The Secret Doctrine
The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
By
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Author of “Isis Unveiled.”
Third and Revised Edition.
SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH.
“There is no Religion higher than Truth.”
Volume II.
Anthropogenesis
The Theosophical Publishing House
London
1893
CONTENTS
Preliminary Notes on The Archaic Stanzas, and the Four Pre‐Historic
Continents.
Part I. Anthropogenesis.
Text.
Stanza I.
Stanza II.
Stanza III.
Stanza IV.
Stanza V.
Stanza VI.
Stanza VII.
Stanza VIII.
Stanza IX.
Stanza X.
Stanza XI.
Stanza XII.
Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their
Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
Stanza I. Beginnings of Sentient Life.
Two Antediluvian Astronomers.
Stanza II. Nature Unaided Fails.
Creation of Divine Beings in the Exoteric Accounts.
Stanza II.—_Continued._
The Chronology of the Brâhmans.
Stanza III. Attempts To Create Man.
Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.
On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.
Stanza IV.—_Continued._
Stanza V. The Evolution of the Second Race.
The Divine Hermaphrodite.
Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The “Sweat‐Born.”
A Few Words About “Deluges” And “Noahs.”
Stanza VII. From The Semi‐Divine Down To The First Human Races.
I. Fission.
II. Budding.
III. Spores.
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism.
V. True Sexual Union.
Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall.
What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.
Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.
Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.
The “Sons Of God” And The “Sacred Island.”
Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.
Archaic Teachings In The “Purânas” And “Genesis.” Physical
Evolution.
A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.
Are Giants A Fiction?
The Races With The “Third Eye.”
The Primeval Manus Of Humanity.
Stanza XI. The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth
Races.
Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.
Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.
Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.
The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.
Our Divine Instructors.
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.
Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.
The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged
Continents.
Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic
Traditions.
The “Curse” From A Philosophical Point Of View.
Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza
XII.
Conclusion.
Part II. The Archaic Symbolism Of The World‐Religions.
Section I. Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in Every Scripture.
Section II. Adam=Adami.
Section III. The “Holy of Holies.” Its Degradation.
Section IV. On the Myth of the “Fallen Angels” in its Various Aspects.
A. The Evil Spirit: Who, And What?
B. The Gods Of Light Proceed From The Gods Of Darkness.
C. The Many Meanings Of The “War In Heaven.”
Section V. Is Plerôma Satan’s Lair?
Section VI. Prometheus, the Titan.
His Origin In Ancient India.
Section VII. Enoïchion‐Henoch.
Section VIII. The Symbolism of the Mystery‐Names Iao and Jehovah, with
their Relation to the Cross and Circle.
A. Cross And Circle.
B. The Fall Of The Cross Into Matter.
Section IX. The Upanishads in Gnostic Literature.
Section X. The Cross and the Pythagorean Decad.
Section XI. The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.
A. Saptaparna.
B. The Tetraktys In Relation To The Heptagon.
C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.
D. The Septenary In The Exoteric Works.
E. Seven In Astronomy, Science, And Magic.
F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists.
Part III. Addenda. Science And The Secret Doctrine Contrasted.
Section I. Archaic, or Modern Anthropology?
Section II. The Ancestors Mankind is Offered by Science.
Plastidular Souls, And Conscious Nerve‐Cells.
Section III. The Fossil Relics of Man and the Anthropoid Ape.
A. Geological Facts Bearing On The Question Of Their Relationship.
B. Western Evolutionism: The Comparative Anatomy Of Man And The
Anthropoid In No Way A Confirmation Of Darwinism.
C. Darwinism And The Antiquity Of Man: The Anthropoids And Their
Ancestry.
Section IV. Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the
Antiquity of Man.
A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe,
Animal Evolution, And Man.
B. On Chains Of Planets And Their Plurality.
C. Supplementary Remarks On Esoteric Geological Chronology.
Section V. Organic Evolution and Creative Centres.
A. The Origin And Evolution Of The Mammalia: Science And Esoteric
Phylogeny.
B. The European Palæolithic Races: Whence, And How Distributed.
Section VI. Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in
History.
A. Some Statements About The Sacred Islands And Continents In The
Classics, Explained Esoterically.
Section VII. Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of
Several Submerged Continents.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
Ἡ ἐμὴ διδαχὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμή, ἀλλὰ τοῦ πέμψαντός με.
My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
JOHN vii. 16.
Modern Science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human
reason and the Secret Doctrine, and the idea is corroborated by
the ancient legends and myths, and even by the _Bible_ itself,
when it is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly
developing from a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the
latter, with all its predetermined programme of physical
transformation, and its invisible, therefore _spiritual_, forces
which gradually develop its form, colour, and odour? The word
_evolution_ speaks for itself. The germ of the present human race
must have preëxisted in the parent of this race, as the seed, in
which lies hidden the flower of next summer, was developed in the
capsule of its parent flower; the parent may be but _slightly_
different, but it still differs from its future progeny. The
antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard were,
perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the
progenitors of our human race have been the “giants” of the
_Vedas_, the _Voluspa_, and the _Book of Genesis_? While it is
positively absurd to believe the “transformation of species” to
have taken place according to some of the more materialistic views
of the Evolutionists, it is but natural to think that each genus,
beginning with the molluscs and ending with monkey‐man, has
modified from its own primordial and distinctive form.—ISIS
UNVEILED, I. 152‐3.
PRELIMINARY NOTES ON THE ARCHAIC STANZAS, AND THE FOUR PRE‐HISTORIC
CONTINENTS.
Facies totius universi, quamvis infinitis modis variet,
Manet tamen semper eadem.—SPINOZA.
The Stanzas, with the Commentaries thereon, in this Volume, are drawn from
the same Archaic Records as the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Volume I. As far
as possible a verbatim translation is given: but some of the Stanzas are
too obscure to be understood without explanation, and therefore, as in
Volume I, they are first given in full as they stand, and then, when taken
verse by verse with their Commentaries, an attempt is made to make them
clearer, by words added in foot‐notes, in anticipation of the fuller
explanation of the Commentary.
As regards the Evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three
new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to Modern Science as
well as to current religious dogmas. It teaches: (_a_) the simultaneous
evolution of seven human Groups on seven different portions of our globe;
(_b_) the birth of the _astral_, before the _physical_ body, the former
being a model for the latter; and (_c_) that man, in this Round, preceded
every mammalian—the anthropoids included—in the animal kingdom.(1)
The Secret Doctrine is not alone in speaking of primeval Men born
simultaneously on the seven divisions of our Globe. In the _Divine
Pymander_ of Hermes Trismegistus, we find the same seven primeval Men(2)
evolving from Nature and the Heavenly Man, in the collective sense of the
word, namely, from the Creative Spirits; and in the fragments of Chaldæan
tablets, collected by George Smith, on which is inscribed the Babylonian
Legend of Creation, in the first column of the Cutha tablet, seven human
Beings “with the faces of ravens,” that is to say, of black swarthy
complexions, whom “the [seven] Great Gods created,” are mentioned. Or, as
explained in lines 16, 17 and 18:
In the midst of the earth they grew up and became great,
And increased in number,
Seven kings, brothers of the same family.(3)
These are the seven Kings of Edom to whom reference is made in the
_Kabalah_; the First Race, which was _imperfect_, that is to say, was born
before the “balance” (sexes) existed, and which was therefore
destroyed.(4)
Seven Kings, brethren, appeared and begat children, 6,000 in
number were their peoples. The God Nergas [death] destroyed them.
“How did he destroy them?” By bringing into equilibrium [or
balance] those who did not yet exist.(5)
They were “destroyed,” as a Race, by being merged in their own progeny (by
exudation): that is to say, the sexless Race reïncarnated in the
(potentially) bisexual; the latter, in the androgynes; these again, in the
sexual, the later Third Race. Were the tablets less mutilated, they would
be found to contain word for word the same account as is given in the
Archaic Records and in Hermes, at least as regards the fundamental facts,
if not as regards minute details; for Hermes is a good deal disfigured by
mistranslations.
It is quite certain that the seeming supernaturalism of these teachings,
although allegorical, is so diametrically opposed to the dead‐letter
statements of the Bible,(6) as well as to the latest hypotheses of
Science, that it will evoke passionate denial. The Occultists, however,
know that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones,
simply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty.
Besides, we have the Egyptian _Books of Thoth_, and _Book of the Dead_,
and the Hindû _Purânas_ with their seven Manus, as well as the Chaldæo‐
Assyrian accounts, whose tiles mention seven primitive Men, or Adams, the
real meaning of which name may be ascertained by means of the _Kabalah_.
Those who know anything of the Samothracian Mysteries will also remember
that the generic name of the Kabiri was the “Holy Fires,” which created on
seven localities of the island of Electria, or Samothrace, the “Kabir born
of the Holy Lemnos”—the island sacred to Vulcan.
According to Pindar, this Kabir, whose name was Adamas,(7) was, in the
traditions of Lemnos, the type of the primitive man born from the bosom of
the Earth. He was the archetype of the first males in the order of
generation, and was one of the seven autochthonous ancestors or
progenitors of mankind.(8) If, coupling with this the fact that Samothrace
was colonized by the Phœnicians, and before them by the mysterious
Pelasgians who came from the East, we also remember the identity of the
“Mystery” Gods of the Phœnicians, Chaldæans, and Israelites, it will be
easy to discover whence came also the confused account of the Noachian
Deluge. It has become undeniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their
primitive ideas about creation from Moses, who had them from the
Egyptians, compiled their Genesis and first cosmogonic traditions, when
rewritten by Ezra and others, from the Chaldæo‐Akkadian account. It is,
therefore, sufficient to examine the Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform and
other inscriptions to find also therein, scattered here and there, not
only the original meaning of the name Adam, Admi, or Adami, but also the
creation of seven Adams or roots of Men, born of Mother Earth, physically,
and of the Divine Fire of the Progenitors, spiritually or astrally. The
Assyriologists, ignorant of the Esoteric teachings, could hardly be
expected to pay any greater attention to the mysterious and ever‐recurring
number _seven_ on the Babylonian cylinders, than they pay to it on finding
it in _Genesis_ and the rest of the _Bible_. Yet the numbers of the
ancestral spirits and their seven groups of human progeny are on the
cylinders, notwithstanding the dilapidated condition of the fragments, and
are to be found as plainly, as they are in _Pymander_ and in the _Book of
the Concealed Mystery_ of the _Kabalah_. In the latter Adam Kadmon is the
Sephirothal Tree, as also the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
And that Tree, says verse 32, “hath around it seven columns,” or palaces,
of the seven creative Angels operating in the Spheres of the seven Planets
on our Globe. As Adam Kadmon is a _collective_ name, so also is the name
of the man Adam. Says George Smith, in his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_:
The word Adam used in these legends for the first human being is
evidently _not a proper name, but is only used as a term for
mankind_. Adam appears as a proper name in _Genesis_, but
certainly in some passages is only used in the same sense as the
Assyrian word.(9)
Moreover, neither the Chaldæan nor the Biblical Deluge, with their stories
of Xisuthrus and Noah, is based on the universal or even on the Atlantean
Deluges, recorded in the Indian allegory of Vaivasvata Manu. They are the
exoteric allegories based on the Esoteric Mysteries of Samothrace. If the
older Chaldæans knew the Esoteric truth concealed in the Purânic legends,
the other nations were aware only of the Samothracian Mystery, and
allegorized it. They adapted it to their astronomical and anthropological,
or rather phallic, notions. Samothrace is known historically to have been
famous in antiquity for a deluge, which submerged the country and reached
the top of the highest mountains; an event which happened before the age
of the Argonauts. It was overflowed very suddenly by waters from the
Euxine, which had been regarded up to that time as a lake.(10) But the
Israelites had, moreover, another legend upon which to base their
allegory, the legend of the Deluge, that transformed the present Gobi
Desert into a sea _for the last time_, some 10,000 or 12,000 years ago,
and which drove many Noahs and their families to the surrounding
mountains. As the Babylonian accounts are only now restored from hundreds
of thousands of broken fragments—the mound of Kouyunjik alone having
yielded from Layard’s excavations upwards of twenty thousand fragments of
inscriptions—the proofs here cited are comparatively scanty; yet such as
they are, they corroborate almost every one of our teachings; three most
certainty, at the very least. These are:
(1) That the race which was the first to fall into generation was a dark
race (zalmat‐qaqadi), which they call the Adamu or Dark Race, and that
Sarku, or the Light Race, remained pure for a long while subsequently.
(2) That the Babylonians recognized two principal Races at the time of the
Fall, the Race of the Gods, the Ethereal Doubles of the Pitris, having
preceded these two. This is Sir H. Rawlinson’s opinion. These Races are
our Second and Third Root‐Races.
(3) That these seven Gods, each of whom created a Man, or Group of men,
were “the Gods imprisoned or incarnated.” These Gods were: the God Zi; the
God Zi‐ku, Noble Life, Director of Purity; the God Mir‐ku, Noble Crown,
“Saviour from death of the Gods [later on] imprisoned,” and the creator of
“the dark races which his hand has made”; the God Libzu, “wise among the
Gods”; the God Nissi; the God Suhhab; and Hea or Sa, their synthesis, the
God of Wisdom and of the Deep, identified with Oannes‐Dagon, at the time
of the Fall, and called, collectively, the Demiurge, or Creator.(11)
There are two “Creations” so‐called, in the Babylonian fragments, and as
_Genesis_ has adhered to this, we find its first two chapters
distinguished as the Elohite and the Jehovite Creations. Their proper
order, however, is not preserved in these or in any other exoteric
accounts. Now these “Creations,” according to the Occult Teachings, refer
respectively to the formation of the primordial seven Men by the
Progenitors, the Pitris, or Elohim, and to that of the human Groups after
the Fall.
All this will be examined in the light of Science and comparisons drawn
from the scriptures of all the ancient nations, the _Bible_ included, as
we proceed. Meanwhile, before we turn to the Anthropogenesis of the
prehistoric Races, it may be useful to agree upon the names to be given to
the Continents on which the four great Races, which preceded our Adamic
Race, were born, lived, and died. Their archaic and Esoteric names were
many, and varied with the language of the nation which mentioned them in
its annals and scriptures. That which in the _Vendîdâd_, for instance, is
referred to as Airyana Vaêjô(12) wherein was born the original
Zoroaster,(13) is called in the Purânic literature Shveta Dvîpa, Mount
Meru, the Abode of Vishnu, etc.; and in the Secret Doctrine is simply
named the “Land of the Gods,” under their chiefs, the “Spirits of this
Planet.”
Therefore, in view of the possible, and even very probable confusion, that
may arise, it is considered more convenient to adopt, for each of the four
Continents constantly referred to, a name more familiar to the cultured
reader. It is proposed, then, to call the first Continent, or rather the
first _terra firma_ on which the First Race was evolved by the divine
Progenitors:
I. The Imperishable Sacred Land.
The reason for the name is that it is stated that: this “Imperishable
Sacred Land” never shared the fate of the other Continents, because it is
the only one whose destiny it is to last from the beginning to the end of
the Manvantara throughout each Round. It is the cradle of the first man
and the dwelling of the last _divine_ mortal, chosen as a Shishta for the
future seed of humanity. Of this mysterious and sacred land very little
can be said, except, perhaps, according to a poetical expression in one of
the Commentaries, that the “_Pole‐star has its watchful eye upon it, from
the dawn to the close of the twilight of a Day of the Great Breath_.”(14)
II. The Hyperborean.
This will be the name chosen for the second Continent, the land which
stretched out its promontories southward and westward from the North Pole
to receive the Second Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known
as Northern Asia. Such was the name given by the oldest Greeks to the far‐
off and mysterious region, whither their tradition made Apollo, the
Hyperborean, travel every year. Astronomically, Apollo is, of course, the
Sun, who, abandoning his Hellenic sanctuaries, loved to annually visit his
far‐away country, where the Sun was said to never set for one half of the
year. “Ἐγγὺς γὰρ νυκτός τε καὶ ἤματος εἰσι κέλευθοι,” says a verse in the
Odyssey.(15)
But historically, or better, perhaps, ethnologically and geologically, the
meaning is different. The land of the Hyperboreans, the country that
extended beyond Boreas, the frozen‐hearted God of snows and hurricanes,
who loved to slumber heavily on the chain of Mount Rhipæus, was neither an
ideal country, as surmized by the Mythologists, nor yet a land in the
neighbourhood of Scythia and the Danube.(16) It was a real Continent, a
_bonâ fide_ land, which knew no winter in those early days, nor have its
sorry remains more than one night and day during the year, even now. The
nocturnal shadows never fall upon it, said the Greeks; for it is the “Land
of the Gods,” the favourite abode of Apollo, the God of light, and its
inhabitants are his beloved priests and servants. This may be regarded as
poetized _fiction_ now; but it was poetized _truth_ then.
III. Lemuria.
The third Continent, we propose to call Lemuria. The name is an invention,
or an idea, of Mr. P. L. Sclater, who, between 1850 and 1860, asserted on
zoological grounds the actual existence, in prehistoric times, of a
Continent which he showed to have extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and
Sumatra. It included some portions of what is now Africa; but otherwise
this gigantic Continent, which stretched from the Indian Ocean to
Australia, has now wholly disappeared beneath the waters of the Pacific,
leaving here and there only some of its highland tops which are now
islands. Mr. A. R. Wallace, the Naturalist, writes Mr. Charles Gould:
Extends the Australia of Tertiary periods to New Guinea and the
Solomon Islands, and perhaps to Fiji, and from its marsupial types
infers a connection with the northern continent during the
Secondary period.(17)
The subject is treated at length elsewhere.(18)
IV. Atlantis.
Thus we name the fourth Continent. It would be the first historical land,
were the traditions of the Ancients to receive more attention than they
have hitherto. The famous island of Plato of that name was but a fragment
of this great Continent.(19)
V. Europe.
The fifth Continent was America; but, as it is situated at the Antipodes,
it is Europe and Asia Minor, almost coëval with it, which are generally
referred to by the Indo‐Aryan Occultists as the fifth. If their teaching
followed the appearance of the Continents in their geological and
geographical order, then this classification would have to be altered. But
as the sequence of the Continents is made to follow the order of evolution
of the Races, from the First to the Fifth, our Âryan Root‐Race, Europe
must be called the fifth great Continent. The Secret Doctrine takes no
account of islands and peninsulas, nor does it follow the modern
geographical distribution of land and sea. Since the day of its earliest
teachings and the destruction of the great Atlantis, the face of the Earth
has changed more than once. There was a time when the delta of Egypt and
Northern Africa belonged to Europe, before the formation of the Straits of
Gibraltar and a further upheaval of the Continent entirely changed the
face of the map of Europe. The last serious change occurred some 12,000
years ago,(20) and was followed by the submersion of Plato’s little
Atlantic island, which he calls Atlantis after its parent continent.
Geography was part of the Mysteries, in days of old. Says the _Zohar_:
These secrets [of land and sea] were divulged to the _men of the
secret science_, but not to the geographers.(21)
The claim that physical man was originally a colossal pre‐tertiary giant,
and that he existed 18,000,000 years ago, must of course appear
preposterous to admirers of, and believers in, modern learning. The whole
_posse comitatus_ of Biologists will turn away from the conception of this
Third Race Titan of the Secondary Age, a being fit to fight successfully
with the then gigantic monsters of the air, sea, and land; so his
forefathers, the ethereal prototypes of the Atlantean, had little need to
fear that which could not hurt them. The modern Anthropologist is quite
welcome to laugh at our Titans, as he laughs at the Biblical Adam, and as
the Theologian laughs at the former’s pithecoid ancestor. The Occultists
and their severe critics may feel that they have pretty well mutually
squared their accounts by this time. Occult Sciences claim less and give
more, at all events, than either Darwinian Anthropology or Biblical
Theology.
Nor ought the Esoteric Chronology to frighten anyone; for, with regard to
figures, the greatest authorities of the day are as fickle and as
uncertain as the Mediterranean waves. As regards the duration of the
geological periods alone, the learned men of the Royal Society are all
hopelessly at sea, and jump from one million to five hundred millions of
years with the utmost ease, as will be seen more than once during this
comparison.
Take one instance for our present purpose—the calculations of Mr. Croll.
Whether, according to this authority, 2,500,000 years represent the time
since the beginning of the Tertiary Age, or the Eocene period, as an
American geologist makes him say;(22) or whether again Mr. Croll “allows
fifteen millions since the beginning of the Eocene period,” as quoted by
an English geologist,(23) both sets of figures cover the claims made by
the Secret Doctrine.(24) For assigning as the latter does from four to
five million years between the incipient and the final evolution of the
Fourth Root‐Race, on the Lemuro‐Atlantean Continents; one million years
for the Fifth, or Âryan Race, to the present date; and about 850,000 since
the submersion of the last large peninsula of the great Atlantis—all this
may have easily taken place within the 15,000,000 years conceded by Mr.
Croll to the Tertiary Age. But, chronologically speaking, the duration of
the period is of secondary importance, as we have, after all, certain
American Scientists to fall back upon. These gentlemen, unmoved by the
fact that their assertions are called not only dubious but absurd, yet
maintain that man existed so far back as in the Secondary Age. They have
found human footprints on rocks of that formation; and furthermore, M. de
Quatrefages finds no valid scientific reason why man should not have
existed during the Secondary Age.
The Ages and periods in Geology are, in sober truth, purely conventional
terms, as they are still barely delineated, and, moreover, no two
Geologists or Naturalists agree as to the figures. Thus, there is a wide
margin for choice offered to the Occultist by the learned fraternity.
Shall we take for one of our supports Mr. T. Mellard Read? This gentleman,
in a paper on “Limestone as an Index of Geological Time,” read by him in
1878 before the Royal Society, claims that the _minimum_ time required for
the formation of the sedimentary strata and the elimination of the
calcareous matter is in round numbers 600 million years;(25) or shall we
ask support for our chronology from Mr. Darwin’s works, wherein, according
to his theory, he demands for the organic transformations from 300 to 500
million years? Sir Charles Lyell and Prof. Houghton were satisfied with
placing the beginning of the Cambrian Age at 200 and 240 millions of years
ago, respectively. Geologists and Zoologists claim the maximum time,
though Mr. Huxley, at one time, placed the beginning of the incrustation
of the earth at 1,000 million years ago, and would not surrender a
millennium of it.
But the main point for us lies not in the agreement or disagreement of the
Naturalists as to the duration of geological periods, but rather in their
perfect accord on one point, for a wonder, and this a very important one.
They all agree that during the Miocene Age—whether one or ten million
years ago—Greenland and even Spitzbergen, the remnants of our second or
Hyperborean Continent, “had an almost tropical climate.” Now the pre‐
Homeric Greeks had preserved a vivid tradition of this “Land of the
Eternal Sun,” whither their Apollo journeyed yearly. Science tells us:
During the Miocene age, Greenland (in N. Lat. 70°) developed an
abundance of trees, such as the yew, the redwood, the sequoia,
allied to the Californian species, beeches, planes, willows, oaks,
poplars and walnuts, as well as a magnolia and a zamia.(26)
In short Greenland had southern plants unknown to northern regions.
And now arises this natural question. If the Greeks, in the days of Homer,
knew of a Hyperborean land, _i.e._, a blessed land beyond the reach of
Boreas, the God of winter and of the hurricane, an ideal region which the
later Greeks and their writers have vainly tried to locate beyond Scythia,
a country where nights were short and days long, and beyond that a land
where the Sun never set and the palm grew freely—if they knew of all this,
who then told them of it? In their day, and for ages previously, Greenland
must certainly have been already covered with perpetual snows, with never‐
thawing ice, just as it is now. Everything tends to show that the land of
the short nights and the long days was Norway or Scandinavia, beyond which
was the blessed land of eternal light and summer. For the Greeks to know
of this, the tradition must have descended to them from some people more
ancient than themselves, who were acquainted with those climatic details
of which the Greeks themselves could know nothing. Even in our day,
Science suspects that beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the
Arctic Pole, there exists a sea which never freezes and a continent which
is ever green. The Archaic Teachings, and also the _Purânas_—for one who
understands their allegories—contain the same statements. Suffice, then,
for us the strong probability that, during the Miocene period of Modern
Science, at a time when Greenland was an almost tropical land, there lived
a people, now unknown to history.
NOTE.
The reader is requested to bear in mind that the following Sections are
not strictly consecutive in order of time. In Part I the Stanzas which
form the skeleton of the exposition are given, and certain important
points commented upon and explained. In the subsequent Sections of Parts
II and III various additional details are gathered, and a fuller
explanation of the subject is attempted.
PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS.
Twelve Stanzas From the “Book Of Dzyan,”(27)
With Commentaries.
In primeval times, a maiden,
Beauteous Daughter of the Ether,
Passed for ages her existence
In the great expanse of Heaven.
Seven hundred years she wandered,
Seven hundred years she laboured,
Ere her first‐born was delivered.
Ere a beauteous duck descending,
Hastens toward the water‐mother,
Lightly on the knee she settles,
Finds a nesting‐place befitting,
Where to lay her eggs in safety.
Lays her eggs within, at pleasure,
Six, the golden eggs she lays there,
Then a Seventh, an egg of iron.
_Kalevala_ (CRAWFORD).
Text.
Stanza I.
1. The Lha which turns the Fourth is Servant to the Lha(s) of the Seven,
they who revolve, driving their Chariots around their Lord, the One Eye of
our World. His Breath gave Life to the Seven. It gave Life to the First.
2. Said the Earth: “Lord of the Shining Face, my House is empty.... Send
thy Sons to people this Wheel. Thou hast sent thy Seven Sons to the Lord
of Wisdom. Seven times doth he see thee nearer to himself, seven times
more doth he feel thee. Thou hast forbidden thy Servants, the small Rings,
to catch thy Light and Heat, thy great Bounty to intercept on its passage.
Send now to thy Servant the same.”
3. Said the Lord of the Shining Face: “I shall send thee a Fire when thy
work is commenced. Raise thy voice to other Lokas; apply to thy Father,
the Lord of the Lotus, for his Sons.... Thy People shall be under the rule
of the Fathers. Thy Men shall be mortals. The Men of the Lord of Wisdom,
not the Sons of Soma, are immortal. Cease thy complaints. Thy Seven Skins
are yet on thee.... Thou art not ready. Thy Men are not ready.”
4. After great throes she cast off her old Three and put on her new Seven
Skins, and stood in her first one.
Stanza II.
5. The Wheel whirled for thirty crores more. It constructed Rûpas; soft
Stones that hardened, hard Plants that softened. Visible from invisible,
Insects and small Lives. She shook them off her back whenever they overran
the Mother.... After thirty crores, she turned round. She lay on her back:
on her side.... She would call no Sons of Heaven, she would ask no Sons of
Wisdom. She created from her own Bosom. She evolved Water‐Men, terrible
and bad.
6. The Water‐Men, terrible and bad, she herself created from the remains
of others. From the dross and slime of her First, Second, and Third, she
formed them. The Dhyâni came and looked ... the Dhyâni from the bright
Father‐Mother, from the White Regions they came, from the Abodes of the
immortal Mortals.
7. Displeased they were. “Our Flesh is not there. No fit Rûpas for our
Brothers of the Fifth. No Dwellings for the Lives. Pure Waters, not
turbid, they must drink. Let us dry them.”
8. The Flames came. The Fires with the Sparks; the Night‐Fires and the
Day‐Fires. They dried out the turbid dark Waters. With their heat they
quenched them. The Lhas of the High, the Lhamayin of Below, came. They
slew the Forms which were two‐ and four‐faced. They fought the Goat‐Men,
and the Dog‐Headed Men, and the Men with fishes’ bodies.
9. Mother‐Water, the Great Sea, wept. She arose, she disappeared in the
Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.
10. When they were destroyed, Mother Earth remained bare. She asked to be
dried.
Stanza III.
11. The Lord of the Lords came. From her Body he separated the Waters, and
that was Heaven above, the First Heaven.
12. The great Chohans called the Lords of the Moon, of the Airy Bodies:
“Bring forth Men, Men of your nature. Give them their Forms within. She
will build Coverings without. Males‐Females will they be. Lords of the
Flame also....”
13. They went each on his allotted Land; Seven of them, each on his Lot.
The Lords of the Flame remain behind. They would not go, they would not
create.
Stanza IV.
14. The Seven Hosts, the Will‐Born Lords, propelled by the Spirit of Life‐
Giving, separate Men from themselves, each on his own Zone.
15. Seven times seven Shadows of Future Men were born, each of his own
Colour and Kind. Each inferior to his Father. The Fathers, the Boneless,
could give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their progeny were Bhûta, with
neither Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ Race.
16. How are the Manushya born? The Manus with minds, how are they made?
The Fathers called to their help their own Fire, which is the Fire that
burns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.
These Three produced in their joint efforts a good Rûpa. It could stand,
walk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with
no Sense....
17. The Breath needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a
Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life;
the Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of
its Body; “We gave it our own!”—said the Dhyânis. The Breath needed a
Vehicle of Desires; “It has it!”—said the Drainer of Waters. But Breath
needs a Mind to embrace the Universe; “We cannot give that!”—said the
Fathers. “I never had it!”—said the Spirit of the Earth. “The Form would
be consumed were I to give it mine!”—said the Great Fire.... Man remained
an empty senseless Bhûta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those
who became Men with Bones in the Third.
Stanza V.
18. The First were the Sons of Yoga. Their sons, the children of the
Yellow Father and the White Mother.
19. The Second Race was the product by budding and expansion, the A‐sexual
from the Sexless.(28) Thus was, O Lanoo, the Second Race produced.
20. Their Fathers were the Self‐born. The Self‐born, the Chhâyâ from the
brilliant Bodies of the Lords, the Fathers, the Sons of Twilight.
21. When the Race became old, the old Waters mixed with the fresher
Waters. When its Drops became turbid, they vanished and disappeared in the
new Stream, in the hot Stream of Life. The Outer of the First became the
Inner of the Second. The old Wing became the new Shadow, and the Shadow of
the Wing.
Stanza VI.
22. Then the Second evolved the Egg‐born, the Third. The Sweat grew, its
Drops grew, and the Drops became hard and round. The Sun warmed it; the
Moon cooled and shaped it; the Wind fed it until its ripeness. The White
Swan from the Starry Vault overshadowed the big Drop. The Egg of the
Future Race, the Man‐swan of the later Third. First male‐female, then man
and woman.
23. The Self‐born were the Chhâyâs, the Shadows from the Bodies of the
Sons of Twilight. Neither water nor fire could destroy them. Their sons
were.
Stanza VII.
24. The Sons of Wisdom, the Sons of Night, ready for rebirth, came down.
They saw the vile forms of the First Third. “We can choose,” said the
Lords, “we have wisdom.” Some entered the Chhâyâs. Some projected a Spark.
Some deferred till the Fourth. From their own Rûpa they filled the Kâma.
Those who entered became Arhats. Those who received but a Spark, remained
destitute of knowledge; the Spark burned low. The Third remained mind‐
less. Their Jîvas were not ready. These were set apart among the Seven.
They became narrow‐headed. The Third were ready. “In these shall we
dwell,” said the Lords of the Flame and of the Dark Wisdom.
25. How did the Mânasa, the Sons of Wisdom, act? They rejected the Self‐
born. They are not ready. They spurned the Sweat‐born. They are not quite
ready. They would not enter the first Egg‐born.
26. When the Sweat‐born produced the Egg‐born, the twofold, the mighty,
the powerful with bones, the Lords of Wisdom said: “Now shall we create.”
27. The Third Race became the Vâhan of the Lords of Wisdom. It created
Sons of Will and Yoga, by Kriyâshakti it created them, the Holy Fathers,
Ancestors of the Arhats....
Stanza VIII.
28. From the drops of sweat, from the residue of the substance, matter
from dead bodies of men and animals of the Wheel before, and from cast‐off
dust, the first animals were produced.
29. Animals with bones, dragons of the deep, and flying Sarpas were added
to the creeping things. They that creep on the ground got wings. They of
the long necks in the water became the progenitors of the fowls of the
air.
30. During the Third, the boneless animals grew and changed; they became
animals with bones, their Chhâyâs became solid.
31. The animals separated the first. They began to breed. The two‐fold man
separated also. He said: “Let us as they; let us unite and make
creatures.” They did....
32. And those which had no Spark took huge she‐animals unto them. They
begat upon them dumb races. Dumb they were themselves. But their tongues
untied. The tongues of their progeny remained still. Monsters they bred. A
race of crooked red‐hair‐covered monsters going on all fours. A dumb race
to keep the shame untold.
Stanza IX.
33. Seeing which, the Lhas who had not built men, wept, saying:
34. “The Amânasa have defiled our future abodes. This is Karma. Let us
dwell in the others. Let us teach them better, lest worse should happen.”
They did....
35. Then all men became endowed with Manas. They saw the sin of the
mindless.
36. The Fourth Race developed speech.
37. The one became two; also all the living and creeping things that were
still one, giant fish, birds and serpents with shell‐heads.
Stanza X.
38. Thus, two by two, on the seven Zones, the Third Race gave birth to the
Fourth; the Sura became A‐sura.
39. The First, on every Zone, was moon‐coloured; the Second yellow like
gold; the Third red; the Fourth brown, which became black with sin. The
first seven human shoots were all of one complexion. The next seven began
mixing.
40. Then the Third and Fourth became tall with pride. “We are the kings;
we are the gods.”
41. They took wives fair to look upon. Wives from the mindless, the
narrow‐headed. They bred monsters, wicked demons, male and female, also
Khado, with little minds.
42. They built temples for the human body. Male and female they
worshipped. Then the Third Eye acted no longer.
Stanza XI.
43. They built huge cities. Of rare earths and metals they built. Out of
the fires vomited, out of the white stone of the mountains and of the
black stone, they cut their own images, in their size and likeness, and
worshipped them.
44. They built great images nine yatis high, the size of their bodies.
Inner fires had destroyed the land of their fathers. The water threatened
the Fourth.
45. The first great waters came. They swallowed the seven great islands.
46. All holy saved, the unholy destroyed. With them most of the huge
animals, produced from the sweat of the earth.
Stanza XII.
47. Few remained. Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red
remained. The moon‐coloured were gone for ever.
48. The Fifth produced from the holy stock remained; it was ruled over by
the first Divine Kings.
49. ... The Serpents who re‐descended, who made peace with the Fifth, who
taught and instructed it....
Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their
Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
Stanza I. Beginnings of Sentient Life.
1. The Lha, or Spirit of the Earth. 2. Invocation of the Earth to
the Sun. 3. What the Sun answers. 4. Transformation of the Earth.
1. THE LHA (_a_) WHICH TURNS THE FOURTH(29) IS SERVANT TO THE LHA(S) OF
THE SEVEN(30) (_b_), THEY WHO REVOLVE, DRIVING THEIR CHARIOTS AROUND THEIR
LORD, THE ONE EYE(31) OF OUR WORLD. HIS BREATH GAVE LIFE TO THE SEVEN.(32)
IT GAVE LIFE TO THE FIRST (_c_).
“_They are all Dragons of Wisdom_,” adds the Commentary (_d_).
(_a_) “Lha” is the ancient term in Trans‐Himâlayan regions for “Spirit,”
any celestial or _super‐human_ Being, and it covers the whole series of
heavenly hierarchies, from an Archangel, or Dhyâni, down to an Angel of
darkness, or terrestrial Spirit.
(_b_) This expression shows in plain language that the Spirit‐Guardian of
our Globe, which is the fourth in the Chain, is subordinate to the chief
Spirit (or God) of the Seven Planetary Genii or Spirits. As already
explained, the Ancients had, in their Kyriel of Gods, seven chief Mystery‐
Gods, whose leader was, _exoterically_, the visible Sun, or the eighth,
and, _Esoterically_, the Second Logos, the Demiurge. The Seven—who have
now, in the Christian religion, become the “Seven Eyes of the Lord”—were
the Regents of the seven _chief_ planets; but these were not reckoned
according to the enumeration devised later by people who had forgotten, or
who had an inadequate notion of, the real Mysteries, and included neither
the Sun, the Moon, nor the Earth. The Sun was the chief, exoterically, of
the twelve Great Gods, or zodiacal constellations; and, Esoterically, the
Messiah, the Christos—the subject “anointed” by the Great Breath, or the
One—surrounded by his twelve subordinate powers, also subordinate, in
turn, to each of the seven Mystery‐Gods of the planets.
“_The Seven Higher make the Seven Lhas create the world_,” states a
Commentary; which means that our Earth—to leave aside the rest—was
“created” or fashioned by Terrestrial Spirits, the Regents being simply
the supervisors. This is the first germ of that which grew later into the
Tree of Astrology and Astrolatry. The Higher Ones were the Cosmocratores,
the fabricators of our Solar System. This is borne out by all the ancient
Cosmogonies, such as those of Hermes, of the Chaldæans, of the Aryans, of
the Egyptians, and even of the Jews. The Signs of the Zodiac—the “_Sacred
Animals_” or “Heaven’s Belt”—are as much the Bne’ Alhim—Sons of the Gods
or the Elohim—as the Spirits of the Earth; but they are prior to them.
Soma and Sin, Isis and Diana, are all lunar Gods or Goddesses, called the
Fathers and Mothers of our Earth, which is subordinate to them. But these,
in their turn, are subordinate to their “Fathers” and “Mothers”—the latter
being interchangeable and varying with each nation—the Gods and their
Planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Bel, Brihaspati, etc.
(_c_) “His Breath gave Life to the Seven,” refers as much to the Sun, who
gives life to the Planets, as to the “High One,” the _Spiritual Sun_, who
gives life to the whole Kosmos. The astronomical and astrological keys
opening the gate leading to the mysteries of Theogony can be found only in
the later glossaries, which accompany the Stanzas.
In the apocalyptic Shlokas of the Archaic Records, the language is as
symbolical, if less mythical, than in the _Purânas_. Without the help of
the later Commentaries, compiled by generations of Adepts, it would be
impossible to understand the meaning correctly. In the ancient
Cosmogonies, the visible and the invisible worlds are the double links of
one and the same chain. As the Invisible Logos, with its Seven
Hierarchies—each represented or personified by its chief Angel or
Rector—form one POWER, the inner and the invisible; so, in the world of
Forms, the Sun and the seven chief Planets constitute the visible and
active potency; the latter Hierarchy being, so to speak, the visible and
objective Logos of the Invisible and—except in the lowest grades—ever‐
subjective Angels.
Thus—to anticipate a little by way of illustration—every Race in its
evolution is said to be born under the direct influence of one of the
Planets; Race the First receiving its breath of life from the Sun, as will
be seen later on; while the Third Humanity—those who fell into generation,
or from androgynes became separate entities, one male and the other
female—is said to be under the direct influence of Venus, “_the
__‘__little sun__’__ in which the solar orb stores his light_.”
The summary of the Stanzas in Volume I showed the genesis(33) of Gods and
men taking rise in, and from, one and the same Point, which is the One
Universal, Immutable, Eternal, and Absolute UNITY. In its primary
manifested aspect we have seen it become: (1) in the sphere of objectivity
and Physics, PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE and FORCE—centripetal and centrifugal,
positive and negative, male and female, etc.; (2) in the world of
Metaphysics, the SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSE, or Cosmic Ideation, called by
some the LOGOS.
This Logos is the apex of the Pythagorean Triangle. When the Triangle is
complete it becomes the Tetraktys, or the Triangle in the Square, and is
the dual symbol of the four‐lettered Tetragrammaton in the manifested
Kosmos, and of its radical triple Ray in the unmanifested—its Noumenon.
Put more metaphysically, the classification given here of Cosmic
Ultimates, is more one of convenience than of absolute philosophical
accuracy. At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahman manifests
as Mûlaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the
“Unconscious Universal Mind,” etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes
the Basis of the _subject_‐side of manifested Being, and is the source of
all manifestations of individual consciousness. Mûlaprakriti or Primordial
Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the _object_‐side of things—the
basis of all objective evolution and cosmo‐genesis. Force, then, does not
emerge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmanic latency. It is the
_transformation into energy of the supra‐conscious thought of the Logos_,
infused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of
potential latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of
Matter; hence the “primal impress” so vainly discussed by Bishop Temple.
Force thus is _not synchronous_ with the first objectivation of
Mûlaprakriti. Nevertheless as, apart from it, the latter is absolutely and
necessarily inert—_a mere abstraction_—it is unnecessary to weave too fine
a cobweb of subtleties as to the order of succession of the Cosmic
Ultimates. Force _succeeds_ Mûlaprakriti; but, _minus_ Force, Mûlaprakriti
is for all practical intents and purposes non‐existent.(34)
The Heavenly Man or Tetragrammaton, who is the Protogonos, Tikkoun, the
Firstborn from the passive Deity and the first manifestation of that
Deity’s Shadow, is the Universal Form and Idea, which engenders the
Manifested Logos, Adam Kadmon, or the four‐lettered symbol, in the
Kabalah, of the Universe itself, also called the Second Logos. The Second
springs from the First and develops the Third Triangle;(35) from the last
of which (the lower host of Angels) _Men_ are generated. It is with this
third aspect that we shall deal at present.
The reader must bear in mind that there is a great difference between the
Logos and the Demiurgos, for one is _Spirit_ and the other is _Soul_; or
as Dr. Wilder has it:
Dianoia and Logos are synonymous, Nous being superior and closely
in affinity with Τὸ Ἀγαθὸν, one being the superior apprehending,
the other the comprehending—one noëtic and the other phrenic.
Moreover, Man was regarded in several systems as the Third Logos. The
Esoteric meaning of the word Logos—Speech or Word, Verbum—is the rendering
in objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The
Logos is the mirror reflecting DIVINE MIND, and the Universe is the mirror
of the Logos, though the latter is the _esse_ of that Universe. As the
Logos reflects _all_ in the Universe of Plerôma, so Man reflects in
himself all that he sees and finds in _his_ Universe, the Earth. It is the
Three Heads of the Kabalah—“_unum intra alterum, et alterum super
alterum._”(36) “Every Universe (World or Planet) has its own Logos,” says
the Doctrine. The Sun was always called by the Egyptians the “Eye of
Osiris,” and was himself the Logos, the First‐begotten, or Light made
manifest to the world, “which is the Mind and divine Intellect of the
Concealed.” It is only by the seven‐fold Ray of this Light that we can
become cognizant of the Logos through the Demiurge, regarding the latter
as the “Creator” of our Planet and everything pertaining to it, and the
former as the guiding Force of that “Creator”—good and bad at the same
time, the origin of good and the origin of evil. This “Creator” is neither
good nor bad _per se_, but its differentiated aspects in Nature make it
assume one or the other character. With the invisible and the unknown
Universes disseminated through Space, none of the Sun‐Gods had anything to
do. The idea is expressed very clearly in the Books of Hermes, and in
every ancient folk‐lore. It is symbolized generally by the Dragon and the
Serpent—the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented on Earth
by the right and the left‐hand Magic. In the epic poem of Finland, the
_Kalevala_,(37) the origin of the Serpent of Evil is given: it is born
from the spittle of Suoyatar, and endowed with a Living Soul by the
Principle of Evil, Hisi. A strife is described between the two, the “thing
of evil,” the Serpent or Sorcerer, and Ahti, the Dragon of the white
magician, Lemminkainen. The latter is one of the seven sons of Ilmatar,
the virgin “daughter of the air,” she “who fell from heaven into the sea,”
before Creation, _i.e._, Spirit transformed into the matter of sensuous
life. There is a world of meaning and Occult thought in the following few
lines, admirably rendered by Dr. J. M. Crawford, of Cincinnati. The hero
Lemminkainen,
Hews the wall with might of magic,
Breaks the palisade in pieces,
Hews to atoms _seven_ pickets,
Chops the _serpent‐wall_ to fragments.
When the monster little heeding,
Pounces with his mouth of venom
At the head of Lemminkainen.
But the hero, quick recalling,
Speaks the _master‐words of knowledge_,
Words that came from distant ages,
Words his ancestors had taught him.
(_d_) In China the men of Fohi, or the “Heavenly Man,” are called the
twelve Tien‐Hoang, the twelve Hierarchies of Dhyânis or Angels, with human
faces, and dragon bodies; the Dragon standing for Divine Wisdom or
Spirit;(38) and they create men by incarnating themselves in seven figures
of clay—earth and water—made in the shape of these Tien‐Hoang, a third
allegory.(39) The twelve Æsers of the Scandinavian Eddas do the same. In
the Secret Catechism of the Druses of Syria—a legend which is repeated
word for word by the oldest tribes about and around the Euphrates—men were
created by the “Sons of God,” who descended on Earth, and after gathering
seven Mandragoras, they animated the roots, which forthwith became
men.(40)
All these allegories point to one and the same origin—to the dual and
triple nature of man; dual, as male and female; triple, as being of
spiritual and psychic essence _within_, and of a material fabric without.
2. SAID THE EARTH, “LORD OF THE SHINING FACE,(41) MY HOUSE IS EMPTY....
SEND THY SONS TO PEOPLE THIS WHEEL.(42) THOU HAST SENT THY SEVEN SONS TO
THE LORD OF WISDOM (_A_). SEVEN TIMES DOTH HE SEE THEE NEARER TO HIMSELF;
SEVEN TIMES MORE DOTH HE FEEL THEE (_B_). THOU HAST FORBIDDEN THY
SERVANTS, THE SMALL RINGS, TO CATCH THY LIGHT AND HEAT, THY GREAT BOUNTY
TO INTERCEPT ON ITS PASSAGE. SEND NOW TO THY SERVANT THE SAME!”
(_a_) The “Lord of Wisdom” is Mercury, or Budha.
(_b_) The modern Commentary explains the words as a reference to a well‐
known astronomical fact, that Mercury receives seven times more light and
heat from the Sun than the Earth, or even the beautiful Venus, which
receives but twice the amount falling on our insignificant Globe. Whether
the fact was known in antiquity may be inferred from the prayer of the
“Earth Spirit” to the Sun as given in the text.(43) The Sun, however,
refuses to people the Globe, as it is not ready to receive life as yet.
Mercury, as an astrological Planet, is still more Occult and mysterious
than Venus. It is identical with the Mazdean Mithra, the Genius, or God,
“established between the Sun and the Moon, the perpetual companion of the
‘Sun’ of Wisdom.” Pausanias (Bk. v.) shows him as having an altar in
common with Jupiter. He had wings to express his attendance upon the Sun
in its course; and he was called the Nuntius and Sun‐wolf, “_solaris
luminis particeps_.” He was the leader and evocator of Souls, the great
Magician and the Hierophant. Virgil depicts him as taking his wand to
evoke from Orcus the souls plunged therein—_tum virgam capit, hac animas
ille evocat Orco_.(44) He is the Golden‐coloured Mercury, the Χρυσοφαὴς
Ἑρμῆς whom the Hierophants forbade to name. He is symbolized in Grecian
mythology by one of the “dogs” (vigilance), which watch over the celestial
flock (Occult Wisdom), or Hermes Anubis, or again Agathodæmon. He is the
Argus watching over the Earth, mistaken by the latter for the Sun itself.
It is through the intercession of Mercury that the Emperor Julian prayed
to the Occult Sun every night; for, as says Vossius:
All the theologians assert that _Mercury and the Sun are one_....
He was the most eloquent and the most wise of all the Gods, which
is not to be wondered at, since _Mercury is in such close
proximity to the Wisdom and the Word of God_ [the Sun] that he was
confused with both.(45)
Vossius here utters a greater Occult truth than he suspected. The Hermes
of the Greeks is closely related to the Hindû Saramâ and Sârameya, the
divine watchman, “who watches over the golden flock of stars and solar
rays.”
In the clearer words of the Commentary:
_The Globe, propelled onward by the Spirit of the Earth and his six
Assistants, gets all its vital forces, life, and powers through the medium
of the seven planetary Dhyânis from the Spirit of the Sun. They are his
messengers of Light and Life._
_Like each of the Seven Regions of the Earth, each of the seven_(_46_)_
First‐born [the primordial Human Groups] receives its light and life from
its own especial Dhyâni—spiritually, and from the Palace [House, the
Planet] of that Dhyâni—physically; so with the seven great Races to be
born on it. The First is born under the Sun; the Second under Brihaspati
[Jupiter]; the Third under Lohitânga [Mars, the __“__Fiery‐bodied,__”__
and also under Venus or Shukra]; the Fourth, under Soma [the Moon, our
Globe also, the Fourth Sphere being born under and from the Moon] and
Shani, Saturn,_(_47_)_ the Krûra‐lochana [Evil‐eyed], and the Asita [the
Dark]; the Fifth, under Budha [Mercury]._
_So also with man and every __“__man__”__ [every principle] in man. Each
gets its specific quality from its Primary [the Planetary Spirit],
therefore every man is a septenate [or a combination of principles, each
having its origin in a quality of that special Dhyâni]. Every active power
or force __ of the Earth comes to her from one of the seven Lords. Light
comes through Shukra [Venus], who receives a triple supply, and gives one‐
third of it to the Earth. Therefore the two are called __“__Twin‐
sisters,__”__ but the Spirit of the Earth is subservient to the
__“__Lord__”__ of Shukra. Our wise men represent the two Globes, one over,
the other under the double Sign [the primeval Svastika bereft of its four
arms, or the cross, ☩]._(48)
The “double sign” is, as every student of Occultism knows, the symbol of
the male and the female principles in Nature, of the positive and the
negative, for the Svastika or 卐 is all that and much more. All antiquity,
ever since the birth of Astronomy—imparted to the Fourth Race by one of
the Kings of the Divine Dynasty—and also of Astrology, represented Venus
in its astronomical tables as a _Globe poised over a Cross_, and the
Earth, as a _Globe under a Cross_. The Esoteric meaning of this is the
Earth fallen into generation, or into the production of its species
through sexual union. But the later Western nations have not failed to
give it quite a different interpretation. They explained the sign through
their Mystics—guided by the light of the Latin Church—as meaning that our
Earth and all on it were redeemed _by the Cross_, while Venus—otherwise
Lucifer or Satan—was trampling upon it. Venus is the most Occult,
powerful, and mysterious of all the Planets; the one whose influence upon,
and relation to, the Earth is most prominent. In exoteric Brâhmanism,
Venus or Shukra—a male deity(49)—is the son of Bhrigu, one of the
Prajâpati and a Vedic sage, and is Daitya‐Guru, or the priest‐instructor
of the primeval giants. The whole history of Shukra in the _Purânas_,
refers to the Third and Fourth Races. As says the Commentary:
_It is through Shukra that the __“__double ones__”__ [the hermaphrodites]
of the Third [__Root‐Race__] descended from the first __“__Sweat‐
born.__”__ Therefore it is represented under the symbol [Symbol: circle
with horizontal line through it] [the circle and diameter], during the
Third [Race], and [Symbol: circle with horizontal line through it, and
another from center to bottom], during the Fourth._
This needs explanation. The diameter, when found isolated in a circle,
stands for female Nature; for the first ideal World, _self‐generated_ and
_self‐impregnated_ by the universally diffused Spirit of Life—thus also
referring to the primitive Root‐Race. It becomes androgynous as the Races
and all else on Earth develop into their physical forms, and the symbol is
transformed into a circle with a diameter from which runs a vertical line,
expressive of male and female, not separated as yet—the first and earliest
Egyptian Tau; [Symbol: circle with horizontal line through it, and another
from center to bottom] after which it becomes ☩, or male female
separated(50) and fallen into generation. Venus (the Planet), is
symbolized by the sign of a globe over a cross, which shows the former as
presiding over the natural generation of man. The Egyptians symbolized
Ankh, “life,” by the ansated cross, or ☥, which is only another form of
Venus (Isis), ♀, and meant, Esoterically, that mankind and all animal life
had stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and had fallen into
physical male and female generation. This sign, from the end of the Third
Race, has the same phallic significance as the “_Tree_ of Life” in Eden.
Anouki, a form of Isis, is the Goddess of Life; and Ankh was taken by the
Hebrews from the Egyptians. It was introduced into the language by Moses,
one learned in the Wisdom of the priests of Egypt, with many other
mystical words. The word Ankh in Hebrew, with the personal suffix, means
“my life”—my being—which “is the personal pronoun Anochi,” from the name
of the Egyptian Goddess Anouki.(51)
In one of the most ancient Catechisms of Southern India, Madras
Presidency, the hermaphrodite Goddess Ardhanârî,(52) has the ansated
cross, the Svastika, the “male and female sign,” right in the central
part, to denote the pre‐sexual state of the Third Race. Vishnu, who is now
represented with a lotus growing out of his navel—or the Universe of
Brahmâ evolving out of the central point, Nara—is shown in one of the
oldest carvings as double‐sexed (Vishnu and Lakshmî) standing on a lotus‐
leaf floating on the water, the water rising in a semicircle and pouring
through the Svastika, “the source of generation,” or of the descent of
man.
Pythagoras calls Shukra‐Venus the _Sol alter_, the “other Sun.” Of the
“seven Palaces of the Sun,” that of Lucifer‐Venus is the third in
Christian and Jewish Kabalah, the _Zohar_ making of it the abode of
Samael. According to the Occult Doctrine, this Planet is our Earth’s
_primary_, and its spiritual prototype. Hence, Shukra’s car (Venus‐
Lucifer’s) is said to be drawn by an _Ogdoad_ of “_earth‐born_ horses,”
while the steeds of the chariots of the other Planets are different.
_Every sin committed on Earth is felt by Ushanas‐Shukra. The Guru of the
Daityas is the Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men. Every change on
Shukra is felt on, and reflected by, the Earth._
Shukra, or Venus, is thus represented as the Preceptor of the Daityas, the
giants of the Fourth Race, who, in the Hindû allegory, at one time
obtained the sovereignty of all the Earth, and defeated the minor Gods.
The Titans of the Western allegory also are as closely connected with
Venus‐Lucifer, which was identified by later Christians with Satan. And,
as Venus, equally with Isis, was represented with cow’s horns on her head,
the symbol of mystic Nature—one convertible with, and significant of, the
Moon, since all these were lunar Goddesses—the configuration of this
Planet is now placed by theologians between the horns of the mystic
Lucifer.(53) It is owing to the fanciful interpretation of the archaic
tradition, which states that Venus changes simultaneously (geologically)
with the Earth, that whatever takes place on the one takes place on the
other, and that many and great were their common changes—it is for these
reasons that St. Augustine repeats it, applying the several changes of
configuration, colour, and even of the orbital paths, to that
theologically‐woven character of Venus‐Lucifer. He even goes so far in his
pious fancy as to connect the last changes of the Planet with the Noachian
and mythical Deluge alleged to have taken place 1796 B.C.(54)
As Venus has no satellites, it is stated allegorically, that Âsphujit
(this “Planet”) adopted the Earth, the progeny of the Moon, “_who overgrew
its parent and gave much trouble_”—a reference to the Occult connection
between the two. The Regent (of the Planet) Shukra(55) loved his adopted
child so well that he incarnated as Ushanas and gave it perfect laws,
which were disregarded and rejected in later ages. Another allegory, in
the _Harivansha_, is that Shukra went to Shiva and asked him to protect
his pupils, the Daityas and Asuras, from the fighting Gods; and that to
further his object he performed a Yoga rite “imbibing the _smoke_ of chaff
with his _head downwards_ for 1,000 years.” This refers to the great
inclination of the axis of Venus—amounting to fifty degrees—and to its
being enveloped in eternal clouds. But it relates only to the physical
constitution of the Planet. It is with its Regent, the informing Dhyân
Chohan, that Occult Mysticism has to deal. The allegory which states that
Vishnu was cursed by Shukra to be _reborn seven times_ on the Earth as a
punishment for killing his (Shukra’s) mother, is full of Occult
philosophical meaning. It does not refer to Vishnu’s Avatâras, since these
number nine—the tenth being still to come—but to the Races on Earth.
Venus, or Lucifer—also Shukra and Ushanas—the Planet, is the light‐bearer
of our Earth, in both the physical and mystic sense. The Christians knew
it well in early times, since one of the earliest popes of Rome is known
by his pontiff‐name as Lucifer.
_Every world has its parent Star and sister Planet. Thus Earth is the
adopted, child and younger brother of Venus, but its inhabitants are of
their own kind.... All sentient complete beings [full septenary men or
higher beings] are furnished, in their beginnings, with forms and
organisms in full harmony with the nature and state of the Sphere they
inhabit._(56)
_The Spheres of Being, or Centres of Life, which are isolated nuclei
breeding their men and their animals, are numberless; not one has any
resemblance to its sister‐companion or to any other in its own special
progeny._(57)
_All have a double physical and spiritual nature._
_The nucleoles are eternal and everlasting; the nuclei periodical and
finite. The nucleoles form part of the Absolute. They are the embrasures
of that black impenetrable fortress, which is for ever concealed from
human or even Dhyânic sight. The nuclei are the light of eternity escaping
therefrom._
_It is that __LIGHT__ which condenses into the Forms of the __“__Lords of
Being__”__—the first and the highest of which are, collectively,
__JÎVÂTMÂ__, or Pratyagâtmâ [which is said figuratively to issue from
Paramâtmâ. It is the Logos of the Greek philosophers—appearing at the
beginning of every new Manvantara]. From these downwards—formed from the
ever‐consolidating waves of that Light, which becomes on the objective
plane gross Matter—proceed the numerous Hierarchies of the Creative
Forces; some formless, others having their own distinctive form, others,
again, the lowest [Elementals], having no form of their own, but assuming
every form according to the surrounding conditions._
_Thus there is but one Absolute Upâdhi [Basis] in the spiritual sense,
from, on, and in which, are built for manvantaric purposes the countless
basic centres on which proceed the universal, cyclic, and individual
Evolutions during the active period._
_The informing Intelligences, which animate these various Centres of
Being, are referred to indiscriminately by men beyond the Great
Range_(_58_)_ as the Manus, the Rishis, the Pitris,_(_59_)_ the Prajâpati,
and so on; and as Dhyâni‐Buddhas, the Chohans, Melhas [Fire‐Gods],
Bodhisattvas,_(_60_)_ and others, on this side. The truly ignorant call
them Gods; the learned profane, the One God; and the wise, the Initiates,
honour in them only the manvantaric manifestations of __THAT__ which
neither our Creators [the Dhyân Chohans] nor their creatures can ever
discuss or know anything about. The __ABSOLUTE__ is not to be defined, and
no mortal or immortal has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods
of Existence. The mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can that which
lives perceive Absolute Life._
“Therefore, man cannot know higher Beings than his own Progenitors.” “_Nor
shall he worship them_,” but he ought to learn _how_ he came into the
world.
Number Seven, the fundamental figure among all other figures in every
national religious system, from Cosmogony down to man, must have its
_raison d’être_. It is found among the ancient Americans, as prominently
as among the archaic Âryans and Egyptians. The question will be fully
dealt with in the second Part of this Volume; meanwhile a few facts may be
given here. Says the author of the _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and
the Quiches, 11,500 years ago_:(61)
Seven seems to have been the sacred number _par excellence_ among
all civilized nations of antiquity. Why? This query has never been
satisfactorily answered. Each separate people has given a
different explanation, according to the peculiar tenets of their
[exoteric] religion. That it was the number of numbers for those
initiated to the sacred mysteries there can be no doubt.
Pythagoras ... calls it the “Vehicle of life,” containing body and
soul, since it is formed of a quaternary, that is: _Wisdom and
Intellect_; and a Trinity, or _action_ and _matter_. The Emperor
Julian, in _Matrem_ and in _Oratio_,(62) expresses himself thus:
“Were I to touch upon the initiation into our secret mysteries,
which the Chaldees bacchized respecting the _seven‐rayed_ god,
lighting up the soul through him, I should say things unknown to
the rabble, very unknown, but well known to the blessed
Theurgists.”(63)
And who that is acquainted with the _Purânas_, the _Book of the Dead_, the
_Zendavesta_, the Assyrian Tiles, and finally the _Bible_, and has
observed the constant occurrence of the number seven in these records of
people from the remotest times upwards unconnected and so far apart, can
regard as a coincidence the following fact, given by the same explorer of
ancient Mysteries? Speaking of the prevalence of seven as a mystic number,
among the inhabitants of the “Western Continent” of America, he adds that
it is not less remarkable. For:
It frequently occurs in the _Popul‐Vuh_. We find it besides in the
_seven families_ said by Sahagun and Clavigero to have accompanied
the mystical personage named _Votan_, the reputed founder of the
great city of Nachan, identified by some with Palenque. In the
_seven caves_(64) from which the ancestors of the Nahualts are
reported to have emerged. In the _seven cities_ of Cibola,
described by Coronado and Niza.... In the _seven Antilles_; in the
_seven heroes_ who, we are told, escaped the Deluge.
Heroes, moreover, whose number is found the same in every Deluge
story—from the seven Rishis who were saved with Vaivasvata Manu, down to
Noah’s ark, into which beasts, fowls, and living creatures were taken by
“sevens.” Thus we see the figures 1, 3, 5, 7, as perfect, because
thoroughly mystic, numbers playing a prominent part in every Cosmogony and
evolution of living Beings. In China, 1, 3, 5, 7, are called “celestial
numbers” in the canonical “Book of Changes”—_Yi King_, or
_transformation_, as in “evolution.”
The explanation of it becomes evident when one examines the ancient
Symbols: all these are based upon and start from the figures given from
the Archaic Manuscript in the Proem of Volume I. [Symbol: circle with
horizontal line through it, and another from center to bottom], the symbol
of evolution and fall into generation or Matter, is reflected in the old
Mexican sculptures or paintings, as it is in the Kabalistic Sephiroth, and
the Egyptian Tau. Examine the Mexican MS. (_Add. MSS._ Brit. Mus.
9789)(65); you will find it in a tree whose trunk is covered with _ten_
fruits ready to be plucked by a male and female, one on each side of it,
while from the top of the trunk two branches shoot horizontally to the
right and left, thus forming a perfect Τ (Tau), the ends of the two
branches, moreover, each bearing a triple bunch, with a bird—the bird of
immortality, Âtmâ or the Divine Spirit—sitting between the two, and thus
making the _seventh_. This represents the same idea as the Sephirothal
Tree, _ten_ in all, yet, when separated from its upper triad, leaving
_seven_. These are the celestial fruits, the ten, or [Symbol: circle with
“i” inside], 10, born out of the two invisible male and female seeds,
making up the 12, or the Dodecahedron of the Universe. The mystic system
contains the ·, the central point; the 3, or [symbol: triangle]; the 5,
[symbol: 5‐point star]; and the 7, or [symbol: triangle in square]; or
again [symbol: 6‐point star]; the triangle in the square and the
synthesizing point in the interlaced double triangles. This for the world
of the archetypes. The phenomenal world receives its culmination and the
reflex of all in MAN. Therefore he is the mystic square—in his
metaphysical aspect—the Tetraktys; and becomes the Cube on the creative
plane. His symbol is the cube unfolded(66) and 6 becoming 7, or the
[Symbol: cross], 3 crossways (the female) and 4 vertically; and this is
man, the culmination of the deity on earth, whose body is the cross of
flesh, _on_, _through_, and _in_ which he is ever crucifying and putting
to death the divine Logos, or his HIGHER SELF. Says every Philosophy and
Cosmogony:
The universe hath a Ruler [Rulers collectively] set over it, which
is called the WORD (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its Queen:
which two are the First Power after the ONE.
These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our Illusory Universe. The
two inseparables remain in the _Universe of Ideas_ so long as it lasts,
and then merge back into Parabrahman, the One ever changeless. “The
Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self‐existent,” emanates a pure
ethereal Light—a dual light not perceptible to the elementary
senses—according to the _Purânas_, the _Bible_, the _Sepher Yetzirah_, the
Greek and Latin Hymns, the _Book of Hermes_, the Chaldæan _Book of
Numbers_, the Esotericism of Lao‐tse, and everywhere else. In the Kabalah,
which explains the secret meaning of _Genesis_, this Light is the Dual‐
Man, or the Androgyne (rather Sexless) Angels, whose generic name is Adam
Kadmon. It is they who complete man, whose ethereal form is emanated by
other divine, but far lower Beings, who solidify the body with clay, or
the “dust of the ground”—an allegory indeed, but as scientific as any
Darwinian evolution and more _true_.
The author of the _Source of Measures_ says that the foundation of the
Kabalah and of all its mystic books is made to rest upon the _ten_
Sephiroth; which is a fundamental truth. He shows these Ten Sephiroth or
the 10 Numbers as follows:
[Illustration: Circle with numbers 2 through 9, and vertical line through
it]
The circle is the _naught_; its vertical diameter line is the first or
primal _One_ [the Word or Logos], from which spring the 2, the 3, and so
on to 9, the limit of the digits. The 10 is the first Divine
Manifestation,(67) which contains every possible power of exact expression
of proportion—the sacred _Jod_. By this Cabbalah we are taught that these
Sephiroth were the _numbers_ or emanations of the heavenly Light (20612 to
6561), they were the 10 Words, DBRIM, 41224, the light of which they were
the flux was the Heavenly man, the Adam‐KDM (the 144‐144); and the Light,
by the New Testament or Covenant (41224) created God; just as by the Old
Testament God (Alhim, 31415) creates Light (20612 to 6561).(68)
Now there are three kinds of Light in Occultism, as in the Kabalah. (1)
The Abstract and Absolute Light, which is Darkness; (2) The Light of the
Manifested‐Unmanifested, called by some the Logos: and (3) The latter
Light reflected in the Dhyân Chohans, the minor Logoi—the Elohim,
collectively—who, in their turn, shed it on the objective Universe. But in
the Kabalah—reëdited and carefully adjusted to fit the Christian tenets by
the Kabalists of the thirteenth century—the three Lights are described as:
(1) The clear and penetrating, that of Jehovah; (2) reflected light; and
(3) light _in the abstract_.
This Light, abstractly taken, (in a metaphysical or symbolical
sense) is Alhim (Elohim, God), while the clear penetrating Light
is Jehovah. The light of Alhim belongs to the world in general, in
its allness and general fulness, but the light of Jehovah is that
pertaining to the chiefest production, man, whom this light
penetrated to and made.(69)
The author of the _Source of Measures_ pertinently refers the reader to
Inman’s _Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names_, ii. 648. There, an
engraving of
The _vesica piscis_, Mary, and the female emblem, copied from a
Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, which was printed at Venice,
1542,
and therefore, as Inman remarks, “with a licence from the Inquisition, and
consequently orthodox,” will show the reader what the Latin Church
understood by this “penetrating power of light and its effects.” How sadly
disfigured—applied as they were to the grossest anthropomorphic
conceptions—have, under Christian interpretation, become the noblest and
grandest, as the most exalted, ideas of Deity of the Eastern Philosophy!
The Occultists in the East call this Light Daiviprakriti, and in the West
the Light of Christos. It is the Light of the Logos, the direct reflection
of the ever Unknowable on the plane of Universal Manifestation. But here
is the interpretation thereof given by the modern Christians from the
Kabalah. As declared by the author just cited;
To the fulness of the world in general with its chiefest content,
man, the term Elohim‐Jehovah applies. In extracts from Sohar, the
Rev. Dr. Cassell [a Kabalist], to prove that the Cabbalah sets
forth the doctrine of the Trinity, among other things says:
“Jehovah is Elohim (Alhim)” ... By _three_ steps God, (Alhim) and
Jehovah become the same, and though separated, each and together
they are of the same One.(70)
Similarly, Vishnu becomes the Sun, the visible symbol of the Impersonal
Deity. Vishnu is described as “striding through the seven regions of the
Universe in _three steps_.” But with the Hindûs this is an _exoteric_
account, a surface tenet and an allegory, while the Kabalists give it out
as the Esoteric and final meaning. But to proceed:
Now Light, as shown, is 20612 to 6561, as the proper enunciation
of the integral and numerical relation of diameter to
circumference of a circle. God (Alhim, that is, 31415 to One, a
modified form of the above) is the reduction of this, so as to
obtain a standard unit _One_, as the basis, in general, of all
calculation and all mensuration. But for the production of animal
life, and for especial _time measure_, or the lunar year, that
influence which causes conception and embryotic development, the
numbers of the Jehovah measure (the “_man even Jehovah_” measure),
viz., 113 to 355, have to be specialized.(71) But this last ratio
is but a modified form of Light, or 20612 to 6561, as a _pi
value_, being only a variation of the same (that is 20612 to 6561
is 31415 to one, and 355 to 113 is 31415 or Alhim or God), and in
such a manner that one can be made to flow into and be derived
from the other:—and these are the three steps by which the _Unity_
and sameness can be shown of the Divine names. That is, the two
are but variations of the same ratio, viz., that of _pi_. The
object of this comment is to show the same symbolic measuring use
for the Cabbalah, as taught, with that of the Three Covenants of
the _Bible_, and with that of Masonry as just noticed.
First, then, the Sephiroth are described as _Light_, that is, they
themselves are a function of, indeed, the same as, the
manifestation of the Ain Soph; and they are so from the fact that
“_Light_” represents the ratio 20612 to 6561, as part of the
“Words,” DBRIM, 41224, or, as to the Word, Dabar, 206 (= 10
cubits). “_Light_” is so much the burden of the Cabbalah as to
explaining the Sephiroth, that the most famous book on the
Cabbalah is called _Sohar_, or “_Light_.” In this we find
expressions of this kind: “The infinite was entirely unknown and
diffused no light before the luminous point violently broke
through into vision.” “When He first assumed the form (of the
crown, or the first Sephira), He caused 9 splendid lights to
emanate from it, which, shining through it, diffused a bright
light in all directions:”—that is, these 9 with his one (which was
the origin, as above, of the 9), together, made the 10, that is
[Symbol: circle with vertical line through it], or [Symbol: circle
with “x” inside], or the sacred Ten (numbers or Sephiroth), or
_Jod_—and these numbers were “_the Light_.” Just as in the Gospel
of St. John, God (Alhim, 31415 to one) was that Light (20612 to
6561) by which (Light) all things were made.(72)
In the _Sepher Yetzirah_, or “Number of Creation,” the whole process of
evolution is given out in numbers. In its “thirty‐two Paths of Wisdom” the
number 3 is repeated four times, and the number 4 five times. Therefore,
the Wisdom of God is contained in numbers (Sephrim or Sephiroth), for
Sepher (or S‐ph‐r when unvowelled) means “to cipher.” And therefore, also,
we find Plato stating that the Deity “geometrizes” in fabricating the
Universe.
The Kabalistic book, the _Sepher Yetzirah_, opens with a statement of the
hidden wisdom of Alhim in Sephrim, _i.e._, the Elohim in the Sephiroth.
In thirty and two paths, hidden wisdom, established Jah, IHVH,
Tzabaoth, Elohi of Israel, Alhim of Life, El of Grace and
Mercy—exalted uplifted Dweller on high, and King of Everlasting,
and His name—Holy! in Three Sephrim, viz.:
B—S’ph‐r, V—S’ph‐r, V—Siph‐o‐r.
Mr. Ralston Skinner goes on to say:
This comment sets forth the “_hidden wisdom_” of the original text
by hidden wisdom, that is, by the use of words carrying a special
set of numbers and a special phraseology, which will set forth the
very explanatory system which we find to fit so accurately in the
Hebrew Bible.... In setting forth his scheme, to enforce it, and
to finish out his detailed exposition in a general
postulate,—viz., the one word “_Sephrim_” (_Sephiroth_), of the
Number Jezirah, the author explains the separation of this word in
the three subordinate ones, a play upon a common word, _s‐ph‐r_,
or number.
The prince Al‐Chazari(73) says to the Rabbi: “I wish now that thou
wouldest impart to me some of the chiefest or leading principles
of _Natural Philosophy_, which, as thou sayest, were in former
times worked out by them (the ancient wise ones);”—to which the
Rabbi makes answer: “To such principles appertains the Number of
Creation of our race‐father Abraham” that is Abram and Abraham, or
numbers 41224 and 41252. He then says that this book of number
treats of teaching the “_Alhim_‐ness and _One_‐ness through
(DBRIM)” viz., the numbers of the word “_Words_.” That is, it
teaches the use of the ratio 31415 to One, through 41224, which
last, in the description of the Ark of the Covenant, was divided
into two parts by the _two_ tables of stone, on which these DBRIM,
or 41224, were written or engraved—or 20612 × 2. He then comments
on these three subordinately used words, and takes care as to one
of them to make the comment, “and _Alhim_ (31415 to One) said let
there be Light (20612 to 6561).”
The words as given in the text are:
ספר ספר סיפור
and the Rabbi, in commenting upon them, says: “It teaches the
_Alhim_‐ness (31415) and _One_‐ness (the diameter to Alhim),
through Words (DBRIM = 41224), by which on the one side there is
infinite expression in heterogeneous creations, and on the other a
final harmonic tendency to _One_‐ness” (which, as everyone knows,
is the mathematical function of _pi_ of the schools, which
measures, weighs, and numbers the stars of heaven, and yet
resolves them back into the final oneness of the Uni‐verse)
“through Words. Their final accord perfects itself in that
_One_‐ness that ordains them, and which consists in
ספר ספר ספור ”
that is, the Rabbi, in his first comment, leaves the _jod_, or
_i_, out of one of the words, whereas afterwards he restores it
again. If we take the values of those subordinate words, we find
them to be 340, 340 and 346;—together these are 1026, and the
division of the general word into these has been to produce these
numbers—which by T’mura may be changed in various ways, for
various purposes.(74)
The reader is asked to turn to Stanza IV of Volume I, Shloka 3 and
Commentary,(75) to find that the 3, 4, (7), and the thrice seven, or 1065,
the number of Jehovah, is the number of the 21 Prajâpati mentioned in the
_Mahâbhârata_, or the three Sephrim (words in ciphers or figures). And
this comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic Philosophy and the
anthropomorphic Creator of _exoteric_ Judaism (since the _Esotericism_ of
the Jews shows its identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the
student to perceive and discover that, in truth, Jehovah is but a “lunar”
and “generation” God. It is a fact well known to every conscientious
student of the Kabalah, that the deeper he dives into it, the more he
feels convinced that unless the Kabalah—or what is left of it—is read by
the light of the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, its study leads only to the
discovery that, on the lines traced by exoteric Judaism and Christianity,
the monotheism of both is nothing more exalted than ancient Astrolatry,
now vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never cease to repeat
that Primal Intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be
comprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless
and negative. Hence the Ain Suph—the “Unknowable” and “UNNAMEABLE”—as It
could not be made manifest, was imagined as emanating Manifesting Powers.
It is then with its Emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can,
deal. Christian theology, having rejected the doctrine of Emanations and
replaced them with direct, conscious Creations of Angels and the rest out
of _nothing_, now finds itself hopelessly stranded between
Supernaturalism, or Miracle, and Materialism. An _extra_‐cosmic God is
fatal to Philosophy: an _intra_‐cosmic Deity—_i.e._, Spirit and Matter
inseparable from each other—is a philosophical necessity. Separate them
and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of
emotionalism. But why “geometrize,” as Plato has it, why represent these
Emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The question
is well answered by the author just cited, who says:
Mental perception, to become physical perception, must have the
cosmic principle of _Light_:—and, by this, our mental circle must
become visible through light; or, for its complete manifestation,
the circle must be that of physical visibility, or Light itself.
Such conceptions, thus formulated, became the ground‐work of the
philosophy of the Divine manifesting in the universe.(76)
This is Philosophy. It is otherwise when we find the Rabbi in _Al‐Chazari_
saying that:
Under s’ph‐r is to be understood—_calculation_ and _weighing_ of
the created bodies. For the _calculation_, by means of which a
body must be constructed in harmony or symmetry, by which it must
be in construction rightly arranged and made to correspond to the
object in design, consists at last in _number_, _extension_,
_mass_, _weight_;—co‐ordinate relation of movements, then harmony
of music, must consist altogether _by number_, that is s’ph‐r....
By Sippor (s’phor) is to be understood the words of Alhim (206—1
of 31415 to one), whereunto joins or adapts itself the design to
the frame or form of construction; for example—it was said “Let
Light be.” The work became as the _words_ were spoken, that is, as
the numbers of the work came forth.(77)
This is _materializing_ the _spiritual_ without scruple. But the Kabalah
was not always so well adapted to anthropo‐monotheistic conceptions.
Compare this with any of the six schools of India. For instance in
Kapila’s Sânkhya Philosophy, unless, allegorically speaking, Purusha
mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter remains irrational, while
the former remains inactive without her. Therefore Nature (in man) must
become a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and
the Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness
gradually. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal
forms, before the Light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man.
Therefore, till then, the latter cannot be referred to as “man,” but has
to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever‐changing forms. _Evolution_,
not _Creation_, by means of _Words_ is recognized in the Philosophies of
the East, even in their exoteric records. _Ex oriente lux._ Even the name
of the first man in the Mosaic _Bible_ had its origin in India, Professor
Max Müller’s negation notwithstanding. The Jews got their Adam from
Chaldæa; and Adam‐Adami is a compound word and therefore a manifold
symbol, and proves the Occult dogmas.
This is no place for philological disquisitions. But the reader may be
reminded that the words _Ad_ and _Adi_ mean in Sanskrit the “first”; in
Aramæan, “one” (_Ad‐ad_, the “only one”); in Assyrian, “Father,” whence
_Ak‐ad_ or “father‐creator.”(78) And once the statement is found correct,
it becomes rather difficult to confine Adam to the Mosaic _Bible_ alone,
and to see therein simply a Jewish name.
There is frequent confusion in the attributes and genealogies of the Gods
in their Theogonies, the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that
symbolical science, as given to the world by the half‐initiated writers,
Brâhmanical and Biblical. Yet there could be no such confusion made by the
earliest nations, the descendants and pupils of the Divine Instructors;
for both the attributes and the genealogies were inseparably linked with
cosmogonical symbols, the “Gods” being the life and animating “soul‐
principle” of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere and by no
people was speculation allowed to range _beyond_ those _manifested_ Gods.
The boundless and infinite Unity remained with every nation a virgin
forbidden soil, untrodden by man’s thought, untouched by fruitless
speculation. The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its
diastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion, or
dilatation, and contraction. In the Universe, with all its incalculable
myriads of Systems and Worlds disappearing and reäppearing in eternity,
the anthropomorphized Powers, or Gods, their Souls, had to disappear from
view with their Bodies. As our _Catechism_ says:
“_The Breath returning to the Eternal Bosom which exhales and inhales
them_.”
Ideal Nature, the Abstract Space in which everything in the Universe is
mysteriously and invisibly generated, is the same female side of the
procreative power in Nature in the Vedic as in every other Cosmogony.
Aditi is Sephira, and the Sophia of the Gnostics, and Isis, the Virgin
Mother of Horus. In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the “Creative”
Deity, there is a Superior Deity, a Planner, an Architect, of whom the
Creator is but the executive agent. And still higher, _over_ and _around_,
_within_ and _without_, there is the Unknowable and the _Unknown_, the
Source and Cause of all these Emanations.
It thus becomes easy to account for the reason why Adam‐Adami is found in
the Chaldæan scripture, certainly earlier than the Mosaic Books. In
Assyrian _Ad_ is the “father,” and in Aramæan _Ad_ is “one,” and _Ad‐ad_
the “only one,” while _Ak_ is in Assyrian “creator.” Thus _Ad‐am‐ak‐ad‐
mon_ became Adam‐Kadmon in the Kabalah (_Zohar_), meaning as it did, the
“One (Son) of the divine Father, or the Creator,” for the words _am_ and
_om_ meant at one time in nearly every language the _divine_, or the
_deity_. Thus Adam‐Kadmon and Adam‐Adami came to mean “The first Emanation
of the Father‐Mother or Divine Nature,” and literally the “first Divine
One.” And it is easy to see that _Ad_‐Argat (or Aster’t, the Syrian
Goddess, the consort of _Ad‐on_, the Lord God of Syria or the Jewish
Adonai), and Venus, Isis, Ister, Mylitta, Eve, etc., are identical with
the Aditi and Vâch of the Hindûs. They are all the “Mothers of all living”
and “of the Gods.” On the other hand—cosmically and astronomically—all the
male Gods became at first “Sun‐Gods,” then, theologically, the “Suns of
Righteousness,” and the Logoi, all symbolized by the Sun.(79) They are all
Protogonoi—First‐born—and Mikroprosopoi. With the Jews Adam‐Kadmon was the
same as Athamaz, Tamaz, or the Adonis of the Greeks—“the One _with_, and
_of_ his Father”—the “Father” becoming during the later Races Helios, the
Sun, as Apollo Karneios,(80) for instance, who was the “Sun‐born”; Osiris,
Ormazd, and so on, were all followed by, and found themselves transformed
later on into, still more earthly types: such as Prometheus, the crucified
of Mount Kajbee, Hercules, and so many others, Sun‐Gods and Heroes, until
all of them came to have no better significance than phallic symbols.
In the _Zohar_ it is said:
Man was created by the Sephiroth (Elohim‐Javeh, also) and they
engendered by common power the _earthly_ Adam.
Therefore in _Genesis_ the Elohim say: “Behold Man is become _as one of
us_.” But in Hindû Cosmogony or “Creation,” Brahmâ‐Prajâpati _creates_
Virâj and the Rishis, spiritually; therefore the latter are distinctly
called the “Mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ”; and this specified mode of
_engendering_ precluded every idea of Phallicism, at any rate in the
earlier human nations. This instance well illustrates the respective
_spirituality_ of the two nations.
3. SAID THE LORD OF THE SHINING FACE: “I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE WHEN THY
WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS; APPLY TO THY FATHER,
THE LORD OF THE LOTUS(81) (_A_), FOR HIS SONS.... THY PEOPLE SHALL BE
UNDER THE RULE OF THE FATHERS.(82) THY MEN SHALL BE MORTALS. THE MEN OF
THE LORD OF WISDOM,(83) NOT THE SONS OF SOMA,(84) ARE IMMORTAL. CEASE THY
COMPLAINTS (_B_). THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON THEE.... THOU ART NOT READY.
THY MEN ARE NOT READY” (_C_).
(_a_) Kumuda‐Pati is the Moon, the Earth’s parent, in his region of Soma‐
loka. Though the Pitris, or Fathers, are Sons of the Gods, elsewhere Sons
of Brahmâ and even Rishis, they are generally known as the Lunar
Ancestors.
(_b_) Pitri‐Pati is the Lord or King of the Pitris, Yama, the God of Death
and the Judge of mortals. The men of Budha, Mercury, are metaphorically
“immortal” through their Wisdom. Such is the common belief of those who
credit every Star or Planet with being inhabited—and there are men of
Science, M. Flammarion among others, who believe in this fervently, on
logical as well as on astronomical data. The Moon being an inferior
body—even to the Earth, to say nothing of other Planets, the terrestrial
men produced by her Sons—the Lunar Men or Ancestors—from her shell or
body, cannot be immortal. They cannot hope to become real, self‐conscious
and intelligent men, unless they are “finished,” so to say, by other
creators. Thus in the Purânic legend, the son of the Moon (Soma) is Budha
(Mercury), the intelligent and the wise, because he is the offspring of
Soma, the Regent of the visible Moon, not of Indu, the physical Moon. Thus
Mercury is the elder brother of the Earth, metaphorically—his step‐
brother, so to say, the offspring of Spirit—while she (the Earth) is the
progeny of the Body. These allegories have a deeper and more scientific
meaning—astronomically and geologically—than our modern Physicists are
willing to admit. The whole cycle of the first “War in Heaven,” the
Târakâ‐maya, is as full of philosophical as of cosmogonical and
astronomical truths. One can trace therein the biographies of all the
Planets by the history of their Gods and Rulers. Ushanas (Shukra, or
Venus), the bosom‐friend of Soma and the foe of Brihaspati (Jupiter), the
“Instructor of the Gods,” whose wife Târâ, or Tarakâ, had been carried
away by the Moon, Soma—“of whom he begat Budha”—took also an active part
in this war against the “Gods” and forthwith was degraded into a Demon
(Asura) Deity, and so he remains to this day.(85)
Here the word “men” refers to the Celestial men, or what are called in
India the Pitaras or Pitris, the Fathers, the Progenitors of men. This
does not remove the seeming difficulty, in view of modern hypotheses, of
the teaching, which shows these Progenitors or Ancestors creating the
first human Adams out of their sides, as astral shadows. And though it is
an improvement on Adam’s rib, still geological and climatic difficulties
will be brought forward. Such, however, is the teaching of Occultism.
(_c_) Man’s organism was adapted in every Race to its surroundings. The
first Root‐Race was as ethereal as ours is material. The progeny of the
Seven Creators, who evolved the Seven Primordial Adams,(86) surely
required no purified gases to breathe and live upon. Therefore, however
strongly the impossibility of this teaching may be urged by the devotees
of Modern Science, the Occultist maintains that the case was as stated
_æons of years_ before even the evolution of the Lemurian, the first
physical man, which took place 18,000,000 years ago. Archaic Scripture
teaches that at the commencement of every local Kalpa, or Round, the Earth
is reborn, and preliminary evolution is described in one of the _Books of
Dzyan_ and the Commentaries thereon in this wise:
“_As the human Jîva [Monad], when passing into a new womb, gets recovered
with a new body, so does the Jîva of the Earth; it gets a more perfect and
solid covering with each Round after reëmerging once more from the matrix
of space into objectivity._”
This process is attended, of course, by the throes of the new birth, or
geological convulsions.
The only reference to it is contained in one verse of the volume of the
_Book of Dzyan_ before us, where it says:
4. AFTER GREAT THROES SHE(87) CAST OFF HER OLD THREE AND PUT ON HER NEW
SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER FIRST ONE.
This refers to the growth of the Earth, whereas in the Stanza treating of
the First Round it is said in the Commentary:
“_After the changeless [Avikâra] immutable Nature [Essence, Sadaikarûpa]
had awakened and changed [differentiated] into [a state of] causality
[Avyakta], and from cause [Kârana] had become its own discrete effect
[Vyakta], from invisible it became visible. The smallest of the small [the
most atomic of atoms, or anîyânsam anîyasâm] became one and the many
[Ekânekarûpa]; and producing the Universe produced also the fourth Loka
[our Earth] in the garland of the seven lotuses. The Achyuta then became
the Chyuta._”(88)
The Earth is said to cast off “her old _three_” Skins, because this refers
to the three preceding Rounds she has already passed through; the present
being the Fourth Round out of the seven. At the beginning of every new
Round, after a period of Obscuration, the Earth—as do also the other six
“Earths”—casts off, or is supposed to cast off, her old Skins as the
Serpent does; therefore she is called in the _Aitareya‐Brâhmana_ the
Sarpa‐Râjnî, the “Queen of the Serpents,” and “the mother of all that
moves.” The “Seven Skins,” in the first of which she now stands, refer to
the seven geological changes which accompany and correspond to the
evolution of the Seven Root‐Races of Humanity.
Stanza II, which speaks of this Round, begins with a few words of
information concerning the age of our Earth. The chronology will be given
in its place. In the Commentary appended to the Stanza, two personages are
mentioned, Nârada and Asuramaya, especially the latter. All the
calculations are attributed to this archaic celebrity; and what follows
will make the reader superficially acquainted with some of these figures.
Two Antediluvian Astronomers.
To the mind of the Eastern student of Occultism, two figures are
indissolubly connected with mystic Astronomy, Chronology, and their
cycles. Two grand and mysterious figures, towering like two giants in the
Archaic Past, emerge before him, whenever he has to refer to Yugas and
Kalpas. When, at what period of pre‐history they lived, none save a few
men in the world know, or ever can know, with that certainty which is
required by exact chronology. It may have been 100,000 years ago, it may
have been 1,000,000, for all that the outside world will ever know. The
mystic West and Freemasonry talk loudly of Enoch and Hermes. The mystic
East speaks of Nârada, the old Vedic Rishi, and of Asuramaya, the
Atlantean.
It has already been hinted that of all the incomprehensible characters in
the _Mahâbhârata_ and the _Purânas_, Nârada, the son of Brahmâ in the
_Matsya Purâna_, the progeny of Kashyapa and the daughter of Daksha, in
the _Vishnu Purâna_, is the most mysterious. He is referred to by the
honourable title of Deva‐Rishi (Divine Rishi, rather than Demi‐God) by
Parâshara, and yet he is cursed by Daksha and even by Brahmâ. He informs
Kansha that Bhagavân, or Vishnu in exotericism, would incarnate in the
eighth child of Devakî, and thus brings the wrath of the Indian Herod upon
Krishna’s mother; and then, from the cloud on which he is seated—invisible
as a true Mânasaputra—he lauds Krishna, in delight at the Avatâr’s feat of
killing the monster Keshin. Nârada is here, there, and everywhere; and
yet, none of the _Purânas_ gives the true characteristics of this great
enemy of physical procreation. Whatever those characteristics may be in
Hindû Esotericism, Nârada—who is called in Cis‐Himâlayan Occultism Pesh‐
Hun, the “Messenger,” or the Greek Angelos—is the sole confidant and the
executor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi‐Budha: a kind of active
and ever‐incarnating Logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the
beginning to the end of the Kalpa.
Pesh‐Hun is a general not a special Hindû possession. He is the mysterious
guiding intelligent power, which gives the impulse to, and regulates the
impetus of Cycles, Kalpas and universal events.(89) He is Karma’s visible
adjuster on a general scale; the inspirer and the leader of the greatest
heroes of this Manvantara. In the exoteric works he is referred to by some
very uncomplimentary names; such as Kali‐kâraka, Strife‐maker, Kapi‐
vaktra, Monkey‐faced, and even Pishuna, the Spy, though elsewhere he is
called Deva‐Brahmâ. Even Sir William Jones was strongly impressed with
this mysterious character from what he gathered in his Sanskrit studies.
He compares him to Hermes and Mercury, and calls him “the eloquent
messenger of the gods.”(90) All this, besides the fact that the Hindûs
believe him to be a great Rishi, “who is for ever wandering about the
earth, giving good counsel,” led the late Dr. Kenealy(91) to see in him
one of his twelve Messiahs. He was, perhaps, not so far off the real track
as some imagine.
What Nârada _really_ is, cannot be explained in print; nor would the
modern generations of the profane gather much from the information. But it
may be remarked, that if there be in the Hindû Pantheon a Deity which
resembles Jehovah, in tempting by “suggestion” of thoughts, and
“hardening” of the hearts of those whom he would make his tools and
victims, it is Nârada. Only with the latter it is no desire to obtain a
pretext for “plaguing,” and thus showing that “_I am_ the Lord God.” Nor
is it through any ambitious or selfish motive; but, verily, to serve and
guide universal progress and evolution.
Nârada is one of the few prominent characters, if we except some Gods, in
the _Purânas_, who visit the so‐called nether or infernal regions, Pâtâla.
Whether or not it was from his intercourse with the thousand‐headed
Shesha, the Serpent who bears the Seven Pâtâlas and the entire world like
a diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of Astronomy,(92)
that Nârada learned all that he knew, certain it is that he surpasses
Garga’s Guru in his knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has
charge of our progress and national weal or woe. It is he who brings on
wars and puts an end to them. In the old Stanzas, Pesh‐Hun is credited
with having calculated and recorded all the astronomical and cosmic Cycles
to come, and with having taught the Science to the first gazers at the
starry vault. And it is Asuramaya, who is said to have based all his
astronomical works upon those records, to have determined the duration of
all the past geological and cosmical periods, and the length of all the
Cycles to come, till the end of this Life‐Cycle, or the end of the Seventh
Race.
There is a work among the Secret Books, called the _Mirror of Futurity_,
wherein all the Kalpas within Kalpas, and Cycles within the bosom of
Shesha, or infinite Time, are recorded. This work is ascribed to Pesh‐Hun‐
Nârada. There is another old work which is attributed to various
Atlanteans. It is these two records which furnish us with the figures of
our Cycles, and the possibility of calculating the date of Cycles to come.
The chronological calculations which will presently be given are, however,
those of the Brâhmans, as explained further on: but most of them are also
those of the Secret Doctrine.
The chronology and computations of the Brâhman Initiates are based upon
the zodiacal records of India, and the works of the above‐mentioned
Astronomer and Magician—Asuramaya. The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot
err, as they were compiled under the guidance of those who first taught
Astronomy, among other things, to mankind.
But here again we are deliberately and recklessly facing a new difficulty.
We shall be told that our statement is contradicted by Science, in the
person of a man regarded as a great authority (in the West) upon all
subjects of Sanskrit literature—Professor Albrecht Weber, of Berlin. This,
to our great regret, cannot be helped; and we are ready to maintain what
is now stated. Asuramaya, to whom the epic tradition points as the
earliest Astronomer in Âryâvarta, one to whom “the Sun‐God imparted the
knowledge of the stars,” _in propriâ personâ_, as Dr. Weber himself
states, is identified by him, in some very mysterious way, with the
“Ptolemaios” of the Greeks. No more valid reason is given for this
identification than that:
This latter name (Ptolemaios), as we see from the inscription of
Piyadasi, became the Indian “Turamaya,” out of which the name
“Asura Maya” might very easily grow.
No doubt it “might,” but the vital question is: Are there any good proofs
that it _has_ thus grown? The only evidence that is given for this is,
that it _must_ be so:
Since ... this Maya is distinctly assigned to Romaka‐pura in the
West.(93)
The Mâyâ is evident, since no Sanskritist among Europeans can tell where
that locality of Romaka‐pura was, except, indeed, that it was somewhere
“in the West.” In any case, as no member of the Asiatic Society, or
Western Orientalist, will ever listen to a Brâhmanical teaching, it is
useless to take the objections of European Orientalists into
consideration. Romaka‐pura was “in the West,” certainly, since it was part
and parcel of the lost continent of Atlantis. And it is equally certain
that it is Atlantis, to which is assigned in the Hindû _Purânas_ the
birth‐place of Asuramaya, “as great a Magician as he was an Astrologer and
an Astronomer.” Moreover, Prof. Weber refuses to assign any great
antiquity to the Indian Zodiac, and feels inclined to think that the
Hindûs never knew of a Zodiac at all till
They had borrowed one from the Greeks.(94)
This statement clashes with the most ancient traditions of India, and must
therefore be ignored. We are the more justified in ignoring it, as the
learned German Professor himself tells us in the introduction to his work,
that:
In addition to the natural obstacles which impede investigation
[in India], there still prevails a dense mist of prejudice and
preconceived opinions hovering over the land, and enfolding it as
with a veil.(95)
Caught in that veil, it is no wonder that Dr. Weber should himself have
been led into involuntary errors. Let us hope that he knows better now.
Now whether Asuramaya is to be considered a modern myth, a personage who
flourished in the day of the Macedonian Greeks, or that which he is
claimed to be by the Occultists, in any case his calculations agree
entirely with those of the Secret Records.
From fragments of immensely old works attributed to the Atlantean
Astronomer, and found in Southern India, the calendar elsewhere mentioned
was compiled by two very learned Brâhmans(96) in 1884 and 1885. The work
is proclaimed by the best Pandits as faultless—from the Brâhmanical
standpoint—and thus far relates to the chronology of the orthodox
teachings. If we compare its statements with those made several years
earlier in _Isis Unveiled_, with the fragmentary teachings published by
some Theosophists, and with the present data derived from the Secret Books
of Occultism, the whole will be found to agree perfectly, save in some
details which may not be explained; for secrets of higher Initiation—as
unknown to the writer as they are to the reader—would have to be revealed,
and that _cannot be done_.
Stanza II. Nature Unaided Fails.
5. After enormous periods the Earth creates monsters. 6. The
“Creators” are displeased. 7. They dry the Earth. 8. The forms are
destroyed by them. 9. The first great tides. 10. The beginning of
incrustation.
5. THE WHEEL WHIRLED FOR THIRTY CRORES MORE.(97) IT CONSTRUCTED RÛPAS;(98)
SOFT STONES THAT HARDENED,(99) HARD PLANTS THAT SOFTENED.(100) VISIBLE
FROM INVISIBLE, INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES.(101) SHE(102) SHOOK THEM OFF HER
BACK WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER (_A_).... AFTER THIRTY CRORES, SHE
TURNED ROUND. SHE LAY ON HER BACK; ON HER SIDE.... SHE WOULD CALL NO SONS
OF HEAVEN, SHE WOULD ASK NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER OWN
BOSOM. SHE EVOLVED WATER‐MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD (_B_).
(_a_) This relates to an inclination of the axis—of which there were
several—to a consequent deluge and chaos on Earth (having, however, no
reference to Primeval Chaos), in which monsters, half‐human, half‐animal,
were generated. We find it mentioned in the _Book of the Dead_, and also
in the Chaldæan account of creation, on the Cutha Tablets, however
mutilated.
It is not even allegory. Here we have _facts_, that are found repeated in
the account of the _Pymander_, as well as in the Chaldæan tablets of
creation. The verses may almost be checked by the Cosmogony, as given by
Berosus, which has been disfigured out of recognition by Eusebius, but
some of the features of which may yet be found in fragments left by
ancient Greek authors—Apollodorus, Alexander Polyhistor, etc. “The water‐
men terrible and bad”—who were the production of Physical Nature alone, a
result of the “evolutionary impulse” and the first attempt to create
“man,” the crown, and the aim and goal of all animal life on Earth—are
shown to be failures in our Stanzas. Do we not find the same in the
Berosian Cosmogony, denounced with such vehemence as the culmination of
heathen absurdity? And yet who of the Evolutionists can say that things in
the beginning have not come to pass as they are described? That, as
maintained in the _Purânas_, the Egyptian and Chaldæan fragments, and even
in _Genesis_, there have not been two, and even more, “creations,” before
the last formation of the Globe; which, changing its geological and
atmospheric conditions, changed also its flora, its fauna, and its men?
This claim agrees not only with every ancient Cosmogony, but also with
Modern Science, and even, to a certain degree, with the theory of
evolution, as may be demonstrated in a few words.
There is no “Dark Creation,” no “Evil Dragon” conquered by a Sun‐God, in
the earliest World‐Cosmogonies. Even with the Akkads, the Great Deep—the
Watery Abyss, or Space—was the birthplace and abode of Ea, Wisdom, the
incognizable infinite Deity. But with the Semites and the later Chaldæans,
the fathomless Deep of Wisdom becomes gross Matter, sinful substance, and
Ea is changed into Tiamat, the Dragon slain by Merodach, or Satan, in the
astral waves.
In the Hindû _Purânas_, Brahmâ, the Creator, is seen recommencing _de
novo_ several “Creations” after as many failures; and two great Creations
are mentioned,(103) the Pâdma and the Vârâha, the present, when the Earth
was lifted out of the water by Brahmâ, in the shape of a Boar, the Varâha
Avatâra. Creation is shown as a sport, an amusement (Lîlâ) of the Creative
God. The _Zohar_ speaks of primordial worlds, which perished as soon as
they came into existence. And the same is said in the _Midraish_, Rabbi
Abahu explaining distinctly(104) that “the Holy One” had successively
created and destroyed sundry Worlds, before he succeeded in the present
one. This does not relate only to other Worlds in Space, but to a mystery
of our own Globe contained in the allegory about the “Kings of Edom.” For
the words, “This one pleases me,” are repeated in _Genesis_,(105) though
in disfigured terms, as usual. The Chaldæan fragments of Cosmogony in the
cuneiform inscriptions, and elsewhere, show two distinct creations of
animals and men, the first being destroyed, as it was a failure. The
Cosmogonical tablets prove that this our actual creation was preceded by
others;(106) and as shown by the author of _The Qabbalah_, in the _Zohar_,
_Siphra Dtzenioutha_, in _Jovah Rabba_, 128a, etc., the Kabalah states the
same.
(_b_) Oannes, or Dagon, the Chaldæan “Man‐fish,” divides his Cosmogony and
Genesis into two portions. First the abyss of waters and darkness, wherein
resided most hideous beings—men with wings, four and two‐winged men, human
beings with two heads, with the legs and horns of a goat—our “goat‐
men”(107)—hippocentaurs, bulls with the heads of men, and dogs with tails
of fishes. In short, combinations of various animals and men, of fishes,
reptiles and other monstrous animals, assuming each other’s shapes and
countenances. The feminine element they resided in is personified by
Thalatth—the Sea, or “Water”—which was finally conquered by Belus, the
male principle. And Polyhistor says:
Belus came, and cut the woman asunder; and of one half of her he
formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens; and at the
same time destroyed the animals within her.(108)
As pertinently remarked by Isaac Myer:
With the Akkadians each object and power of Nature had its _Zi_ or
Spirit. The Akkadians formed their deities into triads, usually of
males [sexless, rather?], the Semites also had triadic deities,
but introduced sex(109)
—or phallicism. With the Âryan and the earliest Akkadians all things are
emanations _through_, not _by_, a Creator or Logos. With the Semites
everything is _begotten_.
6. THE WATER‐MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD, SHE HERSELF CREATED FROM THE REMAINS
OF OTHERS.(110) FROM THE DROSS AND SLIME OF HER FIRST, SECOND, AND
THIRD,(111) SHE FORMED THEM. THE DHYÂNI CAME AND LOOKED.... THE DHYÂNI
FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER‐MOTHER, FROM THE WHITE(112) REGIONS THEY(113) CAME,
FROM THE ABODES OF THE IMMORTAL MORTALS (_A_).
(_a_) The explanations given in our Stanzas are far more clear than that
which the legend of creation from the Cutha tablet would give, even were
it complete. What is preserved on it, however, corroborates them. For, in
the tablet, the “Lord of Angels” destroys the men in the abyss, when
“there were not left the carcases and waste” after they were slaughtered.
After which they, the Great Gods, create men with the bodies of birds of
the desert, human beings, “seven kings, brothers of the same family,”
etc., which is a reference to the locomotive qualities of the primary
ethereal bodies of men, which could fly as well as they could walk,(114)
but who “were destroyed” because they were not “perfect,” _i.e._, they
“were sexless, like the Kings of Edom.”
Weeded of metaphors and allegories, what will Science say to this idea of
a primordial creation of species? It will object to the “Angels” and
“Spirits” having anything to do therewith; but if it be Nature and the
physical law of evolution that are the creators of all there is now on
Earth, why could there be “no such abyss,” when the Globe was covered with
waters, in which numbers of monstrous beings were generated? Is it the
“human beings” and animals with human heads and double faces, which are a
point of the objection? But if man is only a higher animal and has evolved
from the brute species by an infinite series of transformations, why could
not the “missing links” have had human heads attached to the bodies of
animals, or, being two‐headed, have heads of beasts and _vice versâ_, in
Nature’s early efforts? Are we not shown, during the geological periods,
in the ages of the reptiles and the mammalia, lizards with birds’ wings,
and serpents’ heads on animal bodies?(115) And, arguing from the
standpoint of Science, does not even our modern human race occasionally
furnish us with monster‐specimens: two‐headed children, animal bodies with
human heads, dog‐headed babies, etc.? And this proves that, if Nature will
still play such freaks now that she has been settled for ages in the order
of her evolutionary work, monsters, like those described by Berosus, were
a possibility in her opening programme; a possibility which may even have
existed once upon a time as a law, before she sorted out her species and
began regular work upon them. And this indeed now admits of definite proof
by the bare fact of “Reversion,” as Science puts it.
This is what the Doctrine teaches, and demonstrates by numerous proofs.
But we shall not wait for the approval of either dogmatic Theology or
Materialistic Science, but proceed with the Stanzas. Let these speak for
themselves, with the help of the light thrown on them by the Commentaries
and their explanations; the scientific aspect of these questions will be
considered later on.
Thus Physical Nature, when left to herself in the creation of animal and
man, is shown to have failed. She can produce the first two kingdoms, as
well as that of the lower animals, but when it comes to the turn of man,
spiritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for his
creation, besides the “coats of skin” and the “breath of animal life.” The
human Monads of preceding Rounds need something higher than purely
physical materials with which to build their personalities, under the
penalty of remaining even below any “Frankenstein” animal.(116)
7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. “OUR FLESH IS NOT THERE.(117) NO FIT RÛPAS FOR
OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO DWELLINGS FOR THE LIVES.(118) PURE WATERS,
NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK (_A_). LET US DRY THEM.”(119)
(_a_) Says the _Catechism_ on the Commentaries:
_It is from the material Worlds that descend they, who fashion physical
man at the new Manvantaras. They are inferior Lha [Spirits], possessed of
a dual body [an Astral within an Ethereal Form]. They are the fashioners
and creators of our body of illusion_....
_Into the forms projected by the Lha [Pitris] the Two Letters_(_120_)_
[the Monad, called also the __“__Double Dragon__”__] descend from the
Spheres of Expectation._(_121_)_ But they are like a roof with no walls,
nor pillars to rest upon_....
_Man needs four Flames and three Fires to become one on Earth, and he
requires the essence of the forty‐nine Fires_(_122_)_ to be perfect. It is
those who have deserted the Superior Spheres, the Gods of Will,_(_123_)_
who complete the Manu of illusion. For the __“__Double Dragon__”__ has no
hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no tree or
branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there is
no agent of transmission [Manas, __“__Mind__”__] and the form knows it
not._
_In the highest worlds, the three are one,_(_124_)_ on Earth [at first]
the one becomes two. They are like the two [side] lines of a triangle that
has lost its bottom line—which is the third Fire._(125)
Now this requires some explanation before proceeding any further. To do so
especially for the benefit of our Âryan Hindû brethren—whose Esoteric
interpretations may differ from our own—we shall have to explain to them
the foregoing by certain passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the
_Purânas_. In the allegories of the latter, Brahmâ, who is collectively
the Creative Force of the Universe, is thus described:
At the beginning of the Yugas [Cycles] ... possessed of the desire
and of the power to create, and impelled by the potencies of what
is to be created, again and again does he, at the outset of a
Kalpa, put forth a similar creation.(126)
It is now proposed to examine the exoteric account in the _Vishnu Purâna_,
and see how much it may agree or disagree with our Occult version.
Creation of Divine Beings in the Exoteric Accounts.
In the _Vishnu Purâna_, which is certainly the earliest of all the
scriptures of that name, we find, as in all the others, Brahmâ, as the
male God, assuming, for purposes of creation, “_four_ Bodies invested by
_three_ qualities.”(127) It is said:
In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsnâ (dawn), Râtri (night), Ahan
(day), and Sandhyâ (evening [twilight]) are the four bodies of
Brahmâ.(128)
As Parâshara explains it, when Brahmâ wishes to create the world anew and
construct progeny _through his will_, in the fourfold condition, or the
four Orders of Beings, termed Gods (Dhyân Chohans), Demons(129) (_i.e._,
more material Devas), Progenitors (Pitris) and Men, “he collects [Yoga‐
like] his mind into itself” (Yûyuge).
Strange to say, he begins by creating Demons, who thus take precedence
over the Angels or Gods. This is no incongruity, nor is it due to
inconsistency, but has, like all the rest, a profound Esoteric meaning,
quite clear to one free from Christian theological prejudice. He who bears
in mind that the principle Mahat, or Intellect, the “Universal Mind”
(literally the “Great”), which Esoteric Philosophy explains as the
“Manifested Omniscience”—the “first product” of Pradhâna, Primordial
Matter, as the _Vishnu Purâna_ says, but the first Cosmic Aspect of
Parabrahman or the Esoteric Sat, the Universal Soul,(130) as Occultism
teaches—is at the root of SELF‐Consciousness, will understand the reason
why. The so‐called Demons—who are Esoterically the Self‐asserting and
intellectually active Principle—are the _positive pole of creation_, so to
say; hence, the first produced. This is in brief the process as narrated
allegorically in the _Purânas_.
Having concentrated his mind into itself and the Quality of
Darkness pervading Brahmâ’s assumed body, the Asuras, issuing from
his Thigh, were first produced; after which, abandoning this body,
it was transformed into Night.
Two important points are involved herein: (_a_) Primarily in the _Rig
Veda_, the Asuras are shown as _spiritual divine Beings_; their etymology
is derived from Asu, breath, the “Breath of God,” and they mean the same
as the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for
purposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from Brahmâ’s
Thigh, and that their name began to be derived from _a_, privative, and
_Sura_, a God, or “not‐a‐God,” and that they became the enemies of the
Gods. (_b_) Every ancient Theogony without exception—from the Aryan and
the Egyptian down to that of Hesiod—in the order of Cosmogonical
evolution, places Night before Day; even _Genesis_, where “darkness is
upon the face of the deep” before the “first day.” The reason for this is
that every Cosmogony—except in the Secret Doctrine—begins by the
“Secondary Creation” so‐called; to wit, the _Manifested_ Universe, the
Genesis of which has to begin by a marked differentiation between the
eternal Light of “Primary Creation,” whose mystery must remain for ever
“Darkness” to the prying finite conception and intellect of the profane,
and the Secondary Evolution of manifested visible Nature. The _Veda_
contains the whole philosophy of that division, without having ever been
correctly explained by our Orientalists, since it has _never been
understood_ by them.
Continuing to create, Brahmâ assumes another form, that of the Day, and
creates from his Breath the Gods, who are endowed with the Quality of
Goodness (Passivity).(131) In his next body the Quality of great Passivity
prevailed, which is also (negative) goodness, and from the side of that
personage issued the Pitris, the Progenitors of men, because, as the text
explains, Brahmâ “thought of himself [during the process] as the father of
the world.”(132) This is Kriyâ‐shakti—the mysterious Yoga‐power explained
elsewhere. This body of Brahmâ when cast off became the Sandhyâ, Evening
Twilight, the interval between Day and Night.
Finally Brahmâ assumed his last form pervaded by the Quality of Foulness.
And from this, Men, in whom foulness (or passion) predominates,
were produced.
This body when cast off became the Dawn, or Morning Twilight—the Twilight
of Humanity. Here Brahmâ stands Esoterically for the Pitris. He is
collectively the Pitâ, “Father.”
The true Esoteric meaning of this allegory must now be explained. Brahmâ
here symbolizes personally the Collective Creators of the World and
Men—the Universe with all its numberless productions of things movable and
(seemingly) immovable.(133) He is collectively the Prajâpatis, the Lords
of Being; and the four bodies typify the four Classes of Creative Powers
or Dhyân Chohans, described in the Commentary on Shloka I, Stanza VII, in
Volume I. The whole philosophy of the so‐called “Creation” of the good and
evil in this World, and of the whole Cycle of Manvantaric results
therefrom, hangs on the correct comprehension of these Four Bodies of
Brahmâ.
The reader will now be prepared to understand the real, the Esoteric
significance of what follows. Moreover there is an important point to be
cleared up. Christian Theology having arbitrarily settled and agreed that
Satan with his Fallen Angels belonged to the earliest creation, Satan
being the first‐created, the wisest and most beautiful of God’s
Archangels, the word was given, the key‐note struck. Henceforth all the
Pagan Scriptures were made to yield the same meaning, and all were shown
to be demoniacal, and it _was_ and _is_ claimed that _truth and fact_
belong to, and commence only with, Christianity. Even the Orientalists and
Mythologists, some of them no Christians at all but “infidels,” or men of
Science, entered, unconsciously to themselves and by the mere force of
association of ideas and habit, into the theological groove.
Purely Brâhmanical considerations, based on greed of power and ambition,
allowed the masses to remain in ignorance of great truths; and the same
causes led the Initiates among the early Christians to remain silent,
while those who had never known the truth disfigured the order of things,
judging of the Hierarchy of “Angels” by their exoteric form. Thus, as the
Asuras had become the rebellious inferior Gods fighting the higher ones in
popular creeds, so the highest Archangel, in truth the Agathodæmon, the
eldest benevolent Logos, became in theology the “Adversary” or Satan. But
is this warranted by the correct interpretation of any old Scripture? The
answer is: most certainly not. As the Mazdean Scriptures of the _Zend
Avesta_, the _Vendidâd_ and others correct and expose the later cunning
shuffling of the Gods in the Hindû Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the
Asuras to their legitimate place in Theogony, so the recent discoveries of
the Chaldæan tablets vindicate the good name of the first divine
Emanations. This is easily proved. Christian Angelology is directly and
solely derived from that of the Pharisees, who brought their tenets from
Babylonia. The Sadducees, the real guardians of the Laws of Moses, knew
not of any Angels, opposing even the immortality of the human Soul (not
the impersonal Spirit). In the _Bible_ the only Angels spoken of are the
“Sons of God” mentioned in _Genesis_ vi—who are now regarded as the
Nephilim, the Fallen Angels—and several Angels in human form, the
“Messengers” of the Jewish God, whose own rank needs a closer analysis
than heretofore given. As shown above, the early Akkadians called Ea
Wisdom, which was disfigured by the later Chaldees and Semites into
Tiamat, Tisalat and the Thalatth of Berosus, the female Sea Dragon, now
Satan. Truly—“How art thou fallen [by the hand of man], O bright Star and
Son of the Morning”!
Now what do the Babylonian accounts of “Creation,” as found on the
Assyrian fragments of tiles, tell us; those very accounts upon which the
Pharisees built their Angelology? Compare Mr. George Smith’s _Assyrian
Discoveries_,(134) and his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_.(135) The Tablet
with the story of the Seven Wicked Gods or Spirits, has the following
account; we print the important passages in italics:
1. In the _first days_ the evil Gods,
2. the _angels who were in rebellion_, who _in the lower part of
heaven_
3. _had been created_,
4. they caused their evil work
5. devising with wicked heads ... etc.
Thus we are shown, as plainly as can be, on a fragment which remained
unbroken, so that there can be no dubious reading, that the “Rebellious
Angels” had been created in the “lower part of heaven,” _i.e._, that they
belonged and do belong to a _material plane of evolution_, although as it
is not the plane of which we are made cognizant through our senses, it
remains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded as subjective.
Were the Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this our Visible
World, and especially the Earth, had been created by _Lower_ Angels, the
inferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the God of Israel was one?
These Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic Secret
Doctrine, and therefore ought to be allowed to have known what it
contained better than non‐initiated Christians, who took upon themselves,
hundreds of years later, to remodel and _correct_ what was said. But let
us see what the same Tablet says further on:
7. There were seven of them [the wicked gods].
Then follows the description of these, the fourth being a “serpent,” the
phallic symbol of the Fourth Race in human Evolution.
15. The seven of them, messengers of the God Anu their king.
Now Anu belongs to the Chaldæan Trinity, and is identical with Sin, the
“Moon,” in one aspect. And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabalah is the Argha of
the seed of all material life, and is still more closely connected,
kabalistically, with Jehovah, who is double‐sexed, as Anu is. They are
both represented in Esotericism, and viewed, from a dual aspect: male or
spiritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic
principles. Hence the “Messengers of Anu,” who is Sin, the “Moon,” are
shown, in lines 28 to 41, as being finally overpowered by the same Sin
with the help of Bel, the Sun, and Ishtar, Venus. This is regarded as a
contradiction by the Assyriologists, but it is simply _metaphysics_ in the
Esoteric teaching.
There is more than one interpretation, for there are seven keys to the
mystery of the “Fall.” Moreover there are two “Falls” in Theology: the
rebellion of the Archangels and their “Fall,” and the “Fall” of Adam and
Eve. Thus the lower as well as the higher Hierarchies are charged with a
supposed crime. The word “supposed” is the true and correct term, for in
both cases it is founded on misconception. Both are considered in
Occultism as Karmic effects, and both belong to the law of
Evolution—intellectual and spiritual on the one hand, physical and psychic
on the other. The “Fall” is a universal allegory. It sets forth at one end
of the ladder of Evolution the “rebellion,” _i.e._, the action of
differentiating intellection, or consciousness, on its various planes,
seeking union with Matter; and at the other, the lower end, the rebellion
of Matter against Spirit, or of action against spiritual inertia. And here
lies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the
intelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original
allegory it is Matter—hence the more material Angels—which was regarded as
the conqueror of Spirit, or the Archangels who “fell” on this plane.
They of the _flaming sword_ [or animal passions] had put to flight
the Spirits of Darkness.
Yet it is the latter who fought for the supremacy of the conscious and
divine spirituality on Earth and failed, succumbing to the power of
Matter. But in theological dogma we see the reverse. It is Michael, “who
is like unto God,” the representative of Jehovah, who is the Leader of the
Celestial Hosts—as Lucifer, in Milton’s fancy, is of the Infernal
Hosts—who has the best of Satan. It is true that the nature of Michael
depends upon that of his Creator and Master. Who the latter is, one may
find out by carefully studying the allegory of the “War in Heaven” with
the astronomical key. As shown by Bentley, the “War of the Titans against
the Gods” in Hesiod, and also the War of the Asuras, or the Târakâmaya,
against the Devas in Purânic legend, are identical in all save the names.
The aspects of the stars show—Bentley taking the year 945 B.C. as the
nearest date for such conjunction—that:
All the planets, except Saturn, were on the same side of the
heavens as the Sun and Moon.
And hence were his opponents. And yet it is Saturn, or the Jewish “Moon‐
God,” who is shown as prevailing, both by Hesiod and Moses, neither of
whom was understood. Thus it was that the real meaning became distorted.
Stanza II.—_Continued._
8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT‐FIRES AND THE
DAY‐FIRES (_A_). THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID DARK WATERS. WITH THEIR HEAT
THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS(136) OF THE HIGH; THE LHAMAYIN(137) OF BELOW,
CAME (_B_). THEY SLEW THE FORMS, WHICH WERE TWO‐ AND FOUR‐FACED. THEY
FOUGHT THE GOAT‐MEN, AND THE DOG‐HEADED MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES’
BODIES.
(_a_) The “Flames” are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not
identical with, the “burning” fiery Saraph (Seraphim), mentioned by
Isaiah(138) those who, according to Hebrew Theogony, attend the “Throne of
the Almighty.” Melha is the Lord of the “Flames.” When he appears on
Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He
is one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael.
(_b_) The word “Below” must not be taken to mean Infernal Regions, but
simply a spiritual, or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because
nearer to the Earth, or one step higher than our Terrestrial Sphere; while
the Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres—whence the name of the capital
of Tibet, Lha‐ssa.
Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the
evolution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning
attached to this shloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The “Flames,”
or “Fires,” represent Spirit, or the male element, and “Water,” Matter, or
the opposite element. And here again we find, in the action of the Spirit
slaying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal struggle, on
the physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a
scientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse:
9. MOTHER‐WATER, THE GREAT SEA, WEPT. SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED IN THE
MOON, WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN HER BIRTH.
Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in
the early stage of the history of our Planet in its Fourth Round? Modern
research has been busy of late in its speculations on the Palæozoic high‐
tides. Mr. G. H. Darwin’s theory was that not less than 52,000,000 years
ago—and probably much more—the Moon originated from the Earth’s plastic
mass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz,
Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal
retardation of the Earth’s rotary motions far back into the very night of
time, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our Planet at only “a
fraction of its present distance.” In short, his theory was that it was
the Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring
with the swing of the globular mass—centrifugal tendency being then nearly
equal to gravity—the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass
could thus separate completely from the Earth.(139)
The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the
Earth; and, as explained in Volume I, it is the latter which owes its
being to the former, however Astronomy and Geology may explain the fact.
Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown by the liquid
portion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its parent.
This is the meaning of the sentence that the Mother‐Water “arose, she
disappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.”
10. WHEN(140) THEY WERE DESTROYED, MOTHER EARTH REMAINED BARE.(141) SHE
ASKED TO BE DRIED.(142)
The time for the Earth’s incrustation had arrived. The waters had
separated and the process was started. It was the beginning of a new life.
This is what one key divulges to us. Another key teaches the origin of
Water, its admixture with Fire—“Liquid Fire” it calls it—and enters upon
an Alchemical description of the progeny of the two—solid matters such as
minerals and earths. From the “Waters of Space,” the progeny of the male
Spirit‐Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse
on Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as
Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found to be
based on a strictly scientific foundation.
Water is the symbol of the Female Element everywhere; Mater, from which
comes the letter M, is derived pictorially from [Symbol like three
mountains, rather like the letter “M”], a water hieroglyph. It is the
Universal Matrix or the “Great Deep.” Venus, the great Mother‐Virgin,
issues forth from the sea‐wave, and Cupid or Erôs is her son. But Venus is
the later mythological variant of Gæa, Gaia, the Earth, which, in its
higher aspect is Prakriti, Nature, and metaphysically Aditi, and even
Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Prakriti, or its noumenon.
Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or
Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the
prototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power “Life‐Electricity,” or
the Spirit of “Life‐giving.” Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter
into the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all
things, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys,
the latter being Gæa, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the
immeasurable Space—Spirit in Chaos—which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not
the Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case
it is no longer Aditi‐Gæa who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya
among the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized.
The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect
only, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem
thereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every
nation.
Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of
the smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to the _modus operandi_ at
the time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our
Earth’s formation.
The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores,
300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the
duration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician
is able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate
accuracy? Whether they had or had not better means—and it is maintained
that they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs—still the chronology
of the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.
The Chronology of the Brâhmans.
No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly
insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and
Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know of the duration of
the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?
Nothing; absolutely nothing.
If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by
those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly,
the eminent Geologist, “We do not know.”(143) One will learn that, so far,
no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could
be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a
student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of
Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when
reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed
to arrive even at an approximate agreement?
It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the
Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a
labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit
into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting
speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern
tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide
them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender
thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at
perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to
which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology
as but “the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre‐historic
period”—in the words of the writer of the article in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_.
At the same time it is confessed that “beyond that period stretches back a
vast indefinite series of pre‐historic ages.”
It is with those specified “ages” that we shall begin. They are “pre‐
historic” to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of
the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne’s thread stretches beyond
that “historic period” without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into
the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop
it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as
fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted
by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying
refusal only from the official and collective body of _orthodox_ Science.
And since the latter refuses to give us even an approximate idea of the
duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and
contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.
Such computations as are given in _Manu_ and the _Purânas_—save trifling
and most evidently _intentional_ exaggerations—are, as already stated,
almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be
seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.
The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched
for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned
Tamil calendar called the _Tirukkanda Panchanga_, compiled, as we are
told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya’s
data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is
whispered to have also been the most powerful “Sorcerer” of the “White
Island, which had become Black with sin,” _i.e._, of the islands of
Atlantis.
The “White Island” is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived,
as in the tradition of the _Jñâna‐bhâskara_, in Romaka‐pura, in the West;
because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the “Sweat‐born”
of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before
Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant
of the Wise Race, _the Race that never dies_. Many are the legends
concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun‐God, himself, as the
Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or
another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr.
Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka‐pura, in the West,
being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the
more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching
about the Sweat‐born Races, the men born from the “pores of their
parents.” “_Roma‐kûpas_” mean “hair‐pores” in Sanskrit. In the
_Mahâbhârata_,(144) a people named Raumas are said to have been created
from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha’s
sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this
way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third
Root‐Races.
The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot‐note
marks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj
school:
I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,(145) up to the Hindû year
Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years.
II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have
taken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.(146)
III. Time, from the first appearance of “Humanity” (on our Planetary
Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.(147)
IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara(148)—or the
_Human_ Period—up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years.
V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years.
VI. Fourteen Manvantaras, _plus_ the period of one Satya Yuga make one Day
of Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.
Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.(149)
The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years.
To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by
Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from the _Theosophist_ of
November, 1885.
360 days of mortals make a year
Krita Yuga contains 1,728,000
Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000
Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000
Kali Yuga contains 432,000
The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000
Seventy‐one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one
Manu, 306,720,000
The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ
Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000
Add Sandhis, _i.e._, intervals between the reign of each Manu,
which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000
The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is
1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa, _i.e._, one Day of
Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000
As Brahmâ’s Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of
Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000
360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to
3,110,400,000,000
100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ’s Age,
_i.e._, Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000
These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they
dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter,
moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles,
never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division
of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The
rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are,
nevertheless, known to every “Twice‐born” (Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman,
and the _Purânas_ contain references to some of them in veiled terms,
which no matter‐of‐fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor
could he if he would.
These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of
them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The
latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian
Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as
Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a servant of the Evil
One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of “the faithful sons of
the Church.” A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more
harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean
Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa,
or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There
were _good_ “giants” in days of old just as there are _bad_ “pigmies” now;
and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern
dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern
wars. Nor are they myths.
He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from
going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.
remarks somewhere a modern writer.
As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic
calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully
keep them in mind.
In the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ we find, as the last word of Science,
that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch _only over_ “tens of
thousands of years.” It becomes evident that as these figures may be made
to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little
if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the
question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man
in the “pre‐ or post‐ glacial drift,” if we are told at the same time that
the so‐called “Ice Age” is simply a long succession of ages which
Shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the
human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods
having been the rule from the beginning of time.(150)
The latter “rule” only results in the still more puzzling, even if
strictly scientific and correct, information, that:
Even to‐day man is contemporary with the ice‐age in the Alpine
valleys and in the Finmark.(151)
Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and
even by exoteric Hindûism and its traditions, we should to this day be
left to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite “Ages” of
one school of Science, the “tens of thousands” of years of the other, and
the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one of the several
reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of
learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such
questions of pre‐historic antiquity.
Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views.
But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it
has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing’s
assurances that:
In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and
later formations, there is no _theory_, they are based on positive
facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error
either way.(152)
Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very
much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very
passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness
over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the
admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:
In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the
Silurian period(153) when the present order of things was fairly
inaugurated, are approximate [truly so] _facts_ and not
_theories_, while the astronomical conclusions are _theories_
based on _data_ so uncertain, that while in some cases they give
results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost
incredibly long.(154)
After which, the reader is advised that the “safest course”
Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of
the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100
millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though
unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for
the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar
system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through
the habitable phase.(155)
Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt
that, once called upon to answer “the absurd unscientific and preposterous
claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology,” the Scientist of the
“results incredibly short,” _i.e._, only 15,000,000 years, and the
Scientist, who “would require 600,000,000 years,” together with those who
accept Mr. Huxley’s figures of 1,000,000,000(156) “since sedimentation
began in Europe,” would all be as dogmatic the one as the other. Nor would
they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern
men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to
fight “inaccuracy” and “superstition.”
The Earth is passing through the “habitable phase” only for the _present
order_ of things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its
actual “coats of skin” and phosphorus for bones and brain.
We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology,
since we are taught that our present physical mankind—or the Vaivasvata
Humanity—began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no
facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown,
no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W.
Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:
It is at present, and perhaps always will be, _impossible_ to
reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even
into millenniums.
And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than the
_present form_—what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or
strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian.
When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial
protoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of
primordial man. If it is not very material to “the bearings of modern
scientific discovery on modern thought,” whether
Man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for
the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last
500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,(157)
as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of
the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is a _possibility_, if not
a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, the
_Secret Doctrine_ might as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must,
therefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and
men of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in
the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact
that Hindû Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a
fiction based on no “actual” computation,(158) but simply a “childish
boasting,” it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it
yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been
more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by
cyphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.
As the whole Cycle of pre‐historic events, such as the evolution and
transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the
said Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other
existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at
least have the consolation of proving that no other—whether in the figures
of Science or of the Churches—is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max
Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as
to show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies
of both Christian and Scientific computations—by allowing them a fair
chance of comparison with our Chronology—neither of these will have a
reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less
reliable than its own.
We may here refer the reader to our earlier work, _Isis Unveiled_,(159)
for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.
To‐day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which
is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of
4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which
compose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each
and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether
one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making
7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these
numbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and
record the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They
are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who
studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan
in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons,
invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and
reäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and
growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and
depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic
agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives
and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara.
Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and “endexoteric,” so to say.
In _Isis Unveiled_ we wrote that which we now repeat: _We are at the
bottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state_. Plato divides the
intellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile and
barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various
elements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he
says; “but their parts,” owing to a too close proximity to earth, and
their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the
realm of evil), “are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to
(Divine) Nature.” When those circulations—which Éliphas Lévi calls
“currents of the Astral Light”—in the universal Ether which contains in
itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our
Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult
powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the
“superior natures,” and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence
with these “inferior” ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose
their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind
is so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own
Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during
which the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has
entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine
intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone “philosophizes.” And
philosophizing alone, how can it understand the “Soul Doctrine”?
In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some
striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with
our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.
Stanza III. Attempts To Create Man.
11. The Descent of the Demiurge. 12. The Lunar Gods ordered to
create. 13. The Higher Gods refuse.
11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE WATERS, AND
THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN.(160)
Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version,
repeated in the _Purânas_, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the
first it is said:
He the Lord [the God who has the form of Brahmâ], when the world
had become one ocean, concluding that within the waters lay the
earth, and desirous to raise it up [to separate it], created
himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa [Manvantara] he
had assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the
shape of a boar, etc.(161)
In the Elohistic “creation,”(162) “God” creates “a firmament in the midst
of the waters,” and says “let _dry land_ appear.” And now comes the
traditional peg whereunto is hung the Esoteric portion of the Kabalistic
interpretation.
12. THE GREAT CHOHANS(163) CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY
BODIES: “BRING FORTH MEN,(164) MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM(165) THEIR
FORMS WITHIN. SHE(166) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT.(167) MALES‐FEMALES
WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME ALSO....”
Who are the “Lords of the Moon”? In India they are called Pitris or “Lunar
Ancestors,” but in the Hebrew scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the
“Lord of the Moon,” collectively as the Host, and also as one of the
Elohim. The Astronomy of the Hebrews and their “observance of _times_” was
regulated by the Moon. A Kabalist, having shown that “Daniel ... told off
God’s providence by set _times_” and that the _Revelation_ of John “speaks
of a carefully measured _cubical_ city descending out of the heavens,”
etc., adds:
But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with _the moon_....
It was the Hebrew יהוה [Jehovah],—and St. Paul enjoins:—“Let no
man judge you for your observance of the 7th day, and the day of
_new moon,—which are a shadow of things to come_; but the body (or
substance) is of Christ,” _i.e._, Jehovah,—that function of this
power that “made the barren woman the joyful mother of
children,”—“for they are the gift of Jehovah,” ... which is a key
to the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to
her going to the man of God:—“for it is neither the 7th day nor
the day of _new moon_.” The living spiritual powers of the
constellations had mighty wars marked by the movements and
positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result
of the conjunction of the moon, earth and sun. Bentley comments on
the Hindû “war between the gods and the giants,” as marked by the
eclipse of the sun at the ascending node of the moon, 945 B.C.
[!], at which time was born,(168) or produced from the sea, SRI
(Sarai), S‐r‐i, the wife of the Hebrew Abram(169), who was the
Venus‐Aphroditus [_sic_] of the Westerns, emblem “of the luni‐
solar year, or the moon, [as Sri is the wife of the Moon; see
foot‐note], the goddess of increase.”(170) ... [Therefore] the
grand monument and land‐mark of the exact period of the lunar year
and month, by which this cycle [of 19 tropical years of the sun
and 235 revolutions of the moon] could be calculated, was Mount
Sinai,—the Lord Jehovah coming down thereon.... Paul speaks [then]
as a mystagogue, when he says concerning the freed woman and bond
woman of Abraham:—“For this Hagar (the bond woman of Abraham) is
Mount Sinai in Arabia.” How could a woman be a mountain? and such
a mountain! Yet, in one sense, ... she was, and in a very
marvellously true one. Her name was Hagar, הגר whose numbers read
235, or in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal
19 tropical years to complete this cycle and make the likeness and
similitude good; Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of
this wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar year and
month, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed,
and which mountain, indeed, was called (Fuerst) “the Mountain of
the Moon (Sin).” So also Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could
have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, שרה, giving to
her the property of this lunar influence.(171)
This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a
very necessary one with a view to Christian readers. For who, after
studying dispassionately the respective legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai
or Sarah, who was “fair to look upon,” and those of Brahmâ and Sarasvatî,
or Shrî, Lakshmî‐Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon and
Water;—and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of
the name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the Moon—who
can doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahmâ, or that
_Genesis_ was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation? All
in the ancient Scriptures is allegorical—all based upon and inseparably
connected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.
13. THEY(172) WENT EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM, EACH ON HIS
LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAIN BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD
NOT CREATE.
The Secret Teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven
portions of the Globe “each on his lot”—_i.e._, each a different Race of
men externally and internally, and on different Zones. This polygenistic
claim is considered elsewhere, in Stanza VII. But who are “They” who
create, and the “Lords of the Flame,” “who would not”? Occultism divides
the “Creators” into Twelve Classes; of which four have reached
“Liberation” to the end of the “Great Age,” the fifth is ready to reach
it, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are
still under direct Karmic Law. These last act on the man‐bearing Globes of
our Chain.
Exoteric Hindû books mention Seven Classes of Pitris, and among them two
distinct kinds of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the
Agnishvâtta; or those possessed of the “sacred fire” and those devoid of
it. Hindû ritualism seems to connect them with sacrificial fires, and with
Grihastha Brâhmans in earlier incarnations; those who have, and those who
have _not_ attended as they should to their household sacred fires in
their previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the
_Vedas_. The first and highest class (Esoterically), the Agnishvâtta, are
represented in the exoteric allegory as Grihastha or Brâhman‐householders,
who, having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt
sacrifices, in their past births in other Manvantaras, have lost every
right to have oblations with fire presented to them. Whereas the
Barhishad, being Brâhmans who have kept up their household sacred fires,
are thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishvâtta are represented as
devoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.
But Esoteric Philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due
to the difference between the natures of the two Classes: the Agnishvâtta
Pitris are devoid of “fire” _i.e._, of creative passion, because they are
too divine and pure; whereas the Barhishad, being the Lunar Spirits more
closely connected with Earth, became the creative Elohim of form, or the
Adam of dust.
The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahmâ, his
first progeny:
Were without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom,
estranged from the universe and _undesirous of progeny_.(173)
This also is what is meant in the shloka by the words, “They would not
create,” and is explained as follows:
“_The Primordial Emanations from the Creative Power are too near the
Absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which will
develop only in the next and subsequent removes._”
This makes it plain. Hence Brahmâ is said to have felt wrathful when he
saw that those
Embodied spirits, produced from his limbs [_gâtra_], would not
multiply themselves.
After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven Mind‐born Sons(174)
namely, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishtha, the
latter being often replaced by Daksha, the most prolific of the Creators.
In most of the texts these Seven Sons of Vasishtha‐Daksha are called the
Seven Rishis of the _Third_ Manvantara; the latter referring both to the
Third Round and also to the Third Root‐Race and its Branch‐Races in the
Fourth Round. These are all the Creators of the various Beings on this
Earth, the Prajâpati, and at the same time they appear as divers
reïncarnations in the early Manvantaras or Races.
It thus becomes clear why the Agnishvâtta, devoid of the grosser “creative
fire,” hence unable to create physical man, having no Double, or Astral
Body, to project, since they were without any “form,” are shown in
exoteric allegories as Yogîs, Kumâras (chaste youths), who became
“rebels,” Asuras, fighting and opposing Gods,(175) etc. Yet it is they
alone who could complete man, _i.e._, make of him a self‐conscious, almost
a divine Being—a God on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of
“creative fire,” were devoid of the higher Mahat‐ic element. Being on a
level with the lower “Principles”—those which precede gross objective
matter—they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to the model
of the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see them intrusted with
the task by Brahmâ—the collective Mahat or Universal Divine Mind—the
“Mystery of Creation” is repeated on Earth, only in an inverted sense, as
in a _mirror_.
It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who
project the senseless model (the Astral) of the physical Being; and, as
will be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed
themselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to
complete the _septenary man_, to add to his three lower Principles and
cement them with the Spiritual Monad—which could never dwell in such a
form otherwise than in an _absolutely latent state_—two connecting
“Principles” are needed: Manas and Kâma. This requires a living Spiritual
Fire of the middle Principle from the Fifth and Third States of Plerôma.
But this Fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect)
Cubes, which symbolize the Angelic Beings;(176) the former having from the
First Creation possessed themselves of it and being said to have
appropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. These
are the active, and therefore—in Heaven—no longer “pure” Beings. They have
become the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as
fighting for that independence and freedom, and hence—in the ordinary
sense—“rebellious to the divine passive law.” These are then those
“Flames”—the Agnishvâtta—who, as shown in the shloka, “remain behind,”
instead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. But the
true Esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as
the Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind.
The human Ego is neither Âtman nor Buddhi, but the Higher Manas; the
intellectual fruitage and the efflorescence of the intellectual self‐
conscious Egotism—in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer
to it as Kârana Sharîra on the plane of Sûtrâtmâ, which is the “golden
thread” on which, like beads, the various Personalities of this Higher Ego
are strung. If the reader were told, as in the _semi‐Esoteric_ allegories,
that these Beings were returning Nirvânîs from preceding
Mahâ‐Manvantaras—Ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in
the Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago—he would hardly
understand the text correctly; while some Vedântins might say: “This is
not so; the Nirvânî can never return”; which is true during the Manvantara
he belongs to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said
in the Sacred Shlokas:
“_The Thread of Radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in __
Nirvâna, reëmerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law
calls all things back into action._”
Hence, as the higher Pitris or Dhyânîs had no hand in his physical
creation, we find Primeval Man—issued from the bodies of his _spiritually_
“fireless” Progenitors—described as aëriform, devoid of compactness, and
“mindless.” He had no middle Principle to serve him as a medium between
the Highest and the Lowest—the Spiritual Man and the physical brain—for he
lacked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those _empty_ Shells,
remained as unconscious as when separated from their previous incomplete
forms and vehicles. There is no potentiality for Creation, or Self‐
Consciousness, in a _pure_ Spirit on this our plane, unless its too
homogeneous, perfect—because divine—nature is, so to say, mixed with, and
strengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower
line of the Triangle—representing the first Triad that emanates from the
Universal Monad—that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of
differentiated Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this
principle, must have originally been themselves “unconscious” (in our
sense), be of any use in supplying the required Principle, as they could
hardly have possessed it themselves?
The answer is difficult to comprehend, unless one is well acquainted with
the philosophical metaphysics of a beginningless and endless series of
Cosmic Re‐births, and becomes well impressed and familiarized with that
immutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, cyclic and
spiral—therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one
Divine Principle, the nameless THAT of the _Vedas_, is the Universal
Total, which, neither in its spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its
physical Atoms, can ever be at “Absolute Rest” except during the Nights of
Brahmâ. Hence, also, the “First‐born” are those who are first set in
motion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into
the lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology the
“Thrones,” and are the “Seat of God,” must be the first incarnated men on
Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, if we think of the endless series of
past Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come first, and the first
last. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless æons
before, through the “Seven Circles,” and thus “robbed” them of the Sacred
Fire; this means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their
past incarnations, in lower as well as in higher Worlds, all the wisdom
therefrom—the reflection of Mahat in its various degrees of intensity. No
Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state of Nirvâna, or of
absolute purity, except through æons of suffering and the _knowledge_ of
evil as well as of good, as otherwise the latter would remain
incomprehensible.
Between man and the animal—whose Monads, or Jîvas, are fundamentally
identical—there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self‐
consciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it,
if it be not a portion of the essence—and, in some rare cases of
incarnation, the _very essence_—of a higher Being; one from a higher and
divine plane? Can man—a God in the animal form—be the product of Material
Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal which differs from man in
external shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric,
and is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad—seeing that the
intellectual potentialities of the two differ as the sun does from the
glow‐worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an
animal _plus a living God_ within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask
ourselves seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms
of both the materialistic and the psychological modern Sciences.
To some extent, it is admitted that even the Esoteric Teaching is
allegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to the average
intelligence, the use of symbols cast in an intelligible form is needed.
Hence the allegorical and semi‐mythical narratives in the exoteric, and
the only _semi_‐metaphysical and objective representations in the Esoteric
Teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are
adapted only to the perceptions of those who “_see without eyes, hear
without ears, and sense without organs_,” according to the graphic
expression of the Commentary. The too puritan Idealist is at liberty to
spiritualize the tenet, whereas the modern Psychologist would simply try
to spirit away our “fallen,” yet still divine, human Soul—divine in its
connection with Buddhi.
The mystery attached to the highly spiritual Ancestors of the _Divine_ Man
within the earthly man is very great. His dual creation is hinted at in
the _Purânas_, though its Esoteric meaning can be approached only by
collating together the many varying accounts, and reading them in their
symbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the _Bible_, both in
_Genesis_ and even in the _Epistles_ of Paul. For that “Creator,” who is
called in the second chapter of _Genesis_ the “Lord God,” is in the
original the Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in the plural; and while one of
them makes the earthly Adam of Dust, the other breathes into him the
Breath of Life, and the third makes of him a Living Soul, all of which
readings are implied in the plural number of the word Elohim.(177) Or
again, as Paul says:
The first man is of the earth, the second [the last, or rather
highest] is the Lord from heaven.(178)
In the Âryan allegory the rebellious Sons of Brahmâ are all represented as
holy Ascetics and Yogîs. Re‐born in every Kalpa, they generally try to
impede the work of human procreation. When Daksha, the chief of the
Prajâpatis or Creators, brings forth 10,000 sons for the purpose of
peopling the world, Nârada—a son of Brahmâ, the great Rishi, and
_virtually_ a Kumâra, if not so in name—interferes with, and twice
frustrates Daksha’s aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy Ascetics
and eschew marriage. For this, Daksha curses Nârada to be “re‐born as a
man,” as Brahmâ had cursed him before for refusing to marry, and obtain
progeny, saying: “Perish in thy (present [Deva or Angelic] form); and take
up thy abode in the womb”—_i.e._, become a man.(179)
Notwithstanding several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy
to see that Nârada belongs to that Class of Brahmâ’s “First‐born,” who
have all proven rebellious to the law of animal procreation, for which
they had to incarnate as _men_. Of all the Vedic Rishis, Nârada, as
already shown, is the most incomprehensible, because the most closely
connected with the Occult Doctrines—especially with the Secret Cycles and
Kalpas.
Certain contradictory statements about this Sage have much distracted the
Orientalists. Thus he is shown as refusing positively to “create” or have
progeny, and even as calling his father Brahmâ a “false teacher” for
advising him to get married, as related in the _Nârada‐Pancha‐Râtra_;
nevertheless, he is referred to as one of the Prajâpatis or Progenitors!
In the _Nâradîya Purâna_, he describes the laws and the duties of the
celibate Adepts; and as these Occult duties do not happen to be found in
the fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of European museums,
the Brâhmans are proclaimed liars; the Orientalists forgetting that the
_Nâradîya_ is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and that it is not
very likely that such MSS. should be found in the hands of the Hindû
profane, those who are ready to sell any precious Olla for a red pottage.
Suffice it to say, that Nârada is _the_ Deva‐Rishi of Occultism _par
excellence_, and that the Occultist who does not ponder, analyze, and
study Nârada from his seven Esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom
certain anthropological, chronological, and even cosmic Mysteries. He is
one of the Fires above‐mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of
this Kalpa from its incipient down to its final stage. He is an actor who
appears in each of the successive acts, or Root‐Races, of the present
Manvantaric drama, in the world‐allegories which strike the key‐note of
Esotericism, and are now becoming more familiar to the reader. But shall
we turn to other ancient Scriptures and documents for the corroboration of
the “Fires,” “Sparks,” and “Flames”? They are plentiful, if one only seeks
for them in the right places.
In the Kabalistic _Book of the Concealed Mystery_ they are clearly
enunciated, as also in the _Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha_, or “The Lesser Holy
Assembly.” The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still
comprehensible. In the latter, among the sparks of Prior Worlds,
“vibrating Flames and Sparks,” from the divine flint, the “Workman”
proceeds to create man, “male and female” (427). These “Flames and
Sparks”—Angels and their Worlds, Stars and Planets—are said, figuratively,
to become extinct and die, that is to say, remain “unmanifested” until a
certain process of Nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from
public view are the most important facts of Anthropogenesis, two passages
are now quoted from two Kabalistic books. The first is from the _Ha Idra
Zuta Qadisha_:
429. From a Light‐Bearer [one of the Seven Sacred Planets] of
insupportable brightness proceeded a Radiating Flame, dashing off
like a vast and mighty hammer those sparks which were the Prior
Worlds.
430. And with most subtle ether were these intermingled and bound
mutually together, but _only when they were conjoined together_,
even the Great Father and Great Mother.
431. From _Hoa_, Himself, is AB, the Father; and from _Hoa_,
Himself, is Ruach, the Spirit; Who are hidden in the Ancient of
Days, and therein is that ether concealed.
432. And It was connected with a light‐bearer [a Planet and its
Angel or Regent], which went forth from that Light‐Bearer of
insupportable brightness, which is hidden in the bosom of Aima,
the Great Mother.(180)
Now the following extract from the _Zohar_,(181) under the heading, “The
Pre‐Adamite Kings,” also deals with the same mystery:
We have learned in the Siphrah D’Tznioothah: That the _At‐tee’ kah
D’At‐tee’ keen_, Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared His Form,
built kings and engraved kings, and sketched out kings [men, the
“kings” of the animals], and they could not exist: till He
overthrew them and _hid them until after a time_, therefore it is
written; “And these are the kings which reigned in the land of
Edom.”... And they could not exist till _Resha’Hiv’rah_, the White
Head, the _At’‐tee’‐kah D’At‐tee’‐keen_, Ancient of the Ancients,
arranged Himself. When he arranged Himself He formed all forms
Above and Below.... Before He arranged Himself in His Form, had
not been formed all those whom He desired to form, and all worlds
have been destroyed.... They did not remain in their places,
because the form of the kings had not been formed as it ought to
be, and _the Holy City had not been prepared_.(182)
Now the plain meaning of these two allegorical and metaphysical
disquisitions is simply this: Worlds and men were in turn formed and
destroyed, _under the law of evolution_ and _from preëxisting material_,
until both the Planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its animal
and human races, became what they are now in the present cycle—opposite
polar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the
positive and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could
become male and female _physically_, his prototype, the creating Elohim,
had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane _astrally_. That is to say,
the Atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given
differentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so
as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the
Kabalah calls the “Balance,” through which everything that exists does so
as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of
materiality. Chokmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephira, had to diffuse itself
_in_, and _through_, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding.
Therefore the First Root‐Race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be
overthrown and “hidden until after a time”; _i.e._, the First Race,
instead of dying, disappeared _in_ the Second Race, as certain lower lives
and plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The
First became the Second Root‐Race, without either begetting it,
procreating it, or dying.
“They _passed by_ together,” as it is written: “And he died” and
another “reigned in his stead.”(183)
Why? Because the “_Holy City_ had not been prepared.” And what is the
“Holy City”? The Ma‐qom—the Secret Place or the Shrine—on Earth; in other
words, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the Heavenly
Matrix, the female Space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit
fecundates the germ of the Son, or the visible Universe. So much so, that
in the paragraph on “The Emanation of the Male and Female Principles” in
the _Zohar_, it is said that, on this Earth, the Wisdom from the “Holy
Ancient” “does not shine except in male and female.”
(_Hokhmah_ Wisdom, is the Father, and _Binah_ Understanding, is
the Mother.)... And when they connect one with the other, they
bring forth and diffuse and emanate Truth. In the sayings of Rabbi
Ye‐yeva, Sabbah, _i.e._, the Old, we learned this; What is Binah
Understanding? But when they connect in one another, the י (Yod)
in the ה (Heh), they become impregnated and produce a Son. And,
therefore, it is called _Binah_, Understanding. It means BeN YaH,
_i.e._, Son of YaH. This is the completeness of the Whole.(184)
This is also the “completeness” of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect
apotheosis, the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the
grossness of the terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in
Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabalah—the Chaldæan _Book of
Numbers_. We have said so already in _Isis Unveiled_:
We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour
out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: “In a
multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming,
like the Grecian _batylos_, the brutally indecent form of the
_lingham_ ... the Mahâ Deva.” Before casting slurs on a symbol
whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern
champions of that religion of sensualism _par excellence_, Roman
Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their
oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own
temples. The Mahadeo of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhagulpore,
the minarets of Islam—either rounded or pointed—are the originals
of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of Rochester
Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these
steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the
reproductions of the primitive idea of the _lithos_, the upright
phallus.(185)
Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew
Elohim, Sparks, and Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the
Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the forty‐nine Agnis of the ancient
Âryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabalah.
Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.
14. Creation of men. 15. They are empty shadows. 16. The Creators
are perplexed how to create a _thinking_ man. 17. What is needed
for the formation of a perfect Man.
14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE WILL‐BORN(186) LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF
LIFE‐GIVING,(187) SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE.
They threw off their “Shadows” or Astral Bodies—if such an ethereal being
as a “Lunar Spirit” may be supposed to rejoice in an Astral, besides a
hardly tangible Body. In another Commentary it is said that the Ancestors
_breathed_ out the first man, as Brahmâ is explained to have breathed out
the Suras, or Gods, when they became Asuras (from Asu, breath). In a third
it is said that they, the newly‐created Men, were the “shadows of the
Shadows.”
With regard to this sentence—“They were the shadows of the Shadows”—a few
more words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first
process of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one
which follows it, though one and all such processes will be rejected and
doubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the
present effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor
does the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so
difficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is
useless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is
minutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking
of facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being
misunderstood. An Adam made of the dust of the ground will always be found
preferable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the
ethereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been
heard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists
in Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of
those who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materializing form oozing out
of the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his _left side_, can
fail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a _birth_? If there are
in the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose _incorporeal_
essence may constitute an intelligent Entity, notwithstanding the absence
of any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a
God made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living
Soul—and there are millions upon millions who believe both—what does this
doctrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will
dawn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the
miraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of _nothing_, according to
the dead letter of _Genesis_, or a first man born from a fantastic
link—absolutely “missing” so far—the common ancestor of man, and of the
“true ape.”(188) Between these two fallacies, Occult Philosophy steps in.
It teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi‐
divine Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be
considered as abnormal or even inconceivable—because obsolete in Nature at
this point of evolution—it is yet proven possible on the authority of
certain “spiritualistic” _facts_. Which, then, we ask of the three
hypotheses or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd?
Certainly no one—provided he be not a soul‐blind Materialist—can ever
object to the Occult Teaching.
Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not “created” the
complete being he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a
spiritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the
highest to the lowest, as well as a physical development—from the simple
and homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not
quite on the lines traced for us by the modern Evolutionists. This double
evolution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers
natures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the
being now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and
never erring law, which proceeds on the same lines from one Eternity (or
Manvantara) to the other—ever furnishing an ascending scale for the
manifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Mahâ‐Mâyâ), but
plunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and
then _redeeming it through flesh_ and liberating it—this law, we say, uses
for these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds
(Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies.
At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian
Philosophy and Religion. The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret
Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.
On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.
The Progenitors of Man, called in India Fathers, Pitaras, or Pitris, are
the “Creators” of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as
the _first personalities_, and _we are they_. Primeval man would be “the
bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh,” if they had bones and
flesh. As stated, they were “Lunar Beings.”
The endowers of man with his conscious, immortal Ego, are the “Solar
Angels”—whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of
the Conscious Ego or Human Soul are great. The Esoteric name of these
Solar Angels is, literally, the “Lords” (Nâth) of “persevering ceaseless
devotion” (Pranidhâna). Therefore they of the _Fifth_ Principle (Manas)
seem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogîs
who make of Pranidhâna their _fifth_ observance.(189) It has already been
explained why the Trans‐Himâlayan Occultists regard them as evidently
identical with those who in India are termed Kumâras, Agnishvâttas, and
the Barhishads.
How precise and true is Plato’s expression, how profound and philosophical
his remark on the (Human) Soul or Ego, when he defined it as “a compound
of the _same_ and the _other_.” And yet how little this hint has been
understood, since the world took it to mean that the Soul was the Breath
of God, of Jehovah. It is “the _same_ and the _other_,” as the great
Initiate‐Philosopher said; for the Ego—the “Higher Self” when merged with
and in the Divine Monad—is Man, and yet the _same_ as the “_other_”; the
Angel in him incarnated is the same with the Universal Mahat. The great
classical writers and philosophers felt this truth, when saying that:
There must be something within us which produces our thoughts.
Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it
is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection;
it is a number; it is harmony.(190)
All these are the Mânasas and Râjasas; the Kumâras, Asuras, and other
Rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and
various other ways endowed mankind with Mind.
There are Seven Classes of Pitris, as shown below, three Incorporeal and
four Corporeal; and two kinds, the Agnishvâtta and the Barhishad. And we
may add that, as there are two kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a
triple set of Barhishad and Agnishvâtta. The former, having given birth to
their Astral Doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the “Pitris of
the Demons,” or Corporeal Beings, on the authority of Manu;(191) while the
Agnishvâtta are reborn as Sons of Marîchi, a Son of Brahmâ, and are the
“Pitris of the Gods.”(192)
The _Vâyu Purâna_ declares the Seven Orders of Pitris to have been
originally the _first Gods_, the Vairâjas, whom Brahmâ, with the
eye of Yoga, beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the _gods
of the gods_.... The _Matsya_ ... adds, that the Gods worshipped
them.(193)
The _Harivamsha_ distinguishes the Vairâjas as one class of the Pitris
only,(194) a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which,
however, identify the Vairâjas with the _elder_ Agnishvâttas(195) and the
Râjasas, or Âbhûtarajasas, who are Incorporeal without even an Astral
Phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated in and
through them.
In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of gods, was born of
Sambhûti, as the divine Mânasa—originating with the deities called
Râjasas.(196)
Sambhûti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marîchi, the father of the
Agnishvâtta, who, along with the Râjasas, are ever associated with
Mânasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr.
Fitzedward Hall:
Mânasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated with the
Râjasas. We appear to have in it _mânasam_—the same as
_manas_—with the change of termination required to express male
personification.(197)
All the Sons of Virâja are Mânasa, says Nîlakantha. And Virâja is Brahmâ,
and, therefore, the Incorporeal Pitris are called Vairâjas from being the
Sons of Virâja, says _Vayu Purâna_.
We could multiply our proofs _ad infinitum_, but it is useless. The wise
will understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are
thirty‐three crores, or three hundred and thirty millions, of Gods in
India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_:
They may be all devas, but are by no means all “gods,” in the high
spiritual sense one attributes to the term.
This is an unfortunate blunder generally committed by Europeans.
Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is
used in ordinary parlance to mean god, it by no means follows that
we have and worship thirty‐three crores of gods. These beings, as
may be naturally inferred, have a _certain affinity_ with one of
the three component Upâdhis [basic principles] into which we have
divided man.(198)
The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every
Manvantara. Thus the twelve Great Gods, Jayas, created by Brahmâ to assist
him in the work of creation in the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who,
lost in Samâdhi, neglected to create—whereupon they were cursed to be
repeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh—are respectively
called Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sâdhyas, and
Adityas:(199) they are Tushitas, in the second Kalpa, and Âdityas in this
Vaivasvata Period,(200) besides other names for each age. But they are
identical with the Mânasas or Râjasas, and these with our incarnating
Dhyân Chohans.
Yes; besides those Beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinnaras,
etc., taken in their _individualities_, inhabit the Astral Plane, there
are real Devas, and to these classes belong the Adityas, the Vairâjas, the
Kumâras, the Asuras, and all those high celestial Beings whom Occult
teaching calls Manasvin, the Wise, foremost of all, and who would have
made all men the _self‐conscious_ spiritually intellectual Beings they
will be, had they not been “cursed” to fall into generation, and to be
reborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of duty.
Stanza IV.—_Continued._
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS(201) OF FUTURE MEN(202) (_A_) WERE(203)
BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR(204) AND KIND (_B_). EACH(205) INFERIOR TO
HIS FATHER.(206) THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS
WITH BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHÛTA,(207) WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND.
THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED THE CHHÂYÂ(208) RACE(_C_).
(_a_) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root _man_, to think,
hence a “thinker.” It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung
the Latin _mens_, Mind, the Egyptian _Menes_, the “Master‐Mind,” the
Pythagorean _monas_, or conscious “thinking unit,” mind also, and even our
_manas_ or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are
called _Amânasa_, “Mindless.”
With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the
Progenitors,(209) or Ancestors of men—the first Manushyas on this
Earth—and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born
unto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than
the worship of the Gods.(210)
May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of
Progenitors?
The Pitris being divided into _seven_ Classes, we have here the mystic
number again. Nearly all the _Purânas_ agree that three of these are
Arûpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual
and spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically,
it is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris—“born in the
Body of Night”—whereas the other four were produced from the “Body of
Twilight.” Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth,
according to the _Vâyu Purâna_. The legends are purposely mixed up and
made very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in
another, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their
own Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men
simultaneously on the seven Zones.
Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again
divided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That
Class of the “Fire Dhyânîs,” which we identify on undeniable grounds with
the Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the “Heart” of the Dhyân‐
Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and
made them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious
relation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this
angelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic,
and spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the
terrestrial plane, of the model or prototype _above_. Why, it is asked,
should there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the
anatomical structure of man? Why should the heart have _four lower_
cavities and _three higher_ divisions, answering so strangely to the
septenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the
higher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the
various classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as
already stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and
three Incorporeal, or subtler, “Principles,” or call them by any other
name you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate
seven rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct
layers in the human skin?
Says the Commentary:
_Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the
Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ‐Loka, whence they descend periodically, when
the World is renewed, to give birth to new Men._
_The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent
of the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not‐Gods]._
“Not‐Gods,” for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest “Breaths,” for the
Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the
intellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four
corporeal Classes creating only his body.
This is very plainly shown in various texts of the _Rig Veda_—the highest
authority for a Hindû of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means
“spiritual, divine,” and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit,
and the term Asura, in the sense of a “God,” is applied to Varuna and
Indra and preëminently to Agni—the three having been in days of old the
three _highest_ Gods, before Brâhmanical Theo‐Mythology distorted the true
meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is
now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.
In the _Zend Avesta_ the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian,
religion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the “all‐knowing” or
“omniscient Lord”; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as
Benfey shows, “the Lord who bestows _Intelligence_”—Asura Medhâ and Ahura
Mazdâo.(211) Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good
authority, that the Indo‐Iranian Asura was always regarded as _sevenfold_.
This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the
sevenfold Asura the “Lord,” or “Lords” collectively “who bestow
_Intelligence_,” connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our
incarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven
informing Gods of Egypt, Chaldæa, and every other country.
Why these “Gods” refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric
accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power
of their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already
suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology
has taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against
these First‐born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds
of the ignorant and credulous.(212)
The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods
into Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to
obtain hold over the people’s mind. Even in Chaldæan exotericism, Beings
who _refuse to create_, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are
also denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their
intellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are
shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on
blind faith—a hint now ignored by the _orthodox_ Brâhmans—and forthwith
the former become _A_‐Suras. The First‐ and Mind‐born Sons of the Deity
refuse to create progeny, and are _cursed_ by Brahmâ to be _born as men_.
They are hurled _down to Earth_, which, later on, is transformed, in
theological dogma, into the _Infernal_ Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull
created by Ormazd—which is the emblem of terrestrial _illusive_ life, the
“germ of sorrow”—and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die,
in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal
life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the
opposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in
order to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and
Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of
Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the
latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self‐
sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity
through _self‐conscious_ efforts; and it is these worshippers of _form_
who have made Demons of the Angels of Light.
Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches that _one‐third_(213) of the
Dhyânîs—_i.e._, the three Classes of the Arûpa Pitris, endowed with
intelligence, “which is a formless breath, composed of _intellectual_ not
elementary substances”(214)—was simply _doomed by the law of Karma and
evolution to be re‐born_, or incarnated, on Earth.(215) Some of these were
Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the
_Purânas_, re‐appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara—read Third
Root‐Race—as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical
and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated,
disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the
former through superstitious fear.
The supposed “Rebels,” then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic
law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, _had to incarnate_
anew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues
projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused,
because they had not in them the requisite materials—_i.e._, an astral
body—for they were Arûpa. The refusal of others had reference to their
having been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another
mystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for
the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn,
and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in
irresponsible, animal‐like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a
parable and an allegory _within an allegory_. Its solution is left to the
intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his
_spiritual_ eye.
As to their Fashioners or Ancestors—those Angels who, in the exoteric
legends, obeyed the law—they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris,
or the Pitri‐Devatâs, _i.e._, those possessed of the _physical creative
fire_. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with
their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and
likeness. “Man must not be like one of us,” say the _Creative_ Gods,
entrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal—but higher.(216) Their
creating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means,
Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared
its destiny and further evolution. They _would_ not, simply because they
_could_ not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into
the flower of human reason and self‐consciousness, for they had it not to
give. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece
under the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the
physical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.
Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds
his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes
the Human Higher Self owing to the _personal exertion of the individual_;
but they could not make men as they were themselves—perfect, because
sinless; sinless, because having only the first, pale shadowy outlines of
attributes, and these all perfect—from the human standpoint—white, pure
and cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no
merit. Humanity, “of the earth earthy,” was not destined to be created by
the Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to have
_refused_ to create, and man had to be formed by more material
Creators,(217) who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their
own natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could
only project out of themselves _shadowy_ men, a little less ethereal and
spiritual, less _divine_ and _perfect_ than themselves—shadows still. The
first Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too
material, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too
spiritual and pure to be Men—endowed as it is with every _negative_
(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of
imperfection, the _incorruptible_ must grow out of the corruptible, having
the latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is
absolute Darkness, and _vice versâ_. In fact, there is neither Light nor
Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of
Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one
from the other, and they will both die. Neither exists _per se_, since
each has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come
into being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of
perception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.
Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a _lower_
Order of Creative Angels to “create” inhabited Globes—especially ours—or
to deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were
the first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various
systems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one
always finds their “Creators” occupying a place at the very foot of the
ladder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its
mortals were placed on the very limit of mâyâvic Matter, and their
followers were taught to think—to the great disgust of the Church
Fathers—that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and
moral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made
responsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,(218) to which Class they
relegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.
Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient
Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the _Phædrus_, of a “winged” race of men.
Aristophanes, in Plato’s _Banquet_, speaks of a race androgynous and with
round bodies. In _Pymander_, all the animal kingdom even is double‐sexed.
Thus it is said:
The circuit having been accomplished, _the knot was loosened_ ...
and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were _untied_
[separated] _together with man_ ... [for] ... the causes had to
produce effects on earth.(219)
Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, the _Popol Vuh_—published by the
late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg—the first men are described as a race
“whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once”; thus showing
the _divine knowledge of Gods_, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine,
correcting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts
as they are recorded in the archaic symbols.
(_b_) These “Shadows” were born “each of his own colour and kind,” each
also “inferior to his Father,” or Creator, because the latter was a
complete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to
the colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In _Pymander_,
the Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the “Heavenly Man,” all
partake of the qualities of the Seven “Governors,” or Rulers, who loved
Man—their own reflection and synthesis.
In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods,
as also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and
personifications woven into the popular “myths,” as in our Secret
Doctrine; and we find them in the _Vedas_, the _Purânas_, the Mazdean
Scriptures and the _Kabalah_. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the
World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the “Pillars of the
World,” its “Supports,” are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores,
the seven “Workmen” or Rectors of _Pymander_, the seven Rishis and Pitris
of India, the seven Chaldæan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven
Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven
Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the
seas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of
the slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from
the Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after
Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes
him with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.(220) The
Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash‐tree, whence issued the men of the generation
of bronze, the Third Root‐Race, and the Tzité tree of the _Popol Vuh_, out
of which the Mexican _third_ race of men was created, are all one. This
may be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse
Yggdrasil, the Hindû Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and
the Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even
with the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden—who among the
Western scholars can tell?(221) Nevertheless, the fruits of all those
“Trees,” whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are
the “plants of life,” in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were
all enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developed _within and
under_ the great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;(222) and the mystery is half
revealed in the _Dîrghotamas_, where it is said:
Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come _spirits who
love the science_, and where the gods produce all marvels.
As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees,
the “Serpent” dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of
Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic
Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All;
the others are its _reflected_ parts. The “Tree” is man himself, of
course, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious Manas, the
connecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.
Everywhere, it is the same. The “Creating” Powers produce Man, but fail in
their final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man with _conscious_
immortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they
are all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the
attempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment
in the lower or nether region, which is _our Earth, the lowest_ in its
Chain; an “Eternity”—meaning the duration of the Life‐cycle—in the
_darkness_ of Matter, or _within animal Man_. It pleased the half ignorant
and half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They
took advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn
them to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the
darkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his
indwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the
glaring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself.
Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as the
_forbidden_ fruit, and the “Serpent of Wisdom,” the voice of reason and
consciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which
is the old Dragon, the Devil!
The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and
mystic symbol in India, the “Jaina Cross” as it is now called by the
Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the
Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the
“devil’s sign,” we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine
on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand‐headed Shesha‐
Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindû Naraka or Hell? It does: but
what is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of
Time, and becomes _Infinite_ Time itself, when called Ananta, the great
Seven‐headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the _Eternal Deity_, during
Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical
symbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all
symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines
of the whole work of “creation,” or evolution as one should rather say,
from Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown
Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whose _genesis
is as unknown_ to that Science as is that of the All‐Deity Itself. The
Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is
the “Worker’s Hammer” in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, the “Hammer,”
above referred to, in the _Book of Concealed Mystery_, “which striketh
sparks from the flint” (Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor’s
Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the
Pre‐cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the
region of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods—the agents of Universal
Harmony—but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed
out of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the
“Storm‐hammer”; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy
Gods, after having been purified by fire—the fire of the passions and
suffering in their life‐incarnations—become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal
peace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of
Hel—the Goddess‐queen of the region of the Dead—will bind them no longer,
for the kingdom of evil will have passed away.
Surtur’s flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging
waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of
Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but
as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new
earth.(223)
Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the “Hammer of
Creation,” with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the
continual _motion_ and revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In
that of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in
the Cycles of Time of the world’s axes and their equatorial belts; the two
lines forming the Svastika 卐, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks
suggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm,
Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand
being raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the
Earth. In the _Smaragdine Tablet_ of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is
inscribed with the word “Solve,” the left with the word “Coagula.” It is
at one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and
Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to
say that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of
signs contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the
mystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed at the very
threshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its
spiritual death in the scholastic interpretations of mediæval
Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative
Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also
the key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends
its full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ‐Mâyâ, the
great Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine
Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of
Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human
schemes or fictions.
How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the
ravens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round
in their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all
written down in the “Scrolls of Wisdom,” of which many are lost but some
still remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the
Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner’s _Asgard and the Gods_,
concerning the “Renewal of the World,” which is a prophecy about the
Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.
The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:
On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth
Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, and _in them their
fathers rose again_ [the Egos of all their past incarnations].
They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom
and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled.
Near them, but _unseen by them_, was the strong, the mighty One,
who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with
each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.
_They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power,
but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose
out of the waters_ [of Space]. To the south above the Field of
Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a
third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil’s cave a wondrous palace was
erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the
sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our
Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, as _they used to be_, and
they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From
Gimil’s heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they
looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the
coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them to
_climb up higher_, to _rise in knowledge and wisdom_, in piety and
in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until
they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house
of All father.(224)
He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom, though so
imperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in
the above.
Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader
thinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on,
in the light of the Hindû Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological
symbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire
only, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including
Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The
“friction” of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this
image only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists—than whom
there are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the
Sanskrit‐speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the
conjunction of Pramantha and Arani—the Svastika—during the sacrificial
ceremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the “divine artist
and _carpenter_,”(225) and is also the Father of the Gods and of “Creative
Fire” in the _Vedas_. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there
is hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being
found. A number of such terra‐cotta discs, called _fusaïoles_, were found
by Dr. Schliemann _under_ the ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms,
[Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot
in the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being
one more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure
Aryans.
(_c_) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this
meaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife
of Sûrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic
life, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.
16. HOW ARE THE MANUSHYA(226) BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY
MADE? (_A_) THE FATHERS(227) CALLED TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE,(228)
WHICH IS THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO
HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE.(229) THESE THREE(230) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT
EFFORTS A GOOD RÛPA. IT(231) COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE, OR FLY. YET
IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHÂYÂ, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE. (_B_) ...
(_a_) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with
the help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas
(Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldæan Adam—this term not
meaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary
individual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldæans and Assyrians.
It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says
the Commentary, “_who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man_”—_i.e._,
the subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as
already stated, only the Ancestors of his Form, _i.e._, of the model
according to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive
Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhûta(232) or “phantom.” This
“creation” was a failure.
(_b_) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity of
_physical_ Nature’s unaided attempts to construct even a perfect
animal—let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature‐
Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their
own; but this is not enough to construct a _thinking_ man. “_Living_ Fire”
was needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self‐perception and
self‐consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are
the Animal‐Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus
furnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of
man. The first Creators, then, were the Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they
failed to animate the statue—_intellectually_.
This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of,
and fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man—the Higher Self
or Human Monad—and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the
former is endowed with _divine_ intelligence, the latter with
_instinctual_ faculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and
the presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?
Says the Commentary:
_The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the
Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that
vivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life
Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only
breathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their
abode._
This shows that not all men became incarnations of the “Divine Rebels,”
but only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply
quickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great
difference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not
the “Sons of Mahat,” speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate
Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would
never have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through
self‐exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to
be performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if
not entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this
rebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure
spirit, that we are what we are—self‐conscious, thinking men, with the
capabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil.
Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over
this, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by
the attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites—Spirit and
Matter—can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of
self‐conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in
Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible
allegories, foolishly called “fables.”
It explains, to begin with, the statement made in _Pymander_, that the
“Heavenly Man,” the “Son of the Father,” who partook of the nature and
essence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material
World,
Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of
the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the
downward‐borne nature.(233)
It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek
allegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many
allegorical accounts about the “Wars in Heaven,” including that of
_Revelation_ with respect to the Christian dogma of the “Fallen Angels.”
It explains the “Rebellion” of the oldest and highest Angels, and the
meaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,
_i.e._, Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the
Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as
follows:
My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war
with the powers of evil _preceded_ the Creation; I now think it
followed the account of the Fall.(234)
In the same work,(235) Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early
Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The
Tree has seven branches; _three_ on the man’s side, _four_ on that of the
female. These branches are typical of the seven Root‐Races, in the _third_
of which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the
so‐called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless,
then hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each
other. As the writer tells us:
The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads
man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the
sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the
creation of the world.(236)
This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus,
personified, or rather _animalized_; and Tiamat, “the embodiment of the
spirit of chaos,” of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the
Womb. The “spirit of chaos and disorder” refers to the mental perturbation
which it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which
fascinates and seduces, the ever‐living active element which throws the
whole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman,
but it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic
curse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George
Smith:
It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall,
and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay
becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on
the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity.
Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family
quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he
shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour out _useless
prayer_, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines
continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it
only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers
of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).(237)
This account is omitted in _Genesis_, for monotheistic purposes. But it is
a mistaken policy—born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion
and its superstitions—to seek to restore the Chaldæan fragments by
_Genesis_, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the
fragments, which ought to be explained by the former.
17. THE BREATH(238) NEEDED A FORM; THE FATHERS GAVE IT. THE BREATH NEEDED
A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE BREATH NEEDED THE SPIRIT OF LIFE;
THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO ITS FORM. THE BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF
ITS BODY;(239) “WE GAVE IT OUR OWN!”—SAID THE DHYÂNÎS. THE BREATH NEEDED A
VEHICLE OF DESIRES;(240) “IT HAS IT!”—SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS.(241) BUT
BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO EMBRACE THE UNIVERSE; “WE CANNOT GIVE THAT!”—SAID
THE FATHERS. “I NEVER HAD IT!”—SAID THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. “THE FORM
WOULD BE CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT MINE!”—SAID THE GREAT FIRE.(242)...
MAN(243) REMAINED AN EMPTY SENSELESS BHÛTA.... THUS HAVE THE BONELESS
GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO(244) BECAME MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD.(245)
As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few
remarks will now suffice. The “Father” of primitive physical man, or of
his body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is
its “Mother,” because of that mysterious power in the Moon, which has as
decided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it
regulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The “Wind” or
Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those
influences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon
earth, is referred to as the “Nurse”;(246) while “Spiritual Fire” alone
makes of man a divine and perfect entity.
Now what is that “Spiritual Fire”? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general;
while in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds
from its Noumenon, the “Dhyân of the First Element.” Hydrogen is _gas_
only on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen “would be
the only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,”(247) and is
very nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and
generator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water,
and is “fire, air and water,” in fact: _one_ under three aspects; hence
the chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or
Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the
subjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena.
Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified
it with, the To On, the “One” of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen
is _not_ water, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it
manifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a
product of the union of water and fire—since Hydrogen is found in the
aqueous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.
If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of
these “Fires” was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people,
preëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the
Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great
Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by
Kârttikeya—a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and
these Hindû Deities were, like the Kabiri, the _personified sacred Fires
of the most Occult Powers of Nature_. The several branches of the Âryan
Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindû and the Greek, did their
best to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case
of the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there
were three or four only; others say seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus,
and Casmilus may very well stand for the _alter egos_ of the four
Kumâras—Sanat‐Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities,
whose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori,
Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is
Brahmâ—or rather, the “Flame of his Wrath,” which prompted him to perform
the ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva)
and the Kumâras—were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the
Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one—_i.e._, correlative
Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these “Fires” and their
real meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work
is ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.
The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal
intuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would
learn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works
of the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as
do the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered
Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and
inseparably linked together. Æsculapius was the Son of Apollo—the Sun or
Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In
exoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the
Elements—especially Fire, Water, and Air—are made the Progenitors of our
_five physical senses_, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult
way, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation
than the one called in the _Purânas_ Pratisarga, or “Secondary Creation.”
“_Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire_,” says an Occult axiom.
_The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and
their union is Life._
In the Kabalah, Bath‐Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or
Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the _Purânas_ and Hindû exotericism, Vâch,
the Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ—a permutation of Aditi,
Primordial Light. And if Bath‐Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate
præter‐natural voice from heaven, revealing to the “chosen people” the
sacred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before
Judaism, the “Mother of the _Vedas_,” who entered into the Rishis and
inspired them by her revelations; just as Bath‐Kol is said to have
inspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High‐Priests. And both
exist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the
Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which
Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial
Cosmic Trinity.
I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle,
the _Light that radiates within Darkness_ [Chaos], and the shining
Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.(248)
Thus we have to study well the “Primary Creation” before we can understand
the Secondary. The first Race had three _rudimentary_ Elements in it; and
_no Fire_ as yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and
the growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were
subordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this
Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and
sentient principles in the Gods, and even of the so‐called Creative Deity
himself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in
exoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pûrvaja,
“pregenetic,” and the other names connect him in their descending order
more and more with Matter.
The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the
Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial “Man” or “Spirit,” and
mortal physical man:
1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.
2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.
3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.
4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.
5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.
As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its
predecessor; as each Root‐Race adds the characterizing sense of the
preceding Race. The same is true in the septenary “creation” of man, who
evolves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be
shown further on.
Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the First
Cause—which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is the ALL CAUSE, and
cannot be referred to as the “_First_ Cause,”—which First Cause is called
in the Brâhmanical Books Jagad‐Yoni, the “Womb of the World,” mankind
emanates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and
Second Races, were not physical beings, but merely _rudiments_ of the
future men; Bhûtas, which proceeded from Bhûtâdi, “origin,” or the
“original place whence sprang the Elements.” Hence they proceeded with all
the rest from Prabhavâpyaya, “the place whence is the origination, and
into which is the resolution of all things,” as explained by the
Commentator on the _Vishnu Purâna_. Whence also our physical senses.
Whence even the highest “created” Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one
with the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is
a Manifested Deity—hence “created,” or limited and conditioned. This is
easily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.
After being called the _incognizable_, eternal Brahma (neuter or
abstract), the Pundarîkâksha, “supreme and imperishable glory,” once that
instead of Sadaika‐Rûpa, “changeless” or “immutable” Nature, he is
addressed as Ekâneka‐Rûpa, “both single and manifold,” he, the Cause,
becomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric
order, show the following descending scale:
Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.
Âtman or Pûrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.
Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the
senses).
Bhûtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.
Kshetrajña: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.
Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception—Material Universe.
The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false
and erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only
Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.
It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the
spiritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân‐Chohanic
Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected,
in their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles; _every
one of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion
of their various __“__Fires__”__ and Elements_.
Stanza V. The Evolution of the Second Race.
18. The Sons of Yoga. 19. The Sexless Second Race. 20. The Sons of
the “Sons of Twilight.” 21. The “Shadow,” or the Astral Man,
retires within, and man develops a Physical Body.
18. THE FIRST(249) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE
YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.
In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated:
_The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of Ether [or the
__“__Wind__”__] (a)_....
_They were the shadows of the Shadows of the Lords (b). They [the shadows]
expanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the Solar Lhas warmed
them [__i.e.__, preserved the Vital Fire in the nascent physical Forms].
The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no Fire or Water
of their own (c)._
(_a_) Remember in this connection the _Tabula Smaragdina_ of Hermes, the
Esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro‐chemical is well
known to students, the Anthropological may now be given. The “One Thing”
mentioned in it is Man. It is said:
The Father of that One Only Thing is the Sun; its Mother the Moon;
the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its Nurse is the Spirituous
Earth.
In the Occult rendering of the same it is added: “and _Spiritual_ Fire is
its instructor [Guru].”
This Fire is the Higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is
eternally reïncarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves,
changing with every re‐birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a
strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature
should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge
in the Âtman, the ALL‐SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence
thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be
thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the
mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines—Spiritual, Psychic
and Physical.
That which propels towards, and forces evolution, _i.e._, compels the
growth and development of Man towards perfection, is (_a_) the Monad, or
that which acts in it unconsciously through a Force inherent in itself;
and (_b_) the lower Astral Body or the _Personal_ Self. The former,
whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is
indeed itself, that Force. Owing to its identity with the ALL‐FORCE,
which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all‐potent on the Arûpa,
or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains
all‐potential, but individually becomes inactive. For instance, the rays
of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select
this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a
piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not
follow it. So with the Âtman: unless the Higher Self or Ego gravitates
towards its Sun—the Monad—the Lower Ego, or _Personal_ Self, will have the
upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce selfishness
and animal desire to live a senseless life (Tanha), which is the “maker of
the tabernacle,” as Buddha calls it in the _Dhammapada_.(250) Hence the
expression, the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded
them. To these “Spirits” belong temporarily the human Astral Selves; and
it is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the
Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the “Solar”
Lhas, or Spirits, warm the Shadows. This is physically and literally true;
metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true
that the Âtman alone _warms_ the Inner Man; _i.e._, it enlightens it with
the Ray of Divine Life and alone is able to impart to the Inner Man, or
the Reïncarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, we shall find, for the first
three and a half Root‐Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the
Astral Shadows of the “Progenitors,” the Lunar Pitris, which are the
formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the
evolution of the physical form towards perfection—this, at the cost of a
proportionate loss of Spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is
the Higher Ego, or Incarnating Principle, the Nous or Mind, which reigns
over the Animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the
latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or
physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its
evolution, only when the selfishness of the Personality has so strongly
infected the real Inner Man with its lethal _virus_, that the upward
attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober
truth, vice and wickedness are an _abnormal, unnatural_ manifestation, at
this period of our human evolution—at least they ought to be so. The fact
that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now—civilized
nations having succeeded in making of the former an ethical
characteristic, of the latter an art—is an additional proof of the
exceptional nature of the phenomenon.
The entire scheme is in the _Chaldæan Book of Numbers_, and even in the
_Zohar_, if one only understands the meaning of the apocalyptic hints.
First comes Ain Suph, the “Concealed of the Concealed,” then the _Point_,
Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a _World of
Emanations_ that gives birth to three other Worlds—the first the Briatic
World called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the _World
of Formation_, or Jetziratic, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the
Third, or _World of Action_, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or
_our_ World; and yet it is said of this World—also called Kliphoth,
containing the (six other) Spheres, נלגלים, and Matter—that it is the
residence of the “Prince of Darkness.” This is as clearly stated as can
be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second Briatic World, the first
habitable World, means Messenger, Ἄγγελος, Angel, called the great
Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, or Jetziratic,
whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,(251) of whom it is said
that:
They inhabit or vivify this world as essential [_entities_ and]
_intelligences_, and their _correlates_ and logical _contraries_
inhabit the third habitable world, called the Asiatic.
These “contraries” are called the “Shells,” קליפות, or Demons,(252) who
inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the
seven Zones of our Globe.(253) Their prince is called in the Kabalah
Samaël, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing Serpent Satan; but
this Satan is also Lucifer, the bright Angel of Light, the Light‐ and
Life‐bringer, the “Soul” alienated from the Holy Ones, the other Angels,
and for a period, _anticipating the time_ when they would descend on Earth
to incarnate in their turn.
The _Book of Wisdom_ teaches that:
All Souls [Monads] are preëxistent in the Worlds of
Emanations.(254)
And the _Zohar_ teaches that in the “Soul” is the _real man_, _i.e._, the
Ego and the conscious _I am_, the Manas.
Says Josephus, repeating the belief of the Essenes,
[Souls] descend from the pure air to be _chained to bodies_.(255)
And Philo states that:
The air was full of [Souls], and that those which were nearest the
earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, return back to
bodies, being desirous to live in them.(256)
Because through, and in, the human form they will become _progressive_
Beings, whereas the nature of the Angel is purely _intransitive_;
therefore Man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the
Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brâhman, the
Twice‐born, who rules the Gods or Devas; and Paul repeated it in his
_Epistle to the Corinthians_:
Know ye not that we [the Initiates] shall judge angels?(257)
Finally, it is shown in every ancient Scripture and Cosmogony that man
evolved primarily as a _luminous incorporeal form_, over which, like
molten brass poured into the model of the sculptor, the physical frame of
his body was built by, through and from, the lower forms and types of
animal terrestrial life. Says the _Zohar_:
The Soul and the _Form_ when descending on Earth put on an earthly
garment.
His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal
frames are fashioned.
When Adam dwelled in the garden of Eden, he was dressed in the
celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light ...
_light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden_.(258)
Man [the Heavenly Adam] was _created_ by the ten Sephiroth of the
Jetziratic World, and by their _common power_ the seven Angels of
a still lower World engendered the Earthly Adam. First Samaël
fell, and then _deceiving_ (?) man, caused his fall also.
(_b_) The sentence, “they were the shadows of the Shadows of the
Lords”—_i.e._, the Progenitors created man out of their own Astral
Bodies—explains a universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East
with having no “shadows” of their own. “The Devas cast no shadows,” and
this is the sure sign of a _good holy Spirit_.
(_c_) Why had they “no Fire or Water of their own”?(259) Because that
which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its
Noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its
trinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from
the three higher principles in man, namely, Spirit, Soul, and Mind, or
Âtmâ, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human
basis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the “Air” or the “Wind,”
becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of “Spiritual
Fire,” the Noumenon of the “Three in One” within his Self, he acquires
from his Inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self‐Consciousness,
which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again Divine Spirit
is symbolized by the Sun or Fire; Divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both
standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, the Human Soul, or Mind,
symbolized by the Wind or Air, for Pneuma, means “Breath.”
Hence in the _Smaragdine Tablet_, disfigured by Christian hands:
The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the
Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful work—[which is Man].
For the Secret Work of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabalah, “one in
essence, but three in aspect,” is the Universal Agent or Lapis
Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect
Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three Elements is the Occult
Solvent in the “Soul of the World,” the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at
the other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its relation to
the other gases. The TO ON, truly; the ONE “whom no person has seen except
the Son”; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical
Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter
understand the TO ON, the “One Father,” if his Manas, the “Son,” does not
become (_as_) “One with the Father,” and through this absorption receive
enlightenment from the divine “Instructor,” or Guru—Âtmâ‐Buddhi?
As says the Commentary:
_If thou would’st understand the_ SECONDARY [“Creation,” so‐called], _O
Lanoo, thou should’st first study its relation to the_ PRIMARY.(260)
The First Race had three Elements, but no _Living_ Fire. Why? Because:
“We say _four_ Elements, my Son, but ought to say three,” says Hermes
Trismegistus. “In the Primary Circle,” or Creation that which is marked
[Symbol: Like a large letter H, with dots above and below, and tildes
above and below] reads “Root,” as in the Secondary likewise.
Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermeticism—a variant on Eastern Esotericism—we
find:
Sulphur ... Flamma ... Spiritus
Mercury ... Natura ... Aqua
Salt ... Mater ... Sanguis
And these three are all quaternaries completed by their Root, Fire. The
Spirit, beyond Manifested Nature, is the Fiery BREATH in its absolute
Unity. In the Manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the
electric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit
of Nature, the terrestrial God. And in, on, and around the Earth, the
fiery spirit thereof—Air, fluidic Fire; Water, liquid Fire; Earth, solid
Fire. All is Fire—Ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of
which is 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in Nature and its Mind.
“Pro‐Metor” is divine Fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the
Preserver. The primitive names of the Gods are all connected with fire,
from Agni, the Âryan, to the Jewish God who is a “consuming fire.” In
India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and
Îshvara, in Sanskrit, the Lord, from Isha, but this is primarily the name
of Shiva, the Destroyer; and the three chief Vedic Gods are Agni (Ignis),
Vâyu, and Sûrya—Fire, Air, and the Sun, three Occult degrees of Fire. In
the Hebrew, אזא (Aza) means to “illuminate,” and אשא (Asha) is “Fire.” In
Occultism, to “kindle a fire” is synonymous to evoking one of the three
great Fire‐powers, or to “call on God.” In Sanskrit the root Ush is fire
or heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded, as shown by
Schelling, of the two primitives Aish and Asr, or a “fire‐enchanter.”
Aesar in the old Etruscan meant a God, being perhaps derived from Asura of
the _Vedas_. Îshvara is an analogous term, as Dr. Kenealy thought, who
quotes the _Bhagavad Gitâ_ to the effect that:
Îshvara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his
supernatural powers, all things which mount on the wheel of time.
It is the Creator and the Destroyer, truly.
The primitive Fire was supposed to have an insatiable appetite for
devouring. Maximus of Tyre relates that the ancient Persians threw
into the fire combustible matter crying, _Devour, O Lord!_ In the
Irish language _easam_, or _asam_, means to _make_ or _create_.
[And] _Aesar_ was the name also of one of the ancient Irish gods;
the literal meaning of the word is “to kindle a fire.”(261)
The Christian Kabalists and Symbologists who disfigured
_Pymander_—prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, François de Tours, in
the 16th century—divide the Elements in the following way:
_The four Elements formed from divine Substances and the Spirits of the
Salts of Nature represented by_:
[Symbol: Root symbol] ... St. Matthew ... Angel‐Man ... Water (Jesus‐
Christ, Angel‐Man, Mikael)
Α‐Ω ... St. Mark ... The Lion ... Fire
Ε‐Υ ... St. Luke ... The Bull ... Earth
Ι‐Ο ... St. John ... The Eagle ... Air(262)
Η ... _The Quintessence_, Ἡ ΦΛΟΞ, _Flamma‐Virgo_ [Virgin Oil], _Flamma
Durissima_, _Virgo_, _Lucis Æterna Mater_.
The First Race of men were, then, simply the Images, the Astral Doubles,
of their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities
from a preceding though _lower_ Sphere, the shell of which is now our
Moon. But even this shell is all‐potential, for, the Moon having generated
the Earth, its _phantom_, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form
its first inhabitants, the pre‐human monsters. To assure himself of this,
the student has again to turn to the Chaldæan Fragments, and read what
Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the
male‐female Deity of Wisdom. While the Gods were generated in the
androgynous bosom of this Wisdom (Svabhâvat, Mother‐Space), its
reflections became on Earth the woman Omorôka, who is the Chaldæan
Thavatth (or Thalatth), the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which
Esoterically and even exoterically is the _Moon_. It was the Moon
(Omorôka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings
which were slain by the Dhyânîs.(263)
Evolutionary law compelled the Lunar Fathers to pass, in their monadic
condition, through all the forms of life and being on this Globe; but at
the end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine
nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms
destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose
turn it was to incarnate. These “Forms” are called “Sons of Yoga,” because
Yoga—union with Brahmâ, exoterically—is the supreme condition of the
passive infinite Deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is
the essence of Brahmâ, who is said, as Brahmâ, to create everything
through Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva are the most powerful
energies of God, Brahma (Neuter), says a Paurânic text. Yoga here is the
same as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan
text, where the “Sons of Yoga” are called “Sons of Dhyâna,” or of that
abstract meditation through which the Dhyâni‐Buddhas create their
celestial sons, the Dhyâni‐Bodhisattvas.
All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. This
superior, whose inner pleasure it is _to emanate into them_,
cannot impart efflux until they have adored [_i.e._, meditated as
during Yoga].(264)
19. THE SECOND RACE (WAS) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION, THE A‐
SEXUAL(265) FROM THE SEXLESS.(266) THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE
PRODUCED.
What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this A‐sexual
Race, the Second, the Fathers of the “Sweat‐born” so‐called, and perhaps
still more the Third Race, the “Egg‐born” Androgynes. These two modes of
procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the
Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those
who are not students of Occult Metaphysics. European language has no words
to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution,
things which therefore can have no meaning for the Materialist. But there
are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical
evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous
generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms.
Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any
particular mode of reproducing life. For it shows that:
The same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the
course of its life‐cycle, during some of which it may be _sexual_,
and in others _a‐sexual_, _i.e._, it may reproduce itself
alternately by the coöperation of two beings of opposite sex, and
also by fissure or _budding_ from one being only, which is of no
sex.(267)
“Budding” is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhâyâs
reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since
they were ethereal, a‐sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of
desire, or Kâma Rûpa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved
the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the
Amœba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed,
the cell‐theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to
Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the
microscopic cells are looked upon by Physical Science as independent
living beings—just as Occultism regards the “Fiery Lives”—there is no
difficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.
Consider the first stages of the development of a germ‐cell. Its nucleus
grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, [Symbol: Large X
with horizontal lines across tops and bottoms] _within_ the cell. This
spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is
_extruded_ in the form of what are called the “polar cells.” These polar
cells _now_ die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation
of the remaining part of the nucleus which is _nourished_ by the substance
of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created
in _this_ way—at the very beginning of _human and mammalian evolution_?
This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by
which the Second Race was formed from the First.
The Astral Form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its
egg‐shaped sphere of Aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the
germ‐cell or Ovum. The Astral Form itself is the nucleus, now, as then,
instinct with the Principle of Life.
When the season of reproduction arrives, the _Sub_‐astral “extrudes” a
miniature of itself from the egg of surrounding Aura. This germ grows and
feeds on the Aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually
separates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of Aura; just
as we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent
division into two.
The analogy with the “polar cells” would seem to hold good, since their
death would _now_ correspond to the change introduced by the separation of
the sexes, when gestation _in utero_, _i.e._, within the cell, became the
rule.
As the Commentary tells us:
_The early Second [Root] Race were the Fathers of the __“__Sweat‐
born__”__; the later Second [Root] Race were __“__Sweat‐born__”__
themselves._
This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the
beginning of a Race to its close. The “Sons of Yoga,” or the Primitive
Astral Race, had seven stages of evolution _racially_, or collectively; as
every individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only
who divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself.
Thus the first Sub‐races of the Second Race were born at first by the
process described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually,
_pari passu_ with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise.
The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each
covering æons of time. What Physiologist or Biologist can tell whether the
present mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older
than half a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of
observation began hardly half a century ago?
Primeval human Hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the
Ancients, and form one of Darwin’s greatest perplexities. Yet there is
certainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that
hermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early Races; while on the
grounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in
physical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant,
animal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of Monogenesis, and
the descent of man from the mammal, instead of the mammals from man, are
fatal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on
Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the
insuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition—if the
terms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to Antiquity—can
alone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. Says a Talmudic
axiom:
If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eyes wide on the
visible.
In the _Descent of Man_ occurs the following passage, which shows how near
Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.
It has long been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex
bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the
reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex....
Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to
have been hermaphrodite or androgynous.(268) But here we encounter
a singular difficulty. _In the mammalian class the males possess
rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the vesiculæ
prostaticæ; they bear also rudiments of mammæ, and some male
marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac._ Other analogous facts
could be added. Are we, then, to suppose that some extremely
ancient mammal continued androgynous, after it had acquired the
chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had
diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This
seems very improbable,(269) _for we have to look to fishes, the
lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous
forms_.(270)
Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which
the facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem
from which the Mammalia sprang. His explanation runs:
That various accessory organs, proper to each sex, are found in a
rudimentary condition in the opposite sex, may be explained by
such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex, and
then transmitted in a more or less imperfect state to the
other.(271)
He instances the case of “spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired
for battle or ornament by male birds” and only _partially_ inherited by
their female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the
need of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so
much more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial
details with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the
argument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterizes the old
fauna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most
comprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock
must be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs
equally mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of
functions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal
and human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general
economy of primeval life.
The Occult doctrine, in any case, can be advantageously compared with that
of the most liberal men of Science, who have theorized upon the origin of
the first man.
Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which
the Darwinists call Protoplasm, put forward a theory half Occult and half
scientifico‐materialistic. He made Adam, the A‐sexual, spring suddenly
from the _clay_, as it is called in the _Bible_, the Blastema of Science.
As Naudin explains:
It is from this larval form of mankind, that the evolutive force
effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this
great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility
and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of
animals undergoing metamorphosis.(272)
For the eminent Botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but _mankind_,
which remained
Concealed within a temporary organism, already distinct from all
others, and incapable of contracting an alliance with any of them.
He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by
A process of germination similar to that of medusæ and ascidians.
Mankind, thus constituted physiologically,
Would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production
of the various great human races.
De Quatrefages criticizes this position in _The Human Species_. It is
_unscientific_, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin’s ideas “do not
form a scientific theory,” inasmuch as Primordial Blastema is connected in
his theory with the “_first cause_,” which is credited with having made
potentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus
of having in reality _created_ these beings _en masse_; moreover, Naudin
does not even consider the “_second causes_,” or their action in this
evolution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with
“second causes,” has thus
Nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin.(273)
Nor will it have any more to say to the Occult teachings, which are to
some extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his “Primordial
Blastema” the Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence, the Chhâyâ or Double of the Pitris,
which contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite
in accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our
teachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden
leaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and
his Primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts—a kind of
_unconscious_ First Cause in the Manifested Kosmos—which is an absurdity.
Whereas it is our Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence—the _Causality_ of the Primal
Cause which creates _physical_ man—which is the living, active and
potential Matter (pregnant _per se_ with that animal consciousness of a
superior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver) which produces
the long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this, his
“ancient and general process of _creation_” from Proto‐organisms is as
Occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.
Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The _Zohar_,
for instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the
invisible Universe.
All that which is in the Lower (our) World is found in the Upper.
The Lower and the Upper act and reäct upon each other.(274)
20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF‐BORN. THE SELF‐BORN, THE CHHÂYÂ FROM THE
BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF TWILIGHT.
The “Shadows,” or Chhâyâs, are called the Sons of the “Self‐born,” as the
latter name is applied to all the Gods and Beings, born through the Will,
whether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be
also given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material
plane. The name “Sons of Twilight” shows that the “Self‐born” Progenitors
of our Doctrine are identical with the Pitris of the Brâhmanical System,
as the title is a reference to their mode of birth; these Pitris being
stated to have issued from Brahmâ’s “Body of Twilight,” as stated in the
_Purânas_.
21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS
(_A_). WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE
NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE
INNER OF THE SECOND (_B_). THE OLD WING BECAME THE NEW SHADOW, AND THE
SHADOW OF THE WING (_C_).
(_a_) The old or Primitive Race merged in the Second Race, and became one
with it.
(_b_) This is the mysterious process of the transformation and evolution
of mankind. The material of the first Forms—shadowy, ethereal, and
negative—was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the
Forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by saying that, as
the First Race was simply composed of the Astral Shadows of the Creative
Progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of its
own—the Race _never died_. Its “Men” melted gradually away, becoming
absorbed in the bodies of their own “Sweat‐born” progeny, more solid than
their own. The old Form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the
new Form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a
period more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent,
material was used for the formation of the new being, to form the Body and
even the inner or _lower_ Principles or Bodies of the progeny.
(_c_) When the “Shadow” retires, _i.e._, when the Astral Body becomes
covered with more solid flesh, man develops a Physical Body. The “Wing,”
or the ethereal Form that produced its Shadow and Image, became the Shadow
of the Astral Body and its own progeny. The expression is queer and
original.
As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well
to point out at once the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing
upon this particular phase of evolution. It is found in the several
variants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons Castor and Pollux, each
of which variants has a special meaning. Thus in Book XI of the _Odyssey_,
Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband
“to two sons of valiant heart”—Castor and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with
a marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi‐immortal; they live and
die, each in turn, and every alternate day (ἑτερήμεροι(275)). As the
Tyndaridæ, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day
and Night; their two wives, Phœbe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Apollo or
the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.(276) Again, in the
allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes—born from the
Egg to which Leda gives birth—the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates
to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born
from an Egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan, when
uniting herself to the Divine Swan or Brahma‐Kalahamsa. Leda is the
mythical Bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the
Âryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all
lay golden Eggs.(277) In the _Kalevala_, the Epic Poem of Finland, the
beauteous daughter of the Ether, the “Water‐Mother,” creates the World in
conjunction with a “Duck”—another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahamsa—who
lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, an “egg of iron,” in her lap. But
the variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic
man is found in Pindar(278) only, with a slighter reference to it in the
Homeric Hymns.(279) Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri of
Apollodorus(280); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual
man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen,
they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from
the Animal‐man into a God‐man with only an animal body.
Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and
also to the Father of the Gods—Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal,
Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the
occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the
Apharides,(281) Pollux kills Lynceus—“of all mortals he whose sight is the
most penetrating”—but Castor is wounded by Idas, “he who sees and knows.”
Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the
last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.(282) In his despair
he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. “Thou canst not die altogether,”
answers the master of the Gods; “thou art of a divine race.” But he gives
him the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in
Olympus; or, if he would share his brother’s fate in all things, he must
pass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden
heavenly abodes. This semi‐immortality, which is also to be shared by
Castor, is accepted by Pollux.(283) _And thus the twin brothers live
alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night._(284)
Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those “solar myth”
interpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to
soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the “Egg‐born”
Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, _i.e._, unconscious in its
Personality, and having nothing within itself to survive;(285) and the
latter half of which becomes immortal in its Individuality, by reason of
its Fifth Principle being called to life by the _Informing Gods_, and thus
connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor
represents the _personal_, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior
kind, when unlinked from the divine _Individuality_. “Twins” truly; yet
divorced by death for ever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship,
bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine
nature, thus associating him with his own immortality.
Such is the Occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The
widely spread modern interpretation of it—so celebrated in antiquity,
Plutarch tells us,(286) as symbolical of brotherly devotion—namely, that
it was an image of the Sun and Moon borrowed from the spectacle of Nature,
is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact
that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and
could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor, and at the same time be
identified with Diana, ancient Symbologists who held the Sun, the king of
all sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest Deity, would not
have personified it by Pollux, a demi‐god only.(287)
If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we
shall find a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under
another form. Unable to trace in them the “Egg‐born,” we shall still
unmistakably find in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ the Androgynes
and the first Three Races of the Secret Doctrine, hidden under most
ingenious symbology.
The Divine Hermaphrodite.
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the Occult and Religious
Mysteries, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean Race,
some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so
desecrated. Of these Sciences several have now become exoteric—such as
Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspects.
But their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolized and left to the sole
guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and hence the
meaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the Hermaphrodite in
the scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such
unanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?
Under cover of this secrecy the Fifth Race were led to the establishment,
or rather the reëstablishment of the Religious Mysteries, in which ancient
truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of
allegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution
of the Human Races from the Divine, and especially from the Androgynous
Race—the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine Wisdom
incarnating on Earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal
experience of pain and suffering, generated on Earth only under the shade
of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—a secret first known only to
the Elohim, the Self‐Initiated, “Higher Gods.”(288)
In the _Book of Enoch_ we have Adam,(289) the first Divine Androgyne,
separating into man and woman, and becoming Jah‐Heva in one form, or Race,
and Cain and Abel(290)—male and female—in its other form or Race—the
double‐sexed Jehovah,(291) an echo of its Âryan prototype, Brahmâ‐Vâch.
After which come the Third and Fourth Root‐Races of mankind(292)—that is
to say, Races of men and women, or individuals of opposite sexes, no
longer sexless Semi‐spirits and Androgynes, as were the two Races which
precede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found in
fable and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and
tradition. For, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from
hoary antiquity, this is _one of the greatest_. It accounts for the bi‐
sexual element found in every Creative Deity, in Brahmâ‐Virâj‐Vâch, as in
Adam‐Jehovah‐Eve, also in Cain‐Jehovah‐Abel. For “The Book of the
Generations of Adam” does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only:
Male and female created he them; ... and called their name
Adam.(293)
Then it proceeds to say:
And Adam ... begat a son in _his own likeness_, after his image;
and called his name Seth.(294)
After which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and
Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive
_Human_ Race, especially in its cosmo‐sidereal sense. Not so, however, in
its theo‐anthropological meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah‐
Hovah, meaning _male life_ and _female life_—first androgynous, then
separated into sexes—is used in this sense in _Genesis_ from Chapter V
onwards. As the author of the _Source of Measures_ says:
The two words of which _Jehovah_ is composed make up the original
idea of male‐female, as the birth originator.(295)
For the Hebrew letter _Jod_ was the _membrum virile_ and _Hovah_ was Eve,
the mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author
believes, therefore, that:
It is seen that the _perfect one_ [the perfect female circle or
Yoni, 20612, numerically], as _originator of measures_, takes also
the form of _birth_ origin, as _hermaphrodite one_; hence the
phallic form and use.
Precisely; only “the phallic form and use” came long ages later; and the
first and original meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the first Race
born in the present usual way from man and woman—for Seth is no man, but a
_race_. Before him humanity was hermaphrodite. While Seth is the first
result (physiologically) after the “Fall,” he is also the first _man_;
hence his son Enos is referred to as the “Son of _Man_.” Seth represents
the _later_ Third Race.
To screen the real mystery name of Ain Suph—the Boundless and Endless No‐
Thing—the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute‐
appellation of one of the personal Creative Elohim, whose name was Yah or
Jah—the letters _i_ or _j_ or _y_ being interchangeable—or Jah‐Hovah,
_i.e._, _male_ and _female_;(296) Jah‐Eve a hermaphrodite, or the _first
form of humanity_, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose
“Mind‐born Son” is the earthly Jah‐Hovah, mystically. And knowing this,
the crafty Rabbin‐Kabalist has made of it a name so _secret_, that he
could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus
he was obliged to make it _sacred_.
How close is the identity between Brahmâ‐Prajâpati and Jehovah‐Sephiroth,
between Brahmâ‐Virâj and Jehovah‐Adam, the _Bible_ and the _Purânas_
compared alone can show. Analyzed, and read in the same light, they afford
cogent evidence that they are two copies of the same original—made at two
periods far distant from each other. Compare once more in relation to this
subject _Genesis_ iv. 1 and 26 and _Manu_ i. 32 and they will both yield
their meaning. In Manu, Brahmâ, who, like Jehovah or Adam in _Genesis_, is
both man and God, and divides his body into male and female, stands, in
his Esoteric meaning, for the symbolical personification of creative and
_generative_ power, both divine and human. The _Zohar_ affords still more
convincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word
certain original Paurânic expressions; _e.g._, the “creation” of the world
is generally considered in the Brâhmanical books to be the Lîlâ, the
delight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator.
Vishnu, being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and
time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening
to his frolics.(297)
Now compare this with what is said in the Book, _Nobeleth ’Hokhmah_:
The Qabbalists say, that the entering into existence of the worlds
happened through delight, in that Ain Suph [? !] rejoiced in
Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself ... which are
all called delight.(298)
Thus it is not a “curious idea of the Qabbalists,” as the author just
quoted remarks, but a purely Paurânic, Âryan idea. Only, why make of Ain
Suph a Creator?
The “Divine Hermaphrodite” is, then, Brahmâ‐Vâch‐Virâj; and that of the
Semites, or rather of the Jews, is Jehovah‐Cain‐Abel. Only the “Heathen”
were, and are, more sincere and frank than were the later Israëlites and
Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The
Jews regard the name given to them—the Yah‐oudi—as an insult. Yet they
have, or would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call
themselves the ancient Yah‐oudi, “Jah‐hovians,” as the Brâhmans have to
call themselves Brâhmans _after their national deity_. For Jah‐hovah is
the generic name of that Group or Hierarchy of Creative Planetary Angels,
under whose Star their nation has evolved. He is one of the Planetary
Elohim of the Regent Group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Chapter iv of _Genesis_,
when read correctly, would alone give them such a right, for it calls the
new Race of men—sprung from Seth and Enos—_Jehovah_, something quite
different from the translation adopted in the _Bible_, which ought to
read:
To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call
themselves Jah, or Yah‐hovah,
to wit, _men and women_, the “Lords of Creation.” One has but to read the
above‐mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the
Kabalah, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated,
the correct translation should be:
Then began men to _call themselves_ Jehovah;
and not:
Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord
the latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the
well‐known passage:
I have gotten a man from the Lord,
should read:
I have gotten a man, even Jehovah.(299)
Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite
differently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it:
Cain—_I have gotten—Kain_, from _Kâ’nithi, I have gotten_.
Luther:
I have gotten a man—even the Lord [Jehovah].
And the author of _The Source of Measures_:
I have _measured a man_, even _Jehovah_.
The last is the correct rendering for—(_a_) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist,
explained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (_b_) this
rendering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with
regard to Brahmâ.
In _Isis Unveiled_,(300) it was explained by the writer that:
Cain ... is the son of the “Lord” not of Adam.
The “Lord” is Adam Kadmon, the “Father” of Yod‐Heva, “Adam‐Eve,” or
Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood.
Seth, on the other hand, is the _leader and the progenitor of the Races of
the Earth_; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but Esoterically he
is the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the
counterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective
name for man and woman:
Male and female (_zachar va nakobeh_) created he them ... and
called _their_ name Adam.
The verses in _Genesis_ from Chapters i to v, are purposely mixed up for
Kabalistic reasons. After the “Man” of _Genesis_ i. 26, and Enos, the Son
of Man, of iv. 26; after Adam, the first Androgyne; after Adam Kadmon—the
sexless (the first) Logos—Adam and Eve once separated, come finally
Jehovah‐Eve and Cain‐Jehovah. These represent distinct Root‐Races, for
millions of years elapsed between them.
Hence the Âryan and the Semitic Theo‐anthropographies are two leaves on
the same stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages
standing in relation to each other in the following way:
I. The “Unknowable” referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such
as “_Nought_ was,” called, later on, Parabrahman—the אין, Ain, No‐thing,
or Ain Suph of the Kabalists—and again, the “Spirit” (of God) that moves
upon the face of the Waters, in _Genesis_. All these are _identical_.
Moreover, in _Genesis_ i, verse 2 is placed as verse 1 in the _secret_
Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim “creating the Heaven
and the Earth.” This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses was
necessary for _monotheistic_ and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah’s curse
against those Elohim (Gods) who _have not created_ the Heavens and the
Earth,(301) shows that there were other Elohim who had.
II. The Heavenly Manu‐Svâyambhuva, who sprang from Svayambhû‐Nârâyana, the
“Self‐existent,” the Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the Androgyne
“Man,” of _Genesis_ i, are also identical.
III. Manu‐Svâyambhuva is Brahmâ, or the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who
in _Genesis_, iv. 5, separates himself into two halves, male and female,
thus becoming Jah‐Hovah or Jehovah‐Eve; as Manu‐Svâyambhuva, or Brahmâ,
separates himself to become “Brahmâ‐Virâj and Vâch‐Virâj,” male and
female. All the rest of the texts and versions are “blinds.”
IV. Vâch is the daughter of Brahmâ and is named Shata‐Rûpâ, “the hundred‐
formed,” and Sâvitrî, Generatrix, the Mother of the Gods and of all
living. She is identical with Eve, “the Mother [of all the Lords or Gods
or] of all living.” Besides this there are many other Occult meanings.
What is written on the subject in _Isis Unveiled_, although scattered
about and very cautiously expressed at the time, is correct.
Explaining Esoterically Ezekiel’s Wheel, it is said of Jodhevah or
Jehovah:
When the Ternary is taken in the beginning of the Tetragram, it
expresses the Divine Creation _spiritually_, _i.e._, without any
carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter; it
is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of
the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or
Yod; therefore it must not be read Jehovah but Ieva, or Eve. The
Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure
androgyne, Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the
second Adam (of dust), the pure Virgo is separated, and falling
into “generation,” or the downward cycle, becomes Scorpio, emblem
of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points to the purely
Spiritual Races, or the ten Prediluvian Patriarchs, the Prajâpatis
and Sephiroth, led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam
Kadmon or Yodcheva, [spiritually,] the lower one [Jehovah] is that
of the Terrestrial Races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the seventh;
who, because he is half‐divine, half‐terrestrial, is said to have
been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or Libra, are one.(302)
This is only one of the several meanings. No need to remind the scholar
that Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction. Like
the Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers, as
well as interchangeable. According to the subject to which they relate
they become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even _fourteen_, and they have
the same Esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis.
Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown, has a variety of etymologies, but only
those are _true_ which are found in the Kabalah. יהוה (Ieve) is the _Old
Testament_ term, and was pronounced Ya‐va. Inman suggests that it is
contracted from the two words יהו יה, Yaho‐Iah, Jaho‐Jah, or Jaho is Jah.
Punctuated it is יְהוֶֹה, which is, however, a Rabbinical caprice to
associate it with the name Adoni, or אֲדנָי, which has the same points. It
is curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read
the name יהוה Adoni, when they had so many names of which Jeho, and Jah,
and Iah, constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus, who gives us
the so‐called fragment of Sanchuniathon, spelt it in Greek letters Ιευω,
Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced it Yahva, and
the Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus:
יֵהִוֶה (Ye‐hou‐vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true Occult
meaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means “he
will—be.”(303) It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb הֲוָא, or הִוָה,
eue (eve), or eua (eva), “to be.” And so it was, since from Enosh, the
“Son of Man,” only, were the truly human Races to begin and “to be,” as
males and females. This statement receives further corroboration, inasmuch
as Parkhurst makes the verb הוה to mean, (1) “to fall down” (_i.e._ into
generation or Matter); and (2) “to be, to continue”—as a _race_. The
aspirate of the word eua (Eva), “to be,” being הוה, Heve (Eve), which is
the feminine of יהוה, and the same as Hebe, the Grecian Goddess of youth
and the Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still
more clearly in its primitive double‐sexed form.
Finding in Sanskrit such syllables as Jah and Yah, _e.g._, Jâh‐navî,
“Ganges,” and Jagan‐nâtha, “Lord of the World,” it becomes clear why Mr.
Rawlinson is so very confident in his works of an Âryan or Vedic influence
on the early mythology of Babylon. Nor is it to be much wondered at that
the alleged ten tribes of Israel disappeared during the captivity period,
without leaving a trace behind them, when we are informed that the Jews
had _de facto_ but two tribes—those of Judah and of Levi. The Levites,
moreover, were not a tribe at all, but a priestly caste. The descendants
have only followed their progenitors, the various patriarchs, into thin,
sidereal air. There were _Brahms_ and _A‐brahms_, in days of old, truly,
and before the first Jew had been born. Every nation held its first God
and Gods to be androgynous; nor could it be otherwise, since they regarded
their distant primeval progenitors, their dual‐sexed ancestors, as divine
Beings and Gods, just as do the Chinese to this day. And they were divine
in one sense, as also was their first human progeny, the “mind‐born”
primitive humanity, which was most assuredly bi‐sexual, as all the more
ancient symbols and traditions show.
Under the emblematical devices and peculiar phraseology of the
priesthood of old, lie latent hints of sciences as yet
undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a
scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical system of the
Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their records. He
has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the
picture‐writing he is examining fits, to a line, _certain fixed
geometrical figures_ which are the hidden keys to such records,
before he ventures on an interpretation.
But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we
may include the double‐sexed first creators of every Cosmogony.
The Greek Zeus‐Zên (Æther), and Chthonia (the Chaotic Earth) and
Metis (Water), his wives; Osiris and Isis‐Latona—the former God
also representing Æther, the first emanation of the Supreme Deity,
Amun, the primeval source of Light; the Goddess Earth and Water
again; Mithras, the rock‐born God, the symbol of the male Mundane
Fire, or the personified Primordial Light, and Mithra, the Fire‐
Goddess, at once his mother and his wife; the pure element of Fire
(the active, or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in
conjunction with Earth and Water, or Matter (the female or passive
element of cosmical generation).(304)
All these are records of the primeval divine Hermaphrodite.
Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The “Sweat‐Born.”
22. The evolution of the three Races continued. 23. The Second
Race creates the Third and perishes.
22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE EGG‐BORN, THE THIRD.(305) THE SWEAT GREW,
ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT;
THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE
WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT(306) OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG
OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN‐SWAN(307) OF THE LATER THIRD (_A_). FIRST
MALE‐FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (_B_).
(_a_) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was
nourished _ab extra_ by Cosmic Forces, and that the “Father‐Mother”
furnished apparently the germ that ripened; in all probability a “sweat‐
born egg,” to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from
the “double” parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous
humanity, since even now man is, in one sense, “egg‐born.” Magendie,
moreover, in his _Precis Élémentaire de Physiologie_, citing
A case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and perfectly
cicatrized,
yet the infant was born alive, pertinently asks:
How was the circulation carried on in this organ?
On the next page he says:
Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the
fœtus.
And respecting its nutrition, he propounds this query:
What, then, can we say of the nutrition of the fœtus?
Physiological works contain only _vague conjectures_ on this
point.
“Ah, but,” the sceptic may urge, “Magendie’s book belongs to the last
generation, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of
ignorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession.” Indeed; then let us
turn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir Michael Foster,
and, to the disadvantage of Modern Science, we shall find him saying:
Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities
of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely
anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental
qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into
the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to
explain.(308)
The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab, will now kindly draw a veil before the
statue of Hygieia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and
Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants.
One further fact we must note. Sir Michael Foster is discreetly silent
about the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French
_confrère_.
(_b_) This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries.
To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by “budding,”
as explained above, the Second Race gives birth to the Third—which itself
is separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently
procreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method,
presumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub‐races of
the Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of
moisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform
ball—or shall we say egg—that served as an extraneous vehicle for the
generation therein of a fœtus and child, the mode of procreation by the
later sub‐races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of
the earlier sub‐races were entirely sexless—shapeless even for all one
knows;(309) but those of the later sub‐races were born androgynous. It is
in the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being
previously a‐sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi‐
sexual; and finally the man‐bearing Eggs began to give birth, gradually
and almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to
beings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to
distinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these
statements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the
“Egg‐born Race” first. Think of Kashyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most
prolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ’s Mind‐born Son;
and he is made to become the father of the Nâgas, or Serpents, among other
beings. Exoterically, the Nâgas are semi‐divine beings which have a human
face and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nâgas, said to be
a thousand in number only, born or rather sprung from Kadrû, Kashyapa’s
wife, for _the purpose of peopling Pâtâla_, which is undeniably America,
as will be shown; and there was a Nâga‐Dvîpa, one of the seven divisions
of Bhâratavarsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who
are allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be _historical_, and to have
left many a trace behind them to this day.
Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be
claimed for man, his evolution took place in this order: (1) sexless, as
all the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a natural transition, he became a
“solitary hermaphrodite,” a bi‐sexual being; and (3) finally separated and
became what he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms,
though sexless, “still retained the power of undergoing the processes of
a‐sexual multiplication”; why, then, should man be excluded from that law
of Nature? Bi‐sexual reproduction is an evolution, a specialized and
perfected form on the scale of Matter of the fissiparous act of
reproduction. Occult teachings are preëminently panspermic, and the early
history of humanity is hidden only “from ordinary mortals”; nor is the
history of the primitive Races buried for the Initiates in the tomb of
time, as it is for profane Science. Therefore, supported on the one hand
by that Science which shows us progressive development and an internal
cause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the
other hand, by an implicit faith in the Wisdom—we may say Pansophia
even—of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates,
who have perfected them into an almost faultless system—thus supported, we
venture to state the doctrine clearly.
In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and
respected friend Prof. Alexander Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute
logic and necessity of believing “The Primeval Race Double‐Sexed,” and
gives a number of scientific reasons for it.(310) He argues firstly, that
a large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bi‐
sexuality, the Linnæan classification enumerating thus almost all plants.
This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as
much as in the lower forms, from the hemp to the Lombardy poplar and
ailanthus. In the animal kingdom also it is the same. In insect life, the
moth generates a worm, and the worm becomes a moth, as in the Mysteries
the great secret was expressed—_Taurus __ Taurus Draconem genuit, et
Taurum Draco_. The coral‐producing family, which, according to Agassiz,
has spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present
geological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida, produce their
offspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree. Bees
are somewhat in the same line. The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like
Amazons, and _virgin parents_ perpetuate the race for ten successive
generations.
What say the old Sages, the Philosopher‐teachers of antiquity?
Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in Plato’s _Banquet_:
Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was
_androgynous_; the form and name partaking of, and being common to
both the male and female.... Their bodies ... were round, and the
manner of their running circular.(311) They were terrible in force
and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence Zeus divided each
of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction,
closed up the skin.
Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians.
They also taught that man was the product of the Tree of Life,
growing in androgynous pairs, till they were separated at a
subsequent modification of the human form.
In the Book of the Generations (_Toleduth_) of Adam, the verse:
God created (_bara_, brought forth) man in his image, in the image
of God created he him, male and female created he them,
—if read Esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.:
The Elohim [Gods] brought forth from themselves [by modification]
man in their image ... created they _him_ [collective Humanity, or
Adam], male and female created _he_ [collective Deity] them.(312)
This will show the Esoteric point. The _Sexless_ Race was their first
production, a modification _of_ and _from_ themselves, the pure Spiritual
Existences; and this was Adam _solus_. Thence came the _Second_ Race:
Adam‐Eve, or Jod‐Heva, inactive Androgynes; and finally the _Third_, or
the “_Separating_ Hermaphrodite,” Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth,
Seth‐Enos, etc. It is this Third, the last semi‐spiritual Race, which was
also the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the
Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The _Fourth_, which had tasted of the
fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil—Wisdom already united to earthy, and
therefore _impure_, intelligence(313)—had consequently to acquire that
Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and
Intelligence, the former _ruling_ the latter, is called in the Hermetic
books “the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes.”
Mystically Jesus was held to be man‐woman. So also in the Orphic Hymns,
sung during the Mysteries, we find: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal
maid.” The Egyptian Ammon was the Goddess Neïth, in his other half.
Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and
Ilâ, the Goddess, is also Su‐dyumna, the God, as Vaivasvata’s progeny.
Says Professor Wilder:
The name _Adam_, or man, itself implies this double form of
existence. It is identical with _Athamas_, or _Thomas_ (Tamil,
_Tam_), which is rendered by the Greek _Didumos_, a twin; if,
therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first
man, she must, as a logical necessity, be “taken out of man.”
Accordingly we read: “And the _side_ which the Lord God [Elohim]
had taken from man, made he a woman.” The Hebrew word here used is
_Tzala_, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to
trace the legend in Berosus, who says that _Thalatth_ (the
_Omorôka_, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was
also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....
The two memorable twin‐births of _Genesis_, that of Cain and Abel,
and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name _Hebel_ is
the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine.
“Unto thee shall be his desire,” said the Lord God to Cain; “and
thou shalt rule over him.” The same language had been uttered to
Eve: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
thee.”
Thus the pristine bi‐sexual unity of the human Third Root‐Race is an axiom
in the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to “Gods,”
because that Race represented their “Divine Dynasty.” The moderns are
satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created
Gods after their own sexual image, whereas the Gods of primeval mankind
were “male _and_ female.”
As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and on
parallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being
physiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is
rapidly approaching the Fifth Element—call it interstellar ether, if you
will—which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We
men have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but
the first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they
subservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught,
men lived down to the close of the Third Root‐Race, when eternal spring
reigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of
Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:
Is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to
abrupt alternations of temperature, but is enriched with all the
treasures of eternal spring.(314)
Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in
our sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this
learned French Astronomer.(315) It must, however, be always borne in mind
that the “eternal spring” referred to is only a condition _cognized as
such by the Jovians_. It is not “spring,” _as we know it_. In this
reservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories
here cited. Both embrace _partial_ truths.
It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into
its present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and
neither by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full
accord with the ancient Philosophies; from those of Egypt and India, with
their Divine Dynasties, down to that of Plato. And all these universal
beliefs must be classed with the “presentiments” and “obstinate
conceptions,” some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs,
as remarked by Louis Figuier, are:
Frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an
infinite number of generations of men.... [For], a tradition which
has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of
scientific testimony.(316)
And there is more than one such tradition in the Paurânic allegories, as
has been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the First Race of mankind was
formed out of the Chhâyâs, or Astral Images, of the Pitris, is fully
corroborated in the _Zohar_:
In the _Tzelem_, shadow image of Elohim [the Pitris], He made Adam
(man).(317)
It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree
of metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had
nothing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged,
being the work of Greek Mystics who lived in Egypt. To this, an answer can
be given: a direct proof that the Egyptians believed in the Secret
Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the objectors
open the _Eclogæ Physicœ et Ethicæ_ of Stobæus, the Greek compiler of
ancient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, A.D. The following is a
transcription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian
theory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:
From one Soul, that of All, spring all the souls, which spread
themselves as if purposely distributed through the world. These
souls undergo many transformations; those which are already
creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic
animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds.
From the beings who live aloft in the air (heaven) men are born.
On reaching that status of men, the souls receive the principle of
(conscious) immortality, become spirits, then pass into the choir
of Gods.
23. THE SELF‐BORN WERE THE CHHÂYÂS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE
SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS
WERE.(318)
This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It
means that the First Root‐Race, the “Shadows” of the Progenitors, could
not be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little
human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element—flood or
fire. But their “Sons,” the Second Root‐Race, could be and were so
destroyed. As the Progenitors merged wholly in their own Astral Bodies,
which were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants,
the “Sweat‐born.” These were the Second Humanity—composed of the most
heterogeneous gigantic semi‐human monsters—the first attempts of material
nature at building human bodies. The ever‐blooming lands (Greenland, among
others) of the Second Continent were transformed, successively, from Edens
with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was
due to the displacement of the great waters of the Globe, to oceans
changing their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this
first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the Globe during
the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been
four.(319) And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.
A Few Words About “Deluges” And “Noahs.”
The accounts in the various _Purânas_ about our Progenitors are as
contradictory, _in their details_, as everything else. Thus while, in the
_Rig Veda_, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu,
Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and the
_Shatapatha Brâhmana_ shows her to be the Manu’s daughter, an offspring of
_his sacrifice_, and later on, his (Vaivasvata’s) _wife, by whom he begat
the race of Manus_. In the _Purânas_ she is, again, Vaivasvata’s daughter,
yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma)
and the planet Jupiter’s (Brihaspati’s) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems
a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the
Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning
is perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that
the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the
events in their proper order.
The story as told in the _Mahâbhârata_ strikes the key‐note, and yet it
needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in the _Bhagavad
Gîtâ_. It is the _prologue_ to the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While
Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his
protection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where,
growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the
forthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well‐known Matsya Avatâra, the first
Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon(320) of the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, and many
other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition.
Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the
seven Rishis, according to the _Mahâbhârata_; this, however, being absent
from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the
seven Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double
mystery involved in this manifold allegory.
We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that
it referred, as also does the “Fall,” to both spiritual and physical, both
cosmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or
Ark—Navis—in short, being the symbol of the female generative Principle,
is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both
being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the
Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First
Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and
the Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the “Flood,”
and the Moon for the “Mother,” from whom proceed all the life‐germs.(321)
But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In
one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from
utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the
human seed at the end of the Third Race,(322) and in the other to the real
and historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the “Host”—or the Manu
which saved the “seed”—is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity
between the Paurânic and other versions; while in the _Shatapatha
Brâhmana_, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of
Manu—a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by
Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the
Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as
their creator’s “daughters.” The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the
wife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean
Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root‐Race
from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.
This is shown very clearly in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, where Krishna is made
to say:
The seven Great Rishis, the _four preceding_ Manus, partaking of
my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born)
the human race and the world.(323)
Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four Races(324)
which have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death
having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sûrya,
the Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the “Seed of
Life,” both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of
all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.
The “Deluge” is undeniably a “universal tradition.” “Glacial Periods” were
numerous, and so were the “Deluges,” for various reasons. Stockwell and
Croll enumerate some half‐dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges—the
earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000
years ago.(325) But which was _our_ Deluge? Assuredly the former, the one
which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples
from the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last
peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the
comparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the
agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its
gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen
found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C., had
nothing to do with either the _semi_‐universal Deluge, or Noah’s Flood—the
latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions—nor even with
the submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with
them only a moral connection.
Our Fifth Race—the non‐initiated portions of it—hearing of many Deluges,
have confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole
aspect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.
We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:
The Incas, _seven_ in number, have repeopled the earth after the
deluge.(326)
Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses
somewhat the details of the still‐preserved legend concerning the American
Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentions _twice seven_
companions and the “divine bird” which preceded the boat of the Aztecs,
and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This
was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is
said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their
grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldæan Noah, is saved and
translated “alive” to heaven—like Enoch—with the seven Gods, the Kabirim,
or the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao has _seven_ figures
which sail with him and which he will “animate” when he lands, and use for
“human seed.” Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takes _seven_
Rays with him, etc.
Sanchuniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with
Agruerus, the great Phœnician God—whom Faber sought to identify with
Noah;(327) further, it is suspected that the name “Titan” is derived from
Tit‐Ain,—the “fountains of the chaotic abyss”(328) (Tit‐Theus, or Tityus
is the “divine deluge”); and thus the Titans, who are _seven_, are shown
to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata
Manu.(329)
These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as
Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the
seven Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos‐Saturn, the
Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his
conclusions when he wrote:
I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also
as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to
have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the
family.(330)
But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:
The Hindoos, in their wild _legends_ have variously perverted the
_history_ of the Noachidæ (? !), yet it is remarkable that they
seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:(331) hence
Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that, “perhaps, the seven
Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same,
and make only seven individual persons.(332) The seven Brahmâdicas
were _prajâpatis_, or lords of the _prajas_, or creatures. From
them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the
seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were
... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with
inhabitants.”(333) The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the
Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be
the effect of mere accident.(334)
Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory
concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet
is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns.
According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans—whom Faber
refuses to identify with the _impious_ Titans, their descendants—were
Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, and _Iapetus_.
Κοιον τε, Κροιον τε μεγαν, Φορκυν τε κραταιον,
Και Κρονον, Ὠκεανον θ᾽, Ὑπεριονα τ᾽, Ἰαπετον τε.(335)
But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for
one of Noah’s sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes
and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.(336) The Hindûs can
therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and
that Mania is the _female_ Manu of the _Râmâyana_. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ,
the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom “he begat the race of
Manus.” Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth—Sâyana
making her the Goddess of the Earth—and she is but the second edition and
repetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females;
Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the “female Virâj,” turning into a woman
in order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and
divine Theogony, the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of
Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins
and disfigured by them.
Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to
all, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized
Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with
other people’s property, that the Pseudo‐Berosus,(337) shows that Titæa—of
whom Diodorus Siculus(338) makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians—was
the _wife of Noah_. Faber calls him the “Pseudo‐Berosus,” yet accepts the
information in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have
borrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal
material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs
possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show,
that it is the Biblical pseudo‐personages which are all borrowed from
Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus
was well aware of the source of _Genesis_, and that it bore the same
cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis‐Osiris, and the
Ark, and other older “Arkite” symbols. For, Berosus says that “Titæa
Magna” was afterwards called Aretia,(339) and worshipped with the Earth;
and this identifies Titæa, Noah’s consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the
Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and
the Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan‐Kabiri. And Titæa‐Aretia was
worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of
Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.
Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ
Horchiam.(340)
Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention
the sinking of the two continents—often called isles—in one form or
another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island.
Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:
From its deep‐rooted base the Phlegyan isle
Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves
Its impious inhabitants.(341)
Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such
allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindû tradition about
that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though
gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like
all other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It
refers, in Theogony, to _pre‐cosmic transformations_, to _spiritual
correlations_—however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear—and
also to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in
Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit‐Rays which were swamped by,
and _perished_ in, the mysterious differentiation—a pre‐cosmic mystery,
the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam
Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded
Vaivasvata and the rest.(342)
All this goes to show that the _semi_‐universal deluge known to
Geology—the first Glacial Period—must have occurred just at the time
allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round
numbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time
assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period:
_i.e._, about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is
attributed by Geologists and Astronomers to “an extreme eccentricity of
the earth’s orbit,” and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same
source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the
Earth’s axis—a proof of which may be found in the _Book of Enoch_,(343) if
the veiled language of the _Purânas_ be not understood—all this should
tend to show that the Ancients knew something of the “modern discoveries”
of Science. Enoch, when speaking of “the great inclination of the Earth,”
which “is in travail,” is quite significant and clear.
Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, _floating on the waters_ in his
ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the
feminine Principle; Noah is the “Spirit” falling into Matter. We
find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a
vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon, _i.e._,
the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally
imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter of _Genesis_ is only
another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads: “And
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters”; in the former it is said: “And
the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit]
upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if identical with the
Chaldæan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is
Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the
Babylonian legend (the pre‐cosmical blended with the terrestrial
event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is
shut up in the ark and sends out a _dove_ in search of dry
land.(344)
George Smith notes in the “Tablets,” first the creation of the
Moon, and then that of the Sun: “Its beauty and perfection are
extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being
considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.” If
this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm‐even were
this latter universal‐why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth,
the Moon, speak of the _creation of the sun_ after the deluge? The
waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the
Chaldæan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the
Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even
the Himalaya of the Hindû tradition, and yet not have reached the
Sun; the _Bible_ itself stopped short of such a miracle! It is
evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had
another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical
than that of a _universal_ deluge, of which there are no
geological traces whatever.(345)
As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata
figures as a _generic_ character, under various circumstances and events,
there seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first
“great flood” had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it
happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the “Age of Truth,” when the Second
Root‐Race, “the Manu with bones,” made its primeval appearance as the
“Sweat‐born.”
The Second Flood—the so‐called “universal”—which affected the Fourth Root‐
Race—now conveniently regarded by Theology as “the accursed race of
giants,” the Cainites, and the “sons of Ham”—is the flood which was first
perceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the
various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations,
it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given
in the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first
account, “there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,” when Manu Vaivasvata
lands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him
company; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and
Cosmic Flood before the so‐called “Creation,” the others treat, one of the
Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In
the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all
living creatures, and he alone was left—_i.e._, _the seed of life_ alone
remained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya,
after a “Day of Brahmâ”; and the _Mahâbhârata_ refers simply to the
geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make
room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three
distinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:(346) as the “Root‐Manu,” on
Globe A, in the First Round; (_b_) as the “_Seed_ of Life,” on Globe D, in
the Fourth Round; and (_c_) as the “Seed of Man,” at the beginning of
every Root‐Race—in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the
latter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,(347) the destruction of the
accursed sorcerers;
Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the
Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was
an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of
another _large continent_ [America].
It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the “White Island,” and
this White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the “White Devil”
of Colonel Wilford,(348) as already shown. It may well be remarked here
that the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit
texts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that
it is just 869,000 years since that destruction took place. Again, these
figures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists,
who place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.
The _Shatapatha_ then tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu
and declared _herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the
offspring of Manu_. This refers to the physiological transformation of
sexes during the Third Root‐Race. And the allegory is too transparently
clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the
separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body
into two halves—as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and
Eve—and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he
will be her son, “the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his
[and her] bone.” Let it be also well remembered that not one of our
Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those “contradictions and
amazing nonsense,” as some call the _Purânas_, that a reference to a Yuga
may mean a Round, a Root‐Race, and often a sub‐race, as well as form a
page torn out of pre‐cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is
proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently,
under an identical name, while in reality the references are to events
divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first
represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it
is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a
sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating
Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained—Ilâ or Idâ. Then, “through the
favour of the two deities,” her _sex is changed_ and she becomes a man,
Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable
adding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that “she should be a male
one month and a female another.” This has a direct reference to the Third
Root‐Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned
Orientalists(349) think and have declared that:
Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence
a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.
The “profane” are not told, however, the reason why “a libation of milk,”
or “a stream of praise,” should be _male_ and _female_ by turn: unless,
indeed, there is some “internal evidence” which the Occultists fail to
perceive.
In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch‐
Shata‐Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first “euhemerization” of the
dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a
third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root‐Life, the Germ from
which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For,
as says Vishnu:
From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:
By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.
But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and
Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our
teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may
not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri
Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote,
and we will invite them to read their own _Purânas_ a little more
carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat
again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent
allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works.
One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of
the Second Race, which is called the “Sweat‐born.” This allegory is
regarded as a fairy‐tale, and yet it conceals a psycho‐physiological
phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.
But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to
ask:
COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?
To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all
scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata‐
Manu Man, _i.e._, the male and female entity already separated into
distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have
lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the
geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not
exist for the _primeval, ethereal_ Man of the Occult Teachings. _The whole
issue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends
upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body
within the Physical_, the former independent of the latter. Paul d’Assier,
the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,(350) not to
speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern
“Spiritualists” and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this
fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.
The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms
and disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which—owing to its
being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth
Round is the middle‐point of the Life Cycle allotted to it—were far more
terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds—the
Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi‐ethereal
conditions—Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000
years.(351) This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral
and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the
theory of a “boneless,” purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which
knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic
Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable
grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always
existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a
tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought
forward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind
(read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human
beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are
consequently, the best of their kind.(352)
The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother‐
Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They
maintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must
have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with successive
floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters
and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human
life and organization, such _as is assigned by them_ to early mankind.
Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases,
nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and
Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous,
or the Silurian Age itself.
Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new
transformation. They had passed their phases of “immetalization,” of plant
and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for
their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers
do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by
the biblical dead‐letter, form, “Lord‐God”‐like, or as Pygmalion in the
Greek allegory, Adam‐Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a “Living
Soul” into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its
Monad, and needed but a “coating.” Pygmalion, who fails to _animate his
statue_, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazaræan Gnostics, who fails to construct
“a human soul in the creature,” are, as conceptions, far more
philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead‐letter sense, or
the biblical Elohim‐Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches
spontaneous generation—after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the
seed of life on the Earth—shows the Lower Angels able to construct
_physical_ man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved
the Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to
evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called,
protoplasmic, model.
This will again be objected to; “spontaneous generation” is an exploded
theory, we shall be told. Pasteur’s experiments disposed of it twenty
years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He
ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven
impossible in our present world‐period and actual conditions—which the
Occultists deny—still it would be no demonstration that it could not have
taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the
Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be
interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of
species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both
the biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur’s observations,
however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud
reject their importance, and, in fact, show that they have none. The
question is so far left _sub judice_, as well as the other as to when, at
what period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hæckel’s
Moneron—a pinch of salt!—has solved the problem of the origin of life; it
is simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh‐pooh the
theory of the “Self‐existent,” the “Self‐born Heavenly Man,” represented
as an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing,
in his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most
learnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither
animal nor plant, but both, and that it has _no ancestors_ among either of
these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for
all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are _their
own ancestors_. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical
also; too much so, even for the Occultist.
If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now—owing, perhaps, to
accumulated material on hand—so as to almost escape detection, it was,
nevertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the
simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature
proceeds. The scale‐bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the
Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are
the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom
found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the
above enumerated “antediluvian” monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria
without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and
reproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the
architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings
of Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the
same law in his growth, _i.e._, gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced
person would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an
Ethereal—or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly‐like Form, evolved
by Gods or natural “Forces,” which grew, condensed throughout millions of
ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it
settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man—rather than
believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some
unknown anthropoid ancestor.
Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first
appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to _Knowledge_
(Dec. 23, 1881):
Evolution—rather nature, in the light of evolution—has only been
studied for some _twenty‐five years or so_. That is, of course, a
mere fractional space in the history of human thought.
And just because of this we do not lose all hope that Materialistic
Science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept the Esoteric
Teachings—if even at first divorced from their (to Science) too
metaphysical elements.
Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? As
Processor Huxley says:
Each such answer to the great question [man’s real place in
nature], invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder,
if not by himself, to be _complete and final_, remains in high
authority and esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for
twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a
_mere approximation to the truth—tolerable chiefly on account of
the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly
intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their
successors_.(353)
Will this eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his “Pithecoid
Ancestry” being assignable to the list of “wholly intolerable beliefs,” in
the “larger knowledge” of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere “rising
to the civilized state” does not account for the evolution of form.
In the same letter, “The Evolution of Man,” Dr. Wilson makes other strange
confessions. Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to
_Knowledge_, by “G. M.”:
“Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If
not, why not?”... If we refuse to admit [as science does] that man
was created a perfect being, and then became degraded, there
exists only another supposition—that of evolution. If man has
arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is
evolution. _We do not yet know because such knowledge is difficult
to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same influences
as those of lower animals._ But there is little doubt that
elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies
“evolution,” and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man’s
evolution cannot be doubted; the ever‐widening sphere of thought
has sprung from small and rude beginnings, like language itself.
But man’s ways of life, his power of adaptation to his
surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the
facts and course of his “evolution” very difficult to trace.
This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in
their affirmations. But why is evolution impossible, if “man was created a
perfect being, and then became degraded”? At best it can only apply to the
_outward, physical man_. As remarked in _Isis Unveiled_, Darwin’s
evolution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as
for everything else, from universals. The Aristotle‐Baconian method may
have its advantages, but it has, undeniably, already demonstrated its
defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from universals downwards,
are now shown more learned, in the light of Modern Science, than was
Aristotle. For the latter opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution
of the Earth and even of its rotundity, when writing:
Almost all those who affirm that they have studied heaven in its
uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but the
philosophers of the Italian School, otherwise called the
Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary.
This, because the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and followed the deductive
method. Whereas Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained
of those who taught that:
The centre of our system was occupied by the sun, and the earth
was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around the same
centre, produces night and day.(354)
The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and
now expounded, is the only one, which—without falling into the absurdity
of a “miraculous” man created out of the dust of the earth, or the still
greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime‐salt, the ex‐
protoplasmic Moneron—can account for his appearance on Earth.
_Analogy_ is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne’s thread
that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her
primal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite,
and no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having
exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon
which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of “fire‐mist”—as it
rolls through æons of time in the interstellar spaces—becoming gradually a
Planet, a self‐luminous Globe, to settle into a _man‐bearing_ World or
Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock‐bound
Globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non‐nucleated
jelly‐speck that becomes the Sarcode(355) of the Moneron, then passes from
its protistic state(356) into the form of an animal, to grow into a
gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times; then dwindling again
into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to
tropical regions, and the universally common lizard(357)—if we can
conceive all this, then how can man alone escape the general law? “There
were giants on earth in those days” says _Genesis_, repeating the
statement of all the other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded
on an anthropological and physiological fact.
And, as the hard‐shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly‐speck, a
“thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive
condition,” so was the outward covering of primitive man, his early “coat
of skin,” _plus_ an immortal spiritual Monad, and a psychic temporary form
and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man, almost
impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just
what the Hæckelian Moneron is, strictly an “organism without organs,” an
entirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within,
and a human form only outwardly.
No man of Science has the right, in this century, to find the figures of
the Brâhmans in the question of chronology preposterous; for their own
calculations often exceed by far the claims made by Esoteric Science. This
may easily be shown.
Helmholtz calculated that the cooling of our Earth from a temperature of
2,000° to 200° Cent. must have occupied a period of no less than
350,000,000 years. Western Science (including Geology) seems generally to
allow our Globe an age of about 500,000,000 years altogether. Sir William
Thomson, however, limits the appearance of the earliest vegetable life to
100,000,000 years ago—a statement respectfully contradicted by the Archaic
Records. Speculations, furthermore, vary daily in the domains of Science.
Meanwhile, some Geologists are very much opposed to such limitation.
Volger calculates:
That the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us
must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years.
Both time and space are infinite and eternal.
The earth, as a material existence, is indeed infinite; the
changes only which it has undergone can be determined by finite
periods of time....
We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in
space, which no astronomer doubts, but also in time, without
beginning or end; that it never was created, and is
imperishable.(358)
Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Âryan Occultists,
we may be told, knew nothing of these later speculations. As Coleman says:
They were even ignorant of the globular form of our earth.
To this the _Vishnu Purâna_ contains a reply, which has forced certain
Orientalists to open their eyes very wide.
The sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and
over against mid‐night, in all the Dvîpas [Continents], Maitreya.
But the rising and the setting _of the sun_ being perpetually
opposite _to each other_,—and, in the same way, all the cardinal
points, and so the cross‐points, Maitreya, people speak of the
rising of the sun where they see it; and where the sun disappears,
there, _to them_, is his setting. Of the sun, which is always _in
one and the same place_, there is neither setting nor rising; for
what is called rising and setting are _only_ the seeing and the
not seeing the sun.(359)
To this Fitzedward Hall remarks:
The heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is
contradicted, however, a little further on.(360)
Contradicted _purposely_, because it was a secret temple‐teaching. Martin
Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to
calumniate the Âryans any longer.
To return to the chronology of the Geologists and Anthropologists. We are
afraid Science has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the
views of the Occultists in this direction. Except that “of man, the
highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary
strata; only in the uppermost, the so‐called alluvial layer,” is all that
can be urged, so far. That man was _not the last member in the mammalian
family_, but the _first_ in _this_ Round, is something that Science will
be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been
mooted in France on very high authority.
That man can be shown to have lived in the Mid‐Tertiary Period, and in a
geological age _when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the
now known species of mammals_, is a statement that Science _cannot_ deny
and which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.(361) But even supposing
his existence in the Eocene Period is not yet demonstrated, what period of
time has elapsed since the Cretaceous Period? We are aware of the fact
that only the boldest Geologists dare place man further back than the
Miocene Age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and
periods since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation
and wrangling, Science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the
subject being compelled to answer to the question: “We do not know.” This
ought to show that the men of Science are no greater authorities in this
matter than are the profane. If, according to Professor Huxley, “the time
represented by the Coal formation alone would be six millions of
years,”(362) how many more millions would be required to cover the time
from the Jurassic Period, or the middle of the so‐called Reptilian
Age—when the Third Race appeared—up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the
Fourth Race was submerged?(363)
The writer is aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages
of the Globe and Man are the most liberal, have always had the shyer
majority against them. But this proves very little, since the majority
rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. Harvey stood alone
for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers were
in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to
this day—in the Encyclopædias—along with Cagliostro and St. Germain, as a
charlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have
vindicated Mesmer’s claims, and that Mesmerism under its new name of
“Hypnotism”—a false nose on a very old face—is accepted by Science, it
does not strengthen our respect for that majority, when we see the ease
and unconcern with which its members treat of “Hypnotism,” of “telepathic
impacts,” and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they
had believed therein since the days of Solomon, and had not, only a few
years ago, called its votaries lunatics and impostors!(364)
The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years
which Esoteric Philosophy claims as the age of sexual and physiological
mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says: “_The Mind‐born, the
boneless, gave being to the Will‐born with bones_;”—adding that this took
place in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago—has yet a
chance of being accepted by future Scientists.
As far as nineteenth century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even
by some personal friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the
shifting conclusions of Science, that such a statement is absurd. How much
more improbable will appear our further assertion, viz., that the
antiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years beyond this
again. For, although the exact figures are withheld—and it is out of the
question to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine Races
with _certainty_ to either the early Secondary, or the Primary Ages of
Geology—one thing is clear, that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which
embrace the duration of _sexual, physical_, man, have to be enormously
increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral and physical
development is taken into account. Many Geologists, indeed, consider that
the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of
such an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions
whatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene man, if evidence for his
reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date
carries us far back into the Secondary or “Reptilian” Age, may refer to M.
de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote
antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root‐Races the case is very
different. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic
acid, that escaped from the soil, or was held in suspension in the
atmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal
obstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be
asked, could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in
reality, out of court. Such terrestrial conditions as were then operative
had no touch with the plane on which the evolution of the _ethereal
astral_ Races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological periods, has
the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of
physical evolution—the plane of gross material causation. In those early
ages, _astral_ evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the
astral and the physical,(365) though developing on parallel lines, had no
direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow‐like
_ethereal_ man is related by virtue of his organization—if such it can be
called—only to that plane from which the substance of his Upâdhi is
derived.
There are things, perhaps, that may have escaped the far‐seeing—but not
_all‐seeing_—eyes of our modern Naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who
undertakes to furnish the missing links. Agnostic speculative thinkers
have to choose between the version given by the Secret Doctrine of the
East, and the hopelessly materialistic Darwinian and Biblical accounts of
the origin of man; between no soul and no spiritual evolution, and the
Occult doctrine which repudiates “special creation” and the “Evolutionist”
anthropogenesis equally.
Again, to take up the question of “spontaneous generation”; life—as
Science shows—has not always reigned on this terrestrial plane. There was
a time when even the Hæckelian Moneron—that simple globule of
Protoplasm—had not yet appeared at the bottom of the seas. Whence came the
_Impulse_ which caused the molecules of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc., to
group themselves into the Urschleim of Oken, that organic “Slime,” now
christened Protoplasm? What were the prototypes of the Monera? They, at
least, could not have fallen in meteorites from other Globes already
formed, Sir William Thomson’s wild theory to this effect notwithstanding.
And even if they had so fallen; if our Earth got its supply of life‐germs
from other Planets; who, or _what_, had carried them on to these Planets?
Here, again, unless the Occult Teaching is accepted, we are compelled once
more to face a _miracle_—to accept the theory of a personal,
anthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as
formulated by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as
they degrade the ideal of an infinite Universal Deity, before whose
incomprehensible awful grandeur the highest human intellect feels dwarfed.
Let not the modern Philosopher, while arbitrarily placing himself on the
highest pinnacle of human intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself
spiritually and intuitionally so far below the conceptions of even the
ancient Greeks, themselves on a far lower level, in these respects, than
the Philosophers of Eastern Âryan antiquity. Hylozoism, when
philosophically understood, is the highest aspect of Pantheism. It is the
only possible escape from idiotic Atheism based on lethal materiality, and
the still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the Monotheists;
between which it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. Hylozoism
_demands_ absolute Divine Thought, which would _pervade_ the numberless
active, creating Forces, or “Creators,” which _Entities_ are moved by, and
have their being in, from, and through, that Divine Thought; the latter,
nevertheless, having no more personal concern in them or _their_
creations, than the Sun has in the sun‐flower and its seeds, or in
vegetation in general. Such active “Creators” are known to exist and are
believed in, because perceived and sensed by the _Inner_ Man in the
Occultist. Thus the latter says that an Absolute Deity, having to be
unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as an
active, creating, one living God, without immediate degradation of the
ideal.(366) A Deity that manifests in Space and Time—these two being
simply the forms of THAT which is the Absolute ALL—can be but a fractional
part of the whole. And since that “All” cannot be divided in its
absoluteness, therefore that _sensed_ Creator (we say Creators) can be at
best but the mere _aspect_ thereof. To use the same metaphor—inadequate to
express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand—these Creators
are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of,
and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become
the instrumental media every spring—the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth—in
fructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its
differentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that even
the moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct
creation would be quite unbecoming to God—ἀπρεπὲς τῷ Θεῷ. Plato and other
philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to
creation—αὐτουργεῖν ἅπαντα. This Cudworth calls “Hylozoism.” As old Zeno
is credited by Laërtius with having said:
Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal
principles; perfecting and containing those several things which
in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to
that from which it was secreted.(367)
Let us return to our subject, pausing to think over it. Indeed, if there
was vegetable life during those periods that could feed on the then
deleterious elements; and if there was even animal life whose aquatic
organization could be developed, notwithstanding the supposed scarcity of
Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its incipient physical
form, _i.e._, in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and
its surroundings? Besides, Science confesses that it knows nothing of the
real length of geological periods.
But the chief question before us is, whether it is quite certain that,
from the time of that which is called the Azoic Age, there ever was such
an atmosphere as that hypothesized by the Naturalists. Not all the
Physicists agree with this idea. Were the writer anxious to corroborate
the teachings of the Secret Doctrine by exact Science, it would be easy to
show, on the admission of more than one Physicist, that the atmosphere has
changed little, if at all, since the first condensation of the
oceans—_i.e._, since the Laurentian Period, the Pyrolithic Age. Such, at
any rate, is the opinion of Blanchard, S. Meunier, and even of Bischof—as
the experiments of the last Scientist with basalts have shown. For were we
to take the word of the majority of Scientists as to the quantity of
deadly gases, and of elements entirely saturated with Carbon and Nitrogen,
in which the vegetable and animal kingdoms are shown to have lived,
thriven, and developed, then one would have to come to the curious
conclusion that there were, in those days, oceans of _liquid carbonic
acid_, instead of water. With such an element, it becomes doubtful whether
the Ganoids, or even the Primitive Trilobites themselves could live in the
oceans of the Primary Age—let alone in those of the Silurian, as shown by
Blanchard.
The conditions that were necessary for the earliest Race of mankind,
however, require no elements, whether simple or compound. That which was
stated at the beginning is maintained. The spiritual ethereal Entity which
lived in Spaces unknown to Earth, before the first sidereal “jelly‐speck”
evolved in the Ocean of crude Cosmic Matter—billions and trillions of
years before our globular speck in infinity, called Earth, came into being
and generated the Monera in its drops, called oceans—needed no “elements.”
The “Manu with soft bones,” could well dispense with Calcium Phosphate, as
he had no bones, save in a figurative sense. And while even the Monera,
however homogeneous their organism, still required physical conditions of
life that would help them toward further evolution, the Being which became
Primitive Man and the “Father of Man,” after evolving on planes of
existence undreamed of by Science, could well remain impervious to any
state of atmospheric conditions around him. The primitive ancestor, in
Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Popol Vuh_, who—in the Mexican legends—could act
and live with equal ease under ground and water as upon the earth, answers
only to the Second and early Third Races in our texts. And if the three
kingdoms of Nature were so different in pre‐diluvian ages, why should not
man have been composed of materials and combinations of atoms now entirely
unknown to Physical Science? The plants and animals now known, in almost
numberless varieties and species, have all developed, according to
scientific hypotheses, from primitive and far fewer organic forms. Why
should not the same have occurred in the case of man, the elements, and
the rest? As the Commentary says:
_Universal Genesis starts from the One, breaks into Three, then Five, and
finally culminates in Seven, to return into Four, Three, and One._
Stanza VII. From The Semi‐Divine Down To The First Human Races.
24. The higher Creators reject in their pride the Forms evolved by
the “Sons of Yoga.” 25. They will not incarnate in the early Egg‐
born. 26. They select the later Androgynes. 27. The first man
endowed with mind.
24. THE SONS OF WISDOM, THE SONS OF NIGHT,(368) READY FOR REBIRTH, CAME
DOWN. THEY SAW THE VILE(369) FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD(370) (_A_). “WE CAN
CHOOSE,” SAID THE LORDS, “WE HAVE WISDOM.” SOME ENTERED THE CHHÂYÂS. SOME
PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE FOURTH.(371) FROM THEIR OWN RÛPA
THEY FILLED(372) THE KÂMA.(373) THOSE WHO ENTERED BECAME ARHATS. THOSE WHO
RECEIVED BUT A SPARK, REMAINED DESTITUTE OF KNOWLEDGE;(374) THE SPARK
BURNED LOW (_B_). THE THIRD REMAINED MIND‐LESS. THEIR JÎVAS(375) WERE NOT
READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN.(376) THEY BECAME NARROW‐
HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. “IN THESE SHALL WE DWELL,” SAID THE LORDS OF
THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK WISDOM (_C_).
This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil,
the so‐called Fall of the Angels, and the many problems that have puzzled
the brains of the Philosophers from the time that the memory of man began.
It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities or intellectual
capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to
the incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the æons which followed. The
best explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the
subject, will now be attempted.
(_a_) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race
in this Round, _Man_—if the ever‐changing forms that clothed the Monads
during the first three Rounds and the first two and a half Races of the
present Round can be given that misleading name—is, so far, only an animal
intellectually. It is only in the present _midway_ Round that he entirely
develops in himself the Fourth Principle as a fit vehicle for the Fifth.
But Manas will be relatively _fully_ developed only in the following
Round, when it will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until
the end of the Rounds. As Christian Schœttgen says in _Horæ Hebraicæ_,
etc., the first terrestrial Adam “had only the breath of life,”—Nephesh,
_but not the living Soul_.
(_b_) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues
left—as the Australians, now fast dying out, and some African and Oceanic
tribes—are meant. “They were not ready” signifies that the Karmic
development of these Monads had not yet fitted them to occupy the forms of
men destined for incarnation in higher intellectual Races. But this is
explained later on.
(_c_) The _Zohar_ speaks of “Black Fire,” which is Absolute Light—Wisdom.
To those who, prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: But the
Asuras are the rebel Devas, the opponents of the Gods—hence Devils, and
the Spirits of Evil—it is answered: Esoteric Philosophy admits neither
good nor evil _per se_, as existing independently in Nature. The cause for
both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or
contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and
passions. There are no Devils or the utterly depraved, as there are no
Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be Spirits of Light and of
Darkness; thus Lucifer—the Spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and
Freedom of Thought—is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man
to find his way through the rocks and sand‐banks of Life, for Lucifer is
the Logos in his highest, and the “Adversary” in his lowest aspect—both of
which are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of
Christ, makes the Logos, the Word, “the _first‐born brother of Satan_, and
_the first of all creatures_.”(377)
The _Vishnu Purâna_ describes these primeval creatures (Tiryaksrotas) with
_crooked_ digestive canals:
[They were] endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in
ignorance _about their kind and nature_.(378)
The twenty‐eight kinds of Badhas, or “imperfections,” do not apply, as
Wilson thought, to the animals now known, which are specified by him, for
they did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain from
the said work, in which the first created are the “five‐fold (immovable)
world,” minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals,
Tiryaksrotas—the monsters of the Abyss, slain by the “Lords,” of Stanzas
II and III; then the Ûrdhvasrotas, the happy celestial beings, which feed
on ambrosia; and lastly, the Arvâksrotas, human beings—Brahmâ’s seventh
“creation” so‐called. But these “creations,” including the latter, did not
occur on this Globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not
Brahmâ who creates things and men on this Earth, but the Chief and Lord of
the Prajâpatis, the Lords of Being and terrestrial Creation. “Obeying the
command of Brahmâ,” Daksha—the synthesis, or the aggregate, of the
Terrestrial Creators and Progenitors, the Pitris included—made superior
and inferior (vara and avara) things, “referring to putra” progeny, and
“_bipeds_ and _quadrupeds_, and subsequently, by his will [referring to
the Sons of Will and Yoga], gave birth to females”(379)—_i.e._, separated
the androgynes. Here, again, we have “bipeds” or men, created before the
“quadrupeds” as in the Esoteric Teachings.
Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first Beings created
from the “Body of Night,” while the Pitris issue from that of “Twilight”;
the “Gods” being placed by Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, between the
two, and shown to evolve from the “Body of the Day,” it is easy to
discover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the
Arvâksrota coming from the “Body of the Dawn”; and elsewhere, man is again
referred to, when the Creator of the World, Brahmâ, is shown “creating
fierce beings, who were denominated Bhûtas, and eaters of flesh,” or as
the text has it, “fiends, frightful from being monkey‐coloured and
carnivorous.”(380) Whereas the Râkshasas are generally translated by “evil
Spirits” and “enemies of the Gods,” which identifies them with the Asuras.
In the _Râmâyana_, when Hanumân is reconnoitering the enemy in Lankâ, he
finds there Râkshasas, some hideous, “while some were beautiful to look
upon,” and, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, there is a direct reference to their
becoming the Saviours of “Humanity,” or of Brahmâ.
The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are
a two‐edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good.
When combined with selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a
footstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the
attainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian
purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. At all
events, the absence of self‐consciousness and intellect will make of man
an idiot, a brute in human form. Brahmâ is Mahat, the Universal Mind;
hence the too selfish among the Râkshasas showing the desire to become
possessed of it all—to “devour” Mahat. The allegory is transparent.
At any rate, Esoteric Philosophy identifies the pre‐Brâhmanical Asuras,
Rudras,(381) Râkshasas and all the “Adversaries” of the Gods in the
allegories, with the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man
of the Third Race, made him _consciously_ immortal. They are, then, during
the cycle of Incarnations, the true _dual_ Logos—the conflicting and two‐
faced Divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that follows, and the next
Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, but
the writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession
of Races, however, the Commentary says:
_First come the __SELF‐EXISTENT__ on this Earth. They are the
__“__Spiritual Lives__”__ projected by the absolute __WILL__ and __LAW__,
at the Dawn of every Rebirth of the Worlds. These Lives are the divine
__“__Shishta__”__ [the Seed‐Manus, or the Prajâpatis and the Pitris]._
From these proceed:
1. _The First Race, the __“__Self‐born,__”__ which are the [Astral]
Shadows of their Progenitors. The Body was devoid of all understanding
[mind, intelligence, and will]. The Inner Being [the Higher Self, or
Monad], though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The
link, the Manas, was not there as yet._
2. _From the First [Race] emanated the Second, called the __“__Sweat‐
born__”_(_382_)_ and the __“__Boneless.__”__ This is the Second Root‐Race,
endowed by the Preservers [Râkshasas]_(_383_)_ and the Incarnating Gods
[the Asuras and Kumâras] with the first primitive and weak Spark [the germ
of intelligence]...._
And from these in turn proceeds:
3. _The Third Root‐Race, the __“__Two‐fold__”__ [Androgynes]. The first
Races thereof are Shells, till the last is __“__inhabited__”__ [i.e.,
informed] by the Dhyânîs._
The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of
itself, at its beginning, the Third, Androgyne Race by an analogous, but
already more complicated process. As described in the Commentary, the very
earliest of that Race were:
_The __“__Sons of Passive Yoga.__”_(_384_)_ They issued from the Second
Manushyas [Human Race], and became oviparous. The emanations that came out
of their bodies during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small
spheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft, egg‐like vehicle,
gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke and the
young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our Race._
This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is
strictly on the lines of evolutionary analogy, which Science perceives in
the development of the living animal species. First the moneron‐like
procreation by “self‐division”; then, after a few stages, the oviparous,
as in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; then,
finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their
young ones.
If the term “ovoviviparous” is applied to some fish and reptiles, which
hatch their eggs within their bodies, why should it not be applied to
female mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in which, after
impregnation, the development of the fœtus takes place, is an egg.
At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with
a suddenly created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the “apple,”
when even the marsupial, the earliest of mammals, is not placental yet.
Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as
unveiled by Science, is a brilliant confirmation of Esoteric Ethnology, It
is only necessary to tabulate the data in order to prove our
assertion.(385)
I. Fission.
(_a_) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of Protoplasm,
known as Moneron or Amœba, into two.
(_b_) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell‐
nucleus splits into two sub‐nuclei, which either develop within the
original cell‐wall or burst it, and multiply outside as independent
entities. (_Cf._ the First Root‐Race.)
II. Budding.
A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and
finally parts company, growing to the size of the original organism;
_e.g._, many vegetables, the sea‐anemone, etc. (_Cf._ the Second Root‐
Race.)(386)
III. Spores.
A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a
multicellular organism reproducing the features of the latter, _e.g._,
Bacteria and mosses.
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism.
Male and female organs inhering in the same individual; _e.g._, the
majority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (_Cf._
Second and early Third Root‐Races.)
V. True Sexual Union.
(_Cf._ later Third Root‐Race.)
We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of
the human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the _Spiritual_, Dhyânîs had become
“intellectual” through their contact with Matter, because they had already
reached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect
which enabled them to become independent and self‐conscious entities, _on
this plane_ of Matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic effects.
They _entered_ those who were “ready,” and became the Arhats, or Sages,
alluded to above. This needs explanation.
It does not mean that Monads entered Forms in which other Monads already
were. They were “Essences,” “Intelligences,” and Conscious Spirits;
Entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more
developed Matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the
Universal Essence; but their “Egos,” or Manas (since they are called
Mânasaputra, born of Mahat, or Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human
experiences to become _all‐wise_, and be able to start on the returning
ascending cycle. The Monads are not _discrete_ principles, limited or
conditioned, but rays from that one universal _absolute_ Principle. The
entrance of one ray of sunlight following another through the same
aperture into a dark room will not constitute _two_ rays, but one ray
intensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become
a _perfect_ Septenary Being before the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round.
Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it
part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth Principle (Manas), should
receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such
prematurely developed intellects (on the _spiritual_ plane) in our Race
are _abnormal_; they are those whom we have called the “Fifth‐Rounders.”
Even in the coming Seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while
our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be
only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the
spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was
reached during the Fourth Root‐Race. Thus, those who were “half ready,”
who received “but a spark,” constitute the average humanity which have to
acquire their intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution,
after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the
“Sons of Wisdom.” While those which “were not ready” at all, the latest
Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower
animal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the “narrow‐
brained” of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees
of intellectuality among the various races of men—the savage Bushman and
the European—even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are
very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly
disinherited, or the “unfavoured,” as some may think—nothing of the kind.
They are simply those _latest arrivals_ among the human Monads, which
“were not ready”; which have to evolve during the present Round, as also
on the three remaining Globes—hence on four different planes of being—so
as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth
Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in
this connection. The Monads of the lowest specimens of humanity—the
“narrow‐brained”(387) savage South‐Sea Islander, the African, the
Australian—_had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more
favoured brethren in intelligence had_. The former are spinning out Karma
only now; the latter are burdened with past, present and future Karma. In
this respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of
_civilized countries_.
Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and
find out how far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the
possibility of, or even distinctly corroborate, such wild notions as are
found in our Anthropogenesis.
Recapitulating that which has been said, we find that the Secret Doctrine
claims for man: (1) a polygenetic origin; (2) a variety of modes of
procreation before humanity fell into the ordinary method of generation;
(3) that the evolution of animals—of the mammalians at any rate—follows
that of man instead of preceding it. And this is diametrically opposed to
the now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent of man
from an animal ancestor.
Let us, giving to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, examine, first of all, the
chances for the polygenetic theory among the men of Science.
Now the majority of the Darwinian Evolutionists incline to a polygenetic
explanation of the origin of races. On this particular question, however,
as in many other cases, Scientists are at sixes and sevens; they agree to
disagree.
Does man descend from one _single couple_ or from _several
groups_—monogenism or polygenism? As far as one can venture to
pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses [?] will never be
known [?], the second hypothesis is far the most probable.(388)
Abel Hovelacque, in his _Science of Language_, comes to a similar
conclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.
In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H.
Flower remarked on this question:
The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of
the characters and distribution of the races of man ... is a
modification of the monogenistic hypothesis[!]. Without entering
into the difficult question of the method of man’s first
appearance upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity,
at all events as measured by any historical standard. _If we had
any approach to a complete palæontological record, the history of
man could be re‐constructed, but nothing of the kind is
forthcoming._
Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the
Physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to Occult
speculations. The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and still
remain, polygenists. Such “intellectual giants” as John Crawford and James
Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their day
there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It
was only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of
unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphæi.
As regards the other question, of the priority of man to the animals in
the order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really
the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very
impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for
the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint,
all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral—which is light itself,
crystallized and immetallized—from plants to the creatures which preceded
the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical
structures by means of the “cast‐off dust” of those minerals, and _the
refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which
they fed and which gave them their outer bodies_. In his turn also, man
grew more physical, by reäbsorbing into his system that which he had given
out, and which became transformed in the living animal crucibles through
which it had passed, owing to Nature’s alchemical transmutations. There
were animals in those days of which our Modern Naturalists have never
dreamed; and the stronger became physical material man—the giants of those
times—the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne Humanity
separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child‐bearing engines, it
ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of
the body. But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on
the human plane—before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say—all this
vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the
production of the first mammal‐animal forms. Evolution is _an eternal
cycle of becoming_, we are taught; and Nature never leaves an atom unused.
Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become
Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are
directed towards one point—_Man_. The progress in the succession of
beings, says Agassiz:
Consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and
among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing resemblance
to man. Man is the end towards which all _animal_ creation has
tended from the first appearance of the first palæozoic
fishes.(389)
Just so; but the “palæozoic fishes” are at the lower curve of the arc of
the evolution of _forms_, and this Round began with Astral Man, the
_reflection_ of the Dhyân Chohans, called the “Builders.” Man is the
_alpha and the omega_ of objective creation. As said in _Isis Unveiled_:
All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally
begun from above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse,
as taught in the Darwinian theory.(390)
Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent Naturalist above quoted
is one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of
evolution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern
theory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.
But in citing the passage from Agassiz’ work with approval, it must not be
understood that the Occultists are making any _concession_ to the theory
which derives man from the animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he
preceded the mammalia is obviously not impugned by the consideration that
the latter follow in the wake of man.
25. HOW DID THE MÂNASA, THE SONS OF WISDOM, ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF‐
BORN.(391) THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE SWEAT‐BORN.(392) THEY ARE
NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE FIRST EGG‐BORN.(393)
To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological
idea: that of the Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret
Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to incarnate in _half‐
ready_ physical bodies seem to be more connected with physiological than
metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. The
Incarnating Powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.
By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the continent
on which the first Androgynes, the Third Root‐Race, separated, the writer
chose, on geographical considerations, that of “Lemuria,” invented by Mr.
P. L. Sclater. It was only later that, on reading Hæckel’s _Pedigree of
Man_, it was found that the German “Animalist” had chosen the name for his
late continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution
to Lemuria, but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that
“cradle of mankind,” he pictures the gradual transformation of the
anthropoid mammal into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in
America man sprang from a branch of the platyrrhine apes, _independently_
of the origination of the African and Asian root‐stocks from the old world
catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this
question, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of
Esoteric Philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments
of attention to the various consecutive modes of procreation according to
the laws of Evolution.
Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub‐races of the
Third Human Race, by those who found themselves endowed with the “Sacred
Fire” from the Spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the
psychic and spiritual Parents of Man, as the lower Pitri Devatâs (the
Pitris) were the Progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy
Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as “towering
giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the
mysteries of Heaven and Earth.” Have they likewise _fallen_, if, then,
incarnation was the “Fall”?
Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the
chief Gods and Heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later
antiquity, are the _deified images of these Men of the Third_. The days of
their physiological purity, and those of their so‐called Fall, have
equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence,
the dual nature shown in these Gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to
their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were
the Pre‐Adamite and the Divine Races, with which even Theology, in whose
sight they are all the “accursed Cainite races,” now begins to busy
itself.
But the action of the “Spiritual Progenitors” of that Race has first to be
disposed of. A very difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with
regard to Shlokas 26 and 27.
26. WHEN THE SWEAT‐BORN PRODUCED THE EGG‐BORN, THE TWO‐FOLD,(394) THE
MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: “NOW SHALL WE
CREATE.”
Why “now”—and not earlier? This the following Shloka explains.
27. THE THIRD RACE BECAME THE VÂHAN(395) OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT
CREATED SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, BY KRIYÂSHAKTI IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY
FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS....
How did they “create,” since the “Lords of Wisdom” are identical with the
Hindû Devas, who refuse to “create”? Clearly they are the Kumâras of the
Hindû Pantheon and _Purânas_, those Elder Sons of Brahmâ:
Sanandana and the other sous of Vedhas [who], previously created
by him ... without desire or passion, [remained chaste] inspired
with holy wisdom ... and undesirous of progeny.(396)
The power, by which they first created, is that which has since caused
them to be degraded from their high status to the position of Evil
Spirits, of Satan and his Host—created in their turn by the unclean fancy
of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyâshakti, that mysterious and divine
power, latent in the _will_ of every man, which, if not called to life,
quickened and developed by Yoga‐training, remains dormant in 999,999 men
out of a million, and so gets atrophied. This power is explained in the
“Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,”(397) as follows:
_Kriyâshakti_:—The mysterious _power of thought_ which enables it
to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own
inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest
itself _externally_, if one’s attention [and _will_] is deeply
concentrated upon it. Similarly, an intense volition will be
followed by the desired result.
A Yogî generally performs his wonders by means of Ichchhâshakti
(Will‐power) and Kriyâshakti.
The Third Race had thus created the so‐called “Sons of Will and Yoga,” or
the “Ancestors”—the _Spiritual_ Forefathers—of all the subsequent and
present Arhats, or Mahâtmâs, in a truly _immaculate_ way. They were indeed
_created_, not _begotten_, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who
were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the “Fall of Man.”
For Creation is but the result of Will acting on phenomenal Matter, the
calling forth out of it the Primordial Divine Light and Eternal Life. They
were the “Holy Seed Grain” of the future Saviours of Humanity.
Here we have to again make a break, in order to explain certain difficult
points, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such
interruptions.(398)
The order of the evolution of the Human Races stands as follows in the
Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and has already been given:
_The first men were Chhâyâs (1); the Second, the __“__Sweat‐born__”__ (2);
the Third, __“__Egg‐born,__”__ and the holy Fathers born by the power of
Kriyâshakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapâni [Chenresi]
(4)._
Of course such primeval modes of procreation—by the evolution of one’s
image; through drops of perspiration; after that by Yoga; and then by what
people will regard as magic (Kriyâshakti)—are doomed beforehand to be
regarded as fairy‐tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending
with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything
which may not be shown to be natural. This must be proven.
1. Chhâyâ‐birth, or that primeval mode of _sexless_ procreation—the First
Race having _oozed out_, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris—is
hinted at in a cosmic allegory in the _Purânas_.(399) It is the beautiful
allegory and story of Sanjñâ, the daughter of Vishvakarman—married to the
Sun, who, “unable to endure the fervours of her Lord,” gave him her Chhâyâ
(shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle
to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the Chhâyâ to
be his wife, begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith—an _ethereal
shadow_ also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster
millions of years ago.
But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of
the Paurânic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialized
forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain
mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid—the
“creation” of the First Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind
of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the
mystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any
greater—while it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true
metaphysical thinker—than the mystery of the conception of the fœtus, its
gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it.
Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the _Purânas_
about the “Sweat‐born.”
2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogî, eminent in holy wisdom and pious
austerities, which, finally, awaken the jealousy of the Gods, who are
represented in the Hindû Scriptures as being in never‐ending strife with
the Ascetics. Indra, the “King of the Gods,”(400) finally sends one of his
female Apsarases to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending
Sarah, Abraham’s wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is these Gods
(and God), who are ever trying to disturb Ascetics and thus make them lose
the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as “tempting
demons,” instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumâras, and Asuras,
whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don
Juanic Gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the
Paurânic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.
The King of the Gods, or Indra, sends a beautiful Apsaras (nymph) named
Pramlochâ to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her
unholy purpose and “nine hundred and seven years six months and three
days”(401) spent in her company seem to the Sage as one day. When this
psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni bitterly curses the
creature who has seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. “Depart,
begone!” he cries, “vile bundle of delusions!” And Pramlochâ, terrified,
flies away, _wiping the perspiration __ from her body_ with the leaves of
the trees as she passes through the air.
The nymph went from tree to tree, and, as, with the dusky shoots
that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child she had
conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in
drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the
winds collected them into one mass. “This,” said Soma [the Moon],
“I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in size, till
the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely
girl named Mârishâ.”(402)
Now Kandu stands for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one
“devoid of mind,” a fact hinted at by his being unable to discern a period
of nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so
easily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in
_Genesis_, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the “Lord God”
breathes the “breath of life” but not of intellect and discrimination,
which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of
Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the
earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the
Divine Soul. Pramlochâ is the Hindû Lilith of the Âryan Adam; and Mârishâ,
the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the “Sweat‐born,”
and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of mankind.
It is not Indra, who in this case figures in the _Purânas_, but Kâmadeva,
the God of love and desire, who sends Pramlochâ on Earth. Logic, as well
as the Esoteric Doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kâma is the king
and lord of the Apsarases, of whom Pramlochâ is one; and, therefore, when
Kandu, cursing her, exclaims: “Thou hast performed the office assigned by
the monarch of the gods, go!”—he must mean by that monarch Kâma, and not
Indra, to whom the Apsarases are not subservient. For Kâma, again, is in
the _Rig Veda_(403) the personification of that feeling which leads and
propels to creation. He was the _First Movement_ that stirred the ONE,
after its manifestation from the purely Abstract Principle, to create.
Desire first arose in IT, which was the Primal Germ of Mind; and
which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be
the bond which connects Entity with Non‐Entity.
A Hymn in the _Atharva Veda_ exalts Kâma into a supreme God and Creator,
and says:
Kâma was born the first. Him, neither Gods nor Fathers [Pitris]
nor Men have equalled.
The _Atharva Veda_ identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to
that God. The _Taittirîya Brâhmana_ makes him allegorically the son of
Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Shraddhâ (faith).
Elsewhere Kâma is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Âtmabhû
“Self‐Existent,” and Aja, the “Unborn.” His sending Pramlochâ has a deep
philosophical meaning; sent by Indra—the narrative has none. As Erôs was
connected in early Greek mythology with the world’s creation, and only
afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kâma in his original Vedic
character; the _Harivamsha_ making him a son of Lakshmî, who is Venus. The
allegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological,
before the birth of Daksha—_the progenitor of real physical men_—who is
made to be born from Mârishâ and before whose time living beings and men
were procreated “by the will, by sight, by touch, and by yoga,” as will be
shown.
This, then, is the allegory on the mode of procreation of the Second or
the “Sweat‐born.” The same for the Third Race in its final development.
Mârishâ, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the
Prachetases, the production of the “Mind‐born” sons of Brahmâ also,(404)
from whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha—a son of Brahmâ also in a former
Kalpa or life, explain and add the _Purânas_, in order to mislead, yet
speaking the truth.
3. The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of “Sweat,” which,
after many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more
difficult to imagine or realize than the growth of the fœtus from an
imperceptible germ, and its subsequent development into a child, and then
into a strong, heavy man. But the Third Race changes yet again its mode of
procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a
_vis formativa_, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater
drops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies—huge eggs. In these
the human fœtus gestated for several years. In the _Purânas_, Mârishâ, the
daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetases, and the
mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first _human‐like_
Progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The
evolution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the universe, the
macrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the
animal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.
Then the Third Race becomes:
4. The Androgyne, or Hermaphrodite. This process of men‐bearing explains,
perhaps, why Aristophanes, in Plato’s _Banquet_, describes the nature of
the old race as “androgynous,” the form of every individual being rounded,
“having the back and sides as _in a circle_,” whose “manner of running was
circular ... terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition.”
Therefore, to make them weaker, “Zeus divided them [in the Third Root‐
Race] into two, and Apollo [the Sun], under his direction, closed up the
skin.”
The Madagascans—the island belonged to Lemuria—have a tradition about the
first man. He lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food,
a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a
female, who became the mother of their race. Truly, “we have our sciences
of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet
open.... The polyps ... produce their offspring from themselves, like the
buds and ramifications of a tree....” Why not the primitive _human_ polyp?
The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation
into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows
merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately
develop into a sea‐nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to
its parent‐organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself
differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once
more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to
understand that a form may be evolved—as in the _sexual_ Lemurians from
_hermaphrodite_ parentage—quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is,
moreover, unquestionable that in the case of _human_ incarnations the law
of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of
Heredity, its servant.
The meaning of the last sentence in the above‐quoted Commentary on Shloka
27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapâni, may find
its explanation in a certain letter from the Inspirer of _Esoteric
Buddhism_:
_The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub‐race of the Fourth
Root‐Race—the above‐mentioned Chinamen and their off‐shoots and branchlets
(Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux
are all remnants of this last offshoot)._
Padmapâni or Avalokiteshvara, in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now,
Avalokiteshvara is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine
regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the Progenitor
(in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapâni‐Avalokiteshvara is called
_esoterically_ Bodhisattva (or Dhyân Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, “the
powerful and all‐seeing.” He is considered now as the greatest protector
of Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the
Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great Arhats in the
world, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself from age
to age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith begins
to die out in the world, Padmapâni Chenresi, the “Lotus‐bearer,” emits a
brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two
great Lamas—the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he
will incarnate as the “most perfect Buddha” in Tibet, instead of in India,
where his predecessors, the great Rishis and Manus had appeared in the
beginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. Even the exoteric
appearance of Dhyâni Chenresi is suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching. He
is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and
the progenitor of all the _human_ Races after the Third—the first complete
one—and thus is represented as the _culmination_ of the _four_ Primeval
Races in his _eleven‐faced_ form. This is a column built in four rows,
each series having three faces or heads of different complexions; the
three faces for each Race being typical of its three fundamental
physiological transformations. The first is white (moon‐coloured); the
second is yellow; the third, red‐brown; the fourth, in which are only two
faces—the third face being left a blank; a reference to the untimely end
of the Atlanteans—is brown‐black. Padmapâni (Daksha) is seated on the
column, and forms the apex. In this reference compare Shloka 39. The Dhyân
Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four Races.
For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus—Padmapâni, the
“Lotus‐bearer”; the flower symbolizing generation—and the fourth holds a
serpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and
on his head the sign of water [Symbol: two horizontal rows of wave‐like
symbols]—matter, deluge—while on his brow rests the third eye, Shiva’s
eye, that of spiritual insight. His name is “Protector” (of Tibet),
“Saviour of Humanity.” On other occasions when he has only two arms, he is
Chenresi the Dhyânî, and Bodhisattva, Chakna Padma Karpo, “he who holds a
white lotus.” His other name is Chantong, “he of the thousand eyes,” when
he is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of which
is represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a
forest of rays. Another of his names in Sanskrit is Lokapati or Lokanâtha,
“Lord of the World”; and in Tibetan Jigten Gonpo, “Protector and Saviour”
against evil of any kind.(405)
Padmapâni, however, is the “Lotus‐bearer” symbolically only for the
profane; esoterically, it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of
which is called Pâdma, and represents one half of the life of Brahmâ.
Though really a minor Kalpa, it is called Mahâ, “great,” because it
comprises the age in which Brahmâ sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the
Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and subdivided in
Space and Time, each division—down to the smallest—having its own Dhyânî
as patron or regent. Padmapâni (Avalokiteshvara) becomes, in China, in his
female aspect, Kwan‐yin, “who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to
save mankind.” The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the
constellations on the respective “birthdays” of these Dhyânîs—Amitabha
(the A‐mi‐to Fo, of China), included: _e.g._, on the 19th day of the
second month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of
the third month,(406) etc.—gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for
performing what are called “magic” feats. The future of an individual is
seen, with all its coming events marshalled in order, in a _magic_ mirror
placed under the ray of certain constellations. But—beware of the reverse
of the medal, SORCERY.
Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall.
28. How the first mammals were produced. 29. A quasi‐Darwinian
evolution. 30. The animals get solid bodies. 31. Their separation
into sexes. 32. The first sin of the mindless men.
28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT, FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE, MATTER
FROM DEAD BODIES OF MEN AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL BEFORE,(407) AND FROM
CAST‐OFF DUST, THE FIRST ANIMALS(408) WERE PRODUCED.
The Occult Doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a
later work of evolution than man. Evolution proceeds in Cycles. The great
Manvantaric Cycle of Seven Rounds, beginning in the First Round with the
mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its evolutionary work on the
descending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth Race, at the
close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our Earth, then—the
Fourth Sphere and the lowest—and in the present Round, that this middle
point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its first
“immetallization” on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal
worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last
degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the “mid‐
point of evolution,” it is but logical and natural that at the beginning
of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and
also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is
compatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins
its cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the
descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the reäscending
curved line of the Sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the
spiritual which gradually transforms into the material. On the middle line
of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On the ascending
arc, Spirit is slowly reässerting itself at the expense of the physical,
or Matter, so that, at the close of the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round,
the Monad will find itself as free from Matter and all its qualities as it
was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom,
the fruitage of all its personal lives, without their evil and
temptations.
This order of evolution is found also in the first and second chapters of
_Genesis_, if one reads it in its true esoteric sense; for Chapter i
contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the
first Three Races of the Fourth, up to the moment when Man is called to
conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In Chapter i, animals, whales and
fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam.(409) In Chapter
ii, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him.
Even the state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two
Races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the
second chapter of _Genesis_, by the _deep sleep of Adam_. It is the
dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind,
which is meant by that “sleep,” and not at all the physiological process
of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist, M. Naudin,
imagined.
The _Purânas_, the Chaldæan and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese
traditions, all show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the
process and order of evolution. We find in them the corroboration of
almost all our teaching: for instance, the statement concerning the
oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less
innocent mode of procreation of the first mammal forms. “_Gigantic,
transparent, dumb and monstrous they were_,” says the Commentary. Study in
this connection the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious
progeny. Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nâgas—an oviparous
brood; Kashyapa is grandsire, through his wife Tâmrâ, of the birds and of
Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the
parent of cows and buffaloes, etc.
In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nâgas—Beings wiser than Serpents—are the
“Sons of Will and Yoga,” born before the complete separation of the sexes,
“matured in the man‐bearing eggs(410) produced by the power (Kriyâshakti)
of the holy Sages” of the early Third Race.(411)
“In these were incarnated the Lords of the three [upper] worlds—the
various classes of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who
are Âdityas;” for, as explained by Parâshara: “There are a hundred
appellations of the immeasurably mighty Rudras.”
Some of the descendants of the primitive Nâgas, the Serpents of Wisdom,
peopled America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the
great Atlantis; America being the Pâtâla or Antipodes of Jambu‐dvîpa, not
of Bhârata‐varsha. Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends—the latter
_always more true than history_, as says Augustin Thierry—and even the
identity in the names of certain “medicine men” and priests, who exist to
this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals and the
Nagals, and also of Nagalism, called “devil‐worship” by the missionaries.
In almost all the _Purânas_, the story of the “Sacrifice of Daksha” is
given, the oldest account of which is to be found in the _Vâyu Purâna_.
Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in
it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo‐scientific vagaries, which are
regarded as learned theories and hypotheses.
Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out
as the creator of _physical man_, in the “fable” which makes him lose his
head from his body in the general strife between the Gods and the Raumas.
This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the _head of a ram_,
according to the Kâshi Khanda of the _Skanda Purâna_. Now the ram’s head
and horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive
force, and are phallic. As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the
era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. This mode of procreation did
not occur suddenly, however, as one might think, but required long ages
before it became the one “natural” way. Therefore, Daksha’s sacrifice to
the Gods is shown to have been interfered with by Shiva—the _Destroying_
Deity, _Evolution and Progress personified_, who is the _Regenerator_ at
the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to
life under another more perfect type. Shiva‐Rudra creates the terrible
Vîrabhadra, born of his breath, the “thousand‐headed, thousand‐armed”
monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha.
Then Vîrabhadra, “abiding in the region of ghosts (ethereal men) ...
created from _the pores of his skin_ (Roma‐kûpas) powerful Raumas.”(412)
Now, however mythical the allegory, the _Mahâbhârata_(413)—which is as
much history as is the _Iliad_—shows the Raumas and other races springing
in the same manner from the Roma‐kûpas, hair or skin pores. This
allegorical description of Daksha’s “sacrifice” is full of significance to
the students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the “Sweat‐born.”
In the _Vâyu Purâna’s_ account of the sacrifice, moreover, it is said to
have taken place in the presence of creatures _born from the egg_, from
the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the
womb.(414)
Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, as yet devoid of an
Individual Ego, and possessing passive capacities only. Brahmâ, therefore,
commands him to create (in the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command,
he made “inferior and superior” (Avara and Vara) progeny (Putra), _bipeds_
and _quadrupeds_; and by his _will_, gave birth to females, to the Gods,
the Daityas (Giants of the Fourth Race), the snake‐gods, animals, cattle
and the Dânavas (Titans and Demon Magicians) and other beings.
From that period forward, _living creatures were engendered by
sexual intercourse. Before the time of Daksha, they were variously
propagated_—by the _will_, by sight, by touch, and by the
influence of religious austerities practised by devout sages and
holy saints.(415)
And now comes the simply zoölogical teaching.
29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP, AND FLYING SARPAS(416) WERE
ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON THE GROUND GOT WINGS.
THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER BECAME THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF
THE AIR.
This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation
are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition
process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot,
especially in the Ornithoscelidæ, Hesperornis, and the Archæopteryx of
Vogt.
30. DURING THE THIRD,(417) THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED; THEY
BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES, THEIR CHHÂYÂS BECAME SOLID.(418)
Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also
ethereal proto‐organisms, just as man was.
31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST.(419) THEY BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO‐
FOLD MAN(420) SEPARATED ALSO. HE(421) SAID: “LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE
AND MAKE CREATURES.” THEY DID....
32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK(422) TOOK HUGE SHE‐ANIMALS UNTO THEM.
THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY(423) WERE THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR
TONGUES UNTIED.(424) THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED STILL. MONSTERS
THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED RED‐HAIR‐COVERED MONSTERS GOING ON ALL
FOURS.(425) A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD.(426)
The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of
sexes is now indisputable, even from the standpoint of Biology. As Prof.
Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist, shows:
Use and disuse, combined with selection, elucidate [?] _the
separation of the sexes_, and the existence, otherwise totally
incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata
especially, _each sex possesses such distinct traces of the
reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other_, that even
antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primæval condition
of mankind.... The tenacity with which these rudiments of sexual
organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals,
actual hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole
period of their development they drag along with them these
residues, borne by _their unknown ancestry_, no one can say how
long.(427)
“The animals separated the first,” says Shloka 31. Bear in mind that at
that period men were different, even physiologically, to what they are
now; the middle point of the Fifth Race being already passed. We are not
told what the “huge she‐animals” were; but they certainly were as
different from any we now know, as were the “men” from the men of to‐day.
This was the first physical “fall into matter” of some of the then
existing and lower races. Bear in mind Shloka 24. The “Sons of Wisdom” had
spurned the _early_ Third Race, _i.e._, the non‐developed, and are shown
incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the _later_ Third
Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or “mindless” Races, who had no
“spark” and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them
their Karmic duty.
What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.
Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or
even from an ancestor common to both; but, on the contrary, traces some of
the most anthropoid species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean
Period. As this proposition will be maintained and defended elsewhere, a
few words more are all that are needed at present. For greater clearness,
however, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously in Volume I,
Stanza VI.
Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that Nature had,
at one time, built round the human astral form an _ape‐like external_
shape, it is also as correct that this shape was no more that of the
“missing link,” than were the multitudinous other coverings of that astral
form, during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms
of Nature. Nor was it, as has been shown, on this Fourth Round Planet that
such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third
Rounds, when Man was, in turn, “a stone, a plant, and an animal” until he
became what he was in the First Root‐Race of present Humanity. The real
line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are
irreconcilable, unless the latter is divorced from the dogmas of “natural
selection” and the like. Indeed, between the Moneron of Hæckel and the
Sarîsripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape of the
Jîva; for the “human” Monad, whether “immetallized” in the stone‐atom, or
“in‐vegetalized” in the plant, or “inanimalized” in the animal, is still
ever a divine, hence also a _human_ Monad. It ceases to be human only when
it becomes _absolutely divine_. The terms “mineral,” “vegetable” and
“animal” Monad are intended to create a superficial distinction: there is
no such thing as a Monad (Jîva) other than divine, and consequently having
once been, or having in the future to become, human. The latter term has
to remain meaningless unless this difference is well understood. The Monad
is a drop out of the Shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, _within_,
the plane of primæval differentiation. It is _divine_ in its higher and
_human_ in its lower condition—the adjectives “higher” and “lower” being
used for lack of better words—but a Monad it remains at all times, save in
the Nirvânic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms.
As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the Manifested
Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it
repeating an Eastern teaching, so the Monad has, during the cycle of its
incarnations, to reflect in itself every _root‐form_ of each kingdom.
Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that “Man becomes a stone, a plant,
an animal, a man, a spirit, and finally God,” thus accomplishing his cycle
or circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the
_Heavenly Man_. But by “Man” the Divine Monad is meant, and not the
Thinking Entity, much less his Physical Body. The men of Science now try
to trace the immortal Soul, while rejecting its existence, through a
series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in truth,
all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of
which the Stanzas speak. The animals—the creeping beasts and those in the
waters that preceded Man in this Fourth Round, as well as those
contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are
posterior to the Third and Fourth Races—all are either directly or
indirectly the mutual and correlative product, _physically_, of Man. It is
correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, _i.e._, of the three
preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of Nature. That he
was “a stone, a plant, an animal.” But (_a_) these stones, plants, and
animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth
Round; and (_b_) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the
astral shadows, as the Occultists express it, of the present stones,
plants and animals. And finally, neither the forms nor genera of either
man, animal, or plant were what they became later. Thus the astral
prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round,
which _preceded_ the Chhâyâs of Men, were the consolidated, though still
very ethereal _sheaths_ of the still more ethereal forms, or models,
produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D, as set forth in
_Esoteric Buddhism_; produced “from the residue of the substance; matter
from dead bodies of men and [other _extinct_] animals of the Wheel
before,” or the previous _Third_ Round—as Shloka 28 tells us. Hence, while
the nondescript “animals” that preceded the Astral Man at the beginning of
this Life‐cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the
Man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence,
in a great measure, to Man again. Moreover, the “ancestor” of the present
anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless
Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the
level of an animal.
The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought
forward by the Anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man
from the animals.
The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, “The history of
the embryo is an epitome of that of the race.” That:
Every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a
series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors
have passed in the long course of earth’s history.(428) The
history of the embryo ... is a picture in little, and outline of
that of the race. _This conception forms the gist of our
fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the
head of the study of the fundamental law of organic
development._(429)
This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically
expressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage
from _Isis Unveiled_ may here be cited to furnish a few points of
comparison. It was asked why, with all their great learning, Physiologists
were unable to explain teratological phenomena?
Any Anatomist who has made the development and growth of the
embryo ... “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much
brain‐work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes
show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a
facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the
spawn—a tadpole. But no Physiologist or Anatomist seems to have
had the idea of applying to the development of the human
being—from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ
to its ultimate formation and birth—the Pythagorean esoteric
doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics.
The meaning of the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a
plant, a beast; a beast, a man,” etc., was mentioned in another
place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men
on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter
clearer.
What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a
corpuscle, say some Physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the
ovum, say others. If it could be analyzed—by the microscope or
otherwise—of what ought we to expect to find it composed?
Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter,
deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and
united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this
infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same
elements as a stone—of the same elements as the Earth, which the
man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as
authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make
a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as
a stone.
At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant‐
like appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the
other tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be
composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats,
enclosing a liquid. The laminæ approach each other at the lower
end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost
like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become changed,
by “metempsychosis,” into a plant. Then the embryonic creature
begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and
develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black dots; the
ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a
pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into
an animal‐like fœtus—the shape of a tadpole—and, like an
amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its monad
has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists
tell us that this only occurs at the “fourth hour.” One by one the
fœtus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first
flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being: it moves;
... and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it
will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes
a spirit.
This mysterious process of a nine‐months’ formation, the Kabalists
call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.” As the
fœtus develops amidst the _liquor amnii_ in the womb, so the
Earths germinate in the Universal Ether, or Astral Fluid, in the
Womb of the Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy
inhabitants, are first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature;
and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable,
animal, and human forms. From centre to circumference, from the
imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the
cosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle
merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series.
The embryo evolving in its pre‐natal sphere, the individual in his
family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the earth
in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe
in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE—the Boundless and
Endless.(430)
Thus runs _their_ philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that
of Hæckel.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the Soul.
These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But
how is the chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this
case? How, if the anthropoid and homo primigenius had, _argumenti gratiâ_,
a common ancestor—in the way modern speculation puts it—how did the two
groups diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity?
True, the Occultist may be told that in every case Occultism does what
Science repeats; it gives a _common_ ancestor to ape and man, since it
makes the former issue from Primæval Man. Aye, but that “Primæval Man” was
_man_ only in external form. He was _mindless_ and _soulless_ at the time
he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of
apes. This speculation—if speculation it be—is at least logical, and fills
the chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and
explains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact—of which
Science is almost certain—that, in the present stage of evolution, no
issue can follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and
explained elsewhere.
Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so)
conclusions—as enunciated in _The Pedigree of Man_—that man and ape have a
common ancestor, and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this
conclusion and accept the fact that all things and all living beings have
originated from one common source? Materialistic Science makes man evolve
gradually to what _he is now_. Starting from the first protoplasmic speck
called Moneron—which we are told has, like the rest, “originated in the
course of immeasurable ages from a few, or from one simple, _spontaneously
arising_ original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution”—he is made
to pass through “unknown and unknowable” types up to the ape, and thence
to the human being. Where the transitional shapes are discoverable we are
not told; for the simple reason that no “missing‐links” between man and
the apes have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents men
like Hæckel from inventing them _ad libitum_.
Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which
unites man with his real ancestry is searched for on the objective plane
and in the material world of forms, whereas it is safely hidden from the
microscope and dissecting knife _within_ the animal tabernacle of man
himself. We repeat what we have said in _Isis Unveiled_:
All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally
begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse,
as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there has been
a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of
debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of
modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis.
Arrived at this period we shall find it easier to understand
Hæckel’s _Anthropogeny_, which traces the pedigree of man “from
its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed
before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,”
according to Mr. Huxley’s exposition. We may more easily still
believe man (of the Third Round) evolved “by gradual modification
of an [astral] mammal of ape‐like organization,” when we remember
that the same theory, in a more condensed and less elegant, but
equally comprehensible, phraseology, was said by Berosus to have
been taught many thousands of years before his time by the man‐
fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi‐demon of Babylonia(431) (though on
somewhat modified lines).
But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as
Darwin is concerned nothing but “unverifiable hypotheses.” For, as
he puts it, he views all beings “as the lineal descendants of some
few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian
system was deposited.”(432) He does not attempt to show us what
these “few beings” were. But it answers our purpose quite as well,
for, in the bare admission of their existence, recourse to the
ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives
the stamp of scientific approbation.(433)
Truly, as we said in our first work, if we accept Darwin’s theory of the
development of species, we find that his starting‐point lies in front of
an open door. We are at liberty either to remain within with him, or cross
the threshold, beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible,
or rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express
what our spirit—while on this earth—dimly foresees in the great “Beyond,”
it _must_ realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity. But what lies
“beyond” Hæckel’s theory? Why Bathybius Hæckelii, and no more!
Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.
33. The creators repent. 34. They atone for their neglect. 35. Men
become endowed with minds. 36. The Fourth Race develops perfect
speech. 37. Every androgynous unit is separated and becomes
bisexual.
33. SEEING WHICH,(434) THE LHAS(435) WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN,(436) WEPT,
SAYING:
34. “THE AMÂNASA(437) HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES. THIS IS KARMA. LET
US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD
HAPPEN.” THEY DID....
35. THEN ALL MEN BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS.(438) THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE
MINDLESS.
But they had already _separated_, before the ray of divine reason had
enlightened the dark region of their hitherto slumbering minds, and had
_sinned_. That is to say, they had committed evil unconsciously, by
producing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the other six primitive
brother or fellow races, even so this seventh, henceforth degenerated
race, which will have to bide its time for its final development on
account of the _sin_ committed—even this race will find itself _on the
last day_ on one of the Seven Paths. For:
The Wise(439) guard the home of nature’s order, they assume
excellent forms in secret.(440)
But we must see whether the “animals” tampered with, were of the same kind
as those known to Zoölogy.
The “Fall” occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the
old records, as soon as Daksha—the reïncarnated Creator of men and things
in the early Third Race—disappeared to make room for that portion of
mankind which had “separated.” This is how one Commentary explains the
details that preceded the “Fall”:
_In the initial period of man’s Fourth Evolution, the human kingdom
branched off in several and various directions. The outward shape of its
first specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles [the egg‐like, external
shells, in which the future fully physical man gestated] were often
tampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species now
unknown, and belonging to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was
that intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were
produced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long
and live, although, the intrinsically paramount power of psychic over
physical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the __“__Egg‐
born__”__ Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as
mates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal species and human
races becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated, and mated no
longer. Man created no more—he begot. But he also begot animals as well as
men, in days of old. Therefore the Sages [or wise men], who speak of males
who had no more will‐begotten offspring, but begat various animals along
with Dânavas [Giants] on females of other species—animals being as [or in
the manner of] sons putative to them; and they [the human males] refusing
in time to be regarded as [putative] fathers of dumb creatures—spoke
truthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this [state of things], the Kings and
Lords of the last Races [of the Third and the Fourth] placed the seal of
prohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it
developed new [Karma]_(_441_)_. They [the Divine Kings] struck the
culprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races._(442)
In another we find:
_There were blue and red‐faced animal‐men even in later times; not from
actual intercourse [between the human and animal species], but by
descent._
And still another passage mentions:
_Red‐haired, swarthy men going on all‐fours, who bend and unbend [stand
erect and fall on their hands again], who speak as their forefathers, and
run on their hands as their giant fore‐mothers._
Perchance in these specimens Hæckelians might recognize, not the “Homo
Primigenius,” but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the
Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the
anthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi‐human mothers, or, to
speak more correctly, from human monsters—those “failures” mentioned in
the first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Hæckel’s Catarrhini and
Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The Orang‐
Outang, the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee and Cynocephalus are the latest and
purely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a
spark of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not
one drop of pithecoid(443) blood in his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and
universal tradition.
How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe
in the old Jewish fable of the rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief
is more logical and reasonable than the descent of man from the Quadrumana
without any reservation; as the former hides an Esoteric truth under a
fabulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact than a desire
to force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when
we read in _Genesis_ that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means that
the Race “with bones” was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which
were “boneless.” This is an Esoteric tenet spread far and wide. It is
almost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian tradition states that
man was created out of Aræa, “red earth.” Taaroa, the Creative Power, the
chief God, “put man to sleep for long years, for several lives.” This
means racial periods, and is a reference to his _mental sleep_, as shown
elsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and
she became a woman.(444)
Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may signify, even its exoteric meaning
necessitates a _divine_ Builder of man—a “Progenitor.” Do we then believe
in such “supernatural” Beings? We say: No. Occultism has never believed in
anything, whether animate or inanimate, _outside_ Nature. Nor are we
Cosmolaters or Polytheists for believing in “Heavenly Man” and Divine Men,
for we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, with its unvarying
evidence on every essential point, to support us in this; the Wisdom of
the Ancients and _universal_ tradition. We reject, however, such
groundless and baseless traditions as have outgrown strict allegory and
symbolism, although they may have found acceptance in exoteric creeds. But
that which is preserved in _unanimous_ tradition, only the wilfully blind
could reject. Hence we believe in races of Beings other than our own in
far remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following
_incorporeal_ (Arûpa) Men, with form but no solid substance, giants who
preceded us pigmies; in Dynasties of Divine Beings, those Kings and
Instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which
our little Modern Science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic
with geometry.
No, certainly not. We do not believe in _supernatural_ but only in
_superhuman_, or rather _interhuman_, intelligences. One can easily
appreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person would have to
being classed with the superstitious and ignorant; and even realize the
great truth uttered by Renan when he says that:
The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that
everyone seems ashamed of—even those most religious persons who
refuse in our day to accept be it a minimum of Bible miracles in
all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the
minimum, hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the
past.(445)
But the “supernatural” of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It
has nought to do with its spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature.
If Theology asks us to believe that it was only four or five thousand
years ago that men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind,
the enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants
and monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature
only five _thousand_ years back. For Nature never proceeds by jumps and
starts, and logic and common sense, besides Geology, Anthropology and
Ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if this same
Theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived
969 years—the age of Methuselah—five _million_ years ago, we should have
nothing to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of
men was, compared to the present human body, as that of a Megalosaurus to
a common lizard.
A Naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species
which, however unequal in its races, can breed together. “There is no
question of selection between _human races_,” say the anti‐Darwinists, and
no Evolutionist can deny the argument—one which very triumphantly proves
_specific unity_. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the
Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi‐
human, if not quite an animal, race; the hybrids resulting from which
union not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern
anthropoid apes? Esoteric Science replies to this that it was in the very
beginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and
sterility is the only result of the crime of man’s bestiality. But we have
even to‐day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the _specific
unity of mankind_ is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or
rather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half‐animal tribes
or races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro‐Atlantean origin. The world
knows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders,
etc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which
struck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of it.
This fact deserves notice.
De Quatrefages and other Naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the
very fact of every race of mankind being capable of crossing with every
other, have left out of their calculations _exceptions_, which do not in
this case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule
from the time of the separation of sexes, but this does not prevent
another law asserting itself, viz., sterility between two human races,
just as between two animal species of different kinds, in those rare cases
when a European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a
mate, happens to choose a member of such mixed tribes.(446) Darwin notes
such a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with
sterility, _en masse_, some time after the arrival among them of European
colonists. The great Naturalist tried to explain this fact by change of
diet, food conditions, etc., but finally gave up the solution of the
mystery. For the Occultist it is very evident. “Crossing,” as it is
called, of Europeans with Tasmanian women—_i.e._, the representatives of a
race, whose progenitors were a “soulless”(447) and mindless monster, with
a real human, though still as mindless a man—brought on sterility; and
this, not only as a consequence of a physiological law, but also as a
decree of Karmic evolution in the question of further survival of the
abnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science prepared to believe
_as yet_—but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric Philosophy, let us
remember, only fills the gaps left by Science and corrects her false
premisses.
Yet, in this particular, Geology and even Botany and Zoology support the
Esoteric Teachings. It has been suggested by many Geologists that the
Australian native—coëxisting as he does with an _archaic fauna and
flora_—must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole environment of
this mysterious race, about whose origin Ethnology is silent, is a
testimony to the truth of the Esoteric position. As Jukes says:
It is a very curious fact that not only these marsupial animals
[the mammals found in the Oxfordshire Stone‐field Slates], but
several of the shells—as for instance, the Trigonias and even some
of the plants found fossil in the Oolitic rocks—much more nearly
resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of
any other part of the globe. This might be explained on the
supposition that, since the Oolitic [Jurassic] period _less change
has taken place in Australia than elsewhere_, and that the
Australian flora and fauna consequently retain something of the
Oolitic type, _while it had been altogether supplanted and
replaced on the rest of the globe_ [! !].(448)
Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is
the _raison d’être_ for such a “curse of retardation”? It is simply
because the nature of the environment develops _pari passu_ with the race
concerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The survivors of those
later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the
main Continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the
present native tribes. Being a very low sub‐race, begotten originally of
animals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles under the
sea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly
subjected to the _law of retardation_. Australia is one of the oldest
lands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its
“_virgin_ soil” notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless
helped by new and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.
To return once more, however, to the history of the Third Race, the
“Sweat‐born,” the “Egg‐bearing,” and the “Androgyne.” Almost sexless, in
its early beginnings, it became bisexual or androgynous; very gradually of
course. The passage from the first to the last transformation required
numberless generations, during which the simple cell that issued from the
earliest parent (the two in one), first developed into a bisexual being;
and then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual
creature. The Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the five
hitherto developed Races. The mystery of the “How” of the generation of
the distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the
business of an embryologist and a specialist; the present work giving only
faint outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the
Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre‐natal shells, or
eggs,(449) and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes,
ages after the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on
its geological periods, the newly born sub‐races began to lose their natal
capacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub‐race of the Third Race, the
babe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and
by the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by
identically the same process as our historical generations. This required,
of course, millions of years. The reader has been made acquainted with the
approximate figures, at least of the exoteric calculations.(450)
We are approaching the turning‐point of the evolution of the Races. Let us
see what Occult Philosophy says on the origin of language.
36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH.
The Commentaries explain that the First Race—the ethereal or astral Sons
of Yoga, also called “Self‐born”—was, in our sense, speechless, for it was
devoid of mind on our plane. The Second Race had a “sound‐language,” to
wit, chant‐like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race developed
in the beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improvement on
the various sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of the
first animals, which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the
“Sweat‐born” or the _early_ Third Race. In its second half, when the
“Sweat‐born” gave birth to the “Egg‐born,” the _middle_ Third Race; and
when these, instead of “hatching out”—may the reader pardon the rather
ridiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age—as
androgynous beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and
when the same law of evolution led them to reproduce their kind
sexually—an act which forced the Creative Gods, compelled by Karmic law,
to incarnate in _mindless_ men; then only was speech developed. But even
then it was still no better than a tentative effort. The whole human race
was at that time of “one language and of one lip.” This did not prevent
the last two sub‐races of the Third Race(451) from building cities, and
sowing far and wide the first seeds of civilization under the guidance of
their Divine Instructors,(452) and their own already awakened minds. Let
the reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven Races is divided
into four Ages—the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age—so is every
smallest division of such Races. Speech then developed, according to
Occult Teaching, in the following order:
I. _Monosyllabic speech_: that of the first approximately fully developed
human beings at the close of the Third Root‐Race, the “golden‐coloured,”
yellow‐complexioned men, after their separation into sexes, and the full
awakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what
would now be called “thought‐transference,” though, with the exception of
the Race called the “Sons of Will and Yoga”—the first in whom the “Sons of
Wisdom” had incarnated—thought was but very little developed in nascent
physical man, and never soared above a low terrestrial level. Their
physical bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on a higher
plane altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full
acquisition and development of their reasoning faculties. This
monosyllabic speech was the vowel‐parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic
languages mixed with hard consonants, still in use amongst the yellow
races which are known to the Anthropologist.(453)
II. _Agglutinative speech_: these linguistic characteristics developed
into the agglutinative languages. The latter were spoken by some Atlantean
races, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the mother‐
language. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood,
purity, growth, _fall into matter_, admixture with other languages,
maturity, decay and finally death,(454) so the primitive speech of the
most civilized Atlantean races—that language, which is referred to as
Râkshasî Bhâshâ, in old Sanskrit works—decayed and almost died out. While
the “cream” of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex of
physical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the
nascent Fifth (the Âryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed
languages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil
idiom, now scattered, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of
America.
III. _Inflectional speech_: the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously
called the “elder sister” of the Greek, instead of its mother—was the
first language, now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth
Race. The “Semitic” languages are the bastard descendants of the first
phonetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The
Occult Doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Âryan and the Semite,
and accepts even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites,
especially the Arabs, are later Âryans—degenerate in spirituality and
perfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The
former are a tribe descended from the Chandâlas of India, the outcasts,
many of them ex‐Brâhmans, who sought refuge in Chaldæa, in Scinde, and
Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A‐Bram (No‐Brâhman)
some 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those
Âryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of
nations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan
and Kabul(455) and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and
invaded Arabia. But this was when Africa had already been raised as a
continent.
We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the
gradual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly
arrested evolution of certain sub‐races, and their forced and violent
diversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross‐breeding, truly
analogous to the hybridization which we have now learned to utilize in the
vegetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the
anthropoids.
In these red‐haired and hair‐covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural
connection between men and animals, the “Lords of Wisdom” did not
incarnate, as we see. Thus through a long series of transformations due to
unnatural cross‐breeding—unnatural “sexual selection”—originated in due
course of time the lowest specimens of humanity; while further bestiality
and the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a
species which developed into mammalian apes ages later.(456)
As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may
think. Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she does.
37. THE ONE(457) BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS THAT
WERE STILL ONE, GIANT FISH, BIRDS AND SERPENTS WITH SHELL‐HEADS.
This relates evidently to the so‐called age of amphibious reptiles, during
which Science denies that man existed! But what could the Ancients know of
antediluvian prehistoric animals and monsters? Nevertheless, in Book VI of
the Commentaries is found a passage which, freely translated, says:
_When the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men‐animals, these
[the animals] became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive.
Till then, there was no sin, no life taken. After [the separation] the
Satya [Yuga] was at an end. The eternal spring became constant change and
seasons succeeded. Cold forced men to build shelters and devise clothing.
Then man appealed to the superior Fathers [the higher Gods or Angels]. The
Nirmânakâyas, of the Nâgas, the wise Serpents and Dragons of Light, came,
and the precursors of the Enlightened [the Buddhas]. Divine Kings
descended and taught men sciences and arts, for man could live no longer
in the first land [Âdi‐Varsha, the Eden of the first Races], which had
turned into a white frozen corpse._
The above is suggestive. We will see what can be inferred from this brief
statement. Some may incline to think that there is more in it than is
apparent at first sight.
Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.
Whence the idea, and the true meaning of the term “Eden”? Christians will
maintain that the Garden of Eden is the holy Paradise, the place
_desecrated by the sin_ of Adam and Eve; the Occultist will deny this
dead‐letter interpretation, and show the reverse. One need not believe in
the _Bible_ and see in it divine revelation, to say that this ancient
book, if read esoterically, is based upon the same universal traditions as
the other ancient scriptures. What Eden was is partially shown in _Isis
Unveiled_, where it is said that:
The Garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to
those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the
student that the _Bible_ is not all mere allegory. “Eden, or the
Hebrew גן עדן, Gan‐Eden, meaning the Park or the Garden of Eden,
is an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its
many branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian sea.”(458)
In the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, its location is designated in
numerals, and in the cypher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count
St. Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian _Tablets_ it
is rendered Gan‐duniyas. “Behold,” say the אלהִם, Elohim, of
_Genesis_, “the man is become as one of us.” The Elohim may be
accepted in one sense for _gods_ or powers, and in another for
Aleim, or priests—the hierophants initiated into the good and evil
of this world; for there was a college of priests called the
Aleim, while the head of their caste, or the chief of the
hierophants, was known as Java‐Aleim. Instead of becoming a
neophyte, and gradually obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a
regular initiation, an Adam, or Man, uses his intuitional
faculties and, prompted by the serpent—_Woman_ and Matter—tastes
of the Tree of Knowledge, the Esoteric or Secret Doctrine,
unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel‐karth, the “Lord” of
the Eden, all wore “coats of skin.” The text says: “And Java‐Aleim
made for Adam and his wife, כתנותעור. Chitonuth‐our.” The first
Hebrew word, Chiton, is the Greek Χιτὼν (Chitôn). It became a
Slavonic word by adoption from the _Bible_, and means a _coat_, an
upper garment.
Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as does
every early Cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the
marks of a double origin. Its _Genesis_ is purely a reminiscence
of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even
objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldæans and
the Akkadians, the progenitors and Âryan instructors of the
former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldæa,
Babylonia and Assyria were in any way cognate with the Brâhmans of
Hindûstan; but there are more proofs in favour of this opinion
than otherwise. The Shemite or Assyrian ought, perchance, to have
been called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated
Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever existed, otherwise than in the
imagination of some Philologists and Ethnologists, they certainly
would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some Assyriologists
have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on
their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and
their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a
barbarian people. Halévy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania
in regard to Akkadian people, and other scientists have proved
that the Babylonian civilization was neither born nor developed in
that country. It was imported from India, and the importers were
Brâhmanical Hindûs.(459)
And now, ten years after this was written, we find ourselves corroborated
by Professor Sayce, who says in his first Hibbert Lecture that the culture
of the Babylonian city Eridu was of “foreign importation.” It came from
India.
Much of the theology was borrowed by the Semites from the non‐
Semitic Akkadians or Proto‐Chaldæans, whom they supplanted, and
whose local cults they had neither the will nor the power to
uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races,
Semites and Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and
worship of the gods blending insensibly together.
Here, the Akkadians are called “non‐Semitic,” as we had insisted they were
in _Isis Unveiled_, which is another corroboration. Nor are we less right
in always maintaining that the Jewish biblical history was a compilation
of _historical_ facts, arranged from other people’s history in Jewish
garb—_Genesis_ excluded, which is Esotericism pure and simple. But it is
really from the Euxine to Kashmir, and beyond, that Science has to search
for the cradle—or rather one of the chief cradles—of mankind and the sons
of Ad‐ah; especially in after times, when the Garden of Ed‐en on the
Euphrates became the College of the Astrologers and Magi, the Aleim.
But this College and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a
faint reminiscence of the Âdi‐Varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is
the etymological meaning of the word Eden? In Greek it is ἡδονὴ,
signifying “voluptuousness.” In this aspect it is no better than the
Olympus of the Greeks, Indra’s Heaven, Svarga, on Mount Meru, and even the
Paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the faithful. The Garden
of Eden was never the property of the Jews, for China, which can hardly be
suspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C., had such a
primitive Garden in Central Asia inhabited by the “Dragons of Wisdom,” the
Initiates. And according to Klaproth, the hieroglyphical chart copied from
a Japanese Cyclopædia in the book of _Foĕ‐kouĕ‐ki_(460) places its “Garden
of Wisdom” on the Plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the
Himâlayan ranges; and, describing it as the culminating point of Central
Asia, shows the four rivers—Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo—flowing from a
common source, the “Lake of the Dragons.”
But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden of
Eden. For the former—Eden Illa‐ah—means in one sense Wisdom, a state like
that of Nirvâna, a Paradise of Bliss; while in another sense it refers to
Intellectual Man himself, the container of the Eden in which grows the
Tree of Knowledge of good and evil; man being the Knower thereof.
Renan and Barthélemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves “on the most solid
inductions,” think it impossible to doubt any longer, and both place the
cradle of humanity “in the region of the Timaus.” Finally, the _Journal
Asiatique_(461) concludes that:
All the traditions of the human race gathering its primitive
families at the region of their birth‐place, show them to us
grouped around the countries where Jewish tradition places the
Garden of Eden; where the Âryans [Zoroastrians] established their
Airyana Vaêjô or the Meru [?]. They are hemmed in to the North by
the countries which join Lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan,
or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the
abode of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced.
That “primitive humanity” was in its Fifth Race, when the “Four‐mouthed
Dragon,” the lake, of which very few traces are now left, was the abode of
the “Sons of Wisdom,” the first Mind‐born Sons of the Third Race. Yet it
was neither the only nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was
the copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking _divine_ Man. It was
the Paradesha, the highland of the first Sanskrit‐speaking people, the
Hedone, the country of delight of the Greeks, but it was not the “Bower of
Voluptuousness” of the Chaldæans, for the latter was but the reminiscence
of it; nor again was it there that the “Fall of Man” occurred after the
“separation.” The Eden of the Jews was _copied_ from the Chaldæan _copy_.
That the Fall of Man into generation occurred during the earliest portion
of what Science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is
evidenced by the bible phraseology concerning the serpent, the nature of
which is explained in the _Zohar_. The question is not whether Eve’s
incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one
can doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the
symbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not a Jewish but a
universal idea.
Now we find in the _Zohar_ a very strange assertion, one that is
calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous
absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamaël, the
supposed Satan, to seduce Eve, was a kind of “flying
camel”—καμηλόμορφον.(462)
A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal‐minded F.R.S.
Nevertheless, the _Zohar_, which can hardly be expected to use the
language of a Cuvier, was right in its description; for we find it called
in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the _Avesta_ is represented
as having after the Fall lost its _nature_ and its _name_, and is
described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.
Salverte asserts that:
There are no winged serpents nor veritable dragons....
Grasshoppers are still called by the Greeks _winged serpents_, and
this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence
of winged serpents.(463)
There are none _now_; but there is no reason why they should not have
existed during the Mesozoic Age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their
skeletons, is a witness to “flying camels.” Already, after finding simple
fossils of certain saurians, the great Naturalist has written, that:
If anything can justify the hydras and other monsters, whose
figures were so often repeated by mediæval historians, it is
incontestably the Plesiosaurus.(464)
We are unaware if Cuvier has added anything in the way of a further _mea
culpa_, but we may well imagine his confusion for all his slanders against
archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a _flying_
saurian, the Pterodactyl, found in Germany, seventy‐eight feet long, and
carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body. This fossil is
described as a reptile, the _little fingers of whose hands_ are so
elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the “flying
camel” of the _Zohar_ is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of
the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still
better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability on which to
build a “flying camel,” or a long‐necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of
Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a
winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebræ, which
indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.
And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never
claimed Palæontography and Palæontology among its arts and sciences; and
it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old
Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in
the Imperial Library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognized
perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform
Chinese dragons.(465) Moreover, the prophets speak in the _Bible_ of the
flying fiery serpents,(466) and Job mentions the Leviathan.(467) Now the
following questions are put very directly:
I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of
the Carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them
orally and pictorially, unless they had either _seen those monsters
themselves_ or _possessed descriptions of them in their traditions_; which
descriptions necessitate _living and intelligent eye‐witnesses_?
II. And if such eye‐witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective
clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palæolithic men
be no earlier than about the middle of the Tertiary period? We must bear
in mind that most of the men of Science do not allow man to have appeared
before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the
Cainozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which
disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described
by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly
have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the
Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must
be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.
It does not follow that, because the Occultists believe in and defend
Ancient Wisdom and Science, even though winged saurians are called “flying
camels” in the translations of the _Zohar_, we therefore as readily
believe in all the stories which the Middle Ages give us of such dragons.
Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third
Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to
credit Christopher Scherer’s and Father Kircher’s cock‐and‐bull stories of
their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons,
respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their
assertions as either dreams or fibs.(468) Nor shall we regard otherwise
than as a “poetical license” the story told of Petrarch, who, while
following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is
credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his
dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of
his heart.(469) We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in
the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have
existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea‐serpent is
one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority
because it lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and
rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping
invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing
as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped
detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and
exists no more.
The reader may enquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer: firstly,
because the knowledge of such animals is a proof of the enormous antiquity
of the human race; and, secondly, to show the difference between the real
zoological meaning of the words “Dragon,” “Nâga,” and “Serpent,” and the
metaphorical meaning, when used symbolically. The profane reader, who
knows nothing of the mystery language, is likely, whenever he finds one of
these words mentioned, to accept it literally. Hence, the _quidproquos_
and unjust accusations. A couple of instances will suffice.
“Sed et Serpens?” Aye: but what was the nature of the serpent? Mystics
intuitionally see in the serpent of _Genesis_ an animal emblem and a high
spiritual essence: a cosmic force, superintelligent, a “great fallen
light,” a spirit, sidereal, aërial and tellurian at the same time, “whose
influence circumambulates the globe” (_qui circumambulat terram_), as De
Mirville,(470) a Christian fanatic of the dead‐letter, has it, and which
only “manifested itself under the physical emblem which agreed the better
with its moral and intellectual _coils_”—_i.e._, under the ophidian form.
But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the “Divine Healer,”
if the serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of cunning and evil; the
“Evil One” itself? How can the line of demarcation ever be settled, when
it is traced arbitrarily in a sectarian theological spirit? For, if the
followers of the Roman Church are taught that Mercury and Æsculapius, or
Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are “devils and sons of devils,” and
the wand and serpent of the latter, the “Devil’s wand”; how about the
Brazen Serpent of Moses? Every scholar knows that both the Heathen “wand”
and the Jewish “serpent” are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of
Mercury, son of Apollo‐Python. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews
adopted the ophidian shape for their “seducer.” With them it was purely
_physiological_ and _phallic_; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on
the part of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning, once
that the mystery language is well studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are
read numerically. The Occultists know that the Serpent, the Nâga, and the
Dragon have each a septenary meaning; that the Sun, for instance, was the
astronomical and cosmic emblem of the two contrasted Lights and the two
Serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil. They also know that, when
_generalized_, the conclusions of both Science and Theology present two
most ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us that it is
sufficient to trace the legends of the serpents to their primal source,
the astronomical legend, and to meditate seriously on the Sun, the
conqueror of Python, and the celestial Virgin in the Zodiac forcing back
the devouring Dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent
religious dogmas—it is easy to perceive that, instead of generalizing, the
author simply has his eye on Christian religion and _Revelation_. We call
this the one extreme. We see the other when Theology, repeating the famous
decision of the Council of Trent, seeks to convince the masses that:
From the fall of man until the hour of his baptism the Devil has
full power over him, and possesses him _by right_—_diabolum
dominium et potestatem super homines habere et jure eos
possidere_.(471)
To this Occult Philosophy answers: Prove first the existence of the Devil
_as an entity_, and then we may believe in such congenital possession. A
very small amount of observation and knowledge of human nature may be
sufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological dogma. Had Satan any
reality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical
sense), it is the poor Devil who would find himself chronically obsessed
and even possessed by the wicked—hence by the bulk of mankind. It is
humanity itself, and especially the clergy, headed by the haughty,
unscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church, which has begotten, given birth
to, and reared in love the Evil One. But this is a digression.
The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having
adored the serpent.
The whole of humanity burnt incense to it or stoned it. The
_Zends_ speak of it as do the _Kings_ and _Vedas_, as the _Edda_
... and the _Bible_.... Everywhere the sacred serpent [the Nâga]
has its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who ...
prepares its meal with the same care that she bestows on the
sacred fire. In Greece, Æsculapius cannot cure without its
assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Every one has heard of
the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine
and its return with the not less famous serpent, which proceeded
of its own will and by itself toward its master’s temple on one of
the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it
[the serpent] in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it with
care, not a Necromancer whose tombs are free from its presence!
The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing,
as Schelling did, that the serpent is “evil in substance and in
person.”(472)
Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the
prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, he ought to study the
matter in India and learn all that is believed about, and still attributed
to, the Nâgas (cobras) in that country; one should also visit the Africans
of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port‐au‐Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of
Mexico, and the Pâ, or Men‐serpents of China, etc. But why wonder that the
serpent is “adored” and at the same time cursed, since we know that from
the beginning it was a symbol? In every ancient language the word _dragon_
signified what it now does in Chinese, _long_ or “the being who excels in
intelligence,” and in Greek, δράκων, or “he who sees and watches.”(473) Is
it to the animal of this name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it
not evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning
may have led savages now, that the above qualifications were intended to
apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by Serpents and Dragons?
These originals—called to this day in China the “Dragons of Wisdom”—were
the first disciples of the Dhyânîs, who were their Instructors; in short,
the Primitive Adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth
Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era
would ever have confounded the man and the symbol.
The symbol of Chnouphis, or the Soul of the World, writes Champollion:
Is among others that of an enormous serpent standing on human
legs; this reptile, the emblem of the Good Genius, is a veritable
Agathodæmon. It is often represented bearded.... This sacred
animal, identical with the serpent of the Ophites, is found
engraved on numerous Gnostic or Basilidean stones.... The serpent
has various heads, but is constantly inscribed with the letters
ΧΝΟΥΒΙΣ.(474)
Agathodæmon was endowed “with the knowledge of good and evil,” _i.e._,
with Divine Wisdom, for without the latter the former is impossible.(475)
Repeating Jamblichus, Champollion shows him to be:
The deity called Εἰχτῶν [or the Fire of the Celestial Gods—the
Great Thot‐Hermes],(476) to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes
the invention of magic.(477)
The “invention of magic”! A strange term to use, as though the unveiling
of the eternal and actual mysteries of Nature could be _invented_! As well
attribute, millenniums hence, the _invention_ instead of the discovery of
radiant matter to Mr. Crookes. Hermes was not the inventor, or even the
discoverer, for, as said in the last footnote but one, Thot‐Hermes is a
generic name, as is Enoch—Enoïchion, the “inner, spiritual eye”—Nebo, the
prophet and seer, etc. It is not the proper name of any one living man,
but a generic title of many Adepts. Their connection with the serpent in
symbolic allegories is due to their enlightenment by the Solar and
Planetary Gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the Third. They are
all the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios is the son
of the Sun‐God Apollo, and he is Mercury; Nebo is the son of Bel‐Merodach;
Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivasvat—the Sun or Sûrya,
etc. And while, astronomically, the Nâgas along with the Rishis, the
Gandharvas, Apsarases, Grâmanîs (or Yakshas, minor Gods), Yâtudhânas and
Devas, are the Sun’s attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in
theogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are Gods and
Men—when incarnated in the _Nether_ World. Let the reader be reminded, in
this connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist
Nâgas. These are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nâgas
ethnologically, but “wise men.”
The _Bible_, from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_, is but a series of historical
records of the great struggle between White and Black Magic, between the
Adepts of the Right Path, the Prophets, and those of the Left, the
Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. Even the students of Occultism,
though some of them have more archaic MSS. and direct teaching to rely
upon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales
of the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism that arose
between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and
Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of the “Sons of
God,” is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two Schools of
Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is
shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well
to quote a few sentences from _Isis Unveiled_.(478)
The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: “Dan,” he says, “shall be
a _serpent_ by the way, an _adder_ in the path, that biteth the
horse‐heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards [_i.e._, he
will teach candidates _Black_ Magic]. I have waited for thy
salvation, O Lord!” Of Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that
they “are brethren; instruments of _cruelty_ are in their
habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their _secret_; unto
their _assembly_.”(479) Now in the original, the words “their
secret” read—“their Sod.”(480) And Sod was the name for the great
Mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who were all Sun‐Gods and
had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists explain the allegory of
the fiery serpents by saying that this was the name given to the
tribe of Levi, to all the Levites, in short, and that Moses was
the chief of the Sodales.(481)
It is to the Mysteries that the original meaning of the “Dragon‐Slayers”
has to be traced, and the question is fully treated of hereafter.
Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the Chief of the Mysteries, he was
the Hierophant thereof; and further, if, at the same time, we find the
Prophets thundering against the “abominations” of the people of Israël,
that there were two Schools. “Fiery serpents” was, then, simply the
epithet given to the Levites of the priestly caste, after they had
departed from the Good Law, the traditional teachings of Moses, and to all
those who followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the “rebellious
children” who will have to carry their riches into the lands whence come
“the viper and _fiery_ flying _serpent_,”(482) or Chaldæa and Egypt, whose
Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his day (700 B.C.), meant the
sorcerers of those lands.(483) But these must be carefully distinguished
from the “Fiery Dragons of Wisdom” and the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist.”
In the _Great Book of the Mysteries_ we are told that:
_Seven Lords created seven Men; three Lords [Dhyân Chohans or Pitris] were
holy and good, four less heavenly and full of passion.... The Chhâyâs
[phantoms] of the Fathers were as they._
This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided into
seven gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to
be inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions. The
Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of evil, as soon as the
human Forms had become real men. Some ancient philosophers, however, in
their genetical accounts, ignored the seven and gave only four. Thus the
Mexican local _Genesis_ has “four _good_ men,” described as the four real
ancestors of the human race, “who were neither begotten by the Gods nor
born of woman”; but whose creation was a wonder wrought by the Creative
Powers, and who were made only after “_three attempts at manufacturing men
had failed_.” The Egyptians in their theology had only “four Sons of
God”—whereas in _Pymander_ _seven_ are given—thus avoiding any mention of
the evil nature of man. When, however, Set from a God sank into Set‐
Typhon, he began to be called the “seventh son”; whence probably arose the
belief that “the seventh son of the seventh son” is always a natural‐born
magician—though at first only a _sorcerer_ was meant. Apap, the serpent
symbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set’s serpent;(484) therefore Set‐
Typhon could not be that evil. In the _Book of the Dead_, it is commanded
that Chapter clxiii should be read “in the presence of a serpent on two
legs,” which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram’s
horns(485) that adorn his “serpent’s” head in the hieroglyphics of the
title of the said chapter, denote this. Over the “serpent” are represented
the two mystic eyes of Ammon,(486) the hidden “Mystery God.” The above
passages corroborate our assertion, and show what the word “serpent”
really meant in antiquity.
But as to the Nagals and Nargals; whence came the similarity or names
between the Indian Nâgas and the American Nagals?
The Nargal was the Chaldæan and Assyrian chief of the Magi [Rab‐
Mag], and the Nagal was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians.
Both derive their names from Nergal‐Serezer, the Assyrian god, and
the Hindû Nâgas. Both have the same faculties and the power to
have an attendant Dæmon, with whom they identify themselves
completely. The Chaldæan and Assyrian Nargal kept his Dæmon, in
the shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the
Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can—in the neighbouring lake,
or wood, or in the house, in the shape of some household
animal.(487)
Such similarity cannot be attributed to _coincidence_. A new world is
discovered, and we find that, for our forefathers of the Fourth Race, it
was already an old one; that Arjuna, Krishna’s companion and Chelâ, is
said to have descended into Pâtâla, the “antipodes” and therein married
Ulûpî,(488) a Nâga, or Nâgî rather, the daughter of the king of the Nâgas,
Kauravya.(489)
And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem is proven.
It is neither that of evil, nor, least of all, that of the devil; but is,
indeed, the ΣΕΜΕΣ ΕΙΛΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ, the “Eternal Sun Abrasax,” the Central
Spiritual Sun of all the Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the
circle of Tiphereth.
And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter into
further explanations.
From this region of unfathomable Depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah,
the Veil of the Unknown) issues forth a Circle formed of spirals.
This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of symbolism, means a
grand Cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to
follow the spirals, lies the Serpent—emblem of Wisdom and
Eternity—the Dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the
Divine Mind (a Power which does not create but which must
assimilate), and the Serpent, the Agathodæmon, the Ophis, the
_Shadow_ of the Light (non‐eternal, yet the greatest Divine Light
on our plane). Both were the Logoi of the Ophites; or the Unity as
Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of Good and
Evil.(490)
Were it Light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not
appreciate nor even realize it. Shadow is that which enables Light to
manifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore, Shadow is not
evil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes
Light or Good; it is its _creator_ on Earth.
According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable
Light and Shadow; Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed
through all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as there
are manifested worlds.
This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the
Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either round the sacramental loaf,
or a Tau (the phallic emblem). As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are
the Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Spiritual Life, the
other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find
Ophis urging the first human couple—the material production of
Ilda‐baoth, but owing its spiritual principle to Sophia‐
Achamoth—to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents
divine Wisdom.
The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree
of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The
Arasa‐maram [?], the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindûs—since
Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty
shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences—is called the
Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting
foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils
their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the
mysteries of life and death. The Java‐Aleim of the Sacerdotal
College are said, in the Chaldæan tradition, to have taught the
sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh‐
tchou(491) who lives in his Foh‐Maëyu, or the temple of Buddha, on
the top of the Kouin‐Long‐Sang,(492) the great mountain, produces
his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese
Sung‐Ming‐Shŭ, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for
ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This
marvellous display takes place every three years, when an immense
concourse of Chinese Buddhists assembles in pilgrimage at the holy
place.(493)
Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or
the “Wise Men,” who are claimed to have been initiated into the Mysteries
of Nature by the Universal Mind, represented by the highest Angels, were
named the “Serpents of Wisdom” and “Dragons”; and also how the first
physiologically complete couples—after being initiated into the Mystery of
Human Creation through Ophis, the Manifested Logos and the Androgyne, by
eating of the fruit of knowledge—gradually began to be accused by the
material spirit of posterity of having _committed sin_, of having
disobeyed the “Lord God,” and of having been tempted by the Serpent.
So little have the first Christians—who despoiled the Jews of their
_Bible_—understood the first four chapters of _Genesis_ in their esoteric
meaning, that they have never perceived that not only was no sin intended
in this disobedience, but that the “Serpent” was actually the “Lord God”
himself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative
wisdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn.(494) They never
realized that the Cross was an evolution from the Tree and the Serpent,
and thus became the _salvation of mankind_. By this it would become the
very first fundamental symbol of Creative Cause, applying to geometry, to
numbers, to astronomy, to measure and to animal reproduction. According to
the _Kabalah_, _the curse on man came with the formation of woman_.(495)
The circle was separated from its diameter line.
From the possession of the double principle in one, that is, the
Androgyne condition, the separation of the dual principle was
made, presenting two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever
after, to seek reünion into the original _one_ condition. The
curse was this, viz., that Nature, impelling the search, evaded
the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct from
that reünion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to
recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by
this tantalizing process of a continued curse that Nature
lives.(496)
The allegory of Adam being driven away from the Tree of Life means,
Esoterically, that the newly separated Race abused and dragged down the
mystery of Life into the region of animalism and bestiality. For, as the
_Zohar_ shows, Matronethah—Shekinah, the wife of Metatron symbolically—“is
the way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree,” and Shekinah is
Divine Grace. As explained, this Tree reaches the heavenly vale and is
hidden between three mountains (the upper Triad of Principles, in man).
From these three mountains, the Tree ascends above (the Adept’s knowledge
aspires heavenward), and then redescends below (into the Adept’s Ego on
earth). This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden during the
night, _i.e._, revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to ignorance,
which is night.(497) As says the Commentary:
_The Tree of the Knowledge of the Good and the Evil grows from the roots
of the Tree of Life._
But then also, as the author of _The Source of Measures_ writes:
In the Kabalah it is plainly to be found that the “Tree of Life”
was the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the “Tree of
Knowledge” was the separation and the coming together again to
fulfil the fatal condition. To display this in numbers the values
of the letters composing the word Otz (עץ), tree, are 7 and 9, the
seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of
the phallic or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of
the Egyptian _female‐male_, Isis‐Osiris, the germinal principle in
all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in all
directions and in all senses.
This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it differs from
the more philosophical Eastern or Âryan views upon the subject.(498) The
separation of the sexes was in the programme of Nature and of natural
evolution; and the creative faculty in male and female was a gift of
Divine Wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of Antiquity,
from the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined
plebeian, has believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that
the _relative_ truth of such legends, if not their absolute
exactness—vouched for by such giants of intellect as were Solon,
Pythagoras, Plato, and others—begins to dawn upon more than one modern
Scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before proofs
that are being daily accumulated before him; he feels that there is no way
of solving the many historical problems that stare him in the face, unless
he begins by accepting ancient traditions. Therefore, in saying that we
believe absolutely in ancient records and _universal_ legends, we need
hardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more
learned writers, and that too among those who belong to the modern
Scientific School, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do—in
“dragons,” for instance, and not only symbolically, but also in their
actual existence at one time.
It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty
years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection
of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them
the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated
tales, time‐honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of
the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less
distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Nowadays it is a
less hazardous proceeding.(499)
Thus opens the Introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work
by Mr. Charles Gould, called _Mythical Monsters_. He boldly states his
belief in most of these monsters. He submits that:
Many of the so‐called mythical animals, which throughout long ages
and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and
fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter‐of‐fact
Natural History, and that they may be considered, not as the
outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once
existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and
inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very
much refracted, through the mists of time; ... traditions of
creatures _once coëxisting with man, some of which are so weird
and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible_....
For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but
objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a
creature evolved out of the imagination of Âryan man by the
contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he
tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once
lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew....
To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible,
and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its
origin to a lunar myth.(500)...
For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from “the
contemplation of the visible workings of external nature.” It
seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled
the utterance of these oft‐told tales until their original
appearance is almost unrecognizable, than that _uncultured savages
should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far
beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present
day_; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods
and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
descriptions are _transformations_ than to believe them to be
_inventions_.(501)
It is shown by the same Geologist that:
Palæontologists have successively traced back the existence of man
to periods variously estimated at from _thirty thousand to one
million_ years—to periods when he coëxisted with animals which
have long since become extinct.(502)
These animals, “weird and terrible,” were, to give a few instances: (1)
The genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebræ show them to have
attained a length of nearly two hundred feet. The remains of such
monsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the
Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus
Montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length. (3) The Dinosaurians, in
the Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains, of still more gigantic
proportions. (4) The Atlantosaurus Immanis, a femur of which alone is over
six feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in
length. But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the
discovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh‐
bone over twelve feet in length!(503) Then we read of the monstrous
Sivatherium in the Himâlayas, the four‐horned stag, as large as an
elephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium;
of colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with crocodile jaws on a duck’s
head, etc. _All these were coëxistent with man, most probably attacked
man, as man attacked them._ And we are asked to believe that the said man
was no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that,
surrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a
colossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is
it with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a
gigantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one
great man of Science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why
man should not have been “contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and
go back _as far as the Secondary Period_.”(504)
The very conservative Professor Jukes writes:
It appears that the flying dragons of romance had something like a
real existence in former ages of the world.(505)
And the author goes on to ask.
Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we
in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and China,
shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition,
and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from
others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been
submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed
them with all their civilization?(506)
The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants—themselves smaller than
their ancestors the Mastodons—and hippopotami, are the only surviving
relics, and tend to disappear more entirely every day. But even they have
already had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in
size in the same proportion as men have done. For the remains of a pigmy
elephant, E. Falconeri, were found in the cave deposits of Malta; and the
same author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy
hippopotami, the former being only two feet six inches high. There is also
the still existing Hippopotamus (Chœropsis) Liberiensis, “which M. Milne‐
Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height.”(507)
Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy‐
tales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese
philosopher Chuang, who said that:
The things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically
speaking, to the things that are unknown.(508)
Thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.
The “Sons Of God” And The “Sacred Island.”
The “legend” given in _Isis Unveiled_(509) in relation to a portion of the
globe which Science now concedes to have been the cradle of
humanity—though it was but one of the _seven_ cradles, in truth—runs as
follows:
Tradition says, and the records of the _Great Book_ (the _Book of
Dzyan_) explain, that long before the days of Ad‐am, and his
inquisitive wife, He‐va, where now are found but salt lakes and
desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which
extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud Himâlayan range, and
its western prolongation. In it an island, which, for its
unparalleled beauty, had no rival in the world, was inhabited by
the last remnant of the Race which preceded ours.
“The last remnant” means the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” who, with a few
tribes, survived the great cataclysm. For it was the Third Race,
inhabiting the great Lemurian Continent, which preceded the veritable and
complete human Races—the Fourth and the Fifth. Therefore was it said in
_Isis Unveiled_ that:
This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for
it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the
“Sons of God”; not those who saw the daughters of men, but the
real Elohim, though in the oriental _Kabalah_ they have another
name. It was they who imparted Nature’s most weird secrets to men,
and revealed to them the ineffable, and now _lost_ “word.”
The “Island,” according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis
surrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert—whose
sands “no foot hath crossed in the memory of man.”
This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe,
and still lingers as a far‐off dying echo in the hearts of some
privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges
were aware of the existence of this island; but the “word” was
known only to the Java Aleim (Mahâ Chohan in another tongue), or
chief Lord of every College, and was passed to his successor only
at the moment of death. There were many such Colleges, and the old
classical authors speak of them.
There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but
subterranean passages, known only to the chiefs, communicated with
it in all directions.(510)
Tradition asserts, and Archæology accepts the truth of the legend, that
there is more than one city now flourishing in India, which is built on
several other cities, making thus a subterranean city of six or seven
stories high. Delhi is one of them, Allahabad another; examples being
found even in Europe, _e.g._, in Florence, which is built on several
defunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could not Ellora, Elephanta,
Karli, and Ajunta have been built over subterranean labyrinths and
passages, as it is claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which
are known to every European, whether _de visu_ or by hearsay,
notwithstanding their enormous antiquity, though that even is disputed by
modern Archæology; but to a fact, known to the initiated Brâhmans of India
and especially to Yogîs, viz., that there is not a cave‐temple in the
country but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and
that these underground caves and endless corridors have in their turn
_their_ caves and corridors.
Who can tell whether the lost Atlantis—which is also mentioned in
the _Secret Book_, but, again, under another name, peculiar to the
sacred language—did not still exist in those days?—
we went on to ask. It _did_ exist most assuredly, for it was approaching
its greatest days of glory and civilization when the last of the Lemurian
continents went down.
The great lost Continent might have, perhaps, been situated south
of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania.(511) If the
hypothesis—now so much doubted, and positively denied by some
learned authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato—is ever
verified, then, perhaps, will the Scientists believe that the
description of the God‐inhabited continent was not altogether a
fable.(512) And they may then perceive that Plato’s guarded hints
and his attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian
priests, were but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the
world, and at the same time, by cleverly combining truth and
fiction, of disconnecting himself from a story which the
obligations imposed at Initiation forbade him to divulge.
To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of
hierophants was divided into two distinct categories;(513) those
who were instructed by the “Sons of God” of the island, and who
were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation; and
others who inhabited the lost Atlantis—if such must be its
name—and who, being of another race (produced _sexually_ but of
_divine_ parents), were born with a sight which embraced all
hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material
obstacle. In short, they were the Fourth Race of men mentioned in
the _Popol Vuh_, whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all
things at once.
In other words, they were the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, the first who had a
Dynasty of Spirit‐Kings; not of Manes, or “Ghosts,” as some believe,(514)
but of actual living Devas, or Demi‐gods or Angels, again, who had assumed
bodies to rule over this Race, and who, in their turn, instructed them in
arts and sciences. Only, as these Dhyânîs were Rûpa or material Spirits,
they were not always good. Their King Thevetat was one of the latter, and
it is under the evil influence of this King‐Demon that the Atlantis‐Race
became a nation of wicked “magicians.”
In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would
be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the
disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of
Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the
submersion of Atlantis, which finds its imitation in the stories
of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood. The giants and magicians “and
all flesh died ... and every man.” All except Xisuthrus and Noah,
who are substantially identical with the great Father of the
Thlinkithians,(515) who, they say, also escaped in a large boat
like the Hindû Noah Vaivasvata.
If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further
story that, from the intermarrying of the progeny of the
hierophants of the island and the descendants of the Atlantean
Noah, a mixed race of righteous and wicked sprang up. On the one
side the world had its Enochs, Moseses, various Buddhas, its
numerous “Saviours,” and great hierophants; on the other hand, its
“_natural_ magicians” who, through lack of the restraining power
of proper spiritual enlightenment, ... perverted their gifts to
evil purposes.
We may supplement this by the testimony of some records and traditions. In
_L’Histoire des Vierges: les Peuples et les Continents Disparus_, Louis
Jacolliot says:
One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples
by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred
thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean an immense
continent, which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the
fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.
The high plateaux of Hindûstan and Asia, according to this
hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant
epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent....
According to the Brâhmans, this country had attained a high
civilization, and the peninsula of Hindûstan, enlarged by the
displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm,
has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in
this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples
which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their
speech _was derived the Sanskrit_. The Indo‐Hellenic tradition,
preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from
the plains of India, also relates the existence of a continent and
a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides,
and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of
the Tropics.
Apart from this fact, the supposition of an ancient continent in
those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the
volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the
Canaries and Cape de Verd Islands, is not devoid of geographical
probability. The Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond
the Pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the
mysterious Ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories
preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian
legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the
sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan
Archipelago to Polynesia, from the Straits of Sunda to Easter
Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents
preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most
important of all.
A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to
say, to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms
“that all these islands once formed two immense countries,
inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the
gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify
them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and, since then,
it has been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone,
the mountain‐peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the
power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had
committed.”
Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have
been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of
Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is
certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly
important to Science to recover its traces, however feeble and
fugitive they may be.(516)
This Oceanic tradition corroborates the legend given from the “Records of
the Secret Doctrine.” The war mentioned between the yellow and the black
men, relates to a struggle between the “Sons of Gods” and the “Sons of
Giants,” or the inhabitants and magicians of Atlantis.
The final conclusion of the author, who personally visited all the islands
of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language,
and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:
As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of
the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such
proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.
The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New
Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen
to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate
islands, Viti (Fiji), Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna (? Foutouha), Ouvea
(? Oueeha), the Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumoutou (? Pomatou), the
Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from
seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.
All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central
groups could never have communicated in view of their actual
geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at
hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a
pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without
provisions.
On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of
Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti,
etc., _had never known each other, had never heard of each other_,
before the arrival of the Europeans. _And yet each of these people
maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an
immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the
side of Asia._ And all, brought together, were found to speak the
same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same
religious belief. And all to the question, “Where is the cradle of
your race?” for sole response, _extended their hand toward the
setting sun_.(517)
Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the
Secret Records; but it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is
all one cares for. For, as there is no smoke without fire, so a tradition
must be based on some approximate truth.
In its proper place we will show Modern Science fully corroborating the
above and other traditions of the Secret Doctrine with regard to the two
lost Continents. The Easter Island relics, for instance, are the most
astounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants. They are as
grand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of the
colossal statues, that have remained unbroken, to recognize at a glance
the features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race
giants. They seem of one cast though different in features—of a distinctly
sensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and “Atalantians”) are
said to have had in the Esoteric Hindû books. Compare these with the faces
of some other colossal statues in Central Asia—those near Bamian, for
instance—the portrait‐statues, tradition tells us, of Buddhas belonging to
_previous_ Manvantaras; of those Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in
the Buddhist and Hindû works, as men of fabulous size,(518) the good and
holy brothers of their wicked coüterine brothers generally, just as
Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, was the brother of Kumbhakarna; all
descendants of the Gods through the Rishis, and thus, like “Titan and his
enormous brood,” all “Heaven’s first‐born.” These “Buddhas,” though often
spoilt by the symbolical representation of great pendent ears, show a
suggestive difference, perceived at a glance, in the expression of their
faces from that of the Easter Island statues. They may be of one race—but
the former are “Sons of Gods”; the latter the brood of mighty sorcerers.
All these are reïncarnations however, and, apart from unavoidable
exaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are _historical
characters_.(519) When did they live? How long ago lived the two Races,
the Third and Fourth; and how long after did the various tribes of the
Fifth begin their strife, the wars between Good and Evil? We are assured
by the Orientalists that chronology is both hopelessly mixed and absurdly
exaggerated in the _Purânas_ and other Hindû Scriptures. We feel quite
prepared to agree with the accusation. But, if Âryan writers have
occasionally allowed their chronological pendulum to swing too far one
way, beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the distance
of that deviation is compared with the distance of the Orientalists’
deviation in the opposite direction, moderation will be found on the
Brâhmanical side. It is the Pandit who will, in the long run, be found
more truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. The Sanskritist’s
curtailing—even when proved to have been resorted to in order to fit a
personal hobby—is regarded by Western public opinion as “a _cautious_
acceptance of facts,” whereas the Pandit is brutally treated in print as a
“_liar_.” But, surely, this is no reason why everyone should be compelled
to see this in the same light! An impartial observer may judge it
otherwise. He may either proclaim both unscrupulous historians, or justify
both, each on his respective ground, and say: Hindû Âryans wrote for their
Initiates, who read truth between the lines; not for the masses. If they
did mix up events and confuse Ages _intentionally_, it was not with the
view of deceiving any one, but in order to preserve their knowledge from
the prying eye of the foreigner. But, to him who can count the
_generations_ from the Manus, and the _series of incarnations_ specified
in the cases of some heroes,(520) in the _Purânas_, the meaning and
chronological order are very clear. As for the Western Orientalist, he
must be excused, on account of his undeniable ignorance of the methods
used by archaic Esotericism.
But such existing prejudices will have to give way and disappear very soon
before the light of new discoveries. Already Dr. Weber’s and Prof. Max
Müller’s favourite theories—namely, that writing was not known in India,
even in the days of Pânini (!); that the Hindûs had all their arts and
sciences—even to the Zodiac and their architecture (Fergusson)—from the
Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock‐and‐bull hypotheses, are
threatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldæa that comes to the
rescue of truth. In his third Hibbert Lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of
Oxford, speaking of newly‐discovered Assyrian and Babylonian cylinders,
refers at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with the Oannes
of Berosus, the half‐man, half‐fish, who taught the Babylonians culture
and the _art of writing_. This Ea, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical
Deluge, an antiquity of hardly 1,500 B.C. had been hitherto allowed, is
now spoken of in the following terms, to summarize from the Professor:
The city of Ea was Eridu, which stood 6,000 years ago on the
shores of the Persian Gulf. The name means “the good city,” a
particularly holy spot, since it was the centre from which the
earliest Chaldæan civilization made its way to the north. As the
culture‐god was represented as coming from the sea, it was
possible that the culture of which Eridu was the seat was of
foreign importation. We now know that there was intercourse at a
very early period between Chaldæa and the Sinaitic peninsula, as
well as with India. The statues discovered by the French at Tel‐
loh (dating from at latest B.C. 4,000) were made of the extremely
hard stone known as diorite, and the inscriptions on them stated
the diorite to have been brought from Magan—_i.e._, the Sinaitic
peninsula, which was then ruled by the Pharaohs. The statues are
known to resemble in general style the diorite statue, Kephren,
the builder of the second Pyramid, while, according to Mr. Petrie,
the unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city, which one
of the Tel‐loh figures holds on his lap, is the same as that
employed by the Pyramid builders. Teak wood has been found at
Mugheir, or Ur of the Chaldees, although that wood is an Indian
special product; add to this that an ancient Babylonian list of
clothing mentions _sindhu_ or “muslin,” explained as “vegetable
cloth.”(521)
Muslin, best known now as Dacca muslin, known in Chaldæa as Hindu
(Sindhu), and teak wood used 4,000 years B.C., and yet the Hindûs, to whom
Chaldæa owes its civilization, as has been well proven by Colonel Vans
Kennedy, were _ignorant of the art of writing_ before the Greeks taught
them their alphabet—if, at least, we have to believe Orientalists!
Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.
38. The birth of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race. 39. The sub‐races of
the Fourth Humanity begin to divide and interblend; they form the
first mixed races of various colours. 40. The superiority of the
Atlantean over other Races. 41. They fall into sin and beget
children and monsters. 42. The first germs of anthropomorphism and
sexual religion. They lose their “third eye.”
38. THUS, TWO BY TWO, ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD RACE GAVE BIRTH TO THE
FOURTH; THE SURA BECAME A‐SURA.(522)
39. THE FIRST,(523) ON EVERY ZONE, WAS MOON‐COLOURED;(524) THE SECOND
YELLOW LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD RED; THE FOURTH BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH
SIN.(525) THE FIRST SEVEN HUMAN SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION.(526)
THE NEXT SEVEN,(527) BEGAN MIXING.(528)
To understand Shloka 38, it must be read together with the Shlokas of
Stanza IX. Up to this point of evolution man belongs more to metaphysical
than physical Nature. It is only after the so‐called “Fall,” that the
Races began to develop rapidly into a purely human shape. In order that
the student may correctly comprehend the full meaning of the Fall—so
mystic and transcendental in its real significance—he must at once be told
the details which preceded it, seeing that modern Theology has made of the
event a pivot on which its most pernicious and absurd dogmas and beliefs
are made to turn.
The Archaic Commentaries, as the reader may remember, explain that, of the
Host of Dhyânîs, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the
immortal, but, _on this plane_, senseless Monads—some “obeyed” (the Law of
Evolution) immediately the men of the Third Race became physiologically
and physically ready, _i.e._, when they had separated into sexes. These
were those early conscious Beings who, now adding conscious knowledge and
will to their inherent divine purity, “created” by Kriyâshakti the semi‐
divine man, who became the Seed on Earth for future Adepts. Those, on the
other hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom—unfettered as it
then was by the bonds of Matter—said: “We can choose, ... we have
wisdom,”(529) and so incarnated far later—these had their first Karmic
punishment prepared for them. They got bodies inferior (physiologically)
to their Astral Models, because their Chhâyâs had belonged to Progenitors
of an inferior degree in the seven Classes. As to those “Sons of Wisdom”
who “deferred” their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already
tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, these produced a terrible
cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was
produced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that seed of
iniquity for æons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had
become defiled through their own procrastination.(530)
This was the “Fall of the Angels,” owing to their rebellion against Karmic
Law. The “fall of _man_” was no fall, _for he was irresponsible_. But
“creation” having been invented on the dualistic system as the
“prerogative of God alone”—the legitimate _attribute_ patented by Theology
in the name of an _infinite_ Deity of their own making—the power of
Kriyâshakti had to be regarded as “Satanic,” and as a usurpation of divine
rights. Thus, in the light of such narrow views, the foregoing must
naturally be considered as a terrible slander on man, “created in the
image of God,” and a still more dreadful blasphemy in the face of the
dead‐letter dogma. “Your doctrine,” the Occultists have already been told,
“makes of man, created out of dust in the likeness of his God, a vehicle
of the Devil, from the first.” “Why do you make of your God a Devil—both,
moreover, created in _your own_ image?”—is our reply. The Esoteric
interpretation of the _Bible_, however, sufficiently refutes this
slanderous invention of Theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become
the just Karma of the Churches—more anti‐Christian than the representative
assemblies of the most confirmed Materialists and Atheists.
The true meaning of the old doctrine of the “Fallen Angels,” in its
anthropological and evolutionary sense, is contained in the _Kabalah_, and
explains the _Bible_. It is found preëminently in _Genesis_ when the
latter is read in a spirit of research for truth, with no eye to dogma,
and in no mood of preconception. This is easily proven. In _Genesis_ (vi),
the “Sons of God”—B’ne Aleim—become enamoured of the daughters of men,
marry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learnt by them
in Heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the “Fall of the Angels.”(531)
But what, in reality, is the _Book of Enoch_ itself, from which the author
of _Revelation_ and even the St. John of the Fourth Gospel(532) have so
profusely quoted? Simply a _Book of Initiation_, giving out in allegory
and cautious phraseology the programme of certain Archaic Mysteries
performed in the _inner_ Temples. The author of the _Sacred Mysteries
among the Mayas and Quichés_ very justly suggests that the so‐called
“Visions” of Enoch relate to his (Enoch’s) experience at Initiation, and
what he learned in the Mysteries; while he very erroneously states his
opinion that Enoch had learned them before being converted to Christianity
(! !); furthermore, he believes that this book was written “at the
beginning of the Christian era, when ... the customs and religion of the
Egyptians fell into decadency”! This is hardly possible, since Jude, in
his Epistle,(533) quotes from the _Book of Enoch_; and, therefore, as
Archbishop Laurence, the translator of the _Book of Enoch_ from the
Ethiopic version, remarks, it “could not have been the production of a
writer who lived after ... or was even coëval with” the writers of the
_New Testament_, unless, indeed, Jude and the Gospels, and all that
follows, were also a production of the already established Church—which,
some critics say, is not impossible. But we are now concerned with the
“Fallen Angels” of Enoch, rather than with Enoch himself.
In Indian exotericism, these Angels (Asuras) are also denounced as the
“enemies of the Gods”; those who oppose sacrificial worship offered to the
Devas. In Christian Theology they are broadly referred to as the “Fallen
Spirits,” the heroes of various conflicting and contradictory legends,
gathered from Pagan sources. The _coluber tortuosus_, the “tortuous
snake”—a qualification said to have originated with the Jews—had quite
another meaning before the Roman Church distorted it; among others, _a
purely astronomical_ signification.
The “Serpent” fallen from on high (_deorsum fluens_) was credited with the
possession of the Keys of the Empire of the Dead (τοῦ θανάτου ἀρχή) to the
day when Jesus saw it fall “as lightning ... from heaven,”(534)
notwithstanding the Roman Catholic interpretation of “_cadebat ut
fulgur_.” It means indeed that even “the devils are subject” to the
Logos—who is Wisdom, but at the same time, as the opponent of ignorance,
Satan or Lucifer. This remark refers to divine Wisdom falling like
lightning on, and so quickening, the intellects of those who fight the
devils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the
shape of the incarnating Spirits of Mahat, descended from on high to
animate and call the Third Race to real conscious life—Humanity, if it can
be so called in its animal, senseless state, was of course doomed to
_moral_ as well as to physical death. The Angels _fallen into generation_
are referred to metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the
other hand, regarded in the light of the Logos, the Christian Saviour,
like Krishna, whether as man or Logos, may be said to have saved those who
believed in the Secret Teachings, from “eternal death,” and to have
conquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does. This
is the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also—because the
Logos is Christos—that “principle” of our inner nature which develops in
us into the Spiritual Ego—the Higher Self—formed of the indissoluble union
of Buddhi, the sixth, and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the fifth
“principle.”(535) “The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and conscious,
self‐active Wisdom on Earth,” we are taught. It is the Marriage of the
“Heavenly Man” with the “Virgin of the World,” or Nature, as described in
_Pymander_; the result of which is their progeny—immortal man. It is this
which is called in St. John’s _Revelation_(536) the marriage of the Lamb
with his Bride. This “wife” is now identified with the Church of Rome
owing to the arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to
forget that her “linen” may be “clean and white” _outwardly_, like the
“whited sepulchre,” but that the rottenness she is inwardly filled with,
is not the “righteousness of saints,”(537) but rather the blood of the
saints she has “slain upon the earth.”(538) Thus the remark made by the
great Initiate, in _Luke_—referring allegorically to the ray of
enlightenment and reason, _falling like lightning_ from on high into the
hearts and minds of the converts to the old Wisdom‐Religion, then
presented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adept(539)—was distorted out
of all recognition, as was also his own personality, and made to fit in
with one of the most cruel and the most pernicious of all theological
dogmas.
But if Western Theology alone holds the patent and copyright of Satan—in
all the dogmatic horror of that fiction—other nationalities and religions
have committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of a tenet, which
is one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of
ancient thought. They have both disfigured, and hinted at, the correct
meaning of it in their numerous allegories on the subject. Nor have the
semi‐esoteric dogmas of Paurânic Hindûism failed to evolve very suggestive
symbols and allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen Gods. The
_Purânas_ teem with them; and we find a direct hint at the truth in the
frequent allusions of Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, to all those
Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumâras and Munis, who have _to be born in every
age_—to reïncarnate in every Manvantara. This, Esoterically, is equivalent
to saying that the “Flames” born of the Universal Mind, or Mahat, owing to
the mysterious workings of Karmic Will and the impulse of Evolutionary
Law, had—without any gradual transition—landed on this Earth, after
having, as in _Pymander_, broken through the “Seven Circles of Fire,” or,
in short, the seven intermediate Worlds.
There is an Eternal Cyclic Law of Re‐births, and the series is headed at
every new Manvantaric Dawn by those who have enjoyed their rest from
reïncarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable Æons—by the highest and
the earliest Nirvânîs. It was the turn of these “Gods” to incarnate in the
present Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, and the ensuing
allegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.(540) The
Gods who had “_fallen_ into generation,” whose mission it was to complete
_Divine_ Man, are found represented later on as Demons, Evil Spirits, and
Fiends, at feud and war with Gods, or the irresponsible agents of the one
Eternal Law. But no conception of such creatures as the Devils and the
Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahommedan religions was ever intended
by these thousand and one Âryan allegories.(541)
The true Esoteric view about “Satan,” the opinion held on this subject by
the whole of philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an
Appendix, entitled “The Secret of Satan,” to the second edition of Dr. A.
Kingsford’s _Perfect Way_.(542) No better and clearer indication of the
truth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore
quoted here at some length:
1. And on the seventh day [seventh creation of the Hindûs],(543)
there went forth from the presence of God a _mighty Angel_, full
of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the dominion of the
outermost sphere.(544)
2. Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit;
Being descended into generation.(545)
4. _Among the Gods is none like unto him_, into whose hands are
committed the kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:
5. Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,(546) the fall of
nations, the birth of churches, the triumphs of Time.
For, as is said in Hermes:
20. Satan is the door‐keeper of the _Temple of the King_; he
standeth in Solomon’s porch; he holdeth _the Keys of the
Sanctuary_;
21. That no man may enter therein save the anointed, having the
arcanum of Hermes.
These suggestive and majestic verses had reference, with the ancient
Egyptians and other civilized peoples of antiquity, to the _creative and
__ generative Light of the Logos_—Horus, Brahmâ, Ahura Mazda, etc., as
primeval manifestations of the Ever‐unmanifested Principle, whether called
Ain Suph, Parabrahman, or Zeruâna Akerne, or Boundless Time, Kâla—but the
meaning is now degraded in the _Kabalah_. The “Anointed”—who has the
secrets and mysteries of Hermes, or Budha, Wisdom, and who alone is
entrusted with the “Keys of the Sanctuary,” the Womb of Nature, in order
to fructify it and call to active life and being the whole Kosmos—has
become, with the Jews, Jehovah, the “God of Generation” on the Lunar
Mountain—Sinai, the Mountain of the Moon (Sin). The “Sanctuary” has become
the “Holy of Holies,” and the arcanum has been anthropomorphized, and
“phallicized,” and dragged down into Matter, indeed. Hence arose the
necessity of making of the “Dragon of Wisdom,” the “Serpent” of _Genesis_;
of the conscious God who needed a body to clothe his too subjective
divinity, Satan. But the “innumerable incarnations of Spirit,” and “the
ceaseless pulse and current of Desire,”(547) refer, the first, to our
doctrine of Karmic and Cyclic Rebirths, the second—to Erôs, not the later
God of material, physiological love, but to the Divine Desire in the Gods,
as well as in all Nature, to create and give life to Beings. This, the
Rays of the one “Dark,” because invisible and incomprehensible, “Flame”
could achieve only by themselves descending into Matter. Therefore, as
continued in the Appendix:
12. Many names hath God given him [Satan], names of mystery,
secret and terrible.
13. ... The Adversary, because Matter opposeth Spirit, and Time
accuseth even the saints of the Lord.
28. Stand in awe of him, and sin not: speak his name with
trembling....
29. For Satan is the magistrate of the Justice of God [Karma]; he
beareth the balance and the sword.
31. For to him are committed _Weight and Measure and Number_.
Compare the last sentence with what the Rabbi, who explains the Kabalah to
the Prince in the Book of _Al Chazari_, says, and it will be found that
Weight and Measure and Number are, in the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the
attributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or figures, ciphers),
covering the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are the
collective Adam Kadmon, the “Heavenly Man” or the Logos. Thus Satan and
the Anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore:
33. Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of
Hades, the Angel of the manifest Worlds.
The seven Lokas, or Saptaloka, of the Earth with the Hindûs; for Hades, or
the Limbo of Illusion, of which Theology makes a region bordering on Hell,
_is simply our Globe_, the Earth, and thus Satan is called the “Angel of
the _manifest_ Worlds.”
It is “Satan who is the God of our planet and _the only_ God,” and this
without any metaphorical allusion to its wickedness and depravity. For he
is one with the Logos.
The first and “eldest of the gods,” in the order of microcosmic
[divine] evolution, Saturn (Satan) [astronomically] is the
_seventh and last_ in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being
the circumference of the Kingdom of which Phœbus [the Light of
Wisdom, also the Sun] is the centre.
The Gnostics were right, then, in calling the Jewish God an “Angel of
Matter,” or he who breathed (conscious) life into Adam, and whose Planet
was Saturn.
34. And God hath put a girdle about his loins [the rings of
Saturn], and the name of the girdle is Death.
In Anthropogony this “girdle” is the human body with its two lower
principles. These three die, while the innermost Man is immortal. And now
we approach the _secret_ of Satan.
37. ... Upon Satan only _is the shame of generation_.
38. He hath lost his virginal estate [so hath the Kumâra, by
incarnating]: _uncovering heavenly secrets_, he hath entered into
bondage.
39. He encompasseth with bonds and limits all things....
42. Twain are the armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael;
in the abyss [the manifested world] the legions of Satan.
43. These are the Unmanifest and the Manifest; the free and the
bound [in Matter]; the virginal and the fallen.
44. And both are the ministers of the Father, fulfilling the Word
divine.
Therefore:
55. Holy and venerable is the Sabbath of God: _blessed and
sanctified is the name of the Angel of Hades_ [Satan].
For:
41. The glory of Satan is the shadow of the Lord [God in the
manifested World]: the throne of Satan is the footstool of Adonai
[the whole Kosmos].
When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the Kosmic reflection
of God; it anathematizes God made manifest in Matter or in the objective;
it maledicts God, or the ever‐incomprehensible Wisdom, revealing itself as
Light and Shadow, Good and Evil in Nature, in the only manner
comprehensible to the limited intellect of Man.
This is the true philosophical and metaphysical interpretation of Samael,
or Satan, the Adversary in the _Kabalah_; the same tenets and spirit being
found in the allegorical interpretations of every other ancient religion.
This philosophical view does not interfere, however, with the historical
records connected with it. We say “historical,” because allegory and
mythical ornamentation round the kernel of tradition, in nowise prevent
that kernel being a record of real events. Thus, the _Kabalah_, repeating
the time‐honoured revelations of the once universal history of our Globe
and the evolution of its Races, has presented it under the legendary form
of the various records which have formed the _Bible_. Its historical
foundation, in however imperfect a form, is now offered in these pages
from the Secret Doctrine of the East; and thus the allegorical and
symbolical meaning of the Serpent of _Genesis_ is found explained by the
“Sons of Wisdom”—or Angels from higher Spheres, though all and each
pertain to the Kingdom of Satan, or Matter—revealing to men the mysteries
of Heaven. Hence, also, all the so‐called myths of the Hindû, Grecian,
Chaldæan, and Jewish Pantheons are found to be built on fact and truth.
The Giants of _Genesis_ are the historical Atlanteans of Lankâ, and the
Greek Titans.
Who can forget that Troy was once upon a time proclaimed a myth, and Homer
a non‐existent personage, while the existence of such cities as
Herculaneum and Pompeii was denied, and attributed to mere fairy legends?
Yet Schliemann has proved that Troy did really exist, and the two latter
cities, though buried for long ages under the Vesuvian lava, have had
their resurrection day, and live again on the surface of the Earth. How
many more cities and localities called “fabulous” are on the list of
future discoveries, how many more personages regarded as mythical(548)
will one day become historical, those alone can tell who read the decrees
of Fate in the Astral Light.
As the tenets of the Eastern Doctrine, however, have always been kept
secret, and as the reader can hardly hope to be shown the original texts
unless he becomes an accepted disciple, let the Greek and Latin scholar
turn to the original texts of Hermetic literature. Let him, for instance,
read carefully the opening pages of the _Pymander_ of Hermes Trismegistus,
and he will see our doctrines corroborated therein, however veiled its
text. There also he will find the evolution of the Universe, of our Earth,
called “Nature” in _Pymander_, as of everything else, from the “Moyst
Principle,” or the great Deep, Father‐Mother—the first differentiation in
the manifested Kosmos. First the “Universal Mind,” which the hand of the
Christian translator has metamorphosed in the earliest renderings into
God, the Father; then the “Heavenly Man,”(549) the great Total of that
Host of Angels, which was too pure for the creation of the inferior Worlds
or of the Men of our Globe, but which nevertheless _fell_ into Matter by
virtue of that same evolution, as the Second Logos of the “Father.”(550)
Synthetically, every Creative Logos, or “the Son who is one with the
Father,” is the Host of the Rectores Mundi in itself. Even Christian
Theology makes of the seven “Angels of the Presence” the Virtues, or the
personified attributes, of God, which, being created by him, as the Manus
were by Brahmâ, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic Theodice itself,
recognizing in its creative Verbum Princeps the Head of these Angels
(_caput angelorum_) and the Angel of the great Counsel (_magni consilii
angelus_), thus recognizes the identity of Christ with them.
“The Sura became A‐Sura”—the Gods became No‐Gods—says the text; _i.e._,
Gods became Fiends—Satan, when read literally. But Satan will now be
shown, in the teaching of the Secret Doctrine, to be allegorized as Good
and Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names.
The _Kabalah_ teaches that Pride and Presumption—the two chief prompters
of Selfishness and Egotism—are the causes that emptied Heaven of _one‐
third_ of its divine denizens, mystically, and of _one‐third_ of the
stars, astronomically; in other words, the first statement is an allegory,
and the second a fact. The former, nevertheless, is, as shown, intimately
connected with humanity.
In their turn the Rosicrucians, who were well acquainted with the secret
meaning of the tradition, kept it to themselves, teaching merely that the
whole of “creation” was due to, and the result of, that legendary “War in
Heaven,” brought on by the rebellion of the Angels(551) against Creative
Law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct, but the _inner_ meaning is
to this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of the difficulty, by
appealing to divine mystery, or to the sin of prying into its policy—is to
say nothing at all. It may prove sufficient for believers in the Pope’s
infallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the
truth, although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told
by any of their number. One and all, Kabalists and Symbologists, have
shown an extraordinary reluctance to confess the primitive meaning of the
Fall of the Angels. In a Christian such silence is only natural. Neither
Alchemist nor Philosopher during the Mediæval Ages could have uttered
that(552) which in the sight of Orthodox Theology was terrible blasphemy,
for it would have led them directly through the “Holy” Office of the
Inquisition, to rack and stake. But for our modern Kabalists and
Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it is merely
human pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected but ineradicable
superstition. Since the Church, in her struggle with Manicheeïsm, invented
the Devil, and by placing a theological extinguisher on the radiant Star‐
God Lucifer, the “Son of the Morning,” thus created the most gigantic of
all her paradoxes, _a black and tenebrous_ Light—the myth has struck its
roots too deeply into the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age, even
those, who do not acquiesce in her dogmas, and laugh at her horned and
cloven‐footed Satan, to come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the
oldest of all traditions. In a few brief words it is this. Semi‐
exoterically, the “First‐born” of the Almighty—Fiat Lux—or the Angels of
Primordial Light, were commanded to “create”; one‐third of them rebelled
and “refused”; while those who “obeyed” as Fetahil did—_failed_ most
signally.
To realize the refusal and failure in their correct physical meaning, one
must study and understand Eastern Philosophy; one has to be acquainted
with the fundamental mystical tenets of the Vedântins, as to the utter
fallacy of attributing functional activity to the Infinite and Absolute
Deity. Esoteric Philosophy maintains that during the Sandhyâs, the
“Central Sun” emits _Creative Light_—passively, so to say. Causality is
latent. It is only during the active periods of Being that it gives rise
to a stream of ceaseless Energy, whose vibrating currents acquire more
activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being
which they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process of
“creating,” or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its
units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent Beings—who became
collectively a Being or Creative God, differentiated already from the One
Absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned “creation.”(553)
Now the Vatican MS. of the _Kabalah_—the only copy of which (in Europe) is
said to have been in the possession of Count St. Germain—contains the most
complete exposition of the doctrine, including the peculiar version
accepted by the Luciferians(554) and other Gnostics; and in that parchment
the “Seven Suns of Life” are given in the order in which they are found in
the Saptasûrya. Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the editions
of the _Kabalah_ which are procurable in public libraries, and that even
in a more or less veiled phraseology. Nevertheless even this reduced
number is amply sufficient to show an identical origin, as it refers to
the quaternary group of the Dhyân Chohans, and proves the speculation to
have had its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Âryans. As is well
known, the _Kabalah_ did not originate with the Jews, for the latter got
their ideas from the Chaldæans and the Egyptians.
Thus even the _exoteric_ Kabalistic teachings speak of a “Central Sun,”
and of three secondary Suns in each Solar System—our own included. As
shown in that able though too materialistic work, _New Aspects of Life and
Religion_, which is a synopsis of the views of the Kabalists in an aspect
deeply thought out and assimilated:
The central sun ... was to them [as much as to the Âryans] the
_centre of rest_; the centre to which all motion was to be
ultimately referred. Round this central sun ... “the first of
three systemic suns ... revolved on a polar plane ... the second,
on an equatorial plane” ... and the third only was our visible
sun. These four solar bodies were “_the organs on whose action
what man calls the creation, the evolution of life on the planet
earth, depends_.” The channels through which the influence of
these bodies was conveyed to the earth they [the Kabalists] held
to be electrical.... The radiant energy flowing from the central
sun(555) called the earth into being as a watery globe, ... [whose
tendency], as the nucleus of a planetary body, was to rush to the
(central) sun ... within the sphere of whose attraction it had
been created.... But the radiant energy, similarly electrifying
both, withheld the one from the other, and so changed motion
towards into motion round the centre of attraction, which the
revolving planet [earth] thus sought to reach.
In the organic cell the _visible sun_ found its own proper matrix,
and produced through this the animal [while maturing the
vegetable] kingdom, finally placing man at its head, in whom,
through the animating action of that kingdom, it originated the
psychic cell. But the man so placed at the head of the animal
kingdom, at the head of the creation, was the animal, the _soul‐
less, the perishable man_.... Hence man, although apparently its
crown, would, by his advent have marked the close of creation;
since creation, culminating in him, would at his death have
entered on its decline.(556)
This Kabalistic view is here quoted, to show its perfect identity in
spirit with the Eastern Doctrine. Explain, or complete the teaching of the
Seven Suns with the seven systems of Planes of Being, of which the “Suns”
are the central bodies, and you have the seven Angelic Planes, whose
“Host” collectively are the Gods thereof.(557) They are the Head Group
divided into four Classes, from the Incorporeal down to the Semi‐
corporeal. These Classes are directly connected—though in very different
ways as regards voluntary connection and functions—with our mankind. They
are three, synthesized by the fourth, the first and highest, which is
called the “Central Sun” in the Kabalistic doctrine just quoted. This is
the great difference between the Semitic and the Âryan Cosmogony—one
materializing, humanizes the mysteries of Nature; the other spiritualizes
Matter, and its physiology is always made subservient to metaphysics.
Thus, though the seventh “principle” reaches man through all the phases of
Being, pure as an indiscrete element and an impersonal unity, it passes
through—the _Kabalah_ teaches _from_—the Central Spiritual Sun and Group
the Second, the Polar Sun, which two radiate on man his Âtmâ. Group Three,
the Equatorial Sun, cements the Buddhi to Âtman and the higher attributes
of Manas; while Group Four, the Spirit of our visible Sun, endows him with
his Manas and its vehicle, the Kâma Rûpa, or body of passions and
desires—the two elements of Ahamkâra which evolve _individualized
consciousness_, the personal Ego. Finally, it is the Spirit of the Earth,
in its triple unity, that builds the Physical Body, attracting to it the
Spirits of Life and forming his Linga Sharîra.
But everything proceeds cyclically, the evolution of man like everything
else, and the order in which he is generated is described fully in the
Eastern Teachings, whereas it is only hinted at in the _Kabalah_. Says the
_Book of Dzyan_ with regard to Primeval Man when first projected by the
“Boneless,” the Incorporeal Creator:
_First, the Breath, then Buddhi, and the Shadow‐Son [the Body] were
__“__created.__”__ But where was the Pivot [the Middle Principle, Manas]?
Man is doomed. When alone, the Indiscrete [Undifferentiated Element] and
the Vâhan [Buddhi]—the Cause of the Causeless—break asunder from
manifested life._
“_Unless_,” explains the Commentary:
_Unless cemented and held together by the Middle Principle, the Vehicle of
the personal consciousness of Jîva._
In other words, the two higher “principles” _can have no individuality on
Earth_, cannot be _man_, unless there is (_a_) the Mind, the Manas‐Ego, to
cognize itself, and (_b_) the terrestrial false Personality, or the Body
of egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round
a Pivot—which it is, truly—to the physical form of man. It is the _fifth_
and the _fourth_ “principles”(558)—Manas and Kâma Rûpa—that contain the
dual Personality; the real immortal Ego, if it assimilates itself to the
two higher, and the false and transitory Personality, the Mâyâvi or Astral
Body, so‐called, or the Animal‐human Soul—the two having to be closely
blended for purposes of a _full_ terrestrial existence. Incarnate the
Spiritual Monad of a Newton, grafted on that of the greatest saint on
Earth, in a physical body the most perfect you can think of—_i.e._, in a
two or even a three‐principled Body composed of its Sthûla Sharîra, Prâna
(Life‐principle) and Linga Sharîra—and, if it lacks its middle and fifth
“principles,” you will have created _an idiot_—at best a beautiful, soul‐
less, empty and unconscious appearance. “_Cogito—ergo sum_” can find no
room in the brain of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate.
There are students, however, who have long ago understood the
philosophical meaning underlying the allegory—so tortured and disfigured
by the Roman Church—of the “Fallen Angels.”
The kingdom of spirits and spiritual action, which flows from and
is the product of spirit volition, is outside and contrasted with
and in contradiction to the kingdom of [divine] souls and divine
action.(559)
As said in the text of Commentary xiv:
_Like produces like and no more at the genesis of Being, and evolution
with its limited conditioned laws comes later. The Self Existent_(_560_)_
are called __“__Creations,__”__ for they appear in the Spirit‐Ray,
manifested through the potency inherent in its Unborn Nature, which is
beyond Time and [limited or conditioned] Space. Terrene products, animate
and inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and
creatures; they are the development [evolution] of the Discrete Elements._
Again:
_The Heavenly Rûpa [Dhyân Chohan] creates [man] in his own form; it is a
spiritual ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening
of the universal [manifested] Substance; that form is the ideal Shadow of
Itself: and this is the Man of the First Race._
To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this
Earth only, it was the duty of the first “differentiated” Egos—the Church
calls them Archangels—to imbue Primordial Matter with the evolutionary
impulse and guide its formative powers in the fashioning of its
productions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the
Eastern and Western tradition—“the Angels were _commanded to create_.”
After the Earth had been made ready by the _lower_ and more material
Powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be “fruitful
and multiply,” the higher Powers, the Archangels or Dhyânîs, were
compelled by the Evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to
construct the crown of its evolution—Man. Thus the “Self‐created” and the
“Self‐existent” projected their pale Shadows; but Group the Third, the
Fire‐Angels, _rebelled and refused_ to join their fellow Devas.
Hindû exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them
to refuse to “create,” as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras,
“Virgin Youths,” in order, if possible, to anticipate their fellows in
progress towards Nirvâna‐the final liberation. But, agreeably to Esoteric
interpretation, it was a self‐sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The
“Rebels” would not create will‐less irresponsible men, as the “obedient”
Angels did; nor could they endow human beings with even the temporary
reflections of their own attributes; for the latter, belonging to another
and a so much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still
irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of higher progress. No
spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on Earth—the lowest and most
material plane—for one who, on that plane at all events, is inherently
_perfect_ and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Had Man remained
the pale Shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless Perfection, the
one negative and passive attribute of the real _I am that I am_, he would
have been doomed to pass through life on Earth as in a heavy dreamless
sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being,
collectively called Elohim, who first pronounced (if, indeed, they ever
were pronounced) the cruel words, “Behold, the man is become _as one of
us_, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take
also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ...”—must have been
indeed the Ilda‐baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and
envy against his own creature, the reflection of which created
Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural—even from the dead‐letter
standpoint—to view Satan, the Serpent of _Genesis_, as the real creator
and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual Mankind. For it is he who was the
“Harbinger of Light,” bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the
automaton “created” by Jehovah, as alleged. And he who was the first to
whisper, “in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good
and evil,” can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An “Adversary”
to Jehovah, the “_personating_ spirit,” he still remains in Esoteric Truth
the ever‐loving “Messenger,” the Angel, the Seraphim and Cherubim who both
“knew” well, and “loved” still more, and who conferred on us Spiritual,
instead of Physical Immortality—the latter a kind of _static_ immortality
that would have transformed man into an undying “Wandering Jew.”
As narrated in King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_ concerning Ildabaoth,
whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses:
Ildabaoth was far from being a pure spirit; ambition and pride
dominated in his composition. He therefore resolved to break off
all connection with his mother, Achamoth, and to create a world
entirely for himself. Aided by his own Six Spirits, he created
Man, intending him for the image of his power; but he failed
utterly in his work, his Man proving a vast, soulless monster,
crawling upon the earth. The Six Spirits were obliged to bring
their work again before their father, to be animated: he did so by
communicating the ray of Divine Light which he himself had
inherited from Achamoth, who by this loss punished him for his
pride and self‐sufficiency.
Man, thus favoured by Achamoth at the expense of her own son,
followed the impulse of the Divine Light that she had transferred
to him, collected a further supply out of the creation with which
it was intermingled, and began to present not the image of his
creator Ildabaoth, but rather that of the Supreme Being, the
“Primal Man.” At this spectacle the Demiurgus was filled with rage
and envy at having produced a being so superior to himself. His
looks, inspired by his passions, were reflected in the Abyss, as
in a mirror, the image became instinct with life, and forth arose
“Satan Serpent‐formed,” _Ophiomorphos_, the embodiment of envy and
cunning.(561)
This is the exoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a
sectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the
natural deduction from the dead‐letter text of Chapter iii of _Genesis_.
Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the Divine Fire so as to
allow men to proceed consciously on the path of Spiritual Evolution, thus
transforming the most perfect of _animals_ on Earth into a potential God,
and making him free to “take the kingdom of heaven by violence.” Hence,
also, the _curse_ pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and by Jehovah‐
Ilda‐baoth against his “rebellious son,” Satan. The cold, pure snows of
the Caucasian mountain and the never‐dying, singeing fire and flames of an
inextinguishable Hell, two poles, yet the same idea, the dual aspect of a
refined torture; a “Fire‐producer”—the personified emblem of Φωσφόρος
(_Phósphoros_), of the Astral Fire and Light in the Anima Mundi (that
Element of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: “ohne
_Phosphor_ kein Gedanke,” or “without phosphorus no thought”)—burning in
the fierce Flames of his terrestrial Passions; the conflagration fired by
his Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to
the passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full
consciousness gnawing at its heart—a Prometheus indeed, because a
_conscious_, and hence a _responsible_ entity.(562) The curse of life is
great, yet, with the exception of some Hindû and Sufi mystics, how few are
those who would exchange all the tortures of conscious life, all the evils
of a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of a passive
(objectively) _incorporeal_ Being, or even the universal static Inertia
personified in Brahmâ during his “Night’s” Rest. For, to quote from an
able article by one(563) who, confusing the planes of existence and
consciousness, fell a victim thereto:
Satan [or Lucifer] represents the _Active_, or, as [M. Jules]
Baissac calls it, the “Centrifugal” Energy of the Universe [in a
cosmic sense]. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought,
Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At
the same time he is _Pain_, which is the Reaction of the
_Pleasure_ of Action, and _Death_—which is the Revolution of
_Life_—Satan, burning in his own Hell, produced by the fury of his
own momentum—the expansive disintegration of the Nebula which is
to concentrate into New Worlds. And fitly is he again and again
baffled by the Eternal Inertia of the _Passive_ Energy of the
Kosmos—the inexorable “_I am_”—the Flint from which the sparks are
beaten out. And fitly ... are he and his adherents ... consigned
to the “Sea of Fire”—because _it is_ the Sun [in one sense only in
the cosmic allegory], the Fount of Life in _our_ system, where
they are purified (meaning thereby disintegrated) and churned up
to reärrange them for another life (the Resurrection)—that _Sun_
which, as the Origin of the Active Principle of our Earth, is at
once the _Home_ and the _Source_ of the Mundane Satan....
Furthermore, as if to demonstrate the accuracy of Baissac’s
general theory [in _Le Diable et Satan_] cold is known to have a
“Centripetal” effect. Under the influence of Cold everything
contracts.... Under it Life _hybernates_, or dies out, Thought
congeals, and Fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in his own
Fire‐Sea—it is only in the “Nifl‐Heim” [the cold Hell of the
Scandinavian _Eddas_] of the “_I am_” that he cannot exist. But
for all that there is a kind of _Immortal_ Existence in Nifl‐Heim,
and that Existence must be _Painless_ and _Peaceful_, because it
is _Unconscious_ and _Inactive_. In the Kingdom of _Jehovah_ [if
this God were all that the Jews and Christians claim for him]
there is no misery, no war, no marrying and giving in marriage, no
change, no _Individual Consciousness_.(564) All is absorbed in the
spirit of the Most Powerful. _It is emphatically a Kingdom of
Peace and loyal Submission, as that of the __“__Arch‐Rebel__”__ is
one of War and Revolution...._ It [the former] is in fact what
Theosophy calls Nirvâna. But then Theosophy teaches that
Separation from the Primal Source _having once occurred_, Reünion
can only be achieved by _Will‐Effort_—which is distinctly Satanic
in the sense of this essay.(565)
It _is_ “Satanic” from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is
owing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil—to
the Radiant Archangels, Dhyân Chohans, who refused to create, because they
wanted Man _to become his own creator_ and an immortal God—that men can
reach Nirvâna and the Haven of heavenly Divine Peace.
To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the
Fire‐Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumâras, the “Virgin‐Angels,” (to whom the
Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, both belong,) the Divine “Rebels”—called
by the all‐materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or
“Deprived”—preferred the _curse_ of _incarnation_ and the long cycles of
terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery, even if
_unconscious_, of the beings who were evolved as Shadows out of their
Brethren, through the semi‐passive energy of their _too spiritual_
Creators. If “man’s uses of life should be such as neither to animalize
nor to spiritualize, but to _humanize_ Self,”(566) to do so, he must be
born _human_ not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogîs
offering themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity,
which was created god‐like and perfect at first, and endow him with human
affections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their natural
status, descend on our Globe, and take up their abode on it for the whole
cycle of the Mahâyuga, thus exchanging their impersonal Individualities
for individual Personalities—the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse
of terrestrial life. This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose
nature was _Knowledge_ and _Love_, has been construed by the exoteric
theologies into a statement that shows “the Rebel Angels hurled down from
Heaven into the darkness of Hell”—our Earth. Hindû Philosophy hints at the
truth by teaching that the Asuras, hurled down by Shiva, are only in an
_intermediate state_, in which they prepare for higher degrees of
purification and redemption from their wretched condition; but Christian
Theology—claiming to be based on the rock of the divine love, charity, and
justice of him it appeals to as its Saviour—to paradoxically enforce that
claim, has invented the dreary dogma of Hell, that Archimedean lever of
Roman Catholic philosophy.
Whereas Rabbinical wisdom—than which there is none more positive,
materialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to
physiological mysteries—calls these Beings, the “Evil One”; and the
Kabalists—Nahash, “Deprived,” as just said, and the Souls that have,
_after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy One_, thrown
themselves into an Abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have
anticipated the time when they are to descend on Earth.(567)
And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the _Zohar_ or any
other book of the _Kabalah_ in its right interpretation—for the latter is
the same as our own—but only with the gross, _pseudo_‐esoteric
explanations of the later, and especially of the Christian Kabalists.
Says the Commentary:
_Our earth and man [are] the products of the three Fires._
The names of these three answer, in Sanskrit, to the “Electric Fire,” the
“Solar Fire,” and the “Fire produced by Friction.” Explained on the cosmic
and human planes, these three Fires are Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three
great Root Groups, with their four additional divisions. These vary with
the Schools, and—according to their applications—become the Upâdhis and
the Vehicles, or the Noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are
personified by the “three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour” of
Agni Abhimânin, the eldest son of Brahmâ, the Cosmic Logos, by Svâhâ, one
of Daksha’s(568) daughters. In the metaphysical sense, the “Fire by
Friction” means the union between Buddhi, the sixth, and Manas, the fifth
“principle,” which thus are united or cemented together, the fifth merging
partially into and becoming part of the Monad; in the physical, it relates
to the “creative spark,” or germ, which fructifies and generates the human
being. The three Fires, whose names are Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Shuchi, were
condemned, it is said, by a curse of Vasishtha, the great Sage, “to be
born over and over again.”(569) This is clear enough.
Therefore, the Flames, whose functions are confused in the exoteric books,
and who are called indifferently Prajâpatis, Pitris, Manus, Asuras,
Rishis, Kumâras,(570) etc., are said to incarnate personally in the Third
Root‐Race and thus find themselves “reborn over and over again.” In the
Esoteric Doctrine they are generally named Asuras, or the Asura Devatâ or
Pitar Devatâ (Gods), for, as said, they were first Gods—and the
highest—before they became “_No_‐Gods,” and had from Spirits of Heaven
fallen into Spirits of Earth(571)—_exoterically_, note well, in orthodox
dogma.
No Theologian or Orientalist can ever understand the genealogies of the
Prajâpatis, the Manus, and the Rishis, or the direct connection of
these—their correlation rather—with the Gods, unless he has the key to the
old primitive Cosmogony and Theogony, which all nations originally had in
common. All these Gods and Demi‐gods are found reborn on Earth, in various
Kalpas and in as various characters; each, moreover, _having his Karma
distinctly traced, and every effect assigned to its cause_.
Before other Stanzas could be explained, it was, as may be seen,
absolutely necessary to show that the Sons of “Dark Wisdom,” though
identical with the Archangels which Theology has chosen to call the
“Fallen,” are as divine and as pure, if not more pure, than all the
Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the Churches. The “Old Book” also
goes into various details of Astral Life, which at this juncture would be
quite incomprehensible to the reader. It must, therefore, be left for
later explanation, and the First and Second Races will now receive only
bare notice. Not so the Third Race—the Root‐Race which separated into
sexes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason; men evolving
_pari passu_ with the Globe, and the latter having “incrustated” more than
a hundred millions of years before the first human sub‐race had yet begun
to materialize or solidify, so to say. But, as the Stanza has it:
_The Inner Man [the Conscious Entity] was not._
This “Conscious Entity” Occultism says, comes from, nay, in many cases
_is_, the very essence and _esse_ of the high Intelligences, condemned, by
the undeviating law of Karmic evolution, to reïncarnate in this
Manvantara.
(_b_) Shloka 39 relates exclusively to the racial divisions. Strictly
speaking, Esoteric Philosophy teaches a modified polygenesis. For, while
it assigns to humanity a oneness of origin, in so far that its Forefathers
or “Creators” were all Divine Beings—though of different classes or
degrees of perfection in their Hierarchy—it teaches that men were
nevertheless born at seven different centres of the Continent of that
period. Though all were of one common origin, yet, for reasons given,
their potentialities and mental capabilities, outward or physical forms,
and future characteristics, were very different.(572) As to their
complexions, there is a suggestive allegory told in _Linga Purâna_. The
Kumâras—the Rudra Gods, so called—are described as incarnations of Shiva,
the Destroyer (of _outward forms_), called also Vâmadeva. The latter, as a
Kumâra, the “Eternal Celibate,” the chaste Virgin Youth, springs from
Brahmâ in each great Manvantara, and “again becomes four”; a reference to
the four great divisions of the human Races, as regards complexion and
type—and the three chief variations of these. Thus in the twenty‐ninth
Kalpa—in this case a reference to the transformation and evolution of the
human form, which Shiva ever destroys and remodels periodically down to
the great Manvantaric turning point, about the middle of the Fourth
(Atlantean) Race—in the twenty‐ninth Kalpa, Shiva, as Shvetalohita, the
Root‐Kumâra, from moon‐coloured becomes _white_; in his next
transformation, he is _red_ (and in this the exoteric version differs from
the Esoteric Teaching); in the third, _yellow_; in the fourth, _black_.
Esotericism now classes these seven variations, with their four great
divisions, into only three distinct primeval Races—as it does not take
into consideration the First Race, which had neither type nor colour, and
a hardly objective, though colossal, form. The evolution of these Races,
their formation and development, proceeded on parallel lines with the
evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata, from
which the human complexion was as much derived as it was determined by the
climates of these zones. The Esoteric Teaching names three great
divisions, namely, the _red‐yellow_, the _black_, and the _brown‐
white_.(573) The Âryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown,
almost black, red‐brown‐yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are
nevertheless all of one and the same stock, the Fifth Root‐Race, and
spring from one single Progenitor, called in Hindû _exotericism_ by the
generic name of Vaivasvata Manu; the latter, remember, being that Generic
Personage, the Sage, who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago,
and also 850,000 years ago—at the time of the sinking of the last remnants
of the Great Continent of Atlantis,(574) and who is said to live even now
in his mankind.(575) The light yellow is the colour of the first _solid_
human race, which appeared after the middle of the Third Root‐Race—after
its fall into generation, as just explained—bringing on the final changes.
For, it is only at that period that the last transformation took place,
which brought forth man as he is now, only on a magnified scale. This Race
gave birth to the Fourth Race; “Shiva” gradually transforming that portion
of Humanity which became “black with sin” into red‐yellow, of which the
red Indians and the Mongolians are the descendants, and finally into
brown‐white races—which now, together with the yellow races, form the
great bulk of Humanity. The allegory in _Linga Purâna_ is curious, as
showing the great ethnological knowledge of the ancients.
When reading of the “last transformation,” which is said to have taken
place 18,000,000 years ago, let the reader at this juncture, consider how
many millions more it must have required to reach that final stage. And if
Man, in his gradual consolidation, developed _pari passu_ with the Earth,
how many millions of years must have elapsed during the First, Second, and
the first half of the Third Race. For the Earth was in a comparatively
ethereal condition before it reached its last consolidated state. The
Archaic Teachings, moreover, tell us that, during the middle period of the
Lemuro‐Atlantean Race, three and a half Races after the Genesis of Man,
the Earth, Man, and everything on the Globe, were of a still grosser and
more material nature, while such things as corals and some shells were
still in a semi‐gelatinous, astral state. The cycles that have intervened
since then, have already carried us onward, on the opposite ascending arc,
some steps toward our “dematerialization,” as the Spiritualists would say.
The Earth, ourselves, and all things have softened since then—aye, even
our brains. But it has been objected by some Theosophists that an ethereal
Earth even some 15 or 20,000,000 years ago, “does not square with
Geology,” which teaches us that winds blew, rains fell, waves broke on the
shore, sands shifted and accumulated, etc.; that, in short, all natural
causes now in operation were then in force, “in the very earliest ages of
geological time, aye, that of the oldest palæozoic rocks.” To this the
following answers are given. Firstly, what is the date assigned by Geology
to these “oldest palæozoic rocks”? And secondly, why could not the winds
blow, rain fall, and waves—of “carbonic acid” apparently, as Science seems
to imply—break on the shore, on an Earth semi‐astral, _i.e._, viscid? The
word “astral” does not necessarily, in Occult phraseology, mean as thin as
smoke, but rather “starry,” shining or pellucid, in various and numerous
degrees, from a quite filmy to a viscid state, as just observed. But it is
further objected: “How could an astral Earth have affected the other
Planets in this System? Would not the whole process get out of gear now if
the attraction of one Planet were suddenly removed?” The objection is
evidently invalid, since our System is composed of older and younger
Planets, some dead—like the Moon—others in process of formation, for all
that Astronomy knows to the contrary. Nor has the latter ever affirmed, so
far as we know, that all the bodies of our System have sprung into
existence and developed simultaneously. The Cis‐Himâlayan Secret Teachings
differ from those of India in this respect. Hindû Occultism teaches that
the Vaivasvata Manu Humanity is 18,000,000 and odd years old. We say, yes;
but only so far as _physical_ or approximately physical, Man is concerned,
who dates from the close of the Third Root‐Race. Beyond that period _Man_,
or his filmy image, may have existed for 300,000,000 years, for all we
know; _since we are not taught figures_ which are and will remain secret
with the Masters of Occult Science, as justly stated in _Esoteric
Buddhism_. Moreover, whereas the Hindû _Purânas_ speak of one Vaivasvata
Manu, we affirm that there were several, the name being a generic one.
We must now say a few more words on the physical evolution of man.
Archaic Teachings In The “Purânas” And “Genesis.” Physical Evolution.
The writer cannot give too much proof that the system of Cosmogony and
Anthropogony above described actually existed, that its records _are_
preserved, and that it is found mirrored even in the modern versions of
ancient Scriptures.
The _Purânas_ on the one hand, and the Jewish Scriptures on the other, are
based on the same scheme of evolution, which, if read Esoterically and
expressed in modern language, would be found to be quite as scientific as
much of what now passes current as the final word of recent discovery. The
only difference between the two schemes is, that the _Purânas_, giving as
much, and perhaps more, attention to causes than to effects, allude to the
pre‐cosmic and pre‐genetic periods rather than to those of so‐called
“creation,” whereas the _Bible_, after saying only a few words on the
former period, plunges forthwith into material genesis, and, while almost
skipping the Pre‐Adamic races, proceeds with its allegories concerning the
Fifth Race.
Now, whatever the onslaught made on the “order of creation” in
_Genesis_—and its dead‐letter account certainly lends itself admirably to
criticism(576)—the Hindû _Purânas_, notwithstanding their allegorical
exaggerations will be found quite in accordance with Physical Science.
Even what, on the face of it, appears to be the perfectly nonsensical
allegory of Brahmâ assuming the form of a Boar to rescue the Earth from
under the waters, finds a perfectly scientific explanation in the Secret
Commentaries, relating as it does to the many risings and sinkings, the
constant alternation of water and land from the earliest to the latest
geological periods of our Globe; for Science teaches us now that nine‐
tenths of the stratified formations of the Earth’s crust have been
gradually constructed beneath the water at the bottom of the seas. The
ancient Âryans are credited with having known nothing whatever of Natural
History, Geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand,
proclaimed even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the
_Bible_, to have the merit of having conceived the idea of monotheism
“earlier, and retained it more firmly, than any of the _less philosophical
and more immoral religions_ (!!) of the ancient world.”(577) Only, while
in biblical Esotericism, we find physiological sexual mysteries
symbolized, and very little more, something for which _very little real
Philosophy_ is requisite—in the _Purânas_ one can find the most scientific
and philosophical “dawn of creation,” which, if impartially analyzed and
rendered into plain language from its fairy‐tale‐like allegories, would
show that modern Zoology, Geology, Astronomy, and nearly all the branches
of modern knowledge, have been anticipated in ancient Science, and were
known to ancient Philosophers in their general features, if not in such
detail as at present.
Paurânic Astronomy, with all its deliberate concealment and confusion for
the purpose of leading the profane off the real track, has been shown even
by Bentley to be a real science; and those who are versed in the mysteries
of Hindû astronomical treatises, will prove that the modern theories of
the progressive condensation of nebulæ, nebulous stars and suns, with the
most minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms for
chronological and other purposes—far more correct than Europeans have even
now—were known in India to perfection.
If we turn to Geology and Zoology we find the same. What are all the myths
and endless genealogies of the seven Prajâpatis, of their sons, the seven
Rishis or Manus, and of their wives, sons and progeny, but a vast detailed
account of the progressive development and evolution of animal creation,
one species after the other? Were the highly philosophical and
metaphysical Âryans—the authors of the most perfect philosophical system
of transcendental Psychology, of codes of Ethics, of such a grammar as
Pânini’s, of the Sânkhya and Vedânta systems, of a moral code (Buddhism),
proclaimed by Max Müller the most perfect on earth—were the Âryans such
fools, or children, as to lose their time in writing “fairy tales,” such
as the _Purânas_ now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the
remotest idea of their secret meaning? What is the “fable,” the genealogy
and origin of Kashyapa, with his twelve wives by whom he had a numerous
and diversified progeny of serpents (Nâgas), reptiles, birds, and all
kinds of living things, who was thus the “father” of all kinds of animals,
but a _veiled_ record of the order of evolution in _this_ Round? So far,
we do not see that any Orientalist has ever had the remotest conception of
the truths concealed under the allegories and personifications. The
_Shatapatha Brâhmana_, says one, gives “_a not very intelligible_ account”
of Kashyapa’s origin.
According to the _Mahâbhârata_, the _Râmâyana_, and the _Purânas_,
he was the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ, the father of
Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the progenitor of mankind.
According to the _Shatapatha Brahmâna_: Having assumed the form of
a tortoise, Prajâpati created offspring. That which he created he
made (_akarot_); hence the word _kûrma_ (tortoise). Kashyapa means
tortoise; hence men say, “All creatures are descendants of
Kashyapa.”(578)
He was all this; he was also the father of the bird Garuda, the “king of
the feathered tribe,” who _descends from_, and is of one stock with _the
reptiles_, the Nâgas, and who becomes their mortal enemy _subsequently_—as
he is also a _cycle_, a period of time, when, in the course of evolution,
the birds which developed from reptiles in their “struggle for life” and
“survival of the fittest,” etc., turned in preference on those from whom
they issued to devour them, perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to
make room for other and more perfect species.
In that admirable epitome, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, a lesson
in Natural History is offered to Mr. Gladstone, showing the utter variance
of the _Bible_ with it. The author remarks that Geology traces the “dawn
of creation” through a line of scientific research:
Commencing with the earliest known fossil, the Eozoon Canadense of
the Laurentian, and continued in a chain, every link of which is
firmly welded, through the Silurian, with its abundance of
molluscous, crustacean, and vermiform life, and first indication
of fishes; the Devonian, with its predominance of fish and first
appearance of reptiles; the Mesozoic with its batrachians; the
Secondary formations, in which reptiles of the sea, land and air
preponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate land
animals began to appear; and finally the Tertiary, in which
mammalian life has become abundant, and type succeeding to type
and species to species, are gradually differentiated and
specialized, through the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods,
until we arrive at the Glacial and Prehistoric periods, and at
positive proof of the existence of man.(579)
The same order, _plus_ the description of animals unknown to Modern
Science, is found in the Commentaries on the _Purânas_ in general, and in
the _Book of Dzyan_ especially. The only difference—a grave one, no doubt,
as implying a spiritual and divine nature of man independent of his
physical body in this illusionary world, in which the _false personality_
and its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox Psychology—is as
follows. Having been in all the so‐called seven “creations,” which stand
allegorically for the seven evolutionary changes, or sub‐races, as we may
call them, of the First Root‐Race of Mankind—Man has been on Earth in this
Round from the beginning. Having passed through all the Kingdoms of Nature
in the previous _three_ Rounds,(580) his _physical_ frame—one adapted to
the thermal conditions of those early periods—was ready to receive the
Divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of human life, _i.e._, 18,000,000 years
ago. It is only at the mid‐point of the Third Root‐Race that man was
endowed with Manas. Once united, the Two and then the Three made One; for
though the lower animals, from the amœba to man, received _their_ Monads,
in which all the higher qualities are potential, these qualities have to
remain dormant till the animal reaches its human form, before which stage
Manas (mind) has no development in them. In the animals every principle is
paralyzed, and in a fœtus‐like state, save the second, the Vital, and the
third, the Astral, and the rudiments of the fourth, Kâma, which is desire,
instinct—whose intensity and development varies and changes with the
species. To the materialist wedded to the Darwinian theory, this will read
like a fairy‐tale, a mystification; to the believer in the inner,
spiritual man, the statement will have nothing unnatural in it.
As Commentary ix says:
_Men are made complete only during their Third, toward the Fourth Cycle
[Race]. They are made __“__Gods__”__ for good and evil, and responsible,
only when the two arcs meet [after three and a half Rounds towards the
Fifth Race]. They are made so by the Nirmânakâya [Spiritual or Astral
remains] of the Rudra‐Kumâras, __“__cursed to be reborn on Earth
again__”__ [meaning—doomed in their natural turn to reïncarnation in the
higher ascending arc of the terrestrial Cycle]._
Now the writer is certain to be met with what will be termed insuperable
objections. We shall be told that the line of embryology, the gradual
development of every individual life, and the progress of what is known to
take place in the order of progressive stages of specialization—that all
this is opposed to the idea of man preceding mammals. Man begins as the
humblest and most primitive vermiform creature:
From the primitive speck of protoplasm, and the nucleated cell in
which all life originates ... and “is developed through stages
undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile and mammal, until
the cell finally attains the highly specialized development of the
quadrumanous, and, last of all, of the human type.”(581)
This is perfectly scientific, and we have nothing against _that_; for it
all relates to the _shell_ of man—his body, which, in its growth, is
subject, of course, like every other once so‐called morphological unit, to
such metamorphoses. It is not those who teach the transformation of the
mineral atom through crystallization—which is the same function, and bears
the same relation to its so‐called _inorganic_ Upâdhi, or basis, as the
formation of _cells_ to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and
animal into man—it is not they who will reject this theory, as it will
finally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in Nature, ever‐
present, and as ever invisible and unknowable, and of intra‐cosmic Gods,
who were all once men.(582)
But we would ask, what does Science and its exact discoveries and now
axiomatic theories prove against _our_ Occult theory? Those who believe in
the law of evolution and gradual progressive development from a cell—which
from a vital became a morphological cell, until it finally awoke as
protoplasm pure and simple—can surely never limit their belief to one line
of evolution! The types of life are innumerable; and the progress of
evolution, moreover, does not go at the same rate in every kind of
species. The constitution of primordial matter in the Silurian age—we mean
the “primordial” _matter_ of Science—was the same in every essential
particular, save its degree of present grossness, as the primordial
_living_ matter of to‐day. Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if
the now orthodox theory of evolution were _quite_ correct, namely, a
constant, ever‐flowing progress in every species of being. Instead of
this, what does one see? While the intermediate groups of animal beings
all tend toward a higher type, and while specializations, now of one type
and now of another, develop through the geological ages, change forms,
assume new shapes, appear and disappear with a kaleidoscopic rapidity, in
the description of Palæontologists from one period to another, the two
solitary exceptions to the general rule are those at the two opposite
poles of life and type, namely—_man_ and the _lower genera_ of being!
Certain well‐marked forms of living beings have existed through
enormous epochs, surviving not only the changes of physical
conditions, _but persisting comparatively unaltered_, while other
forms of life have appeared and disappeared. Such forms may be
termed “persistent types” of life; and examples of them are
abundant enough in both the animal and the vegetable worlds.(583)
Nevertheless, we are not given any good reason why Darwin links together
reptiles, birds, amphibians, fishes, mollusca, etc., as off‐shoots of a
moneric ancestry. Nor are we told whether reptiles, for instance, are
direct descendants of the amphibia, the latter of fishes, and fishes of
lower forms—which they certainly are. For the Monads have passed through
all these forms of being up to Man, on every Globe, in the _three
preceding_ Rounds; every Round, as well as every subsequent Globe, from A
to G, having been, and still having to be, the arena of the same
evolution, only repeated each time on a more solid material basis.
Therefore the question, “What relation is there between the Third Round
astral prototypes and ordinary physical development in the course of the
origination of pre‐mammalian organic species?”—is easily answered. One is
the shadowy prototype of the other, the preliminary, hardly defined, and
evanescent sketch on the canvas, of objects which are destined to receive
their final and vivid form under the brush of the painter. The fish
evolved into an amphibian—a frog—in the _shadows_ of ponds, and man passed
through all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the Third Round as he did
in this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the
formation of the types in the present Round. On strict analogy, the cycle
of seven Rounds in their work of the gradual formation of man through
every Kingdom of Nature, is repeated on a microscopical scale in the first
seven months of gestation of a future human being. Let the student think
over and work out this analogy. As the seven months’ old unborn baby,
though quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength
and consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during seven
Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of Mother‐Nature before he is
born, or rather reborn a Dhyâni, still more perfect than he was before he
launched forth as a Monad on the newly built Chain of Worlds. Let the
student ponder over this mystery, and then he will easily convince himself
that, as there are also physical links between many classes, so there are
precise domains wherein the Astral merges into Physical Evolution. Of this
Science breathes not one word. Man has evolved with and from the monkey,
it says. But now see the contradiction.
Huxley proceeds to point out plants, ferns, club‐mosses, some of them
generically identical with those now living, which are met with in the
Carboniferous epoch, for:
The cone of the oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from
that of existing species.... Sub‐kingdoms of animals yield the
same instances. The Globigerina of the Atlantic soundings is
identical with the cretaceous species of the same genus ... the
tabulate corals of the Silurian epoch are wonderfully like the
millepores of our own seas.... The Arachnida, the highest group of
which, the scorpions, is represented in the coal by a genus
differing from its living congeners only in ... the eyes. [etc.]
All of which may be closed with Dr. Carpenter’s authoritative statement
about the Foraminifera:
There is no evidence of any fundamental modification or advance in
the foraminiferous type from the palæozoic period to the present
time.... The foraminiferous fauna of our own series probably
present a greater range of variety than existed at any previous
period; but _there is no indication of any tendency to elevation
towards a higher type_.(584)
Now, as in the Foraminifera, Protozoa of the lowest type of life,
mouthless and eyeless, there is no indication of change except their now
greater variety—so man, who is on the uppermost rung of the ladder of
being, indicates still less change, as we have seen; the skeleton of his
palæolithic ancestor being even found superior in some respects to his
present frame. Where is, then, the uniformity of law which is claimed—the
_absolute rule_ for one species shading off into another and thus, by
insensible gradations, into higher types? We see Sir William Thomson
admitting as much as 400,000,000 years for the time since the surface of
the Globe became sufficiently cool to permit of the presence of living
things;(585) and during that enormous lapse of time in the Oolitic period
alone, the so‐called “Age of Reptiles,” we find a most extraordinary
variety and abundance of Saurian forms, the Amphibian type reaching _its
highest development_. We learn of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the
lakes and rivers, and of winged crocodiles or lizards flying in the air.
After which, in the Tertiary period:
We find the Mammalian type exhibiting remarkable divergences from
previously existing forms ... Mastodons, Megatheriums, and other
unwieldy denizens of the ancient forests and plains.
And, subsequently, we are notified of:
The gradual modification of one of the ramifications of the
Quadrumanous order, into those beings from whom primeval Man
himself may claim to have been evolved.(586)
He _may_; but no one, except a Materialist, can see why he should; as
there is not the slightest necessity for it, nor is such an evolution
warranted by facts, for those most interested in the proofs thereof
confess their utter failure to find one single fact to support their
theory. There is no need for the numberless types of life to represent the
members of one progressive series. They are “the products of various and
different evolutional divergences, taking place now in one direction and
now in another.” Therefore it is far more justifiable to say that the
monkey evolved into the quadrumanous order, than that primeval man—who has
_remained stationary_ in his human specialization since the first fossil
skeleton found in the oldest strata, and of whom no variety is found save
in colour and facial type—has developed from a common ancestor together
with the ape.
That man originates like other animals in a cell and develops “through
stages indistinguishable from those of fish, reptile, and mammal until the
cell attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous and
_at last the human type_,” is an Occult axiom thousands of years old. The
Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a
man; a man a God,” holds good throughout the ages. Hæckel, in his
_Schöpfungsgeschichte_, shows a double drawing representing two
embryos—that of a dog six weeks old, and that of a man, eight weeks. The
two, with the exception of a slight difference in the head, which is
larger and wider about the brain in the man, are indistinguishable.
In fact, we may say that every human being passes through the
stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of mammal, and
finally of man.
If we take him up at the more advanced stage, where the embryo has
already passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable
time, the line of development remains the same as that of other
mammalia. The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five
fingers and toes develop in the same way, and the resemblance
after the first four weeks’ growth _between the embryo of a man
and a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish
them_. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal
with a tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy.(587)
Why, then, not make man and dog evolve from a common ancestor, or from a
reptile—a Nâga, instead of coupling man with the Quadrumana? This would be
just as logical as the latter, if not more so. The shape and the stages of
the human embryo have not changed since historical times, and these
metamorphoses were known to Æsculapius and Hippocrates as well as to Mr.
Huxley. Therefore, since the Kabalists had remarked it from prehistoric
times, it is no new discovery.(588)
As the embryo of man has no more of the ape in it than of any other
mammal, but contains in itself _the totality of the kingdoms of nature_,
and since it seems to be a “persistent type” of life, far more so than
even the Foraminifera, it seems as illogical to make him evolve from the
ape as it would be to trace his origin to the frog or the dog. Both Occult
and Eastern Philosophies believe in Evolution, which Manu and Kapila(589)
give with far more clearness than any Scientist does at present. No need
to repeat what has been fully debated in _Isis Unveiled_, as the reader
may find all these arguments and the description of the basis on which all
the Eastern doctrines of Evolution rest, in our earlier volumes.(590) But
no Occultist can accept the unreasonable proposition that all the now
existing forms, “from the structureless Amœba to man,” are the direct
lineal descendants of organisms which lived millions and millions of years
before the birth of man, in the pre‐Silurian epochs, in the sea or land‐
mud. The Occultists believe in an _Inherent Law of Progressive
Development_.(591) Mr. Darwin never did, and says so himself; for we find
him stating that, since _there can be no advantage_ “to the infusorian
animalcule or an intestinal worm ... to become highly organized,”
therefore, “natural selection,” _not necessarily including progressive
development_—leaves the animalcule and the worm, the “persistent types,”
quiet.(592)
There does not appear much _uniform_ law in such behaviour of Nature; and
it looks more like the discriminative action of some _super_‐physical
selection; perhaps, that aspect of Karma, which Eastern Occultists would
call the “Law of Retardation,” may have something to do with it.
But there is every reason to doubt whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave
such an importance to his law as is now given to it by his atheistic
followers. The knowledge of the various living forms in the geological
periods that have gone by is very meagre. The reasons given for this by
Dr. Bastian are very suggestive:
First, on account of the imperfect manner in which the several
forms may be represented in the strata pertaining to the period;
secondly, on account of the extremely limited nature of the
explorations which have been made in these imperfectly
representative strata; and, thirdly, because so many parts of the
record are absolutely inaccessible to use—nearly all beneath the
Silurian system having been blotted out by time, whilst those two‐
thirds of the earth’s surface in which the remaining strata are to
be found are now covered over by seas. Hence Mr. Darwin says: “For
my part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look at the geological
record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in
a changing dialect; _of this history we possess the last volume
alone_, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume,
_only here and there a short chapter has been preserved_; and of
each page _only here and there a few lines_.”(593)
It is not on such meagre data, certainly, that the last word of Science
can be said. Nor is it on any ground of human pride, or unreasonable
belief in man’s representing even here on Earth—in _our_ period,
perhaps—the highest type of life, that Occultism denies that all the
preceding forms of human life belonged to types lower than our own; for it
is not so. But simply because the “missing link,” which will prove the
existing theory undeniably, will never be found by Palæontologists.
Believing as we do that man has, during the preceding Rounds, evolved
from, and passed through, the lowest forms of every life, vegetable and
animal, on Earth, there is nothing very degrading in the idea of having
the Orang Outang as an ancestor of our physical form. Quite the reverse;
as it would most irresistibly forward the Occult Doctrine with regard to
the final evolution of everything in terrestrial nature into man. One may
even enquire how it is that Biologists and Anthropologists, having once
firmly accepted the theory of the descent of man from the ape—how it is
that they have hitherto left untouched the future evolution of the
existing apes into man? This is only a logical sequence of the first
theory—unless Science would make of man a privileged being, and his
evolution a _non_‐precedent in Nature, quite a _special_ and unique case.
And that is what all this leads Physical Science to. The reason, however,
why the Occultists reject the Darwinian, and especially the Hæckelian,
hypothesis is because it is the ape, not man, which is, in sober truth, a
special and unique instance. The Pithecoid is _an accidental creation_, a
forced growth, the result of an unnatural process.
The Occult Doctrine is, we think, more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never
varying Law in Nature, the latter having no personal “special design,” but
acting on a uniform plan that prevails through the whole Manvantaric
period and deals with the land‐worm as it deals with man. Neither the one
nor the other have sought to come into being, hence both are under the
same Evolutionary Law, and both have to progress according to Karmic Law.
Both have started from the same Neutral Centre of Life and both have to
re‐merge into it at the consummation of the Cycle.
It is not denied that in the preceding Round man _was_ a gigantic ape‐like
creature; and when we say “man” we ought perhaps to say, the rough mould
that was developing for the use of man in this Round only—the middle, or
the transition, point of which we have hardly reached. Nor was man during
the first two and a half Root‐Races what he is now. That point he reached,
as said before, only 18,000,000 years ago, during the Secondary period, as
we claim.
Till then he was, according to tradition and Occult Teaching, “a God on
Earth who had fallen into Matter,” or generation. This may or may not be
accepted, since the Secret Doctrine does not impose itself as an
infallible dogma, and since, whether its prehistoric records are accepted
or rejected, it has nothing to do with the question of the _actual_ Man
and his Inner Nature; the Fall mentioned above having left no “original
sin” on Humanity. But all this has been sufficiently dealt with.
Furthermore, we are taught that the transformations through which man
passed on the descending arc—which is centrifugal for Spirit and
centripetal for Matter—and those he is preparing to go through,
henceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the direction of
the two forces—viz., Matter will become centrifugal and Spirit
centripetal—that all such transformations _are next in store for the
anthropoid apes also_; all those, at any rate, who have reached the remove
next to man in this Round—for these will all be men in the Fifth Round,
just as the present men inhabited ape‐like forms in the Third, the
preceding Round.
Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great forests of Sumatra the
degraded and dwarfed examples—“blurred copies,” as Mr. Huxley has it—of
ourselves, as we (the majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub‐races
of the Fourth Root‐Race during the period of what is called the “fall into
generation.” The ape we know is not the product of natural evolution but
an _accident_, a cross‐breed between an animal being, or form, and man. As
has been shown in the present volume, it is the speechless animal that
first began sexual connection, for it was the first to separate into male
and female. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow this
bestial example—as is now shown by the comparatively painless procreation
of their species by animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the
same in woman. The ape is, indeed, as remarked in _Isis Unveiled_:
A transformation of species most directly connected with that of
the human family‐_a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock
before the final perfection of the latter_.(594)
The apes are millions of years later than the speaking human being, and
are the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, it is most
important to remember that the “Egos” of the apes are entities compelled
by their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the
bestiality of the _latest_ Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They
are entities who had already reached the “human stage” before this Round.
Consequently, they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless
traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of
animal men. The animal “Eves” were their foremothers, and the human
“Adams” their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or
Lilatu, Adam’s _first_ wife, whom the Talmud describes as a “charming”
woman, “with long wavy hair,” _i.e._—a female hairy animal of a character
now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic
allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael‐Lilith, or
man‐animal united, a being called, in the _Zohar_, Hayo Bischat, the Beast
or Evil Beast. It is from this unnatural union that the present apes
descended. The latter are truly “speechless men,” and will become speaking
animals, or men of a lower order, in the Fifth Round, while the Adepts of
a certain School hope that some of the “Egos” of the apes of a higher
intelligence will reäppear at the close of the Sixth Root‐Race. What their
form will be is of secondary consideration. The form means nothing. Genera
and species of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal, its crown—man,
change and vary according to the environments and climatic variations, not
only with every Round, but every Root‐Race likewise, as well as after
every geological cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning
point in, the latter. In the Sixth Root‐Race, the fossils of the Orang,
the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous
mammals; and new forms—though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on
and the close of the Manvantara approaches—will develop from the “cast
off” types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of
the mire of physical, life. There were no apes before man, and they will
be extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the Monads
of the unprogressed men of our Race and lodge them in the newly evolved
human frames of the thus physiologically regenerated Baboon.
This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the picture
of this cyclic precession of all that lives and breathes now on Earth, of
each species in its turn, is a true one, and needs no “special creation”
or miraculous formation of man, beast, and plant _ex nihilo_.
This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape
and man, and shows the former evolving from the latter.
A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.
There is a period of a few millions of years to cover between the first
“mindless” race and the highly intelligent and intellectual later
Lemurians; there is another between the earliest civilization of the
Atlanteans and the historic period.
As witnesses to the Lemurians but a few silent records in the shape of
half a dozen broken colossi and old cyclopean ruins are left. These are
not allowed a hearing, as they are “productions of blind natural forces,”
we are assured by some; “quite modern” we are told by others. Tradition is
left contemptuously unnoticed by Sceptic and Materialist, and made
subservient to the _Bible_ in every case by the too zealous Churchman.
Whenever a legend, however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian Deluge
theory, it is declared by the Christian clergy to be “the insanely
delirious voice of old superstition.” Atlantis is denied, when not
confused with Lemuria and other departed Continents, because, perhaps,
Lemuria is half the creation of Modern Science, and has, therefore, to be
believed in; while Plato’s Atlantis is regarded by most of the Scientists
as a dream.
Atlantis is often described by believers in Plato as a prolongation of
Africa. An old continent is also suspected to have existed on the Eastern
coast. But Africa, as a continent, was never part and parcel of either
Lemuria or Atlantis, as we have agreed to call the Third and Fourth
Continents. Their archaic appellations are never mentioned in the
_Purânas_, nor anywhere else. But with only one of the Esoteric keys in
hand, it becomes an easy task to identify these departed lands in the
numberless “Lands of the Gods,” Devas and Munis described in the
_Purânas_, in their Varshas, Dvîpas, and Zones. Their Shveta‐dvîpa, during
the early days of Lemuria, stood out like a giant‐peak from the bottom of
the sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the
waters till about the early period of Atlantis, after the disappearance of
Lemuria, when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was
half‐sunk.
It is of course impossible to attempt, within the compass of even several
volumes, a consecutive and detailed account of the evolution and progress
of the first three Races‐except so far as to give a general view of it, as
will be done presently. Race the First had no history of its own. Of Race
the Second the same may be said. We shall have, therefore, to pay careful
attention to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans only, before the history of
our own Race, the Fifth, can be attempted.
What is known of other Continents, besides our own, and what does history
know or accept of the early Races? Everything outside the repulsive
speculations of Materialistic Science is daubed with the contemptuous term
“superstition.” The wise men of to‐day will believe nothing. Plato’s
“winged” and “hermaphrodite” races, and his Golden Age, under the reign of
Saturn and the Gods, are quietly brought back by Hæckel to their _new_
place in Nature; our Divine Races are shown to be the descendants of
Catarrhine apes, and our ancestor, a piece of “sea slime”!
Nevertheless, as expressed by Faber:
The _fictions_ of ancient poetry ... will be found to comprehend
some portion of historical truth.
However one‐sided the efforts of the learned author of _A Dissertation on
the Mysteries of the Cabiri_—efforts directed throughout his two volumes
to constrain the classical myths and symbols of old Paganism, “to bear
testimony to the truth of Scripture”—time and further research have
avenged, partially at least, that “truth” by showing it unveiled. Thus it
is the clever adaptations of Scripture, on the contrary, which are made to
bear evidence to the great wisdom of Archaic Paganism. This,
notwithstanding the inextricable confusion into which the truth about the
Kabiri—the most mysterious Gods of antiquity—has been thrown by the wild
and contradictory speculations of Bishop Cumberland, Dr. Shuckford,
Cudworth, Vallancey, etc., and finally by Faber. Nevertheless, all of
these scholars, from first to last, had to come to a certain conclusion
framed by the latter, as follows:
We have no reason to think that the idolatry of the Gentile world
was of a merely arbitrary contrivance; on the contrary, it seems
to have been built, almost universally, upon _a traditional
remembrance of certain real events. These events I apprehend to be
the destruction of the first_ [the Fourth in Esoteric Teaching]
_race of mankind by the waters of the Deluge_.(595)
To this, Faber adds:
I am persuaded that the tradition of the sinking of the Phlegyan
isle is the very same as that of the sinking of the island
Atlantis. They both appear to me to allude to one great event, the
sinking of the whole world beneath the waters of the deluge, or,
if we suppose the arch of the earth to have remained in its
original position, the rising of the central water above it. M.
Bailly indeed in his work upon the Atlantis of Plato, the object
of which is evidently to depreciate the authority of the
scriptural chronology, labours to prove that the Atlantians were a
very ancient northern nation, long prior to the Hindoos, the
Phenicians, and the Egyptians.(596)
In this Faber is in agreement with Bailly, who shows himself more learned
and intuitional than those who accept biblical chronology. Nor is the
latter wrong when saying that the Atlanteans were the same as the Titans
and the Giants.(597) Faber adopts the more willingly the opinion of his
French _confrère_, as Bailly mentions Cosmas Indicopleustes, who preserved
an ancient tradition about Noah—that he “formerly inhabited the _island_
Atlantis.” This island, whether it was the “Poseidonis” mentioned in
_Esoteric Buddhism_, or the Continent of Atlantis, does not much matter.
The tradition is there, recorded by a Christian.
No Occultist would ever think of dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives if
he is claimed to be an Atlantean; for this would simply show that the
Israelites repeated the story of Vaivasvata Manu, Xisuthrus, and so many
others, and that they only changed the name, which they had the same right
to do as any other nation or tribe. What we object to is the literal
acceptation of biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and in accord with
neither geological data nor reason. Moreover, if Noah was an Atlantean,
then he was a Titan, a Giant, as Faber shows; and if a Giant, then why is
he not shown as such in _Genesis_?(598)
Bailly’s mistake was to reject the submersion of Atlantis, and to call the
Atlanteans simply a Northern and _post‐diluvian_ nation, which, however,
as he says, certainly flourished before the foundation of the Hindû,
Egyptian, and Phœnician empires. In this, had he only known of the
existence of what we have agreed to call Lemuria, he would have again been
right. For the Atlanteans were post‐diluvian to the Lemurians, and Lemuria
was not submerged as Atlantis was, but was _sunk_ under the waves, owing
to earthquakes and subterranean fires, as Great Britain and Europe will be
one day. It is the ignorance of our men of Science, who will accept
neither the tradition that several Continents have already sunk, nor the
periodical law which acts throughout the Manvantaric Cycle—it is this
ignorance that is the chief cause of all the confusion. Nor is Bailly
wrong again in assuring us that the Hindûs, Egyptians, and Phœnicians came
after the Atlanteans, for the latter belonged to the Fourth, while the
Âryans and their Semitic Branch are of the Fifth Race. Plato, while
repeating the story as narrated to Solon by the priests of Egypt,
intentionally confuses—as every Initiate would—the two Continents, and
assigns to the small island which last sunk, all the events pertaining to
the two enormous Continents, the prehistoric and traditional. Therefore,
he describes the _first couple_, from whom the whole island was peopled,
as being formed of the Earth. In so saying, he means neither Adam and Eve,
nor yet his own Hellenic forefathers. His language is simply allegorical,
and by alluding to “Earth,” he means Matter, as the Atlanteans were really
the first purely _human_ and _terrestrial_ Race—those that preceded it
being more divine and ethereal than human and solid.
Yet Plato must have known, as would any other initiated Adept, about the
history of the Third Race after its “Fall,” though as one pledged to
silence and secrecy he never showed his knowledge in so many words.
Nevertheless, it may become easier now, after acquainting oneself with
even the approximate chronology of the Eastern nations—all of which was
based upon, and followed the early Âryan calculations—to realize the
immense periods of time that must have elapsed since the separation of the
sexes, without mentioning the First or even the Second Root‐Races. As
these must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in Western
thought, it is found useless to speak in detail of the First and Second,
and even of the Third Race in its earliest stage.(599) It is only when the
latter has reached its full human period that a beginning can be made,
without the uninitiated reader finding himself hopelessly bewildered.
The Third Race _fell_—and created no longer; it _begat_ its progeny. Being
still mindless at the period of separation, it begat, moreover, anomalous
offspring, until its physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in
the right direction. Like the “Lords Gods” of the _Bible_, the “Sons of
Wisdom,” the Dhyân Chohans, had warned it to leave alone the fruit
forbidden by Nature; but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the
unfitness—we must not say sin—of what they had done, only when too late;
after the Angelic Monads from higher Spheres had incarnated in, and
endowed them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply
physical, like the animals generated from them. For what is the
distinction? The Doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate
and inanimate objects on Earth, between an animal and a human frame, is
that in some the various “Fires” are latent, and in others they are
active. The _Vital_ Fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of
them. But no animal has the three higher “principles” awakened in him;
they are simply potential, latent, and thus _non‐existing_. And so would
the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they came
out from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose Shadows they were, to
grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in Matter. But as
said in _Pymander_:
This is a Mystery that to this day was sealed and hidden.
Nature(600) being mingled with Man(601) brought forth a wondrous
miracle; the harmonious commingling of the _essence of the Seven_
[Pitris, or Governors] and her own; the _Fire_ and the _Spirit_
and _Nature_ [the Noumenon of Matter]; which [commingling]
forthwith brought forth seven men of opposite sexes [negative and
positive] according to the essences of the Seven Governors.(602)
Thus saith Hermes, the thrice great Initiate,(603) the “Power of the
Thought Divine.” St. Paul, another Initiate, called our World, “the
enigmatical mirror of pure truth,” and St. Gregory of Nazianzen
corroborated Hermes by stating that:
Things visible are but the shadow and delineation of things that
we cannot see.
It is an eternal combination, and images are repeated from the higher rung
of the Ladder of Being down to the lower. The “Fall of the Angels,” and
the “War in Heaven” are repeated on every plane, the lower “mirror”
disfiguring the image of the superior “mirror,” and each repeating it in
its own way. Thus the Christian dogmas are but the reminiscences of the
paradigms of Plato, who spoke of these things cautiously, as every
Initiate would. But it is all as expressed in these few sentences of the
_Desatir_:
All that is on earth, saith the Lord [Ormazd], is the _shadow of
something that is in the superior spheres_. This luminious object
[light, fire, etc.] is the shadow of that which is still more
luminous than itself, and so on till it reaches me, who am the
light of lights.
In the Kabalistic books, in the _Zohar_ prëeminently, the idea that every
objective thing on Earth or in this Universe is the “Shadow” (Dyooknah) of
the eternal Light or Deity, is very strong.
The Third Race was prëeminently the bright “Shadow,” at first, of the
Gods, whom tradition exiles on to the Earth after the allegorical War in
Heaven. This became still more allegorical on Earth, for it was the War
between Spirit and Matter. This War will last till the Inner and Divine
Man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till
then the dark and fierce passions of that self will be at eternal feud
with his Master, the Divine Man. But the animal will be tamed one day,
because its nature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more
between the two as before the “Fall,” when even mortal man was “created”
by the Elements and was not born.
The above is made clear in all the great Theogonies, principally in the
Grecian, as in that of Hesiod. The _mutilation_ of Uranus by his son
Cronus, who thus condemns him to impotency, has never been understood by
the modern Mythographers. Yet, it is very plain; and as it was
universal(604) it must have contained a great abstract and philosophical
idea, now lost to our modern sages. This punishment in the allegory marks,
indeed, “a new period, a second phase in the development of creation,” as
justly remarked by Decharme,(605) who, however, does not attempt to
explain it. Uranus tried to oppose an impediment to that development, or
natural evolution, by _destroying all his children as soon as born_.
Uranus, who personifies all the creative powers of, and in, Chaos—Space,
or the Unmanifested Deity—is thus made to pay the penalty; for it is these
powers which cause the Pitris to evolve primordial “men” from
themselves—as, later on, these men, in their turn, evolve _their_
progeny—without any sense or desire for procreation. The work of
generation, suspended for a moment, passes into the hands of Cronus
(_Chronos_) Time,(606) who unites himself with Rhea (the Earth—‐in
Esotericism, Matter in general), and thus produces celestial and
terrestrial Titans. The whole of this symbolism relates to the mysteries
of evolution.
This allegory is the exoteric version of the Esoteric Doctrine given in
this part of our work. For in Cronus we see the same story repeated again.
As Uranus destroyed his children by Gæa (one in the world of manifestation
with Aditi, or the Great Cosmic Deep), by confining them in the bosom of
the Earth, Titæa, so Cronus, at this second stage of creation, destroyed
his children by Rhea—by devouring them. This is an allusion to the
fruitless efforts of Earth, or Nature, alone to create real _human_
“men.”(607) Time swallows its own fruitless work. Then comes Zeus,
Jupiter, who dethrones his father in his turn.(608) Jupiter the Titan, is
Prometheus, in one sense,(609) and varies from Zeus, the great “Father of
the Gods.” He is the “disrespectful son” in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the
“Heavenly Man” in _Pymander_; and even in the _Bible_ he is found again
under the name of Adam, and, later on—by transmutation—under that of Ham.
Yet these are all personifications of the “Sons of Wisdom.” The necessary
corroboration that Jupiter belongs to the purely _human_ Atlantean
Cycle—if Uranus and Cronus who precede him are found insufficient—may be
read in Hesiod, who tells us that:
The Immortals made the race of the Golden and Silver Age [First
and Second Races]; Jupiter made the generation of Bronze [an
admixture of _two_ elements], that of the Heroes, and of the Iron
Age.(610)
After this he sends his fatal present, Pandora, to Epimetheus.(611) Hesiod
calls this present of the _first woman_ “a fatal gift.” It was a
punishment, he explains, sent to man “for the theft of [divine creative]
fire.” Her apparition on Earth is the signal for every kind of evil.
Before her appearance, the human races lived happy, exempt from sickness
and suffering—as the same races are made to live under Yima’s rule, in the
Mazdean _Vendidâd_.
Two Deluges may also be traced, in universal tradition, by carefully
comparing Hesiod, the _Rig Veda_, the _Zend Avesta_, etc., but no _first_
man is ever mentioned in any of the Theogonies save in the _Bible_.(612)
Everywhere the man of _our_ Race appears after a cataclysm of water. After
this, tradition mentions only the several designations of continents and
islands which sink under the ocean waves in due time.(613) Gods and
mortals have one common origin according to Hesiod;(614) and Pindar echoes
the statement.(615) Deucalion and Pyrrha, who escape the Deluge by
constructing an Ark like Noah’s,(616) ask Jupiter to reänimate the human
race whom he had made to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the
Slavonian mythology all men are drowned, and two old people, a man and his
wife, alone remain. Then Pram’zimas, the “master of all,” advises them to
jump seven times on the rocks of the Earth, and seven new races (couples)
are born, from which come the nine Lithuanian tribes.(617) As well
understood by the author of _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_—the Four Ages
signify periods of time, and are also an allegorical allusion to the
Races. As he says:
The successive races, destroyed and replaced by others, without
any period of transition, are characterized in Greece by the name
of metals, to express their ever‐decreasing value. Gold, the most
brilliant and precious of all, symbol of brightness ... qualifies
the first race.... The men of the second race, those of the Age of
Silver, are already far inferior to the first. Inert and weak
creatures, all their life is no better than a long and stupid
infancy.... They disappear.... The men of the Age of Bronze are
robust and violent [the Third Race]; ... their strength is
extreme. “They had arms made of bronze, habitations of bronze;
used nought but bronze. Iron, the black metal, was yet
unknown.”(618) The fourth race is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes
who fell before Thebes,(619) or under the walls of Troy.(620)
Thus, as the four Races are found mentioned by the oldest Greek poets,
though very much confused and anachronistically, our doctrines are once
more corroborated in the classics. But this is all “mythology” and poetry.
What can Modern Science have to say to such a euhemerization of old
fictions? The verdict is not difficult to foresee. Therefore, an attempt
must be made to answer by anticipation, and to prove that so much of the
domain of this same Science is taken up by fictions and empirical
speculations that none of the men of learning have the slightest right,
with such a heavy beam in their own eye, to point to the speck in the eye
of the Occultist, even supposing that speck were not a figment of their
own imagination.
40. THEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH(621) BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. “WE ARE THE
KINGS;(622) WE ARE THE GODS” (_A_).
41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK UPON. WIVES FROM THE MINDLESS, THE
NARROW‐HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS, WICKED DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE, ALSO
KHADO,(623) WITH LITTLE MINDS (_B_).
42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR THE HUMAN BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY WORSHIPPED
(_C_). THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER (_D_).
(_a_) Such were the first truly physical men, whose first characteristic
was—pride! It is the memory of this Third Race and the gigantic
Atlanteans, which has lingered from one generation and race to another
generation and race down to the days of Moses, and has found an objective
form in those antediluvian giants, those terrible sorcerers and magicians,
of whom the Roman Church has preserved such vivid, and at the same time
distorted, legends. Anyone who has read and studied the Commentaries on
the Archaic Doctrine, will easily recognize in some of these Atlanteans
the prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel, the
Hamites, and all those _tutti quanti_ of “accursed memory,” as theological
literature expresses it; of those, in short, who have furnished posterity
with the orthodox types of Satan. And this naturally leads us to enquire
into the religious ethics of these early Races, mythical as they may be.
What was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common
acceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their progeny, the
Lemuro‐Atlanteans, had any; for they knew no dogma, nor had they to
believe _on faith_. No sooner had the mental eye of man been opened to
understanding, than the Third Race felt itself one with the ever‐present,
as also the ever to be unknown and invisible, All, the One Universal
Deity. Endowed with divine powers, and feeling in himself his _inner_ God,
each felt he was a Man‐God in his nature, though an animal in his physical
self. The struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of
the fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual
and the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the
lower “principles” by obtaining mastery over the body, joined the “Sons of
Light.” Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves
of Matter. From “Sons of Light and Wisdom” they ended by becoming the
“Sons of Darkness.” They fell in the battle of mortal life with Life
Immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of the future
generations of Atlanteans.(624)
At the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root‐Race had thus
no beliefs that could be called _religion_. That is to say, he was not
only ignorant of “gay religions, full of pomp and gold” but even of any
system of faith or outward worship. But if the term is to be defined as
the binding together of the masses in one form of reverence paid to those
we feel higher than ourselves, of piety—as a feeling expressed by a child
toward a loved parent—then even the earliest Lemurians from the very
beginning of their intellectual life, had a religion, and a most beautiful
one. Had they not their bright Gods of the Elements around them, and even
within themselves?(625) Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and
tended by, those who had given them being and called them forth to
intelligent, conscious life? We are assured it was so, and we believe it.
For the evolution of Spirit into Matter could never have been achieved,
nor would it have received its first impulse, had not the bright Spirits
sacrificed their own respective super‐ethereal essences to animate the man
of clay, by endowing each of his inner “principles” with a portion, or
rather, a reflection, of that essence. The Dhyânîs of the Seven
Heavens—the seven planes of Being—are the Noumena of the actual and the
future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of Nature—the
grosser effects of which we perceive in what Science is pleased to call
“modes of motion,” the imponderable forces and what not—are the still
higher Noumena of still higher Hierarchies.
It was the “Golden Age” in those days of old, the Age when the “Gods
walked the earth, and mixed freely with the mortals.” When it ceased, the
Gods departed—_i.e._, became invisible—and later generations ended by
worshipping their kingdoms—the Elements.
It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi‐divine man after his
separation into sexes—hence the first‐begotten and humanly‐born
mortals—who became the first “sacrificers” to the _God of Matter_. They
stand, in the dim far‐away past, in ages more than prehistoric, as the
prototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built,(626) as the first
Anthropomorphists who worshipped Form and Matter—a worship which very soon
degenerated into _self‐worship_, and thence led to phallicism, which
reigns supreme to this day in the symbolism of every exoteric religion of
ritual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve _became matter_, or furnished the
soil, Cain and Abel—the latter the life‐bearing soil, the former “the
tiller of that ground or field.”
Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated
from their earliest tribes into the righteous and the unrighteous; into
those who worshipped the one unseen Spirit of Nature, the Ray of which man
feels within himself—or the Pantheists, and those who offered fanatical
worship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark, cosmic, anthropomorphic
Powers, with whom they made alliance. These were the earliest Gibborim,
the “mighty men ... of renown” in those days,(627) who become with the
Fifth Race the Kabirim, Kabiri with the Egyptians and the Phœnicians,
Titans with the Greeks, and Râkshasas and Daityas with the Indian races.
Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern
religions, especially of the worship of the later Hebrews for their tribal
God. At the same time this sexual religion was closely allied to, based
upon, and, so to say, blended with, astronomical phenomena. The Lemurians
gravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of their Progenitors—the
Hyperborean Continent; the Atlanteans, toward the South Pole, the “_Pit_,”
cosmically and terrestrially—whence breathe the hot passions blown into
hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two Poles were
denominated, by the Ancients, Dragons and Serpents—hence good and bad
Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the “Sons of God”—Sons
of Spirit and Matter—the good and bad Magicians. This is the origin of the
dual and triple nature in man. The legend of the “Fallen Angels” in its
Esoteric signification, contains the key to the manifold contradictions of
human character; it points to the secret of man’s self‐consciousness; it
is the support on which hinges his entire Life‐Cycle—the history of his
evolution and growth.
On a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding of
Esoteric Anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question of the
Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the separator of the One into
various contrasted aspects.
The reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so much space is devoted
to an attempt to elucidate this difficult and obscure subject every time
it presents itself. A good deal must necessarily be said on its
symbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are given to the
thoughtful student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be
suggested than it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more
formal, philosophical exposition. The “Fallen Angels,” so‐called, are
_Humanity_ itself. The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, had no
being _before_ the appearance of physical conscious man. It is man who has
begotten and nurtured the fiend, and allowed it to develop in his heart;
it is he, again, who has contaminated the Indwelling God in himself, by
linking the pure Spirit with the impure Demon of Matter. And, if the
Kabalistic saying, “_Demon est Deus inversus_,” finds its metaphysical and
theoretical corroboration in dual manifested Nature, nevertheless, its
practical application is found in Mankind alone.
Thus it has now become self‐evident that, postulating as we do, (_a_) the
appearance of Man before that of other Mammalia, and even before the Ages
of the huge Reptiles; (_b_) Periodical Deluges and Glacial Periods owing
to the Karmic disturbance of the axis; and chiefly (_c_) the birth of man
from a Superior Being, or what Materialism would call a “supernatural”
Being, though it is only super‐_human_—our teachings have very few chances
of an impartial hearing. Add to it the claim that a portion of Mankind in
the Third Race—all those Monads of men who had reached the highest point
of Merit and Karma in the preceding Manvantara—owed their psychic and
rational natures to divine Beings “hypostasizing” into their Fifth
Principles, and the Secret Doctrine must lose caste in the eyes of not
only Materialism but even of dogmatic Christianity. For, no sooner will
the latter have learned that these Angels are identical with their
“Fallen” Spirits, than the Esoteric tenet will be proclaimed most terribly
heretical and pernicious.(628) The _Divine_ Man dwelt in the animal, and
therefore, when the physiological separation took place in the natural
course of evolution—when also “all the animal creation was _untied_,” and
males were attracted to females—_that race fell_; not because they had
eaten of the Fruit of Knowledge and knew Good from Evil, but because they
knew no better. Propelled by the sexless creative instinct, the early sub‐
races had evolved an intermediate race in which, as hinted in the Stanzas,
the higher Dhyân Chohans had incarnated.(629) “When we have ascertained
the extent of the universe (and learnt to know all that there is in it) we
will multiply our race,” answer the Sons of Will and Yoga to their
brethren of the same race, who invite them to do as they do. This means
that the great Adepts and Initiated Ascetics will “multiply,” _i.e._, once
more produce “mind‐born” immaculate sons—in the Seventh Root‐Race.
It is so stated in the _Vishnu_ and _Brahmâ Purânas_, in the
_Mahâbhârata_(630) and in the _Harivamsha_. In one portion of the
_Pushkara Mâhâtmya_, moreover, the separation of the sexes is allegorized
by Daksha, who, seeing that his will‐born progeny, the “Sons of passive
Yoga,” will not create men, “_converts half himself into a female_ by whom
he begets daughters,” the future females of the Third Race which begat the
Giants of Atlantis, the Fourth Race, so called. In the _Vishnu Purâna_ it
is simply said that Daksha, the father of mankind, established sexual
intercourse as the means of peopling the world.(631)
Happily for the Human Race the “Elect Race” had already become the vehicle
of incarnation of the highest Dhyânîs (intellectually and spiritually)
before Humanity had become quite material. When the last sub‐races—save
some of the lowest—of the Third Race had perished with the great Lemurian
Continent, the “Seeds of the _Trinity of Wisdom_” had already acquired the
secret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the same Great
Personality to step _ad libitum_ from one worn‐out body into another.
(_b_) The first War that Earth knew, the first shedding of human gore, was
the result of man’s eyes and senses being opened, which made him see that
the daughters of his brethren were fairer than his own—and their wives
also. There were rapes committed before that of the Sabines, and
Menelauses robbed of their Helens before the Fifth Race was born. The
Titans or Giants were the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This
took place during the Fourth Race—that of the Giants.
For “there _were_ Giants” in the days of old, indeed.(632) The
evolutionary series of the animal world is a warrant that the same thing
took place within the human races. Lower still in the order of creation we
find witnesses for the same proportionate size in the flora going _pari
passu_ with the fauna. The pretty ferns we collect and dry among the
leaves of our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns
which grew during the Carboniferous period.
Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works—in short,
almost every record that has come down to us from antiquity—contain
references to Giants. No one can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the
Secret Doctrine in the Râkshasas of Lankâ—the opponents conquered by Râma.
Are these accounts no better than the production of empty fancy? Let us
give the subject a few moments’ attention.
Are Giants A Fiction?
Here, again, we come into collision with Science, which so far denies that
man has ever been much larger than the average of tall and powerful men
now met with occasionally. Dr. Henry Gregor denounces the traditions of
Giants as resting upon ill‐digested facts, and instances of mistaken
judgments are brought forward as disproof of such traditions. Thus, in
1613, in a locality, called from time immemorial the “Field of Giants,” in
Lower Dauphiné, France, four miles from St. Romans, enormous bones were
found deeply buried in the sandy soil. They were attributed to human
remains, and even to Teutobodus, the Teuton chief slain by Marius. But
Cuvier’s later research proved them to be the fossil remains of the
Dinotherium Giganteum, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are pointed to as
an evidence that our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are,
the entrance doors being of no larger size then than now. The tallest man
of antiquity known to us, we are told, was the Roman Emperor Maximus,
whose height was only seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern
day, every year we see men taller than this. The Hungarian who exhibited
himself in the London Pavilion was nearly 9 feet high. In America a giant
was shown 9 feet 6 inches tall; the Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7
inches. In Russia and Germany one often sees men in the lower classes
above 7 feet. Now, as the ape‐theorists are told by Mr. Darwin that the
species of animals which result from cross breeding always betray “_a
tendency to revert to the original type_,” they ought to apply the same
law to men. Had there been no giants as a type in ancient days, there
would be none now.
All this applies only to the historic period. And if the skeletons of the
prehistoric ages have failed so far to prove undeniably in the opinion of
Science the claim here advanced, it is but a question of time. We,
however, positively deny the reality of the failure. Moreover, as already
stated, human stature is little changed since the last Racial Cycle. The
giants of old are all buried under the oceans, and hundreds of thousands
of years of constant friction by water would reduce to dust a brazen, much
more a human skeleton. And whence the testimony of well‐known classical
writers, of philosophers and men who, otherwise, never had the reputation
for lying? Let us bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 1847,
when Boucher de Perthes forced it upon the attention of Science, hardly
anything was known of fossil man, for Archæology complacently ignored his
existence. Of giants who were “in the earth in those days” of old, the
_Bible_ alone had spoken to the wise men of the West; the Zodiac being the
solitary witness called upon to corroborate the statement in the persons
of Orion or Atlas, whose mighty shoulders were said to support the world.
Nevertheless, even the giants have not been left without their witnesses,
and one may as well examine both sides of the question. The three
Sciences—geological, sidereal and scriptural, the latter in its universal
character—may furnish us with the needed proofs. To begin with Geology: it
has already confessed that the older the excavated skeletons, the larger,
taller and the more powerful their structure. This is already a certain
proof in hand. Frédéric de Rougemont, who, though believing too piously in
the _Bible_ and Noah’s Ark, is none the less a scientific witness, writes:
All those bones, found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria,
Liège, etc., those skulls which all remind one of the negro type
... and which by reason of their type might be mistaken for
animals, have all belonged to men of _high stature_.(633)
The same is repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a “tall
stature” to those who were submerged in the Deluge—not necessarily
“Noah’s”—and a smaller stature to the races which lived subsequently.
As for the evidence furnished by ancient writers, we need not trouble
ourselves with that of Tertullian, who assures us that in his day a number
of giants were found at Carthage—for, before his testimony can be
accepted, his own identity,(634) if not actual existence, would have to be
proven. We may, however, turn to the papers of 1858, which speak of a
“sarcophagus of giants” found that year on the site of this same city. As
to the ancient Pagan writers, we have the evidence of Philostratus, who
speaks of a giant skeleton twenty‐two cubits long, as well as of another
of twelve cubits, seen by himself on the promontory of Sigæum. This
skeleton may perhaps not have belonged, as believed by Protesilas, to the
giant killed by Apollo at the siege of Troy; nevertheless, it was that of
a giant, as was that of the other discovered by Messecrates of Stira, in
Lemnos—“horrible to behold,” according to Philostratus.(635) Is it
possible that prejudice would carry Science so far as to class _all_ these
men as either fools or liars?
Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he thought he recognized Orion, or Otus,
the brother of Ephialtes.(636) Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the
tomb of Antæus, the Giant; and Pausanias vouches for the actual existence
of the tombs of Asterius and of Geryon, or of Hillus, son of Hercules—all
Giants, Titans and mighty men. Finally the Abbé Pegues, affirms in his
curious work, _Les Volcans de la Grèce_, that:
In the neighbourhood of the volcanoes of the isle of Thera, giants
with enormous skulls were found laid out under colossal stones,
the erection of which in every place must have necessitated the
use of titanic powers, and which tradition associates in all
countries with the ideas about giants, volcanoes and magic.(637)
In the same work above cited, the author wonders why in the _Bible_ and
tradition the Gibborim, the giants or the “mighty ones,” the Rephaim, the
spectres or the “phantoms,” the Nephilim, or the “fallen ones”
(_irruentes_), are shown as if identical, though they are “all _men_,”
since the _Bible_ calls them the primitive and the mighty ones—_e.g._,
Nimrod. The Secret Doctrine explains the secret. These names, which belong
by right only to the four preceding Races and the earliest beginning of
the Fifth, allude very clearly to the first two _Phantom_ (Astral) Races,
to the “Fallen” Race—the Third, and to the Race of the Atlantean
Giants—the Fourth, after which “men began to decrease in stature.”
Bossuet sees the cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the “original
sin.” “Ye shall be as Gods,” says the Serpent of _Genesis_ to Eve, thus
laying the first germ of the worship of _false divinities_.(638) Hence, he
thinks, came idolatry, or the cult and adoration of _images_, of
anthropomorphized or human figures. But, if it is this that idolatry is
made to rest upon, then the two Churches—the Greek, and the Latin
especially—are as idolatrous and pagan as any other religion.(639) It was
only in the Fourth Race that men, who had lost all right to be considered
divine, resorted to body worship, in other words to phallicism. Till then,
they had been truly Gods, as pure and as divine as their Progenitors, and
the expression of the allegorical “Serpent,” as has been sufficiently
shown in the preceding pages, does not refer at all to the physiological
“Fall” of men, but to their acquiring the Knowledge of Good and Evil; and
this knowledge came to them _prior_ to their fall. It must not be
forgotten that it is only after his forced expulsion from Eden that “Adam
knew Eve his wife.” We shall not, however, check the tenets of the Secret
Doctrine by the dead‐letter of the Hebrew _Bible_, but rather point out
the great similarities between the two in their Esoteric meaning.
It was only after his defection from the Neo‐Platonists, that Clement of
Alexandria began to translate _gigantes_ by _serpentes_, explaining that
“serpents and giants signify _demons_.”(640)
We may be told that, before we draw parallels between our tenets and those
of the _Bible_, we have to show better evidence of the existence of the
Giants of the Fourth Race than the reference to them found in _Genesis_.
We answer, that the proofs we give are more satisfactory, at any rate are
supported by more literary and scientific evidence, than those of Noah’s
Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works of China are full of such
reminiscences about the Fourth Race. In the French translation of the
_Shoo‐King_,(641) we read:
When the Miao‐tse (that antediluvian and perverted race [explains
the annotator] which retired in the days of old to the rocky
caves, and the descendants of whom are said to be still found in
the neighbourhood of Canton),(642) _according to our ancient
documents_, had, owing to the beguilements of Tchy‐Yeoo, troubled
all the earth, it became full of brigands.... The Lord (Chang‐ty
[a King of the _Divine_ Dynasty]) cast his eyes over the people,
and saw no longer among them any trace of virtue. Then he
commanded Tchong and Ly [two lower Dhyân Chohans] to cut away
every communication between heaven and earth. Since then, there
has been no more _going up and down_!(643)
“Going up and down” means an untrammelled communication and intercourse
between the two Worlds.
As we are not in a position to give out a full and detailed history of the
Third and Fourth Races, as many isolated facts concerning them as are
permitted must be now collated together, especially those corroborated by
direct as well as by inferential evidence found in ancient literature and
history. As the “coats of skin” of men thickened, and they fell more and
more into physical sin, the intercourse between Physical and Ethereal
_Divine_ Man was stopped. The Veil of Matter between the two planes became
too dense for even the Inner Man to penetrate. The Mysteries of Heaven and
Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their Celestial Teachers in the days
of their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays from which became
necessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial,
because too material, soil. With the masses they degenerated into Sorcery,
taking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of
superstitions, and man‐, or hero‐worship. Alone a handful of primitive
men—in whom the spark of Divine Wisdom burnt bright, and became only
strengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age
in those who turned it to evil purposes—remained the elect custodians of
the Mysteries revealed to mankind by the Divine Teachers. There were those
among them, who remained in their Kaumâric condition from the beginning;
and tradition whispers, what the Secret Teachings affirm, namely, that
these Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy _which has never died since that
period_. As the _Catechism_ of the Inner Schools says:
_The Inner Man of the First ... only changes his body from time to time;
he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvâna, spurning Devachan
and remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind.... Out of
the seven Virgin‐men [Kumâra]_(_644_)_ four sacrificed themselves for the
sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain till the
end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever present. When
people say of one of them, __“__He is dead__”__; behold, he is alive __
and under another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the
Seed of undying Knowledge [Jñâna]. Thou shall never speak, O Lanoo, of
these great ones [Mahâ ...] before a multitude, mentioning them by their
names. The wise alone will understand._(645)
It is these sacred “Four” who have been allegorized and symbolized in the
_Linga Purâna_, which states that Vâmadeva (Shiva) as a Kumâra is reborn
in each Kalpa (Race, in this instance), as four youths—four, white; four,
red; four, yellow; and four, dark or brown. Let us remember that Shiva is
preëminently and chiefly an ascetic, the patron of all Yogîs and Adepts,
and the allegory will become quite comprehensible. It is the spirit of
Divine Wisdom and chaste Asceticism itself which incarnates in these
Elect. It is only after _getting married_ and being dragged by the Gods
from his terrible ascetic life, that Rudra becomes Shiva, a God—and not
one of a very virtuous or merciful type—in the Hindû Pantheon. Higher than
the “Four” is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens—that still more mysterious
and solitary Being described in Volume I.
We have now to examine the nature of the “Sons of the Flame” and of “Dark
Wisdom,” as well as the _pros_ and _cons_ of the Satanic assumption.
Such broken sentences as could be made out from the fragments of the tile,
which George Smith calls “The Curse after the Fall,”(646) are of course
allegorical; yet they corroborate that which is taught of the true nature
of the Fall of the Angels in our Books. Thus, it is said that the “Lord of
the Earth his name called out, the Father Elu [Elohim],” and pronounced
his “curse,” which “the God Hea heard, and his liver was angry, because
_his_ man [Angelic Man] had corrupted his purity,” for which Hea expresses
the desire that “_wisdom and knowledge_ hostilely may they injure him
[man].”(647)
The latter sentence points to the direct connection of the Chaldæan with
the Genetic account. While Hea tries to bring to nought the wisdom and
knowledge gained by man, through his newly‐acquired intellectual and
conscious capacity of creating in his turn—thus taking the monopoly of
creation out of the hands of God (the Gods)—the Elohim do the same in the
third chapter of _Genesis_. Therefore the Elohim sent him out of Eden.
But this was of no avail. For the Spirit of Divine Wisdom being upon and
_in_ man—verily the Serpent of Eternity and all Knowledge, that Mânasic
Spirit, which made him learn the secret of “creation” on the Kriyâshaktic,
and of procreation on the Earthly planes—led him as naturally to discover
his way to immortality, notwithstanding the jealousy of all the Gods.
The early Atlanto‐Lemurians are charged with taking unto themselves (the
divine incarnations) wives of a lower race, namely, the race of the
hitherto mindless men. Every ancient Scripture has the same, more or less
disfigured, legend. Primarily, the Angelic “Fall,” which has transformed
the “First‐born” of God into the Asuras, or into the Ahriman or Typhon of
the “Pagans”—_i.e._, if the accounts given in the _Book of Enoch_,(648)
and in _Hermes_, in _Purânas_ and _Bible_ are taken literally—has, when
read Esoterically, the following simple signification:
Sentences such as, “In his [Satan’s] ambition he raises his hand against
the Sanctuary of the God of Heaven,” etc., ought to read: Prompted by the
Law of Eternal Evolution and Karma, the Angel incarnated on Earth in Man;
and as his Wisdom and Knowledge are still divine, although his Body is
earthly, he is (allegorically) accused of divulging the Mysteries of
Heaven. He combines and uses the two for purposes of human, instead of
super‐human, procreation. Henceforth, “man will _beget_, not
_create_.”(649) But as, by so doing, he has to use his weak Body as the
means of procreation, that Body will pay the penalty for this Wisdom,
carried from Heaven down to the Earth; hence the corruption of physical
purity will become a temporary curse.
The Mediæval Kabalists knew this well, since one of them did not fear to
write:
The Kabalah was first taught by God himself to a select Company of
Angels who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall
the Angels most _graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to
the disobedient child of Earth_, to furnish the protoplasts with
the means of returning to their pristine nobility and
felicity.(650)
This shows how the incident of the Sons of God, marrying and imparting the
Divine Secrets of Heaven to the Daughters of Men—as allegorically told by
Enoch and in the sixth chapter of _Genesis_—was interpreted by the
Christian Kabalists. The whole of this period may be regarded as the
_pre_‐human period, that of Divine Man, or as plastic Protestant Theology
now has it—the _Pre_‐Adamite period. But even _Genesis_ begins its _real_
history (Chap. vi) by the giants of “those days” and the “sons of God”
marrying and teaching their wives—the “daughters of men.”
This period is the one described in the _Purânas_; and relating as it does
to days lost in archaic ages, hence pre‐historic, how can any
Anthropologist feel certain whether the mankind of that period was or was
not as he knows it now? The whole _personnel_ of the _Brâhmanas_ and
_Purânas_—the Rishis, Prajâpatis, Manus, their wives and progeny—belong to
that pre‐human period. All these are the _Seed_ of Humanity, so to speak.
It is around these “Sons of God,” the “mind‐born” astral Children of
Brahmâ, that our physical frames have grown and developed to what they are
now. For, the Paurânic histories of all those men are those of our Monads,
in their various and numberless incarnations on this and other Spheres,
events perceived by the “Shiva Eye” of the ancient Seers—the “Third Eye”
of our Stanzas—and described allegorically. Later on, they were disfigured
for sectarian purposes; mutilated, but still left with a considerable
ground‐work of truth in them. Nor is the philosophy less profound in such
allegories for being so thickly veiled by the overgrowth of fancy.
But with the Fourth Race we reach the purely human period. Those who were
hitherto semi‐divine Beings, self‐imprisoned in bodies which were human
only in appearance, became physiologically changed and took unto
themselves wives who were entirely human and fair to look upon, but in
whom _lower, more material_, though sidereal, Beings had incarnated. These
Beings in female forms—Lilith is the prototype of them in the Jewish
traditions—are called in the Esoteric accounts Khado (Dâkinî, in
Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the Chief of these Liliths Sangye
Khado (Buddha Dâkinî, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art of
“walking in the air,” and the “greatest _kindness to mortals_;” but with
no _mind_—only animal instinct.(651)
(_c_) This is the beginning of a worship which, ages later, was doomed to
degenerate into phallicism and sexual worship. It began by the worship of
the human body—that “miracle of miracles,” as an English author calls
it—and ended by that of its respective sexes. The worshippers were giants
in stature; but they were not giants in knowledge and learning, though it
came to them more easily than it does to the men of our modern times.
Their science was innate in them. The Lemuro‐Atlantean had no need of
discovering and fixing in his memory that which his informing principle
_knew_ at the moment of its incarnation. Time alone, and the ever‐growing
obtuseness of the Matter in which the “principles” had clothed themselves,
could, the one, weaken the memory of their pre‐natal knowledge, the other,
blunt and even extinguish every spark of the spiritual and divine in them.
Therefore had they, from the first, fallen victims to their animal natures
and bred “monsters”—_i.e._, men of distinct varieties from themselves.
Speaking of the Giants, Creuzer well describes them in saying that:
Those children of Heaven and Earth were endowed at their birth by
the _Sovereign Powers_, the authors of their being, with
extraordinary faculties both moral and physical. They _commanded
the Elements, knew the secrets of Heaven and the Earth, of the sea
and the whole world, and read futurity in_ the stars.... It seems,
indeed, as though, when reading of them, one has to deal _not with
men as we are_ but with Spirits of the Elements sprung from the
bosom of Nature and having full sway over her.... All these beings
are marked with a character of _magic_ and _sorcery_....
And so they were, those now legendary heroes of the pre‐historic, still
once really existing, races. Creuzer was wise in his generation, for he
did not charge with deliberate deceit, or dulness and superstition, an
endless series of recognized Philosophers, who mention these races and
assert that, even in their own time, they had seen their fossils. There
were sceptics in days of old—as many and great as they are now. But even a
Lucian, a Democritus and an Epicurus, yielded to the evidence of _facts_
and showed the discriminative capacity of really great intellects, which
can distinguish fiction from fact, and truth from exaggeration and fraud.
Ancient writers were no more fools than are our modern wise men; for, as
well remarked by the author of “Notes on Aristotle’s Psychology in
Relation to Modern Thought,” in _Mind_:
The common division of history into ancient and modern is ...
misleading. The Greeks in the fourth century, B.C., were in many
respects moderns; especially, we may add, in their scepticism.
They were not very likely to accept _fables_ so easily.
Yet the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, those “children of Heaven and
Earth,” were indeed marked with a character of _sorcery_; for the Esoteric
Doctrine charges them precisely with what, if believed, would put an end
to the difficulties of Science with regard to the origin of man, or
rather, his anatomical similarities to the anthropoid ape. It accuses them
of having committed the (to us) abominable crime of breeding with so‐
called “animals,” and thus producing a truly pithecoid species, now
extinct. Of course, as also in the question of spontaneous generation—in
which Esoteric Science believes, and which it teaches—the possibility of
such a cross‐breed between man and an animal of any kind will be denied.
But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as already
remarked, neither the human Atlantean Giants, nor yet the “animals,” were
the physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us,
the modern notions upon this subject—those of the Physiologists
included—are too uncertain and fluctuating to permit them an absolute _à
priori_ denial of such a fact.
A careful perusal of the Commentaries would make one think that the Being
with which the new “Incarnate” bred, was called an “animal,” not because
he was no human being, but rather because he was so dissimilar physically
and mentally to the more perfect races, which had developed
physiologically at an earlier period. Remember Stanza VII and what is said
in Shloka 24, viz., that when the “Sons of Wisdom” came to incarnate the
first time, some of them incarnated fully, others projected into the forms
only a Spark, while some of the Shadows were left over from the _filling_
and perfecting, till the Fourth Race. Those races, then, which “remained
destitute of knowledge,” or those again which were left “mindless,”
remained as they were, even after the natural separation of the sexes. It
is these who committed the first cross‐breeding, so to speak, and bred
monsters; and it is from the descendants of these that the Atlanteans
chose their wives. Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, were supposed to be
the only _human_ family on Earth. Yet we see Cain going to the land of Nod
and taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was supposed perfect
enough to be called human; and, even in our own day, while the Sinhalese
regard the Veddhas of their jungles as _speaking animals_ and no more,
some British people, in their arrogance, firmly believe that every other
human family—especially the dark Indians—is an _inferior_ race. Moreover
there are Naturalists who have seriously considered the problem whether
some savage tribes—like the Bushmen, for instance—can be regarded as _men_
at all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or race) of
animals “fair to look upon,” as a biped:
_Having human shape, but having the lower extremities, from the waist
down, covered with hair._
Hence the race of the satyrs, perhaps.
If men existed two million years ago, they must have been—just as were the
animals—quite different physically and anatomically from what they have
now become, and nearer then to the type of pure mammalian animal than they
are now. Anyhow, we learn that the animal world has bred strictly _inter
se_—_i.e._, in accordance with genus and species—only since the appearance
_on this Earth_ of the Atlantean Race. As demonstrated by the author of
that able work, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, this idea of the
refusal to breed with another species, or that sterility is the only
result of such breeding, “appears to be a _primâ facie_ deduction rather
than an absolute law” even now. He shows that:
Different species do, in fact, often breed together, as is seen in
the familiar instance of the horse and ass. It is true that in
this case the mule is sterile.... But this rule is not universal,
and quite recently one new hybrid race, that of the leporine, or
hare‐rabbit, has been created which is perfectly fertile.
The progeny of wolf and dog is also instanced, as also that of several
other domestic animals; foxes and dogs again, and the modern Swiss cattle
shown by Rütimeyer as descended from “three distinct species of fossil‐
oxen, the _Bos primigenius_, _Bos longifrons_ and _Bos frontosus_.”(652)
Yet some of those species, _as the ape family_, which so clearly resembles
man in physical structure, contain, we are told,
Numerous branches, which graduate into one another, but the
extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the
highest of the ape series.
The gorilla and chimpanzee, for instance.
Thus Mr. Darwin’s remark—or shall we say the remark of Linnæus?—_natura
non facit saltum_, is not only corroborated by Esoteric Science but
would—were there any chance of the real doctrine being accepted by any
others than its direct votaries—reconcile the modern evolution theory, in
more than one way, if not entirely, with facts, as also with the absolute
failure of the Anthropologists to meet with the “missing link” in our
Fourth Round geological formations.
We will show elsewhere that Modern Science, however unconsciously to
itself, pleads our case by its own admissions, and that de Quatrefages is
perfectly right, when he suggests in his last work, that it is far more
likely that the anthropoid ape should be discovered to be _the descendant
of man_, than that these two types should have a common, fantastic and
nowhere‐to‐be‐found ancestor. Thus the wisdom of the compilers of the old
Stanzas is vindicated by at least one eminent man of Science, and the
Occultist prefers to believe, as he has ever done, that, as the Commentary
says:
_Man was the first and highest [mammalian] animal that appeared in this
[Fourth Round] creation. Then came still huger animals; and last of all
the dumb man who walks on all fours. [For] the Râkshasas [Giant‐Demons]
and Daityas [Titans] of the White Dvipa [Continent] spoiled his [the dumb
man’s] sires._
Furthermore, as we see, there are Anthropologists who have traced man back
to an epoch which goes far to break down the apparent barrier that exists
between the chronologies of Modern Science and the Archaic Doctrine. It is
true that English Scientists generally have declined to commit themselves
to the sanction of the hypothesis of even a Tertiary man. They, each and
all, measure the antiquity of Homo Primigenius by their own lights and
prejudices. Huxley, indeed, ventures to speculate on a possible Pliocene
or Miocene man. Prof. Seeman and Mr. Grant Allen have relegated his advent
to the Eocene, but, speaking generally, English Scientists consider that
we cannot safely go beyond the Quaternary. Unfortunately, the facts do not
accommodate the too cautious reserve of these latter. The French school of
Anthropology, basing their views on the discoveries of l’Abbé Bourgeois,
Capellini, and others, has accepted, almost without exception, the
doctrine that the traces of our ancestors are certainly to be found in the
Miocene, while M. de Quatrefages now inclines to postulate a Secondary‐Age
man. Further on we shall compare such estimates with the figures given in
the Brâhmanical exoteric books which approximate to the Esoteric Teaching.
(_d_) “Then the Third Eye acted no longer,” says the Shloka, because Man
had sunk too deep into the mire of Matter.
What is the meaning of this strange and weird statement in Shloka 42,
concerning the Third Eye of the Third Race which had died and acted no
longer?
A few more Occult Teachings must now be given with reference to this point
as well as some others. The history of the Third and Fourth Races must be
amplified, in order that it may throw some more light on the development
of our present humanity; and show how the faculties, called into activity
by Occult training, restore man to the position he previously occupied in
reference to spiritual perception and consciousness. But the phenomenon of
the Third Eye has to be first explained.
The Races With The “Third Eye.”
The subject is so unusual, the paths pursued so intricate, so full of
dangerous pitfalls prepared by adverse theories and criticism, that good
reasons have to be given for every step taken. While turning the light of
the bull’s‐eye, called Esotericism, on almost every inch of the Occult
ground travelled over, we have also to use its lens to throw into stronger
objectivity the regions explored by exact Science; this, not only in order
to contrast the two, but to defend our position.(653)
It may be complained by some that too little is said of the physical,
_human_ side of the extinct races, in the history of their growth and
evolution. Much more might be said, assuredly, if simple prudence did not
make us hesitate at the threshold of every new revelation. All that finds
possibility and landmarks in the discoveries of Modern Science, is given;
all that of which exact knowledge knows nothing and upon which it is
unable to speculate—and therefore denies as fact in nature—is withheld.
But even such statements as, for instance, that, of all the mammalians,
man was the earliest, that it is man who is the indirect ancestor of the
ape, and that he was a kind of Cyclops in days of old—all will be
contested; yet Scientists will never be able to prove, except to their own
satisfaction, that _it was not so_. Nor can they admit that the first two
Races of men were too ethereal and phantom‐like in their constitution,
organism, and _shape_ even, to be called physical men. For, if they do, it
will be found that this is one of the reasons why their relics can never
be expected to be exhumed among other fossils. Nevertheless all this is
maintained. Man was the Store‐house, so to speak, of _all the seeds of
life_ for this Round, vegetable and animal alike.(654) As Ain Suph is
“One, _notwithstanding the innumerable forms which are in him_,”(655) so
is man, on Earth the microcosm of the macrocosm.
As soon as man appeared, everything was complete ... for
everything is comprised in man. He _unites in himself all
forms_.(656)
The mystery of the _earthly_ man is after the mystery of the
Heavenly Man.(657)
The human form—so called because it is the vehicle (under whatever shape)
of the _Divine_ Man—is, as so intuitionally remarked by the author of
“Esoteric Studies,” the _new type_, at the beginning of every Round.
As man never can be, so he never has been, manifested in a shape
belonging to the animal kingdom _in esse_, _i.e._, he never formed
part of that kingdom. Derived, only derived, from the most
finished class of the latter, a new human form must always have
been _the_ new type of the cycle. The human shape in one ring [?],
as I imagine, becomes cast‐off clothes in the next; it is then
appropriated by the highest order in the servant‐kingdom
below.(658)
If the idea is what we understand it to mean—for the “rings” spoken of
somewhat confuse the matter—then it is the correct Esoteric Teaching.
Having appeared at the very beginning, and at the head of sentient and
conscious life, Man—the Astral, or the “Soul,” for the _Zohar_, repeating
the Archaic Teaching, distinctly says that “the _real_ man is the soul,
and his material frame no part of him”—Man became the living and animal
_Unit_, from which the “cast‐off clothes” determined the shape of every
life and animal in this Round.(659)
Thus, he “created,” for ages, the insects, reptiles, birds, and animals,
unconsciously to himself, from his remains and relics from the Third and
the Fourth Rounds. The same idea and teaching are as distinctly given in
the _Vendîdâd_ of the Mazdeans, as they are in the Chaldæan and Mosaic
allegory of the Ark, all of which are the many national versions of the
original legend given in the Hindû Scriptures. It is found in the allegory
of Vaivasvata Manu and _his_ Ark with the Seven Rishis, each of whom is
shown the Father and Progenitor of specified animals, reptiles, and even
monsters, as in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_. Open the Mazdean
_Vendîdâd_, and read the command of Ahura Mazda to Yima, a Spirit of the
Earth, who symbolizes the three Races, after telling him to build a
Vara—“an enclosure,” an Argha or Vehicle.
Thither [into the Vara] thou shalt bring _the seeds of men and
women_, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth;
thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle,
etc.... All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind _to be
kept inexhaustible there_, so long _as those men shall stay in the
Vara_.(660)
Those “men” in the “Vara” are the “Progenitors,” the Heavenly Men or
Dhyânîs, the future Egos who are commissioned to inform mankind. For the
Vara, or Ark, or again the Vehicle, simply means _Man_.(661)
Thou shalt seal up the Vara [after filling it up with the seeds],
and thou shalt make a door, and a window _self‐shining within_
[which is the Soul].(662)
And when Yima enquires of Ahura Mazda how he shall manage to make that
Vara, he is answered:
Crush the earth ... and knead it with thy hands, as the potter
does when kneading the potter’s clay.(663)
The Egyptian ram‐headed God makes man of clay on a potter’s wheel, and so
in _Genesis_ do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material.
When the “Maker of the material world,” Ahura Mazda, is asked,
furthermore, what is to give light “to the Vara which Yima made,” he
answers that:
There are _uncreated_ lights and _created_ lights. There [in
Airyana Vaêjô, where Vara is built], the stars, the moon, and the
sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems
only as a day [and night].(664)
This is a clear reference to the “Land of the Gods” or the (now) Polar
Regions. Moreover another hint is contained in this verse, a distinct
allusion to the “uncreated lights” which enlighten man within—his
“principles.” Otherwise, no sense or reason could be found in Ahura
Mazda’s answer which is forthwith followed by the words:
Every fortieth year, to every couple [hermaphrodite] _two are
born, a male and female_.(665)
The latter is a distinct echo of the Secret Doctrine, of a Stanza which
says:
_At the expiration of every forty [annual] Suns, at the end of every
fortieth Day, the double one becomes four; male and female in one, in the
first and second and the third...._
This is clear, since every “Sun” meant a whole year, the latter being
composed of one Day then, as in the Arctic Circle it is now composed of
six months. According to the old teaching, the axis of the Earth gradually
changes its inclination to the ecliptic, and at the period referred to,
this inclination was such that a polar Day lasted during the whole period
of the Earth’s revolution about the Sun, when a kind of twilight of very
short duration intervened; after which the polar land resumed its position
directly under the solar rays. This may be contrary to Astronomy as now
taught and understood; but who can say that changes in the motion of the
Earth, which do not take place now, did not occur millions of years back?
Returning once more to the statement that Vara meant the Man of the Fourth
Round, as much as the Earth of those days, the Moon, and even Noah’s Ark,
if one will so have it—this is again shown in the dialogue between Ahura
Mazda and Zarathushtra. Thus when the latter asks:
O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Who is he who
brought the law of Mazda into the Vara which Yima made?
Ahura Mazda answered: “It was the bird Karshipta, O holy
Zarathushtra!”(666)
And the note explains:
The bird Karshipta dwells in the heavens: were he living on the
earth, he would be king of birds. He brought the law into the Var
of Yima, and recites the Avesta _in the language of birds_.(667)
This again is an allegory and a symbol misunderstood by the Orientalists
only, who see in this bird “an incarnation of lightning,” and say its song
was “often thought to be the utterance of a god and a revelation,” and
what not. Karshipta is the human Mind‐Soul, and the deity thereof,
symbolized in ancient Magianism by a bird, as the Greeks symbolized it by
a butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta entered the Vara or Man, than he
understood the law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom. In the “Book of Concealed
Mystery” it is said of the Tree, which is the Tree of knowledge of good
and evil:
In its branches the birds lodge and build their nests (the _souls_
and the angels have their place).(668)
Therefore, with the Kabalists it was a like symbol. “Bird” was a Chaldæan,
and has become a Hebrew, synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a Spirit,
or Deva; and the “Bird’s Nest” was, with both, Heaven, and is God’s Bosom,
in the _Zohar_. The perfect Messiah enters Eden “into that place which is
called the Bird’s Nest.”(669)
“Like a bird that is flying from its nest,” and that is the Soul
from which the She’kheen‐ah [divine wisdom or grace] does not move
away.(670)
_The Nest of the Eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces Life,
is boundless Space_,
—says the Commentary, meaning Hamsa, the Bird of Wisdom.
It is Adam Kadmon who is the tree of the Sephiroth, and it is he who
becomes the “tree of knowledge of good and evil,” Esoterically. And that
“tree hath around it seven columns [seven pillars] of the world, or
Rectores [the same Progenitors or Sephiroth again], operating through the
respective orders of Angels in the spheres of the seven planets,” etc.,
one of which orders begets Giants (Nephilim) on Earth.
It was the belief of all antiquity, Pagan and Christian, that the earliest
mankind was a race of giants. Certain excavations in America in mounds and
in caves, have already, in isolated cases, yielded groups of skeletons of
nine and twelve feet high.(671) These belong to tribes of the early Fifth
Race, now degenerated to an average size of between five and six feet. But
we can easily believe that the Titans and Cyclopes of old really belonged
to the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and that all the subsequent legends and
allegories found in the Hindû _Purânas_ and the Greek poems of Hesiod and
Homer, were based on the hazy reminiscences of real Titans—men of a
tremendous super‐human physical power, which enabled them to defend
themselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and
early Cenozoic times—and of actual Cyclopes, “three‐eyed” mortals.
It has been often remarked by observant writers, that the “origin of
nearly every popular myth and legend could be traced invariably to a fact
in Nature.”
In these fantastic creations of an exuberant subjectivism, there is always
an element of the objective and real. The imagination of the masses,
disorderly and ill‐regulated as it may be, could never have conceived and
fabricated _ex nihilo_ so many monstrous figures, such a wealth of
extraordinary tales, had it not had, to serve it as a central nucleus,
those floating reminiscences, obscure and vague, which unite the broken
links of the chain of time to form with them the mysterious, dream
foundation of our collective consciousness.(672)
The evidence for the Cyclopes—a race of Giants—will, in forthcoming
Sections, be pointed out in the Cyclopean remnants, which are so called to
this day. An indication that the early Fourth Race—during its evolution
and before the final adjustment of the human organism, which became
perfect and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race—may have been three‐eyed,
without having necessarily a third eye in the middle of the brow, like the
legendary Cyclops, is also furnished by Science.
To Occultists who believe that spiritual and psychic _involution_ proceeds
on parallel lines with physical _evolution_—that the _inner_ senses,
innate in the first human races, atrophied during racial growth and the
material development of the outer senses—to the students of Esoteric
symbology the above statement is no conjecture or possibility, but simply
_a phase of the law of growth_, a proven fact, in short. They understand
the meaning of the passage in the Commentaries which says:
_There were four‐armed human creatures in those early days of the male‐
females [hermaphrodites]; with one head, yet three eyes. They could see
before them and behind them._(_673_)_ A Kalpa later [after the separation
of the sexes] men having fallen into matter, their spiritual vision became
dim; and coördinately the Third Eye commenced to lose its power.... When
the Fourth [Race] arrived at its middle age, the Inner Vision had to be
awakened, and acquired by artificial stimuli, the process of which was
known to the old Sages._(_674_)_... The Third Eye, likewise, getting
gradually petrified,_(_675_)_ soon disappeared. The double‐faced became
the one‐faced, and the eye was drawn deep into the head and is now buried
under the hair. During the activity of the Inner Man [during trances and
spiritual visions] the eye swells and expands. The Arhat sees and feels
it, and regulates his action accordingly.... The undefiled Lanoo
[Disciple, Chelâ] need fear no danger; he who keeps himself not in purity
[who is not chaste] will receive no help from the __“__Deva Eye.__”_
Unfortunately not. The “Deva Eye” exists no more for the majority of
mankind. The Third Eye _is dead_, and acts no longer; but it has left
behind a witness to its existence. This witness is now the Pineal Gland.
As for the “four‐armed” men, it is they who became the prototypes of the
four‐armed Hindû Gods, as shown in a preceding footnote.
Such is the mystery of the _human eye_ that some Scientists have been
forced to resort to Occult explanations in their vain endeavours to
explain and account for all the difficulties surrounding its action. The
development of the human eye gives more support to Occult Anthropology
than to that of the Materialistic Physiologists. “The eyes in the human
embryo grow _from within without_”—out of the brain, instead of being part
of the skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor
Lankester—thinking the brain a queer place for the eye, and attempting to
explain the phenomenon on Darwinian lines—suggests the curious view that
“our” earliest vertebrate ancestor was a “_transparent_” creature and
hence did not mind where the eye was! And so was man a “transparent
creature” once upon a time, we are taught; and hence our theory holds
good. But how does the Lankester hypothesis square with the Hæckelian view
that the vertebrate eye originated by changes _in the epidermis_? If it
started _inside_, the latter theory goes into the waste basket. This seems
to be proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester’s extraordinary
suggestion—or shall we say admission?—is perhaps rendered necessary by
evolutionist necessities. Occultism, with its teaching as to the gradual
development of senses “_from within without_,” from astral prototypes, is
far more satisfactory. The Third Eye _retreated inwards_ when its course
was run—another point in favour of Occultism.
The allegorical expression of the Hindû mystics who speak of the “Eye of
Shiva,” the Tri‐lochana, or “three‐eyed,” thus receives its justification
and _raison d’être_: the transference of the Pineal Gland (once that Third
Eye) to the forehead, being an exoteric licence. This throws also a light
on the mystery—incomprehensible to some—of the connection between
_abnormal_, or spiritual Seership, and the physiological purity of the
Seer. The question is often asked: Why should celibacy and chastity be a
_sine quâ non_ condition of regular Chelâship, or the development of
psychic and occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary. When
we learn that the Third Eye was once a physiological organ, and that later
on, owing to the gradual disappearance of spirituality and increase of
materiality, the spiritual nature being extinguished by the physical, it
became an atrophied organ, as little understood now by Physiologists as is
the spleen—when we learn this, the connection becomes clear. During human
life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and
especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our
physiological senses. Sexual action also being closely connected, by
interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is
useless to give any longer explanation. Of course, the normal and abnormal
state of the brain, and the degree of active work in the Medulla
Oblongata, reacts powerfully on the Pineal Gland, for, owing to the number
of “centres” in that region, which controls by far the greatest number of
the physiological actions of the animal economy, and also owing to the
close and intimate neighbourhood of the two, a very powerful “inductive”
action must be exerted by the Medulla on the Pineal Gland.
All this is quite plain to the Occultist, but is very vague in the sight
of the general reader. The latter must then be shown the possibility of a
three‐eyed man in Nature, in those periods when his formation was yet in a
comparatively chaotic state. Such a possibility may be inferred from
anatomical and zoological knowledge, first of all, and then it may rest on
the assumptions of Materialistic Science itself.
It is asserted upon the authority of Science, and upon evidence, which is
this time not merely a fiction of theoretical speculation, that many of
the animals—especially among the lower orders of the vertebrata—have a
_third_ eye, now atrophied, but which was necessarily active in its
origin.(676) The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia,
recently discovered in New Zealand—_a part of ancient Lemuria so called,
mark well_—presents this peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner; and
not only the Hatteria Punctata, but the Chameleon, and certain reptiles,
and even fishes. It was thought, at first, that this was no more than the
prolongation of the brain which ended with a small protuberance, called
Epiphysis, a little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and
found in every animal. But it was soon found to be more than this. As its
development and anatomical structure showed, it offered such an analogy
with that of the eye, that it was found impossible to see in it anything
else. There are Palæontologists who to this day feel convinced that this
Third Eye originally functioned, and they are certainly right. For this is
what is said of the Pineal Gland in Quain’s _Anatomy_:
It is from this part, constituting at first the whole and
subsequently the hinder part of the anterior primary encephalic
vesicle, that the optic vesicles are developed in the earliest
period, and the fore part is that in connection with which the
cerebral hemispheres and accompanying parts are formed. The
thalamus opticus of each side is formed by a lateral thickening of
the medullary wall, while the interval between, descending towards
the base, constitutes the cavity of the third ventricle with its
prolongation in the infundibulum. The grey commissure afterwards
stretches across the ventricular cavity.... The hinder part of the
roof is developed by a peculiar process to be noticed later into
the pineal gland, which remains united on each side by its
pedicles to the thalamus, and behind these a transverse band is
formed as posterior commissure.
The lamina terminalis (lamina cinerea) continues to close the
third ventricle in front, below it the optic commissure forms the
floor of the ventricle, and further back the infundibulum descends
to be united in the sella turcica with the tissue adjoining the
posterior lobe of the pituitary body.
The two _optic thalami_, formed from the posterior and outer part
of the anterior vesicle, consist at first of a single hollow sac
of nervous matter, the cavity of which communicates on each side
in front with that of the commencing cerebral hemispheres, and
behind with that of the middle cephalic vesicle (corpora
quadrigemina). Soon, however, by increased deposit taking place in
their interior behind, below, and at the sides, the thalami become
solid, and at the same time a cleft or fissure appears between
them above, and penetrates down to the internal cavity, which
continues open at the back part opposite the entrance of the
Sylvian aqueduct. This cleft or fissure is the _third ventricle_.
Behind, the two thalami continue united by the _posterior
commissure_, which is distinguishable about the end of the third
month, and also by the _peduncles of the pineal gland_....
At an early period the _optic tracts_ may be recognized as hollow
prolongations from the outer part of the wall of the thalami while
they are still vesicular. At the fourth month these tracts are
distinctly formed. They subsequently are prolonged backwards into
connection with the corpora quadrigemina.
The formation of the pineal gland and pituitary body presents some
of the most interesting phenomena which are connected with the
development of the thalamencephalon.(677)
The above is specially interesting when it is remembered that, were it not
for the development of the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres, the
Pineal Gland would be perfectly visible on the removal of the parietal
bones. It is very interesting also to note the obvious connection which
can be traced between the originally hollow Optic Tract and the Eyes
anteriorly, and the Pineal Gland and its Peduncles posteriorly, and
between all of these and the Optic Thalami. So that the recent discoveries
in connection with the third eye of Hatteria Punctata have a very
important bearing on the history of the development of the human senses,
and on the Occult assertions in the text.
It is well known that Descartes saw in the Pineal Gland the _Seat of the
Soul_, though this is now regarded as a fiction by those who have ceased
to believe in the existence of an immortal principle in man. Although the
Soul is joined to every part of the body, he said, there is one special
portion of the latter in which the Soul exercises its functions more
specially than in any other. And, as neither the heart, nor yet the brain
could be that “special” locality, he concluded that it was that little
gland which was tied to the brain, and yet had an action independent of
it, as it could easily be put into a kind of swinging motion “by the
_animal spirits_(678) which cross the cavities of the skull in every
sense.”
Unscientific as this may appear in our day of exact learning, Descartes
was yet far nearer the Occult truth than is any Hæckel. For the Pineal
Gland is, as shown, far more closely connected with Soul and Spirit than
with the physiological senses of man. Had the leading Scientists a glimmer
of the _real_ processes employed by the Evolutionary Impulse, and the
winding _cyclic_ course of this great Law, they would _know_ instead of
conjecturing, and would feel certain of the future physical
transformations which await the human kind by the knowledge of its past
forms. Then would they see the fallacy and the absurdity of their modern
“blind‐force” and “mechanical” processes of Nature; and, in consequence of
such knowledge, would realize that the said Pineal Gland, for instance,
could not but be disabled for _physical_ use at this stage of our Cycle.
If the odd “eye” is now atrophied in man, it is a proof that, as in the
lower animal, it has once been active; for Nature never creates the
smallest, the most insignificant, form without some definite purpose and
for some use. It was an active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution
when the spiritual element in man reigned supreme over the hardly nascent
intellectual and psychic elements. And, as the Cycle ran down towards that
point where the physiological senses were developed by, and went _pari
passu_ with, the growth and consolidation of physical man—the interminable
and complex vicissitudes and tribulations of zoological development—this
median “eye” at last atrophied together with the early spiritual and
purely psychic characteristics in man. The eye is the mirror and also the
window of the Soul, says popular wisdom,(679) and _Vox populi, vox Dei_.
In the beginning, every class and family of the living species was
hermaphrodite and objectively one‐eyed. In the animal—whose form was as
ethereal (astrally) as that of man, before the bodies of both began to
evolve their “coats of skin,” viz., to evolve, from _within without_, the
thick coating of physical substance or matter with its internal
physiological mechanism—the Third Eye was primarily, as in man, the only
seeing organ. The two physical front eyes only developed(680) later on in
both brute and man, whose organ of physical sight was, at the commencement
of the Third Race, in the same position as that of some of the blind
vertebrates, in our day, _i.e._, beneath an opaque skin.(681) Only, the
stages of the odd, or primeval, eye, in man and brute, are now inverted,
as the former has already passed that animal non‐rational stage in the
Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute creation by a whole plane of
consciousness. Therefore, while the Cyclopean eye was, and still _is_, in
man the organ of _spiritual_ sight, in the animal it was that of objective
vision. And this eye, having performed its function, was replaced, in the
course of physical evolution from the simple to the complex, by two eyes,
and thus was stored and laid aside by Nature for further use in æons to
come.
This explains why the Pineal Gland reached its highest development
proportionately with the lowest physical development. It is in the
Vertebrata that it is the most prominent and objective, whereas in man it
is most carefully hidden and inaccessible, except to the Anatomist. No
less light, however, is thereby thrown on the future physical, spiritual,
and intellectual state of mankind, in periods corresponding on parallel
lines with other past periods, and always on the lines of ascending and
descending cyclic evolution and development. Thus, a few centuries before
the Kali Yuga—the Age which began nearly 5,000 years ago—it was said in
Commentary Twenty, if it is paraphrased into comprehensible sentences:
_We [the Fifth Root‐Race] in our first half [of duration] onward [on the
now ascending arc of the Cycle] are on the mid point of [or between] the
First and Second Races—falling downward [i.e., the Races were then on the
descending arc of the Cycle].... Calculate for thyself, Lanoo, and see._
Calculating as advised, we find that during that transitional
period—namely, in the second half of the First spiritual ethereo‐astral
Race—nascent mankind was devoid of the intellectual brain element, as it
was on its _descending_ line. And as we are parallel to it, on the
_ascending_, we are, therefore, devoid of the spiritual element, which is
now replaced by the intellectual. For, remember well, as we are in the
Mânasa period of our Cycle of Races, or in the Fifth, we have, therefore,
crossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and
Matter—or the equilibrium between brain intellect and spiritual
perception. One important point, has, however, to be borne in mind.
[Illustration: Evolution of Root‐Races in the Fourth Round]
[Transcriber’s Note: The graph shows, to the left, “Downward Cycle.
Evolution of Physical and Intellectual Nature and the Gradual Regression
of Spirituality.” To the right is “Ascending Cycle. Reëvolution or
Reversion of Spirituality and the Gradual Decrease of Materiality and mere
Brain‐intellectuality.” Below is “Meridian of Races.”]
We are only in the Fourth Round, and it is in the Fifth that the full
development of Manas, as a direct ray from the Universal Mahat—a ray
unimpeded by Matter—will be finally reached. Nevertheless, as every sub‐
race and nation have their cycles and stages of evolutionary development
repeated on a smaller scale, much more must it be so in the case of a
Root‐Race. Our Race then has, as a Root‐Race, crossed the equatorial line
and is cycling onward on the spiritual side; but some of our sub‐races
still find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their respective
national cycles; while others again—the oldest—having crossed the crucial
point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe, will live
or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub‐races.
It now becomes comprehensible why the Third Eye was gradually transformed
into a simple gland, after the physical Fall of those we have agreed to
call the Lemurians.
It is a curious fact that in human beings the cerebral hemispheres and the
lateral ventricles have been especially developed, whereas it is the Optic
Thalami, Corpora Quadrigemina, and Corpora Striata which are the principal
parts developed in other mammalian brains. Moreover, it is asserted that
the intellect of a man may, to some extent, be gauged by the development
of the central convolutions and the fore part of the cerebral hemispheres.
It would seem a natural corollary to this that if the development of the
Pineal Gland may be considered to be an index of the astral capacities and
spiritual proclivities of any man, there will be a corresponding
development of that part of the cranium, or an increase in the size of the
Pineal Gland at the expense of the posterior part of the cerebral
hemispheres. This is a curious speculation and would receive confirmation
in the present case. We should see, below and behind, the cerebellum which
has been held to be the seat of all the animal proclivities of the human
being, and which is allowed by Science to be the great centre for all the
physiologically coördinated movements of the body, such as walking,
eating, etc.; in front, the fore‐part of the brain, the cerebral
hemispheres, the part especially connected with the development of the
intellectual powers in man; and in the middle, dominating them both, and
especially the animal functions, the developed Pineal Gland, in connection
with the more highly evolved, or spiritual man.
It must be remembered that these are only physical correspondences; just
as the ordinary human brain is the registering organ of memory, but not
memory itself.
This is, then, the organ which has given rise to so many legends and
traditions, among others to that of men with one head but two faces. These
legends may be found in several Chinese works, besides being referred to
in the Chaldæan fragments. Apart from the work already cited, the _Shan
Hai King_, compiled by Kung Chia from engravings on nine urns made by the
Emperor Yü, 2,255 B.C., they may be found in another work, called the
_Bamboo Books_, and in a third, the _’Rh Ya_, whose author was “initiated
according to tradition by Chow Kung, uncle of Wu Wang, the first Emperor
of the Chow Dynasty, 1,122 B.C.” The _Bamboo Books_ contain the ancient
annals of China, found A.D. 279 on opening the grave of King Seang of Wei,
who died 295 B.C.(682) Both these works mention men with two faces on one
head—one in front and one behind.
Now what students of Occultism ought to know is that the Third Eye _is
indissolubly connected with Karma_. The tenet is so mysterious that very
few have heard of it.
The “Eye of Shiva” did not become entirety atrophied before the close of
the Fourth Race. When spirituality and all the divine powers and
attributes of the Deva‐Man of the Third Race had been made the hand‐
maidens of the newly‐awakened physiological and psychic passions of the
physical man, instead of the reverse, the Eye lost its powers. But such
was the law of evolution, and it was, in strict accuracy, no _Fall_. The
sin was not in using those newly‐developed powers, but in _misusing_ them;
in making of the tabernacle, designed to contain a God, the fane of every
_spiritual_ iniquity. And if we say “sin” it is merely that everyone
should understand our meaning, for Karma(683) would be the more correct
term to use in this case; moreover the reader who should feel perplexed at
the use of the term “spiritual” instead of “physical” iniquity, is
reminded of the fact that there can be no physical iniquity. The body is
simply the irresponsible organ, the tool of the Psychic, if not of the
Spiritual, Man. And in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the
Spiritual Being which sinned, the Spirit Element being still the “Master”
Principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the
heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads.
As this sentence may again be found puzzling, it is better that it should
be explained for the benefit of those who are ignorant of Theosophical
Teachings.
Questions with regard to Karma and Re‐births are constantly being put
forward, and great confusion seems to exist upon the subject. Those who
are born and bred in the Christian faith, and have been trained in the
idea that a new Soul is created by God for every newly‐born infant, are
among the most perplexed. They ask whether the number of Monads
incarnating on Earth is limited; to which they are answered in the
affirmative. For, however countless, in our conception, the number of the
incarnating Monads, still, there must be a limit. This is so even if we
take into account the fact that ever since the Second Race, when their
respective seven Groups were furnished with bodies, several births and
deaths may be allowed for every second of time in the æons already passed.
It has been stated that Karma‐Nemesis, whose bond‐maid is Nature, adjusted
everything in the most harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the fresh
pouring‐in, or arrival of new Monads, ceased as soon as Humanity had
reached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated
since the middle‐point of the Atlanteans. Let us remember that, save in
the case of young children, and of individuals whose lives have been
violently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual Entity can reïncarnate
before a period of many centuries has elapsed, and such gaps alone must
show that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited.
Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other animals for their
evolutionary progress.
Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the
evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of Karma is
inextricably interwoven with that of Reïncarnation.
It is only the knowledge of the constant re‐births of one and the same
Individuality throughout the Life‐Cycle; the assurance that the same
Monads—among whom are many Dhyân Chohans, or the “Gods” themselves—have to
pass through the “Circle of Necessity,” rewarded or punished by such
rebirth for the suffering endured or crimes committed in the former life;
that those very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless Shells, or
Astral Figures of the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who
are now amongst us—nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we
say, that can explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and
reconcile man to the terrible _apparent_ injustice of life. Nothing but
such certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one
unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes the
inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one
sees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her
favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all
his intellect and noble virtues—far more deserving in every way—perishing
of want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn
away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one’s ears ringing and
heart aching with the cries of pain around him—that blessed knowledge of
Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their
supposed Creator.(684)
Of all the terrible blasphemies and what are virtually accusations thrown
at their God by the Monotheists, none is greater or more unpardonable than
that (almost always) false humility which makes the presumably “pious”
Christian assert, in the face of every evil and undeserved blow, that
“such _is the will_ of God.”
Dolts and hypocrites! Blasphemers and impious Pharisees who speak in the
same breath of the endless merciful love and care of their God and Creator
for helpless man, and of that God _scourging the good, the very best of
his creatures, bleeding them to death like an insatiable Moloch_! Shall we
be answered to this, in Congreve’s words:
But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?
Logic and simple common sense, we answer. If we are asked to believe in
“original sin,” in _one_ life _only_ on this Earth for every Soul, and in
an anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for the
pleasure of condemning them to eternal hell‐fire—and this whether they be
good or bad, says the Predestinarian(685)—why should not everyone of us
who is endowed with reasoning powers, condemn in his turn such a
villainous Deity? Life would become unbearable, if one had to believe in
the God created by man’s unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in human
dogmas, and in the unhealthy imagination of some poets, who believe they
have solved the problem by addressing him as:
Thou great Mysterious Power, who hast _involved_
The pride of human wisdom, _to confound_
The _daring scrutiny_ and prove _the faith_
Of thy _presuming_ creatures!
Truly a robust “faith” is required to believe that it is “presumption” to
question the justice of one, who creates helpless little man but to
“perplex” him, and to test a “faith” with which that “Power,” moreover,
may have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes.
Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every
reasonable evidence and on life‐experience, in Karma‐Nemesis, or the Law
of Retribution. This Law—whether Conscious or Unconscious—predestines
nothing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is
Eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coëqual with Eternity,
it cannot be said to act, for it is Action itself. It is not the _wave_
which drowns a man, but the _personal_ action of the wretch who goes
deliberately and places himself under the _impersonal_ action of the laws
that govern the _ocean’s_ motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it
design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic Law adjusts the
effects, which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending
ever to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too
forcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate
the arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say
that it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has
brought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and
individual liberty, like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not
involved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it
punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who
through study and meditation unveils its intricate paths, and throws light
on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to
their ignorance of the labyrinth of life—is working for the good of his
fellow‐men. Karma is an Absolute and Eternal Law in the World of
Manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever‐
present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or
Materialists—still less as Fatalists,(686) for Karma is one with the
Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal
world.
Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the Law
of Re‐birth, or of the reïncarnation of the same spiritual Individuality
in a long, almost interminable, series of Personalities. The latter are
like the various characters played by the same actor, with each of which
that actor identifies himself and is identified by the public, for the
space of a few hours. The _inner_, or real Man, who personates those
characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet only for the brief
space of a few acts, which, however, on the plane of human illusion,
represent the whole life of Hamlet. He knows also that he was, the night
before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a
still earlier preceding night. And though the outer, visible character is
supposed to be ignorant of the fact, and in actual life that ignorance is,
unfortunately, but too real, nevertheless, the _permanent_ Individuality
is fully aware of it, and it is through the atrophy of the “spiritual” Eye
in the physical body, that that knowledge is unable to impress itself on
the consciousness of the false Personality.
The possession of a physical Third Eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the
men of the Third Root‐Race down to nearly the middle period of the third
sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race, when the consolidation and perfection of
the human frame caused it to disappear from the outward anatomy of man.
Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual perception
lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing
to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether.
This was prior to the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean Continent.
And now we may return to the Deluges and their many “Noahs.”
The student has to bear in mind that there were many such Deluges as that
mentioned in _Genesis_, and three far more important ones, which will be
mentioned and described in the Section of Part III devoted to the subject
of pre‐historic “Submerged Continents.” To avoid erroneous conjectures,
however, with regard to the claim that the Esoteric Doctrine has much in
common with the legends contained in the Hindû Scriptures; that, again,
the chronology of the latter is almost that of the former—only explained
and made clear; and that finally the belief that Vaivasvata Manu—a generic
term indeed!—was the Noah of the Âryans and the prototype of the biblical
patriarch, all this—as pertaining also to the belief of the
Occultists—necessitates a new explanation at this juncture.
The Primeval Manus Of Humanity.
Those who are aware that the “Great Flood,” which was connected with the
sinking of an entire Continent (save only a few islands) could not have
happened so far back as 18,000,000 years ago, and that Vaivasvata Manu is
the Indian Noah connected with the Matsya, or the Fish, Avatâra of Vishnu,
may feel perplexed at the apparent discrepancy between the facts stated
and the chronology previously given. But there is no discrepancy in truth.
The reader is asked to turn to _The Theosophist_ of July, 1883, for by
studying the article therein, on “The Septenary Principle in Esotericism,”
the whole question can be explained to him. It is in the explanation there
given, I believe, that the Occultists differ from the Brâhmans.
For the benefit of those, however, who may not have _The Theosophist_ of
that date to hand, a passage or two may now be quoted from it:
Who was Manu, the son of Svâyambhuva? The Secret Doctrine tells us
that _this_ Manu was no man, but the representation of the first
human races, evolved with the help of the Dhyân Chohans (Devas),
at the beginning of the First Round. But we are told in his _Laws_
(i. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa, or
“interval from creation to creation”—read rather interval from one
_minor_ Pralaya to another(687)—and that “in the present divine
age, there have been as yet _seven_ Manus.” Those who know that
there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now
in the Fourth; and who are taught that there are seven Dawns and
seven Twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of
every Round and at the end, and on, and between, the planets
[Globes] there is an “awakening to _illusive_ life,” and an
“awakening to _real_ life”; and that, moreover, there are Root‐
Manus, and what we have to clumsily translate as Seed‐Manus—_the
seeds for the human races of the forthcoming_ Round (or the
Shishtas—the surviving fittest(688); a mystery divulged only to
those who have passed their third degree in Initiation)—those who
have learned all this will be better prepared to understand the
meaning of the following. We are told in the Hindû Sacred
Scriptures that, “The first Manu produced _six_ other Manus
[_seven_ primary Manus in all], and these produced in their turn
each seven other Manus”(689) (_Bhrigu_, i. 61‐63)—the production
of the latter standing in the Occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it
becomes clear that Manu—the last one, the Progenitor of our
Fourth‐Round Humanity—must be the _seventh_, since we are on our
Fourth Round,(690) and there is a _Root_‐Manu at Globe A, and a
_Seed_‐Manu at Globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences
with the appearance of a Root‐Manu (Dhyân Chohan) and closes with
a Seed‐Manu, so a Root‐ and a Seed‐Manu appear respectively at the
beginning and the termination of the human period on any
particular planet [Globe].(691) It will be easily seen from the
foregoing statement that a Manvantaric period (Manu‐antara) means,
as the term implies, the time _between_ the appearance of two
Manus or Dhyân Chohans; and hence a Minor Manvantara is the
duration of the _seven_ Races on any particular planet [Globe],
and a Major Manvantara is the period of one human Round along the
Planetary Chain. Moreover, as it is said that each of the seven
Manus _creates_ 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 Root‐Races on
the seven planets [Globes] during each Round, then every Root‐Race
has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called “Vaivasvata” and
stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who in India represents
the Babylonian Xisuthrus and the Jewish Noah.
But in the Esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the
progenitor of our _Fifth_ Race—who saved it from the flood that
nearly exterminated the Fourth or Atlantean—is not the seventh
Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root or Primitive
Manus, but one of the 49 Manus emanated from this Root‐Manu.
For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus
in their respective order and in their relation to each Round:
1st Round, 1st (Root) Manu on Planet A—Svâyambhuva.
1st Round, 1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Svârochi, or Svârochisha.
2nd Round, 2nd (Root) Manu on Planet A—Auttami.
2nd Round, 2nd (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Tâmasa.
3rd Round, 3rd (Root) Manu on Planet A—Raivata.
3rd Round, 3rd (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Châkshusha.
4th Round, 4th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Vaivasvata (our
Progenitor).
4th Round, 4th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Sâvarna.
5th Round, 5th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Daksha‐sâvarna.
5th Round, 5th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Brahma‐sâvarna.
6th Round, 6th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Dharma‐sâvarna.
6th Round, 6th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Rudra‐sâvarna.
7th Round, 7th (Root) Manu on Planet A—Rauchya.
7th Round, 7th (Seed) Manu on Planet G—Bhautya.
Vaivasvata, thus, though seventh in the order given, is the
primitive Root‐Manu of our Fourth Human Wave (the reader must
always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity),
while _our_ Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus, who
are made to preside over the seven Races of this our planet
[Globe]. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the
periodical and ever‐recurring cataclysms (by fire and water) that
close the cycle of every Root‐Race. And it is this Vaivasvata—the
Hindû ideal embodiment, called respectively Xisuthrus, Deucalion,
Noah and other names—who is the allegorical “Man” who rescued our
Race, when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished
by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its
temporary obscuration.(692)
Thus it is shown that there is no real discrepancy in speaking of the
Vaivasvata Manvantara (Manu‐antara, lit., “between two Manus”) as
18,000,000 odd years ago, when physical, or the truly human, Man first
appeared in his Fourth Round on this Earth; and of the other Vaivasvatas,
_e.g._, the Manu of the Great Cosmic or Sidereal Flood—a mystery—or again
the Manu Vaivasvata of the submerged Atlantis, when the _Racial_
Vaivasvata saved the elect of Humanity, the Fifth Race, from utter
destruction. As these several and quite distinct events are purposely
blended in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_ in one narrative, there may
yet be a great deal of perplexity left in the profane reader’s mind.
Therefore, as constant elucidation is needed, we must be forgiven
unavoidable repetitions. The “blinds” which conceal the real mysteries of
Esoteric Philosophy are great and puzzling, and even now the last word
cannot be given. The veil, however, may be a little more removed, and some
explanations, hitherto denied, may now be offered to the earnest student.
As Colonel Vans Kennedy, if we do not mistake, remarked: “the first
principle in Hindû religious philosophy is _unity in diversity_.” If all
those Manus and Rishis are called by one generic name, it is due to the
fact that they are one and all the manifested Energies of one and the same
Logos, the celestial as well as the terrestrial Messengers and
Permutations of that Principle which is ever in a state of
activity—conscious during the period of Cosmic Evolution, unconscious
(from our point of view) during Cosmic Rest—for the Logos sleepeth in the
bosom of THAT which “sleepeth not,” nor is it ever awake, for it is Sat or
“Be‐ness,” not a Being. It is from IT that issues the great _Unseen_
Logos, who evolves all the other Logoi; the Primeval Manu who gives being
to the other Manus, who emanate the universe and all in it collectively,
and who represent in their aggregate the _Manifested_ Logos.(693) Hence we
learn in the Commentaries that while no Dhyân Chohan, not even the
highest, can realize completely
_The condition of the preceding Cosmic Evolution, ... the Manus retain a
knowledge of their experiences in all the Cosmic Evolutions throughout
Eternity._
This is very plain: the first Manu is called Svâyambhuva, the “Self‐
manifested,” the Son of the _Unmanifested_ Father. The Manus are the
Creators of the Creators of our First Race—the Spirit of Mankind—which
does not prevent the _seven_ Manus from having been the first “Pre‐Adamic”
Men on Earth.
Manu declares himself created by Virâj,(694) or Vaishvânara, the Spirit of
Humanity,(695) which means that his Monad emanates from the never resting
Principle in the beginning of every new Cosmic Activity—that Logos or
Universal Monad (collective Elohim) which radiates _from within himself_
all those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of activity—Progenitors of
the numberless Solar Systems as well as of the yet undifferentiated
_human_ Monads of Planetary Chains as well as of every being thereon.
Svâyambhuva, or Self‐born, is the name of every Cosmic Monad _which
becomes the Centre of Force, from within which emerges a Planetary Chain_
(of which Chains there are seven in our System). And the radiations of
this Centre become again so many Manus Svâyambhuva (a mysterious generic
name, meaning far more than appears), each of them becoming, as a Host,
the Creator of his own Humanity.
As to the question of the four distinct Races of mankind that preceded our
Fifth Race, there is nothing mystical in the subject, except the ethereal
bodies of the first Races; and this is a matter of legendary, nevertheless
very correct, history. The legend is universal. And if the Western
_savant_ pleases to see in it only a myth, it does not make the slightest
difference. The Mexicans had, and still have, the tradition of the
fourfold destruction of the world by fire and water, just as the Egyptians
had, and the Hindûs have, to this day.
Trying to account for the community of legends held by Chinese, Chaldæans,
Egyptians, Indians and Greeks, in remote antiquity, and for the absence of
any certain vestige of civilization more ancient than 5,000 years, the
author of _Mythical Monsters_ remarks that:
We must ... not be surprised if we do not immediately discover the
vestiges of the people of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand years
ago. With an ephemeral architecture ... [as in China], the sites
of vast cities may have become entirely lost to recollection in a
few thousands of years from natural decay, and how much more ...
if ... minor cataclysms have intervened, such as local
inundations, earthquakes, deposition of volcanic ashes, ... the
spread of sandy deserts, destruction of life by deadly pestilence,
by miasma, or by the outpour of sulphurous fumes.(696)
How many of such cataclysms have changed the whole surface of the earth
may be inferred from the following Stanza of Commentary Twenty‐two:
_During the first seven crores [70,000,000 years] of the Kalpa the Earth
and its two Kingdoms [mineral and vegetable], one already having achieved
its seventh circle, the other, hardly nascent, are luminous and semi‐
ethereal, cold, lifeless, and translucid. In the eleventh crore_(_697_)_
the Mother [Earth] grows opaque, and in the fourteenth_(_698_)_ the throes
of adolescence take place. These convulsions of Nature [geological
changes] last till her twentieth crore of years, uninterruptedly, after
which they become periodical, and at long intervals._
_The last change took place nearly twelve crores [120,000,000] of years
ago. But the Earth with everything on her face had become cool, hard and
settled ages earlier._
Thus, if we are to believe Esoteric Teaching, _universal_ geological
disturbances and changes have not occurred for the last 120 million years,
but the Earth, even before that time, was ready to receive her human
stock. The appearance of the latter, however, in its full physical
development, as already stated, took place only about 18,000,000 years
ago, after the first great failure of Nature to create beings
alone—_i.e._, without the help of the divine “Fashioners”—had been
followed by the successive evolution of the first three Races.(699) The
actual duration of the first two and a half Races is withheld from all but
the higher Initiates. The history of the Races begins at the separation of
the sexes, when the preceding egg‐bearing androgynous Race perished
rapidly, and the subsequent sub‐races of the Third Root‐Race appeared as
an entirely new race _physiologically_. It is this “Destruction” which is
allegorically called the great “Vaivasvata Manu Deluge,” when the account
shows Vaivasvata Manu, or Humanity, remaining alone on Earth in the Ark of
Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a monstrous fish, and the Seven
Rishis “with him.” The allegory is very plain.
In the symbolism of every nation, the “Deluge” stands for chaotic
unsettled Matter—Chaos itself; and Water for the Feminine Principle—the
“Great Deep.” As the Greek Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it:
Ἀρχὴ answers to the Hebrew _rasit_, or Wisdom ... and [at the same
time] to the emblem of the female generative power, the _arg_ or
_arca_, in which the germ of nature [and of mankind] floats or
broods on the great abyss of the waters, during the interval which
takes place after every mundane [or racial] cycle.
Archê (Ἀρχὴ) or Ark is also the mystic name of the Divine Spirit of Life
which broods over Chaos. Now Vishnu _is_ the Divine Spirit, as an abstract
principle, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or Giver of Life—the
third Person of the Trimûrti—composed of Brahmâ, the Creator, Shiva, the
Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver. Vishnu is shown, in the allegory,
under the form of a _Fish_, guiding the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu across the
Waters of the Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the esoteric
meaning of the word _Fish_ (as Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey, and
others have done). Its theological meaning is phallic, but the
metaphysical, divine. Jesus was called the Fish, as were Vishnu and
Bacchus; ΙΗΣ, the “Saviour” of Mankind, being but the monogram of the God
Bacchus, who was also called ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Fish.(700) Moreover, the Seven
Rishis in the Ark symbolized the seven “principles,” which became complete
in man only after he had separated, and become a _human_, and thus ceased
to be a divine creature.
But to return to the Races; details as to the submersion of the Continent
inhabited by the Second Root‐Race are not numerous. The history of the
Third, or Lemuria, is given, as is also that of Atlantis, but the others
are only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years
before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary Age (the
Eocene).(701) During this Deluge—an actual geological deluge this
time—Vaivasvata Manu is also shown saving mankind, allegorically—in
reality, a portion of it, the Fourth Race—just as he saved the Fifth Race
during the destruction of the last Atlanteans, the remnants that perished
850,000 years ago,(702) after which there was no great submersion until
the day of Plato’s Atlantis, or Poseidonis, which was known to the
Egyptians only because it happened in such relatively recent times.
It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting.
This is the Cataclysm of which the old records, as in the _Book of Enoch_,
say, “the ends of the Earth got loose”; and upon which have been built the
legends and allegories of Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Noah, Deucalion and all
the _tutti quanti_ of the Elect Saved. Tradition, not taking into account
the difference between sidereal and geological phenomena, calls both
“Deluges” indifferently. Yet there is a great difference. The Cataclysm
which destroyed the huge Continent of which Australia is the largest
relic, was due to a series of subterranean convulsions and the breaking
asunder of the ocean floors. That which put an end to its successor—the
Fourth Continent—was brought on by successive disturbances in the axial
rotation. It began during the earliest Tertiary periods, and, continuing
for long ages, carried away successively the last vestige of Atlantis,
with the exception, perhaps, of Ceylon and a small portion of what is now
Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and no memory of its flourishing
continents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, have remained in
the annals of history, save in the Sacred Records of the East.
Hence, Modern Science denies the existence of Atlantis. It even denies any
violent shiftings of the Earth’s axis, and would attribute the change of
climate to other causes. But this question is still an open one. If Dr.
Croll will have it that all such alterations can be accounted for by the
effects of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, there are others,
such as Sir Henry James and Sir John Lubbock,(703) who feel more inclined
to accept the idea that they are due to a change in the position of the
axis of rotation. Against this the majority of the Astronomers are again
arrayed. But then, what have they not denied before now, and what have
they not denounced—only to accept it later on, whenever the hypothesis
became undeniable fact?
How far our figures agree, or rather disagree, with Modern Science will be
seen further in the Addenda to this Volume, where the Geology and
Anthropology of our modern day are carefully compared with the teachings
of Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned by the Secret
Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree very much
with the calculations of Modern Science, which, however, calls Atlantis
“Lemuria” whenever it accepts such a submerged Continent. With regard to
the pre‐human period, all that can be said, at present, is, that even
prior to the appearance of the “mindless” First Race, the Earth was not
without its inhabitants. We might, however, add that what Science, which
recognizes _physical man only_, has a right to regard as the _pre‐human_
period, may be conceded to have extended from the First Race down to the
first half of the Atlantean Race, since it is only then that man became
the “complete _organic_ being he is now.” And this would make Adamic Man
no older than a few millions of years.(704)
The author of the _Qabbalah_ truly remarks that: “Man to‐day, as an
individual, is only a concatenation of the being‐hood of precedent human
life,” or _lives_, rather.
According to the Qabbalah, the soul sparks contained in Adam, went
into three principal classes corresponding to his three sons,
viz.: _Hesed_, Habel, _Ge’boor‐ah_, Qai‐yin and _Ra’h‐min_ Seth.
These three were divided into ... 70 species, called; the
principal roots of the human race.(705)
Said Rabbi Yehudah: “How many garments [of the incorporeal man]
are these which are crowned (from the day man was created)?” Said
R. El’azar: “The mountains of the world (the great men of the
generation) are in discussion upon it, but there are three: one to
clothe in that garment the _Rua’h_ spirit, which is in the garden
(of Eden) on earth: one which is more precious than all, in which
the _Neshamah_ is clothed in that Bundle of Life, between the
angels of the Kings ...: and one outside garment, which exists and
does not exist, is seen and not seen. In that garment, the
_Nephesh_ is clothed, and she goes and flies in it, to and fro in
the world.”(706)
This relates to the Races, their “garments,” or degree of materiality, and
to the three “principles” of man in their three vehicles.
Stanza XI. The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth Races.
43. The Lemuro‐Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization.
The incipient stage of anthropomorphism. 44. Statues, witnesses to
the size of the Lemuro‐Atlanteans. 45. Lemuria destroyed by fire,
Atlantis by water. The Flood. 46. The destruction of the Fourth
Race and of the last antediluvian monster‐animals.
43. THEY(707) BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT. OUT
OF THE FIRES(708) VOMITED, OUT OF THE WHITE STONE(709) OF THE MOUNTAINS
AND OF THE BLACK STONE,(710) THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND
LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM.
At this point, as the history of the first two _human_ races—the last of
the Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans—proceeds, we have to
blend the two, and speak of them for a time collectively.
Here reference is also made to the _divine_ Dynasties, which were claimed
by the Egyptians, Chaldæans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their _human_
Kings. These are still believed in by the modern Hindûs, and are
enumerated in their sacred books. Of these, however, we shall treat in
their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern
Geologists are now being driven into admitting the demonstrable existence
of submerged continents. But to confess the existence of the continents is
quite a different thing from admitting that there were men on them during
the early geological periods(711)—ay, men and civilized nations, not
Palæolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of their _divine_
Rulers, built large cities, cultivated Arts and Sciences, and knew
Astronomy, Architecture and Mathematics to perfection. The primeval
civilization of the Lemurians did not, as one may think, immediately
follow their physiological transformation. Between the final physiological
evolution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had
passed. Nevertheless, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub‐race
building their first rock‐cities out of stone and lava.(712) One of these
great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some
thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow strip
of sterile ground, and was totally destroyed by a series of volcanic
eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the
handiwork of the last sub‐races of the Lemurians; and an Occultist,
therefore, shows no surprise on learning that the stone relics which were
found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are
Very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins
of Tia‐Huanaco in Peru,(713)
and also that they are in the _Cyclopean style_. The first large cities,
however, were built in that region of the Continent which is now known as
the island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in those
days as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection on the
former, and Karma—its work of destruction on the latter. The Australians
and their like are the descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the
Spark projected into them by the “Flames,” extinguished it by long
generations of bestiality.(714) Whereas the Âryan nations could trace
their descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the
Lemurians, in whom the “Sons of Wisdom” had personally incarnated.(715)
It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations
were started. And while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of
mankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal life, and in others
savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to protect himself
against the Elements—his brothers, more favoured than he by their Karma,
and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them, built cities,
and cultivated Arts and Sciences. Nevertheless, notwithstanding
civilization, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as
their birthright, the “builders” could now obtain their powers only
gradually; even those they did obtain being generally used for conquest
over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has
ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the
psychic and spiritual. The command over and the guidance of one’s own
psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural,
were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as
naturally as walking and thinking.
“There is no such thing as magic” philosophizes “She”—the author
forgetting that “magic” in early days still meant the great Science of
Wisdom, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the modern
perversion of thought—“though,” she adds, “there is such a thing as
knowledge of the Secrets of Nature.”(716) But they have become “Secrets”
only in our Race, and were public property with the Third.
Gradually, mankind decreased in stature, for, even before the real advent
of the Fourth or Atlantean Race, the majority of mankind had fallen into
iniquity and sin, save only the Hierarchy of the “Elect,” the followers
and disciples of the “Sons of Will and Yoga”—called later the “Sons of the
Fire‐Mist.”
Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength
reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the
middle period of their fourth sub‐race. But, as said in the Commentary:
_The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island [the primitive
Shveta‐dvîpa] had perished ages before. Their [Lemuria’s] Elect, had taken
shelter on the Sacred Island [now the __“__fabled__”__ Shamballah, in the
Gobi Desert], while some of their accursed races, separating from the main
stock, now lived in the jungles and underground [__“__cave‐men__”__], when
the golden yellow Race [the Fourth] became in its turn __“__black with
sin.__”__ From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third
time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Shveta‐dvîpa, the
blessed, and Adbhitanya [?], east and west, the first, the one and the
pure, had become corrupted.... The Demi‐Gods of the Third had made room
for the Semi‐Demons of the Fourth Race. Shveta‐dvîpa,_(_717_)_ the White
Island, had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black Land,
wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dvîpa (Pushkara) and Râkshasas
from the seventh climate replaced the Sâdhus and the Ascetics of the Third
Age, who had descended to them from other and higher regions...._
In their dead letter, the _Purânas_, in general, read like an absurd
tissue of fairy tales and no better. And if one were to read the first
three chapters of Book II of _Vishnu Purâna_ and accept _verbatim_ the
geography, geodesy, and ethnology in the account of Priyavrata’s seven
sons among whom their father divides the seven Dvîpas (Islands or
Continents); and then proceed to study how his eldest son, Agnîdhra, the
King of Jambu‐dvîpa, apportioned Jambu‐dvîpa among his nine sons; and then
how Nâbhi, _his_ son, had a hundred sons and apportioned lands to all
these in his turn—he would most likely throw the book away and pronounce
it a farrago of nonsense. But the student of Esotericism will understand
that, when the _Purânas_ were written, their true meaning was intended to
be clear only to the Initiated Brâhmans, and so the compilers wrote these
works allegorically and would not give the _whole_ truth to the masses.
And he will, further, explain to the Orientalists—who, beginning with
Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, have made and still are
making such a mess of it—that the first three chapters purposely confuse
the following subjects and events:
I. The series of Kalpas, or Ages, and also of Races, are never taken into
account; and events which have happened in one are allowed to stand along
with those which took place in another. The chronological order is
entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the Sanskrit commentators,
who explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in saying:
Whenever any contradictions in different Purânas are observed,
they are ascribed ... to differences of Kalpas and the like.
II. The several meanings of the words “Manvantara” and “Kalpa” or Age, are
withheld, the general signification only being given.
III. In the genealogy of the Kings and the geography of their dominions,
the Varshas (countries) and Dvîpas are all regarded as terrestrial
regions.
Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is
permissible and easy to show that:
(_a_) The Seven Dvîpas apportioned to Priyavrata’s septenary progeny refer
to several localities—first of all to our Planetary Chain. In this Jambu‐
dvîpa alone represents our Globe, while the six others are the (to us)
invisible companion Globes of the Chain. This is shown by the very nature
of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu‐dvîpa “is _in the
centre of all_ these”—the so‐called “Insular Continents”—and is surrounded
by a _sea of salt water_ (Lavana), whereas Plaksha, Shâlmalia, Kusha,
Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara, are surrounded severally “by great seas ...
of sugar‐cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk,”
etc., and such like metaphorical names.(718)
(_b_) Bhâskara Âchârya, who uses expressions from the books of the Secret
Doctrine, in his description of the sidereal position of all these Dvîpas,
speaks of: “the sea of milk and the sea of curds,” etc., as meaning the
Milky Way, and the various congeries of Nebulæ; the more so, since he
calls “the country to the south of the equator” Bhûr Loka, that to the
north Bhuva, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya Lokas; and adds: “These
lokas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits,” _i.e._, they
are various “Paradises.”(719)
(_c_) That this geographical distribution of seven allegorical continents,
islands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to _our_
Round, or even to _our_ Races—the name of Bhârata‐varsha (India)
notwithstanding—is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of
_Vishnu Purâna_, who tells us that:
Bharata [the son of Nâbhi, who gave his name to Bhârata‐varsha or
India] ... consigned the kingdom to his son Sumati ... and
abandoned his life at ... Shâlagrâma. He was afterwards born
again, as a Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics....
Under these princes [Bharata’s descendants] Bhârata‐varsha was
divided into nine portions; and their descendants successively
held possession of the country for seventy‐one periods of the
aggregate of the four ages (or for the reign of a Manu)
[representing a Mahâyuga of 4,320,000 years].(720)
But having said so much, Parâshara suddenly explains that:
This was the creation of Svâyambhuva (Manu), by which the earth
was peopled when he presided over the _first_ Manvantara, in the
Kalpa of Varâha [_i.e._, the _Boar_ incarnation, or Avatâra].
Now every Brâhman knows that _our_ Humanity began on this Earth (or Round)
_only with Vaivasvata Manu_. And if the Western reader turns to the sub‐
section on “The Primeval Manus of Humanity,”(721) he will see that
Vaivasvata is the _seventh_ of the fourteen Manus who preside over our
Planetary Chain during its Life Cycle; but as every Round has two Manus (a
Root‐ and a Seed‐Manu), he is the Root‐Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the
seventh. Wilson finds in this only incongruity, and speculates that:
The patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological
system of Manvantaras and Kalpas, and [thus] have been rather
clumsily distributed amongst the different periods.
It is nothing of the kind; but as Orientalists know nothing of the Secret
Teaching, they persist in taking everything _literally_, and then turn
round and abuse the writers for that which they do not comprehend!
These Genealogies embrace a period of _three and a half_ Rounds; they
speak of _pre‐human_ periods, and explain the descent into generation of
every Manu—the first manifested sparks of the One Unity—and, furthermore,
show each of these human Sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first,
the Pitaras, the human Ancestors, then by the human Races. No Being can
become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human Cycles. Therefore
the Shloka says:
Happy are those who are born, even from the [latent] condition of
gods, _as men_, in Bhârata‐varsha; as that is the way to ... final
liberation.(722)
In Jambu‐dvîpa Bhârata is considered _the best of its divisions_, because
it is _the land of works_. In it alone it is that:
The succession of four Yugas, or ages, the Krita, the Tretâ, the
Dvâpara, and Kali take place.
When, therefore, Parâshara, on being asked by Maitreya “to give him the
descriptions of the Earth,” returns again to the enumeration of the same
Dvîpas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the
Svâyambhuva Manvantara—it is simply a “blind”; yet, to him who reads
between the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with
their sub‐divisions, islands and continents, some of which were called by
the names of celestial Lokas, and by those of other Globes. Hence the
confusion.
All these islands and lands are called by the Orientalists “mythical” and
“fabulous.”(723) Very true, some are _not of this Earth_, but they still
exist. The White Island and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since
Atala was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the
Fifth Race to the Land of Sin—Atlantis, in general, not to Plato’s island
alone; and since the White Island was (_a_) the Shveta‐dvîpa of Theogony,
and (_b_) Shâka‐dvîpa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions rather) in its
beginnings. This was when it yet had its “seven holy rivers that washed
away all sin,” and its “seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction
of virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue,” as it was then
inhabited by the caste of the Magas—that caste which even the Brâhmans
acknowledged as not inferior to their own, and which was the nursery of
the first Zarathushtra. The Brâhmans are shown consulting with Gauramukha,
on Nârada’s advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the
Sun to the temple built by Sâmba the _reputed_ son of Krishna, for in
reality the latter had none. In this the _Purânas_ are _historical_,
allegory notwithstanding, and Occultism is stating facts.
The whole story is told in _Bhavishya Purâna_. It is stated that Sâmba
having been cured of leprosy by Sûrya (the Sun), built a temple and
dedicated it to the Deity. But when he was looking for pious Brâhmans to
perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God,
Nârada—the virgin Ascetic who is found in every age in the
_Purânas_—advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brâhmans to
receive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore
referred Sâmba to Gauramukha (White‐face), the Purohita, or family priest,
of Ugrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best
employ. The priest directed Sâmba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of
Sûrya, to discharge the duty. But as he was ignorant of the place where
they lived, Sûrya, the Sun himself, directs Sâmba to Shâka‐dvîpa _beyond
the salt water_. Then Sâmba performs the journey, using Garuda, the Great
Bird, the vehicle of Vishnu and Krishna, who transports him to the Magas,
etc.(724)
Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Nârada, who is found reborn in
every Cycle (or Race), in addition to Garuda—the symbol Esoterically of
the Great Cycle—give the key to the allegory; nevertheless the Magas are
the Magi of Chaldæa, and their caste and worship were born on the earlier
Atlantis, in Shâka‐dvîpa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed
that the Magas of Shâka‐dvîpa are the forefathers of the fire‐worshipping
Parsîs. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing periods
of hundreds of thousands of years this time into only a few centuries; in
spite of Nârada and Sâmba, they carry the event only to the days of the
flight of the Parsîs to Gujerat. This is simply absurd, as this took place
only in the eighth century of our era. True, the Magas are credited in the
_Bhavishya Purâna_ with still living in Shâka‐dvîpa in the day of
Krishna’s “son,” nevertheless the last portion of that Continent—Plato’s
“Atlantis”—had perished 6,000 years before. They were Magas “late of”
Shâkadvîpa, and in those days lived in Chaldæa. This, again, is an
intentional confusion.
The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet were
they the human Asuras and the Râkshasas which they became later. In those
days large portions of the future Continent of Atlantis were yet part and
parcel of the ocean floors. Lemuria, as we have called the Continent of
the Third Race, was then a gigantic land.(725) It covered the whole area
from the foot of the Himâlayas, which separated it from the inland sea
rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the Great Desert
of Shamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to
Assam [? Annam]. From thence, it stretched south across what is known to
us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as
we go south, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on
its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; and
from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it
extended far into the Pacific Ocean, beyond Rapa‐nui (Teapy, or Easter
Island) which now lies in latitude 26°S., and longitude 110°W.(726) This
statement seems to be corroborated by Science—even if only partially. When
discussing continental trends, and showing the infra‐Arctic masses
trending generally with the meridian, several ancient continents are
mentioned, though inferentially. Among such are mentioned the “Mascarene
continent,” which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, and
another ancient continent which “stretched from Spitzbergen to the Straits
of Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom.”(727)
This corroborates the Occult teaching which says that what are now the
polar regions were formerly the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity,
and the tomb of the bulk of the Mankind of that region during the Third
Race, when the gigantic Continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller
continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary,
to a decrease of velocity in the Earth’s rotation:
_When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities [the poles] agree
with its middle Circle [the equator], when it runs slower and tilts in
every direction, there is a great disturbance on the face of the Earth.
The waters flow toward the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle
Belt [equatorial lands], while those at the ends are subject to Pralayas
by submersion._
And again:
_Thus the Wheel [the Earth] is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of
the Moon, for the breath of its waters [tides]. Toward the close of the
age [Kalpa] of a great [Root‐] Race, the Regents of the Moon [the Fathers,
or Pitris] begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the Wheel about its
Belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the
swelling running toward the extremities [poles], new lands will arise and
old ones be sucked in._
We have only to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning
of the above very clearly. Scientists—_modern_ Specialists—have
ascertained the influence of the tides on the geological distribution of
land and water on the planet, and have noted the shifting of the oceans
with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands.
Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.(728)
Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward
to the periods of the Earth’s first incrustation.(729) Therefore it seems
easy for Science to verify the Esoteric statement. We propose to treat of
this at greater length in the Addenda.
Some Theosophists who have understood from a few words in _Esoteric
Buddhism_ that “old continents” which have been submerged will reäppear,
have asked the question: “What will Atlantis be like when raised?” Here,
again, there is a slight misconception. Were identically the _same_ lands
of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would,
indeed, be _barren for ages_. But because the Atlantic sea‐bottom is
covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and more is forming—a
new “cretaceous formation” of strata, in fact—that is no reason why, when
the time for a new Continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion
and upraising of the sea‐bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of
chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the
surface. The Racial Cataclysms are not a Noah’s Deluge of forty days—a
kind of Bombay monsoon.
That the periodical sinking and reäppearance of the mighty Continents, now
called Atlantis and Lemuria by modern writers, is no fiction, will be
demonstrated in the Section in which all the evidence has been collated
together. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references
to both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dvîpas) are mentioned in the
_Sûrya Siddhânta_, the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in
the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean Astronomer whom Professor Weber has
made out to be “reïncarnated” in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call
these “Sacred Islands” Atlantean—as is done by us; for, like everything
else in the Hindû Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things.
The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Svâyambhuva Manu, to his seven
sons—was not Atlantis, even though one or two of these Islands survived
the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to
Atlanteans, whose Continent had been submerged in its turn. When first
mentioned by Parâshara in the _Vishnu Purâna_, the seven refer to an
Esoteric Doctrine which is explained further on. In this connection, of
all the seven Islands, Jambu‐dvîpa (our Globe) is the only one that is
terrestrial. In the _Purânas_ every reference to the North of Meru is
connected with that Primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region, which,
when the magnolia blossomed where now we see an unexplored endless desert
of ice, was then a Continent. Science speaks of an “ancient continent”
which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret
Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions
formed a horse‐shoe‐like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more
northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained
Behring’s Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in
its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have
been right under the lower curve of the semi‐circle. This Continent was
raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of
Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains reäppeared again on the
face of the oceans. Therefore, though it can be said, without departing
from truth, that Atlantis is included in the seven great Insular
Continents since the Fourth Race Atlanteans came into possession of some
of the Lemurian relics, and settling on the islands, included them among
_their_ lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an
explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is
attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession
of in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the
Cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on this remnant of Lemuria,
but only to perish thereon, when it was destroyed in one day by volcanic
fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain Geographers and
Geologists; to the Occultists, however, it is _history_. What does Science
know to the contrary?
Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein
the name of America appears for the first time, _the latter was
believed to be part of India_.... Science also refuses to sanction
the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian
peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other,
connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the
pre‐historic ages ... was doubly connected with the two Americas.
The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus
calls the “Brâhmans of Upper India,” stretched from Kashmir far
into the (now) deserts of Shamo. A pedestrian from the north might
then have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula,
through Manchooria, across the _future_ Gulf of Tartary, the
Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller, furnished
with a canoe, and starting from the south, could have walked over
from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any
part of the continent of South America.(730)
This was written from the words of a Master—a rather doubtful authority
for the Materialists and Sceptics. But here we have one of their own
flock, and a bird of the same feather, Ernst Hæckel, who, in _his_
distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost _verbatim_:
It would seem that the region on the earth’s surface where the
evolution of these primitive men from the _closely related
catarrhine apes_ [!!] took place, must be sought either in
Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even
in existence when the Third Race flourished], or in Lemuria.
Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the
Indian Ocean which, lying to the South of the Asia of to‐day,
stretched on the one hand eastwards to Upper India and Sunda
Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and
Africa.(731)
In the epoch of which we are treating, the Continent of Lemuria had
already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents.
Nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe, existed
in those days; all of them slumbering as yet on the ocean‐floors. Nor was
there much of present Asia; for the Cis‐Himâlayan regions were covered
with seas, and beyond them stretched the “lotus leaves” of Shveta‐dvîpa,
the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc. The
immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian,
Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were
gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion
engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Island, for instance, belongs to
the earliest civilization of the Third Race. It was a volcanic and sudden
uplifting of the ocean‐floor, which raised this small relic of the Archaic
Ages—after it had been submerged with the rest—untouched, with its volcano
and statues, during the Champlain epoch of north polar submersion, as a
standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the
Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the
Third Race.
In this we are again corroborated to a degree by Materialistic Science.
Hæckel, when speaking of Blumenbach’s brown or Malay race, and the
Australians and Papuans, remarks:
There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of
Polynesia, that Australian island‐world, that _seems to have been
once on a time a gigantic and continuous continent_.(732)
It certainly was “a gigantic and continuous continent,” for, during the
Third Race, it stretched east and west, as far as where the two Americas
now lie. The present Australia was but a portion of it, and in addition to
this there are a few surviving islands strewn hither and thither on the
face of the Pacific, and a large strip of California, which belonged to
it. Funnily enough, Hæckel, in his fantastic _Pedigree of Man_, considers:
The Australians of to‐day as the lineal descendants, almost
unchanged [?!], of that _second_ branch of the primitive human
race ... that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from
the home of man’s infancy, and seems to have been the parent of
all the other straight‐haired races of men.... The one, woolly‐
haired, migrated in part westwards [_i.e._, to Africa and
eastwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no
existence as yet].... The other, straight‐haired, was evolved
farther to the North, in Asia, and ... peopled Australia.(733)
As writes a Master:
Behold the relics of that once great nation [Lemuria of the Third
Race] in _some_ of the flat‐headed aborigines of your
Australia.(734)
But they belong to the last remnants of the seventh sub‐race of the Third.
Professor Hæckel must also have _dreamt_ a dream and seen for once a
_true_ vision!
It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the
ancestors of those, whom we term the most ancient peoples of the world—now
called respectively the Âryan Hindûs, the Egyptians, and the oldest
Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phœnicians on the other.
These were governed by the Divine Dynasties, _i.e._, Kings and Rulers who
had of mortal man only his physical appearance _as it was then_, but who
were Beings from Spheres higher and more celestial than our own Sphere
will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is, of course, useless to attempt to
force the existence of such Beings on sceptics. _Their_ greatest pride
consists in proving their patronymic denomination as Catarrhinides—a fact
which they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx
appended to their Os Sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if it were only
long enough, they would wag with joy and for ever, in honour of its
eminent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their Ape‐ancestors
as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets
Theosophists and students of the Occult Sciences right on this point.
If we regard the second portion of the Third Race as the first
representatives of the _really human race_ with solid bones, then Hæckel’s
surmise that “the evolution of the primitive men took place ...in _either_
Southern Asia or ... Lemuria”—Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out
of the question—is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate,
however, just as the evolution of the First Race, from the bodies of the
Pitris, took place on seven distinctly separated regions, at the Arctic
Pole of the (then) only Earth—so did the ultimate transformation of the
Third occur. It began in those northern regions, which have just been
described as including Behring’s Straits, and what there then was of dry
land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi‐tropical even in the
Arctic regions and excellently adapted to the primitive wants of nascent
physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and
tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The Commentary tells us that
the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when:
_The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over __
the heads of that portion of the Sweat‐born; people knew snow, ice, and
frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those
that did not perish remained as half‐grown babes_(_735_)_ in size and
intellect. This was the third Pralaya of the Races._(736)
This means again, that our Globe is subject to seven periodical and
_entire_ changes which go _pari passu_ with the Races. For the Secret
Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial
Pralayas, occasioned by the change in the inclination of the Earth’s axis.
It is a Law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as
Science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic Law.
In Occultism this Inexorable Law is referred to as the “Great Adjuster.”
Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic
vicissitudes and also the changes in the axial direction, which are always
followed by these vicissitudes. In fact, it does not seem at all sure of
the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared to
deny the axial phenomena altogether, rather than admit the intelligent
hand of the Karmic Law which alone can reasonably explain these sudden
changes and their accompanying results. It has tried to account for them
by various and more or less fantastic speculations; one of which, as de
Boucheporn imagined, would be the sudden collision of our Earth with a
Comet, thus causing all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding
to our Esoteric explanation, since Fohat is as good as any Comet, and, in
addition, has universal Intelligence to guide him.
Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu’s Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have
already been four such axial disturbances. The old Continents—save the
first—were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge
mountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the
Globe was completely changed each time; the “survival of the fittest”
nations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones—the
failures—were disposed of by being swept off the Earth. Such sorting and
shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but
requires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order.
The sub‐races are also subject to the same cleansing process, and the
side‐branchlets or family‐races as well. Let any one, well acquainted with
astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight
and shadows of the Past. Let him observe and take notes of what he knows
of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises
and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles—especially with the
Sidereal Year, which is equal to 25,868 of our solar years.(737) Then, if
the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, he will find how the
weal and woe of nations are intimately connected with the beginning and
close of this Sidereal Cycle. True, the non‐occultist has the disadvantage
that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing,
through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he
may find consolation in the knowledge of, or—if he so prefers—speculation
about, the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of—some 16,000
years hence. Our meaning is very clear. Every Sidereal Year the tropics
recede from the pole _four degrees_ in each revolution from the
equinoctial points, as the equator turns through the Zodiacal
constellations. Now, as every Astronomer knows, at present the tropic is
only twenty‐three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the
equator. Hence it has still two and a half degrees to run before the end
of the Sidereal Year. This gives humanity in general, and our civilized
races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years.
After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) as Commentary
Thirty‐three tells us:
_Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives
was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal
races, and intermarried among giants and pigmies [the dwarfed races of the
Poles].... Many acquired divine, nay more—unlawful knowledge, and followed
willingly the Left Path._
Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many
geological periods it took to accomplish this _fourth_ destruction who can
tell! But we are told that:
44. THEY(738) BUILT GREAT IMAGES NINE YATIS HIGH,(739) THE SIZE OF THEIR
BODIES (_a_). INNER FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS.(740)
WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH(741) (_b_).
(_a_) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues
discovered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged
continent, as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which
had been submerged for untold ages, are all between twenty and thirty feet
high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all
twenty‐seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders.(742) The
writer is well aware that the modern Archæologists have decided that
“these statues are not very old,” as declared by one of the high officials
of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of
those arbitrary decisions of Modern Science which does not carry much
weight.
We are told that after the destruction of Lemuria by subterranean fires
men went on steadily decreasing in stature—a process already commenced
after their _physical_ Fall—and that finally, some millions of years
later, they decreased to between six and seven feet, and are now, as in
the older Asiatic races, dwindling down to nearer five than six feet. As
Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub‐race of the Fourth
Root‐Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian
family, such as the Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders, are of a
_higher stature than the rest of mankind_; but the Indian tribes and the
inhabitants of the Indo‐Chinese countries are decidedly below the general
average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very
earliest of the surviving sub‐races, the others to the very latest and
most transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and
the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon
follow.
(_b_) How could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even
the knowledge of the Zodiac by the Hindûs is denied by our kind and
learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Âryan Hindûs knew nothing of
it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled‐for
slander has been so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more, by
the clear _evidence of facts_, as not to need very much additional
refutation. While the Egyptian Zodiacs(743) preserve irrefutable proofs of
records embracing more than three‐and‐a‐half Sidereal Years—or about
87,000 years—the Hindû calculations cover nearly thirty‐three such years,
or 850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of
the Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as
remarked by the author of the _Sphinxiad_:
These _poor benighted_ Hindoos have registered a knowledge of
Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the [last local] Flood
[in Asia], or Age of Horror.
And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great
Flood within the Âryan _historical_ memory—the Flood which submerged the
last portions of Atlantis 850,000 years ago. The Floods which preceded
are, of course, more traditional than historical.
The sinking and transformation of Lemuria began nearly at the Arctic
Circle (Norway), and the Third Race ended its career in Lankâ, or rather
on that which became Lankâ with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now
known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lankâ, while the
enormous Island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic
Continent already described. As a Master says:
_Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents
explored and fathomed by them ... there may be hidden, deep in the
fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other and far older
continents whose strata have never been geologically explored; and that
they may some day upset entirely their present theories? Why not admit
that our present continents have, like Lemuria and Atlantis, been several
times already submerged, and had the time to reäppear again, and bear
their new groups of mankind and civilizations; and that at the first great
geological upheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series of periodical
cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, our
already autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and
Atlantises come up again?_(744)
Not identically the _same_ Continents, of course. But here an explanation
is needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a
Northern Lemuria. The prolongation of that great Continent into the North
Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as
to the site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must
be noted that the Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root‐
Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but
extended in the shape of a horse‐shoe past Madagascar, round “South
Africa” (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the
Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh‐water deposit called the
Wealden—which every Geologist regards as the mouth of a former great
river—is the bed of _the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the
Secondary age_. The former actual existence of this river is a fact of
Science—its votaries acknowledge the necessity of accepting the Secondary‐
age Northern Lemuria, demanded by their data? Professor Berthold Seemann
not only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded
Australia and Europe _as formerly portions of one continent_—thus
corroborating the whole “horse‐shoe” doctrine already enunciated. No more
striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that
the _elevated ridge_ in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which
runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the
British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then _shifts almost
at right angles_ to proceed in a _south‐easterly_ line _toward the African
coast_, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d’Acunha. This ridge is a
remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would
establish the reality of a submarine horse‐shoe junction with a former
continent in the Indian Ocean.(745)
The _Atlantic portion of Lemuria_ was the geological basis of what is
generally known as Atlantis, but which must be regarded rather as a
development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria than as an entirely
new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth
Root‐Race. Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the
shifting and re‐shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can
be drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in
natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth‐Race Atlanteans were
developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third‐Race Men, centred,
roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid‐Atlantic
Ocean. Their Continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and
peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and
ultimately became the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans.
After this consummation was once attained it follows, as stated on the
highest Occult authority, that:
_Lemuria should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than
Europe with America._(746)
The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will,
of course, be regarded as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever
work of Donnelly, already mentioned, is put aside, notwithstanding that
its statements are all confined within a frame of strictly scientific
proofs. But we write for the future. New discoveries in this direction
will vindicate the claim of the Asiatic Philosophers, that
sciences—Geology, Ethnology, and History included—were pursued by the
Antediluvian nations who lived untold ages ago. Future “finds” will
justify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as
H. A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such
archaic nations as the Egyptians, Âryans of India, Chaldæans, Chinese, and
Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations lasting “_myriads_ of
centuries”;(747) and the latter points to the fact that:
Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without
mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth.
Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period.
The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy.
It was already mature.(748)
To this Professor R. Owen adds that:
Egypt is recorded to have been a civilized and governed community
_before_ the time of Menes.
And Winchell states that:
At the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized and
numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of this
first king Menes, built the palace of Memphis; that he was a
physician, and left _anatomical books_.
This is quite natural if we are to believe the statement of Herodotus, who
records in Euterpe (cxlii), that the written history of the Egyptian
priests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12,000
or even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years which have
elapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left
without witnesses, notwithstanding its tremendous antiquity. The complete
records of the growth, development, social and even political life of the
Lemurians, have been preserved in the Secret Annals. Unfortunately, few
are those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to
understand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its
symbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that
of the Seven Sciences; and these Sciences find their expression in the
seven different applications of the Secret Records to the exoteric texts.
Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different
planes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from,
one of the following standpoints:
1. The Realistic Plane of Thought.
2. The Idealistic.
3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.
The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially
of the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in
terms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely _mythical_ element in
any of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they
were originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during
the process of interpretation. For it is symbolical, the archaic mode of
thought; emblematical, a later though very ancient mode of thought;
parabolical or allegorical; hieroglyphical; or again logogrammical, the
most difficult method of all; every letter, as in the Chinese language,
representing a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the
_Vedas_, the _Book of the Dead_, or, to a certain degree, in the _Bible_,
is composed of such logograms. No one not initiated into the mystery of
the Occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any
ancient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter
that composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane
thinker, however great may be his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to
say—_i.e._, in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves
of solar myth and sexual worship—how is it to be expected that the profane
scholar should penetrate into the arcana behind the veil? One who deals
with the husk or shell of the dead‐letter, and devotes himself to the
kaleidoscopic transformation of barren word‐symbols, can never expect to
get beyond the vagaries of modern Mythologists.
Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah, etc.,—all the head‐figures
of the World‐Deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or
geological—all furnish in their very names the records of the causes and
effects which led to the event, if one can but read them fully. All such
Deluges are based on events that took place in Nature, and stand as
_historical_ records, therefore—whether they were sidereal, geological, or
even simply allegorical—of a moral event on other and higher planes of
being. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during the
long explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas.
To speak of a race nine “yatis,” or twenty‐seven feet, high, in a work
claiming a more scientific character than, let us say, the story of “Jack
the Giant‐Killer,” is a somewhat unusual proceeding. Where are your
proofs?—the writer will be asked. In history and tradition, is the answer.
Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they exist
in oral and written lore. India had her Dânavas and Daityas; Ceylon had
her Râkshasas; Greece, her Titans; Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldæa,
her Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with
the famous giants, Anakim.(749) Moses speaks of Og, a king whose
“bedstead” was nine cubits long (15ft. 4in.) and four wide,(750) and
Goliath was “six cubits and a span in height” (or 10ft. 7in.). The only
difference found between “revealed scripture” and the evidence furnished
to us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch,
Philostratus, etc., is this: While the Pagans mention only the _skeletons
of giants_, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them _had
personally seen_, the _Bible_ interpreters unblushingly demand that
Geology and Archæology should believe, that several countries were
inhabited by such giants in the day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews
were as grasshoppers, and who still existed in the days of Joshua and
David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. Either the latter
or the giants has to be given up.
Of yet standing witnesses to the submerged Continents, and the colossal
men that inhabited them, there are still a few. Archæology claims several
such on this Earth, though beyond wondering “what these may be”—it has
never made any serious attempt to solve the mystery. Not to speak of the
Easter Island statues already mentioned, to what epoch belong the colossal
statues, still erect and intact near Bamian? Archæology, as usual, assigns
them to the first centuries of Christianity, and errs in this as it does
in many other speculations. A few words of description will show the
readers what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first
examine what is known of them to orthodox Science.
Teapi, Rapa‐nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost
2,000 miles from the South American coast.... In length it is
about twelve miles, in breadth four ... and there is an extinct
crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island abounds in
craters, which have been extinct for so long that no tradition of
their activity remains.(751)
But who made the great stone images(752) which are now the chief
attraction of the island to visitors? “_No one knows_,” says a reviewer.
It is more than likely that they were here when the present
inhabitants [a handful of Polynesian savages] arrived.... Their
workmanship _is of a high order_, ... and it is believed that the
race who formed them were the frequenters of the natives of Peru
and other portions of South America.... Even at the date of Cook’s
visit, some of the statues, measuring twenty‐seven feet in height
and eight across the shoulders, were lying overthrown, while
others still standing appeared much larger. One of the latter was
so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of
thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which
these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in
length, twelve to sixteen broad ... all built of hewn stone in the
Cyclopean style, very much like the walls of the Temple of
Pachacamac, _or the ruins of Tia‐Huanaco in Peru_.(753)
“_There is no reason to believe that any of the statues have been built
up, bit by bit, by scaffolding erected around them_,” adds the reviewer
very suggestively—without explaining _how_ they could be built otherwise,
unless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. Two of
the best of these colossal images are now in the British Museum. The
images at Ronororaka are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil,
and one resting on the back of its head like a man asleep. Their types,
though all are long‐headed, are different; and they are evidently meant
for portraits, as the noses, the mouths, and chins differ greatly in form;
their head‐dress, moreover—a kind of flat cap with a piece attached to it
to cover the back portion of the head—shows that the originals were no
savages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked, Who made
them?—but it is not Archæology nor yet Geology that is likely to answer,
even though the latter recognizes in the island a portion of a submerged
continent.
But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the
most gigantic in the whole world?—for Bartholdi’s “Statue of Liberty,” now
at New York, _is a dwarf_ when compared with the largest of the five
images. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who have visited the place,
speak of a mountain “all honeycombed with gigantic cells,” with two
immense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern
Miaotse (_vide supra_, quotation from _Shoo‐King_), the last surviving
witnesses of the Miaotse who had “troubled the earth”; the Jesuits are
right, and the Archæologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these
statues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins which are
discovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of
colossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky
Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of
old. “Masses of enormous human bones” were found “in America, near Munte
[?]” a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which
local tradition points out as the landing spot of those giants who overran
America when it had hardly arisen from the waters.(754)
Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are
they, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages,
defying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the
instance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal‐warriors of Nadir Shah?
Bamian is a small, miserable, half‐ruined town in Central Asia, half‐way
between Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Koh‐i‐baba, a huge mountain of the
Paropamisian, or Hindu‐Kush, Chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the
sea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of
Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis‐Khan in the
thirteenth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which
are full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes,
once the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their
Vihâras. Such Vihâras are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the
rock‐cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. In front of some
of these caves five enormous statues—of what is regarded as Buddha—have
been discovered or rather _rediscovered_ in our century, for the famous
Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang speaks of having seen them, when he
visited Bamian in the seventh century.
The contention that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, is easily
proven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and
taken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or _seventy_
feet higher than the “Statue of Liberty” now at New York, as the latter is
only 105 feet or 34 mètres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself,
between whose legs the largest vessels of those days passed with ease,
measured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second largest statue, which
is also cut out in the rock like the first, is only 120 feet or fifteen
feet taller than the said “Liberty.”(755) The third statue is only 60 feet
high, the two others still smaller, the last being only a little larger
than the average tall man of our present Race. The first and largest of
the colossi represents a man draped in a kind of “toga”; M. de Nadeylac
thinks that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head,
the drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, are undeniable
indications that Buddha was meant to be represented. But they really prove
nothing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the now existing figures of
Buddha, represented in the posture of Samâdhi, have large drooping ears,
this is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due
to Esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience
of wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who _knows and
hears all_, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures
nothing can escape. As a Shloka says:
_The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of
the small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance._
Gautama Buddha was an Âryan Hindû, and an approach to such ears is found
only among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort
their ears artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottoes of
the Miao‐tse into Vihâras and cells, came into Central Asia about or in
the first century of the Christian era. Therefore, Hiouen Thsang, speaking
of the colossal statue, says that “the shining of the gold ornamentation
that overlaid the statue” in his day “dazzled one’s eyes,” but of such
gilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The drapery, in
contrast to the figure itself, which is cut out of the standing rock, is
made of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made
the most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far
later epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far
earlier period than Buddhism. In such case, it may be asked, Whom does it
represent?
Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query,
and explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five
statues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust. Three of them standing
in colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered
with plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent
Lord Tathâgata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day
with bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is
repeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments—which remind one of
the Byzantine style of painting—are all due to the piety of the monk‐
ascetics, as also are some other minor figures and rock‐cut
ornamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the
Initiates of the Fourth Race, who, after the submersion of their
Continent, sought refuge in the fastnesses and on the summits of the
Central Asian mountain chains. Thus, the five statues are an imperishable
record of the Esoteric Teaching as to the gradual evolution of the Races.
The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal
body being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of
future generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived
the Atlantean Deluge. The second—120 feet high—represents the Sweat‐born;
and the third—measuring 60 feet—immortalizes the Race that fell, and
thereby inaugurated the first _physical_ Race, born of father and mother,
the last descendants of which are represented in the statues found on
Easter Isle. These were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch
when Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic
fires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison
with our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the
latter.
These are, then, the “Giants” of antiquity, the ante‐ and post‐diluvian
Gibborim of the _Bible_. They lived and flourished one million years ago
rather than between three and four thousand only. The Anakim of Joshua,
whose hosts were as “grasshoppers” in comparison with the Jews, are thus a
piece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for
Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the
Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions
of years.
In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear
in mind the wise words of Montaigne. Saith the great French Philosopher:
It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for
false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or
truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who perswade
themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort....
But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing
for false and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage
to have the bounds and limits of God’s will, and the power of our
common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no
greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of
our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie....
If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason
cannot attain, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our
sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde‐folde,
we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands;
verily we shall finde it is rather custome than science that
receiveth the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things,
were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them
as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other.(756)
A fair‐minded scholar, before denying the possibility of _our_ history and
records, should search modern history, as well as the universal traditions
scattered throughout ancient and modern literature, for traces left by
these marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth
of corroborative evidence which is to be found scattered about and buried,
even in the British Museum alone. The reader is asked to throw one more
glance at the subject‐matter treated of in the Section which follows.
Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.
De Mirville, in his enormous works, “Mémoires Adressées aux Académies,”
carrying out the task of proving the reality of the Devil and showing his
abode in every ancient and modern idol, has collected several hundred
pages of “historical evidence” that, in the days of “miracle,” both pagan
and biblical, stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sang. That
finally, the “Christ‐stone,” or Christ‐rock, “the spiritual Rock” that
followed Israel,(757) “became a Jupiter‐lapis,” swallowed by his father
Saturn, “under the shape of a stone.”(758) We will not stop to discuss the
evident misuse and materialization of biblical metaphors simply for the
sake of proving the “Satanism” of idols, though a good deal might be
said(759) on this subject. But without claiming any such peripateticism
and innate psychic faculties for our stones, we may collect, in our turn,
every available evidence to hand, to show that: (_a_) had there been no
giants to move such colossal rocks, there could never have been a
Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany), or other such Cyclopean structures; and
(_b_) were there no such thing as Magic, there could never have been so
many witnesses to “oracular” and “speaking” stones.
In the _Achaica_ we find Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work,
he had regarded the Greeks as mighty _stupid_ “for worshipping stones.”
But, having reached Arcadia, he adds: “I have changed my way of
thinking.”(760) Therefore, without worshipping stones or stone idols and
statues, which is the same thing—a crime with which Roman Catholics are
unwise to reproach Pagans, as they do—one may be allowed to believe in
what so many great Philosophers and holy men have believed in, without
deserving to be called an “idiot” by modern Pausaniuses.
The reader is referred to the _Académie des Inscriptions_, if he would
study the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint of
magic and psychic powers. In a poem on “Stones” attributed to Orpheus,
these stones are divided into Ophites and Sideritês, the “Serpent‐stone”
and “Star‐stone.”
The Ophitês is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has _the gift of
speech_; when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound
_similar to the cry of a child_. It is by means of this stone that
Helenus foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland.(761)
Sanchuniathon and Philo Byblus, in referring to these “bétyles,” call them
“_animated_ stones.” Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus
and the physician Eusebius had asserted before him. Eusebius especially
never parted with his Ophitês, which he carried in his bosom, and received
oracles from it, delivered _in a small voice resembling a low
whistling_.(762) Arnobius, a holy man, who “from a Pagan had become one of
the _lights of the Church_,” as Christians tell their readers, confesses
he could never meet with one of such stones without putting it a question,
“which it answered occasionally in a _clear and sharp small voice_.”
Where, then, is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan
Ophitês, we ask?
The famous stone at Westminster was called _liafail_, “the speaking
stone,” and raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen.
Cambry, in his _Monuments Celtiques_, says he saw it when it still bore
the inscription:(763)
_Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum_
_Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem_.
Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heræscus, who could distinguish at a
glance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and
Pliny mentions stones which “ran away when a hand approached them.”(764)
De Mirville—who seeks to justify the _Bible_—enquires very pertinently,
why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old _chior‐
gaur_ or the “dance of giants” (from _côr_, “dance,” whence _chorea_, and
_gaur_, “giant”)? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from
the Bishop St. Gildas. But the authors of such works as _Voyage dans le
Comté de Cornouailles, sur les Traces des Géants_, and of various learned
works on the ruins of Stonehenge,(765) Carnac, and West Hoadley, give far
fuller and more reliable information upon this particular subject. In
those regions—true forests of rocks—immense monoliths are found, “some
weighing over 500,000 kilograms.” These “hanging stones” of Salisbury
Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids
were historical men and not Cyclopes, or giants. Who then, _if not
giants_, could ever raise such masses—especially those at Carnac and West
Hoadley—range them in such symmetrical order that they should represent
the planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise that they seem
to hardly touch the ground, and though set in motion at the slightest
touch of the finger, would nevertheless resist the efforts of twenty men
should they attempt to displace them.
Now if we say that most of these stones are relics of the last Atlanteans,
we shall be answered that all the Geologists claim them to be of a natural
origin; that, a rock when “weathering”—_i.e._, losing flake after flake of
its substance under the influence of the weather—assumes this form; that,
the “tors” in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced by this
cause. And thus since all Scientists consider the “rocking stones to be of
purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks
in layers”—our statement will be justly denied, especially as “we see this
process of rock‐modification in progress around us to‐day.” Let us then
examine the case.
First read what Geology has to say, and you will then learn that often
these gigantic masses are entire strangers in the countries wherein they
are now fixed; that their geological congeners often pertain to strata
unknown in those countries and which are only to be found far beyond the
seas. Mr. William Tooke, in speculating upon the enormous blocks of
granite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the
reader that where they now rest, there are neither rocks nor mountains;
and that they must have been brought over “from immense distances and with
prodigious efforts.”(766) Charton speaks of a specimen of such rock from
Ireland, which had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English
Geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin “_perhaps even
African_.”(767)
This is a strange _coincidence_, for Irish tradition attributes the origin
of her circular stones to a _Sorcerer who brought them from Africa_. De
Mirville sees in this Sorcerer “an accursed Hamite.”(768) We see in him a
dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived
till the birth of the British Islands—a giant in any and every case.(769)
Says Cambry, naively:
Men have nothing to do with it ... for never could _human_ power
and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has
accomplished it all [!!] and Science will demonstrate it some day
[!!].(770)
Nevertheless, it was _human_, though gigantic power, which accomplished
it, and no more “Nature” alone than God or Devil.
“Science,” having undertaken to demonstrate that even the Mind and Spirit
of man are simply the production of “blind forces,” is quite capable of
accepting the task, and it may be that she will come out some fine
morning, and seek to prove that Nature alone has marshalled the gigantic
rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical precision,
given them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the
Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds from Africa
and Asia to England and Ireland!
It is true that Cambry recanted later on, when saying:
I believed for a long time in _Nature_, but I _recant_, ... for
chance _is unable to create_ such marvellous combinations, ... and
those who placed the said rocks in equipoise, are the same who
have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat, near
Concarneau.
Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author, when speaking of the _moving_
rocks, or “rocking stones” situated on the slope of Golcar (the
“Enchanter”) says:
The astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium
made the Celts compare them to Gods.(771)
In _Stonehenge_, by Flinders Petrie, it is said that:
Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone,
or “sarsen” stone, locally called “grey wethers.” But some of the
stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to
astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably
the North of Ireland.
To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon the
subject published in 1850 in the _Revue Archéologique_, are worthy of
being quoted:
Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful
machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe,
masses, before which the word _materials_ seems to remain
inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and
that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the things
themselves. Besides which, these _immense rocking_ stones, called
sometimes _routers_, placed upright on one of their sides as on a
point, their equipoise being so perfect that the slightest touch
is sufficient to set them in motion ... betray a most positive
knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter‐motion, surfaces, plane,
convex and concave, in turn ... all this allies them to Cyclopean
monuments, of which it can be said with good reason, repeating De
la Vega, that “the demons seem to have worked on them more than
men.”(772)
For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask
whether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, with masses weighing
millions of pounds, can be the work of Palæolithic _savages_, of cave‐men,
taller than the average man in our century, yet ordinary mortals as we
are? It is not our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached to
the rocking stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English reader
of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona,
which returned to its place, notwithstanding every effort to keep it
elsewhere. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II, a Count
Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the fact,
tied the Mona stone to a far larger one and had them thrown into the sea.
On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. The learned
William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in
the wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. And this reminds one of
what Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the
Cyzicans had placed in the Prytaneum, “whence it _ran away several times_,
and so they were forced to weight it with lead.”(773) Here we have immense
stones stated by all antiquity to be “living, moving, speaking, and self‐
perambulating.” They were also capable, it seems, of making people run
away, since they were called _routers_, from the word to “rout,” or “put
to flight”; and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones, and
sometimes called “_mad_ stones.”(774)
The rocking stone is accepted by Science. But why did it rock? One must be
blind not to see that this motion was one more means of divination, and
that they were called for this very reason the “stones of truth.”(775)
_This is history_, the past of prehistoric times warranting the same in
later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the
more ancient “rocks of destiny” of older nations; and their motion, or
_rocking_, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated priests, who alone
had the key to this ancient _reading_. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that
it was according to the orders of the oracle, whose voice spoke through
“these immense rocks raised by the colossal powers of [ancient] giants,”
that the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Says Pliny:
In India and Persia it is she (the Persian Otizoë) whom the Magi
had to consult for the election of their sovereigns;(776)
and he further describes a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed
in such a manner that “a single finger can move it, while the weight of
the whole body makes it resist.”(777) Why then should not the rocking
stones of Ireland, or those of Brimham, in Yorkshire, have served for the
same mode of _divination_ or oracular communications? The hugest of them
are evidently the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller, such as Brimham
Rocks, with revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more
ancient lithoi. Had not the Bishops of the Middle Ages destroyed all the
plans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, Science would know
more of these.(778) As it is, we know that they were universally used
during long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy
and _magic_. É. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in
the _Antiquités de France_ (vol. ix), an article showing the Chatampéramba
(the “Field of Death,” or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be
identical in situation with the old tombs at Carnac; that is to say, “a
prominence and a central tomb.” Bones are found in the tombs, and Mr.
Halliwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives calling
the tombs the “dwellings of the Râkshasas” or giants. Several stone
circles, “considered the work of the Panch Pândava (five Pândus), as all
such monuments are in India, where they are to be found in such great
numbers,” when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, “were found to
contain _human bones of a very large size_.”(779)
Again, De Mirville is right in his _generalization_, if not in his
conclusions. As the long cherished theory that the Dracontia are mostly
witnesses to “great natural geological commotions” (Charton), and “the
work of Nature” (Cambry), is now exploded, his remarks are very just:
We advise Science to reflect .... and, above all, no longer to
class Titans and Giants among primitive legends; for their works
are there, under our eyes, and those rocking masses will oscillate
on their basis to the end of the world to help them to realize
once for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton
for believing in wonders certified to by the whole of
Antiquity.(780)
This is just what we can never repeat too often, though it may be that the
voices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert.
Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to
say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and mediæval
Theology in _its_ interpretations of the so‐called _Revelation_. Science
would have men descend from the pithecoid ape—a transformation requiring
millions of years—and yet fears to make Mankind older than 100,000 years!
Science teaches the gradual transformation of species, natural selection
and evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish,
from reptile to bird and mammalian—yet it refuses to man, who is
physiologically only a higher mammal and animal, such a transformation of
his external form. But if the monstrous Iguanodon of the Wealden may have
been the ancestor of the diminutive Iguana of to‐day, why could not the
monstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man—the link
between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in this
“theory” than in that of refusing to man a spiritual immortal Ego, making
of him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, _as a distinct
genus_ in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific
than the present Exact Sciences, they are nevertheless more logical and
consistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and the natural affinities
of atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal;
but it requires more than the mere interplay between certain material
aggregates and their environment, to call to life a _fully conscious man_,
even though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two “poor
cousins” of the quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Hæckel that
(objective) Life on our Globe “is a logical postulate of scientific
natural history,” but add that the rejection of a like _spiritual_
involution, from _within without_, of invisible subjective Spirit‐
Life—Eternal and a Principle in Nature—is more illogical, if possible,
than to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by
“blind forces” inherent in Matter, without any _external_ help.
Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a
cathedral had come originally into being as follows: first, there was a
progressive and gradual elaboration in space of an organizable material,
which resulted in the production of a state of matter named _organic
protein_; then, under the influence of incident forces, these states
having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and
majestically evolved into new combinations of carved and polished wood, of
brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind‐pipes and bellows;
after which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and
symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart’s “Requiem”;
this was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., _ad infinitum_, its keys
playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own
inherent force and fancy. What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it
is precisely in such wise that the materialistic _savants_ tell us that
the Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its
spiritual crown.
Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when
writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, his words
apply to our doctrine.
Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived
as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations _on
a preëxisting kind of being_.(781)
Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a
modification on a preëxistent and prehistorical kind of man, even
supposing for argument’s sake that there is _nothing_ within him to last
longer than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is
not so! For, when we are told that “organic matters are produced in the
laboratory by what we may literally call _artificial evolution_”(782)—we
answer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great
Adepts did as much, and, indeed, far more, before the Chemists ever
attempted to “build out of dissociated elements complex combinations.” The
Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in
Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster will
have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no Chemist, or Alchemist either,
will ever endow such a monster with more than animal instinct, unless
indeed he does that with which the “Progenitors” are credited, namely,
leave his own Physical Body, and incarnate in the “Empty Form.” But even
this would be an _artificial_, not a natural man, for our “Progenitors”
had, in the course of eternal evolution, to become _Gods_ before they
became Men.
The above digression—if indeed it is one—is an attempt at justification
before the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this.
It also gives the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our
present day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology,
and why they prefer any “psychic craze” to the dogmatic assertions of the
pair, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to
offer than _blind_ faith. _Universal_ tradition is by far the safer guide
in life. And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages
together with his Creators and first Instructors—the Elohim—in the World’s
“Garden of Eden,” or “Delight.”(783)
45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS
(_A_).
46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF THE HUGE
ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH (_B_).
(_a_) As this subject—the fourth great Deluge on our Globe in this
Round—is fully treated in the Sections that follow the last Stanza, to say
anything more at present would be a mere anticipation. The seven Great
Islands (Dvîpas) belonged to the Continent of Atlantis. The Secret
Teachings show that the Deluge overtook the Fourth, Giant Race, not on
account of its depravity, or because it had become “black with sin,” but
simply because such is the fate of every Continent, which—like everything
else under our Sun—is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies. This was
when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.
(_b_) Thus the Giants perished—the Magicians and the Sorcerers, adds the
fancy of popular tradition. But “all holy saved,” and alone the “unholy”
were “destroyed.” This was due, however, as much to the _prevision_ of the
“holy” ones, who had not lost the use of their Third Eye, as to Karma and
Natural Law. Speaking of the subsequent Race, our Fifth Humanity, the
Commentary says:
_Alone the handful of those Elect, whose Divine Instructors had gone to __
inhabit that Sacred Island—__“__from whence the last Saviour will
come__”__—now kept mankind from becoming one‐half the exterminator of the
other [as mankind is now_—H. P. B.]. _It [mankind] became divided. Two‐
thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the
Earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one‐third
remained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race—the Divine
Incarnates. When the Poles moved [for the fourth time] this did not affect
those who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like
the Lemurians—alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and __“__were seen no
more__”__...!_
Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.
47. The remnants of the first two Races disappear for ever. Groups
of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with
the Forefathers of the Fifth. 48. The origins of our present Race,
the Fifth. The first Divine Dynasties. 49. The earliest
glimmerings in history, now pinned to the allegorical chronology
of the _Bible_, and “universal” history slavishly following it.
The nature of the first Instructors and Civilizers of mankind.
47. FEW(784) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED
REMAINED. THE MOON‐COLOURED(785) WERE GONE FOR EVER (_A_).
48. THE FIFTH(786) PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED
OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS.
49. ... THE SERPENTS WHO RE‐DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH,(787)
WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (_b_)....
(_a_) This Shloka relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with
it, but living and ever‐recurring tradition does. History—or what is
called history—does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our
fifth sub‐race, a “few thousands” of years. It is the sub‐divisions of the
first sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race which are referred to in the
sentence, “Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained.” The
“moon‐coloured”—_i.e._, the First and the Second Races—were gone for ever;
ay, without leaving any traces whatever—and that, so far back as the third
“Deluge” of the Third Lemurian Race, that “Great Dragon,” whose tail
sweeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this
is the true meaning of the verse in the Commentary which says:
_The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom, the Serpents
whose holes are now under the Triangular Stones._
Or in other words, “the pyramids, at the four corners of the world.”
(_b_) This puts clearly what is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the
Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or “Wise” men of the Third, Fourth
and Fifth Races dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind
of pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such
“pyramids” existed in the “four corners of the world” and were never the
monopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though indeed until they were found
scattered all over the two Americas, under and above ground, beneath and
amidst virgin forests, and also in plain and vale, they were generally
supposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If true geometrically
correct pyramids are no longer found in European regions, nevertheless
many of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular
pyramidal and conical “menhirs” in Morbihan, and Brittany generally, many
of the Danish “tumuli” and even of the “giant tombs” of Sardinia with
their inseparable companions, the “nuraghi,” are so many more or less
clumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first
settlers on the newly‐born continent and isles of Europe, the “some
yellow, some brown and black, and some red” races that remained after the
submersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands, 850,000 years
ago—Plato’s Island excepted—and before the arrival of the great Âryan
races; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East.
Those who can hardly accept the placing of the antiquity of the human race
so far back as the 57,000 years, the age assigned by Dr. Dowler to the
skeleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi,
will, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken
some day. We may disparage the foolish self‐glorification of the Arcadians
who styled themselves “older than the Moon” (προσέληνοι), and of the
people of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the Sun
appeared in Heaven—but not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at
the universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones
of the Mammoth and Mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic
Salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with
the difficulty that, of all the Mammalians, man is the only one whom
Science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames,
from the giant Homo Diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that
he is now.
But the “Serpents of Wisdom” have preserved their records well, and the
history of human evolution _is_ traced in Heaven as it is traced on
underground walls. Humanity and the _Stars_ are bound together
indissolubly, because of the _Intelligences_ that rule the latter.
Modern Symbologists may scoff at this and call it “fancy,” but as Mr.
Staniland Wake writes:
It is unquestionable that the Deluge has [ever] been associated in
the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids,
but also with the constellations.(788)
The “Old Dragon” is identical with the “Great Flood,” says Mr. Proctor:
We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at
the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples,
... the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation....
It is singular how closely these constellations ... correspond in
sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded
respecting the [Biblical] Flood.(789)
The reasons for this _singularity_, however, have been made abundantly
clear in this work. It only shows that there were _several_ Deluges
confused in the memories and traditions of the sub‐races of the Fifth
Race. The first great Flood was astronomical and cosmical, while several
others were terrestrial. And yet our very learned friend Mr. Gerald
Massey—an initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still
only a self‐initiate—declared and insisted that the Atlantean Submersion
and Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people, and
that Atlantis was no better than an “astronomical allegory.” But the great
zodiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and allegory can hardly
interfere with history; moreover, every student of Occultism knows what
that astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Dr. Smith shows in the
Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of the allegory.
[Its twelve cantos] refer to the annual course of the Sun through
the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special
month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in
the signs of the Zodiac; ... [the eleventh canto being]
consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and rain, and harmonizes
with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac—Aquarius, or the
Waterman.(790)
But even this is preceded in the old Records by the _pre_‐astronomical
Cosmic Flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above
Zodiacal or Noah’s Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The
Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the constellation of
the Great Dragon, the “Dragons of Wisdom,” or the great Initiates of the
Third and Fourth Races, and the floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine
reminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of
Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the
third sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race or the Atlanteans. When was it?
Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of
the zodiacal calculations in Egypt, _the poles have been thrice inverted_.
We will presently return again to this statement. Such symbols as are
represented by the Signs of the Zodiac—a fact which offers a handle to
Materialists upon which to hang their one‐sided theories and opinions—have
too profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too
important, to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to
consider the meaning of the statement, in Shloka 48, concerning the “first
Divine Kings,” who are said to have “redescended,” guided and _instructed_
our Fifth Race after the last Deluge! We shall consider this last claim
historically in the Sections that follow, but must end with a few more
details on the subject of “Serpents.”
The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further
elucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, mediæval, and modern
works which have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to
be gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to
compel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs.
And as the manifold meaning of the weird and suggestive symbol (so often
referred to) of the “tempter of man”—in the orthodox light of the
Church—can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to
exhaust the subject by every available proof, at this juncture, even at
the risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made
out by our Theologians and some pious Symbologists to be indissolubly
connected with the grotesque personage called the “Devil,” and every proof
which goes against their theory has been hitherto as invariably rejected
and ignored. The Occultist must, therefore, neglect nothing which may tend
to defeat this conspiracy of slander. And so we propose to divide the
subjects involved in these last three Verses into several groups, and to
examine them as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more
details may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the
most disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine—the bulk of
which, however, will be found in Part II, on Symbology.
Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.
The name of the Dragon in Chaldæa was not written phonetically, but was
represented by two monograms, meaning _probably_, according to the
Orientalists, the “scaly one.” “This description,” very pertinently
remarks G. Smith, “of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a
serpent, or a fish.” To this we may add that, in one aspect, it applies to
Makara, the tenth Zodiacal Sign, the Sanskrit term for a nondescript
amphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, but really signifying
something else. This, then, is a virtual admission that the
Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of
the Dragon in ancient Chaldæa. It was from Chaldæa that the Hebrews got
_their_ symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians,
who made of the “scaly one” a living entity and a maleficent power.
A specimen of Dragons, “winged and scaled,” may be seen in the British
Museum. In this representation of the events of the Fall, according to the
same authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a
“tree,” and holding out their hands to the “apple,” while at the back of
the “tree” is the Dragon‐Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two
“Chaldees” ready for Initiation, the Serpent symbolizing the Initiator;
while the jealous Gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane
clergy. Not much of the literal “biblical event” there, as any Occultist
can see!
“The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom,” says the
Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures
and the “Serpent.”
“The Serpents who redescended, .... who taught and instructed” the Fifth
Race. What sane man, in our day, is capable of believing that _real_
serpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess—now become almost an
axiom with men of Science—that those who in antiquity wrote upon various
sacred Dragons and Serpents were either superstitious and credulous
people, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves.
Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the
Profane.
“Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves”—those _Gods_ whom
men call _Dragons_. And Ælianus, treating in his _De Naturâ Animalium_ of
these ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well
understood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with
reference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains:
For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, _has within
himself something still more of the divine nature_ of which it is
better [for others?] to remain in ignorance.(791)
The “Dragon” symbol has a septenary meaning, and of these seven meanings,
the highest and the lowest may be given. The highest is identical with the
“Self‐born,” the Logos, the Hindû Aja. With the Christian Gnostics called
the Naasenians, or Serpent‐worshippers, he was the Second Person of the
Trinity, the Son. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.(792) Its
seven “Stars” are the seven stars held in the hand of the “Alpha and
Omega” in _Revelation_. In its most terrestrial meaning, the term “Dragon”
was applied to the “Wise” men.
This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and
mysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern
day it so jars on the Christian ear that, in spite of our boasted
civilization, it can hardly escape being regarded as a direct denunciation
of the most cherished of Christian dogmas. Such a subject required, to do
it justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now
taken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.
Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven
originate with St. John, in his _Revelation_? Emphatically we answer—No.
St. John’s “Dragon” is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean Magic.
In order that we may demonstrate this negation, the reader is asked to
examine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several
aspects.
The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.
Every Astronomer—not to speak of Occultists and Astrologers—knows that,
figuratively speaking, the Astral Light, the Milky Way, and also the Path
of the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the Circles
of the Sidereal or Tropical Year, were always called “Serpents” in the
allegorical and mystic phraseology of the Adepts.
This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a “Dragon”—the
Dragon “Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune” according to the Peratæ
Gnostics, the “Good and Perfect Serpent,” the Messiah of the Naaseni,
whose symbol in Heaven is Draco.
But we ought to discriminate between the various characters of this
symbol. Now Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret
Doctrine, and when an Occultist reads in the _Vendîdâd_ complaints uttered
against the “Serpent,” whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal
spring of Airyana Vaêjô, changing it into winter, generating disease and
death, and at the same time mental and psychic consumption—he knows that
the Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, and also the Pole of the
Heavens.(793) These two axes produce the seasons according to their angle
of inclination to each other. The two axes were _no more parallel_; hence
the eternal spring of Airyana Vaêjô “by the good river Dâitya” had
disappeared, and “the Âryan Magi had to emigrate to Sogdiana”—say the
exoteric accounts. But the Esoteric Teaching states that the pole had
passed from the equator, and that the “Land of Bliss” of the Fourth Race,
its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation
and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great
antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo‐Âryans of the post‐
diluvian age could, of course, hardly recognize the mountains, on the
summits of which their forefathers had met _before_ the Flood, and
conversed with the pure “Yazatas” or celestial Spirits of the Elements,
whose life and _food_ they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein:
The _Vendîdâd_ seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere
of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a
whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara‐Korum
chain.(794)
The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who, for a wonder, once wrote the
truth, symbolized Kosmos by a large fiery circle, with a serpent with a
hawk’s head lying across its diameter.
Here we see the pole of the earth within the plane of the
ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise
from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac, in 25,000
[odd] years, must have “redden’d with the solar blaze”; and _each
sign must have been vertical_ to the polar region.(795)
Meru, the Abode of the Gods, as explained before, was placed in the North
Pole, while Pâtâla, the Nether Region, was supposed to lie towards the
South. As each symbol in Esoteric Philosophy has _seven_ keys, Meru and
Pâtâla have, geographically, one significance and represent localities,
while, astronomically, they have another, and mean the “two poles”; the
latter meaning led to their being often rendered in _exoteric_
sectarianism as the “Mountain” and the “Pit,” or Heaven and Hell. If we
for the present hold only to the astronomical and geographical
significance, it may be found that the Ancients knew the topography and
nature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern
Astronomers. They had reasons, and good ones, for naming one the
“Mountain” and the other the “Pit.” As the author just quoted half
explains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same. “Heli‐on is the Sun in
his highest,” Heli‐os or Eli‐os meaning the “most high,” and Acheron is 32
degrees above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus
supposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The
vast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded
the southern pole, the first astronomers called the Pit, while observing,
toward the northern pole, that a certain circuit in the heavens always
appeared above the horizon—they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the
high abode of the Gods, these were said to _ascend_ and _descend_
periodically; by which (astronomically) the _Zodiacal_ Gods were meant,
the passing of the original north pole of the Earth to the south pole of
the Heaven.
In that age at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the
meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the north pole
to the north horizon; crossing the _eight coils of the serpent_
[eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years], which would
seem like an imaginary _ladder_ with _eight staves_ reaching from
the earth up to the pole, _i.e._, the throne of Jove. Up this
ladder, then, the Gods, _i.e._, the Signs of the Zodiac, ascended
and descended. [Jacob’s ladder and the Angels] .... It is more
than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this
ladder.(796)
This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from
Occult heresy. Yet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific
and especially theological character. As said, the Christian Trinity was
purely astronomical from its beginning. This it was which made Rutilius
say of those who euhemerized it: “_Judæa gens, radix stultorum_.”
But the profane, and especially Christian fanatics who are ever in search
of scientific corroboration for their dead‐letter texts, persist in seeing
in the Celestial Pole the true Serpent of _Genesis_, Satan, the enemy of
mankind; whereas it is really—a cosmic metaphor. When the Gods are said to
forsake the Earth, it means not only the Gods, the Protectors and
Instructors, but also the _minor_ Gods—the Regents of the Zodiacal Signs.
The former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed,
and instructed Mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in
that of the Zoroastrians as well as in the Hindû Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura
Mazda, the “Lord of Wisdom,” is the synthesis of the Amshaspands, or
Amesha Spentas, the “Immortal Benefactors,”(797) the “Word,” or the Logos,
and its six highest aspects in Mazdeanism. These “Immortal Benefactors”
are described in _Zamyad Yasht_ as:
The Amesha Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great,
helpful ... imperishable and pure ... which are all seven of like
mind, like speech, all seven doing alike ... which are _the
creators and destroyers of the creatures_ of Ahura Mazda, their
creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers.
These few lines are sufficient to indicate the dual and even the triple
character of the Amshaspands, our Dhyân Chohans or the “Serpents of
Wisdom.” They are identical with, and yet separate from Ormazd (Ahura
Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the Christians—the Star‐
Yazatas of the Zoroastrians—or again the seven Planets (including the Sun)
of every religion.(798) The epithet, “the shining, having efficacious
eyes,” proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the
spiritual, they are the Divine Powers of Ahura Mazda; but on the astral or
psychic plane again, they are the “Builders,” the “Watchers,” the Pitris,
or Fathers, and the first Preceptors of Mankind.
When mortals have become sufficiently spiritualized, there will be no more
need of _forcing_ them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men
will _know_ then, that there never yet was a great World‐reformer whose
name has passed into our generation, who (_a_) was not a direct emanation
of the Logos (under whatever name known to us) _i.e._, an _essential_
incarnation of one of the “Seven,” of the “Divine Spirit who is
sevenfold”; and (_b_) who had not appeared before, in past Cycles. They
will recognize, then, the cause which produces certain riddles of the
ages, in both history and chronology; the reason, for instance, why it is
impossible _for them_ to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is
found multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the _Dabistan_; why the numbers
and individualities of the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up; why Krishna
and Buddha speak of themselves as reïncarnations, Krishna identifying
himself with the Rishi Nârâyana, and Gautama giving a series of his
previous births; and why the former, especially, being “the _very supreme_
Brahmâ,” is yet called Anshânshâvatâra—“a part of a part” only of the
Supreme on Earth; finally, why Osiris is a Great God, and at the same time
a “Prince on Earth,” who reäppears in Thoth Hermes; and why Jesus (in
Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognized, kabalistically, in Joshua, the
son of Nun, as well as in other personages. The Esoteric Doctrine explains
all this by saying that each of these, as also many others, had first
appeared on Earth as one of the Seven Powers of the Logos, individualized
as a God or Angel (Messenger); then, mixed with Matter, they had
reäppeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who “taught” the Fifth
Race, after having instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during
the Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn
under various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation
at certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had
become truly only the “parts of a part” on Earth, though _de facto_ the
One Supreme in Nature.
This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every “Power” among the Seven,
once he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of
creation, and rules over it;(799) hence the many meanings in every symbol.
These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally
lead to inextricable confusion.
Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern
Occultist, require a proof? Let him open Éliphas Lévi’s _Histoire de la
Magie_,(800) and carefully examine his “Grand Symbole Kabbalistique” from
the _Zohar_. He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the
“interlaced triangles,” a _white_ man above and a _black_ woman below
reversed, the legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and
protruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on
each side. Éliphas Lévi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God,
“Light,” mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, “Darkness.”
Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as
emblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have
the Kabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in
the temples of Egypt from time immemorial, agreeably to tradition, and
historically‐ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them.
Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years.
This, at the very least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great,
succeeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two
Kabiri personifying the _opposite poles_. Herodotus(801) tells posterity
that when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an
inextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a
man erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These
were the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate “the
passing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the
heaven,” as perceived by Mackey.(802) But they also represented the poles
_inverted_, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which
each time resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of
the polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the
equatorial regions, and _vice versâ_. These Kabirim were the “Deluge”
Gods.
This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion
among the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same Gods, and
classes of Gods. Faber, at the beginning of this century, showed the
identity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei,
Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,(803) Titans, and Aletæ with the Kabiri.
And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis,
and our Dhyân Chohans who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth
Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri‐Titans were seven Great Gods,
cosmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because,
perhaps, as Faber says, they were connected with _at‐al‐as_, the “divine
sun,” and with _tit_, the “deluge.” But this, if true, is only the
exoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on
the appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe‐inspiring Great
Gods—the Dioscuri,(804) the deities surrounded with the darkness of Occult
Nature—become the Idei Dactyli, or Ideic “Fingers,” with the Adept‐healers
by metals. The true etymology of the name Lares, now signifying “Ghosts,”
must be sought in the Etruscan word _lars_, “conductor,” “leader.”
Sanchuniathon translates the word Aletæ as “fire worshippers,” and Faber
believes it to be derived from _al‐orit_, the “God of fire.” Both are
right, for in both cases it is a reference to the Sun, the “highest” God,
toward whom the Planetary Gods “gravitate” (astronomically and
allegorically), and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar
Deities, though Faber’s etymology, that “Lar is a contraction of El‐Ar,
the solar deity,”(805) is not very correct. They are the Lares, the
Conductors and Leaders of men. As Aletæ, they were the seven
Planets—astronomically; and as Lares, the Regents of these Planets, our
Protectors and Rulers—mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic
worship, and also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, whose attributes and
dual capacities were denoted by the names of the temples to which they
respectively belonged, and also by those of their priests. They all
belonged, however, to the septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyân
Chohans. The Sabæans, who worshipped the “Regents of the Seven Planets”
just as the Hindûs worship their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes
(Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the Planetary Gods. Seth and Enos
were borrowed from the Sabæans and then disfigured by the Jews
(exoterically); but the truth about them can still be discovered even in
_Genesis_.(806) Seth is the “Progenitor” of those early men of the Third
Race in whom the Planetary Angels had incarnated; he was himself a Dhyân
Chohan and belonged to the _informing_ Gods, and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch),
or Hermes, was said to be his _son_—Enos being a generic name for all the
early “Seers” (Enoïchion). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti
says that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of
Sabaism, and that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were
regarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idrus (Hermes or
Enoch);(807) that thither Sabæans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted
prayers _seven times_ a day, _turning to the North_ (Mount Meru, Kaph,
Olympus, etc.).(808) Abd Allatif also tells us some curious things about
the Sabæans and their books. So also does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote
200 years later. While the latter maintains “that each pyramid was
consecrated to a _star_” (a Star _Regent_ rather), Abd Allatif assures us
that he had read in ancient Sabæan books that “one pyramid was the tomb of
Agathodæmon and the other of Hermes”:(809)
Agathodæmon was none other than Seth, and, according to some
writers, Hermes was his son,
adds Mr. Staniland Wake in _The Great Pyramid_.(810)
Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples the Kabiri were
the Great Cosmic Gods—the Seven and the _Forty‐nine_ Sacred Fires—in the
Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, and therefore, to the
profane, obscene. In the latter case they were three and four, or
seven—the male and female principles—the _crux ansata_. This division
shows why some classical writers held that they were only three, while
others named four. And these were Axieros (in his female aspect Demeter);
Axiokersa (Persephone);(811) Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or
Kasmilos (Hermes—not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus,(812)
but “he of the sacred legend,” which was explained only during the
Samothracian Mysteries). This identification, which is due, according to
the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,(813) to an indiscretion of Mnaseas,
is really no identification at all, as names alone do not reveal
much.(814) Others again have maintained, being equally right in their way,
that there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two
Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. These
two personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial pole,
and the pole of the heavens, astronomically; and also the physical and the
spiritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus,
Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read
esoterically for the understanding of the allegory. The parts played in
the event by the Fire, Water, Earth, etc., in the many versions, will show
how the “Father of the Gods” and the “merry God of Wine” were also made to
personify the two terrestrial poles. The telluric, metalline, magnetic,
electric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references
to the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In
Astronomy, the poles are indeed the “heavenly measure”; and so are the
Kabiri‐Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri‐Titans, to whom Diodorus
ascribes the “invention of Fire”(815) and the art of manufacturing iron.
Moreover, Pausanias(816) shows that the original Kabiric deity was
Prometheus.
But the fact that, astronomically, the Titan‐Kabirim were also the
Generators and Regulators of the Seasons, and, cosmically, the great
Volcanic Energies—the Gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial
works—does not prevent them from being, in their original divine
characters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought
light to the world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason. They
are preëminently in every Theogony—especially in the Hindû—the Sacred
Divine Fires, Three, Seven, or Forty‐nine, according as the allegory
demands it. Their very names prove it, for they are the Agni‐putra, or
Sons of the Fire, in India, and the Genii of the Fire under numerous names
in Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name
_kabeiros_ meaning “the powerful through fire,” from the Greek καίω “to
burn.” The Semitic word _kabirim_ contains the idea of “the powerful, the
mighty, and the great,” answering to the Greek μεγάλοι, δυνατοί, but these
are later epithets. These Gods were universally worshipped, and their
origin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia,
Phœnicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was
always connected with Fire, their temples ever built in the most volcanic
localities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to the Chthonian
Divinities, and therefore has Christianity made of them _Infernal_ Gods.
They are truly “the great, beneficent and powerful Gods,” as Cassius
Hermone calls them.(817) At Thebes, Core and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a
sanctuary,(818) and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that
none, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter its holy
precincts.(819) But we must not, at the same time, lose sight of the fact
that the title of Kabiri was generic; that the Kabiri, the mighty Gods as
well as mortals, were of both sexes, and also terrestrial, celestial and
cosmic; that while, in their later capacity of rulers of sidereal and
terrestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon—as it is now
regarded—was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in
the beginning of times, the Rulers of Mankind, when, incarnated as Kings
of the “Divine Dynasties,” they gave the first impulse to civilization,
and directed the mind with which they had endued men, to the invention and
perfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have
appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the
memory of nations. To these Kabiri or Titans is ascribed the invention of
letters (the Deva‐nâgari, or alphabet and language of the Gods), of laws
and legislature, of architecture, as also of the various modes of magic,
so‐called, and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus,
Asclepius, all those Demi‐gods and Heroes, to whom is ascribed the
revelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop
Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers—too zealous for plain
truth—would force posterity to see only Pagan copies of one sole
prototype, named Noah—all are generic names.
It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed the great boon of
agriculture, by _producing_ corn or wheat. What Isis‐Osiris, the once
living Kabiria, did in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily;
they all belong to one class.
That serpents were ever emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by
the Caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the God of Wisdom, with Hermes,
and so on. The two serpents, entwined round the rod, are phallic symbols
of Jupiter and other Gods who transformed themselves into snakes for
purposes of seducing Goddesses—only in the unclean fancies of profane
Symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the Adept, and of
his powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury, in his
psychopompic character, conducting and guiding the souls of the dead to
Hades with his Caduceus and even raising them to life with it, is a simple
and very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret
Wisdom: black and white Magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding
the Soul after death, and displaying the power of calling to life that
which is dead—a very deep metaphor if one but thinks over its meaning. All
the peoples of antiquity, with one exception, reverenced this symbol; the
exception being the Christians, who chose to forget the “brazen serpent”
of Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and
prudence of the “serpent” by Jesus himself, “Be ye _wise_ as serpents and
harmless as doves.” The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth
Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate
successors of the “Serpents” or Initiates, who ruled the early races of
the Fifth Humanity. The Emperor’s throne is the “Dragon’s Seat,” and his
dresses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon. The
aphorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the
Dragon is a human, albeit _divine_, Being. Speaking of the “Yellow
Dragon,” the chief of the others, the _Twan‐ying‐t’u_ says:
His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable ... he does not go in
company and does not live in herds [he is an ascetic].... He
wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes,
fulfilling the decree [Karma]; at the proper seasons if there is
perfection he comes forth, if not he remains [invisible].
And Lü‐lan asserts that Confucius said:
The Dragon feeds in the pure (water) [of Wisdom] and disports in
the clear (water) [of Life].(820)
Our Divine Instructors.
Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the
Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or
continent, which it calls Ma‐li‐ga‐si‐ma, and which Kæmpfer and Faber
spell “Maurigasima,” for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own.
Kæmpfer, in his _Japan_,(821) gives the tradition: The island, owing to
the iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun,
the king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a
warning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his
descendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the
Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.
At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a
multiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings—spiritual,
psychic, intellectual, and physical—just as is described in the present
work. A few of these claims have now to be considered.
Our races—they all show—have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name
the latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or
Pitris; with the Chinese Chim‐nang and Tchan‐gy—their “Divine Man” and
Demi‐gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul‐lil—the Creative God and the
“Gods of the Ghost‐world”; with the Egyptian Isis‐Osiris and Thot; with
the Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco‐Capac and his Peruvian progeny—the
story varies nowhere. Every nation has either the _seven_ and _ten_ Rishi‐
Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki‐y; or _ten_ and _seven_
Amshaspands(822) (six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldæan Annedoti; ten
and seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive
Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the “Builders” of the Stanzas
of Volume I. From Manu, Thot‐Hermes, Oannes‐Dagon, and Edris‐Enoch, down
to Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven
Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven
primitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode(823) and
reign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the
other sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as
Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as
“Divine Kings and Rulers.” But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As
Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had
flourished in their country only since the time of Isis‐Osiris, whom they
continued to adore as Gods, “though they had become princes in human
form.” And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:
It is said that this prince [Isis‐Osiris] built cities in Egypt,
stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use
of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.
When Abul Feda, in his _Historia Anteïslamitica_,(824) says that the
“Sabæan language” was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)—he means
Astronomy. In the _Melelwa Nahil_,(825) Hermes is called the disciple of
Agathodæmon. And in another account,(826) Agathodæmon is mentioned as a
“King of Egypt.” The _Celepas Geraldinus_ gives us some curious traditions
about Henoch, who is called the “Divine Giant.” In his _Book of the
Various Names of the Nile_, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells
us of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the
Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in
the _Bible_; then he became a mortal and Adam’s son, after which he
communicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who
passed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris), “the author of thirty
books,” was “Sabæan by origin”—_i.e._, belonged to the Saba, “a Host”:
Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship,
he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty
cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to
Egypt where he became its King.(827)
Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes—or rather
one, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different
characters. In the _Burham i Kati_, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of
the Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and
Thot.(828) The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the
Phineatæ, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt,
and civilized it under the name of Thoth.(829) But under whichever of
these characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the
sciences from _latent to active potency_, _i.e._, with having been the
first to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna
Græcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.
Not only does Herodotus, the “father of history,” tell us of the
marvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed
by the Dynasties of Demi‐gods, Heroes, and finally men, but the whole
series of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato,
Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.
As Creuzer shows:
It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the
gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In
the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all
things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole
world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid
may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of
spirits.(830)
It is the modern historians—French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly—who
have made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of
Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could
never have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260 B.C.) to accept
the unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to
recognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much
contempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them “a
superstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying
priests of Heliopolis.” As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:
All those historians and priests, so _veracious_ when repeating
stories of _human_ kings and men, suddenly become _extremely
suspicious_ no sooner do they go back _to their gods_.
But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the
genius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of
Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the
most remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:
Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his
own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest
mythic times, or the _Reigns of the Gods and Heroes_.... At the
very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the
conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these
mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had
transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of
Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth‐Hermes, and the
Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign
of each of these.(831)
These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by
Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The
chronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of
humanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from
the profane multitudes.
Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of
Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest
Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once
upon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by
Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology.
Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first
country occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from
the north‐east.
When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the
Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest
Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious
three Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its Œdipus to understand the
riddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who
told Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (_a_) that the poles of the
Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (_b_) that even since
their first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three
times within the plane of the Ecliptic.
Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at the
_sameness_ of all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:
What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian]
Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien‐hoang
or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti‐hoang, or Kings
on Earth, and the Gin‐hoang, the King men, distinctions which are
in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in
enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi‐gods and
Mortals.(832)
As says Panodorus:
Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that
the _Reign of the Seven Gods_ who rule the world took place. It
was during that period that those benefactors of humanity
_descended_ on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the
sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.(833)
Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt
showed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs‐Piromis—the
Arch‐prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples, _born one from the other_,
without the intervention of woman—who had reigned before Menes, their
first _human_ King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood,
three hundred and forty‐five in number, _each of which had its name,
history and annals_. They also assured Herodotus—unless the most truthful
of historians, the “father of history,” is now to be accused of fibbing,
_just in this instance_—that no historian could ever understand or write
an account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned
the history of the _three_ Dynasties that preceded the human—namely, the
Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi‐gods, and of the Heroes, or
Giants.(834) These “three” Dynasties are the three Races.
Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three
Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the
Dânavas and Daityas—otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or
Titans. “Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as
men in Bhârata‐varsha!”—exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the
Third Root‐Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it
symbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of
the divisions of Jambu‐dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual)
works _par excellence_; the land of Initiation and of Divine
Knowledge.(835)
Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when,
although he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindû philosophies,
which were but little known in his day, we find him writing:
We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the
Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, _the natural
good sense and the upright judgment_ of the ancient peoples, quite
foreign to our _entirely material_ ideas of mechanics and physical
sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but
simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in
sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or
repulsion; they saw in them _living_ bodies, _animated_ by spirits
as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.... _This doctrine
of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature_, from which
it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the
physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended
together.(836)
It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct
conclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the
Universe—of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without
such a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can
ever progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis
of physical matter only.
Occultists believe in “spirits,” because they _feel_—and some
see—themselves surrounded by them on every side.(837) Materialists do not.
They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects
and even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without
seeing, or so much as sensing them.(838)
Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of
the Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls
Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been
preceded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned
Jesuit, who in his _Œdipus Ægyptiacus_, writes:
I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties
and Atlantis] as pure fables (_meras nugas_) to the day when,
better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those
legends must be, after all, only the development of a great
truth.(839)
As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his _Meropis_, made the priests of
Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saïs when they
revealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to
Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing
two countries inhabited by two races—a fighting, warrior race, and a
pious, meditative race(840)—which Theopompus symbolizes by two
cities.(841) The pious “city” was _continually visited by the Gods_: the
belligerent “city” was inhabited by various beings _invulnerable_ by iron,
who could be _mortally wounded_ only by stone and wood.(842) De Rougemont
treats this as a pure _fiction_ of Theopompus and even sees a fraud
(_supercherie_) in the assertion of the Saïtic priests. This was denounced
by the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:
A _supercherie_ which was based on a belief, the product of the
faith of the whole of antiquity; a _supposition_ which yet gave
its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with
the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this
land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe),
which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, _the great
transoceanic land_ situated beyond that Atlantis and which “is
reached,” it said, “by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the
Good Spirits,” εὐδαιμόνια (our Îles Fortunées)—such a supposition
can well be nothing else but a _universal chimera_!(843)
It is certain that, whether “chimera” or reality, the priests of the whole
world had it from one and the same source—the universal tradition about
the third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,(844) a
Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and
especially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets
of nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course
and progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese
teachings upon the subject, if it is but a “fiction”? Have they not
recorded the existence once upon a time of a _Holy_ Island beyond the sun,
Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands of _Immortal_ Men?(845) Do
they not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men—who
survived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished—have
found refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside,
invisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?
As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:
If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the
reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi‐gods; and still
earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all
the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals
so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our
historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once
universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere
them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such
considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The
ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which _we accept no
longer because we no longer understand them_, must have had
motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater
proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us
from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of his
_Laws_, says that, long before the construction of the first
cities, Saturn had established on earth a _certain_ form of
government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden
Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in
ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age,
and what was the occasion he had to introduce this _fable_ into a
treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear
and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to
turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great
changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, _in heaven and on
earth_, and the present state of things is one of the results
[Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that
have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn’s reign, and
of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory;
but _one never hears anything of the evil which has produced these
revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them_. Yet
... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able
to treat of royalty and the origin of power.(846)
That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the
natures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man
built his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on
Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man
could not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe
through his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power
over his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we
ourselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a
ram over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,
_i.e._, _a being of a species quite different from their own and of a
superior nature_. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and
placed to rule over it no mortal king or prince but—“Spirits and Genii
(δαίμονες) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man.”
It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over
the Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.(847) When the world
had ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts
devoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry,
Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire,
wheat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.(848)
And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of
nature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.
As say the Commentaries:
_Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the
__“__Lords of Wisdom,__”__ for the benefit of those they ruled from other
Lokas [Spheres]._
Now:
The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that
the race has ever made.... The _first use of fire_, and the
discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the
domestication of animals; and, above all, _the processes by which
the various cereals were first developed_ out of some wild grasses
[?]—these are all _discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in
importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare_. They are all
unknown to history—all lost in the light of an _effulgent
dawn_.(849)
This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be
asserted that there are no grains and fruits _unknown to earth_, then we
may remind the reader _that wheat has never been found in the wild state;
it is not a product of the earth_. All the other cereals have been traced
to their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat
has hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin.
And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal
with the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has
been found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the
servants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheat _seven
cubits high_.(850)
Says the Egyptian Isis:
I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to
mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in
the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert
my nurse.(851)
Sirius was called the Dog‐star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha,
called the great Instructor of Mankind.
The Chinese _Y‐King_ attributes the discovery of agriculture to “the
instruction given to men by celestial genii.”
Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they
see. They are all blind,(852) since they remain ignorant how full
the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even
in the most sacred places.(853)
The “Sons of God” _have_ existed and _do_ exist. From the Hindû
Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind‐born Sons, down to
the Bne Aleim of the Jewish _Bible_, the faith of the centuries and
universal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value
is “independent criticism” so‐called, or “internal evidence”—based usually
on the respective hobbies of the critics—in the face of the universal
testimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For
instance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter of _Genesis_, which repeats
the statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form,
and drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the _Zohar_.
There were giants in the earth in those days; _and also after
that_, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters
of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men
which were of old, men of renown [or giants].(854)
What does this sentence, “and also after that,” signify unless it means:
There were Giants in the Earth _before_, _i.e._, before the Sinless Sons
of the Third Race; _and also after that_ when other Sons of God, lower in
nature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth—as Daksha did, when he saw
that his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long
break in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or
through the wickedness of the “mighty men ... men of renown,” among whom
is placed Nimrod the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” that “God saw that
the wickedness of man was great,” nor in the builders of Babel, for this
was _after_ the Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who produced
_monstra quædam de genere giganteo_, monsters from whence sprang the lower
races of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying‐out tribes
and the huge anthropoid apes.
And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman
Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above
quoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and
biblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne
puts it:
Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how
could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could
not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.(855)
This biblical riddle—“the real sense of which no author has ever
understood,” as is candidly confessed by Fourmont(856)—can only be
explained by the Occult doctrine, through the _Zohar_ to the Western, and
the _Book of Dzyan_ to the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen;
what the _Zohar_ tells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the
Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.(857)
We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the
“Adversary,” is included in _Job_ among the “sons” of God or Bne Aleim who
visit their father.(858) But of this later on.
Now the _Zohar_ says that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, were _not_
guilty, but mixed _themselves with mortal men because they were sent on
earth to do so_.(859) Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim
belonging to the tenth sub‐division of the “Thrones.”(860) It also
explains that the Ischins—“Men‐spirits,” _viri spirituales_(861)—now that
men can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science,
Homunculi which are not “small men” but “men _smaller_ (in the sense of
inferiority) than men.” Both show themselves under the form that the
Ischins had then, _i.e._, gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.
But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is
nothing of the kind. Azazel is a _mystery_, as explained elsewhere, and it
is so expressed by Maimonides:
There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning
Azazel.(862)
And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted
before, and one who ought to know, says:
This venerable divine name (_nome divino e venerabile_) has become
through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a
mountain, and a he‐goat.(863)
Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal
(separated) and El (God), hence “one separated from God”—the Devil. In the
_Zohar_, Azazel is rather the “sacrificial victim” than the “formal
adversary of Jehovah,” as Spencer would have it.(864)
The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this “Host” by
various fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his “Host”
are simply the Hebrew “Prometheus,” and ought to be viewed from the same
standpoint. The _Zohar_ shows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the
desert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these “Spirits” as
being chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or
Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the “transgressing” Angels in the _Book
of Enoch_, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound
themselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel
taught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to
make _one see what is behind him_—viz., “magic mirrors.” Amazarak taught
all the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of
Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs;
Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.(865) “These
seven were the first instructors of the fourth man” (_i.e._, of the Fourth
Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what
its dead‐letter expresses?
It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine
Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and
Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven—because the Divine Monad had
voluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes,
to a lower plane and thus transform the _animal_ of clay into an immortal
_God_. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:
The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man‐God,
is above even Angels.
On Earth—because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in
the coils of Matter.
Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the
anthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man‐like
God with the Hindûs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon,
or Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery;
theological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many
a saying in the _Bible_ and even in the _New Testament_ which has hitherto
remained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan
and his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would‐be
infinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse
on Earth—belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially
revealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been
restored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods
and Archangels standing as symbols for the dead‐letter or dogmatic
religions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and
unadorned with fancy.
Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in _Isis Unveiled_, and a
still greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered
throughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which
the clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points
out as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine
Spirit—Occult Wisdom on Earth—which is naturally antagonistic to every
worldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions
included. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who
do not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the “bride”
of Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke
of the Master “Get thee behind me, Satan” was justly addressed; and again
the Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically
replaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly
repudiated—both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when
repudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever
they anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodæmon Christos,
or the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of
_Genesis_—they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved
the Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: “Say we not well thou hast a
devil?”
Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in the _Rig Veda_, the Occult volume _par
excellence_ of Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in the
_Purânas_—the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account
of the true Wisdom Religion. In the _Rig Veda_, Indra is the highest and
greatest of the Gods, and his Soma‐drinking is allegorical of his highly
spiritual nature. In the _Purânas_, Indra becomes a profligate, and a
regular drunkard on the Soma‐juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is
the conqueror of all the “enemies of the Gods” the Daityas, Nâgas
(Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent‐gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic
Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindû Pantheon—the chief of the
_militant_ Host. Turning to the _Bible_, we find Satan, one of the “Sons
of God,”(866) becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the
Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the _Kabalah_,(867) Samael,
who is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the
Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects
alike Michael and Samael, _who are one_? Both proceed, it is taught, from
Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldæan _Book
of Numbers_ Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the
higher _terrestrial_ Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but
diverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is
Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They
diverge, because the one (Michael) is _influenced_ by Neshamah, while the
other (Samael) remains _uninfluenced_. This tenet was perverted by the
dogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit,
uninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of
Samael‐Satan—the most wise and spiritual spirit of all—the Adversary of
its anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.
Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper,
and find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth
is easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in
every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi‐savage regions. It
took rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane,
and was once universally established through the formerly universal
heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world
were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the
cult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,
Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the
priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of
his God.(868)
Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its
Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus,
and heliolatrous worship with its Sun‐gods crossed over into the land of
the Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the
divinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of
the Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and
Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names—the latest of
which are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As
Michael is “one as God,” or his “Double” for terrestrial purposes, and is
one of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of
Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to
the allegory of the “War in Heaven,” its earthly origin has to be sought
in the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we
find (_a_) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (_b_)
the “Dragons” held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality
and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (_c_) the Hierophants
of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the “Sons of
the Dragon” and “Serpents”; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret
Doctrine.
There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldæa, some of them of a very
vast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of
Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile,
extended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent’s
Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred
Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkês, the “Unavoidable Cycle,” more generally
known as the “Circle of Necessity”; the inexorable doom imposed upon every
Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.
In De Bourbourg’s book, Votan, the Mexican Demi‐god, in narrating his
expedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and
terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a
Snake’s hole, “_un agujero de colubra_”; and that he was admitted to it
because he was himself a “Son of the Snakes,” or a Serpent.(869)
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the “Snake’s
hole” is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The
Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled
themselves during the Mysteries, the “Sons of the Serpent‐god,” or “Sons
of the Dragon.”
“The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God,” says Movers. The
Druids of the Celto‐Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes. “I am
a Serpent, I am a Druid,” they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin
brother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent’s
Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these
temples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the
Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God—the Phœnician
Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.(870) Besides the
surname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of “Builders” or
“Architects,” for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was
such that even now the pulverized remains of them “frighten the
mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,” as Taliesin says.(871)
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo‐
Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and
Canaan. “I am Hivim,” they say. “Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of
the Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim.”(872)
Furthermore, the “War in Heaven” is shown, in one of its significations,
to have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate
for Adeptship—struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified
human passions, when the enlightened _Inner Man_ had to either slay them
or fail. In the former case he became the “Dragon‐Slayer,” as having
happily overcome all the temptations, and a “Son of the Serpent” and a
Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a _new_
body, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.
Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of
Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan.
He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for
Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the _dark side_ of Osiris, his
brother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda.
Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of
Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and
Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in
India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and
traditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.
Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya—a Giant, a Demi‐god, the lower part of
whose body ended in a Dragon’s or Serpent’s tail. During the Churning of
the Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he
stole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who
had detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in
the stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the
Dragon’s head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon’s tail; the two being the
ascending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on
the Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has
another mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon’s head, played a prominent
part in the Mysteries of the Sun’s (Vikartana’s) Initiation, when the
Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.
The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were
modelled on those of the Nâgas—the Hindû King‐Snakes, who dwelt in
cavities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand‐headed
Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon‐serpent oracle,
all point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact
mentioned in the earliest _Purânas_. The children of Surasâ are the mighty
“Dragons.” The _Vâyu Purâna_ replacing the “Dragons” of Surasâ of the
_Vishnu Purâna_ by the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage
Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred
against the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the “Dragons” and
“Serpents” of Wisdom.
We have only to compare the Sun‐gods of every country, to find their
allegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the
allegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in exoteric
systems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from
each other in appearance—the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern
Christian schemes—several Sun‐gods and Dragons are selected at random,
they will be found to be copied from each other.
Let us take Agni the Fire‐god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from
the Hindûs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the “Angel of the Sun,” the
first of the Æons, called by the Gnostics the “Saviour”—and proceed in
order.
(1) Agni, the Fire‐god, is called Vaishvânara in the _Rig Veda_. Now
Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant‐demon,(873) whose daughters Pulomâ and
Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by
Kashyapa,(874) and live in Hiranyapura, “_the golden city, floating in the
air_.”(875) Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step‐son of these two
as a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni,
the Fire‐god, or Sun (Kashyapa‐Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda
or Kârttikeya, God of War, the _six‐faced_ planet Mars astronomically, a
Kumâra, or Virgin‐youth, born of Agni,(876) for the purpose of destroying
Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son
Hiranyâksha.(877) Târaka’s Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that
they became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.(878)
While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the
Serpent‐Demon—for which feat he is called Vritra‐han, the “Destroyer of
Vritra”—he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other
Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu, “Leader of
the Celestial Host.” Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For
killing Târaka, the Dânava, he is called Târaka‐jit, “Vanquisher of
Târaka,”(879) Kumâra Guha, the “mysterious Virgin‐youth,” Siddha‐sena,
“Leader of the Siddhas,” and Shakti‐dhara, “Spear‐holder.”
(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun‐god, and by comparing the mythical
accounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra,
Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa‐Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as
the Angelic form of Jehovah) the “Angel of the Sun,” who is “like,” and
“one with, God.” Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic
purposes, elevated though they be into not‐to‐be‐questioned Church dogmas,
prove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.
Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos‐Apollo, the “Light of Life and of the
World,”(880) who arises out of the Golden‐winged Cup (the Sun); hence he
is the Sun‐god _par excellence_. At the moment of his birth he asks for
his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before
his birth,(881) and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like
Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, the _too holy
and wise_ Demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the
“golden star island,” the “earth which floats in the air,” which is the
Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the
Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt
“from all sensual love.”(882) He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya,
and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover,
the “red Dragon,” connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic
Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child‐birth, as Python attacks
Apollo’s mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W.
E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and
understanding of the spirit of Homer’s allegories, ever had a real inkling
of the _esoteric_ meaning of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, he would have
understood St. John’s _Revelation_, and even the _Pentateuch_, better than
he does. For the way to the _Bible_ lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer,
as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.
(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of
St. John’s _Revelation_, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without
the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its
origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late
George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the
Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:
Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam,
as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards
he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the
spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who _curses him_,
and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of
humanity.(883)
This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of
evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.
The gods have weapons forged for them,(884) and Merodach [the
Archangel Michael in _Revelation_] undertakes to lead the heavenly
host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit,
ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.(885)
This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last
and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of
the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the
Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.
The symbols of the “Dragon” and “War in Heaven” have, as already stated,
more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events
being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a
cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its
forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the _Vedas_ this Ahi‐Vritra
is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is
shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder
and lightning the God compels Ahi‐Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth,
and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra‐han or the “Slayer
of Vritra,” as Michael is called the Conqueror and “Slayer of the Dragon.”
Both these “Enemies” are then the “Old Dragon” precipitated into the
depths of the Earth, in this one sense.
The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over
them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the
account in the _Vendîdâd_. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by
Ahura Mazda to “invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven
Karshvares(886) of the Earth”;(887) which Karshvares in their seven
applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to
the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense
is applied to a physical, supra‐mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In
the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host,
Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: “I invoke the seven bright
Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”(888) The “Sravah”—a word which
the Orientalists have given up as one “of unknown meaning”—means the same
Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the
Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those
_manifested_ Powers; and “their sons and their flocks” refer to the
Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.
“Amshaspand” is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and
affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the “maker
of the _material_ world.” Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta
Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as “the fair daughter of
Ahura Mazda,”(889) who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and
Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious
Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never
pronounced outside the temple.
Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of _Genesis_, and one of the primeval
Angels who rebelled, is the name of the “Red Dragon.” He is the Angel of
Death, for the _Talmud_ says that “the Angel of Death and Satan are the
same.” He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who
also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is
identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the
Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra. “Simoon is called Atabutos”
or—Diabolos, the Devil.
Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in the _Book of the Dead_—is
worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent’s head with a spear; and Typhon
is the all‐destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that
throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the
murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology
demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,(890) whose effigy was
discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like
Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon,
that has the head and tail of a serpent.(891)
Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their
“Slayers” are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in
Chaos, brought to order by the Sun‐gods or _Creative_ Powers. In the _Book
of the Dead_ those principles are called the “Sons of Rebellion.”(892)
In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise
called the _deceiving Serpent_ ... calls the Sons of Rebellion in
_Air_, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there
is War in Heaven and in the entire World.(893)
In the Scandinavian _Eddas_ the “War” of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or
Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and
the “Wolf” who comes out of “Darkness”—is the repetition of the same myth.
The “Evil Spirits,”(894) who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos,
have become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have
finally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most
civilized and learned races of this globe _since its creation_, and have
become a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:
The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldæa and
Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war
on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the
Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.(895)
This is only another version of the Hindû “War in Heaven,” between Soma,
the Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul—which shows it
plainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into
and drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.
It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the
real meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols
of Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings,
divulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the
true meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a
few exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have
hardly advised his apostles to show themselves as _wise_ as the serpent,
had the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the
learned Egyptian Gnostics of the “Brotherhood of the Serpent,” have
reverenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of _Wisdom_,
the divine Sophia, and a type of the All‐good, not the All‐bad, were that
reptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a
common ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has
never been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its
great Wisdom. The _draco volans_, the “flying dragon” of the early
painters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian
animal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in
the days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of
Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as
prototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.(896) The
Jews formerly worshipped the latter _idol_ themselves, but, after the
religious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called
that symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and
their own usurper—the “One God.”(897)
The appellation Sa’tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an “Adversary” (from the verb
_shatana_, “to be adverse,” “to persecute”) belongs by right to the first
and cruellest “Adversary” _of all the other Gods_—Jehovah; not to the
Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the
worst, even in the dogma, the “Adversary” _of men_. This dogma, based as
it is on the third chapter of _Genesis_, is as illogical and unjust as it
is paradoxical. For who was the first to _create_ that original and
henceforward universal tempter of man—the woman? Not the Serpent surely,
but the “Lord God” himself, who, saying, “It is not good that the man
should be alone,” made woman, and “brought her unto the man.”(898) If the
unpleasant little incident that followed _was_ and is still to be regarded
as the “original sin,” then it exhibits the Creator’s divine foresight in
a poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of
the first chapter to have been left either “male and female,” or “alone.”
It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief,
the “_agent provocateur_,” and the Serpent—only a prototype of Azazel,
“the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel,” the poor Tragos having
to pay the penalty for his Master’s and Creator’s blunder. This, of
course, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the
drama of humanity in _Genesis_ in their dead‐letter sense. Those who read
them Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and
hypotheses; they _know_ how to read the symbolism therein contained, and
cannot err.
There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning
of the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity
falsely called by that name. It was a “blind” purposely created by the
Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten‐fold care after the
Christians had despoiled them of this God‐name which was their own
property.(899) The following statement, however, is now made. The
personage who is named in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ variously
as “God,” the “Lord God,” and “Lord” simply, is not one and the same
person; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or
groups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the _Kabalah_. Jehovah appears
only in chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the first verse of which he is named
Cain, and in the last transformed into _mankind_—male and female, Jah‐
veh.(900) The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one
of the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who—promising the woman, if
they ate of the forbidden fruit, “ye shall not surely die”—kept his
promise, and made man immortal in his _incorruptible nature_. He is the
Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter
iii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that
closed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the
“boneless” Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature;
thus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of
Immortality, and as the “Enlightener”; while the real Fall into generation
and matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah‐Cain, the male
part of Adam the _dual_ man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in
her Abel, _the first natural woman_,(901) and sheds the _virgin blood_.
Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the
correct reading of the first verse of chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the
original Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that “Kin (Cain) the Evil
was the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of
Adam,”(902) and the _Talmud_ adding that “the evil Spirit, Satan, and
Samael, the angel of Death, are the same”(903)—it becomes easy to see that
Jehovah (mankind, or Jah‐hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent)
are one and the same in every particular. _There is no Devil, no Evil
outside mankind to produce a Devil._ Evil is a necessity in, and one of
the supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress
and evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death
for that of life—_that man may live for ever_.
Satan represents metaphysically simply the _reverse_ or the _polar
opposite_ of everything in Nature.(904) He is the “Adversary,”
allegorically, the “Murderer,” and the great Enemy of _all_, because there
is nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides—the reverses of
the same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be
called Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the
Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and
the _rationale_ of certain early Christian sects—called _heretical_ and
viewed as the abomination of the times—will become more comprehensible. We
may understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded,
and were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day,
since they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the
Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true
character of the _treacherous_ apostle having never been correctly
presented before the tribunal of humanity.
As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become
clear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets
were based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus
it becomes comprehensible why Ilda‐baoth was regarded by most of them as
the God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure
Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God,
though he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother
Elohim; the latter representing the all‐embracing, manifested Deity only
in their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first
differentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the
phenomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the
Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.(905)
They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao‐Jehovah, who is an
emanation of Ilda‐baoth.(906) This, in their language, amounted to saying
what the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that “Cain had
been generated by Samael or Satan.”
The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes of
_fallen_ men—allegorically, and _those men themselves_—Esoterically. Thus
the Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni‐Elohim, the Sons of
God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between
Thrætaona and Azhi‐dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth,
according to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of
Evil, “of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India.” And the conflict
of the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War—the Mahâbhârata.
In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and
Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons
and Satans, simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent
of _Genesis_, and thus prove the new dogma.
Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.
It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again
the Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to
prevent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend,
and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon
one man. Noah is either a _myth_ along with the others, or one whose
legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in
Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or
Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and
research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri
or pious Titans, etc.—then biblical chronology falls by its own weight,
and along with it all the Patriarchs—the Antediluvian and Pre‐Atlantean
Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God of
_power and generation_, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.(907) Tubal‐
Cain is a Kabir, “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”;
or—if this will please better—he is one with Hephæstus or Vulcan. Jabal
again is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture, “such as have
cattle,” and Jubal is “the father of all those who handle the harp,” he,
or _they_ who fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for
Poseidon.(908)
The history or “fables” about the mysterious Telchines—fables echoing each
and all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings—furnish us with a key
to the origin of Cain’s genealogy in the third chapter of _Genesis_; they
give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies “the accursed
blood” of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the
Deluge. Were not the Telchines—it is argued—the mysterious ironworkers of
Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them
with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were
destroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that
of Jehovah?
The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They
are the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme:
Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth‐place of the
Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.(909)
The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been
previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace
of the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood
legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left
for the present.
But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of
nearly every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs
contain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who
are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to
disconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,(910) and the further
equally futile attempt to show them as _real_, _historical_ men, has only
led to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to
discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed _revelation_. For
instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the
further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus‐Saturn is
also proved.
That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the
Christian writers. Bryant(911) concurs with all those who are of opinion
that Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and
that the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character
given him in _Genesis_.(912)
He was צדיק, Sadic, a _just man_, and perfect in his generation.
All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and
through his sons transmitted to posterity.(913)
Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the
Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi‐zedek). True enough, as this information
has descended to us through the _Preparatio Evangelica_ of Eusebius, it
may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than
likely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon’s works as he has with Manetho’s
Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic,
Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the
Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah’s
characteristic as a _just man_, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious
Melchizedek, “king of Salem, and priest of the most high God,” after “his
own order”;(914) and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually,
astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they
became rabbinically and kabalistically.
In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., as _personifications_, we find the
author of the _Source of Measures_ enunciating our very Esoteric Teachings
in his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:
Now, Mars was the Lord of _birth_, and of _death_, of _generation_
and of _destruction_, of _ploughing_, of _building_, of
_sculpture_ or stone‐cutting, of _architecture_, ... in fine, of
all comprised under our English word ARTS. He was the _primal
principle_, disintegrating into the modification of _two opposites
for production_. Astronomically, too,(915) he held the birthplace
of the day and year, _the place of its increase of strength_,
Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the
house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as _birth_, was
_Good_; as _death_, was _Evil_. As _good_, he was _light_; as
_bad_, he was _night_. As _good_, he was _man_; as _bad_, he was
_woman_. He held the cardinal points, and as _Cain_, or
_Vulcan_,(916) or _Pater Sadic_, or _Melchizadek_, he was lord of
the _ecliptic_, or _balance_, or _line of adjustment_, and
therefore was _The Just One_. The ancients held to there being
seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater
Sadic, _The Just or Right One_, was Lord of the eighth, which was
_Mater Terra_.(917)
This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough,
and establishes the identity.
The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead‐letter and within the period
of biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the
pious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to
follow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather
fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that:
There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of
Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of
Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri
of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the
scriptural Shem.(918)
The Kabirim, the “Mighty Ones,” are identical with our primeval Dhyân
Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the
Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the
Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties.
The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged
Continents.
Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to
unrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the
one hand, and Persia on the other—a country ever at war with the
former—there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of
such coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by
Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every
available source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with
the so‐called Grecian “fables.”
Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia,
as many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The
stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy
tales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the
history of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel
of the history and the pre‐historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says
as follows:
Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding
the other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who
reigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs
were giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but
wiser and kinder.
Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of
the _Râmâyana_ and the children of Bharata‐varsha, or India; the Ante‐ and
the Post‐diluvians of the _Bible_.
Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge), also called
Gian‐ben‐Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.(919)
He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving
against an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic,
the _sorcery_ of the Devs. Gian‐ben‐Gian had reigned 2,000 years when
Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter
them to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being
produced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments,
and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate,
or Karma.(920) They count ten kings in their last metropolis called
Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam.
These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given
by Berosus.
Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to
identify them with the Chaldæan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew
traditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to
speak of Pre‐Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly
inferred, by sending out Cain—_one of the only two living men on
earth_—into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.(921)
Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the
9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the
last Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on
this, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may
restore the figures to their true meaning. We read in the _Critias_:
First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed
_since the war of the nations_, which lived above and outside the
Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this
side.
In the _Timæus_ Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that
most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between
850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old
when the first great “Island,” or Continent, was submerged, there seems
hardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in
truth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the
Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldæa and Persia through whose
exoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to
posterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week “seven days,” and
speaking of a “week of years” when each of its days represents 360 solar
years, and the whole “week” is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical
week, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24
hours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the
present times call an age a “century.” They of Plato’s day, the initiated
writers, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years;
while the Hindûs, more independent than any, have never concealed their
chronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years,
during which space of time—_i.e._, from the first appearance of the Âryan
Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began
gradually sinking(922) and other continents to appear on the surface, down
to the final disappearance of Plato’s small island of Atlantis—the Âryan
races had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant
races. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the
Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian
history. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of
hundreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the
numbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the
Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of
Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had
never been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the
Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their
isolation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left
untrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our
era.
History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first
time through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the _Bible_, and
its queer chronology.(923) And how little Herodotus _could_ tell is
confessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at
Saïs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:
Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One, _whose name I consider
it impious to divulge_.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks
and there is a _lake_ near, surrounded with a stone wall formed
_in a circle_.... In this lake they perform by night, that
person’s adventures, which the Egyptians call _Mysteries_: on
these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the
particulars of them, _I must observe a discreet silence_.(924)
On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved
and so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations.
From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to
divulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for
divulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the
infernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were
threatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them.
Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple—especially in
those of Isis and Serapis—each pressing a finger to the lips. And the
Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after
initiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.
And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews!
What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our
conceptions of Science and the duration of things!
The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now
entirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only
transformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf
(Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein
statues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call
them Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy‐
two kings of that name.(925) Three among them reigned for 1,000 years
each.(926)
Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was
murdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved
in the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence—the origin of fire‐
worship, as some Orientalists think!
Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re‐
discovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by
the Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also how to make brass‐
work, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk,
again, who is credited with having written the work called _Eternal
Wisdom_, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and
Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is
built on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on
emplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it
can only be inferred from another legend.
In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war
against the Giants on a twelve‐legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to
the _amours_ of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This “Dodecapod”
was found on the “dry island” or new continent; much force and cunning had
to be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk
mounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his
tremendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an
enormous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of
Damavend.(927)
Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight
who always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great
enemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and
occasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the
Persian folklore call him the Dev‐bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He,
too, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like
his grand‐sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far
more rare and rapid—a bird called Simorgh‐Anke. A marvellous bird, in
truth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.(928) What says
that Persian Phœnix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles
and cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the
revolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of
twelve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give
us again 840,000 years.(929) Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the
Pre‐Adamites, says the “Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif”!(930)
What says the _Book of Numbers_? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar
Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons—Ka‐yin,
Habel, and Seth—represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah‐
Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo‐geological key), the Third
Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover,
symbolizing that race which uncovered the “nakedness” of the Parent Race,
and of the “Mindless,” _i.e._, committed sin.
Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf or Kaph. He
finds there the Peris ill‐treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the
giant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,(931) whom
Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the “dry island,”
_i.e._, the new continent of Europe.(932) After him came Giamschid, who
builds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his
great pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate
punishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of
Dhulkarnayn, the “two‐horned.” But this epithet has no connection with the
“two‐horned” gentleman of the cloven foot. The “two‐horned” is the epithet
given in Asia—which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the
attributes of the Devil—to those conquerors who have subdued the world
from the East to the West.
Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who
vanquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend.
These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new
Dynasty.
Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To
begin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?
Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the
Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far
beyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors
of the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an
unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which,
nevertheless, are situated the “Fortunate Islands,” wherein, from the
beginning of life on earth, bubbles the “Fountain of Life.”(933) The
legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first “dry island”
(continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained,
since then, beyond the Mountains of Koh‐Kaf, “the stony girdle that
surrounds the world.” A journey of seven months’ duration will bring him
who is possessed of “Soliman’s Ring” to that “Fountain,” if he keep on
journeying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying,
therefore, from Persia _straight_ North, will bring one along the sixtieth
degree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the
Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one
between the sixtieth and forty‐fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova
Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse
of Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to
cross over the Arctic Ocean.(934)
Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will
maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow‐capped summits of Kap, or
Caucasus, _there is a great continent now concealed from all_; that it is
reached by those who can secure the services of the twelve‐legged progeny
of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will
twelve _wings_,(935) or by those who have the patience to wait for the
good pleasure of Simorgh‐Anke, who promised that before she dies she will
reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and
within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build
between that portion of the “dry island” and its severed parts.(936) This
relates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric
Cycle.
It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth
century A.D., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt
at first, in a country “beyond the Ocean,” a proof of which had been given
him in India, by a learned Chaldæan. He says:
The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that
Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky;
and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise.
During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his
posterity now inhabits.(937)
The twelve‐legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the
“dry island.”
The “Christian Topography” of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are
well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which
has now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller
suspects a continent or a “dry island” beyond the line of eternal ice.
Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the
Commentaries may become clearer.
_In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the
right end_(_938_)_ of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is
motionless._(_939_)_ The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the
waters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the
immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara._(_940_)_ There was eternal
spring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to‐day, was
light to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat_(_941_)_
reigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the
head of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated
[begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ...
Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was
divided by the Water of Life._(_942_)
_It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth’s] body. Its one end
issues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It
gets purified [on its return] to her heart—which beats under the foot of
the sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For
it is in the belt of man’s dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the
life and health of all that lives and breathes._(_943_)_ During the First
and Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the
great __ Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the
first one which our wise men call the head‐gear [the cap]. She travailed
harder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the
water. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the
World._(_944_)_ She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck_(_945_)_
downward [to the South‐West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal
Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent
waters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn].
Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was
now hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her
nostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon’s mouth, etc._
This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even
say that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of
human life its Root‐Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part
of the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age,
and divided by the glacial waters.
If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which
came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken
crust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed
like an unreachable _mirage_ to the few arctic travellers who perceived
it.
During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a
continuation of the “head” from the “neck.” Beginning on both hemispheres,
on the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,(946) on
Mercator’s Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American
side, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin’s Bay and the
neighbouring islands and promontories. _There_ it hardly reached,
southward, the seventieth degree of latitude; _here_ it formed the
horseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of
which, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the
fiftieth degree a little South‐West, and the other Kamschatka, the two
ends being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of
Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the
early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in
its turn, Atlantis appeared.
Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic Traditions.
Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have
reached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish Scientist, about two
centuries ago, tried to prove that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He
even thought that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the
situation and measurements of the capital of “Atlantis” as given by the
Greek sage. As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly
likewise, and still more so, for Sweden and Norway had formed part and
parcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just
as Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the
Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately
only by studying the _Purânas_, that is to say if we will have nought to
do with the Secret Teachings.
Three‐quarters of a century have already elapsed since Wilford brought
forward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the “White
Island,” the Atala of the _Purânas_. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala
is one of the seven Dvîpas, or Islands, belonging to the nether Lokas, one
of the seven regions of Pâtâla (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford(947)
shows, the _Purânas_ place it “on the seventh zone or seventh
climate”—rather, on the seventh measure of heat—which thus locates it
between the latitudes of 24° and 28° North. It is then to be sought on the
same degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the
latitudes of 50° and 60°. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the
White Island. Its enemy is called the “White Devil,” the Demon of Terror,
for he says:
In their [the Hindû and Persian] romances, we see Cai‐caus going
to the mountain of _Az‐burj_, or _As‐burj_, _at the foot of which_
the sun sets, to fight the _Div‐sefid_, or white devil, the _Târa‐
daitya_ of the _Purânas_, and whose abode was on the _seventh
stage_ of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the
Bauddhists; ... or, in other words, to the White Island.(948)
Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx’s
riddle, the erroneous solution of which will ever destroy their
authority—if not their persons—in the eyes of every Hindû scholar, whether
or not an Initiate. For there is not a statement in the _Purânas_—on the
conflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations—which has not
several meanings, and which does not apply to both the physical and the
metaphysical worlds. If the old Hindûs divided the face of the Globe into
seven Zones, Climates, Dvîpas, geographically, and into seven Hells and
seven Heavens, allegorically, the measure of seven did not apply in both
cases to the same localities. Now it is the North Pole, the country of
“Meru,” which is the seventh division, as it answers to the seventh
Principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the Occult calculation. It
represents the region of Âtmâ, of pure Soul, and Spirituality. Hence
Pushkara is shown as the seventh Zone, or Dvîpa, which encompasses the
Kshîra Ocean, or Ocean of Milk (the ever‐frozen white region) in the
_Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_.(949) And Pushkara, with its two Varshas,
lies directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that:
The two countries north and south of Meru are _shaped like a bow_,
... [and that] one half of the surface of the earth is on the
south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru—_beyond
which is half of Pushkara_.
Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and
allegorically it is the prolongation of Jambu‐dvîpa,(950) in the middle of
which stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten
thousand years, who are free from sickness or failing; where there is
neither virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are “of the same
nature as the Gods.”(951) Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas,
and locates there also the Lokâloka. Now Meru, we are told, which is the
Svar‐loka, the abode of Brahmâ, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian
exoteric religions, is described geographically as “passing through the
middle of the earth‐globe, and protruding on either side.”(952) On its
upper station are the Gods, at the nether, or South Pole, is the abode of
Demons (Hells). How then can Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides which,
Târadaitya, a Demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter be
identified with the White Island, which is Shveta‐dvîpa, for reasons given
in the foot‐note above.
Wilford accuses the modern Brâhmans “of having jumbled them [islands and
countries] all together”; but it is _he_ who has jumbled them still more.
He believes that as the _Brahmânda_ and _Vâyu Purânas_ divide the old
Continent into seven Dvîpas, said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond
which lie the regions and mountains of Atala, hence:
Most probably the Greeks derived their notion of the celebrated
Atlantis, which, as it could not be found after having once been
discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of
nature.(953)
As we find certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests,
Plato, and even Homer, all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala—a
nether region located at the Southern Pole—we prefer holding to the
statements given in the Secret Books. We believe in the seven Continents,
four of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and
two are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not
strictly a continent in the modern sense of the word, but that each name,
from Jambu down to Pushkara,(954) refers to the geographical names given
(i) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole Earth during the
period of a Root‐Race, in general; (ii) to what remained of these after a
geological Race Pralaya, as Jambu, for instance; and (iii) to those
localities which will enter, after future cataclysms, into the formation
of new universal Continents, Peninsulas, or Dvîpas(955)—each Continent
being, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land surrounded
with water. Thus, that whatever “jumble” the nomenclature of these may
represent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has the key.
Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Paurânic Islands—the
Sixth and Seventh Continents—are yet to come, nevertheless there _were_,
or there _are_, lands which will enter into the composition of the future
dry lands, of new Earths whose geographical faces will be entirely
changed, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the _Purânas_
that Shâka‐dvîpa is (or will be) a Continent, and that Shankha‐dvîpa, as
shown in the _Vâyu Purâna_, is only “a minor island,” one of the nine
divisions (to which _Vâyu_ adds six more) of Bhârata‐varsha. Because
Shankha‐dvîpa was peopled by “Mlechchhas [unclean foreigners], who
worshipped Hindû divinities,” therefore they were connected with
India.(956) This accounts for Shankhâsura, a King of a portion of Shankha‐
dvîpa, who was killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace
“which was an ocean shell, and whose subjects lived in shells also,” says
Wilford.
On the banks of the Nîlâ(957) there were frequent contests between
the Devatâs [Divine Beings, Demi‐gods] and the Daityas [Giants]:
but the latter tribe having prevailed, their king and leader,
Shankhâsura, who resided in the ocean, made frequent incursions
... in the night.(958)
It is not on the banks of the Nile, as Wilford supposes, but on the coasts
of Western Africa, South of where now lies Morocco, that these battles
took place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara Desert was a
sea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after
another temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other
wilderness, the Desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Paurânic
tradition, for on the same page as above cited, it is said:
The people were between two fires; for, while Shankhâsura was
ravaging one side of the continent, Cracacha [or Krauncha], king
of Crauncha‐dwîp [Krauncha‐dvîpa], used to desolate the other:
both armies ... thus _changed the most fertile of regions into a
barren desert_.
That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large
Continent, first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas
and islands (called Dvîpas), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the
whole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as well as portions of the
North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean (relics
of Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian _Purânas_, Greek writers,
and Asiatic, Persian, and Mahommedan traditions. Wilford, who sorely
confuses the Hindû and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however,
clearly.(959) His facts and quotations from the _Purânas_ give direct and
conclusive evidence that the Âryan Hindûs and other ancient nations were
earlier navigators than the Phœnicians, who are now credited with having
been the first seamen that appeared in the post‐diluvian times. This is
what we read in the _Asiatick Researches_:
In this distress the few natives, who survived [in the war between
Devatâs and Daityas] raised their hands and hearts to Bhagavân,
and exclaimed, “Let him that can deliver us ... be our king”;
using the word ÎT [a _magic_ term not understood by Wilford,
evidently] which reëchoed through the whole country.(960)
Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kâlî are strangely agitated,
“when there appeared from the waves ... a man, afterwards called ÎT, at
the head of a numerous army, saying ‘_abhayan_,’ or _there is no fear_”;
and scattered the enemy. “The King ÎT,” explains Wilford, “is a
subordinate incarnation of Mrīra”—Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably?—who
“reëstablished peace and prosperity throughout all Shankha‐dvîpa, through
Barbaradêsa, Misra‐st’hân and Arva‐st’hân, or Arabia,”(961) etc.
Surely, if the Hindû _Purânas_ give a description of wars on continents
and islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their
writers speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs—they who were
never known to navigate, or cross the Kâla‐pâni, the Black Waters of the
Ocean, in the days of Phœnician navigation—then these _Purânas_ must be
older than those Phœnicians who are placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years
B.C. At any rate, their traditions must have been older,(962) for an Adept
writes:
_In the above accounts, the Hindûs speak of this island as existing and in
great power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years
ago._
But another proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindû
Âryans who described the last surviving island of Atlantis, or rather of
that remnant of the Eastern portion of that Continent which had perished
soon after the upheaval of the two Americas(963)—the two Varshas of
Pushkara. And they described what they knew, for they had once dwelt on
it. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by
an Adept who criticizes Wilford. Recalling what that Orientalist had
brought forward concerning the Mount Ashburj “at the foot of which the sun
sets,” where was the war between the Devatâs and the Daityas,(964) he
says:
_We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island,
and of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the
world_, _i.e._, _in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of
24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north).... This island, the daughter of
the Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the Sun is
represented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas,
Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the White Devil of
the __“__White Island.__”_
Now, if we consider this statement from its astronomical aspect, as
Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God, and as he is said to
have killed Div‐sefid, the White Devil—a _possible_ personification of the
ancient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas—he may perchance be only a
representation of the vertical beams of the Sun. Again, these inhabitants,
the Atlantides, as we have seen, are accused by Diodorus of daily
_cursing_ the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is, however, only
an astronomical interpretation. It will now be proved that Shankhâsura,
and Shankha‐dvîpa, and all their history, is also geographically and
ethnologically Plato’s Atlantis in Hindû dress.
It has just been remarked that since, in the Paurânic accounts, the island
is _still existing_, these accounts must be older than the 11,000 years
which have elapsed since Shankha‐dvîpa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis,
disappeared. But is it not barely possible that Hindûs should have known
the island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical
demonstrations, which make this quite plain if with the said Adept one
assumes that:
_At the time when the summer tropical __“__colure__”__ passed through the
Pleiades, when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator, and when Leo_ was
vertical _to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island
of Atlantis at noon_.
This explains, perhaps, why the Sinhalese, the heirs of the Râkshasas and
Giants of Lankâ, and the direct descendants of Sinha, or Leo, became
connected with Shankha‐dvîpa or Poseidonis (Plato’s Atlantis). Only, as
shown by Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_, this must have occurred about 23,000 years
ago, _astronomically_; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must
have been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have
passed over Atlantis or Shankha‐dvîpa. And that it was so is clearly
demonstrated. Say the Commentaries:
_The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhârata to Shankha to meet
Rishabha [Taurus] every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island [who
descended originally from Shveta‐dvîpa],_(_965_)_ who had mixed with the
Daityas [Giants] of the land of iniquity, had become black with sin, then
Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta‐dvîpa].... Those of
the Fourth World [Race] lost AUM._
Asburj, or Azburj, whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano,
when the sinking of the “Western Atala,” or Hell, began, and those who
were saved told the tale to their children. Plato’s Atlantis perished
between water below and fire above; the great mountain vomiting flames all
the while.
_The __“__fire‐vomiting Monster__”__ survived alone out of the ruins of
the unfortunate island._
Do the Greeks, who are accused of borrowing a Hindû fiction (Atala), and
inventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their
geographical notions and the number seven from them?
“The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt
that it did once,” says Proclus, “for Marcellus, who wrote a
history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great, an
island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who composed
histories relative to the external sea. For _they relate that in
this time there were seven islands_ in the Atlantic sea sacred to
Proserpine; and besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred
to Pluto, ... Jupiter, ... and Neptune. And, besides this, the
inhabitants of the last island [Poseidonis] _preserved the memory
of the prodigious magnitude_ of the Atlantic island as related by
their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the
islands in the Atlantic sea. From this _isle_ one may pass to
other large islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land,
near which is the true sea.”
These seven Dvîpas [inaccurately rendered islands] constitute,
according to Marcellus, the body of the famous Atlantis.... This
evidently shows that _Atlantis is the old continent_.... The
Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm [?]: this is well
known to the Paurâunics, some of whom assert that in consequence
of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the Dvîpas
disappeared.(966)
Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic.
Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact Science will also be added. And
yet even though volumes were written, it would be to no purpose for those
who will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their
respective authorities.
Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon,
the mount in the land of Mizpeth—meaning “anathema,” “destruction”—is the
same as Mount Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as
affirming that still in his own day enormous bones of giants were daily
discovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the
“Lord loved well.” And so mixed up are facts and personages in the said
scholiasts’ brains, that, when the _Zohar_ explains the “Birds” which
inspired Balaam to mean “Serpents,” to wit, the Wise Men and Adepts at
whose School he had learnt the mysteries of prophecy—the opportunity is
again taken of showing Mount Hermon inhabited by the “winged dragons of
Evil, whose chief is Samael”—the Jewish Satan! As Spencer says:
It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the
Desert, that the scape‐goat of Israel, who assumed the name of one
of them [Azaz(y)el], was sent.
We say it is not so. The _Zohar_ has the following explanation on the
practice of magic which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim, or the “Serpents’
Works.” It says (part iii. col. 302):
It is called Nehhaschim, because the magicians [practical
Kabalists] work _surrounded by the light of the Primordial
Serpent_, which they perceive in heaven as a luminous zone
composed of myriads of small stars.
This means simply the Astral Eight, so called by the Martinists, by
Éliphas Lévi, and now by all the modern Occultists.
The “Curse” From A Philosophical Point Of View.
The foregoing teachings of the Secret Doctrine, supplemented by universal
traditions, must now have demonstrated that the _Brâhmanas_ and _Purânas_,
the _Vendîdâd_ and other Mazdean scriptures, down to the Egyptian, Greek,
and Roman, and finally to the Jewish sacred records, all have the same
origin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the
unwary profane; all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or
less fantastic veil, the great truths gathered in the same field of pre‐
historic tradition. Space forbids us, in these volumes, from entering into
further and more minute details with respect to the four Races which
preceded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the
psychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our
Fifth (Âryan) Humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the
other side branches grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few
more facts. It has been shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient
literary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than one
Philosopher and Scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our
Esoteric Doctrine are, in almost every case, corroborated by inferential
as well as by direct proof, that neither the “legendary” Giants, nor the
lost Continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding Races, are quite
baseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, Science will find
itself more than once unable to reply; these Addenda, will, it is hoped,
finally dispose of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number
in nature, and our figures in general.
Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete—the disposing of that most
pernicious of all the theological dogmas, the Curse under which man‐kind
is alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam
and Eve in the bower of Eden.
Creative powers in man were the gift of Divine Wisdom, not the result of
sin. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah,
who first _curses_ Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed crime
committed, and then _blesses_ his “chosen people” by saying, “Be fruitful,
and multiply, and replenish the earth.”(967) The Curse was not brought on
mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the
still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the
Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and
geological law. Nor was the Curse of Karma called down upon them for
seeking _natural_ union, as all the mindless animal‐world does in its
proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the
divine gift, and wasting the life‐essence for no purpose except bestial
personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of _Genesis_
will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the
commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for
woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that
woman should bring forth her young ones “in sorrow.” Since that period,
however, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity
between its seed and the “Serpent’s” seed, the seed or product of Karma
and Divine Wisdom. For the seed of woman, or lust, _bruised the head_ of
the seed of _the fruit of wisdom and knowledge_, by turning the holy
mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the Law of Karma
“bruised the _heel_” of the Atlantean Race, by gradually changing
physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of
the Fourth Race of mankind,(968) until, from being the healthy king of
animal creation in the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our Race, a
helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the
Globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and
intelligently bestial of all animals!(969)
This is the real Curse from the physiological standpoint, almost the only
one touched upon in Kabalistic Esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the
Curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its
progress hand‐in‐hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse
instead of a blessing—a gift quickened by the “Lords of Wisdom,” who have
poured on the human Manas the fresh dew of their own Spirit and Essence.
The Divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to
regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically
depicted by Æschylus in his “Prometheus Bound,” when, at the close of the
first Titanic Age (the Age that followed that of Ethereal Man, of the
pious Kandu and Pramlochâ), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and
(physiologically) senseless, is described as—
Seeing, they saw in vain;
Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams,
Through the long time all things at random mixed.
Our Saviours, the Agnishvâtta and other divine “Sons of the Flame of
Wisdom”—personified by the Greeks in Prometheus(970)—may well be left
unrecognized and unthanked, in the injustice of the human heart. They may,
in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora’s gift;
but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy,
as the Evil Ones, is too heavy a Karma for “Him” who, when Zeus “ardently
desired” to quench the entire human race, “dared alone” to save that
“mortal race” from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is make to say:
From sinking blasted down to Hades’ gloom.
For this by these dire tortures I am bent,
Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold,
I who did mortals pity....
The chorus remarking very pertinently:
Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals!
Prometheus answers:
Yea, and besides ’twas I that gave them fire.
CHORUS: Have now these short‐lived creatures flame‐eyed fire?
PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn....
But, with the arts, the “fire” received has turned into the greatest
curse; the animal element, and _consciousness_ of its possession, has
changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.(971) It
is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises
the responsibility of free‐will; the Titanic passions which represent
humanity in its darkest aspect;
The restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires,
when, with self‐asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the
restraints of law.(972)
Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato’s _Protagoras_, with
that “wisdom which ministers to physical well‐being,” but the lower aspect
of Manas of the animal (Kâma) having remained unchanged, instead of “an
untainted mind, heaven’s first gift,” there was created the eternal
vulture of ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair, coupled with
“the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals” (556),
unto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven‐appointed
deliverer, Herakles.
Now Christians—Roman Catholics especially—have tried to prophetically
connect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be
made. The true Theosophist, the pursuer of Divine Wisdom and worshipper of
Absolute Perfection—the Unknown Deity which is neither Zeus nor
Jehovah—will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he will prove
that there never has been an _original_ sin, but only an abuse of physical
intelligence—the Psychic being guided by the Animal, and both putting out
the light of the Spiritual. He will say: All you who can read between the
lines, study Ancient Wisdom in the old dramas, the Indian and the Greek;
read carefully the “Prometheus Bound,” enacted in the theatres of Athens
2,400 years ago! The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor Æschylus; but, as
Bunsen says, it “is older than the Hellenes themselves,” for it belongs,
in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The _crucified_ Titan is the
personified symbol of the collective Logos, the “Host,” and of the “Lords
of Wisdom” or the Heavenly Man, who incarnated in Humanity. Moreover, as
his name (_Pro_‐me‐_theus_, “he who sees before him” or futurity)
shows(973)—in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological
insight was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters of
Oceanus:
Of prophecies the various modes I fixed, (492)
And among dreams did first discriminate
The truthful vision ... and mortals guided
To a mysterious art....
All arts to mortals from Prometheus came....
Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be
the hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive
of traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early Races, this
will be no real digression.
The subject of Æschylus’ trilogy, of which two plays are lost, is known to
all cultured readers. The Demi‐god robs the Gods (the Elohim) of their
secret—the mystery of the _Creative Fire_. For this sacrilegious attempt
he is struck down by Cronus(974) and delivered unto Zeus, the Father and
Creator of a mankind which he would have wished to have blind
intellectually, and animal‐like; a _Personal_ Deity, which will not see
Man “like one of us.” Hence Prometheus, the “Fire and Light‐giver,” is
chained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform
Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus—
E’en he the fore‐ordained cannot escape....
—ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of
Zeus—
Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire (787)
One of thine [Io’s] own descendants it must be (791)
—is born. This “Son” will deliver Prometheus (suffering Humanity) from his
own fatal gift. His name is, “He who has to come.”
On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other
allegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning—on the
authority of the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the
daughter of Inachus, persecuted by Zeus—a whole prophecy is constructed by
some Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan:
And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase,
Wast hailed _as the illustrious spouse of Zeus_ ... (853)
... stroking thee
With _touch alone of unalarming hand_;
Then thou _dark Epaphos_ shalt bear, whose name
Records his sacred gendering ... (870).
This was construed by several fanatics—Des Mousseaux and De Mirville
amongst others—into a clear prophecy. Io “is the mother of God,” we are
told, and “dark Epaphos”—Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his
Father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that
Father; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled _his_ Father down into Hades.
Prometheus says (in verse 930) that Zeus will be humbled yet:
... such marriage he prepares
Which from his throne of power to nothingness
Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled
His father Kronos’ curse....
.... Then let him sit
Confiding in his lofty thunder‐peals,
And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt;
For _these shall not avail, but fall he shall,_
_A fall disgraceful_, not to be endured.... (980).
“Dark Epaphos” was the Dionysus‐Sabasius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter
in the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the “Father of the Gods,” assuming
the shape of a _Serpent_, begot on Demeter Dionysus, or the Solar Bacchus.
Io is the Moon, and at the same time the Eve of a _new race_, and so is
Demeter—in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but
it does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared
periodically in various countries and among various nations, in their
transitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the
mysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind,
having passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from
spiritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the
opposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive
state, when _woman knew no man_, and human progeny _was created, not
begotten_.
That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter
shall discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast
problem of sex. It will be like “the light that never shone on sea or
land,” and has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light
will lead on and up to _true spiritual intuition_. Then, as expressed once
in a letter to a Theosophist,
_The world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world
will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers
to procreate Buddha‐like children—or Demons_.... When that
knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the
Demons, will die out.
If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the
character of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. Cronus is of course
“Time” in its cyclic course. He swallows his children—the _personal_ Gods
of exoteric dogmas included. Instead of Zeus he has swallowed his stone
idol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as
mankind has been cycling down toward only its physical and
intellectual—not spiritual—perfection. When it is as far advanced in its
spiritual evolution Cronus will be no longer deceived. Instead of the
stone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself.
Because, the Serpent of Wisdom, represented in the Sabasian Mysteries by
the anthropomorphized Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers,
will have begotten in Time (Cronus) a progeny—Dionysus‐Bacchus, or the
“dark Epaphos,” the “mighty one,” the Race that will overthrow him. Where
will he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth‐place in
his prophecy to Io. Io is the Moon‐goddess of generation—for she is Isis
and she is Eve, the Great Mother.(975) He traces the path of the (racial)
wanderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and
go to Asia’s continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of
Caucasus (v. 737), the Titan telling her:
When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt
Two continents, fronting the burning East.... (810)—
that she must travel Eastward, after passing the “Kimmerian Bosphorus,”
and cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhân on the Caspian
Sea. After this she will encounter “fierce northern blasts” and cross
thither to the land of the “Arimaspian host” (East of Herodotus’ Scythia)
to—
Pluto’s gold‐abounding flood.... (825).
This is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the Ural,
the Arimaspi of Herodotus being “the recognized inhabitants of this golden
region.”
And here comes (between verses 825 and 835) a puzzle to all the European
interpreters. Says the Titan:
To these [Arimaspi and Grypes] approach not; a far border land
Thou next shalt reach, where dwells a swarthy race
Near the Sun’s founts, whence is the Æthiop river;
Along its banks proceed till thou attain
The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights
Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends.
There Io was ordained to found a colony for herself and her sons. Now we
must see how the passage is interpreted. Io is told that she has to travel
Eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till
it falls into the Nile—hence the perplexity. “According to the
geographical theories of the earliest Greeks,” we are informed by the
author of the version of “Prometheus Bound”:
This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi. 1)
mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to sail down the
Indus [having seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other
river except the Nile ...], seemed to himself to have discovered
the sources of the Nile; as though the Nile, rising from some
place in India, and flowing through much desert land, and thereby
losing its name Indus, next ... flowed through inhabited land,
being now called Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and
afterwards by the Egyptians. Virgil in the IVth Georgic echoes the
obsolete error.(976)
Both Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their
geographical notions; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not in the least
so sinned—not, at any rate, in its Esoteric spirit. When a certain Race is
symbolized, and events pertaining to its history are rendered
allegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the
itinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the
river Ethiops is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nîl or Nîlâ. It
is the river born on the Kailâsa Heaven mountain, the Mansion of the
Gods—22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river, and
was so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because
its banks, from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally
referred to as the Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred
nations, and the Eastern Ethiopians—the mighty builders—have come from
India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in _Isis Unveiled_.(977)
Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil, have used the
word Nile or Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its
names? To this day the Indus is called, in the regions around Kalabagh,
Nîl, “blue,” and Nîlâ, the “blue river.” The water there is of such a dark
blue colour that this name was given to it from time immemorial; a small
town on its banks being called by the same name, and existing to this day.
Evidently Arrian, who wrote far later than the days of Alexander, and who
was ignorant of the old name of the Indus, has unconsciously slandered the
Greek conqueror. Nor are our modern historians much wiser, in judging as
they do, for they often make the most sweeping declarations on mere
appearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did in days of old,
when no Encyclopædias were yet ready for them.
The race of Io, the “cow‐horned maid,” is then simply the first pioneer
race of the Æthiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile, which
received its name in memory of the mother river of the colonists from
India.(978) Therefore Prometheus says to Io(979) that the sacred
Neilos—the God, not the river—shall guide her “to the land, _three‐
cornered_,” namely, to the Delta, where her sons are foreordained to found
“that far‐off colony.” (833 _et seqq._)
It is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a “female
race” (873) which, “fifth in descent” from dark Epaphos—
Fifty in number shall return to Argos.
Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall—
... A kingly race in Argos bear....
But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring,
Bow—famous, who shall free me from these ills.
When these heroes shall arise, the Titan does not reveal; for as he
remarks:
This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech.
But “Argos” is Arghyavarsha, the Land of Libations of the old Hierophants,
whence the Deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages
later that of its neighbour, India—the Aryâvarta of old.
That the subject formed part of the Sabasian Mysteries is made known by
several ancient writers; among others by Cicero(980) and by Clemens
Alexandrinus.(981) The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the
fact of Æschylus being charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and
condemned to be stoned to death to its true cause. They say that being
himself uninitiated, Æschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them
in his Trilogies on a public stage.(982) But he would have incurred the
same condemnation had he been initiated; which must have been the case, as
otherwise he must, like Socrates, have had a Daimon to reveal to him the
secret and sacred allegorical Drama of Initiation. At all events, it is
not the “father of the Greek tragedy” who invented the prophecy of
Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed
by the priests during the Mysteria of the Sabasia.(983) The latter was one
of the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to
history. Mythologists connect it through Mithras, the Sun, called Sabasius
on some old monuments, with Jupiter and Bacchus. It was never, however,
the property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial.
The translator of the drama wonders how Æschylus could become guilty of
such
Discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the
“Prometheus Bound” and that depicted in the remaining dramas.(984)
This is just because Æschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain
the intellectual “Sphinx” of the ages. Between Zeus, the Abstract Deity of
Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter
represented in the Mysteries no higher a principle than the lower aspect
of human physical intelligence—Manas wedded to Kâma; whereas
Prometheus—the divine aspect of Manas merging into and aspiring to
Buddhi—was the divine Soul. Zeus, whenever shown as yielding to his lower
passions, is the Human Soul and nothing more—the _jealous_ God, revengeful
and cruel in its Egotism or “I‐am‐ness.” Hence, Zeus is represented as a
Serpent—the intellectual tempter of man—which, nevertheless, begets in the
course of cyclic evolution the “Man‐Saviour,” the Solar Bacchus or
Dionysus—_more than a man_.
Dionysus is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha, the heavenly
Wise One, and with the coming (tenth) Avatâra, the glorified Spiritual
Christos, who will deliver the suffering Chrestos—mankind, or Prometheus,
on its trial. This, say Brâhmanical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the
Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only
occasionally), will happen at the end of the Kali Yuga. It is only after
the appearance of Kalki Avatâra, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from
woman without sin. Then will Brahmâ, the Hindû deity, Ahura Mazda
(Ormazd), the Zoroastrian, Zeus, the Greco‐Olympian Don Juan, Jehovah, the
jealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their
likes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy—vanish and disappear in
thin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the _dark
aspects_ of all these Deities, ever represented as their “twin brothers”
and creatures, in exoteric legend—their own _reflection_ on Earth, in
Esoteric Philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans,
must be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be
subdued.
There is one Eternal Law in Nature, one that always tends to adjust
contraries, and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this Law of
spiritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual,
that mankind will become freed from its false Gods, and find itself
finally—Self‐redeemed.
In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus, of whom the proto‐
and anti‐types are found in every ancient Theogony, stands in each of them
at the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human
physical life. Cronus is “Time,” whose first law is that the order of the
successive and harmonious phases, in the process of evolution during
cyclic development, should be strictly preserved—under the severe penalty
of abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the
programme of natural development, that man—higher animal though he may
be—should become at once, intellectually, spiritually, and psychically,
the Demi‐god he is on Earth, while his physical frame remains weaker, more
helpless and ephemeral, than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast
is too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its
indwelling God. The gift of Prometheus thus became a Curse—though
_foreknown_ and _foreseen_ by the Host personified in that personage, as
his name well shows.(985) It is in this that rests, at one and the same
time, its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a
portion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free‐
will to passive slavery, intellectual self‐conscious pain and even
torture, “while myriad time shall flow,” to inane, imbecile, instinctual
beatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the
programme of Nature, the Heavenly Host, “Prometheus,” still sacrificed
itself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.(986) But
while saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the
tortures of the self‐consciousness of his responsibility—the result of his
free will—besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir. This
torture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became
henceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was
still un‐achieved at that period of formation.
Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical,
once its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the
chief cause, if not the sole origin, of Evil.(987) Highly philosophical is
the allegory which shows Cronus cursing Zeus for dethroning him, in the
primitive Golden Age of Saturn, when all men were Demi‐gods, and for
creating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then
as delivering to his (Zeus’) revenge the culprit, who despoiled the Gods
of their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their
level, intellectually and spiritually. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus
represents the Host of the Primeval Progenitors, of the Pitaras, the
“Fathers” who created man senseless and without mind; while the Divine
Titan stands for the Spiritual Creators, the Devas who “fell” into
generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger,
than the “Prometheans”; therefore, the latter are shown conquered. “The
lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of
Zeus,” was on this Earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas
the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the
meshes of Matter. The inferior Host were masters of all the Cosmic and
lower Titanic Forces; the higher Titan possessed only the Intellectual and
Spiritual Fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic
tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual
mankind; the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of
Matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and
repentance. In every such case one sees once more—
A god ... in fetters, anguish fraught;
The foe of Zeus, in hatred held of all—
a God, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered
in self‐sacrifice—
For that to men he [I] bore too fond a mind—
as the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by
selfishness and egoïsm in every instance.
The modern Prometheus has now become Epi‐metneus, “he who sees only after
the event”; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago
degenerated into selfishness and self‐adoration. Man will become the
_free_ Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has reestablished the
broken harmony between the two natures—the terrestrial and the divine;
after which he becomes impermeable to the lower Titanic Forces,
invulnerable in his Personality, and immortal in his Individuality—but
this cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his
nature. When man understands that “_Deus non __ fecit mortem_,”(988) but
that man has created it himself, he will re‐become the Prometheus before
his Fall.
For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in
Greece, the reader is referred to Part II of this Volume, Section XX,
“Prometheus, the Titan,” etc. In the said Part—a kind of supplement to the
present portion—every additional information is given upon those tenets
that will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so
heterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of Theology and
Modern Science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards
often usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.
Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza XII.
The MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the
group called _Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa_, or the “Records of the Thirty‐
five Buddhas of Confession,” as they are _exoterically_ called. These
personages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist religion
Buddhas, may just as well be called Rishis, Avatâras, etc., as they are
“Buddhas who have preceded Shâkyamuni” only for the Northern followers of
the ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahâtmâs, or Buddhas, are a
universal and common property; they are _historical_ Sages—at any rate for
all the Occultists who believe in such a Hierarchy of Sages, and who have
had its existence proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity.
They are chosen from among some ninety‐seven Buddhas in one group, and
fifty‐three in another,(989) mostly imaginary personages, who are really
the personifications of the powers of the first‐named.(990) These
“Baskets” of the oldest writings on “palm leaves” are kept very secret.
Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub‐
race to which the particular Buddha‐Lha belonged. The one special MS. from
which the fragments which follow have been extracted, and then rendered
into more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from stone
tablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest days of the Fifth Race,
who had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of
the Atlantean Race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given
here from the Archaic Records, will be found correct, is not far distant.
Then the modern Symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or
the God Woden, the highest God in the German and Scandinavian mythology,
is one of these thirty‐five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the
Continent to which he and his Race belonged is also one of the earliest—so
early, in truth, that in those days tropical nature was to be found, where
now lie eternal unthawing snows, and one could cross almost by dry land
from Norway _viâ_ Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present
surround Hudson’s Bay.(991) In similar fashion, in the palmy days of the
Atlantean Giants, the sons of the “Giants from the East,” a pilgrim could
perform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara Desert, to
the lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of
the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never written
outside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one
generation to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by
constant transmission “within the book volume of the brain,” and through
countless æons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written
document or record. “That which is part of our souls is eternal,” says
Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our Souls than that which happens at
the dawn of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the Soul or Spirit
that animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and
though “the book volume” of the _physical brain_ may forget events within
the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections
can never desert the Divine Soul within us. Its whispers may be too soft,
the sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical
senses; yet the shadow of events _that were_, just as much as the shadow
of the events _that are to come_, is within its perceptive powers, and is
ever present before its mind’s eye.
It is this Soul‐voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition
more than in written history, that what is said below is all true, and
relates to pre‐historic facts.
This is what is written in one passage:
_The Kings of Light have departed in wrath. The sins of men have become so
black that Earth quivers in her great agony.... The Azure Seats remain
empty. Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black [Races],
can sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Knowledge and Mercy? Who
can assume the Flower of Power, the Plant of the Golden Stem and the Azure
Blossom?_
The “Kings of Light” is the name given in all old records to the
Sovereigns of the Divine Dynasties. The “Azure Seats” are translated
“Celestial Thrones” in certain documents. The “Flower of Power” is now the
Lotus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell?
The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his
people. They had become bereft of their “Azure” (Celestial) Kings, and
“they of the deva‐hue,” the moon‐like complexion, and “they of the
refulgent (golden) face” have gone “to the Land of Bliss, the Land of Fire
and Metal”—or, agreeably with the rules of symbolism, to the lands lying
North and East, from whence “the Great Waters have been swept away, sucked
in by the Earth and dissipated in the Air.” The wise races had perceived
“the black Storm‐dragons, called down by the Dragons of Wisdom”—and “had
fled, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land”—the
great ancient Adepts, presumably; those the Hindûs refer to as their Manus
and Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu.
They “of the yellow hue” are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now
classes as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations;
and the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There, entirely
new races were born; there, they lived and died until the separation of
the nations. But this “separation” did not take place either in the
localities assigned for it by Modern Science, nor in the way the Âryans
are shown to have divided and separated by Prof. Max Müller and other
Âryanists. Nearly two‐thirds of one million years have elapsed since that
period. The yellow‐faced giants of the Post‐Atlantean day had ample time,
through this forced confinement to one part of the world, with the same
racial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, during a
period of nearly 700,000 years, to branch off into the most heterogeneous
and diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more
extraordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from
gigantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced
isolation. The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred
thousands of years. If to‐morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear
and other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to
separate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a
hundred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized
nations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured
nations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of
crossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative
savagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into _superior_ and
_inferior_ races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.
Such are the facts given in the Archaic Records. Collating and comparing
them with some modern theories of evolution, _minus_ Natural
Selection,(992) these statements appear quite reasonable and logical.
Thus, while the Âryans are the descendants of the _yellow_ Adam, the
gigantic and highly civilized Atlanto‐Âryan race, the Semites—and the Jews
along with them—are those of the _red_ Adam, and thus both De Quatrefages
and the writers of the Mosaic _Genesis_ are right. For, could chapter v of
the First Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our
Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed
therein, though of course under different names, the respective years of
the Patriarchs being turned into periods, and the whole being symbolical
and allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the
references to the great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean
nations, showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their
arts and sciences. If the Third Root‐Race, the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, are
already spoken of as having been drowned “with their high civilizations
and Gods,”(993) how much more may the same be said of the Atlanteans!
It is from the Fourth Race that the early Âryans got their knowledge of
“the bundle of wonderful things,” the Sabhâ and Mâyâsabhâ, mentioned in
the _Mahâbhârata_, the gift of Mâyâsura to the Pândavas. It is from them
that they learnt æronautics, Vimâna Vidyâ, the “knowledge of flying in
air‐vehicles,” and, therefore, their great arts of Meteorography and
Meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Âryans inherited their most
valuable Science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of
Chemistry, or rather Alchemy, of Mineralogy, Geology, Physics and
Astronomy.
Several times the writer has put to herself the question: Is the story of
_Exodus_—in its details at least—as narrated in the _Old Testament_,
original? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many others,
simply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans? For who,
upon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the great
similarity of the fundamental features? Remember the anger of “God” at the
obduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the “chosen” ones to spoil the
Egyptians, before departing, of their “jewels of silver and jewels of
gold,”(994) and finally the Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red
Sea. Then read the following fragment of the earlier story from the
Commentary:
_And the __“__Great King of the Dazzling Face__”__ the chief of all the
Yellow‐faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the Black‐faced._
_He sent his air‐vehicles [Vimânas] to all his brother‐chiefs [chiefs of
other nations and tribes] with pious men within, saying:_
“_Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law, and cross the land while [yet]
dry._
“_The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the
land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face [the
Sorcerers] live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to
descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires [the Gnomes and Fire
Elementals] are preparing their magic Agnyastra [fire‐weapons worked by
Magic]. But the Lords of the Dark Eye [__‘__Evil Eye__’__] are stronger
than they [the Elementals] and they are the slaves of the mighty ones.
They are versed in Astra [Vidyâ, the highest magical knowledge]._(_995_)_
Come and use yours_ [i.e., _your magic powers, in order to counteract
those of the Sorcerers]. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face [an Adept of
the White Magic] cause the Vimâna of every Lord of the Dark Face to come
into his hands [or possession], lest any [of the Sorcerers] should by its
means escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of the Four [Karmic Deities],
and save his wicked [followers, or people]._
“_May every Yellow Face send sleep from himself to [mesmerize?] every
Black Face. May even they [the Sorcerers] avoid pain and suffering. May __
every man true to the Solar Gods bind [paralyze] every man under the Lunar
Gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny._
“_And may every Yellow Face offer of his life‐water [blood] to the
speaking animal of a Black Face, lest he awaken his master._(996)
“_The hour has struck, the black night is ready._
“_Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the Great
Four._(_997_)_ May the Kings of Light return._”
_The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept...._
_When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved...._
_[But] the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the
water‐mark. Their Kings reached them in their Vimânas, and led them on to
the lands of Fire and Metal [East and North]._
Still, in another passage, it is said:
_Stars [meteors] showered on the lands of the Black Faces; but they
slept._
_The speaking beasts [the magic watchers] kept quiet._
_The nether Lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters
slept._
_The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to
the other. High lands remained, the bottom of the Earth [the lands of the
antipodes] remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped; the men of the
Yellow Faces and of the straight eye [the frank and sincere people]._
_When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their
Vimânas in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone._
Then a passage shows some of the more powerful Magicians of the “Dark
Faces,” who awoke earlier than the others, pursuing those who had “spoilt
them” and who were in the rear‐guard, for—“the nations that were led away
were as thick as the stars of the milky way,” says a more modern
Commentary, written in Sanskrit only.
_Like as a dragon‐snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of Men, led
on by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expanded
like a running stream of sweet waters ... many of the faint‐hearted among
them perished on their way. But most were saved._
Yet the pursuers, “whose heads and chests soared high above the water,”
chased them “for three lunar terms” until finally reached by the rising
waves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking under their feet
and the Earth engulfing those who had desecrated her.
This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar
story in _Exodus_ was built many hundred thousands of years later. The
biography of Moses, the story of his birth, childhood and rescue from the
Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, is now shown to have been adapted from the
Chaldæan narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian tiles in the
British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing
the Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so
on? The gigantic Magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the “Lords of the Dark
Face,” may, in the later narrative, have become the Egyptian Magi, and the
yellow‐faced nations of the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the
“chosen people”! One more statement has to be made. There have been
several Divine Dynasties—a series for every Root‐Race beginning with the
Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last seven
Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldæan records belonged to the
Fifth Race, which, though generally called Âryan, was not entirely so, as
it was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethnology gives other
names. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our
disposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, in
whom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient
Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists
deny, as they have denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence
of Homer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of the
Atlanteans was greater than even that of the Egyptians. It is their
degenerate descendants, the nation of Plato’s Atlantis, who built the
first Pyramids in the country, and that certainty before the advent of the
“Eastern Æthiopians,” as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. This may be well
inferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the
Pyramids that:
There are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which,
it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of
which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different
places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be
lost.
These men who “divined the coming of floods” were not Egyptians, who never
had any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last
remnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain; those races which are dimly
suspected by Science, and thinking of which Mr. Charles Gould, the well‐
known Geologist, says:
Can we suppose that we have at all exhausted the great museum of
nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its antechambers?
Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? or have we
in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldæa and of China,
shadowy mementoes of pre‐historic man, handed down by tradition,
and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands from
others, which, like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato, may have
been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which
destroyed them with all their civilization.(998)
After this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who
wrote, several years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould:
_The Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and
Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the
civilizations that began with the Third Race [—after its separation]._
But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied
to the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great
civilizations of antiquity, such as those of Egypt and India, there
stretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism ever since the
beginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization, during which
period all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in _Isis
Unveiled_:
Why should we forget that, ages before the prows of the
adventurous Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phœnician
vessels had circumnavigated the Globe, and spread civilization in
regions now silent and deserted? What Archæologist will dare
assert that the same hand which planned the Pyramids of Egypt,
Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling to oblivion on the
sandy banks of the Nile, did _not_ erect the monumental Nagkon‐Wat
of Cambodia; or trace the hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors
of the deserted Indian village, newly discovered in British
Columbia by Lord Dufferin; or those on the ruins of Palenque and
Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in our
museums—last mementoes of the long “lost arts”—speak loudly in
favour of ancient civilization? And do they not prove, over and
over again, that nations and continents that have passed away have
buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first
crucible ever heated in a mediæval cloister, nor the last cracked
by a modern chemist, have revived, nor will—at least, in the
present century.
And the same question may be put now that was put then; it may be once
more asked:
How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint that has been
reached in our times, only enables us to see in the dim distance
up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs that earlier
explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and
occupied?
If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do
they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian
forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of
Luxor—the Tyrian purple, the bright vermilion, and dazzling blue
which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on
the first day of their application; the indestructible cement of
the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which
can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking;
the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is
found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of
ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass?
And if Chemistry is so little able to rival even the early
mediæval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which,
according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of
years ago. The more Archæology and Philology advance, the more
humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made,
the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who,
perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have
been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire
of superstition.
Among other Arts and Sciences, the Ancients—ay, as an heirloom from the
Atlanteans—had those of Astronomy and Symbolism, which included the
knowledge of the Zodiac.
As already explained, the whole of Antiquity believed, with good reason,
that humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the Planets,
and these with the Zodiacal Signs. The whole world’s history is recorded
in the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt there is an example in the
Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sûfî, the
writer has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of
the past—and also of the _future_—history of our Globe. Yet the original
records exist, most undeniably.
As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, and those
they do happen to know of they fail to understand, as witness Bentley, the
reader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work
of Denon(999) in which the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs can be found and
examined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to
trust to what other students—who have examined and studied both very
carefully—have to say of them. The assertion of the Egyptian Priests to
Herodotus, that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had
formerly coincided, has been corroborated by Mackey, who states that the
Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions.
And in that which shows the Poles [polar axes] at right angles,
there are marks which show, that it was not the last time they
were in that position; _but the first_ [—after the Zodiacs had
been traced]. Capricorn, is, therein, represented at the North
Pole; and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole;
which is a confirmation that, originally they had their winter
when the Sun was in Cancer. But the chief characteristics of its
being a monument commemorating the _first time_ that the Pole had
been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.(1000)
Broadly calculated, it is believed by Egyptologists that the Great Pyramid
was built 3,350 B.C.;(1001) and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 750
years before the appearance of the Fourth Dynasty—during which the
Pyramids are _supposed_ to have been built. Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the
age assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s declaration that all
the facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already—
Made very great progress in the arts of civilization _before the
age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley
of the Nile_—(1002)
is very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis of the comparatively
modern civilizing of Egypt. It points to a great civilization in _pre‐
historic_ times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo‐Hor, the
“servants of Horus,” were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M.
Maspéro affirms, it is to this “pre‐historic race” that—
Belongs the honour of having constituted Egypt, such as we know
it, from the commencement of the historic period.
And Staniland Wake adds:
They founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the
most important sanctuaries.(1003)
This was _before_ the Great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly
arisen from the waters. Yet:
They possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the
Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in
civilization.
As says Lenormant:
It was the country of the great pre‐historic sanctuaries, seats of
the sacerdotal dominion, which played the most important part in
the origin of civilization.
What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost
of 5,000, years B.C. (Maspéro). Now it is claimed that it is by means of
the Cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal Year) that the approximate year of
the erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained.
Assuming that the long narrow downward passage leading from the
entrance was directed towards the pole‐star of the pyramid
builders, astronomers have shown that in the year 2,170 B.C. the
passage pointed to Alpha Draconis, the then pole‐star.... Mr.
Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, after stating that the pole‐
star was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in
2,170 B.C., says: “either of these would correspond with the
position of the descending passage in the Great Pyramid; but
Egyptologists tell us there can absolutely be no doubt that the
later epoch is far too late.”(1004)
But we are also told that:
This relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an
extraordinary one ... it could not occur again for a whole
Sidereal Year.(1005)
This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of
three Sidereal Years, the Great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years
ago, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least
as readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C.
Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, the same
characteristics of the signs as on the Dendera Zodiac are found. Those who
know the Hindû symbols and constellations well, will be able to find out
from the description of the Egyptian, whether the indications of time are
correct or not. On the Dendera Zodiac, as preserved by the modern Egyptian
Coptic and Greek Adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the
Dion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing
downwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing
with the _original_ conformation of these constellations. But adds Mackey:
In many places we see the Lion [Sinha], with his tail turned up
over his back, and ending with a Serpent’s head; thereby, shewing
that the Lion had been _inverted_: which, indeed, must have been
the case with the whole Zodiac, and every other Constellation,
when the Pole had been inverted.
Speaking of the _circular_ Zodiac, which is also given by Denon, he says:
There ... the Lion is standing _on_ the Serpent, and his tail
forming a curve downward, from which we find that, _though six or
seven hundred thousand years_ must have passed between the two
positions, yet they had made but little or no difference in the
Constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is represented
very differently in the two—in the circular Zodiac, the Virgin is
_nursing her child_: but it seems that they had not had that idea
when the Pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in
_this_ Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the
Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds, in her hand, an ear
of wheat. It is much to be lamented that, there is in this Zodiac
a breach of the figures in the latter part of Leo and the
beginning of Virgo, which has taken away one _Decan_ out of each
sign.(1006)
Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three
different epochs; namely, to the last three family races of the fourth
sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race, each of which must have lived
approximately from 25,000 to 30,000 years. The first of these, the “Âryan‐
Asiatics,” witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the Giant
Atlanteans(1007) (the Ruta and Daitya Island‐Continents) who perished some
850,000 years ago, toward the close of the Miocene Age.(1008) The fourth
sub‐race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the
Atlanteans—the Âryo‐Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely,
some 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this, the reader is asked to
glance at the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐
Race—generally, though hardly correctly, called the Âryan Race—and the
explanations appended to it.
Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root‐
Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and
concisely in Mr. Sinnett’s _Esoteric Buddhism_.
1. There are seven Rounds in every Manvantara; this Round is the Fourth,
and we are in the Fifth Root‐Race, at present.
2. Each Root‐Race has seven sub‐races.
3. Each sub‐race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be
called “branch” or “family” races.
4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last‐named are
countless, and depend on Karmic action.
Examine the Genealogical Tree hereto appended, and you will understand.
The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist
the reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the
confusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different
times for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express
in figures—but only within approximate limits, for the sake of
comparison—the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely
distinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless
confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few; for
the Races, sub‐races, etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap
and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to
separate them.
[Illustration: Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root‐Race.]
The Human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as
an illustration.
The main stem of a tree may be compared to the Root‐Race (A).
Its larger limbs to the various sub‐races; seven in number (B1, B2, etc.).
On each of these limbs are seven “branches,” or “family” races (C).
After this the cactus‐plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy
“leaves” are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a
nation or tribe of human beings.
Now our Fifth Root‐Race has already been in existence—as a Race _sui
generis_ and quite free from its parent stem—about 1,000,000 years;
therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding sub‐races
has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each family race has an
average existence of about 30,000 years, and thus the European “family
race” has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or
the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding “season” of
three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the
comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a “family race”
and a Sidereal Year.
The knowledge of the foregoing, and the absolutely correct divisions of
time, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were
taught to the Disciples, and where they were transmitted by one Hierophant
to another. Everyone is aware that the European Astronomers
assign—arbitrarily enough—the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac
to the years 2,000 or 2,400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that the date of
this invention coincides with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid.
This, to an Occultist and Eastern Astronomer, must appear quite absurd.
The Cycle of the Kali Yuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th
of February in the year 3,102 B.C. Now the Hindûs claim that in the year
20,400 before Kali Yugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the
Spring Equinox—there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and
Moon—and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date,
that, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started to
establish the beginning of their Kali Yuga was _very real_. That “epoch is
the year 3,102 before our era,” he writes.(1009) The lunar eclipse
arriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the Black Age—it took
place in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star Θ of
the same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon
certain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades
(Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern
India and Lankâ,(1010) the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The
“three Virgins,” or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both,
the record of the first three “Divine or Astronomical Dynasties,” who
taught the Third Root‐Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to
their doom, returned, or redescended rather, during the third sub‐race of
the Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries of their
birth‐place—the Sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human
Races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes—Semi‐divine Astrals of the
Third and Fourth—and the Heroes of the Fifth Race) which preceded the
purely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and
passages of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles
of course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed
each time. In Mackey’s _Sphinxiad_ the speculations of the bold author
must have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, for
he says, fantastically enough:
But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those
monuments [the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs] _does not
exceed five millions of years_:(1011) which falls short of the
records given us both by the [esoteric] Chinese and Hindoos: which
latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or
eight millions of years:(1012) which I have seen upon a talisman
of porcelain.(1013)
The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura Maya, as the
modern Hindûs still have. As stated in _Esoteric Buddhism_, the Egyptians,
as well as the Greeks and “Romans” some thousand years ago, were “remnants
of the Atlanto‐Âryans”—the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans;
the last‐named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose
sudden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The
_human_ Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the
_knowledge_ of the Atlanteans, though there was no longer Atlantean blood
in their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic
Records. All this has been shown long ago.(1014) And it is just because
the Egyptian Zodiac is between 75,000 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac
of the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out that it is
only 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.(1015)
Conclusion.
Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of _The Secret
Doctrine_ has to be closed. The forty‐nine Stanzas and the few fragments
from the Commentaries which have been given are all that can be published
in these Volumes. These, with some still older Records—to which none but
the highest Initiates have access—and a whole library of comments,
glossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man’s Genesis.
It is from these Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to
explain the hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the
true views of Esoteric Antiquity upon Geology, Anthropology, and even
Ethnology. In the Part which follows we will endeavour to establish a
still closer metaphysical connection between the earliest Races and their
Creators, the _Divine_ Men from other Worlds; accompanying the statements
proffered with the most important demonstrations of the same in Esoteric
Astronomy and Symbolism.
The duration of the “periods” that separate, in space and time, the Fourth
from the Fifth Race—in the historical(1016) or even the legendary
beginnings of the latter—is too tremendous for us to offer, even to a
Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them. During the course of the
Post‐diluvian Ages, which were marked at certain periodical epochs by the
most terrible cataclysms, too many races and nations were born, and
disappeared almost without leaving a trace, for anyone to offer any
description of the slightest value concerning them. Whether the Masters of
Wisdom have a full and consecutive history of our Race from its incipient
stage down to the present times; whether they possess the uninterrupted
record of man since he developed into a complete physical being, and
became thereby the king of the animals and master on this Earth—is not for
the writer to say. Most probably they have, and such is our own personal
conviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest Initiates,
who do not take their students into their confidence. The writer can,
therefore, give but what she has herself been taught, and no more, and
even this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic
dream, than as a possible reality.
This is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the
impression made upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Born and
bred in European, matter‐of‐fact and presumably civilized, countries, she
assimilated the foregoing with the utmost difficulty. But there are proofs
of a certain character which become irrefutable and are undeniable in the
long run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a series of years
such were offered to her, and now she has the full certitude that our
present Globe and its human Races must have been born, grown and developed
in this, and in no other way.
But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be
expected to have any more weight than any other “doxy,” in the eyes of
those to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved.
Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared for such questions as these:
How do we know that the writer has not invented the whole scheme? And
supposing _she_ has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing,
as given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the
ancients? How could they have preserved the records of such an immense,
such an incredible antiquity?
The answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its
end is “written in the stars,” _i.e._, is recorded in the Zodiac and
Universal Symbolism, whose keys are in the keeping of the Initiates, will
hardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac in Egypt is much
doubted, and it is denied point‐blank with regard to India. “Your
conclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always doubtful,”
the writer was once told by a profane friend. To this, the answer came
that it was at least one point gained on scientific syllogisms, for, with
the exception of a few problems from the domain of purely Physical
Science, both the premises and conclusions of men of Science are as
hypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not
so appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane are
very little aware, taking as they do their scientific data on faith, that
both premises and conclusions are generally the product of the same
brains, which, however learned, are not infallible—a truism demonstrated
daily by the shifting and re‐shifting of scientific theories and
speculations.
However it may be, the records of the temples, zodiacal and traditional,
as well as the ideographic records of the East, as read by the Adepts of
the Sacred Science or Vidyâ, are not a whit more doubtful than the so‐
called ancient history of the European nations, now edited, corrected, and
amplified by half a century of archæological discoveries, and the very
problematical readings of the Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and
Egyptian hieroglyphics. Our data also are based upon the same
“readings”—in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of secret works
of which Europe knows nothing—_plus_ the perfect knowledge by the
Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these
records belong to an immense antiquity. Every Archæologist and
Palæontologist is acquainted with the ideographic productions of certain
semi‐savage tribes, who from time immemorial have aimed at rendering their
thoughts symbolically. This is the earliest mode of recording events and
ideas. And how old this knowledge is in the human race may be inferred
from some signs, evidently ideographic, found on hatchets of the
Palæolithic period. The Red Indian tribes of America, only a few years
ago, comparatively speaking, petitioned the President of the United States
to grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being written
on the tiny surface of a piece of fabric, which was covered with barely a
dozen representations of animals and birds. The American savages have a
number of such different kinds of writing, but not one of our Scientists
is yet familiar with, or even knows of, the early hieroglyphic cypher,
still preserved in some Fraternities, and named in Occultism the Senzar.
Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such modes of
writing—_e.g._, the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese
characters—as “attempts of the early races of mankind to express their
untutored thoughts,” will decidedly object to our statement, that writing
was invented by the Atlanteans, and not at all by the Phœnicians. Indeed,
such a claim as that writing was known to mankind many hundreds of
millenniums ago, in the face of the Philologists who have decreed that
writing was unknown in the days of Pânini, in India, as also to the Greeks
in the time of Homer, will be met by general disapprobation, if not with
silent scorn. All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will
maintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our
modern Royal Society, we have too long a period full of the most ludicrous
mistakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modern scientific
assumptions rather than in the statements of our Teachers. Writing, our
Scientists say, was unknown to Pânini; and this Sage nevertheless composed
a grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the
grammars that were ever made! Pânini is made out to have lived barely a
few centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central
Asia—whence the Philologists and Historians show us the ancestors of the
same Pânini, the Brâhmans, coming into India—are _covered with writing_,
two and three thousand years old, at least, and twelve thousand, according
to some fearless Palæontologists.
Writing was an _ars incognita_ in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably
to Grote, and was unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C.; and the
Phœnicians who had _invented_ it, and knew writing as far back as 1,500
B.C. at the earliest,(1017) were living among the Greeks, and elbowing
them, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclusions
disappeared, however, into thin air, when Schliemann discovered (_a_) the
site of ancient Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as
a fable, and (_b_) excavated from that site earthenware vessels with
inscriptions _in characters unknown_ to Palæontologists and the all‐
denying Sanskritists. Who will now deny Troy, or these archaic
inscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses:
I was myself an eye‐witness of two such discoveries, and helped to
gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been
silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an
imposture.(1018)
Nor were truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu,
Gordon Cumming, Madame Merian,(1019) Bruce, and a host of others were
charged with lying.
Says the author of _Mythical Monsters_, who gives this information in the
Introduction:(1020)
Madame Merian was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to
her description of a bird‐eating spider nearly two hundred years
ago. But now‐a‐days ... reliable observers have confirmed it in
regard to South America, India, and elsewhere.
Audubon was similarly accused by botanists of having invented the
yellow water‐lily, which he figured in his _Birds of the South_
under the name of Nymphæa lutea, and after having lain under the
imputation for years, was confirmed at last by the discovery of
the long‐lost flower in Florida ... in ... 1876.(1021)
And, as Audubon was called a liar for this, and for his Haliætus
Washingtonii,(1022) so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for his marvellous word‐
painting of the devil‐fish, and his description of a man becoming its
helpless victim.
The thing was derided as a monstrous impossibility; yet within a
few years were discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle‐
fishes with arms extending to thirty feet in length, and capable
of dragging a good‐sized boat beneath the surface; and their
action has been reproduced _for centuries past_ ... by Japanese
artists.(1023)
And if Troy was denied, and regarded as a myth; the existence of
Herculaneum and Pompeii declared a fiction; the travels of Marco Polo
laughed at and called as absurd a fable as one of Baron Münchausen’s
tales, why should the writer of _Isis Unveiled_ and of _The Secret
Doctrine_ be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the author of the
above‐cited volume quotes, in his excellent work, a few lines from
_Macmillan_ (1860), which are as true as life, and too much to the point
not to be reproduced:
When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are
still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer
plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game....
As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the
great (mis?) guiding spirit, _à priori_ by name, who furnishes
philosophers with their omniscience _pro re natâ_, whispers that
no such thing _can_ be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax.
The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When
Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was
gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been
calculated was not _the_ planet but another which had
clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the
true body. _The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the
disposition to hoax._ Who was it that first announced that the
classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax
perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little
or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?(1024)
Thus let it be. No disbeliever who takes _The Secret Doctrine_ for a
“hoax” is forced, or even asked, to credit our statements, which have
already been proclaimed to be such by certain very clever American
journalists even before the work went to press.(1025)
Nor, after all, is it necessary that any one should believe in the Occult
Sciences and the Old Teachings, before he knows anything of, or even
believes in his own Soul. No great truth has ever been accepted _à __
priori_, and generally a century or two has passed before it has begun to
glimmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such
cases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths
of to‐day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and _vice versà_. It
is only in the twentieth century that portions, if not the whole, of the
present work will be vindicated.
It is not destructive of our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans
does affirm that writing was unknown in the Stone Age. For it may have
been unknown during that period in the Fifth Âryan Race, and yet have been
perfectly known to the Atlanteans of the Fourth, in the palmy days of
their highest civilization. The cycles of the rise and fall of nations and
races are there to account for it.
If told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being
palmed off on the credulous, and that our work may be classed with
Jacolliot’s _Bible in India_—although, by the way, there are more truths
mixed up with its errors than are found in the works of orthodox and
recognized Orientalists—the charge and comparison will dismay us very
little. We bide our time. Even the famous _Ezour Veda_ of the last
century, considered by Voltaire “the most precious gift from the East to
the West,” and by Max Müller “about the silliest book that can be read,”
is not altogether without facts and truths in it. The cases when the _à
priori_ negations of specialists have become justified by subsequent
corroborations, form but an insignificant percentage of those that have
been fully vindicated by subsequent discoveries and confirmed, to the
great dismay of the learned objectors. _Ezour Veda_ was a very small bone
of contention compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil du
Perron, and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such
facts are recorded by Professor Max Müller himself, who, speaking of the
discomfiture of Dugald Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states
that:
If the facts about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise
not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable.
He therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit
altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had
been put together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those
arch‐forgers and liars, the Brâhmans, and that the whole of
Sanskrit literature was an imposition.(1026)
The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with these
Brâhmans, and other _historical_ “liars,” in the opinion of our modern
Dugald Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience has been too
varied and personal, for her not to know at least something of human
nature. “When you doubt, abstain,” says the wise Zoroaster, whose prudent
aphorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience.
Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this Sage of the past ages is found
preaching in the desert, in company with a more modern Philosopher, namely
Bacon, who offers the same priceless bit of practical wisdom, when saying:
In contemplation [in any question of knowledge, we add], if a man
begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but _if he will be
content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties_.
With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the
representatives of British Scepticism we ought to close the debate, but
our Theosophical readers are entitled to a final piece of Occult
information.
Enough has been said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind,
and everything else in Nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven
Races, five of which have nearly completed their earthly career, and have
claimed that every Root‐Race, with its sub‐races and innumerable family
divisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its preceding and
succeeding Race. This will be objected to, on the authority of uniform
experience, in the question of Anthropology and Ethnology. Man—save in
colour and type, and perhaps a difference in facial peculiarities and
cranial capacity—has been ever the same under every climate and in every
part of the world, say the Naturalists; ay, even in stature—this, while
maintaining that man descends from the same unknown ancestor as the ape; a
claim that is logically impossible without an infinite variation of
stature and form from his first evolution into a biped. The very logical
persons who maintain both propositions are welcome to their paradoxical
views. Once more we address only those who, doubting the general
derivation of myths from “the contemplation of the visible workings of
external nature,” think it
Less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and
demi‐gods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
descriptions, are transformations, than to believe them to be
inventions.
It is only such “transformations” in physical nature, as much as in the
memory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine
teaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of Modern Science,
based upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few
centuries, with the unbroken tradition and records of its Sanctuaries; and
brushing away that tissue of cobweb‐like theories, spun in the darkness
that covers a period of hardly a few millenniums, which Europeans call
their “history,” the Old Science says to us: Listen, now, to my version of
the memoirs of Humanity.
The Human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old,
and die. Their sub‐races and nations follow the same rule. If your all‐
denying Modern Science and so‐called Philosophy do not contest that the
human family is composed of a variety of well‐defined types and races, it
is only because the fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no
external difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a
Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand, it is formally denied by most
Naturalists that _mixed_ human races, _i.e._, the seeds for entirely new
races, are any longer formed in our days, although indeed the latter is
maintained on good grounds by De Quatrefages and some others.
Nevertheless our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said
that whatever forms man has passed through in the long pre‐historic past
there are no more changes for him—save certain variations, as at
present—in the future. Hence that our Sixth and Seventh Root‐Races are
fictions.
To this it is again answered: How do you know? Your experience is limited
to a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity
and to the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth
Race. How can you tell what will or will not be? Meanwhile, such is the
prophecy of the Secret Books and their not uncertain statements.
Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed,
yet we find the last of the Atlanteans still mixed up with the Âryan
element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one Race
over the Race which succeeds it, though in characters and external type
the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the
younger Race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races.
Now, Occult Philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new
Race and races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that
the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced.
Pure Anglo‐Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the
United States have already become a nation apart, and, owing to a strong
admixture of various nationalities and inter‐marriage, almost a race _sui
generis_, not only mentally, but also physically. To quote from De
Quatrefages:
Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play
the part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its
present state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest
part, by the successive crossing of a number of races _at present
undetermined_.(1027)
Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a “primary race,”
temporarily, before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all
other now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the _sixth_
sub‐race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly
the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or
fifth sub‐race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about
25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub‐race;
until, in consequence of cataclysms—the first series of those which must
one day destroy Europe, and still later the whole Âryan Race (and thus
affect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with
the confines of our continent and isles—the Sixth Root‐Race will have
appeared on the stage of our Round. When shall this be? Who knows save the
great Masters of Wisdom, perchance, and they are as silent upon the
subject as the snow‐capped peaks that tower above them. All we know is,
that it will silently come into existence; so silently, indeed, that for
long millenniums will its pioneers—the peculiar children who will grow
into peculiar men and women—be regarded as anomalous _lusûs naturæ_,
abnormal oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase, and
their numbers become with every age greater, one day they will awake to
find themselves in a majority. Then the present men will begin to be
regarded as exceptional mongrels, until they die out in their turn in
civilized lands, surviving only in small groups on islands—the mountain
peaks of to‐day—where they will vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out,
perhaps millions of years hence, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam‐Nyam and
the dwarfish Moola Koorumba of the Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are
the remnants of once mighty races, the recollection of whose existence has
entirely died out of the remembrance of modern generations, just as we
shall vanish from the memory of the Sixth Race Humanity. The Fifth will
overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of millenniums, changing with it
more slowly than its new successor, still changing in stature, general
physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Âryan Race, and
the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.
This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout
the whole sixth and seventh sub‐races.(1028) But the _last_ remnants of
the Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after the birth of
the _new_ Race; when another and _new_ dwelling, the Sixth Continent, will
have appeared above the _new_ waters on the face of the Globe, so as to
receive the new stranger. To it also will emigrate and there will settle
all those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster.
When this shall be—as just said—it is not for the writer to know. Only, as
Nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes
suddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be
preceded by many smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and
volcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high in the heart of the race
now in the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the
Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have
now become a _new Race, and many new nations_. Yet the Fifth will not die,
but will survive for a while; overlapping the new Race for many hundred
thousands of years to come, it will, as we have just said, become
transformed with it more slowly than its new successor—still getting
entirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will
not grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the
Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth Race led the latter
down to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the
present Race is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be rapidly
growing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh.
Thus it is the mankind of the New World, the senior by far of our Old
one—a fact men had also forgotten—of Pâtâla (the Antipodes, or the Nether
World, as America is called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to
sow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than
any of those we know of at present. The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded
by Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of
parallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be
composed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny, and
not one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the
burden of its coöperative work with Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after
race, perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. Climates will, and have
already begun to, change, each Tropical Year after the other dropping one
sub‐race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle;
while a series of other less favoured groups—the failures of Nature—will,
like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even
leaving a trace behind.
Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever‐present
and Ever‐becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few
Occultists:
_The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the
Present. And yet, O present moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no
parent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but
thyself? Before thou hast even begun to say __“__I am the progeny of the
departed moment, the child of the past,__”__ thou hast become that past
itself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more
the Present but verily that Future. Thus, are the Past, the Present, and
the Future the Ever‐living Trinity in One—the Mahámâyâ of the Absolute
__“__IS.__”_
PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD‐RELIGIONS.
The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only
at the garment—that is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine; more
they know not. The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak,
but what the cloak covers.—_Zohar_ (iii. 152; FRANCK, 119).
The Mysteries of the Faith (are) not to be divulged to all.... It
is requisite to hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken.—_Stromateis_
(12; CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS).
Section I. Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in Every Scripture.
In view of the strangeness of the teachings, and of many a doctrine which
from the modern scientific standpoint must seem absurd, some necessary and
additional explanations have to be made. The theories contained in the
Stanzas of Volume II are even more difficult to assimilate than those
which are embodied in Volume I, on Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to
be questioned here, in Part II, as Science will be in Part III, for since
our doctrines differ so widely from the current ideas of both Materialism
and Theology, the Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the attacks of
either or of both.
The reader can never be too often reminded that, as the abundant
quotations from various old Scriptures prove, these teachings are as old
as the world; and that the present work is simply an attempt to render, in
modern language and in a phraseology with which the scientific and
educated student is familiar, archaic Genesis and History as taught in
certain Asiatic centres of Esoteric Learning. These must be accepted or
rejected on their own merits, fully or partially; but not before they have
been carefully compared with the corresponding theological dogmas and the
modern scientific theories and speculations.
One feels serious doubt whether, with all its intellectual acuteness, our
age is destined to discover in each Western nation even one solitary
_uninitiated_ Scholar or Philosopher capable of fully comprehending the
spirit of Archaic Philosophy. Nor can either be expected to do so, before
the real meaning of the Alpha and the Omega of Eastern Esotericism, the
terms Sat and Asat—so freely used in the _Rig Veda_ and elsewhere—is
thoroughly assimilated. Without this key to Âryan Wisdom, the Cosmogony of
the Rishis and the Arhats is in danger of remaining a dead letter to the
average Orientalist. Asat is not merely the negation of Sat, nor is it the
“not yet existing”; for Sat is in itself neither the “existent,” nor
“being.” Sat is the immutable, the ever‐present, changeless, and eternal
Root, from and through which all proceeds. But it is far more than the
potential force in the seed, which propels onward the process of
development, or what is now called evolution. It is the ever becoming,
though the never manifesting.(1029) Sat is born from Asat, and Asat is
begotten by Sat—perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can
be squared only at the Supreme Initiation, at the threshold of
Parinirvâna.
Barth started a reflection on the _Rig Veda_ which was meant for a stern
criticism, an unusual, therefore, as was thought, an original, view of
this archaic volume. It so happened, however, that, in his criticism, this
scholar revealed a truth, without being himself aware of its full
importance. He premises by saying that “neither in the language nor in the
thought of the _Rig Veda_” has he “been able to discover that quality _of
primitive natural simplicity_, which so many are fain to see in it.” Barth
had Max Müller in his mind’s eye when writing this. For the famous Oxford
professor has throughout characterized the hymns of the _Rig Veda_, as the
unsophisticated expression of the religious feeling of a pastoral innocent
people. “In the Vedic hymns the ideas and myths appear in their simplest
and freshest form”—the Sanskrit scholar thinks. Barth is of a different
opinion, however.
So divided and personal are the opinions of Sanskritists as to the
importance and intrinsic value of the _Rig Veda_, that these opinions
become entirely biassed whichever way they incline. Thus Prof. Max Müller
declares that:
Nowhere is the wide distance which separates the ancient poems of
India from the most ancient literature of Greece more clearly
felt, than when we compare the growing myths of the Veda with the
full grown and decayed myths on which the poetry of Homer is
founded. The Veda is the real Theogony of the _Aryan races_, while
that of Hesiod is a distorted caricature of the original image.
This is a sweeping assertion, and perhaps rather unjust in its general
application. But why not try to account for it? Orientalists cannot do so,
for they reject the chronology of the Secret Doctrine, and can hardly
admit the fact that between the Rig Vedic hymns and Hesiod’s Theogony tens
of thousands of years have elapsed. So they fail to see that the Greek
myths are no longer the primitive symbolical language of the Initiates,
the Disciples of the Gods‐Hierophants, the divine ancient “Sacrificers,”
and that disfigured by the distance, and encumbered by the exuberant
growth of human _profane_ fancy, they now stand like distorted images of
stars in running waves. But if Hesiod’s Cosmogony and Theogony are to be
viewed as caricatures of the original images, how much more so the myths
in the Hebrew _Genesis_, in the sight of those for whom they are no more
divine revelation or the word of God, than is Hesiod’s Theogony for Mr.
Gladstone.
As Barth says:
The poetry it [the _Rig Veda_] contains appears to me, on the
contrary, to be of a singularly refined character and artificially
elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions [?]
to mysticism and theosophic insight; and the manner of its
expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the
phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated than
the poetic language of a large community.(1030)
We will not stop to enquire of the critic what he can know of the
phraseology in use among the “initiated,” or whether he belongs himself to
such a group; for, in the latter case, he would hardly have used such
language. But the above shows the remarkable disagreement between scholars
even with regard to the _external_ character of the _Rig Veda_. What,
then, can any of the modern Sanskritists know about its _internal_ or
_esoteric_ meaning, beyond the correct inference of Barth, that this
Scripture _has been compiled by Initiates_?
The whole of the present work is an endeavour to prove this truth. The
ancient Adepts have solved the great problems of Science, however
unwilling modern Materialism may be to admit the fact. The mysteries of
Life and Death _were_ fathomed by the great master‐minds of antiquity; and
if they have preserved them in secresy and silence, it is because these
problems formed part of the Sacred Mysteries, which must have remained
incomprehensible to the vast majority of men then, as they do now. If such
teachings are still regarded as chimeras by our opponents in Philosophy,
it may be a consolation to Theosophists to learn, on good proof, that the
speculations of modern Psychologists—whether serious Idealists, like Mr.
Herbert Spencer, or wool‐gathering Pseudo‐idealists—are far more
chimerical. Indeed, instead of resting on the firm foundation of facts in
Nature, they are the unhealthy will‐o’‐the‐wisps of materialistic
imagination, of the brains that evolved them—and no more. While they deny,
we affirm; and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the Sages of
antiquity. Believing in Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for
good reasons, we say, _Certus sum, scio quod credidi_; to which our
critics reply, _Credat Judæus Apella_. Neither is converted by the other,
nor does such result affect even our little planet. _E pur se muove!_
Nor is there any need of proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero:
Time destroys the speculations of man, but it confirms the
judgment of nature.
Let us bide our time. Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to
witness in silence the destruction of one’s Gods, whether they be true or
false. And as Theology and Materialism have combined together to destroy
the old Gods of antiquity and seek to disfigure every old philosophical
conception, it is but just that the lovers of the Old Wisdom should defend
their position, by proving that the whole arsenal of the two is, at best,
formed of new weapons made out of very old material.