His Origin In Ancient India.
In our modern day there is not the slightest doubt in the minds of the
best European symbologists that the name Prometheus possessed the greatest
and most mysterious significance in antiquity. While giving the history of
Deucalion, whom the Bœotians regarded as the ancestor of the human races,
and who was the son of Prometheus, according to the significant legend,
the author of the _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_ remarks:
Thus Prometheus is something more than the archetype of humanity;
he is its _generator_. In the same way that we saw Hephæstus
moulding the first woman [Pandora] and endowing her with life, so
Prometheus kneads the moist clay, of which he fashions the body of
the first man whom he will endow with the soul‐spark.(1193) After
the flood of Deucalion, Zeus, they said, had commanded Prometheus
and Athena to call forth a new race of men from the mire left by
the waters of the deluge,(1194) and, in the day of Pausanias, the
slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in
Phocis.(1195) On several archaic monuments we still see Prometheus
modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena’s help.(1196)
The same author reminds us of another equally mysterious personage, though
one less generally known than Prometheus, whose legend offers remarkable
analogies with that of the Titan. The name of this second ancestor and
generator is Phoroneus, the hero of an ancient poem, now unfortunately no
longer extant, the Phoroneidæ. His legend was localized in Argolis, where
a perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as a reminder that he was the
bringer of fire upon earth.(1197) A benefactor of men, like Prometheus, he
had made them participators of every bliss on earth. Plato(1198) and
Clemens Alexandrinus(1199) say that Phoroneus was the first man, or the
“father of mortals.” His genealogy, which assigns to him the river Inachos
as his father, reminds us of that of Prometheus, which makes that Titan
the son of the Oceanid Clymene. But the mother of Phoroneus was the nymph
Melia: a significant descent which distinguishes him from
Prometheus.(1200)
Melia, Decharme thinks, is the personification of the “Ash‐tree,” whence,
according to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze,(1201) and which
with the Greeks is the _celestial tree_ common to every Âryan mythology.
This Ash is the Yggdrasil of Norse antiquity, which the Norns sprinkle
daily with the waters from the fountain of Urd, that it may not wither. It
remains verdant till the last days of the Golden Age. Then the Norns—the
three sisters who gaze respectively into the Past, the Present, and the
Future—make known the decree of Orlog or Fate (Karma), but men are
conscious only of the Present.
[But when] Gultweig (gold‐ore) comes, the bewitching enchantress
... who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each time more
beautiful than before and fills the souls of gods and men with
unappeasable longing, then the Norns ... enter into being, and the
blessed peace of childhood’s dreams passes away, and sin comes
into existence with all its evil consequences [and Karma].(1202)
The thrice‐purified Gold is—Manas, the Conscious Soul.
With the Greeks, the Ash‐tree represented the same idea. Its luxuriant
boughs are the Sidereal Heaven, golden by day and studded with stars by
night—the fruits of Melia and Yggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow
humanity lived during the Golden Age without desire as without fear. “That
tree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, _which was lightning_”—Decharme
guesses.
And here steps in the killing Materialism of the age, that peculiar twist
in the modern mind, which, like a Northern blast, bends all on its way,
and freezes every intuition, allowing it no hand in the physical
speculations of the day. After having seen in Prometheus no more than
“fire by friction,” the learned author of the _Mythologie de la Grèce
Antique_ perceives in this “fruit” a trifle more than an allusion to
terrestrial fire and its discovery. It is no longer fire, owing to the
fall of lightning setting some dry fuel in a blaze, and thus revealing all
its priceless benefits to palæolithic men—but something more mysterious
this time, though still as earthly!
A divine bird, nestled in the branches [of the celestial Ash‐
tree], stole that bough [or the fruit] and carried it down on the
earth in its bill. Now the Greek word Φορώνευς is the rigid
equivalent of the Sanskrit word _bhuranyu_, “the rapid,” an
epithet of Agni, considered as the carrier of the divine spark.
Phoroneus, son of Melia or of the celestial ash, thus corresponds
to a conception far more ancient, probably, than that one which
transformed the _pramantha_ [of the old Âryan Hindûs] into the
Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the [personified] bird, that brings
the heavenly lightning to the earth. Traditions relating to the
birth of the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the
father of the Argolians, are an evidence to us that this
thunderbolt [or lightning], as in the legend of Hephæstus or
Prometheus, was the origin of the human race.(1203)
This still affords us no more than the external meaning of the symbols and
the allegory. It is now supposed that the name of Prometheus has been
unriddled. But the modern Mythologists and Orientalists see in it no
longer what their fathers saw on the authority of the whole of classical
antiquity. They only find therein something far more appropriate to the
spirit of the age, namely, a phallic element. But the name of Phoroneus,
as well as that of Prometheus, bears not one, nor even two, but a series
of esoteric meanings. Both relate to the _seven_ Celestial Fires; to Agni
Abhimânin, his three sons, and their forty‐five sons, constituting the
Forty‐nine Fires. Do all these numbers relate only to the terrestrial mode
of fire and to the flame of sexual passion? Did the Hindû Âryan mind never
soar above such purely sensual conceptions; that mind which is declared by
Prof. Max Müller to be the most spiritual and mystically inclined on the
whole globe? The number of those fires alone ought to have suggested an
inkling of the truth.
We are told that one is no longer permitted, in this age of rational
thought, to explain the name of Pro‐metheus as the old Greeks did. The
latter, it seems:
Basing themselves on the apparent analogy of προμηθεύς with the
verb προμανθύνειν, saw in him the type of the “foreseeing” man, to
whom, for the sake of symmetry, a brother was added—Epi‐metheus,
or “he who takes counsel _after_ the event.”(1204)
But now the Orientalists have decided otherwise. They know the real
meaning of the two names better than those who invented them. The legend
is based upon an event of universal importance. It was built to
commemorate
A great event which must have strongly impressed itself upon the
imagination of the first witnesses, and its remembrance has never
since faded out from popular memory.(1205)
What was this? Laying aside every poetical _fiction_, all those dreams of
the Golden Age, let us imagine—argue the modern scholars—in all its gross
realism, the first miserable state of humanity, the striking picture of
which was traced for us after Æschylus by Lucretius, and the exact truth
of which is now confirmed by Science; and then we may understand better
that a new life really began for man, on that day when he saw the first
spark produced by the friction of two pieces of wood, or from the veins of
a flint. How could men help feeling gratitude to that mysterious and
marvellous being which they were henceforth enabled to create at their
will, and which was no sooner born, than it grew and expanded, developing
with singular power.
This terrestrial flame, was it not analogous in nature to that
which sent them from above its light and heat, or which frightened
them in the thunderbolt? Was it not derived from the same source?
And if its origin was in heaven, must it not have been brought
down some day on earth? If so, who was the powerful being, the
beneficent being, God or man, who had conquered it? Such are the
questions which the curiosity of the Âryans offered in the early
days of their existence, and which found their answer in the myth
of Prometheus.(1206)
The Philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the above
reflections, and proceeds to point them out. The miserable state of
Humanity described by Æschylus and Lucretius was no more wretched then, in
the early days of the Âryans, than it is now. That “state” was limited to
the savage tribes; and the now‐existing savages are not a whit more happy
or unhappy than their forefathers were a million years ago.
It is an accepted fact in Science that “rude implements, exactly
resembling those in use _among existing savages_,” are found in river‐
gravels and caves, geologically “implying an enormous antiquity.” So great
is that resemblance that, as the author of _The Modern Zoroastrian_ tells
us:
If the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of stone celts and
arrow‐heads used by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed side
by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects from
Kent’s Cavern or the Caves of Dordogne, no one but an expert could
distinguish between them.(1207)
And if there are Bushmen existing now, in our age of the highest
civilization, who are no higher intellectually than the race of men which
inhabited Devonshire and Southern France during the Palæolithic age, why
could not the latter have lived simultaneously with, and have been the
contemporary of, other races as highly civilized for their day as we are
for ours? That the sum of knowledge increases daily in mankind, “but that
intellectual capacity does not increase with it,” is shown when the
intellect, if not the physical knowledge, of the Euclids, Pythagorases,
Pâninis, Kapilas, Platos, and Socrates, is compared with that of the
Newtons, Kants, and the modern Huxleys and Hæckels. On comparing the
results obtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Craniologist,(1208) with
regard to the internal capacity of the skull—its volume being taken as the
standard and test for judging of the intellectual capacities—Dr. Pfaff
finds that this capacity among the French (certainly in the highest rank
of mankind) is 88.4 cubic inches, being thus “perceptibly smaller than
that of the Polynesians generally, which, even among many Papuans and
Alfuras of the lowest grade, amounts to 89 and 89.7 cubic inches”; which
shows that it is the _quality_ and not the _quantity_ of the brain that is
the cause of intellectual capacity. The average index of skulls among
various races having been now recognized to be “one of the most
characteristic marks of difference between different races,” the following
comparison is suggestive:
The index of breadth among the Scandinavians [is] at 75; among the
English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77; in Bresgau at 80;
Schiller’s skull shows an index of breadth even of 82 ... the
Madurese also 82!
Finally, the same comparison between the oldest skulls known and the
European, brings to light the startling fact that:
_Most of these old skulls, belonging to the stone period, are
above rather than below the average of the brain of the now living
man in volume._
Calculating the measures for the height, breadth, and length in inches
from the average measurements of several skulls, the following sums are
obtained:
1. Old Northern skulls of the stone age: 18.877 ins.
2. Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England: 18.858 ins.
3. Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales: 18.649 ins.
4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France: 18.220 ins.
The average of the now living Europeans is 18.579 inches; of Hottentots,
17.795 inches!
These figures show plainly that:
The size of the brain of the oldest populations known to us is not
such as to place them on a lower level than that of the now living
inhabitants of the Earth.(1209)
Besides which, they show the “missing link” vanishing into thin air. Of
these, however, more anon: we must return to our direct subject.
As the “Prometheus Vinctus” of Æschylus tells us, the race which Jupiter
so ardently desired “to quench, and plant a new one in its stead” (v.
241), suffered _mental_, not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus
gave to mortals, as he tells the Chorus, was to hinder them “from
_foreseeing_ death” (v. 256); he “saved the mortal race from sinking
blasted down to Hades’ gloom” (v. 244); and then only, “besides” that, he
gave them fire (v. 260). This shows plainly the dual character at any rate
of the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of
the _seven keys_ taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of
man’s spiritual perceptions, not to his first seeing or “discovering”
fire. For fire was never _discovered_, but existed on Earth since its
beginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic
eruptions being as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in
England now. And if we are told that men appeared so late on Earth that
all but a few volcanoes were already extinct, and that geological
disturbances had made room for a more settled state of things, we answer:
Let a new race of men—whether evolved from Angel or Gorilla—appear now on
any uninhabited spot of the Globe, with the exception perhaps of the
Sahara, and a thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before
“discovering fire,” through lightning setting the grass or something else
in flames. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages on Earth before
he was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical
of all. But old Æschylus was an Initiate, and knew well what he was giving
out.(1210)
No Occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us
from the East, will for a moment deny that the myth of Prometheus has
reached Europe from Âryâvarta. Nor is he likely to deny that in one sense
Prometheus represents “fire by friction.” Therefore, he admires the
sagacity of M. F. Baudry, who shows in “Les Mythes du Feu et du Breuvage
Céleste”(1211) one of the aspects of Prometheus and his origin from India.
He shows the reader the _supposed_ primitive process to obtain fire, still
in use to‐day in India to light the sacrificial flame. This is what he
says:
This process, such as it is minutely described in the Vedic
Sûtras, consists in rapidly turning a stick in a socket made in
the centre of a piece of wood. The friction develops intense heat
and ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact. The
motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series of
motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the stick
in its middle; the operator holds one of the ends in each hand and
pulls them alternately.... The full process is designated in
Sanskrit by the verb _manthâmi, mathnáni_, which means “to rub,
agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing,” and is especially applied
to rotatory friction, as is proved by its derivative _mandala_,
which signifies a circle.... The pieces of wood serving for the
production of fire have each their name in Sanskrit. The stick
which turns is called _pramantha_; the discus which receives it is
called _arani_ and _aranî_: “the two aranis” designating the
_ensemble_ of the instrument.(1212)
It remains to be seen what the Brâhmans will say to this. But even
supposing that Prometheus, in one of the aspects of his myth, was
conceived as the producer of fire by means of the Pramantha, or as an
animate and divine Pramantha, would this imply that the symbolism had no
other than the phallic meaning attributed to it by modern symbologists?
Decharme, at any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering of the truth;
for he unconsciously corroborates all that the Occult Sciences teach with
regard to the Mânasa Devas, who have endowed man with the consciousness of
his immortal soul—that consciousness which hinders man “from foreseeing
death,” and makes him _know_ he is immortal.(1213) “How did Prometheus
come into possession of the [divine] spark?” he asks.
Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there he must have gone to
find it before he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the
gods, he must have been a god himself.(1214)
The Greeks held that he was of the _Divine_ Race, “the son of the Titan
Iapetos”;(1215) the Hindûs, that he was a Deva.
But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the gods alone; it
was a treasure they reserved for themselves ... over which they
jealously watched.... “The prudent son of Iapetus,” says Hesiod,
“deceived Jupiter by stealing and concealing in the cavity of a
narthex, the indefatigable fire of the resplendent glow.”(1216)
... Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men was a conquest made
from heaven. Now according to Greek ideas [in this identical with
those of the Occultists], this possession forced from Jupiter,
this human trespassing upon the property of the gods, had to be
followed by an expiation.... Prometheus, moreover, belongs to that
race of Titans who had rebelled(1217) against the gods, and whom
the master of Olympus had hurled down into Tartarus; like them, he
is the genius of evil, doomed to cruel suffering.(1218)
What is most revolting in the explanations that follow, is the one‐sided
view taken of this grandest of all myths. The most intuitional among
modern writers cannot, or will not, rise in their conceptions above the
level of the Earth and cosmic phenomena. It is not denied that the moral
idea in the myth, as presented in the _Theogony_ of Hesiod, plays a
certain part in the primitive Greek conception. The Titan is more than a
thief of the celestial fire. He is the representation of humanity—active,
industrious, intelligent, but at the same time ambitious, which aims at
equalling divine powers. Therefore it is humanity punished in the person
of Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks. With them, Prometheus is
not a criminal, save in the eyes of the Gods. In his relation with the
Earth, he is, on the contrary, a God himself, a friend of mankind
(φιλάνθρωπος), which he has raised to civilization and initiated into the
knowledge of all the arts; a conception which found its most poetical
expounder in Æschylus. But with all other nations Prometheus is—what? The
Fallen Angel, Satan, as the Church would have it? Not at all. _He is
simply the image of the pernicious and dreaded effects of lightning._ He
is the “evil fire” (_mal feu_)(1219) _and the symbol of the divine
reproductive male organ_.
Reduced to its simple expression, the myth we are trying to
explain is then simply a [cosmic] genius of fire.(1220)
It is the former idea (the phallic) which was _preëminently_ Âryan, if we
believe Adalbert Kuhn(1221) and F. Baudry. For:
The fire used by man being the result of the action of _pramantha_
in the _arani_, the Âryas _must have_ ascribed [?] the same origin
to celestial fire, and they _must have_(1222) imagined [?] that a
god armed with the pramantha, or a divine pramantha, caused a
violent friction in the bosom of the clouds, which gave birth to
lightning and thunderbolts.(1223)
This idea is supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch’s
testimony,(1224) the Stoics thought that thunder was the result of
the struggle of storm‐clouds, and lightning a conflagration due to
friction; while Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt only the action
of clouds which clashed with each other. What was this theory, if
not the scientific translation of the production of fire by
friction?... Everything leads us to think that, from the highest
antiquity, and before the dispersion of the Âryas, it was believed
that the pramantha lighted the fire in the storm‐cloud as well as
in the aranis.(1225)
Thus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered
truths. Defenders of the biblical dead‐letter could not help the writers
of missionary tracts more effectually than do materialistic Symbologists
in thus taking for granted that the ancient Âryans based their religious
conceptions on no higher thought than the physiological.
But it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic Philosophy is against such
an interpretation. For if, as Decharme himself confesses:
This idea of the creative power of fire is explained ... by the
ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial spark(1226)
—as shown by the imagery often made use of in the _Vedas_ when speaking of
Arani, it would mean something higher than simply a gross sexual
conception. A Hymn to Agni in the _Veda_ is cited as an example:
Here is the pramantha; the generator is ready. Bring the mistress
of the race (the female aranî). Let us produce Agni by attrition,
according to ancient custom.
This means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongue of
mortals. The female Aranî, the “mistress of the race,” is Aditi, the
Mother of the Gods, or Shekinah, Eternal Light—in the World of Spirit, the
“Great Deep” and Chaos; or Primordial Substance in its first remove from
the Unknown, in the Manifested Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is
applied to Devakî, the Mother of Krishna, or the incarnated Logos; and if
the symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric
religions, may now be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no
way mars the original purity of the image. The subjective had been
transformed into the objective; Spirit had fallen into Matter. The
universal kosmic polarity of Spirit‐Substance had become, in human
thought, the mystic, but still sexual, union of Spirit and Matter, and had
thus acquired an anthropomorphic colouring which it had never had in the
beginning. Between the _Vedas_ and the _Purânas_ there is an abyss of
which they are the poles, like as are the seventh principle, the Âtmâ, and
the first or lowest principle, the Physical Body, in the septenary
constitution of Man. The primitive and purely spiritual language of the
_Vedas_, conceived many decades of millenniums earlier than the Paurânic
accounts, found a purely human expression for the purpose of describing
events which took place 5,000 years ago, the date of Krishna’s death, from
which day the Kali Yuga, or Black Age, began for mankind.
As Aditi is called Surârani, the Matrix or “Mother” of the Suras or Gods,
so Kuntî, the mother of the Pândavas, is called in the _Mahâbhârata_
Pândavârani(1227)—and the term is now _physiologized_. But Devakî, the
antetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form
of Aditi. The latter is the Goddess‐mother, or Deva‐mâtri, of seven Sons
(the six and the seven Âdityas of early Vedic times); the mother of
Krishna, Devakî, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagad‐dhâtri,
the “Nurse of the World,” the seventh, Krishna, the Logos, being
transferred to that of Rohinî. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of
seven children, of five sons and two daughters (a later transformation of
sex), in Matthew’s Gospel.(1228) No one of the worshippers of the Roman
Catholic Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer
addressed by the Gods to Devakî. Let the reader judge.
Thou art that Prakriti [essence], infinite and subtile, which
formerly bore Brahmâ in its womb.... Thou, eternal being,
comprising, in thy substance, the essence of all created things,
wast identical with creation; thou wast the parent of the tri‐form
sacrifice, becoming the germ of all things. Thou art sacrifice,
whence all fruit proceeds; thou art the Aranî, whose attrition
engenders fire.(1229) As Aditi, thou art the parent of the
gods.... Thou art light [Jyotsnâ, the morning twilight],(1230)
whence day is begotten. Thou art humility [Samnati, a daughter of
Daksha], the mother of wisdom; thou art Niti, the parent of
harmony (Naya);(1231) thou art modesty, the progenitrix of
affection [Prashraya, explained by Vinaya]; thou art desire, of
whom love is born.... Thou art ... the mother of knowledge
[Avabodha]; thou art patience [Dhriti], the parent of fortitude
[Dhairya].(1232)
Thus Aranî is shown here to be the same as the Roman Catholic “Vase of
Election.” As to its primitive meaning, it was purely metaphysical. No
unclean thought traversed these conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in
the _Zohar_—far less metaphysical in its symbology than any other
symbolism—the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the
_Zohar_ says:
All that which exists, all that which has been formed by the
ancient, whose name is holy, can only exist through a male and
female principle.(1233)
It means no more than that the divine Spirit of Life is ever coalescing
with Matter. It is the Will of the Deity that acts; and the idea is purely
Schopenhauerian.
When Atteekah Kaddosha, the ancient and the concealed of the
concealed, desired to form all things, it formed all things like
male and female. This wisdom comprises _all_ when it goeth forth.
Hence Chokmah (male Wisdom) and Binah (female Consciousness or Intellect)
are said to create all between the two—the active and the passive
principles. As the eye of the expert jeweller discerns under the rough and
uncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate pearl, enshrined within its
bosom, his hand touching the shell but to get at its contents, so the eye
of the true Philosopher reads between the lines of the _Purânas_ the
sublime Vedic truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedântic
Wisdom. Our Orientalists, however, never perceive the pearl under the
thick coating of the shell and—act accordingly.
From all that has been said in this Section, one sees clearly that,
between the Serpent of Eden and the Devil of Christianity, there is an
abyss. Alone the sledge hammer of Ancient Philosophy can kill this dogma.