CHAPTER VI.

“The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of

To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both

_are_.”--_Sartor Resartus_: Natural Supernaturalism.

“May we not then be permitted to examine the authenticity

of the Bible? which since the second century has been put

forth as the criterion of scientific truth? To maintain

itself in a position so exalted, it must challenge human

criticism.”--_Conflict between Religion and Science._

“One kiss of Nara upon the lips of Nari and all Nature

wakes.”--VINA SNATI (A Hindu Poet).

We must not forget that the Christian Church owes its present

canonical _Gospels_, and hence its whole religious dogmatism, to

the _Sortes Sanctorum_. Unable to agree as to which were the most

divinely-inspired of the numerous gospels extant in its time, the

mysterious Council of Nicea concluded to leave the decision of the

puzzling question to miraculous intervention. This Nicean Council

may well be called mysterious. There was a mystery, first, in the

mystical number of its 318 bishops, on which Barnabas (viii. 11,

12, 13) lays such a stress; added to this, there is no agreement

among ancient writers as to the time and place of its assembly,

nor even as to the bishop who presided. Notwithstanding the

grandiloquent eulogium of Constantine,[524] Sabinus, the Bishop

of Heraclea, affirms that “except Constantine, the emperor, and

Eusebius Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of _illiterate,

simple_ creatures, that understood nothing;” which is equivalent

to saying that they were a set of fools. Such was apparently the

opinion entertained of them by Pappus, who tells us of the bit of

magic resorted to to decide which were the _true_ gospels. In his

_Synodicon_ to that Council Pappus says, having “promiscuously put

all the books that were referred to the Council for determination

under a communion-table in a church, they (the bishops) besought the

Lord that the _inspired_ writings might get upon the table, while the

spurious ones remained underneath, and _it happened accordingly_.”

But we are not told who kept the keys of the council chamber over

night!

On the authority of ecclesiastical eye-witnesses, therefore, we

are at liberty to say that the Christian world owes its “Word of

God” to a method of divination, for resorting to which the Church

subsequently condemned unfortunate victims as conjurers, enchanters,

magicians, witches, and vaticinators, and burnt them by thousands!

In treating of this truly divine phenomenon of the self-sorting

manuscripts, the Fathers of the Church say that God himself presides

over the _Sortes_. As we have shown elsewhere, Augustine confesses

that he himself used this sort of divination. But opinions, like

revealed religions, are liable to change. That which for nearly

fifteen hundred years was imposed on Christendom as a book, of which

every word was written under the direct supervision of the Holy

Ghost; of which not a syllable, nor a comma could be changed without

sacrilege, is now being retranslated, revised, corrected, and clipped

of whole verses, in some cases of entire chapters. And yet, as soon

as the new edition is out, its doctors would have us accept it as

a new “Revelation” of the nineteenth century, with the alternative

of being held as an infidel. Thus, we see that, no more _within_

than _without_ its precincts, is the infallible Church to be trusted

more than would be reasonably convenient. The forefathers of our

modern divines found authority for the _Sortes_ in the verse where

it is said: “The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing

thereof is of the Lord;”[525] and now, their direct heirs hold

that “the whole disposing thereof is of the Devil.” Perhaps, they

are unconsciously beginning to endorse the doctrine of the Syrian

Bardesanes, that the actions of God, as well as of man, _are subject

to necessity_?

It was no doubt, also, according to strict “necessity” that the

Neo-platonists were so summarily dealt with by the Christian mob. In

those days, the doctrines of the Hindu naturalists and antediluvian

Pyrrhonists were forgotten, if they ever had been known at all,

to any but a few philosophers; and Mr. Darwin, with his modern

_discoveries_, had not even been mentioned in the prophecies. In

this case the law of the survival of the fittest was reversed; the

_Neo-platonists were doomed to destruction from the day when they

openly sided with Aristotle_.

At the beginning of the fourth century crowds began gathering at

the door of the academy where the learned and unfortunate Hypatia

expounded the doctrines of the divine Plato and Plotinus, and thereby

impeded the progress of Christian proselytism. She too successfully

dispelled the mist hanging over the religious “mysteries” invented by

the Fathers, not to be considered dangerous. This alone would have

been sufficient to imperil both herself and her followers. It was

precisely the teachings of this Pagan philosopher, which had been so

freely borrowed by the Christians to give a finishing touch to their

otherwise incomprehensible scheme, that had seduced so many into

joining the new religion; and now the Platonic light began shining

so inconveniently bright upon the pious patchwork, as to allow every

one to see whence the “revealed” doctrines were derived. But there

was a still greater peril. Hypatia had studied under Plutarch, the

head of the Athenian school, and had learned all the secrets of

theurgy. While she lived to instruct the multitude, no _divine_

miracles could be produced before one who could divulge the natural

causes by which they took place. Her doom was sealed by Cyril, whose

eloquence she eclipsed, and whose authority, built on degrading

superstitions, had to yield before hers, which was erected on the

rock of immutable natural law. It is more than curious that Cave, the

author of the _Lives of the Fathers_, should find it incredible that

Cyril sanctioned her murder on account of his “general character.” A

saint who will sell the gold and silver vessels of his church, and

then, after spending the money, lie at his trial, as he did, may

well be suspected of anything. Besides, in this case, the Church

had to fight for her life, to say nothing of her future supremacy.

Alone, the hated and erudite Pagan scholars, and the no less learned

Gnostics, held in their doctrines the hitherto concealed wires of all

these theological marionettes. Once the curtain should be lifted,

the connection between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions

would be exposed; and then, what would have become of the Mysteries

into which it is sin and blasphemy to pry? With such a coincidence

of the astronomical allegories of various Pagan myths with the

dates adopted by Christianity for the nativity, crucifixion, and

resurrection, and such an identity of rites and ceremonies, what

would have been the fate of the new religion, had not the Church,

under the pretext of serving Christ, got rid of the too-well-informed

philosophers? To guess what, if the _coup d’état_ had then failed,

might have been the prevailing religion in our own century would

indeed, be a hard task. But, in all probability, the state of things

which made of the middle ages a period of intellectual darkness,

which degraded the nations of the Occident, and lowered the European

of those days almost to the level of a Papuan savage--could not have

occurred.

The fears of the Christians were but too well founded, and their

pious zeal and prophetic insight was rewarded from the very first.

In the demolition of the Serapeum, after the bloody riot between

the Christian mob and the Pagan worshippers had ended with the

interference of the emperor, a Latin cross, of a perfect Christian

shape, was discovered hewn upon the granite slabs of the adytum.

This was a lucky discovery, indeed; and the monks did not fail to

claim that the cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a “spirit

of prophecy.” At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph, records

the fact.[526] But, archæology and symbolism, those tireless and

implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the

hieroglyphics of the legend running around the design, at least a

partial interpretation of its meaning.

According to King and other numismatists and archæologists, the

cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life. Such a Tau, or

Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries.

Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of

the initiate, after his “new birth” was accomplished, and the Mystæ

had returned from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign

that his spiritual birth had regenerated and united his astral soul

with his divine spirit, and that he was ready to ascend in spirit

to the blessed abodes of light and glory--the Eleusinia. The Tau

was a magic talisman at the same time as a religious emblem. It

was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics and kabalists,

who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify, and who had

the Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin cross

from the Buddhist missionaries, who brought it from India, where it

can be found until now, two or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians,

Egyptians, ancient Americans, Hindus, and Romans had it in various,

but very slight modifications of shape. Till very late in the

mediæval ages, it was considered a potent spell against epilepsy and

demoniacal possession; and the “signet of the living God,” brought

down in St. John’s vision by the angel ascending from the east to

“seal the servants of our God in their foreheads,” was but the same

mystic Tau--the Egyptian cross. In the painted glass of St. Dionysus

(France), this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the

forehead of the elect; the legend reads, SIGNVM ΤΑΥ. In King’s

_Gnostics_, the author reminds us that “this mark is commonly born

by St. Anthony, an _Egyptian_ recluse.”[527] What the real meaning

of the Tau was, is explained to us by the Christian St. John, the

Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but too evident

that, with the apostle, at least, it meant the “Ineffable Name,” as

he calls this “signet of the living God,” a few chapters further

on,[528] the “_Father’s name written in their foreheads_.”

The Brahmâtma, the chief of the Hindu initiates, had on his head-gear

two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed

cross-like; and, in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia,

the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally containing the

staircase which leads to the inner daghôba,[529] and the porticos

of some _Prachida_[530] are ornamented with a cross formed of two

fishes, and as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists. We

should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the

tombs in the Catacombs, at Rome, the “Vesica piscis,” was derived

from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must have been

that geometrical figure in the world-symbols, may be inferred from

the fact that there is a Masonic tradition that Solomon’s temple

was built on three foundations, forming the “triple Tau,” or three

crosses.

In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as

an emblem, to the realization by the earliest philosophy of an

androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature, which proceeds

from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while

the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law

prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated.[531] The crucifix was

an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans as it was

unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the “Tree of Infamy.” It

is but later that it was adopted as a Christian symbol; but, during

the first two decades, the apostles looked upon it with horror.[532]

It is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when

speaking of the “signet of the living God,” but the _mystic_ Tau--the

Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the most ancient kabalistic

talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the

Holy Word.

The famous Lady Ellenborough, known among the Arabs of Damascus, and

in the desert, after her last marriage, as _Hanoum Medjouyé_, had a

talisman in her possession, presented to her by a Druze from Mount

Lebanon. It was recognized by a certain sign on its left corner,

to belong to that class of gems which is known in Palestine as a

“_Messianic_” amulet, of the second or third century, B.C. It is a

green stone of a pentagonal form; at the bottom is engraved a fish;

higher, Solomon’s seal;[533] and still higher, the four Chaldaic

letters----Jod, He, Vau, He, IAHO, which form the name of the Deity.

These are arranged in quite an unusual way, running from below

upward, in reversed order, and forming the Egyptian Tau. Around these

there is a legend which, as the gem is not our property, we are not

at liberty to give. The Tau, in its mystical sense, as well as the

_crux ansata_, is the _Tree of Life_.

[Illustration]

It is well known, that the earliest Christian emblems--before it was

ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus--were

the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and _the Fish_. The origin of the

latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archæologists, thus becomes

comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily-ascertained

fact that, while in the _Kabala_, the King Messiah is called

“Interpreter,” or Revealer of the mystery, and shown to be the

_fifth_ emanation, in the _Talmud_--for reasons we will now

explain--the Messiah is very often designated as “DAG,” or the

Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates--as the

very name indicates--to the Babylonian Dagon, the man-fish, who was

the instructor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared.

Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his

(Messiah’s) coming “is the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the

sign _Pisces_.”[534] Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon

identifying their Christos with the Messiah of the _Old Testament_,

they adopted it so readily as to forget that its true origin might

be traced still farther back than the Babylonian Dagon. How eagerly

and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians,

with every imaginable kabalistic and Pagan tenet, may be inferred

from the language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his brother

co-religionists.

When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate

symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the following

words: “Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either _a

dove_, or _a ship running before the wind_ (the Argha), or _a fish_.”

Was the good father, when writing this sentence, laboring under the

recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called _Jesus_ in the Greek and

Slavonian versions); or had he forgotten the real interpretation of

these Pagan symbols? Joshua, son of Nun, or Nave (_Navis_), could

have with perfect propriety adopted the image of a _ship_, or even

of a fish, for Joshua means Jesus, son of the fish-god; but it was

really too hazardous to connect the emblems of Venus, Astarte, and

all the Hindu goddesses--the _argha_, _dove_, and _fish_--with the

“immaculate” birth of their god! This looks very much as if in the

early days of Christianity but little difference was made between

Christ, Bacchus, Apollo, and the Hindu Christna, the incarnation of

Vishnu, with whose first avatar this symbol of the fish originated.

In the _Hari-purana_, in the _Bagaved-gitta_, as well as in several

other books, the god Vishnu is shown as having assumed the form of a

fish with a human head, in order to reclaim the _Vedas_ lost during

the deluge. Having enabled Visvamitra to escape with all his tribe

in the ark, Vishnu, pitying weak and ignorant humanity, remained

with them for some time. It was this god who taught them to build

houses, cultivate the land, and to thank the unknown Deity whom he

represented, by building temples and instituting a regular worship;

and, as he remained half-fish, half-man, all the time, at every

sunset he used to return to the ocean, wherein he passed the night.

“It is he,” says the sacred book, “who taught men, after the

diluvium, all that was necessary for their happiness.

“One day he plunged into the water and returned no more, for the

earth had covered itself again with vegetation, fruit, and cattle.

“But he had taught the Brahmas the secret of all things”

(_Hari-purana_).

So far, we see in this narrative the _double_ of the story given by

the Babylonian Berosus about Oannes, the fish-man, who is no other

than Vishnu--unless, indeed, we have to believe that it was Chaldea

which civilized India!

We say again, we desire to give nothing on our sole authority.

Therefore we cite Jacolliot, who, however criticised and contradicted

on other points, and however loose he may be in the matter of

chronology (though even in this he is nearer right than those

scientists who would have all Hindu books written since the Council

of Nicea), at least cannot be denied the reputation of a good

Sanscrit scholar. And he says, while analyzing the word _Oan_,

or Oannes, that _O_ in Sanscrit is an interjection expressing an

invocation, as O, Swayambhuva! O, God! etc; and _An_ is a radical,

signifying in Sanscrit a spirit, a being; and, we presume, what the

Greeks meant by the word _Dæmon_, a semi-god.

“What an extraordinary antiquity,” he remarks, “this fable of Vishnu,

disguised as a fish, gives to the sacred books of the Hindus;

especially in presence of the fact that the _Vedas_ and _Manu_ reckon

more _than twenty-five thousand years of existence_, as proved by the

most serious as the most authentic documents. Few peoples, says the

learned Halhed, have their annals more authentic or serious than the

Hindus.”[535]

We may, perhaps, throw additional light upon the puzzling question of

the fish-symbol by reminding the reader that according to _Genesis_

the first created of living beings, the first type of animal life,

was the fish. “And the Elohim said: ‘Let the waters bring forth

abundantly the moving creature that _hath life_’ ... and God created

great whales ... and the morning and the evening were the _fifth

day_.” Jonah is swallowed by a big fish, and is cast out again three

days later. This the Christians regard as a premonition of the three

days’ sepulture of Jesus which preceded his resurrection--though

the statement of the three days is as fanciful as much of the rest,

and adopted to fit the well-known threat to destroy the temple and

rebuild it again in _three_ days. Between his burial and alleged

resurrection there intervened but _one day_--the Jewish Sabbath--as

he was buried on Friday evening and rose to life at dawn on Sunday.

However, whatever other circumstance may be regarded as a prophecy,

the story of Jonah cannot be made to answer the purpose.

“Big Fish” is Cetus, the latinized form of Keto-κητω and keto is

Dagon, Poseidon, the female gender of it being Keton Atar-gatis--the

Syrian goddess, and Venus, of Askalon. The figure or bust of Der-Keto

or Astarte was generally represented on the prow of the ships. Jonah

(the Greek Iona, or _dove_ sacred to Venus) fled to Jaffa, where the

god Dagon, the man-fish, was worshipped, and dared not go to Níneveh,

_where the dove was revered_. Hence, some commentators believe that

when Jonah was thrown overboard and was swallowed by a fish, we

must understand that he was picked up by one of these vessels, on

the prow of which was the figure of _Keto_. But the kabalists have

another legend, to this effect: They say that Jonah was a run-away

priest from the temple of the goddess where the dove was worshipped,

and desired to abolish idolatry and institute monotheistic worship.

That, caught near Jaffa, he was held prisoner by the devotees of

Dagon in one of the prison-cells of the temple, and that it is the

strange form of the cell which gave rise to the allegory. In the

collection of Mose de Garcia, a Portuguese kabalist, there is a

drawing representing the interior of the temple of Dagon. In the

middle stands an immense idol, the upper portion of whose body is

human, and the lower fish-like. Between the belly and the tail is an

aperture which can be closed like the door of a closet. In it the

transgressors against the local deity were shut up until further

disposal. The drawing in question was made from an old tablet covered

with curious drawings and inscriptions in old Phœnician characters,

describing this Venetian _oubliette_ of biblical days. The tablet

itself was found in an excavation a few miles from Jaffa. Considering

the extraordinary tendency of Oriental nations for puns and

allegories, is it not barely possible that the “big fish” by which

Jonah was swallowed was simply the cell within the belly of Dagon?

It is significant that this double appellation of “Messiah” and

“Dag” (fish), of the Talmudists, should so well apply to the Hindu

Vishnu, the “Preserving” Spirit, and the second personage of the

Brahmanic trinity. This deity, having already manifested itself, is

still regarded as the future Saviour of humanity, and is the selected

Redeemer, who will appear at its tenth incarnation or _avatar_, like

the Messiah of the Jews, to lead the blessed onward, and restore to

them the primitive _Vedas_. At his first avatar, Vishnu is alleged

to have appeared to humanity, in form like a fish. In the temple of

Rama, there is a representation of this god which answers perfectly

to that of Dagon, as given by Berosus. He has the body of a man

issuing from the mouth of a fish, and holds in his hands the lost

_Veda_. Vishnu, moreover, is the water-god, in one sense, the Logos

of the Parabrahm, for as the three persons of the manifested god-head

constantly interchange their attributes, we see him in the same

temple represented as reclining on the seven-headed serpent, Ananta

(eternity), and moving, like the _Spirit_ of God, on the face of the

primeval waters.

Vishnu is evidently the Adam Kadmon of the kabalists, for Adam is the

Logos or the first Anointed, as Adam Second is the King Messiah.

Lakmy, or Lakshmi, the passive or feminine counterpart of Vishnu,

the creator and the preserver, is also called Ada Maya. She is the

“Mother of the World,” Damatri, the Venus Aphrodite of the Greeks;

also Isis and Eve. While Venus is born from the sea-foam, Lakmy

springs out from the water at the churning of the sea; when born, she

is so beautiful that all the gods fall in love with her. The Jews,

borrowing their types wherever they could get them, made their first

woman after the pattern of Lakmy. It is curious that Viracocha, the

Supreme Being in Peru, means, literally translated, “foam of the sea.”

Eugene Burnouf, the great authority of the French school, announces

his opinion in the same spirit: “We must learn one day,” he observes,

“that all ancient traditions disfigured by emigration and legend,

belong to the history of India.” Such is the opinion of Colebrooke,

Inman, King, Jacolliot, and many other Orientalists.

We have said above, that, according to the secret computation

peculiar to the students of the hidden science, Messiah is the

fifth emanation, or potency. In the Jewish _Kabala_, where the ten

Sephiroth emanate from Adam Kadmon (placed below the crown), he comes

fifth. So in the Gnostic system; so in the Buddhistic, in which the

fifth Buddha--Maitree, will appear at his last advent to save mankind

before the final destruction of the world. If Vishnu is represented

in his forthcoming and last appearance as the _tenth_ avatar or

incarnation, it is only because every unit held as an androgyne

manifests itself doubly. The Buddhists who reject this dual-sexed

incarnation reckon but five. Thus, while Vishnu is to make his last

appearance in his tenth, Buddha is said to do the same in his fifth

incarnation.[536]

The better to illustrate the idea, and show how completely the real

meaning of the avatars, known only to the students of the secret

doctrine was misunderstood by the ignorant masses, we elsewhere

give the diagrams of the Hindu and Chaldeo-Kabalistic avatars and

emanations.[537] This basic and true fundamental stone of the

secret cycles, shows on its very face, that far from taking their

revealed _Vedas_ and _Bible_ literally, the Brahman-pundits, and

the Tanaïm--the scientists and philosophers of the pre-Christian

epochs--speculated on the creation and development of the world quite

in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in the

natural selection of species, gradual development, and transformation.

We advise every one tempted to enter an indignant protest against

this affirmation to read more carefully the books of Manu, even in

the incomplete translation of Sir William Jones, and the more or less

careless one of Jacolliot. If we compare the Sanchoniathon Phœnician

Cosmogony, and the record of Berosus with the _Bhagavatta_ and

_Manu_, we will find enunciated exactly the same principles as those

now offered as the latest developments of modern science. We have

quoted from the Chaldean and Phœnician records in our first volume;

we will now glance at the Hindu books.

“When this world had issued out of darkness, the subtile elementary

principles produced the vegetal seed which animated first the plants;

from the plants, life passed into fastastical bodies which were born

_in the ilus of the waters_; then, through a series of forms and

various animals, it reached MAN.”[538]

“He (man, before becoming such) will pass successively through

plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, cattle, and wild

animals; such is the inferior degree.”

“Such, from Brahma down to the vegetables, are declared the

transmigrations which take place in this world.”[539]

In the Sanchoniathonian Cosmogony, men are also evolved out of the

ilus of the chaos,[540] and the same evolution and transformation of

species are shown.

And now we will leave the rostrum to Mr. Darwin: “I believe

that animals have descended from at most only four or five

progenitors.”[541]

Again: “I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic

beings which have ever lived on this earth, have descended from

some one primordial form.[542]... I view all beings, not as special

creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which

lived long _before the first bed of the Silurian system was

deposited_.”[543]

In short, they lived in the Sanchoniathonian chaos, and in the _ilus_

of Manu. Vyasa and Kapila go still farther than Darwin and Manu.

“They see in Brahma but the name of the universal germ; _they deny

the existence of a First Cause_; and pretend that everything in

nature found itself developed only in consequence of material and

fatal forces,” says Jacolliot.[544]

Correct as may be this latter quotation from Kapila, it demands a

few words of explanation. Jacolliot repeatedly compares Kapila and

Veda Vyasa with Pyrrho and Littré. We have nothing against such a

comparison with the Greek philosopher, but we must decidedly object

to any with the French Comtist; we find it an unmerited fling at

the memory of the great Aryan sage. Nowhere does this prolific

writer state the repudiation by either ancient or modern Brahmans of

God--the “unknown,” universal Spirit; nor does any other Orientalist

accuse the Hindus of the same, however perverted the general

deductions of our savants about Buddhistic atheism. On the contrary,

Jacolliot states more than once that the learned Pundits and educated

Brahmans have never shared the popular superstitions; and affirms

their unshaken belief in the unity of God and the soul’s immortality,

although most assuredly neither Kapila, nor the initiated Brahmans,

nor the followers of the Vedanta school would ever admit the

existence of an anthropomorphic creator, a “First Cause” in the

Christian sense. Jacolliot, in his _Indo-European and African

Traditions_, is the first to make an onslaught on Professor Müller,

for remarking that the Hindu gods were “masks without actors ...

names without being, and not beings without names.”[545] Quoting, in

support of his argument, numerous verses from the sacred Hindu books,

he adds: “Is it possible to refuse to the author of these stanzas a

definite and clear conception of the divine force, of the Unique

Being, master and Sovereign of the Universe?... Were the altars then

built to a metaphor?”[546]

The latter argument is perfectly just, so far as Max Müller’s

negation is concerned. But we doubt whether the French rationalist

understands Kapila’s and Vyasa’s philosophy better than the German

philologist does the “theological twaddle,” as the latter terms the

_Atharva-Veda_. Professor Müller and Jacolliot may have ever so great

claims to erudition, and be ever so familiar with Sanscrit and other

ancient Oriental languages, but both lack the key to the thousand

and one mysteries of the old secret doctrine and its philosophy.

Only, while the German philologist does not even take the trouble to

look into this magical and “theological twaddle,” we find the French

Indianist never losing an opportunity to investigate. Moreover,

he honestly admits his incompetency to ever fathom this ocean of

mystical learning. In its existence he not only firmly believes, but

throughout his works he incessantly calls the attention of science

to its unmistakable traces at every step in India. Still, though the

learned Pundits and Brahmans--his “revered masters” of the pagodas

of Villenoor and Chélambrum in the Carnatic,[547] as it seems,

positively refused to reveal to him the mysteries of the magical part

of the _Agrouchada-Parikshaï_,[548] and of Brahmâtma’s triangle,[549]

he persists in the honest declaration that everything is possible in

Hindu metaphysics, even to the Kapila and Vyasa systems having been

hitherto misunderstood.

M. Jacolliot weakens his assertion immediately afterward with the

following contradiction:

“We were one day inquiring of a Brahman of the pagoda of Chélambrum,

who belonged to the _skeptical school of the naturalists of Vyasa_,

whether he believed in the existence of God. He answered us, smiling:

‘_Aham eva param Brahma_’--I am myself a god.

“‘What do you mean by that?’

“‘I mean that every being on earth, however humble, is an immortal

portion of the immortal matter.’”[550]

The answer is one which would suggest itself to every ancient

philosopher, Kabalist and Gnostic, of the early days. It contains the

very spirit of the delphic and kabalistic commandment, for esoteric

philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and

will be. If persons believing the _Bible_ verse which teaches that

the “Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed

into his nostrils the breath of life,” reject at the same time the

idea that every atom of this dust, as every particle of this “living

soul,” contains “God” within itself, then we pity the logic of that

Christian. He forgets the verses which precede the one in question.

God blesses equally every beast of the field and every living

creature, in the water as in the air, and He endows them all with

_life_, which is a breath of His own Spirit, and the _soul_ of the

animal. Humanity is the Adam Kadmon of the “Unknown,” His microcosm,

and His only representative on earth, and every man is a god on earth.

We would ask this French scholar, who seems so familiar with every

sloka of the books of Manu, and other Vedic writers, the meaning of

this sentence so well known to him:

“Plants and vegetation reveal a multitude of forms because of

their precedent actions; they are surrounded by darkness, but are

nevertheless endowed with an interior soul, and feel equally pleasure

and pain” (_Manu_, book i.).

If the Hindu philosophy teach the presence of a degree of _soul_ in

the lowest forms of vegetable life, and even in every atom in space,

how is it possible that it should deny the same immortal principle

to man? And if it once admit the immortal spirit in man, how can it

logically deny the existence of the parent source--I will not say the

first, but the eternal Cause? Neither rationalists nor sensualists,

who do not comprehend Indian metaphysics, should estimate the

ignorance of Hindu metaphysicians by their own.

The grand cycle, as we have heretofore remarked, includes the

progress of mankind from its germ in the primordial man of spiritual

form to the deepest depth of degradation he can reach--each

successive step in the descent being accompanied by a greater

strength and grossness of the physical form than its precursor--and

ends with the Flood. But while the grand cycle, or age, is running

its course, seven minor cycles are passed, each marking the evolution

of a new race out of the preceding one, on a new world. And each of

these races, or grand types of humanity, breaks up into subdivisions

of families, and they again into nations and tribes, as we see the

earth’s inhabitants subdivided to-day into Mongols, Caucasians,

Indians, etc.

Before proceeding to show by diagrams the close resemblance

between the esoteric philosophies of all the ancient peoples,

however geographically remote from each other, it will be useful

to briefly explain the real ideas which underlie all those symbols

and allegorical representations and have hitherto so puzzled the

uninitiated commentators. Better than anything, it may show that

religion and science were closer knit than twins in days of old;

that they were one in two and two in one from the very moment of

their conception. With mutually convertible attributes, science

was spiritual and religion was scientific. Like the androgyne man

of the first chapter of _Genesis_--“male and female,” passive and

active; created in the image of the Elohim. Omniscience developed

omnipotency, the latter called for the exercise of the former, and

thus the giant had dominion given him over all the four kingdoms of

the world. But, like the second Adam, these androgynes were doomed to

“fall and lose their powers” as soon as the two halves of the duality

separated. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge gives death without the

fruit of the Tree of Life. Man must know _himself_ before he can hope

to know the ultimate genesis even of beings and powers less developed

in their inner nature than himself. So with religion and science;

united two in one they were infallible, for the spiritual intuition

was there to supply the limitations of physical senses. Separated,

exact science rejects the help of the inner voice, while religion

becomes merely dogmatic theology--each is but a corpse without a

soul.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

The esoteric doctrine, then, teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism,

and even the persecuted _Kabala_, that the one infinite and unknown

Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious

successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology

of Manu these conditions are called the “day” and the “night” of

Brahma. The latter is either “awake” or “asleep.” The Svâbhâvikas, or

philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism (which still exists in

Nepaul), speculate but upon the active condition of this “Essence,”

which they call Svabhâvât, and deem it foolish to theorize upon the

abstract and “unknowable” power in its passive condition. Hence they

are called atheists by both Christian theology and modern scientists;

for neither of the two are able to understand the profound logic of

their philosophy. The former will allow of no other God than the

personified _secondary_ powers which have blindly worked out the

visible universe, and which became with them the anthropomorphic God

of the Christians--the Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning.

In its turn, rationalistic science greets the Buddhists and the

Svâbhâvikas as the “positivists” of the archaic ages. If we take a

one-sided view of the philosophy of the latter, our materialists

may be right in their own way. The Buddhists maintain that there

is _no_ Creator but an infinitude of _creative powers_, which

collectively form the one eternal substance, the _essence_ of which

is inscrutable--hence not a subject for speculation for any true

philosopher. Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery

of universal being, yet no one would ever have thought of charging

him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction.

Upon inaugurating an active period, says the _Secret Doctrine_, an

expansion of this Divine essence, _from within outwardly_, occurs

in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or

visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical

forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the

passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence

takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and

progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its

material dispersed; and “darkness,” solitary and alone, broods once

more over the face of the “deep.” To use a metaphor which will convey

the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the “unknown essence”

produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. _This

process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe

is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have

no end._

Thus we are enabled to build our theories solely on the visible

manifestations of the Deity, on its objective natural phenomena.

To apply to these creative principles the term God is puerile and

absurd. One might as well call by the name of Benvenuto Cellini the

fire which fuses the metal, or the air that cools it when it is run

in the mould. If the inner and ever-concealed spiritual, and to our

minds abstract, Essence within these forces can ever be connected

with the creation of the physical universe, it is but in the sense

given to it by Plato. IT may be termed, at best, the framer of the

abstract universe which developed gradually in the Divine Thought

within which it had lain dormant.

In Chapter VIII. we will attempt to show the esoteric meaning of

_Genesis_, and its complete agreement with the ideas of other

nations. The six days of creation will be found to have a meaning

little suspected by the multitude of commentators, who have exercised

their abilities to the full extent in attempting to reconcile them by

turns with Christian theology and un-Christian geology. Disfigured as

the _Old Testament_ is, yet in its symbolism are preserved enough of

the original in its principal features to show the family likeness to

the cosmogonies of older nations than the Jews.

We here give the diagrams of the Hindu and the Chaldeo-Jewish

cosmogonies. The antiquity of the diagram of the former may be

inferred from the fact that many of the Brahmanical pagodas are

designed and built on this figure, called the “Sri-Iantara.”[551]

And yet we find the highest honors paid to it by the Jewish and

mediæval kabalists, who call it “Solomon’s seal.” It will be quite an

easy matter to trace it to its origin, once we are reminded of the

history of the king-kabalist and his transactions with King Hiram and

Ophir--the country of peacocks, gold, and ivory--for which land we

have to search in old India.

EXPLANATION OF THE TWO DIAGRAMS

REPRESENTING THE

CHAOTIC AND THE FORMATIVE PERIODS, BEFORE AND AFTER

OUR UNIVERSE BEGAN TO BE EVOLVED.

FROM THE ESOTERIC BRAHMANICAL, BUDDHISTIC, AND CHALDEAN

STANDPOINTS, WHICH AGREE IN EVERY RESPECT WITH THE EVOLUTIONARY

THEORY OF MODERN SCIENCE.

THE HINDU DOCTRINE. THE CHALDEAN DOCTRINE.

_The Upper Triangle_ _The Upper Triangle_

Contains the Ineffable Name. Contains the Ineffable Name.

It is the AUM--to be It is En-Soph, the

pronounced only mentally, Boundless, the Infinite,

under penalty of death. The whose name is known to no

Unrevealed Para-Brahma, the one but the initiated, and

Passive-Principle; absolute could not be pronounced

and unconditioned “mukta,” aloud under the penalty of

which cannot enter into the death.

condition of a Creator, as

the latter, in order to No more than Para-Brahma can

_think_, _will_, and _plan_, En-Soph create, for he is in

must be bound and the same condition of

conditioned (baddha); hence, non-being as the former; he

in one sense, be a finite is עין non-existent so long

being. “THIS (Para-Brahma) as he lies in his latent or

was absorbed in the passive state within _Oulom_

non-being, imperceptible, (the boundless and termless

without any distinct time); as such he is not the

attribute, non-existent for Creator of the visible

our senses. He was absorbed universe, neither is he the

in his (to us) eternal (to _Aur_ (Light). He will

himself) periodical, sleep,” become the latter when the

for it was one of the period of creation shall

“Nights of Brahma.” have compelled him to expand

Therefore he is not the the Force within himself,

_First_ but the Eternal according to the Law of

Cause. He is the Soul of which he is the embodiment

Souls, whom no being can and essence.

comprehend in this state.

But “he who studies the “Whosoever acquaints himself

secret Mantras and with ה״ד the Mercaba and the

comprehends the _Vâch_” (the _lahgash_ (secret speech or

Spirit or hidden voice of incantation),[552] will

the Mantras, the active learn the secret of

manifestation of the latent secrets.”

Force) will learn to

understand him in his

“revealed” aspect.

Both “THIS” and En-Soph, in their first manifestation of Light,

emerging from within Darkness, may be summarized in the Svabhâvât,

the Eternal and the uncreated Self-existing Substance which produces

all; while everything which is of its essence produces itself out of

its own nature.

_The Space Around the _The Space Around the

Upper Triangle._ Upper Triangle._

When the “Night of Brahma” When the active period had

was ended, and the time came arrived, En-Soph sent forth

for the Self-Existent to from within his own eternal

manifest _Itself_ by essence, Sephira, the active

revelation, it made its Power, called the Primordial

glory visible by sending Point, and the Crown,

forth from its Essence an _Keter_. It is only through

active Power, which, female her that the “Un-bounded

at first, subsequently Wisdom” could give a

becomes androgyne. It is concrete form to his

Aditi, the “Infinite,”[553] abstract Thought. Two sides

the Boundless, or rather the of the upper triangle, the

“Un-bounded.” Aditi is the right side and the base, are

“mother” of all the gods, composed of unbroken lines;

and Aditi is the Father and the third, the left side, is

the Son.[554] “Who will give dotted. It is through the

us back to the great Aditi, latter that emerges Sephira.

that I may see father and Spreading in every

mother?”[555] It is in direction, she finally

conjunction with the latter encompasses the whole

female, Force, that the triangle. In this emanation

Divine but latent Thought of the female active

produces the great principle from the left side

“Deep”--water. “Water is of the mystic triangle, is

born from a transformation foreshadowed the creation of

of light ... and from a Eve from Adam’s left rib.

_modification_ of the water Adam is the Microcosm of the

is born the earth,” says Macrocosm, and is created in

Manu (book i.). the image of the Elohim. In

the Tree of Life עצחיום the

“Ye are born of Aditi from triple triad is disposed in

the water, you who are born such a manner that the three

of the earth, hear ye all my male Sephiroth are on the

call.”[556] right, the three female on

the left, and the four

In this water (or primeval uniting principles in the

chaos) the “Infinite” centre. From the Invisible

androgyne, which, with the Dew falling from the Higher

Eternal Cause, forms the “Head” Sephira creates

first abstract Triad, primeval water, or chaos

rendered by AUM, deposited taking shape. It is the

the germ of universal life. first step toward the

It is the Mundane Egg, in solidification of Spirit,

which took place the which through various

gestation of Pūrūsha, or the modifications will produce

manifested Brahma. The germ earth.[557] “_It requires

which fecundated the earth and water to make a

_Mother_ Principle (the living soul_,” says Moses.

water) is called Nara, the

Divine Spirit or Holy When Sephira emerges like an

Ghost,[558] and the waters active power from within the

themselves, are an emanation latent Deity, she is female;

of the former, Nari, while when she assumes the office

the Spirit which brooded of a creator, she becomes a

over it is called male; hence, she is

Narayana.[559] androgyne. She is the

“Father and Mother Aditi,”

“In that egg, the great of the Hindu Cosmogony.

Power sat inactive a whole After brooding over the

_year of the Creator_, at “Deep,” the “Spirit of God”

the close of which, by his produces its own image in

thought alone, he caused the the water, the Universal

egg to divide itself.”[560] Womb, symbolized in _Manu_

The upper half became by the Golden Egg. In the

heaven, the lower, the earth kabalistic Cosmogony, Heaven

(both yet in their ideal, and Earth are personified by

not their manifested form). Adam Kadmon and the second

Adam. The first Ineffable

Thus, this second triad, Triad, contained in the

only another name for the abstract idea of the “Three

first one (never pronounced Heads,” was a “mystery

aloud), and which is the name.” It was composed of

real pre-Vedic and En-Soph, Sephira, and Adam

primordial _secret_ Kadmon, the Protogonos, the

Trimurti, consisted of latter being identical with

the former, when

Nara, Father-Heaven, bisexual.[561] In every

Nari, Mother-Earth, triad there is a male, a

Viradj, the Son--or Universe. female, and an androgyne.

Adam-Sephira is the Crown

The Trimurti, comprising (Keter). It sets itself to

Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the work of creation, by

the Preserver, and Siva, the first producing Chochmah,

Destroyer and Regenerator, Male Wisdom, a masculine

belongs to a later period. active potency, represented

It is an anthropomorphic by חה, jah, or the Wheels of

afterthought, invented for Creation, אפּוַים, from which

the more popular proceeds Binah, Intelligence,

comprehension of the female and passive potency,

uninitiated masses. The which is _Jehovah_, יהוה,

_Dikshita_, the initiate, whom we find in the _Bible_

knew better. Thus, also, the figuring as the Supreme. But

profound allegory under the this Jehovah is not the

colors of a ridiculous kabalistic Jodcheva. The

fable, given in the _binary_ is the fundamental

_Aytareya Brahmana_,[562] corner-stone of _Gnosis_. As

which resulted in the the binary is the Unity

representations in some multiplying itself and

temples of Brahm-Nara, self-creating, the kabalists

assuming the form of a bull, show the “Unknown” passive

and his daughter, En-Soph, as emanating from

Aditi-Nari, that of a himself, Sephira, which,

heifer, contains the same becoming visible light, is

metaphysical idea as the said to produce Adam Kadmon.

“fall of man,” or that of But, in the hidden sense,

the Spirit into Sephira and Adam are one and

generation--matter. The the same light, only latent

All-pervading Divine Spirit and active, invisible and

embodied under the symbols visible. The second Adam, as

of Heaven, the Sun, and Heat the human tetragram,

(fire)--the correlation of produces in his turn Eve,

cosmic forces--fecundates out of his side. It is this

Matter or Nature, the second triad, with which the

daughter of Spirit. And kabalists have hitherto

Para-Brahma himself has to dealt, hardly hinting at the

submit to and bear the Supreme and Ineffable One,

penance of the curses of the and never committing

other gods (Elohim) for such anything to writing. All

an incest. (See knowledge concerning the

corresponding column.) latter was imparted orally.

According to the immutable, It is the _second_ Adam,

and, therefore, fatal law, then, who is the unity

both Nara and Nari are represented by _Jod_, emblem

mutually Father and Mother, of the kabalistic male

as well as Father and principle, and, at the same

Daughter.[563] Matter, time, he is Chochmah,

through infinite _Wisdom_, while _Binah_ or

transformation, is the Jehovah is Eve; the first

gradual product of Spirit. Chochmah issuing from Keter,

The unification of one or the androgyne, Adam

Eternal Supreme Cause Kadmon, and the second,

required such a correlation; Binah, from Chochmah. If we

and if nature be the product combine with _Jod_ the three

or effect of that Cause, in letters which form the name

its turn it has to be of Eve, we will have the

fecundated by the same divine tetragram pronounced

divine Ray which produced IEVO-HEVAH, Adam and Eve, יחוה,

nature itself. The most Jehovah, male and female, or

absurd cosmogonical the idealization of humanity

allegories, if analyzed embodied in the first man.

without prejudice, will be Thus is it that we can prove

found built on strict and that, while the Jewish

logical necessarianism. kabalists, in common with

their initiated masters, the

“Being was born from Chaldeans and the Hindus,

not-being,” says a verse in adored the Supreme and

the _Rig-Veda_.[564] The Unknown God, in the sacred

first being had to become silence of their

androgyne and finite, by the sanctuaries, the ignorant

very fact of its creation as masses of every nation were

a being. And thus even the left to adore something

sacred Trimurti, containing which was certainly less

Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva than the Eternal Substance

will have an end when the of the Buddhists, the

“night” of Para-Brahma so-called Atheists. As

succeeds the present “day,” Brahma, the deity manifested

or period of universal in the mythical _Manu_, or

activity. the first man (born of

Swayambhuva, or the

The second, or rather the Self-existent), is finite,

first, triad---as the so Jehovah, embodied in Adam

highest one is a pure and Eve, is but a _human_

abstraction--is the god. He is the symbol of

intellectual world. The Vâch humanity, a mixture of good

which surrounds it is a more with a portion of

definite transformation of unavoidable evil; of spirit

Aditi. Besides its occult fallen into matter. In

significance in the secret worshipping Jehovah, we

Mantrâm, Vâch is personified simply worship nature, as

as the active power of embodied in man,

Brahma proceeding from him. half-spiritual and

In the _Vedas_ she is made half-material, at best: we

to speak of herself as the are Pantheists, when not

supreme and universal soul. fetich worshippers, like the

“I bore the Father on the idolatrous Jews, who

head of the universal mind, sacrificed on high places,

and _my origin is in the in groves, to the

midst of the ocean_; and personified male and female

therefore do I pervade all principle, ignorant of IAO,

beings.... Originating all the Supreme “Secret Name” of

beings, I pass like the the Mysteries.

breeze (Holy Ghost). I am

above this heaven, beyond Shekinah is the Hindu Vâch,

this earth; and _what is the and praised in the same

Great One that am I_.”[565] terms as the latter. Though

Literally, Vâch is speech, shown in the kabalistic Tree

the power of awakening, of Life as proceeding from

through the metrical the ninth Sephiroth, yet

arrangement contained in Shekinah is the “veil” of

the number and syllables En-Soph, and the “garment”

of the Mantras,[566] of Jehovah. The “veil,” for

corresponding powers in it succeeded for long ages

the invisible world. In in concealing the real

the sacrificial Mysteries supreme God, the universal

Vâch stirs up the Brahma Spirit, and masking Jehovah,

(_Brahma jinvati_), or the exoteric deity, made the

the power lying latent at Christians accept him as the

the bottom of every magical “father” of the initiated

operation. It existed from Jesus. Yet the kabalists,

eternity as the Yajna (its as well as the Hindu

latent form), lying dormant _Dikshita_, know the power

in Brahma from of the Shekinah or Vâch,

“no-beginning,” and and call it the “secret

proceeded forth from him as wisdom,” חכמח־נסהדח.

Vâch (the active power). It

is the key to the The triangle played a

“Traividyâ,” the thrice prominent part in the

sacred science which teaches religious symbolism of every

the Yajus (the sacrificial great nation; for everywhere

Mysteries).[567] it represented the three

great principles--spirit,

Having done with the force, and matter; or the

unrevealed triad, and the active (male), passive

first triad of the (female), and the dual or

Sephiroth, called the correlative principle which

“intellectual world,” little partakes of both and binds

remains to be said. In the the two together. It was the

great geometrical figure _Arba_ or mystic “four,”[568]

which has the double the mystery-gods, the Kabeiri,

triangle in it, the central summarized in the unity of

circle represents the world one supreme Deity. It is

within the universe. The found in the Egyptian

double triangle belongs to pyramids, whose equal sides

one of the most important, tower up until lost in one

if it is not in itself the crowning point. In the

most important, of the kabalistic diagram the

mystic figures in India. It central circle of the

is the emblem of the Brahmanical figure is

Trimurti three in one. The replaced by the cross; the

triangle with its apex celestial perpendicular and

upward indicates the male the terrestrial horizontal

principle, downward the base line.[569] But the idea

female; the two typifying, is the same: Adam Kadmon is

at the same time, spirit and the type of humanity as a

matter. This world within collective totality within

the infinite universe is the the unity of the creative

microcosm within the God and the universal

macrocosm, as in the Jewish spirit.

_Kabala_. It is the symbol

of the womb of the universe, “Of him who is formless, the

the terrestrial egg, whose non-existent (also the

archetype is the golden eternal, but _not_ First

mundane egg. It is from Cause), is born the heavenly

within this spiritual bosom man.” But after he created

of mother nature that the form of the heavenly

proceed all the great man אדמעלאה, he “used it as

saviours of the a vehicle wherein to

universe--the avatars of the descend,” says the _Kabala_.

invisible Deity. Thus Adam Kadmon is the

avatar of the concealed

“Of him who is and yet is power. After that the

not, from the not-being, heavenly Adam creates or

Eternal Cause, is born the engenders by the combined

being Pouroucha,” says Manu, power of the Sephiroth, the

the legislator. Pouroucha is earthly Adam. The work of

the “divine male,” the creation is also begun by

_second_ god, and the Sephira in the creation of

avatar, or the Logos of the ten Sephiroth (who are

Para-Brahma and his divine the Pradjapatis of the

son, who in his turn _Kabala_, for they are

produced Viradj, the son, or likewise the Lords of all

the ideal type of the beings).

universe. “Viradj begins the

work of creation by The _Sohar_ asserts the

producing the ten same. According to the

Pradjapati, ‘the lords of kabalistic doctrine there

all beings.’” were old worlds (see Idra

Suta: _Sohar_, iii., p. 292

According to the doctrine of b). Everything will return

Manu, the universe is some day to that from which

subjected to a periodical it first proceeded. “All

and never-ending succession things of which this world

of creations and consists, spirit as well as

dissolutions, which periods body, will return to their

of creation are named principal, and the roots

Manvântara. from which they proceeded”

(_Sohar_, ii., 218 b). The

“It is the germ (which the kabalists also maintain the

Divine Spirit produced from indestructibility of matter,

its own substance) which albeit their doctrine is

never perishes in the being, shrouded still more

for it becomes the soul of carefully than that of the

Being, and at the period of Hindus. The creation is

_pralaya_ (dissolution) it eternal, and the universe is

returns to absorb itself the “garment,” or “the veil

again _into the Divine_ of God”--Shekinah; and the

Spirit, _which itself_ rests latter is immortal and

from all eternity within eternal as Him within whom

Swayambhuva, the it has ever existed. Every

‘Self-Existent’” world is made after the

(_Institutes of Manu_, pattern of its predecessor,

book i.). and each more gross and

material than the preceding

As we have shown, neither one. In the _Kabala_ all

the Svâbhâvikas, Buddhist were called sparks. Finally,

philosophers--nor the our present grossly

Brahmans believe in a materialistic world was

creation of the universe _ex formed.

nihilo_, but both believe in

the _Prakriti_, the In the Chaldean account of

indestructibility of matter. the period which preceded

the Genesis of our world,

The evolution of species, Berosus speaks of a time

and the successive when there existed nothing

appearance of various new but darkness, and an abyss

types is very distinctly of waters, filled with

shown in _Manu_. hideous monsters, “produced

of a two-fold principle ....

“From earth, heat, and These were creatures in

water, are born all which were combined the

creatures, whether animate limbs of every species of

or inanimate, produced by animals. In addition to

the germ which the Divine these fishes, reptiles,

Spirit drew from its own serpents, with other

substance. Thus has Brahma monstrous animals, which

established the series of assumed each other’s shape

transformations from the and countenance.”[571]

plant up to man, and from

man up to the primordial

essence.... Among them each

succeeding being (or

element) acquires the

quality of the preceding;

and in as many degrees as

each of them is advanced,

with so many properties is

it said to be endowed”

(_Manu_, book i., sloka

20).[570]

This, we believe, is the

veritable theory of the

modern evolutionists.

In the first book of Manu, we read: “Know that the sum of 1,000

divine ages, composes the totality of one day of Brahma; and that one

night is equal to that day.” One thousand divine ages is equal to

4,320,000,000 of human years, in the Brahmanical calculations.

“At the expiration of each night, Brahma, who has been asleep,

awakes, and through the sole energy of the motion causes to emanate

from himself the spirit, which in its essence _is_, and yet is not.”

“Prompted by the desire to create, the Spirit (first of the

emanations) operates the creation and gives birth to ether, which the

sages consider as having the faculty of transmitting sound.

“Ether begets air whose property is tangible, and which is necessary

to life.

“Through a transformation of the air, light is produced.

“From air and light, which begets heat, water is formed, and the

water is the womb of all the living germs.”

Throughout the whole immense period of progressive creation,

covering 4,320,000,000 years, ether, air, water and fire (heat), are

constantly forming matter under the never-ceasing impulse of the

Spirit, or the _unrevealed_ God who fills up the whole creation,

for he is in all, and all is in him. This computation, which was

secret and which is hardly hinted at even now, led Higgins into the

error of dividing every ten ages into 6,000 years. Had he added a

few more ciphers to his sums he might have come nearer to a correct

explanation of the neroses, or secret cycles.[572]

In the _Sepher Jezireh_, the kabalistic Book of Creation, the author

has evidently repeated the words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance

is represented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless

and absolute; and emitted from itself the Spirit. “One is the Spirit

of the living God, blessed be His Name, who liveth for ever! Voice,

Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit;”[573] and this is the

kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized

by the Fathers. From this triple ONE emanated the whole Cosmos.

First from ONE emanated number TWO, or Air, the creative element;

and then number THREE, _Water_, proceeded from the air; _Ether_

or _Fire_ complete the mystic four, the Arba-il.[574] “When the

Concealed of the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a

point (primordial point, or the first Sephira, air or Holy Ghost),

shaped it into a sacred form (the ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly

man), and covered it with a rich and splendid garment, _that is the

world_.”[575] “He maketh the wind His messengers, flaming Fire his

servants,” says the _Jezireh_, showing the cosmical character of the

later euhemerized angels,[576] and that the Spirit permeates every

minutest atom of the Cosmos.[577]

When the cycle of creation is run down, the energy of the manifested

word is weakening. He alone, the Unconceivable, is unchangeable (ever

latent), but the Creative Force, though also eternal, as it has been

in the former from “no beginning,” yet must be subject to periodical

cycles of activity and rest; as it had a _beginning_ in one of its

aspects, when it first emanated, therefore must also have an end.

Thus, the evening succeeds the day, and the night of the deity

approaches. Brahma is gradually falling asleep. In one of the books

of _Sohar_, we read the following:

“As Moses was keeping a vigil on Mount Sinai, in company with the

Deity, who was concealed from his sight by a cloud, he felt a great

fear overcome him and suddenly asked: ‘Lord, where art Thou ...

sleepest thou, O Lord?’ And the _Spirit_ answered him: ‘I never

sleep; were I to fall asleep for a moment _before my time_, all

the Creation would crumble into dissolution in one instant.’” And

Vamadeva-Modēly describes the “Night of Brahma,” or the second period

of the Divine Unknown existence, thus:

“Strange noises are heard, proceeding from every point.... These are

the precursors of the Night of Brahma; _dusk rises at the horizon_

and the Sun passes away behind the thirtieth degree of Macara (sign

of the zodiac), and will reach no more the sign of the _Minas_

(zodiacal _pisces_, or fish). The gurus of the pagodas appointed

to watch the rās-chakr (Zodiac), may now break their circle and

instruments, for they are henceforth useless.

“Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabitable spots multiply

on the earth, the air becomes more and more rarefied; the springs of

waters dry up, the great rivers see their waves exhausted, the ocean

shows its sandy bottom, and plants die. Men and animals decrease in

size daily. Life and motion lose their force, planets can hardly

gravitate in space; they are extinguished one by one, like a lamp

which the hand of the chokra (servant) neglects to replenish. Sourya

(the Sun) flickers and goes out, matter falls into dissolution

(pralaya), and Brahma merges back into Dyäus, the Unrevealed God, and

his task being accomplished, he falls asleep. Another day is passed,

night sets in and continues until the future dawn.

“And now again re-enter into the golden egg of His Thought, the germs

of all that exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful

rest, the animated beings, endowed with the principles of action,

cease their functions, and all feeling (manas) becomes dormant. When

they are all absorbed in the SUPREME SOUL, this Soul of all the

beings sleeps in complete repose, till the day when it resumes its

form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness.”[578]

If we now examine the ten mythical avatars of Vishnu, we find them

recorded in the following progression:

1. Matsya-Avatar: as a fish. It will also be his tenth and last

avatar, at the end of the Kali-yug.

2. Kurm-Avatar: as a tortoise.

3. Varaha: as a boar.

4. Nara-Sing: as a _man-lion_; last animal stage.

5. Vamuna: as a dwarf; first step toward the human form.

6. Parasu-Rama: as a hero, but yet an imperfect man.

7. Rama-Chandra: as the hero of Ramayâna. Physically a perfect man;

his next of kin, friend and ally Hanoumā, the monkey-god. _The monkey

endowed with speech._[579]

8. Christna-Avatar: the Son of the Virgin Devanaguy (or Devaki) one

formed by God, or rather by the manifested Deity Vishnu, who is

identical with Adam Kadmon.[580] Christna is also called Kaneya, the

Son of the Virgin.

9. Gautama-Buddha, Siddhârtha, or Sakya-muni. (The Buddhists reject

this doctrine of their Buddha being an incarnation of Vishnu.)

10. This avatar has not yet occurred. It is expected in the future,

like the Christian Advent, the idea of which was undoubtedly copied

from the Hindu. When Vishnu appears for the last time he will come

as a “Saviour.” According to the opinion of some Brahmans he will

appear himself under the form of the horse Kalki. Others maintain

that he will be mounting it. This horse is the envelope of the

spirit of evil, and Vishnu will mount it, invisible to all, till he

has conquered it for the last time. The “Kalki-Avataram,” or the

last incarnation, divides Brahmanism into two sects. That of the

Vaïhnâva refuses to recognize the incarnations of their god Vishnu in

animal forms literally. They claim that these must be understood as

allegorical.

In this diagram of avatars we see traced the gradual evolution and

transformation of all species out of the ante-Silurian mud of Darwin

and the _ilus_ of Sanchoniathon and Berosus. Beginning with the

Azoic time, corresponding to the _ilus_ in which Brahma implants

the creative germ, we pass through the Palæozoic and Mesozoic

times, covered by the first and second incarnations as the fish and

tortoise; and the Cenozoic, which is embraced by the incarnations

in the animal and semi-human forms of the boar and man-lion; and we

come to the fifth and crowning geological period, designated as the

“era of mind, or age of man,” whose symbol in the Hindu mythology is

the dwarf--the first attempt of nature at the creation of man. In

this diagram we should follow the main-idea, not judge the degree of

knowledge of the ancient philosophers by the literal acceptance of

the popular form in which it is presented to us in the grand epical

poem of _Maha-Bharata_ and its chapter the _Bagaved-gitta_.

Even the four ages of the Hindu chronology contain a far more

philosophical idea than appears on the surface. It defines them

according to both the psychological or mental and the physical states

of man during their period. Crita-yug, the golden age, the “age of

joy,” or spiritual innocence of man; Treta-yug, the age of silver,

or that of fire--the period of supremacy of man and of giants and of

the sons of God; Dwapara-yug, the age of bronze--a mixture already

of purity and impurity (spirit and matter), the age of doubt; and at

last our own, the Kali-yug, or age of iron, of darkness, misery, and

sorrow. In this age, Vishnu had to incarnate himself in Christna,

in order to save humanity from the goddess Kali, consort of Siva,

the all-annihilating--the goddess of death, destruction, and human

misery. Kali is the best emblem to represent the “fall of man;”

the falling of spirit into the degradation of matter, with all its

terrific results. We have to rid ourselves of Kali before we can ever

reach “Moksha,” or Nirvana, the abode of blessed Peace and Spirit.

With the Buddhists the last incarnation is the fifth. When

Maitree-Buddha comes, then our present world will be destroyed; and

a new and a better one will replace it. The four arms of every Hindu

Deity are the emblems of the four preceding manifestations of our

earth from its invisible state, while its head typifies the fifth and

last _Kalki_-Avatar, when this would be destroyed, and the power of

Budh--Wisdom (with the Hindus, of Brahma), will be again called into

requisition to manifest itself--as a _Logos_--to create the future

world.

In this diagram, the male gods typify Spirit in its deific

attributes, while their female counterparts--the _Sakti_, represent

the active energies of these attributes. The _Durga_ (active virtue),

is a subtile, invisible force, which answers to Shekinah--the garment

of En-Soph. She is the Sakti through which the passive “Eternal”

calls forth the visible universe from its first ideal conception.

Every one of the three personages of the exoteric Trimurti are shown

as using their _Sakti_ as a _Vehan_ (vehicle). Each of them is for

the time being the form which sits upon the mysterious wagon of

Ezekiel.

Nor do we see less clearly carried out in this succession of avatars,

the truly philosophical idea of a simultaneous spiritual and physical

evolution of creatures and man. From a fish the progress of this dual

transformation carries on the physical form through the shape of a

tortoise, a boar, and a man-lion; and then, appearing in the dwarf of

humanity, it shows Parasu Rama physically, a perfect, spiritually,

an undeveloped entity, until it carries mankind personified by one

god-like man, to the apex of physical and spiritual perfection--a god

on earth. In Christna and the other Saviours of the world we see the

philosophical idea of the progressive dual development understood

and as clearly expressed in the _Sohar_. The “Heavenly man,” who is

the Protogonos, Tikkun, the first-born of God, or the universal Form

and Idea, engenders Adam. Hence the latter is god-born in humanity,

and endowed with the attributes of all the ten Sephiroth. These are:

Wisdom, Intelligence, Justice, Love, Beauty, Splendor, Firmness,

etc. They make him the Foundation or basis, “_the mighty living

one_,” אלחי, and the crown of creation, thus placing him as the

Alpha and Omega to reign over the “kingdom”--Malchuth. “Man is both

the import and the highest degree of creation,” says the _Sohar_. “As

soon as man was created, everything was complete, including the upper

and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in

himself all forms” (iii., p. 48 a).

But this does not relate to our degenerated mankind; it is only

occasionally that men are born who are the types of what man should

be, and yet is not. The first races of men were spiritual, and their

protoplastic bodies were not composed of the gross and material

substances of which we see them composed now-a-day. The first men

were created with all the faculties of the Deity, and powers far

transcending those of the angelic host; for they were the direct

emanations of Adam Kadmon, the primitive man, the Macrocosm; while

the present humanity is several degrees removed even from the earthly

Adam, who was the Microcosm, or “the little world.” Seir Anpin,

the mystical figure of the Man, consists of 243 numbers, and we

see in the circles which follow each other that it is the angels

which emanated from the “Primitive Man,” not the Sephiroth from

angels. Hence, man was intended from the first to be a being of

both a progressive and retrogressive nature. Beginning at the apex

of the divine cycle, he gradually began receding from the centre of

Light, acquiring at every new and lower sphere of being (worlds each

inhabited by a different race of human beings) a more solid physical

form and losing a portion of his _divine_ faculties.

In the “fall of Adam” we must see, not the personal transgression of

man, but simply the law of the dual evolution. Adam, or “Man,” begins

his career of existences by dwelling in the garden of Eden “dressed

in the celestial garment, which _is a garment of heavenly light_”

(_Sohar_, ii., 229 b); but when expelled he is “clothed” by God, or

the eternal law of Evolution or necessarianism, with coats of skin.

But even on this earth of material degradation--in which the divine

spark (Soul, a corruscation of the Spirit) was to begin its physical

progression in a series of imprisonments from a stone up to a man’s

body--if he but exercise his WILL and call his deity to his help, man

can transcend the powers of the angel. “Know ye not that we shall

judge angels?” asks Paul (_1 Corinthians_, vi. 3). The real man is

the Soul (Spirit), teaches the _Sohar_. “The mystery of the earthly

man is after the mystery of the heavenly man ... the wise can read

the mysteries in the human face” (ii., 76 a).

This is still another of the many sentences by which Paul must be

recognized as an initiate. For reasons fully explained, we give far

more credit for genuineness to certain Epistles of the apostles, now

dismissed as apocryphal, than to many suspicious portions of the

_Acts_. And we find corroboration of this view in the _Epistle of

Paul to Seneca_. In this message Paul styles Seneca “my respected

master,” while Seneca terms the apostle simply “brother.”

No more than the true religion of Judaic philosophy can be judged

by the absurdities of the exoteric _Bible_, have we any right to

form an opinion of Brahmanism and Buddhism by their nonsensical and

sometimes disgusting popular forms. If we only search for the true

essence of the philosophy of both _Manu_ and the _Kabala_, we will

find that Vishnu is, as well as Adam Kadmon, the expression of the

universe itself; and that his incarnations are but concrete and

various embodiments of the manifestations of this “Stupendous Whole.”

“I am the Soul, O, Arjuna. I am the Soul which exists in the heart of

all beings; and I am the beginning and the middle, and also the end

of existing things,” says Vishnu to his disciple, in _Bagaved-gitta_

(ch. x., p. 71).

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.... I am the first

and the last,” says Jesus to John (_Rev._ i. 6, 17).

Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are a trinity in a unity, and, like the

Christian trinity, they are mutually convertible. In the esoteric

doctrine they are one and the same manifestation of him “whose name

is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too majestic and

infinite to be imagined.” Thus by describing the avatars of one, all

others are included in the allegory, with a change of form but not of

substance. It is out of such manifestations that emanated the many

worlds that were, and that will emanate the one--which is to come.

Coleman, followed in it by other Orientalists, presents the seventh

avatar of Vishnu in the most caricatured way.[581] Apart from the

fact that the _Ramayana_ is one of the grandest epic poems in the

world--the source and origin of Homer’s inspiration--this avatar

conceals one of the most scientific problems of our modern day.

The learned Brahmans of India never understood the allegory of the

famous war between men, giants, and monkeys, otherwise than in the

light of the transformation of species. It is our firm belief that

were European academicians to seek for information from some learned

native Brahmans, instead of unanimously and incontinently rejecting

their authority, and were they, like Jacolliot--against whom they

have nearly all arrayed themselves--to seek for light in the oldest

documents scattered about the country in pagodas, they might

learn strange but not useless lessons. Let any one inquire of an

_educated_ Brahman the reason for the respect shown to monkeys--the

origin of which feeling is indicated in the story of the valorous

feats of Hanoumā, the generalissimo and faithful ally of the hero

of Ramayana,[582] and he would soon be disabused of the erroneous

idea that the Hindus accord deific honors to a monkey-_god_. He

would, perhaps, learn--were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an

explanation--that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he

should: the 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.[583] He might learn,

further, that in the eyes of the educated “heathen” the spiritual

or _inner_ man is one thing, and his terrestrial, physical casket

another. That _physical_ nature, the great combination of physical

correlations of forces ever creeping on toward perfection, has to

avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she

proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone

as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the Divine spirit. But

the latter circumstance does not give man the right of life and death

over the animals lower than himself in the scale of _nature_, or

the right to torture them. Quite the reverse. Besides being endowed

with a soul--of which every animal, and even plant, is more or less

possessed--man has his immortal _rational_ soul, or _nous_, which

ought to make him at least equal in magnanimity to the elephant,

who treads so carefully, lest he should crush weaker creatures than

himself. It is this feeling which prompts Brahman and Buddhist alike

to construct hospitals for sick animals, and even insects, and to

prepare refuges wherein they may finish their days. It is this same

feeling, again, which causes the Jaïn sectarian to sacrifice one-half

of his life-time to brushing away from his path the helpless,

crawling insects, rather than recklessly deprive the smallest of

life; and it is again from this sense of highest benevolence and

charity toward the weaker, however abject the creature may be,

that they honor one of the natural modifications of their own dual

nature, and that later the popular belief in metempsychosis arose.

No trace of the latter is to be found in the _Vedas_; and the true

interpretation of the doctrine, discussed at length in _Manu_ and

the Buddhistic sacred books, having been confined from the first to

the learned sacerdotal castes, the false and foolish popular ideas

concerning it need occasion no surprise.

Upon those who, in the remains of antiquity, see evidence that modern

times can lay small claim to originality, it is common to charge a

disposition to exaggerate and distort facts. But the candid reader

will scarcely aver that the above is an example in point. There were

evolutionists before the day when the mythical Noah is made, in the

_Bible_, to float in his ark; and the ancient scientists were better

informed, and had their theories more logically defined than the

modern evolutionists.

Plato, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, the Eleatic schools of Greece, as well

as the old Chaldean sacerdotal colleges, all taught the doctrine of

the dual evolution; the doctrine of the transmigration of souls

referring only to the progress of man from world to world, after

death here. Every philosophy worthy of the name, taught that the

_spirit_ of man, if not the _soul_, was preëxistent. “The Essenes,”

says Josephus, “believed that the souls were immortal, and that they

descended from the ethereal spaces to be chained to bodies.”[584] In

his turn, Philo Judæus says, the “air is full of them (of souls);

those which are nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal

bodies, παλινδρομοῦσι αὖθις, return to other bodies, being desirous to

live in them.”[585] In the _Sohar_, the soul is made to plead her

freedom before God: “Lord of the Universe! I am happy in this world,

and do not wish to go into another world, where I shall be a handmaid,

and be exposed to all kinds of pollutions.”[586] The doctrine of fatal

necessity, the everlasting immutable Law, is asserted in the answer of

the Deity: “Against thy will thou becomest an embryo, and against thy

will thou art born.”[587] Light would be incomprehensible without

darkness, to make it manifest by contrast; good would be no good

without evil, to show the priceless nature of the boon; and so,

personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the

furnace of temptation. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the

Concealed Deity. Nothing that is finite--whether because it had a

beginning, or must have an end--can remain stationary. It must either

progress or recede; and a soul which thirsts after a reünion with its

spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality, must purify itself

through cyclic transmigrations, onward toward the only Land of Bliss and

Eternal Rest, called in the _Sohar_, “The Palace of Love,” היבל אהבת;

in the Hindu religion, “Moksha;” among the Gnostics, the “Pleroma of

eternal Light;” and by the Buddhists, Nirvana. The Christian calls it

the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and claims to have alone found the truth,

whereas he has but invented a new name for a doctrine which is coëval

with man.

The proof that the transmigration of the soul does not relate to

man’s condition on this earth _after_ death, is found in the _Sohar_,

notwithstanding the many incorrect renderings of its translators.

“All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven from the Holy

One--blessed be His Name--have thrown themselves into an abyss at

their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are

to descend on earth.[588]... Come and see when the soul reaches

the abode of Love.... The soul could not bear this light, but for

the luminous mantle which she puts on. For, just as the soul, when

sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment to preserve herself

here, so she receives above a shining garment, in order to be able

to look without injury into the mirror, whose light proceeds from

the Lord of Light.”[589] Moreover, the _Sohar_ teaches that the soul

cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she has received the “holy

kiss,” or the re-union of the soul _with the substance from which

she emanated_--spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the latter

is a feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned

in body, man is a trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have

caused his divorce from the spirit. “Woe to the soul which prefers to

her divine husband (spirit), the earthly wedlock with her terrestrial

body,” records a text of the _Book of the Keys_.[590]

These ideas on the transmigrations and the trinity of man, were

held by many of the early Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made

by the translators of the _New Testament_ and ancient philosophical

treatises between soul and spirit, that has occasioned the many

misunderstandings. It is also one of the many reasons why Buddha,

Plotinus, and so many other initiates are now accused of having

longed for the total extinction of their souls--“absorption unto the

Deity,” or “reunion with the universal soul,” meaning, according

to modern ideas, annihilation. The animal soul must, of course, be

disintegrated of its particles, before it is able to link its purer

essence forever with the immortal spirit. But the translators of

both the _Acts_ and the _Epistles_, who laid the foundation of the

_Kingdom of Heaven_, and the modern commentators on the Buddhist

_Sutra of the Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness_, have

muddled the sense of the great apostle of Christianity, as of the

great reformer of India. The former have smothered the word φυχικος,

so that no reader imagines it to have any relation with _soul_; and

with this confusion of _soul_ and _spirit_ together, _Bible_ readers

get only a perverted sense of anything on the subject; and the

interpreters of the latter have failed to understand the meaning and

object of the Buddhist four degrees of Dhyâna.

In the writings of Paul, the entity of man is divided into a

trine--flesh, psychical existence or _soul_, and the overshadowing

and at the same time interior entity or SPIRIT. His phraseology is

very definite, when he teaches the _anastasis_, or the continuation

of life of those who have died. He maintains that there is a

_psychical_ body which is sown in the corruptible, and a spiritual

body that is raised in incorruptible substance. “The first man is

of the earth earthy, the second man from heaven.” Even James (iii.

15) identifies the soul by saying that its “wisdom descendeth not

from the above but is terrestrial, _psychical_, _demoniacal_” (see

Greek text). Plato, speaking of the Soul (_psuché_), observes that

“when she allies herself to the _nous_ (divine substance, a god, as

psuché is a goddess), she does everything aright and felicitously;

but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to _Annoia_.”

What Plato calls _nous_, Paul terms the _Spirit_; and Jesus makes

the _heart_ what Paul says of the _flesh_. The natural condition of

mankind was called in Greek αποστασια; the new condition αναστασις. In

Adam came the former (death), in Christ the latter (resurrection), for

it is he who first publicly taught mankind the “Noble Path” to Eternal

life, as Gautama pointed the same Path to Nirvana. To accomplish both

ends there was but one way, according to the teachings of both.

“Poverty, chastity, contemplation or inner prayer; contempt for wealth

and the illusive joys of this world.”

“Enter on this Path and put an end to sorrow; verily the Path has

been preached by me, who have found out how to quench the darts of

grief. You yourselves must make the effort; _the Buddhas are only

preachers_. The thoughtful who enter the Path are freed from the

bondage of the Deceiver (Marâ).[591]

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad

is the way that leadeth to destruction.... Follow me.... Every one

that heareth these sayings and doeth them not, shall be likened

unto a foolish man” (_Matthew_ vii. and viii.). “_I can of mine own

self do nothing_” (_John_ v. 30). “The care of this world, and the

deceitfulness of riches, choke the word” (_Matthew_ xiii. 22), say

the Christians; and it is only by shaking off all delusions that the

Buddhist enters on the “Path” which will lead him “away from the

restless tossing waves of the ocean of life,” and take him “to the

calm City of Peace, to the real joy and rest of Nirvana.”

The Greek philosophers are alike made misty instead of mystic by their

too learned translators. The Egyptians revered the Divine Spirit, the

One-Only One, as NOUT. It is most evident that it is from that word

that Anaxagoras borrowed his denominative _nous_, or, as he calls it,

Νοῦς αυτοκρατης--the Mind or Spirit self-potent, the αρχητης κινησεως.

“All things,” says he, “were in chaos; then came Νοῦς and introduced

order.” He also denominated this Νοῦς the One that ruled the many. In

his idea Νοῦς was God; and the _Logos_ was man, the emanation of the

former. The external powers perceived _phenomena_; the _nous_ alone

recognized _noumena_ or subjective things. This is purely Buddhistic

and esoteric.

Here Socrates took his clew and followed it, and Plato after

him, with the whole world of interior knowledge. Where the old

Ionico-Italian world culminated in Anaxagoras, the new world began

with Socrates and Plato. Pythagoras made the _Soul_ a self-moving

unit, with three elements, the _nous_, the _phren_ and the _thumos_;

the latter two, shared with the brutes; the former only, being his

essential _self_. So the charge that he taught transmigration is

refuted; he taught no more than Gautama-Buddha ever did, whatever the

popular superstition of the Hindu rabble made of it after his death.

Whether Pythagoras borrowed from Buddha, or Buddha from somebody

else, matters not; the esoteric doctrine is the same.

The Platonic School is even more distinct in enunciating all this.

The real selfhood was at the basis of all. Socrates therefore taught

that he had a δαιμόνιον (_daimonion_), a spiritual something which put

him in the road to wisdom. He himself knew nothing, but this put him

in the way to learn all.

Plato followed him with a full investigation of the principles of

being. There was an _Agathon_, Supreme God, who produced in his own

mind a _paradeigma_ of all things.

He taught that in man was “the immortal principle of the soul,” a

mortal body, and a “separate mortal kind of soul,” which was placed

in a separate receptacle of the body from the other; the immortal

part was in the head (_Timæus_ xix., xx.) the other in the trunk

(xliv.).

Nothing is plainer than that Plato regarded the interior man as

constituted of two parts--one always the same, formed of the same

entity as Deity, and one mortal and corruptible.

“Plato and Pythagoras,” says Plutarch, “distribute the soul into two

parts, the rational (noëtic) and irrational (_agnoia_); that that

part of the soul of man which is rational, is eternal; for though it

be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but that part

of the soul which is divested of reason (_agnoia_) dies.”

“Man,” says Plutarch, “is compound; and they are mistaken who think

him to be compounded of two parts only. For they imagine that the

understanding is a part of the soul, but they err in this no less

than those who make the soul to be a part of the body, for the

understanding (_nous_) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better

and diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul (φυχη)

with the understanding (νοῦς) makes reason; and with the body,

passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle of pleasure

and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of these three parts

conjoined and compacted together, the earth has given the body, the

moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man.

“Now of the deaths we die, _the one makes man two of three_, and the

other, _one_ of (out of) two. The former is in the region and

jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries τελειν

resembled that given to death, τελευταν. The Athenians also heretofore

called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the _other death_ it is

in the moon or region of Persophoné. And as with the one the

terrestrial, so with the other the celestial Hermes doth dwell. This

suddenly and with violence plucks the soul from the body; but

Proserpina mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from

the soul. For this reason she is called _Monogenes_, _only-begotten_,

or rather _begetting one alone_; for the better part of man becomes

alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other

happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Faith that every

soul, whether with or without understanding (νοῦς), when gone out of

the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in

the region lying between the earth and moon. For those that have been

unjust and dissolute suffer there the punishment due to their

offences; but the good and virtuous are there detained till they are

purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of them all the

infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the body,

as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called

the Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed

and appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a

wandering pilgrimage or long exile into their country, they have a

taste of joy, such as they principally receive who are initiated into

Sacred Mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one’s

proper and peculiar hope.”

The _dæmonium_ of Socrates was this νοῦς, mind, spirit, or

understanding of the divine in it. “The νοῦς of Socrates,” says

Plutarch, “was pure and mixed itself with the body no more than

necessity required.... Every soul hath some portion of νοῦς, reason, a

man cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed

with flesh and appetite is changed and through pain or pleasure

becomes irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort;

some plunge themselves into the body, and so, in this life their whole

frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to

some part, but the purer part [nous] still remains _without the body_.

It is not drawn down into the body, but it swims above and touches

(overshadows) the extremest part of the man’s head; it is like a cord

to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it

proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. The

part that is plunged into the body is called _soul_. But the

incorruptible part is called the _nous_ and _the vulgar think it is

within them_, as they likewise imagine the image reflected from a

glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be

without, call it a Daëmon” (a god, a spirit).

“The soul, like to a dream, flies quick away, which it does not

immediately, as soon as it is separated from the body, but afterward,

when it is alone and divided from the understanding (_nous_)....

The soul being moulded and formed by the understanding (_nous_),

and itself moulding and forming the body, by embracing it on every

side, receives from it an impression and form; so that although it be

separated both from the understanding and the body, it nevertheless

so retains still its figure and resemblance for a long time, that it

may, with good right, be called its image.

“And of these souls the moon is the element, because souls resolve

into her, as the bodies of the deceased do into earth. Those, indeed,

who have been virtuous and honest, living a quiet and philosophical

life, without embroiling themselves in troublesome affairs, are

quickly resolved; because, being left by the nous, understanding, and

no longer using the corporeal passions, they incontinently vanish

away.”

We find even Irenæus, that untiring and mortal enemy of every Grecian

and “heathen” heresy, explain his belief in the trinity of man. The

perfect man, according to his views, consists of _flesh_, _soul_,

and _spirit_. “... carne, anima, spiritu, altero quidem figurante,

spiritu, altero quod formatur, carne. Id vero quod inter haec est

duo, est anima, quae aliquando subsequens spiritum elevatur ab eo,

aliquando autem consentient carni in terrenas concupiscentias”

(_Irenæus_ v., 1).

And Origen, in his _Sixth Epistle to the Romans_, says: “There is a

threefold partition of man, the body or flesh, the lowest part of our

nature, on which the old serpent by original sin inscribed the law

of sin, and by which we are tempted to vile things, and as oft as we

are overcome by temptations are joined fast to the Devil; the spirit,

in or by which we express the likeness of the divine nature in which

the very Best Creator, from the archetype of his own mind, engraved

with his finger (that is, his spirit), the eternal law of honesty; by

this we are joined (conglutinated) to God and made one with God. In

the third, the soul mediates between these, which, as in a factious

republic, cannot but join with one party or the other, is solicited

this way and that and is at liberty to choose the side to which it

will adhere. If, renouncing the flesh, it betakes itself to the party

of the spirit it will itself become spiritual, but if it cast itself

down to the cupidities of the flesh it will degenerate itself into

body.”

Plato (in _Laws_ x.) defines _soul_ as “the motion that is able

to move itself.” “Soul is the most ancient of all things, and the

commencement of motion.” “Soul was generated prior to body, and body

is posterior and secondary, as being, according to nature, ruled over

by the ruling soul.” “The soul which administers all things that are

moved in every way, administers likewise the heavens.”

“Soul then leads everything in heaven, and on earth, and in the sea,

by its movements--the names of which are, to will, to consider, to

take care of, to consult, to form opinions true and false, to be in

a state of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear, hate, love, together with

all such primary movements as are allied to these ... being a goddess

herself, she ever takes as an ally NOUS, a god, and disciplines all

things correctly and happily; but when with _Annoia_--not _nous_--it

works out everything the contrary.”

In this language, as in the Buddhist texts, the negative is treated

as essential existence. _Annihilation_ comes under a similar

exegesis. The positive state, is essential being but no manifestation

as such. When the spirit, in Buddhistic parlance, entered _nirvana_,

it lost objective existence but retained subjective. To objective

minds this is becoming absolute nothing; to subjective, NO-thing,

nothing to be displayed to sense.

These rather lengthy quotations are necessary for our purpose.

Better than anything else, they show the agreement between the

oldest “Pagan” philosophies--not “assisted by the light of divine

revelation,” to use the curious expression of Laboulaye in relation

to Buddha--and the early Christianity of some Fathers. Both Pagan

philosophy and Christianity, however, owe their elevated ideas on

the soul and spirit of man and the unknown Deity to Buddhism and the

Hindu Manu. No wonder that the Manicheans maintained that Jesus was

a permutation of Gautama; that Buddha, Christ, and Mani were one

and the same person,[592] for the teachings of the former two were

identical. It was the doctrine of old India that Jesus held to when

preaching the complete renunciation of the world and its vanities in

order to reach the kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, where “men neither

marry nor are given in marriage, but live like the angels.”

It is the philosophy of Siddhârtha-Buddha again that Pythagoras

expounded, when asserting that the _ego_ (νοῦς) was eternal with God,

and that the soul only passed through various stages (Hindu

_Rupa-locas_) to arrive at the divine excellence; meanwhile the

_thumos_ returned to the earth, and even the _phren_ was eliminated.

Thus the _metempsychosis_ was only a succession of disciplines through

refuge-heavens (called by the Buddhists _Zion_),[593] to work off the

exterior mind, to rid the _nous_ of the _phren_, or soul, the Buddhist

“Winyanaskandaya,” _that principle that lives_ from _Karma_ and the

Skandhas (groups). It is the latter, the metaphysical personations of

the “deeds” of man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of his

body, incarnate themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible

but never-dying compounds into a new body, or rather into an ethereal

being, the _double_ of what man was _morally_. It is the astral body

of the kabalist and the “incarnated deeds” which form the new sentient

self as his _Ahancara_ (the ego, self-consciousness), given to him by

the sovereign Master (the breath of God) can never perish, for it is

immortal _per se_ as a spirit; hence the sufferings of the newly-born

_self_ till he rids himself of every earthly thought, desire, and

passion.

We now see that the “four mysteries” of the Buddhist doctrine have

been as little understood and appreciated as the “wisdom” hinted at

by Paul, and spoken “among them that are _perfect_” (initiated),

the “mystery-wisdom” which “none of the _Archons_ of this world

knew.”[594] The fourth degree of the Buddhist Dhyâna, the fruit of

Samâdhi, which leads to the utmost perfection, to _Viconddham_, a

term correctly rendered by Burnouf in the verb “_perfected_,”[595] is

wholly misunderstood by others, as well as in himself. Defining the

condition of Dhyâna, St. Hilaire argues thus:

“Finally, having attained the fourth degree, the ascetic possesses

no more this feeling of beatitude, however obscure it may be ...

he has also lost all memory ... he has reached impassibility, as

near a neighbor of Nirvana as can be.... However, this absolute

impassibility does not hinder the ascetic from acquiring, at

this very moment, _omniscience and the magical power; a flagrant

contradiction, about which the Buddhists_ no more disturb themselves

than about so many others.”[596]

And why should they, when these contradictions are, in fact, no

contradictions at all? It ill behooves us to speak of contradictions

in other peoples’ religions, when those of our own have bred, besides

the three great conflicting bodies of Romanism, Protestantism, and

the Eastern Church, a thousand and one most curious smaller sects.

However it may be, we have here a term applied to one and the same

thing by the Buddhist holy “mendicants” and Paul, the Apostle. When

the latter says: “If so be that I might attain the _resurrection_

from among the dead [the Nirvana], not as though I had already

attained, or were already _perfect_” (initiated),[597] he uses an

expression common among the initiated Buddhists. When a Buddhist

ascetic has reached the “fourth degree,” he is considered a rahat.

He produces every kind of phenomena by the sole power of his freed

spirit. A _rahat_, say the Buddhists, is one who has acquired the

power of flying in the air, becoming invisible, commanding the

elements, and working all manner of wonders, commonly, and as

erroneously, called _meipo_ (miracles). He is a _perfect_ man, a

demi-god. A god he will become when he reaches Nirvana; for, like the

initiates of both Testaments, the worshippers of Buddha know that

they “are gods.”

“Genuine Buddhism, overleaping the barrier between finite and

infinite mind, urges its followers to aspire, _by their own efforts_,

to that divine perfectibility of which it teaches that man is

capable, and by attaining which man becomes _a god_,” says Brian

Houghton Hodgson.[598]

Dreary and sad were the ways, and blood-covered the tortuous paths by

which the world of the Christians was driven to embrace the Irenæan

and Eusebian Christianity. And yet, unless we accept the views of

the ancient Pagans, what claim has our generation to having solved

any of the mysteries of the “kingdom of heaven?” What more does the

most pious and learned of Christians know of the future destiny and

progress of our immortal spirits than the heathen philosopher of old,

or the modern “Pagan” beyond the Himalaya? Can he even boast that

he knows as much, although he works in the full blaze of “divine”

revelation? We have seen a Buddhist holding to the religion of his

fathers, both in theory and practice; and, however blind may be

his faith, however absurd his notions on some particular doctrinal

points, later engraftings of an ambitious clergy, yet in practical

works his Buddhism is far more Christ-like in deed and spirit than

the average life of our Christian priests and ministers. The fact

alone that his religion commands him to “honor his own faith, but

never slander that of other people,”[599] is sufficient. It places

the Buddhist lama immeasurably higher than any priest or clergyman

who deems it his sacred duty to curse the “heathen” to his face, and

sentence him and his religion to “eternal damnation.” Christianity

becomes every day more a religion of pure emotionalism. The doctrine

of Buddha is entirely based on practical works. A general love of all

beings, human and animal, is its nucleus. A man who knows that unless

he toils for himself he has to starve, and understands that he has

no scapegoat to carry the burden of his iniquities for him, is ten

times as likely to become a better man than one who is taught that

murder, theft, and profligacy can be washed in one instant as white

as snow, if he but believes in a God who, to borrow an expression of

Volney, “once took food upon earth, and is now himself the food of

his people.”