The Secret Doctrine
The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
By
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Author of “Isis Unveiled.”
Third and Revised Edition.
SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH.
“There is no Religion higher than Truth.”
Volume I.
Cosmogenesis
The Theosophical Publishing House
London
1893
CONTENTS
Preface To The First Edition.
Preface To The Third And Revised Edition.
Introductory.
Proem: Pages From A Pre‐Historic Record.
Part I. Cosmic Evolution.
Seven Stanzas From The “Book Of Dzyan”
Stanza I.
Stanza II.
Stanza III.
Stanza IV.
Stanza V.
Stanza VI.
Stanza VII.
Commentaries On The Seven Stanzas And Their Terms, According To Their
Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
Stanza I.
Stanza II.
Stanza III.
Stanza IV.
Stanza V.
Stanza VI.
A Digression.
A Few Early Misconceptions Concerning Planets, Rounds, And Man.
The Septenary Division In Different Indian Systems.
Additional Facts And Explanations Concerning The Globes And The
Monads.
Stanza VI.—_Continued_.
Stanza VII.
Summing Up.
Extracts From An Eastern Private Commentary, Hitherto Secret.
Part II. The Evolution Of Symbolism.
Section I. Symbolism and Ideographs.
Section II. The Mystery Language and Its Keys.
Section III. Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.
Section IV. Chaos: Theos: Kosmos.
Section V. On the Hidden Deity, Its Symbols and Glyphs.
Section VI. The Mundane Egg.
Section VII. The Days and Nights of Brahmâ.
Section VIII. The Lotus, as a Universal Symbol.
Section IX. The Moon; Deus Lunus, Phœbe.
Section X. Tree, Serpent, and Crocodile Worship.
Section XI. Demon est Deus Inversus.
Section XII. The Theogony of the Creative Gods.
Section XIII. The Seven Creations.
Section XIV. The Four Elements.
Section XV. On Kwan‐Shi‐Yin and Kwan‐Yin.
Part III. Addenda. On Occult And Modern Science.
Section I. Reasons for These Addenda.
Section II. Modern Physicists are Playing at Blind Man’s Buff.
“An Lumen Sit Corpus, Nec Non?”
Section III. Is Gravitation a Law?
Section IV. The Theories of Rotation in Science.
Current Hypotheses explaining the Origin of Rotation.
Hypotheses of the Origin of Planets and Comets.
Section V. The Masks of Science. Physics Or Metaphysics?
Section VI. An Attack on the Scientific Theory of Force by a Man of
Science.
Section VII. Life, Force, or Gravity.
Section VIII. The Solar Theory.
Section IX. The Coming Force. Its Possibilities And Impossibilities.
Section X. On the Elements and Atoms.
Section XI. Ancient Thought in Modern Dress.
Section XII. Scientific and Esoteric Evidence for, and Objections to,
the Modern Nebular Theory.
Section XIII. Forces—Modes of Motion or Intelligences?
Section XIV. Gods, Monads and Atoms.
Section XV. Cyclic Evolution and Karma.
Section XVI. The Zodiac and its Antiquity.
Section XVII. Summary of the Position.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter
at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
This Work
I Dedicate to all True Theosophists,
In every Country,
And of every Race,
For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
The author—the writer, rather—feels it necessary to apologize for the long
delay which has occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been
occasioned by ill‐health and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the
two volumes now issued do not complete the scheme, nor do these treat
exhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large quantity of
material has already been prepared, dealing with the history of Occultism
as contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Âryan Race, and
showing the bearing of Occult Philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it
is and as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a
favourable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of
the work in its entirety.
This scheme, it must be added, was not in contemplation when the
preparation of the work was first announced. As originally announced, it
was intended that _The Secret Doctrine_ should be an amended and enlarged
version of _Isis Unveiled_. It was, however, soon found that the
explanations which could be added to those already put before the world,
in the last‐named and other works dealing with Esoteric Science, were such
as to require a different method of treatment; and consequently the
present volumes do not contain, in all, twenty pages extracted from _Isis
Unveiled_.
The author does not feel it necessary to ask the indulgence of her readers
and critics for the many defects of literary style, and the imperfect
English which may be found in these pages. She is a foreigner, and her
knowledge of the language was acquired late in life. The English tongue is
employed because it offers the most widely‐diffused medium for conveying
the truths which it had become her duty to place before the world.
These truths are in no sense put forward as a _revelation_; nor does the
author claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public
for the first time in the world’s history. For what is contained in this
work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying
the Scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden
under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left unnoticed because of this veil.
What is now attempted is to gather the oldest tenets together and to make
of them one harmonious and unbroken whole. The sole advantage which the
writer has over her predecessors, is that she need not resort to personal
speculations and theories. For this work is a partial statement of what
she herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, in a
few details only, by the results of her own study and observation. The
publication of many of the facts herein stated has been rendered necessary
by the wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists and
students of Mysticism have indulged, during the last few years, in their
endeavour, as they imagined, to work out a complete system of thought from
the few facts previously communicated to them.
It is needless to explain that this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its
entirety, but a select number of fragments of its fundamental tenets,
special attention being paid to some facts which have been seized upon by
various writers, and distorted out of all resemblance to the truth.
But it is perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the teachings,
however fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these volumes, do not
belong to the Hindû, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldæan, or the Egyptian
religion, nor to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism or Christianity exclusively. The
Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their
origins, the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into
their original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown,
developed, and become materialized.
It is more than probable that the book will be regarded by a large section
of the public as a romance of the wildest kind; for who has ever even
heard of the Book of Dzyan?
The writer, therefore, is fully prepared to take all the responsibility
for what is contained in this work, and even to face the charge of having
invented the whole of it. That it has many shortcomings she is fully
aware; all that she claims for it is that, romantic as it may seem to
many, its logical coherence and consistency entitle this new Genesis to
rank, at any rate, on a level with the “working hypotheses” so freely
accepted by Modern Science. Further, it claims consideration, not by
reason of any appeal to dogmatic authority, but because it closely adheres
to Nature, and follows the laws of uniformity and analogy.
The aim of this work may be thus stated: to show that Nature is not “a
fortuitous concurrence of atoms,” and to assign to man his rightful place
in the scheme of the Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic
truths which are the basis of all religions; to uncover, to some extent,
the fundamental unity from which they all spring; finally, to show that
the Occult side of Nature has never been approached by the Science of
modern civilization.
If this is in any degree accomplished, the writer is content. It is
written in the service of humanity, and by humanity and the future
generations it must be judged. Its author recognizes no inferior court of
appeal. Abuse she is accustomed to; calumny she is daily acquainted with;
at slander she smiles in silent contempt.
_De minimis non curat lex._
H. P. B.
LONDON, _October, 1888_.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD AND REVISED EDITION.
In preparing this edition for the press, we have striven to correct minor
points of detail in literary form, without touching at all more important
matters. Had H. P. Blavatsky lived to issue the new edition, she would
doubtless have corrected and enlarged it to a very considerable extent.
That this is not done is one of the many minor losses caused by the one
great loss.
Awkward phrases, due to imperfect knowledge of English, have been
corrected; most of the quotations have been verified, and exact references
given—a work involving great labour, as the references in the previous
editions were often very loose; a uniform system of transliteration for
Sanskrit words has been adopted. Rejecting the form most favoured by
Western Orientalists as being misleading to the general reader—we have
given to the consonants not present in our English alphabet combinations
that approximately express their sound‐values, and we have carefully
inserted quantities, wherever they occur, on the vowels. In a few
instances we have incorporated notes in the text, but this has been very
sparingly done, and only when they obviously formed part of it.
We have added a copious Index for the assistance of students, and have
bound it separately, so that reference to it may be facilitated. For the
great labour in this we, and all students, are the debtors of Mr. A. J.
Faulding.
ANNIE BESANT.
G. R. S. MEAD.
LONDON, 1893.
INTRODUCTORY.
Gently to hear, kindly to judge.
SHAKESPEARE.
Since the appearance of Theosophical literature in England, it has become
customary to call its teachings “Esoteric Buddhism.” And, having become a
habit—as an old proverb based on daily experience has it—“Error runs down
an inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill.”
Old truisms are often the wisest. The human mind can hardly remain
entirely free from bias, and decisive opinions are often formed before a
thorough examination of a subject from all its aspects has been made. This
is said with reference to the prevailing double mistake (_a_) of limiting
Theosophy to Buddhism; and (_b_) of confounding the tenets of the
religious philosophy preached by Gautama, the Buddha, with the doctrines
broadly outlined in _Esoteric Buddhism_. Any thing more erroneous than
this could hardly be imagined. It has enabled our enemies to find an
effective weapon against Theosophy, because, as an eminent Pâli scholar
very pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume named “neither
Esotericism nor Buddhism.” The esoteric truths, presented in Mr. Sinnett’s
work, ceased to be esoteric from the moment they were made public; nor did
the book contain the religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a
hitherto hidden teaching, which are now explained and supplemented by many
more in the present volumes. And even the latter, though giving out many
fundamental tenets from the SECRET DOCTRINE of the East, raise but a small
corner of the dark veil. For no one, not even the greatest living Adept,
would be permitted to, or could—even if he would—give out promiscuously to
a mocking, unbelieving world that which has been so effectually concealed
from it for long æons and ages.
_Esoteric Buddhism_ was an excellent work with a very unfortunate title,
though it meant no more than does the title of this work, THE SECRET
DOCTRINE. It proved unfortunate, because people are always in the habit of
judging things by their appearance rather than by their meaning, and
because the error has now become so universal, that even most of the
Fellows of the Theosophical Society have fallen victims to the same
misconception. From the first, however, protests were raised by Brâhmans
and others against the title; and, in justice to myself, I must add that
_Esoteric Buddhism_ was presented to me as a completed volume, and that I
was entirely unaware of the manner in which the author intended to spell
the word “Budh‐ism.”
This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the
first to bring the subject under public notice, neglected to point out the
difference between “Buddhism”—the religious system of ethics preached by
the Lord Gautama, and so named from his title of _Buddha_, the
“Enlightened”—and “Budhism,” from _Budha_, Wisdom, or Knowledge (Vidyâ),
the faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root _Budh_, to know. We
Theosophists of India are ourselves the real culprits, although, at the
time, we did our best to correct the mistake.(1) To avoid this deplorable
misnomer was easy; the spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by
common consent both pronounced and written “Budhism,” instead of
“Buddhism.” Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, as it
ought to be called, in English, Buddhaïsm, and its votaries “Buddhaïsts.”
This explanation is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like
the present. The Wisdom‐Religion is the inheritance of all the nations,
the world over, in spite of the statement made in _Esoteric Buddhism_(2)
that “two years ago (_i.e._, in 1883), neither I, _nor any other European
living_, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put
into a scientific shape,” etc. This error must have crept in through
inadvertence. The present writer knew all that is “divulged” in _Esoteric
Buddhism_, and much more, _many years_ before it became her duty (in 1880)
to impart a small portion of the Secret Doctrine to two _European_
gentlemen, one of whom was the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_; and surely
the present writer has the undoubted, though to her, rather equivocal,
privilege of being a European by birth and education. Moreover, a
considerable part of the philosophy expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught in
America, even before _Isis Unveiled_ was published, to two Europeans and
to my colleague, Colonel H. S. Olcott. Of the three teachers the latter
gentleman has had, the first was a Hungarian Initiate, the second an
Egyptian, the third a Hindû. As permitted, Colonel Olcott has given out
some of this teaching in various ways; if the other two have not, it has
been simply because they were not allowed, their time for public work
having not yet come. But for others it has, and the appearance of Mr.
Sinnett’s several interesting books is a visible proof of the fact.
Moreover, it is above everything important to keep in mind that no
Theosophical book acquires the least additional value from pretended
authority.
Âdi, or Âdhi Budha, the One, or the First, and Supreme Wisdom, is a term
used by Âryâsanga in his secret treatises, and now by all the mystic
Northern Buddhists. It is a Sanskrit term, and an appellation given by the
earliest Âryans to the Unknown Deity; the word “Brahmâ” not being found in
the _Vedas_ and the early works. It means the Absolute Wisdom, and
Âdibhûta is translated by Fitzedward Hall, “the primeval uncreated cause
of all.” Æons of untold duration must have elapsed, before the epithet of
Buddha was so humanized, so to speak, as to allow of the term being
applied to mortals, and finally appropriated to one whose unparalleled
virtues and knowledge caused him to receive the title of the “Buddha of
Wisdom Unmoved.” _Bodha_ means the innate possession of divine intellect
or understanding; _Buddha_, the acquirement of it by personal efforts and
merit; while _Buddhi_ is the faculty of cognizing, the channel through
which divine knowledge reaches the Ego, the discernment of good and evil,
also divine conscience, and the Spiritual Soul, which is the vehicle of
Âtmâ. “When Buddhi absorbs our Ego‐tism (destroys it) with all its
Vikâras, Avalokiteshvara becomes manifested to us, and Nirvâna, or Mukti,
is reached,” Mukti being the same as Nirvana, _i.e._, freedom from the
trammels of Mâyâ or Illusion. _Bodhi_ is likewise the name of a particular
state of trance‐condition, called Samâdhi, during which the subject
reaches the culmination of spiritual knowledge.
Unwise are those who, in their blind and, in our age, untimely hatred of
Buddhism, and, by reäction, of Budhism, deny its esoteric teachings, which
are those also of the Brâhmans, simply because the name suggests what to
them, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. _Unwise_ is the correct term
to use in their case. For in this age of crass and illogical materialism,
the Esoteric Philosophy alone is calculated to withstand the repeated
attacks on all and everything man holds most dear and sacred in his inner
spiritual life. The true philosopher, the student of Esoteric Wisdom,
entirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special
religions. Moreover, Esoteric Philosophy reconciles all religions, strips
every one of its outward human garments, and shows the root of each to be
identical with that of every other great religion. It proves the necessity
of a Divine Absolute Principle in Nature. It denies Deity no more than it
does the sun. Esoteric Philosophy has never rejected God in Nature, nor
Deity as the absolute and abstract _Ens_. It only refuses to accept any of
the gods of the so‐called monotheistic religions, gods created by man in
his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the
Ever‐Unknowable. Furthermore, the records we mean to place before the
reader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the beginning
of our humanity, and Buddhistic Occultism occupies therein only its
legitimate place, and no more. Indeed, the secret portions of the _Dan_ or
_Janna_ (_Dhyâna_)(3) of Gautama’s metaphysics—grand as they appear to one
unacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom‐Religion of antiquity—are but a
very small portion of the whole. The Hindû reformer limited his public
teachings to the purely moral and physiological aspect of the Wisdom‐
Religion, to ethics and man alone. Things “unseen and incorporeal,” the
mysteries of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher left
entirely untouched in his public lectures, reserving the Hidden Truths for
a select circle of his Arhats. The latter received their Initiation at the
famous Saptaparna Cave (the Sattapanni of Mahâvansa) near Mount Baibhâr
(the Webhâra of the Pâli MSS.). This cave was in Râjâgriha, the ancient
capital of Magadha, and was the Cheta Cave of Fa‐hian, as is rightly
suspected by some archaeologists.(4)
Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and philosophy of
these teachings, once that they were transplanted from the secret and
sacred circle of the Arhats, during the course of their work of
proselytism, into a soil less prepared for metaphysical conceptions than
India; _i.e._, once they were transferred into China, Japan, Siam, and
Burmah. How the pristine purity of these grand revelations was dealt with
may be seen in studying some of the so‐called “esoteric” Buddhist schools
of antiquity in their modern garb, not only in China and other Buddhist
countries in general, but even in not a few schools of Tibet, which have
been left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and Mongolian innovators.
Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the very important difference
between _orthodox_ Buddhism—_i.e._, the public teachings of Gautama, the
Buddha—and his esoteric Budhism. His Secret Doctrine, however, differed in
no wise from that of the initiated Brahmans of his day. The Buddha was a
child of Âryan soil, a born Hindû, a Kshatriya and a disciple of the
Twice‐born (the initiated Brâhmans) or Dvîjas. His teachings, therefore,
could not be different from their doctrines, for the whole Buddhist reform
consisted merely in giving out a portion of that which had been kept
secret from every man outside of the “enchanted” circle of ascetics and
Temple‐Initiates. Unable, owing to his pledges, to teach _all_ that had
been imparted to him, though the Buddha taught a philosophy built upon the
ground‐work of the true esoteric knowledge, he gave to the world only its
outward material body and kept its soul for his Elect. Many Chinese
scholars among Orientalists have heard of the “Soul‐Doctrine.” None seem
to have understood its real meaning and importance.
That doctrine was preserved secretly—too secretly, perhaps—within the
sanctuary. The mystery that shrouded its chief dogma and
aspiration—Nirvâna—has so tried and irritated the curiosity of those
scholars who have studied it, that, unable to solve it logically and
satisfactorily by untying its Gordian knot, they have cut it through by
declaring that Nirvâna means _absolute annihilation_.
Toward the end of the first quarter of this century a distinct class of
literature appeared in the world, which with every year became more
defined in its tendency. Being based, _soi‐disant_, on the scholarly
researches of Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was considered
scientific. Hindû, Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and
emblems were made to yield anything the symbologist wanted them to yield,
and thus often the rude _outward_ form was given out in place of the inner
meaning. Works, most remarkable for their ingenious deductions and
speculations, _circulo vicioso_—foregone conclusions generally taking the
place of premisses in the syllogisms of more than one Sanskrit and Pâli
scholar—appeared rapidly in succession, over‐flooding the libraries with
dissertations on phallic and sexual worship rather than on real symbology,
and each contradicting the other.
This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental
truths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic Ages is now permitted to
see the light, after long millenniums of the most profound silence and
secrecy. I say advisedly “a _few_ truths,” because that which must remain
unsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be
imparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But even the little that
is now given is better than complete silence upon these vital truths. The
world of to‐day, in its mad career towards the unknown, which the
Physicist is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the
problem eludes his grasp, is rapidly progressing on the reverse plane to
that of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena, a true valley of
discord and of eternal strife, a necropolis, wherein lie buried the
highest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit‐Soul. That soul
becomes with every new generation more paralyzed and atrophied. The
“amiable infidels and accomplished profligates” of Society, spoken of by
Greeley, care little for the revival of the _dead_ sciences of the past;
but there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to learn
the few truths that may be given to them _now_; and now much more than ten
years ago, when _Isis Unveiled_ appeared, or even when the later attempts
to explain the mysteries of esoteric science were published.
One of the greatest and perhaps the most serious objection to the
correctness and reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary
Stanzas. How can the statements contained in them be verified? True,
though a great portion of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian works
quoted in the present volumes is known to some Orientalists, yet the chief
work—that one from which the Stanzas are given—is not in the possession of
European Libraries. THE BOOK OF DZYAN (or DZAN) is utterly unknown to our
Philologists, or at any rate was never heard of by them under its present
name. This is, of course, a great drawback to those who follow the methods
of research prescribed by official Science; but to students of Occultism,
and to every genuine Occultist, this will be of little moment. The main
body of the doctrines given, however, is found scattered throughout
hundreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some already
translated—disfigured in their interpretations, as usual—others still
waiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of
verifying the statements herein made, and of checking most of the
quotations. A few new facts, _new_ to the profane Orientalist only, and
passages quoted from the Commentaries will be found difficult to trace.
Several of the teachings also have hitherto been transmitted orally, yet
even these in every instance are hinted at in the almost countless volumes
of Brâhmanical, Chinese and Tibetan temple‐literature.
However it may be, and whatsoever is in store for the writer through
malevolent criticism, one fact is quite certain. The members of several
esoteric schools—the seat of which is beyond the Himâlayas, and whose
ramifications may be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet, and even in
Syria, and also South America—claim to have in their possession the _sum
total_ of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and print, all the works,
in fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language or character,
since the art of writing began, from the ideographic hieroglyphs down to
the alphabet of Cadmus and the Devanâgari.
It has been constantly claimed that, ever since the destruction of the
Alexandrian Library,(5) every work of a character that might lead the
profane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the
mysteries of the Secret Science, owing to the combined efforts of the
members of these Brotherhoods, has been diligently searched for. It is
added, moreover, by those who know, that once found all such works were
destroyed, save three copies of each which were preserved and safely
stored away. In India, the last of these precious manuscripts were secured
and hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.
Prof. Max Müller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort the
original text of the _Vedas_ from the Brâhmans, and yet boasts that
European Orientalists have it.(6) That Europe has the _complete text_ is
exceedingly doubtful, and the future may have very disagreeable surprises
in store for the Orientalists.
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of this kind, the
text of which was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any
direct references to the ancient mysteries, was first carefully copied in
cryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and
cleverest palæographer, and then destroyed to the last copy. During
Akbar’s reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at the Emperor’s
sinful prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves helped the
Brâhmans to conceal their MSS. Such was Badáoní, who had an _undisguised
horror_ of Akbar’s mania for idolatrous religions.
Badáoní, in his _Muntakhab_ at _Tawarikh_, writes:
As they [the Shramana and Brâhmans] surpass other learned men in
their treatises on morals and on physical and religious sciences,
and reach a high degree in their _knowledge of the future_, in
spiritual power, and human perfection, they brought proofs based
on reason and testimony, ... and inculcated their doctrines so
firmly ... that no man ... could now raise a doubt in his Majesty
even if mountains were to crumble to dust, or the heavens were to
tear asunder.... His Majesty relished inquiries into the sects of
these infidels, who cannot be counted, so numerous they are, and
who have no end of _revealed books_.(7)
This work “was kept secret and, was not published till the reign of
Jahángír.”
Moreover in all the large and wealthy Lamasaries, there are subterranean
crypts and cave‐libraries, cut in the rock, whenever the Gonpa and
Lhakhang are situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western Tsaydam, in the
solitary passes of Kuen‐lun there are several such hiding‐places. Along
the ridge of Altyn‐tag, whose soil no European foot has ever trodden so
far, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small
cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a poor‐looking
temple in it, and one old Lama, a hermit, living near by to watch it.
Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries and halls under it contain a
collection of books, the number of which, according to the accounts given,
is too large to find room even in the British Museum.
According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless
land of Tarim—a veritable wilderness in the heart of Turkestan—were in
days of old covered with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, a few
verdant oases only relieve its dread solitude. One such, carpeting the
sepulchre of a vast city buried under the sandy soil of the desert,
belongs to no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The
tradition also speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors
filled with tiles and cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be
an actual fact.
All this will very likely provoke a smile of doubt. But before the reader
rejects the truthfulness of the reports, let him pause and reflect over
the following well‐known facts. The collective researches of Orientalists,
and especially of late years the labours of students of Comparative
Philology and the Science of Religion, have enabled them to ascertain that
an incalculable number of MSS., and even of printed works _known to have
existed, are now to be no more found_. They have disappeared without
leaving the slightest trace behind them. Were they works of no importance
they might, in the natural course of time, have been left to perish, and
their very names would have been obliterated from human memory. But this
is not so, for, as now ascertained, most of them contained the true keys
to works still extant, and now _entirely incomprehensible_, for the
greater portion of their readers, _without these additional volumes of
commentaries and explanations_.
Such, for instance, are the works of Lao‐tse, the predecessor of
Confucius. He is said to have written nine hundred and thirty books on
ethics and religions, and seventy on magic, _one thousand_ in all. His
great work, however, the _Tao‐te‐King_, the _heart_ of his doctrine and
the sacred scripture of the _Tao‐sse_, has in it, as Stanislas Julien
shows, only “about 5,000 words,”(8) hardly a dozen of pages; yet Professor
Max Müller finds that “the text is unintelligible without commentaries, so
that M. Julien had to consult more than sixty commentators for the purpose
of his translation, the earliest going back as far as the year 163 B.C.”,
and _not earlier_, as we see. During the four centuries and a half that
preceded this “earliest” of the commentators there was ample time to veil
the true Lao‐tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. The
Japanese, among whom are now to be found the most learned of the priests
and followers of Lao‐tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of
European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the commentaries to
which our Western Sinologues have access are not the real _occult_
records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as
almost all the texts, have long _disappeared_ from the eyes of the
profane.
Of the works of Confucius we read:
If we turn to China, we find that the religion of Confucius is
founded on the Five _King_ and the Four _Shu_ books—in themselves
of considerable extent and surrounded by voluminous Commentaries,
without which even the most learned scholars would not venture to
fathom _the depth_ of their sacred canon.(9)
But they have not fathomed it; and this is the complaint of the
Confucianists, as a very learned member of that body, in Paris, complained
in 1881.
If our scholars turn to the ancient literature of the Semitic religions,
to the Scriptures of Chaldea, the elder sister and instructress, if not
the fountain‐head of the Mosaic Bible, the basis and starting‐point of
Christianity, what do they find? To perpetuate the memory of the ancient
religions of Babylon, to record the vast cycle of astronomical
observations of the Chaldean Magi, to justify the tradition of their
splendid and preëminently occult literature, what now remains? Only a few
fragments, which are _said to be_ by Berosus.
These, however, are almost valueless, even as a clue to the character of
what has disappeared, for they passed through the hands of his Reverence,
the Bishop of Cæsarea—that self‐constituted censor and editor of the
sacred records of other men’s religions—and they doubtless to this day
bear the mark of his eminently veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is
the history of this treatise on the once grand religion of Babylon?
It was written in Greek for Alexander the Great, by Berosus, a priest of
the temple of Belus, from the astronomical and chronological records
preserved by the priests of that temple—records covering a period of
200,000 years—and is now lost. In the first century B.C. Alexander
Polyhistor made a series of extracts from it, _which are also lost_.
Eusebius (270‐340 A.D.) used these extracts in writing his _Chronicon_.
The points of resemblance—almost of identity—between the Jewish and the
Chaldean scriptures,(10) made the latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in
his _rôle_ of defender and champion of the new faith which had adopted the
former scriptures and together with them an absurd chronology.
Now it is pretty certain that Eusebius did not spare the Egyptian
synchronistic tables of Manetho—so much so that Bunsen(11) charges him
with mutilating history most unscrupulously, and Socrates, a historian of
the fifth century, and Syncellus, vice‐patriarch of Constantinople in the
beginning of the eighth, denounce him as the most daring and desperate
forger. Is it likely, then, that he dealt more tenderly with the Chaldean
records, which were already menacing the new religion, so rashly accepted?
So that, with the exception of these more than doubtful fragments, the
entire Chaldean sacred literature has disappeared from the eyes of the
profane as completely as the lost Atlantis. A few facts that were
contained in the Berosian History are given later on, and may throw great
light on the true origin of the Fallen Angels, personified by Bel and the
Dragon.
Turning now to the oldest specimen of Âryan literature, the _Rig Veda_,
the student if he strictly follows in this the data furnished by the
Orientalists themselves, will find that although the _Rig Veda_ contains
only about 10,580 verses, or 1,028 hymns, yet in spite of the _Brâhmanas_
and the mass of glosses and commentaries, it is not understood correctly
to this day. Why is this so? Evidently because the _Brâhmanas_, “the
scholastic and oldest treatises on the primitive hymns,” _themselves
require a key_, which the Orientalists have failed to secure.
What, again, do the scholars say of Buddhist literature? Do they possess
it in its completeness? Assuredly not. Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of
the _Kanjur_ and _Tanjur_ of the Northern Buddhists, each volume, we are
told, “weighing from four to five pounds,” nothing, in truth, is known of
real Lamaïsm. Yet the sacred canon is said in the _Saddharmâlankâra_(12)
to contain 29,368,000 letters, or, exclusive of treatises and
commentaries, five or six times the amount of the matter contained in the
_Bible_, which, as Professor Max Müller states, rejoices in only 3,567,180
letters. Notwithstanding, then, these 325 volumes (in reality there are
333, the _Kanjur_ comprising 108, and _Tanjur_ 225 volumes), “the
translators, instead of supplying us with correct versions, have
interwoven them with their own commentaries, for the purpose of justifying
the dogmas of their several schools.”(13) Moreover, “according to a
tradition preserved by the Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the
North, the sacred Buddhist Canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000
tracts, but most of them were lost, so that there remained but 6,000”—as
the Professor tells his audience. Lost, as usual—for Europeans. But who
can be quite sure that they are likewise lost for Buddhists and Brâhmans?
Considering the reverence of the Buddhists for every line written upon
Buddha and the Good Law, the loss of nearly 76,000 tracts does seem
miraculous. Had it been _vice versâ_, every one acquainted with the
natural course of events would subscribe to the statement that, of these
76,000, 5,000 or 6,000 treatises _might have been_ destroyed during the
persecutions in, and emigrations from, India. But as it is well
ascertained that the Buddhist Arhats began their religious exodus, for the
purpose of propagating the new faith beyond Kashmir and the Himâlayas, as
early as the year 300 before our era,(14) and reached China in the year 61
A.D.,(15) when Kashyapa, at the invitation of the Emperor Ming‐ti, went
there to acquaint the “Son of Heaven” with the tenets of Buddhism, it does
seem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of such a loss as though it
were really possible. They do not seem to allow for one moment the
possibility that the texts may be lost only for the West and for
themselves, or that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled
boldness to keep their most sacred records out of the reach of foreigners,
thus refusing to deliver them to the profanation and misuse even of races
so “vastly superior” to themselves.
Judging by the expressed regrets and numerous confessions of almost every
one of the Orientalists,(16) the public may feel sufficiently sure, (_a_)
that the students of ancient religions have indeed very few data upon
which to build such final conclusions as they generally do about the old
faiths, and (_b_) that such lack of data does not in the least prevent
them from dogmatizing. One would imagine that, thanks to the numerous
records of the Egyptian theogony and mysteries, preserved in the classics
and in a number of ancient writers, the rites and dogmas of Pharaonic
Egypt, at least, ought to be well understood; better, at any rate, than
the too abstruse philosophies and Pantheism of India, of whose religion
and language Europe had hardly any idea before the beginning of the
present century. Along the Nile and on the face of the whole country,
there stand to this hour, yearly and daily exhumed, ever fresh relics
which eloquently tell their own history. Still it is not so. The learned
Oxford Philologist himself confesses the truth by saying:
We see still standing the pyramids, and the ruins of temples and
labyrinths, their walls covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions,
and with the strange pictures of gods and goddesses. On rolls of
papyrus, which seem to defy the ravages of time, we have even
fragments of what may be called the sacred books of the Egyptians.
Yet, though much has been deciphered in the ancient records of the
mysterious race, the mainspring of the religion of Egypt and the
original intention of its ceremonial worship are far from being
fully disclosed to us.(17)
Here again the mysterious hieroglyphic documents remain, but the keys by
which alone they become intelligible have disappeared.
In fact so little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the
funerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of
sex on the mummies, that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a
year or two ago, one of this kind was discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The
mummy of what was considered the wife of an unimportant Pharaoh, has,
thanks to an inscription found on an amulet hung round its neck, turned
out to be that of Sesostris—the greatest King of Egypt!
Nevertheless, having found that “there is a natural connection between
language and religion”; and that “there was a _common_ Âryan religion
before the separation of the Âryan race; a _common_ Semitic religion
before the separation of the Semitic race; and a _common_ Turanic religion
before the separation of the Chinese and the other tribes belonging to the
Turanian class”; having, in fact, discovered only “three ancient centres
of religion” and “three centres of language”; and though as entirely
ignorant of those primitive religions and languages as of their origin—the
Professor does not hesitate to declare “that a truly _historical basis_
for a scientific treatment of the principal religions of the world” has
been gained!
A “scientific treatment” of a subject is no guarantee for its “historical
basis”; and with such scarcity of data on hand, no Philologist, even among
the most eminent, is justified in giving out his own conclusions for
_historical facts_. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has thoroughly
proved to the world’s satisfaction that, according to the phonetic rules
of Grimm’s law, Odin and Buddha are two different personages, quite
distinct from each other, and has proved it _scientifically_. When,
however, he takes the opportunity of saying in the same breath that Odin
“was worshipped as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the
age of the _Veda_ and of Homer,”(18) he has not the slightest “historical
basis” for it, but makes _history_ and _fact_ subservient to his own
conclusions, which may be very “scientific” in the sight of Oriental
scholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The conflicting
views of the various eminent Philologists and Orientalists, from Martin
Haug down to Prof. Max Müller himself, on the subject of chronology, in
the case of the _Vedas_, are an evident proof that the statement has no
“historical” basis to stand upon, “internal evidence” being very often a
Jack‐o’‐lantern, instead of a safe beacon to follow. Nor has the Science
of modern Comparative Mythology any better argument to bring forward to
crush the contention of those learned writers who have insisted for the
last century or so that there must have been “fragments of a primeval
revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind ...
preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy.” For this is what all the
Eastern Initiates and Pandits have been proclaiming to the world from time
to time. And while a prominent Singhalese priest assured the writer that
it was well known that the most important tracts, belonging to the
Buddhist sacred canon, were stored away in _countries and places
inaccessible to the European Pandits_, the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî,
the greatest Sanskritist of his day in India, assured some members of the
Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard to ancient Brâhmanical
works. When told that Professor Max Müller had declared to the audiences
of his _Lectures_ that the theory “_that there was a primeval
preternatural revelation_ granted to the fathers of the human race, finds
but few supporters at present”—the holy and learned man laughed. His
answer was suggestive. “If Mr. ‘Moksh Mooller’ [as he pronounced the
name], were a Brâhman, and came with me, I might take him to a _gupa_ cave
[a secret crypt] near Okhee Math, in the Himâlayas, where he would soon
find out that what crossed the Kâlapani [the black waters of the ocean]
from India to Europe were only the _bits of rejected copies of some
passages from our sacred books_. There _was_ a ‘primeval revelation,’ and
it still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the world, but will reäppear;
though the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait.”
Questioned further on the point, he would say no more. This was at Meerut,
in 1880.
No doubt the mystification played by the Brâhmans upon Colonel Wilford and
Sir William Jones, in the last century, at Calcutta, was cruel, but it had
been well deserved, and no one was more to blame in that affair than the
missionaries and Colonel Wilford himself. The former, on the testimony of
Sir William Jones himself,(19) were silly enough to maintain that “the
Hindûs were even now almost Christians, because their Brahmâ, Vishnu and
Mahesha were no other than the Christian trinity.”(20) It was a good
lesson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it
has also made some of them too shy and, in its reäction, has caused the
pendulum of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other way. For
“that first supply from the Brâhmanical market,” in answer to the demand
of Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the
Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern
as to give the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of
their opportunity. That they do so and to the full extent of their mental
powers, is shown by the absurd attempts of late to prove that the whole
Purânic story about Krishna was _plagiarized by the Brâhmans from the
Bible!_ But the facts cited by the Oxford Professor in his _Lectures_
concerning the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to
the sorrow, of Colonel Wilford, do not at all interfere with the
conclusions to which one who studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably
come. For, if the results show that neither the _New_ nor even the _Old
Testament_ borrowed anything from the more ancient religion of the
Brâhmans and Buddhists, it does not follow that the Jews have not borrowed
all they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later
on by Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive
learning from the Brâhmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic
influence in the early mythology of Babylon; and Colonel Vans Kennedy has
long ago justly declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of
Sanskrit and Brâhman learning. But all such proofs must lose their value,
in the presence of the latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Müller. What
it is everyone knows. The code of phonetic laws has now become a universal
solvent for every identification and “connection” between the gods of many
nations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot‐Hermes, etc.) was
Maia, the mother of Gautama Buddha, also Mâyâ, and the mother of Jesus,
likewise Mâyâ (Illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great Illusion
symbolically)—yet these three characters have no connection, nor can they
have any, since Bopp has “laid down his code of phonetic laws.”
In their efforts to collect together the many skeins of unwritten history,
it is a bold step for our Orientalists to take, to deny _à priori_
everything that does not dove‐tail with their special conclusions. Thus,
while new discoveries are daily made of great arts and sciences having
existed far back in the night of time, yet even the knowledge of writing
is refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they are credited with
barbarism instead of culture. Nevertheless traces of an immense
civilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This
civilization is undeniably _prehistoric_. And how can there be
civilization without a literature in some form, without annals or
chronicles? Common sense alone ought to supplement the broken links in the
history of departed nations. The gigantic and unbroken wall of the
mountains that hem in the whole table‐land of Tibet, from the upper course
of the river Khuan‐Khé down to the Karakorum hills, witnessed a
civilization during millenniums of years, and should have strange secrets
to tell mankind. The eastern and central portions of these regions—the
Nan‐chan and the Altyn‐tag—were once upon a time covered with cities that
could well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has swept over the
land, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of shifting
sand and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains of
the basin of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known
to the traveller. Within those table‐lands of sand there is water, and
fresh oases are found blooming there, wherein no European foot has ever
yet ventured, or trodden the now treacherous soil. Among these verdant
oases there are some which are entirely inaccessible even to the profane
native traveller. Hurricanes may “tear up the sands and sweep whole plains
away,” they are powerless to destroy that which is beyond their reach.
Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure;
and as their entrances are concealed, there is little fear that anyone
would discover them, even should several armies invade the sandy wastes
where—
Not a pool, not a bush, not a house is seen,
And the mountain‐range forms a rugged screen
Round the parch’d flats of the dry, dry desert....
But there is no need to send the reader across the desert, when the same
proofs of ancient civilization are found even in comparatively populated
regions of the same country. The oasis of Tchertchen, for instance,
situated about 4,000 feet above the level of the river Tchertchen‐Darya,
is now surrounded in every direction by the ruins of archaic towns and
cities. There, some 3,000 human beings represent the relics of about a
hundred extinct nations and races, the very names of which are now unknown
to our ethnologists. An anthropologist would feel more than embarrassed to
class, divide and subdivide them; the more so, as the respective
descendants of all these antediluvian races and tribes themselves know as
little of their own forefathers as if they had fallen from the moon. When
questioned about their origin, they reply that they know not whence their
fathers had come, but had heard that their first, or earliest, men were
ruled by the great Genii of these deserts. This may be put down to
ignorance and superstition, yet in view of the teachings of the Secret
Doctrine, the answer may be based upon primeval tradition. Alone the tribe
of Khoorassan claims to have come from what is now known as Afghanistan,
long before the days of Alexander, and brings legendary lore to that
effect in corroboration. The Russian traveller Colonel (now General)
Prjevalsky found quite close to the oasis of Tchertchen the ruins of two
enormous cities, the oldest of which, according to local tradition, was
destroyed 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant, and the other by Mongolians
in the tenth century of our era.
The emplacement of the two cities is now covered, owing to
shifting sands and the desert wind, with strange and heterogeneous
relics; with broken china and kitchen utensils and human bones.
The natives often find copper and gold coins, melted silver
ingots, diamonds, and turquoises, and what is the most
remarkable—broken glass.... Coffins of some undecaying wood, or
material, also, within which beautifully preserved embalmed bodies
are found.... The male mummies are all extremely tall powerfully
built men with long wavy hair.... A vault was found with twelve
dead men sitting in it. Another time, in a separate coffin, a
young girl was discovered by us. Her eyes were closed with golden
discs, and the jaws held firm by a golden circlet running from
under the chin across the top of the head. Clad in a narrow
woollen garment, her bosom was covered with golden stars, the feet
being left naked.(21)
To this, the famous traveller adds that all along their way on the river
Tchertchen they heard legends about twenty‐three towns buried ages ago by
the shifting sands of the deserts. The same tradition exists on the Lob‐
nor and in the oasis of Kerya.
The traces of such civilization, and these and like traditions, give us
the right to credit other legendary lore, warranted by well educated and
learned natives of India and Mongolia who speak of immense libraries
reclaimed from the sand, together with various relics of ancient Magic
Lore, which have all been safely stowed away.
To recapitulate. The Secret Doctrine was the universally diffused religion
of the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic
records of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its
character and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all
its great Adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries
belonging to the Occult Fraternity.
This statement is rendered more credible by a consideration of the
following facts: the tradition of the thousands of ancient parchments
saved when the Alexandrian library was destroyed; the thousands of
Sanskrit works which disappeared in India in the reign of Akbar; the
universal tradition in China and Japan that the true ancient texts with
the commentaries, which alone make them comprehensible, amounting to many
thousands of volumes, have long passed out of the reach of profane hands;
the disappearance of the vast sacred and occult literature of Babylon; the
loss of those keys which alone could solve the thousand riddles of the
Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India that the real secret
commentaries which alone make the _Vedas_ intelligible, though no longer
visible to profane eyes, still remain for the Initiate, hidden in secret
caves and crypts; and an identical belief among the Buddhists, with regard
to their secret books.
The Occultists assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating
hands, to reäppear in some more enlightened age, for which, in the words
of the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî, “the Mlechchhas [outcasts, savages,
those beyond the pale of Âryan civilization] will have to wait.”
For it is not the fault of the Initiates that these documents are now
“lost” to the profane; nor was their policy dictated by selfishness, or
any desire to monopolise the life‐giving sacred lore. There were portions
of the Secret Science that for incalculable ages had to remain concealed
from the profane gaze. But this was because the imparting to the
unprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous importance was equivalent
to giving a child a lighted candle in a powder magazine.
The answer to a question which has frequently arisen in the minds of
students, when meeting with statements such as this, may well be outlined
here.
We can understand, they say, the necessity for concealing from the herd
such secrets as the Vril, or the rock‐destroying force, discovered by J.
W. Keely, of Philadelphia, but we cannot understand how any danger could
arise from the revelation of such a purely philosophical doctrine, for
instance, as the evolution of the Planetary Chains.
The danger was that such doctrines as the Planetary Chain, or the seven
Races, at once give a clue to the seven‐fold nature of man, for each
principle is correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race, and the human
principles are, on every plane, correlated to seven‐fold occult forces,
those of the higher planes being of tremendous power. So that any
septenary division at once gives a clue to tremendous occult powers, the
abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to humanity; a clue which is,
perhaps, no clue to the present generation—especially to Westerns,
protected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant materialistic
disbelief in the occult—but a clue which would, nevertheless, have been
very real in the early centuries of the Christian era to people fully
convinced of the reality of Occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation
which made them rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst
description.
The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its
actual existence was never made a secret of by the Hierophants of the
Temples, wherein the MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and
stimulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was repeatedly made known
by the great Adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to the Neo‐Platonists.
It was the new religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a change for the
worse in the policy of centuries.
Moreover, there is a well‐known fact—a very curious one, corroborated to
the writer by a reverend gentleman attached for years to a Russian
Embassy—that there are several documents in the St. Petersburg Imperial
Libraries to show that, even so late as the days when Freemasonry and
Secret Societies of Mystics flourished without hindrance in Russia, namely
at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, more than
one Russian Mystic travelled to Tibet _viâ_ the Ural Mountains in search
of knowledge and initiation in the unknown crypts of Central Asia. And
more than one returned years later, with a rich store of information such
as could never have been given him anywhere in Europe. Several cases could
be cited and well‐known names brought forward, but for the fact that such
publicity might annoy the surviving relatives of the late Initiates
referred to. Let any one look over the annals and history of Freemasonry
in the archives of the Russian metropolis, and he will assure himself of
the fact above stated.
This is a corroboration of what has been stated many times before,
unfortunately, too indiscreetly. Instead of benefiting humanity, the
virulent charges of deliberate invention and imposture with a purpose,
hurled at those who asserted a veritable, even if a little known fact,
have only generated bad Karma for the slanderers. But now the mischief is
done, and truth should no longer be denied, whatever the consequences.
Is Theosophy a new religion, we are asked? By no means; it is not a
“religion,” nor is its philosophy “new”; for, as already stated, it is as
old as thinking man. Its tenets are not now published for the first time,
but have been cautiously given out to, and taught by, more than one
European Initiate—especially by the late Ragon.
More than one great scholar has stated that there never was a religious
founder, whether Âryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had _invented_ a new
religion, or revealed a new truth. These founders were all _transmitters_,
not original teachers. They were the authors of new forms and
interpretations, while the truths upon which their teachings were based
were as old as mankind. Thus out of the many truths revealed orally to man
in the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the Adyta of the temples
through initiation, during the Mysteries and by personal transmission,
they selected one or more of such grand verities—actualities visible only
to the eye of the real Sage and Seer, and revealed them to the masses.
Thus every nation received in its turn some of the said truths, under the
veil of its own local and special symbolism, which, as time went on,
developed into a more or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical
disguise. Therefore is Confucius, a very ancient legislator in historical
chronology, though a very modern sage in the world’s history, shown by Dr.
Legge(22) to be emphatically a _transmitter_, not a maker. As he himself
says, “I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the
ancients and therefore I love them.”(23)
The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in these ancients, and
the modern heirs to their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now transmits
that which she has received and learnt herself, to all those who will
accept it. As to those who may reject her testimony—the great majority—she
will bear them no malice, for they will be as right in their way in
denying, as she is right in hers in affirming, since they look at Truth
from two entirely different stand‐points. Agreeably with the rules of
critical scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject _à priori_ whatever
evidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And how can a Western scholar
accept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? Indeed, that which is
given in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from written
teachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based upon
Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology. They are
written, it is claimed, in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of
languages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; are said to
emanate from a source repudiated by Science—to‐wit, Occultism; and finally
they are offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the
world by all those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby
of their own to defend. Therefore, the rejection of these teachings may be
expected, and must be expected beforehand. No one styling himself a
“scholar,” in whatever department of exact Science, will permit himself to
regard these teachings seriously. They will be derided and rejected _à
priori_ in this century, but only in this one. For in the twentieth
century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret
Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary,
simply outlined; and finally that its teachings antedate the Vedas. This
is no pretension to prophecy, but simply a statement based on the
knowledge of facts. Every century an attempt is being made to show the
world that Occultism is no vain superstition. Once the door is permitted
to remain a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century.
The times are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted,
though still, even now, very limited.
For have not even the _Vedas_ been derided, rejected and called “a modern
forgery” even so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit proclaimed
at one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek,
according to Lemprière and other scholars? About 1820, as Prof. Max Müller
tells us, the sacred books of the Brâhmans, of the Magians, and of the
Buddhists, “were all but unknown, their very existence was doubted, and
there was not a single scholar who could have translated a line of the
_Veda_ ... of the _Zend Avesta_, or ... of the Buddhist _Tripitaka_, and
now the _Vedas_ are proved to be the work of the highest antiquity, whose
‘preservation amounts almost to a marvel’.”
The same will be said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when undeniable
proofs are given of its existence and records. But it will be centuries
before much more is given from it. Speaking of the keys to the Zodiacal
Mysteries as being almost lost to the world, it was remarked by the writer
some ten years ago in _Isis Unveiled_ that: “The said key must be turned
seven times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but one
turn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy
he, who understands the whole!”
The same may be said of the whole Esoteric System. One turn of the key,
and no more, was given in _Isis Unveiled_. Much more is explained in these
volumes. In those days the writer hardly knew the language in which the
work was written, and the disclosure of many things, freely spoken about
now, was forbidden. In Century the Twentieth, some disciple more informed,
and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final
and irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta Vidyâ; and
that, like the once mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all
religions and philosophies now made known to the world has been for many
ages forgotten and lost to men, but it is at last found.
Such a work as this has to be introduced with no simple preface, but with
a volume rather—one that would give facts, not mere disquisitions, since
THE SECRET DOCTRINE is not a treatise, or a series of vague theories, but
contains all that can be given out to the world in this century.
It would be worse than useless to publish in these pages even those
portions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from confinement,
unless the genuineness and authenticity, or at any rate the probability,
of the existence of such teachings were first established. Such statements
as will now be made, have to be shown as warranted by various authorities,
such as ancient philosophers, classical writers and even certain learned
Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had studied
them, had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had even
been personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the
performance of which the arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The
writer will have to give historical and trustworthy names, and to cite
well‐known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized ability, good
judgment, and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous proficients
in the secret arts and science, together with the mysteries of the latter,
as they are divulged, or rather partially presented before the public in
their strange archaic form.
How is this to be done; what is the best way for achieving such an object,
has been the ever‐recurring question. To make our plan clearer, an
illustration may be attempted. When a tourist, coming from a well‐explored
country, suddenly reaches the borderland of a _terra incognita_, hedged
in, and shut out from view by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks, he
may still refuse to acknowledge himself baffled in his exploratory plans.
Ingress beyond is forbidden. But if he cannot visit the mysterious region
personally, he may still find a means of examining it from as short a
distance as can be arrived at. Helped by his knowledge of the landscapes
left behind, he can get a general and pretty correct idea of the
transmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit of the
altitudes in front of him. Once there, he can gaze at it at his leisure,
comparing that which he dimly perceives with that which he has just left
below, now that he is, thanks to his own efforts, beyond the line of the
mists and the cloud‐capped cliffs.
Such a point of preliminary observation, cannot in these two volumes be
offered to those who would like to get a more correct understanding of the
mysteries of the pre‐archaic periods given in the texts. But if the reader
has patience, and will glance at the present state of beliefs and creeds
in Europe, compare and check it with what is known to history of the ages
directly preceding and following the Christian era, then he will find all
this in a future volume of the present work.
In the latter volume a brief recapitulation will be made of all the
principal Adepts known to history, and the downfall of the Mysteries will
be described, after which began the disappearance and the systematic and
final elimination from the memory of men of the real nature of Initiation
and the Sacred Science. From that time its teachings became occult, and
Magic sailed but too often under the venerable but frequently misleading
name of Hermetic Philosophy. As real Occultism had been prevalent among
the Mystics during the centuries that preceded our era, so Magic, or
rather Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed the beginning of
Christianity.
However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during these early
centuries, to obliterate every trace of the mental and intellectual labour
of the Pagans, they were a failure; but the same spirit of the dark demon
of bigotry and intolerance has ever since systematically perverted every
bright page written in the pre‐Christian periods. Even history, in her
uncertain records, has preserved enough of that which has survived to
throw an impartial light upon the whole. Let, then, the reader tarry a
little while with the writer on the spot of observation selected. He is
asked to give all his attention to that millennium of the pre‐Christian
and the post‐Christian periods, divided by the year One of the Nativity.
This event—whether historically correct or not—has nevertheless been made
to serve as a first signal for the erection of manifold bulwarks against
any possible return of, or even a glimpse into, the hated religions of the
Past; hated and dreaded, because throwing such a vivid light on the novel
and intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as the “New
Dispensation.”
However superhuman the efforts of the early Christian Fathers to
obliterate the Secret Doctrine from the very memory of man, they all
failed. Truth can never be killed; hence the failure to sweep away
entirely from the face of the earth every vestige of that ancient Wisdom,
and to shackle and gag every witness who testified to it. Let one only
think of the thousands, perhaps millions, of MSS. burnt; of monuments,
with their too indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial symbols, pulverized
to dust; of the bands of early hermits and ascetics roaming about among
the ruined cities of Upper and Lower Egypt, in desert and mountain, valley
and highland, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and pillar,
scroll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if only it bore the
symbol of the Tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new
faith—and he will then see plainly how it is that so little has remained
of the records of the past. Verily, the fiendish spirit of fanaticism of
early and mediæval Christianity and of Islam has loved from the first to
dwell in darkness and ignorance; and both have made
... the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom!
Both creeds have won their proselytes at the point of the sword; both have
built their churches on heaven‐kissing hecatombs of human victims. Over
the gateway of Century I of our era, the ominous words “THE KARMA OF
ISRAEL,” fatally glowed. Over the portals of our own, the future seer may
discern other words, that will point to the Karma for cunningly made‐up
history, for events purposely perverted, and for great characters
slandered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between the two cars
of Jagannâtha—Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much, the other
denying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden mid‐point, who believes in
the eternal justice of things. Says Faizi Díwán, the “witness to the
wonderful speeches of a freethinker who belongs to a thousand sects”:
In the assembly of the day of resurrection, when past things shall
be forgiven, the sins of the Ka’bah will be forgiven for the sake
of the dust of Christian churches.
To this, Professor Max Müller replies:
The sins of Islam are _as worthless as the dust of Christianity;
on the day of resurrection both Muhammadans and Christians will
see the vanity of their religious doctrines._ Men fight about
religion on earth; in heaven they shall find out that there is
only one true religion—the worship of God’s SPIRIT.(24)
In other words, “THERE IS NO RELIGION [OR LAW] HIGHER THAN TRUTH”—(_Satyât
Nâsti Paro Dharmah_)—the motto of the Mahârâjah of Benares, adopted by the
Theosophical Society.
As already said in the _Preface_, THE SECRET DOCTRINE is not a version of
_Isis Unveiled_, as originally intended. It is rather a volume explanatory
of the latter, and, though entirely independent of the earlier work, an
indispensable corollary to it. Much of what was in the former work could
hardly be understood by Theosophists in those days. THE SECRET DOCTRINE
will now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the first work,
especially on the opening pages, which have never been understood.
As it was concerned simply with the philosophies within historical times
and the respective symbolism of the fallen nations, only a hurried glance
could be thrown at the panorama of Occultism in the two volumes of _Isis_.
In the present work, detailed cosmogony and the evolution of the four
Races that preceded our fifth‐race Humanity are given, and now two large
volumes explain that which was stated only on the first page of _Isis
Unveiled_ alone, and in a few allusions scattered hither and thither
throughout that work. Nor can the vast catalogue of the Archaic Sciences
be attempted in the present volumes, before we have disposed of such
tremendous problems as cosmic and planetary Evolution, and the gradual
development of the mysterious humanities and races that preceded our
Adamic Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some
mysteries of the Esoteric Philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the
earlier work. The writer must be allowed to illustrate what is said by an
instance.
Volume I of _Isis_ begins with a reference to an “old book”:
So very old that our modern antiquarians might ponder over its
pages an indefinite time, and still not quite agree as to the
nature of the fabric upon which it is written. It is the only
original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew document
on occult learning—the _Siprah Dzeniouta_—was compiled from it,
and that at a time when the former was already considered in the
light of a literary relic. One of its illustrations represents the
Divine Essence emanating from ADAM(25) like a luminous arc
proceeding to form a circle; and then, having attained the highest
point of its circumference, the ineffable Glory bends back again,
and returns to earth, bringing a higher type of humanity in its
vortex. As it approaches nearer and nearer to our planet, the
Emanation becomes more and more shadowy, until upon touching the
ground it is as black as night.
This very old book is the original work from which the many volumes of
_Kiu‐ti_ were compiled. Not only the latter and the _Siphrah Dzeniouta_,
but even the _Sepher Jetzirah_(26)—the work attributed by the Hebrew
Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the _Shu‐king_, China’s
primitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth‐Hermes, the
_Purânas_ in India, the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_ and the _Pentateuch_
itself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says,
that it was taken down in _Senzar_, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the
words of Divine Beings, who dictated it to the Sons of Light, in Central
Asia, at the very beginning of our Fifth Race; for there was a time when
its language (the Senzar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when
the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants
of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of
the Third Race, the Mânushis, who learnt it direct from the Devas of the
Second and First Races. The illustration spoken of in _Isis_ relates to
the evolution of these Races and of our fourth‐ and fifth‐race Humanity in
the Vaivasvata Manvantara, or Round; each Round being composed of the
Yugas of the seven periods of Humanity; four of which are now passed in
_our_ Life‐Cycle, the middle point of the fifth being nearly reached. This
illustration is symbolical, as every one can well understand, and covers
the ground from the beginning. The old book, having described cosmic
evolution and explained the origin of everything on earth, including
physical man, after giving the true history of the Races, from the First
down to our own Fifth Race, goes no further. It stops short at the
beginning of the Kali Yuga, just 4,989 years ago, at the death of Krishna,
the bright Sun‐god, the once living hero and reformer.
But there exists another book. None of its possessors regard it as very
ancient, as it was born with, and is only as old as the Black Age, namely,
about 5,000 years. In about nine years hence, the first cycle of the first
five millenniums, that began with the great cycle of the Kali Yuga, will
end. And then the last prophecy contained in that book—the first volume of
the prophetic record for the Black Age—will be accomplished. We have not
long to wait, and many of us will witness the dawn of the New Cycle, at
the end of which not a few accounts will be settled and squared between
the races. Volume II of the prophecies is nearly ready, having been in
preparation since the time of Buddha’s grand successor, Shankarâchârya.
One more important point must be noticed, one that stands foremost in the
series of proofs given of the existence of one primeval, universal
Wisdom—at any rate for Christian Kabalists and students. The teachings
were, at least, partially known to several of the Fathers of the Church.
It is maintained, on purely historical grounds, that Origen, Synesius, and
even Clemens Alexandrinus, had themselves been initiated into the
Mysteries before adding to the Neo‐Platonism of the Alexandrian school
that of the Gnostics, under the Christian veil. More than this, some of
the doctrines of the secret schools, though by no means all, were
preserved in the Vatican, and have since become part and parcel of the
Mysteries, in the shape of disfigured additions made to the original
Christian programme by the Latin Church. Such is the now materialised
dogma of the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great
persecutions set on foot by the Roman Catholic Church against Occultism,
Masonry, and heterodox Mysticism generally.
The days of Constantine were the last turning‐point in history, the period
of the supreme struggle, that ended in the Western world throttling the
old religions in favour of the new one, built on their bodies. From thence
the vista into the far distant past, beyond the Deluge and the Garden of
Eden, began to be forcibly and relentlessly shut out by every fair and
unfair means from the indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was
blocked up, every record upon which hands could be laid, destroyed. Yet
there remains enough, even among such mutilated records, to warrant us in
saying that there is in them every requisite evidence of the actual
existence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived geological and
political cataclysms, to tell the story; and every survival shows evidence
that the now secret Wisdom was once the one fountain head, the ever‐
flowing perennial source, from which were fed all the streamlets—the later
religions of all nations—from the first down to the last. This period,
beginning with Buddha and Pythagoras at the one end and finishing with the
Neo‐Platonists and Gnostics at the other, is the only focus left in
History wherein converge for the last time the bright rays of light
streaming from the æons of times gone by, unobscured by the hand of
bigotry and fanaticism.
This accounts for the necessity under which the writer has laboured of
ever explaining the facts given from the hoariest past by evidence
gathered from the historical period, even at the risk of being once more
charged with a lack of method and system. No other means was at hand. The
public must be made acquainted with the efforts of many world‐adepts, of
initiated poets and writers in the classics of every age, to preserve in
the records of humanity the knowledge at least of the existence of such a
philosophy, if not actually of its tenets. The Initiates of 1888 would
indeed remain incomprehensible and even a seemingly impossible myth, were
not like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age of history. This
could be done only by naming chapter and verse where mention may be found
of these great characters, who were preceded and followed by a long and
interminable line of other famous antediluvian and postdiluvian Masters in
the arts. Thus only could it be shown, on semi‐traditional and semi‐
historical authority, that occult knowledge and the powers it confers on
man, are not altogether fictions, but that they are as old as the world
itself.
To my judges, past and future, therefore—whether they are serious literary
critics, or those howling dervishes in literature who judge a book
according to the popularity or unpopularity of the author’s name, who,
hardly glancing at its contents, fasten like lethal _bacilli_ on the
weakest points of the body—I have nothing to say. Nor shall I condescend
to notice those crack‐brained slanderers—fortunately very few in
number—who, hoping to attract public attention by throwing discredit on
every writer whose name is better known than their own, foam and bark at
their very shadows. These, having first maintained for years that the
doctrines taught in the _Theosophist_, and which culminated in _Esoteric
Buddhism_, had been all _invented_ by the present writer, have finally
turned round, and denounced _Isis Unveiled_ and the rest as a plagiarism
from Éliphas Lévi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, _mirabile dictu_, Buddhism
and Brâhminism (!!!). As well charge Renan with having stolen his _Vie de
Jésus_ from the Gospels, and Max Müller his _Sacred Books of the East_ or
his _Chips_ from the philosophies of the Brâhmans and of Gautama, the
Buddha. But to the public in general and the readers of THE SECRET
DOCTRINE I may repeat what I have stated all along, and which I now clothe
in the words of Montaigne:
_Gentlemen, __“__I have here made only a nosegay of culled
flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the string that
ties them.__”_
Pull the “string” to pieces and cut it up in shreds, if you will. As for
the nosegay of _facts_—you will never be able to make away with these. You
can only ignore them, and no more.
We may close with a parting word concerning this first volume. In an
introduction prefacing chapters dealing chiefly with cosmogony, certain
subjects brought forward may be deemed out of place, but one more
consideration added to those already given has led me to touch upon them.
Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the stand‐
point of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, basing his
judgment on what he has already learnt. This fact the writer is constantly
obliged to bear in mind; hence, also the frequent references in this first
volume to matters which, properly speaking, belong to a later part of the
work, but which could not be passed by in silence, lest the reader should
look upon it as a fairy tale indeed—a fiction of some modern brain.
Thus, the Past shall help to realize the Present, and the latter to better
appreciate the Past. The errors of the day must be explained and swept
away, yet it is more than probable—nay in the present case it amounts to
certitude—that once more the testimony of long ages and of history will
fail to impress any but the very intuitional—which is equal to saying the
very few. But in this as in all like cases, the true and the faithful may
console themselves by presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the
mathematical proof and memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and bigotry.
There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy, the
famous law of probabilities worked out by certain mathematicians for the
benefit of sceptics by an algebraical process. It runs thus: If two
persons give their evidence to a fact, and thus impart to it each of them
5/6 of certitude; that fact will have then 35/36 of certitude; _i.e._, its
probability will bear to its improbability the ratio of 35 to 1. If three
such evidences are joined together the certitude will become 215/216. The
agreement of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce
1023/1024, etc., etc. The Occultist may remain satisfied with such
certitude, and care for no more.
PROEM: PAGES FROM A PRE‐HISTORIC RECORD.
An archaic Manuscript—a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to
water, fire, and air, by some specific and unknown process—is before the
writer’s eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull
black ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central
point. The first, the student knows, represents Kosmos in Eternity, before
the reäwakening of still slumbering Energy, the Emanation of the World in
later systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate disk, Space and
Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is the Point
in the Mundane Egg, the Germ within it which will become the Universe, the
All, the boundless, periodical Kosmos—a Germ which is latent and active,
periodically and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all
proceeds, whither all returns: its circumference—a forcibly limited
symbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind—indicates the
abstract, ever incognizable PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul,
although the two are one. Only, the face of the disk being white, and the
surrounding ground black, clearly shows that its plane is the sole
knowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is attainable by man. It
is on this plane that the manvantaric manifestations begin; for it is in
this SOUL, that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine Thought,(27)
wherein lies concealed the plan of every future cosmogony and theogony.
It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet omnipresent, without beginning
or end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations—between which periods
reigns the dark mystery of Non‐Being; unconscious, yet absolute
Consciousness, unrealizable, yet the one self‐existing Reality; truly, “a
Chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.” Its one absolute attribute,
which is Itself, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance
the Great Breath,(28) which is the perpetual motion of the Universe, in
the sense of limitless, ever‐present Space. That which is motionless
cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely
motionless within the Universal Soul.
Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus,
maintained that Space was eternally filled with atoms actuated by a
ceaseless motion, which, in due course of time, as they aggregated,
generated rotatory motion, through mutual collisions producing lateral
movements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same doctrine, adding however
to the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity—an Occult
teaching.
From the beginning of man’s inheritance, from the first appearance of the
architects of the globe he lives on, the unrevealed Deity was recognized
and considered under its only philosophical aspect—Universal Motion, the
thrill of the creative Breath in Nature. Occultism sums up the One
Existence thus: “_Deity is an arcane, living [or moving] Fire, and the
eternal witnesses to this unseen Presence, are Light, Heat,
Moisture_,”—this trinity including, and being the cause of, every
phenomenon in Nature.(29) Intra‐cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless;
cosmic motion—the visible, or that which is subject to perception—is
finite and periodical. As an eternal abstraction it is the Ever‐Present;
as a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction and the
opposite, the two being the Alpha and Omega of successive reconstructions.
Kosmos—the Noumenon—has nought to do with the causal relations of the
phenomenal World. It is only with reference to the intra‐cosmic Soul, the
ideal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: “It never
had a beginning nor will it have an end.” With regard to its body or
cosmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had a first, or will
ever have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its
organization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it
evolves every time on a higher plane.
A few years ago only, it was stated that:
The esoteric doctrine, like Buddhism and Brâhmanism, and even
Kabalism, teaches 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 Days and the Nights of Brahmâ. The
latter is either “awake” or “asleep.” The Svâbhâvikas, or
philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism, which still exists
in Nepaul, speculate only upon the active condition of this
“Essence,” which they call Svabhâvat, and deem it foolish to
theorize upon the abstract and “unknowable” power in its passive
condition. Hence they are called Atheists by both Christian
theologians 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 worked out the visible universe, and which becomes with
them the anthropomorphic God of the Christians—the male 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 without inwardly and 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 from the secret books, which will convey the
idea still more clearly, an out‐breathing 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.(30)
This passage will be explained, as far as it is possible, in the present
work. Though it contains nothing new to the Orientalist, as it now stands,
its esoteric interpretation may contain a good deal which has hitherto
remained entirely unknown to the Western student.
The first illustration is a plain disk, [circle]. The second in the
archaic symbol shows a disk with a point in it, [circle with dot]—the
first differentiation in the periodical manifestations of the ever‐eternal
Nature, sexless and infinite, “Aditi in THAT,”(31) or potential Space
within abstract Space. In its third stage the point is transformed into a
diameter, [circle with line]. It now symbolizes a divine immaculate
Mother‐Nature within the all‐embracing absolute Infinitude. When the
horizontal diameter is crossed by a vertical one, [circle with cross], it
becomes the Mundane Cross. Humanity has reached its Third Root‐Race; it is
the sign for the origin of human Life. When the circumference disappears
and leaves only the [cross], it is a sign that the fall of man into matter
is accomplished, and the Fourth Race begins. The cross within a circle
symbolizes pure Pantheism; when the cross is left uninscribed, it becomes
phallic. It had the same and yet other meanings as a Tau inscribed within
a circle, [circle with lines (Tau)]; or as a Thor’s Hammer—the so‐called
Jaina cross, or Svastika, within a circle, [circle with swastika].
By the third symbol—the circle divided in two by a horizontal diameter—was
meant the first manifestation of creative Nature—still passive, because
feminine. The first shadowy perception of man connected with procreation
is feminine, because man knows his mother more than his father. Hence
female deities were more sacred than male. Nature is therefore feminine,
and, to a degree, objective and tangible, and the Spirit Principle which
fructifies it, is concealed.(32) By adding to the horizontal line in the
circle, a perpendicular, the Tau was formed, [T], the oldest form of the
letter. It was the glyph of the Third Root‐Race to the day of its
symbolical Fall—_i.e._, when the separation of sexes by natural evolution
took place—when the figure became [circle with vertical line], or sexless
life modified or separated—a double glyph or symbol. With the sub‐races of
our Fifth Race it became in symbology the Sacr’, and in Hebrew N’cabvah,
of the first‐formed Races;(33) then it changed into the Egyptian emblem of
life, [Ankh], and still later into the sign of Venus, [female symbol].
Then comes the Svastika (Thor’s Hammer, now the Hermetic Cross), entirely
separated from its circle, thus becoming purely phallic. The esoteric
symbol of Kali Yuga is the five‐pointed star reversed, with its two points
(horns) turned heavenward, thus [five‐pointed star], the sign of human
sorcery, a position every Occultist will recognize as one of the “left‐
hand,” and used in ceremonial magic.
It is hoped that during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of
the public in general with regard to Pantheism will be modified. It is
wrong and unjust to regard the Buddhists and Advaitin Occultists as
Atheists. If not all of them philosophers, they are, at any rate, all
logicians, their objections and arguments being based on strict reasoning.
Indeed, if the Parabrahman of the Hindûs may be taken as a representative
of the hidden and nameless deities of other nations, this absolute
Principle will be found to be the prototype from which all the others were
copied. Parabrahman is not “God,” because It is not _a_ God. “It is that
which is supreme, and not supreme (_paravara_).”(34) It is supreme as
cause, not supreme as effect. Parabrahman is simply, as a Secondless
Reality, the all‐inclusive Kosmos—or rather the infinite Cosmic Space—in
the highest spiritual sense, of course. Brahman (neuter) being the
unchanging, pure, free, undecaying supreme Root, the “One true Existence,
Paramârthika,” and the absolute Chit and Chaitanya (Intelligence,
Consciousness), cannot be a cognizer, “for THAT can have no subject of
cognition.” Can the Flame be called the Essence of Fire? This Essence is
“the Life and Light of the Universe, the visible fire and flame are
destruction, death, and evil.” “Fire and Flame destroy the body of an
Arhat, their essence makes him immortal.”(35) “The knowledge of the
absolute Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is
naught else than the absolute Essence itself,” says Shankarâchârya. IT—is
“the Spirit of the Fire,” not Fire itself; therefore, “the attributes of
the latter, Heat or Flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of
that of which that Spirit is the unconscious cause.” Is not the above
sentence the true key‐note of later Rosicrucian philosophy? Parabrahman
is, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and
eternity, the “THAT” and “THIS” to which distributive aggregates can not
be applied.(36) “In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only;”(37) and
the great Shankarâchârya explains that “_This_” refers to the Universe
(Jagat); the words, “in the beginning,” meaning before the reproduction of
the phenomenal Universe.
Therefore, when the Pantheists echo the _Upanishads_, which state, as in
the Secret Doctrine, that “This” cannot create, they do not deny a
Creator, or rather a collective aggregate of creators; they simply refuse,
very logically, to attribute “creation” and especially formation—something
finite—to an Infinite Principle. With them, Parabrahman is a passive
because an absolute Cause, the unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited
omniscience and omnipotence that are refused to the latter, because these
are still attributes, reflected in man’s perceptions; and because
Parabrahman, being the Supreme ALL, the ever invisible Spirit and Soul of
Nature, changeless and eternal, can have no attributes, the term
Absoluteness very naturally precluding any idea of the finite or
conditioned from being connected with it. And if the Vedântins postulate
attributes as belonging simply to its emanation, calling it Îshvara _plus_
Mâyâ, and Avidyâ (Agnosticism and Nescience rather than Ignorance), it is
difficult to find any Atheism in this conception.(38) Since there can be
neither two Infinites nor two Absolutes in a Universe supposed to be
boundless, this Self‐Existence can hardly be conceived of as creating
personally. To the senses and in the perceptions of finite _beings_, THAT
is Non‐_Being_, in the sense that it is the One _Be‐ness_; for, in this
ALL lies concealed its coëternal and coëval emanation or inherent
radiation, which, becoming periodically Brahmâ (the male‐female Potency),
expands itself into the manifested Universe. “Nârâyana moving on the
[abstract] Waters of Space,” is transformed into the Waters of concrete
substance moved by him, who now becomes the manifested Word or Logos.
The orthodox Brâhmans, those who rise the most against the Pantheists and
Advaitins, calling them Atheists, are forced, if Manu is any authority in
this matter, to accept the death of Brahmâ, the Creator, at the expiration
of every Age of this deity—100 Divine Years, a period which in our years
requires fifteen figures to express. Yet no philosopher among them will
view this “death” in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance
from the manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.
The Occultists are, therefore, at one with the Advaita Vedântin
philosophers as to the above tenet. They show, on philosophical grounds,
the impossibility of accepting the idea of the absolute ALL creating or
even evolving the Golden Egg, into which it is said to enter in order to
transform itself into Brahmâ, the Creator, who later expands himself into
the Gods and all the visible Universe. They say that absolute Unity cannot
pass to Infinity, for Infinity presupposes the limitless extension of
_something_, and the duration of that something; and the One All—like
Space, which is its only mental and physical representation on this earth,
or our plane of existence—is neither an object of, nor a subject to,
perception. If one could suppose the eternal infinite All, the omnipresent
Unity, instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical
manifestation a manifold Universe or a multiple Personality, that Unity
would cease to be one. Locke’s idea, that “pure space is capable of
neither resistance nor motion,” is incorrect. Space is neither a
“limitless void,” nor a “conditioned fulness,” but both. Being—on the
plane of absolute abstraction—the ever‐incognizable Deity, which is void
only to finite minds,(39) and on that of mâyâvic perception, the Plenum,
the absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or unmanifested,
it is, therefore, that ABSOLUTE ALL. There is no difference between the
Christian Apostle’s “in Him we live and move and have our being,” and the
Hindû Rishi’s “the Universe lives in, proceeds from, and will return to,
Brahmâ”: for Brahman (neuter), the unmanifested, is that Universe _in
abscondito_, and Brahmâ, the manifested, is the Logos, made male‐
female(40) in the symbolical orthodox dogmas, the God of the Apostle‐
Initiate and of the Rishi being both the Unseen and the Visible Space.
Space is called, in esoteric symbolism, the “Seven‐Skinned Eternal Mother‐
Father.” From its undifferentiated to its differentiated surface it is
composed of seven layers.
“_What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or
not; whether there be gods or none?_” asks the esoteric Senzar Catechism.
And the answer made is—“_Space_.”
It is not the One unknown ever‐present God in Nature, or Nature _in
abscondito_, that is rejected, but the “God” of human dogma, and his
_humanized_ “Word.” Man, in his infinite conceit and inherent pride and
vanity, shaped it himself with his sacrilegious hand out of the material
he found in his own small brain‐fabric, and forced it upon his fellows as
a direct revelation from the one unrevealed SPACE.(41) The Occultist
accepts revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the
manifested Lives, never from the unmanifestable ONE LIFE; from those
Entities, called Primordial Man, Dhyâni‐Buddhas, or Dhyân Chohans, the
Rishi‐Prajâpati of the Hindus, the Elohim or Sons of God of the Jews, the
Planetary Spirits of all nations, who have become Gods for men. The
Occultist also regards the Âdi‐Shakti—the direct emanation of
Mûlaprakriti, the eternal Root of THAT, and the female aspect of the
Creative Cause, Brahmâ, in her âkâshic form of the Universal Soul—as
philosophically a Mâyâ, and cause of human Mâyâ. But this view does not
prevent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit,
for one Mahâmanvantara; nor from applying Âkâsha, the radiation of
Mûlaprakriti,(42) to practical purposes, connected as this World‐Soul is
with all natural phenomena known or unknown to Science.
The oldest religions of the world—exoterically, for the esoteric root or
foundation is one—are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Next
comes the Chaldean, the outcome of these, now entirely lost to the world,
except in its disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the
archæologists. Then, passing over a number of religions that will be
mentioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically following in the line of
Babylonian Magism, as in the _Kabalah_; exoterically, a collection of
allegorical legends, as in _Genesis_ and the _Pentateuch_. Read by the
light of the _Zohar_, the four initial chapters of _Genesis_ are the
fragment of a highly philosophical page in the world’s cosmogony. Left in
their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the
side of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To let them serve
as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the
Rabbis, who knew better what their _Pentateuch_ meant. It was a silent
protest against their spoliation, and the Jews have now certainly the
better of their traditional persecutors. The above‐named exoteric creeds
will be explained in the light of the universal doctrine as we proceed.
The Occult Catechism contains the following questions and answers:
_What is it that ever is?_—_Space, the eternal Anupâdaka [Parentless]._
_What is it that ever was?—The Germ in the Root. What is it that is ever
coming and going?—The Great Breath. Then, there are three Eternals?—No, __
the three are one. That which ever is is one, that which ever was is one,
that which is ever being and becoming is also one: and this is Space._
_Explain, O Lanoo [disciple].—The One is an unbroken Circle [Ring] with no
circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless
Plane of the Circle, manifesting a Diameter only during the manvantaric
periods; the One is the indivisible Point found nowhere, perceived
everywhere during those periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal,
the Father and the Mother, the summit and base of the Father, the two
extremities of the Mother, reaching in reality nowhere, for the One is the
Ring as also the Rings that are within that Ring. Light in Darkness and
Darkness in Light: the __“__Breath which is eternal.__”__ It proceeds from
without inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from within outwardly, when
it is nowhere—(i.e., Mâyâ,_(_43_)_ one of the Centres)._(_44_)_ It expands
and contracts [exhalation and inhalation]. When it expands, the Mother
diffuses and scatters; when it contracts, the Mother draws back and
ingathers. This produces the periods of Evolution and Dissolution,
Manvantara and Pralaya. The Germ is invisible and fiery; the Root [the
Plane of the Circle] is cool; but during Evolution and Manvantara her
garment is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the Father who devours the
progeny of the many‐faced Element [heterogeneous], and leaves the single‐
faced ones [homogeneous]. Cool Breath is the Mother, who conceives, forms,
brings forth, and receives them back into her bosom, to reform them at the
Dawn [of the Day of Brahmâ, or Manvantara]._
For clearer understanding on the part of the general reader, it must be
stated that Occult Science recognizes _seven_ Cosmic Elements—four
entirely physical, and the fifth (Ether) semi‐material, which will become
visible in the Air towards the end of our Fourth Round, to reign supreme
over the others during the whole of the Fifth. The remaining two are as
yet absolutely beyond the range of human perception. They will, however,
appear as presentments during the Sixth and Seventh Races of this Round,
and will be fully known in the Sixth and Seventh Rounds respectively.(45)
These seven Elements with their numberless sub‐elements, which are far
more numerous than those known to Science, are simply _conditional_
modifications and aspects of the One and only Element. This latter is not
Ether,(46) not even Âkâsha, but the _source_ of these. The Fifth Element,
now quite freely advocated by Science, is not the Ether hypothesized by
Sir Isaac Newton—although he calls it by that name, having probably
associated it in his mind with Æther, the “Father‐Mother” of antiquity. As
Newton intuitionally says, “Nature is a perpetual circulatory worker,
generating fluids out of solids, fixed things out of volatile, and
volatile out of fixed, subtile out of gross, and gross out of subtile....
Thus, perhaps, may all things be originated from Ether.”(47)
The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas treat only of the
cosmogony of our own planetary system and of what is visible around it,
after a Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with regard to the evolution
of the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they could not be
understood by even the highest minds in this age, and there seem to be
very few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are allowed to speculate
upon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say openly that not even the
highest Dhyâni‐Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those
boundaries that separate the milliards of solar systems from the Central
Sun, as it is called. Therefore, that which is given relates only to our
visible Cosmos, after a Night of Brahmâ.
Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the
_Book of Dzyan_ which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely
necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental
conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to
which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number, but
on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows;
therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself
familiar with these first, before entering on the perusal of the work
itself.
The Secret Doctrine then, establishes three fundamental propositions:
I. An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable PRINCIPLE, on which
all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human
conception and can only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude.
It is beyond the range and reach of thought—in the words of the
_Mândûkya_, “unthinkable and unspeakable.”
To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with
the postulate that there is One Absolute Reality which antecedes all
manifested, conditioned Being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause—dimly
formulated in the “Unconscious” and “Unknowable” of current European
philosophy—is the Rootless Root of “all that was, is, or ever shall be.”
It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any
relation to manifested, finite Being. It is “Be‐ness” rather than Being,
Sat in Sanskrit, and is beyond all thought or speculation.
This Be‐ness is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On
the one hand, absolute Abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the
one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or
conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing
Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that
consciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best
symbolizes change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the
One Reality, is also symbolized by the term the Great Breath, a symbol
sufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first
fundamental axiom of the Secret Doctrine is this metaphysical One Absolute
BE‐NESS—symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity.
It may, however, assist the student if a few further explanations are here
given.
Herbert Spencer has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert
that the nature of the “First Cause,”(48) which the Occultist more
logically derives from the Causeless Cause, the “Eternal,” and the
“Unknowable,” may be essentially the same as that of the consciousness
which wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal Reality pervading
the Kosmos is the pure noumenon of thought. This advance on his part
brings him very near to the Esoteric and Vedântin tenet.(49)
Parabrahman, the One Reality, the Absolute, is the field of Absolute
Consciousness, _i.e._, that Essence which is out of all relation to
conditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned
symbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute
Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or Consciousness)
and Matter, Subject and Object.
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as
independent realities, but as the two symbols or aspects of the Absolute,
Parabrahman, which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether
subjective or objective.
Considering this metaphysical triad as the Root from which proceeds all
manifestation, the Great Breath assumes the character of Pre‐cosmic
Ideation. It is the _fons et origo_ of Force and of all individual
Consciousness, and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast scheme of
cosmic Evolution. On the other hand, Pre‐cosmic Root‐Substance
(Mûlaprakriti) is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the
objective planes of Nature.
Just as Pre‐cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual Consciousness,
so Pre‐cosmic Substance is the substratum of Matter in the various grades
of its differentiation.
Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the
Absolute is essential to the existence of the Manifested Universe. Apart
from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual
Consciousness, since it is only through a vehicle (_upâdhi_) of matter
that consciousness wells up as “I am I,” a physical basis being necessary
to focus a Ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity.
Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance would remain an empty
abstraction, and no emergence of Consciousness could ensue.
The Manifested Universe, therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as
it were, the very essence of its _Ex_‐istence as Manifestation. But just
as the opposite poles of Subject and Object, Spirit and Matter, are but
aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the
Manifested Universe, there is “that” which links Spirit to Matter, Subject
to Object.
This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by
Occultists Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the Ideas existing in the
Divine Thought are impressed on Cosmic Substance as the Laws of Nature.
Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the
other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all
manifestation, the Thought Divine transmitted and made manifest through
the Dhyân Chohans,(50) the Architects of the visible World. Thus from
Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our Consciousness, from Cosmic Substance
the several Vehicles in which that Consciousness is individualized and
attains to self—or reflective—consciousness; while Fohat, in its various
manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the
animating principle electrifying every atom into life.
The following summary will afford a clearer idea to the reader.
(1.) ABSOLUTENESS: the Parabrahman of the Vedântins or the One Reality,
Sat, which is, as Hegel says, both Absolute Being and Non‐Being.
(2.) The _First_ Logos: the impersonal, and, in philosophy, Unmanifested
Logos, the precursor of the Manifested. This is the “First Cause,” the
“Unconscious” of European Pantheists.
(3.) The _Second_ Logos: Spirit‐Matter, Life; the “Spirit of the
Universe,” Purusha and Prakriti.
(4.) The _Third_ Logos: Cosmic Ideation, Mahat or Intelligence, the
Universal World‐Soul; the Cosmic Noumenon of Matter, the basis of the
intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called Mahâ‐Buddhi.
The ONE REALITY: its _dual_ aspects in the conditioned Universe.
Further, the Secret Doctrine affirms:
II. The Eternity of the Universe _in toto_ as a boundless plane;
periodically “the playground of numberless Universes incessantly
manifesting and disappearing,” called the “Manifesting Stars,” and the
“Sparks of Eternity.” “_The Eternity of the Pilgrim_(_51_)_ is like a wink
of the Eye of Self‐Existence_,” as the _Book of Dyzan_ puts it. “_The
appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux
and reflux._”
This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality
of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which
physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature.
An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and
Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception,
that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely
fundamental Laws of the Universe.
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches:
III. The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over‐Soul,
the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory
pilgrimage for every Soul—a spark of the former—through the Cycle of
Incarnation, or Necessity, in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic Law,
during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (Divine
Soul) can have an independent conscious existence before the spark which
issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth Principle—or the OVER‐
SOUL—has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world
of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural
impulse, and then by self‐induced and self‐devised efforts, checked by its
Karma, thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the
lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest
Archangel (Dhyâni‐Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric Philosophy
admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own
Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of
metempsychoses and reïncarnations. This is why the Hindûs say that the
Universe is Brahman and Brahmâ, for Brahman is in every atom of the
universe, the six Principles in Nature being all the outcome—the variously
differentiated aspects—of the Seventh and One, the only Reality in the
Universe whether cosmic or micro‐cosmic; and also why the permutations,
psychic, spiritual and physical, on the plane of manifestation and form,
of the Sixth (Brahmâ the vehicle of Brahman) are viewed by metaphysical
antiphrasis as illusive and mâyâvic. For although the root of every atom
individually and of every form collectively, is that Seventh Principle or
the One Reality, still, in its manifested phenomenal and temporary
appearance, it is no better than an evanescent illusion of our senses.
In its absoluteness, the One Principle under its two aspects, Parabrahman
and Mûlaprakriti, is sexless, unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical
manvantaric emanation, or primal radiation, is also One, androgynous and
phenomenally finite. When the radiation radiates in its turn, all its
radiations are also androgynous, to become male and female principles in
their lower aspects. After Pralaya, whether the Great or Minor Pralaya—the
latter leaving the worlds _in statu quo_(52)—the first that reäwakes to
active life is the plastic Âkâsha, Father‐Mother, the Spirit and Soul of
Ether, or the Plane of the Circle. Space is called the Mother before its
cosmic activity, and Father‐Mother at the first stage of reäwakening. In
the _Kabalah_ it is also Father‐Mother‐Son. But whereas in the Eastern
Doctrine, these are the Seventh Principle of the Manifested Universe, or
its Atmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas (Spirit‐Soul‐Intelligence), the Triad branching off
and dividing into seven cosmical and seven human Principles, in the
Western _Kabalah_ of the Christian Mystics it is the Triad or Trinity, and
with their Occultists, the male‐female Jehovah, Jah‐Havah. In this lies
the whole difference between the Esoteric and the Christian Trinities. The
Mystics and the Philosophers, the Eastern and Western Pantheists,
synthesize their pregenetic Triad in the pure divine abstraction. The
orthodox, anthropomorphize it. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara—the three
Hypostases of the manifesting “Spirit of the Supreme Spirit,” by which
title Prithivî, the Earth, greets Vishnu in his first Avatâra—are the
purely metaphysical abstract qualities of Formation, Preservation, and
Destruction, and are the three divine Avasthâs (Hypostases) of that which
“does not perish with created things,” Achyuta, a name of Vishnu; whereas
the orthodox Christian separates his Personal Creative Deity into the
three Personages of the Trinity, and admits of no higher Deity. The
latter, in Occultism, is the abstract Triangle; with the orthodox, the
perfect Cube. The creative god or the aggregate gods are regarded by the
Eastern philosopher as _Bhrântidarshanatah_, “false appearances,”
something “conceived of, by reason of erroneous appearances, as a material
form,” and explained as arising from the illusive conception of the
egotistic personal and human Soul (lower Fifth Principle). It is
beautifully expressed in a revised translation in Fitzedward Hall’s notes
to Wilson’s translation of the _Vishnu Purâna_. “That Brahma in its
totality, has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and
unevolved [Mûlaprakriti], and also the aspect of Spirit and the aspect of
Time. Spirit, O twice born, is the leading aspect of the Supreme
Brahma.(53) The next is a two‐fold aspect,—Prakriti, both evolved and
unevolved, and Time is the last.” Cronus is shown in the Orphic Theogony
also as being a generated god or agent.
At this stage of the reäwakening of the Universe, the sacred symbolism
represents it as a perfect Circle with the Point (Root) in the centre.
This sign was universal, therefore we find it in the _Kabalah_ also. The
Western _Kabalah_, however, now in the hands of Christian Mystics, ignores
it altogether, though it is plainly shown in the _Zohar_. These sectarians
begin at the end, and give, as the symbol of pregenetic Kosmos, [cross],
calling it the “Union of the Rose and Cross,” the great mystery of occult
generation, from whence the name—Rosicrucian (Rose Cross)! This may be
seen from one of the most important and best known of their symbols, one
which has never been hitherto understood even by modern Mystics. It is
that of the Pelican tearing open its breast to feed its seven little
ones—the real creed of the Brothers of the Rosie‐Cross and a direct
outcome from the Eastern Secret Doctrine.
Brahman (neuter) is called Kâlahamsa, meaning, as explained by Western
Orientalists, the Eternal Swan (or goose), and so is Brahmâ, the Creator.
A great mistake is thus brought under notice; it is Brahman (neuter) which
ought to be referred to as Hamsa‐vâhana (that which uses the Swan as its
Vehicle), and not Brahmâ, the Creator, who is the real Kâlahamsa; while
Brahman (neuter) is Hamsa, and A‐hamsa, as will be explained in the
Commentaries. Let it be understood that the terms Brahmâ and Parabrahman
are not used here because they belong to our Esoteric nomenclature, but
simply because they are more familiar to the students in the West. Both
are the perfect equivalents of our one, three, and seven vowelled terms,
which stand for the ONE ALL, and the One “All in All.”
Such are the basic conceptions on which the Secret Doctrine rests.
It would not be in place here to enter upon any defence or proof of their
inherent reasonableness; nor can I pause to show how they are, in fact,
contained—though too often under a misleading guise—in every system of
thought or philosophy worthy of the name.
Once that the reader has gained a clear comprehension of them and realized
the light which they throw on every problem of life, they will need no
further justification in his eyes, because their truth will be to him as
evident as the sun in heaven. I pass on, therefore, to the subject matter
of the Stanzas as given in this volume, adding a skeleton outline of them,
in the hope of thereby rendering the task of the student more easy, by
placing before him in a few words the general conception therein
explained.
The history of Cosmic Evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to say,
the abstract algebraical formula of that evolution. Hence the student must
not expect to find there an account of all the stages and transformations
which intervene between the first beginnings of Universal Evolution and
our present state. To give such an account would be as impossible as it
would be incomprehensible to men who cannot grasp the nature of even the
plane of existence next to that to which, for the moment, their
consciousness is limited.
The Stanzas, therefore, give an abstract formula which can be applied,
_mutatis mutandis_, to all evolution: to that of our tiny Earth, to that
of the Chain of Planets of which that Earth forms one, to the Solar
Universe to which that Chain belongs and so on, in an ascending scale,
till the mind reels and is exhausted in the effort.
The seven Stanzas given in this volume represent the seven terms of this
abstract formula. They refer to, and describe, the seven great stages of
the evolutionary process, which are spoken of in the _Purânas_ as the
“Seven Creations,” and in the _Bible_ as the “Days” of Creation.
_Stanza I_ describes the state of the ONE ALL during Pralaya, before the
first flutter of reäwakening Manifestation.
A moment’s thought shows that such a state can only be symbolized; to
describe it is impossible. Nor can it be symbolized except in negatives;
for, since it is the state of Absoluteness _per se_, it can possess none
of those specific attributes which serve us to describe objects in
positive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the negatives of
all those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than conceive, as
the remotest limits attainable by their power of conception.
_Stanza II_ describes a stage which, to a Western mind, is so nearly
identical with that mentioned in Stanza I, that to express the idea of its
difference would require a treatise in itself. Hence it must be left to
the intuition and the higher faculties of the reader to grasp, as far as
he can, the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed it must be
remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather
than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain.
_Stanza III_ describes the Reäwakening of the Universe to life after
Pralaya. It depicts the emergence of the Monads from their state of
absorption within the One, the earliest and highest stage in the formation
of Worlds—the term Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest
Solar System or the tiniest atom.
_Stanza IV_ shows the differentiation of the “Germ” of the Universe into
the Septenary Hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, which are the active
manifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, shapers,
and ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe, in the only
sense in which the name “creator” is intelligible; they inform and guide
it; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and control evolution,
embodying in themselves those manifestations of the One Law, which we know
as the “Laws of Nature.”
Generically, they are known as the Dhyân Chohans, though each of the
various groups has its own designation in the Secret Doctrine.
This stage of evolution is spoken of in Hindû mythology as the “Creation
of the Gods.”
_Stanza V_ describes the process of world‐formation. First, diffused
Cosmic Matter, then the “Fiery Whirlwind,” the first stage in the
formation of a nebula. This nebula condenses, and after passing through
various transformations, forms a Solar Universe, a Planetary Chain, or a
single Planet, as the case may be.
_Stanza VI_ indicates the subsequent stages in the formation of a “World”
and brings the evolution of such a World down to its fourth great period,
corresponding to the period in which we are now living.
_Stanza VII_ continues the history, tracing the descent of life down to
the appearance of Man; and thus closes the First Book of the Secret
Doctrine.
The development of “Man” from his first appearance on this earth in this
Round to the state in which we now find him will form the subject of Book
II.
The Stanzas which form the thesis of every section are given throughout in
their modern translated version, as it would be worse than useless to make
the subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of
the original, with its puzzling style and words. Extracts are given from
the Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar
Commentaries and Glosses on the _Book of Dzyan_—now rendered for the first
time into a European language. It is almost unnecessary to state that only
portions of the seven Stanzas are here given. Were they published complete
they would remain incomprehensible to all save a few high Occultists. Nor
is there any need to assure the reader that no more than most of the
profane, does the writer, or rather the humble recorder, understand those
forbidden passages. To facilitate the reading, and to avoid the too
frequent reference to foot‐notes, it was thought best to blend together
texts and glosses, using the Sanskrit and Tibetan proper names whenever
these could not be avoided, in preference to giving the originals: the
more so as the said terms are all accepted synonyms, the latter only being
used between a Master and his Chelâs (or Disciples).
Thus, were one to translate into English, using only the substantives and
technical terms as employed in one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions,
shloka 1 would read as follows:
_Tho‐ag in Zhi‐gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas zhiba. All Nyug bosom.
Konch‐hog not; Thyan‐Kam not; Lha‐Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakâya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang and Ssa in Ngovonyidj;
alone Tho‐og Yinsin in night of Sun‐chan and Yong‐Grub [Paranishpanna],
etc., etc._
This would sound like pure _Abracadabra_.
As this work is written for the instruction of students of Occultism, and
not for the benefit of Philologists, we may well avoid such foreign terms
wherever it is possible to do so. The untranslateable terms alone,
incomprehensible unless their meanings are explained, are left, but all
such terms are rendered in their Sanskrit form. Needless to remind the
reader that these are, in almost every case, the late developments of the
latter language, and pertain to the Fifth Root‐Race. Sanskrit, as now
known, was not spoken by the Atlanteans, and most of the philosophical
terms used in the systems of the India of the Post‐Mahâbhâratan period are
not found in the _Vedas_, nor are they to be met with in the original
Stanzas, but only their equivalents. The reader who is not a Theosophist,
is once more invited to regard all that follows as a fairy tale, if he
likes; at best as one of the yet unproven speculations of dreamers; and,
at the worst, as an additional hypothesis to the many scientific
hypotheses past, present and future, some exploded, others still
lingering. It is not in any sense less scientific than are many of the so‐
called scientific theories; and it is in every case more philosophical and
probable.
In view of the abundant comments and explanations required, the references
to the footnotes are marked in the usual way, while the sentences to be
commented upon are marked with letters. Additional matter will be found in
the Chapters on Symbolism, which are often more full of information than
the Commentaries.
PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION.
Seven Stanzas From The “Book Of Dzyan,” With Commentaries.
Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven’s broad roof outstretched above.
What covered all? What sheltered? What concealed?
Was it the water’s fathomless abyss?
There was no death—yet there was nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by Itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound—an ocean without light.
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Who knows the secret? Who proclaimed it here?
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The Gods themselves came later into being—
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
That, whence all this great creation came,
Whether Its will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it—or perchance even he knows not.
Gazing into eternity
Ere the foundations of the earth were laid.
Thou wert. And when the subterranean flame
Shall burst its prison and devour the frame,
Thou shalt be still as thou wert before
And know no change, when time shall be no more.
O, endless thought, divine Eternity.
_Rig Veda_ (COLEBROOKE).
Seven Stanzas From The “Book Of Dzyan”
Stanza I.
1. The Eternal Parent, wrapped in her Ever‐Invisible Robes, had slumbered
once again for Seven Eternities.
2. Time was not, for it lay asleep in the Infinite Bosom of Duration.
3. Universal Mind was not, for there were no Ah‐hi to contain it.
4. The Seven Ways to Bliss were not. The Great Causes of Misery were not,
for there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.
5. Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son
were once more one, and the Son had not yet awakened for the new Wheel and
his Pilgrimage thereon.
6. The Seven Sublime Lords and the Seven Truths had ceased to be, and the
Universe, the Son of Necessity, was immersed in Paranishpanna, to be
outbreathed by that which is, and yet is not. Naught was.
7. The Causes of Existence had been done away with; the Visible that was,
and the Invisible that is, rested in Eternal Non‐Being—the One Being.
8. Alone, the One Form of Existence stretched boundless, infinite,
causeless, in Dreamless Sleep; and Life pulsated unconscious in Universal
Space, throughout that All‐Presence, which is sensed by the Opened Eye of
Dangma.
9. But where was Dangma when the Âlaya of the Universe was in Paramârtha,
and the Great Wheel was Anupâdaka?
Stanza II.
1. ... Where were the Builders, the Luminous Sons of Manvantaric Dawn?...
In the Unknown Darkness in their Ah‐hi Paranishpanna. The Producers of
Form from No‐Form—the Root of the World—the Devamâtri and Svabhâvat,
rested in the Bliss of Non‐Being.
2. ... Where was Silence? Where the ears to sense it? No, there was
neither Silence nor Sound; naught save Ceaseless Eternal Breath, which
knows itself not.
3. The Hour had not yet struck; the Ray had not yet flashed into the Germ;
the Mâtripadma had not yet swollen.
4. Her Heart had not yet opened for the One Ray to enter, thence to fall,
as Three into Four, into the Lap of Mâyâ.
5. The Seven were not yet born from the Web of Light. Darkness alone was
Father‐Mother, Svabhâvat; and Svabhâvat was in Darkness.
6. These Two are the Germ, and the Germ is One. The Universe was still
concealed in the Divine Thought and the Divine Bosom.
Stanza III.
1. ... The last Vibration of the Seventh Eternity thrills through
Infinitude. The Mother swells, expanding from within without, like the Bud
of the Lotus.
2. The Vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift Wing the whole
Universe and the Germ that dwelleth in Darkness, the Darkness that
breathes over the slumbering Waters of Life.
3. Darkness radiates Light, and Light drops one solitary Ray into the
Waters, into the Mother‐Deep. The Ray shoots through the Virgin Egg, the
Ray causes the Eternal Egg to thrill, and drop the non‐eternal Germ, which
condenses into the World‐Egg.
4. The Three fall into the Four. The Radiant Essence becomes Seven inside,
Seven outside. The Luminous Egg, which in itself is Three, curdles and
spreads in milk‐white Curds throughout the Depths of Mother, the Root that
grows in the Depths of the Ocean of Life.
5. The Root remains, the Light remains, the Curds remain, and still
Oeaohoo is One.
6. The Root of Life was in every Drop of the Ocean of Immortality, and the
Ocean was Radiant Light, which was Fire, and Heat, and Motion. Darkness
vanished and was no more; it disappeared in its own Essence, the Body of
Fire and Water, of Father and Mother.
7. Behold, O Lanoo, the Radiant Child of the Two, the unparalleled
refulgent Glory—Bright Space, Son of Dark Space, who emerges from the
Depths of the great Dark Waters. It is Oeaohoo, the Younger, the ——. He
shines forth as the Sun, he is the Blazing Divine Dragon of Wisdom; the
Eka is Chatur, and Chatur takes to itself Tri, and the Union produces the
Sapta, in whom are the Seven, which become the Tridasha, the Hosts and the
Multitudes. Behold him lifting the Veil, and unfurling it from East to
West. He shuts out the Above, and leaves the Below to be seen as the Great
Illusion. He marks the places for the Shining Ones, and turns the Upper
into a shoreless Sea of Fire, and the One Manifested into the Great
Waters.
8. Where was the Germ, and where was now Darkness? Where is the Spirit of
the Flame that burns in thy Lamp, O Lanoo? The Germ is That, and That is
Light, the White Brilliant Son of the Dark Hidden Father.
9. Light is Cold Flame, and Flame is Fire, and Fire produces Heat, which
yields Water—the Water of Life in the Great Mother.
10. Father‐Mother spin a Web, whose upper end is fastened to Spirit, the
Light of the One Darkness, and the lower one to its shadowy end, Matter;
and this Web is the Universe, spun out of the Two Substances made in One,
which is Svabhâvat.
11. It expands when the Breath of Fire is upon it; it contracts when the
Breath of the Mother touches it. Then the Sons dissociate and scatter, to
return into their Mother’s Bosom, at the end of the Great Day, and re‐
become one with her. When it is cooling, it becomes radiant. Its Sons
expand and contract through their own Selves and Hearts; they embrace
Infinitude.
12. Then Svabhâvat sends Fohat to harden the Atoms. Each is a part of the
Web. Reflecting the “Self‐Existent Lord,” like a Mirror, each becomes in
turn a World.
Stanza IV.
1. ... Listen, ye Sons of the Earth, to your Instructors—the Sons of the
Fire. Learn, there is neither first nor last; for all is One Number,
issued from No‐Number.
2. Learn what we, who descend from the Primordial Seven, we, who are born
from the Primordial Flame, have learnt from our Fathers....
3. From the Effulgency of Light—the Ray of the Ever‐Darkness—sprang in
Space the reäwakened Energies; the One from the Egg, the Six, and the
Five. Then the Three, the One, the Four, the One, the Five—the Twice
Seven, the Sum Total. And these are the Essences, the Flames, the
Elements, the Builders, the Numbers, the Arûpa, the Rûpa, and the Force or
Divine Man, the Sum Total. And from the Divine Man emanated the Forms, the
Sparks, the Sacred Animals, and the Messengers of the Sacred Fathers
within the Holy Four.
4. This was the Army of the Voice, the Divine Mother of the Seven. The
Sparks of the Seven are subject to, and the servants of, the First, the
Second, the Third, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh of
the Seven. These are called Spheres, Triangles, Cubes, Lines and
Modellers; for thus stands the Eternal Nidâna—the Oi‐Ha‐Hou.
5. The Oi‐Ha‐Hou, which is Darkness, the Boundless, or the No‐Number, Âdi‐
Nidâna Svabhâvat, the [circle]:
I. The Âdi‐Sanat, the Number, for he is One.
II. The Voice of the Word, Svabhâvat, the Numbers, for he is One and Nine.
III. The “Formless Square.”
And these Three, enclosed within the [circle], are the Sacred Four; and
the Ten are the Arûpa Universe. Then come the Sons, the Seven Fighters,
the One, the Eighth left out, and his Breath which is the Light‐Maker.
6. ... Then the Second Seven, who are the Lipika, produced by the Three.
The Rejected Son is One. The “Son‐Suns” are countless.
Stanza V.
1. The Primordial Seven, the First Seven Breaths of the Dragon of Wisdom,
produce in their turn from their Holy Circumgyrating Breaths the Fiery
Whirlwind.
2. They make of him the Messenger of their Will. The Dzyu becomes Fohat:
the swift Son of the Divine Sons, whose Sons are the Lipika, runs circular
errands. Fohat is the Steed, and the Thought is the Rider. He passes like
lightning through the fiery clouds; takes Three, and Five, and Seven
Strides through the Seven Regions above, and the Seven below. He lifts his
Voice, and calls the innumerable Sparks, and joins them together.
3. He is their guiding spirit and leader. When he commences work, he
separates the Sparks of the Lower Kingdom, that float and thrill with joy
in their radiant dwellings, and forms therewith the Germs of Wheels. He
places them in the Six Directions of Space, and One in the middle—the
Central Wheel.
4. Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the Sixth to the Seventh—the Crown.
An Army of the Sons of Light stands at each angle; the Lipika, in the
Middle Wheel. They say: “his is good.” The first Divine World is ready;
the First, the Second. Then the “Divine Arûpa” reflects itself in Chhâyâ
Loka, the First Garment of Anupâdaka.
5. Fohat takes five strides, and builds a winged wheel at each corner of
the square for the Four Holy Ones ... and their Armies.
6. The Lipika circumscribe the Triangle, the First One, the Cube, the
Second One, and the Pentacle within the Egg. It is the Ring called “Pass
Not” for those who descend and ascend; who during the Kalpa are
progressing towards the Great Day “Be With Us.”... Thus were formed the
Arûpa and the Rûpa: from One Light, Seven Lights; from each of the Seven,
seven times Seven Lights. The Wheels watch the Ring....
Stanza VI.
1. By the power of the Mother of Mercy and Knowledge, Kwan‐Yin—the Triple
of Kwan‐Shai‐Yin, residing in Kwan‐Yin‐Tien—Fohat, the Breath of their
Progeny, the Son of the Sons, having called forth, from the lower Abyss,
the Illusive Form of Sien‐Tchan and the Seven Elements.
2. The Swift and the Radiant One produces the seven Laya Centres, against
which none will prevail to the Great Day “Be With Us”; and seats the
Universe on these Eternal Foundations, surrounding Sien‐Tchan with the
Elementary Germs.
3. Of the Seven—first One manifested, Six concealed; Two manifested, Five
concealed; Three manifested, Four concealed; Four produced, Three hidden;
Four and One Tsan revealed, Two and One‐Half concealed; Six to be
manifested, One laid aside. Lastly, Seven Small Wheels revolving: one
giving birth to the other.
4. He builds them in the likeness of older Wheels, placing them on the
Imperishable Centres.
How does Fohat build them? He collects the Fiery‐Dust. He makes Balls of
Fire, runs through them, and round them, infusing life thereïnto, then
sets them into motion; some one way, some the other way. They are cold, he
makes them hot. They are dry, he makes them moist. They shine, he fans and
cools them. Thus acts Fohat from one Twilight to the other, during Seven
Eternities.
5. At the Fourth, the Sons are told to create their Images. One‐Third
refuses. Two obey.
The Curse is pronounced. They will be born in the Fourth, suffer and cause
suffering. This is the First War.
6. The Older Wheels rotated downward and upward.... The Mother’s Spawn
filled the whole. There were Battles fought between the Creators and the
Destroyers, and Battles fought for Space; the Seed appearing and
reäppearing continuously.
7. Make thy calculations, O Lanoo, if thou wouldst learn the correct age
of thy Small Wheel. Its Fourth Spoke is our Mother. Reach the Fourth Fruit
of the Fourth Path of Knowledge that leads to Nirvana, and thou shalt
comprehend, for thou shalt see....
Stanza VII.
1. Behold the beginning of sentient formless Life.
First, the Divine, the One from the Mother‐Spirit; then, the Spiritual;
the Three from the One, the Four from the One, and the Five, from which
the Three, the Five and the Seven. These are the Three‐fold and the Four‐
fold downward; the Mind‐born Sons of the First Lord, the Shining Seven. It
is they who are thou, I, he, O Lanoo; they who watch over thee and thy
mother, Bhûmî.
2. The One Ray multiplies the smaller Rays. Life precedes Form, and Life
survives the last atom. Through the countless Rays the Life‐Ray, the One,
like a Thread through many Beads.
3. When the One becomes Two, the Threefold appears, and the Three are One;
and it is our Thread, O Lanoo, the Heart of the Man‐Plant called
Saptaparna.
4. It is the Root that never dies; the Three‐tongued Flame of the Four
Wicks. The Wicks are the Sparks, that draw from the Three‐tongued Flame
shot out by the Seven—their Flame—the Beams and Sparks of one Moon
reflected in the running Waves of all the Rivers of Earth.
5. The Spark hangs from the Flame by the finest thread of Fohat. It
journeys through the Seven Worlds of Mâyâ. It stops in the First, and is a
Metal and a Stone; it passes into the Second, and behold—a Plant; the
Plant whirls through seven changes and becomes a Sacred Animal. From the
combined attributes of these, Manu, the Thinker, is formed. Who forms him?
The Seven Lives and the One Life. Who completes him? The Fivefold Lha. And
who perfects the last Body? Fish, Sin, and Soma....
6. From the First‐born the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his
Shadow becomes more strong and radiant with every Change. The morning
Sunlight has changed into noon‐day glory....
7. “This is thy present Wheel,” said the Flame to the Spark. “Thou art
myself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee, and thou
art my Vâhan to the Day ‘Be With Us,’ when thou shalt re‐become myself and
others, thyself and me.” Then the Builders, having donned their first
Clothing, descend on radiant Earth and reign over Men—who are
themselves....
[_Thus ends this portion of the archaic narrative, dark, confused, almost
incomprehensible. An attempt will now be made to throw light into this
darkness, to make sense out of this apparent non‐sense._]
Commentaries On The Seven Stanzas And Their Terms, According To Their
Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
Stanza I.
1. THE ETERNAL PARENT,(54) WRAPPED IN HER EVER‐INVISIBLE ROBES, HAD
SLUMBERED ONCE AGAIN FOR SEVEN ETERNITIES.
The “Parent,” Space, is the eternal, ever‐present Cause of all—the
incomprehensible DEITY, whose “Invisible Robes” are the mystic Root of all
Matter, and of the Universe. Space is the _one eternal thing_ that we can
most easily imagine, immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by
either the presence or absence in it of an objective Universe. It is
without dimension, in every sense, and self‐existent. Spirit is the first
differentiation from “THAT,” the Causeless Cause of both Spirit and
Matter. As taught in the Esoteric Catechism, it is neither “limitless
void,” nor “conditioned fulness,” but both. It was and ever will be.
Thus, the “Robes” stand for the noumenon of undifferentiated Cosmic
Matter. It is not matter as we know it, but the spiritual essence of
matter, and is coëternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense.
Root‐Nature is also the source of the subtile invisible properties in
visible matter. It is the Soul, so to say, of the One Infinite Spirit. The
Hindûs call it Mûlaprakriti, and say that it is the primordial Substance,
which is the basis of the Upâdhi or Vehicle of every phenomenon, whether
physical, psychic or mental. It is the source from which Âkâsha radiates.
By the “Seven Eternities,” æons or periods are meant. The word Eternity,
as understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to the Asiatic ear,
except in its application to the One Existence; nor is the term
“sempiternity,” the eternal only in futurity, anything better than a
misnomer.(55) Such words do not and cannot exist in philosophical
metaphysics, and were unknown till the advent of ecclesiastical
Christianity. The Seven Eternities mean the seven periods, or a period
answering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara, extending
throughout a Mahâkalpa or “Great Age” (100 Years of Brahmâ), making a
total of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each Year of Brahmâ being composed
of 360 Days, and of the same number of Nights of Brahmâ (reckoning by the
Chandrâyana or lunar year); and a Day of Brahmâ consisting of
4,320,000,000 of mortal years. These Eternities belong to the most secret
calculations, in which, in order to arrive at the true total, every figure
must be 7x, x varying according to the nature of the cycle in the
subjective or real world; and every figure relating to, or representing,
the different cycles—from the greatest to the smallest—in the objective or
unreal world, must necessarily be multiples of seven. The key to this
cannot be given, for herein lies the mystery of esoteric calculations, and
for the purposes of ordinary calculation it has no sense. “The number
seven,” says the _Kabalah_, “is the great number of the Divine Mysteries”;
number ten is that of all human knowledge (the Pythagorean Decad); 1,000
is the number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is
also symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine the figure 4 is the male symbol
only on the highest plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is
the masculine and the 4 the feminine—the upright and the horizontal in the
fourth stage of symbolism, when the symbols become the glyphs of the
generative powers on the physical plane.
2. TIME WAS NOT, FOR IT LAY ASLEEP IN THE INFINITE BOSOM OF DURATION.
“Time” is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of
consciousness as we travel through Eternal Duration, and it does not exist
where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced, but
“lies asleep.” The Present is only a mathematical line which divides that
part of Eternal Duration which we call the Future, from that part which we
call the Past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains
without change—or the same—for the billionth part of a second; and the
sensation we have of the actuality of the division of Time known as the
Present, comes from the blurring of the momentary glimpse, or succession
of glimpses, of things that our senses give us, as those things pass from
the region of ideals, which we call the Future, to the region of memories
that we name the Past. In the same way we experience a sensation of
duration in the case of the instantaneous electric spark, by reason of the
blurred and continuing impression on the retina. The real person or thing
does not consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but is
composed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions from its
appearance in material form to its disappearance from earth. It is these
“sum‐totals” that exist from eternity in the Future, and pass by degrees
through matter, to exist for eternity in the Past. No one would say that a
bar of metal dropped into the sea came into existence as it left the air,
and ceased to exist as it entered the water, and that the bar itself
consisted only of that cross‐section thereof which at any given moment
coincided with the mathematical plane that separates, and, at the same
time, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons and things,
which, dropping out of the “to be” into the “has been,” out of the Future
into the Past—present momentarily to our senses a cross‐section, as it
were, of their total selves, as they pass through Time and Space (as
Matter) on their way from one eternity to another: and these two
eternities constitute that Duration in which alone anything has true
existence, were our senses but able to cognize it.
3. UNIVERSAL MIND WAS NOT, FOR THERE WERE NO AH‐HI(56) TO CONTAIN IT.(57)
“Mind” is a name given to the sum of the States of Consciousness, grouped
under Thought, Will and Feeling. During deep sleep ideation ceases on the
physical plane, and memory is in abeyance; thus for the time‐being “Mind
is not,” because the organ, through which the Ego manifests ideation and
memory on the material plane, has temporarily ceased to function. A
noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane of existence only by
manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle; and
during the long Night of rest called Pralaya, when all the Existences are
dissolved, the “Universal Mind” remains as a permanent possibility of
mental action, or as that abstract absolute Thought, of which Mind is the
concrete relative manifestation. The Ah‐hi (Dhyân Chohans) are the
collective hosts of spiritual Beings—the Angelic Hosts of Christianity,
the Elohim and “Messengers” of the Jews—who are the Vehicle for the
manifestation of the Divine or Universal Thought and Will. They are the
Intelligent Forces that give to, and enact in, Nature her “Laws,” while
they themselves act according to Laws imposed upon them in a similar
manner by still higher Powers; but they are not the “personifications” of
the Powers of Nature, as erroneously thought. This Hierarchy of spiritual
Beings, through which the Universal Mind comes into action, is like an
army—a host, truly—by means of which the fighting power of a nation
manifests itself, and which is composed of army‐corps, divisions,
brigades, regiments, and so forth, each with its separate individuality or
life, and its limited freedom of action and limited responsibilities; each
contained in a larger individuality, to which its own interests are
subservient, and each containing lesser individualities in itself.
4. THE SEVEN WAYS TO BLISS(58) WERE NOT (_a_). THE GREAT CAUSES OF
MISERY(59) WERE NOT, FOR THERE WAS NO ONE TO PRODUCE AND GET ENSNARED BY
THEM (_b_).
(_a_) There are “Seven Paths” or “Ways” to the “Bliss” of Non‐Existence,
which is absolute Being, Existence and Consciousness. They were not,
because the Universe, so far, was empty, and existed only in the Divine
Thought.
(_b_) For it is ... the Twelve Nidânas, or Causes of Being. Each is the
effect of its antecedent cause, and a cause, in its turn, to its
successor; the sum total of the Nidânas being based on the Four Truths, a
doctrine especially characteristic of the Hînayâna System.(60) They belong
to the theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit and
demerit, and finally brings Karma into full sway. It is a system based
upon the great truth that reïncarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in
this world entails upon man only suffering, misery and pain; death itself
being unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the door
through which he passes to another life on earth after a little rest on
its threshold—Devachan. The Hînayâna System, or School of the Little
Vehicle, is of very ancient growth; while the Mahâyâna, or School of the
Great Vehicle, is of a later period, having originated after the death of
Buddha. Yet the tenets of the latter are as old as the hills that have
contained such schools from time immemorial, and the Hînayâna and Mahâyâna
Schools both teach the same doctrine in reality. Yâna, or Vehicle, is a
mystic expression, both “Vehicles” inculcating that man may escape the
sufferings of rebirth and even the false bliss of Devachan, by obtaining
Wisdom and Knowledge, which alone can dispel the Fruits of Illusion and
Ignorance.
Mâyâ, or Illusion, is an element which enters into all finite things, for
everything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality,
since the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer
depends upon his power of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a
painting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and daubs of
colour, while an educated eye sees instantly a face or a landscape.
Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute Existence which
contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The Existences belonging
to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyân Chohans, are,
comparatively, like the shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless
screen. Nevertheless all things are relatively real, for the cognizer is
also a reflection, and the things cognized are therefore as real to him as
himself. Whatever reality things possess, must be looked for in them
before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world;
for we cannot cognize any such existence directly, so long as we have
sense‐instruments which bring only material existence into the field of
our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both
we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our
only realities. But as we rise in the scale of development, we perceive
that in the stages through which we have passed, we mistook shadows for
realities, and that the upward progress of the Ego is a series of
progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now,
at last, we have reached “reality”; but only when we shall have reached
absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from
the delusions produced by Mâyâ.
5. DARKNESS ALONE FILLED THE BOUNDLESS ALL (_a_), FOR FATHER, MOTHER AND
SON WERE ONCE MORE ONE, AND THE SON HAD NOT YET AWAKENED FOR THE NEW
WHEEL(61) AND HIS PILGRIMAGE THEREON (_b_).
(_a_) “_Darkness is Father‐Mother: Light their Son_,” says an old Eastern
proverb. Light is inconceivable except as coming from some source which is
the cause of it: and as, in the case of Primordial Light, that source is
unknown, though so strongly demanded by reason and logic, therefore it is
called “Darkness” by us, from an intellectual point of view. As to
borrowed or secondary light, whatever its source, it can be only of a
temporary mâyâvic character. Darkness, then, is the Eternal Matrix in
which the Sources of Light appear and disappear. Nothing is added to
darkness to make of it light, or to light to make it darkness, on this our
plane. They are interchangeable; and, scientifically, light is but a mode
of darkness and _vice versâ_. Yet both are phenomena of the same
noumenon—which is absolute darkness to the scientific mind, and but a gray
twilight to the perception of the average Mystic, though to that of the
spiritual eye of the Initiate it is absolute light. How far we discern the
light that shines in darkness depends upon our powers of vision. What is
light to us is darkness to certain insects, and the eye of the clairvoyant
sees illumination where the normal eye perceives only blackness. When the
whole Universe was plunged in sleep—had returned to its one primordial
element—there was neither centre of luminosity, nor eye to perceive light,
and darkness necessarily filled the “Boundless All.”
(_b_) The “Father” and “Mother” are the male and female principles in
Root‐Nature, the opposite poles that manifest in all things on every plane
of Kosmos—or Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the
resultant of which is the Universe, or the “Son.” They are “once more
one,” when in the Night of Brahmâ, during Pralaya, all in the objective
Universe has returned to its one primal and eternal cause, to reäppear at
the following Dawn—as it does periodically. Kârana—Eternal Cause—was
alone. To put it more plainly: Kârana is alone during the Nights of
Brahmâ. The previous objective Universe has dissolved into its one primal
and eternal Cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in Space, to
differentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following Manvataric
Dawn, which is the commencement of a new Day or new activity of Brahmâ—the
symbol of a Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahmâ is Father‐Mother‐Son,
or Spirit, Soul and Body at once; each personage being symbolical of an
attribute, and each attribute or quality being a graduated efflux of
Divine Breath in its cyclic differentiation, involutionary and
evolutionary. In the cosmico‐physical sense, it is the Universe, the
Planetary Chain and the Earth; in the purely spiritual, the Unknown Deity,
Planetary Spirit, and Man—the son of the two, the creature of Spirit and
Matter, and a manifestation of them in his periodical appearances on Earth
during the “Wheels,” or the Manvantaras.
6. THE SEVEN SUBLIME LORDS AND THE SEVEN TRUTHS HAD CEASED TO BE, (_a_)
AND THE UNIVERSE, THE SON OF NECESSITY, WAS IMMERSED IN PARANISHPANNA,(62)
(_b_) TO BE OUTBREATHED BY THAT WHICH IS, AND YET IS NOT. NAUGHT WAS
(_c_).
(a) The “Seven Sublime Lords” are the Seven Creative Spirits, the Dhyân
Chohans, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same Hierarchy of
Archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and others belong, in
Christian Theogony. Only while St. Michael, for instance, is allowed in
dogmatic Latin Theology to watch over all the promontories and gulfs, in
the Esoteric System the Dhyânis watch successively over one of the Rounds
and the great Root‐Races of our Planetary Chain. They are, moreover, said
to send their Bodhisattvas, the human correspondents of the Dhyâni‐Buddhas
during every Round and Race. Out of the “Seven Truths” and Revelations, or
rather revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as we are still
in the Fourth Round, and the world also has had only four Buddhas, so far.
This is a very complicated question, and will receive more ample treatment
later on.
So far “there are only Four Truths, and Four _Vedas_”—say the Buddhists
and Hindûs. For a similar reason Irenæus insisted on the necessity of Four
Gospels. But as every new Root‐Race at the head of a Round must have its
revelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth, the
following the Sixth, and so on.
(b) “Paranishpanna” is the Absolute Perfection to which all Existences
attain at the close of a great period of activity, or Mahâmanvantara, and
in which they rest during the succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it
is called “Yong‐Grub.” Up to the day of the Yogâchârya School the true
nature of Paranirvâna was taught publicly, but since then it has become
entirely esoteric; hence so many contradictory interpretations of it. It
is only a true Idealist who can understand it. Everything has to be viewed
as ideal, with the exception of Paranirvâna, by him who would comprehend
that state, and acquire a knowledge of how Non‐Ego, Voidness, and Darkness
are Three in One, and alone self‐existent and perfect. It is absolute,
however, only in a relative sense, for it must give room to still further
absolute perfection, according to a higher standard of excellence in the
following period of activity—just as a perfect flower must cease to be a
perfect flower and die, in order to grow into a perfect fruit, if such a
mode of expression may be permitted.
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything,
worlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous development has neither
conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our “Universe” is only one of an
infinite number of Universes, all of them “Sons of Necessity,” because
links in the great cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing in the
relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and of a cause as
regards its successor.
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an
outbreathing and inbreathing of the “Great Breath,” which is eternal, and
which, being Motion, is one of the three symbols of the Absolute—Abstract
Space and Duration being the other two. When the Great Breath is
projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the
breathing of the Unknowable Deity—the One Existence—which breathes out a
thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos. So also is it that when the
Divine Breath is inspired, the Universe disappears into the bosom of the
Great Mother, who then sleeps “wrapped in her Ever‐Invisible Robes.”
(c) By “that which is, and yet is not” is meant the Great Breath itself,
which we can only speak of as Absolute Existence, but cannot picture to
our imagination as any form of Existence that we can distinguish from Non‐
Existence. The three periods—the Present, the Past and the Future—are in
Esoteric Philosophy a compound time; for the three are a composite number
only in relation to the phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have
no abstract validity. As said in the Scriptures: “The Past Time is the
Present Time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into
existence, still is,” according to a precept in the Prasanga Madhyamika
teaching, whose dogmas have been known ever since it broke away from the
purely esoteric schools.(63) Our ideas, in short, on duration and time are
all derived from our sensations according to the laws of association.
Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge, they
nevertheless can have no existence except in the experience of the
individual Ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Mâyâ of
phenomenal existence. What is time, for instance, but the panoramic
succession of our states of consciousness? In the words of a Master, “I
feel irritated at having to use these three clumsy words—Past, Present,
and Future—miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective
whole, they are about as ill‐adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine
carving.” One has to acquire Paramârtha lest one should become too easy a
prey to Samvriti—is a philosophical axiom.(64)
7. THE CAUSES OF EXISTENCE HAD BEEN DONE AWAY WITH; (_a_) THE VISIBLE THAT
WAS, AND THE INVISIBLE THAT IS, RESTED IN ETERNAL NON‐BEING—THE ONE BEING
(_b_).
(a) “The Causes of Existence” mean not only the physical causes known to
Science, but the metaphysical causes, the chief of which is the desire to
exist, an outcome of Nidâna and Mâyâ. This desire for a sentient life
shows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of
the Divine Thought propelled into objective existence, into a law that the
Universe should exist. According to Esoteric teaching, the real cause of
that supposed desire, and of all existence, remains for ever hidden, and
its first emanations are the most complete abstractions mind can conceive.
These abstractions must of necessity be postulated as the cause of the
material Universe which presents itself to the senses and intellect, and
must underlie the secondary and subordinate powers of Nature, which have
been anthropomorphized and worshipped as “God” and “gods” by the common
herd of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause;
the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank. This is virtually the
condition to which the mind must come at last when we try to trace back
the chain of causes and effects, but both Science and Religion jump to
this condition of blankness much more quickly than is necessary, for they
ignore the metaphysical abstractions which are the only conceivable causes
of physical concretions. These abstractions become more and more concrete
as they approach our plane of existence, until finally they phenomenalize
in the form of the material Universe, by a process of conversion of
metaphysics into physics, analogous to that by which steam can be
condensed into water, and water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of “Eternal Non‐Being,” which is the “One Being,” will appear
a paradox to anyone who does not remember that we limit our ideas of Being
to our present consciousness of Existence; making it a specific, instead
of a generic term. An unborn infant, could it think in our acceptation of
that term, would necessarily in a similar manner limit its conception of
Being to the intra‐uterine life which alone it knows; and were it to
endeavour to express to its consciousness the idea of life after birth
(death to it), it would, in the absence of data to go upon, and of
faculties to comprehend such data, probably express that life as “Non‐
Being which is Real Being.” In our case the One Being is the noumenon of
all the noumena which we know must underlie phenomena, and give them
whatever shadow of reality they possess, but which we have not the senses
or the intellect to cognize at present. The impalpable atoms of gold
scattered through the substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be
imperceptible to the naked eye of the miner, yet he knows that they are
not only present there, but that they alone give his quartz any
appreciable value; and this relation of the gold to the quartz may faintly
shadow forth that of the noumenon to the phenomenon. Only the miner knows
what the gold will look like when extracted from the quartz, whereas the
common mortal can form no conception of the reality of things separated
from the Mâyâ which veils them, and in which they are hidden. Alone the
Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of his
predecessors, directs the “Eye of Dangma” toward the essence of things on
which no Mâyâ can have any influence. It is here that the teachings of
Esoteric Philosophy in relation to the Nidânas and the Four Truths become
of the greatest importance; but they are secret.
8. ALONE, THE ONE FORM OF EXISTENCE (A) STRETCHED BOUNDLESS, INFINITE,
CAUSELESS, IN DREAMLESS SLEEP (B); AND LIFE PULSATED UNCONSCIOUS IN
UNIVERSAL SPACE, THROUGHOUT THAT ALL‐PRESENCE, WHICH IS SENSED BY THE
OPENED EYE OF DANGMA.(65)
(a) The tendency of modern thought is to recur to the archaic idea of a
homogeneous basis for apparently widely different things—heterogeneity
developed from homogeneity. Biologists are now searching for their
homogeneous protoplasm and Chemists for their protyle, while Science is
looking for the force of which electricity, magnetism, heat, and so forth,
are the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this idea into the
region of metaphysics, and postulates a “One Form of Existence” as the
basis and source of all things. But perhaps the phrase, the “One Form of
Existence,” is not altogether correct. The Sanskrit word is Prabhavâpyaya,
“the place [or rather plane] whence is the origination, and into which is
the resolution of all things,” as a commentator says. It is not the
“Mother of the World,” as translated by Wilson;(66) for Jagad Yoni, as
shown by Fitzedward Hall, is scarcely so much the “Mother of the World,”
or the “Womb of the World,” as the “Material Cause of the World.” The
Purânic commentators explain it by Kârana, “Cause,” but Esoteric
Philosophy, by the _ideal spirit of that cause_. In its secondary stage,
it is the Svabhâvat of the Buddhist philosopher, the Eternal Cause and
Effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the self‐existent plastic Essence and
the Root of all things, viewed in the same dual light as the Vedântin
views his Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti, the one under two aspects. It
seems indeed extraordinary to find great scholars speculating on the
possibility of the Vedânta, and the Uttara Mîmânsâ especially, having been
“evoked by the teachings of the Buddhists”; whereas, on the contrary, it
is Buddhism, the teaching of Gautama Buddha, that was “evoked” and
entirely upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a partial
sketch is here attempted, and on which, also, the _Upanishads_ are made to
rest.(67) According to the teachings of Shrî Shankarâchârya our contention
is undeniable.(68)
(b) “Dreamless Sleep” is one of the seven states of consciousness known in
Oriental Esotericism. In each of these states a different portion of the
mind comes into action; or as a Vedântin would express it, the individual
is conscious in a different plane of his being. The term “Dreamless
Sleep,” in this case, is applied allegorically to the Universe to express
a condition somewhat analogous to that state of consciousness in man,
which, not being remembered in a waking state, seems a blank, just as the
sleep of the mesmerized subject seems to him an unconscious blank when he
returns to his normal condition, although he has been talking and acting
as a conscious individual would.
9. BUT WHERE WAS DANGMA WHEN THE ÂLAYA OF THE UNIVERSE(69) WAS IN
PARAMÂRTHA (_a_),(70) AND THE GREAT WHEEL WAS ANUPÂDAKA (_b_)?
(a) Here we have before us the subject of centuries of scholastic
disputations. The two terms “Âlaya,” and “Paramârtha,” have been the
causes of dividing schools and splitting the truth into more different
aspects than any other mystic words. Âlaya is the Soul of the World or
Anima Mundi—the Over‐Soul of Emerson—which according to esoteric teaching
changes its nature periodically. Âlaya, though eternal and changeless in
its inner essence on the planes which are unreachable by either men or
cosmic gods (Dhyâni‐Buddhas), changes during the active life‐period with
respect to the lower planes, ours included. During that time not only the
Dhyâni‐Buddhas are one with Âlaya in Soul and Essence, but even the man
strong in Yoga (Mystic Meditation) “is able to merge his soul with it,” as
Aryâsanga, of the Yogâchârya school, says. This is not Nirvâna, but a
condition next to it. Hence the disagreement. Thus, while the Yogâchâryas
of the Mahâyâna School say that Âlaya (Nyingpo and Tsang in Tibetan) is
the personification of the Voidness, and yet Âlaya is the basis of every
visible and invisible thing, and that, though it is eternal and immutable
in its essence, it reflects itself in every object of the Universe “like
the moon in clear tranquil water”; other schools dispute the statement.
The same for Paramârtha. The Yogâchâryas interpret the term as that which
is also dependent upon other things (_paratantra_); and the Madhyamikas
say that Paramârtha is limited to Paranishpanna or Absolute Perfection;
_i.e._, in the exposition of these “Two Truths” of the Four, the former
believe and maintain that, on this plane, at any rate, there exists only
Samvritisatya or relative truth; and the latter teach the existence of
Paramârthasatya, Absolute Truth.(71) “No Arhat, O mendicants, can reach
absolute knowledge before he becomes one with Paranirvâna. Parikalpita and
Paratantra are his two great enemies.”(72) Parikalpita (in Tibetan Kun‐
tag) is error, made by those unable to realize the emptiness and
illusionary nature of all; who believe something to exist which does
not—_e.g._, the Non‐Ego. And Paratantra is that, whatever it is, which
exists only through a dependent or causal connection, and which has to
disappear as soon as the cause from which it proceeds is removed—_e.g._,
the flame of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and light disappears.
Esoteric Philosophy teaches that everything lives and is conscious, but
not that all life and consciousness are similar to those of human or even
animal beings. Life we look upon as the One Form of Existence, manifesting
in what is called Matter; or what, incorrectly separating them, we name
Spirit, Soul and Matter in man. Matter is the Vehicle for the
manifestation of Soul on this plane of existence, and Soul is the Vehicle
on a higher plane for the manifestation of Spirit, and these three are a
Trinity synthesized by Life, which pervades them all. The idea of
Universal Life is one of those ancient conceptions which are returning to
the human mind in this century, as a consequence of its liberation from
anthropomorphic Theology. Science, it is true, contents itself with
tracing or postulating the signs of Universal Life, but has not yet been
bold enough to even whisper “Anima Mundi”! The idea of “crystalline life,”
now familiar to Science, would have been scouted half a century ago.
Botanists are now searching for the nerves of plants; not that they
suppose that plants can feel or think as animals do, but because they
believe that some structure, bearing the same relation functionally to
plant life that nerves bear to animal life, is necessary to explain
vegetable growth and nutrition. It seems hardly possible that Science, by
the mere use of terms such as “force” and “energy,” can disguise from
itself much longer the fact that things that have life are living things,
whether they be atoms or planets.
But what is the belief of the inner Esoteric Schools, the reader may ask.
What are the doctrines taught on this subject by the Esoteric “Buddhists”?
With them, we answer, Âlaya has a double and even a threefold meaning. In
the Yogâchârya system of the contemplative Mahâyâna School, Âlaya is both
the Universal Soul, Anima Mundi, and the Self of a progressed Adept. “He
who is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will his Âlaya by means of
meditation into the true nature of Existence.” “The Âlaya has an absolute
eternal existence,” says Aryâsanga, the rival of Nâgârjuna.(73) In one
sense it is Pradhâna, which is explained in _Vishnu Purâna_ as, “that
which is the unevolved cause, is emphatically called, by the most eminent
sages, Pradhâna, original base, which is subtile Prakriti, _viz._, that
which is eternal, and which at once is [or comprehends what is] and [what]
is not, or is mere process.”(74) “The indiscrete cause which is uniform,
and both cause and effect, and which those who are acquainted with first
principles, call Pradhâna and Prakriti, is the incognizable Brahma who was
before all,”(75) _i.e._, Brahma does not put forth evolution itself or
create, but only exhibits various aspects of itself, one of which is
Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhâna. “Prakriti,” however, is an incorrect
word, and Âlaya would explain it better; for Prakriti is not the
“uncognizable Brahma.” It is a mistake of those who know nothing of the
universality of the Occult doctrines from the very cradle of the human
races, and especially so of those scholars who reject the very idea of a
“primordial revelation,” to teach that the Anima Mundi, the One Life or
Universal Soul, was made known only by Anaxagoras, or during his age. This
philosopher brought the teaching forward simply to oppose the too
materialistic conceptions of Democritus on cosmogony, based on the
exoteric theory of _blindly_ driven atoms. Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ,
however, was not its inventor, but only its propagator, as was also Plato.
That which he called Mundane Intelligence, Nous (Νοῦς), the principle that
according to his views is absolutely separated and free from matter and
acts with design, was called Motion, the One Life, or Jîvâtmâ, in India,
ages before the year 500 B.C. Only the Âryan philosophers never endowed
this principle, which with them is infinite, with the finite “attribute of
thinking.”(76)
This leads naturally to the “Supreme Spirit” of Hegel and the German
Transcendentalists—a contrast that it may be useful to point out. The
schools of Schelling and Fichte have diverged widely from the primitive
archaic conception of an Absolute Principle, and have mirrored an aspect
only of the basic idea of the Vedânta. Even the “Absoluter Geist” shadowed
forth by von Hartmann in his pessimistic philosophy of the “Unconscious,”
while it is, perhaps, the closest approximation made by European
speculation to the Hindû Advaitin doctrines, yet similarly falls far short
of the reality.
According to Hegel, the “Unconscious” would never have undertaken the vast
and laborious task of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of
attaining clear Self‐Consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne
in mind that in designating Spirit, a term which the European Pantheists
use as equivalent to Parabrahman, as Unconscious, they do not attach to
the expression the connotation it usually bears. It is employed in the
absence of a better term to symbolize a profound mystery.
The “Absolute Consciousness behind phenomena,” they tell us, which is only
termed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of personality,
transcends human conception. Man, unable to form a single concept except
in terms of empirical phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution
of his being to raise the veil that shrouds the majesty of the Absolute.
Only the liberated Spirit is able to faintly realize the nature of the
source whence it sprung and whither it must eventually return. As the
highest Dhyân Chohan, however, can but bow in ignorance before the awful
mystery of Absolute Being; and since, even in that culmination of
conscious existence—“the merging of the individual in the universal
consciousness,” to use a phrase of Fichte’s—the Finite cannot conceive the
Infinite, nor can it apply to it its own standard of mental experiences,
how can it be said that the Unconscious and the Absolute can have even an
instinctive impulse or hope of attaining clear Self‐Consciousness?(77) A
Vedântin, moreover, would never admit this Hegelian idea; and the
Occultist would say that it applies perfectly to the awakened Mahat, the
Universal Mind already projected into the phenomenal world as the first
aspect of the changeless Absolute, but never to the latter. “Spirit and
Matter, or Purusha and Prakriti, are but the two primeval aspects of the
One and Secondless,” we are taught.
The matter‐moving Nous, the animating Soul, immanent in every atom,
manifested in man, latent in the stone, has different degrees of power;
and this Pantheistic idea of a general Spirit‐Soul pervading all Nature is
the oldest of all the philosophical notions. Nor was the Archæus a
discovery either of Paracelsus or of his pupil Van Helmont; for this same
Archæus is “Father‐Æther,” the manifested basis and source of the
innumerable phenomena of life—localized. The whole series of the
numberless speculations of this kind are but variations on the same theme,
the key‐note of which was struck in this “primeval revelation.”
(b) The term “Anupâdaka,” parentless, or without progenitors, is a
mystical designation having several meanings in our philosophy. By this
name Celestial Beings, the Dhyân Chohans or Dhyâni‐Buddhas, are generally
meant. These correspond mystically to the human Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
known as the Mânushi (Human) Buddhas, which latter are also designated
Anupâdaka, once that their whole personality is merged in their compound
Sixth and Seventh Principles, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi, and they have become the
“Diamond‐Souled” (Vajrasattvas(78)), or full Mahâtmâs. The “Concealed
Lord” (Sangbai Dag‐po), “the one merged with the Absolute,” can have no
parents since he is Self‐Existent, and one with the Universal Spirit
(Svayambhû),(79) the Svabhâvat in its highest aspect. The mystery of the
Hierarchy of the Anupâdaka is great, its apex being the universal Spirit‐
Soul, and the lower rung the Mânushi‐Buddha: and even every soul‐endowed
man also is an Anupâdaka in a latent state. Hence—when speaking of the
Universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was
fashioned by the Builders—the expression, “the great Wheel [Universe] was
Anupâdaka.”
Stanza II.
1. ... WHERE WERE THE BUILDERS, THE LUMINOUS SONS OF MANVANTARIC DAWN?...
(_a_) IN THE UNKNOWN DARKNESS IN THEIR AH‐HI(80) PARANISHPANNA. THE
PRODUCERS OF FORM(81) FROM NO‐FORM(82)—THE ROOT OF THE WORLD—THE
DEVÂMATRI(83) AND SVABHÂVAT, RESTED IN THE BLISS OF NON‐BEING (_b_).
(a) The “Builders,” the “Sons of Manvantaric Dawn,” are the real creators
of the Universe; and in this doctrine, which deals only with our Planetary
System, they, as the architects of the latter, are also called the
“Watchers” of the Seven Spheres, which exoterically are the seven planets,
and esoterically the seven earths or spheres (Globes) of our Chain also.
The opening sentence of Stanza I, when mentioning “Seven Eternities,”
applies both to the Mahâkalpa or “the (Great) Age of Brahmâ,” as well as
to the Solar Pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System
on a higher plane. There are many kinds of Pralaya (dissolution of a thing
visible), as will be shown elsewhere.
(b) “Paranishpanna,” remember, is the _summum bonum_, the Absolute, hence
the same as Paranirvâna. Besides being the final state, it is that
condition of subjectivity which has no relation to anything but the One
Absolute Truth (Paramârthasatya) on its own plane. It is that state which
leads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non‐Being, which, as
explained, is Absolute Being. Sooner or later, all that now _seemingly_
exists, will be in reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna. But
there is a great difference between _conscious_ and _unconscious_ Being.
The condition of Paranishpanna, without Paramârtha, the Self‐analysing
Consciousness (Svasamvedâna), is no bliss, but simply extinction for Seven
Eternities. Thus, an iron ball placed under the scorching rays of the sun
will get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while
a man will. It is only “_with a mind clear and undarkened by Personality,
and an assimilation of the merit of manifold Existences devoted to Being
in its collectivity_ [_the whole living and sentient Universe_],” that one
gets rid of personal existence, merging into, becoming one with, the
Absolute,(84) and continuing in full possession of Paramârtha.
2. ... WHERE WAS SILENCE? WHERE THE EARS TO SENSE IT? NO, THERE WAS
NEITHER SILENCE NOR SOUND (_a_); NAUGHT SAVE CEASELESS ETERNAL BREATH,(85)
WHICH KNOWS ITSELF NOT (_b_).
(a) The idea that things can cease to _exist_ and still _be_, is a
fundamental one in Eastern psychology. Under this apparent contradiction
in terms, there rests a fact of Nature, to realize which in the mind,
rather than to argue about words, is the important thing. A familiar
instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination. The
question whether hydrogen and oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to
form water, is still a moot one; some arguing that since they are found
again when the water is decomposed, they must be there all the while;
others contending that as they actually turn into something totally
different, they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being; but
neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition
of a thing, which has become something else and yet has not ceased to be
itself. Existence as water for oxygen and hydrogen may be said to be a
state of Non‐Being, which is more real Being than their existence as
gases; and it may faintly symbolize the condition of the Universe when it
goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the Nights of Brahmâ—to awaken or
reäppear again, when the dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it to what we
call existence.
(b) The “Breath” of the One Existence is only used in application to the
spiritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic Esotericism; in other cases, it
is replaced by its equivalent on the material plane—Motion. The One
Eternal Element, or element‐containing Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in
every sense; coëxistent with which are Endless Duration, Primordial (hence
Indestructible) Matter, and Motion—Absolute “Perpetual Motion,” which is
the “Breath” of the One Element. This Breath, as seen, can never cease,
not even during the Pralayic Eternities.
But the Breath of the One Existence does not, all the same, apply to the
One Causeless Cause or the All‐Be‐ness, in contradistinction to All‐Being,
which is Brahmâ, or the Universe. Brahmâ, the four‐faced god, who, after
lifting the Earth out of the waters, “accomplished the creation,” is held
to be only the Instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the Ideal Cause.
No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real
sense of the verses in the _Purânas_, that treat of “creation.”
Therein Brahmâ is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated
subsequently for the work of “creation.” For instance, in the _Vishnu
Purâna_,(86) the translation, “and from him proceed the potencies to be
created, after they have become the real cause,” would perhaps be more
correctly rendered, “and from IT proceed the potencies that _will create_
as they _become_ the real cause [on the material plane].” Save that One
Causeless Ideal Cause there is no other to which the Universe can be
referred. “Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency—_i.e._, through the
potency of that cause—every created thing comes by its inherent or proper
nature.” If, “in the Vedânta and Nyâya, _nimitta_ is the efficient cause,
as contrasted with _upâdâna_, the material cause, [and] in the Sânkhya,
_pradhâna_ implies the functions of both”; in the Esoteric Philosophy,
which reconciles all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is
the Vedânta as expounded by the Advaita Vedântists, none but the _upâdâna_
can be speculated upon. That which is, in the minds of the Vaishnavas (the
Visishthadvaitas), as the ideal in contradistinction to the real—or
Parabrahman and Îshvara—can find no room in published speculations, since
that ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human
reason, even that of an Adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception to be
cognized—both limited faculties in relation to any subject except
Parabrahman. Hence the “Eternal Breath which knows itself not.” Infinity
cannot comprehend Finiteness. The Boundless can have no relation to the
Bounded and the Conditioned. In the Occult teachings, the Unknown and the
Unknowable Mover, or the Self‐Existing, is the Absolute Divine Essence.
And thus being Absolute Consciousness, and Absolute Motion—to the limited
senses of those who describe this indescribable—it is unconsciousness and
immovableness. Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract
consciousness, any more than the quality wet can be predicated of
water—wetness being its own attribute and the cause of the wet quality in
other things. Consciousness implies limitations and qualifications;
something to be conscious of, and someone to be conscious of it. But
Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and the
cognition, all three in itself and all three _one_. No man is conscious of
more than that portion of his knowledge which happens to be recalled to
his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that
we have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from
knowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget is synonymous with
not to remember. How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms
to describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or
differences! It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things
according to the appearances they assume for ourselves. We call Absolute
Consciousness “unconsciousness,” because it seems to us that it must
necessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute, “Darkness,” because to
our finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable; yet we recognize
fully that our perception of such things does not do them justice. We
involuntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious
Absolute Consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the
former with some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane
than our thoughts can reach, with what we know as consciousness in
ourselves. But this is not any kind of consciousness that we can manage to
distinguish from what appears to us as unconsciousness.
3. THE HOUR HAD NOT YET STRUCK; THE RAY HAD NOT YET FLASHED INTO THE GERM
(_a_); THE MÂTRIPADMA(87) HAD NOT YET SWOLLEN (_b_).(88)
(_a_) The “Ray” of the “Ever Darkness” becomes, as it is emitted, a Ray of
effulgent Light or Life, and flashes into the “Germ”—the Point in the
Mundane Egg, represented by Matter in its abstract sense. But the term
“Point” must not be understood as applying to any particular point in
Space, for a germ exists in the centre of every atom, and these
collectively form the “Germ;” or rather, as no atom can be made visible to
our physical eye, the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to
something which is boundless and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal
and indestructible Matter.
(_b_) One of the symbolical figures for the Dual Creative Power in Nature
(matter and force on the material plane) is “Padma,” the water‐lily of
India. The Lotus is the product of heat (fire) and water (vapour or
ether); fire standing in every philosophical and religious system, even in
Christianity, as a representation of the Spirit of Deity, the active,
male, generative principle; and ether, or the soul of matter, the light of
the fire, for the passive female principle, from which everything in this
Universe emanated. Hence, ether or water is the Mother, and fire is the
Father. Sir William Jones—and before him archaic botany—showed that the
seeds of the Lotus contain—even before they germinate—perfectly formed
leaves, with the miniature shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they
will become: nature thus giving us a specimen of the preformation of its
production ... the seeds of all phanerogamous plants bearing proper
flowers containing an embryo plantlet ready formed.(89) This explains the
sentence, “The Mâtri‐Padma had not yet swollen”—the form being usually
sacrificed to the inner or root idea in archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite symbol for
the Cosmos itself, and also for man. The popular reasons given are,
firstly, the fact just mentioned, that the Lotus‐seed contains within
itself a perfect miniature of the future plant, which typifies the fact
that the spiritual prototypes of all things exist in the immaterial world,
before these things become materialized on earth. Secondly, the fact that
the Lotus‐plant grows up through the water, having its root in the Ilus,
or mud, and spreading its flower in the air above. The Lotus thus typifies
the life of man and also that of the Cosmos; for the Secret Doctrine
teaches that the elements of both are the same, and that both are
developing in the same direction. The root of the Lotus sunk in the mud
represents material life, the stalk passing up through the water typifies
existence in the astral world, and the flower floating on the water and
opening to the sky is emblematical of spiritual being.
4. HER HEART HAD NOT YET OPENED FOR THE ONE RAY TO ENTER, THENCE TO FALL,
AS THREE INTO FOUR, INTO THE LAP OF MÂYÂ.
The Primordial Substance had not yet passed out of its precosmic latency
into differentiated objectivity, or even become the (to man, so far)
invisible Protyle of Science. But, as the “Hour strikes” and it becomes
receptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought—the Logos, or the
male aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya—its “Heart” opens. It
differentiates, and the Three (Father, Mother, Son) are transformed into
Four. Herein lies the origin of the double mystery of the Trinity and the
Immaculate Conception. The first and fundamental dogma of Occultism is
Universal Unity (or Homogeneity) under three aspects. This leads to a
possible conception of Deity, which as an absolute Unity must remain
forever incomprehensible to finite intellects.
If thou wouldest believe in the Power which acts within the root
of a plant, or imagine the root concealed under the soul, thou
hast to think of its stalk or trunk, and of its leaves and
flowers. Thou canst not imagine that Power independently of these
objects. Life can be known only by the Tree of Life....(90)
The idea of Absolute Unity would be broken entirely in our conception, had
we not something concrete before our eyes to contain that Unity. And the
Deity being absolute, must be omnipresent; hence not an atom but contains
It within itself. The roots, the trunk, and its many branches, are three
distinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: “The Deity is
one, because It is infinite. It is triple, because It is ever
manifesting.” This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it
requires, as Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to
become objective: privation, form, and matter.(91) Privation meant in the
mind of the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the
prototypes impressed in the Astral Light—the lowest plane and world of
Anima Mundi. The union of these three principles depends upon a fourth—the
Life which radiates from the summits of the Unreachable, to become a
universally diffused Essence on the manifested planes of Existence. And
this Quaternary (Father, Mother, Son, as a Unity, and a Quaternary—as a
living manifestation) has been the means of leading to the very archaic
idea of Immaculate Conception, now finally crystallized into a dogma of
the Christian Church, which has carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond
any common sense. For one has but to read the _Kabalah_ and study its
numerical methods of interpretation to find the origin of the dogma. It is
purely astronomical, mathematical, and preëminently metaphysical: the Male
Element in Nature (personified by the male deities and Logoi—Virâj, or
Brahmâ, Horus, or Osiris, etc., etc.) is born through, not from, an
immaculate source, personified by the “Mother,” for—the Abstract Deity
being sexless, and not even a Being but Be‐ness, or Life itself—that Male
having a “Mother” cannot have a “Father.” Let us render this in the
mathematical language of the author of _The Source of Measures_. Speaking
of the “Measure of a Man” and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes
that in _Genesis_, iv. 1—
It is called the “Man even Jehovah” Measure, and this is obtained
in this way, viz.: 113 x 5 = 565, and the value 565 can be placed
under the form of expression 56.5 x 10 = 565. Here the Man‐number
113 becomes a factor of 56.5 x 10, and the (Kabalistic) reading of
this last numbered expression is Jod, He, Vau, He, or Jehovah....
The expansion of 565 into 56·5 x 10 is purposed to show the
emanation of the male (Jod) from the female (Eva) principle; or,
so to speak, the birth of a male element from an immaculate
source, in other words, an immaculate conception.
Thus is repeated on earth the mystery enacted, according to the Seers, on
the divine plane. The Son of the Immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the
Undifferentiated Cosmic Protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again
on earth as the Son of the terrestrial Eve, our mother Earth, and becomes
Humanity as a total—past, present, and future—for Jehovah, or Jod‐Hé‐Vau‐
Hé, is androgyne, or both male and female. Above, the Son is the whole
Kosmos; below, he is Mankind. The Triad or Triangle becomes Tetraktys, the
sacred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a six‐faced Cube on
earth. The Macroprosopus (the Great Face) is now Microprosopus (the Lesser
Face); or, as the Kabbalists have it, the Ancient of Days, descending on
Adam Kadmon whom he uses as his vehicle to manifest through, gets
transformed into Tetragrammaton. It is now in the “Lap of Mâyâ,” the Great
Illusion, and between itself and the Reality has the Astral Light, the
Great Deceiver of man’s limited senses, unless Knowledge through
Paramârthasatya comes to the rescue.
5. THE SEVEN(92) WERE NOT YET BORN FROM THE WEB OF LIGHT, DARKNESS ALONE
WAS FATHER‐MOTHER, SVABHÂVAT; AND SVABHÂVAT WAS IN DARKNESS.
The Secret Doctrine, in the Stanzas here given, occupies itself chiefly,
if not entirely, with our Solar System, and especially with our Planetary
Chain. The “Seven Sons,” therefore, are the creators of the latter. This
teaching will be explained more fully hereafter.
Svabhâvat, the “Plastic Essence” that fills the Universe, is the root of
all things. Svabhâvat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the
abstraction called in Hindû philosophy Mûlaprakriti. It is the body of the
Soul, and that which Ether would be to Âkâsha, the latter being the
informing principle of the former. Chinese mystics have made of it the
synonym of “Being.” In the Chinese translation of the _Ekashloka‐Shâstra_
of Nâgârjuna (the Lung‐shu of China), called the _Yih‐shu‐lu‐kia‐lun_, it
is said that the term “Being,” or “Subhâva,” (Yeu in Chinese) means “the
Substance giving substance to itself”; it is also explained by him as
meaning “without action and with action,” “the nature which has no nature
of its own.” Subhâva, from which Svabhâvat, is composed of two words: _su_
fair, handsome, good; _sva_, self, and _bhâva_, being or states of being.
6. THESE TWO ARE THE GERM, AND THE GERM IS ONE. THE UNIVERSE WAS STILL
CONCEALED IN THE DIVINE THOUGHT AND THE DIVINE BOSOM.
The “Divine Thought” does not imply the idea of a Divine Thinker. The
Universe, not only past, present and future—a human and finite idea
expressed by finite thought—but in its totality, the Sat (an
untranslateable term), Absolute Being, with the Past and Future
crystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought itself reflected in a
secondary or manifested cause. Brahman (neuter), as the Mysterium Magnum
of Paracelsus, is an absolute mystery to the human mind. Brahmâ, the male‐
female, the aspect and anthropomorphic reflection of Brahman, is
conceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human
intellect when it attains its majority.
Hence the statement that during the prologue, so to say, of the drama of
creation, or the beginning of cosmic evolution, the Universe, or the Son,
lies still concealed “in the Divine Thought,” which had not yet penetrated
into the “Divine Bosom.” This idea, note well, is at the root, and forms
the origin, of all the allegories about the “Sons of God” born of
immaculate virgins.
Stanza III.
1. ... THE LAST VIBRATION OF THE SEVENTH ETERNITY THRILLS THROUGH
INFINITUDE (_a_). THE MOTHER SWELLS, EXPANDING FROM WITHIN WITHOUT, LIKE
THE BUD OF THE LOTUS (_b_).
(_a_) The seemingly paradoxical use of the term, “Seventh Eternity,” thus
dividing the indivisible, is sanctified in Esoteric Philosophy. The latter
divides boundless Duration into unconditionally eternal and universal Time
(Kâla); and conditioned Time (Khandakâla). One is the abstraction or
noumenon of infinite Time, the other its phenomenon appearing
periodically, as the effect of Mahat—the Universal Intelligence, limited
by manvantaric duration. With some schools, Mahat is the first‐born of
Pradhâna (undifferentiated Substance, or the periodical aspect of
Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Nature), which (Pradhâna) is called Mâyâ,
Illusion. In this respect, I believe, Esoteric teaching differs from the
Vedântin doctrines of both the Advaita and the Visishthadvaita schools.
For it says that, while Mûlaprakriti, the noumenon, is self‐existing and
without any origin—is, in short, parentless, Anupâdaka, as one with
Brahman—Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical and no better than a
phantasm of the former; so Mahat, the first‐born of Jñâna (or Gnôsis),
Knowledge, Wisdom or the Logos—is a phantasm reflected from the Absolute
Nirguna (Parabrahman), the One Reality, “devoid of attributes and
qualities”; while with some Vedântins Mahat is a manifestation of
Prakriti, or Matter.
(_b_) Therefore, the “last Vibration of the Seventh Eternity” was “fore‐
ordained”—by no God in particular, but occurred in virtue of the eternal
and changeless Law which causes the great periods of Activity and Rest,
called so graphically, and at the same time so poetically, the Days and
Nights of Brahmâ. The expansion “from within without” of the Mother,
called elsewhere the “Waters of Space,” “Universal Matrix,” etc., does not
allude to an expansion from a small centre or focus, but means the
development of limitless subjectivity into as limitless objectivity,
without reference to size or limitation or area. “_The ever [to us]
invisible and immaterial Substance present in eternity, threw its
periodical Shadow from its own plane into the Lap of Mâyâ._” It implies
that this expansion, not being an increase in size—for infinite extension
admits of no enlargement—was a change of condition. It expanded “like the
Bud of the Lotus”; for the Lotus plant exists not only as a miniature
embryo in its seed (a physical characteristic), but its prototype is
present in an ideal form in the Astral Light from “Dawn” to “Night” during
the manvantaric period, like everything else, as a matter of fact, in this
objective Universe; from man to mite, from giant trees to the tiniest
blades of grass.
All this, teaches the Hidden Science, is but the temporary reflection, the
shadow of the eternal ideal prototype in Divine Thought; the word
“Eternity,” note well again, standing here only in the sense of “Æon,” as
lasting throughout the seemingly interminable, but still limited cycle of
activity, called by us Manvantara. For what is the real esoteric meaning
of Manvantara, or rather a Manu‐antara? It means, literally, “between two
Manus,” of whom there are fourteen in every Day of Brahmâ, such a Day
consisting of 1,000 aggregates of four Ages, 1,000 “Great Ages” or
Mahâyugas. Let us now analyse the word or name Manu. Orientalists in their
dictionaries tell us that the term “Manu” is from the root _man_, “to
think”; hence “the thinking man.” But, esoterically, every Manu, as an
anthropomorphized patron of his special cycle (or Round), is but the
personified idea of the “Thought Divine” (as the Hermetic Pymander); each
of the Manus, therefore, being the special god, the creator and fashioner
of all that appears during his own respective cycle of being or
Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus’ (or Dhyân Chohans’) errands, and causes
the ideal prototypes to expand from within without—that is, to cross
gradually, on a descending scale, all the planes, from the noumenal to the
lowest phenomenal, to bloom finally on the last into full objectivity—the
acme of Illusion, or the grossest matter.
2. THE VIBRATION SWEEPS ALONG, TOUCHING(93) WITH ITS SWIFT WING THE WHOLE
UNIVERSE AND THE GERM THAT DWELLETH IN DARKNESS, THE DARKNESS THAT
BREATHES(94) OVER THE SLUMBERING WATERS OF LIFE.
The Pythagorean Monas is also said to dwell in solitude and “Darkness”
like the “Germ.” The idea of the Breath of Darkness moving over “the
slumbering Waters of Life,” which is Primordial Matter with the latent
Spirit in it, recalls the first chapter of _Genesis_. Its original is the
Brâhmanical Nârâyana (the Mover on the Waters), who is the personification
of the Eternal Breath of the unconscious All (or Parabrahaman) of the
Eastern Occultists. The Waters of Life, or Chaos—the female principle in
symbolism—are the vacuum (to our mental sight), in which lie the latent
Spirit and Matter. This it was that made Democritus assert, after his
instructor Leucippus, that the primordial principles of all were atoms and
a vacuum, in the sense of space, but not of empty space, for “Nature
abhors a vacuum,” according to the Peripatetics and every ancient
philosopher.
In all Cosmogonies “Water” plays the same important part. It is the base
and source of material existence. Scientists, mistaking the word for the
thing, understand by it the definite chemical combination of oxygen and
hydrogen, thus giving a specific meaning to a term used by Occultists in a
generic sense, and which is employed in Cosmogony with a metaphysical and
mystical meaning. Ice is not water, neither is steam, although all three
have precisely the same chemical composition.
3. DARKNESS RADIATES LIGHT, AND LIGHT DROPS ONE SOLITARY RAY INTO THE
WATERS, INTO THE MOTHER‐DEEP. THE RAY SHOOTS THROUGH THE VIRGIN EGG, THE
RAY CAUSES THE ETERNAL EGG TO THRILL, AND DROP THE NON‐ETERNAL GERM,(95)
WHICH CONDENSES INTO THE WORLD‐EGG.
The “solitary Ray” dropping into the “Mother‐Deep” may be taken to mean
Divine Thought, or Intelligence, impregnating Chaos. This, however, occurs
on the plane of metaphysical abstraction, or rather the plane whereon that
which we call a metaphysical abstraction, is a reality. The “Virgin‐Egg,”
being in one sense the abstract of all ova, or the power of becoming
developed through fecundation, is eternal and for ever the same. And just
as the fecundation of an egg takes place before it is dropped; so the non‐
eternal periodical Germ, which later becomes in symbolism the Mundane Egg,
contains in itself, when it emerges from the said symbol, “the promise and
potency” of all the Universe. Though the idea _per se_ is, of course, an
abstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a true symbol, for it
suggests the idea of infinity as an endless circle. It brings before the
mind’s eye the picture of Kosmos emerging from and in boundless Space, a
Universe as shoreless in magnitude, if not as endless in its objective
manifestation. The symbol of an egg also expresses the fact taught in
Occultism that the primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to
globe, from man to angel, is spheroidal, the sphere being with all nations
the emblem of eternity and infinity—a serpent swallowing its tail. To
realize the meaning, however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from
its centre. The field of vision, or of thought, is like a sphere whose
radii proceed from one’s self in every direction, and extend out into
space, opening up boundless vistas all around. It is the symbolical circle
of Pascal and the Kabalists, “whose centre is everywhere and circumference
nowhere”—a conception which enters into the compound idea of this emblem.
The “World‐Egg” is, perhaps, one of the most universally adopted symbols,
highly suggestive as it is, equally in the spiritual, physiological, and
cosmological sense. Therefore, it is found in every world‐theogony, where
it is largely associated with the serpent symbol, the latter being
everywhere, in philosophy as in religious symbolism, an emblem of
eternity, infinitude, regeneration, and rejuvenation, as well as of
wisdom. The mystery of apparent self‐generation and evolution through its
own creative power, repeating in miniature, in the egg, the process of
cosmic evolution—both due to heat and moisture under the efflux of the
unseen creative spirit—fully justified the selection of this graphic
symbol. The “Virgin‐Egg” is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic
prototype, the “Virgin Mother”—Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male
creator (under whatever name) springs forth from the virgin female, the
Immaculate Root fructified by the Ray. Who, if versed in astronomy and
natural sciences, can fail to see its suggestiveness? Kosmos, as receptive
Nature, is an egg fructified—yet left immaculate; for once regarded as
boundless, it could have no other representation than a spheroid. The
Golden Egg was surrounded by seven natural Elements, “four ready [ether,
fire, air, water], three secret.” This may be found stated in _Vishnu
Purâna_, where elements are translated “envelopes,” and a _secret_ one is
added—Ahamkâra.(96) The original text has no Ahamkâra; it mentions seven
Elements without specifying the last three.
4. THE THREE(97) FALL INTO THE FOUR(98). THE RADIANT ESSENCE BECOMES SEVEN
INSIDE, SEVEN OUTSIDE (_a_). THE LUMINOUS EGG,(99) WHICH IN ITSELF IS
THREE,(100) CURDLES AND SPREADS IN MILK‐WHITE CURDS THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS
OF MOTHER, THE ROOT THAT GROWS IN THE DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN OF LIFE (_b_).
The use of geometrical figures and the frequent allusions to figures in
all ancient scriptures, as in the _Purânas_, the Egyptian _Book of the
Dead_ and even the _Bible_—must be explained. In the _Book of Dzyan_, as
in the _Kabalah_, there are two kinds of numerals to be studied—the
Figures, often simple blinds, and the Sacred Numbers, the values of which
are all known to the Occultists through Initiation. The former are but
conventional glyphs; the latter, the basic symbols of all. That is to say,
the one are purely physical, the other purely metaphysical, the two
standing in relation to each other as Matter stands to Spirit—the extreme
poles of the One Substance.
As Balzac, the unconscious Occultist of French literature, says somewhere,
the Number is to Mind the same as it is to Matter, “an incomprehensible
agent.” Perhaps so to the profane, never to the initiated mind. Number is,
as the great writer thought, an Entity, and, at the same time, a Breath
emanating from what he called God and what we call the ALL, the Breath
which alone could organize the physical Cosmos, “where naught obtains its
form but through the Deity, which is an effect of Number.” It is
instructive to quote Balzac’s words upon this subject:
The smallest as the most immense creations, are they not to be
distinguished from each other by their quantities, their
qualities, their dimensions, their forces and attributes, all
begotten by Number? The infinitude of Numbers is a fact proven to
our mind, but of which no proof can be physically given. The
mathematician will tell us that the infinitude of Numbers exists
but is not to be demonstrated. God is a Number endowed with
motion, which is felt but not demonstrated. _As Unity, it begins
the Numbers, with which it has nothing in common._... The
existence of Numbers depends on Unity, which without a single
Number, begets them all.... What! unable either to measure the
first abstraction yielded to you by the Deity, or to get hold of
it, you still hope to subject to your measurements the mystery of
the Secret Sciences which emanate from that Deity? .... And what
would you feel, were I to plunge you into the abysses of Motion,
the Force which organizes the Numbers? What would you think, were
I to add that _Motion_ and _Number_(101) are begotten by the Word,
the Supreme Reason of the Seers and Prophets, who, in days of old,
sensed the mighty Breath of God, a witness to which is the
Apocalypse?
(_b_) “The Radiant Essence curdles and spreads throughout the Depths” of
Space. From an astronomical point of view this is easy of explanation: it
is the Milky Way, the World‐Stuff, or Primordial Matter in its first form.
It is more difficult, however, to explain it in a few words, or even
lines, from the standpoint of Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is the
most complicated of glyphs. Herein are enshrined more than a dozen
symbols. To begin with, it contains the whole pantheon of mysterious
objects,(102) every one of them having some definite Occult meaning,
extracted from the Hindû allegorical “Churning of the Ocean” by the Gods.
Besides Amrita, the water of life or immortality, Surabhi, the “cow of
plenty,” called “the fountain of milk and curds,” was extracted from this
“sea of milk.” Hence the universal adoration of the cow and bull, one the
productive, the other the generative power in Nature: symbols connected
with both the solar and the cosmic deities. The specific properties, for
Occult purposes, of the “fourteen precious things,” being explained only
at the Fourth Initiation, cannot be given here; but the following may be
remarked. In the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_ it is stated that the Churning of
the Ocean of Milk took place in the Satya Yuga, the first Age which
immediately followed the “Deluge.” As, however, neither the _Rig Veda_ nor
_Manu_—both preceding Vaivasvata’s “Deluge,” that of the bulk of the
Fourth Race—mention this Deluge, it is evident that it is neither the
Great Deluge, nor that which carried away Atlantis, nor even the Deluge of
Noah, which is here meant. This “Churning” relates to a period before the
earth’s formation, and is in direct connection with another universal
legend, the various and contradictory versions of which culminated in the
Christian dogma of the “War in Heaven,” and the “Fall of the Angels.” The
_Brâhmanas_, reproached by the Orientalists with their versions on the
same subjects often clashing with each other, _are preëminently occult
works_, hence used purposely as blinds. They are allowed to survive for
public use and property only because they were and are absolutely
unintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared from
circulation as long ago as the days of Akbar.
5. THE ROOT REMAINS, THE LIGHT REMAINS, THE CURDS REMAIN, AND STILL
OEAOHOO IS ONE.
“Oeaohoo” is rendered “Father‐Mother of the Gods” in the Commentaries, or
the “Six in One,” or _the Septenary Root from which all proceeds_. All
depends upon the accent given to these seven vowels, which may be
pronounced as one, three, or even seven syllables, by adding an _e_ after
the final _o_. This mystic name is given out, because without a thorough
mastery of the triple pronunciation it remains for ever ineffectual.
“Is One” refers to the Non‐Separateness of all that lives and has its
being, whether in an active or passive state. In one sense, Oeaohoo is the
Rootless Root of All; hence, one with Parabrahman: in another sense it is
a name for the manifested One Life, the eternal living Unity. The “Root”
means, as already explained, Pure Knowledge (Sattva),(103) eternal
(_nitya_) unconditioned Reality, or Sat (Satya), whether we call it
Parabrahman or Mûlaprakriti, for these are but the two symbols of the One.
The “Light” is the same Omnipresent Spiritual Ray, which has entered and
now fecundated the Divine Egg, and calls cosmic matter to begin its long
series of differentiations. The “Curds” are the first differentiation, and
probably also refer to that cosmic matter which is supposed to be the
origin of the Milky Way—the matter we know. This “matter,” which,
according to the revelation received from the primeval Dhyâni‐Buddhas, is,
during the periodical Sleep of the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity
conceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisattva—this matter, radiant and
cool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion, scattered
through Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and lumps,
like curds in thin milk. These are the seeds of the future worlds, the
“star‐stuff.”
6. THE ROOT OF LIFE WAS IN EVERY DROP OF THE OCEAN OF IMMORTALITY,(104)
AND THE OCEAN WAS RADIANT LIGHT, WHICH WAS FIRE, AND HEAT, AND MOTION.
DARKNESS VANISHED AND WAS NO MORE; IT DISAPPEARED IN ITS OWN ESSENCE, THE
BODY OF FIRE AND WATER, OF FATHER AND MOTHER.
The Essence of Darkness being Absolute Light, Darkness is taken as the
appropriate allegorical representation of the condition of the Universe
during Pralaya, or the term of Absolute Rest, or Non‐Being, as it appears
to our finite minds. The “Fire, and Heat, and Motion,” here spoken of,
are, of course, not the fire, heat, and motion of Physical Science, but
the underlying abstractions, the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of
these material manifestations—the “things in themselves,” which, as Modern
Science confesses, entirely elude the instruments of the laboratory, and
which even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally as little avoid
the conclusion that these underlying essences of things must exist. “Fire
and Water, or Father and Mother,” may be taken here to mean the divine Ray
and Chaos. “Chaos, from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with
pleasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos [the first‐born Light],”
says a fragment of Hermas. Damascius calls it Dis, the “disposer of all
things.”(105)
According to the Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the
profane for once correctly, if only partially, “Light and Darkness are
identical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind”; and
according to Robert Fludd, “Darkness adopted illumination in order to make
itself visible.”(106) According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism,
Darkness is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of Light,
without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist.
Light is Matter, and Darkness pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical,
metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute Light; while the latter in
all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it
can never be eternal, and is simply an Illusion, or Mâyâ.
Even in the mind‐baffling and science‐harassing _Genesis_,(107) light is
created out of darkness—“and darkness was upon the face of the deep”—and
not _vice versâ_. “In him [in darkness] was life; and the life was the
_light_ of men.”(108) A day may come when the eyes of men will be opened;
and then they may comprehend better than they do now the verse in the
Gospel of John that says, “And the light shineth in darkness; and the
darkness comprehendeth it not.” They will see then that the word
“darkness” does not apply to man’s spiritual eyesight, but indeed to
Darkness, the Absolute, that comprehendeth not (cannot cognize) transient
Light, however transcendent to human eyes. _Demon est Deus inversus._ The
Devil is now called “darkness” by the Church, whereas in the _Bible_, in
the _Book of Job_, he is called the “Son of God,” the bright star of the
early morning, Lucifer. There is a whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in
the reason why the first Archangel, who sprang from the depths of Chaos,
was called Lux (Lucifer), the luminous “Son of the Morning,” or
Manvantaric Dawn. He has been transformed by the Church into Lucifer or
Satan, because he is higher and older than Jehovah, and had to be
sacrificed to the new dogma.
7. BEHOLD, O LANOO,(109) THE RADIANT CHILD OF THE TWO, THE UNPARALLELED
REFULGENT GLORY—BRIGHT SPACE, SON OF DARK SPACE, WHO EMERGES FROM THE
DEPTHS OF THE GREAT DARK WATERS. IT IS OEAOHOO, THE YOUNGER, THE —— (110)
(_a_). HE SHINES FORTH AS THE SUN, HE IS THE BLAZING DIVINE DRAGON OF
WISDOM; THE EKA(111) IS CHATUR, AND CHATUR TAKES TO ITSELF TRI, AND THE
UNION PRODUCES THE SAPTA, IN WHOM ARE THE SEVEN, WHICH BECOME THE
TRIDASHA,(112) THE HOSTS AND THE MULTITUDES (_b_). BEHOLD HIM LIFTING THE
VEIL, AND UNFURLING IT FROM EAST TO WEST. HE SHUTS OUT THE ABOVE, AND
LEAVES THE BELOW TO BE SEEN AS THE GREAT ILLUSION. HE MARKS THE PLACES FOR
THE SHINING ONES,(113) AND TURNS THE UPPER(114) INTO A SHORELESS SEA OF
FIRE (_c_), AND THE ONE MANIFESTED(115) INTO THE GREAT WATERS.
(_a_) “Bright Space, Son of Dark Space,” corresponds to the Ray dropped at
the first thrill of the new Dawn into the great Cosmic Depths, from which
it reëmerges differentiated as “Oeaohoo, the Younger” (the “New Life”), to
be to the end of the Life‐Cycle the Germ of all things. He is “the
Incorporeal Man who contains in himself the Divine Idea,” the generator of
Light and Life, to use an expression of Philo Judæus. He is called the
“Blazing Dragon of Wisdom,” because, firstly, he is that which the Greek
philosophers called the Logos, the Verbum of the Thought Divine; and
secondly, because in Esoteric Philosophy this first manifestation, being
the synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo, the “Son of
the Sun,” contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (Sephiroth), and is
thus the essence of manifested Wisdom. “_He who bathes in the Light of
Oeaohoo will never be deceived by the Veil of Mâyâ._”
“Kwan‐Shai‐Yin” is identical with, and an equivalent of the Sanskrit
Avalokiteshvara, and as such is an androgynous deity, like the
Tetragrammaton and all the Logoi of antiquity. It is only by some sects in
China that he is anthropomorphized, and represented with female
attributes; under his female aspect becoming Kwan‐Yin, the Goddess of
Mercy, called the “Divine Voice.”(116) The latter is the patron deity of
Tibet and of the island of Puto in China, where both deities have a number
of monasteries.(117)
The higher gods of antiquity are all “Sons of the Mother” before they
become “Sons of the Father.” The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, son of
Cronus‐Saturn, “Infinite Time” (Kâla), in their origin were represented as
male‐female. Zeus is said to be the “beautiful virgin,” and Venus is made
bearded. Apollo was originally bisexual, so is Brahmâ‐Vâch in _Manu_ and
the _Purânas_. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is of both
sexes. Finally in St. John’s vision in _Revelation_, the Logos, who is now
connected with Jesus, is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having
female breasts. So also is Tetragrammaton, or Jehovah. But there are two
Avalokiteshvaras in Esotericism; the First and the Second Logos.
No religious symbol can escape profanation and even derision in our days
of politics and science. In Southern India the writer has seen a converted
native making pûjâ with offerings before a statue of Jesus clad in woman’s
clothes and with a ring in its nose. On asking the meaning of this
masquerade, we were answered that it was Jesu‐Maria blended in one, and
that it was done by the permission of the Padre, as the zealous convert
had no money to purchase two statues, or “idols” as they, very properly,
were called by a witness, another but a non‐converted Hindû. Blasphemous
this will appear to a dogmatic Christian, but the Theosophist and the
Occultist must award the palm of logic to the converted Hindû. The
esoteric Christos in the Gnôsis is, of course, sexless, but in exoteric
Theology he is male and female.
(b) The “Dragon of Wisdom” is the One, the “Eka” or Saka. It is curious
that Jehovah’s name in Hebrew should also be One, Achad. “His name is
Achad,” say the Rabbins. The Philologists ought to decide which of the two
is derived from the other, linguistically and symbolically; surely, not
the Sanskrit. The “One” and the “Dragon” are expressions used by the
ancients in connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah—esoterically
Elohim—is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve; and the Dragon is
an old glyph for the Astral Light (Primordial Principle), “which is the
Wisdom of Chaos.” Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as
a fundamental or independent power, but starting from the Absolute ALL
(Universal Perfection eternally), traces both through the course of
natural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually into form, and hence
becoming Matter or Evil. It was left with the early and ignorant Christian
Fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of this
emblem into the absurd superstition called the “Devil.” They took this
from the later Zoroastrians, who saw Devils or Evil in the Hindû Devas,
and the word Evil has become by a double transmutation D’Evil (Diabolos,
Diable, Diavolo, Teufel). But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical
discrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent
symbolized divine Wisdom and Perfection, and has always stood for
psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence, Hermes calling the serpent
the most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated into the Wisdom of
Hermes, following suit in _Genesis_; the Gnostic Serpent with the seven
vowels over its head, being the emblem of the Seven Hierarchies of the
Septenary or Planetary Creators. Hence, also, the Hindû serpent Shesha or
Ananta, the Infinite, a name of Vishnu, and his first Vâhana, or Vehicle,
on the Primordial Waters. Like the Logoi and the Hierarchies of Powers,
however, these serpents have to be distinguished one from the other.
Shesha or Ananta, the “Couch of Vishnu,” is an allegorical abstraction,
symbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains the Germ and throws off
periodically the efflorescence of this Germ, the Manifested Universe;
whereas, the Gnostic Ophis contains the same triple symbolism in its seven
vowels as the one, three and seven‐syllabled Oeaohoo of the archaic
doctrine; _i.e._, the First Unmanifested Logos, the Second Manifested, the
Triangle concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and the Rays of
the latter on the material plane.
Yet they all made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent (the
Astral Light of the Kabalists)—between the former, the embodiment of
divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the
plane of Matter. For the Astral Light, or the Ether, of the ancient
Pagans—the name Astral Light is quite modern—is Spirit‐Matter. Beginning
with the pure spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as it descends, until it
becomes Mâyâ, or the tempting and deceitful Serpent on our plane.
Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of
his teaching: “Be ye wise as serpents,” he says. “_In the beginning,
before Mother became Father‐Mother, the Fiery Dragon moved in the
Infinitudes alone._”(118) The _Aitareya Brahmana_ calls the Earth
Sarparâjni, the “Serpent Queen,” and the “Mother of all that moves.”
Before our globe became egg‐shaped (and the Universe also), “a long trail
of cosmic dust [or fire‐mist] moved and writhed like a serpent in Space.”
The “Spirit of God moving on Chaos” was symbolized by every nation in the
shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon the primordial
waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the
annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth—which symbolizes not
only eternity and infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the
bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as
also the Earth and Man, serpent‐like, periodically cast off their old
skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is surely not
a less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and
chrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche,
the human soul! The Dragon was also the symbol of the Logos with the
Egyptians, as with the Gnostics. In the _Book of Hermes_, Pymander, the
oldest and the most spiritual of the Logoi of the Western Continent,
appears to Hermes in the shape of a Fiery Dragon of “Light, Fire, and
Flame.” Pymander, the “Thought Divine” personified, says:
The Light is I, I am the Nous [the Mind or Manu], I am thy God,
and I am far older than the human principle which escapes from the
shadow [Darkness, or the concealed Deity]. I am the germ of
thought, the resplendent Word, the Son of God. All that thus sees
and hears in thee is the Verbum of the Master; it is the Thought
[Mahat] which is God, the Father.(119) The celestial Ocean, the
Æther, ... is the Breath of the Father, the life‐giving principle,
the Mother, the Holy Spirit, ... for these are not separated, and
their union is Life.
Here we find the unmistakable echo of the archaic Secret Doctrine, as now
expounded. Only the latter does not place at the head of the Evolution of
Life the “Father,” who comes third and is the “Son of the Mother,” but the
“Eternal and Ceaseless Breath of the ALL.” Mahat (Understanding, Universal
Mind, Thought, etc.), before it manifests itself as Brahmâ or Shiva,
appears as Vishnu, says the _Sânkhya Sâra_.(120) Hence it has several
aspects, just as the Logos has. Mahat is called the Lord, in the _Primary_
Creation, and is, in this sense, Universal Cognition or Thought Divine;
but, “that Mahat which was first produced is (afterwards) called _Ego‐
ism_, when it is born as (the feeling itself) ‘I,’ that is said to be the
_Secondary_ Creation.”(121) And the translator (an able and learned
Brâhman, not a European Orientalist) explains in a foot‐note, “_i.e._,
when Mahat develops into the feeling of Self‐Consciousness—I—then it
assumes the name of Egoism,” which, translated into our Esoteric
phraseology, means—when Mahat is transformed into the human Manas (or even
that of the finite gods), and becomes _Aham_‐ship. Why it is called the
Mahat of the _Secondary_ Creation (or the _Ninth_, the Kaumâra in _Vishnu
Purâna_), will be explained hereafter.
(c) The “Sea of Fire” is, then, the Super‐Astral (_i.e._, Noumenal) Light,
the first radiation from the Root Mûlaprakriti, Undifferentiated Cosmic
Substance, which becomes Astral Matter. It is also called the “Fiery
Serpent,” as above described. If the student bears in mind that there is
but One Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying and that
all the rest—as in the world of phenomena—are but so many various
differentiated aspects and transformations (correlations, they are now
called) of that One, from macrocosmical down to microcosmical effects,
from super‐human down to human and sub‐human beings, the totality, in
short, of objective existence—then the first and chief difficulty will
disappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered. Thus in the Egyptian also
as in the Indian Theogony there was a _Concealed_ Deity, the ONE, and a
creative, androgynous god; Shoo being the god of creation, and Osiris in
his original primary form, the god “whose name is unknown.”(122)
All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognize (_a_) the
identity of “Father‐Mother” with Primordial Æther, or Âkâsha (Astral
Light); and (_b_) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “Son,”
cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “_Fohat hardens and
scatters the Seven Brothers_”;(123) which means that the Primordial
Electric Entity—for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an
Entity—electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic
matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness.
“There exists a universal _agent unique_ of all forms and of life, that is
called Od, Ob, and Aour,(124) active and passive, positive and negative,
like day and night: it is the first light in Creation” (Éliphas Lévi)—the
“first light” of the primordial Elohim, the Adam, “male and female,” or
(scientifically) Electricity and Life.
The ancients represented it by a serpent, for “_Fohat hisses as he glides
hither and thither_,” in zigzags. The Kabalah figures it with the Hebrew
letter Teth, ט, whose symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent
part in the Mysteries. Its universal value is nine, for it is the ninth
letter of the alphabet, and the ninth door of the fifty portals, or
gateways, that lead to the concealed mysteries of being. It is the magical
agent _par excellence_, and designates in Hermetic philosophy “Life
infused into Primordial Matter,” the essence that composes all things, and
the spirit that determines their form. But there are two secret Hermetical
operations, one spiritual, the other material, correlative and for ever
united. As Hermes says:
Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the
solid ... that which ascends from earth to heaven and descends
again from heaven to earth. It [the subtile light] is the strong
force of every force, for it conquers every subtile thing and
penetrates into every solid. Thus was the world formed.
It was not Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, alone, who taught that the
Universe evolves, and its primary substance is transformed from the state
of fire into that of air, then into that of water, etc. Heraclitus of
Ephesus maintained that the one principle that underlies all phenomena in
Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the Universe is fire, and fire
is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of
Miletus (600 years B.C.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all
these philosophers, by showing that though each was right, the system of
none was complete.
8. WHERE WAS THE GERM, AND WHERE WAS NOW DARKNESS? WHERE IS THE SPIRIT OF
THE FLAME THAT BURNS IN THY LAMP, O LANOO? THE GERM IS THAT, AND THAT IS
LIGHT, THE WHITE BRILLIANT SON OF THE DARK HIDDEN FATHER..
The answer to the first question, suggested by the second, which is the
reply of the teacher to the pupil, contains in a single phrase one of the
most essential truths of Occult Philosophy. It indicates the existence of
things imperceptible to our physical senses which are of far greater
importance, more real and more permanent, than those that appeal to these
senses themselves. Before the Lanoo can hope to understand the
transcendentally metaphysical problem contained in the first question, he
must be able to answer the second; while the very answer he gives to the
second will furnish him with the clue to the correct reply to the first.
In the Sanskrit Commentary on this Stanza, the terms used for the
concealed and the unrevealed Principle are many. In the earliest MSS. of
Indian literature this Unrevealed Abstract Deity has no name. It is
generally called “That” (Tad, in Sanskrit), and means all that is, was,
and will be, or that can be so received by the human mind.
Among such appellations given—of course, only in Esoteric Philosophy—as
the “Unfathomable Darkness,” the “Whirlwind,” etc., it is also called the
“It of the Kâlahansa,” the “Kâla‐ham‐sa,” and even the “Kâli Hamsa” (Black
Swan). Here the m and the n are convertible, and both sound like the nasal
French an or am. As in the Hebrew so also in the Sanskrit many a
mysterious sacred name conveys to the profane ear no more than some
ordinary, and often vulgar word, because it is concealed anagrammatically
or otherwise. This word Hansa, or Hamsa, is just such a case. Hamsa is
equal to “A‐ham‐sa”—three words meaning “I am He”; while divided in still
another way it will read “So‐ham,” “He [is] I.” In this single word is
contained, for him who understands the language of wisdom, the universal
mystery, the doctrine of the identity of man’s essence with god‐essence.
Hence the glyph of, and the allegory about, Kâlahansa (or Hamsa), and the
name given to Brahman (neuter), later on to the male Brahmâ, of Hamsa‐
vâhana, “he who uses the Hamsa as his vehicle.” The same word may be read
“Kâlaham‐sa,” or “I am I, in the eternity of time,” answering to the
Biblical, or rather Zoroastrian, “I am that I am.” The same doctrine is
found in the _Kabalah_, as witness the following extract from an
unpublished MS. by Mr. S. Liddell McGregor Mathers, the learned Kabalist:
The three pronouns, הוא, אתה, אני, Hua, Ateh, Ani—He, Thou, I—are
used to symbolize the ideas of Macroposopus and Microprosopus in
the Hebrew Qabalah. Hua, “He,” is applied to the hidden and
concealed Macroprosopus; Ateh, “Thou,” to Microprosopus; and Ani,
“I,” to the latter when He is represented as speaking. (See
_Lesser Holy Assembly_, 204 _et seq_.) It is to be noted that each
of these names consists of three letters, of which the letter
Aleph א, A, forms the conclusion of the first word Hua, and the
commencement of Atah and Ani, as if it were the connecting link
between them. But א is the symbol of the Unity and consequently of
the unvarying Idea of the Divine operating through all these. But
behind the א in the name Hua are the letters ו and ה, the symbols
of the numbers Six and Five, the Male and the Female, the Hexagram
and the Pentagram. And the numbers of these three words, Hua,
Ateh, Ani, are 12, 406, and 61, which are resumed in the key
numbers of 3, 10, and 7, by the Qabalah of the Nine Chambers which
is a form of the exegetical rule of Temura.
It is useless to attempt to explain the mystery in full. Materialists and
the men of Modern Science will never understand it, since, in order to
obtain clear perception of it, one has first of all to admit the postulate
of a universally diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature; secondly,
to have fathomed the mystery of electricity in its true essence; and
thirdly, to credit man with being the septenary symbol, on the terrestrial
plane, of the One Great Unit, the Logos, which is Itself the seven‐
vowelled sign, the Breath crystallized into the Word.(125) He who believes
in all this, has also to believe in the multiple combination of the seven
planets of Occultism and of the _Kabalah_, with the twelve zodiacal signs;
and attribute, as we do, to each planet and to each constellation an
influence which, in the words of Mr. Ely Star (a French astrologer), “is
proper to it, beneficent or maleficent, and this, after the planetary
spirit which rules it, who, in his turn, is capable of influencing men and
things which are found in harmony with him and with which he has any
affinity.” For these reasons, and since few believe in the foregoing, all
that can now be given is that in both cases the symbol of Hansa (whether
I, He, Goose or Swan) is an important symbol, representing, among other
things, Divine Wisdom, Wisdom in Darkness beyond the reach of men. For all
exoteric purposes, Hansa, as every Hindû knows, is a fabulous bird which,
when (in the allegory) given milk mixed with water for its food, separated
the two, drinking the milk and leaving the water; thus showing inherent
wisdom—milk standing symbolically for spirit, and water for matter.
That this allegory is very ancient and dates from the very earliest
archaic period, is shown by the mention, in the _Bhâgavata Purâna_, of a
certain caste named Hamsa or Hansa, which was the “one caste” _par
excellence_; when far back in the mists of a forgotten past there was
among the Hindûs only “One Veda, One Deity, One Caste.” There is also a
range in the Himâlayas, described in the old books as being situated north
of Mount Meru, called Hamsa, and connected with episodes pertaining to the
history of religious mysteries and initiations. As to Kâlahansa being the
supposed Vehicle of Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, in the exoteric texts and
translations of the Orientalists, it is quite a mistake. Brahman, the
neuter, is called by them Kâla‐hansa, and Brahmâ, the male, Hansa‐vâhana,
because, forsooth, “his vehicle is a swan or goose.”(126) This is a purely
exoteric gloss. Esoterically and logically, if Brahman, the infinite, is
all that is described by the Orientalists, and, agreeably with the
Vedântic texts, is an abstract deity, in no way characterized by the
ascription of any human attributes, and at the same time it is maintained
that he or it is called Kâlahansa—then how can it ever become the Vâhan of
Brahmâ, the manifested finite god? It is quite the reverse. The “Swan or
Goose” (Hansa) is the symbol of the male or temporary deity, Brahmâ, the
emanation of the primordial Ray, which is made to serve as a Vâhan or
Vehicle for the Divine Ray, which otherwise could not manifest itself in
the Universe, being, antiphrastically, itself an emanation of Darkness—for
our human intellect, at any rate. It is Brahmâ, then, who is Kâlahansa,
and the Ray, Hansa‐vâhana.
As to the strange symbol thus chosen, it is equally suggestive; the true
mystic significance being the idea of a Universal Matrix, figured by the
Primordial Waters of the Deep, or the opening for the reception, and
subsequently for the issuing, of that One Ray (the Logos) which contains
in itself the other Seven Procreative Rays or Powers (the Logoi or
Builders). Hence the choice by the Rosecroix of the aquatic fowl—whether
swan or pelican(127)—with seven young ones, for a symbol, modified and
adapted to the religion of every country. Ain Suph is called the “Fiery
Soul of the Pelican” in the _Book of Numbers_.(128) Appearing with every
Manvantara as Nârâyana, or Svâyambhuva, the Self‐Existent, and penetrating
into the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the divine
incubation as Brahmâ, or Prajâpati, the progenitor of the future Universe,
into which he expands. He is Purusha (Spirit), but he is also Prakriti
(Matter). Therefore it is only after separating itself into two
halves—Brahmâ‐Vâch (the female) and Brahmâ‐Virâj (the male)—that the
Prajâpati becomes the male Brahmâ.
9. LIGHT IS COLD FLAME, AND FLAME IS FIRE, AND FIRE PRODUCES HEAT, WHICH
YIELDS WATER—THE WATER OF LIFE IN THE GREAT MOTHER.(129)
It must be remembered that the words “Light,” “Flame” and “Fire,” have
been adopted by the translators from the vocabulary of the old “Fire
Philosophers,”(130) in order to render more clearly the meaning of the
archaic terms and symbols employed in the original. Otherwise they would
have remained entirely unintelligible to a European reader. To a student
of the Occult, however, the above terms will be sufficiently clear.
All these—“Light,” “Flame,” “Cold,” “Fire,” “Heat,” “Water,” and “Water of
Life”—are, on our plane, the progeny, or, as a modern Physicist would say,
the correlations of Electricity. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol!
Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of Fire—the creator, the
preserver and the destroyer; of Light—the essence of our divine ancestors;
of Flame—the soul of things. Electricity, the One Life at the upper rung
of Being, and Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at the lower;
God and Devil, Good and Evil.
Now, why is Light called “Cold Flame”? In the order of Cosmic Evolution
(as taught by the Occultist), the energy that actuates matter, after its
first formation into atoms, is generated on our plane by Cosmic Heat; and
before that period Cosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not.
The first Primordial Matter, eternal and coëval with Space, “_which has
neither a beginning nor an end, [is] neither hot nor cold, but is of its
own special nature_,” says the Commentary. Heat and cold are relative
qualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all
proceed from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect,
is referred to as the “Cold Virgin,” and when awakened to life, as the
“Mother.” The ancient Western cosmogonic myths state that at first there
was only cold mist (the Father) and the prolific slime (the Mother, Ilus
or Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane Snake (Matter).(131)
Primordial Matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of the never‐
manifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of
Fohat, is but “a cool radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and
devoid of every quality and aspect.” Even such are her First‐born, the
“Four Sons,” who “are One, and become Seven,”—the Entities, by whose
qualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the four of
the seven primal “Centres of Force,” or Atoms, that develop later into the
great Cosmic “Elements,” now divided into the seventy or so sub‐elements,
known to Science. The four “Primal Natures” of the first Dhyân Chohans are
the so‐called (for want of better terms) Âkâshic, Ethereal, Watery and
Fiery. They answer, in the terminology of practical Occultism, to the
scientific definitions of gases, which—to convey a clear idea to both
Occultists and laymen—may be defined as parahydrogenic,(132) paraoxygenic,
oxyhydrogenic, and ozonic, or perhaps nitrozonic; the latter forces, or
gases (in Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances), being the most
effective and active when energizing on the plane of more grossly
differentiated matter. These elements are both electro‐positive and
electro‐negative. These and many more are probably the missing links of
Chemistry. They are known by other names in Alchemy and to Occultists who
practise phenomenal powers. It is by combining and recombining, or
dissociating, the “Elements” in a certain way, by means of Astral Fire,
that the greatest phenomena are produced.
10. FATHER‐MOTHER SPIN A WEB, WHOSE UPPER END IS FASTENED TO SPIRIT,(133)
THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS, AND THE LOWER ONE TO ITS SHADOWY END,
MATTER;(134) AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUBSTANCES
MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SVABHÂVAT.
In the _Mândukya Upanishad_(135) it is written, “As a spider throws out
and retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the ground ... so is the
Universe derived from the undecaying one,” Brahmâ, for the “Germ of
unknown Darkness,” is the material from which all evolves and develops,
“as the web from the spider, as foam from the water,” etc. This is only
graphic and true, if the term Brahmâ, the “Creator,” is derived from the
root _brih_, to increase or expand. Brahmâ “expands,” and becomes the
Universe woven out of his own substance.
The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who says:
Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the garment thou see’st Him by.
11. IT(136) EXPANDS WHEN THE BREATH OF FIRE(137) IS UPON IT; IT CONTRACTS
WHEN THE BREATH OF THE MOTHER(138) TOUCHES IT. THEN THE SONS(139)
DISSOCIATE AND SCATTER, TO RETURN INTO THEIR MOTHER’S BOSOM, AT THE END OF
THE GREAT DAY, AND RE‐BECOME ONE WITH HER. WHEN IT(140) IS COOLING, IT
BECOMES RADIANT. ITS SONS EXPAND AND CONTRACT THROUGH THEIR OWN SELVES AND
HEARTS; THEY EMBRACE INFINITUDE.
The expanding of the Universe, under the “Breath of Fire,” is very
suggestive in the light of the fire‐mist period, of which Modern Science
speaks so much, and knows in reality so little.
Great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the heavenly
bodies into their Primeval One Element, explains the Commentary.
“_Once disintegrated into its primal constituent, by getting within the
attraction and reach of a focus, or centre of heat [energy], of which many
are carried about to and fro in space, a body, whether alive or dead, will
be vapourized, and held in the __‘__Bosom of the Mother,__’__ until Fohat,
gathering a few of the clusters of Cosmic Matter [nebulæ], will, by giving
it an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop the required heat, and then
leave it to follow its own new growth._”
The expanding and contracting of the “Web” _i.e._, the world‐stuff, or
atoms—express here the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular
contraction and expansion of the infinite and shoreless Ocean, of that
which we may call the noumenon of Matter, emanated by Svabhâvat, which
causes the universal vibration of atoms. But it is also suggestive of
something else. It shows that the ancients were acquainted with that which
is now the puzzle of many Scientists and especially of Astronomers—the
cause of the first ignition of matter, or world‐stuff, the paradox of the
heat produced by refrigerative contraction, and other such cosmic
riddles—for it points unmistakably to a knowledge by the ancients of such
phenomena. “_There is heat internal and heat external in every atom_,” say
the MSS. Commentaries, to which the writer has had access, “_the Breath of
the Father [Spirit], and the Breath [or Heat] of the Mother [Matter]_”;
and they give explanations which show that the modern theory of the
extinction of the solar fires, by loss of heat through radiation, is
erroneous. The assumption is false even on the Scientists’ own admission.
For, as Professor Newcomb(141) points out, “by losing heat a gaseous body
contracts, and the heat generated by the contraction exceeds that which it
had to lose in order to produce the contraction.” This paradox, that a
body gets hotter, as the shrinking produced by its getting colder is
greater, has led to long disputes. The surplus of heat, it is argued, is
lost by radiation, and to assume that the temperature is not lowered _pari
passu_ with a decrease of volume under a constant pressure, is to set at
naught the law of Charles. Contraction develops heat, it is true; but
contraction (from cooling) is incapable of developing the whole amount of
heat at any time existing in the mass, or even of maintaining a body at a
constant temperature, etc. Professor Winchell tries to reconcile the
paradox—only a seeming one in fact, as J. Homer Lane(142) proved—by
suggesting “something besides heat.” “May it not be,” he asks, “simply a
repulsion among the molecules, which varies according to some law of the
distance”?(143) But even this will be found irreconcilable, unless this
“something besides heat” is ticketed “Causeless Heat,” the “Breath of
Fire,” the all‐creative Force _plus_ Absolute Intelligence, which Physical
Science is not likely to accept.
However it may be, the reading of this Stanza, notwithstanding its archaic
phraseology, shows it to be more scientific than even Modern Science.
12. THEN SVABHÂVAT SENDS FOHAT TO HARDEN THE ATOMS. EACH(144) IS A PART OF
THE WEB.(145) REFLECTING THE “SELF‐EXISTENT LORD,”(146) LIKE A MIRROR,
EACH BECOMES IN TURN A WORLD.(147)
Fohat hardens the Atoms; _i.e._, by infusing energy into them, he scatters
the “Atoms,” or Primordial Matter. “_He scatters himself while scattering
Matter into Atoms_.”
It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed
upon Matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from
the appellation “Cosmic Electricity,” sometimes applied to it; but, in
this case, to the commonly known properties of electricity, must be added
others, including intelligence. It is of interest to note that Modern
Science has come to the conclusion, that all cerebration and brain‐
activity are attended by electrical phenomena.
Stanza IV.
1. ... LISTEN, YE SONS OF THE EARTH, TO YOUR INSTRUCTORS—THE SONS OF THE
FIRE (_a_). LEARN THERE IS NEITHER FIRST NOR LAST; FOR ALL IS ONE NUMBER,
ISSUED FROM NO‐NUMBER (_b_).
(_a_) The terms, the “Sons of the Fire,” the “Sons of the Fire‐Mist,” and
the like, require explanation. They are connected with a great primordial
and universal mystery, and it is not easy to make it clear. There is a
passage in the _Bhagavadgîtâ_, wherein Krishna, speaking symbolically and
esoterically, says:
I will state the times [conditions] ... at which devotees
departing [from this life] do so never to return [be reborn], or
to return [to incarnate again]. The fire, the flame, the day, the
bright [lucky] fortnight, the six months of the northern solstice,
departing [dying] ... in these, those who know the Brahman [Yogîs]
go to the Brahman. Smoke, night, the dark [unlucky] fortnight, the
six months of the southern solstice, (dying) in these, the devotee
goes to the lunar light [or mansion, the Astral Light also] and
returns [is reborn]. These two paths, bright and dark, are said to
be eternal in this world [or Great Kalpa (Age)]. By the one (a
man) goes never to return, by the other he comes back.(148)
Now these terms “fire,” “flame,” “day,” the “bright fortnight,” etc.,
“smoke,” “night,” and so on, leading only to the end of the Lunar Path,
are incomprehensible without a knowledge of Esotericism. These are all
_names of various deities_ which preside over the cosmo‐psychic Powers. We
often speak of the Hierarchy of “Flames,” of the “Sons of Fire,” etc.
Shankarâchârya, the greatest of the Esoteric Masters of India, says that
Fire means a deity which presides over Time (Kâla). The able translator of
the _Bhagavadgîtâ_, Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A., of Bombay, confesses
he has “no clear notion of the meaning of these verses.” It seems quite
clear, on the contrary, to him who knows the Occult doctrine. With these
verses the mystic sense of the solar and lunar symbols are connected. The
Pitris are Lunar Deities and our Ancestors, because they _created the
physical man_. The Agnishvatta, the Kumâras (the Seven Mystic Sages), are
Solar Deities, though they are Pitris also; and these are the “Fashioners
of the _Inner_ Man.” They are “The Sons of Fire,” because they are the
first Beings, called “Minds,” in the Secret Doctrine, evolved from
Primordial Fire. “The Lord ... is a consuming fire.”(149) “The Lord shall
be revealed ... with his mighty angels in flaming fire.”(150) The Holy
Ghost descended on the Apostles as “cloven tongues like as of fire”;(151)
Vishnu will return on Kalkî, the White Horse, as the last Avatâra, amid
fire and flames; and Sosiosh will also descend on a White Horse in a
“tornado of fire.” “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and
he that sat upon him ... and his name is called the Word of God,”(152)
amid flaming Fire. Fire is Æther in its purest form, and hence is not
regarded as matter, but is the unity of Æther—the second, manifested
deity—in its universality. But there are two “Fires,” and a distinction is
made between them in the Occult teachings. The first, or the purely
_formless_ and _invisible_ Fire, concealed in the _Central Spiritual Sun_,
is spoken of as Triple (metaphysically); while the Fire of the Manifested
Cosmos is Septenary, throughout both the Universe and our Solar System.
“_The fire of knowledge burns up all action on the plane of illusion_,”
says the Commentary. “_Therefore, those who have acquired it and are
emancipated, are called __‘__Fires__’__._” Speaking of the _seven_ senses,
symbolized as Hotris, or Priests, Nârada says in _Anugitâ_: “Thus these
seven [senses, smell and taste, and colour, and sound, etc.,] are the
causes of emancipation”; and the translator adds: “It is from these seven
from which the Self is to be emancipated. ‘I’ [in the sentence, ‘I am ...
devoid of qualities’] must mean the Self, not the Brâhmana who
speaks.”(153)
(_b_) The expression, “all is One Number, issued from No‐Number,” relates
again to that universal and philosophical tenet just explained in the
commentary on Shloka 4 of Stanza III. That which is absolute, is of course
No‐Number; but in its later significance it has an application both in
Space and in Time. It means that not only every increment of time is part
of a larger increment, up to the most indefinitely prolonged duration
conceivable by the human intellect, but also that no manifested thing can
be thought of except as part of a whole: the total aggregate being the One
Manifested Universe that issues from the Unmanifested or Absolute—called
Non‐Being, or “No‐Number,” to distinguish it from Being, or the “One
Number.”
2. LEARN WHAT WE, WHO DESCEND FROM THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, WE, WHO ARE BORN
FROM THE PRIMORDIAL FLAME, HAVE LEARNT FROM OUR FATHERS....
This is explained in Book II, and the term, “Primordial Flame,”
corroborates what is said in the first paragraph of the preceding
commentary on Stanza IV.
The distinction between the “Primordial” and the subsequent Seven Builders
is that the former are the Ray and direct emanation of the first “Sacred
Four,” the Tetraktys, that is, the eternally Self‐Existent One—eternal in
_essence_ note well, not in manifestation, and distinct from the Universal
One. Latent, during Pralaya, and active, during Manvantara, the
“Primordial” proceed from “Father‐Mother” (Spirit‐Hyle, or Ilus); whereas
the other Manifested Quaternary and the Seven proceed from the Mother
alone. It is the latter who is the immaculate Virgin‐Mother, who is
overshadowed, not impregnated, by the Universal Mystery—when she emerges
from her state of Laya, or undifferentiated condition. In reality, they
are, of course, all one; but their aspects on the various planes of Being
are different.
The first Primordial are the highest Beings on the Scale of Existence.
They are the Archangels of Christianity, those who refuse to create or
rather to multiply—as did Michael in the latter system, and as did the
eldest “Mind‐born Sons” of Brahmâ (Vedhâs).
3. FROM THE EFFULGENCY OF LIGHT—THE RAY OF THE EVER‐DARKNESS—SPRANG IN
SPACE THE REÄWAKENED ENERGIES;(154) THE ONE FROM THE EGG, THE SIX, AND THE
FIVE (_a_). THEN THE THREE, THE ONE, THE FOUR, THE ONE, THE FIVE—THE TWICE
SEVEN, THE SUM TOTAL (_b_). AND THESE ARE THE ESSENCES, THE FLAMES, THE
ELEMENTS, THE BUILDERS, THE NUMBERS (_c_), THE ARÛPA,(155) THE RÛPA,(156)
AND THE FORCE, OR DIVINE MAN—THE SUM TOTAL. AND FROM THE DIVINE MAN
EMANATED THE FORMS, THE SPARKS, THE SACRED ANIMALS (_d_), AND THE
MESSENGERS OF THE SACRED FATHERS(157) WITHIN THE HOLY FOUR.(158)
(a) This relates to the Sacred Science of the Numerals; so sacred, indeed,
and so important in the study of Occultism that the subject can hardly be
skimmed, even in such a large work as the present. It is on the
Hierarchies and the correct numbers of these Beings—invisible (to us)
except upon very rare occasions—that the mystery of the whole Universe is
built. The Kumâras, for instance, are called the “Four”—though in reality
seven in number—because Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana and Sanatkumâra are the
chief Vaidhâtra (their patronymic name), who sprang from the “four‐fold
mystery.” To make the whole clearer, we have to turn for our illustrations
to tenets more familiar to some of our readers, namely the Brâhmanical.
According to _Manu_, Hiranyagarbha is Brahmâ, the first _male_, formed by
the undiscernible Causeless Cause, in a “Golden Egg resplendent as the
Sun,” as states the _Hindû Classical Dictionary_; Hiranyagarbha meaning
the Golden, or rather the Effulgent, Womb or Egg. The meaning tallies
awkwardly with the epithet “male.” Surely the esoteric meaning of the
sentence is clear enough! In the _Rig Veda_ it is said—“THAT, the one Lord
of all beings ... the one animating principle of gods and men,” arose, in
the beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha—which is the Mundane Egg,
or Sphere of our Universe. That Being is surely androgynous, and the
allegory of Brahmâ separating into two, and creating in one of his halves
(the female Vâch) himself as Virâj, is a proof of it.
“The One from the Egg, the Six and the Five,” give the number 1065, the
value of the First‐born (later on the male and female Brahmâ‐Prajâpati),
who answers to the numbers 7, and 14, and 21 respectively. The Prajâpati,
like the Sephiroth are only seven, including the synthetic Sephira of the
Triad from which they spring. Thus from Hiranyagarbha, or Prajâpati, the
Triune (the primeval Vedic Trimûrti, Agni, Vâyu, and Sûrya), emanate the
other seven, or again ten, if we separate the first three which exist in
one, and one in three; all, moreover, being comprehended within that one
“Supreme,” Parama, called Guhya or “Secret,” and Sarvâtman, the “Super‐
Soul.” “_The seven Lords of Being lie concealed in Sarvâtman like thoughts
in one brain_.” So with the Sephiroth. They are either seven when counting
from the upper Triad, headed by Kether, or ten—exoterically. In the
_Mahâbhârata_, the Prajâpati are 21 in number, or ten, six, and five
(1065), thrice seven.(159)
(b) “The Three, the One, the Four, the One, the Five,” in their
total—Twice Seven, represent 31415—the numerical Hierarchy of the Dhyân
Chohans of various orders, and of the inner or circumscribed world.(160)
Placed on the boundary of the great Circle, “Pass Not”—called also the
Dhyânipâsha, the “Rope of the Angels,” the “Rope” that hedges off the
phenomenal from the noumenal Cosmos, which does not fall within the range
of our present objective consciousness—this number, when not enlarged by
permutation and expansion, is ever 31415, anagrammatically and
Kabalistically, being both the number of the Circle and the mystic
Svastika, the “Twice Seven” once more; for whatever way the two sets of
figures are counted, when added separately, one figure after another,
whether crossways from right, or from left, they will always yield
fourteen. Mathematically they represent the well‐known mathematical
formula, that the ratio of the diameter of a circle to the circumference
is as 1 to 3.1415, or the value of π (pi), as it is called. This set of
figures must have the same meaning, since the 1:314,159 and again
1:3.1415927 are worked out in the secret calculations to express the
various cycles and ages of the “First‐born,” or 311,040,000,000,000 with
fractions, and yield the same 1.3415 by a process we are not concerned
with at present. And it may be shown that Mr. Ralston Skinner, the author
of _The Source of Measures_, reads the Hebrew word Alhim in the same
number values—by omitting, as said, the ciphers, and by permutation—13514:
since א (a) is 1; ל (l) is 3 (30); ה (h) is 5; י (i) is 1 (10); and מ (m)
is 4 (40); and anagrammatically—31415, as explained by him.
Thus, while in the metaphysical world, the Circle with the one central
Point in it has no number, and is called Anupâdaka—parentless and
numberless, for it can fall under no calculation; in the manifested world,
the Mundane Egg or Circle is circumscribed within the groups called the
Line, the Triangle, the Pentagram, the second Line and the Square (or
13514); and when the Point has generated a Line, and thus becomes a
diameter which stands for the androgynous Logos, then the figures become
31415, or a triangle, a line, a square, a second line, and a pentagram.
“_When the Son separates from the Mother he becomes the Father_,” the
diameter standing for Nature, or the feminine principle. Therefore it is
said: “_In the World of Being, the One Point fructifies the Line, the
Virgin Matrix of Kosmos [the egg‐shaped zero], and the immaculate Mother
gives birth to the Form that combines all forms_.” Prajâpati is called the
first procreating male, and “his mother’s husband.”(161) This gives the
key‐note to all the later “Divine Sons” from “Immaculate Mothers.” It is
strongly corroborated by the significant fact that Anna, the name of the
Mother of the Virgin Mary, now represented by the Roman Catholic Church as
having given birth to her daughter in an immaculate way (“Mary conceived
without sin”), is derived from the Chaldean Ana, Heaven, or Astral Light,
Anima Mundi; whence Anaitia, Devî‐Durgâ, the wife of Shiva, is also called
Annapurna, and Kanyâ, the Virgin; Umâ‐Kanyâ being her esoteric name, and
meaning the “Virgin of Light,” Astral Light in one of its multitudinous
aspects.
(_c_) The Devas, Pitris, Rishis; the Suras and the Asuras; the Daityas and
Âdityas; the Dânavas and Gandharvas, etc., etc., have all their synonyms
in our Secret Doctrine, as well as in the _Kabalah_ and Hebrew Angelology;
but it is useless to give their ancient names, as it would only create
confusion. Many of these may be now also found even in the Christian
Hierarchy of divine and celestial Powers. All those Thrones and Dominions,
Virtues and Principalities, Cherubs, Seraphs and Demons, the various
denizens of the Sidereal World, are the modern copies of archaic
prototypes. The very symbolism in their names, when transliterated and
arranged, in Greek and Latin, are sufficient to show it, as will be proved
in several cases further on.
(_d_) The “Sacred Animals” are found in the _Bible_ as well as in the
_Kabalah_, and they have their meaning—a very profound one, too—on the
page of the origins of Life. In the _Sepher Jetzirah_ it is stated that:
“God engraved in the Holy Four the Throne of his Glory, the Auphanim [the
Wheels or World‐Spheres], the Seraphim, and the Sacred Animals, as
Ministering Angels, and from these [Air, Water, and Fire or Ether] he
formed his habitation.”
The following is the literal translation from the IXth and Xth Sections:
Ten numbers without what? One: the Spirit of the living God ...
who liveth in eternities! Voice and Spirit and Word, and this is
the Holy Spirit. Two: Air out of Spirit. He designed and hewed
therewith twenty‐two letters of foundation, three mothers, and
seven double and twelve single, and one Spirit out of them. Three:
Water out of Spirit; he designed and hewed with them the barren
and the void, mud and earth. He designed them as a flower‐bed,
hewed them as a wall, covered them as a paving. Four: Fire out of
Water. He designed and hewed therewith the throne of glory and the
wheels, and the seraphim and the holy animals as ministering
angels, and of the three He founded his dwelling, as it is said,
He makes his angels spirits, and his servants fiery flames!
The words “founded his dwelling” show clearly that in the _Kabalah_, as in
India, the Deity was considered as the Universe, and was not, in his
origin, the extra‐cosmic God he now is.
Thus was the world made “through Three Seraphim—Sepher, Saphar, and
Sipur,” or “through Number, Numbers, and Numbered.” With the astronomical
key, these “Sacred Animals” become the signs of the Zodiac.
4. THIS WAS THE ARMY OF THE VOICE, THE DIVINE MOTHER OF THE SEVEN. THE
SPARKS OF THE SEVEN ARE SUBJECT TO, AND THE SERVANTS OF, THE FIRST, THE
SECOND, THE THIRD, THE FOURTH, THE FIFTH, THE SIXTH, AND THE SEVENTH OF
THE SEVEN (_a_). THESE(162) ARE CALLED SPHERES, TRIANGLES, CUBES, LINES
AND MODELLERS; FOR THUS STANDS THE ETERNAL NIDÂNA—THE OI‐HA‐HOU
(_b_).(163)
(a) This Shloka gives again a brief analysis of the Hierarchies of the
Dhyân Chohans, called Devas (Gods) in India, or the Conscious Intelligent
Powers in Nature. To this Hierarchy correspond the actual types into which
Humanity may be divided; for Humanity, as a whole, is in reality a
materialized, though as yet imperfect, expression thereof. The “Army of
the Voice” is a term closely connected with the mystery of Sound and
Speech, as an effect and corollary of the Cause—Divine Thought. As
beautifully expressed by P. Christian, the learned author of _Histoire de
la Magie_ and _L’Homme Rouge des Tuileries_, the words spoken by, as well
as the name of, every individual largely determine his future fate. Why?
Because:
When our soul [mind] creates or evokes a thought, the
representative sign of that thought is self‐engraved upon the
astral fluid, which is the receptacle and, so to say, the mirror
of all the manifestations of being.
The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the [hidden or occult]
virtue of the sign.
To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present:
the magnetic potency of human speech is the commencement of every
manifestation in the Occult World. To utter a Name is not only to
define a Being [an Entity], but to place it under, and condemn it
through the emission of the Word [Verbum] to the influence of, one
or more Occult potencies. Things are, for every one of us, that
which it [the Word] makes them while naming them. The Word
[Verbum] or the speech of every man is, quite unconsciously to
himself, a _blessing_ or a _curse_; this is why our present
ignorance about the properties and attributes of the _idea_, as
well as about the attributes and properties of _matter_, is often
fatal to us.
Yes, names [and words] are either _beneficent_ or _maleficent_;
they are, in a certain sense, either venomous or health‐giving,
according to the hidden influences attached by Supreme Wisdom to
their elements, that is to say, to the _letters_ which compose
them, and the _numbers_ correlative to these letters.
This is strictly true as an esoteric teaching accepted by all the Eastern
Schools of Occultism. In the Sanskrit, as also in the Hebrew and all other
alphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and its _rationale_: it is
a cause and an effect of a preceding cause, and a combination of these
very often produces the most magical effect. The vowels, especially,
contain the most occult and formidable potencies. The _Mantras_ (magical
rather than religious invocations, esoterically) are chanted by the
Brâhmans, and so are the rest of the _Vedas_ and other Scriptures.
The “Army of the Voice” is the prototype of the “Host of the Logos,” or
the “Word,” of the _Sepher Jetzirah_, called in the Secret Doctrine the
“One Number issued from No‐Number”—the One Eternal Principle. The Esoteric
Theogony begins with the One Manifested (therefore not eternal in its
presence and being, if eternal in its essence), the Number of the Numbers
and Numbered—the latter proceeding from the Voice, the feminine Vâch, “of
the hundred forms,” Shatarûpâ, or Nature. It is from this Number, 10, or
Creative Nature, the Mother (the Occult cypher, or “0,” ever procreating
and multiplying in union with the unit “1,” or the Spirit of Life), that
the whole Universe proceeds.
In the _Anugîtâ_,(164) a conversation is given between a Brâhmana and his
wife on the origin of Speech and its Occult properties. The wife asks how
Speech came into existence, and which was prior to the other, Speech or
Mind. The Brâhmana tells her that the Apâna (_inspirational __ breath_)
becoming lord, changes that intelligence, which does not understand Speech
or Words, into the state of Apâna, and thus opens the Mind. Thereupon he
tells her a story, a dialogue between Speech and Mind. Both went to the
Self of Being (_i.e._, to the individual Higher Self, as Nîlakantha
thinks; to Prajâpati, according to the commentator Arjuna Mishra), and
asked him to destroy their doubts, and decide which of them preceded and
was superior to the other. To this the Lord said: “Mind (is superior).”
But Speech answered the Self of Being, by saying: “I verily yield (you)
your desires,” meaning that by Speech he acquired what he desired.
Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are two Minds, the “movable”
and the “immovable.” “The immovable is with me,” he said, “the movable is
in your dominion” (_i.e._ of Speech), on the plane of matter. “To that you
are superior.”
But inasmuch, O beautiful one, as you came personally to speak to
me (in the way you did, _i.e._ proudly), therefore, O Sarasvatî!
you shall never speak after (hard) exhalation. The goddess Speech
[Sarasvatî, a later form or aspect of Vâch, the goddess also of
secret learning, or Esoteric Wisdom], verily, dwelt always between
the Prâna and the Apâna. But, O noble one! going with the Apâna
wind [vital air], though impelled, ... without the Prâna
[expirational breath], she ran up to Prajâpati [Brahmâ], saying,
“Be pleased, O venerable sir!” Then the Prâna appeared again
nourishing Speech. And, therefore, Speech never speaks after
(hard) exhalation. It is always noisy or noiseless. Of these two,
the noiseless is the superior to the noisy (Speech).... The
(Speech) which is produced in the body by means of the Prâna, and
which then goes [is transformed] into Apâna and then becoming
assimilated with the Udâna [physical organs of Speech] ... then
finally dwells in the Samâna [“at the navel in the form of sound,
as the material cause of all words,” says Arjuna Mishra]. So
Speech formerly spoke. Hence the Mind is distinguished by reason
of its being immovable, and the Goddess (Speech) by reason of her
being movable.
The above allegory is at the root of the Occult law, which prescribes
silence upon the knowledge of certain secret and invisible things,
perceptible only to the spiritual mind (the sixth sense), and which cannot
be expressed by “noisy” or uttered speech. This chapter of _Anugîtâ_
explains, says Arjuna Mishra, Prânâyâma, or regulation of the breath in
Yoga practices. This mode, however, without the previous acquisition of,
or at least full understanding of, the two higher senses (of which there
are seven, as will be shown), pertains rather to the lower Yoga. The Hatha
so called was and still is discountenanced by the Arhats. It is injurious
to the health, and alone can never develop into Râja Yoga. This story is
quoted to show how inseparably connected in the metaphysics of old, are
intelligent beings, or rather “intelligences,” with every sense or
function, whether physical or mental. The Occult claim that there are
seven senses in man, and in nature, as there are seven states of
consciousness, is corroborated in the same work, Chapter vii, on
Pratyâhâra (the restraint and regulation of the senses, Prânâyâma being
that of the “vital winds” or breath). The Brâhmana, speaking of the
institution of the seven sacrificial Priests (Hotris), says: “The nose and
the eye, and the tongue, and the skin and the ear as the fifth [or smell,
sight, taste, touch, and hearing], mind and understanding are the seven
sacrificial priests separately stationed,” which “dwelling in a minute
space (still) do not perceive each other,” on this sensuous plane, none of
them except mind. For mind says: “The nose smells not without me, the eye
does not take in colour, etc., etc. I am the eternal chief among all
elements [_i.e._, senses]. Without me, the senses never shine, like an
empty dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct. Without me,
all beings, like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend
qualities or objects even with the senses exerting themselves.”(165)
This, of course, only with regard to _mind on the sensuous plane_.
Spiritual Mind, the upper portion or aspect of the _impersonal_ Manas,
takes no cognizance of the senses in physical man. How well the ancients
were acquainted with the correlation of forces, and all the recently
discovered phenomena of mental and physical faculties and functions, and
with many more mysteries also—may be found in reading Chapters vii and
viii of this priceless work in philosophy and mystic learning. See the
quarrel of the senses about their respective superiority and their taking
the Brahman, the Lord of all creatures, for their arbiter. “You are all
greatest and not greatest [or superior to objects, as Arjuna Mishra says,
none being independent of the other]. You are all possessed of one
another’s qualities. All are greatest in their own spheres and all support
one another. There is one unmoving [life‐wind or breath, the _yoga‐
inhalation_, so called, which is the breath of the _One_ or Higher Self].
That one is my own Self, accumulated in numerous (forms).”
This Breath, Voice, Self or Wind (Pneuma?), is the Synthesis of the Seven
Senses, _noumenally_ all minor deities, and esoterically—the _Septenary_
and the “Army of the Voice.”
(_b_) Next we see Cosmic Matter scattering and forming itself into
Elements; grouped into the mystic Four within the fifth Element—Ether, the
“lining” of Âkâsha, the Anima Mundi, or Mother of Cosmos. “Dots, Lines,
Triangles, Cubes, Circles” and finally “Spheres”—why or how? Because, says
the Commentary, such is the first law of Nature, and because Nature
geometrizes universally in all her manifestations. There is an inherent
law—not only in the primordial, but also in the manifested matter of our
phenomenal plane—by which Nature correlates her geometrical forms, and
later, also, her compound elements, and in which also there is no place
for accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in Occultism, that there
is no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.(166) That which seems rest is
only the change of one form into another, the change of substance going
hand in hand with that of form—so at least we are taught in Occult
physics, which thus seem to have anticipated the discovery of the
“conservation of matter” by a considerable time. Says the ancient
Commentary(167) to Stanza IV:
_The Mother is the fiery Fish of Life. She scatters her Spawn and the
Breath [Motion] heats and quickens it. The Grains [of Spawn] are soon
attracted to each other and form the Curds in the Ocean [of Space]. The
larger lumps coalesce and receive new Spawn—in fiery Dots, Triangles and
Cubes, which ripen, and at the appointed time some of the lumps detach
themselves and assume spheroidal form, a process which they effect only
when not interfered with by the others. After which, Law No. —— comes into
operation. Motion [the Breath] becomes the Whirlwind and sets them into
rotation._(168)
5. THE OI‐HA‐HOU, WHICH IS DARKNESS, THE BOUNDLESS, OR THE NO‐NUMBER, ÂDI‐
NIDÂNA SVABHÂVAT, THE [circle]:(169)
I. THE ÂDI‐SANAT, THE NUMBER, FOR HE IS ONE (_a_).
II. THE VOICE OF THE WORD, SVABHÂVAT, THE NUMBERS, FOR HE IS ONE AND
NINE.(170)
III. THE “FORMLESS SQUARE”.(171)
AND THESE THREE, ENCLOSED WITHIN THE [CIRCLE],(172) ARE THE SACRED FOUR;
AND THE TEN ARE THE ARÛPA (173) UNIVERSE (_b_). THEN COME THE SONS, THE
SEVEN FIGHTERS, THE ONE, THE EIGHTH LEFT OUT, AND HIS BREATH WHICH IS THE
LIGHT‐MAKER (_c_).(174)
(_a_) “Âdi‐Sanat,” translated literally, is the First or “Primeval
Ancient,” a name which identifies the Kabalistic “Ancient of Days” and the
“Holy Aged” (Sephira and Adam Kadmon) with Brahmâ, the Creator, called
also Sanat among his other names and titles.
“Svabhâvat” is the mystic Essence, the plastic Root of physical
Nature—“Numbers” when manifested; the “Number,” in its Unity of Substance,
on the highest plane. The name is of Buddhist use and a synonym for the
four‐fold Anima Mundi, the Kabalistic Archetypal World, from whence
proceed the Creative, Formative, and Material Worlds; and the Scintillæ or
Sparks—the various other worlds contained in the last three. The Worlds
are all subject to Rulers or Regents—Rishis and Pitris with the Hindûs,
Angels with the Jews and Christians, Gods with the Ancients in general.
(_b_) “[circle].” This means that the “Boundless Circle,” the zero,
becomes a number, only when one of the other nine figures precedes it, and
thus manifests its value and potency; the “Word” or Logos, in union with
“Voice” and Spirit(175) (the expression and source of Consciousness),
standing for the nine figures, and thus forming, with the cypher, the
Decad which contains in itself all the Universe. The Triad forms the
Tetraktys, or “Sacred Four,” within the Circle, the Square within the
Circle being the most potent of all the magical figures.
(_c_) The “One Rejected” is the Sun of our system. The exoteric version
may be found in the oldest Sanskrit Scriptures. In the _Rig Veda_, Aditi,
the “Boundless” or Infinite Space—translated by Prof. Max Müller, “the
visible infinite, visible by the naked eye (!!); the endless expanse
beyond the earth, beyond the clouds, beyond the sky”—is the equivalent of
“Mother‐Space,” coëval with “Darkness.” She is very properly called the
“Mother of the Gods,” Deva‐Mâtri, as it is from her cosmic matrix that all
the heavenly bodies of our system were born—sun and planets. Thus she is
described, allegorically, in this wise: “_Eight sons were born from the
body of Aditi; she approached the gods with seven, but cast away the
eighth, Mârttânda_,” our sun. The seven sons called the Adityas are,
cosmically or astronomically, the seven planets; and the sun being
excluded from their number shows plainly that the Hindûs may have known,
and in fact knew, of a seventh planet, without calling it Uranus.(176) But
esoterically and theologically, so to say, the Adityas, in their primitive
most ancient meanings, are the eight, and twelve great gods of the Hindû
Pantheon. “The Seven allow the mortals to see their dwellings, but show
themselves only to the Arhats,” says an old proverb; “their dwellings”
standing here for the planets. The ancient Commentary gives the following
allegory and explains it:
_Eight houses were built by Mother: eight houses for her eight Divine
Sons; four large and four small ones. Eight brilliant Suns, according to
their age and merits. Bal‐i‐lu [Mârttânda] was not satisfied, though his
house was the largest. He began [to work] as the huge elephants do. He
breathed [drew in] into his stomach the vital airs of his brothers. He
sought to devour them. The larger four were far away; far, on the margin
__ of their kingdom._(_177_)_ They were not robbed [affected], and
laughed. Do your worst, Sir, you cannot reach us, they said. But the
smaller wept. They complained to the Mother. She exiled Bal‐i‐lu to the
centre of her kingdom, from whence he could not move. [Since then] he
[only] watches and threatens. He pursues them, turning slowly round
himself; they turning swiftly from him, and he following from afar the
direction in which his brothers move on the path that encircles their
houses._(_178_)_ From that day he feeds on the sweat of the Mother’s body.
He fills himself with her breath and refuse. Therefore, she rejected him_.
Thus the “Rejected Son” being our Sun, evidently, as shown above, the
“Son‐Suns” refer not only to our planets but to the heavenly bodies in
general. Sûrya, himself only a reflection of the Central Spiritual Sun, is
the prototype of all those bodies that evolved after him. In the _Vedas_
he is called Loka‐Chakshuh, the “Eye of the World” (our planetary world),
and he is one of the three chief deities. He is called indifferently the
Son of Dyaus or of Aditi, because no distinction is made with reference
to, or scope allowed for, the esoteric meaning. Thus he is depicted as
drawn by seven horses, and by one horse with seven heads; the former
referring to his seven planets, the latter to their one common origin from
the One Cosmic Element. This “One Element” is called figuratively “Fire.”
The _Vedas_ teach that “fire verily is all the deities.”(179)
The meaning of the allegory is plain, for we have both the Dzyan
Commentary and Modern Science to explain it, though the two differ in more
than one particular. The Occult Doctrine rejects the hypothesis born of
the Nebular Theory, that the (seven) great planets have evolved from the
Sun’s central mass, of this our visible Sun, at any rate. The first
condensation of cosmic matter of course took place about a central
nucleus, its parent Sun; but our Sun, it is taught, merely detached itself
earlier than all the others, as the rotating mass contracted, and is their
elder, bigger “brother” therefore, not their “father.” The eight Adityas,
the “gods,” are all formed from the eternal substance (cometary
matter(180)—the Mother), or the “world‐stuff,” which is both the fifth and
the sixth Cosmic Principle, the Upâdhi, or Basis, of the Universal Soul,
just as in man, the Microcosm, Manas(181) is the Upâdhi of Buddhi.(182)
There is a whole poem on the pregenetic battles fought by the growing
planets before the final formation of Cosmos, thus accounting for the
seemingly disturbed position of the systems of several planets; the plane
of the satellites of some (of Neptune and Uranus, for instance, of which
the ancients knew nothing, it is said) being tilted over, thus giving them
an appearance of retrograde motion. These planets are called the Warriors,
the Architects, and are accepted by the Roman Church as the leaders of the
heavenly Hosts, thus showing the same traditions. Having evolved from
Cosmic Space, the Sun, we are taught—before the final formation of the
primaries and the annulation of the planetary nebulæ—drew into the depths
of his mass all the cosmic vitality he could, threatening to engulf his
weaker “Brothers,” before the law of attraction and repulsion was finally
adjusted; after which, he began feeding on “the Mother’s refuse and
sweat”; in other words, on those portions of Æther (the “Breath of the
Universal Soul”), of the existence and constitution of which Science is as
yet absolutely ignorant. As a theory of this kind has been propounded by
Sir William Grove,(183) who theorizes that the systems “are gradually
changing by atmospheric additions or subtractions, or by accretions and
diminutions arising from nebular substance,” and again that “the sun may
condense gaseous matter as it travels in space, and so heat may be
produced”—the archaic teaching seems scientific enough, even in this
age.(184) Mr. W. Mattieu Williams suggested that the diffused matter or
Ether, which is the recipient of the heat radiations of the Universe, is
thereby drawn into the depths of the solar mass; expelling thence the
previously condensed and thermally exhausted Ether, it becomes compressed
and gives up its heat, to be in turn itself driven out in a rarefied and
cooled state, to absorb a fresh supply of heat, which he supposes to be in
this way taken up by the Ether, and again concentrated and redistributed
by the Suns of the Universe.
This is about as close an approximation to the Occult teachings as Science
ever imagined; for Occultism explains it by the “dead breath,” given back
by Mârttânda, and his feeding on the “sweat and refuse” of “Mother Space.”
What could affect Neptune,(185) Saturn and Jupiter, but little, would have
killed such comparatively small “Houses” as Mercury, Venus and Mars. As
Uranus was not known before the end of the eighteenth century, the name of
the fourth planet mentioned in the allegory must remain to us, so far, a
mystery.
The “Breath” of all the “Seven” is said to be Bhâskara, the Light‐Maker,
because they (the planets) were all comets and suns in their origin. They
evolve into manvantaric life from Primeval Chaos (now the noumenon of
irresolvable nebulæ), by aggregation and accumulation of the primary
differentiations of eternal Matter, according to the beautiful expression
in the Commentary, “_Thus the Sons of Light clothed themselves in the
fabric of Darkness_.” They are called allegorically the “Heavenly Snails,”
on account of their (to us) formless Intelligences inhabiting unseen their
starry and planetary homes, and so to speak, carrying them, as the snails
do, along with themselves in their revolution. The doctrine of a common
origin for all the heavenly bodies and planets was, as we see, inculcated
by the archaic astronomers, before Kepler, Newton, Leibnitz, Kant,
Herschel and Laplace. Heat (the “Breath”), Attraction and Repulsion—the
three great factors of Motion—are the conditions under which all the
members of this primitive family are born, develop, and die; to be reborn
after a Night of Brahmâ, during which eternal Matter relapses periodically
into its primary undifferentiated state. The most attenuated gases can
give no idea of its nature to the modern Physicist. Centres of Forces at
first, the invisible Sparks, or primordial Atoms, differentiate into
Molecules, and become Suns—passing gradually into objectivity—gaseous,
radiant, cosmic, the one “Whirlwind” (or Motion) finally giving the
impulse to the form, and the initial motion, regulated and sustained by
the never‐resting “Breaths”—the Dhyân Chohans.
6. ... THEN THE SECOND SEVEN, WHO ARE THE LIPIKA, PRODUCED BY THE
THREE.(186) THE REJECTED SON IS ONE. THE “SON‐SUNS” ARE COUNTLESS.
The “Lipika,” from the word _lipi_, “writing,” means literally the
“Scribes.”(187) Mystically, these Divine Beings are connected with Karma,
the Law of Retribution, for they are the Recorders, or Annalists, who
impress on the (to us) invisible tablets of the Astral Light, “the great
picture‐gallery of eternity”—a faithful record of every act, and even
thought, of man; of all that was, is, or ever will be, in the phenomenal
Universe. As said in _Isis Unveiled_, this divine and unseen canvas is the
_Book of Life_. As it is the Lipika who project into objectivity from the
passive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the Universe, upon which the
“Builders” reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who
stand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians
recognize in the Seven “Planetary Spirits,” or the “Spirits of the Stars”;
and thus it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal
Ideation—or, as Plato calls it, the “Divine Thought.” The Eternal Record
is no fantastic dream, for we meet with the same records in the world of
gross matter. As Dr. Draper says:
A shadow never falls upon a wall without leaving thereupon a
permanent trace which might be made visible by resorting to proper
processes.... The portraits of our friends or landscape‐views may
be hidden on the sensitive surface from the eye, but they are
ready to make their appearance as soon as proper developers are
resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver or a glassy
surface, until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the
visible world. Upon the walls of our most private apartments,
where we think the eye of intrusion is altogether shut out, and
our retirement can never be profaned, there exist the vestiges of
our acts, silhouettes of whatever we have done.(188)
Drs. Jevons and Babbage believe that every thought displaces the particles
of the brain and, setting them in motion, scatters them throughout the
universe: they also think that “each particle of the existing matter must
be a register of all that has happened.”(189) Thus the ancient doctrine
has begun to acquire rights of citizenship in the speculations of the
scientific world.
The forty “Assessors,” who stand in the region of Amenti as the accusers
of the Soul before Osiris, belong to the same class of deities as the
Lipika, and might stand as parallels, were not the Egyptian gods so little
understood in their esoteric meaning. The Hindû Chitragupta who reads out
the account of every Soul’s life from his register, called Agra‐Sandhânî;
the Assessors who read theirs from the Heart of the Defunct, which becomes
an open book before either Yama, Minos, Osiris, or Karma—are all so many
copies of, and variants from, the Lipika and their Astral Records.
Nevertheless, the Lipika are not deities connected with Death, but with
Life Eternal.
Connected as the Lipika are with the destiny of every man, and the birth
of every child, whose life is already traced in the Astral Light—not
fatalistically, but only because the Future, like the Past, is ever alive
in the Present—they may also be said to exercise an influence on the
Science of Horoscopy. We must admit the truth of the latter whether we
will or not. For, as observed by one of the modern professors of
Astrology:
Now that photography has revealed to us the chemical influence of
the sidereal system, by fixing on the sensitized plate of the
apparatus milliards of stars and planets that had hitherto baffled
the efforts of the most powerful telescopes to discover, it
becomes easier to understand how our solar system can, at the
birth of a child, influence his brain—virgin of any impression—in
a definite manner and according to the presence on the zenith of
such or another zodiacal constellation.(190)
Stanza V.
1. THE PRIMORDIAL SEVEN, THE FIRST SEVEN BREATHS OF THE DRAGON OF WISDOM,
PRODUCE IN THEIR TURN FROM THEIR HOLY CIRCUMGYRATING BREATHS THE FIERY
WHIRLWIND.
This is, perhaps, the most difficult of all the Stanzas to explain. Its
language is comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern
allegory, and its purposely obscure phraseology. The question will surely
be asked: Do the Occultists believe in all these “Builders,” “Lipika,” and
“Sons of Light,” as Entities, or are they merely imagery? To this the
answer is given as plainly: After due allowance for the imagery of
personified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we
would not reject the existence of Spiritual Humanity within physical
mankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light, the Mind‐born Sons of the
first manifested Ray of the Unknown All, are the very root of Spiritual
Man. Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical dogma of a specially
created soul for every human birth—a fresh supply of these pouring in
daily, since “Adam”—we have to admit the Occult teachings. This will be
explained in its place. Let us see, now, what may be the meaning of this
Occult Stanza.
The Doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious
God—aye, even the highest—the Spiritual Primeval Intelligences must pass
through the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely
to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any world,
_i.e._, to those Intelligences that have reached the appropriate
equilibrium between matter and spirit, as _we_ have now, ever since the
middle point of the Fourth Root Race of the Fourth Round was passed. Each
Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming divine, through
self‐experience. Hegel, the great German thinker, must have known or
sensed intuitionally this truth, when he said, that the Unconscious
evolved the Universe only “in the hope of attaining clear self‐
consciousness,” in other words, of becoming Man; for this is also the
secret meaning of the oft recurring Purânic phrase, of Brahmâ being
constantly “moved by the desire to create.” This explains also the hidden
Kabalistic meaning of the saying: “The Breath becomes a stone; the stone,
a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and
the spirit, a god.” The Mind‐born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc.,
were all Men—of whatever forms and shapes—in other worlds and in preceding
Manvantaras.
This subject being so very mystical, it is most difficult to explain it in
all its details and bearings; for the whole mystery of evolutionary
creation is contained therein. A sentence or two in the Shloka vividly
recalls to mind similar sentences in the _Kabalah_ and the phraseology of
the King Psalmist.(191) Both, when speaking of God, show him making the
wind his messenger and his “ministers a flaming fire.” But in the Esoteric
Doctrine it is used figuratively. The “Fiery Whirl‐wind” is the
incandescent cosmic dust which only follows magnetically, as the iron
filings follow the magnet, the directing thought of the “Creative Forces.”
Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for every atom in the Universe
has the potentiality of self‐consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads
of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and _for_ itself. _It is an atom and an
angel_.
In this connection it should be noted that one of the luminaries of the
modern Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the
inadequacy of “natural selection” as the sole factor in the development of
physical man, practically concedes the whole point here discussed. He
holds that the evolution of man was directed and furthered by superior
Intelligences, whose agency is a necessary factor in the scheme of Nature.
But once the operation of these Intelligences is admitted in one place, it
is only a logical deduction to extend it still further. No hard and fast
line can be drawn.
2. THEY MAKE OF HIM THE MESSENGER OF THEIR WILL (_a_). THE DZYU BECOMES
FOHAT: THE SWIFT SON OF THE DIVINE SONS, WHOSE SONS ARE THE LIPIKA,(192)
RUNS CIRCULAR ERRANDS. FOHAT IS THE STEED, AND THE THOUGHT IS THE
RIDER.(193) HE PASSES LIKE LIGHTNING THROUGH THE FIERY CLOUDS(194) (_b_);
TAKES THREE, AND FIVE, AND SEVEN STRIDES THROUGH THE SEVEN REGIONS ABOVE,
AND THE SEVEN BELOW.(195) HE LIFTS HIS VOICE, AND CALLS THE INNUMERABLE
SPARKS,(196) AND JOINS THEM TOGETHER (_c_).
(_a_) This shows the “Primordial Seven” using for their Vehicle, (Vâhana,
or the manifested subject which becomes the symbol of the Power directing
it) Fohat, called in consequence, the “Messenger of their Will”—the “Fiery
Whirlwind.”
(_b_) “Dzyu becomes Fohat”—the expression itself shows it. Dzyu is the one
Real (Magical) Knowledge, or Occult Wisdom; which, dealing with eternal
truths and primal causes, becomes almost omnipotence when applied in the
right direction. Its antithesis is Dzyu‐mi, that which deals with
illusions and false appearances only, as in our exoteric modern sciences.
In this case, Dzyu is the expression of the collective Wisdom of the
Dhyâni‐Buddhas.
As the reader is supposed not to be acquainted with the Dhyâni‐Buddhas, it
is as well to say at once that, _according to the Orientalists_, there are
five Dhyânis who are the Celestial Buddhas, of whom the Human Buddhas are
the manifestations in the world of form and matter. Esoterically, however,
the Dhyâni‐Buddhas are seven, of whom five only have hitherto
manifested,(197) and two are to come in the Sixth and Seventh Root‐Races.
They are, so to speak, the eternal prototypes of the Buddhas who appear on
this earth, each of whom has his particular divine prototype. So, for
instance, Amitâbha is the Dhyâni‐Buddha of Gautama Shâkyamuni, manifesting
through him whenever this great Soul incarnates on earth as He did in
Tzonkha‐pa.(198) As the synthesis of the seven Dhyâni‐Buddhas,
Avalokiteshvara was the first Buddha (the Logos), and Amitâbha is the
inner “God” of Gautama, who, in China, is called Amida (Buddha). They are,
as Prof. Rhys Davids correctly states, “the glorious counterparts in the
mystic world, free from the debasing conditions of this material life,” of
every earthly mortal Buddha—the liberated Mânushi‐Buddhas appointed to
govern the Earth in this Round. They are the “Buddhas of Contemplation,”
and are all Anupâdaka (parentless), _i.e._, self‐born of the divine
essence. The exoteric teaching—which says that every Dhyâni‐Buddha has the
faculty of creating from himself an equally celestial son, a Dhyâni‐
Bodhisattva, who, after the decease of the Mânushi‐Buddha, has to carry
out the work of the latter—rests on the fact that, owing to the highest
Initiation performed by one overshadowed by the “Spirit of Buddha”—who is
credited by the Orientalists with having created the five Dhyâni‐
Buddhas!—a candidate becomes virtually a Bodhisattva, created such by the
High Initiator.
(_c_) Fohat, being one of the most, if not the most important character in
Esoteric cosmogony, should be minutely described. As in the oldest Grecian
cosmogony, which differed widely from the later mythology, Eros is the
third person in the primeval trinity, Chaos, Gæa, Eros—answering to the
Kabalistic Trinity, Ain Suph, the Boundless All (for Chaos is Space, from
χαίνω, to open wide, to be void), Shekinah and the Ancient of Days, or the
Holy Ghost—so Fohat is one thing in the yet Unmanifested Universe, and
another in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the latter, he is that
occult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative
Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first
impulse, which in time becomes law. But in the Unmanifested Universe,
Fohat is no more this, than Eros is the later brilliant winged Cupid, or
Love. Fohat has naught to do with Cosmos yet, since Cosmos is not born,
and the Gods still sleep in the bosom of “Father‐Mother.” He is an
abstract philosophical idea. He produces nothing yet by himself; he is
simply that potential creative Power, in virtue of whose action the
Noumenon of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a
mystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative Ray. When the “Divine Son”
breaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power
which causes the One to become Two and Three—on the cosmic plane of
manifestation. The triple One differentiates into the Many, and then Fohat
is transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms,
and makes them aggregate and combine. We find an echo of this primeval
teaching in early Greek mythology. Erebus and Nux are born out of Chaos,
and, under the action of Eros, give birth in their turn to Æther and
Hemera, the light of the superior and the light of the inferior, or
terrestrial, regions. Darkness generates light. Compare in the _Purânas_
Brahmâ’s Will or “Desire” to create; and in the Phœnician cosmogony of
Sanchuniathon the doctrine that Desire, πόθος, is the principle of
creation.
Fohat is closely related to the “One Life.” From the Unknown One, the
Infinite Totality, the Manifested One, or the periodical, Manvantaric
Deity, emanates; and this is the Universal Mind, which, separated from its
Fountain‐Source, is the Demiurge or the Creative Logos of the Western
Kabalists, and the Four‐faced Brahmâ of the Hindû religion. In its
totality, viewed, in the Esoteric doctrine, from the standpoint of
manifested Divine Thought, it represents the Hosts of the higher Creative
Dhyân Chohans. Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal Mind,
the Concealed Wisdom of Adi‐Buddha—the One Supreme and Eternal—manifests
itself as Avalokiteshvara (or Manifested Îshvara), which is the Osiris of
the Egyptians, the Ahura‐Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of
the Hermetic philosophers, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Âtman of
the Vedântins.(199) By the action of the Manifested Wisdom, or
Mahat—represented by these innumerable centres of spiritual energy in the
Kosmos—the Reflection of the Universal Mind, which is Cosmic Ideation and
the Intellectual Force accompanying such Ideation, becomes objectively the
Fohat of the Buddhist esoteric philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven
principles of Âkâsha, acts upon manifested Substance, or the One Element,
as declared above, and, by differentiating it into various centres of
energy, sets in motion the law of Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to
the Ideation of the Universal Mind, brings into existence all the various
states of being in the manifested Solar System.
The Solar System, brought into existence by these agencies, consists of
Seven Principles, like everything else within these centres. Such is the
teaching of the Trans‐Himâlayan Esotericism. Every philosophy, however,
has its own way of dividing these principles.
Fohat, then, is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental
binding unity of all cosmic energies, on the unseen as on the manifested
planes, the action of which resembles—on an immense scale—that of a living
Force created by Will, in those phenomena where the seemingly subjective
acts on the seemingly objective, and propels it to action. Fohat is not
only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by
the Occultists as an Entity; the forces it acts upon being cosmic, human
and terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all these planes
respectively. On the earthly plane, its influence is felt in the magnetic
and active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer. On the
cosmic, it is present in the constructive power that, in the formation of
things—from the planetary system down to the glow‐worm and simple
daisy—carries out the plan in the mind of Nature, or in the Divine
Thought, with regard to the development and growth of a particular thing.
It is, metaphysically, the objectivized Thought of the Gods, the “Word
made flesh” on a lower scale, and the messenger of cosmic and human
Ideation; the active force in Universal Life. In its secondary aspect,
Fohat is the Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid, and the preserving
Fourth Principle, the Animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or—Electricity.
In 1882, the President of the Theosophical Society, Col. Olcott, was taken
to task for asserting in one of his lectures that Electricity is matter.
Such, nevertheless, is the teaching of the Occult Doctrine. “Force,”
“Energy,” may be better names for it, so long as European Science knows so
little about its true nature; yet matter it is, as much as Ether is
matter, since it is as atomic, though indeed several removes from Ether.
It seems ridiculous to argue that because a thing is imponderable to
Science, therefore it cannot be called matter. Electricity is
“immaterial,” in the sense that its molecules are not subject to
perception and experiment; yet it may be—and Occultism says it is—atomic;
therefore it is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to speak
of it in such terms, once Electricity is called in Science a source of
Energy, Energy simply, and a Force—where is that Force or that Energy
which can be thought of without thinking of matter? Maxwell, a
mathematician and one of the greatest authorities upon Electricity and its
phenomena, said, years ago, that Electricity was matter, not motion
merely. “If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are
composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also,
positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary
portions, which behave like atoms of electricity.”(200) We will go further
than this, and assert that Electricity is not only Substance, but that it
is an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of
the numberless Entities that rule and guide our world, according to the
eternal Law of Karma.
To return to Fohat, it is connected with Vishnu and Sûrya in the early
character of the former God; for Vishnu is not a high God in the _Rig
Veda_. The name Vishnu is from the root _vish_, “to pervade,” and Fohat is
called the “Pervader” and the Manufacturer, because he shapes the atoms
from crude material.(201) In the sacred texts of the _Rig Veda_, Vishnu is
also “a manifestation of the Solar Energy, and is described as striding
through the seven regions of the Universe in three steps,” the Vedic God
having little in common with the Vishnu of later times. Therefore the two
are identical in this particular feature, and one is the copy of the
other.
The Three and Seven “Strides” refer to the seven spheres inhabited by man,
in the Esoteric Doctrine, as well as to the seven regions of the Earth.
Notwithstanding the frequent objections made by would‐be Orientalists, the
Seven Worlds, or Spheres, of our Planetary Chain are distinctly referred
to in the exoteric Hindû scriptures. But how strangely all these numbers
are connected with like numbers in other cosmogonies and with their
symbols, can be seen from the comparisons and parallelisms made by
students of old religions. The “three strides of Vishnu,” through the
“seven regions of the Universe,” of the _Rig Veda_, have been variously
explained by commentators as meaning fire, lightning and the sun,
cosmically, and as having been taken in the earth, the atmosphere, and the
sky; more philosophically—and in the astronomical sense, very
correctly—they are explained by Aurnavâbha as being the various positions
of the sun, rising, noon, and setting. Esoteric Philosophy alone explains
it clearly, though the _Zohar_ has laid it down very philosophically and
comprehensively. It is plainly demonstrated therein that in the beginning
the Elohim (Alhim) were called Achad, “One,” or the “Deity, One in Many,”
a very simple idea in a pantheistic conception—pantheistic in its
philosophical sense, of course. Then came the change, “Jehovah is Elohim,”
thus unifying the multiplicity and taking the first step towards
Monotheism. Now to the query, “How is Jehovah Elohim?” the answer is, “By
Three Steps” from below. The meaning is plain. The Steps are symbols, and
emblematic, mutually and correlatively, of Spirit, Soul and Body (Man); of
the Circle, transformed into Spirit, the Soul of the World and its Body
(or Earth). Stepping out of the Circle of Infinity, that no man
comprehendeth, Ain Suph—the Kabalistic synonym for Parabrahman, for the
Zeroâna Akerne, of the Mazdeans, or for any other “Unknowable”—becomes
“One” (the Achad, the Eka, the Ahu); then he (or it) is transformed by
evolution into the “One in Many,” the Dhyâni‐Buddhas or the Elohim, or
again the Amshaspends, his third Step being taken into the generation of
the flesh, or Man. And from Man, or Jah‐Hovah, “male‐female,” the _inner_
divine entity becomes, on the metaphysical plane, once more the Elohim.
The numbers 3, 5, and 7 are prominent in speculative Masonry, as shown in
_Isis Unveiled_. A Mason writes:
There are the 3, 5, and 7 steps to show a circular walk. The three
faces of 3, 3; 5, 3; and 7, 3; etc., etc. Sometimes it comes in
this form: 753/2 = 376.5, and 7535/2 = 3817.5, and the ratio of
20612/6561 feet for cubit measure gives the Great Pyramid
measures.
Three, five and seven are mystical numbers, and the last and the first are
as greatly honoured by Masons as by Parsis—the Triangle being a symbol of
Deity everywhere.(202) As a matter of course, Doctors of Divinity—Cassel,
for instance—show the _Zohar_ explaining and supporting the Christian
Trinity(!). It is the latter, however, that had its origin from the
[triangle], in the archaic Occultism and Symbology of the Heathen. The
Three Strides relate metaphysically to the descent of Spirit into Matter,
of the Logos falling as a ray into the spirit, then into the soul, and
finally into the human physical form of man, in which it becomes Life.
The Kabalistic idea is identical with the Esotericism of the archaic
period. This Esotericism is the common property of all, and belongs
neither to the Âryan Fifth Race, nor to any of its numerous sub‐races. It
cannot be claimed by the Turanians, so‐called, the Egyptians, Chinese,
Chaldeans, or by any of the seven divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but
really belongs to the Third and Fourth Root Races, whose descendants we
find in the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Âryans. The Circle was with
every nation the symbol of the Unknown—“Boundless Space,” the abstract
garb of an ever present abstraction—the Incognizable Deity. It represents
limitless Time in Eternity. The Zeroâna Akerne is also the “Boundless
Circle of Unknown Time,” from which Circle issues the radiant Light—the
Universal Sun, or Ormazd(203)—and the latter is identical with Cronus, in
his Æolian form, that of a Circle. For the Circle is Sar and Saros, or
Cycle. It was the Babylonian God whose circular horizon was the visible
symbol of the invisible, while the Sun was the One Circle from which
proceeded the cosmic orbs, of which he was considered the leader. Zeroâna,
is the Chakra, or Circle, of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is,
according to the definition of a Mystic, “a curve of such a nature that as
to any, the least possible, part thereof, if the curve be protracted
either way, it will proceed and finally reënter upon itself, and form one
and the same curve—or that which we call the circle.” No better definition
could thus be given of the natural symbol and the evident nature of Deity,
which having its circumference everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore,
its central point also everywhere; in other words, is in every point of
the Universe. The invisible Deity is thus also the Dhyân Chohans, or the
Rishis, the primitive seven, and the nine, without, and ten, including,
their synthetical unit, from which IT steps into Man.
Returning to Commentary 4 of Stanza IV, the reader now will understand
why, while the Trans‐Himâlayan Chakra has inscribed within it [triangle]
[square] [5‐point star with middle dot]—triangle, first line, square,
second line, and a pentacle with a point in the centre, either thus
[5‐point star with middle dot] or some other variation—the Kabalistic
Circle of the Elohim reveals, when the letters of the word אלהים (Alhim or
Elohim) are read numerically, the famous numerals 13514, or
anagrammatically 31415—the astronomical π (pi), or the hidden meaning of
the Dhyâni‐Buddhas, of the Gebers, the Giburim, the Kabeiri, and the
Elohim, all signifying “Great Men,” “Titans,” “Heavenly Men,” and, on
earth, “Giants.”
The Seven was a Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to
more physiologically materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With them 7 was
preëminently the generative number, and 9 the male causative one, forming
as shown by the Kabalists the otz, עצ (90, 70), or “the Tree of the Garden
of Eden,” the “double hermaphrodite rod” of the Fourth Race. This was the
symbol of the “Holy of Holies,” the 3 and the 4 of sexual separation.
Nearly every one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic symbols. Of
the two letters—as shown above—one, the _ayin_, is a negative female
letter, symbolically an eye; the the other a male letter, _tzâ_, a
_fish_‐hook or dart. Whereas with the Hindûs and Âryans generally, the
significance was manifold, and related almost entirely to purely
metaphysical and astronomical truths. Their Rishis and Gods, their Demons
and Heroes, have historical and ethical meanings.
Yet we are told by a Kabalist, who, in a work not yet published, contrasts
the _Kabalah_ and _Zohar_ with Âryan Esotericism, that:
The Hebrew clear, short, terse and exact, modes far and beyond
measure surpass the toddling word‐talk of the Hindûs—just as by
parallelisms the Psalmist says, “My mouth speaks with my tongue, I
know not thy numbers” (lxxi., 15).... The Hindû glyph shows by its
insufficiency in the large admixture of adventitious sides the
same borrowed plumage that the Greeks (the lying Greeks) had, and
that Masonry has: which, in the rough monosyllabic (and apparent)
poverty of the Hebrew, shows the latter to have come down from a
far more remote antiquity than any of these, and to have been the
source [! ?], or nearer the old original source than any of them.
This is entirely erroneous. Our learned brother and correspondent judges
the Hindû religious systems apparently by their _Shâstras_ and _Purânas_,
probably the latter, and in their modern translations moreover, which
disfigure them out of all recognition. It is to their philosophical
systems that we have to turn, to their esoteric teaching, if we would make
a point of comparison. No doubt the symbology of the _Pentateuch_, and
even of the _New Testament_, comes from the same source. But surely the
Pyramid of Cheops, whose measurements are all found, by Professor Piazzi
Smyth, repeated in Solomon’s alleged and mythical Temple, is not of a
later date than the Mosaic books? Hence, if there is any such great
identity as is claimed, it must be due to servile copying on the part of
the Jews, not on that of the Egyptians. The glyphs of the Jews—and even
their language, the Hebrew—are not original. They are borrowed from the
Egyptians, from whom Moses got his Wisdom; from the Coptic, the probable
kinsman, if not parent, of the old Phœnician and from the Hyksos, their
(alleged) ancestors, as Josephus shows.(204) Aye; but who are the Hyksos
shepherds? And who the Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question,
and speculates and theorizes out of the depths of the respective
consciousnesses of her historians.(205) “Khamism, or old Coptic, is from
Western Asia, and contains some germ of the Semitic, thus bearing witness
to the primitive cognate unity of the Âryan and Semitic races,” says
Bunsen, who places the great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.C. The fact is
that in archaic Esotericism and Âryan thought we find a grand philosophy,
whereas in the Hebrew records we find only the most surprising ingenuity
in inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual theogony.
That the Âryans never made their religion rest solely on physiological
symbols, as the old Hebrews have done, may be seen in the exoteric Hindû
Scriptures. That these accounts, also, are blinds is shown by their
contradicting each other, a different explanation being found in almost
every _Purâna_ and epic poem. Read esoterically, however, they will all
yield the same meaning. Thus one account enumerates seven worlds,
exclusive of the nether worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen upper
and nether worlds have nothing to do with the classification of the
Septenary Chain and belong to the purely ethereal, invisible worlds. These
will be noticed elsewhere. Suffice it for the present to show that they
are purposely referred to as though they belonged to the Chain. “Another
enumeration calls the seven worlds earth, sky, heaven, middle region,
place of birth, mansion of the blest, and abode of truth; placing the Sons
of Brahmâ in the sixth division, and stating the fifth, or Jana‐loka, to
be that where animals destroyed in the general conflagration are born
again.”(206) Some real Esoteric teaching is given in the subsequent
chapters on Symbolism. He who is prepared for it will understand the
hidden meaning.
3. HE IS THEIR GUIDING SPIRIT AND LEADER. WHEN HE COMMENCES WORK, HE
SEPARATES THE SPARKS OF THE LOWER KINGDOM,(207) THAT FLOAT AND THRILL WITH
JOY IN THEIR RADIANT DWELLINGS,(208) AND FORMS THEREWITH THE GERMS OF
WHEELS. HE PLACES THEM IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE, AND ONE IN THE
MIDDLE—THE CENTRAL WHEEL.
“Wheels,” as already explained, are the centres of force, around which
primordial cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages
of consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into
globes or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric
cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or Æons) of Life, Motion, which, during
the periods of Rest, “_pulsates and thrills through every slumbering
atom_”—assumes an evergrowing tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos
to a new “Day,” to circular movement. “The Deity becomes a Whirlwind.” It
may be asked, as the writer has not failed to ask: Who is there to
ascertain the difference in that Motion, since all Nature is reduced to
its primal essence, and there can be no one—not even one of the Dhyâni‐
Chohans, who are all in Nirvâna—to see it? The answer to this is:
Everything in Nature has to be judged by analogy. Though the highest
Deities (Archangels or Dhyâni‐Buddhas) are unable to penetrate the
mysteries which lie too far beyond our Planetary System and the visible
Cosmos, yet there were great seers and prophets in olden times who were
enabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when
the systems of Worlds were at rest and plunged in their periodic sleep.
The Wheels are also called Rotæ—the moving wheels of the celestial orbs
participating in the world’s creation—when the meaning refers to the
animating principle of the stars and planets; for, in the _Kabalah_, they
are represented by the Auphanim, the Angels of the Spheres and Stars, of
which they are the informing Souls.(209)
This law of vortical movement in primordial matter is one of the oldest
conceptions of Greek philosophy, whose first historical sages were nearly
all Initiates of the Mysteries. The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and
the latter from the Chaldeans, who had been the pupils of Brâhmans of the
Esoteric school. Leucippus, and Democritus of Abdera—the pupil of the
Magi—taught that this gyratory movement of the atoms and spheres existed
from eternity.(210) Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all
his pupils, taught the rotation of the earth; and Âryabhata of India,
Aristarchus, Seleucus, and Archimedes calculated its revolution as
scientifically as the Astronomers do now; while the theory of Elemental
Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and maintained by him 500 years B.C., or
nearly 2,000 before it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes, Swedenborg, and
finally, with slight modifications, by Sir W. Thomson.(211) All such
knowledge, if justice be only done, is an echo of the archaic doctrine, an
attempt to explain which is now being made. How men of the last few
centuries have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were taught as
axiomatic truths in the secrecy of the Adyta, dozens of millenniums ago,
is a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it by the
natural progress in Physical Science and by independent observation;
others—such as Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more—their great learning
notwithstanding, owed their knowledge far more to intuitive than to
acquired ideas, developed in the usual way by a course of study. That
Swedenborg, who could not possibly have known anything of the esoteric
ideas of Buddhism, independently came near the Occult teaching in his
general conceptions, is shown by his essay on the Vortical Theory. In
Clissold’s translation of it, quoted by Prof. Winchell,(212) we find the
following _résumé_:
The first cause is the infinite or unlimited. This gives existence
to the first finite or limited. [The Logos in its manifestation
and the Universe.] That which produces a limit is analogous to
motion. [See Stanza I _supra_.] The limit produced is a point, the
essence of which is motion; but being without parts, this essence
is not actual motion, but only a conatus to it. [In our doctrine
it is not a “conatus,” but a change from Eternal Vibration, in the
unmanifested, to Vortical Motion, in the phenomenal or manifested
World.] From this first proceed extension, space, figure, and
succession, or time. As in geometry a point generates a line, a
line a surface, and a surface a solid, so here the conatus of the
point tends towards lines, surfaces and solids. In other words,
the Universe is contained _in ovo_ in the first natural point.
The Motion toward which the conatus tends is circular, since the
circle is the most perfect of all figures.... “The most perfect
figure of the motion above described must be the perpetually
circular; that is to say, it must proceed from the centre to the
periphery and from the periphery to the centre.”(213)
This is Occultism pure and simple.
By the “Six Directions of Space” is here meant the “Double Triangle,” the
junction and blending together of pure Spirit and Matter, of the Arûpa and
the Rûpa, of which the Triangles are a Symbol. This Double Triangle is a
sign of Vishnu; it is Solomon’s Seal, and the Shrî‐Antara of the Brâhmans.
4. FOHAT TRACES SPIRAL LINES TO UNITE THE SIXTH TO THE SEVENTH—THE CROWN
(_a_). AN ARMY OF THE SONS OF LIGHT STANDS AT EACH ANGLE; THE LIPIKA, IN
THE MIDDLE WHEEL (_b_). THEY(214) SAY: “THIS IS GOOD.” THE FIRST DIVINE
WORLD IS READY; THE FIRST, THE SECOND.(215) THEN THE “DIVINE ARÛPA”(216)
REFLECTS ITSELF IN CHHÂYÂ LOKA,(217) THE FIRST GARMENT OF ANUPÂDAKA (_c_).
(_a_) This tracing of “spiral lines” refers to the evolution of Man’s as
well as of Nature’s Principles; an evolution which takes place gradually,
as does everything else in Nature. The Sixth Principle in Man (Buddhi, the
Divine Soul), though a mere breath, in our conceptions, is still something
material when compared with Divine Spirit (Âtmâ), of which it is the
carrier or vehicle. Fohat, in his capacity of Divine Love (Eros), the
electric power of affinity and sympathy, is shown, allegorically, trying
to bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from the One Absolute, into
union with the Soul, the two constituting in Man the Monad, and in Nature
the first link between the ever‐unconditioned and the manifested. “The
First is now the Second [World]”—of the Lipikas—has reference to the same.
(_b_) The “Army” at each angle is the Host of Angelic Beings (Dhyân
Chohans), appointed to guide and watch over each respective region, from
the beginning to the end of a Manvantara. They are the “Mystic Watchers”
of the Christian Kabalists and Alchemists, and relate, symbolically as
well as cosmogonically, to the numerical system of the Universe. The
numbers with which these Celestial Beings are connected, are extremely
difficult to explain, as each number refers to several groups of distinct
ideas, according to the particular group of “Angels” which it is intended
to represent. Herein lies the _nodus_ in the study of symbology, with
which so many scholars, unable to untie it, have preferred dealing as
Alexander dealt with the Gordian knot; hence erroneous conceptions and
teachings, as a direct result.
(_c_) The “First is the Second,” because the “First” cannot really be
numbered or regarded as such, for the First is the realm of noumena in its
primary manifestation, the threshold to the World of Truth, or Sat,
through which the direct energy that radiates from the One Reality—the
Nameless Deity—reaches us. Here again, the untranslateable term Sat (Be‐
ness) is likely to lead to an erroneous conception, since that which is
manifested cannot be Sat, but is something phenomenal, not everlasting,
nor, in truth, even sempiternal. It is coëval and coëxistent with the One
Life, “Secondless,” but as a manifestation it is still a Mâyâ—like the
rest. This “World of Truth,” in the words of the Commentary, can be
described only as “_a bright star dropped from the Heart of Eternity; the
beacon of hope on whose Seven Rays hang the Seven Worlds of Being_.” Truly
so; since these are the Seven Lights whose reflections are the human
immortal Monads—the Âtmâ, or the irradiating Spirit of every creature of
the human family. First, this Septenary Light; then the “Divine World”—the
countless lights lit at the primeval Light—the Buddhis, or formless Divine
Souls, of the last Arûpa (Formless) World, the “Sum Total,” in the
mysterious language of the old Stanza.
In the Catechism, the Master is made to ask the pupil:
_“__Lift thy head, O Lanoo; dost thou see one, or countless lights above
thee, burning in the dark midnight sky?__”_
_“__I sense one Flame, O Gurudeva, I see countless undetached sparks
shining in it.__”_
_“__Thou sayest well. And now look around and into thyself. That light
which burns inside thee, dost thou feel it different in anywise from the
light that shines in thy brother‐men?__”_
_“__It is in no way different, though the prisoner is held in bondage by
Karma, and though its outer garments delude the ignorant into saying,
__‘__Thy Soul and My Soul__’__.__”_
The radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of
compounds in Nature—from star to mineral atom, from the highest Dhyân
Chohan to the smallest infusorium, in the fullest acceptation of the term,
and whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical
worlds—this unity is the one fundamental law in Occult Science. “The Deity
is boundless and infinite expansion,” says an Occult axiom: hence, the
name of Brahmâ, as previously remarked.(218)
There is a deep philosophy underlying the earliest worship in the world,
the worship of the Sun and of Fire. Of all the Elements known to Physical
Science, Fire is that which has ever eluded definite analysis. It is
confidently asserted that air is a mixture containing the gases oxygen and
nitrogen. We view the Universe and the Earth as matter composed of
definite chemical molecules. We speak of the primitive ten earths,
endowing each with a Greek or Latin name. We say that water is,
chemically, a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. But what is Fire? It is the
effect of combustion, we are gravely answered. It is heat and light and
motion, and a correlation of physical and chemical forces in general. And
this scientific definition is philosophically supplemented by a
theological one in Webster’s Dictionary, which explains fire as “the
instrument of punishment, or the punishment of the impenitent in another
state”—the “state,” by the bye, being supposed to be spiritual; but, alas!
the presence of fire would seem to be a convincing proof of its material
nature. Yet, speaking of the illusion of regarding phenomena as simple,
because they are familiar, Professor Bain says:
Very familiar facts seem to stand in no need of explanation
themselves and to be the means of explaining whatever can be
assimilated to them. Thus, the boiling and evaporation of a liquid
is supposed to be a very simple phenomenon requiring no
explanation, and a satisfactory explanation of rarer phenomena.
That water should dry up is, to the uninstructed mind, a thing
wholly intelligible: whereas to the man acquainted with physical
science the liquid state is anomalous and inexplicable. The
lighting of a fire by a flame is a _great scientific difficulty_,
yet few people think so.(219)
What says the Esoteric teaching with regard to Fire? “_Fire is the most
perfect and unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the One
Flame. It is Life and Death, the origin and the end of every material
thing. It is divine Substance._” Thus, not only the Fire‐Worshipper, the
Parsi, but even the wandering savage tribes of America, which proclaim
themselves “born of fire,” show more science in their creeds and truth in
their superstitions, than all the speculations of modern physics and
learning. The Christian who says, “God is a living Fire,” and speaks of
the Pentecostal “Tongues of Fire” and of the “Burning Bush” of Moses, is
as much a fire‐worshipper as any other “Heathen.” Among the Mystics and
Kabalists, the Rosicrucians were those who defined Fire in the most
correct way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it only supplied with oil, and
you will be able to light at its flame the lamps, candles, and fires of
the whole globe without diminishing that flame. If the Deity, the radical
One, is an eternal and infinite Substance never consumed (“the Lord thy
God is a consuming fire”), then it does not seem reasonable that the
Occult teaching should be held as unphilosophical when it says: “Thus were
formed the Arûpa and Rûpa [Worlds]: from One Light Seven Lights; from each
of the Seven, seven times Seven” etc., etc.
5. FOHAT TAKES FIVE STRIDES(220) (_a_), AND BUILDS A WINGED WHEEL AT EACH
CORNER OF THE SQUARE FOR THE FOUR HOLY ONES ... AND THEIR ARMIES(221)
(_b_).
(_a_) The “Strides,” as already explained in the last Commentary, refer to
both the cosmic and the human Principles—the latter of which consist, in
the exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul and Body), and, in the
esoteric calculation, of seven Principles—three Rays of the Essence and
four Aspects.(222) Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett’s _Esoteric
Buddhism_ will easily grasp the nomenclature. There are two Esoteric
schools beyond the Himâlayas, or rather one school, divided into two
sections—one for the inner Lanoos, the other for the outer or semi‐lay
Chelâs; the first teaching a septenary, the other a six‐fold division of
the human Principles.
From a cosmic point of view, Fohat taking “Five Strides” refers here to
the five upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the
seventh (counting downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the
two lower planes.
(_b_) Four “Winged Wheels at each corner ... for the Four Holy Ones and
their Armies (Hosts).” These are the “Four Mahârâjahs,” or great Kings, of
the Dhyân Chohans, the Devas, who preside each over one of the four
cardinal points. They are the Regents, or Angels, who rule over the
Cosmical Forces of North, South, East and West, Forces having each a
distinct Occult property. These Beings are also connected with Karma, as
the latter needs physical and material agents to carry out its decrees,
such as the four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by
Science to have their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the
health of mankind and every living thing. There is Occult philosophy in
the Roman Catholic doctrine which traces the various public calamities,
such as epidemics of disease, and wars, and so on, to the invisible
“Messengers” from North and West. “The glory of God comes from the way of
the East,” says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure
their readers that all the evil under the Sun comes from the North and the
West—which, when applied to the Jewish nation, sounds like an undeniable
prophecy. And this accounts also for St. Ambrose(223) declaring that it is
precisely for this reason that “we curse the North Wind, and that during
the ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards the West [Sidereal],
to renounce the better him who inhabits it; after which we turn to the
East.”
Belief in the Four Mahârâjahs—the Regents of the four cardinal points—was
universal and is now that of Christians, who call them, after St.
Augustine, “Angelic Virtues” and “Spirits,” when enumerated by themselves,
and “Devils,” when named by Pagans. But where is the difference between
the Pagans and the Christians in this case? Says the scholarly Vossius:
Though St. Augustine has said that every visible thing in this
world had an angelic virtue as an overseer near it, it is not
individuals but entire species of things that must be understood,
each such species having indeed its particular angel to watch it.
He is at one in this with all the philosophers ... For us these
angels are spirits separated from the objects.... whereas for the
[Pagan] philosophers they were gods.(224)
Considering the Ritual for the “Spirits of the Stars,” established by the
Roman Catholic Church, these look suspiciously like “gods,” but they were
no more honoured or worshipped by the ancient, nor are they by the modern,
Pagan rabble than they are now at Rome by the highly cultured Catholic
Christians.
Following Plato, Aristotle explained that the term στοιχεῖα was understood
only as meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four
great divisions of our cosmical world, to supervise them. Thus, no more
than Christians do Pagans _adore_ and _worship_ the Elements and the
(imaginary) cardinal points, but the “gods” that respectively rule over
them. For the Church, there are two kinds of Sidereal Beings, Angels and
Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist, there is but one class, and
neither Occultist nor Kabalist makes any difference between the “Rectors
of Light” and the “Rectores Tenebrarum,” or Cosmocratores, whom the Roman
Church imagines and discovers in the “Rectors of Light,” as soon as any
one of them is called by another name than the one she addresses him by.
It is not the Rector, or Mahârâjah, who punishes or rewards, with or
without “God’s” permission or order, but man himself—his deeds, or Karma,
attracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations,
sometimes) every kind of evil and calamity. We produce _Causes_, and these
awaken the corresponding powers in the Sidereal World, which are
magnetically and irresistibly attracted to—and reäct upon—those who
produce such causes; whether such persons are practically the evil‐doers,
or simply “thinkers” who brood mischief. For thought is matter, we are
taught by Modern Science; and “every particle of the existing matter must
be a register of all that has happened,” as Messrs. Jevons and Babbage in
their _Principles of Science_ tell the profane. Modern Science is every
day drawn more into the maëlstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt,
still very sensibly.
“Thought is matter”: not of course, however, in the sense of the German
Materialist Moleschott, who assures us that “thought is the movement of
matter”—a statement of almost unparalleled absurdity. Mental states and
bodily states are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not affect the
position that every thought, in addition to its physical accompaniment
(brain‐change), exhibits an objective—though to us supersensuously
objective—aspect on the astral plane.(225)
The two main theories of Science as to the relations between Mind and
Matter are Monism and Materialism. These two cover the whole ground of
negative psychology with the exception of the quasi‐occult views of the
German Pantheistic schools.
The views of our present‐day scientific thinkers as to the relations
between mind and matter may be reduced to the following two hypotheses.
These show that both views equally exclude the possibility of an
independent soul, distinct from the physical brain through which it
functions. They are:
(1.) _Materialism_, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the
product of molecular change in the brain; _i.e._, as the outcome of a
transformation of motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so
far as to identify mind with a “peculiar mode of motion” (!!), but this
view is now happily regarded as absurd by most of the men of Science
themselves.
(2.)_ Monism_, or the Single Substance doctrine, is the more subtle form
of negative psychology, which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably
terms “guarded materialism.” This doctrine, which commands a very wide
assent, counting among its upholders such men as Lewes, Spencer, Ferrier,
and others, while positing thought and mental phenomena generally as
radically contrasted with matter, regards them as the two sides, or
aspects, of one and the same substance in some of its conditions. Thought
as thought, they say, is utterly contrasted with material phenomena, but
it must be also regarded as only “the subjective side of nervous
motion”—whatever our learned men may mean by this.
To return to the commentary on the Four Mahârâjahs, however, in the
Egyptian temples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus, an immense curtain
separated the tabernacle from the place for the congregation. The Jews had
the same. In both, the curtain was drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle),
symbolizing our five senses and five Root Races esoterically, while the
four colours of the curtain represented the four cardinal points and the
four terrestrial elements. The whole was an allegorical symbol. It is
through the four high Rulers over the four points and elements that our
five senses may become cognizant of the hidden truths of Nature; and not
at all, as Clemens would have it, that it is the elements _per se_ that
furnished the Pagans with Divine Knowledge or the Knowledge of God.(226)
While the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews was purely
materialistic, and, indeed, honoured only the blind elements and the
imaginary “points.” For what was the meaning of the square Tabernacle
raised by Moses in the wilderness, if it had not the same cosmical
significance? “Thou shalt make an hanging ... of blue, purple, and scarlet
... five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging ... four brazen rings in
the four corners thereof ... boards of fine wood for the four sides,
North, South, West, and East ... of the Tabernacle ... with Cherubims of
cunning work.”(227) The Tabernacle and the square courtyard, Cherubim and
all, were precisely the same as those in the Egyptian temples. The square
form of the Tabernacle meant just the same thing as it still means, to
this day, in the exoteric worship of the Chinese and Tibetans—the four
cardinal points signifying that which the four sides of the pyramids,
obelisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes care to
explain the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars were the
same as those raised at Tyre to the four elements, which were placed on
pedestals whose four angles faced the four cardinal points; adding that
“the angles of the pedestals had the four figures of the Zodiac” on them,
which represented the same orientation.(228)
The idea may be traced in the Zoroastrian caves, in the rock‐cut temples
of India, and in all the sacred square buildings of antiquity that have
survived to this day. This is shown definitely by Layard, who finds the
four cardinal points, and the four primitive elements, in the religion of
every country, under the shape of square obelisks, the four sides of the
pyramids, etc., etc. Of these elements and their points the Four
Mahârâjahs were the regents and directors.
If the student would know more of them, he has but to compare the Vision
of Ezekiel (ch. i.) with what is known of Chinese Buddhism, even in its
exoteric teachings, and examine the outward shape of these “Great Kings of
the Devas.” In the opinion of the Rev. Joseph Edkins, “they preside each
over one of the four continents into which the Hindûs divide the world....
Each leads an army of spiritual beings to protect mankind and
Buddhism.”(229) With the exception of favouritism towards Buddhism, the
four Celestial Beings are precisely this. The Hindûs, however, happen to
divide the world into seven continents, exoterically as well as
esoterically; and their four Cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the
eight points of the compass and not over the continents.
The “Four” are the protectors of mankind and also the agents of Karma on
Earth, whereas the Lipika are concerned with Humanity’s hereafter. At the
same time they are the four living creatures, “who have the likeness of a
man,” of Ezekiel’s vision, called by the translators of the Bible,
“Cherubim,” “Seraphim,” etc.; by the Occultists, “Winged Globes,” “Fiery
Wheels”; and in the Hindû Pantheon, by a number of different names. All
these Gandharvas, the “Sweet Songsters,” the Asuras, Kinnaras, and Nâgas,
are the allegorical descriptions of the Four Mahârâjahs. The Seraphim are
the fiery Serpents of Heaven which we find in a passage, describing Mount
Meru as “the exalted mass of glory, the venerable haunt of gods and
heavenly choristers ... not to be reached by sinful men ... because
guarded by Serpents.” They are called the Avengers, and the “Winged
Wheels.”
Their mission and character being explained, let us see what the Christian
bible‐interpreters say of the Cherubim. “The word signifies in Hebrew,
fulness of knowledge; these angels are so called from their exquisite
Knowledge, and were therefore used for the punishment of men who affected
divine Knowledge.” (Interpreted by Cruden in his _Concordance_, from
_Genesis_ iii. 24.) Very well; and vague as the information is, it shows
that the Cherub placed at the gate of the Garden of Eden, after the
“Fall,” suggested to the venerable interpreters the idea of punishment
connected with forbidden Science or divine Knowledge—one that generally
leads to another “Fall,” that of the gods or “God,” in man’s estimation.
But as the good old Cruden knew nought of Karma, he may be forgiven. Yet
the allegory is suggestive. From Meru, the abode of gods, to Eden, the
distance is very small, and from the Hindû Serpents to the Ophite
Cherubim, the third out of the seven of which was the Dragon, the
separation is still smaller, for both watched the entrance to the realm of
Secret Knowledge. Ezekiel, moreover, plainly describes the four Cosmic
Angels:
I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind, ... a ... cloud and a fire
infolding it ... also out of the midst thereof came the likeness
of four living creatures ... they had the likeness of a man. And
every one had four faces and ... four wings ... the face of a
man,(230) and the face of a lion ... the face of an ox, and ...
the face of an eagle.... Now as I beheld the living creatures,
behold one wheel upon the Earth ... with his four faces ... as it
were a wheel in the middle of a wheel ... for the spirit of the
living creature was in the wheel.(231)
There are three chief Groups of Builders, and as many of the Planetary
Spirits and the Lipika, each Group being again divided into seven sub‐
groups. It is impossible, even in such a large work as this, to enter into
a minute examination of even the three principal Groups, as it would
demand an extra volume. The Builders are the representatives of the first
“Mind‐Born” Entities, therefore of the primeval Rishi‐Prajâpati; also of
the Seven great Gods of Egypt, of which Osiris is the chief; of the Seven
Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians, with Ormazd at their head; of the “Seven
Spirits of the Face”; of the Seven Sephiroth separated from the first
Triad, etc., etc.(232) They build, or rather rebuild, every “System” after
the “Night.” The Second Group of the Builders is the Architect of our
Planetary Chain exclusively; and the Third, the Progenitor of our
Humanity—the macrocosmic prototype of the microcosm.
The Planetary Spirits are the informing spirits of the Stars in general,
and of the Planets especially. They rule the destinies of men who are all
born under one or other of their constellations; the Second and Third
Groups pertaining to other systems have the same functions, and all rule
various departments in Nature. In the Hindû exoteric Pantheon they are the
guardian deities who preside over the eight points of the compass—the four
cardinal and the four intermediate points—and are called Lokapâlas,
“Supporters or Guardians of the World” (in our visible Cosmos), of which
Indra (East), Yama (South), Varuna (West), and Kuvera (North) are the
chief; their elephants and spouses pertaining of course to fancy and
afterthought, though all of them have an Occult significance.
The Lipika, a description of whom is given in Commentary 6 of Stanza IV,
are the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own
planetary deities. The former belong to the most Occult portion of
cosmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts—even the
highest—know this angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees,
or only the lower one connected with the records of our world, is
something which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would rather
incline to the latter supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only is
taught: the Lipika are connected with Karma—being its direct Recorders.
The Symbol for Sacred and Secret Knowledge in antiquity was universally a
Tree, by which a Scripture or a Record was also meant. Hence the word
Lipika, the Writers or Scribes; the Dragons, symbols of Wisdom, who guard
the Trees of Knowledge; the “golden” Apple‐Tree of the Hesperides; the
“Luxuriant Trees” and vegetation of Mount Meru, guarded by Serpents.
Juno’s giving Jupiter, on her marriage, a Tree with golden fruit, is
another form of Eve offering Adam the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.
6. THE LIPIKA CIRCUMSCRIBE THE TRIANGLE, THE FIRST ONE,(233) THE CUBE, THE
SECOND ONE, AND THE PENTACLE WITHIN THE EGG(234) (_a_).
IT IS THE RING CALLED “PASS NOT” FOR THOSE WHO DESCEND AND ASCEND;(235)
WHO DURING THE KALPA ARE PROGRESSING TOWARDS THE GREAT DAY “BE WITH US”
(_b_).... THUS WERE FORMED THE ARÛPA AND THE RÛPA:(236) FROM ONE LIGHT,
SEVEN LIGHTS; FROM EACH OF THE SEVEN, SEVEN TIMES SEVEN LIGHTS. THE WHEELS
WATCH THE RING....
The Stanza proceeds with a minute classification of the Orders of the
Angelic Hierarchy. From the Group of Four and Seven emanates the Mind‐Born
Groups of Ten, of Twelve, of Twenty‐one, etc., all these divided again
into sub‐groups of Heptads, Enneads, Dodecads, and so on, until the mind
is lost in this endless enumeration of celestial Hosts and Beings, each
having its distinct task in the ruling of the visible Cosmos during its
existence.
(_a_) The Esoteric meaning of the first sentence of the Shloka is, that
those who have been called Lipikas, the Recorders of the Karmic Ledger,
make an impassible barrier between the personal _Ego_ and the impersonal
_Self_, the Noumenon and Parent‐Source of the former. Hence the allegory.
They circumscribe the manifested world of matter within the Ring “Pass
Not.” This world is the objective symbol of the One divided into the Many,
on the planes of Illusion, of Adi (the “First”) or of Eka (the “One”); and
this One is the collective aggregate, or totality, of the principal
Creators or Architects of this visible Universe. In Hebrew Occultism their
name is both Achath, feminine, “One,” and Achad, “One” again, but
masculine. The Monotheists have taken, and are still taking, advantage of
the profound esotericism of the _Kabalah_, to apply the name by which the
One Supreme Essence is known, to _its_ manifestation, the Sephiroth‐
Elohim, and call it Jehovah. But this is quite arbitrary and against all
reason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural noun, identical with the
plural word Chiim, often compounded with it. The sentence in the _Sepher
Yetzirah_ and elsewhere, “Achath‐Ruach‐Elohim‐Chiim,” denotes the Elohim
as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it
would read: “ONE is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life.” As said, Achath
(or Echath) is feminine, and Achad (or Echad) masculine, both meaning One.
Moreover, in Occult metaphysics, there are, properly speaking, two
“Ones”—the One on the unreachable plane of Absoluteness and Infinity, on
which no speculation is possible; and the second One on the plane of
Emanations. The former can neither emanate nor be divided, as it is
eternal, absolute, and immutable; but the second, being, so to speak, the
reflection of the first One (for it is the Logos, or Îshvara, in the
Universe of Illusion), can do so. It emanates from itself—as the upper
Sephirothal Triad emanates the lower seven Sephiroth—the seven Rays or
Dhyân Chohans; in other words, the Homogeneous becomes the Heterogeneous,
the Protyle differentiates into the Elements. But these, unless they
return into their primal Element, can never cross beyond the Laya, or
zero‐point. This metaphysical tenet can hardly be better described than in
T. Subba Row’s _Bhagavadgîtâ_ Lectures:
Mûlaprakriti [the veil of Parabrahman] acts as the one energy
through the Logos [or Îshvara]. Now Parabrahman ... is the one
essence from which starts into existence a centre of energy, which
I shall for the present call the Logos.... It is called the Verbum
... by the Christians, and it is the divine Christos who is
eternal in the bosom of his Father. It is called Avalokiteshvara
by the Buddhists.... In almost every doctrine, they have
formulated the existence of a centre of spiritual energy which is
unborn and eternal, and which exists in the bosom of Parabrahman
at the time of Pralaya, and starts as a centre of conscious energy
at the time of cosmic activity....(237)
For, as the lecturer premised by saying, Parabrahman is not this or that,
it is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or
anything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non‐Ego, nor even Âtmâ, but
verily the one source of all manifestations and modes of existence.
Thus in the allegory, the Lipika separate the world (or plane) of pure
Spirit from that of Matter. Those who “descend and ascend”—the incarnating
Monads, and men striving towards purification and “ascending,” but still
not having quite reached the goal—may cross the Circle of “Pass Not,” only
on the Day “Be With Us”; that day when man, freeing himself from the
trammels of ignorance, and recognizing fully the non‐separateness of the
Ego within his Personality—erroneously regarded as his own—from the
Universal Ego (Anima Supra‐Mundi), merges thereby into the One Essence, to
become not only one with “Us,” the manifested universal Lives which are
_one_ Life, but that very Life itself.
Astronomically, the Ring “Pass Not” that the Lipika trace round “the
Triangle, the First One, the Cube, the Second One, and the Pentacle,” to
circumscribe these figures, is thus again shown to contain the symbols of
31415, or the coëfficient constantly used in mathematical tables, the
value π (pi), the geometrical figures standing here for numerical figures.
According to the general philosophical teachings, this Ring is beyond the
region of what are called nebulæ in astronomy. But this is as erroneous a
conception as that of the topography and descriptions, given in Purânic
and other exoteric Scriptures, about the 1008 worlds of the Deva‐loka
worlds and firmaments. There are worlds, of course, in the esoteric as
well as in the profane scientific teachings, at such incalculable
distances that the light of the nearest of them, though it has only just
reached our modern “Chaldees,” may have left its luminary long before the
day on which the words, “Let there be Light,” were pronounced; but these
are not worlds on the Devalokic plane, but in our Cosmos.
The Chemist goes to the laya or zero‐point of the plane of matter with
which he deals, and then stops short. The Physicist or the Astronomer
counts billions of miles beyond the nebulæ, and then he also stops short.
The semi‐initiated Occultist also will represent this laya‐point to
himself as existing on some plane which, if not physical, is still
conceivable to the human intellect. But the full Initiate _knows_ that the
Ring “Pass Not” is neither a locality, nor can it be measured by distance,
but that it exists in the absoluteness of Infinity. In this “Infinity” of
the full Initiate, there is neither height, breadth nor thickness, but all
is fathomless profundity, reaching down from the physical to the “para‐
metaphysical.” In using the word “down,” essential depth—“nowhere and
everywhere”—is meant, not depth of physical matter.
If one carefully searches through the exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic
allegories of popular religions, even in these the doctrine embodied in
the Circle of “Pass Not,” guarded by the Lipika, may be dimly perceived.
Thus one finds it even in the teachings of the Vedântin sect of the
Visishthadvaita, the most tenaciously anthropomorphic in all India. For we
read of the released soul that, after reaching Moksha—a state of bliss
meaning “release from Bandha,” or bondage—bliss is enjoyed by it in a
place called Paramapada, which place is not material, but made of
Suddasattva, the essence, of which the body of Îshvara—the “Lord”—is
formed. There, Muktas or Jîvâtmâs (Monads) who have attained Moksha, are
never again subject to the qualities of either matter or Karma. “But if
they choose, _for the __ sake of doing good to the world_, they may
incarnate on earth.”(238) The way to Paramapada, or the immaterial worlds,
from this world, is called Devayâna. When a person has attained Moksha and
the body dies:
The Jîva (Soul) goes with Sûkshma Sharira(239) from the heart of
the body to the Brahmarandra in the crown of the head, traversing
Sushumna, a nerve connecting the heart with the Brahmarandra. The
Jiva breaks through the Brahmarandra and goes to the region of the
Sun (Sûryamandala) through the solar rays. Then it goes, through a
dark spot in the Sun, to Paramapada.... The Jîva is directed on
its way ... by the Supreme Wisdom acquired by Yoga.(240) The Jîva
thus proceeds to Paramapada by the aid of Athivâhikas (bearers in
transit), known by the names of Archi Ahas ... Âditya, ...
Prajâpati, etc. The Archis, etc., here mentioned, are certain pure
Souls, etc., etc.(241)
No Spirits except the “Recorders” (Lipika) have ever crossed the forbidden
line of this Ring, nor will any do so until the day of the next Pralaya,
for it is the boundary that separates the Finite—however infinite in man’s
sight—from the truly Infinite. The Spirits referred to, therefore, as
those who “ascend and descend,” are the “Hosts” of what are loosely called
“Celestial Beings.” But they are, in fact, nothing of the kind. They are
Entities of higher worlds in the Hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high
that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively—_God_. But so must
we, mortal men, appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale of its
special capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging
finger of a Personal God in the hand of the urchin who, under the impulse
of mischief, destroys, in one moment, its ant‐hill, the labour of many
weeks—long years in the chronology of insects. The ant, feeling it
acutely, may also, like man, attribute the undeserved calamity to a
combination of providence and sin, and see in it the result of the sin of
its first parent. Who knows, and who can affirm or deny? The refusal to
admit, in the whole Solar System, of any other reasonable and intellectual
beings than ourselves on the human plane, is the greatest conceit of our
age. All that Science has a right to affirm, is that there are no
invisible Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It
cannot deny point‐blank the possibility of there being worlds within
worlds, under conditions totally different to those that constitute the
nature of our world; nor can it deny that there may be a certain limited
communication between some of these worlds and our own. The greatest
philosopher of European birth, Emmanuel Kant, assures us that such a
communication is in no way improbable.
I confess I am much disposed to assert the existence of immaterial
natures in the world, and to place my own soul in the class of
these beings. It will hereafter, I know not where, or when, yet be
proved that the human soul stands even in this life in
indissoluble connection with all immaterial natures in the spirit‐
world, that it reciprocally acts upon these and receives
impressions from them.(242)
To the highest of these worlds, we are taught, belong the seven Orders of
the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong Hierarchies that
can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and that do communicate with
their progeny of the Earth; a progeny which is indissolubly linked with
them, each Principle in man having its direct source in the nature of
these great Beings, who furnish us respectively with the invisible
elements in us. Physical Science is welcome to speculate upon the
physiological mechanism of living beings, and to continue her fruitless
efforts in trying to resolve our feelings, our sensations, mental and
spiritual, into functions of their organic vehicles. Nevertheless, all
that will ever be accomplished in this direction has already been done,
and Science can go no farther. She is before a dead wall, on the face of
which she traces, as she imagines, great physiological and psychic
discoveries, every one of which will be shown later on to be no better
than cobwebs, spun by her scientific fancies and illusions. The tissues of
our objective framework alone are subservient to the analysis and
researches of Physiological Science. The six higher Principles in them
will evade for ever the hand that is guided by an animus, which purposely
ignores and rejects the Occult Sciences. All that modern physiological
research in connection with psychological problems has, and owing to the
nature of things could have shown, is that every thought, sensation, and
emotion is attended with a re‐marshalling of the molecules of certain
nerves. The inference drawn by scientists of the type of Büchner, Vogt,
and others, that thought is molecular motion, necessitates the fact of our
subjective consciousness being made a complete abstraction.
The Great Day “Be With Us,” then, is an expression, the only merit of
which lies in its literal translation. Its significance is not so easily
revealed to a public, unacquainted with the mystic tenets of Occultism, or
rather of Esoteric Wisdom or “Budhism.” It is an expression peculiar to
the latter, and as hazy for the profane as that of the Egyptians, who
called the same the Day “Come To Us,” which is identical with the
former—though the word “be,” in this sense, might be still better replaced
with either of the two terms “remain” or “rest with us,” as it refers to
that long period of Rest which is called Paranirvâna. “Le Jour de ‘Viens à
nous’! C’est le jour où Osiris a dit au Soleil: Viens! Je le vois
rencontrant le Soleil dans l’Amenti.”(243) The Sun here stands for the
Logos (or Christos, or Horus), as the central Essence synthetically, and
as a diffused essence of radiated Entities, different in substance, but
not in essence. As expressed by the _Bhagavadgîtâ_ lecturer, “it must not
be supposed that the Logos is but a single centre of energy which is
manifested by Parabrahman. There are innumerable others. Their number is
almost infinite, in the bosom of Parabrahman.” Hence the expressions, “The
Day of Come to Us” and “The Day of Be With Us,” etc. Just as the Square is
the Symbol of the Four sacred Forces or Powers—Tetraktys—so the Circle
shows the boundary within the Infinity that no man, even in spirit, or
Deva or Dhyân Chohan can cross. The Spirits of those who “descend and
ascend,” during the course of cyclic evolution, shall cross the “iron‐
bound world,” only on the day of their approach to the threshold of
Paranirvâna. If they reach it, they will rest in the bosom of Parabrahman,
or the “Unknown Darkness,” which shall then become for all of them Light,
during the whole period of Mahâpralaya, the “Great Night,” namely,
311,040,000,000,000 years of absorption in Brahman. The Day of “Be With
Us” is this period of Rest, or Paranirvâna. It corresponds to the Day of
the Last Judgment of the Christians, which has been sorely materialized in
their religion.(244)
As in the exoteric interpretation of the Egyptian rites, the soul of every
defunct person—from the Hierophant down to the sacred bull Apis—became an
Osiris, was Osirified (the Secret Doctrine, however, teaching that the
real Osirification was the lot of every Monad only after 3,000 cycles of
Existences); so in the present case. The Monad, born of the nature and the
very Essence of the “Seven” (its highest Principle becoming immediately
enshrined in the Seventh Cosmic Element), has to perform its septenary
gyration throughout the Cycle of Being and Forms, from the highest to the
lowest; and then again from man to God. At the threshold of Paranirvâna,
it reässumes its primeval Essence and becomes the Absolute once more.
Stanza VI.
1. BY THE POWER OF THE MOTHER OF MERCY AND KNOWLEDGE (_a_), KWAN‐YIN—THE
TRIPLE OF KWAN‐SHAI‐YIN, RESIDING IN KWAN‐YIN‐TIEN (_b_)—FOHAT, THE BREATH
OF THEIR PROGENY, THE SON OF THE SONS, HAVING CALLED FORTH, FROM THE LOWER
ABYSS,(245) THE ILLUSIVE FORM OF SIEN‐TCHAN(246) AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS.
This Stanza is translated from the Chinese text, and the names given as
the equivalents of the original terms are preserved. The real Esoteric
nomenclature cannot be given, as it would only confuse the reader. The
Brâhmanical doctrine has no equivalents for these. Vâch seems, in many an
aspect, to approach the Chinese Kwan‐Yin, but there is no regular worship
of Vâch under this name in India, as there is of Kwan‐Yin in China. No
exoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus,
from the first dawn of popular religions, woman has been regarded and
treated as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan‐Yin
and Isis are placed on a par with the male gods. Esotericism ignores both
sexes. Its highest Deity is as sexless as it is formless, neither Father
nor Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial
alike, become only gradually androgynous to finally separate into distinct
sexes.
(_a_) “The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge” is called the “Triple” of Kwan‐
Shai‐Yin, because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is
the “Mother, the Wife and the Daughter” of the Logos, just as in the later
theological translations she became the “Father, Son and (female) Holy
Ghost”—the Shakti or Energy—the Essence of the Three. Thus in the
Esotericism of the Vedântins, Daiviprakriti, the Light manifested through
Îshvara, the Logos,(247) is at one and the same time the Mother and also
the Daughter of the Logos, or Verbum of Parabrahman; while in that of the
Trans‐Himâlayan teachings, it is—in the Hierarchy of their allegorical and
metaphysical theogony—the “Mother,” or abstract ideal Matter,
Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Nature; from the metaphysical standpoint, a
correlation of Adi‐Budha, manifested in the Logos, Avalokiteshvara; and
from the purely Occult and cosmical, Fohat, the “Son of the Son,” the
androgynous energy resulting from this “Light of the Logos,” which
manifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as
the revealed, Electricity—which is Life. Says T. Subba Row:
Evolution is commenced by the intellectual energy of the Logos,
... not merely on account of the potentialities locked up in
Mûlaprakriti. This Light of the Logos is the link ... between
objective matter and the subjective Thought of Îshvara [or Logos].
It is called in several Buddhist books Fohat. It is the one
instrument with which the Logos works.(248)
(_b_) “Kwan‐Yin‐Tien” means the “Melodious Heaven of Sound,” the Abode of
Kwan‐Yin, or the “Divine Voice.” This “Voice” is a synonym of the Verbum
or Word, “Speech,” as the expression of Thought. Thus may be traced the
connection with, and even the origin of, the Hebrew Bath‐Kol, the
“Daughter of the Divine Voice,” or Verbum, or the male and female Logos,
the “Heavenly Man,” or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The
latter was surely anticipated by the Hindû Vâch, the goddess of Speech, or
of the Word. For Vâch—the daughter and the female portion, as is stated,
of Brahmâ, one “generated by the gods”—is, in company with Kwan‐Yin, with
Isis (also the daughter, wife and sister of Osiris) and other goddesses,
the female Logos, so to speak, the goddess of the _active_ forces in
Nature, the Word, Voice or Sound, and Speech. If Kwan‐Yin is the
“Melodious Voice,” so is Vâch “the melodious cow who milked forth
sustenance and water [the female principle] ... who yields us nourishment
and sustenance,” as Mother‐Nature. She is associated in the work of
creation with Prajâpati. She is male and female _ad libitum_, as Eve is
with Adam. And she is a form of Aditi—the principle higher than Æther—of
Âkâsha, the synthesis of all the forces in Nature. Thus Vâch and Kwan‐Yin
are both the magic potency of Occult Sound in Nature and Æther—which
“Voice” calls forth Sien‐Tchan, the illusive form of the Universe out of
Chaos and the Seven Elements.
Thus, in _Manu_, Brahmâ (the Logos also) is shown dividing his body into
two parts, male and female, and creating in the latter, who is Vâch,
Virâj, who is himself, or Brahmâ again. A learned Vedântin Occultist
speaks of this “goddess” as follows, explaining the reason why Îshvara (or
Brahmâ) is called Verbum or Logos; why in fact it is called Sabda Brahman:
The explanation I am going to give you will appear thoroughly
mystical; but if mystical, it has a tremendous significance when
properly understood. Our old writers said that Vâch is of four
kinds. [See _Rig Veda_ and the _Upanishads_.] Vaikharî Vâch is
what we utter. Every kind of Vaikharî Vâch exists in its Madhyama,
further in its Pashyanti, and ultimately in its Para form.(249)
The reason why this Pranava is called Vâch is this, that the four
principles of the great cosmos correspond to these four forms of
Vâch. Now the whole manifested solar system exists in its Sûkshma
form in the light or energy of the Logos, because its energy is
caught up and transferred to cosmic matter ... the whole cosmos in
its objective form is Vaikharî Vâch, the light of the Logos is the
Madhyama form, and the Logos itself the Pashyanti form, and
Parabrahman the Para aspect of that Vâch. It is by the light of
this explanation that we must try to understand certain statements
made by various philosophers to the effect that the manifested
cosmos is the Verbum manifested as cosmos.(250)
2. THE SWIFT AND THE RADIANT ONE PRODUCES THE SEVEN LAYA(251) CENTRES
(_a_), AGAINST WHICH NONE WILL PREVAIL TO THE GREAT DAY “BE WITH US”; AND
SEATS THE UNIVERSE ON THESE ETERNAL FOUNDATIONS, SURROUNDING SIEN‐TCHAN
WITH THE ELEMENTARY GERMS (_b_).
(_a_) The seven Laya Centres are the seven zero‐points, using the term
zero in the same sense that Chemists do. It indicates, in Esotericism, a
point at which the reckoning of differentiation begins. From these
Centres—beyond which Esoteric Philosophy allows us to perceive the dim
metaphysical outlines of the “Seven Sons” of Life and Light, the Seven
Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophers—begins the
differentiation of the Elements which enter into the constitution of our
Solar System. It has often been asked what is the exact definition of
Fohat and his powers and functions, for he seems to exercise those of a
Personal God as understood in the popular religions. The answer has just
been given in the Commentary on Stanza V. As well said in the
_Bhagavadgîtâ_ Lectures, “The whole cosmos must necessarily exist in the
one source of energy from which this light [Fohat] emanates.” Whether we
count the principles in cosmos and man as seven or only as four, the
forces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is stated by the same
authority that, “Prajnâ, or the capacity of perception, exists in seven
different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter.” For,
“just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated
matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions.”(252) So
does Fohat. Fohat has several meanings, as already shown. He is called the
“Builder of the Builders,” the Force that he personifies having formed our
Septenary Chain. He is One and Seven, and on the cosmic plane is behind
all such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and
is the “spirit” of electricity, which is the Life of the Universe. As an
abstraction, we will call it the One Life; as an objective and evident
Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at
the upper rung with the One Unknowable Causality, and ends as Omnipresent
Mind and Life, immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while Science
speaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless
motion, the Occultists point to _Intelligent_ Law and _Sentient_ Life, and
add that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal
god at all, but the emanation of those other Powers behind him, whom the
Christians call the “Messengers” of their God (in reality, of the Elohim,
or rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we the Messenger
of the primordial Sons of Life and Light.
(_b_) The “Elementary Germs,” with which he fills Sien‐Tchan (the
Universe) from Tien‐Sin (the “Heaven of Mind,” or that which is absolute),
are the Atoms of Science and the Monads of Leibnitz.
3. OF THE SEVEN(253)—FIRST ONE MANIFESTED, SIX CONCEALED; TWO MANIFESTED,
FIVE CONCEALED; THREE MANIFESTED, FOUR CONCEALED; FOUR PRODUCED, THREE
HIDDEN; FOUR AND ONE TSAN(254) REVEALED, TWO AND ONE HALF CONCEALED; SIX
TO BE MANIFESTED, ONE LAID ASIDE (_a_). LASTLY, SEVEN SMALL WHEELS
REVOLVING; ONE GIVING BIRTH TO THE OTHER (_b_).
(_a_) Although these Stanzas refer to the whole Universe after a
Mahâpralaya (Universal Dissolution), yet this sentence, as any student of
Occultism may see, refers also by analogy to the evolution and final
formation of the primitive (though compound) seven Elements on our Earth.
Of these, four Elements are now fully manifested, while the fifth—Ether—is
only partially so, as we are hardly in the second half of the Fourth
Round, and consequently the fifth Element will manifest fully only in the
Fifth Round. The Worlds, including our own, as germs, were of course
primarily evolved from the One Element in its second stage—“Father‐
Mother,” the Differentiated World’s Soul, not what is termed the “Over‐
Soul” by Emerson—whether we call it, with Modern Science, cosmic dust and
fire‐mist, or with Occultism, Âkâsha, Jîvâtmâ, Divine Astral Light, or the
“Soul of the World.” But this first stage of Evolution was in due course
of time followed by the next. No World, and no heavenly body, could be
constructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been already
sufficiently differentiated from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya. The
latter term is a synonym of Nirvâna. It is, in fact, the Nirvânic
dissociation of all substances, merged after a Life‐Cycle into the latency
of their primary conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the
Matter that _was_, the realm of negativeness—wherein lie latent during
their period of rest the active Forces of the Universe.
Now, speaking of Elements, it is made the standing reproach of the
Ancients, that they “supposed their elements simple and undecomposable.”
The shades of our pre‐historic ancestors might return the compliment to
modern Physicists, now that new discoveries in Chemistry have led Mr. W.
Crookes, F.R.S., to admit, that Science is yet a thousand leagues from a
knowledge of the compound nature of the simplest molecule. From him we
learn that such a thing as a really simple molecule entirely homogeneous
is _terra incognita_ in Chemistry. “Where are we to draw the line?” he
asks; “is there no way out of this perplexity? Must we either make the
elementary examinations so stiff that only 60 or 70 candidates can pass,
or must we open the examination doors so wide that the number of
admissions is limited only by the number of applicants?” And then the
learned chemist gives striking instances. He says:
Take the case of yttrium. It has its definite atomic weight, it
behaved in every respect as a simple body, an element, to which we
might indeed add, but from which we could not take away. Yet this
yttrium, this supposed homogeneous whole, on being submitted to a
certain method of fractionation, is resolved into portions not
absolutely identical among themselves, and exhibiting a gradation
of properties. Or take the case of didymium. Here was a body
betraying all the recognized characters of an element. It had been
separated with much difficulty from other bodies which
approximated closely to it in their properties, and during this
crucial process it had undergone very severe treatment and very
close scrutiny. But then came another chemist, who, treating this
assumed homogeneous body by a peculiar process of fractionation,
resolved it into the two bodies praseodymium and neodymium,
between which certain distinctions are perceptible. Further, we
even now have no certainty that neodymium and praseodymium are
simple bodies. On the contrary, they likewise exhibit symptoms of
splitting up. Now, if one supposed element on proper treatment is
thus found to comprise dissimilar molecules, we are surely
warranted in asking whether similar results might not be obtained
in other elements, perhaps in all elements, if treated in the
right way. We may even ask where the process of sorting‐out is to
stop—a process which of course presupposes variations between the
individual molecules of each species. And in these successive
separations we naturally find bodies approaching more and more
closely to each other.(255)
Once more this reproach against the Ancients is an unwarrantable
statement. Their initiated philosophers at any rate, can hardly come under
such an imputation, since it is they who have invented allegories and
religious myths from the beginning. Had they been ignorant of the
Heterogeneity of their Elements they would have had no personifications of
Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Æther; their cosmic gods and goddesses would
never have been blessed with such posterity, with so many sons and
daughters, elements born _from_ and _within_ each respective Element.
Alchemy and Occult phenomena would have been a delusion and a snare, even
in theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities and
correlative functions and attributes, of every element that enters into
the composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire—the latter a _terra
incognita_ to this day to Modern Science, which is obliged to call it
motion, evolution of light and heat, state of ignition—defining it by its
outward aspects in short, in ignorance of its nature.
But what Modern Science seems to fail to perceive, is that, differentiated
as may have been those simple chemical atoms—which archaic philosophy
called “the creators of their respective parents,” fathers, brothers,
husbands of their mothers, and these mothers the daughters of their own
sons, like Aditi and Daksha, for example—differentiated as these elements
were in the beginning, still, they were not the compound bodies known to
Science, as they are now. Neither Water, Air, nor Earth (a synonym for
solids generally) existed in their present form, representing the only
three states of matter recognized by Science; for all these and even Fire
are productions already recombined by the atmospheres of completely formed
globes, so that in the first periods of the earth’s formation they were
something quite _sui generis_. Now that the conditions and laws ruling our
Solar System are fully developed, and that the atmosphere of our earth, as
of every other globe, has become, so to say, a crucible of its own, Occult
Science teaches that there is a perpetual exchange taking place, in space,
of molecules, or rather of atoms, correlating, and thus changing their
combining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and these
among the greatest Physicists and Chemists, begin to suspect this fact,
which has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope shows
only the probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and
sidereal substance; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether or
not atoms gravitate towards one another in the same way, and under the
same conditions, as they are supposed to do on our planet, physically and
chemically. The scale of temperature, from the highest degree to the
lowest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be one and the same in
and for the whole Universe; nevertheless, its properties, other than those
of dissociation and reässociation, differ on every planet; and thus atoms
enter into new forms of existence, undreamed of, and incognizable to,
Physical Science. As already expressed in _Five Years of Theosophy_,(256)
the essence of cometary matter, for instance, “is totally different from
any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest
Chemists and Physicists of the earth are acquainted.” And even that
matter, during rapid passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain
change in its nature.
Thus not only the elements of our planet, but even those of all its
sisters in the Solar System, differ in their combinations as widely from
each other, as from the cosmic elements beyond our solar limits. This is
again corroborated by the same man of Science in the lecture referred to
above, who quotes Clerk Maxwell, saying “that the elements are not
absolutely homogeneous.” He writes:
It is difficult to conceive of selection and elimination of
intermediate varieties, for where can these eliminated molecules
have gone to, if, as we have reason to believe, the hydrogen,
etc., of the fixed stars is composed of molecules identical in all
respects with our own.... In the first place we may call in
question this absolute molecular identity, since we have hitherto
had no means for coming to a conclusion save the means furnished
by the spectroscope, while it is admitted that, for accurately
comparing and discriminating the spectra of two bodies, they
should be examined under identical states of temperature,
pressure, and all other physical conditions. We have certainly
seen, in the spectrum of the sun, rays which we have not been able
to identify.
Therefore, the elements of our planet cannot be taken as a standard for
comparison with the elements in other worlds. In fact each world has its
Fohat, which is omnipresent in its own sphere of action. But there are as
many Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of
manifestation. The individual Fohats make one universal, collective
Fohat—the aspect‐entity of the one absolute Non‐Entity, which is absolute
Be‐ness, Sat. “Millions and billions of worlds are produced at every
Manvantara”—it is said. Therefore there must be many Fohats, whom we
consider as conscious and _intelligent_ Forces. This, no doubt, to the
disgust of scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good
reasons for it, consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though
supersensuous, states of Matter; and as possible objects of perception to
beings endowed with the requisite senses.
Enshrined in its pristine, virgin state within the Bosom of the Eternal
Mother, every atom born beyond the threshold of her realm is doomed to
incessant differentiation. “_The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing_.”
And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her protean
products, which, carried on by the wave of efflux, are scattered by Fohat,
and driven toward or beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once
caught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for
ever, unless fate dissociates it by leading it to a “current of efflux”
(an Occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the
ordinary word implies), when it may be carried once more to the borderland
where it had previously perished, and taking its flight, not into Space
_above_ but into Space _within_, be brought under a state of differential
equilibrium and happily reabsorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist‐
Alchemist to write the “Life and Adventures of an Atom,” he would secure
thereby the supreme scorn of the modern Chemist, though perchance also his
subsequent gratitude. Indeed, if such an imaginary Chemist happened to be
intuitional, and would for a moment step out of the habitual groove of
strictly “Exact Science,” as the Alchemists of old did, he might be repaid
for his audacity. However it may be, “_The Breath of the Father‐Mother
issues cold and radiant, and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more and
be purified in the eternal bosom of inner Space_,” says the Commentary.
Man absorbs cold pure air on the mountain‐top, and throws it out impure,
hot and transformed. Thus, the higher atmosphere of every globe, being its
mouth, and the lower its lungs, the man of our planet breathes only the
“refuse of Mother;” therefore, “he is doomed to die thereon.” He who would
allotropize sluggish oxygen into ozone to a measure of alchemical
activity, reducing it to its pure essence (for which there are means),
would discover thereby a substitute for an “Elixir of Life” and prepare it
for practical use.
(_b_) The process referred to as the “Small Wheels, one giving birth to
the other,” takes place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane
of the most material world of all in the manifested Kosmos—our terrestrial
plane. These “Seven Wheels” are our Planetary Chain. By “Wheels” the
various spheres and centres of forces are generally meant; but in this
case they refer to our septenary Ring.
4. HE BUILDS THEM IN THE LIKENESS OF OLDER WHEELS,(257) PLACING THEM ON
THE IMPERISHABLE CENTRES (_a_).
HOW DOES FOHAT BUILD THEM? HE COLLECTS THE FIERY‐DUST. HE MAKES BALLS OF
FIRE, RUNS THROUGH THEM, AND ROUND THEM, INFUSING LIFE THEREINTO, THEN
SETS THEM INTO MOTION; SOME ONE WAY, SOME THE OTHER WAY. THEY ARE COLD, HE
MAKES THEM HOT. THEY ARE DRY, HE MAKES THEM MOIST. THEY SHINE, HE FANS AND
COOLS THEM (_b_). THUS ACTS FOHAT FROM ONE TWILIGHT TO THE OTHER, DURING
SEVEN ETERNITIES.(258)
(_a_) The Worlds are built “in the likeness of older Wheels”—_i.e._, of
those that had existed in preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya; for
the Law for the birth, growth, and decay of everything in Kosmos, from the
Sun to the glow‐worm in the grass, is One. There is an everlasting work of
perfection with every new appearance, but the Substance‐Matter and Forces
are all one and the same. And this Law acts on every planet through minor
and varying laws.
The “Imperishable [Laya] Centres” have a great importance, and their
meaning must be fully understood, if we would have a clear conception of
the Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now passed into Occultism. At
present, one thing may be stated. The Worlds are built neither _upon_, nor
_over_, nor _in_ the Laya Centres, the zero‐point being a condition, not a
mathematical point.
(_b_) Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic
Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have sprung, like Rudra from the
head of Brahmâ, “_from the Brain of the Father and the Bosom of the
Mother_,” and then to have metamorphosed himself into a male and a female,
_i.e._, polarized himself into positive and negative electricity. He has
_Seven Sons_ who are his _Brothers_. Fohat is forced to be born, time
after time, whenever any two of his “Son‐Brothers” indulge in _too close
contact_—whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he unites and binds
together those of unlike nature, and separates those of similar
temperaments. This, as any one can see, relates, of course, to electricity
generated by friction, and to the law of attraction between two objects of
unlike, and repulsion between those of like polarity. The Seven Son‐
Brothers, however, represent and personify the seven forms of cosmic
magnetism, called in Practical Occultism the “Seven Radicals,” whose
coöperative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity,
Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all
these as super‐sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as
objective phenomena in the world of sense; the former requiring abnormal
faculties to perceive them, the latter cognizable by our ordinary physical
senses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more
supersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to,
real and conscious Causes. To attempt a description of such Entities would
be worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our
teaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a Great Illusion, the
nearer a body is to the Unknown Substance, the more it approaches Reality,
as being the farther removed from this world of Mâyâ. Therefore, though
the molecular constitution of these bodies is not deducible from their
manifestations, on this plane of consciousness, they nevertheless, from
the standpoint of the Adept Occultist, possess a distinctive objective if
not material structure, in the relatively noumenal—as opposed to the
phenomenal—Universe. Men of science may term them force or forces
generated by matter, or “modes of its motion,” if they will; Occultism
sees in these effects Elementals (Forces), and, in the direct causes
producing them, intelligent Divine Workmen. The intimate connection of
these Elementals, guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers, with the
elements of pure Matter—their correlation we might call it—results in our
terrestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of
course we shall never agree with the American Substantialists(259) who
call every force and energy—whether light, heat, electricity or
cohesion—an “entity”; for this would be equivalent to calling the noise
produced by the rolling of the wheels of a vehicle an entity—thus
confusing and identifying that “noise” with the “driver” _outside_, and
the guiding “Master Intelligence” _within_ the vehicle. But we do
certainly give that name to the “drivers” and to these guiding
“Intelligences,” the ruling Dhyân Chohans, as has been shown. The
Elementals, the Nature‐Forces, are the acting, though invisible, or rather
imperceptible, secondary causes, and in themselves the effects of primary
causes behind the veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light,
heat, etc., have been aptly termed the “Ghosts or Shadows of Matter in
Motion,” _i.e._, supersensuous states of Matter whose effects only we are
able to cognize. To expand, then, the simile given above. The sensation of
light is like the sound of the rolling wheels—a purely phenomenal effect,
having no existence outside the observer. The proximate exciting cause of
the sensation is comparable to the driver—a supersensuous state of matter
in motion, a Nature‐Force or Elemental. But, behind this—just as the owner
of the carriage directs the driver from within—stands the higher and
_noumenal_ cause, the _Intelligence_ from whose essence radiate these
States of “Mother,” generating the countless milliards of Elementals, or
Psychic Nature‐Spirits, just as every drop of water generates its physical
infinitesimal Infusoria. It is Fohat who guides the transfer of the
principles from one planet to the other, from one star to another child‐
star. When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a
laya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is
thus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new sidereal
body.
It is most remarkable that, while honestly confessing their entire
ignorance of the true nature of even terrestrial matter—primordial
substance being regarded more as a dream than as a sober reality—the
Physicists should, nevertheless, set themselves up as judges of that
matter, and claim to know what it is able and is not able to do, in
various combinations. Scientists know this matter hardly skin‐deep, and
yet they will dogmatize. It is “a mode of motion” and nothing else! But
the “force” that is inherent in a living person’s breath, when blowing a
speck of dust from the table, is also, undeniably, “a mode of motion.” It
is as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the particles of the
speck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity that breathed,
whether the impulse originated consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, to
endow matter—something of which nothing is so far known—with an inherent
quality called force, of the nature of which still less is known, is to
create a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in the
acceptation of the intervention of our “Nature‐Spirits” in every natural
phenomenon.
The Occultists—who, if they would express themselves correctly, do not say
that matter, but only the _substance_ or _essence_ of matter, (_i.e._,
Mûlaprakriti, the Root of all) is indestructible and eternal—assert that
all the so‐called Forces of Nature, electricity, magnetism, light, heat,
etc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, are _in
esse_, _i.e._, in their ultimate constitution, the differentiated aspects
of that Universal Motion which is discussed and explained in the first
pages of this volume. When Fohat is said to produce Seven Laya Centres, it
means that, for formative or creative purposes, the _Great Law_—Theists
may call it God—stays, or rather modifies, its perpetual motion on seven
invisible points within the area of the Manifested Universe. “_The Great
Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya, to cause them to
circumgyrate during Manvantara_,” says the Occult Catechism. We have said
that Laya is what Science may call the zero‐point or line; the realm of
absolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, the _noumenon_ of
the Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognize as
“Force”; or again the noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which
is itself an unreachable and unknowable object for finite perception; the
root and basis of all states of objectivity and also subjectivity; the
neutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to
elucidate the meaning, if we try to imagine a “neutral centre”—the dream
of those who would discover perpetual motion. A “neutral centre” is, in
one aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine
two consecutive planes of matter; each of these corresponding to an
appropriate set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between
these two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we
follow the atoms and molecules of, say, the lower in their transformation
upwards, they will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the
range of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, for us
the matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception—or
rather, it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter
corresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess
special, and not readily discoverable, properties. Seven such “Neutral
Centres,”(260) then, are produced by Fohat, who, when, as Milton has it:
Fair foundations (are) laid whereon to build ...
quickens matter into activity and evolution.
The Primordial Atom (Anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic
state, or its primogeneity; therefore it is called the “Sum Total,” of
course, figuratively, as that “Sum Total” is boundless. That which is the
abyss of nothingness to the Physicist, who knows only the world of visible
causes and effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the
Occultist. Among many other objections to the doctrine of an endless
evolution and involution, or reäbsorption of the Kosmos, a process which,
according to the Brâhmanical and Esoteric Doctrine, is without beginning
or end, the Occultist is told that it cannot be, since “by all the
admissions of modern scientific philosophy it is a necessity of nature to
run down.” If the tendency of nature “to run down” is to be considered so
forcible an objection to Occult Cosmogony, how, we may ask, do your
Positivists and Free‐thinkers and Scientists account for the phalanx of
active stellar systems around us? They had eternity to “run down” in; why,
then, is not the Kosmos a huge inert mass? Even the moon is only
hypothetically believed to be a dead planet, “run down,” and Astronomy
does not seem to be acquainted with many such dead planets.(261) The query
is unanswerable. But apart from this, it must be noted that the idea of
the amount of “transformable energy” in our little system coming to an
end, is based purely on the fallacious conception of a “white‐hot,
incandescent sun,” perpetually radiating away its heat without
compensation into space. To this we reply that nature runs down and
disappears from the objective plane, only to reëmerge after a time of rest
out of the subjective, and to reäscend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature
will run down only to reäppear on a more perfect plane after every
Pralaya. The Matter of the Eastern philosophers is not the “matter” and
Nature of the Western metaphysicians. For what is Matter? And above all,
what is our scientific philosophy but that which was so justly and so
politely defined by Kant as the “science of the _limits_ to our
knowledge?” To what have the many attempts made by Science to bind,
connect, and define all the phenomena of organic life, by mere physical
and chemical manifestations, brought it? To speculation generally—mere
soap‐bubbles, that have burst one after the other before the men of
Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would have been
avoided, and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with gigantic
strides, had only Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting
hypotheses merely on the one‐sided knowledge of _their_ “matter.” The
behaviour of Uranus and Neptune—whose satellites, four and one in number
respectively, revolved, it was thought, in their orbits from East to West,
whereas all the other satellites rotate from West to East—is a very good
instance, as showing how unreliable are all _à priori_ speculations, even
when based on the strictest mathematical analysis. The famous hypothesis
of the formation of our Solar System out of nebulous rings, put forward by
Kant and Laplace, was chiefly based on the assumed fact that all the
planets revolved in the same direction. Laplace, relying on this
mathematically demonstrated fact in his own time, and calculating on the
theory of probabilities, offered to bet three milliards to one that the
next planet discovered would have in its system the same peculiarity of
motion eastward. The immutable laws of scientific mathematics got “worsted
by further experiments and observations.” This idea of Laplace’s mistake
prevails generally to this day; but some Astronomers have finally
succeeded in demonstrating (?) that the error has been in accepting
Laplace’s assertion for a mistake; and steps to correct the _bévue_,
without attracting general attention, are now being taken. Many such
unpleasant surprises are in store for hypotheses of even a purely physical
character. What further disillusions, then, may there not be in questions
concerning a transcendental, Occult Nature? At any rate, Occultism teaches
that the so‐called “reverse rotation” is a fact.
If no physical intellect is capable of counting the grains of sand
covering a few miles of sea‐shore, or of fathoming the ultimate nature and
essence of these grains, when palpable and visible on the palm of the
Naturalist, how can any Materialist limit the laws which govern the
changes in the conditions and being of the atoms in Primordial Chaos, or
know anything certain about the capabilities and potency of the atoms and
molecules, before and after their formation into worlds? These changeless
and eternal molecules—far more numberless in space than the grains on the
ocean shore—may differ in their constitution along the lines of their
planes of existence, as the soul‐substance differs from its vehicle, the
body. Each atom has seven planes of being or existence, we are taught; and
each plane is governed by its specific laws of evolution and absorption.
Ignorant of any, even approximate, chronological data from which to start,
in attempting to decide the age of our planet or the origin of the solar
system, Astronomers, Geologists, and Physicists, with each new hypothesis,
are drifting farther and farther away from the shores of fact into the
fathomless depths of speculative ontology.(262) The Law of Analogy, in the
plan of structure between the trans‐solar systems and the solar planets,
does not necessarily bear upon the finite conditions, to which every
visible body is subject, in this our plane of being. In Occult Science,
this Law of Analogy is the first and most important key to cosmic physics;
but it has to be studied in its minutest details, and “turned seven
times,” before one comes to understand it. Occult Philosophy is the only
science that can teach it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the
untruth of the Occultist’s proposition, “the Kosmos is eternal in its
unconditioned collectivity, and finite only in its conditioned
manifestations,” on this one‐sided physical enunciation that “it is a
necessity of Nature to run down”?(263)
A Digression.
With this Shloka ends that portion of the Stanzas relating to the
cosmogony of the Universe after the last Mahâpralaya, or Universal
Dissolution, which, when it comes, sweeps out of Space every
differentiated thing, gods as well as atoms, like so many dry leaves. From
this verse onwards, the Stanzas are only concerned with our Solar System
in general, with the Planetary Chains therein inferentially, and with the
history of our Globe (the Fourth and its Chain) especially. All the verses
which follow in this Volume refer only to the evolution of, and on, our
Earth. With regard to the latter, a strange tenet—strange from the modern
scientific standpoint only, of course—is held, which ought to be made
known.
But before entirely new and somewhat startling theories are presented to
the reader, they must be prefaced by a few words of explanation. This is
absolutely necessary, as these theories clash not only with Modern
Science, but, on certain points, contradict earlier statements(264) made
by other Theosophists, who claim to base their explanations and renderings
of these teachings on the same authority as we do.
This may give rise to the idea that there is a decided contradiction
between the expounders of the same doctrine; whereas the difference, in
reality, arises from the incompleteness of the information given to
earlier writers, who thus drew some erroneous conclusions and indulged in
premature speculations, in their endeavour to present a complete system to
the public. Thus the reader, who is already a student of Theosophy, must
not be surprised to find in these pages the rectification of certain
statements made in various Theosophical works, and also the explanation of
certain points which have remained obscure, because they were necessarily
left incomplete. Many are the questions upon which even the author of
_Esoteric Buddhism_, the best and most accurate of all such works, has not
touched. On the other hand, even he has introduced several mistaken
notions, which must now be presented in their true mystic light, as far as
the present writer is capable of so doing.
Let us then make a short break between the Shlokas just explained and
those which follow, for the cosmic periods which separate them are of
immense duration. This will afford us ample time to take a bird’s‐eye view
of some points pertaining to the Secret Doctrine, which have been
presented to the public under a more or less uncertain and sometimes
mistaken light.
A Few Early Misconceptions Concerning Planets, Rounds, And Man.
Among the eleven Stanzas omitted, there is one which gives a full
description of the formation of the Planetary Chains one after another,
after the first cosmic and atomic differentiation had commenced in the
primitive Acosmism. It is idle to speak of “laws arising when Deity
prepares to create,” for “laws,” or rather Law, are eternal and uncreated;
and again Deity is Law, and _vice versà_. Moreover, the one eternal Law
unfolds everything in the (to be) manifested Nature on a sevenfold
principle; among the rest, the countless circular Chains of Worlds,
composed of seven Globes, graduated on the four lower planes of the World
of Formation, the three others belonging to the Archetypal Universe. Out
of these seven only one, _the lowest and the most material of these
Globes_, is within our plane or means of perception, the six others lying
outside it and being therefore invisible to the terrestrial eye. Every
such Chain of Worlds is the progeny and creation of another, _lower_, and
_dead_ Chain—its _reïncarnation_, so to say. To make it clearer: we are
told that each of the planets—of which _seven only_ were called sacred, as
being ruled by the highest Regents or Gods, and not at all because the
Ancients knew nothing of the others(265)—whether known or unknown, is a
septenary, as also is the Chain to which the Earth belongs. For instance,
all such planets as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., etc., or
our Earth, are as visible to us as our Globe, probably, is to the
inhabitants, if any, of the other planets, because they are all on the
same plane; while the superior fellow‐globes of these planets are on other
planes quite outside that of our terrestrial senses. As their relative
positions are given further on, and also in the diagram appended to the
comments on Shloka 6 of Stanza VI, a few words of explanation is all that
is needed at present. These invisible companions correspond curiously to
that which we call the “principles” in man. The seven are on three
material planes and one spiritual plane, answering to the three Upâdhis
(Material Bases), and one spiritual Vehicle (Vâhana), of our seven
Principles in the human division. If, for the sake of a clearer mental
conception, we imagine the human Principles to be arranged as in the
following scheme, we shall obtain the following diagram of
correspondences:
[Diagram I]
As we are proceeding here from Universals to Particulars, instead of using
the inductive or Aristotelean method, the numbers are reversed. Spirit is
enumerated the first instead of seventh, as is usually done, but in truth,
_ought not to be done_.
The Principles, as usually named after the manner of _Esoteric Buddhism_
and other works, are: 1, Âtmâ; 2, Buddhi (Spiritual Soul); 3, Manas (Human
Soul); 4, Kâma Rûpa (Vehicle of Desires and Passions); 5, Prâna; 6, Linga
Sharîra; 7, Sthûla Sharîra.
The dark horizontal lines of the lower planes are the Upâdhis in the case
of the human Principles, and the planes in the case of the Planetary
Chain. Of course, as regards the Human Principles, the diagram does not
place them quite in order, yet it shows the correspondence and analogy to
which attention is now drawn. As the reader will see, it is a case of
descent into matter, the adjustment—in both the mystic and the physical
sense—of the two, and their interblending for the great coming “struggle
for life” that awaits both Entities. “Entity” may be thought a strange
term to use in the case of a Globe, but the ancient philosophers, who saw
in the Earth a huge “animal,” were wiser in their generation than our
modern geologists are in theirs; and Pliny, who called the Earth our kind
nurse and mother, the only Element which is not inimical to man, spoke
more truly than Watts, who fancied that he saw in her the footstool of
God. For Earth is only the footstool of man in his ascension to higher
regions; the vestibule—
... to glorious mansions,
Through which a moving crowd for ever press.
But this only shows how admirably Occult Philosophy fits every thing in
Nature, and how much more logical are its tenets than the lifeless
hypothetical speculations of Physical Science.
Having learned thus much, the Mystic will be better prepared to understand
the Occult teaching, though every formal student of Modern Science may,
and probably will, regard it as preposterous nonsense. The student of
Occultism, however, holds that the theory at present under discussion is
far more philosophical and probable than any other. It is more logical, at
any rate, than the theory recently advanced which made of the Moon the
projection of a portion of our Earth, extruded when the latter was a globe
in fusion, a molten plastic mass.
Says Mr. Samuel Laing, the author of _Modern Science and Modern Thought_:
The astronomical conclusions are theories based on data so
uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly
short, like that of 15 millions of years for the whole past
process of formation of the solar system, in others they give
results almost incredibly long, as in that which _supposes the
moon to have been thrown off when the earth was rotating in three
hours_, while the utmost actual retardation obtained from
observation would require 600 millions of years to make it rotate
in twenty‐three hours instead of twenty‐four.(266)
And if Physicists persist in such speculations, why should the chronology
of the Hindûs be laughed at as exaggerated?
It is said, moreover, that the Planetary Chains having their Days and
their Nights—_i.e._, periods of activity or life, and of inertia or
death—behave in heaven as do men on earth: they generate their likes, grow
old, and become personally extinct, their spiritual principles only living
in their progeny as a survival of themselves.
Without attempting the very difficult task of giving out the whole process
in all its cosmic details, enough may be said to give an approximate idea
of it. When a Planetary Chain is in its last Round, its Globe A, before
finally _dying out_, sends all its energy and principles into a neutral
centre of latent force, a laya centre, and thereby informs a new nucleus
of undifferentiated substance or matter, _i.e._, calls it into activity or
gives it life. Suppose such a process to have taken place in the Lunar
Planetary Chain; suppose again, for argument’s sake—though Mr. Darwin’s
theory quoted below has lately been upset, even if the fact has not yet
been ascertained by mathematical calculation—that the Moon is far older
than the Earth. Imagine the _six_ fellow‐globes of the Moon—æons before
the first Globe of our seven was evolved—just in the same position in
relation to each other as the fellow‐globes of our Chain now occupy in
regard to our Earth.(267) And now it will be easy to imagine further Globe
A of the Lunar Chain informing Globe A of the Terrestrial Chain,
and—dying; next Globe B of the former sending its energy into Globe B of
the new Chain; then Globe C of the Lunar creating its progeny Sphere C of
the Terrene Chain; then the Moon (our satellite) pouring forth into the
lowest Globe of our Planetary Chain—Globe D, our Earth—all its life,
energy and powers; and, having transferred them to a new centre, becoming
virtually a _dead planet_, in which since the birth of our Globe rotation
has almost ceased. The Moon is the satellite of our Earth, undeniably, but
this does not invalidate the theory that she has given to the Earth all
but her corpse. For Darwin’s theory to hold good, besides the hypothesis
just upset, other still more incongruous speculations had to be invented.
The Moon, it is said, has cooled nearly six times as rapidly as the
Earth.(268) “The Moon, if the earth is 14,000,000 years old since its
incrustation, is only eleven and two‐thirds millions of years old since
that stage ...” etc. And if our Moon is but a splash from our Earth, why
can no similar inference be established for the Moons of other planets?
The Astronomers “do not know.” Why should Venus and Mercury have no
satellites, and by what, when they exist, were they formed? The
Astronomers do not know, because, we say, Science has only one key—the key
of matter—to open the mysteries of Nature, while Occult Philosophy has
seven keys and explains that which Science fails to see. Mercury and Venus
have no satellites, but they had “parents” just as the Earth had. Both are
far older than the Earth, and, before the latter reaches her Seventh
Round, her mother Moon will have dissolved into thin air, as the Moons of
the other planets have, or have not, as the case may be, since there are
planets which have _several_ Moons—a mystery again which no Œdipus of
Astronomy has solved.
The Moon is now the cold residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the
new body, into which her living powers and principles are transfused. She
now is doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted
by and to attract her progeny. Constantly _vampirized_ by her child, she
revenges herself on it, by soaking it through and through with the
nefarious, invisible and poisoned influence which emanates from the occult
side of her nature. For she is a _dead_, yet a _living body_. The
particles of her decaying corpse are full of active and destructive life,
although the body which they had formed, is soulless and lifeless.
Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent and maleficent—a
circumstance finding its parallel on earth, in the fact that the grass and
plants are nowhere more juicy and thriving than on graves; while at the
same time it is the graveyard, or corpse‐emanations, which kill. And like
all ghouls or vampires, the Moon is the friend of the sorcerers and the
foe of the unwary. From the archaic æons and the later times of the
witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present Tântrikas of Bengal, her
nature and properties have been known to every Occultist, but have
remained a closed book for Physicists.
Such is the Moon from the astronomical, geological, and physical
standpoints. As to her metaphysical and psychic nature, it must remain an
occult secret in this work, as it was in the volume entitled _Esoteric
Buddhism_, notwithstanding the rather sanguine statement made therein,
that “there is not much mystery left now in the riddle of the eighth
sphere.”(269) These are topics, indeed, “on which the Adepts are very
reserved in their communications to uninitiated pupils,” and since they
have, moreover, never sanctioned or permitted any published speculations
upon them, the less said the better.
Yet, without treading upon the forbidden ground of the “eighth sphere,” it
may be useful to state some additional facts with regard to the ex‐monads
of the Lunar Chain—the “Lunar Ancestors”—as they play a leading part in
the coming Anthropogenesis. This brings us directly to the Septenary
Constitution of man; and as some discussion has arisen of late about the
best classification to be adopted for the division of the microcosmic
entity, two systems are now appended with a view to facilitate comparison.
The subjoined short article is from the pen of Mr. T. Subba Row, a learned
Vedântin scholar. He prefers the Brâhmanical division of the Râja Yoga,
and from a metaphysical point of view he is quite right. But, as it is a
question of simple choice and expediency, we hold in this work to the
time‐honoured classification of the Trans‐Himâlayan “Arhat Esoteric
School.” The following table and its explanatory text are reprinted from
the _Theosophist_, and are also contained in _Five Years of
Theosophy_.(270)
The Septenary Division In Different Indian Systems.
We give below in a tabular form the classifications adopted by the
Buddhist and Vedântic teachers of the principles of man:
“Esoteric Vedânta. Târaka Râja
Buddhism.” Yoga.
1. Sthûla Annamayakosha.(271) Sthûlopâdhi.(272)
Sharîra.
2. Prâna.(273) Prânamayakosha. Sthûlopâdhi.
3. The Vehicle Prânamayakosha. Sthûlopâdhi.
of Prâna.(274)
4. Kâma Rûpa. Mânomayakosha. Sûkshmopâdhi.
5. Mind Mânomayakosha. Sûkshmopâdhi.
(Volitions and
feelings);
Vijñânam.
6. Spiritual Ânandamayakosha. Kâranopâdhi.
Soul.(275)
7. Âtmâ. Âtmâ. Âtmâ.
From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the
Buddhist classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedântic
division, as it is merely the vehicle of Prâna. It will also be seen that
the fourth principle is included in the third Kosha (Sheath), as the same
principle is but the vehicle of will‐power, which is but an energy of the
mind. It must also be noticed that the Vijñânamayakosha is considered to
be distinct from the Mânomayakosha, as a division is made after death
between the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a closer
affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth and its higher
part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the
basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man.
We may also here point out to our readers that the classification
mentioned in the last column is, for all practical purposes, connected
with Râja Yoga, the best and simplest. Though there are seven principles
in man, there are but three distinct Upâdhis (Bases), in each of which his
Âtmâ may work independently of the rest. These three Upâdhis can be
separated by an Adept without killing himself. He cannot separate the
seven principles from each other without destroying his constitution.
The student will now be better prepared to see that between the three
Upâdhis of the Râja Yoga and its Atmâ, and our three Upâdhis, Âtmâ, and
the additional three divisions, there is in reality but very little
difference. Moreover, as every Adept in Cis‐Himâlayan or Trans‐Himâlayan
India, of the Patanjali, the Âryâsanga or the Mahâyâna schools, has to
become a Râja Yogî, he must, therefore, accept the Târaka Râja
classification in principle and theory, whatever classification he resorts
to for practical and Occult purposes. Thus, it matters very little whether
one speaks of the _three_ Upâdhis, with their _three_ Aspects, and Âtmâ,
the eternal and immortal synthesis, or calls them the “Seven Principles.”
For the benefit of those who may not have read, or, if they have, may not
have clearly understood, in Theosophical writings, the doctrine of the
septenary Chains of Worlds in the Solar Cosmos, the teaching is briefly as
follows.
1. Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe is
septenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet, whether visible or
invisible, is credited with six companion Globes. The evolution of life
proceeds on these seven Globes or bodies, from the First to the Seventh,
in Seven Rounds or Seven Cycles.
2. These Globes are formed by a process which the Occultists call the
“rebirth of Planetary Chains (or Rings).” When the Seventh and last Round
of one of such Rings has been entered upon, the highest or first Globe, A,
followed by all the others down to the last, instead of entering upon a
certain time of rest—or “Obscuration,” as in the previous Rounds—begins to
die out. The Planetary Dissolution (Pralaya) is at hand, and its hour has
struck; each Globe has to transfer its life and energy to another
planet.(276)
3. Our Earth, as the visible representative of its invisible superior
fellow‐globes, its “Lords” or “Principles,” has to live, as have the
others, through seven Rounds. During the first three, it forms and
consolidates; during the fourth, it settles and hardens; during the last
three, it gradually returns to its first ethereal form: it is
spiritualized, so to say.
4. Its Humanity develops fully only in the Fourth—our present Round. Up to
this Fourth Life‐Cycle, it is referred to as “Humanity” only for lack of a
more appropriate term. Like the grub which becomes chrysalis and
butterfly, Man, or rather that which becomes Man, passes through all the
forms and kingdoms during the First Round, and through all the human
shapes during the two following Rounds. Arrived on our Earth at the
commencement of the Fourth, in the present series of Life‐Cycles and
Races, Man is the first form that appears thereon, being preceded only by
the mineral and vegetable kingdoms—even the latter having to _develop and
continue_ its further evolution _through man_. This will be explained in
Volume II. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the Globe on
which it lives, will be ever tending to reässume its primeval form, that
of a Dhyân Chohanic Host. Man tends to become _a_ God and then—_God_, like
every other Atom in the Universe.
_Beginning so early as with the Second Round, Evolution proceeds already
on quite a different plan. It is only during the first Round that
(Heavenly) Man becomes a human being on Globe A, (rebecomes) a mineral, a
plant, an animal, on Globe B and C, etc. The process changes entirely from
the Second Round; but you have learned prudence ... and I advise you to
say nothing before the time for saying it has come...._(277)
5. Every Life‐Cycle on Globe D (our Earth)(278) is composed of seven Root‐
Races. They commence with the ethereal and end with the spiritual, on the
double line of physical and moral evolution—from the beginning of the
Terrestrial Round to its close. One is a “Planetary Round” from Globe A to
Globe G, the seventh; the other, the “Globe Round,” or the Terrestrial.
This is very well described in _Esoteric Buddhism_, and needs no further
elucidation for the time being.
6. The First Root‐Race, _i.e._, the first “Men” on earth (irrespective of
form), were the progeny of the “Celestial Men,” rightly called in Indian
philosophy the “Lunar Ancestors” or the Pitris, of which there are seven
Classes or Hierarchies. As all this will be sufficiently explained in the
following sections and in Volume II, no more need be said of it here.
But the two works already mentioned, both of which treat of subjects from
the Occult doctrine, need particular notice. _Esoteric Buddhism_ is too
well known in Theosophical circles, and even to the outside world, for it
to be necessary to enter at length upon its merits here. It is an
excellent book, and has done still more excellent work. But this does not
alter the fact that it contains some mistaken notions, and that it has led
many Theosophists and lay‐readers to form an erroneous conception of the
Eastern Secret Doctrine. Moreover it seems, perhaps, a little too
materialistic.
_Man_, which came later, was an attempt to present the archaic doctrine
from a more ideal standpoint, to translate some visions in and from the
Astral Light, to render some teachings partly gathered from a Master’s
thoughts, but unfortunately misunderstood. This work also speaks of the
evolution of the early Races of men on Earth, and contains some excellent
pages of a philosophical character. But so far it is only an interesting
little mystical romance. It has failed in its mission, because the
conditions required for a correct translation of these visions were not
present. Hence the reader must not wonder if our volumes contradict these
earlier descriptions in several particulars.
Esoteric cosmogony in general, and the evolution of the human Monad
especially, differ so essentially in these two books, and in other
Theosophical works written independently by _beginners_, that it becomes
impossible to proceed with the present work without special mention of
these two earlier volumes, for both have a number of admirers—_Esoteric
Buddhism_ especially. The time has arrived for the explanation of some
matters in this direction. Mistakes have now to be checked by the original
teachings, and corrected. If one of the said works has too pronounced a
bias toward materialistic Science, the other is decidedly too idealistic,
and at times is fantastic.
From the doctrine—rather incomprehensible to Western minds—which deals
with the periodical Obscurations and successive Rounds of the Globes,
along their circular Chains, were born the first perplexities and
misconceptions. One of such has reference to the “Fifth‐” and even “Sixth‐
Rounders.” Those who knew that a Round was preceded and followed by a long
Pralaya, a pause of rest, which created an impassable gulf between two
Rounds until the time came for a renewed cycle of life, could not
understand the “fallacy” of talking about “_Fifth_ and _Sixth_‐Rounders”
in our _Fourth_ Round. Gautama Buddha, it was held, was a “Sixth‐Rounder,”
Plato and some other great philosophers and minds, “Fifth‐Rounders.” How
could it be? One Master taught and affirmed that there were such “Fifth‐
Rounders” even now on Earth; and though _understood to say_ that mankind
was yet in the Fourth Round, in another place he _seemed_ to say that we
were in the Fifth. To this an “apocalyptic answer” was returned by another
Teacher: “A few drops of rain do not make a monsoon, though they presage
it.”... “No, we are not in the Fifth Round, but Fifth Round men have been
coming in for the last few thousand years.” This was worse than the riddle
of the Sphinx! Students of Occultism subjected their brains to the wildest
work of speculation. For a considerable time they tried to outvie Œdipus
and reconcile the two statements. And as the Masters kept as silent as the
stony Sphinx herself, they were accused of “inconsistency,”
“contradiction,” and “discrepancies.” But they were simply allowing the
speculations to go on, in order _to teach a lesson_ which the Western mind
sorely needs. In their conceit and arrogance, and in their habit of
materializing every metaphysical conception and term, without allowing any
margin for Eastern metaphor and allegory, the Orientalists had made a
jumble of the Hindû exoteric philosophy, and the Theosophists were now
doing the same with regard to Esoteric teachings. To this day it is
evident that the latter have utterly failed to understand the meaning of
the term “Fifth and Sixth‐Rounders.” But it is simply this: every Round
brings about a new development, and even an entire change, in the mental,
psychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man; all these principles
evolving on an ever ascending scale. Hence it follows that those persons
who, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and
spiritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as
the average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to
find itself, on this scale of evolution, immensely higher than is our
present humanity. Similarly, Gautama Buddha—Wisdom incarnate—was still
higher and greater than all the men we have mentioned who are called
“Fifth‐Rounders,” and so Buddha and Shankarâchârya are termed “Sixth
Rounders,” allegorically. Hence again the concealed wisdom of the remark,
pronounced at the time “evasive”—“a few drops of rain do not make a
monsoon, _though they presage it_.”
And now the truth of the following remark, in _Esoteric Buddhism_, will be
fully apparent:
It is impossible, _when the complicated facts of an entirely
unfamiliar science are being presented to untrained minds for the
first time_, to put them forward with all their appropriate
qualifications ... and abnormal developments.... We must be
content to take the broad rules first and deal with the exceptions
afterwards, and especially is this the case with a study, in
connection with which _the traditional methods of teaching,
generally followed, aim at impressing every fresh idea on the
memory by provoking the perplexity it at last relieves_.
As the author of the remark was himself, as he says, “an untrained mind”
in Occultism, his own inferences, and his better knowledge of modern
astronomical speculations than of archaic doctrines, led him, quite
naturally, and unconsciously to himself, to commit a few mistakes of
detail rather than of any “broad rule.” One such will now be noticed. It
is a trifling one, still it is calculated to lead many a beginner into
erroneous conceptions. But as the mistaken notions of the earlier editions
were corrected in the annotations of the fifth edition, so the sixth may
be revised and perfected. There were several reasons for such mistakes.
They were due to the necessity, under which the Teachers laboured, of
giving what were considered as “evasive answers”; the questions being too
persistently pressed to be left unnoticed, while, on the other hand, they
_could only be partially answered_. This position notwithstanding, the
confession that “half a loaf is better than no bread” was but too often
misunderstood, and hardly appreciated as it ought to have been. As a
result thereof gratuitous speculations were sometimes indulged in by the
European lay‐chelâs. Among such were the “Mystery of the Eighth Sphere” in
its relation to the Moon, and the erroneous statement that two of the
superior Globes of the Terrestrial Chain were two of our well‐known
planets; “besides the earth ... there are _only two other worlds of our
chain which are visible_ ... Mars and Mercury....”(279)
This was a great mistake. But the blame for it is to be attached as much
to the vagueness and incompleteness of the Master’s answer as to the
question of the learner itself, which was equally vague and indefinite.
It was asked: “What planets, of those known to ordinary Science, besides
Mercury, belong to our system of worlds?” Now if by “system of worlds” our
_Terrestrial Chain_, or “String,” was intended, in the mind of the
querist, instead of the “Solar System of Worlds,” as it should have been,
then of course the answer was likely to have been misunderstood. For the
reply was: “_Mars, etc., and, four other planets of which Astronomy knows
nothing. Neither A, B, nor Y, Z, are known, nor can they be seen through
physical means, however perfected_.” This is plain: (_a_) Astronomy as yet
knows nothing in reality of the planets, neither the ancient ones, nor
those discovered in modern times. (_b_) No _companion_ planets from A to
Z, _i.e._, no upper Globes of any Chain in the Solar System, can be seen;
with the exception of course of all the planets which come _fourth_ in
number, as our Earth, the Moon, etc., etc. As to Mars, Mercury, and “the
four other planets,” they bear a relation to Earth of which no Master or
high Occultist will ever speak, much less explain the nature.
In this same letter the impossibility is distinctly stated by one of the
Teachers to the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_: “_Try to understand that
you are putting me questions pertaining to the highest Initiation; that I
can give you (only) a general view, but that I dare not, nor will I, enter
into details_....” Copies of all the letters ever received, or sent, with
the exception of a few private ones—“_in which there was no teaching_,”
the Master says—are with the writer. As it was her duty, in the beginning,
to answer and explain certain points not touched upon, it is more than
likely that, notwithstanding the many annotations on these copies, the
writer, in her ignorance of English and her fear of saying too much, may
have bungled the information given. _She takes the whole blame for it upon
herself in any and every case_. But it is impossible for her to allow
students to remain any longer under erroneous impressions, or to believe
that the fault lies with the Esoteric system.
Let it then be now distinctly stated that the theory broached is
impossible, with or without the additional evidence furnished by modern
Astronomy. Physical Science can supply corroborative, though still very
uncertain, evidence, but only as regards heavenly bodies on the same plane
of materiality as our objective Universe. Mars and Mercury, Venus and
Jupiter, like every hitherto discovered planet, or those still to be
discovered, are all, _per se_, the representatives on our plane of such
Chains. As distinctly stated in one of the numerous letters of Mr.
Sinnett’s Teacher: “_there are other and innumerable __ manvantaric Chains
of Globes which bear intelligent Beings, both in and outside our Solar
System_.” But neither Mars nor Mercury belong to _our_ Chain. They are,
along with other planets, septenary Units in the great host of Chains of
our System, and all are as visible as their _upper_ Globes are invisible.
If it is still argued that certain expressions in the Teacher’s letters
were liable to mislead, the answer comes: Amen; so they were. The author
of _Esoteric Buddhism_ understood it well when he wrote that such are “the
traditional modes of teaching ... by provoking the perplexity,” they _do_
or _do not relieve_—as the case may be. At all events, if it is urged that
this might have been explained earlier, and the true nature of the planets
given out as they now are, the answer comes that: It was not found
expedient to do so at the time, as it would have opened the way to a
series of additional questions _which could never be answered on account
of their Esoteric nature_, and thus would only become embarrassing. It had
been declared from the first, and has been repeatedly asserted since: (1)
That no Theosophist, _not even as an accepted Chelâ_, let alone lay
students, could expect to have the secret teachings explained to him
_thoroughly and completely_, before _he had irretrievably pledged himself
to the Brotherhood and passed through at least one Initiation_, because no
figures and numbers could be given to the public, for figures and numbers
are the key to the Esoteric system. (2) That what was revealed was merely
the Esoteric lining of that which is contained in almost all the exoteric
scriptures of the world‐religions—preëminently in the _Brâhmanas_ and the
_Upanishads_ of the _Vedas_, and even in the _Purânas_. It was a small
portion of what is divulged far more fully now in the present volumes; and
even this is very incomplete and fragmentary.
When the present work was commenced, the writer, feeling sure that the
speculation about Mars and Mercury was a mistake, applied to the Teachers
_by letter_ for an explanation and an authoritative version. Both came in
due time, and _verbatim_ extracts from these are now given.
“... _It is quite correct that Mars is in a state of obscuration at
present, and Mercury just beginning to get out of it. You might add that
Venus is in her last Round.... If neither Mercury nor Venus have
satellites, it is because of the reasons ... and also because Mars has two
satellites to which he has no right.... Phobos, the supposed
__‘__inner__’__ satellite, is no satellite at all. Thus, this remark of
long ago by Laplace and now by Faye do not agree, you see. (Read
__‘__Comptes Rendus,__’__ __ Tome XC, p. 569.) Phobos keeps a too short
periodic time, and therefore there __‘__must exist some defect in the
mother idea of the theory,__’__ as Faye justly observes.... Again, both
[Mars and Mercury] are septenary Chains, as independent of the Earth’s
sidereal lords and superiors as you are independent of the
__‘__principles__’__ of Däumling [Tom Thumb]—which were perhaps his six
brothers, with or without night‐caps.... __‘__Gratification of curiosity
is the end of knowledge for some men,__’__ was said by Bacon, who was as
right in postulating this truism, as those who were familiar with it
before him, were right in hedging off_ WISDOM _from Knowledge, and tracing
limits to that which is to be given out at one time.... Remember:_
_... knowledge dwells_
_In heads replete with thoughts of other men,_
_Wisdom in minds attentive to their own_....”
“_You can never impress it too profoundly on the minds of those to whom
you impart some of the Esoteric teachings_.”
Here are more extracts from another letter written by the same authority.
This time it is in answer to some objections laid before the Teachers.
They are based upon extremely scientific, and as futile, reasonings about
the advisability of trying to reconcile the Esoteric theories with the
speculations of Modern Science, were written by a young Theosophist as a
warning against the “Secret Doctrine,” and in reference to the same
subject. He had declared that if there were such companion Earths, “they
must be only a wee bit less material than our globe.” How then was it that
they could not be seen? The answer was:
“..._ Were psychic and spiritual teachings more fully understood, it would
become next to impossible to even imagine such an incongruity. Unless less
trouble is taken to reconcile the irreconcilable—that is to say, the
metaphysical and spiritual sciences with physical or natural philosophy,
__‘__natural__’__ being a synonym to them [men of Science] of that matter
which falls under the perception of their corporeal senses—no progress can
be really achieved. Our Globe, as taught from the first, is at the bottom
of the arc of descent, where the matter of our perceptions exhibits itself
in its grossest form.... Hence it only stands to reason that the Globes
which overshadow our Earth, must be on different and superior planes. In
short, as Globes, they are in_ COÄDUNITION _but not in_ CONSUBSTANTIALITY
_with our Earth, and thus pertain to quite another state of consciousness.
Our planet (like all those we see) is adapted to the peculiar state of its
human stock, that state which enables us to see with our naked eye the
sidereal bodies __ which are coëssential with our terrene plane and
substance, just as their respective inhabitants, the Jovians, Martians and
others, can perceive our little world; because our planes of
consciousness, differing as they do in degree, but being the same in kind,
are on the same layer of differentiated matter.... What I wrote was:
__‘__The minor Pralaya concerns only our little Strings of Globes. (We
called Chains __“__Strings__”__ in those days of lip‐confusion.)... To
such a String our Earth belongs.__’__ This ought to have shown plainly
that the other planets were also __‘__Strings,__’__ or_ CHAINS.... _If he
[meaning the objector] would perceive even the dim silhouette of one of
such __‘__planets__’__ on the higher planes, he has to first throw off
even the thin clouds of the astral matter that stand between him and the
next plane_.”
It thus becomes patent why we could not perceive, even with the help of
the best telescopes, that which is outside our world of matter. Those
alone, whom we call Adepts, who know how to direct their mental vision and
to transfer their consciousness—both physical and psychic—to other planes
of being, are able to speak with authority on such subjects. And they tell
us plainly:
“_Lead the life necessary for the acquisition of such knowledge and
powers, and Wisdom will come to you naturally. Whenever you are able to
attune your consciousness to any of the seven chords of __‘__Universal
Consciousness,__’__ those chords that run along the sounding‐board of
Kosmos, vibrating from one Eternity to another; when you have studied
thoroughly the __‘__Music of the Spheres,__’__ then only will you become
quite free to share your knowledge with those with whom it is safe to do
so. Meanwhile, be prudent. Do not give out the great Truths that are the
inheritance of the future Races, to our present generation. Do not attempt
to unveil the secret of Being and Non‐Being to those unable to see the
hidden meaning of Apollo’s Heptachord, the lyre of the radiant god, in
each of the seven strings of which dwelleth the Spirit, Soul and Astral
Body of the Kosmos, whose shell only has now fallen into the hands of
modern Science.... Be prudent, we say, prudent and wise, and above all
take care what those who learn from you believe in; lest by deceiving
themselves they deceive others, ... for such is the fate of every truth
with which men are, as yet, unfamiliar.... Let rather the Planetary Chains
and other super‐ and sub‐cosmic mysteries remain a dreamland for those who
can neither see, nor yet believe that others can_.”
It is to be regretted that few of us have followed the wise advice, and
that many a priceless pearl, many a jewel of wisdom, has been cast to an
enemy, unable to understand its value, who has turned round and rent us.
“_Let us imagine_”—wrote the same Master to his two “lay chelâs,” as he
called the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ and another gentleman, his co‐
student for some time—“_let us imagine that our earth is one of a group of
seven planets or man‐bearing worlds.... [The __‘__seven planets__’__ are
the sacred planets of antiquity, and are all septenary.] Now the life‐
impulse reaches A, or rather that which is destined to become A, and which
so far is but cosmic dust [a laya‐centre]_ ...” etc.
In these early letters, in which terms had to be invented and words
coined, the “Rings” very often became “Rounds,” and the “Rounds,” “Life‐
Cycles,” and _vice versâ_. To a correspondent who called a “Round” a
“World‐Ring,” the Teacher wrote: “_I believe this will lead to a further
confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the passage of a Monad from Globe
A to Globe G or Z.... The __‘__World‐Ring__’__ is correct.... Advise Mr.
... strongly, to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further_.”
Notwithstanding this agreement, many mistakes, owing to this confusion,
crept into the earliest teachings. The “Races” even were occasionally
mixed up with the “Rounds” and “Rings,” and led to similar mistakes in
_Man: Fragments of Forgotten Truth_. From the first the Master had
written:
“_Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number
of isolated fractions, ... I am unable to satisfy you_.”
This in answer to the questions: “If we are right, then the total
existence prior to the man‐period is 637,” etc., etc. To all the queries
relating to figures, the reply was: “_Try to solve the problem of 777
incarnations.... Though I am obliged to withhold information, ... yet if
you should work out the problem by yourself, it will be my duty to tell
you so_.”
But it never was so worked out, and the results were—never‐ceasing
perplexity and mistakes.
Even the teaching about the septenary constitution of the sidereal bodies
and of the macrocosm—from which the septenary division of the microcosm,
or man—has until now been among the most esoteric. In olden times it used
to be divulged only at Initiation together with the most sacred figures of
the cycles. Now, as stated in one of the Theosophical journals,(280) the
revelation of the whole system of cosmogony had not been contemplated, nor
even thought for one moment possible, at a time when a few scraps of
information were sparingly given out, in answer to letters, written by the
author of _Esoteric Buddhism_, in which he put forward a multiplicity of
questions. Among these were questions on such problems _as no_ MASTER,
_however high and independent he might be, would have the right to answer,
and thus divulge to the world the most time‐honoured and archaic of the
mysteries of the ancient college‐temples_. Hence only a few of the
doctrines were revealed in their broad outlines, while details were
constantly withheld, and all the efforts made to elicit more information
about them were systematically eluded from the beginning. This was
perfectly natural. Of the four Vidyâs, out of the seven branches of
Knowledge mentioned in the _Purânas_—namely, Yajna Vidyâ, the performance
of religious rites in order to produce certain results; Mahâ Vidyâ, the
great (magic) knowledge, now degenerated into Tântrika worship; Guhya
Vidyâ, the science of Mantras and their true rhythm or chanting, of
mystical incantations, etc.; Âtmâ Vidyâ, or the true _spiritual_ and
_divine Wisdom_—it is only the last which can throw final and absolute
light upon the teachings of the three first named. Without the help of
Âtmâ Vidyâ, the other three remain no better than _surface_ sciences,
geometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no thickness. They
are like the soul, limbs and mind of a sleeping man, capable of mechanical
motions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep‐walking, of producing visible
effects, but stimulated only by instinctual not intellectual causes, least
of all by fully conscious spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out
and explained from the three first‐named sciences. But unless the key to
their teachings is furnished by Âtmâ Vidyâ, they will remain for ever like
the fragments of a mangled text‐book, like the adumbrations of great
truths, dimly perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all
proportion by those who would nail every shadow to the wall.
Then, again, another great perplexity was created in the minds of students
by the incomplete exposition of the doctrine of the evolution of the
Monads. To be fully realized, both this process and that of the birth of
the Globes must be examined far more from their metaphysical aspect, than
from what one might call a statistical standpoint, involving figures and
numbers which are rarely permitted to be widely used. Unfortunately, there
are few who are inclined to handle these doctrines only metaphysically.
Even the best of the Western writers upon our doctrine declares in his
work, when speaking of the evolution of the Monads, that “on pure
metaphysics of that sort we are not now engaged.”(281) And in such case,
as the Teacher remarks in a letter to him: “_Why this preaching of our
doctrines, all this uphill work and swimming __‘__in adversum flumen__’__?
Why should the West ... learn ... from the East ... that which can never
meet the requirements of the special tastes of the æsthetics?_” And he
draws his correspondent’s attention “_to the formidable difficulties
encountered by us [the Adepts] in every attempt we make to explain our
metaphysics to the Western mind._”
And well he may; for _outside_ of metaphysics, no Occult philosophy, no
Esotericism is possible. It is like trying to explain the aspirations and
affections, love and hatred, the most private and sacred workings in the
soul and mind of a living man, by an anatomical description of the thorax
and brain of his dead body.
Let us now examine two tenets mentioned above, but hardly alluded to in
_Esoteric Buddhism_, and supplement them as far as lies in our power.
Additional Facts And Explanations Concerning The Globes And The Monads.
Two statements made in the above work must be noticed and the author’s
opinions quoted. The first is as follows:
The spiritual Monads ... do not fully complete their mineral
existence on Globe A, then complete it on Globe B, and so on. They
pass several times round the whole circle as minerals, and then
again several times round as vegetables, and several times as
animals. We purposely refrain for the present from going into
figures, etc., etc.(282)
That was a wise course to adopt in view of the great secrecy maintained
with regard to figures and numbers. This reticence is now partially
relinquished; but it would perhaps have been better had the real numbers
concerning Rounds and evolutional gyrations been either entirely divulged
at the time, or entirely withheld. Mr. Sinnett understood this difficulty
well when saying:
For reasons which are not easy for the outsider to divine, the
possessors of Occult knowledge are especially reluctant to give
out numerical facts relating to cosmogony, though it is hard for
the uninitiated to understand why they should be withheld.(283)
That there were such reasons is evident. Nevertheless, it is to this
reticence that most of the confused ideas of some Eastern as well as
Western pupils are due. The difficulties in the way of the acceptance of
the particular tenets under consideration seemed great, just because of
the absence of any data to go upon. But there it was. For, as the Masters
have many times declared, the figures belonging to the Occult calculations
cannot be given—outside the circle of pledged Chelâs, and not even these
can break the rules.
To make things plainer, without touching upon the mathematical aspects of
the doctrine, the teaching given may be expanded and some obscure points
solved. As the evolution of the Globes and that of the Monads are so
closely interblended, we will make of the two teachings one. In reference
to the Monads, the reader is asked to bear in mind that Eastern philosophy
rejects the Western theological dogma of a newly‐created soul for every
baby born, a dogma as unphilosophical as it is impossible in the economy
of Nature. There must be a limited number of Monads, evolving and growing
more and more perfect, through their assimilation of many successive
Personalities, in every new Manvantara. This is absolutely necessary in
view of the doctrines of Rebirth and Karma, and of the gradual return of
the human Monad to its source—Absolute Deity. Thus, although the hosts of
more or less progressed Monads are almost incalculable, they are still
finite, as is everything in this Universe of differentiation and
finiteness.
As shown in the double diagram of the human Principles and the ascending
Globes of the World‐Chains,(284) there is an eternal concatenation of
causes and effects, and a perfect analogy which runs through, and links
together, all the lines of evolution. One begets the other—Globes as
Personalities. But, let us begin at the beginning.
The general outline of the process by which the successive Planetary
Chains are formed has just been given. To prevent future misconceptions,
some further details may be offered which will also throw light on the
history of Humanity on our own Chain, the progeny of that of the Moon.
In the accompanying diagram, Fig. 1 represents the Lunar Chain of seven
Globes at the outset of its seventh or last Round; while Fig. 2 represents
the Earth Chain which will be, but is not yet in existence. The seven
Globes of each Chain are distinguished in their cyclic order by the
letters A to G, the Globes of the Earth Chain being further marked by a
cross, the symbol of the Earth.
[Diagram II]
Now, it must be remembered that the Monads cycling round any septenary
Chain are divided into seven Classes or Hierarchies, according to their
respective stages of evolution, consciousness and merit. Let us follow,
then, the order of their appearance on Globe A, in the First Round. The
time‐spaces between the appearances of these Hierarchies on any one Globe
are so adjusted, that when Class 7, the last, appears on Globe A, Class 1,
the first, has just passed on to Globe B; and so on, step by step, all
round the Chain.
Again, in the Seventh Round of the Lunar Chain, when Class 7, the last,
quits Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in
previous Rounds, begins to die (to go into its Planetary Pralaya);(285)
and in dying it transfers successively, as just said, its principles, or
life‐elements and energy, etc., one after the other, to a new laya‐centre,
which commences the formation of Globe A of the Earth Chain. A similar
process takes place for each of the Globes of the Lunar Chain, one after
the other, each forming a fresh Globe of the Earth Chain. Our Moon was the
fourth Globe of the series, and was on the same plane of perception as our
Earth. But Globe A of the Lunar Chain is not fully “dead,” till the first
Monads of the first Class have passed from Globe G or Z, the last of the
Lunar Chain, into the Nirvâna which awaits them between the two Chains;
and similarly for all the other Globes as stated, each giving birth to the
corresponding Globe of the Earth Chain.
Further, when Globe A of the new Chain is ready, the first Class or
Hierarchy of Monads from the Lunar Chain incarnate upon it in the lowest
kingdom, and so on successively. The result of this is, that it is only
the first Class of Monads which attains the human state of development
during the first Round, since the second Class, on each Globe, arriving
later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach
the incipient human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up to the
middle of the Fourth Round. But at this point—and on this Fourth Round in
which the human stage will be _fully_ developed—the “door” into the human
kingdom closes; and henceforward the number of “human” Monads, _i.e._,
Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the Monads
which had not reached the human stage by this point, will, owing to the
evolution of Humanity itself, find themselves so far behind, that they
will reach the human stage only at the close of the Seventh and last
Round. They will, therefore, not be men on this Chain, but will form the
Humanity of a future Manvantara, and be rewarded by becoming “men” on a
higher Chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this
there is _but one solitary exception_, and for very good reasons, of which
we shall speak farther on. But this accounts for the difference in the
Races.
It thus becomes apparent how perfect is the analogy between the processes
of Nature in the cosmos and in the individual man. The latter lives
through his life‐cycle, and dies. His higher principles, corresponding in
the development of a Planetary Chain to the cycling Monads, pass into
Devachan, which corresponds to the Nirvâna and states of rest intervening
between two Chains. The man’s lower principles are disintegrated in time,
and are used by Nature again for the formation of new human principles;
the same process also taking place in the disintegration and formation of
Worlds. Analogy is thus the surest guide to the comprehension of the
Occult teachings.
This is one of the “seven mysteries of the moon,” and it is now revealed.
The seven “mysteries” are called by the Japanese Yamabooshis, the mystics
of the Lao‐Tze sect and the ascetic monks of Kioto, the Dzenodoo—the
“Seven Jewels”; only, the Japanese and the Chinese Buddhist ascetics and
Initiates are, if possible, even more reticent in giving out their
“Knowledge” than are the Hindûs.
But the reader must not be allowed to lose sight of the Monads, and must
be enlightened as to their nature, as far as permitted, without
trespassing upon the highest mysteries, of which the writer does not in
any way pretend to know the last or final word.
The Monadic Host may be roughly divided into three great Classes:
1. The most developed Monads—the Lunar Gods or “Spirits,” called, in
India, the Pitris—whose function it is to pass in the First Round through
the whole triple cycle of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in
their most ethereal, filmy, and rudimentary forms, in order to clothe
themselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed Chain. They
are those who first reach the human form—if there can be any form in the
realm of the almost subjective—on Globe A, in the First Round. It is they,
therefore, who lead and represent the human element during the Second and
Third Rounds, and finally evolve their shadows at the beginning of the
Fourth Round for the second Class, or those who come behind them.
2. Those Monads that are the first to reach the human stage during the
three and a half Rounds, and to become “men.”
3. The laggards, the Monads which are retarded, and which will not reach,
by reason of Karmic impediments, the human stage at all during this Cycle
or Round, save one exception which will be spoken of elsewhere, as already
promised.
We are forced to use above the misleading word “men,” and this is a clear
proof of how little any European language is adapted to express these
subtle distinctions.
It stands to reason that these “men” did not resemble the men of to‐day,
either in form or nature. Why then, it may be asked, call them “men” at
all? Because there is no other term, in any Western language, which
approximately conveys the idea intended. The word “men” at least indicates
that these beings were “_manus_,” thinking entities, however they differed
in form and intellection from ourselves. But in reality they were, in
respect of spirituality and intellection, rather “gods” than “men.”
The same difficulty of language is met with in describing the “stages”
through which the Monad passes. Metaphysically speaking, it is of course
an absurdity to talk of the “development” of a Monad, or to say that _it_
becomes “man.” But any attempt to preserve metaphysical accuracy of
language, in the use of such a tongue as the English, would necessitate at
least three extra volumes of this work, and would entail an amount of
verbal repetition which would be wearisome in the extreme. It stands to
reason that a Monad cannot either progress or develop, or even be affected
by the changes of state it passes through. _It is not of this world or
plane_, and may only be compared to an indestructible star of divine light
and fire, thrown down on to our Earth, as a plank of salvation for the
Personalities in which it indwells. It is for the latter to cling to it;
and thus partaking of its divine nature, obtain immortality. Left to
itself the Monad will cling to no one; but, like the plank, be drifted
away to another incarnation, by the unresting current of evolution.
Now the evolution of the _external_ form, or body, round the _astral_, is
produced by the terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower
kingdoms; but the evolution of the _internal_, or real, _Man_ is purely
spiritual. It is now no more a passage of the impersonal Monad through
many and various forms of matter—endowed at best with instinct and
consciousness on quite a different plane—as in the case of external
evolution, but a journey of the “Pilgrim‐Soul” through various _states_ of
not only matter, but of self‐consciousness and self‐perception, or of
_perception_ from _apperception_.
The Monad emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual
unconsciousness; and, skipping the first two planes—too near the Absolute
to permit of any correlation with anything on a lower plane—it gets
directly into the plane of Mentality. But there is no plane in the whole
universe with a broader margin, or a wider field of action, in its almost
endless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive qualities, than this
plane, which has in its turn an appropriate smaller plane for every
“form,” from the Mineral Monad up to the time when that Monad blossoms
forth by evolution into the Divine Monad. But all the time it is still one
and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, throughout its
ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or
partial or total obscuration of matter—two polar antitheses—as it ascends
into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of
materiality.
To return to _Esoteric Buddhism_. The second statement is with regard to
the enormous period intervening between the mineral epoch, on Globe A, and
the man epoch, the term “man epoch” being used because of the necessity of
giving a name to that fourth kingdom which follows the animal, though in
truth the “man” on Globe A, during the First Round, is no man, but only
his prototype, or dimensionless image, from the astral regions. The
statement runs as follows:
The full development of the mineral epoch on Globe A, prepares the
way for the vegetable development, and, as soon as this begins,
the mineral life‐impulse overflows into Globe B. Then, when the
vegetable development on Globe A is complete and the animal
development begins, the vegetable life‐impulse overflows to Globe
B, and the mineral impulse passes on to Globe C. Then finally
comes the human life impulse on Globe A.(286)
And so it goes on for three Rounds, when it slackens, and finally stops at
the threshold of our Globe, in the Fourth Round; because the human period
(of the true physical men to be), the seventh, is now reached. This is
evident, for as said:
... There are processes of evolution which precede the mineral
kingdom, and thus a wave of evolution, indeed several waves of
evolution, precede the mineral wave in its progress round the
spheres.(287)
And now we have to quote from another article, “The Mineral Monad,” in
_Five Years of Theosophy_:
There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees
of elementals, or nascent centres of forces—from the first stage
of differentiation of [from] Mûlaprakriti [or rather Pradhâna,
Primordial Homogeneous Matter] to its third degree—_i.e._, from
full unconsciousness to semi‐perception; the second or higher
group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral
kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees
of the “Monadic Essence,” considered as an evolving energy. Three
stages [sub‐physical] on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom;
three stages on the objective physical(288) side—these are the
[first or preliminary] seven links of the evolutionary chain.(289)
“Preliminary” because they are preparatory, and though belonging in fact
to the natural, they would be more correctly described as the sub‐natural
evolution. This process makes a halt in its stages at the third, at the
threshold of the fourth stage, when it becomes, on the plane of natural
evolution, the first really manward stage, thus forming with the three
elemental kingdoms, the ten, the Sephirothal number. It is at this point
that begins:
A descent of spirit into matter equivalent to an ascent in
physical evolution; a reäscent from the deepest depths of
materiality (the mineral) towards its _status quo ante_, with a
corresponding dissipation of concrete organism—up to Nirvâna, the
vanishing point of differentiated matter.(290)
Therefore it becomes evident, why that which is pertinently called in
_Esoteric Buddhism_ “wave of evolution,” and “mineral, vegetable, animal
and man‐impulse,” stops at the door of our Globe, at its Fourth Cycle or
Round. It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded
to, and become the vehicle of, the Âtmic Ray; _i.e._, Buddhi will awaken
to an apperception of it (Âtman), and thus enter on the first step of a
new septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the
tenth, counting from the lowest upwards, of the Sephirothal Tree, the
Crown.
Everything in the Universe follows analogy. “As above, so below”; Man is
the microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual
plane, repeats itself on the cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of
abstraction; corresponding to the highest must be the lowest; the material
to the spiritual. Thus, corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown, or Upper
Triad, there are the three elemental kingdoms, which precede the
mineral,(291) and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in
the cosmic differentiation to the Worlds of Form and Matter, from the
Super‐Spiritual to the Archetypal.
Now what is a Monad? And what relation does it bear to an Atom? The
following reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to these
questions in the above‐cited article, “The Mineral Monad,” written by the
author. To the second question it is answered:
None whatever to the atom or molecule as at present existing in
the scientific conception. It can neither be compared with the
microscopic organisms, once classed among polygastric infusoria,
and now regarded as vegetable, and classed among algæ; nor is it
quite the _monas_ of the Peripatetics. Physically or
constitutionally the Mineral Monad differs, of course, from the
Human Monad, which is not physical, nor can its constitution be
rendered by chemical symbols and elements.(292)
In short, as the Spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and
Impartite, whose Rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call
the “Individual Monads” of men, so the Mineral Monad—being at the opposite
curve of the circle—is also One, and from it proceed the countless
physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized.
Otherwise how could one account for, and explain mathematically,
the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The
Monad is the combination of the last two principles in man, the
sixth and the seventh, and, properly speaking, the term “Human
Monad” applies only to the Dual Soul (Âtmâ‐Buddhi), not to its
highest spiritual vivifying principle, Âtmâ, alone. But since the
Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Âtmâ), could have no
existence, no being, it has thus been called.... Now the Monadic,
or rather Cosmic, Essence, if such a term be permitted, in the
mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the
series of cycles, from the lowest elemental up to the Deva
kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very
misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity, trailing its
slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after
an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human
being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the
Monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a “Mineral
Monad,” the more correct phraseology in Physical Science, which
differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it
“the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called ‘the
Mineral Kingdom’.” The atom, as represented in the ordinary
scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by
a psychic something, destined after æons to blossom into a man.
But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy, which
itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential
manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The Ocean of Matter does
not divide into its potential and constituent drops, until the
sweep of the life‐impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man‐
birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is
gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The
Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the
pantheistic sense; and the Occultists, while accepting this
thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages
of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract, by terms of
which the “Mineral, Vegetable, Animal Monad,” etc., are examples.
The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution
is passing through that arc of its circuit. The “Monadic Essence”
begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual
consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. As the Monads are
uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the
Spiritual Essence which vivifies them in their degrees of
differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad—not the
atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance
through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of
intelligence.(293)
Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible units,
endowed with the power of _giving and receiving_ with respect to other
units, and thus of determining all spiritual and physical phenomena. It is
he who invented the term apperception, which together with nerve‐ (not
perception, but rather) sensation, expresses the state of the Monadic
consciousness through all the kingdoms up to Man.
Thus it may be wrong, on strictly metaphysical lines, to call Âtmâ‐Buddhi
a Monad, since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore
compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and _vice versâ_; and since the
Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from each
other; so in the case of Âtmâ‐Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the
former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Âtmâ, as Adam‐Kadmon, the
Kabalistic Logos, does to Ain Suph, or Mûlaprakriti to Parabrahman.
And now a few words more on the Moon.
What, it may be asked, are the “Lunar Monads,” just spoken of? The
description of the seven Classes of Pitris will come later, but now some
general explanations may be given. It must be plain to everyone that they
are Monads, who, having ended their Life‐Cycle on the Lunar Chain, which
is inferior to the Terrestrial Chain, have incarnated on the latter. But
there are some further details which may be added, though they border too
closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the
mystery is divulged only to Adepts, but it may be stated that our
satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then
that there are seven Earths, so there are seven Moons, the last alone
being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Mâyâ,
a reflection, just as man’s body is. “_The real Sun and the real Moon are
as invisible as the real man_,” says an Occult maxim.
And it may be remarked, _en passant_, that those Ancients were not so
foolish after all who first started the idea of “Seven Moons.” For though
this conception is now taken solely as an astronomical measure of time, in
a very materialized form, yet underlying the husk there can still be
recognized the traces of a profoundly philosophical idea.
In reality the Moon is the satellite of the Earth in one respect only,
viz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every
other respect, it is the Earth which is the satellite of the Moon, and not
_vice versâ_. Startling as the statement may seem, it is not without
confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by
the cyclic changes in many forms of disease, which coincide with the lunar
phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in
the phenomena of human conception and gestation. The importance of the
Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient
religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of
psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the
Earth’s action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which
causes her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist, that
this fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth’s
satellite on other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a
mother, who walks round and round her child’s cradle, keeping watch over
the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it? Though
in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more
fully developed than the child she watches.
It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as
well in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with
human beings. The Lunar Monads, or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in
reality man himself. They are the Monads, who enter on the cycle of
evolution on Globe A, and who, passing round the Chain of Globes, evolve
the human form, as has just been shown. At the beginning of the human
stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they “ooze out” their astral
doubles, from the “ape‐like” forms which they had evolved in the Third
Round. And it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round
which Nature builds physical man. These Monads, or Divine Sparks, are thus
the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris themselves; for these Lunar Spirits have
to become “men,” in order that their Monads may reach a higher plane of
activity and self‐consciousness, _i.e._, the plane of the Mânasa‐Putras,
those who endow the “senseless” shells, created and informed by the
Pitris, with “mind,” in the latter part of the Third Root‐Race.
In the same way, the Monads, or Egos, of the men of the Seventh Round of
our Earth, after our own Globes A, B, C, D, etc., parting with their life‐
energy, will have informed, and thereby called to life, other laya‐
centres, destined to live and act on a still higher plane of being—in the
same way will the Terrene Ancestors create those who will become their
superiors.
It now becomes plain, that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary
scheme for the formation of the three _periodical_ Upâdhis; or rather
three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably
interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic (or
Spiritual), the Intellectual, and the Physical Evolutions. These three are
the finite aspects, or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion, of
Âtmâ, the seventh, the One Reality.
1. The Monadic, as the name implies, is concerned with the growth and
development into still higher phases of activity of the Monads, in
conjunction with:
2. The Intellectual, represented by the Mânasa‐Dhyânis (the Solar Devas,
or the Agnishvatta Pitris), the “givers of intelligence and consciousness”
to man, and:
3. The Physical, represented by the Chhâyâs of the Lunar Pitris, round
which Nature has concreted the present physical body. This body serves as
the vehicle for the “growth,” to use a misleading word, and the
transformations—through Manas, and owing to the accumulation of
experiences—of the Finite into the Infinite, of the Transient into the
Eternal and Absolute.
Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by
different sets of the highest Dhyânis or Logoi. Each is represented in the
constitution of Man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the
union of these three streams in him, which makes him the complex being he
now is.
Nature, the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve Intelligence
unaided; she can only create “senseless forms,” as will be seen in our
Anthropogenesis. The Lunar Monads cannot progress, for they have not yet
had sufficient touch with the forms created by “Nature,” to allow of their
accumulating experiences through its means. It is the Mânasa‐Dhyânis who
fill up the gap, and they represent the evolutionary power of Intelligence
and Mind, the link between Spirit and Matter—in this Round.
Also it must be borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the
evolutionary cycle upon Globe A, in the first Round, are in very different
stages of development. Hence the matter becomes somewhat complicated. Let
us recapitulate.
The most developed, the Lunar Monads, reach the human germ‐stage in the
First Round; become terrestrial, though very ethereal, human beings
towards the end of the Third Round, remaining on the Globe through the
“obscuration” period, as the seed for future mankind in the Fourth Round,
and thus become the pioneers of Humanity at the beginning of this, the
present Fourth Round. Others reach the human stage only during later
Rounds, _i.e._, in the second, third or first half of the Fourth Round.
And finally the most retarded of all—_i.e._, those still occupying animal
forms after the middle turning‐point of the Fourth Round—will not become
men at all during this Manvantara. They will reach to the verge of
Humanity only at the close of the Seventh Round, to be, in their turn,
ushered into a new Chain, after Pralaya, by older pioneers, the
progenitors of Humanity, or the Seed‐Humanity (Shishta), viz., the men who
will be at the head of all at the end of these Rounds.
The student scarcely needs any further explanation on the part played by
the Fourth Globe and the Fourth Round in the scheme of evolution.
From the preceding diagrams, which are applicable, _mutatis mutandis_, to
Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen that the fourth member of a
series occupies a unique position. Unlike the others, the Fourth has no
“sister” Globe on the same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum
of the “balance” represented by the whole Chain. It is the sphere of final
evolutionary adjustments, the world of the Karmic scales, the Hall of
Justice, where the balance is struck which determines the future course of
the Monad during the remainder of its incarnations in the Cycle. And
therefore is it that, after this central turning‐point has been passed in
the Great Cycle—_i.e._, after the middle point of the Fourth Race in the
Fourth Round on our Globe—no more Monads can enter the human kingdom. The
door is closed for this Cycle, and the balance struck. For were it
otherwise—had there been a new soul created for each of the countless
milliards of human beings that have passed away, and had there been no
reïncarnation—it would become difficult indeed to provide room for the
disembodied “spirits”; nor could the origin and cause of suffering ever be
accounted for. It is the ignorance of the Occult tenets, and the
enforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious education,
which have created Materialism and Atheism as a protest against the
asserted divine order of things.
The only exceptions to the rule just stated are the “dumb races,” whose
Monads are already within the human stage, in virtue of the fact that
these “animals” are later than, and even half descended from, man; their
last descendants being the anthropoid and other apes. These “human
presentments” are in truth only the distorted copies of the early
humanity. But this will receive full attention in the next volume.
As the Commentary, broadly rendered, says:
_1. Every Form on earth, and every Speck [atom] in Space strives in its
efforts towards self‐formation to follow the model placed for it in the
__“__Heavenly Man.__”__... Its (the atom’s) involution and evolution, its
__ external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same
object—Man; Man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this Earth;
the __“__Monad,__”__ in its absolute totality and awakened condition—as
the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth._
_2. The Dhyânis [Pitris] are those who have evolved their Bhuta [Doubles]
from themselves, which Rûpa [Form] has become the vehicle of Monads
[Seventh and Sixth principles] that had completed their cycle of
transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas [Rounds]. Then, they [the
Astral Doubles] became the men of the first Human Race of the Round. But
they were not complete, and were senseless._
This will be explained in the sequel. Meanwhile man—or rather his
Monad—has existed on Earth from the very beginning of this Round. But, up
to our own Fifth Race, the external shapes which covered those divine
Astral Doubles, have changed and consolidated with every sub‐race; the
form and physical structure of the fauna changing at the same time, as
they had to be adapted to the ever‐changing conditions of life on this
Globe, during the geological periods of its formative cycle. And thus will
they go on changing with every Root‐Race, and every _chief_ sub‐race, down
to the last one of the Seventh in this Round.
_3. The inner, now concealed, man, was then [in the beginnings] the
external man. The progeny of the Dhyânis [Pitris], he was __“__the son
like unto his father.__”__ Like the lotus, whose external shape assumes
gradually the form of the model within itself, so did the form of man in
the beginning evolve from within without. After the cycle in which man
began to procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal
kingdom, it became the reverse. The human fœtus follows now in its
transformations all the forms that the physical frame of man assumed,
throughout the three Kalpas [Rounds], during the tentative efforts at
plastic formation around the Monad, by senseless, because imperfect,
matter, in her blind wanderings. In the present age, the physical embryo
is a plant, a reptile, an animal, before it finally becomes man, evolving
within himself his own ethereal counterpart, in his turn. In the beginning
it was that counterpart [astral man] which, being senseless, got entangled
in the meshes of matter._
But this “man” belongs to the Fourth Round. As shown, the Monad had passed
through, journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form,
throughout every kingdom of nature, during the three preceding Rounds. But
the Monad which becomes human, is _not the Man_. In this Round—with the
exception of the highest mammals after man, the anthropoids destined to
die out in this our race, when their Monads will be liberated and pass
into the astral human forms, or the highest elementals, of the Sixth and
the Seventh Races, and then into the lowest human forms in the Fifth
Round—no units of any of the kingdoms are animated any longer by Monads
destined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower
elementals of their respective realms. These “elementals” will become
human Monads, in their turn, only at the next great planetary Manvantara.
And in fact the last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the
Fifth Root‐Race. Nature never repeats herself; therefore the anthropoids
of our day have not existed at any time since the middle of the Miocene
period, when, like all cross breeds, they began to show a tendency, more
and more marked as time went on, to return to the type of their first
parent, the gigantic black and yellow Lemuro‐Atlantean. To search for the
“missing link” is useless. To the Scientists of the closing Sixth Root‐
Race, millions and millions of years hence, our modern races, or rather
their fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes—an extinct
species of the _genus homo_.
Such anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by
Nature, but are the direct product and creation of “senseless” man. The
Hindûs attribute a divine origin to the apes and monkeys, because the men
of the Third Race were gods from another plane, who had become “senseless”
mortals. This subject had already been touched upon in _Isis Unveiled_,
twelve years ago, as plainly as was then possible. The reader is there
referred to the Brâhmans, if he would know the reason of the regard they
have for the monkeys.
He [the reader] would perhaps learn—were the Brâhman to judge him
worthy of an explanation—that the Hindû 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. 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, that
great combination of correlations of physical forces, ever
creeping on towards 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.(294)
Moreover, a German scientific work is mentioned in a footnote on the same
page. It says that:
A Hanoverian Scientist has recently published a work entitled,
_Ueber die __ Auflösung der Arten durch Natürliche Zucht‐wahl_, in
which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly
mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he
maintains that it is the ape which is evolved from man. He shows
that, in the beginning, mankind were, morally and physically, the
types and prototypes of our present race and of our human dignity,
by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial
development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur
of ideal conceptions. This is a purely Brâhmanic, Buddhistic and
Kabalistic doctrine. His book is copiously illustrated with
diagrams, tables, etc. It asserts that the gradual debasement and
degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced
throughout ethnological transformations down to our time. And, as
one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized
man of the present day will at last, under the action of the
inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like
descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual present,
it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and
materialistic a race should end as Simia rather than as Seraphs.
But though the apes descend from man, it is certainly not the fact that
the human Monad, which has once reached the level of humanity, ever
incarnates again in the form of an animal.
The cycle of “metempsychosis” for the human Monad is closed, for we are in
the Fourth Round and the Fifth Root‐Race. The reader will have to bear in
mind—at any rate one who has made himself acquainted with _Esoteric
Buddhism_—that the Stanzas which follow in this volume and the next speak
of the evolution in our Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the
turning‐point, after which, matter, having reached its lowest depths,
begins to strive onward and to become spiritualized, with every new race
and with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to
see contradiction where there is none, for in _Esoteric Buddhism_ Rounds
are spoken of in general, while here only the Fourth, or our present
Round, is meant. Then it was the work of formation; now it is that of
reformation and evolutionary perfection.
Finally, to close this digression anent various, but unavoidable,
misconceptions, we must refer to a statement in _Esoteric Buddhism_, which
has produced a very fatal impression upon the minds of many Theosophists.
One unfortunate sentence, from the work just referred to, is constantly
brought forward to prove the materialism of the doctrine. The author,
referring to the progress of organisms on the Globes, says that:
The mineral kingdom will no more develop the vegetable ... than
the Earth was able to develop man from the ape, till it received
an impulse.(295)
Whether this sentence renders the thought of the author literally, or is
simply, as we believe it is, a _lapsus calami_, may remain an open
question.
It is really with surprise that we have ascertained the fact, that
_Esoteric Buddhism_ was so little understood by some Theosophists, as to
have led them into the belief that it thoroughly supported Darwinian
evolution, and especially the theory of the descent of man from a
pithecoid ancestor. As one member writes: “I suppose you realize that
three‐fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that, as far as
the evolution of man is concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one
another.” Nothing of the kind was ever realized, nor is there any great
warrant for it, so far as we know, in _Esoteric Buddhism_. It has been
repeatedly stated, that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the
groundwork of the modern teachings, but neither Occultism nor Theosophy
has ever supported the wild theories of the present Darwinists—least of
all the descent of man from an ape. Of this, more hereafter. But one has
only to turn to p. 47 of the work named, to find the statement that:
Man belongs to a kingdom distinctly separate from that of the
animals.
With such a plain and unequivocal statement before him, it is very strange
that any careful student should have been so misled, unless he is prepared
to charge the author with a gross contradiction.
Every Round repeats the evolutionary work of the preceding Round, on a
higher scale. With the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just
mentioned, the Monadic inflow, or inner evolution, is at an end till the
next Manvantara. It can never be too often repeated that the full‐blown
human Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new crop of
candidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next Cycle. Thus
there is a lull; and this is why, during the Fourth Round, man appears on
Earth earlier than any animal creation, as will be described.
But it is still urged that the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ has “preached
Darwinism” all along. Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend
countenance to this inference. Besides which, the Occultists themselves
are ready to concede _partial_ correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis, in
later details, bye‐laws of evolution, and after the midway point of the
Fourth Race. Of that which has taken place, Physical Science can really
know nothing, for such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of
investigation. But what the Occultists have never admitted, nor will they
ever admit, is that man was _an ape in __ this or any other Round_; or
that he ever could be one, however much he may have been “ape‐like.” This
is vouched for by the very authority from whom the author of _Esoteric
Buddhism_ got his information.
Thus to those who confront the Occultists with these lines from the above‐
named volume:
It is enough to show that we may as reasonably—and that we must,
if we would talk about these matters at all—conceive a life‐
impulse giving birth to mineral forms, as of the same sort of
impulse concerned to _raise a race of apes into a race of
rudimentary men_.
To those who bring this passage forward as showing “decided Darwinism,”
the Occultists answer by pointing to the explanation of the Master, Mr.
Sinnett’s Teacher, which would contradict these lines, were they written
in the spirit attributed to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the
writer, together with others, two years ago (1886), with additional
marginal remarks, to quote from, in the _Secret Doctrine_.
It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the Western
student, in reconciling some facts, previously given, with the evolution
of man from the animal, _i.e._, from the mineral, vegetable and animal
kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine of analogy and
correspondences. Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas, and even
Gods, having to pass through states, which it was agreed to refer to as
“Immetallization, Inherbation, Inzoönization and finally Incarnation,” and
explains this by hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal
races of Dhyân Chohans. Concerning this it says:
“_These __‘__failures__’__ are too far progressed and spiritualized to be
thrown back forcibly from Dhyân Chohanship into the vortex of a new
primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms_....”
After which, a hint only is given about the mystery contained in the
allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in
Volume II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution:
“_They will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup of
retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the
elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop
little by little the full type of humanity._”
These Dhyân Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as
do the lower Pitris; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root
Race. Thus, as the teaching stands:
“_Round I. Man in the First Round and First Race on Globe D, our __ Earth,
was an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyâni, as man), non‐intelligent but super‐
spiritual; and correspondingly, on the law of analogy, in the First Race
of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races and sub‐races, ... he
grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still
preponderatingly ethereal.... He is sexless, and, like the animal and
vegetable, he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser
surroundings._
“_Round II. He [man] is still gigantic and ethereal, but growing firmer
and more condensed in body; a more physical man yet still less intelligent
than spiritual (1), for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than
is the physical frame...._
“_Round III. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first
the form of a giant‐ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than
spiritual. For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his
primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality
(2). In the last half of the Third Round, his gigantic stature decreases,
and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being,
though still more an ape than a Deva.... [All this is almost exactly
repeated in the Third Root‐Race of the Fourth Round.]_
“_Round IV. Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The
[hitherto] dumb races acquire our [present] human speech on this Globe, on
which, from the Fourth Race, language is perfected and knowledge
increases. At this half‐way point of the Fourth Round [as of the Fourth,
or Atlantean, Root‐Race], humanity passes the axial point of the minor
manvantaric cycle ... the world teeming with the results of intellectual
activity and spiritual decrease...._”
This is from the authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and
additional explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes.
“_(1) ... The original letter contained general teaching—a __‘__bird’s‐eye
view__’__—and particularized nothing.... To speak of __‘__physical
man,__’__ while limiting the statement to the early Rounds, would be
drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous __‘__coats of
skin.__’__... The first __‘__Nature,__’__ the first __‘__body,__’__ the
first __‘__mind__’__ on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe
in the first Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have:_
‘_... centred in our make such strange extremes,_
_From different Natures_(_296_)_ marvellously mixed ..._’
“_(2) Restore: he has now reached the point [by analogy, and as the __
Third Root Race in the Fourth Round], where his [the angel‐man’s]
primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human
mentality, and you have the true version on your thumb‐nail...._”
These are the words of the Teacher; text, words and sentences in brackets,
and explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an
enormous difference in such terms as “objectivity” and “subjectivity,”
“materiality” and “spirituality,” when the same terms are applied to
different planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its
relative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left
to his own speculations, an author who, however eager to learn, was yet
quite inexperienced in these abstruse teachings, has fallen into an error.
Nor was the difference between the Rounds and the Races sufficiently
defined in the letters received, since nothing of the kind had been
required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the
difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master:
“_The teachings were imparted under protest.... They were, so to say,
smuggled goods ... and when I remained face to face with only one
correspondent, the other, Mr. ... had so far tossed all the cards into
confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law._”
Theosophists “whom it may concern” will understand what is meant.
The outcome of all this is, that nothing had ever been said in the letters
to warrant the assurance, that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any
Adept believed in, unless metaphorically, the preposterous modern theory
of the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape—an anthropoid of
the actual animal kind. To this day the world is more full of ape‐like men
than the woods are of men‐like apes. The ape is sacred in India because
its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick
veil of allegory. Hanumâna is the son of Pavana (Vâyu, “God of the wind”)
by Anjanâ, wife of a monster called Kesarî, though his genealogy varies.
The reader who bears this in mind, will find in Volume II, _passim_, the
whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The “men” of the Third Race
(who separated) were “Gods,” by their spirituality and purity, though
senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.
These “men” of the Third Race, the ancestors of the Atlanteans, were just
such ape‐like, intellectually senseless, giants as were those beings, who,
during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it
was these Third Race “men” who, through promiscuous connection with animal
species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages
later (in the Tertiary period only), the remote ancestor of the real ape,
as we find it now in the pithecoid family.
And if this is found clashing with the statement which shows the animal
later than man, then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the
_placental mammal_ only is meant. In those days, there were animals of
which Zoölogy does not even dream in our own; _and the modes of
reproduction were not identical_ with the notions which modern Physiology
has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such
questions in public, but there is _no_ contradiction or impossibility in
this whatever.
Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary,
did not teach the evolution of “man” from the “ape.” Nor does the author
of _Esoteric Buddhism_ assert it anywhere in his work in so many words;
but, owing to his inclination towards Modern Science, he uses language
which might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the
Fourth, the Atlantean, Race, however much he may have looked physically
like a “gigantic ape”—“the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a
man”—was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The Lemuro‐Atlantean
was a highly civilized Race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better
history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he
was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization
of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro‐Atlantean of the closing Third Race
was so.
And now we may return to the Stanzas.
Stanza VI.—_Continued_.
5. AT THE FOURTH(297) (_a_), THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE
THIRD REFUSES. TWO(298) OBEY.
THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED (_b_); THEY WILL BE BORN IN THE FOURTH,(299)
SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING. THIS IS THE FIRST WAR (_c_).
The full meaning of this Shloka can only be fully comprehended after
reading the additional detailed explanations, in the Anthropogenesis and
its Commentaries, in Volume II. Between this Shloka and Shloka 4, extend
long ages; and there now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another æon. The
drama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act; but for
a clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn
back before he can proceed onward. For this verse belongs to the general
Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Volume II will give a
detailed account of the “creation,” or rather formation, of the first
human beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or,
as they are called, the First, Second, and the Third Root‐Races. As the
solid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its
protoplasmic phantom, so did man.
(_a_) That which is meant by the qualification the “Fourth,” is explained
as the Fourth Round, only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can
equally mean Fourth Eternity as Fourth Round, or even our Fourth Globe.
For, as will repeatedly be shown, the latter is the fourth sphere, on the
fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we are in
the Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium
between Spirit and Matter had to take place.
It was, as we shall see, at this period—during the highest point of
civilization and knowledge, and also of human intellectuality, of the
Fourth, Atlantean Race—that, owing to the final crisis of the
physiologico‐spiritual adjustment of the races, humanity branched off into
two diametrically opposite paths: the _Right‐_ and the _Left‐hand_ Paths
of Knowledge or Vidyâ. In the words of the Commentary:
_Thus were the germs of the White and the Black Magic sown in those days.
The seeds lay latent for some time, to sprout only during the early period
of the Fifth [our Race]._
Says the Commentary explaining the Shloka:
_The Holy Youths [the Gods] refused to multiply and create species after
their likeness, after their kind. __“__They are not fit Forms [Rûpas] for
us. They have to grow.__”__ They refuse to enter the Chhâyâs [Shadows or
Images] of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling prevailed from the
beginning, even among the Gods, and they fell under the eye of the Karmic
Lipikas._
They had to suffer for it in later births. How the punishment reached the
Gods will be seen in Volume II.
It is a universal tradition that, before the physiological “Fall,”
propagation of one’s kind, whether human or animal, took place through the
_Will_ of the Creators, or of their progeny. This was the Fall of Spirit
into generation, not the Fall of mortal Man. It has already been stated
that, to become self‐conscious, Spirit must pass through every cycle of
being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man. Spirit _per se_
is an unconscious negative _abstraction_. Its purity is inherent, not
acquired by merit; hence, as already shown, to become the highest Dhyân
Chohan, it is necessary for each Ego to attain to full self‐consciousness
as a human, _i.e._, conscious, being, which is synthesized for us in Man.
The Jewish Kabalists, arguing that no Spirit can belong to the divine
Hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) is united to Nephesh (Living Soul), only
repeat the Eastern Esoteric teaching:
_A Dhyâni has to be an Âtmâ‐Buddhi; once the Buddhi‐Manas breaks loose
from the immortal Âtmâ, of which it (Buddhi) is the vehicle, Âtman passes
into Non‐Being, which is Absolute Being._
This means that the purely Nirvânic state is a passage of Spirit back to
the ideal abstraction of Be‐ness, which has no relation to the plane on
which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle.
(_b_) “The Curse is pronounced” does not mean, in this instance, that any
Personal Being, God, or Superior Spirit, pronounced it, but simply that
the cause, which could but create bad results, had been generated; and
that the effects of this Karmic cause could lead the Beings that
counteracted the laws of Nature, and thus impeded her legitimate progress,
only to bad incarnations, hence to suffering.
(_c_) “There were many Wars,” all referring to struggles of adjustment,
spiritual, cosmical and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the
evolution of man, as he is now. The Powers or pure Essences that were
“told to create,” relate to a mystery explained, as already said,
elsewhere. It is not only one of the most hidden secrets of Nature—that of
generation, over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their
heads together—but likewise a divine function which involves that great
religious, or rather dogmatic, mystery, the so‐called “Fall” of the
Angels. Satan and his rebellious host, when the meaning of the allegory is
explained, will thus prove to have refused to create physical man, only to
become the direct Saviours and Creators of divine Man. The symbolical
teaching is more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as
will be seen later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind functioning
medium, impelled and guided by fathomless Law, the “rebellious” Angel
claimed and enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his right
of free‐agency and responsibility, since Man and Angel are alike under
Karmic Law.
Explaining Kabalistic views, the author of _New Aspects of Life_ says of
the Fallen Angels that:
According to the symbolical teaching, Spirit, from being simply a
functionary agent of God, became volitional in its developed and
developing action; and, substituting its own will for the divine
desire in its regard, so fell. Hence the kingdom and reign of
spirits and spiritual action, which flow from and are the product
of spirit‐volition, are outside, and contrasted with, and in
contradiction to, the kingdom of souls and divine action.(300)
So far, so good; but what does the author mean by saying:
When man was created, he was human in constitution, with human
affections, human hopes and aspirations. From this state he
fell—into the brute and savage.
This is diametrically opposite to our Eastern teaching, and even to the
Kabalistic notion, so far as we understand it, and to the _Bible_ itself.
This looks like Corporealism and Substantialism colouring Positive
Philosophy, though it is rather difficult to feel quite sure of the
author’s meaning. A _fall_, however, “from the natural into the
supernatural and the animal”—supernatural meaning the purely spiritual in
this case—implies what we suggest.
The _New Testament_ speaks of one of these “Wars,” as follows:
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against
the Dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed
not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the
great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.(301)
The Kabalistic version of the same story is given in the _Codex Nazaræus_,
the scripture of the Nazarenes, the real mystic Christians of John the
Baptist, and the Initiates of Christos. Bahak Zivo, the “Father of the
Genii,” is ordered to construct creatures—to “create.” But, as he is
“ignorant of Orcus,” he fails to do so, and calls in Fetahil, a still
purer spirit, to his aid, who fails still worse. This is a repetition of
the failure of the “Fathers,” the Lords of Light, who fail one after the
other.(302)
We will now quote from our earlier volumes:(303)
Then steps on the stage of creation the Spirit(304) (of the Earth
so‐called, or the Soul, Psyche, which St. James calls “devilish”),
the lower portion of the Anima Mundi or Astral Light. [See the
close of this Shloka.] With the Nazarenes and the Gnostics this
Spirit was _feminine_. Thus the Spirit of the Earth, perceiving
that for Fetahil,(305) the newest man (the latest), the splendour
was “changed,” and that for splendour existed “decrease and
damage,” she awakes Karabtanos,(306) “who was frantic and _without
sense and judgment_,” and says to him: “Arise, see, the Splendour
(Light) of the _Newest_ Man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or
create men), the decrease of this Splendour is visible. Rise up,
come with thy Mother (the Spiritus) and free thee from limits by
which thou art held, and those more ample than the whole world.”
After which, follows the union of the frantic and blind matter,
guided by the insinuations of the Spirit (not the _Divine_ Breath
but the _Astral_ Spirit, which by its double essence is already
tainted with matter); and the offer of the Mother being accepted,
the Spiritus conceives “Seven Figures,” and the Seven Stellars
(Planets), which represent also the _seven capital sins_, the
progeny of an Astral Soul, separated from its divine source
(spirit), and _matter_, the blind demon of concupiscence. Seeing
this, Fetahil extends his hand towards the abyss of matter, and
says: “Let the earth exist, just as the abode of the Powers has
existed.” Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he condenses, he
creates our planet.
Then the _Codex_ proceeds to tell how Bahak Zivo was separated
from the Spiritus, and the Genii or Angels from the Rebels.(307)
Then (the greatest) Mano,(308) who dwells with the greatest Ferho,
calls Kebar Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat Iavar bar Iufin
Ifafin), the Helm and Vine of the Food of Life(309)—he being the
third Life, and commiserating the rebellious and foolish Genii, on
account of the magnitude of their ambition, says: “Lord of the
Genii(310) (Æons), see what the Genii (the Rebellious Angels) do,
and about what they are consulting.(311) They say: ‘Let us call
forth the world, and let us call the “Powers” into existence. The
Genii are the Princes (Principes), the Sons of Light, but Thou art
the Messenger of Life’.”
And in order to counteract the influence of the seven “badly
disposed” principles the progeny of Spiritus, Kebar Zivo (or Cabar
Zio), the mighty Lord of Splendour, produces _seven other lives_
(the cardinal virtues), who shine in their own form and light
“from on high,”(312) and thus reëstablish the balance between good
and evil, light and darkness.
Here one finds a repetition of the early _allegorical_ dual systems, such
as the Zoroastrian, and detects a germ of the dogmatic and dualistic
religions of the future, a germ which has grown into such a luxuriant tree
in ecclesiastical Christianity. It is already the outline of the two
“Supremes”—God and Satan. But in the Stanzas no such idea exists.
Most of the Western Christian Kabalists—preëminently Éliphas Lévi—in their
desire to reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church Dogmas, did their best
to make of the “Astral Light” only and preeminently the Plerôma of the
early Church Fathers, the abode of the Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the
Archôns and Powers. But the Astral Light, though only the lower aspect of
the Absolute, is still dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never to be
viewed otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes. The difference which
exists between its “Light” and its “Living Fire,” ought ever to be present
in the mind of the Seer and the Psychic. The higher aspect of this
“Light,” without which only creatures of matter can be produced, is this
Living Fire, and its Seventh Principle. It is stated in _Isis Unveiled_,
in a complete description of it:
The Astral Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bi‐sexual. The (ideal)
male part of it is purely divine and spiritual, it is Wisdom, it
is Spirit or Purusha; while the female portion (the Spiritus of
the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense, with matter, _is_ indeed
matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the life‐principle of
every living creature, and furnishes the astral soul, the fluidic
_perisprit_, to men, animals, fowls of the air, and everything
living. Animals have only the latent germ of the highest immortal
soul in them. This latter will develop only after a series of
countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolutions is
contained in the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a
plant, a beast; a beast, a man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a
god.(313)”
The seven principles of the Eastern Initiates had not been explained when
_Isis Unveiled_ was written, but only the three _Kabalistic Faces_ of the
semi‐exoteric _Kabalah_.(314) But these contain the description of the
mystic natures of the first Group of Dhyân Chohans in the _regimen ignis_,
the region and “rule (or government) of fire,” divided into three classes,
synthesized by the first, which makes _four_ or the “Tetraktys.” If one
studies the commentaries attentively, he will find the same progression in
the angelic natures, _viz_., from the _passive_ down to the _active_; the
last of these Beings are as near to the Ahamkâra Element—the region or
plane wherein _Egoship_, or the feeling of _I‐am‐ness_, is beginning to be
defined—as the first are near to the undifferentiated Essence. The former
are Arûpa, incorporeal; the latter, Rûpa, corporeal.
In Volume II of the same work,(315) the philosophical systems of the
Gnostics and the primitive Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the
Ebionites, are fully considered. They show the views held in those days,
outside the circle of Mosaic Jews, about Jehovah. He was identified by all
the Gnostics with the evil, rather than with the good principle. For them,
he was Ilda‐Baoth, the “Son of Darkness,” whose mother, Sophia Achamôth,
was the daughter of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom—the female Holy Ghost of the
early Christians—Âkâsha; Sophia Achamôth personifying the Lower Astral
Light or Ether. The Astral Light stands in the same relation to Âkâsha and
Anima Mundi, as Satan stands to the Deity. They are one and the same thing
_seen from two aspects_, the spiritual and the psychic—the super‐ethereal,
or connecting link between matter and pure spirit—and the physical.(316)
Ilda‐Baoth—a compound name, made up of _Ilda_ (ילד), child, and _Baoth_;
the latter from בהוצ an egg, and בהות, chaos, emptiness, void, or
desolation; or the Child born in the Egg of Chaos, like Brahmâ—or Jehovah,
is simply one of the Elohim, the Seven Creative Spirits, and one of the
lower Sephiroth. Ilda‐Baoth produces from himself seven other Gods,
“Stellar Spirits,” or the Lunar Ancestors,(317) for they are all the
same.(318) They are all _in his own image_, the “Spirits of the Face,” and
the reflections one of the other, who become darker and more material, as
they successively recede from their originator. They also inhabit seven
regions disposed like a stair, for its steps mount and descend the scale
of spirit and matter.(319) With Pagans and Christians, with Hindûs and
Chaldeans, with Greek as with Roman Catholics—the texts varying slightly
in their interpretations—they all were the Genii of the seven planets, and
of the seven planetary spheres of our septenary Chain, of which Earth is
the lowest. This connects the “Stellar” and “Lunar” Spirits with the
higher planetary Angels, and the Saptarshis, the Seven Rishis of the
Stars, of the Hindûs—as subordinate Angels, or Messengers, to these
Rishis, their emanations, on the descending scale. Such, in the opinion of
the philosophical Gnostics, were the God and the Archangels now worshipped
by the Christians! The “Fallen Angels” and the legend of the “War in
Heaven” are thus purely pagan in their origin, and come from India, _viá_
Persia and Chaldea. The only reference to them in the Christian canon is
found in _Revelation_ xii, as quoted a few pages back.
Thus “Satan,” once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious, dogmatic,
unphilosophical spirit of the Churches, grows into the grandiose image of
one who makes of a _terrestrial_, a _divine_ Man; who gives him,
throughout the long cycle of Mahâkalpa, the law of the Spirit of Life, and
makes him free from the Sin of Ignorance, hence of Death.
6. THE OLDER WHEELS ROTATED DOWNWARD AND UPWARD (_a_).... THE MOTHER’S
SPAWN FILLED THE WHOLE.(320) THERE WERE BATTLES FOUGHT BETWEEN THE
CREATORS AND THE DESTROYERS, AND BATTLES FOUGHT FOR SPACE; THE SEED
APPEARING AND REÄPPEARING CONTINUOUSLY (_b_).(321)
(_a_) Here, having finished for the time being with our side‐issues—which,
however they may break the flow of the narrative, are necessary for the
elucidation of the whole scheme—we must return once more to Cosmogony. The
phrase “Older Wheels” refers to the Worlds, or Globes, of our Chain as
they were during the previous Rounds. The present Stanza, when explained
esoterically, is found embodied entirely in Kabalistic works. Therein will
be found the very history of the evolution of those countless Globes,
which evolve after a periodical Pralaya, rebuilt from old material into
new forms. The previous Globes disintegrate and reäppear, transformed and
perfected for a new phase of life. In the _Kabalah_, worlds are compared
to sparks which fly from under the hammer of the great Architect—_Law_,
the Law which rules all the smaller Creators.
The following comparative diagram shows the identity between the two
systems, the Kabalistic and the Eastern. The three upper are the three
higher planes of consciousness, revealed and explained in both schools
only to the Initiates; the lower represent the four lower planes—the
lowest being our plane, or the visible Universe.
[Diagram III]
These seven _planes_ correspond to the seven _states_ of consciousness in
man. It remains with him to attune the three higher states in himself to
the three higher planes in Kosmos. But before he can attempt to attune, he
must awaken the three “seats” to life and activity. And how many are
capable of bringing themselves to even a superficial comprehension of Âtmâ
Vidyâ (Spirit‐Knowledge), or what is called by the Sufis, Rohanee!(322)
(_b_) “The Seed appearing and reäppearing continuously.” Here “Seed”
stands for the “World‐Germ,” viewed by Science as material particles in a
highly attenuated condition, but in Occult Physics as “spiritual
particles,” _i.e._, supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval
differentiation. To see and appreciate the difference—the immense gulf
that separates terrestrial matter from the finer grades of supersensuous
matter—every Astronomer, every Chemist and Physicist ought to be a
_Psychometer_, to say the least; he ought to be able to sense for himself
that difference in which he now refuses to believe. Mrs. Elizabeth Denton,
one of the most learned, and also one of the most materialistic and
sceptical women of her age—the wife of Professor Denton, the well‐known
American Geologist, and the author of _The Soul of Things_—was, in spite
of her scepticism, one of the most wonderful psychometers. This is what
she describes in one of her experiments. A particle of a meteorite was
placed on her forehead, in an envelope, and the lady, not being aware of
what it contained, said:
What a difference between that which we recognize as matter here
and that which seems like matter there! In the one, the _elements
are so coarse and so angular_, I wonder that we can endure it at
all, much more that we can desire to continue our present
relations to it; in the other, all the elements are so refined,
they are so free from those great, rough angularities, which
characterize the elements here, that I can but regard _that_ as by
so much the more than this the real existence.(323)
In Theogony, every Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves later
on a celestial Being, a God.
In the “Beginning,” that which is called in mystic phraseology “Cosmic
Desire” evolves into Absolute Light. Now light without any shadow would be
absolute light; in other words, absolute darkness, as Physical Science
tries to prove. This “shadow” appears under the form of primordial matter,
allegorized—if you will—in the shape of the Spirit of Creative Fire or
Heat. If, rejecting the poetical form and allegory, Science chooses to see
in this the primordial “fire‐mist,” it is welcome to do so. Whether one
way or the other, whether Fohat or the famous Force of Science, nameless
and as difficult of definition as our Fohat himself, that Something
“caused the Universe to move with circular motion,” as Plato has it; or,
as the Occult teaching expresses it:
_The Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of
balls, to impel them to move in converging lines and finally to approach
__ each other and aggregate.... Being scattered in Space, without order or
system, the World‐Germs come into frequent collision until their final
aggregation, after which they become Wanderers [Comets]. Then the battles
and struggles begin. The older [bodies] attract the younger, while others
repel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those that
escape become worlds._(324)
When carefully analyzed and reflected upon, this will be found as
scientific as Science can make it, even at our late period.
We have been assured, that there exist several modern works of speculative
fancy upon such struggles for life in sidereal heaven, especially in the
German language. We rejoice to hear it, for ours is an Occult teaching
lost in the darkness of archaic ages. We have treated of it fully in _Isis
Unveiled_,(325) and the idea of Darwinian‐like evolution, of struggle for
life and supremacy, and of the “survival of the fittest,” among the Hosts
above as of the Hosts below, runs throughout both the volumes of our
earlier work, written in 1876. But the idea is not ours, it is that of
antiquity. Even the Purânic writers have ingeniously interwoven allegory
with cosmic facts and human events. Any symbologist may discern their
astro‐cosmical allusions, even though he be unable to grasp the whole
meaning. The great “wars in heaven,” in the _Purânas_; the wars of the
Titans, in Hesiod and other classical writers; the “struggles” also
between Osiris and Typhon, in the Egyptian myth; and even those in the
Scandinavian legends; all refer to the same subject. Northern Mythology
refers to it as the battle of the Flames, the sons of Muspel who fought on
the field of Wigred. All these relate to Heaven and Earth, and have a
double, and often even a triple, meaning and esoteric application to
things above as to things below. They severally relate to astronomical,
theogonical and human struggles; to the adjustment of orbs, and the
supremacy among nations and tribes. The “struggle for existence” and the
“survival of the fittest” reigned supreme from the moment that Kosmos
manifested into being, and could hardly escape the observant eye of the
ancient Sages. Hence the incessant fights of Indra, the God of the
Firmament, with the Asuras—degraded from high Gods into cosmic Demons—and
with Vritra or Ahi; the battles fought between stars and constellations,
between moons and planets—later on incarnated as kings and mortals. Hence
also the War in Heaven of Michael and his Host against the Dragon—Jupiter
and Lucifer Venus—when a third of the stars of the rebellious Host was
hurled down into Space, and “its place was found no more in Heaven.” As we
wrote long ago:
This is the basic and fundamental stone of the secret cycles. It
shows that the Brâhmans and Tanaïm ... speculated on the creation
and development of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both
anticipating him and his school in the natural selection, gradual
development and transformation of species.(326)
There were old worlds that perished, conquered by the new, etc., etc. The
assertion that all the worlds (stars, planets, etc.)—as soon as a nucleus
of primordial substance, in the laya (undifferentiated) state, is informed
by the freed principles of a just _deceased_ sidereal body—become first
comets, and then suns, to cool down to inhabitable worlds, is a teaching
as old as the Rishis.
Thus the Secret Books, as we see, distinctly teach an astronomy that would
not be rejected even by modern speculation, could the latter thoroughly
understand its teachings.
For archaic astronomy and the ancient physical and mathematical sciences
expressed views identical with those of Modern Science, and many of far
more momentous import. A “struggle for life” and a “survival of the
fittest,” in the worlds above and on our planet here below, are distinctly
taught. This teaching, however, although it would not be entirely rejected
by Science, is sure to be repudiated as an integral whole. For it avers
that there are only seven self‐born primordial “Gods,” emanated from the
trinitarian One. In other words, it means that all the worlds, or sidereal
bodies—always on strict analogy—are formed one from the other, after the
primordial manifestation at the beginning of the Great Age is
accomplished.
The birth of the celestial bodies in space is compared to a multitude of
pilgrims at the Festival of the Fires. Seven ascetics appear on the
threshold of the temple with seven lighted sticks of incense. At the light
of these the first row of pilgrims light their incense sticks. After
which, every ascetic begins whirling his stick around his head in space,
and furnishes the rest with fire. Thus with the heavenly bodies. A laya‐
centre is lighted and awakened into life by the fires of another
“pilgrim,” after which, the new “centre” rushes into space and becomes a
comet. It is only after losing its velocity, and hence its fiery tail,
that the Fiery Dragon settles down into quiet and steady life, as a
regular respectable citizen of the sidereal family. Therefore it is said:
_Born in the unfathomable depths of Space, out of the homogeneous Element
called the World‐Soul, every nucleus of cosmic matter, suddenly launched
into being, begins life under the most hostile circumstances. Through a
series of countless ages, it has to conquer for itself a place in the
infinitudes. It circles round and round, between denser and already fixed
bodies, moving by jerks, and pulling towards some given point or centre
that attracts it, and, like as a ship drawn into a channel dotted with
reefs and sunken rocks, trying to avoid other bodies that draw and repel
it in turn. Many perish, their mass disintegrating through stronger
masses, and, when born within a system, chiefly within the insatiable
stomachs of various Suns. Those which move slower, and are propelled into
an elliptic course, are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others,
moving in parabolic curves, generally escape destruction, owing to their
velocity._
Some very critical readers will perhaps imagine that this teaching, as to
the cometary stage passed through by all heavenly bodies, is in
contradiction with the statements just made as to the Moon being the
mother of the Earth. They will perhaps fancy that intuition is needed to
harmonize the two. But no intuition is in truth required. What does
Science know of comets, their genesis, growth, and ultimate behaviour?
Nothing—absolutely nothing! And what is there so impossible in that a
laya‐centre—a lump of cosmic protoplasm, homogeneous and latent—when
suddenly animated or fired up, should rush from its bed in space, and
whirl throughout the abysmal depths, in order to strengthen its
homogeneous organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated
elements? And why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become
an inhabited globe?
_“__The abodes of Fohat are many__”_—it is said. _“__He places his Four
Fiery [electro‐positive] Sons in the Four Circles__”_; these Circles are
the equator, the ecliptic, and the two parallels of declination, or the
tropics, to preside over the _climates_ of which are placed the Four
Mystical Entities. Then again: “_Other Seven [Sons] are commissioned to
preside over the seven hot, and seven cold Lokas [the Hells of the
orthodox Brâhmans] at the two ends of the Egg of Matter [our Earth and its
poles]._” The seven Lokas are elsewhere also called the “Rings” and the
“Circles.” The Ancients made the polar circles _seven_ instead of two, as
do the Europeans; for Mount Meru, which is the North Pole, is said to have
seven gold and seven silver steps leading to it.
The strange statements, in one of the Stanzas, that “_The Songs of __
Fohat and his Sons were_ RADIANT _as the noon‐tide Sun and the Moon
combined_,” and that the Four Sons, on the _middle_ Four‐fold Circle, “SAW
_their Father’s Songs and_ HEARD _his solar‐selenic Radiance_,” are
explained, in the Commentary, in these words: “_The agitation of the
Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends [North and South Poles] of the Earth,
which results in a multicoloured radiance at night, has in it several of
the properties of Âkâsha [Ether], Colour and Sound as well_.”
“Sound is the characteristic of Âkâsha [Ether]: it generates Air, the
property of which is Touch; which [by friction] becomes productive of
Colour and Light.”(327)
Perhaps the above will be regarded as archaic nonsense, but it will be
better comprehended, if the reader remembers the Aurora Borealis and
Australis, both of which take place at the very centres of terrestrial
electric and magnetic forces. The two Poles are said to be the store‐
houses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of cosmic and
terrestrial Vitality (Electricity), from the surplus of which the Earth,
had it not been for these two natural safety‐valves, would have been rent
to pieces long ago. At the same time it is a theory that has lately become
an axiom, that the phenomenon of the polar lights is accompanied by, and
productive of, strong sounds, like whistling, hissing and cracking. See
Professor Humboldt’s works on the Aurora Borealis, and his correspondence
regarding this moot question.
7. MAKE THY CALCULATIONS, O LANOO, IF THOU WOULDST LEARN THE CORRECT AGE
OF THY SMALL WHEEL.(328) ITS FOURTH SPOKE IS OUR MOTHER(329) (_a_). REACH
THE FOURTH FRUIT OF THE FOURTH PATH OF KNOWLEDGE THAT LEADS TO NIRVÂNA,
AND THOU SHALT COMPREHEND, FOR THOU SHALT SEE (_b_)....
(_a_) The “Small Wheel” is our Chain of Spheres, and the “Fourth Spoke” is
our Earth, the fourth in the Chain. It is one of those on which the “hot
[positive] breath of the Sun” has a direct effect.
The seven fundamental transformations of the Globes or heavenly Spheres,
or rather of their constituent particles of matter, are described as
follows: (1) _homogeneous_; (2) _aëriform_ and _radiant_—gaseous; (3)
_curd‐like_ (nebulous); (4) _atomic, ethereal_—beginning of motion, hence
of differentiation; (5) _germinal, fiery_—differentiated, but composed of
the germs only of the Elements, in their earliest states, they having
seven states, when completely developed on our earth; (6) _four‐fold,
vapoury_—the future Earth; (7) _cold_—and depending on the Sun for life
and light.
To calculate its age, however, as the pupil is asked to do in the Stanza,
is rather difficult, since we are not given the figures of the Great
Kalpa, and are not allowed to publish those of our small Yugas, except as
to the approximate duration of these. “_The older Wheels rotated for one
Eternity and one‐half of an Eternity_,” it says. We know that by
“Eternity” the seventh part of 311,040,000,000,000 years, or an Age of
Brahmâ is meant. But what of that? We also know that, to begin with, if we
take for our basis the above figures, we have first of all to eliminate
from the 100 Years of Brahmâ, or 311,040,000,000,000 years, two Years
taken up by the Sandhyâs (Twilights), which leaves 98, as we have to bring
it to the mystical combination 14 x 7. But _we_ have no knowledge at what
time precisely the evolution and formation of our little Earth began.
Therefore, it is impossible to calculate its age, unless the time of its
birth is given—which the Teachers refuse to do, so far. At the close of
this Volume and in Volume II, however, some chronological hints will be
given. We must remember, moreover, that the law of analogy holds good for
the worlds, as it does for man; and that as “_The One [Deity] becomes Two
[Deva or Angel], and Two becomes Three [or Man]_,” etc., so we are taught
that the Curds (World‐Stuff) become Wanderers (Comets); these become
stars; and the stars (the centres of vortices), _our sun and planets_—to
put it briefly. This cannot be so very _unscientific_, since Descartes
also thought that “the planets rotate on their axes, because they were
once lucid stars, the centres of vortices.”
(_b_) There are four grades of Initiation mentioned in exoteric works,
which are known respectively in Sanskrit as Srotâpanna, Sakridâgâmin,
Anâgâmin, and Arhan; the Four Paths to Nirvâna, in this our Fourth Round,
bearing the same appellations. The Arhan, though he can see the Past, the
Present and the Future, is not yet the highest Initiate; for the Adept
himself, the _initiated_ candidate, becomes Chelâ (Pupil) to a higher
Initiate. Three higher grades have still to be conquered by the Arhan who
would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have
reached it even in this Fifth Race of ours, but the faculties necessary
for the attainment of these higher grades will be fully developed, in the
average ascetic, only at the end of this Root‐Race, and in the Sixth and
Seventh. Thus, there will always be Initiates and the Profane until the
end of this minor Manvantara, the present Life‐Cycle. The Arhats of the
“Fire‐Mist,” of the Seventh Rung, are but one remove from the Root‐Base of
their Hierarchy, the highest on Earth and our Terrestrial Chain. This
“Root‐Base” has a name which can only be translated into English by
several compound words—the “Ever‐Living‐Human‐Banyan.” This “Wondrous
Being” descended from a “high region,” they say, in the early part of the
Third Age, before the separation of sexes in the Third Race.
This Third Race is sometimes called collectively the “Sons of Passive
Yoga,” _i.e._, it was produced unconsciously by the Second Race, which, as
it was intellectually inactive, is supposed to have been constantly
plunged in a kind of blank or abstract contemplation, as required by the
conditions of the Yoga state. In the first or earlier portion of the
existence of this Third Race, while it was yet in its state of purity, the
“Sons of Wisdom,” who, as will be seen, incarnated in this Root‐Race,
produced by Kriyâshakti a progeny, called the “Sons of Ad,” or of the
“Fire‐Mist,” the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” etc. They were a conscious
production, as a portion of the Race was already animated with the divine
spark of spiritual, superior intelligence. This progeny was not a race. It
was at first a Wondrous Being, called the “Initiator,” and after him a
group of semi‐divine and semi‐human Beings. “Set apart” in archaic genesis
for certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated
the highest Dhyânis—“Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras”—_to form
the nursery for future human Adepts_, on this Earth and during the present
Cycle. These “Sons of Will and Yoga,” born, so to speak, in an immaculate
way, remained, it is explained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind.
The “Being” just referred to, who has to remain nameless, is the _Tree_
from which, in subsequent ages, all the great _historically_ known Sages
and Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc.,
have branched off. As objective _man_, he is the mysterious (to the
profane—the ever invisible, yet ever present) Personage, about whom
legends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the
students of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains
ever the same. And it is he, again, who holds spiritual sway over the
_initiated_ Adepts throughout the whole world. He is, as said, the
“Nameless One” who has so many names, and yet whose names and whose very
nature are unknown. He is _the_ “Initiator,” called the “GREAT SACRIFICE.”
For, sitting at the Threshold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the
Circle of Darkness, which he will not cross; nor will he quit his post
till the last Day of this Life‐Cycle. Why does the Solitary Watcher remain
at his self‐chosen post? Why does he sit by the Fountain of Primeval
Wisdom, of which he drinks no longer, for he has naught to learn which he
does not know—aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its Heaven? Because the
lonely, sore‐footed Pilgrims, on their journey back to their Home, are
never sure, to the last moment, of not losing their way, in this limitless
desert of Illusion and Matter called Earth‐Life. Because he would fain
show the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a
voluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating
himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has
sacrificed himself for the sake of Mankind, though but a few elect may
profit by the GREAT SACRIFICE.
It is under the direct, silent guidance of this _Mahâ‐Guru_ that all the
other less divine Teachers and Instructors of Mankind became, from the
first awakening of human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It
is through these “Sons of God” that infant Humanity learned its first
notions of all the arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge;
and it is They who laid the first foundation‐stone of those ancient
civilizations that so sorely puzzle our modern generation of students and
scholars.
Let those who doubt this statement, explain, on any other equally
reasonable grounds, the mystery of the extraordinary knowledge possessed
by the Ancients—who, some pretend, developed from lower and animal‐like
savages, the “cave‐men” of the palæolithic age! Let them turn, for
instance, to such works as those of Vitruvius Pollio of the Augustan age,
on architecture, in which all the rules of proportion are those _anciently
taught at Initiations_, if they would acquaint themselves with this truly
divine art, and understand the _deep esoteric significance hidden in every
rule and law of proportion_. No man descended from a palæolithic cave‐
dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of
thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated
Rishis and Devas of the Third Root Race who handed on their knowledge,
from one generation to another, to Egypt and to Greece with her now lost
_canon of proportion_; just as the disciples of the Initiates of the
Fourth, the Atlanteans, handed it over to their Cyclopes, the “Sons of
Cycles” or of the “Infinite,” from whom the name passed to the still later
generations of Gnostic priests.
It is owing to the divine perfection of these architectural
proportions that the Ancients could build these wonders of all the
subsequent ages, their Fanes, Pyramids, Cave‐Temples, Cromlechs,
Cairns, Altars, proving they had the powers of machinery and a
knowledge of mechanics to which modern skill is like a child’s
play, and which that skill refers to itself as the “works of
hundred‐handed giants.”(330)
Modern architects may not have altogether neglected these rules, but they
have superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy the just
proportions. It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of
construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal Gods; and the
ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short,
_who was an Initiate_, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical
Circles, the Dolmens, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers,
and the 127 towns in Europe which were found “Cyclopean in origin” by the
French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest‐Architects, the
descendants of those first taught by the “Sons of God,” and justly called
the “Builders.” This is what appreciative posterity says of these
descendants:
They used neither mortar nor cement, nor steel, nor iron to cut
the stones with; and yet they were so artificially wrought that in
many places the joints are hardly seen, though many of the stones,
as in Peru, are 38 feet long, 18 feet broad, and 6 feet thick, and
in the walls of the fortress of Cuzco there are stones of a still
greater size.(331)
Again:
The well of Syene, made 5,400 years ago, when that spot was
exactly under the tropic, which it has now ceased to be, was ...
so constructed, that at noon, at the precise moment of the solar
solstice, the entire disk of the sun was seen reflected on its
surface—a work which the united skill of all the astronomers in
Europe would not now be able to effect.(332)
Although these matters were barely hinted at in _Isis Unveiled_, it will
be well to remind the reader of what was said there(333) concerning a
certain Sacred Island in Central Asia, and to refer him for further
details to the Section, entitled “The Sons of God and the Sacred Island,”
attached to Stanza IX of Volume II. A few more explanations, however,
though thrown out in a fragmentary form, may help the student to obtain a
glimpse into the present mystery.
To state at least one detail concerning these mysterious “Sons of God” in
plain words: it is from them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dvijas,
the initiated Brâhmans of old, claimed descent, while the modern Brâhman
would have the lower castes believe literally that they (the Brâhmans)
issued direct from the mouth of Brahmâ. Such is the Esoteric teaching; and
it adds moreover that, although those descended (spiritually, of course)
from the “Sons of Will and Yoga” became in time divided into opposite
sexes, as their “Kriyâshakti” progenitors did themselves later on; yet
even their degenerate descendants have, down to the present day, retained
a veneration and respect for the creative function, and still regard it in
the light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more civilized nations
consider it as a mere animal function. Compare the Western views and
practice in these matters with the Institutions of Manu, in regard to the
laws of Grihastha, or married life. The true Brâhman is, thus, indeed “he
whose seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the Moon‐plant (Soma),”
and who is a “Trisuparna,” for he has understood the secret of the
_Vedas_.
And, to this day, such Brâhmans know that, during the early beginnings of
this Race, psychic and physical intellect being dormant and consciousness
still undeveloped, its spiritual conceptions were quite unconnected with
its physical surroundings; that _divine_ man dwelt in his animal—though
externally human—form; that, if there was instinct in him, no self‐
consciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent Fifth
Principle. When the Lords of Wisdom, moved by the law of evolution,
infused into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to
life and activity was a sense of solidarity, of one‐ness with his
spiritual creators. As the child’s first feeling is for its mother and
nurse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in
primitive man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who
were yet outside, and independent of him. _Devotion_ arose out of that
feeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his nature; for it is
the only one which is natural in his heart, which is innate in him, and
which we find alike in the human babe and the young of the animal. This
feeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is
beautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by Carlyle, who
exclaims:
The great antique heart—how like a child’s in its simplicity, like
a man’s in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him
wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the earth a
mystic temple to him, the earth’s business all a kind of worship.
Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels
yet hover, doing God’s messages among men.... Wonder, miracle,
encompass the man; he lives in an element of miracle.(334)... A
great law of duty, high as these two infinitudes (heaven and
hell), dwarfing all else, annihilating all else—it was a reality,
and it is one: the garment only of it is dead; the essence of it
lives through all times and all eternity!
It lives undeniably, and has settled in all its ineradicable strength and
power in the Asiatic Âryan heart, from the Third Race direct, through its
first Mind‐born Sons, the fruits of Kriyâshakti. As time rolled on, the
holy caste of Initiates produced, but rarely, from age to age, such
perfect creatures; beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who
produced them, outwardly.
In the infancy of the Third primitive Race:
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and therefore was designed;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed and fit to rule the rest.
It was called into being, a ready and perfect vehicle for the incarnating
denizens of higher spheres, who took forthwith their abodes in these
forms, born of _Spiritual Will_ and the natural divine power in man. It
was a child of pure spirit, mentally unalloyed with any tincture of
earthly element. Its physical frame alone was of time and of life, for it
drew its intelligence direct from above. It was the Living Tree of Divine
Wisdom; and may therefore be likened to the Mundane Tree of the Norse
Legends, which cannot wither and die until the last battle of life shall
be fought, while its roots are all the time gnawed by the dragon Nidhogg.
For even so, the first and holy Son of Kriyâshakti had his body gnawed by
the tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever
undecaying and strong, because they grew and expanded in heaven, and not
on earth. He was the first of the _First_, and he was the Seed of all the
others. There were other Sons of Kriyâshakti produced by a second
spiritual effort, but the first one has remained to this day the Seed of
Divine Knowledge, the One and the Supreme among the terrestrial “Sons of
Wisdom.” Of this subject we can say no more, except to add that in every
age—aye, even in our own—there have been great intellects who have
understood the problem correctly.
But how comes our physical body to the state of perfection it is now found
in? Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through,
or from, animals, as taught by Materialism. For, as Carlyle says:
... The essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself
“I,”—ah, what words have we for such things?—is a breath of
Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. This body, these
faculties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that
Unnamed?
The “breath of Heaven,” or rather the breath of Life, called in the
_Bible_ Nephesh, is in every animal, in every animate speck and in every
mineral atom. But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the
nature of that “Highest Being,”(335) as none has that divine harmony in
its form, which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said, and no one since
has said it better, as repeated by Carlyle:
There is but one temple in the Universe, and that is the Body of
Man. Nothing is holier than that high form.... We touch Heaven
when we lay our hand on a human body! This sounds like a mere
flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will
turn out to be a scientific fact; the expression ... of the actual
truth of the thing. _We_ are the miracle of miracles—the great
inscrutable Mystery....(336)
Stanza VII.
1. BEHOLD THE BEGINNING OF SENTIENT FORMLESS LIFE (_a_).
FIRST, THE DIVINE(337) (_b_), THE ONE FROM THE MOTHER‐SPIRIT;(338) THEN,
THE SPIRITUAL(339) (_c_); (340)THE THREE FROM THE ONE (_d_), THE FOUR FROM
THE ONE (_e_), AND THE FIVE (_f_), FROM WHICH THE THREE, THE FIVE AND THE
SEVEN (_g_). THESE ARE THE THREE‐FOLD AND THE FOUR‐FOLD DOWNWARD; THE
MIND‐BORN SONS OF THE FIRST LORD,(341) THE SHINING SEVEN.(342) IT IS THEY
WHO ARE THOU, I, HE, O LANOO; THEY WHO WATCH OVER THEE AND THY MOTHER,
BHÛMI.(343)
(_a_) The Hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided esoterically into Seven
(four and three), within the Twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve
signs of the Zodiac; the Seven of the manifesting scale being connected,
moreover, with the Seven Planets. All these are subdivided into numberless
Groups of divine spiritual, semi‐spiritual, and ethereal Beings.
The chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary,
or the “four bodies and the three faculties,” exoterically, of Brahmâ and
the Panchâsya, the five Brahmâs, or the five Dhyâni‐Buddhas in the
Buddhist system.
The highest Group is composed of the Divine Flames, so called, also spoken
of as the “Fiery Lions” and the “Lions of Life,” whose esotericism is
securely hidden in the zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the _nucleole_ of the
superior Divine World. They are the Formless Fiery Breaths, identical in
one aspect with the upper Sephirothal Triad, which is placed by the
Kabalists in the Archetypal World.
The same Hierarchy, with the same numbers, is found in the Japanese
system, in the “Beginnings,” as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist
sects. In this system, Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the
divine merges into the human, and creates—midway in its descent into
matter—the visible Universe; the legendary personages, remarks
reverentially Omoie, “having to be understood as the stereotyped
embodiment of the higher [secret] doctrine, and its sublime truths.” To
state this old system at full length would occupy too much of our space; a
few words on it, however, cannot be out of place. The following is a short
synopsis of this Anthropo‐Cosmogenesis, and shows how closely the most
separated nations echoed one and the same archaic teaching.
When all was as yet Chaos (Kon‐ton), three spiritual Beings appeared on
the stage of future creation: (1) Ame no ani naka nushi no Kami, “Divine
Monarch of the Central Heaven”; (2) Taka mi onosubi no Kami, “Exalted,
Imperial Divine Offspring of Heaven and Earth”; and (3) Kamu mi musubi no
Kami, “Offspring of the Gods,” simply.
These were without form or substance—our Arûpa Triad—as neither the
celestial nor the terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, “nor had
the essence of things been formed.”
(_b_) In the _Zohar_—which, as now arranged and reëdited by Moses de Leon,
with the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics, in the XIIIth
century, and corrected and revised still later by many Christian hands, is
only a little less exoteric than the _Bible_ itself—this “Divine
[Vehicle]” no longer appears as it does in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_.
True enough, Ain Suph, the Absolute Endless No‐thing, uses also the form
of the One, the manifested “Heavenly Man” (the First Cause), as its
Chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vâhana, in Sanskrit) or Vehicle, to descend
into, and manifest itself in, the phenomenal world. But the Kabalists
neither make it plain how the Absolute can use anything, or exercise any
attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of attributes;
nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato’s Logos),
the original and eternal Idea, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the
Second Logos, so to speak. In the _Book of Numbers_, it is explained that
Ain (En, or Aiôr) is the only self‐existent, whereas its “Depth,” the
Bythos of the Gnostics, called Propatôr, is only periodical. The latter is
Brahmâ, as differentiated from Brahman or Parabrahman. It is the Depth,
the Source of Light, or Propatôr, which is the Unmanifested Logos, or the
abstract Idea, and not Ain Suph, whose Ray uses Adam Kadmon—“male and
female”—or the Manifested Logos, the objective Universe, as a Chariot,
through which to manifest. But in the _Zohar_ we read the following
incongruity: “_Senior occultatus est, et absconditus; Microprosopus
manifestus est, et non manifestus_.”(344) This is a fallacy, since
Microprosopus, or the Microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations,
and is destroyed during the Mahâpralayas. Rosenroth’s _Kabbala_ is no
guide, but very often a puzzle.
The _First Order_ are the Divine. As in the Japanese system, in the
Egyptian, and every old cosmogony—at this divine Flame, the “One,” are lit
the Three descending Groups. Having their potential being in the higher
Group, they now become distinct and separate Entities. These are called
the Virgins of Life, the Great Illusion, etc., etc., and collectively the
six‐pointed star. The latter, in almost every religion, is the symbol of
the Logos as the first emanation. It is the sign of Vishnu in India, the
Chakra, or Wheel; and the glyph of the Tetragrammaton, “He of the Four
Letters,” in the _Kabalah_, or metaphorically the “Limbs of
Microprosopus,” which are ten and six respectively.
The later Kabalists, however, especially the Christian Mystics, have
played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol. Indeed, the
Microprosopus—who is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the
unmanifested eternal Logos, “one with the Father”—has finally been
brought, by centuries of incessant efforts of sophistry and of paradoxes,
to be considered as one with Jehovah, or the _one_ living God (!), whereas
Jehovah is no better than Binah, a female Sephira. This fact cannot be too
frequently impressed upon the reader. For the “Ten Limbs” of the Heavenly
Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man is the unmanifested
Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopus,
the Lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial
plane. The Microprosopus is, as just said, the Logos manifested, and of
such there are many. Of this, however, later on. The six‐pointed star
refers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles,
etc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the
star. All these, the upper and lower Hierarchies included, emanate from
the Heavenly or Celestial Virgin, the Great Mother in all religions, the
Androgyne, the Sephira Adam Kadmon. Sephira is the Crown, Kether, in the
abstract principle only, as a mathematical x, the unknown quantity. On the
plane of differentiated nature, she is the female counterpart of Adam
Kadmon, the first Androgyne. The _Kabalah_ teaches that the words “_Fiat
Lux_”(345) referred to the formation and evolution of the Sephiroth, and
not to light as opposed to darkness. Rabbi Simeon says:
O companions, companions, man as an emanation was both man and
woman, Adam Kadmon verily, and this is the sense of the words,
“Let there be Light, and there was Light.” And this is the two‐
fold man.(346)
In its Unity, Primordial Light is the seventh, or highest, principle,
Daiviprakriti, the Light of the Unmanifested Logos. But in its
differentiation, it becomes Fohat, or the “Seven Sons.” The former is
symbolized by the central point in the Double Triangle; the latter by the
Hexagon itself, or the “Six Limbs” of Microprosopus, the Seventh being
Malkuth, the “Bride” of the Christian Kabalists, or our Earth. Hence the
expressions:
_The first after the One is Divine Fire; the second, Fire and Ether; the
third is composed of Fire, Ether and Water; the fourth of Fire, Ether,
Water, and Air. The One is not concerned with Man‐bearing Globes, but with
the inner, invisible Spheres. The First‐Born are the_ LIFE, _the Heart and
Pulse of the Universe; the Second are its_ MIND _or Consciousness_.
These Elements of Fire, Air, etc., are not our compound elements; and this
“Consciousness” has no relation to our consciousness. The Consciousness of
the “One Manifested,” if not absolute, is still unconditioned. Mahat, the
Universal Mind, is the first production of the Brahmâ‐Creator, but also of
Pradhâna, Undifferentiated Matter.
(_c_) The _Second Order_ of Celestial Beings, those of Fire and Ether,
corresponding to Spirit and Soul, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi, whose names are legion,
are still formless, but more definitely “substantial.” They are the first
differentiation in the Secondary Evolution or “Creation”—a misleading
word. As the name shows, they are the Prototypes of the incarnating Jîvas
or Monads, and are composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through
these that passes, like a pure solar beam, the Ray which is furnished by
them with its future Vehicle, the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly
concerned with the Hosts of the higher World of _our_ System. From these
Two‐fold Units emanate the “Three‐fold.”
In the cosmogony of Japan, when, out of the chaotic mass, an egg‐like
nucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all
universal as well as of all terrestrial life, it is the Three‐fold just
named, which differentiate. The male ethereal principle (Yo) ascends, and
the female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into
the universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial
and the terrestrial. From this, the female, the Mother, the first
rudimentary objective being is born. It is ethereal, without form or sex,
and yet it is from it and the Mother that the Seven Divine Spirits are
born, from whom will emanate the seven “creations”; just as in the _Codex
Nazaræus_ from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven “evilly
disposed” (material) spirits are born. It would be too long to give here
the Japanese names, but in translation they stand in this order:
(1.) The “Invisible Celibate,” which is the Creative Logos of the non‐
creating “Father,” or the creative potentiality of the latter made
manifest.
(2.) The “Spirit [or God] of the rayless Depths [Chaos],” which becomes
differentiated matter, or the world‐stuff; also the mineral realm.
(3.) The “Spirit of the Vegetable Kingdom,” of the “Abundant Vegetation.”
(4.) The “Spirit of the Earth” and “the Spirit of the Sands”; a Being of
dual nature, the former containing the potentiality of the male element,
the latter that of the female element. These two were one, as yet
unconscious of being two.
In this duality were contained (_a_) Isu no gai no Kami, the male, dark
and muscular Being; and (_b_) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker
or more delicate Being. Then:
(5 and 6.) The Spirits who were androgynous or dual‐sexed.
(7.) The Seventh Spirit, the last emanated from the “Mother,” appears as
the first divine human form distinctly male and female. It was the seventh
“creation,” as in the _Purânas_, wherein man is the seventh creation of
Brahmâ.
These, Tsanagi‐Tsanami, descended into the Universe by the Celestial
Bridge, the Milky Way, and “Tsanagi, perceiving far below a chaotic mass
of cloud and water, thrust his jewelled spear into the depths, and dry
land appeared. Then the two separated to explore Onokoro, the newly‐
created island‐world.” (Omoie.)
Such are the Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel
of the same one truth of the Secret Doctrine.
(_d_) The _Third Order_ correspond to Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas, Spirit, Soul and
Intellect; and are called the “Triads.”
(_e_) The _Fourth Order_ are substantial Entities. This is the highest
Group among the Rûpas (Atomic Forms). It is the nursery of the human,
conscious, spiritual Souls. They are called the “Imperishable Jîvas,” and
constitute, through the Order below their own, the first Group of the
first Septenary Host—the great mystery of human, conscious and
intellectual Being. For the latter is the field wherein lies concealed,
_in its privation_, the Germ that will _fall into generation_. That Germ
will become the spiritual potency in the physical cell, that guides the
development of the embryo, and that is the cause of the hereditary
transmission of faculties, and all the inherent qualities in man. The
Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties is
neither taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution, in the latter,
proceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to Esoteric
teaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This
inner soul of the physical cell—the “spiritual plasm” that dominates the
germinal plasm—is the key that must open one day the gates of the _terra
incognita_ of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of Embryology. It
is worthy of notice that Modern Chemistry, while rejecting, as a
superstition of Occultism and Religion as well, the theory of substantial
and invisible Beings, called Angels, Elementals, etc.—without, of course,
having ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal Entities, or
thought over them—should, owing to observation and discovery, have been
unconsciously forced to recognize and adopt the same ratio of progression
and order, in the evolution of chemical atoms, as Occultism does for both
its Dhyânis and Atoms—analogy being its first law. As seen above, the very
first Group of the Rûpa Angels is quaternary, an element being added to
each in descending order. So also are the atoms, in the phraseology of
Chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, triatomic, tetratomic, etc., progressing
downwards.
Let it be remembered that the Fire, Water, and Air of Occultism, or the
“Elements of Primary Creation” so‐called, are not the compound elements
they are on earth, but noumenal homogeneous Elements—the Spirits of the
former. Then follow the Septenary Groups or Hosts. Placed on parallel
lines with the atoms in a diagram, the natures of these Beings would be
seen to correspond, in their downward scale of progression, to composite
elements in a mathematically identical manner as to analogy. This refers,
of course, only to diagrams made by Occultists; for were the scale of
Angelic Beings to be placed on parallel lines with the scale of the
chemical atoms of Science—from the hypothetical Helium down to
Uranium—they would of course be found to differ. For the latter have, as
correspondents on the Astral Plane, only the four lowest orders—the three
higher principles in the atom, or rather molecule, or chemical element,
being perceptible to the initiated Dangma’s eye alone. But then, if
Chemistry desired to find itself on the right path, it would have to
correct its tabular arrangement by that of the Occultists—which it might
refuse to do. In Esoteric Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds
to, and depends on, its higher noumenon—the Being to whose essence it
belongs; and, above as below, the Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the
Psycho‐mental from the Spiritual—tainted from its lower plane by the
Astral—the whole animate and (seemingly) inanimate Nature evolving on
parallel lines, and drawing its attributes from above as well as below.
The number seven, as applied to the term Septenary Host, above mentioned,
does not imply only seven Entities, but seven Groups or Hosts, as
explained before. The highest Group, the Asuras born in Brahmâ’s first
body, which turned into “Night,” are septenary, _i.e._, divided like the
Pitris into seven Classes, three of which are bodiless (arûpa) and four
with bodies.(347) They are in fact more truly our Pitris (Ancestors) than
the Pitris who projected the first physical man.
(_f_) The _Fifth Order_ is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with
the microcosmic pentagon, the five‐pointed star, representing man. In
India and Egypt, these Dhyânis were connected with the Crocodile, and
their abode is in Capricornus. But these are convertible terms in Indian
Astrology, for the tenth sign of the Zodiac, which is called Makara, is
loosely translated “Crocodile.” The word itself is occultly interpreted in
various ways, as will be shown further on. In Egypt, the Defunct—whose
symbol is the pentagram, or the five‐pointed star, the points of which
represent the limbs of a man—was shown emblematically transformed into a
crocodile. Sebekh, or Sevekh (or “Seventh”), as Mr. Gerald Massey says,
showing it to be the type of intelligence, is a dragon in reality, not a
crocodile. He is the “Dragon of Wisdom,” or Manas, the Human Soul, Mind,
the Intelligent Principle, called in our Esoteric Philosophy the _Fifth_
Principle.
Says the defunct “Osirified,” in the _Book of the Dead_, or _Ritual_,
under the glyph of a mummiform God with a crocodile’s head:
I am the crocodile presiding at the fear, I am the God‐crocodile,
at the arrival of his Soul among men. I am the God‐crocodile
brought for destruction.
An allusion to the destruction of divine spiritual purity when man
acquires the knowledge of good and evil; also to the “fallen” Gods, or
Angels of every theogony.
I am the fish of the great Horus. [As Makara is the “Crocodile,”
the Vehicle of Varuna.] I am merged in Sekhem.(348)
This last sentence gives the corroboration, and repeats the doctrine of
esoteric “Buddhism,” for it alludes directly to the Fifth Principle
(Manas), or the most spiritual part of its essence rather, which merges
into, is absorbed by, and made one with Âtmâ‐Buddhi, after the death of
man. For Sekhem is the residence, or Loka, of the God Khem (Horus‐Osiris,
or Father and Son); hence the Devachan of Âtmâ‐Buddhi. In the _Book of the
Dead_, the Defunct is shown entering into Sekhem, with Horus‐Thot, and
“emerging from it as pure spirit.” Thus the Defunct says:
I see the forms of [myself, as various] men transforming
eternally.... I know this [chapter]. He who knows it ... takes all
kinds of living forms.(349)
And addressing in magic formula that which is called, in Egyptian
Esotericism, the “ancestral heart,” or the reïncarnating principle, the
permanent Ego, the Defunct says:
O my heart, my ancestral heart, necessary for my transformations,
... do not separate thyself from me before the guardian of the
scales. Thou art my personality within my breast, divine companion
_watching over my fleshes_ [bodies].(350)
It is in Sekhem that lies concealed the “Mysterious Face,” or the real Man
concealed under the false personality, the triple‐crocodile of Egypt, the
symbol of the higher Trinity, or human Triad, Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas.
One of the explanations of the real though hidden meaning of this Egyptian
religious glyph is easy. The crocodile is the first to await and meet the
devouring fires of the morning sun, and very soon came to personify the
solar heat. When the sun arose, it was like the arrival on earth, and
among men, of the “divine soul which informs the Gods.” Hence the strange
symbolism. The mummy donned the head of a crocodile to show that it was a
Soul arriving from the earth.
In all the ancient papyri, the crocodile is called Sebekh (Seventh); water
also symbolizes the fifth principle esoterically; and, as already stated,
Mr. Gerald Massey shows that the crocodile was the “seventh Soul, the
supreme one of seven—the Seer unseen.” Even exoterically Sekhem is the
residence of the God Khem, and Khem is Horus avenging the death of his
father Osiris, hence punishing the sins of man, when he becomes a
disembodied Soul. Thus the defunct Osirified became the God Khem, who
“gleans the field of Aanroo”; that is, he gleans either his reward or
punishment, for that field is the celestial locality (Devachan), where the
Defunct is given _wheat_, the food of divine justice. The Fifth Group of
Celestial Beings is supposed to contain in itself the dual attributes of
both the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe; the two poles, so
to say, of Mahat, the Universal Intelligence, and the dual nature of man,
the spiritual and the physical. Hence its number Five, doubled and made
into Ten, connecting it with Makara, the tenth sign of the Zodiac.
(_g_) The _Sixth_ and _Seventh Orders_ partake of the lower qualities of
the Quaternary. They are conscious ethereal Entities, as invisible as
Ether, which are shot out, like the boughs of a tree, from the first
central Group of the Four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side
Groups, the lower of which are the Nature‐Spirits, or Elementals, of
countless kinds and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial—the
ideal Thoughts of their creators—down to atomic, though, to human
perception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “spirits
of atoms,” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical
atom—sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to
Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the Doctrine
teaches, there are no such privileged Beings in the Universe, whether in
our own or in other Systems, in the outer or the inner Worlds,(351) as the
Angels of the Western Religion and the Judean. A Dhyân Chohan has to
become one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a
full‐blown Angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will
find itself transferred, in the next Circle of Life, into higher superior
Worlds, and will make room for a new Hierarchy, composed of the elect ones
of our mankind. Being is an endless cycle within the One Absolute
Eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and conditioned.
Gods, created as such, would evince no personal merit in being Gods. Such
a class of Beings—perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature
inherent in them—in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and
even of the lower creation, would be the symbol of an eternal injustice
quite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an
impossibility in Nature. Therefore the “Four” and the “Three” have to
incarnate as all other beings have. This Sixth Group, moreover, remains
almost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and
lowest principles, or his spirit and body; the five middle human
principles being the very essence of those Dhyânis. Paracelsus calls them
the Flagæ; the Christians, the Guardian Angels; the Occultists, the
Ancestors, the Pitris. They are the Six‐fold Dhyân Chohans, having the six
spiritual Elements in the composition of their bodies—in fact, men, minus
the physical body.
Alone, the Divine Ray, the Âtman, proceeds directly from the One. When
asked how this can be? How is it possible to conceive that these “Gods,”
or Angels, can be at the same time their own emanations and their personal
selves? Is it in the same sense as in the material world, where the son
is, in one way, his father, being his blood, the bone of his bone and the
flesh of his flesh? To this the Teachers answer: Verily it is so. But one
has to go deep into the mystery of Being, before one can fully comprehend
this truth.
2. THE ONE RAY MULTIPLIES THE SMALLER RAYS. LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE
SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM.(352) THROUGH THE COUNTLESS RAYS THE LIFE‐RAY, THE
ONE, LIKE A THREAD THROUGH MANY BEADS.(353)
This shloka expresses the conception—a purely Vedântic one, as already
explained elsewhere—of a Life‐Thread, Sûtrâtmâ, running through successive
generations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile,
to a familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our
available analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask,
whether it seems unnatural, least of all “supernatural,” to any one of us,
when we consider the process of the growth and development of a fœtus into
a healthy baby weighing several pounds? Evolving from what? From the
segmentation of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoön! And
afterwards we see the baby develop into a six‐foot man! This refers to the
atomic and physical expansion, from the microscopically small into
something exceedingly large; from the unseen, to the naked eye, into the
visible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say,
her theories, embryological, biological and physiological, are correct
enough, so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless,
the two chief difficulties of the science of Embryology—namely, what are
the forces at work in the formation of the fœtus, and the _cause_ of
“hereditary transmission” of likeness, physical, moral or mental—have
never been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved, till the day
when Scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories. But if this
physical phenomenon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the
Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution
of the Human‐Spiritual to the Divine‐Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem,
more impossible than the other?
The Materialists and the Evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be
ill‐advised to accept the newly worked‐out theories of Professor
Weissmann, the author of _Beiträge zur Descendenzlehre_, with regard to
one of the two mysteries of Embryology, as above specified, which he seems
to think he has solved; for, when it is fully solved, Science will have
stepped into the domain of the truly Occult, and passed for ever out of
the realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The two theories are
irreconcilable, from the standpoint of Materialism. Regarded from that of
the Occultists, however, the new theory solves all these mysteries. Those
who are not acquainted with the discovery of Professor Weissmann—at one
time a fervent Darwinist—ought to hasten to repair the deficiency. The
German embryologist‐philosopher—stepping over the heads of the Greek
Hippocrates and Aristotle, right back into the teachings of the old
Âryans—shows one infinitesimal cell, out of millions of others at work in
the formation of an organism, alone and unaided determining, by means of
constant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future
man, or animal, in its physical, mental and psychic characteristics. It is
this cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual the
features of the parents, or of some distant ancestor; it is this cell,
again, which transmits to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies
of his sires, and so on. This Plasm is the immortal portion of our bodies,
developing by means of a process of successive assimilations. Darwin’s
theory, viewing the embryological cell as the essence or extract from all
other cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting for hereditary
transmission. There are but two ways of explaining the mystery of
heredity: either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed with the
faculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to the
construction of a separate organism, and then to the reproduction of
identical germinal cells; or, _these germinal cells do not have their
genesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from
the ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long
generations_. It is the latter hypothesis that Weissmann has adopted and
worked upon, and it is to this cell that he traces the immortal portion of
man. So far, so good; and when this almost correct theory is accepted, how
will Biologists explain the first appearance of this everlasting cell?
Unless man “grew” like the immortal “Topsy,” and was not born at all, but
fell from the clouds, how was that embryological cell generated in him?
Complete the Physical Plasm, mentioned above, the “Germinal Cell” of man
with all its material potentialities, with the “Spiritual Plasm,” so to
say, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the Six‐
principled Dhyâni—and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to
understand it.
Now to the promised simile.
_When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal
woman, that seed cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the
five virtues [the fluid of, or the emanation from, the principles] of the
Six‐fold Heavenly Man. Wherefore the Microcosm is represented as a
Pentagon, within the Hexagon Star, the Macrocosm._(_354_)
_The functions of Jiva on this Earth are of a five‐fold character. In the
mineral atom, it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of
the Earth (the Six‐fold Dhyânis); in the vegetable particle, with their __
second—the Prâna (Life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and
the fourth; in man, the germ must receive the fruitage of all the five.
Otherwise he will be born no higher than an animal_.(355)
Thus in man alone the Jîva is complete. As to his seventh principle, it is
but one of the Beams of the Universal Sun, for each rational creature
receives the temporary loan only of that which has to return to its
source. As to his physical body, it is shaped by the lowest terrestrial
Lives, through physical, chemical and physiological evolution; “the
Blessed Ones have nought to do with the purgations of matter,” says the
Kabalah in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_.
It comes to this: Mankind, in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the
offspring of the Elohim of Life, or Pitris; in its qualitative and
physical aspect, it is the direct progeny of the “Ancestors,” the lowest
Dhyânis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral, psychic and spiritual
nature, it is indebted to a Group of divine Beings, the name and
characteristics of which will be given in Volume II. Collectively, men are
the handiwork of Hosts of various Spirits; distributively, the tabernacles
of those Hosts; and occasionally and individually, the vehicles of some of
them. In our present all‐material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the
Fourth is still strong in us; but we are approaching the time when the
pendulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing
Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive Third Root‐Race in
spirituality. During its childhood, mankind was wholly composed of that
Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the monstrous
and gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race, built by and composed
of countless myriads of Lives, as our bodies are also now. This sentence
will be explained later on in the present Commentary. Science, dimly
perceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other infinitesimals in the
human body, and see in them only occasional and abnormal visitors, to
which diseases are attributed. Occultism—which discerns a Life in every
atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or
water—affirms that our whole body is built of such Lives; the smallest
bacterium under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an
elephant to the tiniest infusoria.
The “tabernacles” mentioned above have improved in texture and symmetry of
form, growing and developing with the Globe that bears them; but the
physical improvement has taken place at the expense of the spiritual Inner
Man and of Nature. The three middle principles, in earth and man, became
with every Race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the
Physical Intellect; the essence of the Elements becoming the material and
composite elements now known.
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the “Lord God”;
but he _is_ the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the
singular number and masculine gender. The first Dhyânis, commissioned to
“create” man in their image, could only throw off their Shadows, as a
delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. Man is,
beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his
creators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the “Lord God
breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life,” unless that God is
identified with the “One Life,” omnipresent though invisible, and unless
the same operation is attributed to “God” on behalf of every “Living
Soul,” which is the _Vital_ Soul (Nephesh), and not the Divine Spirit
(Ruach) which ensures to man alone a divine degree of immortality, that no
animal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is
owing to the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our
Western metaphysicians, who are unable to understand, and hence to accept,
more than a triune man—Spirit, Soul, Body—that the “Breath of Life” has
been confused with the immortal “Spirit.” This applies also directly to
the Protestant theologians, who in translating a certain verse in the
Fourth Gospel(356) have entirely perverted its meaning. This
mistranslation runs, “the _wind_ bloweth where it listeth,” instead of
“the _spirit_ goeth where it willeth,” as in the original, and also in the
translation of the Greek Eastern Church.
The learned and very philosophical author of _New Aspects of Life_ would
impress upon his reader that the Nephesh Chiah (Living Soul), according to
the Hebrews:
Proceeded from, or was produced by, the infusion of the Spirit or
Breath of Life into the quickening body of man, and was to
supersede and take the place of that Spirit in the thus
constituted Self, so that the Spirit passed into, was lost sight
of, and disappeared in the Living Soul.
The human body, he thinks, ought to be viewed as a matrix in which, and
from which, the Soul, which he seems to place higher than the Spirit, is
developed. Considered _functionally_ and from the standpoint of activity,
the Soul stands undeniably higher, in this finite and conditioned world of
Mâyâ. The Soul, he says, “is ultimately produced from the animated body of
man.” Thus the author identifies “Spirit” (Âtmâ) with the “Breath of Life”
simply. The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is
based on the erroneous conception that Prâna and Âtmâ, or Jîvâtmâ, are one
and the same thing. The author supports the argument, by showing that with
the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus
meant Wind—with the Jews undeniably, and with the Greeks and Romans very
probably; the Greek word Anemos (Wind) and the Latin Animus (Soul) having
a suspicious relation.
This is very far fetched. But a legitimate battle‐field for deciding this
question is hardly to be found, since Dr. Pratt seems to be a practical,
matter‐of‐fact metaphysician, a kind of Kabalist‐Positivist, whereas the
Eastern metaphysicians, especially the Vedântins, are all Idealists. The
Occultists also are of the extreme Esoteric Vedântin school, and though
they call the One Life (Parabrahman) the Great Breath and the Whirlwind,
they disconnect the seventh principle entirely from matter, and deny that
it has any relation to, or connection with it.
Thus the philosophy of man’s psychic, spiritual and mental relations with
his physical functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the
old Âryan nor the Egyptian psychology is now properly understood; nor can
they be assimilated, without accepting the Esoteric septenary, or, at any
rate, the Vedântic quinquepartite division of the human inner principles.
Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the
metaphysical and purely psychic, and even physiological, relations between
the Dhyân Chohans, or Angels, on the one plane, and Humanity on the other.
No Eastern (Âryan) Esoteric works are so far published, but we possess the
Egyptian papyri, which speak clearly of the seven principles, or the
“Seven Souls of Man.” The _Book of the Dead_ gives a complete list of the
“transformations” that every Defunct undergoes, while divesting himself,
one by one, of all these principles—materialized for the sake of clearness
into ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try
to show that the Ancient Egyptians did not teach Reïncarnation, that the
“Soul” (the Ego or Self) of the Defunct is said to be living in Eternity:
it is immortal, “coëval with, and disappearing with, the Solar Boat,” that
is, for the Cycle of Necessity. This “Soul” _emerges_ from the Tiaou, the
Realm of the _Cause of Life_, and joins the living on Earth by _day_, to
return to Tiaou every _night_. This expresses the periodical existences of
the Ego.(357)
The Shadow, the Astral Form, is annihilated, “devoured by the Uræus,”(358)
the Manes will be annihilated; the two Twins (the Fourth and Fifth
Principles) will be scattered; but the Soul‐Bird, “the Divine Swallow, and
the Uræus of Flame” (Manas and Âtmâ‐Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for
they are their mother’s husbands.
Another suggestive analogy between the Âryan, or Brâhmanical, and the
Egyptian Esotericism. The former call the Pitris the “Lunar Ancestors” of
men, and the Egyptians make of the Moon‐God, Taht‐Esmun, the first human
ancestor.
This Moon‐God “expressed the Seven nature‐powers that were prior
to himself, and were summed up in him as his seven souls, of which
he was the manifestor as the Eighth One. [Hence the eighth
sphere.]... The seven rays of the Chaldean ... Heptakis or Iao, on
the Gnostic stones, indicate the same septenary of souls.... The
first form of the mystical Seven was seen to be figured in heaven,
by the seven large stars of the Great Bear, the constellation
assigned by the Egyptians to the Mother of Time, and of the seven
Elemental Powers.”(359)
As well known to every Hindû, this same constellation represents in India
the Seven Rishis, and is called Riksha, and Chitrashikandinas.
Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the Gods (Dhyânis)
give him his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which these
Gods are often the animating principle. Spirit (Âtman) is one, and
indiscrete. It is not in the Tiaou.
For what is the Tiaou? The frequent allusion to it in the _Book of the
Dead_ contains a mystery. Tiaou is the path of the Night‐Sun, the inferior
hemisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the
_concealed side of the Moon_. The human being, in their Esotericism, came
out from the Moon—a triple mystery, astronomical, physiological and
psychical, at once; he crossed the whole cycle of existence, and then
returned to his birth‐place, before issuing from it again. Thus the
Defunct is shown arriving in the West, receiving his judgment before
Osiris, resurrecting as the God Horus, and circling round the sidereal
heavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having
crossed the Noot, the Celestial Abyss, returning once more to Tiaou; an
assimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits
the Moon. Plutarch(360) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called
“The Ingress of Osiris into the Moon.” In the _Ritual_,(361) life is
promised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the
patronage of Osiris‐Lunus, because the Moon was the symbol of life‐
renewals or reïncarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and
reäppearance every month. In the _Dankmoe_,(362) it is said: “O Osiris‐
Lunus, that renews to thee thy renewal.” And Sabekh says to Seti I:(363)
“Thou renewest thyself as the God Lunus, when a babe.” It is still better
explained in a Louvre papyrus:(364) “Couplings and conceptions abound when
he [Osiris‐Lunus] is seen in heaven on that day.” Says Osiris: “O sole
radiant beam of the Moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes [of
stars].... Open me the Tiaou, for Osiris N. I will issue by day to do what
I have to do amongst the living”(365)—_i.e._, to produce conceptions.
Osiris was “God manifest in generation,” because the ancients knew, far
better than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon
the mysteries of conception. In the oldest systems we find the Moon always
male. Thus Soma, with the Hindûs, is a kind of sidereal Don Juan, a
“King,” and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Budha—Wisdom. This relates
to Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough acquaintance
with lunar mysteries, including those of sexual generation. And later,
when the Moon became connected with the female Goddesses, with Diana,
Isis, Artemis, Juno, etc., this connection was also due to a thorough
knowledge of physiology and female nature, physical as much as psychic.
If, instead of being taught in Sunday Schools useless lessons from the
_Bible_, the armies of the ragged and poor were taught Astrology—so far,
at any rate, as the occult properties of the Moon and its hidden
influences on generation are concerned—then, there would be little need to
fear increase of the population, or to resort to the questionable
literature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her
conjunctions that regulate conceptions, and every Astrologer in India
knows it. During the previous Races, and at least at the beginning of the
present one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar
phases that made those relations sterile, were regarded as sorcerers and
sinners. But now even these sins of old, which arose from the abuse of
Occult knowledge, would appear preferable to the crimes of to‐day, which
are perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of such Occult
influences.
But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, by their
effects, so to say, _tangible_, psychic and physiological deities—the
Father and the Son—while Space or Air in general, or that expanse of
heaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of
the two. The Father and Son were interchangeable in their functions, and
worked together harmoniously in their effects upon terrestrial nature and
humanity; hence they were regarded as _one_, though _two_ as personified
Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct though
collaborative work in the causative generation of humanity. So much from
the astronomical and cosmic standpoints, viewed and expressed in
symbolical language, which became in our last races theological and
dogmatic. But behind this veil of cosmic and astrological symbols, there
were the occult mysteries of anthropography and the primeval genesis of
man. And in this, no knowledge of symbols, or even the key to the post‐
diluvian symbolical language of the Jews, will or can help, save only with
reference to that which has been laid down in national scriptures for
exoteric uses; the sum of which, however cleverly veiled, was but the
smallest portion of the real primitive history of each people, and often,
moreover, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, related merely to the terrestrial
human, and not to the divine life of that nation. That psychic and
spiritual element belonged to the MYSTERIES and INITIATION. There were
things never recorded in scrolls, but which, as in Central Asia, were
engraved on rocks and in subterranean crypts.
Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was “of one lip and of
one knowledge,” and man knew more of his origin than he does now; and thus
knew that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they may play in the
constitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the
direct causative agents of his appearance on Earth; for these agents, in
truth, are the living and intelligent Powers which the Occultists call
Dhyân Chohans.
As to this, a very learned admirer of the Jewish Esotericism tells us
that:
The _Kabalah_ says expressly that Elohim is a “general
abstraction”; what we call in mathematics “a constant
coëfficient,” or a “general function,” entering into all
construction, not particular; that is, by the general ratio 1 to
31415, the [Astro‐Dhyânic and] Elohistic figures.
To this the Eastern Occultist replies: Quite so; they are an abstraction
to our physical senses. To our spiritual perceptions, however, and to our
inner spiritual eye, the Elohim, or Dhyânis, are no more an abstraction
than our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject the
other, since that which is the _surviving_ Entity _in us_, is partly the
direct emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities _themselves_.
One thing is certain; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery and
various maleficent forces: but, with the exception of some of their great
prophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel—Enoch belonging to a far
distant race, as a generic character, and not to any nation but to
all—they knew little of, nor would they deal with, the real divine
Occultism; their national character being averse to anything which had no
direct bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal and individual
benefits—witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered by them
against the “stiff‐necked race.” But even the _Kabalah_ plainly shows the
direct relation between the Sephiroth, or Elohim, and men.
Therefore, when it is proved to us that the Kabalistic identification of
Jehovah with Binah, a female Sephira, has still another, a sub‐occult,
meaning in it, then and then only will Occultists be ready to pass the
palm of perfection to the Kabalist. Until then, it is asserted that, as
Jehovah, in the abstract sense of a “one living God,” is a single number,
a metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as
an emanation and a Sephira—we have a right to maintain that the _Zohar_,
as witnessed by the _Book of Numbers_, at any rate, gave out originally,
before the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out, the
same doctrine that we do; that is, it makes Man emanate, not from one
Celestial Man, but from a Septenary Group of Celestial Men, or Angels,
just as in _Pymander, the Thought Divine_.
3. WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE THREE‐FOLD APPEARS (_a_). THE THREE
ARE(366) ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, O LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN‐PLANT,
CALLED SAPTAPARNA (_b_).
(_a_) “When the One becomes Two, the Three‐fold appears”: to wit, when the
One Eternal drops its reflection into the region of Manifestation, that
reflection, the Ray, differentiates the Water of Space; or, in the words
of the _Book of the Dead_: “Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the
Ray of Primordial Light dissipating total darkness, by the help of the
great magic power of the Word of the [Central] Sun.” Chaos becomes male‐
female, and Water, incubated by Light, and the Three‐fold Being issues as
its “First‐born.” “Ra [or Osiris‐Ptah] creates his own Limbs [like
Brahmâ], by creating the Gods destined to personify his phases,” during
the Cycle.(367) The Egyptian Ra, issuing from the Deep, is the Divine
Universal Soul in its manifested aspect, and so is Nârâyana, the Purusha,
“concealed in Âkâsha, and present in Ether.”
This is the metaphysical explanation, and refers to the very beginning of
Evolution, or, as we would rather say, of Theogony. The meaning of the
Stanza, when explained from another standpoint in its reference to the
mystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to comprehend. In
order to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One becoming Two,
and then being transformed into the Three‐fold, the student has to make
himself thoroughly acquainted with what we call Rounds. If he refers to
_Esoteric Buddhism_—the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline
of archaic cosmogony—he will find that by a Round is meant the serial
evolution of nascent material Nature, of the seven Globes of our
Chain,(368) with their mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; man being
included in the latter and standing at the head of it, during the whole
period of a Life‐Cycle, which latter would be called by the Brâhmans a
“Day of Brahmâ.” It is, in short, one revolution of the “Wheel” (our
Planetary Chain), which is composed of seven Globes, or seven separate
“Wheels,” in another sense this time. When evolution has run downward into
matter from Globe A to Globe G, it is one Round. In the middle of the
fourth revolution, which is our present Round, “Evolution has reached its
acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical
man, and, from this point, begins its work spirit‐ward.” All this needs
little repetition, as it is well explained in _Esoteric Buddhism_. That
which was hardly touched upon, however, and of which the little that was
said has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a
little more light may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more
comprehensible, as the process will be fully explained only in its
legitimate place, in Volume II.
Now every Round, on the descending scale, is but a repetition in a more
concrete form of the Round which preceded it, just as every Globe, down to
our Fourth Sphere the actual Earth, is a grosser and more material copy of
the more shadowy Sphere which precedes it, each in order, on the three
higher planes.(369) On its way upwards, on the ascending arc, Evolution
spiritualizes and etherealizes, so to speak, the general nature of all,
bringing it on to a level with the plane on which the twin Globe on the
opposite arc is placed; the result being, that when the seventh Globe is
reached, in whatever Round, the nature of everything that is evolving
returns to the condition it was in at its starting point—_plus_, every
time, a new and superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it
becomes clear that the “origin of man,” so‐called, in this our present
Round, or Life‐Cycle, on this Planet, must occupy the same place in the
same order—save details based on local conditions and time—as in the
preceding Round. Again, it must be explained and remembered that, as the
work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different Group of so‐
called Creators, or Architects, so is that of every Globe; that is, it is
under the supervision and guidance of special Builders and Watchers—the
various Dhyân Chohans.
“Creators” is an incorrect word to use, as no other religion, not even the
sect of the Visishthadvaitîs in India, one which anthropomorphizes even
Parabrahman, believes in creation _ex nihilo_, as Christians and Jews do,
but only in evolution out of preëxisting materials.
The Group of the Hierarchy which is commissioned to “create” men is a
special Group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this Cycle, just as a
higher and still more spiritual Group evolved him in the Third Round. But
as it is the Sixth, on the downward scale of Spirituality—the last and
Seventh being the Terrestrial Spirits (Elementals), which gradually form,
build and condense his physical body—this Sixth Group evolves no more than
the future man’s shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible, transparent copy
of themselves. It becomes the task of the Fifth Hierarchy—the mysterious
Beings that preside over the constellation Capricornus, Makara, or
“Crocodile,” in India and in Egypt—to inform the empty and ethereal animal
form, and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon
which very little may be said to the general public. It is a Mystery
truly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of
intellectual and conscious Spiritual Beings in the Universe, and to limit
full Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a “function of the
brain.” Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated
bodily in man, since his first appearance, and who, for all that, still
exist as independently as they did before, in the infinitudes of Space.
To put it more clearly, such an invisible Entity may be bodily present on
earth without, however, abandoning its status and functions in the
supersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can do no better than
remind the reader of like cases in so‐called “Spiritualism”; though such
cases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity
incarnating, or taking temporary possession of a medium. For the so‐called
“spirits” that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of
mediums are not the Monads, or Higher Principles, of disembodied
Personalities. Such “spirits” can only be either Elementaries,
or—Nirmânakâyas. Just as certain persons, whether by virtue of a peculiar
organization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be
seen in their “double” in one place, while their body is many miles away;
so the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.
Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an
animal, hardly more perfect than his pithecoid‐like ancestor of the Third
Round. He is a living Body, not a living Being, since the realization of
existence, the “_Ego Sum_,” necessitates self‐consciousness, and an animal
can only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well
understood by the ancients, that even the Kabalists made of soul and body
two Lives, independent of each other. In the _New Aspects of Life_, the
author states the Kabalistic teaching:
They held that, functionally, Spirit and Matter, of corresponding
opacity and density, tended to coalesce; and that the resultant
created Spirits, in the disembodied state, were constituted on a
scale in which the differing opacities and transparencies of
elemental or uncreated Spirit were reproduced. And that these
Spirits, in the disembodied state, attracted, appropriated,
digested and assimilated elemental Spirit and elemental Matter
whose condition was conformed to their own.... They therefore
taught that there was a wide difference in the conditions of
created Spirits; and that, in the intimate association between the
Spirit‐world and the world of Matter, the more opaque Spirits, in
the disembodied state, were drawn towards the more dense parts of
the material world, and therefore tended towards the centre of the
Earth, where they found the conditions most suited to their state;
while the more transparent Spirits passed into the surrounding
aura of the planet, the most rarefied finding their home in its
satellite.(370)
This relates exclusively to our Elemental Spirits, and has naught to do
with either the Planetary, Sidereal, Cosmic or Inter‐Etheric Intelligent
Forces, or “Angels” as they are termed by the Roman Church. The Jewish
Kabalists, especially the practical Occultists who dealt with Ceremonial
Magic, busied themselves solely with the Spirits of the Planets and the
“Elementals” so‐called. Therefore the above covers only a portion of the
Esoteric teaching.
The Soul, whose body‐vehicle is the astral, ethereo‐substantial envelope,
could die and man be still living on earth. That is to say, the Soul could
free itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons, such as
insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc. The possibility of the
“Soul”—that is, the eternal Spiritual Ego—dwelling in the unseen worlds,
while its body goes on living on Earth, is a preeminently Occult doctrine,
especially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. Many are the _soulless_ men
among us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists
as well as in persons “who advance in holiness and never turn back.”
Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyânis, who have
no physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief
of the antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual
society in “Spiritualism,” as well as in the Greek and Roman Churches,
which teach the ubiquity of their Angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their
Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality—in Esoteric
philosophy, at any rate—to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the
numberless worlds in space, which are visible to our eye. In a note of
Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean Oracles, we have ample evidence
of the universality of this doctrine, for he says: “In these Oracles, the
seven Cosmocratores of the World [‘the World‐Pillars’], mentioned likewise
by St. Paul, are double; one set being commissioned to rule the superior
worlds, the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch
over the worlds of matter.” Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who
makes an evident distinction between the Archangels and the
Archontes.(371)
The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the
degrees or orders of Spiritual Beings, and it is in this sense that the
Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for
while the Archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, she denounces
their “Doubles” as Devils. But the word Ferouer is not to be understood in
this sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some
attribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the “Demon is the
inverse of God”—evil, the reverse of the medal—he does not mean two
separate actualities, but two aspects or facets of the same Unity. But the
best man living, side by side with an Archangel—as described in
Theology—would appear a fiend. Hence a certain reason in depreciating a
lower “Double,” immersed far deeper in matter than its original. But still
there is as little cause to regard them as Devils, and this is precisely
what the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic.
This identity between the Spirit and its material “Double”—in man it is
the reverse—explains still better the confusion, already alluded to in
this work, in the names and individualities, as well as in the numbers, of
the Rishis and Prajâpatis; especially of those of the Satya Yuga and the
Mahâbhâratan Period. It also throws additional light on what the Secret
Doctrine teaches with regard to the Root‐ and the Seed‐Manus. Not only
these Progenitors of our mankind, but every human being, we are taught,
has his prototype in the Spiritual Spheres, which prototype is the highest
essence of his Seventh Principle. Thus the seven Manus become fourteen,
the Root‐Manu being the Prime Cause, and the Seed‐Manu its Effect; and
from the Satya Yuga (the first stage) to the Heroic Period, these Manus or
Rishis become twenty‐one in number.
(_b_) The concluding sentence of this shloka shows how archaic is the
belief and the doctrine that man is seven‐fold in his constitution. The
“Thread” of Being, which animates man, and passes through all his
Personalities, or Rebirths on this Earth—an allusion to Sûtrâtmâ—the
Thread on which moreover all his “Spirits” are strung, is spun from the
essence of the Three‐fold, the Four‐fold and the Five‐fold which contain
all the preceding. Panchâshikha, agreeably to _Padma Purâna_,(372) is one
of the seven _Kumâras_ who go to Shveta Dvîpa to worship Vishnu. We shall
see, further on, what connection there is between the “celibate” and
chaste Sons of Brahmâ, who refuse “to multiply,” and terrestrial mortals.
Meanwhile, it is evident that the “Man‐Plant, Saptaparna,” thus refers to
the seven principles, and that man is compared to this seven‐leaved plant,
which is so sacred among Buddhists. The Egyptian allegory, in the _Book of
the Dead_, that relates to the “reward of the Soul,” is as suggestive of
our septenary doctrine as it is poetical. The Deceased is allotted a piece
of land in the field of Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of
the dead, glean, as the harvest they have sown by their actions in life,
the corn seven cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into seven
and fourteen portions. This corn is the food on which they will live and
prosper, or that will kill them, in Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo‐
field is a domain. For, as said in the hymn,(373) the Deceased is either
destroyed therein, or becomes pure spirit for the Eternity, in consequence
of the “seven times seventy‐seven lives” passed, or to be passed, on
Earth. The idea of the corn reaped as the “fruit of our actions” is very
graphic.
4. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES, THE THREE‐TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR
WICKS (_a_)... THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE‐TONGUED
FLAME,(374) SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN, THEIR FLAME; THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF
ONE MOON, REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF THE
EARTH(375) (_b_).
(_a_) The “Three‐tongued Flame that never dies” is the immortal spiritual
Triad, the Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas, or rather the fruitage of the last,
assimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The “Four
Wicks,” that go out and are extinguished, are the Quaternary, the four
lower principles, including the body.
“I am the Three‐wicked Flame and my Wicks are immortal,” says the Defunct.
“I enter into the domain of Sekhem [the God whose hand sows the seed of
action produced by the disembodied soul], and I enter the region of the
Flames who have destroyed their adversaries [_i.e._, got rid of the sin‐
creating Four Wicks].”(376)
“The Three‐tongued Flame of the Four Wicks” corresponds to the four
Unities and the three Binaries of the Sephirothal tree.
(_b_) Just as milliards of bright sparks dance on the waters of an ocean,
above which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent
Personalities—the illusive envelopes of the immortal Monad‐Ego—twinkle and
dance on the waves of Mâyâ. They appear and, as the thousands of sparks
produced by the moon‐beams, last only so long as the Queen of the Night
radiates her lustre on the “Running Waves” of Life, the period of a
Manvantara; and then they disappear, the “Beams”—symbols of our eternal
Spiritual Egos—alone surviving, remerged in, and being, as they were
before, one with the Mother‐Source.
5. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT
JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MÂYÂ (_a_). IT STOPS IN THE
FIRST,(377) AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND,(378)
AND BEHOLD—A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN FORMS AND BECOMES A
SACRED ANIMAL(379) (_b_).
FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU,(380) THE THINKER, IS FORMED.
WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE (_c_). WHO COMPLETES HIM?
THE FIVE‐FOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN AND SOMA(381)
(_d_).
(_a_) The phrase, “through the Seven Worlds of Mâyâ,” refers here to the
seven Globes of the Planetary Chain and the seven Rounds, or the forty‐
nine stations of active existence that are before the “Spark,” or Monad,
at the beginning of every Great Life‐Cycle, or Manvantara. The “Thread of
Fohat” is the Thread of Life before referred to.
This relates to the greatest problem of philosophy—the physical and
substantial nature of Life, the independent nature of which is denied by
Modern Science, because that Science is unable to comprehend it. The
reïncarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly perceive, that the
whole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations,
whether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because even if:
Life, like a dome of many‐coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity—
yet it is itself part and parcel of that Eternity; for Life alone can
understand Life.
What is that “Spark” which “hangs from the Flame”? It is Jîva, the Monad
in conjunction with Manas, or rather its aroma—that which remains from
each Personality, when worthy, and hangs from Âtmâ‐Buddhi, the Flame, by
the Thread of Life. In whatever way it is interpreted, and into whatever
number of principles the human being is divided, it may be easily shown
that this doctrine is supported by all the ancient religions, from the
Vedic to the Egyptian, from the Zoroastrian to the Jewish. In the case of
the last‐mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this
statement. The entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the
divine Septenary hanging from the Triad, thus forming the Decad, and its
permutations 7, 5, 4, and 3, which, finally, all merge into the _One_
itself; an endless and boundless Circle.
As says the _Zohar_:
The Deity [the ever invisible Presence] manifests itself through
the _ten_ Sephiroth, which are its radiating witnesses. The Deity
is like the sea from which outflows a stream called Wisdom, the
waters of which fall into a lake named Intelligence. From the
basin, like seven channels, issue the Seven Sephiroth.... For
_ten_ equal _seven_: the Decad contains _four_ Unities and _three_
Binaries.
The Ten Sephiroth correspond to the Limbs of Man.
When I [the Elohim] framed Adam Kadmon, the Spirit of the Eternal
shot out of his Body, like a sheet of lightning that radiated at
once on the billows of the _seven_ millions of skies, and my _ten_
Splendours were his Limbs.
But neither the Head nor the Shoulders of Adam Kadmon can be seen;
therefore we read in the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_, the “Book of the Concealed
Mystery”:
In the beginning of Time, after the Elohim [the “Sons of Light and
Life,” or the Builders] had shaped out of the eternal Essence the
Heavens and the Earth, they formed the worlds six by six.
The seventh being Malkuth, which is our Earth(382) on its plane, and the
lowest on all the other planes of conscious existence. The Chaldean _Book
of Numbers_ contains a detailed explanation of all this.
The first triad of the Body of Adam Kadmon [the three upper planes
of the seven (383)] cannot be seen before the Soul stands in the
presence of the Ancient of Days.
The Sephiroth of this upper Triad are: “1. Kether (the Crown), represented
by the brow of Macroprosopus; 2. Chokmah (Wisdom, a male Principle), by
his right shoulder; and 3. Binah (Intelligence, a female Principle), by
the left shoulder.” Then come the _seven_ Limbs, or Sephiroth, on the
planes of manifestation; the totality of these four planes being
represented by Microprosopus, the Lesser Face, or Tetragrammaton, the
“four‐lettered” Mystery. “The _seven_ manifested and the _three_ concealed
Limbs are the Body of the Deity.”
Thus our Earth, Malkuth, is both the _seventh_ and the _fourth_ World; the
former when counting from the first Globe above, the latter if reckoned by
the planes. It is generated by the sixth Globe or Sephira, called Yezud,
“Foundation,” or, as said in the _Book of Numbers_, “by Yezud, He [Adam
Kadmon] fecundates the primitive Heva [Eve or our Earth].” Rendered in
mystic language, this is the explanation why Malkuth, called the Inferior
Mother, Matrona, Queen, and the Kingdom of the Foundation, is shown as the
Bride of Tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus (the Second Logos), the Heavenly
Man. When free from all impurity, she will become united with the
Spiritual Logos, _i.e._, in the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round—after
the regeneration, on the day of “Sabbath.” For the “_Seventh_ Day” again
has an occult significance undreamed of by our theologians.
When Matronitha, the Mother, is separated and brought face to face
with the King, in the excellence of the Sabbath, all things become
one body.(384)
“Become one body” means, that all is reäbsorbed once more into the One
Element, the spirits of men becoming Nirvânîs, and the elements of
everything else becoming again what they were before—Protyle or
Undifferentiated Substance. “Sabbath” means Rest, or Nirvâna. It is not
the “_seventh_ day” after _six_ days, but a period the duration of which
equals that of the seven “days,” or any period made up of seven parts.
Thus a Pralaya is equal in duration to a Manvantara, or a Night of Brahmâ
is equal to his Day. If the Christians will follow Jewish customs, they
ought to adopt the spirit and not the dead letter thereof. They should
work one week of seven days and _rest_ seven days. That the word “Sabbath”
had a mystic significance, is disclosed in the contempt shown by Jesus for
the Sabbath day, and by what is said in _Luke_.(385) Sabbath is there
taken for the _whole week_. See the Greek text where the week is called
“Sabbath.” Literally, “I fast twice in the Sabbath.” Paul, an Initiate,
knew it well when referring to the eternal rest and felicity in Heaven, as
Sabbath:(386) “and their happiness will be eternal, for they will ever be
[one] with the Lord, and will enjoy _an eternal Sabbath_.”(387)
The difference between the Kabalah and the archaic Esoteric Vidyâ—taking
the Kabalah as contained in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_, not as
misrepresented by its now disfigured copy, the _Kabalah_ of the Christian
Mystics—is very small indeed, being confined to unimportant divergences of
form and expression. Thus Eastern Occultism refers to our Earth as the
Fourth World, the lowest of the Chain, above which run upward on both
curves the six Globes, three on each side. The _Zohar_, on the other hand,
calls the Earth the lower, or the _seventh_, adding that upon the six
depend all things which are in it (Microprosopus). The “Smaller Face
[smaller because manifested and finite] is formed of _six_ Sephiroth,”
says the same work. “Seven Kings come and _die in the thrice‐destroyed
World_ [Malkuth, our Earth, destroyed after each of the Three Rounds which
it has gone through]. And their reign [that of the Seven Kings] will be
broken up.”(388) This relates to the Seven Races, _five_ of which have
already appeared, and _two_ more have still to appear in this Round.
The Shinto allegorical accounts of cosmogony and the origin of man, in
Japan, hint at the same belief.
Captain C. Pfoundes, who studied the religion underlying the various sects
of the land, for nearly nine years in the monasteries of Japan, says:
The Shinto idea of creation is as follows: Out of Chaos (Konton)
the Earth (In) was the sediment precipitated, and the Heavens (Yo)
the ethereal essences which ascended: Man (Jin) appeared between
the two. The first man was called Kuni‐to ko tatchino‐mikoto, and
_five other names were given to him_, and then the human race
appeared, male and female. Isanagi and Isanami begat Tenshoko
doijin, the first of the five Gods of the Earth.
These “Gods” are simply our Five Races, Isanagi and Isanami being the two
kinds of “Ancestors,” the two preceding Races which give birth to animal
and to rational man.
It will be shown in Volume II, that the number seven, as well as the
doctrine of the septenary constitution of man, was preëminent in all the
secret systems. It plays as important a part in Western Kabalah as in
Eastern Occultism. Éliphas Lévi calls the number seven “the key to the
Mosaic creation and the symbols of every religion.” He shows the Kabalah
faithfully following even the septenary division of man, for the diagram
he gives in his _Clef des Grands Mystères_(389) is septenary. This may be
seen at a glance, however cleverly the correct thought is veiled. One
needs also only to look at the diagram, the “Formation of the Soul,” in
Mathers’ _Kabbalah Unveiled_,(390) from the above mentioned, work of Lévi,
to find the same, though with a different interpretation.
Thus it stands with both the Kabalistic and Occult names attached:
[Diagram IV]
Lévi calls Nephesh that which we name Manas, and _vice versâ_. Nephesh is
the Breath of (animal) Life in man—the Breath of Life, _instinctual_ in
the animal; and Manas is the Third Soul—the human in its light side, and
animal, in its connection with Samaël or Kâma. Nephesh is really the
“Breath of (animal) Life” breathed into Adam, the Man of Dust; it is
consequently the Vital Spark, the informing Element. Without Manas, the
“Reasoning Soul,” or Mind, which in Lévi’s diagram is miscalled Nephesh,
Âtmâ‐Buddhi is irrational on this plane and cannot act. It is Buddhi which
is the Plastic Mediator; not Manas, the intelligent medium between the
upper Triad and the lower Quaternary. But there are many such strange and
curious transformations to be found in the Kabalistic works—a convincing
proof that this literature has become a sad jumble. We do not accept the
classification, except in this one particular, in order to show the points
of agreement.
We will now give in tabular form what the very cautious Éliphas Lévi says
in explanation of his diagram, and what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches—and
compare the two. Lévi, too, makes a distinction between Kabalistic and
Occult Pneumatics.
Says Éliphas Lévi, the Kabalist: Say the Theosophists:
KABALISTIC PNEUMATICS. ESOTERIC PNEUMATICS.
1. The Soul (or Ego) is a 1. The same; for it is
clothed light; and this light is Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas.
triple.
2. Neshamah—pure Spirit. 2. The same(391).
3. Ruach—the Soul or Spirit. 3. Spiritual Soul.
4. Nephesh—Plastic 4. Mediator between Spirit and
Mediator.(392) Man, the Seat of Reason, the
Mind, in man.
5. The garment of the Soul is 5. Correct.
the rind [body] of the Image
[Astral Soul].
6. The Image is double, because 6. Too uselessly apocalyptic.
it reflects the good and the Why not say that the Astral
bad. reflects the good as well as the
bad man; man, who is ever
tending to the upper Triad, or
else disappears with the
Quaternary.
7. [Image—Body.] 7. The Earthly Image.
OCCULT PNEUMATICS. OCCULT PNEUMATICS.
(As given by Éliphas Lévi.) (As given by the Occultists.)
1. Nephesh is immortal, because 1. Manas is immortal, because
it renews its life by the after every new incarnation it
destruction of forms. [But adds to Âtmâ‐Buddhi something of
Nephesh, the “Breath of Life,” itself; and thus, assimilating
is a misnomer, and a useless itself to the Monad, shares its
puzzle to the student.] immortality.
2. Ruach progresses by the 2. Buddhi becomes conscious by
evolution of ideas (!?). the accretions it gets from
Manas, on the death of man after
every new incarnation.
3. Neshamah is progressive, 3. Âtmâ neither progresses,
without oblivion and forgets, nor remembers. It does
destruction. not belong to this plane; it is
but the Ray of Light eternal
which shines upon, and through,
the darkness of matter—when the
latter is willing.
4. The Soul has three dwellings. 4. The Soul—collectively, as the
Upper Triad—_lives_ on three
planes, besides its fourth, the
terrestrial sphere; and it _is_
eternally on the highest of the
three.
5. These dwellings are: the 5. These dwellings are: Earth
Plane of Mortals; the Superior for the physical man, or Animal
Eden; and the Inferior Eden. Soul; Kâma Loka (Hades, the
Limbo) for the disembodied man,
or his Shell; Devachan for the
Higher Triad.
6. The Image [man] is a sphinx 6. Correct.
that offers the riddle of birth.
7. The fatal Image [the Astral] 7. The Astral, through Kâma
endows Nephesh with its (Desire), is ever drawing Manas
aptitudes; but Ruach is able to down into the sphere of material
substitute for it the Image passions and desires. But if the
conquered in accordance with the _better_ Man, or Manas, tries to
inspirations of Neshamah. escape the fatal attraction, and
turns its aspirations to Âtmâ
(Neshamah), then Buddhi (Ruach)
conquers, and carries Manas with
it to the realm of eternal
Spirit.
It is very evident that the French Kabalist either did not sufficiently
know the real tenet, or distorted it to suit himself and his objects. Thus
he says again, treating upon the same subject, as follows; and we
Occultists answer the late Kabalist and his admirers also as follows:
1. The Body is the mould of 1. The Body follows the whims,
Nephesh; Nephesh the mould of good or bad, of Manas; Manas
Ruach; Ruach the mould of the tries to follow the Light of
_garment_ of Neshamah. Buddhi, but often fails. Buddhi
is the mould of the “garments”
of Âtmâ; for Âtmâ is no body, or
shape, or anything, and because
Buddhi is only _figuratively_
its Vehicle.
2. Light [the Soul] personifies 2. The Monad becomes a personal
itself in clothing itself [with Ego when it incarnates; and
a Body]; and personality endures something remains of that
only when the garment is Personality through Manas, when
perfect. the latter is perfect enough to
assimilate Buddhi.
3. The Angels aspire to become 3. Correct.
men; a Perfect Man, a Man‐God,
is above all the Angels.
4. Every 14,000 years the soul 4. Within a period, a Great Age,
rejuvenates, and rests in the or a Day of Brahmâ, 14 Manus
jubilean sleep of oblivion. reign; after which comes
Pralaya, when all the Souls
(Egos) rest in Nirvâna.
Such are the distorted copies of the Esoteric Doctrine in the _Kabalah_.
But to return to Shloka 5 of Stanza VII.
(_b_) The well‐known Kabalistic aphorism runs: “A stone becomes a plant; a
plant, a beast; the beast, a man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.”
The “Spark” animates all the kingdoms, in turn, before it enters into and
informs Divine Man, between whom and his predecessor animal man, there is
all the difference in the world. _Genesis_ begins its anthropology at the
wrong end—evidently for a blind—and lands nowhere. The introductory
chapters of _Genesis_ were never meant to represent even a remote allegory
of the creation of _our_ Earth. They embrace a metaphysical conception of
some indefinite period, in eternity, when successive attempts were being
made by the law of evolution at the formation of universes. The idea is
plainly stated in the _Zohar_:
There were old Worlds, which perished as soon as they came into
existence, were formless, and were called Sparks. Thus, the smith,
when hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all directions.
The Sparks are the primordial Worlds, which could not continue
because the Sacred Aged (Sephira) had not as yet assumed its form
(of androgyne, or opposite sexes) of King and Queen (Sephira and
Kadmon), and the Master was not yet at his work.(393)
Had _Genesis_ begun as it ought, one would have found in it, first, the
Celestial Logos, the “Heavenly Man,” which evolves as a Compound Unit of
Logoi, out of which, after their pralayic sleep—a sleep that gathers the
Numbers scattered on the mâyâvic plane into One, as the separate globules
of quicksilver on a plate blend into one mass—the Logoi appear in their
totality as the first “Male and Female,” or Adam Kadmon, the “Fiat Lux” of
the _Bible_, as we have already seen. But this transformation did not take
place on our Earth, nor on any material plane, but in the Spacial Depths
of the first differentiation of the eternal Root‐Matter. On our nascent
Globe, things proceed differently. The Monad or Jîva, as said in _Isis
Unveiled_,(394) is, first of all, shot down by the Law of Evolution into
the lowest form of matter—the mineral. After a sevenfold gyration encased
in the stone, or that which will become mineral and stone in the Fourth
Round, it creeps out of it, say, as a lichen. Passing thence, through all
the forms of vegetable matter, into what is termed animal matter, it has
now reached the point at which it has become the germ, so to speak, of the
animal, that will become the physical man. All this, up to the Third
Round, is formless, as matter, and senseless, as consciousness. For the
Monad, or Jîva, _per se_, cannot be called even Spirit: it is a Ray, a
Breath of the Absolute, or the ABSOLUTENESS rather; and the Absolute
Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned and relative
finiteness, is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the material
which will be needed for its future human form, the Monad requires (_a_) a
spiritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape itself into; and
(_b_) an intelligent consciousness, to guide its evolution and progress,
neither of which is possessed by the homogeneous Monad, or by senseless
though living matter. The Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be
breathed into him: the two middle Principles, which are the _sentient_
Life of the irrational animal and the Human Soul, for the former is
irrational without the latter. It is only when, from a potential
androgyne, man has become separated into male and female, that he will be
endowed with this conscious, rational, individual Soul (Manas), “the
principle, or the intelligence, of the Elohim,” to receive which, he has
to eat of the fruit of Knowledge from the Tree of Good and Evil. How is he
to obtain all this? The Occult Doctrine teaches that while the Monad is
cycling on downward into matter, these very Elohim, or Pitris—the lower
Dhyân Chohans—are evolving, _pari passu_ with it, on a higher and more
spiritual plane, descending also relatively into matter, on their own
plane of consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they
will meet the incarnating senseless Monad, encased in the lowest matter,
and blending the two potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce
that terrestrial symbol of the “Heavenly Man” in space—PERFECT MAN. In the
Sânkhya Philosophy, Purusha (Spirit) is spoken of as something impotent
unless it mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (Matter), which, left alone,
is—senseless. But in the Secret Philosophy they are viewed as graduated.
Spirit and Matter, though one and the same thing in their origin, when
once they are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their
evolutionary progress in contrary directions—Spirit falling gradually into
Matter, and the latter ascending to its original condition, that of a pure
spiritual Substance. Both are inseparable, yet ever separated. On the
physical plane, two like poles will always repel each other, while the
negative and the positive are mutually attracted; so do Spirit and Matter
stand to each other—the two poles of the same homogeneous Substance, the
Root‐Principle of the Universe.
Therefore, when the hour strikes for Purusha to mount on Prakriti’s
shoulders for the formation of the Perfect Man—rudimentary man of the
first Two and a Half Races being only the _first_, gradually evolving into
the _most perfect, of mammals_—the Celestial Ancestors (Entities from
preceding Worlds, called in India the Shishta) step in on this our plane,
and incarnate in the physical or animal man, as the Pitris had stepped in
before them for the formation of the latter. Thus the two processes for
the two “creations”—the animal and the divine man—differ greatly. The
Pitris shoot out from their ethereal bodies still more ethereal and
shadowy similitudes of themselves, or what we should now call “doubles,”
or “astral forms,” in their own likeness.(395) This furnishes the Monad
with its first dwelling, and blind matter with a model around and upon
which to build henceforth. But _Man is still incomplete_. From Svâyambhuva
Manu,(396) from whom descended the seven primitive Manus, or Prajâpatis,
each of whom gave birth to a primitive Race of men, down to the _Codex
Nazaræus_, in which Karabtanos, or Fetahil, blind concupiscent Matter,
begets on his Mother, Spiritus, seven Figures, each of which stands as the
progenitor of one of the primeval seven Races—this doctrine has left its
impress on every archaic scripture.
“Who forms Manu [the Man] and who forms his body? The Life and the Lives.
Sin(397) and the Moon.” Here Manu stands for the spiritual, heavenly Man,
the real and non‐dying Ego in us, which is the direct emanation of the
“One Life,” or the Absolute Deity. As to our outward physical bodies, the
house of the tabernacle of the Soul, the Doctrine teaches a strange
lesson; so strange that unless thoroughly explained, and as thoroughly
comprehended, it is only the exact science of the future that is destined
to fully vindicate the theory.
It has been stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything
inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, “inorganic
substance,” means simply that the latent life, slumbering in the molecules
of so‐called “inert matter,” is incognizable. ALL IS LIFE, and every atom
of even mineral dust is a LIFE, though beyond our comprehension and
perception, because it is outside the range of the laws known to those who
reject Occultism. “The very atoms,” says Tyndall, “seem instinct with a
desire for life.” Whence, then, we would ask, comes the tendency “to run
into organic form”? Is it in any way explicable except according to the
teachings of Occult Science?
_The Worlds, to the profane, are built up of the known Elements. To the
conception of an Arhat, these Elements are themselves, collectively, a
Divine Life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the
numberless and countless crores of Lives. Fire alone is_ ONE, _on the
plane of the One Reality: on that of manifested, hence illusive, Being,
its particles are fiery Lives which live and have their being at the
expense of every other Life that they consume. Therefore they are named
the_ “DEVOURERS.” ... _Every visible thing in this Universe was built by
such_ LIVES, _from conscious and divine primordial man down to the
unconscious agents that construct matter.... From the_ ONE LIFE, _formless
and uncreate, proceeds the Universe of Lives. First was manifested from
the Deep [Chaos] cold luminous Fire [gaseous light?], which formed the
Curds in Space [irresolvable nebulæ, perhaps?] ... These fought, and a
great heat was developed by the encountering and collision, which produced
rotation. Then came the first manifested_ MATERIAL _Fire, the hot Flames,
the Wanderers in Heaven [Comets]. Heat generates moist vapour; that forms
solid water [?]; then dry mist, then liquid mist, watery, that puts out
the luminous brightness of the Pilgrims [Comets?], and forms solid watery
Wheels_ [MATTER _Globes]. Bhümi [the Earth] appears with six sisters.
These produce by their continuous motion the inferior fire, heat, and an
aqueous mist, which yields the third World‐Element_—WATER; _and from the
breath of all [atmospheric]_ AIR _is born. These four are the four Lives
of the first four Periods [Rounds] of Manvantara. The three last will
follow_.
The Commentary first speaks of the “numberless and countless crores of
Lives.” Is Pasteur, then, unconsciously taking the first step toward
Occult Science, in declaring that, if he dared express his ideas fully
upon this subject, he would say, that the organic cells are endowed with a
vital potency that does not cease its activity with the cessation of a
current of oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account, break off
its relations with life itself, which is supported by the influence of
that gas? “I would add,” continues Pasteur, “that the evolution of the
germ is accomplished by means of complicated phenomena, among which we
must class processes of fermentation”; and life, according to Claude
Bernard and Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That
there exist in Nature Beings, or Lives, that can live and thrive without
air, even on our Globe, has been demonstrated by the same Scientists.
Pasteur found that many of the lower lives, such as vibriones, and other
microbes and bacteria, could exist without air, which, on the contrary,
killed them. They derived the oxygen necessary for their multiplication
from the various substances that surrounded them. He calls them _ærobes_,
living on the tissues of our matter, when the latter has ceased to form a
part of an integral and living whole (then called very unscientifically by
Science “dead matter”), and _anærobes_. The one kind binds oxygen, and
contributes greatly to the destruction of animal life and vegetable
tissues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter, later on,
into the constitution of other organisms; the other finally destroys, or
rather annihilates, the so‐called organic substance; ultimate decay being
impossible without their participation. Certain germ‐cells, such as those
of yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived of it, they will
adapt themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing oxygen
from substances coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the
latter. The cells in fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and
stimulate fermentation. “Therefore the vegetable cell, in this case,
manifests its life as an anærobic being. Why, then, should an organic cell
form, in this case, an exception?” asks Professor Bogolubof. Pasteur shows
that in the substance of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding
sufficient oxygen for itself, stimulates fermentation in the same way as
the fruit‐cell, and Claude Bernard thought that Pasteur’s idea of the
formation of ferments found its application and corroboration in the fact
that urea increases in the blood during strangulation. LIFE therefore is
everywhere in the Universe, and, Occultism teaches us, it is also in the
atom.
“Bhûmi appears with six sisters,” says the Commentary. It is a Vedic
teaching that “there are three Earths, corresponding to three Heavens, and
our Earth [the fourth] is called Bhûmi.” This is the explanation given by
our exoteric Western Orientalists. But the esoteric meaning, and allusion
to it in the _Vedas_, is that it refers to our Planetary Chain; “three
Earths” on the descending arc, and “three Heavens,” which are three Earths
or Globes also, only far more ethereal, on the ascending or spiritual arc.
By the first three we descend into Matter, by the other three we ascend
into Spirit; the lowest one, Bhûmi, our Earth, forming the turning point,
so to say, and containing, _potentially_, as much of Spirit as it does of
Matter. But we shall treat of this hereafter.
The general teaching of the Commentary, then, is that every new Round
develops one of the Compound Elements, as now known to Science, which
rejects the primitive nomenclature, preferring to subdivide them into
constituents. If Nature is the “Ever‐Becoming” on the manifested plane,
then these Elements are to be regarded in the same light: they have to
evolve, progress, and increase to the manvantaric end.
Thus the First Round, we are taught, developed but one Element, and a
nature and humanity in what may be spoken of as one aspect of
Nature—called by some, very unscientifically, though it may be so _de
facto_, “one‐dimensional space.”
The Second Round brought forth and developed two Elements, Fire and Earth;
and _its_ humanity, adapted to this condition of Nature, if we can give
the name humanity to beings living under conditions now unknown to men,
was—to use again a familiar phrase in a strictly figurative sense, the
only way in which it can be used correctly—a “two‐dimensional” species.
The processes of natural development which we are now considering will at
once elucidate and discredit the fashion of speculating on the attributes
of _two_, _three_, and _four_ or more _dimensional_ space; but, in
passing, it is worth while to point out the real significance of the
sound, but incomplete, intuition that has prompted—among Spiritualists and
Theosophists, and several great men of Science, for the matter of
that(398)—the use of the modern expression, the “fourth dimension of
space.” To begin with, the superficial absurdity of assuming that Space
itself is measurable in any direction is of little consequence. The
familiar phrase can only be an abbreviation of the fuller form—the
“_fourth dimension of matter, in Space_.”(399) But even thus expanded, it
is an unhappy phrase, because while it is perfectly true that the progress
of evolution may be destined to introduce us to new characteristics of
matter, those with which we are already familiar are really more numerous
than the three dimensions. The qualities, or what is perhaps the best
available term, the characteristics of matter, must clearly bear a direct
relation always to the senses of man. Matter has extension, colour, motion
(molecular motion), taste and smell, corresponding to the existing senses
of man, and the next characteristic it develops—let us call it for the
moment “Permeability”—will correspond to the next sense of man, which we
may call “Normal Clairvoyance.” Thus, when some bold thinkers have been
thirsting for a fourth dimension, to explain the passage of matter through
matter, and the production of knots upon an endless cord, they have been
in want of a _sixth characteristic_ of matter. The three dimensions belong
really to only one attribute, or characteristic, of matter—extension; and
popular common sense justly rebels against the idea that, under any
condition of things, there can be more than three of such dimensions as
length, breadth and thickness. These terms, and the term “dimension”
itself, all belong to one plane of thought, to one stage of evolution, to
one characteristic of matter. So long as there are foot‐rules within the
resources of cosmos, to apply to matter, so long will they be able to
measure it three ways and no more; just as, from the time the idea of
measurement first occupied a place in the human understanding, it has been
possible to apply measurement in three directions and no more. But these
considerations do not in any way militate against the certainty that, in
the progress of time, as the faculties of humanity are multiplied, so will
the characteristics of matter be multiplied also. Meanwhile, the
expression is far more incorrect than even the familiar phrase of the
sun’s “rising” or “setting.”
We now return to the consideration of material evolution through the
Rounds. Matter in the Second Round, it has been stated, may be
figuratively referred to as two‐dimensional. But here another _caveat_
must be entered. This loose and figurative expression may be regarded—on
one plane of thought, as we have just seen—as equivalent to the second
characteristic of matter, corresponding to the second perceptive faculty
or sense of man. But these two linked scales of evolution are concerned
with the processes going on within the limits of a single Round. The
succession of primary aspects of Nature, with which the succession of
Rounds is concerned, has to do, as already indicated, with the development
of the Elements—in the Occult sense—Fire, Air, Water, Earth. We are only
in the Fourth Round, and our catalogue so far stops short. The order in
which these Elements are mentioned, in the last sentence but one, is the
correct one for Esoteric purposes and in the Secret Teachings. Milton was
right when he spoke of the “Powers of Fire, Air, Water, Earth”; the Earth,
such as we know it now, had no existence before the Fourth Round, hundreds
of millions of years ago, the commencement of our geological Earth. The
Globe, says the Commentary, was “_fiery, cool and radiant, as its ethereal
men and animals, during the First Round_”—a contradiction or paradox in
the opinion of our present Science—“_luminous and more dense and heavy,
during the Second Round; watery during the Third_.” Thus are the Elements
reversed.
The centres of consciousness of the Third Round, destined to develop into
humanity as we know it, arrived at a perception of the third Element,
Water. If we had to frame our conclusions according to the _data_
furnished us by Geologists, then we would say that there was no real
water, even during the Carboniferous Period. We are told that gigantic
masses of carbon, which existed formerly spread in the atmosphere, as
carbonic acid, were absorbed by plants, while a large proportion of that
gas was mixed in the water. Now, if this be so, and we have to believe
that all the carbonic acid which went to compose those plants that formed
bituminous coal, lignite, etc., and went towards the formation of lime‐
stone, and so on, that all this was at that period in the atmosphere in
gaseous form, then, there must have been seas and oceans of liquid
carbonic acid! But how then could the Carboniferous Period be preceded by
the Devonian and Silurian Ages—those of fishes and molluscs—on that
assumption? Barometric pressure, moreover, must have exceeded several
hundred times the pressure of our present atmosphere. How could organisms,
even so simple as those of certain fishes and molluscs, stand that? There
is a curious work by Blanchard, on the Origin of Life, wherein he shows
some strange contradictions and confusions in the theories of his
colleagues, and which we recommend to the reader’s attention.
Those of the Fourth Round have added Earth as a state of matter to their
stock, as well as the three other Elements in their present
transformation.
In short, none of the so‐called Elements were, in the three preceding
Rounds, as they are now. For all we know, FIRE may have been _pure_
Âkâsha, the First Matter of the “Magnum Opus” of the Creators and
Builders, that Astral Light which the paradoxical Éliphas Lévi calls in
one breath the “Body of the Holy Ghost,” and in the next “Baphomet,” the
“Androgyne Goat of Mendes”; AIR, simply Nitrogen, the “Breath of the
Supporters of the Heavenly Dome,” as the Mahometan Mystics call it; WATER,
that primordial fluid which was required, according to Moses, to make a
“Living Soul.” And this may account for the flagrant discrepancies and
unscientific statements found in _Genesis_. Separate the first from the
second chapter; read the former as a scripture of the Elohists, and the
latter as that of the far later Jehovists; still one finds, if one reads
between the lines, the same order in which created things appear; namely,
Fire (Light), Air, Water, and Man (or Earth). For the sentence of the
first chapter (the Elohistic), “In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth,” is a mistranslation; it is not “the heaven and the earth,”
but the duplex, or dual, Heaven, the _upper_ and the _lower_ Heavens, or
the separation of Primordial Substance that was light in its upper, and
dark in its lower portions (the manifested Universe), in its duality of
the _invisible_ (to the senses), and the _visible_ to our perceptions.
“God divided the light from the darkness”; and then made the firmament
(Air). “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the waters,” _i.e._, “the waters which were under
the firmament [our manifested visible Universe] from the waters which were
_above_ the firmament [the (to us) invisible planes of being].” In the
second chapter (the Jehovistic), plants and herbs are created before
water, just as in the first, _light_ is produced before the _sun_. “God
made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field _before it
was in the earth_, and every herb of the field _before it grew_; for the
Lord God [Elohim] had not caused it to rain upon the earth, etc.”—an
absurdity unless the esoteric explanation is accepted. The plants _were_
created before they were in the earth—_for there was no earth then such as
it is now_; and the herb of the field was in existence before it grew as
it does now, in the Fourth Round.
Discussing and explaining the nature of the invisible Elements and the
“Primordial Fire” mentioned above, Éliphas Lévi invariably calls it the
“Astral Light”: with him it is the “Grand Agent Magique.” Undeniably it is
so, but—only so far as _Black_ Magic is concerned, and on the lowest
planes of what we call Ether, the noumenon of which is Âkâsha; and even
this would be held incorrect by orthodox Occultists. The “Astral Light” is
simply the older “Sidereal Light” of Paracelsus; and to say that
“everything which exists has been evolved from it, and it preserves and
reproduces all forms,” as he does, is to enunciate truth only in the
second proposition. The first is erroneous; for if all that exists was
evolved _through_ (or _viâ_) it, this is not the Astral Light, since the
latter is not the container of _all_ things but, at best, only the
reflector of this _all_. Éliphas Lévi very truly shows it “a force in
Nature,” by means of which “a single man who can master it ... might throw
the world into confusion and transform its face”; for it is the “Great
Arcanum of transcendent Magic.” Quoting the words of the great Western
Kabalist in their translated form,(400) we may, perhaps, the better
explain them by the occasional addition of a word or two, to show the
difference between Western and Eastern explanations of the same subject.
The author says of the great Magic Agent:
This ambient and all‐penetrating fluid, this ray detached from the
[Central or Spiritual] Sun’s splendour ... fixed by the weight of
the atmosphere [?!] and the power of central attraction ... the
Astral Light, this electro‐magnetic ether, this vital and luminous
caloric, is represented on ancient monuments by the girdle of
Isis, which twines round two poles ... and in ancient theogonies
by the serpent devouring its own tail, emblem of prudence and of
Saturn [emblem of infinity, immortality, and Cronus—Time—not the
God Saturn or the planet]. It is the winged dragon of Medea, the
double serpent of the caduceus, and the tempter of Genesis; but it
is also the brazen snake of Moses encircling the Tau ... lastly,
it is the devil of exoteric dogmatism, and is really the blind
force [it is not blind, and Lévi knew it], which souls must
conquer, in order to detach themselves from the chains of Earth;
for if they should not, they will be absorbed by the same power
which first produced them, and will return to the central and
eternal fire.
This great Archæus is now publicly discovered by, and _for_, only one
man—J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia. For others, however, it _is_ discovered,
yet must remain almost useless. “So far shalt thou go....”
All the above is as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we
have explained. Éliphas Lévi commits a great blunder in always identifying
the Astral Light with what we call Âkâsha. What it really is will be
expounded in Volume II.
Éliphas Lévi further writes:
The great Magic Agent is the fourth emanation of the life
principle [we say—it is the first in the inner, and the second in
the outer (our) Universe], of which the Sun is the third form ...
for the day‐star [the Sun] is only the reflection and material
shadow of the Central Sun of truth, which illuminates the
intellectual [invisible] world of Spirit, and which itself is but
a gleam borrowed from the Absolute.
So far he is right enough. But when the great authority of the Western
Kabalists adds that, nevertheless, “it is not the immortal Spirit, as the
Indian Hierophants have imagined”—we answer, that he slanders the said
Hierophants, as they have said nothing of the kind; for even the Purânic
exoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindû has ever
mistaken Prakriti—the Astral Light being only above the lowest plane of
Prakriti, the Material Kosmos—for the “immortal Spirit.” Prakriti is ever
called Mâyâ, Illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the Gods
included, at the hour of the Pralaya. As it is shown that Âkâsha is not
even the Ether, least of all then, we imagine, can it be the Astral Light.
Those unable to penetrate beyond the dead letter of the _Purânas_, have
occasionally confused Âkâsha with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the
visible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated the
term Âkâsha by “Ether”—Wilson, for instance—finding it called “the
material cause of sound” possessing, moreover, this _one single property_,
have ignorantly imagined it to be “material,” in the physical sense. True,
again, that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since
nothing material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary, can
be immortal—according to metaphysics and philosophy—it would follow that
Âkâsha is neither infinite nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since
both the words Pradhâna, Primeval Matter, and Sound, as a property, have
been misunderstood; the former term (Pradhâna) being certainly synonymous
with Mûlaprakriti and Âkâsha, and the latter (Sound) with the Verbum, the
Word or the Logos. This is easy to demonstrate; for it is shown in the
following sentence from _Vishnu Purâna_.(401) “There was neither day nor
night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light, nor any other thing,
save only One, unapprehensible by intellect, or that which is Brahman, and
Pums, [Spirit] and Pradhâna [Primordial Matter].”
Now, what is Pradhâna, if it is not Mûlaprakriti, the Root of All, in
another aspect? For though Pradhâna is said, further on, to merge into the
Deity, as everything else does, in order to leave the One absolute during
the Pralaya, yet is it held as infinite and immortal. The literal
translation is given as: “One Prâdhânika Brahma Spirit: THAT was”; and the
Commentator interprets the compound term as a substantive, not as a
derivative word used attributively, _i.e._, like something “conjoined with
Pradhâna.” The student has to note, moreover, that the Purânic is a
dualistic system, not evolutionary, and that, in this respect, far more
will be found, from an Esoteric standpoint, in the Sânkhya, and even in
the _Mânava‐Dharma‐Shâstra_, however much the latter differs from the
former. Hence Pradhâna, even in the _Purânas_, is an aspect of
Parabrahman, not an evolution, and must be the same as the Vedântic
Mûlaprakriti. “Prakriti, in its _primary_ state, is Âkâsha,” says a
Vedântin scholar.(402) It is almost abstract Nature.
Âkâsha, then, is Pradhâna in another form, and as such cannot be Ether,
the ever‐invisible agent, courted even by Physical Science. Nor is it
Astral Light. It is, as said, the _noumenon_ of the seven‐fold
differentiated Prakriti(403)—the ever immaculate “Mother” of the
_fatherless_ “Son,” who becomes “Father” on the lower manifested plane.
For Mahat is the first product of Pradhâna, or Âkâsha; and Mahat—Universal
Intelligence, “whose _characteristic property_ is Buddhi”—is no other than
the Logos, for he is called Îshvara, Brahmâ, Bhâva, etc.(404) He is, in
short, the “Creator,” or the Divine Mind in creative operation, “the Cause
of all things.” He is the “First‐Born,” of whom the _Purânas_ tell us that
“Earth and Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe,” or,
in our language, the negative and the positive poles of dual Nature
(abstract and concrete), for the _Purâna_ adds:
In this manner—as were the _seven_ forms [principles] of Prakriti
reckoned from Mahat to Earth—so at the (time of elemental)
dissolution (_pratyâhâra_), these seven successively reënter into
each other. The Egg of Brahmâ (_Sarva‐mandala_) is dissolved, with
its seven zones (_dvîpa_), seven oceans, seven regions, etc.(405)
These are the reasons why the Occultists refuse to give the name of Astral
Light to Âkâsha, or to call it Ether. “In my Father’s house are many
mansions,” may be contrasted with the Occult saying, “In our Mother’s
house are seven mansions,” or planes, the lowest of which is above and
around us—the Astral Light.
The Elements, whether simple or compound, could not have remained the same
since the commencement of the evolution of our Chain. Everything in the
Universe progresses steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going
up and down in the smaller Cycles. Nature is never stationary during
Manvantara, as it is ever _becoming_,(406) not simply _being_; and
mineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their organisms to
the then reigning Elements; and therefore _those_ Elements were then
fitted for them, as they are now for the life of present humanity. It will
only be in the next, or Fifth, Round that the fifth Element, Ether—the
gross body of Âkâsha, if it can be called even that—will, by becoming a
familiar fact of Nature to all men, as Air is familiar to us now, cease to
be, as at present, hypothetical and an “agent” for so many things. And
only during that Round will those higher senses, the growth and
development of which Âkâsha subserves, be susceptible of a complete
expansion. As already indicated, a _partial_ familiarity with the
characteristic of matter—Permeability—which should be developed
concurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the
proper period in this Round. But with the next Element added to our
resources, in the next Round, Permeability will become so manifest a
characteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this Round will seem
to man’s perceptions as obstructive to him as a thick fog, and no more.
Let us now return to the Life‐Cycle. Without entering at length upon the
description given of the Higher LIVES, we must direct our attention, at
present, simply to the earthly Beings and the Earth itself. The latter, we
are told, is built up for the _First_ Round by the “Devourers,” which
disintegrate and differentiate the germs of other Lives in the Elements;
pretty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world,
the _ærobes_ do, when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in
an organism, they transform animal matter, and generate substances that
vary in their constitutions. Thus Occultism disposes of the so‐called
Azoic Age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when the
Earth was without life upon it. Wherever there is an atom of matter, a
particle, or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life
in it, however latent and unconscious.
_Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active Life; it is drawn into
the vortex of_ MOTION _[the Alchemical Solvent of Life]; Spirit and Matter
are __ the two States of the_ ONE, _which is neither Spirit nor Matter,
both being the Absolute Life, latent.... Spirit is the first
differentiation of [and in]_ SPACE; _and Matter the first differentiation
of Spirit. That, which is neither Spirit nor Matter, That is IT—the
Causeless_ CAUSE _of Spirit and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And
THAT we call the_ ONE LIFE, _or the Intra‐Cosmic Breath_.(407)
Once more we say—_like must produce like_. Absolute Life cannot produce an
inorganic atom, whether single or complex, and there is life even in Laya,
just as a man in a profound cataleptic state—to all appearance a corpse—is
still a living being.
When the “Devourers”—in whom the men of Science are invited to see, with
some show of reason, atoms of the Fire‐Mist, if they will, as the
Occultist will offer no objection to this—when the “Devourers,” we say,
have differentiated the “Fire Atoms,” by a peculiar process of
segmentation, the latter become Life‐Germs, which aggregate according to
the laws of cohesion and affinity. Then the Life‐Germs produce Lives of
another kind, which work on the structure of our Globes.
Thus, in the First Round, the Globe, having been built by the primitive
Fire‐Lives—_i.e._, formed into a sphere—had no solidity, no
qualifications, save a cold brightness, no form, no colour; it is only
towards the end of the First Round that it developed one Element, which,
from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence, has become now, in our
Round, the fire we know throughout the System. The Earth was in her first
Rûpa, the essence of which is the Âkâshic Principle named ——, that which
is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Éliphas
Lévi calls the “Imagination of Nature,” probably to avoid giving it its
correct name, as others do.
Speaking of it, in his Preface to the _Histoire de la Magie_, Éliphas Lévi
says:
It is through this Force that all the nervous centres secretly
communicate with each other; from it—that sympathy and antipathy
are born; from it—that we have our dreams; and that the phenomena
of second sight and extra‐natural visions take place.... Astral
Light [acting under the impulsion of powerful wills] ... destroys,
coagulates, separates, breaks, gathers in all things.... God
created it on that day when he said: “_Fiat Lux!_” ... It is
directed by the Egregores, _i.e._, the chiefs of the souls, who
are the spirits of energy and action.(408)
Éliphas Lévi ought to have added that the Astral Light, or Primordial
Substance, if matter at all, is that which, called Light, _Lux_
esoterically explained, _is the body of those Spirits themselves, and
their very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our plane_,
and the reflected radiance, of the Divine Light, emanating from the
collective Body of those who are called the “Lights” and the “Flames.” But
no other Kabalist has ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction
on the other, of making one paradox chase another in the same sentence,
and in such flowing language, as Éliphas Lévi. He leads his reader through
the most lovely valleys, to strand him after all on a desert and barren
rock.
Says the Commentary:
_It is through and from the radiations of the seven Bodies of the seven
Orders of Dhyânis, that the seven Discrete Quantities [Elements], whose
Motion and harmonious Union produce the manifested Universe of Matter, are
born._
The _Second_ Round brings into manifestation the second Element—AIR; an
element, the purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would
use it. In Europe there have been two Occultists only who have discovered
and even partially applied it in practice, though its composition has
always been known among the highest Eastern Initiates. The ozone of the
modern Chemists is poison compared with the real Universal Solvent, which
could never be thought of unless it existed in Nature.
_From the Second Round, Earth—hitherto a fœtus in the matrix of
Space—began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient Life,
its second Principle. The second corresponds to the sixth [Principle]; the
second is Life continuous, the other, temporary._
The _Third_ Round developed the third Principle—WATER; while the _Fourth_
transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our Globe into the
hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. Bhûmi has reached
her fourth Principle. To this it may be objected that the law of analogy,
so much insisted upon, is broken. Not at all. Earth will reach her true
ultimate form—her body shell—inversely in this to man, only toward the end
of the Manvantara, after the Seventh Round. Eugenius Philalethes was right
when he assured his readers, “on his word of honour,” that no one had yet
seen the “Earth,” _i.e._, Matter in its essential form. Our Globe is, so
far, in its Kâmarûpic state—the Astral Body of Desires of Ahamkâra, dark
Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane.
It is not molecularly constituted matter, least of all the human Body,
Sthûla Sharîra, that is the grossest of all our “Principles,” but verily
the _middle_ Principle, the real Animal Centre, whereas our Body is but
its shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in
us acts all its life. Every intellectual Theosophist will understand my
real meaning. Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is built by
countless Lives, just in the same way as was the rocky crust of our Earth,
has nothing repulsive in it for the true Mystic. Nor can Science oppose
the Occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope will ever fail
to detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the
doctrine.
(_c_) Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organisms of
both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds;
that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with
every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, ærobes, anærobes,
and what not. But Science has never yet gone so far as to assert with the
Occult doctrine, that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and
stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings; which, with the
exception of the larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as
regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its
way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory.
Chemistry and Physiology are the two great magicians of the future, which
are destined to open the eyes of mankind to great physical truths. With
every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the
plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and
man—is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents
of all being found to be identical, Chemical Science may well say that
there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox, and that
which forms man. But the Occult doctrine is far more explicit. It says:
Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal
_invisible_ Lives compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the
daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters
it from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it organic or
inorganic—_is a_ Life. Every atom and molecule in the Universe is both
_life‐giving_ and _death‐giving_ to such forms, inasmuch as it builds by
aggregation universes, and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the
transmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the _forms_,
and expels the souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it
is self‐generating and self‐destroying; it brings into being, and
annihilates, that mystery of mysteries, the _living body_ of man, animal,
or plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life
and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and
disagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that
mysterious LIFE, represented collectively by countless myriads of Lives,
that follows in its own sporadic way the hitherto incomprehensible law of
Atavism; that copies family resemblances, as well as those it finds
impressed in the Aura of the generators of every future human being; a
mystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere. For the
present, one instance may be cited in illustration. Modern Science is
beginning to find out that ptomaine, the alkaloid poison generated by
decaying corpses and matter—a Life also, extracted with the help of
volatile ether, yields a smell as strong as that of the freshest orange‐
blossoms; but that free from oxygen, such alkaloids yield either a most
sickening, disgusting smell, or a most agreeable aroma, which recalls that
of the most delicately scented flowers; and it is suspected that such
blossoms owe their agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine. The venomous
essence of certain fungi, also, is nearly identical with the venom of the
cobra of India, the most deadly of serpents. The French savants Arnaud,
Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same
venomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and
the trigonocephalus of Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest
kind, whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by
living men, animals and plants. Gautier also discovered an alkaloid in the
fresh carcase and brains of an ox, and a venom which he calls
xanthocreatinine, similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous
saliva of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, the most active organs in
the animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors
of venoms, which have the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the
functions of life, and are the ultimate products of inner combustion. And
though it is not yet fully determined whether poisons can be generated by
the animal systems of living beings, without the participation and
interference of microbes, it is ascertained that the animal does produce
venomous substances in its physiological or living state.
Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has to find their _primary_
causes; and this it can never do without the help of the old sciences, of
Alchemy, Occult Botany and Physics. We are taught that every physiological
change, in addition to pathological phenomena, diseases—nay, life itself,
or rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain conditions
and changes in the tissues of the body, which allow and force life to act
in that body—that all this is due to those unseen “Creators” and
“Destroyers,” which are called, in such a loose and general way, microbes.
It might be supposed that these Fiery Lives and the microbes of Science
are identical. This is not true. The Fiery Lives are the seventh and
highest sub‐division of the plane of matter, and correspond in the
individual with the One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane of
matter. The microbes of Science are the first and lowest sub‐division on
the second plane—that of material Prâna, or Life. The physical body of man
undergoes a complete change of structure every seven years, and its
destruction and preservation are due to the alternate functions of the
Fiery Lives, as Destroyers and Builders. They are Builders by sacrificing
themselves, in the form of vitality, to restrain the destructive influence
of the microbes, and, by supplying the microbes with what is necessary,
they compel them under that restraint to build up the material body and
its cells. They are Destroyers also, when that restraint is removed, and
the microbes, unsupplied with vital constructive energy, are left to run
riot as destructive agents. Thus, during the first half of a man’s life,
the first _five_ periods of seven years each, the Fiery Lives are
indirectly engaged in the process of building up man’s material body; Life
is on the ascending scale, and the force is used in construction and
increase. After this period is passed, the age of retrogression commences,
and, the work of the Fiery Lives exhausting their strength, the work of
destruction and decrease also commences.
An analogy between cosmic events in the descent of Spirit into Matter, for
the first half of a Manvantara (planetary as well as human), and its
ascent, at the expense of Matter, in the second half, may here be traced.
These considerations have to do solely with the plane of matter, but the
restraining influence of the Fiery Lives on the lowest sub‐division of the
second plane, the microbes, is confirmed by the fact mentioned in the
theory of Pasteur above referred to, that the cells of the organs, when
they do not find sufficient oxygen for themselves, adapt themselves to
that condition and form _ferments_, which, by absorbing oxygen from
substances which come in contact with them, produce their destruction.
Thus the process is commenced by one cell robbing its neighbour of the
source of its vitality, when the supply is insufficient; and the
destruction so commenced steadily progresses.
Such experimenters as Pasteur are the best friends and helpers of the
Destroyers, and the worst enemies of the Creators—if the latter were not
at the same time Destroyers also. However it may be, one thing is certain
in this: the knowledge of these primary causes, and of the ultimate
essence of every Element, of its Lives, their functions, properties, and
conditions of change—constitutes the basis of MAGIC. Paracelsus was,
perhaps, the only Occultist in Europe, during the latter centuries of the
Christian era, who was versed in this mystery. Had not a criminal hand put
an end to his life years before the time allotted him by Nature,
physiological Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world than
it now has.
(_d_) But what has the Moon to do in all this, we may be asked. What have
“Fish, Sin and Soma [Moon],” in the apocalyptic sentence of the Stanza, to
do in company with the Life‐microbes? With the latter nothing, except that
they avail themselves of the tabernacle of clay prepared by them; with
divine perfect Man everything, since “Fish, Sin and Moon” conjointly
compose the three symbols of the immortal Being.
This is all that can be given. Nor does the writer pretend to know more of
these strange symbols than may be inferred about them from exoteric
religions—from the mystery, perhaps, which underlies the Matsya (Fish)
Avatâra of Vishnu, the. Chaldean Oannes, the Man‐Fish, recorded in the
imperishable sign of the Zodiac, Pisces, and running throughout the two
_Testaments_ in the personages of Joshua “Son of Nun (the Fish)” and
Jesus; from the allegorical “Sin,” or Fall of Spirit into Matter; and from
the Moon—in so far as it relates to the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris.
For the present, it may be as well to remind the reader, that while the
Moon‐Goddesses were connected in every mythology, especially the Grecian,
with child‐birth, because of the influence of the Moon on women and
conception, the Occult and actual connection of our satellite with
fecundation is to this day unknown to Physiology, which regards every
popular practice in this connection as gross superstition. As it is
useless to discuss these in detail, we can only stop for the present to
notice the lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition
belongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism—the basis of
Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was
child‐giving, and the Esotericism of the _Bible_, interpreted
kabalistically, shows undeniably that the Holy of Holies in the Temple was
simply the symbol of the womb. This is now proven beyond doubt and cavil,
by the _numerical_ reading of the _Bible_ in general, and of _Genesis_
especially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from
the Egyptians and Indians, whose Holy of Holies is symbolized by the
King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid and the Yoni symbols of exoteric
Hindûism. To make the matter clearer, and to show at the same time the
enormous difference in the spirit of interpretation and the original
meaning of the same symbols between the ancient Eastern Occultists and the
Jewish Kabalists, we refer the reader to the Section on “The Holy of
Holies,” in the second Volume.
Phallic worship has developed only with the loss of the keys to the true
meaning of the symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning from the
highway of truth and divine knowledge into the side path of fiction,
raised into dogma through human falsification and hierarchic ambition.
6. FROM THE FIRST‐BORN,(409) THE THREAD BETWEEN THE SILENT WATCHER AND HIS
SHADOW BECOMES MORE STRONG AND RADIANT WITH EVERY CHANGE.(410) THE MORNING
SUN‐LIGHT HAS CHANGED INTO NOON‐DAY GLORY....
This sentence, “the Thread between the Silent Watcher and his Shadow [Man]
becomes more strong with every Change,” is another psychological mystery,
that will find its explanation in Volume II. For the present, it will
suffice to say that the “Watcher” and his “Shadows”—the latter numbering
as many as there are reïncarnations for the Monad—are one. The Watcher, or
the Divine Prototype, is at the upper rung of the Ladder of Being; the
Shadow, at the lower. Withal, the Monad of every living being, unless his
moral turpitude breaks the connection, and he runs loose and astray into
the “Lunar Path”—to use the Occult expression—_is an individual Dhyân
Chohan, distinct from others, with a kind of spiritual Individuality of
its own_, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit (Âtman),
is one, of course, with the One Universal Spirit (Paramâtmâ), but the
Vehicle (Vâhan) it is enshrined in, the Buddhi, is part and parcel of that
Dhyân‐Chohanic Essence; and it is in this that lies the mystery of that
_ubiquity_, which was discussed a few pages back. “My Father, that is in
Heaven, and I—are one,” says the Christian Scripture; and in this, at any
rate, it is the faithful echo of the Esoteric tenet.
7. “THIS IS THY PRESENT WHEEL”—SAID THE FLAME TO THE SPARK. “THOU ART
MYSELF, MY IMAGE AND MY SHADOW. I HAVE CLOTHED MYSELF IN THEE, AND THOU
ART MY VÂHAN,(411) TO THE DAY ‘BE WITH US,’ WHEN THOU SHALT RE‐BECOME
MYSELF AND OTHERS, THYSELF AND I” (_a_). THEN THE BUILDERS, HAVING DONNED
THEIR FIRST CLOTHING, DESCEND ON RADIANT EARTH, AND REIGN OVER MEN—WHO ARE
THEMSELVES (_b_).
(_a_) The Day when the Spark will re‐become the Flame, when Man will merge
into his Dhyân Chohan, “myself and others, thyself and I,” as the Stanza
has it, means that in Paranirvâna—when Pralaya will have reduced not only
material and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Egos, to their
original principle—the Past, Present, and even Future Humanities, like all
things, will be one and the same. Everything will have reëntered the Great
Breath. In other words, everything will be “merged in Brahman,” or the
Divine Unity.
Is this annihilation, as some think? Or _atheism_, as other critics—the
worshippers of a _personal_ deity, and believers in an unphilosophical
paradise—are inclined to suppose? Neither. It is worse than useless to
return to the question of implied atheism, in that which is _spirituality_
of a most refined character. To see in Nirvâna annihilation, amounts to
saying of a man plunged in a sound _dreamless_ sleep—_one that leaves no
impression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper’s Higher
Self is then in its original state of Absolute Consciousness_—that he,
too, is annihilated. The latter simile answers to one side of the question
only—the most material; since _reäbsorption_ is by no means such a
“dreamless sleep,” but, on the contrary, _Absolute_ Existence, an
unconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is
absolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a
comprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic
visions of the Soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine Monad. Nor
is the Individuality—_nor even the essence of the Personality_, if any be
left behind—lost, because reäbsorbed. For, however limitless from a human
standpoint, the paranirvânic state, yet it has a limit in Eternity. Once
reached, the same Monad will _reëmerge_ therefrom, as a still higher
being, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected
activity. The human mind, in its present stage of development, cannot
transcend, scarcely can it reach this plane of thought. It totters here,
on the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.
(_b_) The “Watchers” reign over men during the whole period of Satya Yuga
and the smaller subsequent Yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root
Race; after which it is the Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes, as in the
Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the priests to Solon, the incarnated
Dhyânis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the human Kings of other
nations. All were carefully recorded. In the views of symbologists this
Mythopœic Age is of course regarded as only a fairy tale. But since
traditions and even chronicles of such Dynasties of _Divine_ Kings, of
Gods reigning over men, followed by Dynasties of Heroes or Giants, exist
in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the
peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast oceans and
belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and
Mexicans, as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same “fairy
tales” in the same order of events.(412) However, as the Secret Doctrine
teaches _history_—which, although esoteric and traditional, is, none the
less, more reliable than profane history—we are entitled to our beliefs as
much as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine
says that the Dhyâni‐Buddhas of the two higher Groups, namely, the
Watchers or the Architects, furnished the many and various races with
divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts
and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that
had just shaken off their Vehicles of the lower Kingdoms, and who had,
therefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin, the great
spiritual truths of the transcendental Worlds.
Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers “descend on radiant Earth
and reign over men, _who are themselves_.” The reigning Kings had finished
their cycle on Earth and other Worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the
future Manvantaras they will have risen to higher Systems than our
planetary World; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the
hard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their
predecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own
Life‐Cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a Mankind whose Monads
may now be still imprisoned—semi‐conscious—in the most intellectual of the
animal kingdom, while their lower principles may be animating, perhaps,
the highest specimens of the vegetable world.
Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Seven‐fold Nature;
the spiritual or divine; the psychic or semi‐divine; the intellectual; the
passional, the instinctual, or _cognitional_; the semi‐corporeal; and the
purely material or physical natures. All these evolve and progress
cyclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and
centripetal, way, _one_ in their ultimate essence, _seven_ in their
aspects. The lowest, of course, is that depending upon and subservient to
our five physical senses, which are in truth _seven_, as shown later, on
the authority of the oldest _Upanishads_. Thus far, for individual, human,
sentient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher
macrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for
purposes of the collective progress of the countless Lives, the
outbreathings of the One Life; in order that, through the Ever‐Becoming,
every cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and
the intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi‐terrestrial, down to
matter in full generation, and then back again, reäscending at each new
period higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may
reach, _through individual merits and efforts_, that plane where it re‐
becomes the One Unconditioned ALL. But between the Alpha and the Omega
there is the weary “Road,” hedged in by thorns, that goes down first,
then—
Winds up hill all the way;
Yes, to the very end....
Starting upon the long journey immaculate, descending more and more into
sinful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in manifested
Space—the Pilgrim, having struggled through, and suffered in, every form
of Life and Being, is only at the bottom of the valley of matter, and half
through his cycle, when he has identified himself with collective
Humanity. This, _he has made in his own image_. In order to progress
upwards and homewards, the “God” has now to ascend the weary uphill path
of the Golgotha of Life. It is the martyrdom of self‐conscious existence.
Like Vishvakarman, he has to sacrifice _himself to himself_, in order to
redeem all creatures, to resurrect from the Many into the One Life. Then
he ascends into Heaven indeed; where, plunged into the incomprehensible
Absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvâna, he reigns unconditionally, and
whence he will re‐descend again, at the next “Coming,” which one portion
of humanity expects in its dead‐letter sense as the “Second Advent,” and
the other as the last “Kalkî Avatâra.”
Summing Up.
The History of Creation and of this World, from its beginning up
to the present time, is composed of _seven_ chapters. The
_seventh_ chapter is not yet written.
T. SUBBA ROW.(413)
The first of these “seven chapters” has been attempted and is now
finished. However incomplete and feeble as an exposition, it is, at any
rate, an approximation—using the word in a mathematical sense—to that
which is the oldest basis for all subsequent cosmogonies. The attempt to
render in a European tongue the grand panorama of the ever periodically
recurring Law, impressed upon the plastic minds of the first Races endowed
with Consciousness, by those who reflected the same from the Universal
Mind, is daring; for no human language, save the Sanskrit—which is that
_of the Gods_—can do so with any degree of adequacy. But the failures in
this work must be forgiven for the sake of the motive.
As a whole, neither the foregoing nor what follows can be found in full
anywhere. It is not taught in any of the six Indian schools of philosophy,
for it pertains to their synthesis, the seventh, which is the Occult
Doctrine. It is not traced on any crumbling papyrus of Egypt, nor is it
any longer graven on Assyrian tile or granite wall. The Books of the
Vedânta—the “last word of human knowledge”—give out but the metaphysical
aspect of this world‐cosmogony; and their priceless thesaurus, the
_Upanishads_—_Upa‐ni‐shad_ being a compound word, expressing the conquest
of ignorance by the revelation of _secret_, _spiritual_ knowledge—now
requires the additional possession of a master‐key, to enable the student
to get at their full meaning. The reason for this I venture to state here
as I learned it from a Master.
The name _Upanishad_, is usually translated “esoteric doctrine.” These
treatises form part of Shruti, or “revealed” Knowledge, Revelation in
short, and are generally attached to the Brâhmana portion of the _Vedas_,
as their third division.
[Now] the _Vedas_ have a distinct dual meaning—one expressed by
the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre
and the _svara_ (intonation), which are as the life of the
_Vedas_.... Learned pandits and philologists of course deny that
_svara_ has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric
doctrines; but the mysterious connection between _svara_ and
_light_ is one of its most profound secrets.(414)
There are over 150 _Upanishads_ enumerated by Orientalists, who credit the
oldest with being written _probably_ about 600 years B.C.; but of
_genuine_ texts there does not exist a fifth of the number. The
_Upanishads_ are to the _Vedas_ what the _Kabalah_ is to the Jewish
_Bible_. They treat of and expound the secret and mystic meaning of the
Vedic texts. They speak of the origin of the Universe, the nature of
Deity, and of Spirit and Soul, as also of the metaphysical connection of
Mind and Matter. In a few words: _They_ CONTAIN _the beginning and the end
of all human knowledge, but they have ceased to_ REVEAL _it_, since the
days of Buddha. If it were otherwise, the _Upanishads_ could not be called
_esoteric_, since they are now openly attached to the Sacred Brâhmanical
Books, which have, in our present age, become accessible even to the
Mlechchhas (out‐castes) and the European Orientalists. One thing in
them—and this, in all the _Upanishads_—invariably and constantly points to
their ancient origin, and proves (_a_) that they were written, in some of
their portions, _before_ the caste system became the tyrannical
institution which it still is; and (_b_) that half of their contents have
been eliminated, while some of them have been rewritten and abridged. “The
great Teachers of the higher Knowledge and the Brâhmans are continually
represented as going to Kshatriya [military‐caste] kings to become their
pupils.” As Professor Cowell pertinently remarks, the _Upanishads_
“breathe an entirely different spirit [from other Brâhmanical writings], a
freedom of thought unknown in any earlier work, except in the _Rig Veda_
hymns themselves.” The second fact is explained by a tradition recorded in
one of the MSS. on Buddha’s life. It says that the _Upanishads_ were
originally attached to their _Brâhmanas_ after the beginning of a reform,
which led to the exclusiveness of the present caste system among the
Brâhmans, a few centuries after the invasion of India by the “Twice‐born.”
They were complete in those days, and were used for the instruction of the
Chelâs who were preparing for Initiation.
This lasted so long as the _Vedas_ and the _Brâhmanas_ remained in the
sole and exclusive keeping of the temple‐Brâhmans—while no one else had
the right to study or even read them outside of the _sacred_ caste. Then
came Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu. After _learning_ the whole of the
Brâhmanical wisdom in the _Rahasya_, or the _Upanishads_, and finding that
the teachings differed little, if at all, from those of the “Teachers of
Life” inhabiting the snowy ranges of the Himâlayas,(415) the disciple of
the Brâhmans, feeling indignant because the Sacred Wisdom was thus
withheld from all but Brâhmans, determined, by popularizing it, to save
the whole world. Then it was that the Brâhmans, seeing that their Sacred
Knowledge and Occult Wisdom was falling into the hands of the Mlechchhas,
abridged the texts of the _Upanishads_, which originally contained thrice
the matter of the _Vedas_ and the _Brâhmanas_ together, without altering,
however, one word of the texts. They simply detached from the MSS. the
most important portions, containing the last word of the Mystery of Being.
The key to the Brâhmanical secret code remained henceforth with the
Initiates alone, and the Brâhmans were thus in a position to publicly deny
the correctness of Buddha’s teaching by appealing to their _Upanishads_,
silenced for ever on the chief questions. Such is the esoteric tradition
beyond the Himâlayas.
Shrî Shankarâchârya, the greatest Initiate living in the historical ages,
wrote many a Bhâshya (Commentary) on the _Upanishads_. But his original
treatises, as there are reasons to suppose, have not yet fallen into the
hands of the Philistines, for they are too jealously preserved in his
monasteries (mathams). And there are still weightier reasons to believe
that the priceless Bhâshyas on the Esoteric Doctrine of the Brâhmans, by
their greatest expounder, will remain for ages still a dead letter to most
of the Hindûs, except the Smârtava Brâhmans. This sect, founded by
Shankarâchârya, which is still very powerful in Southern India, is now
almost the only one to produce students who have preserved sufficient
knowledge to comprehend the dead letter of the Bhâshyas. The reason for
this, I am informed, is that they alone have occasionally real Initiates
at their head in their mathams, as for instance, in the Shringa‐giri, in
the Western Ghâts of Mysore. On the other hand, there is no sect, in that
desperately exclusive caste of the Brâhmans, more exclusive than is the
Smârtava; and the reticence of its followers, to say what they may know of
the Occult sciences and the Esoteric Doctrine, is only equalled by their
pride and learning.
Therefore the writer of the present statement must be prepared beforehand
to meet with great opposition, and even the denial of such statements as
are brought forward in this work. Not that any claim to infallibility, or
to perfect correctness in every detail of all which is herein written, has
ever been put forward. Facts are there, and they can hardly be denied.
But, owing to the intrinsic difficulties of the subjects treated of, and
the almost insurmountable limitations of the English tongue, as of all
other European languages, to express certain ideas, it is more than
probable that the writer has failed to present the explanations in the
best and the clearest form; yet all that could be done, under every
adverse circumstance, has been done, and this is the utmost that can be
expected of any writer.
Let us recapitulate and, by the vastness of the subjects expounded, show
how difficult, if not impossible, it is to do them full justice.
(1) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its
cosmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate of all systems, even
as veiled in the exotericism of the _Purânas_. But such is the mysterious
power of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied
countless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, set down
and explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all
recorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze
of those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded
the soul of things there, where an ordinary profane observer, however
learned, would have perceived but the external work of form. But Modern
Science believes not in the “soul of things,” and hence will reject the
whole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in
question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals; that it is an
uninterrupted record, covering thousands of generations of seers, whose
respective experiences were made to test and verify the traditions, passed
on orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and
exalted Beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity; that for long
ages, the “Wise Men” of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued
from the last cataclysm and the shifting of continents, passed their lives
_in learning, not teaching_. How did they do so? It is answered: by
checking, testing, and verifying, in every department of Nature, the
traditions of old, by the independent visions of great Adepts; that is to
say, men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic,
and spiritual organizations, to the utmost possible degree. No vision of
one Adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions—so
obtained as to stand as independent evidence—of other Adepts, and by
centuries of experience.
(2) The fundamental law in that system, the central point from which all
emerges, around and towards which all gravitates, and upon which is hung
all its philosophy, is the One Homogeneous Divine SUBSTANCE‐PRINCIPLE, the
One Radical Cause.
... Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause to nature’s secret head,
And found that one first Principle must be....
It is called “Substance‐Principle,” for it becomes “Substance” on the
plane of the manifested Universe, an Illusion, while it remains a
“Principle” in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and
invisible, SPACE. It is the omnipresent Reality; impersonal, because it
contains all and everything. Its _Impersonality_ is the _fundamental
conception_ of the System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and
is the Universe itself.
(3) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown Absolute
Essence. To call it “Essence,” however, is to sin against the very spirit
of the philosophy. For though the noun may be derived in this case from
the verb _esse_, “to be,” yet IT cannot be identified with a “being” of
any kind, that can be conceived by human intellect. IT is best described
as neither Spirit nor Matter, but both. Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti are
One, in reality, yet TWO in the universal conception of the Manifested,
even in the conception of the One Logos, the first “Manifestation,” to
which, as the able lecturer shows, in the “Notes on the _Bhagavadgîtâ_,”
IT appears from the objective standpoint as Mûlaprakriti, and not as
Parabrahman; as its Veil, and not the One Reality hidden behind, which is
unconditioned and absolute.
(4) The Universe, with everything in it, is called Mâyâ, because all is
temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire‐fly to that of the
sun. Compared to the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the
changelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent ever‐
changing forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher, no
better than a will‐o’‐the‐wisp. Yet, the Universe is real enough to the
conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.
(5) Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is
_conscious_: _i.e._, endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on
its own plane of perception. We men must remember that, simply because
_we_ do not perceive any signs of consciousness which we can recognize,
say, in stones, we have no right to say that _no consciousness exists
there_. There is no such thing as either “dead” or “blind” matter, as
there is no “blind” or “unconscious” Law. These find no place among the
conceptions of Occult Philosophy. The latter never stops at surface
appearances, and for it the noumenal Essences have more reality than their
objective counterparts; wherein it resembles the system of the mediæval
Nominalists, for whom it was the universals that were the realities, and
the particulars which existed only in name and human fancy.
(6) The Universe is worked and _guided_, from _within outwards_. As above
so it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man, the microcosm and
miniature copy of the macrocosm, is the living witness to this Universal
Law, and to the mode of its action. We see that every _external_ motion,
act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is
produced and preceded by _internal_ feeling or emotion, will or volition,
and thought or mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man’s
external body, can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given
through one of the three functions named, so with the external or
manifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated
by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a
mission to perform, and who—whether we give them one name or another,
whether we call them Dhyân Chohans or Angels—are “Messengers,” in the
sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary
infinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence;
and to call them all pure Spirits, without any of the earthly alloy “which
time is wont to prey upon,” is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each
of these Beings either _was_, or prepares to become, a man, if not in the
present, then in a past or a coming Manvantara. They are _perfected_, when
not _incipient_, men; and in their higher, less material, spheres differ
morally from terrestrial human beings only in that they are devoid of the
feeling of personality, and of the _human_ emotional nature—two purely
earthly characteristics. The former, or the “perfected,” have become free
from these feelings, because (_a_) they have no longer fleshly bodies—an
ever‐numbing weight on the Soul; and (_b_), the pure spiritual element
being left untrammelled and more free, they are less influenced by Mâyâ
than man can ever be, unless he is an Adept who keeps his two
personalities—the spiritual and the physical—entirely separated. The
incipient Monads, having never yet had terrestrial bodies, can have no
sense of personality or _Ego_‐ism. That which is meant by “personality”
being a limitation and a relation, or, as defined by Coleridge,
“individuality existing in itself but with a nature as a ground,” the term
cannot of course be applied to non‐human Entities; but, as a fact insisted
upon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings, high or low, have
either individuality or personality as separate Entities, _i.e._, they
have no individuality in the sense in which a man says, “_I am myself_ and
no one else”; in other words, they are conscious of no such distinct
separateness as men and things have on earth. Individuality is the
characteristic of their respective Hierarchies, not of their units; and
these characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which
these Hierarchies belong: the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the
One Divine, the purer and the less accentuated is that individuality in
the Hierarchy. They are finite in all respects, with the exception of
their higher principles—the immortal Sparks reflecting the Universal
Divine Flame, individualized and separated only on the spheres of
Illusion, by a differentiation as illusive as the rest. They are “Living
Ones,” because they are the streams projected on the cosmic screen of
Illusion from the Absolute Life; Beings in whom life cannot become
extinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in those who sense these
“Lives.” Having sprung into being under the quickening influence of the
uncreated Beam, the reflection of the great Central Sun that radiates on
the shores of the River of Life, it is the Inner Principle in them which
belongs to the Waters of Immortality, while its differentiated clothing is
as perishable as man’s body. Therefore Young was right in saying that
Angels are men of a superior kind ...
and no more. They are neither “ministering” nor “protecting” Angels, nor
are they “Harbingers of the Most High”; still less the “Messengers of
Wrath” of any God such as man’s fancy has created. To appeal to their
protection is as foolish as to believe that their sympathy may be secured
by any kind of propitiation; for they are, as much as man himself is, the
slaves and creatures of immutable Karmic and Cosmic Law. The reason for
this is evident. Having no elements of personality in their essence, they
can have no personal qualities, such as are attributed by men, in exoteric
religions, to their anthropomorphic God—a jealous and exclusive God, who
rejoices and feels wrathful, is pleased with sacrifice, and is more
despotic in his vanity than any finite foolish man. Man, being a compound
of the essences of all these celestial Hierarchies, may succeed in making
himself, as such, superior, in one sense, to any Hierarchy or Class, or
even combination of them. “Man can neither propitiate nor command the
Devas,” it is said. But, by paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving
thereby at the full knowledge of the _non‐separateness_ of his Higher Self
from the One Absolute SELF, man can, even during his terrestrial life,
become as “one of us.” Thus it is, by eating of the fruit of knowledge,
which dispels ignorance, that man becomes like one of the Elohim, or the
Dhyânis; and once on _their_ plane, the spirit of Solidarity and perfect
Harmony, which reigns in every Hierarchy, must extend over him, and
protect him in every particular.
The chief difficulty which prevents men of Science from believing in
divine as well as in nature spirits is their Materialism. The main
impediment before the Spiritualist which hinders him from believing in the
same, while preserving a blind belief in the “Spirits” of the Departed, is
the general ignorance of all—except some Occultists and Kabalists—about
the true essence and nature of Matter. It is on the acceptance or
rejection of the theory of the _Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate
Essence_, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around
us of other conscious Beings, besides the Spirits of the Dead. It is on
the right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of Spirit‐Matter, and
its real Essence, that the student has to depend for the further
elucidation in his mind of the Occult Cosmogony, and for the only sure
clue which can guide his subsequent studies.
In sober truth, as just shown, every so‐called “Spirit” is either a
_disembodied or a future man_. As from the highest Archangel (Dhyân
Chohan) down to the last conscious Builder (the inferior Class of
Spiritual Entities), all such are _men_, having lived æons ago, in other
Manvantaras, on this or other Spheres; so the inferior, semi‐intelligent
and non‐intelligent Elementals are all _future_ men. The fact alone, that
a Spirit is endowed with intelligence, is a proof to the Occultist that
such a Being must have been a _man_, and acquired his knowledge and
intelligence throughout the human cycle. There is but one indivisible and
absolute Omniscience and Intelligence in the Universe, and this thrills
throughout every atom and infinitesimal point of the whole Kosmos, which
has no bounds, and which people call Space, considered independently of
anything contained in it. But the first differentiation of its
_reflection_ in the Manifested World is purely spiritual, and the Beings
generated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation
to the one we conceive of. They can have no human consciousness or
intelligence before they have acquired such, personally and individually.
This may be a mystery, yet it is a fact in Esoteric Philosophy, and a very
apparent one too.
The whole order of Nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher
life. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The
whole process of evolution, with its endless adaptations, is a proof of
this. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and feeble species, to
make room for the strong, and which ensure the “survival of the fittest,”
though so cruel in their immediate action, all are working toward the
grand end. The very _fact_ that adaptations _do_ occur, that the fittest
_do_ survive in the struggle for existence, shows that what is called
“unconscious Nature” is in reality an aggregate of forces, manipulated by
semi‐intelligent beings (Elementals), guided by High Planetary Spirits
(Dhyân Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the Manifested Verbum of
the Unmanifested Logos, and constitutes one and the same time the Mind of
the Universe and its immutable Law.
For Nature, taken in its abstract sense, _cannot_ be “unconscious,” as it
is the emanation from, and thus an aspect on the manifested plane of, the
Absolute Consciousness. Where is that daring man who would presume to deny
to vegetation and even to minerals _a consciousness of their own_? All he
can say is, that this consciousness is beyond his comprehension.
Three distinct representations of the Universe, in its three distinct
aspects, are impressed upon our thoughts by the Esoteric Philosophy: the
_Pre‐existing_, evolved from the _Ever‐existing_, and the _Phenomenal_—the
world of illusion, the reflection, and shadow thereof. During the great
mystery and drama of life, known as the Manvantara, real Kosmos is like
the objects placed behind the white screen upon which shadows are thrown.
The actual figures and things remain invisible, while the wires of
evolution are pulled by unseen hands. Men and things are thus but the
reflections, _on_ the white field, of the realities _behind_ the snares of
Mahâmâyâ, or the Great Illusion. This was taught in every philosophy, in
every religion, ante‐ as well as post‐diluvian, in India and Chaldea, by
the Chinese as by the Grecian Sages. In the former countries these three
Universes were allegorized, in exoteric teachings, by the three Trinities,
emanating from the central eternal Germ, and forming with it a Supreme
Unity: the _initial_, the _manifested_, and the _creative_ Triad, or the
Three in One. The last is but the symbol, in its concrete expression, of
the first _ideal_ two. Hence Esoteric Philosophy passes over the
necessarianism of this purely metaphysical conception, and calls the first
one, only, the Ever‐Existing. This is the view of every one of the six
great schools of Indian philosophy—the six principles of that unit body of
Wisdom of which the Gnôsis, the _hidden_ Knowledge, is the seventh.
The writer hopes that, however superficially the comments on the Seven
Stanzas may have been handled, enough has been given, in this cosmogonic
portion of the work, to show the archaic teachings to be on their very
face more _scientific_ (in the modern sense of the word) than any other
ancient Scriptures left to be judged on their exoteric aspect. Since,
however, as before confessed, this work _withholds far more than it gives
out_, the student is invited to use his own intuitions. Our chief care is
to elucidate that which has already been given out, and, to our regret,
very incorrectly at times; to supplement the knowledge hinted at—whenever
and wherever possible—by additional matter; and to bulwark our doctrines
against the too strong attacks of modern Sectarianism, and more especially
against those of our latter‐day Materialism, very often miscalled Science,
whereas, in reality, the words “Scientists” and “Sciolists” ought alone to
bear the responsibility for the many illogical theories offered to the
world. In its great ignorance, the public, while blindly accepting
everything that emanates from “authorities,” and feeling it to be its duty
to regard every _dictum_ coming from a man of Science as a proven fact—the
public, we say, is taught to scoff at anything brought forward from
“heathen” sources. Therefore, as materialistic Scientists can be fought
solely with their own weapons—those of controversy and argument—an
Addendum is added to each Volume contrasting the respective views, and
showing how even great authorities may often err. We believe that this can
be done effectually, by showing the weak points of our opponents, and by
proving their too frequent sophisms, which are made to pass for scientific
_dicta_, to be incorrect. We hold to Hermes and his “Wisdom,” in its
universal character; they—to Aristotle, as against intuition and the
experience of the Ages, fancying that Truth is the exclusive property of
the Western world. Hence the disagreement. As Hermes says: “Knowledge
differs much from sense; for sense is of things that surmount it, but
Knowledge is the end of sense”—_i.e._, of the illusion of our physical
brain and its intellect; thus emphasizing the contrast between the
laboriously acquired knowledge of the senses and Mind (Manas), and the
intuitive omniscience of the Spiritual Divine Soul (Buddhi).
Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a remote future,
we hope to have so far proven the following facts:
(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the sense underlying
the Sanskrit word Nâstika, a rejection of idols, including every
anthropomorphic God. In this sense every Occultist is a Nâstika.
(2) It admits a Logos, or a Collective “Creator” of the Universe; a
Demiurge, in the sense implied when one speaks of an “Architect” as the
“Creator” of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one
stone of it, but, furnishing the plan, has left all the manual labour to
the masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the
Universe, and the constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent
Powers and Forces. But that Demiurge is no _personal_ deity—_i.e._, an
imperfect _extra‐cosmic God_, but only the aggregate of the Dhyân Chohans
and the other Forces.
(3) The Dhyân Chohans are dual in their character; being composed of (_a_)
the irrational _brute Energy_, inherent in Matter, and (_b_) the
intelligent Soul, or cosmic Consciousness, which directs and guides that
Energy, and which is the _Dhyân Chohanic Thought, reflecting the Ideation
of the Universal Mind_. This results in a perpetual series of physical
manifestations and _moral effects_ on Earth, during manvantaric periods,
the whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is not always
perfect; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding
Intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even very
often results in evident failures—therefore, neither the collective Host
(Demiurge), nor any of the working Powers individually, are proper
subjects for divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the grateful
reverence of humanity, however, and man ought to be ever striving to help
the divine evolution of _Ideas_, by becoming, to the best of his ability,
a _co‐worker with Nature_, in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and
incognizable Kârana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have
its shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our
heart—invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through the “still small
voice” of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship before it, ought
to do so in the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls; making
their Spirit the sole mediator between them and the Universal Spirit,
their good actions the only priests, and their sinful intentions the only
visible and objective sacrificial victims to the _Presence_.
“When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are ... but enter
into _thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father
which is in secret_.”(416) Our Father is _within us_ “in secret,” our
Seventh Principle in the “inner chamber” of our soul‐perception. “The
Kingdom of God” and of Heaven is _within_ us, says Jesus, not _outside_.
Why are Christians so absolutely blind to the self‐evident meaning of the
words of wisdom they delight in mechanically repeating?
(4) Matter is Eternal. It is the Upâdhi, or Physical Basis, for the One
Infinite Universal Mind to build thereon its ideations. Therefore, the
Esotericists maintain that there is no inorganic or “dead” matter in
Nature, the distinction between the two made by Science being as unfounded
as it is arbitrary and devoid of reason. Whatever Science may think,
however—and _exact_ Science is a fickle dame, as we all know by
experience—Occultism knows and teaches differently, as it has done from
time immemorial, from Manu and Hermes down to Paracelsus and his
successors.
Thus, Hermes, the Thrice Great, says:
Oh, my son, matter _becomes_; formerly it _was_; for matter is the
vehicle of becoming. Becoming is the mode of activity of the
uncreate and foreseeing God. Having been endowed with the germ of
becoming, [objective] matter is brought into birth, for the
creative force fashions it _according to the ideal forms_. Matter
not yet engendered had no form; it becomes, when it is put into
operation.(417)
To this the late Dr. Anna Kingsford, the able translator and compiler of
the Hermetic Fragments, remarks in a footnote:
Dr. Ménard observes that in Greek the same word signifies _to be
born_ and _to become_. The idea here is, that the material of the
world is in its essence eternal, but that before creation or
“becoming” it is in a passive and motionless condition. Thus it
“was” before being put into operation; now it “becomes,” that is,
it is mobile and progressive.
And she adds the purely Vedântic doctrine of the Hermetic philosophy that:
Creation is thus the period of activity [Manvantara] of God, who,
according to Hermetic thought [or _which_, according to the
Vedântin], has two modes—Activity or Existence, God evolved (Deus
explicitus); and Passivity of Being [Pralaya], God involved (Deus
implicitus). Both modes are perfect and complete, as are the
waking and sleeping states of man. Fichte, the German philosopher,
distinguished Being (Seyn) as One, which we know only through
existence (Daseyn) as the Manifold. This view is thoroughly
Hermetic. The “Ideal Forms” ... are the archetypal or formative
ideas of the Neo‐Platonists; the eternal and subjective concepts
of things subsisting in the Divine Mind, prior to “creation” or
becoming.
Or, as in the philosophy of Paracelsus:
Everything is the product of one universal creative effort....
There is nothing _dead_ in Nature. _Everything is organic and
living_, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living
organism.(418)
(5) The Universe was evolved out of its ideal plan, upheld through
Eternity in the Unconsciousness of that which the Vedântins call
Parabrahman. This is practically identical with the conclusions of the
highest Western philosophy, “the innate, eternal, and self‐existing Ideas”
of Plato, now reflected by Von Hartmann. The “Unknowable” of Herbert
Spencer bears but a faint resemblance to that transcendental Reality
believed in by Occultists, often appearing merely a personification of a
“force behind phenomena”—an infinite and eternal Energy, from which all
things proceed, whereas the author of the _Philosophy of the Unconscious_
has come (in this respect only) as near to a solution of the great Mystery
as mortal man can. Few have been those, whether in ancient or mediæval
philosophy, who have dared to approach the subject or even hint at it.
Paracelsus mentions it inferentially, and his ideas are admirably
synthesized by Dr. F. Hartmann, F.T.S., in his _Paracelsus_, from which we
have just quoted.
All the Christian Kabalists understood well the Eastern root idea. The
active Power, the “Perpetual Motion of the great Breath,” only awakens
Cosmos at the dawn of every new Period, setting it into motion by means of
the two contrary Forces, the centripetal and the centrifugal Forces, which
are male and female, positive and negative, physical and spiritual, the
two being the one _Primordial_ Force, and thus causing it to become
objective on the plane of Illusion. In other words, that dual motion
transfers Cosmos from the plane of the Eternal Ideal into that of finite
manifestation, or from the _noumenal_ to the _phenomenal_ plane.
Everything that _is_, _was_, and _will be_, eternally IS, even the
countless Forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective,
but not in their _ideal_ form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity,
and, when they pass away, will exist as reflections. Occultism teaches
that no form can be given to anything, either by Nature or by man, whose
ideal type does not already exist on the subjective plane: more than this;
that no form or shape can possibly enter man’s consciousness, or evolve in
his imagination, which does not exist in prototype, at least as an
approximation. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or
stone, has ever been “created”; and it is only on this plane of ours that
it commenced “becoming,” that is to say, objectivizing into its present
materiality, or expanding _from within outwards_, from the most sublimated
and supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore _our_
human forms have existed in the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes;
according to which models, the Spiritual Beings, or Gods, whose duty it
was to bring them into objective being and terrestrial life, evolved the
protoplasmic forms of the future Egos from _their own_ essence. After
which, when this human Upâdhi, or basic mould, was ready, the natural
terrestrial Forces began to work on these supersensuous moulds, _which
contained, besides their own, the elements of all the past vegetable and
future animal forms of this Globe_. Therefore, man’s _outward_ shell
passed through every vegetable and animal body, before it assumed the
human shape. But as this will be fully described in Volume II, in the
Commentaries, there is no need to say more of it here.
According to the Hermetico‐Kabalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, it is
Yliaster—the ancestor of the just‐born Protyle, introduced by Mr. Crookes
into Chemistry—or primordial Protomateria, that evolved out of itself the
Cosmos.
When creation [evolution] took place, the Yliaster divided itself;
it, so to say, melted and dissolved, developed out of [from
within] itself the Ideos or Chaos (Mysterium Magnum, Iliados,
Limbus Major, or Primordial Matter). This Primordial Essence is of
a monistic nature, and manifests itself not only as vital
activity, a spiritual force, an invisible, incomprehensible, and
indescribable power, but also as vital matter of which the
substance of living beings consists. In this Limbus or Ideos of
primordial matter, ... the only matrix of all created things, the
substance of all things is contained. It is described by the
ancients as the Chaos ... out of which the Macrocosmos, and
afterwards, by division and evolution in Mysteria Specialia,(419)
each separate being came into existence. All things and all
elementary substances were contained in it _in potentiâ_ but not
_in actu_.(420)
This makes the translator, Dr. F. Hartmann, justly observe that “it seems
that Paracelsus anticipated the modern discovery of the ‘potency of
matter’ three hundred years ago.”
The Magnus Limbus, then, or Yliaster, of Paracelsus is simply our old
friend “Father‐Mother,” _within_, before it appeared in Space. It is the
Universal Matrix of Kosmos, personified in the dual character of Macrocosm
and Microcosm, or the Universe and our Globe,(421) by Aditi‐Prakriti,
spiritual and physical Nature. For we find it explained in Paracelsus
that:
The Magnus Limbus is the nursery out of which all creatures have
grown, in the same sense as a tree may grow out of a small seed;
with the difference, however, that the great Limbus takes its
origin from the Word of God, while the Limbus minor (the
terrestrial seed or sperm) takes it from the earth. The great
Limbus is the seed out of which all beings have come, and the
little Limbus is each ultimate being that reproduces its form, and
that has itself been produced by the great. The little Limbus
possesses all the qualifications of the great one, in the same
sense as a son has an organization similar to that of his
father.... As ... Yliaster dissolved, Ares, the dividing,
differentiating, and individualizing power [Fohat, another old
friend] ... began to act. All production took place in consequence
of separation. There were produced out of the Ideos the elements
of Fire, Water, Air and Earth, whose birth, however, did not take
place in a material mode, or by simple separation, but spiritually
and dynamically [not even by complex combinations—_e.g._,
mechanical mixture as opposed to chemical combination], just as
fire may come out of a pebble, or a tree out of a seed, although
there is originally no fire in the pebble, nor a tree in the seed.
“Spirit is living, and Life is Spirit, and Life and Spirit
[Prakriti, Purusha (?)] produce all things, but they are
essentially one and not two.” ... The elements, too, have each one
its own Yliaster, because all the activity of matter in every form
is only an effluvium of the same fountain. But as from the seed
grow the roots with their fibres, afterwards the stalk with its
branches and leaves, and lastly the flowers and seeds; likewise
all beings were born from the elements, and consist of elementary
substances out of which other forms may come into existence,
bearing the characteristics of their parents.(422) The elements as
the mothers of all creatures _are of an __ invisible, spiritual
nature, and have souls_.(423) They all spring from the Mysterium
Magnum.
Compare this with _Vishnu Purâna_.
From Pradhâna [Primordial Substance] presided over by Kshetrajna
[“embodied spirit” (?)] proceeds the unequal development
[Evolution] of those qualities.... From the great principle
(Mahat) [Universal] Intellect [or Mind] ... is produced the origin
of the subtle elements and of the organs of sense.(424) ...
Thus it may be shown that all the fundamental truths of Nature were
universal in antiquity, and that the basic ideas upon Spirit, Matter and
the Universe, or upon God, Substance and Man, were identical. Taking the
two most ancient religious philosophies on the globe, Hindûism and
Hermeticism, from the Scriptures of India and Egypt, the identity of the
two is easily recognizable.
This becomes apparent to one who reads the latest translation and
rendering of the “Hermetic Fragments” just mentioned, by our late lamented
friend, Dr. Anna Kingsford. Disfigured and tortured as these have been in
their passage through sectarian Greek and Christian hands, the translator
has most ably and intuitionally seized the weak points and tried to remedy
them by means of explanations and footnotes. She says:
The creation of the visible world by the “working gods” or Titans,
as agents of the Supreme God,(425) is a thoroughly Hermetic idea,
recognizable _in all religious systems_, and in accordance with
modern scientific research [?], which shows us everywhere the
Divine Power operating through natural Forces.
To quote from the translation:
That Universal Being, that contains all, and which is all, puts
into motion the soul and the world, all that nature comprises. In
the manifold unity of universal life, the innumerable
individualities distinguished by their variations are,
nevertheless, united in such a manner that the whole is one, and
that everything proceeds from Unity.(426)
And again from another translation:
God is not a mind, but the cause that the Mind is; _not a spirit_,
but the cause that the Spirit is; not light, but the cause that
the Light is.(427)
The above shows plainly that the “Divine Pymander,” however much distorted
in some passages by Christian “smoothing,” was nevertheless written by a
philosopher, while most of the so‐called “Hermetic Fragments” are the
production of sectarian pagans with a tendency towards an anthropomorphic
Supreme Being. Yet both are the echo of the Esoteric Philosophy and the
Hindû _Purânas_.
Compare two invocations, one to the Hermetic “Supreme All,” the other to
the “Supreme All” of the later Âryans. Says a Hermetic Fragment cited by
Suidas:
I adjure thee, Heaven, holy work of the great God; I adjure thee,
Voice of the Father, uttered in the beginning when the universal
world was framed; I adjure thee by the Word, only Son of the
Father Who upholds all things; be favourable, be favourable.(428)
This is preceded by the following:
Thus the Ideal Light was before the Ideal Light, and the luminous
Intelligence of Intelligence was always, _and its unity was
nothing else than the Spirit enveloping the Universe. Out of Whom
[Which] is neither God nor Angels, nor any other essentials_, for
He [It] is the Lord of all things and the Power and the Light; and
all depends on Him [It] and is in Him [It].
A passage contradicted by the very same Trismegistus, who is made to say:
To speak of God is impossible. For the corporeal cannot express
the incorporeal.... That which has not any body nor appearance,
nor form, nor matter, cannot be apprehended by sense. I
understand, Tatios, I understand, that which it is impossible to
define—that is God.(429)
The contradiction between the two passages is evident; and this shows
(_a_) that Hermes was a generic _nom de plume_ used by a series of
generations of Mystics of every shade, and (_b_) that great discernment
has to be used before accepting a Fragment as esoteric teaching only
because it is undeniably ancient. Let us now compare the above with a like
invocation in the Hindû Scriptures—undoubtedly as old, if not far older.
Here it is. Parâshara, the Âryan “Hermes,” instructs Maitreya, the Indian
Asclepios, and calls upon Vishnu in his triple hypostasis:
Glory to the unchangeable, holy, eternal, supreme Vishnu, of one
universal nature, the mighty over all; to him who is
Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara [Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva], the
creator, the preserver, and destroyer of the world; to Vâsudeva,
the liberator (of his worshippers); to him whose essence is both
single and manifold; who is both subtile and corporeal, indiscrete
and discrete; to Vishnu, the cause of final emancipation. Glory to
the supreme Vishnu, the cause of the creation, existence, the end
of this world; _who is the root of the world_, and who _consists
of the world_.(430)
This is a grand invocation, with a deep philosophical meaning underlying
it; but, for the profane masses, as suggestive as is the Hermetic prayer
of an anthropomorphic Being. We must respect the feeling that dictated
both; but we cannot help finding it in full disharmony with its inner
meaning, even with that which is found in the same Hermetic treatise where
it is said:
_Trismegistus_: Reality is not upon the earth, my son, and it
cannot be thereon.... Nothing on earth is real, there are only
appearances.... He [man] is not real, my son, as man. The real
consists solely in itself and remains what it is.... Man is
transient, therefore he is not real, he is but appearance, and
appearance is the supreme illusion.
_Tatios_: Then the celestial bodies themselves are not real, my
father, since they also vary?
_Trismegistus_: That which is subject to birth and to change is
not real ... there is in them a certain falsity, seeing that they
too are variable....
_Tatios_: And what then is the primordial Reality, O my Father?
_Trismegistus_: He Who [That Which] is one and alone, O Tatios; He
Who [That Which] is not made of matter, nor in any body. Who
[Which] has neither colour nor form, Who [Which] changes not nor
is transmitted, but Who [Which] always IS.(431)
This is quite consistent with the Vedântic teaching. The leading thought
is Occult; and many are the passages in the Hermetic Fragments that belong
bodily to the Secret Doctrine.
This Doctrine teaches that the whole Universe is ruled by intelligent and
semi‐intelligent Forces and Powers, as stated from the very beginning.
Christian Theology admits and even _enforces_ belief in such, but makes an
arbitrary division and refers to them as “Angels” and “Devils.” Science
denies the existence of both, and ridicules the very idea. Spiritualists
believe in the “Spirits of the Dead,” and outside these deny entirely any
other kind or class of invisible beings. The Occultists and Kabalists are
thus the only rational expounders of the ancient traditions, which have
now culminated in dogmatic faith on the one hand, and dogmatic denial on
the other. For both belief and unbelief each embrace but one small corner
of the infinite horizons of spiritual and physical manifestations: and
thus both are right from their respective standpoints, yet both are wrong
in believing that they can circumscribe the whole within their own special
and narrow barriers, for—they can never do so. In this respect, Science,
Theology, and even Spiritualism show little more wisdom than the ostrich,
when it hides its head in the sand at its feet, feeling sure that there
can be thus nothing beyond its own point of observation and the limited
area occupied by its foolish head.
As the only works now extant upon the subject under consideration, within
reach of the profane of the Western “civilized” races, are the above‐
mentioned Hermetic Books, or rather Hermetic Fragments, we may contrast
them in the present case with the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy. To
quote for this purpose from any other would be useless, since the public
knows nothing of the Chaldean works, which are translated into Arabic and
preserved by some Sufi Initiates. Therefore the “Definitions of
Asclepios,” as lately compiled and glossed by Dr. Anna Kingsford, F.T.S.,
some of which sayings are in remarkable agreement with the Eastern
Esoteric Doctrine, have to be resorted to for comparison. Though not a few
passages bear a strong impression of some later Christian hand, yet on the
whole the characteristics of the Genii and Gods are those of Eastern
teachings, although concerning other things there are passages which
differ widely in our doctrines.
As to the Genii, the Hermetic philosophers called Theoi (Gods), Genii and
Daimones, those Entities whom we call Devas (Gods), Dhyân Chohans,
Chitkala (the Kwan‐Yin, of the Buddhists), and various other names. The
Daimones are—in the Socratic sense, and even in the Oriental and Latin
theological sense—the guardian spirits of the human race; “those who dwell
in the neighbourhood of the immortals, and thence watch over human
affairs,” as Hermes has it. In Esoteric parlance, they are called
Chitkala, some of which are those who have furnished man with his fourth
and fifth Principles from their own essence, and others the so‐called
Pitris. This will be explained when we come to the production of the
_complete man_. The root of the name is Chit, “that by which the
consequences of acts and species of knowledge are selected for the use of
the soul,” or conscience, the _inner voice_ in man. With the Yogins, Chit
is a synonym of Mahat, the first and divine Intellect; but in Esoteric
Philosophy Mahat is the root of Chit, its germ; and Chit is a quality of
Manas in conjunction with Buddhi, a quality that attracts to itself by
spiritual affinity a Chitkala, when it develops sufficiently in man. This
is why it is said that Chit is a voice acquiring mystic life and becoming
Kwan‐Yin.
Extracts From An Eastern Private Commentary, Hitherto Secret.(432)
xvii. _The Initial Existence, in the first Twilight of the Mahâmanvantara
[after the Mahâpralaya that follows every Age of Brahmâ], is a_ CONSCIOUS
SPIRITUAL QUALITY. _In the Manifested Worlds [Solar Systems], it is, in
its Objective Subjectivity, like the film from a Divine Breath to the gaze
of the entranced seer. It spreads as it issues from Laya_(_433_)_
throughout Infinity as a colourless spiritual fluid. It is on the Seventh
Plane, and in its Seventh State, in our Planetary World._(434)
xviii. _It is Substance to_ OUR _spiritual sight. It cannot be called so
by men in their Waking State; therefore they have named it in their
ignorance __“__God‐Spirit.__”_
xix. _It exists everywhere and forms the first Upâdhi [Foundation] on
which our World [Solar System] is built. Outside the latter, it is to be
found in its pristine purity only between [the Solar Systems or] the Stars
of the Universe, the Worlds already formed or forming; those in Laya
resting meanwhile in its bosom. As its substance is of a different kind
from that known on Earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing_ THROUGH
IT, _believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space. There
is not one finger’s breadth [angula] of void Space in the whole Boundless
[Universe]...._
xx. _Matter or Substance is septenary within our World, as it is so beyond
it. Moreover, each of its states or principles is graduated into seven
degrees of density. Sûrya [the Sun], in its visible reflection, exhibits
the first or lowest state of the seventh, the highest state of the
Universal_ PRESENCE, _the pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of
the Ever‐Unmanifested Sat [Be‐ness]. All the central physical or objective
Suns are in their substance the lowest state of the first principle of the
Breath. Nor are any of these any more than the Reflections of their
Primaries, which are concealed from the gaze of all but the Dhyân Chohans,
whose corporeal substance belongs to the fifth division of the seventh
principle of the Mother‐Substance, and is, therefore, four degrees higher
than the solar reflected substance. As there are seven Dhâtu [principal
substances in the human body], so there are seven Forces in Man and in all
Nature._
xxi. _The real substance of the Concealed [Sun] is nucleus of __ Mother‐
Substance._(_435_)_ It is the Heart and Matrix of all the living and
existing Forces in our Solar Universe. It is the Kernel from which proceed
to spread on their cyclic journeys all the Powers that set in action the
Atoms, in their functional duties, and the Focus within which they again
meet in their Seventh Essence every eleventh year. He who tells thee he
has seen the Sun, laugh at him,_(_436_)_ as if he had said that the Sun
moves really onward in his diurnal path...._
xxiii. _It is on account of his septenary nature, that the Sun is spoken
of by the ancients as one who is driven by seven horses equal to the
metres of the Vedas; or, again, that, though he is identified with the
seven Gana [Classes of Being] in his orb, he is distinct from
them,_(_437_)_ as he is, indeed; as also that he has Seven Rays, as indeed
he has...._
xxv. _The Seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, self‐born from
the inherent power in the Matrix of Mother‐Substance. It is they who send
the seven principal Forces, called Rays, which at the beginning of Pralaya
will centre into seven new Suns for the next Manvantara. The energy, from
which they spring into conscious existence in every Sun, is what some
people call Vishnu, which is the Breath of the __ABSOLUTENESS__._
_We call it the One Manifested life—itself a reflection of the
Absolute...._
xxvii. _The latter must never be mentioned in words or speech_, LEST IT
SHOULD TAKE AWAY SOME OF OUR SPIRITUAL ENERGIES _that aspire towards_ ITS
_state, gravitating ever toward unto_ IT _spiritually, as the whole
physical universe gravitates towards_ ITS _manifested centre—cosmically._
xxviii. _The former—the Initial Existence—which may be called, while in
this state of being, the_ ONE LIFE, _is, as explained, a Film for creative
or formative purposes. It manifests in seven states, which, with their
septenary sub‐divisions, are the Forty‐nine Fires mentioned in sacred
books...._
xxix. _The first is the ... __“__Mother__”__ [Prima_ MATERIA]. _Separating
itself into its primary seven states, it proceeds down cyclically; when
having consolidated itself in its_ LAST _principle, as_ GROSS MATTER,(438)
_it revolves around itself and informs, with the seventh emanation of the
last, the first and the lowest element [the serpent biting its own tail].
In a Hierarchy, or Order of Being, the seventh emanation of her last
principle is:_
_(a) In the Mineral, the Spark that lies latent in it, and is called to
its evanescent being by the Positive awakening the Negative [and so
forth]...._
_(b) In the Plant, it is that vital and intelligent Force which informs
the seed and develops it into the blade of grass, or the root and sapling.
It is the germ which becomes the Upâdhi of the seven principles of the
thing it resides in, shooting them out as the latter grows and develops._
_(c) In every Animal, it does the same. It is its Life‐Principle and vital
power; its instinct and qualities; its characteristics and special
idiosyncrasies...._
_(d) To Man, it gives all that it bestows on all the rest of the
manifested units in Nature; but develops, furthermore, the reflection of
all its __“__Forty‐nine Fires__”__ in him. Each of his seven principles is
an heir in full to, and a partaker of, the seven principles of the
__“__Great Mother.__”__ The breath of her first principle is his Spirit
[Âtmâ]. Her second principle is Buddhi [Soul]. We call it, erroneously,
the seventh. The third furnishes him with the Brain Stuff on the physical
plane, and with the Mind that moves it [which is the Human Soul._—H. P.
B.]—_according to his organic capacities._
_(e) It is the guiding Force in the cosmic and terrestrial Elements. It
resides in the Fire provoked out of its latent into active being; for the
whole of the seven sub‐divisions of the ... principle reside in the
terrestrial Fire. It whirls in the breeze, blows with the hurricane, and
sets the air in motion, which element participates in one of its
principles also. Proceeding cyclically, it regulates the motion of the
water, attracts and repels the waves,_(_439_)_ according to fixed laws, of
which its seventh principle is the informing soul._
_(f) Its four higher principles contain the Germ that develops into the
Cosmic Gods; its three lower ones breed the Lives of the Elements
[Elementals]._
_(g) In our Solar World, the One Existence is Heaven and Earth, the Root
and the Flower, the Action and the Thought. It is in the Sun, and is as
present in the glow‐worm. Not an atom can escape it. Therefore, the
ancient Sages have wisely called it the manifested God in Nature...._
It may be interesting, in this connection, to remind the reader of what T.
Subba Row said of the Forces—mystically defined.
Kanyâ [the sixth sign of the Zodiac, or Virgo] means a virgin, and
represents Shakti or Mahâmâyâ. The sign in question is the sixth
Râshi or division, and indicates that there are six primary forces
in Nature [synthesized by the Seventh]....
These Shaktis stand as follows:
(1) _Parâshakti._—Literally the great or supreme force or power.
It means and includes _the powers of light and heat_.
(2) _Jñânashakti._—Literally the power of intellect, of real
wisdom or knowledge. It has two aspects:
I. The following are _some_ of its manifestations _when placed
under the influence or control of material conditions_. (_a_) The
power of the mind in interpreting our sensations. (_b_) Its power
in recalling past ideas (memory) and raising future expectation.
(_c_) Its power as exhibited in what are called by modern
psychologists “the laws of association,” which enables it to form
_persisting_ connections between various groups of sensations and
possibilities of sensations, and thus generate the notion or idea
of an external object. (_d_) Its power in connecting our ideas
together by the mysterious link of memory, and thus generating the
notion of self or individuality.
II. The following are _some_ of its manifestations _when liberated
from the bonds of matter_:
(_a_) Clairvoyance. (_b_) Psychometry.
(3) _Ichchhâshakti._—Literally _the power of the will_. Its _most
ordinary manifestation_ is the generation of certain nerve
currents, which set in motion such muscles as are required for the
accomplishment of the desired object.
(4) _Kriyâshakti._—The mysterious power of thought which enables
it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own
inherent energy. The ancients held that _any idea will manifest
itself externally if one’s attention is deeply concentrated upon
it_. Similarly _an intense volition will be followed by the
desired result_.
A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Ichchhâshakti
and Kriyâshakti.
(5) _Kundalinî Shakti._—The power or force which moves in a
serpentine or curved path. It is the universal life‐principle
which everywhere manifests in Nature. This force includes the two
great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and
magnetism are but manifestations of it. This is the power which
brings about that “continuous adjustment of _internal relations to
external relations_,” which is the essence of life according to
Herbert Spencer, and that “continuous adjustment of _external
relations to internal relations_,” which is the basis of
transmigration of souls, Punarjanman (Re‐birth), in the doctrines
of the ancient Hindû philosophers.
A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate this power or force, before he
can attain Moksha....
(6) _Mantrikâshakti._—Literally the force or power of letters,
speech or music. The whole of the ancient _Mantra Shâstra_ has
this force or power in all its manifestations for its subject
matter.... The influence of its music is one of its ordinary
manifestations. The power of the mirific ineffable name is the
crown of this Shakti.
Modern Science has but partly investigated the first, second and
fifth of the forces or powers above named, but is altogether in
the dark as regards the remaining powers.... The six forces are in
their unity represented by the Astral Light [Daiviprakriti, the
seventh, the Light of the Logos].(440)
The above is quoted to show the real Hindû ideas on the subject. It is all
esoteric, though not covering the tenth part of _what might be said_. For
one thing, the six names of the six Forces mentioned are those of the six
Hierarchies of Dhyân Chohans, synthesized by their Primary, the
seventh—who personify the Fifth Principle of Cosmic Nature, or of the
“Mother” in its mystical sense. The enumeration alone of the Yoga Powers
would require ten volumes. Each of these Forces has a living _Conscious
Entity_ at its head, of which Entity it is an emanation.
But let us compare with the Commentary above cited the words of Hermes,
the Thrice Great:
The creation of life by the sun is as continuous as his light;
nothing arrests or limits it. Around him, like an army of
satellites, are innumerable _choirs of Genii_. These dwell in the
neighbourhood of the Immortals, and thence watch over human
things. They fulfil the will of the Gods [Karma] by means of
_storms_, _tempests_, _transitions of fire and earthquakes_;
likewise by famines and wars, for the punishment of impiety.(441)
...
It is the sun who preserves and nourishes all creatures; and, even
as the Ideal World, which environs the sensible world, fills this
last with the plenitude and universal variety of forms, so also
the sun, enfolding all in his light, accomplishes everywhere the
birth and development of creatures.... “_Under his orders is the
choir of the Genii, or rather the choirs, for there are many and
diverse, and their number corresponds to that of the stars. Every
star has its Genii, good and evil by nature, or rather by their
operation, for operation is the essence of the Genii...._ All
these Genii _preside over mundane affairs_,(442) they shake and
overthrow the constitution of states and of individuals; they
_imprint their likeness on our souls_, they are present in our
nerves, our marrow, our veins, our arteries, and _our very brain‐
substance_.... At the moment when each of us receives life and
being, he is taken in charge by the Genii [Elementals] who preside
over births,(443) and who are classed beneath the astral powers
[superhuman astral Spirits]. Perpetually they change, not always
identically, but revolving in circles.(444) They permeate by the
body two parts of the soul, that it may receive from each the
impress of his own energy. But the reasonable part of the soul is
not subject to the Genii; it is designed for the reception of
[the] God,(445) who enlightens it with a sunny ray. Those who are
thus illumined are few in number, and from them the Genii abstain:
for neither Genii nor Gods have any power in the presence of a
single ray of God.(446) But all other men, both soul and body, are
directed by Genii, to whom they cleave, and whose operations they
affect.... The Genii have then the control of mundane things and
our bodies serve them as instruments.”(447)
The above, save a few sectarian points, represents that which was a
universal belief, common to all nations, till about a century or so back.
It is still as orthodox in its broad outlines and features among Pagans
and Christians alike, if one excepts a handful of Materialists and men of
Science.
For whether one calls the Genii of Hermes and his “Gods,” “Powers of
Darkness” and “Angels,” as in the Greek and Latin Churches; or “Spirits of
the Dead,” as in Spiritualism; or, again, Bhûts and Devas, Shaitan or
Djin, as they are still called in India and Mussulman countries—_they are
all one and the same thing_—ILLUSION. Let not this, however, be
misunderstood in the sense into which the great philosophical doctrine of
the Vedântists has been lately perverted by Western schools.
All that which _is_, emanates from the ABSOLUTE, which, by reason of this
qualification alone, stands as the One and Only Reality—hence, everything
extraneous to this Absolute, the generative and causative Element, _must_
be an Illusion, most undeniably. But this is only so from the purely
metaphysical view. A man who regards himself as mentally sane, and is so
regarded by his neighbours, calls the visions of an _insane_
brother—hallucinations which make the victim either _happy or supremely
wretched_, as the case may be—likewise illusions and fancies. But, where
is that madman for whom the hideous shadows in his deranged mind, his
_illusions_, are not, for the time being, as actual and as real as the
things which his physician or keeper may see? Everything is relative in
this Universe, everything is an Illusion. But the experience of any plane
is an actuality for the percipient being, whose consciousness is on that
plane, though the said experience, regarded from the purely metaphysical
standpoint, may be conceived to have no objective reality. But it is not
against Metaphysicians, but against Physicists and Materialists that
Esoteric teaching has to fight; and for these latter Vital Force, Light,
Sound, Electricity, even to the objectively drawing force of Magnetism,
have no objective being, and are said to exist merely as “modes of
motion,” “sensations and _affections_ of matter.”
Neither the Occultists generally, nor the Theosophists, reject, as
erroneously believed by some, the views and theories of the Modern
Scientists only because these views are opposed to Theosophy. The first
rule of our Society is to render unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s. Theosophists,
therefore, are the first to recognize the intrinsic value of Science. But
when its high priests resolve consciousness into a secretion from the grey
matter of the brain, and everything else in Nature into a mode of motion,
we protest against the doctrine as being unphilosophical, self‐
contradictory, and simply absurd, from a _scientific_ point of view, as
much and even more than from the Occult aspect of the Esoteric Knowledge.
For truly the Astral Light of the derided Kabalists has strange and weird
secrets for him who can see in it; and the mysteries concealed within its
incessantly disturbed waves _are there_, the whole body of Materialists
and scoffers notwithstanding.
The Astral Light of the Kabalists is by some very incorrectly translated
“Ether,” the latter is confused with the hypothetical Ether of Science,
and both are referred to by some Theosophists as synonymous with Âkâsha.
This is a great mistake.
The author of _A Rational Refutation_ writes, thus unconsciously helping
Occultism:
A characterization of Âkâsha will serve to show how inadequately
it is represented by “ether.” In dimension it is ... infinite; it
is not made up of parts; and colour, taste, smell, and tangibility
do not appertain to it. So far forth it corresponds exactly to
time, space, Îshvara [the “Lord,” but rather creative potency and
soul—Anima Mundi] and soul. Its speciality, as compared therewith,
consists in its being the _material cause of sound_. Except for
its being so, one might take it to be one with vacuity.(448)
It is _vacuity_, no doubt, especially for Rationalists. At any rate Âkâsha
is sure to produce vacuity in the brain of a Materialist. Nevertheless,
though Âkâsha is certainly not the Ether of Science—not even the Ether of
the Occultist who defines the latter as one of the principles of Âkâsha
only—it is as certainly, together with its primary, the cause of sound, a
psychical and spiritual, not a material cause by any means. The relations
of Ether to Âkâsha may be defined by applying to both Âkâsha and Ether the
words used of the God in the _Vedas_, “So himself was indeed (his own)
son,” one being the progeny of the other and yet itself. This may be a
difficult riddle to the profane, but very easy to understand for any
Hindû—even though not a Mystic.
These secrets of the Astral Light, along with many other mysteries, will
remain non‐existent to the Materialists of our age, in the same way as
America was a non‐existent myth for Europeans during the early part of the
mediæval ages, whereas Scandinavians and Norwegians had actually reached
and settled in that very old “New World” several centuries before. But, as
a Columbus was born to re‐discover, and to force the Old World to believe
in antipodal countries, so will there be born Scientists who will discover
the marvels now claimed by Occultists to exist in the regions of Ether,
with their varied and multiform denizens and conscious Entities. Then,
_nolens volens_, Science will have to accept the old “superstition,” as it
has several others. And having been once forced to accept it, its learned
professors in all probability—judging from past experience, as in the case
of Mesmerism and Magnetism, now re‐baptized Hypnotism—will father the
thing and reject the name. The choice of the new appellation will, in its
turn, depend on the “modes of motion”—the new name for the older
“automatic physical processes among the nerve fibrils of the [scientific]
brain” of Moleschott—and also, most likely, upon the last meal of the
namer, since, according to the founder of the new Hylo‐Idealistic Scheme,
“cerebration is generically the same as chylification.”(449) Thus, were
one to believe this preposterous proposition, the new name of the archaic
truth would have to take its chance on the inspiration of the namer’s
liver, and then only would these truths have a chance of becoming
scientific!
But, TRUTH, however distasteful to the generally blind majority, has
always had her champions ready to die for her, and it is not the
Occultists who will protest against its adoption by Science under whatever
new name. But until absolutely forced on the notice and acceptance of
Scientists, many an Occult truth will be tabooed, as the phenomena of the
Spiritualists and other psychic manifestations were, to be finally
appropriated by its ex‐traducers without the least acknowledgment or
thanks. Nitrogen has added considerably to chemical knowledge, but its
discoverer, Paracelsus, is to this day called a “quack.” How profoundly
true are the words of H. T. Buckle, in his admirable _History of
Civilization_, when he says:
Owing to circumstances still unknown [Karmic provision] there
appear from time to time great thinkers, who, devoting their lives
to a single purpose, are able to anticipate the progress of
mankind, and to produce a religion or a philosophy by which
important effects are eventually brought about. But if we look
into history we shall clearly see that, although the origin of a
new opinion may be thus due to a single man, the result which the
new opinion produces will depend on the condition of the people
among whom it is propagated. If either a religion or a philosophy
is too much in advance of a nation, it can do no present service,
but must bide its time(450) until the minds of men are ripe for
its reception.... Every science, every creed has had its martyrs.
_According to the ordinary course of affairs, a few generations
pass away, and then there comes a period when these very truths
are looked upon as commonplace facts, and a little later there
comes another period in which they are declared to be necessary,
and even the dullest intellect wonders how they could ever have
been denied._(451)
It is barely possible that the minds of the present generations are not
quite ripe for the reception of Occult truths. Such perchance will be the
retrospect furnished to the advanced thinkers of the Sixth Root‐Race of
the history of the acceptance of Esoteric Philosophy—fully and
unconditionally. Meanwhile the generations of our Fifth Race will continue
to be led away by prejudice and preconceptions. Occult Sciences will have
the finger of scorn pointed at them from every street‐corner, and everyone
will seek to ridicule and crush them in the name, and for the greater
glory, of Materialism and its so‐called Science. The present Volumes,
however, show, in an anticipatory answer to several of the forthcoming
Scientific objections, the true and mutual positions of the defendant and
plaintiff. The Theosophists and Occultists stand arraigned by public
opinion, which still holds high the banner of the inductive Sciences. The
latter have, then, to be examined; and it must be shown how far their
achievements and discoveries in the realm of natural law are opposed, not
so much to our claims, as to facts in nature. The hour has now struck to
ascertain whether the walls of the modern Jericho are so impregnable, that
no blast of the Occult trumpet is ever likely to make them crumble.
The so‐called “Forces,” with Light and Electricity heading them, and the
constitution of the Solar orb must be carefully examined; as also
Gravitation and the Nebular theories. The natures of Ether and of other
Elements must be discussed; thus contrasting Scientific with Occult
teachings, while revealing some of the hitherto secret tenets of the
latter.
Some fifteen years ago, the writer was the first to repeat, after the
Kabalists, the wise Commandments in the Esoteric Catechism.
Close thy mouth, lest thou shouldst speak of _this_ [the mystery],
and thy heart, lest thou shouldst think aloud; and if thy heart
has escaped thee, bring it back to its place, for such is the
object of our alliance.(452)
And again, from the _Rules of Initiation_.
_This is a secret which gives death: close thy mouth lest thou shouldst
reveal it to the vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should escape
from it and fall outside._
A few years later, a corner of the Veil of Isis had to be lifted; and now
another and a larger rent is made.
But old and time‐honoured errors—such as become with every day more
glaring and self‐evident—stand arrayed in battle‐order now, as they did
then. Marshalled by blind conservatism, conceit and prejudice, they are
constantly on the watch, ready to strangle every truth, which, awakening
from its age‐long sleep, happens to knock for admission. Such has been the
case ever since man became an animal. That this proves in every case
_moral death_ to the revealers who bring to light any of these old, old
truths, is as certain as that it gives _life_ and _regeneration_ to those
who are fit to profit even by the little that is now revealed to them.
PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM.
Section I. Symbolism and Ideographs.
Is not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or
clearer revelation of the God‐like?... Through all ... there
glimmers something of a Divine Idea. Nay, the highest ensign that
men ever met and embraced under, the cross itself, had no meaning,
save an accidental extrinsic one.
CARLYLE.
The study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of
whatsoever nation, large or small, and preëminently in the traditions of
the East, has occupied the greater portion of the present writer’s life.
She is one of those who feel convinced that no mythological story, no
traditional event in the folk‐lore of a people, has ever, at any time,
been pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual
historical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees with those
symbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth
nothing more than additional proof of the superstitious bent of mind of
the Ancients, and who believe that all mythologies sprang from, and are
built upon, _solar myths_. Such superficial thinkers have been admirably
disposed of by Mr. Gerald Massey, the poet and Egyptologist, in a lecture
on “Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern.” His pointed criticism is worthy of
reproduction in this part of our work, as it echoes so well our own
feelings, expressed openly so far back as 1875, when _Isis Unveiled_ was
written.
For thirty years past Professor Max Müller has been teaching in
his books and lectures, in the _Times_, _Saturday Review_, and
various magazines, from the platform of the Royal Institution, the
pulpit of Westminster Abbey, and his chair at Oxford, that
mythology is a disease of language, and that the ancient symbolism
was a result of something like a primitive mental aberration.
“We know,” says Renouf, echoing Max Müller, in his Hibbert
lectures, “We know that mythology _is_ the disease which springs
up at a peculiar stage of human culture.” Such is the shallow
explanation of the non‐evolutionists, and such explanations are
still accepted by the British public, that gets its thinking done
for it by proxy. Professor Max Müller, Cox, Gubernatis, and other
propounders of the Solar Mythos, have portrayed the primitive
myth‐maker for us as a sort of Germanised‐Hindû metaphysician,
projecting his own shadow on a mental mist, and talking
ingeniously concerning smoke, or, at least, _cloud_; the sky
overhead becoming like the dome of dreamland, scribbled over with
the imagery of aboriginal nightmares! They conceive the early man
in their own likeness, and look upon him as perversely prone to
self‐mystification, or, as Fontenelle has it, “subject to
beholding things that are not there”! They have misrepresented
primitive or archaic man as having been idiotically misled from
the first by an active but untutored imagination into believing
all sorts of fallacies, which were directly and constantly
contradicted by his own daily experience; a fool of fancy in the
midst of those grim realities that were grinding his experiences
into him, like the griding icebergs making their imprints upon the
rocks submerged beneath the sea. It remains to be said, and will
one day be acknowledged, that these accepted teachers have been no
nearer to the beginnings of mythology and language than Burns’s
poet Willie had been near to Pegasus. My reply is, ’Tis but a
dream of the metaphysical theorist that mythology was a disease of
language, or of anything else except his own brain. The origin and
meaning of mythology have been missed altogether by these
solarites and weather‐mongers! Mythology was a primitive mode of
_thinking_ the early thought. It was founded on natural facts, and
is still verifiable in phenomena. There is nothing insane, nothing
irrational in it, when considered in the light of evolution, and
when its mode of expression by sign‐language is thoroughly
understood. The insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or
Divine Revelation.(453) Mythology is the repository of man’s most
ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this—when truly
interpreted once more, it is destined to be the death of those
false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth!(454)
In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes said to be mythical
in proportion to its being untrue; but the ancient mythology was
not a system or mode of falsifying in that sense. Its fables were
the means of conveying facts; they were neither forgeries nor
fictions.... For example, when the Egyptians portrayed the moon as
a _cat_, they were not ignorant enough to suppose that the moon
was a cat; nor did their wandering fancies see any likeness in the
moon to a cat; nor was a cat‐myth any _mere expansion of verbal
metaphor_; nor had they any intention of making puzzles or
riddles.... They had observed the simple fact that the cat saw in
the dark, and that her eyes became full‐orbed, and grew most
luminous by night. The moon was the seer by night in heaven, and
the cat was its equivalent on the earth; and so the familiar cat
was adopted as a representative, a natural sign, a living
pictograph of the lunar orb.... And so it followed that the sun
which saw down in the under‐world at night could also be called
the cat, as it was, because _it also saw_ in the dark. The name of
the cat in Egyptian is _mau_, which denotes the seer, from _mau_,
to see. One writer on mythology asserts that the Egyptians
“imagined a great cat behind the sun, which is the pupil of the
cat’s eye.” But this imagining is all modern. It is the Müllerite
stock in trade. The moon, _as cat, was_ the eye of the sun,
_because it reflected the solar light_, and because the eye gives
back the image in its mirror. In the form of the goddess Pasht,
the cat keeps watch for the sun, with her paw holding down and
bruising the head of the serpent of darkness, called his eternal
enemy!
This is a very correct exposition of the lunar mythos from its
astronomical aspect. Selenography, however, is the least esoteric of the
divisions of lunar Symbology. To master thoroughly—if one is permitted to
coin a new word—Selenognosis, one must become proficient in more than its
astronomical meaning. The Moon is intimately related to the Earth, as
shown in the Stanzas, and is more directly concerned with all the
mysteries of our Globe than is even Venus‐Lucifer, the occult sister and
_alter ego_ of the Earth.(455)
The untiring researches of Western, especially German, symbologists,
during the last and the present centuries, have induced the most
unprejudiced students, and of course every Occultist, to see that without
the help of symbology—with its seven departments, of which the moderns
know nothing—no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood.
Symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation
had its own peculiar methods of expression. In short, no Egyptian papyrus,
no Indian olla, no Assyrian tile, no Hebrew scroll, should be read and
interpreted _literally_.
This every scholar now knows. The able lectures of Mr. Gerald Massey alone
are sufficient to convince any fair‐minded Christian that to accept the
dead‐letter of the _Bible_ is equivalent to falling into a grosser error
and superstition than any hitherto evolved by the brain of the savage
South Sea Islander. But the fact to which even the most truth‐loving and
truth‐searching Orientalists—whether Âryanists or Egyptologists—seem to
remain blind, is that every symbol on papyrus or olla is a many‐faced
diamond, each of whose facets not only includes several interpretations,
but also relates to several sciences. This is instanced in the just quoted
interpretation of the cat symbolizing the moon—an example of sidereo‐
terrestrial imagery; for the moon has with other nations many other
meanings besides.
As a learned Mason and Theosophist, the late Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown
in his _Royal Masonic Cyclopædia_, there is a great difference between
_emblem_ and _symbol_. The former “comprises a larger series of thoughts
than a symbol, which may be said rather to illustrate some single special
idea.” Hence, the symbols—lunar, or solar, for example—of several
countries, each illustrating such a special idea, or series of ideas, form
collectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is “a concrete visible picture
or sign representing principles, or a series of principles, _recognizable
by those who have received certain instructions_ [Initiates].” To put it
still plainer, an emblem is usually _a series of graphic pictures_ viewed
and explained allegorically, and unfolding an idea in panoramic views, one
after the other. Thus the _Purânas_ are written emblems. So are the Mosaic
and Christian _Testaments_, or the _Bible_, and all other exoteric
Scriptures. As the same authority shows:
All esoteric societies have made use of emblems and symbols, such
as the Pythagorean Society, the Eleusinia, the Hermetic Brethren
of Egypt, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons. Many of these
emblems it is not proper to divulge to the general eye, and _a
very minute difference_ may make the emblem or symbol differ
widely in its meaning. The magical sigilla, being founded on
certain principles of number, partake of this character, and
although monstrous or ridiculous in the eyes of the uninstructed,
convey a whole body of doctrine to those who have been trained to
recognize them.
The above enumerated societies are all comparatively modern, none dating
back earlier than the Middle Ages. How much more proper, then, that the
students of the oldest archaic school should be careful not to divulge
secrets of far more importance to humanity (as being dangerous in ignorant
hands) than any of the so‐called “Masonic Secrets,” which have now become
those of Polichinelle, as the French say! But this restriction can apply
only to the psychological or rather psycho‐physiological and cosmical
significance of symbol and emblem, and even to that only partially. For
though an Adept is compelled to refuse to impart the conditions and means
that lead to any correlation of Elements—whether psychic or physical—which
may produce harmful as well as beneficent results; yet he is ever ready to
impart to the earnest student the secret of the ancient thought, in
anything that has respect to history concealed under mythological
symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more land‐marks for a retrospective
view of the past, in so far as it furnishes useful information with regard
to the origin of man, the evolution of the Races and geognosy. And yet it
is the crying complaint to‐day, not only among Theosophists, but also
among the few profane interested in the subject: Why do not the Adepts
reveal that which they know? To this, one might answer: Why should they,
since one knows beforehand that no man of Science will accept it, even as
a hypothesis, much less as a theory or axiom. Have you so much as accepted
or believed in the A B C of the Occult Philosophy contained in the
_Theosophist_, _Esoteric Buddhism_, and other works and periodicals? Has
not even the little which has been given, been ridiculed and derided, and
made to face the “animal‐” and “ape‐theory” of Huxley and Hæckel, on the
one hand, and the rib of Adam and the apple on the other? Notwithstanding
such an unenviable prospect, however, a mass of facts is given in the
present work, and the origin of man, the evolution of the Globe and the
Races, human and animal, are as fully treated as the writer is able to
treat them.
The proofs brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are
scattered widely throughout the old scriptures of ancient civilizations.
The _Purânas_, the _Zend Avesta_, and the old classics, are full of such
facts; but no one has ever taken the trouble of collecting and collating
them together. The reason for this is that all such events were recorded
symbolically; and that the best scholars, the most acute minds, among our
Âryanists and Egyptologists, have been too often darkened by one or
another preconception, and still oftener, by one‐sided views of the secret
meaning. Yet even a parable is a spoken symbol: a fiction or a fable, as
some think; an allegorical representation, we say, of life‐realities,
events, and facts. And just as a moral was ever drawn from a parable, such
moral being an actual truth and fact in human life, so a historical, real
event was deduced, by those versed in the hieratic sciences, from emblems
and symbols recorded in the ancient archives of the temples. The religious
and esoteric history of every nation was embedded in symbols; it was never
expressed literally in so many words. All the thoughts and emotions, all
the learning and knowledge, revealed and acquired, of the early Races,
found their pictorial expression in allegory and parable. Why? Because
_the spoken word has a potency not only unknown to, but even unsuspected
and naturally disbelieved in_, by the modern “sages.” Because sound and
rhythm are closely related to the four Elements of the Ancients; and
because such or another vibration in the air is sure to awaken the
corresponding Powers, union with which produces good or bad results, as
the case may be. No student was ever allowed to recite historical,
religious, or real events of any kind, in so many unmistakable words, lest
the Powers connected with the event should be once more attracted. Such
events were narrated only during Initiation, and every student had to
record them in corresponding symbols, drawn out of his own mind and
examined later by his Master, before they were finally accepted. Thus by
degrees was the Chinese Alphabet created, as just before it the hieratic
symbols were fixed upon in old Egypt. In the Chinese language, the
characters of which may be read in any language, and which, as just said,
is only a little less ancient than the Egyptian alphabet of Thoth, every
word has its corresponding symbol in a pictorial form. This language
possesses many thousands of such symbol‐letters, or logograms, each
conveying the meaning of a whole word; for letters proper, or an alphabet
as we understand it, do not exist in the Chinese language, any more than
they did in the Egyptian, till a far later period.
Thus a Japanese who does not understand one word of Chinese, meeting with
a Chinaman who has never heard the language of the former, will
communicate in writing with him, and they will understand each other
perfectly—because their writing is symbolical.
The explanation of the chief symbols and emblems is now attempted, as Book
II, which treats of Anthropogenesis, would be most difficult to understand
without a preparatory acquaintance with at least the metaphysical symbols.
Nor would it be just to enter upon an esoteric reading of symbolism,
without giving due honour to one who has rendered it the greatest service
in this century, by discovering the chief key to ancient Hebrew symbology,
strongly interwoven with metrology, one of the keys to the once universal
Mystery Language. Mr. Ralston Skinner, of Cincinnati, the author of _The
Key to the Hebrew‐Egyptian Mystery in the Source of Measures_, has our
thanks. A Mystic and a Kabalist by nature, he has laboured for many years
in this direction, and his efforts have certainly been crowned with great
success. In his own words:
The writer is quite certain that there was an ancient language
which modernly and up to this time appears to have been lost, the
vestiges of which, however, abundantly exist.... The author
discovered that this geometrical ratio [the integral ratio of the
diameter to the circumference of a circle] was the very ancient,
and probably the divine origin of ... linear measures.... It
appears almost proven that the same system of geometry, numbers,
ratio, and measures was known and made use of on the continent of
North America, even prior to the knowledge of the same by the
descending Semites....
The peculiarity of this language was that it could be contained in
another, concealed and not to be perceived, save through the help
of special instruction; letters and syllabic signs possessing at
the same time the powers or meanings of numbers, of geometrical
shapes, pictures, or ideographs and symbols, the designed scope of
which would be determinatively helped out by parables in the shape
of narratives or parts of narratives; while also it could be set
forth separately, independently, and variously, by pictures, in
stone work, or in earth constructions.
To clear up an ambiguity as to the term language: Primarily the
word means the expression of ideas by human speech; but,
secondarily, it may mean the expression of ideas by any other
instrumentality. This old language is so composed in the Hebrew
text, that by the use of the written characters, which uttered
shall be the language first defined, a distinctly separated series
of ideas may be intentionally communicated, other than those ideas
expressed by the reading of the sound‐signs. This secondary
language sets forth, under a veil, series of ideas, copies in
imagination of things sensible, which may be pictured, and of
things which may be classed as real without being sensible: as,
for instance, the number 9 may be taken as a reality, though it
has no sensible existence, so also a revolution of the moon, as
separated from the moon itself by which that revolution has been
made, may be taken as giving rise to, or causing a real idea,
though such a revolution has no substance. This idea‐language may
consist of symbols restricted to arbitrary terms and signs, having
a very limited range of conceptions, and quite valueless, or it
may be a reading of nature in some of her manifestations of a
value almost immeasurable, as regards human civilization. A
picture of something natural may give rise to ideas of
coördinating subjects, radiating out in various and even opposing
directions, like the spokes of a wheel, and producing natural
realities in departments very foreign to the apparent tendency of
the reading of the first or starting picture. Notion may give rise
to connected notion, but if it does, then, however apparently
incongruous, all resulting ideas must spring from the original
picture and be harmonically connected, or related the one with the
other. Thus with a pictured idea radical enough, the imagination
of the cosmos itself, even in its details of construction, might
result. Such a use of ordinary language is now obsolete, but it
has become a question with the writer whether at one time, far
back in the past, it, or such, was not the language of the world
and of universal use, possessed, however, as it became more and
more moulded into its arcane forms, by a select class or caste. By
this I mean that the popular tongue or vernacular commenced even
in its origin to be made use of as the vehicle of this peculiar
mode of conveying ideas. Of this the evidences are very strong;
and, indeed, it would seem that in the history of the human race
there happened, from causes which at present, at any rate, we
cannot trace, a lapse or loss from an original perfect language
and a perfect system of science—shall we say perfect because they
were of divine origin and importation?(456)
“Divine origin” does not here mean a revelation from an anthropomorphic
God on a mount amidst thunder and lightning; but, as we understand it, a
language and a system of science imparted to early mankind by a more
advanced mankind, so much higher as to be _divine_ in the sight of that
infant humanity: by a “mankind,” in short, from other spheres; an idea
which contains nothing supernatural in it, but the acceptance or rejection
of which depends upon the degree of conceit and arrogance in the mind of
him to whom it is stated. For, if the professors of modern knowledge would
only confess that, though they know nothing of the future of the
disembodied man—or rather will accept nothing—yet this future may be
pregnant with surprises and unexpected revelations to them, once their
Egos are rid of their gross bodies—then materialistic unbelief would have
fewer chances than it has. Who of them knows, or can tell, what may happen
when once the Life‐Cycle of this Globe is run down, and our mother Earth
herself falls into her last sleep? Who is bold enough to say that the
_divine_ Egos of our mankind—at least the elect out of the multitudes
passing on to other spheres—will not become in their turn the “divine”
instructors of a new mankind generated by them on a new Globe, called to
life and activity by the disembodied “principles” of our Earth? All this
may have been the experience of the Past, and these strange records lie
embedded in the “Mystery Language” of the pre‐historic ages, the language
now called SYMBOLISM.
Section II. The Mystery Language and Its Keys.
Recent discoveries made by great mathematicians and Kabalists thus prove,
beyond a shadow of doubt, that every theology, from the earliest down to
the latest, has sprung, not only from a common source of abstract beliefs,
but from one universal Esoteric, or Mystery, Language. These scholars hold
the key to the universal language of old, and have turned it successfully,
though only _once_, in the hermetically closed door leading to the Hall of
Mysteries. The great archaic system known from prehistoric ages as the
sacred Wisdom‐Science, one that is contained and can be traced in every
old as well as in every new religion, had, and still has, its universal
language—suspected by the Mason Ragon—the language of the Hierophants,
which has seven “dialects,” so to speak, each referring, and being
specially appropriate, to one of the seven mysteries of Nature. Each had
its own symbolism. Nature could thus be either read in its fulness, or
viewed from one of its special aspects.
The proof of this lies, to this day, in the extreme difficulty which the
Orientalists in general, and the Indianists and Egyptologists in
particular, experience in interpreting the allegorical writings of the
Âryans and the hieratic records of old Egypt. This is because they will
never remember that all the ancient records were written in a language
which was universal and known to all nations alike in days of old, but
which is now intelligible only to the few. Like the Arabic figures which
are understandable to men of every nation, or like the English word _and_,
which becomes _et_ for the Frenchman, _und_ for the German, and so on, yet
which may be expressed for all civilized nations in the simple sign &—so
all the words of that Mystery Language signified the same thing to each
man, of whatever nationality. There have been several men of note who have
tried to reëstablish such a universal and _philosophical_ tongue,
Delgarme, Wilkins, Leibnitz; but Demaimieux, in his _Pasigraphie_, is the
only one who has proven its possibility. The scheme of Valentinius, called
the “Greek Kabalah,” based on the combination of Greek letters, might
serve as a model.
The many‐sided facets of the Mystery Language have led to the adoption of
widely varied dogmas and rites in the exotericism of the Church rituals.
It is these, again, which are at the origin of most of the dogmas of the
Christian Church; for instance, the seven Sacraments, the Trinity, the
Resurrection, the seven Capital Sins and the seven Virtues. The Seven Keys
to the Mystery Tongue, however, having always been in the keeping of the
highest among the initiated Hierophants of antiquity; it is only the
partial use of a few out of the seven which passed, through the treason of
some early Church Fathers—ex‐Initiates of the Temples—into the hands of
the new sect of the Nazarenes. Some of the early Popes were Initiates, but
the last fragments of their knowledge have now fallen into the power of
the Jesuits, who have turned them into a system of sorcery.
It is maintained that _India_—not confined to its present limits, but
including its ancient boundaries—is the only country in the world which
still has among her sons Adepts, who have the knowledge of all the seven
sub‐systems and the key to the entire system. From the fall of Memphis,
Egypt began to lose these keys one by one, and Chaldæa had preserved only
three in the days of Berosus. As for the Hebrews, in all their writings
they show no more than a thorough knowledge of the astronomical,
geometrical and numerical systems of symbolizing the human, and especially
the physiological functions. They never had the higher keys.
M. Gaston Maspero, the great French Egyptologist and the successor of
Mariette Bey, writes:
Every time I hear people talking of the religion of Egypt, I am
tempted to ask _which_ of the Egyptian religions they are talking
about? Is it of the Egyptian religion of the fourth dynasty, or of
the Egyptian religion of the Ptolemaic period? Is it of the
religion of the rabble, or of that of the learned? Of the religion
such as was taught in the schools of Heliopolis, or of that which
was in the minds and conceptions of the Theban sacerdotal class?
For, between the first Memphite tomb, which bears the _cartouche_
of a king of the third dynasty, and the last stones engraved at
Esneh under Cæsar Philippus, the Arabian, there is an interval of
at least five thousand years. Leaving aside the invasion of the
Shepherds, the Ethiopian and Assyrian dominions, the Persian
conquest, Greek colonization, and the thousand revolutions of its
political life, Egypt had passed during those five thousand years
through many vicissitudes of life, moral and intellectual. Chapter
XVII of the _Book of the Dead_, which seems to contain the
exposition of the system of the world, as it was understood at
Heliopolis during the time of the first dynasties, is known to us
by a few copies of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties. Every one
of the verses composing it was already interpreted in three or
four different ways; so different, indeed, that according to this
or another school, the Demiurge became either the solar fire—Ra‐
shoo, or the primordial water. Fifteen centuries later, the number
of readings had increased considerably. Time, in its course, had
modified their ideas about the universe and the forces that ruled
it. In the short eighteen centuries that Christianity has existed,
it has worked up, developed and transformed most of its dogmas;
how many times, then, might not the Egyptian priesthood have
altered their dogmas during those fifty centuries that separate
Theodosius from the King Builders of the Pyramids.(457)
Here we believe the eminent Egyptologist is going too far. The exoteric
dogmas may often have been altered, the esoteric never. He does not take
into account the sacred immutability of the primitive truths, revealed
only during the mysteries of Initiation. The Egyptian priests _had
forgotten much, they altered nothing_. The loss of a great part of the
primitive teaching was due to the sudden deaths of the great Hierophants,
who passed away before they had time to reveal _all_ to their successors,
mostly in the absence of worthy heirs to the knowledge. Yet they have
preserved in their rituals and dogmas the principal teachings of the
Secret Doctrine.
Thus, in the Chapter of the _Book of the Dead_, mentioned by Maspero, we
find (1) Osiris saying he is Toom—the creative force in Nature, giving
form to all beings, spirits and men, self‐generated and self‐
existent—issued from Noon, the celestial river, called Father‐Mother of
the Gods, the primordial deity, which is Chaos or the Deep, impregnated by
the unseen Spirit. (2) He has found Shoo, the solar force, on the Stairway
in the City of the Eight (the two squares of Good and Evil), and he has
annihilated the Children of Rebellion, the evil principles in Noon
(Chaos). (3) He is the Fire and Water, Noon the Primordial Parent, and he
created the Gods out of his Limbs—fourteen Gods (twice seven), seven dark
and seven light Gods—the seven Spirits of the Presence of the Christians,
and the seven dark Evil Spirits.
(4) He is the Law of Existence and Being, the Bennoo, or Phœnix, the Bird
of Resurrection in Eternity, in whom Night follows Day, and Day Night—an
allusion to the periodical cycles of cosmic resurrection and human
reïncarnation. For what else can this mean? “The Wayfarer who crosses
millions of years is the name of one, and the Great Green [Primordial
Water or Chaos] the name of the other,” one begetting millions of years in
succession, the other engulfing them, to restore them back. (5) He speaks
of the Seven Luminous Ones who follow their Lord, Osiris, who confers
justice, in Amenti.
All this is now shown to have been the source and origin of Christian
dogmas. That which the Jews had from Egypt, through Moses and other
Initiates, was confused and distorted enough in later days; but that which
the Church got from both, is still more misinterpreted.
Yet the system of the former, in this special department of symbology—the
key, namely, to the mysteries of astronomy as connected with those of
generation and conception—is now proven identical with those ideas in
ancient religions which have developed the phallic element of theology.
The Jewish system of sacred measures, applied to religious symbols, is the
same, so far as geometrical and numerical combinations go, as those of
Greece, Chaldæa and Egypt, for it was adopted by the Israelites during the
centuries of their slavery and captivity among the two latter
nations.(458) What was this system? It is the intimate conviction of the
author of _The Source of Measures_ that: “the Mosaic Books were intended,
by a mode of art‐speech, to set forth a geometrical and numerical system
of exact science, which should serve as an origin of measures.” Piazzi
Smyth believes similarly. This system and these measures are found by some
scholars to be identical with those used in the construction of the Great
Pyramid: but this is only partially so. “The foundation of these measures
was the Parker ratio,” says Ralston Skinner, in _The Source of Measures_.
The author of this very extraordinary work has discovered it, he says, in
the use of the integral ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a
circle, discovered by John A. Parker, of New York. This ratio is 6561 for
diameter, and 20612 for circumference. Furthermore, that this geometrical
ratio was the very ancient and probably the divine origin of what have now
become, through exoteric handling and practical application, the British
linear measures, “the underlying unit of which, viz., the _inch_, was
likewise the base of one of the royal Egyptian _cubits_, and of the Roman
_foot_.”
He also discovered that there was a modified form of the ratio,
viz., 113 to 355; and that while this last ratio pointed through
its origin to the exact integral _pi_, or to 6561 to 20612, it
also served as a base for astronomical calculations. The author
discovered that a system of _exact science_, geometrical,
numerical, and astronomical, founded on these ratios, and to be
seen in use in the construction of the Great Egyptian Pyramid, was
in part the burden of this _language_, as contained in, and
concealed under, the verbiage of the Hebrew text of the Bible. The
_inch_ and the two‐foot rule of 24 inches, interpreted for use
through the elements of the circle and the ratios mentioned, were
found to be at the basis or foundation of this natural, and
Egyptian, and Hebrew system of science; while, moreover, it seems
evident enough that the system itself was looked upon as of divine
origin, and of divine revelation.
But let us see what is said by the opponents of Prof. Piazzi Smyth’s
measurements of the Pyramid.
Mr. Petrie seems to deny them, and to have made short work altogether of
Piazzi Smyth’s calculations in their Biblical connection. So does Mr.
Proctor, the champion “Coincidentalist” for many years past in every
question of ancient arts and sciences. Speaking of “the multitude of
relations independent of the Pyramid, which have turned up while the
Pyramidalists have been endeavouring to connect the Pyramid with the solar
system,” he says:
These coincidences [which “would still remain if the Pyramid had
no existence,”] are altogether more curious than any coincidence
between the Pyramid and astronomical numbers: the former are as
close and remarkable as they are real; the latter, which are only
_imaginary_ (?), have only been established by the process which
schoolboys call “fudging,” and now new measures have left the work
to be done all over again.(459)
On this Mr. C. Staniland Wake justly observes:
They must, however, have been more than _mere coincidences_, if
the builders of the Pyramid had the astronomical knowledge
displayed in its perfect orientation and in its other admitted
astronomical features.(460)
They had it assuredly; and it is on this “knowledge” that the programme of
the Mysteries and of the series of Initiations was based: hence, the
construction of the Pyramid, the everlasting record and the indestructible
symbol of these Mysteries and Initiations on Earth, as the courses of the
stars are in Heaven. The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction in
miniature of that great series of cosmic changes to which astronomers have
given the name of the Tropical or Sidereal Year. Just as, at the close of
the cycle of the Sidereal Year (25,868 years), the heavenly bodies return
to the same relative positions as they occupied at its outset, so at the
close of the cycle of Initiation the Inner Man has regained the pristine
state of divine purity and knowledge from which he set out on his cycle of
terrestrial incarnation.
Moses, an Initiate into the Egyptian Mystagogy, based the religious
mysteries of the new nation which he created, upon the same abstract
formulæ derived from this Sidereal Cycle, symbolized by the form and
measurements of the Tabernacle, which he is supposed to have constructed
in the Wilderness. On these data, the later Jewish High Priests
constructed the allegory of Solomon’s Temple—a building which never had a
real existence, any more than had King Solomon himself, who is as much a
solar myth as is the still later Hiram Abif of the Masons, as Ragon has
well demonstrated. Thus, if the measurements of this allegorical Temple,
the symbol of the cycle of Initiation, coincide with those of the Great
Pyramid, it is due to the fact that the former were derived from the
latter through the Tabernacle of Moses.
That our author has undeniably discovered _one_ and even _two_ of the
_keys_, is fully demonstrated in the work just quoted. One has only to
read it, to feel a growing conviction that the hidden meaning of the
allegories and parables of both _Testaments_ is now unveiled. But that he
owes this discovery far more to his own genius than to Parker and Piazzi
Smyth, is also as certain, if not more so. For, as just shown, it is not
so certain whether the measures of the Great Pyramid adopted by the
Biblical Pyramidalists are beyond suspicion. A proof of this is to be
found in the work called _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_, by Mr. F.
Petrie, and also in other works written quite recently to oppose the said
calculations, which their authors call “biassed.” We gather that nearly
every one of Piazzi Smyth’s measurements differs from the later and more
carefully made measurements of Mr. Petrie, who concludes the Introduction
to his work with this sentence:
As to the results of the whole investigation, perhaps many
theorists will agree with an American who was a warm believer in
Pyramid theories when he came to Gizeh. I had the pleasure of his
company there for a couple of days, and at our last meal together
he said to me in a saddened way: “Well, sir! I feel as if I had
been to a funeral. By all means let the old theories have a decent
burial, though we should take care that in our haste none of the
wounded ones are buried alive.”
As regards the late J. A. Parker’s calculation in general, and his third
proposition especially, we have consulted some eminent mathematicians, and
this is the substance of what they say:
Parker’s reasoning rests on sentimental, rather than on mathematical,
considerations, and is logically inconclusive.
Proposition III, namely, that:
The circle is the natural basis or beginning of all area, and the
square being made so in mathematical science, is artificial and
arbitrary.
—is an illustration of an arbitrary proposition, and cannot safely be
relied upon in mathematical reasoning. The same observation applies, even
more strongly, to Proposition VII, which states that:
Because the circle is the primary shape in nature, and hence the
basis of area; and because the circle is measured by, and is equal
to the square only in ratio of half its circumference by the
radius, therefore, circumference and radius, and not the square of
diameter, are the only natural and legitimate elements of area, by
which all regular shapes are made equal to the square, and equal
to the circle.
Proposition IX is a remarkable example of faulty reasoning, though it is
the one on which Mr. Parker’s Quadrature mainly rests. It states that:
The circle and the equilateral triangle are opposite to one
another in all the elements of their construction, and hence the
fractional diameter of one circle, which is equal to the diameter
of one square, is in the opposite duplicate ratio to the diameter
of an equilateral triangle whose area is one, etc., etc.
Granting, for the sake of argument, that a triangle can be said to have a
radius, in the sense in which we speak of the radius of a circle—for what
Parker calls the radius of the triangle, is the radius of a circle
inscribed in a triangle, and therefore not the radius of the triangle at
all—and granting for the moment the other fanciful and mathematical
propositions united in his premisses, why must we conclude that, if the
equilateral triangle and circle are opposite in all the elements of their
construction, the diameter of any defined circle is in the opposite
duplicate ratio of the diameter of any given equivalent triangle? What
necessary connection is there between the premisses and the conclusion?
The reasoning is of a kind not known in geometry, and would not be
accepted by strict mathematicians.
Whether the archaic Esoteric system originated the British inch or not, is
of little consequence, however, to the strict and true metaphysician. Nor
does Mr. Ralston Skinner’s esoteric reading of the _Bible_ become
incorrect, merely because the measurements of the Pyramid may not be found
to agree with those of Solomon’s Temple, the Ark of Noah, etc., or because
Mr. Parker’s Quadrature of the Circle is rejected by mathematicians. For
Mr. Skinner’s reading depends primarily on the Kabalistic methods and the
Rabbinical value of the Hebrew letters. But it is extremely important to
ascertain whether the measures used in the evolution of the symbolic
religion of the Âryans, in the construction of their temples, in the
figures given in the _Purânas_, and especially in their chronology, their
astronomical symbols, the duration of the cycles, and other computations,
were, or were not, the same as those used in the Biblical measurements and
glyphs. For this will prove that the Jews, unless they took their sacred
cubit and measurements from the Egyptians—Moses being an Initiate of their
Priests—must have got those notions from India. At any rate they passed
them on to the early Christians. Hence, it is the Occultists and Kabalists
who are the true heirs to the Knowledge, or the Secret Wisdom, which is
still found in the _Bible_; for they alone now understand its real
meaning, whereas profane Jews and Christians cling to the husks and dead
letter thereof. That it was this system of measures which led to the
invention of the God‐names Elohim and Jehovah, and to their adaptation to
Phallicism, and that Jehovah is a not very flattering copy of Osiris, is
now demonstrated by the author of the _Source of Measures_. But the latter
and Mr. Piazzi Smyth both seem to labour under the impression that (_a_)
the priority of the system belongs to the Israelites, the Hebrew language
being the divine language, and that (_b_) this universal language belongs
to direct revelation!
The latter hypothesis is correct only in the sense shown in the last
paragraph of the preceding Section; but we have yet to agree as to the
nature and character of the divine “Revealer.” The former hypothesis as to
priority will for the profane, of course depend on (_a_) the internal and
external evidence of the revelation, and (_b_) on each scholar’s
individual preconceptions. This, however, cannot prevent either the
Theistic Kabalist, or the Pantheistic Occultist, from believing each in
his way; neither of the two convincing the other. The data furnished by
history are too meagre and unsatisfactory for either of them to prove to
the sceptic which of them is right.
On the other hand, the proofs afforded by tradition are too constantly
rejected for us to hope to settle the question in our present age.
Meanwhile, Materialistic Science will be laughing at both Kabalists and
Occultists indifferently. But the vexed question of priority once laid
aside, Science, in its departments of Philology and Comparative Religion,
will find itself finally taken to task, and be compelled to admit the
common claim.
One by one the claims become admitted, as one Scientist after another is
compelled to recognize the facts given out from the Secret Doctrine;
though he rarely, if ever, recognizes that he has been anticipated in his
statements. Thus, in the palmy days of Mr. Piazzi Smyth’s authority on the
Pyramid of Gizeh, his theory was, that the porphyry sarcophagus of the
King’s Chamber was “_the unit of measure_ for the two most enlightened
nations of the earth, England and America,” and was no better than a
“corn‐bin.” This was vehemently denied by us in _Isis Unveiled_, which had
just been published at that time. Then the New York press arose in arms
(the _Sun_ and the _World_ newspapers chiefly) against our presuming to
correct or find fault with such a star of learning. In that work, we had
said, that Herodotus, when treating of that Pyramid:
... might have added that, externally it symbolized _the creative
principle of Nature_, and illustrated also the _principles of
geometry_, _mathematics_, _astrology_, _and astronomy_.
Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were
performed the Mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the
initiation‐scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry
sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of
Scotland, degrades into a corn‐bin, was the _baptismal font_, upon
emerging from which the neophyte was “born again” and became an
adept.(461)
Our statement was laughed at in those days. We were accused of having got
our ideas from the “craze” of Shaw, an English writer who had maintained
that the sarcophagus had been used for the celebration of the Mysteries of
Osiris, although we had never heard of that writer. And now, six or seven
years later (1882), this is what Mr. Staniland Wake writes:
The so‐called King’s Chamber, of which an enthusiastic pyramidist
says, “The polished walls, fine materials, grand proportions, and
exalted place, eloquently tell of glories yet to come,” if not
“the chamber of perfections” of Cheops’ tomb, was probably _the
place to which the initiant was admitted after he had passed
through the narrow upward passage and the grand gallery, with its
lowly termination, which gradually prepared him for the final
stage of the Sacred Mysteries_.(462)
Had Mr. Staniland Wake been a Theosophist, he might have added that the
narrow upward passage leading to the King’s Chamber had a “narrow gate”
indeed; the same “strait gate” which “leadeth unto life,” or the new
spiritual re‐birth alluded to by Jesus in Matthew;(463) and that it was of
this gate in the Initiation Temple, that the writer, who recorded the
words alleged to have been spoken by an Initiate, was thinking.
Thus the greatest scholars of Science, instead of pooh‐poohing that
supposed “farrago of absurd fiction and superstitions,” as the Brâhmanical
literature is generally termed, will endeavour to learn the symbolical
universal language, with its numerical and geometrical keys. But here,
again, they will hardly be successful, if they share the belief that the
Jewish Kabalistic system contains the key to the _whole_ mystery; for it
_does not_. Nor does any other Scripture at present possess it in its
entirety, since even the _Vedas_ are not complete. Every old religion is
but a chapter or two of the entire volume of archaic primeval mysteries;
Eastern Occultism alone being able to boast that it is in possession of
the full secret, with its _seven_ keys. Comparisons will be instituted,
and as much as possible will be explained in this work; the rest is left
to the student’s personal intuition. In saying that Eastern Occultism has
the secret, it is not as if a “complete” or even an approximate knowledge
was claimed by the writer, which would be absurd. What I know, I give out;
that which I cannot explain, the student must find out for himself.
But though we may suppose that the entire cycle of the universal Mystery
Language will not be mastered for centuries to come, yet even the little
which has hitherto been discovered in the _Bible_ by some scholars, is
quite sufficient to demonstrate the claim—mathematically. As Judaism
availed itself of two keys out of the seven, and as these two keys have
now been re‐discovered, it becomes no longer a matter of individual
speculation and hypothesis, least of all of “coincidence,” but one of a
correct reading of the Biblical texts, just as anyone acquainted with
arithmetic reads and verifies an addition sum. In fact, all we have said
in _Isis Unveiled_ is now found corroborated in the _Egyptian Mystery_, or
_The Source of Measures_, by such readings of the _Bible_ with the
numerical and geometrical keys.
A few years longer, and this system will kill the dead‐letter reading of
the _Bible_, as it will that of all the other exoteric faiths, by showing
the dogmas in their real, naked meaning. And then this undeniable meaning,
however incomplete, will unveil the mystery of Being, and will, moreover,
entirely change the modern scientific systems of Anthropology, Ethnology
and especially that of Chronology. The element of Phallicism, found in
every God‐name and narrative in the _Old_, and to some degree in the
_New_, _Testament_, may also in time considerably change modern
materialistic views on Biology and Physiology.
Divested of their modern repulsive crudeness, such views of Nature and man
will, on the authority of the celestial bodies and their mysteries, unveil
the evolutions of the human mind and show how natural was such a course of
thought. The so‐called phallic symbols have become offensive only because
of the element of materiality and animality in them. In the beginning,
such symbols were but natural, as they originated with the archaic races,
which, issuing to their personal knowledge from an androgyne ancestry,
were the first phenomenal manifestations in their own sight of the
separation of the sexes and the ensuing mystery of creating in their turn.
If later races, especially the “chosen people,” have degraded them, this
does not affect the origin of the symbols. This little Semitic tribe—one
of the smallest branchlets from the commingling of the fourth and fifth
sub‐races, the Mongolo‐Turanian and the so‐called Indo‐European, after the
sinking of the great Continent—could only accept its symbology in the
spirit which was given to it by the nations from which it was derived.
And, perchance, in the Mosaic beginnings, the symbology was not so crude
as it became later under the handling of Ezra, who remodelled the whole
_Pentateuch_. To take an instance, the glyph of Pharaoh’s daughter (the
woman), the Nile (the Great Deep and Water), and the baby‐boy found
floating therein in the ark of rushes, was not primarily composed for, or
by, Moses. It was anticipated in the fragments found on the Babylonian
tiles, in the story of King Sargon, who lived far earlier than Moses.
In his _Assyrian Antiquities_,(464) Mr. George Smith says: “In the palace
of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik, I found another fragment of the curious
history of Sargon ... published in my translation in the _Transactions of
the Society of Biblical Archeology_.”(465) The capital of Sargon the
Babylonian Moses, “was the great city of Agadi, called by the Semites
Akkad—mentioned in _Genesis_(466) as the capital of Nimrod.... Akkad lay
near the City of Sippara on the Euphrates and North of Babylon.”(467)
Another strange “coincidence” is found in the fact that the name of the
neighbouring City of Sippara is the same as the name of the wife of
Moses—Zipporah.(468) Of course the story is a clever addition by Ezra,
_who could not have been ignorant of the original_. This curious story is
found on fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik, and reads as follows:
1. Sargina, the powerful king, the king of Akkad am I.
2. My mother was a princess, my father I did not know; a brother
of my father ruled over the country.
3. In the city of Azupiranu, which by the side of the river
Euphrates is situated,
4. My mother, the princess, conceived me; in difficulty she
brought me forth;
5. She placed me in an ark of rushes, with bitumen my exit she
sealed up;
6. She launched me in the river, which did not drown me.
7. The river carried me, to Akki, the water‐carrier, it brought
me.
8. Akki, the water‐carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted
me.(469)
And now let us compare the _Bible_ narrative in _Exodus_:
And when she [Moses’ mother] could not longer hide him, she took
for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with
pitch, and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by
the river’s brink.(470)
Mr. G. Smith then continues:
The story is supposed to have happened about 1600 B.C., rather
earlier than the supposed age of Moses; and, as we know that the
fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is quite likely that this account
had a connection with the events related in _Exodus_ II, for every
action, when once performed, has a tendency to be repeated.
But now that Professor Sayce has had the courage to push back the dates of
the Chaldean and Assyrian Kings by two thousand years more, Sargon must
have preceded Moses by 2,000 years at the least. The confession is
suggestive, but the figures lack a cypher or two.
Now, what is the logical inference? Most assuredly, that which gives us
the right to say that the story told of Moses by Ezra had been learned by
him while at Babylon, and that he applied the allegory told of Sargon to
the Jewish lawgiver. In short, that _Exodus_ was never written by Moses,
but was re‐fabricated from old materials by Ezra.
And if so, then why should not other symbols and glyphs far more crude in
their phallic element have been added by this adept in the later Chaldean
and Sabæan phallic worship? We are taught that the primeval faith of the
Israelites was quite different from that which was developed centuries
later by the Talmudists, and before them by David and Hezekiah.
All this, notwithstanding the exoteric element, as now found in the two
_Testaments_, is quite sufficient to class the _Bible_ among esoteric
works, and to connect its secret system with Indian, Chaldean, and
Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of Biblical glyphs and numbers, as
suggested by astronomical observations—Astronomy and Theology being
closely connected—is found in Indian exoteric, as well as esoteric,
systems. These figures and their symbols, the signs of the Zodiac, the
planets, their aspects and nodes—the last term having now passed even into
our modern Botany—are known in Astronomy as Sextiles, Quartiles and so on,
and have been used for ages and æons by the archaic nations, and in one
sense have the same meaning as the Hebrew numerals. The earliest forms of
elementary geometry must have certainly been suggested by the observation
of the heavenly bodies and their groupings. Hence, the most archaic
symbols in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a triangle, a
square, a pentagon, and a hexagon, and other plane figures with various
sides and angles. This shows the knowledge and use of geometrical
symbology to be as old as the world.
Starting from this, it becomes easy to understand how Nature herself, even
without the help of their divine instructors, could have taught primeval
mankind the first principles of a numerical and geometrical symbol‐
language.(471) Hence we find numbers and figures used as an expression and
a record of thought in every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever
the same, with certain variations only, arising from the first figures.
Thus the evolution and correlation of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its
growth and development—spiritual and physical, abstract and concrete—were
first recorded in geometrical changes of shape. Every Cosmogony began with
a circle, a point, a triangle and a square, up to number 9, when it was
synthesized by the first line and a circle—the Pythagorean mystic Decad,
the sum of all, involving and expressing the mysteries of the entire
Kosmos; mysteries recorded a hundred times more fully in the Hindû system
than elsewhere, for him who can understand its mystic language. The
numbers 3 and 4, in their combination 7, and also 5, 6, 9, and 10, are the
very corner‐stones of Occult Cosmogonies. This Decad and its thousand
combinations are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes it in
the caves and rock‐cut temples of Hindûstan and Central Asia; in the
Pyramids and Lithoi of Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas;
in the mounds of the snow‐capped Caucasian fastnesses; in the ruins of
Palenque; in Easter Island; everywhere whither the foot of ancient man has
ever journeyed. The 3 and the 4, the triangle and the square, or the
universal male and female glyphs, showing the first aspect of the evolving
deity, are stamped for ever in the Southern Cross in the Heavens, as in
the Egyptian Crux Ansata. As well expressed by the author of _The Source
of Measures_:
The Cube unfolded is in display a cross of the Tau, or Egyptian
form, or of the Christian cross‐form.... A circle attached to the
first, gives the Ansated Cross ... numbers 3 and 4, counted on the
cross, showing a form of the [Hebrew] golden candlestick [in the
Holy of Holies], and of the 3 + 4 = 7, and 6 + 1 = 7, days in the
_circle of the week_, as 7 lights of the sun. So also as the week
of 7 lights gave origin to the _month_ and _year_, so it is the
_time‐marker of birth_.... The cross‐form being shown, then, by
the connected use of the form 113:355, the symbol is completed by
the _attachment of a man to the cross_.(472) This kind of measure
was made to coördinate with the idea of the _origin_ of human
life, and hence the _phallic form_.
The Stanzas show the cross and these numbers playing a prominent part in
archaic Cosmogony. Meanwhile we may profit by the evidence collected by
the same author, in the section which he rightly calls the “Primordial
Vestiges of these Symbols,” to show the identity of symbols and their
esoteric meaning all over the globe.
Under the general view taken of the nature of the number‐forms ...
it becomes a matter of research of the utmost interest as to when
and where their existence and their use first became known. Has it
been a matter of revelation in what we know as the historic age—a
cycle exceedingly modern when the age of the human race is
contemplated? It seems, in fact, as to the date of its possession
by man, to have been farther removed, in the past, from the old
Egyptians than are the old Egyptians from us.
The Easter Isles in “_mid Pacific_” present the feature of the
remaining peaks of the mountains of _a submerged continent_, for
the reason that these peaks are thickly studded with cyclopean
statues, remnants of the civilization of a dense and cultivated
people, who must have, of necessity, occupied a widely extended
area. On the backs of these images is to be found the “_ansated
cross_” and the same modified to the outlines of the human form. A
full description, with plate showing the land with the thickly
planted statues, also with copies of the images, is to be found in
the January number, 1870, of the _London Builder_....
In the _Naturalist_, published at Salem, Massachusetts, in one of
the early numbers (about 36), is to be found a description of some
very ancient and curious carving on the crest walls of the
mountains of South America, older by far, it is averred, than the
races now living. The strangeness of these tracings is in that
they exhibit the outlines of a man stretched out on a cross,(473)
by a series of drawings, by which from the form of a _man_ that of
a _cross_ springs, but so done that the cross may be taken as the
man, or the man as the cross....
It is known that tradition among the Aztecs has handed down a very
perfect account of the _deluge_.... Baron Humboldt says that we
are to look for the country of Aztalan, the original country of
the Aztecs, as high up, at least, as the 42nd parallel north;
whence journeying, they at last arrived in the vale of Mexico. In
that vale the earthen mounds of the far north become the elegant
stone pyramidal, and other structures, whose remains are now
found. The correspondences between the Aztec remains and those of
the Egyptians are well known.... Atwater, from examination of
hundreds of them, is convinced that they had a knowledge of
astronomy. As to one of the most perfect of the pyramidal
structures among the Aztecs, Humboldt gives a description to the
following effect:
“The form of this pyramid [of Papantla] which has _seven_ stories,
is more tapering than any other monument of this kind yet
discovered, but its height is not remarkable, being but 57 feet,
its base but 25 feet on each side. However, it is remarkable on
one account: it is built entirely of hewn stones, of an
extraordinary size, and very beautifully shaped. _Three_
staircases lead to the top, the steps of which were decorated with
hieroglyphical sculptures and small _niches_, arranged with great
symmetry. The number of these niches seem to allude to the 318
_simple and compound signs of the days of their civil calendar_.”
318 is the Gnostic value of Christ, and the famous number of the
trained or circumcized servants of Abram. When it is considered
that 318 is an _abstract value_, and _universal_, as expressive of
a diameter value to a circumference of _unity_, its use in the
composition of a civil calendar becomes manifest.
Identical glyphs, numbers and esoteric symbols are found in Egypt, Peru,
Mexico, Easter Island, India, Chaldæa, and Central Asia—Crucified Men, and
symbols of the evolution of races from Gods—and yet behold Science
repudiating the idea of a human race other than one made in _our_ image;
Theology clinging to its 6,000 years of Creation; Anthropology teaching
our descent from the ape; and the Clergy tracing it from Adam 4,004 years
B.C.!!
Shall one, for fear of incurring the penalty of being called a
superstitious fool, and even a liar, abstain from furnishing proofs—as
good as any existent—only because that day, when all the Seven Keys shall
be delivered unto Science, or rather the men of learning and research in
the department of symbology, has not yet dawned? In the face of the
crushing discoveries of Geology and Anthropology with regard to the
antiquity of man, shall we—in order to avoid the usual penalty that awaits
every one who strays outside the beaten paths of either Theology or
Materialism—hold to the 6,000 years and “special creation” or accept in
submissive admiration our genealogy and descent from the ape? Not so, as
long as it is known that the Secret Records hold the said Seven Keys to
the mystery of the genesis of man. Faulty, materialistic, and biassed as
the scientific theories may be, they are a thousand times nearer the truth
than the vagaries of Theology. The latter are in their death agony for
every one but the most uncompromising bigot and fanatic. Or rather, some
of its defenders must have lost their reason. For what can one think when,
in the face of the dead‐letter absurdities of the _Bible_, these are still
publicly supported, and as fiercely as ever, and one finds the Theologians
maintaining that though “the Scriptures carefully refrain [?] from making
any direct contribution to scientific knowledge, they have _never_
stumbled upon any statement _which will not abide the light of_ Advancing
Science”!!!(474)
Hence we have no choice but either to blindly accept the deductions of
Science, or to cut ourselves adrift from it, and withstand it fearlessly
to its face, stating what the Secret Doctrine teaches us, and being fully
prepared to bear the consequences.
But let us see whether Science, in its materialistic speculations, and
even Theology, in its death‐rattle and supreme struggle to reconcile the
6,000 years since Adam with Sir Charles Lyell’s _Geological Evidences of
the Antiquity of Man_, do not themselves unconsciously give us a helping
hand. Ethnology, on the confession of some of its most learned votaries,
finds it already impossible to account for the varieties in the human
race, unless the hypothesis of the _creation of several Adams_ be
accepted. They speak of “a white Adam and a black Adam, a red Adam and a
yellow Adam.”(475) Were they Hindûs enumerating the rebirths of Vâmadeva,
from the _Linga Purâna_, they could say little more. For, enumerating the
repeated births of Shiva, they show him in one Kalpa of a _white_
complexion, in another of a _black_ colour, in still another of a _red_
colour, after which the Kumâra becomes “four youths of a _yellow_ colour.”
This strange “coincidence,” as Mr. Proctor would say, speaks only in
favour of scientific intuition, as Shiva‐Kumâra simply represents,
allegorically, the human Races during the genesis of man. But it has led
to another intuitional phenomenon—in the theological ranks this time. The
unknown author of _Primeval Man_, in a desperate effort to screen the
Divine Revelation from the merciless and eloquent discoveries of Geology
and Anthropology, remarking that “it would be unfortunate if the defenders
of the _Bible_ should be driven into the position of either surrendering
the inspiration of Scripture, or denying the conclusions of
Geologists”—finds a compromise. Nay, he devotes a thick volume to proving
this fact: “Adam was not the _first man_(476) created upon this earth.”
The exhumed relics of pre‐Adamic man, “instead of shaking our confidence
in Scripture, supply additional proof of its veracity.”(477) How so? In
the simplest way imaginable; for the author argues that, henceforth “we
[the clergy] are enabled to leave scientific men to pursue their studies
without attempting to coërce them by the fear of heresy.” This must be a
relief indeed to Messrs. Huxley, Tyndall, and Sir Charles Lyell!
The Bible narrative _does not commence with creation_, as is
commonly supposed, but with the formation of Adam and Eve,
_millions of years after_ our planet had been created. Its
previous history, so far as Scripture is concerned, is yet
unwritten.... There may have been not one, but twenty different
races upon the earth before the time of Adam, just as there may be
twenty different races of men on other worlds.(478)
Who, then, or what were those races, since the author still maintains that
Adam is _the first man of our race_? It was the Satanic Race and Races!
“Satan [was] never in heaven, Angels and men [being] one species.” It was
the pre‐Adamic race of “Angels that sinned.” Satan was the “first prince
of this world,” we read. Having died in consequence of his rebellion, he
remained on earth as a _disembodied Spirit_, and tempted Adam and Eve.
The earlier ages of the Satanic race, and more especially _during
the life‐time of Satan_ [!!!], may have been a period of
patriarchal civilization and comparative repose—a time of Tubal‐
Cains and Jubals, when both sciences and arts attempted to strike
their roots into the accursed ground.... What a subject for an
epic!... There are inevitable incidents which must have occurred.
We see before us ... the gay primeval lover wooing his blushing
bride at dewy eve under the Danish oaks, that then grew where now
no oaks will grow ... the grey primeval patriarch ... the primeval
offspring innocently gambolling by his side.... A thousand such
pictures rise before us!(479)
The retrospective glance at this Satanic “blushing bride,” in the days of
Satan’s innocence, does not lose in poetry as it gains in originality.
Quite the reverse. The modern Christian bride—who does not often blush
now‐a‐days before her gay modern lovers—might even derive a moral lesson
from this daughter of Satan, created in the exuberant fancy of her first
human biographer. These pictures—and to appreciate them at their true
value they must be examined in the volume that describes them—are all
suggested with a view to reconcile the infallibility of revealed Scripture
with Sir Charles Lyell’s _Antiquity of Man_, and other damaging scientific
works. But this does not prevent truth and fact appearing at the
foundation of these vagaries, which the author has not dared to sign with
his own, or even a borrowed, name. For, his pre‐Adamic Races—not Satanic
but simply Atlantean, and the Hermaphrodites before the latter—are
mentioned in the _Bible_, if read esoterically, as they are in the Secret
Doctrine. The Seven Keys open the mysteries, past and future, of the seven
great Root‐Races, and of the seven Kalpas. Though the genesis of man, and
even the geology, of Esotericism will surely be rejected by Science, just
as much as the Satanic and pre‐Adamic Races, yet if the Scientists, having
no other way out of their difficulties, are compelled to choose between
the two, we feel certain that—Scripture notwithstanding—once the Mystery
Language is approximately mastered, it is the archaic teaching that will
be accepted.
Section III. Primordial Substance and Divine Thought.
As it would seem irrational to affirm that we already know all
existing causes, permission must be given to assume, if need be,
_an entirely new agent_.
Assuming, what is not strictly accurate as yet, that the
undulatory hypothesis accounts for all the facts, we are called on
to decide whether the existence of an undulating ether is thereby
proved. _We cannot positively affirm that no other supposition
will explain the facts._ Newton’s corpuscular hypothesis is
admitted to have broken down on interference; and there is, at the
present day, no rival. Still, it is extremely desirable in all
such hypotheses to find some collateral confirmation, some
evidence _aliunde_, of _the supposed Ether_.... Some hypotheses
consist of assumptions as to the minute structure and operations
of bodies. From the nature of the case, these assumptions can
never be proved by direct means. Their only merit is _their
suitability to express the phenomena_. They are _representative
fictions_.
_Logic_, by ALEXANDER BAIN, L.L.D., Part II, p. 133.
Ether—this hypothetical Proteus, one of the “representative fictions” of
Modern Science, which, nevertheless, was so long accepted—is one of the
lower “principles” of what we call Primordial Substance (Âkâsha, in
Sanskrit), one of the dreams of old, which has now again become the dream
of Modern Science. It is the greatest, as it is the boldest, of the
surviving speculations of ancient philosophers. For the Occultists,
however, both Ether and the Primordial Substance are realities. To put it
plainly, Ether is the Astral Light, and the Primordial Substance is
Âkâsha, the Upâdhi of Divine Thought.
In modern language, the latter would be better named Cosmic Ideation,
Spirit; the former, Cosmic Substance, Matter. These, the Alpha and the
Omega of Being, are but the two _facets_ of the one Absolute Existence.
The latter was never addressed, or even mentioned, by any name in
antiquity, except in allegory. In the oldest Âryan race, the Hindû, the
worship of the intellectual classes at no time ever consisted in an
adoration of marvellous form and art, however fervent, as with the Greeks;
an adoration, which led later on to anthropomorphism. But while the Greek
philosopher adored form, and the Hindû sage alone “perceived the true
relation of earthly beauty and eternal truth”—the uneducated of every
nation understood neither, at any time.
They do not understand it even now. The evolution of the God‐idea proceeds
apace with man’s own intellectual evolution. So true is it that the
noblest ideal to which the religious spirit of one age can soar, will
appear but a gross caricature to the philosophic mind in a succeeding
epoch! The philosophers themselves had to be _initiated into perceptive
mysteries_, before they could grasp the correct idea of the Ancients in
relation to this most metaphysical subject. Otherwise—outside such
Initiation—for every thinker there will be a “thus far shalt thou go and
no farther” mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as clearly and as
unmistakably as there is one for the progress of any nation or race in its
cycle by the law of Karma. Outside of Initiation, the ideals of
contemporary religious thought must always have their wings clipped, and
remain unable to soar higher; for idealistic, as well as realistic,
thinkers, and even free‐thinkers, are but the outcome and the natural
product of their respective environments and periods. The ideals of each
are but the necessary results of their temperaments, and the outcome of
that phase of intellectual progress to which a nation, in its
collectivity, has attained. Hence, as already remarked, the highest
flights of modern Western metaphysics have fallen far short of the truth.
Much of current Agnostic speculation on the existence of the “First Cause”
is little better than veiled Materialism—the terminology alone being
different. Even so great a thinker as Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks of the
“Unknowable” occasionally in terms that demonstrate the lethal influence
of materialistic thought, which, like the deadly Sirocco, has withered and
blighted all current ontological speculation.
For instance, when he terms the “First Cause” the “Unknowable,” a “power
_manifesting_ through phenomena,” and “an infinite eternal _energy_,” it
is clear that he has grasped solely the _physical_ aspect of the Mystery
of Being—the Energies of Cosmic Substance only. The coeternal aspect of
the One Reality, Cosmic Ideation, is absolutely omitted from
consideration, and as to its Noumenon, it seems non‐existent in the mind
of the great thinker. Without doubt, this one‐sided mode of dealing with
the problem is due largely to the pernicious Western practice of
subordinating Consciousness to Matter, or regarding it as a “bye‐product”
of molecular motion.
From the early ages of the Fourth Race, when Spirit alone was worshipped
and the Mystery was made manifest, down to the last palmy days of Grecian
art, at the dawn of Christianity, the Hellenes alone had dared publicly to
raise an altar to the “Unknown God.” Whatever St. Paul may have had in his
profound mind, when declaring to the Athenians that this “Unknown,” which
they ignorantly worshipped, was the true God announced by himself—that
Deity _was not_ “Jehovah,” nor was he “the maker of the world and all
things.” For it is not the “God of Israel” but the “Unknown” of the
ancient and modern Pantheist that “dwelleth not in temples _made with
hands_.”(480)
Divine Thought cannot be defined, nor can its meaning be explained, except
by the numberless manifestations of Cosmic Substance, in which the former
is _sensed_ spiritually by those who can do so. To say this, after having
defined it as the Unknown Deity, abstract, impersonal, sexless, which must
be placed at the root of every Cosmogony and its subsequent evolution, is
equivalent to saying nothing at all. It is like attempting a
transcendental equation of conditions, having in hand for deducing the
true value of its terms only a number of _unknown_ quantities. Its place
is found in the old primitive symbolic charts, in which, as already shown,
it is represented by a boundless darkness, on the ground of which appears
the first central point in white—thus symbolizing coëval and coëternal
Spirit‐Matter making its appearance in the phenomenal world, before its
first differentiation. When “the One becomes Two,” it may then be referred
to as Spirit _and_ Matter. To “Spirit” is referable every manifestation of
Consciousness, reflective or direct, and of “unconscious purposiveness”—to
adopt a modern expression used in Western _philosophy_, so‐called—as
evidenced in the Vital Principle, and Nature’s submission to the majestic
sequence of immutable Law. “Matter” must be regarded as objectivity in its
purest abstraction, the self‐existing basis, whose septenary manvantaric
differentiations constitute the objective reality underlying the phenomena
of each phase of conscious existence. During the period of Universal
Pralaya, Cosmic Ideation is non‐existent; and the variously differentiated
states of Cosmic Substance are resolved back again into the primary state
of abstract potential objectivity.
Manvantaric impulse commences with the reäwakening of Cosmic Ideation, the
Universal Mind, concurrently with, and parallel to, the primary emergence
of Cosmic Substance—the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the
former—from its undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, Absolute Wisdom
mirrors itself in its Ideation; which, by a transcendental process,
superior to and incomprehensible by human Consciousness, results in Cosmic
Energy, Fohat. Thrilling through the bosom of inert Substance, Fohat
impels it to activity, and guides its primary differentiations on all the
seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are thus Seven Protyles—as
they are now called, whereas Âryan antiquity named them the Seven
Prakritis, or Natures—serving, severally, as the _relatively_ homogeneous
bases, which in the course of the increasing heterogeneity, in the
evolution of the Universe, differentiate into the marvellous complexity
presented by phenomena on the planes of perception. The term “relatively”
is used designedly, because the very existence of such a process,
resulting in the primary segregations of undifferentiated Cosmic Substance
into its septenary bases of evolution, compels us to regard the Protyle of
each plane as only a _mediate_ phase assumed by Substance in its passage
from abstract, into full objectivity. The term Protyle is due to Mr.
Crookes, the eminent Chemist, who has given that name to _pre‐matter_, if
one may so call primordial and purely homogeneous substance, suspected, if
not actually yet found, by Science in the ultimate composition of the
atom. But the incipient segregation of primordial matter into atoms and
molecules takes its rise subsequent to the evolution of our Seven
Protyles. It is the last of these that Mr. Crookes is in search of, having
recently detected the possibility of its existence on our plane.
Cosmic Ideation is said to be non‐existent during pralayic periods, for
the simple reason that there is no one, and nothing, to perceive its
effects. There can be no manifestation of consciousness, semi‐
consciousness, or even “unconscious purposiveness,” except through a
vehicle of Matter; that is to say, on this our plane, wherein human
consciousness, _in its normal state_, cannot soar beyond what is known as
transcendental metaphysics, it is only through some molecular aggregation,
or fabric, that Spirit wells up in a stream of individual or sub‐conscious
subjectivity. And as Matter existing apart from perception is a mere
abstraction, both of these aspects of the Absolute—Cosmic Substance and
Cosmic Ideation—are mutually interdependent. In strict accuracy, to avoid
confusion and misconception, the term “Matter” ought to be applied to the
aggregate of objects of possible perception, and the term “Substance” to
Noumena; for inasmuch as the phenomena of _our_ plane are the creations of
the perceiving Ego—the modifications of its own subjectivity—all the
“states of matter representing the aggregate of perceived objects” can
have but a relative and purely phenomenal existence for the children of
our plane. As the modern Idealists would say, the coöperation of Subject
and Object results in the sense‐object, or phenomenon.
But this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is the same
on all other planes; that the coöperation of the two, on the planes of
their septenary differentiation, results in a septenary aggregate of
phenomena which are likewise non‐existent _per se_, though concrete
realities for the Entities of whose experience they form a part, in the
same manner as the rocks and rivers around us are real from the stand‐
point of a Physicist, though unreal illusions of sense from that of the
Metaphysician. It would be an error to say, or even conceive, such a
thing. From the stand‐point of the highest metaphysics, the whole
Universe, Gods included, is an Illusion (Mâyâ). But the illusion of him
who is in himself an illusion differs on every plane of consciousness; and
we have no more right to dogmatize about the possible nature of the
perceptive faculties of an Ego on, say, the sixth plane, than we have to
identify our perceptions with, or make them a standard for, those of an
ant, in _its_ mode of consciousness. Cosmic Ideation focussed in a
Principle, or Upâdhi (Basis), results as the consciousness of the
individual Ego. Its manifestation varies with the degree of the Upâdhi.
For instance, through that known as Manas, it wells up as Mind‐
Consciousness; through the more finely differentiated fabric (sixth state
of matter) of Buddhi—resting on the experience of Manas as its Basis—as a
stream of Spiritual Intuition.
The pure Object apart from consciousness is unknown to us, while living on
the plane of our three‐dimensional world, for we know only the mental
states it excites in the perceiving Ego. And, so long as the contrast of
Subject and Object endures—to wit, so long as we enjoy our five senses and
no more, and do not know how to divorce our all‐perceiving Ego from the
thraldom of these senses—so long will it be impossible for the _personal_
Ego to break through the barrier which separates it from a knowledge of
“things in themselves,” or Substance.
That Ego, progressing in an arc of ascending subjectivity, must exhaust
the experience of every plane. But not till the Unit is merged in the ALL,
whether on this or any other plane, and Subject and Object alike vanish in
the absolute negation of the Nirvânic State—negation, again, only _from
our plane_—not until then, is scaled that peak of Omniscience, the
Knowledge of Things‐in‐themselves, and the solution of the yet more awful
riddle approached, before which even the highest Dhyân Chohan must bow in
silence and ignorance—the Unspeakable Mystery of that which is called by
the Vedântins, Parabrahman.
Therefore, such being the case, all those who have sought to give a name
to the Incognizable Principle have simply degraded it. Even to speak of
Cosmic Ideation—save in its _phenomenal_ aspect—is like trying to bottle
up primordial Chaos, or to put a printed label on Eternity.
What, then, is the “Primordial Substance,” that mysterious object of which
Alchemy was ever talking, and which was the subject of philosophical
speculation in every age? What can it be finally, even in its _phenomenal_
pre‐differentiation? Even _that_ is the All of manifested Nature
and—_nothing_ to our senses. It is mentioned under various names in every
cosmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown to be, to this day,
the ever grasp‐eluding Proteus in Nature. We touch and do not feel it; we
look at it without seeing it; we breathe it and do not perceive it; we
hear and smell it without the smallest cognition that it is there; for it
is in every molecule of that which, in our illusion and ignorance, we
regard as Matter in any of its states, or conceive as a feeling, a
thought, an emotion. In short, it is the Upâdhi, or Vehicle, of every
possible phenomenon, whether physical, mental, or psychic. In the opening
sentences of _Genesis_, and in the Chaldean Cosmogony; in the _Purânas_ of
India, and in the _Book of the Dead_ of Egypt; everywhere it opens the
cycle of manifestation. It is termed Chaos, and the Face of the Waters,
incubated by the Spirit, proceeding from the Unknown, whatever that
Spirit’s name may be.
The authors of the Sacred Scriptures in India go deeper into the origin of
the evolution of things than does Thales or Job, for they say:
From Intelligence [called Mahat, in the _Purânas_], associated
with Ignorance [Îshvara, as a _personal_ deity], _attended by its
projective power_, in which the quality of dulness [_tamas_,
insensibility] predominates, proceeds _Ether_—from ether, air;
from air, heat; from heat, water; and from water, earth with
everything on it.
“From This, from this same Self, was the Ether produced,” says the
_Veda_.(481)
It thus becomes evident that it is not _this_ Ether—sprung at the fourth
remove from an _emanation_ of “Intelligence, associated with
Ignorance”—which is the high Principle, the _deific_ Entity worshipped by
the Greeks and Latins under the name of “Pater, Omnipotens Æther,” and
“Magnus Æther,” in its collective aggregate. The septenary gradation, and
the innumerable sub‐divisions and differences, made by the Ancients
between the powers of Ether collectively—from its outward fringe of
effects, with which our Science is so familiar, up to the “Imponderable
Substance,” once admitted as the “Ether of Space,” but now about to be
rejected—have been ever a vexing riddle for every branch of knowledge. The
Mythologists and Symbologists of our day, confused by this
incomprehensible glorification on the one hand, and degradation on the
other, of the same deified Entity and in the same religious systems, are
often driven to the most ludicrous mistakes. The Church, firm as a rock in
each and all of her early errors of interpretation, has made of Ether the
abode of her Satanic legions. The whole Hierarchy of the “Fallen” Angels
is there; Cosmocratores, the “World Bearers,” according to Bossuet; Mundi
Tenentes, the “World Holders,” as Tertullian calls them; Mundi Domini,
“World Dominations,” or rather Dominators; the Curbati, or “Curved,” etc.;
thus making of the stars and celestial orbs in their courses—Devils!
For it is thus that the Church has interpreted the verse: “For we wrestle
not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world.”(482) Further, St. Paul
mentions the spiritual malices (“wickedness,” in English texts), in the
Air—_spiritualia nequitiæ cœlestibus_—the Latin texts giving various names
to these “malices,” the innocent “Elementals.” But the Church is right
this time, though wrong in calling them all Devils. The Astral Light, or
lower Ether, _is_ full of conscious, semi‐conscious and unconscious
entities; only the church has less _power_ over them than over invisible
microbes or mosquitoes.
The difference made between the seven states of Ether—itself one of the
Seven Cosmic Principles, whereas the Æther of the ancients is Universal
Fire—may be seen in the injunctions by Zoroaster and Psellus,
respectively. The former said: “Consult it only when it is without form or
figure”—_absque formâ et figurâ_—which means, without flames or burning
coals. “When it has a form, _heed it not_”; teaches Psellus, “but when it
is formless, obey it, for it is then _sacred fire_, and all it will reveal
thee shall be true.”(483) This proves that Ether, itself an aspect of
Âkâsha, has in its turn several aspects or “principles.”
All the ancient nations deified Æther in its imponderable aspect and
potency. Virgil calls Jupiter, _Pater Omnipotens Æther_, and the “Great
Æther.”(484) The Hindûs have also placed it among their deities, under the
name of Âkâsha, the synthesis of Ether. And the author of the Homœomerian
System of philosophy, Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, firmly believed that the
spiritual prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be
found in the boundless Æther, where they were generated, whence they
evolved, and whither they returned—an Occult teaching.
It thus becomes clear that it is from Æther, in its highest synthetic
aspect, once anthropomorphized, that sprang the first idea of a personal
Creative Deity. With the philosophical Hindûs the Elements are _tâmasa_,
_i.e._, “unenlightened by _intellect_, which they obscure.”
We have now to exhaust the question of the mystical meaning of Primordial
Chaos and of the Root‐Principle, and show how they were connected in the
ancient philosophies with Âkâsha, incorrectly translated Ether, and also
with Mâyâ, Illusion, of which Îshvara is the male aspect. We shall speak
further on of the Intelligent Principle, or rather of the invisible
immaterial properties, in the visible and material elements, that “sprang
from the Primordial Chaos.”
For “what is the primordial Chaos but Æther?”—it is asked, in _Isis
Unveiled_. Not the _modern_ Ether; not such as is recognized now, but such
as _was_ known to the ancient philosophers long before the time of
Moses—Æther, with all its mysterious and occult properties, containing in
itself the germs of universal creation. The Upper Æther, or Âkâsha, is the
Celestial Virgin and Mother of every existing form and being, from whose
bosom, as soon as “incubated” by the Divine Spirit, are called into
existence Matter and Life, Force and Action. Æther is the Aditi of the
Hindûs, and it is Âkâsha. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and
chemical action are so little understood even now, that fresh facts are
constantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the
power of this protean giant—Æther; or whence its mysterious origin? Who,
we mean, that denies the Spirit that works in it, and evolves out of it
all visible forms?
It will be an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the
world are based on a knowledge among the Ancients of those sciences, which
have, in our days, allied themselves in support of the doctrine of
evolution; and that further research may demonstrate that these Ancients
were far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing
both its physical and spiritual aspects, than we are now.
With the old philosophers, evolution was a universal theorem, a
doctrine embracing the _whole_, and an established principle;
whereas our modern evolutionists are enabled to present us merely
with speculative theoretics; with _particular_, if not wholly
_negative_ theorems. It is idle for the representatives of our
modern wisdom to close the debate and pretend that the question is
settled, merely because the obscure phraseology of the Mosaic ...
account clashes with the definite exegesis of “Exact
Science.”(485)
If we turn to the _Ordinances of Manu_, we find the prototype of all these
ideas. Mostly lost, to the Western world, in their original form,
disfigured by later interpolations and additions, they have, nevertheless,
preserved quite enough of their ancient spirit to show its character.
“Removing the darkness, the Self‐existent Lord [Vishnu, Nârâyana, etc.]
became manifest; and, wishing to produce beings from his Essence, created,
in the beginning, water alone. In that he cast seed. That became a Golden
Egg.”
Whence this Self‐existent Lord? It is called This, and is spoken of as
“Darkness, imperceptible, without definite qualities, undiscoverable,
unknowable, as if wholly in sleep.” Having dwelt in that Egg for a whole
Divine Year, he “who is called in the world Brahmâ,” splits that Egg in
two, and from the upper portion he forms the heaven, from the lower the
earth, and from the middle the sky and “the perpetual place of
waters.”(486)
Directly following these verses, however, there is something more
important for us, as it entirely corroborates our Esoteric teachings. From
verse 14 to 36, evolution is given in the order described in the Esoteric
Philosophy. This cannot be easily gainsaid. Even Medhâtithi, the son of
Virasvâmin, and the author of the Commentary, the _Manubhâsya_, whose
date, according to the western Orientalists, is 1,000 A.D., helps us with
his remarks to the elucidation of the truth. He shows himself either
unwilling to give out more, because he knew what had to be kept from the
profane, or else he was really puzzled. Still, what he does give out makes
the septenary principle in man and Nature plain enough.
Let us begin with Chapter I of the _Ordinances_, or “Laws,” after the
Self‐existent Lord, the Unmanifesting Logos of the Unknown “Darkness,”
becomes manifested in the Golden Egg. It is from this Egg, from
11. “That which is the undiscrete [undifferentiated] Cause, eternal, which
_is_ and _is not_, from It issued that Male who is called in the world
Brahmâ.”
Here, as in all genuine philosophical systems, we find even the “Egg,” or
the Circle, or Zero, Boundless Infinity, referred to as “It,”(487) and
Brahmâ, the first Unit only, referred to as the “Male” God, _i.e._, the
fructifying Principle. It is [circle split by vertical line], or 10 (ten),
the Decad. On the plane of the Septenary, or _our_ World, only, it is
called Brahmâ. On that of the Unified Decad, in the realm of Reality, this
male Brahmâ is an Illusion.
14. “From Self (_Âtmanah_) he created Mind, _which is and is not_; and
from Mind, Ego‐ism [Self‐Consciousness] (_a_), the ruler (_b_), the Lord.”
(_a_) The Mind is Manas. Medhâtithi, the commentator, justly observes here
that it is the reverse of this, and shows already interpolation and
rearranging; for it is Manas that springs from Ahamkâra or (Universal)
Self‐Consciousness, as Manas in the microcosm springs from Mahat, or
Mahâ‐Buddhi (Buddhi, in man). For Manas is dual. As shown and translated
by Colebrooke, “Mind, _serving both for sense and action_, is an organ by
affinity, being cognate with the rest”;(488) “the rest” here meaning that
Manas, our Fifth Principle (the _fifth_, because the body was named the
_first_, which is the reverse of the true philosophical order), is in
affinity both with Âtmâ‐Buddhi and with the lower Four Principles. Hence,
our teaching: namely, that Manas follows Âtmâ‐Buddhi to Devachan, and that
the Lower Manas, that is to say, the dregs or residue of Manas, remains
with Kâma Rûpa, in Limbus, or Kâma Loka, the abode of the “Shells.”
(_b_) Medhâtithi translates this as “the one conscious of the I,” or Ego,
not “the ruler,” as do the Orientalists. Thus also they translate the
following shloka:
16. “He also, having made the subtile parts of those six [the great Self
and the five organs of sense], of unmeasured brightness, to enter into the
elements of self (_âtmamâtrâsu_), created all beings.”
When, according to Medhâtithi, it ought to read _mâtrâbhih_ instead of
_âtmamâtrâsu_, and thus would read:
“He having pervaded the subtile parts of those six, of unmeasured
brightness, by elements of self, created all beings.”
The latter reading must be the correct one, since He, the Self, is what we
call Âtmâ, and thus constitutes the seventh principle, the synthesis of
the “six.” Such is also the opinion of the editor of the _Mânava Dharma
Shâstra_, who seems to have intuitionally entered far deeper into the
spirit of the philosophy than has the translator, the late Dr. Burnell;
for he hesitates little between the text of Kullûka Bhatta and the
commentary of Medhâtithi. Rejecting the _tanmâtra_, or subtile elements,
and the _âtmamâtra_ of Kullûka Bhatta, he says, applying the principles to
the Cosmic Self:
“The six appear rather to be the _manas_ plus the five principles of
ether, air, fire, water, earth; ‘having united five portions of those six
with the spiritual element [the _seventh_] he (thus) created all existing
things;’ ... _âtmamâtra_ is therefore the spiritual atom as opposed to the
elementary, not reflexive ‘elements of himself’.”
Thus he corrects the translation of verse 17:
“As the subtile elements of bodily forms of this One depend on these six,
so the wise call his form Sharîra.”
And he adds that “elements” mean here portions, or parts (or principles),
which reading is borne out by verse 19, which says:
“This non‐eternal (Universe) arises then from the Eternal, by means of the
subtile elements of forms of _those seven_ very glorious Principles
(_Purusha_).”
Commenting upon which emendation of Medhâtithi, the editor remarks: “the
five elements _plus_ mind [_Manas_] and self‐consciousness
[_Ahamkâra_](489) are probably meant; ‘subtile elements,’ as before
[meaning] ‘fine portions of form’ [or principles].” Verse 20 shows this,
when saying of these five elements, or “fine portions of form” (Rûpa
_plus_ Manas and Self‐Consciousness) that they constitute the “Seven
Purusha,” or Principles, called in the _Purânas_ the “Seven Prakritis.”
Moreover, these “five elements,” or “five portions,” are spoken of in
verse 27 as “those which are called the atomic destructible portions,” and
which are, therefore, “distinct from the atoms of the Nyâya.”
This creative Brahmâ, issuing from the Mundane or Golden Egg, unites in
himself both the male and female principles. He is, in short, the same as
all the creative Protologoi. Of Brahmâ, however, it could not be said, as
of Dionysos, “πρωτόγονον διφυῆ τρίγονον βακχεῖον Ἅνακτα Ἄγριον ἀρρητὸν
κρύφιον δικέρωτα δίμορφον”—a lunar Jehovah, Bacchus truly, with David
dancing nude before his _symbol_ in the ark—because no licentious Dionysia
were ever established in his name and honour. All such public worship was
exoteric, and the great universal symbols were distorted universally, as
those of Krishna are now by the Vallabâchâryas of Bombay, the followers of
the “infant” God. But are these popular Gods the _true_ Deity? Are _they_
the apex and synthesis of the sevenfold creation, man included?
Impossible! Each and all are one of the rungs of that septenary ladder of
Divine Consciousness, Pagan as Christian. Ain Suph is said to manifest
through the _Seven Letters_ of the Name of Jehovah who, having usurped the
place of the Unknown Limitless, was given by his devotees his Seven Angels
of the Presence—his Seven Principles. But, indeed, they are mentioned in
almost every school. In the pure Sânkhya philosophy Mahat, Ahamkâra and
the five Tanmâtras are called the Seven Prakritis, or Natures, and are
counted from Mahâ‐Buddhi, or Mahat, down to Earth.(490)
Nevertheless, however disfigured by Ezra for Rabbinical purposes is the
original Elohistic version, however repulsive at times is even the
_esoteric_ meaning in the Hebrew scrolls, far more so indeed than its
outward veil or cloaking may be—once the Jehovistic portions are
eliminated, the Mosaic Books are found full of purely Occult and priceless
knowledge, especially in the first six chapters.
Read by the aid of the _Kabalah_, one finds a matchless temple of Occult
truths, a well of deeply concealed beauty, hidden under a structure, the
_visible_ architecture of which, notwithstanding its apparent symmetry, is
unable to stand the criticism of cold reason, or to reveal the age of its
hidden truth, for it belongs to all the ages. There is more Wisdom
concealed under the exoteric _fables_ of the _Purânas_ and _Bible_ than in
all the exoteric _facts_ and science in the literature of the world, and
more Occult true Science, than there is of exact knowledge in all the
academies. Or, in plainer and stronger language, there is as much esoteric
wisdom in some portions of the _exoteric Purânas_ and _Pentateuch_, as
there is of nonsense and of designedly childish fancy, when read only in
the dead‐letter and murderous interpretations of the great dogmatic
religions, and especially of their sects.
Let anyone read the first verses of _Genesis_ and reflect upon them.
There, “God” commands _another_ “God,” _who does his bidding_—even in the
_cautious_ English Protestant authorized translation of King James I.
In the “beginning”—the Hebrew language having no word to express the idea
of eternity(491)—“God” fashions the Heaven and the Earth; and the latter
is “without form and void,” while the former is in fact not Heaven, but
the “Deep,” Chaos, with darkness upon its face.(492)
“And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the Waters,” or the Great
Deep of the Infinite Space. And this Spirit is Nârâyana, or Vishnu.
“And God said, Let there be a firmament....” And “God,” the second, obeyed
and “_made_ the firmament.” “And God said let there be light.” And “there
was light.” Now the latter does not mean light at all, but, as in the
_Kabalah_, the androgyne Adam Kadmon, or Sephira (Spiritual Light), for
they are one; or, according to the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_, the
_secondary_ Angels, the first being the Elohim, who are the aggregate of
that “fashioning” _God_. For to whom are those words of command addressed?
And who is it who commands? That which commands is the Eternal Law, and he
who obeys, the Elohim, the known quantity acting in and with _x_, or the
coëfficient of the unknown quantity, the Forces of the One Force. All this
is Occultism, and is found in the archaic Stanzas. It is perfectly
immaterial whether we call these “Forces” the Dhyân Chohans, or the
Auphanim as Ezekiel does.
“The one Universal Light, which to man is Darkness, is ever existent,”
says the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_. From it proceeds periodically the
Energy, which is reflected in the Deep, or Chaos, the store‐house of
future Worlds, and, once awakened, stirs up and fructifies the latent
Forces, which are the ever present eternal potentialities in it. Then
awake anew the Brahmâs and Buddhas—the co‐eternal Forces—and a new
Universe springs into being.
In the _Sepher Yetzirah_, 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 as having emitted from itself the Spirit.(493) “One is the
Spirit of the living God, blessed be Its name, which liveth for ever!
Voice, Spirit, and Word, this is the Holy Spirit.”(494) And this is the
Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously anthropomorphized by the
Christian Fathers. From this triple One emanated the whole Kosmos. First
from One emanated number Two, or Air (the Father), the creative Element;
and then number Three, Water (the Mother), proceeded from Air; Ether or
Fire completes the Mystic Four, the Arbo‐al.(495) When the Concealed of
the Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a Point [the
Primordial Point, or the first Sephira, Air, or Holy Ghost,] shaped into a
sacred Form, [the Ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly Man,] and covered it with
a rich and splendid Garment, _that is the World_.(496)
“He maketh the Wind His messengers, flaming Fire His servants”;(497) says
the _Yetzirah_, showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerized
Elements, and that Spirit permeates every atom in Kosmos.
Paul calls the invisible Cosmic Beings the “Elements.” But now the
Elements are degraded into, and limited to, atoms of which nothing is
known so far, and which are only “children of necessity,” as is Ether
also. As we said in _Isis Unveiled_:
The poor primordial Elements have long been exiled, and our
ambitious Physicists run races, to determine who shall add one
more to the fledgling brood of the sixty and odd elementary
substances.
Meanwhile there rages a war in modern Chemistry about terms. We are denied
the right to call these substances “chemical elements,” for these are not
“primordial principles of self‐existing essences, out of which the
universe was fashioned,” according to Plato. Such ideas associated with
the word “element” were good enough for the old Greek Philosophy, but
Modern Science rejects them; for, as Mr. William Crookes says: “they are
unfortunate terms,” and experimental Science will have “nothing to do with
any kind of essences except those which it can see, smell, or taste. It
leaves others to the metaphysicians....” We must feel grateful even for so
much!
This “Primordial Substance” is called by some Chaos. Plato and the
Pythagoreans named it the Soul of the World, after it had been impregnated
by the Spirit of that which broods over the Primeval Waters, or Chaos. It
is by being reflected in it, say the Kabalists, that the brooding
Principle “created” the phantasmagoria of a visible, manifested Universe.
Chaos before, Ether after this “reflection,” it is still the Deity that
pervades Space and all things. It is the invisible, imponderable Spirit of
things, and the invisible, but only too tangible, fluid that radiates from
the fingers of the healthy magnetizer, for it is Vital Electricity—Life
itself. Called in derision, by the Marquis de Mirville, the “Nebulous
Almighty,” it is to this day termed by the Theurgists and Occultists the
“Living Fire”; and there is not a Hindû who practises at dawn a certain
kind of meditation but knows its effects. It is the “Spirit of Light” and
Magnes. As truly expressed by an opponent, Magus and Magnes are two
branches growing from the same trunk and shooting forth the same
resultants. And in this appellation of “Living Fire” we may also discover
the meaning of the puzzling sentence in the _Zend Avesta_: there is “a
Fire that gives knowledge of the future, science and amiable speech”; that
is to say, which develops an extraordinary eloquence in the sibyl, the
sensitive, and even some orators. Writing upon this subject, in _Isis
Unveiled_, we said:
The Chaos of the ancients, the Zoroastrian Sacred Fire, or the
Atash‐Behram of the Parsîs; the Hermes‐fire, the Elmes‐fire of the
ancient Germans; the Lightning of Cybele; the Burning Torch of
Apollo; the Flame on the altar of Pan; the Inextinguishable Fire
in the temple on the Acropolis, and in that of Vesta; the Fire‐
flame of Pluto’s helm; the brilliant Sparks on the caps of the
Dioscuri, on the Gorgon’s head, the helm of Pallas, and the staff
of Mercury; the Egyptian Ptah‐Ra; the Grecian Zeus Cataibates (the
Descending) of Pausanias; the Pentecostal Fire‐tongues; the
Burning Bush of Moses; the Pillar of Fire of _Exodus_, and the
Burning Lamp of Abram; the Eternal Fire of the “bottomless pit”;
the Delphic oracular vapours; the Sidereal Light of the
Rosicrucians; the Âkâsha of the Hindû Adepts; the Astral Light of
Éliphas Lévi; the Nerve‐Aura and the Fluid of the Magnetists; the
Od of Reichenbach; the Psychod and Ectenic Force of Thury; the
“Psychic Force” of Sergeant Cox, and the atmospheric magnetism of
some Naturalists; galvanism; and finally, electricity—all these
are but various names for many different manifestations or effects
of the same mysterious, all‐pervading Cause, the Greek Archæus.
We now add—it is all this and much more.
This “Fire” is spoken of in all the Hindû Sacred Books, as also in the
Kabalistic works. The _Zohar_ explains it as the “White Hidden Fire, in
the Risha Havurah,” the White Head, whose Will causes the fiery fluid to
flow in 370 currents in every direction of the Universe. It is identical
with the “Serpent that runs with 370 leaps” of the _Siphrah Dtzenioutha_,
the Serpent, which, when the “Perfect Man,” the Metatron, _is raised_,
that is to say, when the _Divine_ Man indwells in the _animal_ man,
becomes _three_ Spirits, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas, in our Theosophical
phraseology.
Spirit, then, or Cosmic Ideation, and Cosmic Substance—one of whose
“principles” is Ether—are _one_, and include the Elements, in the sense
St. Paul attaches to them. These Elements are the veiled Synthesis
standing for Dhyân Chohans, Devas, Sephiroth, Amshaspends, Archangels,
etc. The Ether of Science—the Ilus of Berosus, or the Protyle of
Chemistry—constitutes, so to speak, the _rude_ material, relatively, out
of which the above‐named Builders, following the plan traced out for them
eternally in the Divine Thought, fashion the Systems in the Kosmos. They
are “myths,” we are told. No more so than Ether and the Atoms, we answer.
The two latter are absolute necessities of Physical Science, and the
Builders are as absolute a necessity of Metaphysics. We are twitted with
the objection: You never saw them. And we ask the Materialists: Have you
ever seen Ether, or your Atoms, or, again, your Force? Moreover, one of
the greatest Western Evolutionists of our modern day, co‐“discoverer” with
Darwin, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the inadequacy of Natural
Selection alone accounting for the physical form of Man, admits the
guiding action of “higher intelligences” as a “_necessary_ part of the
great laws which govern the material Universe.”(498)
These “higher intelligences” are the Dhyân Chohans of the Occultists.
Indeed, there are few myths in any religious system worthy of the name,
but have a historical as well as a scientific foundation. “Myths,” justly
observes Pococke, “are now proved to be _fables_, just in proportion as
_we misunderstand_ them; _truths_, in proportion as _they were once
understood_.”
The most distinct and the one prevailing idea, found in all ancient
teaching, with reference to Cosmic Evolution and the first “creation” of
our Globe with all its products, organic and _inorganic_—strange word for
an Occultist to use!—is that the whole Kosmos has sprung from the Divine
Thought. This Thought impregnates Matter, which is co‐eternal with the One
Reality; and all that lives and breathes evolves from the Emanations of
the One Immutable, Parabrahman‐Mûlaprakriti, the Eternal One‐Root. The
former of these, in its aspect of the Central Point turned inward, so to
say, into regions quite inaccessible to human intellect, is Absolute
Abstraction; whereas, in its aspect as Mûlaprakriti, the Eternal Root of
all, it gives one at least some hazy comprehension of the Mystery of
Being.
Therefore, it was taught in the _inner_ temples that this visible
Universe of Spirit and Matter is but the concrete Image of the
ideal Abstraction; it was built on the Model of the first Divine
Idea. Thus our Universe existed from eternity in a latent state.
The Soul animating this purely spiritual Universe is the Central
Sun, the highest Deity Itself. It was not the One who built the
concrete form of the idea, but the First‐Begotten; and, as it was
constructed on the geometrical figure of the dodecahedron,(499)
the First‐Begotten “was pleased to employ 12,000 years in its
creation.” The latter number is expressed in the Tyrrhenian
Cosmogony,(500) which shows man created in the sixth millennium.
This agrees with the Egyptian theory of 6,000 “years,”(501) and
with the Hebrew computation. But it is the exoteric form of it.
The secret computation explains that the “12,000 and the 6,000
years” are Years of Brahmâ, one Day of Brahmâ being equal to
4,320,000,000 years. Sanchuniathon, in his _Cosmogony_,(502)
declares that when the Wind (Spirit) became enamoured of its own
principles (Chaos), an intimate union took place, which connection
was called Pothos (ποθος), and from this sprang the seed of all.
And the Chaos knew not its own production, for it was _senseless_;
but from its embrace with the Wind was generated Môt, or the Ilus
(Mud).(503) From this proceeded the spores of creation and the
generation of the Universe.(504)
Zeus‐Zên (Æther), and Chthonia (Chaotic Earth) and Metis (Water),
his wives; Osiris—also representing Æther, the first emanation of
the Supreme Deity, Amun, the primeval source of Light—and Isis‐
Latona, the Goddess Earth and Water again; Mithras,(505) the rock‐
born God, the symbol of the male Mundane Fire, or the personified
Primordial Light, and Mithra, the Fire‐Goddess, at once his mother
and his wife—the pure element of Fire, the active or male
principle, regarded as light and heat, in conjunction with Earth
and Water, or matter, the female, or passive, element of cosmical
generation—Mithras who is the son of Bordj, the Persian mundane
mountain,(506) from which he flashed out as a radiant ray of
light; Brahmâ, the Fire‐God, and his prolific consort; and the
Hindû Agni, the refulgent Deity from whose body issue a thousand
streams of glory and _seven_ tongues of flame, and in whose honour
certain Brâhmans to this day maintain a perpetual fire; Shiva,
personated by Meru, the mundane mountain of the Hindûs, the
terrific Fire‐God, who is said in the legend to have descended
from heaven, like the Jewish Jehovah, “in a pillar of fire”; and a
dozen other archaic double‐sexed Deities—all loudly proclaim their
hidden meaning. And what could be the dual meaning of these myths
but the psycho‐chemical principle of primordial creation; the
First Evolution, in its triple manifestation of Spirit, Force and
Matter; the divine _correlation_, at its starting point,
allegorized as the marriage of Fire and Water, the products of
electrifying Spirit—the union of the male active principle with
the female passive element—which become the parents of their
tellurian child, Cosmic Matter, the Prima Materia, whose Soul is
Æther, and whose Shadow is the Astral Light!(507)
But the fragments of the cosmogonical systems that have reached us are now
rejected as absurd fables. Nevertheless, Occult Science—which has survived
even the Great Flood that submerged the Antediluvian Giants and with them
their very memory, save the record preserved in the Secret Doctrine, the
_Bible_ and other Scriptures—still holds the Key to all the world
problems.
Let us, then, apply this Key to the rare fragments of long‐forgotten
Cosmogonies, and by means of their scattered portions endeavour to
reestablish the once Universal Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine. The Key
fits them all. No one can seriously study ancient philosophies without
perceiving that the striking similitude of conception in all of them, in
their exoteric form very frequently, and in their hidden spirit
invariably, is the result of no mere coincidence, but of a concurrent
design; and that, during the youth of mankind, there was but one language,
one knowledge, one universal religion, when there were no churches, no
creeds or sects, but when every man was a priest unto himself. And, if it
is shown that already in those early ages which are shut out from our
sight by the exuberant growth of tradition, human religious thought
developed in uniform sympathy in every portion of the globe; then, it
becomes evident that that thought, born under whatever latitude, in the
cold North or the burning South, in the East or West, was inspired by the
same revelations, and that man was nurtured under the protecting shadow of
the same _Tree of Knowledge_.
Section IV. Chaos: Theos: Kosmos.
These three are the containment of Space; or, as a learned Kabalist has
defined it: “Space, the all‐containing uncontained, is the primary
embodiment of simple Unity ... boundless extension.”(508) But, he asks
again: “boundless extension of what?”—and makes the correct reply: “The
Unknown Container of All, the _Unknown First Cause_.” This is a most
correct definition and answer; most esoteric and true, from every aspect
of Occult Teaching.
_Space_, which, in their ignorance and with their iconoclastic tendency to
destroy every philosophic idea of old, the modern wiseacres have
proclaimed “an abstract idea” and a “void,” is, in reality, the Container
and the Body of the Universe in its Seven Principles. It is a Body of
limitless extent, whose Principles, in Occult phraseology—each being in
its turn a septenary—manifest in our phenomenal World only the grossest
fabric of their _sub‐divisions_. “No one has ever seen the Elements in
their fulness,” the Doctrine teaches. We have to search for our Wisdom in
the original expressions and synonyms of the primeval peoples. Even the
Jews, the latest of these, show the same idea, in their Kabalistic
teachings, when they speak of the seven‐headed Serpent of Space, called
the “Great Sea.”
In the beginning, the Alhim created the Heavens and the Earth; the
Six [Sephiroth].... They created Six, and on these all things are
based. And these [Six] depend upon the _seven forms_ of the
Cranium up to the Dignity of all Dignities.(509)
Now Wind, Air and Spirit have ever been synonymous in every nation. Pneuma
(Spirit) and Anemos (Wind), with the Greeks, Spiritus and Ventus, with the
Latins, were convertible terms, even if dissociated from the original idea
of the Breath of Life. In the “Forces” of Science we see but the _material
effect_ of the _spiritual effect_ of one or other of the four primordial
Elements, transmitted to us by the Fourth Race just as we shall transmit
Æther, or rather its gross sub‐division, in its fulness to the Sixth Root‐
Race.
Chaos was called _senseless_ by the Ancients, because—Chaos and Space
being synonymous—it represented and contained in itself all the Elements
in their rudimentary, undifferentiated State. They made Æther, the fifth
Element, the synthesis of the other four; for the Æther of the Greek
philosophers was not its Dregs, although indeed they knew more than
Science does now of these Dregs (Ether), which are rightly enough supposed
to act as an agent for many Forces that manifest on Earth. Their Æther was
the Âkâsha of the Hindûs; the Ether accepted in Physics is but one of its
sub‐divisions, on our plane, the Astral Light of the Kabalists with all
its _evil_ as well as its good effects.
Seeing that the Essence of Æther, or the Unseen Space, was considered
divine, as being the supposed Veil of Deity, it was regarded as the Medium
between this life and the next. The Ancients considered that when the
directing active Intelligences—the Gods—retired from any portion of Æther
in _our_ Space, or the four realms which they superintend, then that
particular region was left in the possession of _evil_, so called by
reason of the absence from it of _good_.
The existence of Spirit in the common Mediator, the Ether, is
denied by Materialism; while Theology makes of it a Personal God.
But the Kabalist holds that both are wrong, saying that in Ether,
the elements represent only Matter, the blind Cosmic Forces of
Nature; while Spirit represents the Intelligence which directs
them. The Âryan, Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean cosmogonical
doctrines, as well as those of Sanchuniathon and Berosus, are all
based upon one irrefutable formula, viz., that Æther and Chaos,
or, in the Platonic language, Mind and Matter, were the two
primeval and eternal principles of the Universe, utterly
independent of anything else. The former was the all‐vivifying
intellectual principle, while Chaos was a shapeless liquid
principle, without “form or sense”; from the union of which two
sprang into existence the Universe, or rather the Universal World,
the first Androgynous Deity—Chaotic Matter becoming its Body, and
Ether its Soul. According to the phraseology of a Fragment of
Hermeias: “Chaos, from this union with Spirit, obtaining _sense_,
shone with pleasure, and thus was produced Protogonos the (First‐
Born) Light.”(510) This is the universal Trinity, based on the
metaphysical conceptions of the Ancients, who, reasoning by
analogy, made of man, who is a compound of Intellect and Matter,
the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, or Great Universe.(511)
“Nature abhors Vacuum” said the Peripatetics, who though Materialists in
their way, comprehended perhaps why Democritus, with his instructor
Leucippus, taught that the first principles of all things contained in the
Universe were Atoms and a Vacuum. The latter means simply _latent_ Force
or Deity, which, before its first manifestation—when it became Will,
communicating the first impulse to these Atoms—was the great Nothingness,
Ain Suph, or No‐Thing; and, therefore, to every sense, a Void, or Chaos.
This Chaos, however, became the “Soul of the World,” according to Plato
and the Pythagoreans. According to Hindû teaching, Deity, in the shape of
Æther or Âkâsha, pervades all things. It was called, therefore, by the
Theurgists the “Living Fire,” the “Spirit of Light,” and sometimes
“Magnes.” According to Plato, the highest Deity itself built the Universe
in the geometrical form of the dodecahedron, and its “First‐Begotten” was
born of Chaos and Primordial Light—the Central Sun. This First‐Born,
however, was only the aggregate of the Host of the Builders, the first
Constructive Forces, who are called in ancient Cosmogonies, the Ancients,
born of the Deep or Chaos, and the First Point. He is the Tetragrammaton,
so‐called, at the head of the Seven lower Sephiroth. This was also the
belief of the Chaldeans. Philo, the Jew, speaking very flippantly of the
first instructors of his ancestors, writes as follows:
These Chaldeans were of opinion that the Kosmos, _among the things
that exist_ [?], is a single Point, either being itself God
[Theos] or that in it is God, comprehending the Soul of all
things.(512)
Chaos, Theos, Kosmos are but the three symbols of their synthesis—_Space_.
One can never hope to solve the mystery of this Tetraktys, by holding to
the dead‐letter even of the old philosophies as now extant. But even in
these, Chaos, Theos, Kosmos and Space are identified in all Eternity, as
the One Unknown Space, the last word on which will never, perhaps, be
known, before our Seventh Round. Nevertheless, the allegories and
metaphysical symbols about the primeval and _perfect_ Cube, are
remarkable, even in the exoteric _Purânas_.
There, also, Brahmâ is Theos, evolving out of Chaos, or the Great Deep,
the Waters, over which Spirit or Space—the Spirit moving over the face of
the future boundless Kosmos—is silently hovering, in the first hour of
reäwakening. It is also Vishnu, sleeping on Ananta‐Shesha, the great
Serpent of Eternity, of which Western Theology, ignorant of the _Kabalah_,
the only key that opens the secrets of the _Bible_, has made—the Devil. It
is the first Triangle or the Pythagorean Triad, the “God of the _three_
Aspects,” before it is transformed, through the perfect quadrature of the
Infinite Circle, into the “four‐faced” Brahmâ. “Of him who is and yet is
not, from Non‐Being, the Eternal Cause, is born the Being, Purusha,” says
Manu, the legislator.
In the Egyptian mythology, Kneph, the Eternal _Unrevealed_ God, is
represented by a snake‐emblem of Eternity encircling a water urn,
with its head hovering over the waters, which it incubates with
its breath. In this case, the Serpent is the Agathodaimôn, the
Good Spirit; in its opposite aspect, it is the Kakodaimôn, the
Evil Spirit. In the Scandinavian _Eddas_, the honey‐dew, the fruit
of the Gods, and of the creative busy Yggdrasil bees, falls during
the hours of night, when the atmosphere is impregnated with
humidity; and in the Northern mythologies, as the passive
principle of creation, it typifies the creation of the Universe
out of Water. This dew is the Astral Light in one of its
combinations, and possesses creative as well as destructive
properties. In the Chaldean legend of Berosus, Oannes or Dagon,
the man‐fish, instructing the people, shows the infant World
created out of Water, and all beings originating from this Prima
Materia. Moses teaches that only Earth and Water can bring into
existence a Living Soul: and we read in the Scriptures that herbs
could not grow until the Eternal caused it to _rain_ upon Earth.
In the Mexican _Popol Vuh_, man is created out of _mud_ or clay
(_terre glaise_), taken from under the Water. Brahmâ creates the
great Muni, or first man, seated on his Lotus, only after having
called spirits into being, who thus enjoyed over mortals a
priority of existence; and he creates him out of Water, Air and
Earth. Alchemists claim that the primordial or pre‐adamic Earth,
when reduced to its first substance, is in its _second_ stage of
transformation like clear Water, the first being the Alkahest
proper. This primordial substance is said to contain within itself
the essence of all that goes to make up man; it contains not only
all the elements of his physical being, but even the “breath of
life” in a latent state, ready to be awakened. This it derives
from the “incubation” of the “Spirit of God” upon the face of the
Waters—Chaos. In fact, this substance is Chaos itself. From this
it was that Paracelsus claimed to be able to make his Homunculi;
and this is why Thales, the great natural philosopher, maintained
that Water was the principle of all things in nature.(513)... Job
says that dead _things_ are formed from under the Waters, and the
inhabitants thereof.(514) In the original text, instead of “dead
_things_,” it is written dead Rephaim, Giants or mighty Primitive
Men, from whom Evolution may one day trace our present race.(515)
“In the primordial state of the creation,” says Polier’s _Mythologie des
Indous_, “the rudimental Universe, submerged in Water, reposed in the
bosom of Vishnu. Sprung from this Chaos and Darkness, Brahmâ, the
Architect of the World, poised on a lotus‐leaf, floated [moved] upon the
waters, unable to discern anything but water and darkness.” Perceiving
such a dismal state of things, Brahmâ soliloquizes in consternation: “Who
am I? Whence came I?” Then he hears a voice:(516) “Direct your thoughts to
Bhagavat.” Brahmâ, rising from his natatory position, seats himself upon
the lotus, in an attitude of contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal,
who, pleased with this evidence of piety, disperses the primeval darkness
and opens his understanding. “After this Brahmâ issues from the Universal
Egg [Infinite Chaos] as Light, for his understanding is now opened, and he
sets himself to work. He moves on the eternal Waters, with the Spirit of
God within himself; and in his capacity of Mover of the Waters he is
Vishnu, or Nârâyana.”
This is, of course, exoteric; yet, in its main idea, it is as identical as
possible with the Egyptian Cosmogony, which, in its opening sentences,
shows Athtor,(517) or Mother Night, representing Illimitable Darkness, as
the Primeval Element which covered the Infinite Abyss, animated by Water
and the Universal Spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone in Chaos.
Similarly in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the creation opens with
the Spirit of God and his creative Emanation—another Deity.(518)
The _Zohar_ teaches that it is the Primordial Elements—the trinity of
Fire, Air and Water—the Four Cardinal Points, and all the Forces of
Nature, which form collectively the Voice of the Will, Memrab, or the
Word, the Logos of the Absolute Silent ALL. “The indivisible Point,
limitless and unknowable,” spreads itself over space, and thus forms a
Veil, the Mûlaprakriti of Parabrahman, which conceals this Absolute Point.
In the Cosmogonies of all the nations it is the Architects, synthesized by
the Demiurge, in the _Bible_ the Elohim, or Alhim, who fashion Kosmos out
of Chaos, and who are the collective Theos, male‐female, Spirit and
Matter. “By a series (_yom_) of foundations (_hasoth_), the Alhim caused
earth and heaven to be.”(519) In _Genesis_, it is first Alhim, then Jahva‐
Alhim, and finally Jehovah—after the separation of the sexes in the fourth
chapter. It is noticeable that nowhere, except in the later, or rather the
_last_, Cosmogonies of our Fifth Race does the ineffable and unutterable
NAME(520)—the symbol of the Unknown Deity, which was used only in the
MYSTERIES—occur in connection with the “Creation” of the Universe. It is
the Movers, the Runners, the Theoi (from θέειν to run), who do the work of
formation, the Messengers of the Manvantaric Law, who have now become in
Christianity simply the “Messengers” (Malachim). This seems to be also the
case in Hindûism or early Brâhmanism. For in the _Rig Veda_, it is not
Brahmâ who creates, but the Prajâpatis, the “Lords of Being,” who are also
the Rishis; the term Rishi, according to Professor Mahadeo Kunte, being
connected with the word to move, to lead on, applied to them in their
terrestrial character, when, as Patriarchs, they lead their Hosts on the
Seven Rivers.
Moreover, the very word “God,” in the singular, embracing all the Gods, or
Theoi, came to the “superior” civilized nations from a strange source, one
as entirely and preëminently phallic as the sincere outspokenness of the
Indian Lingham. The attempt to derive _God_ from the Anglo‐Saxon synonym
_Good_ is an abandoned idea, for in no other language, from the Persian
_Khoda_ down to the Latin _Deus_, has an instance been found of the name
for God being derived from the attribute of _Goodness_. To the Latin races
it comes from the Âryan _Dyaus_ (the Day); to the Slavonian, from the
Greek Bacchus (_Bagh‐bog_); and to the Saxon races directly from the
Hebrew _Yod_, or _Jod_. The latter is י the number‐letter 10, male and
female, and Yod is the phallic _hook_. Hence the Saxon _Godh_, the
Germanic _Gott_, and the English _God_. This symbolic term may be said to
represent the Creator of Physical Humanity, on the _terrestrial_ plane;
but surely it had nothing to do with the Formation, or “Creation,” of
either Spirit, Gods, or Kosmos?
Chaos‐Theos‐Kosmos, the Triple Deity, is _all in all_. Therefore, it is
said to be male and female, good and evil, positive and negative; the
whole series of contrasted qualities. When latent, in Pralaya, it is
incognizable and becomes the Unknowable Deity. It can be known only in its
active functions; hence as Matter‐Force and _living_ Spirit, the
correlations and outcome, or the expression, on the visible plane, of the
ultimate and ever‐to‐be unknown Unity.
In its turn this Triple Unit is the producer of the Four Primary
Elements,(521) which are known, in our visible terrestrial Nature, as the
seven (so far the five) Elements, each divisible into forty‐nine—seven
times seven—sub‐elements, with about seventy of which Chemistry is
acquainted. Every Cosmical Element, such as Fire, Air, Water, Earth,
partaking of the qualities and defects of its Primaries, is in its nature
Good and Evil, Force or Spirit, and Matter, etc.; and each, therefore, is
at one and the same time Life and Death, Health and Disease, Action and
Reaction. They are ever forming Matter, under the never‐ceasing impulse of
the One Element, the Incognizable, represented in the world of phenomena
by Æther. They are “the immortal Gods who give birth and life to all.”
In _The Philosophical Writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol_, in
treating of the structure of the Universe, it is said:
R. Yehudah began, it is written: “Elohim said: Let there be a
firmament in the midst of the waters.” Come, see! At the time that
the Holy ... created the World, He created 7 heavens Above. He
created 7 earths Below, 7 seas, 7 days, 7 rivers, 7 weeks, 7
years, 7 times, and 7,000 years that the World has been. The Holy
_is in the seventh_ of all.(522)
This, besides showing a strange identity with the Cosmogony of the
_Purânas_,(523) corroborates all our teachings with regard to number
seven, as briefly given in _Esoteric Buddhism_.
The Hindûs have an endless series of allegories to express this idea. In
the Primordial Chaos, before it became developed into the Sapta Samudra,
or Seven Oceans—emblematical of the Seven Gunas, or conditioned Qualities,
composed of Trigunas (Sattva, Rajas and Tamas)—lie latent both Amrita, or
Immortality, and Visha, or Poison, Death, Evil. This is to be found in the
allegorical Churning of the Ocean by the Gods. Amrita is beyond any Guna,
for it is _unconditioned_, _per se_; but when once fallen into phenomenal
creation, it became mixed with Evil, Chaos, with latent Theos in it,
before Kosmos was evolved. Hence we find Vishnu, the personification of
Eternal Law, periodically calling forth Kosmos into activity, or, in
allegorical phraseology, churning out of the Primitive Ocean, or Boundless
Chaos, the Amrita of Eternity, reserved only for the Gods and Devas; and
in the task he has to employ Nâgas and Asuras, or Demons in exoteric
Hindûism. The whole allegory is highly philosophical, and indeed we find
it repeated in every ancient system of philosophy. Thus we find it in
Plato, who having fully embraced the ideas which Pythagoras had brought
from India, compiled and published them in a form more intelligible than
the original mysterious numerals of the Samian Sage. Thus the Kosmos is
the “Son” with Plato, having for his Father and Mother Divine Thought and
Matter.(524)
“The Egyptians,” says Dunlap, “distinguish between an older and younger
Horus; the former the _brother_ of Osiris, the latter the _son_ of Osiris
and Isis.”(525) The first is the Idea of the World remaining in the
Demiurgic Mind, “born in Darkness before the Creation of the World.” The
second Horus is this Idea going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed
with Matter, and assuming an actual existence.(526)
The _Chaldean Oracles_ speak of the “Mundane God, eternal, boundless,
young and old, of winding form.”(527) This “winding form” is a figure to
express the vibratory motion of the Astral Light, with which the ancient
priests were perfectly well acquainted, though the name “Astral Light” was
invented by the Martinists.
Cosmolatry has the finger of scorn pointed at its superstitions by Modern
Science. Science, however, before laughing at it, ought, as advised by a
French savant, “to entirely remodel its own system of cosmo‐
pneumatological education.” _Satis eloquentiæ, sapientiæ parum!_
Cosmolatry, like Pantheism, in its ultimate expression, may be made to
express itself in the same words in which the _Purâna_ describes Vishnu:
He is only the _ideal cause_ of the _potencies_ to be created in
the work of creation; and from him proceed the potencies to be
created, after they have become the real cause. _Save that one
ideal cause_, there is no other to which the world can be
referred.... _Through the potency of that cause_, every created
thing comes by its proper nature.(528)
Section V. On the Hidden Deity, Its Symbols and Glyphs.
The Logos, or Creative Deity, the “Word made Flesh,” of every religion,
has to be traced to its ultimate source and essence. In India, it is a
Proteus of 1,008 divine names and aspects in each of its _personal_
transformations, from Brahmâ‐Purusha, through the Seven _Divine_ Rishis
and Ten _Semi‐divine_ Prajâpatis (also Rishis), down to the _Divine‐human_
Avatâras. The same puzzling problem of the “One in Many,” and the
Multitude in One, is found in other Pantheons; in the Egyptian, the Greek
and the Chaldeo‐Judaic, the latter having made confusion still more
confused by presenting its Gods as euhemerizations, in the shapes of
Patriarchs. And these Patriarchs are now accepted by those who reject
Romulus as a myth, and are represented as living and _historical_
Entities. _Verbum satis sapienti!_
In the _Zohar_, Ain Suph is also the One, the Infinite Unity. This was
known to the very few learned Fathers of the Church, who were aware that
Jehovah was no “highest” God, but a _third‐rate_ Potency. But while
complaining bitterly of the Gnostics, and saying: “our Heretics hold ...
that Propatôr is known but to the Only‐begotten Son(529) [who is Brahmâ],
that is to the Mind [Nous],” Irenæus failed to mention that the Jews did
the same in their real _secret_ books. Valentinus, “the profoundest doctor
of the Gnosis,” held that “there was a perfect Aiôn who existed before
Bythos [the first Father of unfathomable nature, which is the Second
Logos], called Propatôr.” It is this Aiôn who springs as a Ray from Ain
Suph, which _does not create_, and Aiôn who creates, or _through_ whom,
rather, everything is created, or evolves. For, as the Basilidians taught,
“there was a Supreme God, Abrasax, by whom was created Mind [Mahat, in
Sanskrit; Nous, in Greek]. From Mind proceeded the Word, Logos; from the
Word, Providence [Divine Light, rather]; then from it Virtue and Wisdom in
Principalities, Powers, Angels, etc.” By these Angels the 365 Æons were
created. “Amongst the lowest, indeed, and those who made this world, he
[Basilides] sets last of all the God of the Jews, whom he denies to be God
[and very rightly], affirming he is one of the Angels.”
Here, then, we find the same system as in the _Purânas_, wherein the
Incomprehensible drops a Seed, which becomes the Golden Egg, from which
Brahmâ is produced. Brahmâ produces Mahat, etc. True Esoteric Philosophy,
however, speaks neither of “creation,” nor of “evolution,” in the sense in
which the exoteric religions do. All these personified Powers are not
evolutions from one another, but so many aspects of the one and sole
manifestation of the Absolute All.
The same system as that of the Gnostic Emanations prevails in the
Sephirothic aspects of Ain Suph, and, as these aspects are in Space and
Time, a certain order is maintained in their successive appearances.
Therefore, it becomes impossible not to take notice of the great changes
that the _Zohar_ has undergone under the handling of generations of
Christian Mystics. For, even in the metaphysics of the _Talmud_, the Lower
Face or Lesser Countenance, or Microprosopus, could never be placed on the
same plane of abstract ideals as the Higher, or Greater Countenance,
Macroprosopus. The latter is, in the Chaldean _Kabalah_, a pure
abstraction, the Word or Logos, or Dabar in Hebrew; which Word, though it
becomes in fact a plural number, or Words, D(a)B(a)R(i)M, when it reflects
itself, or falls into the aspect of a Host of Angels, or Sephiroth—the
“Number”—is still collectively One, and on the ideal plane a nought,
[circle], “Nothing.” _It_ is without form or being, “with no likeness with
anything else.”(530) And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who
stands next God, the “Second God,” when he speaks of “the Second God, who
is his [the Highest God’s] Wisdom.”(531) Deity is not God. It is No‐thing,
and Darkness. It is nameless, and therefore called Ain Suph, the word
“Ayin meaning nothing.”(532) The “Highest God,” the Unmanifested Logos, is
Its Son.
Nor are most of the Gnostic systems which have come down to us, mutilated
as they are by the Church Fathers, anything better than the distorted
shells of the original speculations. Nor were they, moreover, ever _open_
to the public or general reader; for had their hidden meaning or
esotericism been revealed, it would have been no more an esoteric
teaching, and this could never have been. Marcus, the chief of the
Marcosians, who flourished in the middle of the second century, and taught
that Deity had to be viewed under the symbol of _four_ syllables, gave out
more of the esoteric truths than any other Gnostic. But even he was never
well understood. For it is only on the surface or dead‐letter of his
_Revelation_ that it appears that God is a Quaternary, to wit, “the
Ineffable, the Silence, the Father, and Truth,” since in reality it is
quite erroneous, and divulges only one more esoteric riddle. This teaching
of Marcus was that of the early Kabalists and is ours. For he makes of
Deity the Number 30, in four syllables, which, translated esoterically,
means a Triad or Triangle, and a Quaternary or a Square, in all seven,
which, on the lower plane, made the seven divine or Secret Letters of
which the God‐name is composed. This requires demonstration. In his
_Revelation_, speaking of divine mysteries expressed by means of letters
and numbers, Marcus narrates how the Supreme “Tetrad came down” unto him
“from the region which cannot be seen nor named, _in a female form_,
because _the world would have been unable to bear her appearing in a male
figure_,” and revealed to him “the generation of the universe, _untold
before to either_ Gods or men.”
The first sentence already contains a double meaning. Why should the
apparition of a female figure be more easily borne, or listened to, by the
world than a male figure? On the face of it, this appears nonsensical. But
to one who is acquainted with the Mystery Language, it is quite clear and
simple. Esoteric Philosophy, or the Secret Wisdom, was symbolized by a
female form, while a male figure stood for the Unveiled Mystery. Hence,
the world, not being ready to receive it, could not bear it, and the
Revelation of Marcus had to be given allegorically. Thus he writes:
When first its Father [_sc._ of the Tetrad] ... the Inconceivable,
the Beingless, Sexless [the Kabalistic Ain Suph], desired that Its
Ineffable [the First Logos, or Æon] should be born, and Its
Invisible should be clothed with form, Its mouth opened and
uttered the Word like unto Itself. This Word [Logos] standing near
showed It what It was, manifesting itself in the form of the
Invisible One. Now the uttering of the [Ineffable] Name [through
the Word] came to pass in this manner. It [the Supreme Logos]
uttered the first Word of its Name, ... which, was a combination
[syllable] of _four_ elements [letters]. Then the second
combination was added, also of _four_ elements. Then the third,
composed of _ten_ elements; and after this the fourth was uttered,
which contained _twelve_ elements. The utterance of the whole Name
consisted thus of _thirty_ elements and of _four_ combinations.
Each element has its own letters and peculiar character, and
pronunciation, and groupings and similitudes; but none of them
perceives the form of that of which it is the element, nor
understands the utterance of its neighbour, but, what each sounds
forth itself, as sounding forth all [it can], that it thinks good
to call the whole.... And these sounds are they which manifest in
form the Beingless and Ingenerable Æon, and these are the forms
which are called Angels, perpetually beholding the Face of the
Father,(533) the Logos, the “Second God,” who stands next God the
“Inconceivable,” according to Philo.(534)
This is as plain as ancient esoteric secresy could make it. It is as
Kabalistic though less veiled than the _Zohar_, in which the mystic names,
or attributes, are also four syllabled, twelve, forty‐two, and even
seventy‐two syllabled words! The Tetrad shows to Marcus the Truth in the
shape of a naked woman, and letters every limb of that figure, calling her
head Α Ω, her neck Β Ψ, shoulders and hands Γ Χ, etc. In this, Sephira is
easily recognized; the head, or Crown, Kether, being numbered 1; the
brain, or Chokmah, 2; the Heart, or Intelligence, Binah, 3; and the other
seven Sephiroth representing the limbs of the body. The Sephirothic Tree
is the Universe, and Adam Kadmon personifies it in the West, as Brahmâ
represents it in India.
Throughout, the Ten Sephiroth are represented as divided into the Three
higher, or the spiritual Triad, and the lower Septenary. The true esoteric
meaning of the sacred number Seven though cleverly veiled, in the _Zohar_,
is betrayed by the double way of writing the term, “in the Beginning,” or
_Be‐rasheeth_, and _Be‐raishath_, the latter the “Higher, or Upper
Wisdom.” As shown by S. L. MacGregor Mathers(535) and Isaac Myer,(536)
both of these Kabalists being supported by the best ancient authorities,
these words have a dual and secret meaning. _Braisheeth barah Elohim_
means, that the _six_, over which stands the _seventh_ Sephira, belong to
the lower material class, or, as the author says: “Seven ... are applied
to the Lower Creation, and Three to the Spiritual Man, the Heavenly
Prototypic or First Adam.”
When the Theosophists and Occultists say that God is no Being, for It is
Nothing, No‐Thing, they are more reverential and religiously respectful to
the Deity than those who call God _He_, and thus make of Him a gigantic
Male.
He who studies the _Kabalah_ will soon find the same idea in the ultimate
thought of its authors, the earlier and great Hebrew Initiates, who got
this Secret Wisdom in Babylonia from the Chaldean Hierophants, just as
Moses got his in Egypt. The Zoharic system cannot very well be judged by
its translations into Latin and other tongues, when all its ideas were
softened and made to fit in with the views and policy of its Christian
arrangers; for its original ideas are identical with those of all other
religious systems. The various Cosmogonies show that the Universal Soul
was considered by every archaic nation as the Mind of the Demiurgic
Creator; and that it was called the Mother, Sophia, or the female Wisdom,
with the Gnostics; the Sephira, with the Jews; Sarasvatî or Vâch, with the
Hindûs; the Holy Ghost also being a female Principle.
Hence, the Kurios, or Logos, born from it, was, with the Greeks, the God,
Mind (Nous). “Now Koros [Kurios] ... signifies the pure and unmixed nature
of Intellect—Wisdom,” says Plato, in _Cratylus_;(537) and Kurios is
Mercury (Mercurius, Mar‐kurios), the Divine Wisdom, and “Mercury is Sol
[the Sun],”(538) from whom Thot‐Hermes received this Divine Wisdom. While,
then, the Logoi of all countries and religions are correlative, in their
sexual aspects, with the female Soul of the World or the Great Deep, the
Deity, from which these Two in One have their being, is ever concealed and
called the Hidden One, and is connected only indirectly with
“Creation,”(539) as it can act only through the Dual Force emanating from
the Eternal Essence. Even Æsculapius, called the “Saviour of all,” is
identical, according to ancient classical writers, with the Egyptian Ptah,
the Creative Intellect, or Divine Wisdom, and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis
and Hercules:(540) and Ptah, in one of its aspects, is the Anima Mundi;
the Universal Soul of Plato; the Divine Spirit of the Egyptians; the Holy
Ghost of the early Christians and Gnostics; and the Âkâsha of the Hindûs,
and even, in its lower aspect, the Astral Light. For Ptah was originally
the God of the Dead, he into whose bosom they were received, hence the
Limbus of the Greek Christians, or the Astral Light. It was far later that
Ptah was classed with the Sun‐Gods, his name signifying “he who opens,” as
he is shown to be the first to unveil the face of the dead mummy, to call
the Soul to _life in his bosom_. Kneph, the Eternal Unrevealed, is
represented by the snake‐emblem of eternity encircling a water‐urn, with
its head hovering over the “Waters,” which it incubates with its
breath—another form of the one original idea of “Darkness,” with its Ray
moving on the Waters, etc. As the Logos‐Soul, this _permutation_ is called
Ptah; as the Logos‐Creator, he becomes Imhotep, his Son, the “God of the
handsome face.” In their primitive characters, these two were the first
Cosmic Duad, Noot, Space or “Sky,” and Noon, the “Primordial Waters,” the
Androgyne Unity, above whom was the Concealed Breath of Kneph. And all of
them had the aquatic animals and plants sacred to them, the ibis, the
swan, the goose, the crocodile, and the lotus.
Returning to the Kabalistic Deity, this Concealed Unity is then Ain Suph
(אין סוף, τὸ πάν, τό ἄπειρον), Endless, Boundless, Non‐Existent (אין), so
long as the Absolute is within Oulom,(541) the Boundless and Termless
Time; as such, Ain Suph cannot be the Creator or even the Modeller of the
Universe, nor can It be Aur (Light). Therefore Ain Suph is also Darkness.
The _immutably_ Infinite, and the _absolutely_ Boundless, can neither
will, think, nor act. To do this, it has to become Finite, and _it_ does
so by its Ray penetrating into the Mundane Egg, or Infinite Space, and
emanating from it as a Finite God. All this is left to the Ray latent in
the One. When the period arrives, the Absolute Will expands naturally the
Force within it, according to the Law of which it is the inner and
ultimate Essence. The Hebrews did not adopt the Egg as a symbol, but they
substituted for it the “Duplex Heavens,” for, translated correctly, the
sentence “God made the heavens and the earth” would read: “In and out of
his own Essence, as a Womb [the Mundane Egg], God created the Two
Heavens.” The Christians, however, have chosen the Dove, the bird and not
the egg, as the symbol of their Holy Ghost.
“Whoever acquaints himself with Hud, the Mercabah and the Lahgash [secret
speech or incantation], will learn the secret of secrets.” Lahgash is
nearly identical in meaning with Vâch, the hidden power of the Mantras.
When the active period has arrived, from within the Eternal Essence of Ain
Suph, comes forth Sephira, the Active Power, called the Primordial Point
and the Crown, Kether. It is only through her that the “Un‐bounded Wisdom”
could give a Concrete Form to the Abstract Thought. Two sides of the Upper
Triangle, by which the Ineffable Essence and its Manifested Body, the
Universe, are symbolized, the right side and the base, are composed of
unbroken lines; the third, the left side, is dotted. It is through the
latter that emerges Sephira. Spreading in every direction, she finally
encompasses the whole Triangle. In this emanation the triple Triad is
formed. From the invisible Dew falling from the higher Uni‐triad, the
“Head,”—thus leaving 7 Sephiroth only—Sephira _creates_ Primeval Waters,
or in other words, Chaos takes shape. It is the first stage towards the
solidification of Spirit which, through various modifications, will
produce Earth. “It requires Earth and Water to make a Living Soul,” says
Moses. It requires the image of an aquatic bird to connect it with Water,
the female element of procreation, with the egg and the bird that
fecundates it.
When Sephira emerges as an Active Power from within the Latent Deity, she
is female; when she assumes the office of a Creator, she becomes a male;
hence, she is androgyne. She is the “Father and Mother, Aditi,” of the
Hindû Cosmogony and of the Secret Doctrine. If the oldest Hebrew scrolls
had been preserved, the modern Jehovah‐worshipper would have found that
many and uncomely were the symbols of the “Creative God.” The frog in the
moon, typical of his generative character, was the most frequent. All the
birds and animals now called “unclean” in the _Bible_ have been the
symbols of this Deity, in days of old. A mask of uncleanness was placed
over them, in order to preserve them from destruction, because they were
so sacred. The brazen serpent is not a bit more poetical than the goose or
swan, if symbols are to be accepted _à la lettre_.
In the words of the _Zohar_:
The Indivisible Point, which has no limit and cannot be
comprehended because of Its purity and brightness, expanded _from
without_, forming a brightness that served the Indivisible Point
as a Veil; [yet the latter also] _could not be viewed in_
consequence of its immeasurable Light. It too _expanded from
without_, and this expansion was its Garment. Thus through a
constant _upheaving_ [motion] finally the world originated.(542)
The Spiritual Substance sent forth by the Infinite Light is the First
Sephira or Shekinah. Sephira, _exoterically_, contains all the other nine
Sephiroth in her: _esoterically_, she contains but two, Chokmah or Wisdom,
“a masculine, _active_ potency whose divine name is Jah (יה),” and Binah,
or Intelligence, a feminine passive potency, represented by the divine
name Jehovah (יהוה); which two potencies form, with Sephira the third, the
Jewish Trinity or the Crown, Kether. These two Sephiroth, called Abba,
Father, and Amona, Mother, are the Duad, or the double‐sexed Logos, from
which issued the other seven Sephiroth. Thus, the first Jewish Triad,
Sephira, Chokmah and Binah, is the Hindû Trimûrti.(543) However veiled
even in the _Zohar_, and still more in the exoteric Pantheon of India,
every particular connected with one is reproduced in the other. The
Prajâpatis are the Sephiroth. Ten with Brahmâ, they dwindle to seven when
the Trimûrti, or the Kabalistic Triad, are separated from the rest. The
seven Builders, or “Creators,” become the seven Prajâpati, or the seven
Rishis, in the same order as the Sephiroth become the Creators, then the
Patriarchs, etc. In both Secret Systems, the One Universal Essence is
incomprehensible and inactive, in its Absoluteness, and can be connected
with the Building of the Universe only in an indirect way. In both, the
primeval Male‐female, or Androgynous, Principle and its ten and seven
Emanations—Brahmâ‐Virâj and Aditi‐Vâch, on the one hand; and the Elohim‐
Jehovah, or Adam‐Adami (Adam Kadmon) and Sephira‐Eve, on the other; with
their Prajâpatis and Sephiroth—in their totality, represent primarily the
Archetypal Man, the Protologos; and it is only in their secondary aspect
that they become cosmic powers, and astronomical or sidereal bodies. If
Aditi is the Mother of the Gods, Deva‐Mâtri, Eve is the Mother of All
Living; both are the Shakti, or Generative Power, in their female aspect,
of the Heavenly Man, and they are both compound Creators. Says a Guptâ
Vidyâ Sûtra:
_In the beginning, a Ray, issuing from Paramârthika [the one and only True
Existence], became manifested in Vyâvahârika [Conventional Existence],
which was used as a Vâhana to descend with into the Universal Mother, and
to cause her to expand [swell, brih]._
And in the _Zohar_ it is stated:
The Infinite Unity, formless and without similitude, after the
Form of the Heavenly Man was created, used it. The Unknown
Light(544) [Darkness] used the Heavenly Form (אדם עילאה—Adam
Oilah) as a Chariot (מרכבה—Mercabah), through which to descend,
and wished to be called by this Form, which is the sacred name
Jehovah.
As the _Zohar_ again says:
In the beginning was the Will of the King, prior to any other
existence.... It [the Will] sketched the forms of all things that
had been concealed but now came into view. And there went forth as
a sealed secret, from the head of Ain Suph, a nebulous spark of
matter, without shape or form.... Life is drawn from below, and
from above the source renews itself, the sea is always full and
spreads its waters everywhere.
Thus the Deity is compared to a shoreless sea, to Water which is “the
fountain of life.”(545) “The seventh palace, the fountain of life, is the
first in the order from above.”(546) Hence the Kabalistic tenet on the
lips of the very Kabalistic Solomon, who says in _Proverbs_: “Wisdom hath
builded her house; it hath hewn out its _seven_ pillars.”(547)
Whence, then, all this identity of ideas, if there were no primeval
Universal Revelation? The few points so far brought out are like a few
straws in a stack, in comparison to that which will be disclosed as the
work proceeds. If we turn to the Chinese Cosmogony, the most hazy of all,
even there the same idea is found. Tsi‐tsai, the Self‐Existent, is the
Unknown Darkness, the Root of the Wu‐liang‐sheu, Boundless Age; Amitâbha,
and Tien, Heaven, come later on. The “Great Extreme” of Confucius gives
the same idea, his “straws” notwithstanding. The latter are a source of
great amusement to the missionaries, who laugh at every “heathen”
religion, despise and hate that of their brother Christians of other
denominations, and yet one and all accept their own _Genesis_,
_literally_.
If we turn to the Chaldean we find in it Anu, the Concealed Deity, the
One, whose name, moreover, shows it to be of Sanskrit origin; for Anu in
Sanskrit means Atom, Anîyâmsam‐anîyasâm, smallest of the small, being a
name of Parabrahman, in the Vedântic philosophy, in which Parabrahman is
described as smaller than the smallest atom, and greater than the greatest
sphere or universe, Anagrânîyas and Mahatoruvat. In the first verses of
the Akkadian _Genesis_, as found in the cuneiform texts on the Babylonian
tiles or Lateres Coctiles, and as translated by George Smith, we find Anu,
the Passive Deity, or Ain Suph; Bel, the Creator, the Spirit of God, or
Sephira, moving on the Face of the Waters, hence Water itself; and Hea,
the Universal Soul, or Wisdom of the Three combined.
The first eight verses read as follows:
1. When above, were not raised the heavens:
2. and below on the earth a plant had not grown up;
3. the abyss had not broken open their boundaries.
4. The Chaos (or Water) Tiamat (the Sea) was the producing‐mother
of the whole of them. [This is the Cosmical Aditi and
Sephira.]
5. Those waters at the beginning were ordained; but
6. a tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded.
7. When the Gods had not sprung up, any one of them;
8. a plant had not grown, and order did not exist.(548)
This was the Chaotic or Ante‐genetic Period; the double Swan, and the Dark
Swan which becomes white, when Light is created.(549)
The symbol chosen for the majestic ideal of the Universal Principle may
perhaps seem little calculated to answer its sacred character. A goose, or
even a swan, will, no doubt, be thought an unfit symbol to represent the
grandeur of the Spirit. Nevertheless, it must have had some deep Occult
meaning, since it figures not only in every Cosmogony and World‐religion,
but was also chosen by the Crusaders, among the mediæval Christians, as
the Vehicle of the Holy Ghost, which was supposed to be leading the army
to Palestine, to wrench the tomb of the Saviour from the hands of the
Saracen. If we are to credit Professor Draper’s statement, in his
_Intellectual Development of Europe_, the Crusaders, under Peter the
Hermit, were preceded, at the head of the army, by the Holy Ghost, under
the shape of a white gander in the company of a goat. Seb, the Egyptian
God of Time, carries a goose on his head; Jupiter assumes the form of a
swan, and so also does Brahmâ; and the root of all this is that mystery of
mysteries—the Mundane Egg. One should learn the reason of a symbol before
depreciating it. The dual element of Air and Water is that of the ibis,
swan, goose and pelican, of crocodiles and frogs, lotus flowers and water
lilies, etc.; and the result is the choice of the most unseemly symbols by
the modern as much as by the ancient Mystics. Pan, the great God of
Nature, was generally figured in company with aquatic birds, geese
especially, and so were other Gods. If later on, with the gradual
degeneration of religion, the Gods to whom geese were sacred, became
priapic deities, it does not, therefore, follow that water‐fowls were made
sacred to Pan and other phallic deities, as some scoffers even of
antiquity would have it,(550) but that the abstract and divine power of
Procreative Nature had become grossly anthropomorphized. Nor does the swan
of Leda show “priapic doings and her enjoyment thereof,” as Mr. Hargrave
Jennings chastely expresses it; for the myth is but another version of the
same philosophical idea of Cosmogony. Swans are frequently found
associated with Apollo, as they are the emblems of Water and Fire, and
also of the Sun‐light, before the separation of the Elements.
Our modern symbologists might profit by some remarks made by a well‐known
writer, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, who says:
From time immemorial an emblem has been worshipped in Hindûstan as
the type of creation, or the origin of life.... Shiva, or the
Mahâdeva, being not only the reproducer of human forms, but also
the fructifying principle, the generative power that pervades the
Universe. The maternal emblem is likewise a religious type. This
reverence for the production of life introduced into the worship
of Osiris the sexual emblems. Is it strange that they regarded
with reverence the great mystery of human birth? Were they impure
thus to regard it? Or are _we_ impure that we do not so regard it?
But _no clean and thoughtful mind_ could so regard them.... We
have travelled far, and unclean have been the paths, since those
old anchorites first spoke of God and the soul in the solemn
depths of their first sanctuaries. Let us not smile at their mode
of tracing the infinite and the incomprehensible Cause throughout
all the mysteries of nature, lest by so doing we cast the shadow
of our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity.(551)
Section VI. The Mundane Egg.
Whence this universal symbol? The Egg was incorporated as a sacred sign in
the Cosmogony of every people on the earth, and was revered both on
account of its form and of its inner mystery. From the earliest mental
conceptions of man, it has been known as that which represented most
successfully the origin and secret of Being. The gradual development of
the imperceptible germ within the closed shell; the inward working,
without any apparent outward interference of force, which from a latent
_nothing_ produced an active _something_, needing naught save heat; and
which, having gradually evolved into a concrete, living creature, broke
its shell, appearing to the outward senses of all as a self‐generated and
self‐created being; all this must have been a standing miracle from the
beginning.
The Secret Teaching explains the reason for this reverence by the
symbolism of the prehistoric races. In the beginnings, the “First Cause”
had no name. Later it was pictured in the fancy of the thinkers as an ever
invisible, mysterious Bird that dropped an Egg into Chaos, which Egg
became the Universe. Hence Brahmâ was called Kâlahansa, the “Swan in
[Space and] Time.” Becoming the Swan of Eternity, Brahmâ, at the beginning
of each Mahâmanvantara, lays a Golden Egg, which typifies the great
Circle, or [circle] itself a symbol for the Universe and its spherical
bodies.
A second reason for the Egg having been chosen as the symbolical
representation of the Universe, and of our Earth, was its form. It was a
Circle and a Sphere; and the ovi‐form shape of our Globe must have been
known from the beginning of symbology, since it was so universally
adopted. The first manifestation of the Kosmos in the form of an Egg was
the most widely diffused belief of Antiquity. As Bryant shows,(552) it was
a symbol adopted among the Greeks, the Syrians, Persians, and Egyptians.
In the Egyptian _Ritual_, Seb, the God of Time and of the Earth, is spoken
of as having laid an Egg, or the Universe, an “Egg conceived at the hour
of the Great One of the Dual Force.”(553)
Ra is shown like Brahmâ gestating in the Egg of the Universe. The Deceased
is “resplendent in the Egg of the Land of Mysteries.”(554) For, this is
“the Egg to which is given Life among the Gods.”(555) “It is the Egg of
the great clucking Hen, the Egg of Seb, who issues from it like a
hawk.”(556)
Among the Greeks the Orphic Egg is described by Aristophanes, and was part
of the Dionysiac and other Mysteries, during which the Mundane Egg was
consecrated and its significance explained; Porphyry also shows it to be a
representation of the world: “Ἑρμηνεύει δὲ τὸ ὠὸν τὸν κόσμον.” Faber and
Bryant have tried to show that the Egg typified the Ark of Noah—a wild
belief, unless the latter is accepted as purely allegorical and
symbolical. It can only have typified the Ark as a synonym of the Moon,
the Argha which carries the universal seed of life; but had surely nothing
to do with the Ark of the _Bible_. Anyhow, the belief that the Universe
existed in the beginning in the shape of an Egg was general. And as Wilson
says:
A similar account of the first aggregation of the elements in the
form of an Egg is given in all the _Purânas_, with the usual
epithet Haima or Hiranya, “golden,” as it occurs in _Manu_, I.
9.(557)
Hiranya, however, means “resplendent,” “shining,” rather than “golden,” as
is proven by the great Indian scholar, the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî,
in his unpublished polemics with Professor Max Müller. As said in the
_Vishnu Purâna_:
Intellect [Mahat] ... the [unmanifested] gross elements inclusive,
formed an Egg ... and the Lord of the Universe himself abided in
it, in the character of Brahmâ. In that Egg, O Brâhmana, were the
continents, and seas and mountains, the planets and divisions of
the planets, the gods, the demons and mankind.(558)
Both in Greece and in India the first visible male Being, who united in
himself the nature of either sex, abode in the Egg and issued from it.
This “First‐born of the World” was Dionysus, with some Greeks; the God who
sprang from the Mundane Egg, and from whom the Mortals and Immortals were
derived. The God Ra is shown, in the _Book of the Dead_, beaming in his
Egg [the Sun], and the stars off as soon as the God Shoo [the Solar
Energy] awakens and gives him the impulse.(559) “He is in the Solar Egg,
the Egg to which is given Life among the Gods.”(560) The Solar God
exclaims: “I am the Creative Soul of the Celestial Abyss. None sees my
Nest, none can break my Egg, I am the Lord!”(561)
In view of this circular form, the “[vertical bar]” issuing from the
“[circle],” or the Egg, or the male from the female in the androgyne, it
is strange to find a scholar saying, on the ground that the most ancient
Indian MSS. show no trace of it, that the ancient Âryans were ignorant of
the decimal notation. The 10, being the sacred number of the Universe, was
secret and esoteric, both as regards the unit and cipher, or zero, the
circle. Moreover, Professor Max Müller tells that “the two words _cipher_
and _zero_, which are but one, are sufficient to prove that our figures
are borrowed from the Arabs.”(562) Cipher is the Arabic _cifron_, and
means “empty,” a translation of the Sanskrit _sunyan_, or “nought,” says
the Professor.(563) The Arabs had their figures from Hindûstan, and never
claimed the discovery for themselves. As to the Pythagoreans, we need but
turn to the ancient manuscripts of Boethius’ treatise, _De Arithmetica_,
composed in the sixth century, to find among the Pythagorean numerals the
“1” and the “0,” as the first and final figures.(564) And Porphyry, who
quotes from the Pythagorean Moderatus,(565) says that the numerals of
Pythagoras were “hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained
ideas concerning the nature of things,” or the origin of the Universe.
Now, if, on the one hand, the most ancient Indian MSS. show as yet no
trace of decimal notation in them, and Max Müller states very clearly that
until now he has found but nine letters, the initials of the Sanskrit
numerals; on the other hand, we have records as ancient, to supply the
wanted proof. We speak of the sculptures and the sacred imagery in the
most ancient temples of the far East. Pythagoras derived his knowledge
from India; and we find Professor Max Müller corroborating this statement,
at least so far as to allow that the Neo‐Pythagoreans were the first
teachers of “ciphering,” among the Greeks and Romans; that they “at
Alexandria, or in Syria, became acquainted with the Indian figures, and
adapted them to the Pythagorean Abacus.” This cautious admission implies
that Pythagoras himself was acquainted with only _nine_ figures. Thus we
might reasonably answer that, although we possess no certain proof,
exoterically, that the decimal notation was known to Pythagoras, who lived
at the very close of the archaic ages,(566) yet we have sufficient
evidence to show that the full numbers, as given by Boethius, were known
to the Pythagoreans, even before Alexandria was built.(567) This evidence
we find in Aristotle, who says that “some philosophers hold that ideas and
numbers are of the same nature, and amount to _ten_ in all.”(568) This, we
believe, will be sufficient to show that the decimal notation was known
among them at least as early as four centuries B.C., for Aristotle does
not seem to treat the question as an innovation of the Neo‐Pythagoreans.
But we know more than this; _we know_ that the decimal system must have
been used by the mankind of the earliest archaic ages, since the whole
astronomical and geometrical portion of the secret sacerdotal language was
built upon the number 10, or the combination of the male and female
principles, and since the “Pyramid of Cheops,” so‐called, is built upon
measures of this decimal notation, or rather upon the digits and their
combinations with the _nought_. Of this, however, sufficient has been said
in _Isis Unveiled_, and it is useless to repeat it.
The symbolism of the Lunar and Solar Deities is so inextricably mixed up,
that it is next to impossible to separate from each other such glyphs as
the Egg, the Lotus, and the “Sacred” Animals. The Ibis, for instance, was
held in the greatest veneration in Egypt. It was sacred to Isis, who is
often represented with the head of that bird, and also sacred to Mercury
or Thoth, who is said to have assumed its form while escaping from Typhon.
There were two kinds of Ibises in Egypt, Herodotus(569) tells us; one
_quite black_, the other black and white. The former is credited with
fighting and exterminating the winged serpents which came every spring
from Arabia, and infested the country. The other was sacred to the Moon,
because the latter planet is white and brilliant on her external side,
dark and black on that side which she never turns to the Earth. Moreover,
the Ibis kills land serpents, and makes the most terrible havoc amongst
the eggs of the crocodile, and thus saves Egypt from having the Nile over‐
infested by those horrible saurians. The bird is credited with doing this
in the moonlight, and thus being helped by Isis, whose sidereal symbol is
the Moon. But the more correct esoteric truth underlying these popular
myths is, that Hermes, as shown by Abenephius,(570) watched over the
Egyptians under the form of that bird, and taught them the Occult arts and
sciences. This simply means that the _ibis religiosa_ had, and has,
“magical” properties in common with many other birds, the albatross
preëminently, and the mythical white swan, the Swan of Eternity or Time,
the Kâlahansa.
Were it otherwise, indeed, why should all the ancient peoples, who were no
more fools than we are, have had such a superstitious dread of killing
certain birds? In Egypt, he who killed an Ibis, or the Golden Hawk, the
symbol of the Sun and Osiris, risked death, and could hardly escape it.
The veneration of some nations for birds was such that Zoroaster, in his
precepts, forbids their slaughter as a heinous crime. In our age, we laugh
at every kind of divination. Yet why should so many generations have
believed in divination by birds, and even in Oömancy, which is said by
Suidas to have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how, under certain
conditions, to perceive in the yolk and white of an egg, that which the
bird born from it would have seen around it during its short life. This
Occult art, which, 3,000 years ago, demanded the greatest learning and the
most abstruse mathematical calculations, has now fallen into the depths of
degradation; and to‐day it is the old cooks and fortune‐tellers who read
the future for servant‐girls in search of husbands, from the white of an
egg in a glass.
Nevertheless, even Christians have to this day their sacred birds; for
instance, the Dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Nor have they neglected
the sacred animals; and the evangelical zoölatry, with its Bull, Eagle,
Dion, and Angel—in reality the Cherub, or Seraph, the fiery‐winged
Serpent—is as much Pagan as that of the Egyptians or the Chaldeans. These
four animals are, in reality, the symbols of the four Elements, and of the
four _lower_ Principles in man. Nevertheless, they correspond physically
and materially to the four constellations that form, so to speak, the
_suite_ or _cortège_ of the Solar God, and which, during the winter
solstice, occupy the four cardinal points of the zodiacal circle. These
four “animals” may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic _New Testaments_
in which the “portraits” of the Evangelists are given. They are the
animals of Ezekiel’s Mercabah.
As truly stated by Ragon:
The ancient Hierophants have combined so cleverly the dogmas and
symbols of their religious philosophies, that these symbols can be
fully explained only by the combination and knowledge of _all_ the
keys.
They can be only _approximately_ interpreted, even if one discovers three
out of these seven systems, viz., the anthropological, the psychic and the
astronomical. The two chief interpretations, the highest and the lowest,
the spiritual and the physiological, were preserved in the greatest
secrecy, until the latter fell into the dominion of the profane. Thus far,
with regard only to the pre‐historic Hierophants, with whom that which has
now become purely—or impurely—phallic, was a science as profound and as
mysterious as Biology and Physiology are now. This was their exclusive
property, the fruit of their studies and discoveries. The other two were
those which dealt with the Creative Gods, or Theogony, and with creative
man; that is to say, with the ideal and the practical Mysteries. These
interpretations were so cleverly veiled and combined, that many were those
who, while arriving at the discovery of one meaning, were baffled in
understanding the significance of the others, and could never unriddle
them sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions. The highest, the
first and the fourth—Theogony in relation to Anthropogony—were almost
impossible to fathom. We find the proofs of this in the Jewish “Holy
Writ.”
It is owing to the serpent being oviparous, that it became a symbol of
Wisdom and an emblem of the Logoi, or the Self‐Born. In the temple of
Philæ, in Upper Egypt, an egg was artificially prepared of clay mixed with
various incenses. This was hatched by a peculiar process, and a cerastes
or horned viper was produced. The same was done in the Indian temples, in
antiquity, in the case of the cobra. The Creative God emerges from the Egg
that issues from the mouth of Kneph, as a winged Serpent, for the Serpent
is the symbol of the All‐Wisdom. With the Hebrews the same Deity is
glyphed by the Flying or “Fiery Serpents” of Moses in the Wilderness; and
with the Alexandrian Mystic she becomes the Orphio‐Christos, the Logos of
the Gnostics. The Protestants try to show that the allegory of the Brazen
Serpent and of the Fiery Serpents has a direct reference to the mystery of
the Christ and the Crucifixion, whereas, in truth, it has a far nearer
relation to the _mystery of generation_, when dissociated from the Egg
with the Central Germ, or the _Circle with its Central Point_. Protestant
Theologians would have us believe their interpretation _only_ because the
Brazen Serpent was lifted on a pole! Whereas it had rather a reference to
the Egyptian Egg standing upright supported by the sacred Tau; since the
Egg and the Serpent are in‐separable in the old worship and symbology of
Egypt, and since both the Brazen and Fiery Serpents were Seraphs, the
burning “Fiery” Messengers, or the Serpent Gods, the Nâgas of India.
Without the Egg it was a purely phallic symbol, but when associated
therewith, it related to cosmic creation. The Brazen Serpent had no such
holy meaning as the Protestants would ascribe to it; nor was it, in fact,
glorified above the Fiery Serpents, _for the bite of which it was only a
natural remedy_; the symbological meaning of the word “Brazen” being the
feminine principle, and that of “Fiery,” or “Gold,” the masculine
principle.
Brass was a metal symbolizing the _nether world_ ... that of the
womb where life should be given.... The word for serpent in Hebrew
was _Nachash_, but this is also the term for _brass_.
It is said in _Numbers_ that the Jews complained of the Wilderness _where
there was no water_,(571) after which “the Lord sent fiery serpents” to
bite them, and then, to oblige Moses, he gave him as a remedy the Brazen
Serpent on a pole for them to look at; after which “any man when he beheld
the serpent of brass ... _lived_” (?). After that the “Lord,” gathering
the people together at the well of Beer, gave them water, and grateful
Israel sang this song, “Spring up, O well.” When, after studying
symbology, the Christian reader comes to understand the innermost meaning
of these three symbols, Water, Brazen, and Serpent, and a few more, _in
the sense given to them in the Holy Bible_, he will hardly like to connect
the sacred name of his Saviour with the Brazen Serpent incident. The
Seraphim (שרפים) or Fiery Winged Serpents, are no doubt connected with,
and inseparable from, the idea of the “Serpent of Eternity—God,” as
explained in Kenealy’s _Apocalypse_; but the word Cherub also meant
Serpent, in one sense, though its direct meaning is different, for the
Cherubim and the Persian Winged Griffins (Γρύπες), the guardians of the
Golden Mountain, are the same, and the compound name of the former shows
their character, as it is formed of _kr_ (כר), a circle, and _aub_ or _ob_
(אוב), a serpent, and therefore means a “serpent in a circle.” And this
settles the phallic character of the Brazen Serpent, and justifies
Hezekiah for breaking it.(572) _Verbum satis sapienti!_
In the _Book of the Dead_, as just shown,(573) reference is often made to
the Egg. Ra, the Mighty One, remains in his Egg, during the struggle
between the “Children of the Rebellion” and Shoo, the Solar Energy and the
Dragon of Darkness. The Deceased is resplendent in his Egg when he crosses
to the Land of Mystery. He is the Egg of Seb. The Egg was the symbol of
Life in Immortality and Eternity; and also the glyph of the generative
matrix; whereas the Tau, which was associated with it, was only the symbol
of life and birth in _generation_. The Mundane Egg was placed in Khoom,
the Water of Space, or the feminine _abstract_ Principle; Khoom becoming,
with the “fall” of mankind into generation and phallicism, Ammon the
Creative God. When Ptah, the “Fiery God,” carries the Mundane Egg in his
hand, then the symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its
significance. In conjunction with the Hawk, the symbol of Osiris‐Sun, the
symbol is dual, and relates to both Lives—the mortal and the immortal. The
engraving of a papyrus in Kircher’s _Œdipus Egyptiacus_,(574) shows an egg
floating above the mummy. This is the symbol of hope and the promise of a
Second Birth for the Osirified Dead; his Soul, after due purification in
the Amenti, will gestate in this Egg of Immortality, to be reborn
therefrom into a new life on earth. For this Egg, in the Esoteric
Doctrine, is Devachan, the Abode of Bliss; the Winged Scarabæus also being
another symbol of it. The Winged Globe is but another form of the Egg, and
has the same significance as the Scarabæus, the Khopiroo—from the Root
_khoproo_, to become, to be reborn—which relates to the rebirth of man, as
well as to his spiritual regeneration.
In the _Theogony_ of Mochus, we find Æther first, and then Air, the two
principles from which Ulom, the Intelligible (Νοητὸς) Deity, the visible
Universe of Matter, is born, out of the Mundane Egg.(575)
In the _Orphic Hymns_, Eros‐Phanes evolves from the Divine Egg, which the
Æthereal Winds impregnate, Wind being the “Spirit of God,” or rather the
“Spirit of the Unknown Darkness”—the Divine Idea of Plato—which is said to
move in Æther.(576) In the Hindû _Kathopanishad_, Purusha, the Divine
Spirit, already stands before the Original Matter, “from whose union
springs the Great Soul of the World,” Mahâ‐Âtmâ, Brahmâ, the Spirit of
Life,(577) etc.; the latter appellations being all identical with Anima
Mundi, or the “Universal Soul,” the Astral Light of the Kabalist and the
Occultist, or the “Egg of Darkness.” Besides this there are many charming
allegories on this subject, scattered through the Sacred Books of the
Brâhmans. In one place, it is the female creator who is first a germ, then
a drop of heavenly dew, a pearl, and then an Egg. In such cases, of which
there are too many to enumerate separately, the Egg gives birth to the
four Elements within the fifth, Æther, and is covered with seven
coverings, which become later on the seven upper and the seven lower
worlds. Breaking in two, the shell becomes the Heaven, and the contents
the Earth, the white forming the Terrestrial Waters. Then, again, it is
Vishnu who emerges from within the Egg, with a Lotus in his hand. Vinatâ,
a daughter of Daksha and wife of Kashyapa, “the Self‐born, sprung from
Time,” one of the seven “Creators” of our World, brought forth an Egg from
which was born Garuda, the Vehicle of Vishnu; the latter allegory having a
relation to our Earth, as Garuda is the Great Cycle.
The Egg was sacred to Isis; and therefore the priests of Egypt never ate
eggs.
Isis is almost always represented holding a Lotus in one hand, and in the
other a Circle and a Cross (_crux ansata_).
Diodorus Siculus states that Osiris was born from an Egg, like Brahmâ.
From Leda’s Egg, Apollo and Latona were born, and also Castor and Pollux,
the bright Gemini. And though the Buddhists do not attribute the same
origin to their Founder, yet, no more than the ancient Egyptians or the
modern Brâhmans, do they eat eggs, lest they should destroy the germ of
life latent in them, and thereby commit sin. The Chinese believe that
their First Man was born from an Egg, which Tien dropped down from Heaven
to Earth into the Waters.(578) This egg‐symbol is still regarded by some
as representing the idea of the origin of life, which is a scientific
truth, though the human _ovum_ is invisible to the naked eye. Therefore we
see respect shown to it from the remotest antiquity, by the Greeks,
Phœnicians, Romans, the Japanese, and the Siamese, the North and South
American tribes, and even the savages of the remotest islands.
With the Egyptians, the Concealed God was Ammon or Mon, the “Hidden”, the
Supreme Spirit. All their Gods were dual—the scientific _Reality_ for the
sanctuary; its double, the fabulous and mythical Entity, for the masses.
For instance, as observed in the Section “Chaos, Theos, Kosmos,” the Elder
Horus was the Idea of the World remaining in the Demiurgic Mind, “born in
Darkness before the Creation of the World”; the Second Horus was the same
Idea going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed with matter and assuming
an actual existence.(579) Horus, the “Elder,” or Haroiri, is an ancient
aspect of the Solar God, contemporary with Ra and Shoo; Haroiri is often
mistaken for Hor (Horsusi), Son of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptians very
often represented the rising Sun under the form of Hor, the Elder, rising
from a full‐blown Lotus, the Universe, when the solar disk is always found
on the hawk‐head of that God. Haroiri is Khnoom. The same with Khnoom and
Ammon, both are represented as ram‐headed, and both are often confused,
though their functions are different. Khnoom is the “modeller of men,”
fashioning men and things out of the Mundane Egg, on a potter’s wheel;
Ammon‐Ra, the Generator, is the secondary aspect of the Concealed Deity.
Khnoom was adored at Elephanta and Philæ,(580) Ammon at Thebes. But it is
Emepht, the One, Supreme Planetary Principle, who blows the Egg out of his
mouth, and who is, therefore, Brahmâ. The Shadow of the Deity, Kosmic and
Universal, of that which broods over and permeates the Egg with its
vivifying Spirit, until the Germ contained in it is ripe, was the Mystery
God whose name was unpronounceable. It is Ptah, however, “he who opens,”
the opener of Life and Death,(581) who proceeds from the Egg of the World
to begin his dual work.(582)
According to the Greeks, the phantom form of the Chemis (Chemi, ancient
Egypt) which floats on the Ethereal Waves of the Empyrean Sphere, was
called into being by Horus‐Apollo, the Sun‐God, who caused it to evolve
out of the Mundane Egg.
The _Brahmânda Purâna_ contains fully the mystery about Brahmâ’s Golden
Egg; and this is why, perhaps, it is inaccessible to the Orientalists, who
say that this _Purâna_, like the _Skanda_, is “no longer procurable in a
collective body,” but “is represented by a variety of Khandas and
Mâhâtmyas professing to be derived from it.” The _Brahmânda Purâna_ is
described as “that which has declared in 12,200 verses, the magnificence
of the Egg of Brahmâ, and in which an account of the future Kalpas is
contained, as revealed by Brahmâ.”(583) Quite so, and much more,
perchance.
In the Scandinavian Cosmogony, placed by Professor Max Müller, in point of
time, as “far anterior to the _Vedas_,” in the poem of Wöluspa, the Song
of the Prophetess, the Mundane Egg is again discovered in the Phantom‐Germ
of the Universe, which is represented as lying in the Ginnungagap, the Cup
of Illusion, Mâyâ, the Boundless and Void Abyss. In this World’s Matrix,
formerly a region of night and desolation, Nefelheim, the Mist‐Place, the
_nebular_, as it is called now, in the Astral Light, dropped a _Ray of
Cold Light_ which overflowed this cup and froze in it. Then the Invisible
blew a scorching Wind which dissolved the frozen Waters and cleared the
Mist. These Waters (Chaos), called the Streams of Eliwagar, distilling in
vivifying drops, fell down and created the Earth and the Giant Ymir, who
had only the “semblance of man” (the Heavenly Man), and the Cow, Audumla
(the “Mother,” Astral Light or Cosmic Soul), from whose udder flowed
_four_ streams of milk—the four cardinal points; the four heads of the
four rivers of Eden, etc.—which “four” are symbolized by the Cube in all
its various and mystical meanings.
The Christians—especially the Greek and Latin Churches—have fully adopted
the symbol, and see in it a commemoration of life eternal, of salvation
and of resurrection. This is found in, and corroborated by, the time‐
honoured custom of exchanging “Easter Eggs.” From the Anguinum, the “Egg”
of the Pagan Druid, whose name alone made Rome tremble with fear, to the
red Easter Egg of the Slavonian peasant, a cycle has passed. And yet,
whether in civilized Europe, or among the abject savages of Central
America, we find the same archaic, primitive thought, if we will only
search for it, and do not—in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and
physical superiority—disfigure the original idea of the symbol.
Section VII. The Days and Nights of Brahmâ.
This is the name given to the Periods called Manvantara (Manuantara, or
between the Manus) and Pralaya, or Dissolution; one referring to the
Active Periods of the Universe; the other to its times of relative and
complete Rest, whether they occur at the end of a Day or an Age, or Life,
of Brahmâ. These Periods, which follow each other in regular succession,
are also called Small and Great Kalpas, the Minor and the Mahâ Kalpas;
though, properly speaking, the Mahâ Kalpa is never a Day, but a whole Life
or Age of Brahmâ, for it is said in the _Brahma Vaivarta_: “Chronologers
compute a Kalpa by the Life of Brahmâ. Minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the
rest, are numerous.” In sober truth they are infinite; for they have never
had a commencement; or, in other words, there never was a _first_ Kalpa,
nor will there ever be a _last_, in Eternity.
One Parârdha, or half of the existence of Brahmâ, in the ordinary
acceptation of this measure of time, has already expired in the present
Mahâ Kalpa; the last Kalpa was the Padma, or that of the Golden Lotus; the
present one is the Varâha,(584) the “Boar” Incarnation, or Avatâra.
One thing is to be especially noted by the scholar who studies the Hindû
religion from the _Puranâs_. He must never take the statements found
therein literally, and in one sense only; and those especially, which
concern the Manvantaras, or Kalpas, have to be understood in their several
references. Thus these Ages relate, in the same language, to both the
great and the small periods, to Mahâ Kalpas and to Minor Cycles. The
Matsya, or Fish Avatâra, happened before the Varâha or Boar Avatâra; the
allegories, therefore, must relate to both the Padma and the present
Manvantara, and also to the Minor Cycles which have occurred since the
reäppearance of our Chain of Worlds and the Earth. And as the Matsya
Avatâra of Vishnu and Vaivasvata’s Deluge are correctly connected with an
event that happened on our Earth during this Round, it is evident that,
while it may relate to pre‐cosmic events, pre‐cosmic in the sense of _our_
Cosmos, or Solar System, it has reference, in our case, to a distant
geological period. Not even Esoteric Philosophy can claim to know, except
by analogical inference, that which took place before the reäppearance of
our Solar System, and previous to the last Mahâ Pralaya. But it teaches
distinctly, that after the first geological disturbance of the Earth’s
axis, which ended in the sweeping down to the bottom of the seas of the
whole Second Continent, with its primeval races—of which successive
Continents, or “Earths,” Atlantis was the fourth—there came another
disturbance owing to the axis again resuming its previous degree of
inclination as rapidly as it had changed it: when the Earth was indeed
once more _raised_ out of the waters—as above, so below, and _vice versâ_.
There were “Gods” on Earth in those days; Gods, and not men, as we know
them now, says the tradition. As will be shown in Volume II, the
computation of periods, in exoteric Hindûism, refers to both the great
cosmic and the small terrestrial events and cataclysms, and the same may
be demonstrated in respect to names. For instance, the name
Yudishthira—the first king of the Sacae or Shakas, who opens the Kali Yuga
Era, which has to last 432,000 years, “an actual king who lived 3,102
years B.C.”—applies also to the Great Deluge, at the time of the first
sinking of Atlantis. He is the “Yudishthira,(585) born on the mountain of
the hundred peaks, at the extremity of the world, _beyond which nobody can
__ go_” and “immediately after the flood.”(586) We know of no “Flood”
3,102 years B.C., not even that of Noah, for, agreeably with Judæo‐
Christian chronology, it took place 2,349 years B.C.
This relates to an esoteric division of time and a mystery explained
elsewhere, and may therefore be left aside for the present. Suffice it to
remark, at this juncture, that all the efforts of imagination of the
Wilfords, Bentleys, and other would‐be Œdipuses of esoteric Hindû
Chronology, have sadly failed. No computation of either the Four Ages, or
the Manvantaras, has ever yet been unriddled by our very learned
Orientalists, who have therefore cut the Gordian Knot by proclaiming the
whole “a figment of the Brâhmanical brain.” So be it, and may the great
scholars rest in peace! This “figment” is given at the end of the
Commentaries on Stanza II of the Anthropogenesis, in Volume II, with
Esoteric additions.
Let us see, however, what were the three kinds of Pralayas, and what is
the _popular_ belief about them. For once it agrees with Esotericism.
Of the Pralaya, before which fourteen Manvantaras elapse, having over them
as many presiding Manus, and at whose close occurs the Incidental, or
Brahmâ’s Dissolution, it is said in _Vishnu Purâna_, in condensed
paraphrase:
At the end of a thousand Periods of Four Ages, which complete a
day of Brahmâ, the earth is almost exhausted. The Eternal (Avyaya)
Vishnu then assumes the character of Rudra, the Destroyer (Shiva),
and reünites all his creatures to himself. He enters the Seven
Rays of the Sun and drinks up all the Waters of the Globe; he
causes the moisture to evaporate, thus drying up the whole Earth.
Oceans and rivers, torrents and small streams, are all exhaled.
Thus fed with abundant moisture the Seven Solar Rays become Seven
Suns, by dilation, and they finally set the World on fire. Hari,
the destroyer of all things, who is the Flame of Time, Kâlâgni,
finally consumes the Earth. Then Rudra, becoming Janârdana,
breathes clouds and rain.(587)
There are many kinds of Pralaya, but three chief periods are specially
mentioned in old Hindû books. The first of these, as Wilson shows, is
called Naimittika,(588) “Occasional” or “Incidental,” caused by the
intervals of Brahmâ’s Days; it is the destruction of creatures, of all
that lives and has a form, but not of the substance, which remains in
_statu quo_ till the new Dawn after that Night. The second is called
Prâkritika, and occurs at the end of the Age or Life of Brahmâ, when
everything that exists is resolved into the Primal Element, to be
remodelled at the end of that longer Night. The third, Âtyantika, does not
concern the Worlds, or the Universe, but only the Individualities of some
people. It is thus the Individual Pralaya, or Nirvâna, after having
reached which, there is no more future existence possible, no rebirth till
after the Mahâ Pralaya. The latter Night—lasting as it does
311,040,000,000,000 years, with the possibility also of being almost
doubled in the case of the lucky Jîvanmukta who reaches Nirvâna at an
early period of a Manvantara—is long enough to be regarded as _eternal_,
if not endless. The _Bhâgavata Purâna_(589) speaks of a fourth kind of
Pralaya, the Nitya, or Constant Dissolution, and explains it as the change
which takes place imperceptibly in everything in this Universe from the
globe down to the atom, without cessation. It is growth and decay—life and
death.
When the Mahâ Pralaya arrives, the inhabitants of Svar‐loka, the Upper
Sphere, disturbed by the conflagration, seek refuge “with the Pitris,
their Progenitors, the Manus, the Seven Rishis, the various orders of
Celestial Spirits and the Gods, in Mahar‐loka.” When the latter is reached
also, the whole of the above enumerated beings migrate in their turn from
Mahar‐loka, and repair to Jana‐loka, “_in their subtile forms, destined to
become reëmbodied, in similar capacities as their former, when the world
is renewed at the beginning of the succeeding Kalpa_.”(590)
Clouds, mighty in size, and loud in thunder, fill up all Space
[Nabhas‐tala]. Showering down torrents of water, these clouds
quench the dreadful fires, ... and then they rain uninterruptedly
for a hundred [divine] Years, and deluge the whole World [Solar
System]. Pouring down, in drops as large as dice, these rains
overspread the Earth, and fill the Middle Region (Bhuvo‐loka) and
inundate Heaven. The World is now enveloped in darkness; and all
things, animate or inanimate, having perished, the clouds continue
to pour down their Waters, ... and the Night of Brahmâ reigns
supreme over the scene of desolation.(591)
This is what we call in the Esoteric Doctrine a Solar Pralaya. When the
Waters have reached the region of the Seven Rishis, and the World, our
Solar System, is one Ocean, they stop. The Breath of Vishnu becomes a
strong Wind, which blows for another hundred Divine Years until all clouds
are dispersed. The wind is then reäbsorbed: and That—
Of which all things are made, the Lord by whom all things exist,
He who is inconceivable, without beginning, the beginning of the
Universe, reposes, sleeping upon Shesha [the Serpent of Infinity]
in the midst of the Deep. The Creator [(?) Âdikrit] Hari, sleeps
upon the Ocean [of Space] in the form of Brahmâ—glorified by
Sanaka(592) and the Saints (Siddhas) of Jana‐loka, and
contemplated by the holy denizens of Brahma‐loka, anxious for
final liberation—involved in mystic slumber, the celestial
personification of his own illusions.... This is the Dissolution
[(?) Pratisanchara] termed Incidental because Hari is its
Incidental [Ideal] Cause.(593) When the Universal Spirit wakes,
the World revives; when he closes his eyes, all things fall upon
the bed of mystic slumber. In like manner, as a thousand Great
Ages constitute a Day of Brahmâ [in the original it is Padmayoni,
the same as Abjayoni, “Lotus‐born,” not Brahmâ], so his Night
consists of the same period.... Awaking at the end of his Night,
the Unborn ... creates the Universe anew.(594)
This is “Incidental” Pralaya; what is the Elemental (Prâkritika)
Dissolution? Parâshara describes it to Maitreya as follows:
When, by dearth and fire all the Worlds and Pâtâlas [Hells] are
withered up(595) ... the progress of Elemental Dissolution is
begun. Then, first, the Waters swallow up the property of Earth
(which is the rudiment of Smell), and Earth deprived of this
property proceeds to destruction ... and becomes one with
Water.... When the Universe is, thus, pervaded by the waves of the
watery Element, its rudimentary flavour is licked up by the
Element of Fire ... and the Waters themselves are destroyed ...
and become one with Fire; and the Universe is, therefore, entirely
filled with [ethereal] Flame, which ... gradually overspreads the
whole World. While Space is [one] Flame, ... the Element of Wind
seizes upon the rudimental property, or form, which is the Cause
of Light, and that being withdrawn (pralîna), all becomes of the
nature of Air. The rudiment of form being destroyed, and Fire [(?)
Vibhâvasu] deprived of its rudiment, Air extinguishes Fire and
spreads ... over Space, which is deprived of Light, when Fire
merges into Air. Air, then, accompanied by Sound, which is the
source of Ether, extends everywhere throughout the ten regions ...
until Ether seizes upon Contact [(?) Sparsha, Cohesion—Touch?],
its rudimental property, by the loss of which, Air is destroyed,
and Ether [(?) Kha] remains unmodified; devoid of Form, Flavour,
Touch (Sparsha), and Smell, it exists [un]embodied [mûrttimat] and
vast, and pervades the whole of Space. Ether [Âkâsha], whose
characteristic property and rudiment is Sound [the “Word”] exists
alone, occupying all the vacuity of Space [or rather, occupying
the whole containment of Space]. Then the Origin [Noumenon?] of
the Elements (Bhûtâdi) devours Sound [the collective Demiurgos];
[and the hosts of Dhyân Chohans] and all the [existing]
Elements(596) are, at once, merged into their original. This
Primary Element is Consciousness, combined with the Property of
Darkness [Tâmasa—Spiritual Darkness rather], and is, itself,
swallowed up [disintegrated] by Mahat [the Universal Intellect],
whose characteristic property is Intelligence [Buddhi], and Earth
and Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the Universe. In
this manner, as [in the Beginning] were the seven forms of Nature
[Prakriti] reckoned from Mahat to Earth, so ... _these seven_
successively reënter into each other.(597)
The Egg of Brahmâ (Sarva‐mandala) is dissolved in the Waters that
surround it, with its seven zones (dvîpas), seven oceans, seven
regions, and their mountains. The investure of Water is drunk by
Fire; the (stratum of) Fire is absorbed by (that of) Air; Air
blends itself with Ether [Âkâsha]; the Primary Element [Bhûtâdi,
the origin, or rather the _cause_, of the Primary Element] devours
the Ether, and is (itself) destroyed by Intellect [Mahat, the
Great, the Universal Mind], which, along with all these, is seized
upon by Nature [Prakriti] and disappears. This Prakriti is,
essentially, the same, whether discrete or indiscrete; only that
which is discrete is, finally, lost or absorbed in the indiscrete.
Spirit [Pums] also, which is one, pure, imperishable, eternal,
all‐pervading, is a portion of that Supreme Spirit which is all
things. That Spirit [Sarvesha] which is other than (embodied)
Spirit, and in which there are no attributes of name, species
[nâman and jâti, or rûpa, hence body rather than species], or the
like ... [remains] as the (sole) Existence [Sattâ]. Nature
[Prakriti] and Spirit [Purusha] both resolve [finally] into
Supreme Spirit.(598)
This is the final Pralaya(599)—the Death of Kosmos; after which its Spirit
rests in Nirvâna, or in _That_ for which there is neither Day nor Night.
All the other Pralayas are periodical, and follow the Manvantaras in
regular succession, as the night follows the day of every human creature,
animal, and plant. The Cycle of Creation of the Lives of Kosmos is run
down; the energy of the Manifested “Word” having its growth, culmination,
and decrease, as have all things temporary, however long their duration.
The Creative Force is Eternal as noumenal; as a phenomenal manifestation,
in its aspects, it has a beginning and must, therefore, have an end.
During that interval, it has its Periods of Activity and its Periods of
Rest. And these are the Days and Nights of Brahmâ. But Brahman, the
Noumenon, never rests, as _It_ never changes, but ever _is_, though It
cannot be said to be anywhere.
The Jewish Kabalists felt the necessity of this _immutability_ in an
eternal, infinite Deity, and therefore applied the same thought to the
anthropomorphic God. The idea is poetical, and very appropriate in its
application. In the _Zohar_ we read as follows:
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.”
“Before my time” is very suggestive. It shows the God of Moses to be only
a temporary substitute, like Brahmâ, the male, a substitute and an aspect
of THAT which is immutable, and which, therefore, can take no part in the
Days, or Nights, nor have any concern whatever with reäction or
dissolution.
While the Eastern Occultists have seven modes of interpretation, the Jews
have only four; namely, the real‐mystical, the allegorical, the moral, and
the literal or Pashut. The latter is the key of the exoteric Churches and
not worth discussion. Here are several sentences, which, read in the
first, or mystical key, show the identity of the foundations of
construction in every Scripture. They are given in Isaac Myer’s excellent
book on the Kabalistic works, which he seems to have well studied. I quote
_verbatim_.
“_B’raisheeth barah elohim ath hashama’ yem v’ath haa’retz_,
_i.e._, ‘In the beginning the God(s) created the heavens and the
earth’; (the meaning of which is;) the six (Sephiroth of
Construction),(600) over which _B’raisheeth_ stands, _all belong
Below_. It created six, (and) on these stand (exist) all Things.
And those depend upon the _seven forms of the Cranium_ up to the
Dignity of all Dignities. And the second ’Earth’ does not come
into calculation, therefore it has been said: ‘And from it (that
Earth) which underwent the curse; came it forth.’ ... ‘It (the
Earth) was without form and void; and darkness was over the face
of the Abyss, and the Spirit of Elohim ... was breathing
(_me’racha’pheth_, _i.e._, hovering, brooding over, moving, ...)
over the waters.’ Thirteen depend on thirteen (forms) of the most
worthy Dignity. Six thousand years hang (are referred to) in the
first six words. The seventh (thousand, the millennium) above it
(the cursed Earth) is that which is strong by Itself. And it was
rendered entirely desolate during twelve hours (one ... day ...).
In the thirteenth, It (the Deity) shall restore them ... and
everything shall be renewed as before; and all those six shall
continue.”(601)
The “Sephiroth of Construction” are the six Dhyân Chohans, or Manus, or
Prajâpatis, synthesized by the seventh “B’raisheeth,” the First Emanation,
or Logos, and who are called, therefore, the Builders of the Lower or
Physical Universe, all belonging Below. These Six [6‐pointed star with
middle dot], whose essence is of the _Seventh_, are the Upâdhi, the Base
or Fundamental Stone, on which the Objective Universe is built, the
Noumenoi of all things. Hence they are, at the same time, the Forces of
Nature; the Seven Angels of the Presence; the Sixth and Seventh Principles
in Man; the spirito‐psycho‐physical Spheres of the Septenary Chain, the
Root Races, etc. They all “depend upon the Seven Forms of the Cranium” up
to the Highest. The “_Second_ ‘Earth’ does not come into calculation,”
because it is _no Earth_, but the Chaos, or Abyss of Space, in which
rested the Paradigmatic, or Model Universe, in the Ideation of the Over‐
Soul, brooding over it. The term “Curse” is here very misleading, for it
means simply Doom or Destiny, or _that fatality which sent it forth_ into
the objective state. This is shown by that “Earth,” under the “Curse,”
being described as “without form and void,” in whose abysmal depths the
“Breath” of the Elohim, or collective Logoi, produced, or so to say
photographed, the first Divine Ideation of the _things to be_. This
process is repeated after every Pralaya before the beginnings of a new
Manvantara, or Period of sentient individual Being. “Thirteen depend on
thirteen Forms,” refers to the thirteen Periods, personified by the
thirteen Manus, with Svâyambhuva, the fourteenth—13, instead of 14, being
an additional veil—those fourteen Manus who reign within the term of a
Mahâ Yuga, a Day of Brahmâ. These thirteen‐fourteen of the objective
Universe depend on the thirteen‐fourteen paradigmatic, ideal Forms. The
meaning of the “six thousand Years” which “hang in the first six Words,”
has again to be sought in the Indian Wisdom. They refer to the primordial
six (seven) “Kings of Edom,” who typify the Worlds, or Spheres, of our
Chain, during the First Round, as well as the primordial men of this
Round. They are the septenary pre‐Adamic First Root‐Race, or they who
existed before the Third, _Separated_ Race. As they were Shadows, and
senseless, for they had not yet eaten of the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge, they could not see the Parzuphim, or “Face could not see Face”;
that is to say, primeval men were “unconscious.” “Therefore, the
primordial (seven) Kings died,” _i.e._, were destroyed.(602) Now, who are
these Kings? They are the Kings who are the “Seven Rishis, certain
(secondary) divinities, Indra [Shakra], Manu, and the Kings his Sons [who]
_are created and perish at one period_” as _Vishnu Purâna_ tells us.(603)
For the seventh “thousand,” which is not the millennium of exoteric
Christianity, but that of Anthropogenesis, represents both the “Seventh
Period of Creation,” that of physical man, according to _Vishnu Purâna_,
and the Seventh Principle, both macrocosmic and microcosmic, and also the
Pralaya after the Seventh Period, the Night, which has the same duration
as the Day, of Brahmâ. “It was rendered entirely desolate during twelve
hours.” It is in the Thirteenth (twice six and the synthesis) that
everything shall be restored, and the “_six_ shall continue.”
Thus, the author of the _Qabbalah_ remarks quite truly that:
Long before his [Ibn Gebirol’s] time ... many centuries before the
Christian era, there was in Central Asia a “Wisdom Religion”,
fragments of which subsequently existed among the learned men of
the archaic Egyptians, the ancient Chinese, Hindûs, etc.... [And
that] the _Qabbalah_ most likely originally came from Âryan
sources, through Central Asia, Persia, India and Mesopotamia, for
from Ur and Haran came Abraham and many others, into
Palestine.(604)
Such was also the firm conviction of C. W. King, the author of _The
Gnostics and Their Remains_.
Vâmadeva Modelyar describes the coming Night most poetically. Though it is
given in _Isis Unveiled_, it is worthy of repetition.
Strange noises are heard, proceeding from every point.... These
are the precursors of the Night of Brahmâ; _dusk rises at the
horizon_, and the Sun passes away behind the thirteenth degree of
Makara [the tenth sign of the Zodiac], and will reach no more the
sign of the Mîna [the Zodiacal sign Pisces, or the Fish]. The
Gurus of the Pagodas, appointed to watch the Râshichakram
[Zodiac], may now break their circle and instruments, for they are
henceforth useless.
Gradually light pales, heat diminishes, uninhabited 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. Sûrya [the Sun] flickers and goes out, matter falls
into Dissolution [Pralaya], and Brahmâ merges back into Dyaus, 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 reënter 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.(605)
As the Satya Yuga is always the first in the series of the Four Ages or
Yugas, so the Kali ever comes the last. The Kali Yuga now reigns supreme
in India, and it seems to coincide with that of the Western Age. Anyhow,
it is curious to see how prophetic in almost all things was the writer of
_Vishnu Purâna_, when foretelling to Maitreya some of the dark influences
and sins of this Kali Yuga. For after saying that the “barbarians” will be
masters of the banks of the Indus, of Chandrabhâgâ and Kâshmîra, he adds:
There will be contemporary monarchs, reigning over the earth,
kings of churlish spirit, violent temper, and ever addicted to
falsehood and wickedness. They will inflict death on women,
children, and cows; they will seize upon the property of their
subjects [or, according to another reading, _be intent upon the
wives of others_]; they will be of limited power ... their lives
will be short, their desires insatiable.... People of various
countries intermingling with them will follow their example; and,
the barbarians being powerful [in India] in the patronage of the
princes, whilst pure tribes are neglected, the people will perish
[or, as the Commentator has it: “the Mlechchhas will be in the
centre, and the Âryas in the end”].(606) Wealth and piety will
decrease day by day, until the world will be wholly depraved....
Property alone will confer rank; wealth will be the only source of
devotion; passion will be the sole bond of union between the
sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation;
and women will be objects merely of sensual gratification....
_External types will be the only distinction of the several orders
of life_; dishonesty [anyâya] will be the (universal) means of
subsistence; weakness the cause of dependence; menace and
presumption will be substituted for learning; liberality will be
devotion; a man if rich will be reputed pure; mutual assent will
be marriage; fine clothes will be dignity.... He who is the
strongest will reign ... the people, unable to bear the heavy
burthens [khara‐bhâra, load of taxes], will take refuge among the
valleys.... Thus, in the Kali Age, will decay constantly proceed,
until the human race approaches its annihilation [pralaya]. When
... the close of the Kali age shall be nigh, a portion of that
divine Being which exists, of its own spiritual nature [Kalkî
Avatâra] ... shall descend upon Earth, ... endowed with the eight
superhuman faculties.... He will reëstablish righteousness upon
earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of Kali Yuga
shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal. The men
who are, thus, changed ... shall be as _the seeds of human
beings_, and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws
of the Krita Age (or Age of Purity). As it is said: “When the Sun
and Moon and (the Lunar Asterism) Tishya, and the planet Jupiter
are in one mansion, the Krita [or Satya] Age shall
return....”(607)
Two persons, Devâpi, of the race of Kuru, and Maru [Moru], of the family
of Ikshvâku, ... continue alive throughout the Four Ages, residing at ...
Kalâpa.(608) They will return hither, in the beginning of the Krita
Age(609) ... Maru [Moru](610) the son of Shîghra, through the power of
devotion (Yoga) is still living ... and will be the restorer of the
Kshattriya race of the Solar Dynasty.(611)
Whether right or wrong with regard to the latter prophecy, the “blessings”
of Kali Yuga are well described, and fit in admirably even with that which
one sees and hears in Europe and other civilized and Christian lands in
the full XIXth, and at the dawn of the XXth century of our great “Era of
Enlightenment.”
Section VIII. The Lotus, as a Universal Symbol.
There are no ancient symbols without a deep and philosophical meaning
attached to them, their importance and significance increasing with their
antiquity. Such is the Lotus. It is the flower sacred to Nature and her
Gods, and represents the Abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as
the emblem of the productive powers of both Spiritual and Physical Nature.
It was held as sacred from the remotest antiquity by the Âryan Hindûs, the
Egyptians, and by the Buddhists after them. It was revered in China and
Japan, and adopted as a Christian emblem by the Greek and Latin Churches,
who made of it a messenger, as do now the Christians, who have replaced it
with the water‐lily.
In the Christian religion, in every picture of the Annunciation, Gabriel,
the Archangel, appears to the Virgin Mary, holding in his hand a spray of
water‐lilies. This spray, typifying Fire and Water, or the idea of
creation and generation, symbolizes _precisely the same idea_ as the
Lotus, in the hand of the Bodhisattva who announces to Mahâ‐Mâyâ,
Gautama’s mother, the birth of Buddha, the world’s Saviour. Thus also,
were Osiris and Horus constantly represented by the Egyptians in
association with the Lotus‐flower, both being Sun‐Gods or Gods of Fire;
just as the Holy Ghost is still typified by “tongues of fire,” in the
_Acts_.
It had, and still has, its mystic meaning, which is identical in every
nation on earth. We refer the reader to Sir William Jones.(612) With the
Hindûs, the Lotus is the emblem of the productive power of Nature, through
the agency of Fire and Water, or Spirit and Matter. “O Thou Eternal! I see
Brahm, the Creator, enthroned in thee above the Lotus!” says a verse in
the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_. And Sir W. Jones shows, as already noted in the
Stanzas, that the seeds of the Lotus, even before they germinate, contain
perfectly‐formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what they will become one
day, as perfected plants. The Lotus, in India, is the symbol of prolific
Earth and, what is more, of Mount Meru. The four Angels or Genii of the
four quarters of Heaven, the Mahârâjahs of the Stanzas, stand each on a
Lotus. The Lotus is the two‐fold type of the Divine and Human
Hermaphrodite, being so to say, of dual sex.
With the Hindûs, the Spirit of Fire or Heat—which stirs up, fructifies,
and develops into concrete form, from its ideal prototype, everything
which is born of Water, or Primordial Earth—evolved Brahmâ. The Lotus‐
flower, represented as growing out of Vishnu’s navel, the God who rests in
the Waters of Space on the Serpent of Infinity, is the most graphic symbol
ever yet made. It is the Universe evolving from the Central Sun, the
Point, the ever‐concealed Germ. Lakshmî, who is the female aspect of
Vishnu, and who is also called Padma, the Lotus, in the _Râmâyana_, is
likewise shown floating on a Lotus‐flower, at the “Creation,” and during
the “Churning of the Ocean” of Space, as also springing from the “Sea of
Milk,” like Venus‐Aphrodite from the Foam of the Ocean.
... Then, seated on a lotus,
Beauty’s bright Goddess, peerless Shrî, arose
Out of the waves ...
sings an English Orientalist and poet, Sir Monier Williams.
The underlying idea, in this symbol, is very beautiful, and, furthermore,
shows an identical parentage in all the religious systems. Whether as the
Lotus or water‐lily, it signifies one and the same philosophical idea;
namely, the Emanation of the Objective from the Subjective, Divine
Ideation passing from the abstract into the concrete, or visible form.
For, as soon as Darkness, or rather that which is “Darkness” for
ignorance, has disappeared in its own realm of Eternal Light, leaving
behind itself only its Divine Manifested Ideation, the Creative Logoi have
their understanding opened, and they see in the Ideal World, hitherto
concealed in the Divine Thought, the archetypal forms of all, and proceed
to copy and build, or fashion, upon these models, forms evanescent and
transcendent.
At this stage of Action, the Demiurge is not yet the Architect. Born in
the Twilight of Action, he has yet to first perceive the Plan, to realize
the Ideal Forms, which lie buried in the Bosom of Eternal Ideation, just
as the future lotus‐leaves, the immaculate petals, are concealed within
the seed of that plant.
In Esoteric Philosophy the Demiurge, or Logos, regarded as the Creator, is
simply an abstract term, an idea, like the word “army.” As the latter is
the all‐embracing term for a body of active forces, or working
units—soldiers, so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound of a multitude
of Creators or Builders. Burnouf, the great Orientalist, seized the idea
perfectly, when he said that Brahmâ does _not_ create the Earth, any more
than the rest of the Universe.
Having evolved himself from the Soul of the World, once separated
from the First Cause, he evaporates with, and emanates, all Nature
out of himself. He does not stand above it, but is mixed up with
it; Brahmâ and the Universe form one Being, each particle of which
is in its essence Brahmâ himself, who proceeded out of himself.
In a chapter of the _Book of the Dead_, called “Transformation into the
Lotus,” the God, figured as a head emerging from this flower, exclaims:
I am the pure Lotus, emerging from the Luminous Ones.... I carry
the messages of Horus. I am the pure Lotus which comes from the
Solar Fields.(613)
The lotus‐idea may be traced even in the Elohistic first chapter of
_Genesis_, as stated in _Isis Unveiled_. It is to this idea that we must
look for the origin and explanation of the verse in the Jewish Cosmogony
which reads: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth ... the fruit‐tree
yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself.”(614) In all the
primitive religions, the Creative God is the “Son of the Father,” that is
to say, his Thought made visible; and before the Christian era, from the
Trimûrti of the Hindûs down to the three Kabalistic Heads of the
scriptures, as explained by the Jews, the Triune Godhead of each nation
was fully defined and substantiated, in its allegories.
Such is the cosmic and ideal significance of this great symbol with the
Eastern peoples. But when applied to practical and exoteric worship, which
had also its esoteric symbology, the Lotus, in time, became the carrier
and container of a more terrestrial idea. No dogmatic religion has ever
escaped having the sexual element in it; and to this day it soils the
moral beauty of the root idea of symbology. The following is quoted from
the same Kabalistic MS. which we have already cited on several occasions:
Pointing to like signification was the Lotus growing in the waters
of the Nile. Its mode of growth peculiarly fitted it as a symbol
of the generative activities. The flower of the Lotus, which is
the bearer of the seed for reproduction, as the result of its
maturing, is connected by its placenta‐like attachment to mother‐
earth, or the womb of Isis, through the water of the womb, that
is, the river Nile, by the long cord‐like stalk, the umbilicus.
Nothing can be plainer than the symbol, and to make it perfect in
its intended signification, a child is sometimes represented as
seated in or issuing from the flower.(615) Thus Osiris and Isis,
the children of Cronus, or time without end, in the development of
their nature‐forces, in this picture become the parents of man
under the name Horus.
We cannot lay too great stress upon the use of this generative
function as a basis for a symbolical language, and a scientific
art‐speech. Thought upon the idea leads at once to reflection upon
the subject of creative cause. In its workings Nature is observed
to have fashioned a wonderful piece of living mechanism, governed
by an added living soul; the life development and history of which
soul, as to its whence, its present, and its whither, surpass all
efforts of the human intellect.(616) The new‐born is an ever‐
recurring miracle, an evidence that within the workshop of the
womb an intelligent creative power has intervened to fasten a
living soul to a physical machine. The amazing wonderfulness of
the fact attaches a holy sacredness to all connected with the
organs of reproduction, as the dwelling and place of evident
constructive intervention of deity.
This is a correct rendering of the underlying ideas of old, of the purely
pantheistic conceptions, _impersonal_ and reverential, of the archaic
philosophers of the prehistoric ages. It is not so, however, when applied
to sinful humanity, to the gross ideas attached to _personality_.
Therefore, no pantheistic philosopher would fail to find the remarks that
follow the above, and which represent the anthropomorphism of Judean
symbology, other than dangerous for the sacredness of true religion, and
fitting only for our materialistic age, which is the direct outcome and
result of that anthropomorphic character. For this is the key‐note to the
entire spirit and essence of the _Old __ Testament_, as the MS. states,
treating of the symbolism of the art‐speech of the _Bible_:
Therefore the locality of the womb is to be taken as the Most Holy
Place, the Sanctum Sanctorum, and the veritable Temple of the
Living God.(617) With man, the possession of the woman has always
been considered as an essential part of himself, to make one out
of two, and jealously guarded as sacred. Even the part of the
ordinary house or home consecrated to the dwelling of the wife was
called the _penetralia_, the secret or sacred, and hence the
metaphor of the Holy of Holies, of sacred constructions taken from
the idea of the sacredness of the organs of generation. Carried to
the extreme of description(618) by metaphor, this part of the
house is described in the Sacred Books as the “between the thighs
of the house,” and sometimes the idea is carried out
constructively in the great door‐opening of Churches placed inward
between flanking buttresses.
No such thought, “carried to the extreme,” ever existed among the old
primitive Âryans. This is proven by the fact that, in the Vedic period,
their women were not placed apart from men in _penetralia_, or Zenanas.
This seclusion began when the Mahommedans—the next heirs to Hebrew
symbolism, after Christian ecclesiasticism—had conquered the land and
gradually enforced their ways and customs upon the Hindûs. The pre‐ and
post‐Vedic woman was as free as man; and no impure terrestrial thought was
ever mixed with the religious symbology of the early Âryans. The idea and
application are purely Semitic. This is corroborated by the writer of the
said intensely learned and Kabalistic revelation, when he closes the
above‐quoted passages by adding:
If to these organs as symbols of creative cosmic agencies the idea
of the origin of measures as well as of time‐periods can be
attached, then indeed, in the constructions of the Temples as
Dwellings of Deity, or of Jehovah, that part designated as the
Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy Place, should borrow its title
from the recognized sacredness of the generative organs,
considered as symbols of measures as well as of creative cause.
With the ancient _wise, there was no name, and no idea, and no
symbol_ of a First Cause.
Most decidedly not. Rather never give a thought to it and leave it for
ever nameless, as the early Pantheists did, than degrade the sacredness of
that Ideal of Ideals, by dragging down its symbols into such
anthropomorphic forms! Here again one perceives the immense chasm between
Âryan and Semitic religious thought, the two opposite poles, Sincerity and
Concealment. With the Brâhmans, who have never invested the natural
procreative functions of mankind with an “original sin” element, it is a
_religious duty_ to have a son. A Brâhman, in days of old, having
accomplished his mission of human creator, retired to the jungle, and
passed the rest of his days in religious meditation. He had accomplished
his duty to nature, as mortal man and its co‐worker, and henceforth gave
all his thoughts to the spiritual and immortal portion of himself,
regarding the terrestrial as a mere illusion, an evanescent dream—which,
indeed it is. With the Semite, it was different. He invented a temptation
of flesh in a garden of Eden, and showed his God—esoterically, the Tempter
and the Ruler of Nature—_cursing for ever_ an act, which was in the
logical programme of that Nature.(619) All this exoterically, as in the
_cloak_ and dead‐letter of _Genesis_ and the rest. At the same time,
_esoterically_, he regarded the supposed _sin_ and _fall_ as an act so
sacred, as to choose the organ, the perpetrator of the _original sin_, as
the fittest and most sacred symbol to represent that God, who is shown as
branding its entering into function as disobedience and everlasting _sin!_
Who can ever fathom the paradoxical depths of the Semitic mind! And this
paradoxical element, _minus_ its innermost significance, has now passed
entirely into Christian theology and dogma!
Whether the early Fathers of the Church knew the esoteric meaning of the
Hebrew _Testament_, or whether only a few of them were aware of it, while
the others remained ignorant of the secret, is for posterity to decide.
One thing, at any rate, is certain. As the Esotericism of the _New
Testament_ agrees perfectly with that of the Hebrew Mosaic Books; and
since, at the same time, a number of purely Egyptian symbols and Pagan
dogmas in general—the Trinity, for example—have been copied by, and
incorporated into, the Synoptics and St. John, it becomes evident that the
identity of those symbols was known to the writers of the _New Testament_,
whoever they may have been. They must have been also aware of the priority
of the Egyptian Esotericism, since they have adopted several symbols which
typify purely Egyptian conceptions and beliefs, in their outward and
inward meaning, and which are not to be found in the Jewish Canon. One of
these is the water‐lily in the hands of the Archangel, in the early
representations of his appearance to the Virgin Mary; and these symbolical
images are preserved to this day in the iconography of the Greek and Roman
Churches. Thus Water, Fire and the Cross, as well as the Dove, the Lamb
and other Sacred Animals, with all their combinations, esoterically yield
an identical meaning, and must have been accepted as an improvement upon
Judaism pure and simple.
For the Lotus and Water are among the oldest symbols, and in their origin
are purely Âryan, though they became common property during the branching
off of the Fifth Race. To give an example; letters, as well as numbers,
were all mystic, whether in combination, or taken separately. The most
sacred of all is the letter M. It is both feminine and masculine, or
androgyne, and is made to symbolize Water in its origin, the Great Deep.
It is a mystic letter in all languages, Eastern and Western, and stands as
a glyph for the waves, thus [three triangles]. In the Âryan Esotericism,
as in the Semitic, this letter has always stood for the Waters. In
Sanskrit, for instance, Makara, the tenth sign of the Zodiac, means a
Crocodile, or rather an aquatic monster associated always with Water. The
letter Ma is equivalent to, and corresponds with, the number 5, which is
composed of a Binary, the symbol of the two sexes separated, and of the
Ternary, the symbol of the Third Life, the progeny of the Binary. This,
again, is often symbolized by a Pentagon, the latter being a sacred sign,
a divine Monogram. Maitreya is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha, and
the Kalkî Avatâra of the Brâhmans, the last Messiah who will come at the
culmination of the Great Cycle. It is also the initial letter of the Greek
Metis, or Divine Wisdom; of Mimra, the Word, or Logos; and of Mithras, the
Mihr, the Monad Mystery. All these are born in, and from, the Great Deep,
and are the Sons of Mâyâ, the “Mother”; in Egypt, Moot; in Greece,
Minerva, Divine Wisdom; of Mary, or Miriam, Myrrha, etc., the Mother of
the Christian Logos; and of Mâyâ, the Mother of Buddha. Mâdhava and
Mâdhavî are the titles of the most important Gods and Goddesses of the
Hindû Pantheon. Finally, Mandala is, in Sanskrit, a “Circle,” or an Orb,
also the ten divisions of the _Rig Veda_. The most sacred names in India
generally begin with this letter, from Mahat, the first manifested
Intellect, and Mandara, the great mountain used by the Gods to churn the
Ocean, down to Mandâkinî, the heavenly Gangâ, or Ganges, Manu, etc., etc.
Will this be called a coincidence? A strange one is it then, indeed, when
we see even Moses, found in the Water of the Nile, with the symbolical
consonant in his name. And Pharaoh’s daughter “called his name Moses; and
she said, Because I drew him out of the Water.”(620) Besides which, the
Hebrew sacred name of God, applied to this letter M, is Meborach, the
“Holy” or the “Blessed,” and the name for the Water of the Flood is Mbul.
A reminder of the “Three Maries” at the Crucifixion, and their connection
with Mare, the Sea, or Water, may close these examples. This is why, in
Judaism and Christianity, the Messiah is always connected with Water,
Baptism; and also with the Fishes, the sign of the Zodiac called Mînam in
Sanskrit, and even with the Matsya (Fish) Avatâra, and the Lotus, the
symbol of the womb, or with the water‐lily, which has the same
signification.
In the relics of ancient Egypt, the greater the antiquity of the votive
symbols and emblems of the objects exhumed, the oftener are Lotus‐flowers
and Water found in connection with the Solar Gods. The God Khnoom, the
Moist Power, or Water, as Thales taught, being the principle of all
things, sits on a throne enshrined in a Lotus. The God Bes stands on a
Lotus, ready to devour his progeny. Thot, the God of Mystery and Wisdom,
the sacred Scribe of Amenti, wearing the solar disk as head gear, sits
with a bull’s head—the sacred bull of Mendes being a form of Thot—and a
human body, on a full blown Lotus. Finally, it is the Goddess Hiqit, under
her shape of a frog, who rests on the Lotus, thus showing her connection
with water. And it is from the unpoetical shape of this frog‐symbol,
undeniably the glyph of the most ancient of the Egyptian Deities, that the
Egyptologists have been vainly trying to unravel the mystery and functions
of the Goddess. Its adoption in the Church, by the early Christians, shows
that they knew it better than our modern Orientalists. The “frog or toad
Goddess” was one of the chief Cosmic Deities connected with Creation, on
account of this animal’s amphibious nature, and chiefly because of its
apparent resurrection, after long ages of solitary life, enshrined in old
walls, in rocks, etc. She not only participated in the organization of the
World, together with Khnoom, but was also connected with _the dogma of
resurrection_.(621) There must have been some very profound and sacred
meaning attached to this symbol, since, notwithstanding the risk of being
charged with a disgusting form of zoölatry, the early Egyptian Christians
adopted it in their Churches. A frog or toad, enshrined in a Lotus‐flower,
or simply without the latter emblem, was the form chosen for the _Church‐
lamps_, on which were engraved the words, “Ἐγώ εἰμι ἀναστάσις”—I am the
resurrection.(622) These frog‐Goddesses are also found on all the mummies.
Section IX. The Moon; Deus Lunus, Phœbe.
This archaic symbol is the most poetical of all symbols, as also the most
philosophical. The ancient Greeks brought it into prominence, and the
modern poets have worn it threadbare. The Queen of Night, riding in the
majesty of her peerless light in Heaven, throwing all, even Hesperus, into
darkness, and spreading her silver mantle over the whole Sidereal World,
has ever been a favourite theme with all the poets of Christendom, from
Milton and Shakespeare down to the latest versifier. But the refulgent
lamp of night, with her suite of stars unnumbered, spoke only to the
imagination of the profane. Until lately, Religion and Science had nought
to do with the beautiful mythos. Yet, the cold chaste Moon, she, who, in
the words of Shelley:
... makes all beautiful on which she smiles,
That wandering shrine of soft, yet icy flame
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,
And warms not, but illumes....
stands in closer relations to Earth than any other sidereal orb. The Sun
is the Giver of Life to the whole Planetary System; the Moon is the Giver
of Life to our Globe; and the early races understood and knew it, even in
their infancy. She is the Queen, and she is the King. She was King Soma
before she became transformed into Phœbe and the chaste Diana. She is
preëminently the Deity of the Christians, through the Mosaic and
Kabalistic Jews, though the civilized world may have remained ignorant of
the fact for long ages; in fact, ever since the last initiated Father of
the Church died, carrying with him into his grave the secrets of the Pagan
Temples. For such Fathers as Origen or Clemens Alexandrinus, the Moon was
Jehovah’s living symbol; the Giver of Life and the Giver of Death, the
Disposer of Being—in _our_ World. For, if Artemis was Luna in Heaven, and,
with the Greeks, Diana on Earth, who presided over child‐birth and life;
with the Egyptians, she was Hekat (Hecate) in Hell, the Goddess of Death,
who ruled over magic and enchantments. More than this; as the personified
Moon, whose phenomena are triadic, Diana‐Hecate‐Luna is the _three in
one_. For she is _Diva triformis_, _tergemina_, _triceps_, three heads on
one neck,(623) like Brahmâ‐Vishnu‐Shiva. Hence she is the prototype of our
Trinity, which has not always been entirely male. The number seven, so
prominent in the _Bible_, so sacred in the seventh day, or Sabbath, came
to the Jews from antiquity, deriving its origin from the four‐fold number
7 contained in the 28 days of the lunar month, each septenary portion
thereof being typified by one quarter of the Moon.
It is worth the trouble of presenting, in this work, a bird’s‐eye view of
the origin and development of the lunar myth and worship, in historical
antiquity, on our side of the globe. Its earlier origin is untraceable by
_exact_ Science, which rejects all tradition; while for Theology, which,
under the guidance of the crafty Popes, has put a brand on every fragment
of literature that does not bear the _imprimatur_ of the Church of Rome,
its archaic history is a sealed book. Whether the Egyptian or the Âryan
Hindû religious philosophy is the more ancient—the Secret Doctrine says it
is the latter—does not much matter, in this instance, as the Lunar and
Solar “worship” are the most ancient in the world. Both have survived, and
prevail to this day throughout the whole world; with some openly, with
others—as, for instance, in Christian symbology—secretly. The cat, a lunar
symbol, was sacred to Isis, who was the Moon in one sense, just as Osiris
was the Sun, and is often seen on the top of the Sistrum in the hand of
the Goddess. This animal was held in great veneration in the city of
Bubastis, which went into deep mourning on the death of the sacred cats,
because Isis, as the Moon, was particularly worshipped in that city of
mysteries. The astronomical symbolism connected with it has already been
given in Section I, and no one has better described it than Mr. Gerald
Massey, in his _Lectures_ and in _The Natural Genesis_. The eye of the
cat, it is said, seems to follow the lunar phases in their growth and
decline, and its orbs shine like two stars in the darkness of night. Hence
the mythological allegory which shows Diana hiding in the Moon, under the
shape of a cat, when she was seeking, in company with other Deities, to
escape the pursuit of Typhon, as related in the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid.
The Moon, in Egypt, was both the “Eye of Horns” and the “Eye of Osiris,”
the Sun.
The same with the Cynocephalus. The dog‐headed ape was a glyph to
symbolize the Sun and Moon, in turn, though the Cynocephalus is really
_more a Hermetic than a religious symbol_. For it is the hieroglyph of
Mercury, the planet, and of the Mercury of the Alchemical philosophers,
who say that:
Mercury has to be ever _near_ Isis, as her _minister_, for without
Mercury neither Isis nor Osiris can accomplish anything in the
Great Work.
The Cynocephalus, whenever represented with the caduceus, the crescent, or
the lotus, is a glyph of the “philosophical” Mercury; but when seen with a
reed, or a roll of parchment, he stands for Hermes, the secretary and
adviser of Isis, as Hanumâna filled the same office with Râma.
Though the regular Sun‐Worshippers, the Parsîs, are few, yet not only is
the bulk of the Hindû mythology and history based upon, and interblended
with, these two worships, but so is even the Christian religion itself.
From their origin down to our modern day, it has coloured the theologies
of both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches. Indeed, the difference
between the Aryan Hindû and the Âryan European faiths is very small, if
only the fundamental ideas of both are taken into consideration. Hindûs
are proud of calling themselves Sûryavanshas and Chandravanshas, of the
_Solar_ and _Lunar_ Dynasties. The Christians pretend to regard this as
idolatry, and yet they adhere to a religion entirely based upon Solar and
Lunar worship. It is vain and useless for the Protestants to exclaim
against the Roman Catholics for their “Mariolatry,” based on the ancient
cult of lunar Goddesses, when they themselves worship Jehovah,
preëminently a _lunar_ God; and when both Churches have accepted in their
theologies the _Sun_‐Christ and the _Lunar_ Trinity.
What is known of Chaldean Moon‐Worship, of the Babylonian God, Sin, called
by the Greeks Deus Lunus, is very little; and that little is apt to
mislead the profane student, who fails to grasp the esoteric significance
of the symbols. As popularly known to the ancient profane philosophers and
writers—for those who were initiated were pledged to silence—the Chaldeans
were the worshippers of the Moon under _her_, and _his_, various names,
just as were the Jews, who came after them.
In the unpublished MS. on the Art‐Speech, already mentioned, giving a key
to the formation of the ancient symbolical language, a logical _raison
d’être_ is brought forward for this double worship. It is written by a
wonderfully well‐informed and acute scholar and Mystic, who gives it in
the comprehensive form of a hypothesis. The latter, however, forcibly
becomes a proven fact in the history of religious evolution in human
thought, to anyone who has ever had a glimpse into the secret of ancient
symbology. Thus, he says:
One of the first occupations among men, connected with those of
actual necessity, would be the perception of time periods,(624)
marked on the vaulted arch of the heavens, sprung and rising over
the level floor of the horizon, or the plain of still water. These
would come to be marked as those of day and night, of the phases
of the moon, of its stellar or synodic revolutions, and of the
period of the solar year with recurrence of the seasons, and with
the application to such periods of the natural measure of day or
night, or of the day divided into the light and the dark. It would
also be discovered that there was a longest and shortest solar
day, and two solar days of equal day and night, within the period
of the solar year; and the points in the year of these could be
marked with the greatest precision in the starry groups of the
heavens or the constellations, subject to that retrograde movement
thereof, which in time would require a correction by
intercalation, as was the case in the description of the Flood,
where correction of 150 days was made for a period of 600 years,
during which confusion of landmarks had increased.... This would
naturally come to pass with all races in all time; and such
knowledge must be taken to have been inherent in the human race,
prior to what we call the historic period as during the same.
On this basis, the author seeks for some natural physical function,
possessed in common by the human race, and connected with the periodical
manifestations, such that “the connection between the two kinds of
phenomena ... became fixed in common or popular usage.” He finds it in:
(_a_) The feminine physiological phenomena every lunar month of 28
days, or 4 weeks of 7 days each, so that 13 occurrences of the
period should happen in 364 days, which is the solar week‐year of
52 weeks of 7 days each. (_b_) The quickening of the fœtus is
marked by a period of 126 days, or 18 weeks of 7 days each. (_c_)
That period which is called “the period of viability” is one of
210 days, or 30 weeks of 7 days each. (_d_) The period of
parturition is accomplished in 280 days, or a period of 40 weeks
of 7 days each, or 10 lunar months of 28 days each, or of 9
calendar months of 31 days each, counting on the royal arch of
heavens for the measure of the period of traverse from the
darkness of the womb to the light and glory of conscious
existence, that continuing inscrutable mystery and miracle....
Thus the observed periods of time marking the workings of the
birth function would naturally become a basis of astronomical
calculation.... We may almost affirm ... that this was the mode of
reckoning among all nations, either independently, or
intermediately and indirectly by tuition. It was the mode with the
Hebrews, for even to‐day they calculate the calendar by means of
the 354 and 355 of the lunar year, and we possess a special
evidence that it was the mode with the ancient Egyptians, as to
which this is the proof:
The basic idea underlying the religious philosophy of the Hebrews
was that God contained all things within himself,(625) and that
man was his image, man including woman.... The place of the man
and woman with the Hebrews was among the Egyptians occupied by the
bull and the cow, sacred to Osiris and Isis,(626) who were
represented, respectively, by a man having a bull’s head, and a
woman having the head of a cow; which symbols were worshipped.
Notoriously Osiris was the Sun and the river Nile, the tropical
year of 365 days, which number is the value of the word Neilos,
and the bull, as he was also the principle of fire and of life‐
giving force; while Isis was the moon, the bed of the river Nile,
or the Mother Earth, for the parturient energies of which water
was a necessity, the lunar year of 354‐364 days, the time‐maker of
the periods of gestation, and the cow marked by, or with, the
crescent new moon....
But the use of the cow of the Egyptians for the woman of the
Hebrews was not intended as of any radical difference of
signification, but a concurrence in the teaching, intended, and
merely as the substitution of a symbol of common import, which was
this, viz., the period of parturition with the cow and the woman
was held to be the same, or 280 days, or ten lunar months of 4
weeks each. And in this period consisted the essential value of
this animal symbol, whose mark was that of the crescent
moon.(627)... These parturient and natural periods are found to
have been subjects of symbolism all over the world. They were thus
used by the Hindûs, and are found to be most plainly set forth by
the ancient Americans, in the Richardson and Gest tablets, in the
Palenque Cross and elsewhere, and manifestly lay at the base of
the formation of the calendar forms of the Mayas of Yucatan, the
Hindûs, the Assyrians, and the ancient Babylonians, as well as the
Egyptians and old Hebrews. The natural symbols ... would be either
the phallus or the phallus and yoni, ... _male_ and _female_.
Indeed, the words translated by the generalizing terms male and
female, in the 27th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis are ...
_sacr_ and _n’cabvah_ or, literally, phallus and yoni.(628) While
the representation of the phallic emblems would barely indicate
the genital members of the human body, when their functions and
the development of the seed‐vesicles emanating from them were
considered, there would come into indication a mode of measures of
lunar time, and through lunar, of solar time.
This is the physiological or anthropological key to the Moon symbol. The
key that opens the mystery of Theogony, or the evolution of the
manvantaric Gods, is more complicated, and has nothing phallic in it.
There, all is mystical and divine. But the Jews, beyond connecting Jehovah
directly with the Moon as a generative God, preferred to ignore the higher
Hierarchies, and have made their Patriarchs of some of these zodiacal
constellations and planetary Gods, thus euhemerizing the purely
theosophical idea and dragging it down to the level of sinful humanity.
The MS., from which the above is extracted, explains very clearly to what
Hierarchy of Gods Jehovah belonged, and who this Jewish God was; for it
shows, in clear language, that which the writer has always insisted upon,
namely, that the God with which the Christians have burdened themselves,
was no better than the lunar symbol of the reproductive or generative
faculty in Nature. They have ever ignored even the Hebrew secret God of
the Kabalists, Ain Suph, a conception as grand as Parabrahman in the
earliest Kabalistic and mystical ideas. But it is not the _Kabalah_ of
Rosenroth that can ever give the true original teachings of Shimeon Ben
Yochaï, which were as metaphysical and philosophical as any could be. And
how many are there among the students of the _Kabalah_ who know anything
of them except in their distorted Latin translations? Let us glance at the
idea which led the ancient Jews to adopt a substitute for the Ever‐
Unknowable, and which has misled the Christians into mistaking the
substitute for the reality.
If to these organs [phallus and yoni] as symbols of creative
cosmic agencies the idea of ... time periods can be attached,
then, indeed, in the construction of Temples as Dwellings of
Deity, or of Jehovah, that part designated as the Holy of Holies,
or The Most Holy Place, should borrow its title from the
recognized sacredness of the generative organs, considered as
symbols of measures as well as of creative cause.
With the ancient Wise, there was no name, and no idea, and no
symbol, of a First Cause.(629) With the Hebrews, the indirect
conception of such was couched in a term of negation of
comprehension, viz., Ain Suph, or the Without Bounds. But the
symbol of _its first comprehensible manifestation_ was the
conception of a circle with its diameter line, to at once carry a
geometric, phallic, and astronomic idea; ... for the one takes its
birth from the 0, or the circle, without which it could not be,
and from the 1, or primal one, spring the 9 digits, and,
geometrically, all plane shapes. So in Kabalah this circle, with
its diameter line, is the picture of the 10 Sephiroth, or
Emanations, composing the Adam Kadmon, or the Archetypal Man, the
creative origin of all things.... This idea of connecting the
picture of the circle and its diameter line, that is, the number
10, with the signification of the reproductive organs, and the
Most Holy Place ... was carried out constructively in the King’s
Chamber, or Holy of Holies, of the great Pyramid, in the
Tabernacle of Moses, and in the Holy of Holies of the Temple of
Solomon.... It is _the picture of a double womb_, for in Hebrew
the letter _Hé_ (ה) is at the same time the number 5, and the
symbol of the womb, and twice 5 is 10, or the phallic number.
This “double womb” also shows the duality of the idea carried from the
highest or spiritual down to the lowest or terrestrial plane; and limited
by the Jews to the latter. With them, therefore, the number seven has
acquired the most prominent place in their exoteric religion, a cult of
external forms and empty rituals; take, for instance, their Sabbath, the
seventh day sacred to their Deity, the Moon, symbolical of the generative
Jehovah. But, with other nations, the number seven was typical of
theogonic evolution, of Cycles, Cosmic Planes, and the Seven Forces and
Occult Powers in Kosmos, as a Boundless Whole, whose first upper Triangle
was unreachable to the finite intellect of man. While other nations,
therefore, busied themselves, in their forcible limitation of Kosmos in
Space and Time, only with its septenary manifested plane, the Jews centred
this number solely in the Moon, and based all their sacred calculations
thereupon. Hence we find the thoughtful author of the MS. just quoted,
remarking, in reference to the metrology of the Jews, that:
If 20,612 be multiplied by 4/3, _the product will afford a base
for the ascertainment of the mean revolution of the moon_; and if
this product be again multiplied by 4/3, this continued product
will afford a base for finding the exact period of the mean solar
year, ... this form ... becoming, for the finding of astronomical
periods of time, of very great service.
This double number—male and female—is symbolized also in some well‐known
idols; for instance:
Ardhanârî‐Îshvara, the Isis of the Hindûs, Eridanus, or Ardan, or
the Hebrew Jordan, or _source of descent_. She is standing on a
lotus‐leaf floating on the water. But the signification is, that
it is androgyne or hermaphrodite, that is phallus and yoni
combined, the number 10, the Hebrew letter _Yod_ (י), the
_containment of Jehovah_. She, or rather she‐he, gives the minutes
of the same circle of 360 degrees.
“Jehovah,” in its best aspect is Binah, the “Upper mediating Mother, the
Great Sea or Holy Spirit,” and therefore rather a synonym of Mary, the
Mother of Jesus, than of his Father; that “Mother, being the Latin Mare,”
the Sea, is here, also, Venus, the Stella del Mare, or “Star of the Sea.”
The ancestors of the mysterious Akkadians—the Chandravanshas or
Indovanshas, the Lunar Kings, whom tradition shows reigning at Prayâga
(Allahabad), ages before our era—had come from India, and brought with
them the worship of their forefathers, of Soma, and his son Budha, which
afterwards became that of the Chaldeans. Yet such adoration, apart from
popular Astrolatry and Heliolatry, was in no sense _idolatry_. No more, at
any rate, than the modern Roman Catholic symbolism which connects the
Virgin Mary, the Magna Mater of the Syrians and Greeks, with the Moon.
Of this worship, the most pious Roman Catholics feel quite proud, and
loudly confess to it. In a _Mémoire_ to the French Academy, the Marquis De
Mirville says:
It is only natural that, as an unconscious prophecy, Ammon‐Râ
should be his mother’s husband, since the Magna Mater of the
Christians _is precisely the spouse of that son she conceives_....
We [Christians] can understand now _why Neïth throws radiance on
the Sun, while remaining the Moon_, since the Virgin, who is the
Queen of Heaven, _as was Neïth_, clothes the Christ‐Sun, as does
Neïth, and is clothed by him; “_Tu vestis solem et te sol vestit_”
[as is sung by the Roman Catholics during their service].
We [Christians] understand also how it is that the famous
inscription at Saïs should have stated that “none has ever lifted
my veil [peplum],” considering that this sentence, literally
translated, _is the summary of what is sung in the Church on the
Day of the Immaculate Conception_.(630)
Surely nothing could be more sincere than this! It justifies entirely what
Mr. Gerald Massey has said in his Lecture on “Luniolatry, Ancient and
Modern”:
The man in the moon [Osiris‐Sut, Jehovah‐Satan, Christ‐Judas, and
other Lunar Twins] is often charged with bad conduct.... In the
lunar phenomena the moon was one, as _the_ moon, which was two‐
fold in sex, and three‐fold in character, as mother, child, and
adult male. Thus the child of the moon became the consort of his
own mother! It could not be _helped_ if there was to be any
reproduction. He was compelled to be his own father! These
relationships were repudiated by later sociology, and the
primitive man in the moon got tabooed. Yet in its latest, most
inexplicable phase, this has become the central doctrine of the
grossest superstition the world has seen, for these lunar
phenomena and their humanly represented relationships, the
incestuous included, are the very foundations of the Christian
Trinity in Unity. Through ignorance of the symbolism, the simple
representation of early time has become the most profound
religious mystery in modern Luniolatry. The Roman Church, without
being in any wise ashamed of the proof, portrays the Virgin Mary
arrayed with the sun, and the horned moon at her feet, holding the
lunar infant in her arms—as child and consort of the mother moon!
The mother, child, and adult male, are fundamental....
In this way it can be proved that our Christology is mummified
mythology, and legendary lore, which have been palmed off upon us
in the _Old Testament_ and the _New_, as divine revelation uttered
by the very voice of God.(631)
A charming allegory is found in the _Zohar_, one which unveils better than
anything else ever did the true character of Jehovah, or YHVH, in the
primitive conception of the Hebrew Kabalists. It is now found in the
philosophy of Ibn Gebirol’s _Kabalah_, translated by Isaac Myer.
In the introduction written by R. ’Hiz’qee‐yah, which is very old,
and forms part of our Brody edition of the _Zohar_ (1. 5b. _sq._)
is an account of a journey taken by R. El’azar, son of R. Shim‐on
b. Yo’haï, and R. Abbah.... They met a man bearing a heavy
burden.... They conversed together ... and the explanations of the
Thorah, by the man with the burden, were so wonderful, that they
asked him for his name; he replied: “Do not ask me who I am; but
we will all proceed with the explanation of the Thorah [Law].”
They asked: “Who caused thee thus to walk and carry such a heavy
load?” He answered: “The letter י (Yod, which = 10, and is the
symbolical letter of Kether and the essence and germ of the Holy
Name יהוה, YHVH) made war, etc.”.... They said to him: “If thou
wilt tell us the name of thy father, we will kiss the dust of thy
feet.” He replied: “... As to my father, _he had his dwelling in
the Great Sea, and was a fish therein_ [like Vishnu and Dagon or
Oannes]; which [first] destroyed the Great Sea ... and he was
great and mighty and ‘Ancient of Days,’ until he swallowed all the
other fishes in the (Great) Sea.” ... R. El’azar listened to his
words and said to him: “Thou art the Son of the Holy Flame, thou
art the Son of Rab Ham‐’_nun_‐ah Sabah (the old) [the _fish_ in
Aramaic or Chaldee is _nun_ (_noon_)], thou art the Son of the
Light of the Thorah [Dharma], etc.”(632)
Then the author explains that the feminine Sephira, Binah, is termed by
the Kabalists the Great Sea: therefore Binah, whose divine names are
Jehovah, Yah, and Elohim, is simply the Chaldean Tiamat, the Female Power,
the Thalatth of Berosus, who presides over the Chaos, and was made out
later by Christian Theology to be the Serpent and the Devil. She‐He (Yah‐
hovah) is the supernal Hé, and Eve. This Yah‐hovah then, or Jehovah, is
identical with our Chaos—Father, Mother, Son—on the material plane, and in
the purely physical World; Deus and Demon, at one and the same time; the
Sun and Moon, Good and Evil, God and Demon.
Lunar magnetism generates life, preserves and destroys it, psychically as
well as physically. And if, astronomically, the Moon is one of the seven
planets of the Ancient World, in Theogony she is one of the Regents
thereof—with Christians now as much as with Pagans, the former referring
to her under the name of one of their Archangels, and the latter under
that of one of their Gods.
Therefore the meaning of the “fairy tale,” translated by Chwolsohn from
the Arabic translation of an old Chaldean MS., of Qû‐tâmy being instructed
by the _idol_ of the Moon, is easily understood. Seldenus tells us the
secret, as well as Maimonides in his _Guide to the Perplexed_.(633) The
worshippers of the Teraphim, or the Jewish Oracles, “carved images, and
claimed that the light of the principal stars [planets] permeating these
through and through, the Angelic Virtues [or the Regents of the stars and
planets] conversed with them, teaching them many most useful things and
arts.” And Seldenus explains that the Teraphim were built and composed
after the position of certain planets, those which the Greeks called
στοιχεῖα, and according to figures that were located in the sky, and
called ἀλεξητήριοι, or the Tutelary Gods. Those who traced out the
στοιχεῖα were called στοιχειωματικοί, or diviners by the στοιχεῖα.(634)
It is such sentences, however, in the _Nabathean Agriculture_, which have
frightened the men of Science, and made them proclaim the work “either an
apocryphon, or a fairy tale, unworthy of the notice of an Academician.” At
the same time, as shown, zealous Roman Catholics and Protestants
metaphorically tore it to pieces; the former because “it described the
worship of demons,” the latter because it was “ungodly.” Once more, all
are wrong. It is _not_ a fairy tale; and, as far as the pious Churchmen
are concerned, the same worship may be shown in their Scriptures, however
disfigured by translation. Solar and Lunar worship and also the worship of
the Stars and Elements can be traced, and figure in Christian Theology.
These are defended by Papists, and can be stoutly denied by the
Protestants only at their own risk and peril. Two instances may be given.
Ammianus Marcellinus teaches that ancient divinations were always
accomplished with the help of the Spirits of the Elements (_Spiritus
Elementorum_, and in Greek πνεύματα τῶν στοιχείων).(635)
But it is found now that the Planets, the Elements, and the Zodiac, were
figured not only at Heliopolis by the twelve stones called “Mysteries of
the Elements” (_Elementorum Arcana_), but also in Solomon’s Temple, and,
as pointed out by various writers, in several old Italian churches and
even at _Notre Dame de Paris_, where they can be seen to this day.
No symbol, even including the Sun, was more complex in its manifold
meanings than the lunar symbol. The sex was, of course, dual. With some it
was male; as, for instance, the Hindû “King Soma,” and the Chaldean Sin;
with other nations it was female, the beauteous Goddesses Diana‐Luna,
Ilithyia, Lucina. With the Tauri, human victims were sacrificed to
Artemis, a form of the lunar Goddess; the Cretans called her Dictynna, and
the Medes and Persians Anaïtis, as shown by an inscription of Colœ:
Ἀρτέμιδι Ἀνάειτι. But, we are now concerned chiefly with the most chaste
and pure of the virgin Goddesses, Luna‐Artemis, to whom Pamphôs was the
first to give the surname of Καλλίστη, and of whom Hippolytus wrote:
Καλλίστα πολὺ παρθένων.(636) This Artemis‐Lochia, the Goddess that
presided at conception and childbirth, is, in her functions and as the
triple Hecate, the Orphic Deity, the predecessor of the God of the Rabbins
and pre‐Christian Kabalists, and his lunar type. The Goddess Τρίμορφος was
the personified symbol of the various and successive aspects represented
by the Moon in each of her three phases; and this interpretation was
already that of the Stoics,(637) while the Orpheans explained the epithet
Τρίμορφος by the three kingdoms of Nature over which she reigned. Jealous,
bloodthirsty, revengeful and exacting, Hecate‐Luna is a worthy counterpart
of the “jealous God” of the Hebrew prophets.
The whole riddle of the Solar and Lunar worship, as now traced in the
churches, hangs indeed on this world‐old mystery of lunar phenomena. The
correlative forces in the “Queen of Night,” that lie latent for Modern
Science, but are fully active to the knowledge of Eastern Adepts, explain
well the thousand and one images under which the Moon was represented by
the Ancients. It also shows how much more profoundly learned in the
Selenic Mysteries were the Ancients than are now our modern Astronomers.
The whole Pantheon of the lunar Gods and Goddesses, Nephtys or Neïth,
Proserpina, Melitta, Cybele, Isis, Astarte, Venus, and Hecate, on the one
hand, and Apollo, Dionysus, Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, Atys, Thammuz, etc.,
on the other, all show on the face of their names and titles—those of
“Sons” and “Husbands” of their “Mothers”—their identity with the Christian
Trinity. In every religious system, the Gods were made to merge their
functions, as Father, Son, and Husband, into one, and the Goddesses were
identified as Wife, Mother, and Sister of the male God; the former
synthesizing the human attributes as the “Sun, the Giver of Life,” the
latter merging all the other titles in the grand synthesis known as Maia,
Maya, Maria, etc., a generic name. Maia, in its forced derivation, has
come to mean with the Greeks, “mother,” from the root _ma_ (nurse), and
even gave its name to the month of May, which was sacred to all these
Goddesses before it became consecrated to Mary.(638) Its primitive
meaning, however, was Mâyâ, Durgâ, translated by the Orientalists as
“inaccessible,” but meaning in truth the “unreachable,” in the sense of
illusion and unreality, as being the source and cause of spells, the
personification of illusion.
In religious rites, the Moon served a dual purpose. Personified as a
female Goddess for exoteric purposes, or as a male God in allegory and
symbol, in Occult Philosophy our satellite was regarded as a sexless
Potency to be well studied, because it was to be dreaded. With the
initiated Âryans, Chaldeans, Greeks and Romans, Soma, Sin, Artemis Soteira
(the hermaphrodite Apollo, whose attribute is the lyre, and the bearded
Diana of the bow and arrow), Deus Lunus, and especially Osiris‐Lunus and
Thot‐Lunus,(639) were the Occult potencies of the Moon. But whether male
or female, whether Thot or Minerva, Soma or Astoreth, the Moon is the
Occult Mystery of Mysteries, and more a symbol of evil than of good. Her
seven phases, in the original Esoteric division, are divided into three
astronomical phenomena and four purely psychic phases. That the Moon was
not always reverenced is shown in the Mysteries, in which the death of the
Moon‐God—the three phases of gradual waning and final disappearance—was
allegorized by the Moon standing for the Genius of Evil that, for the
time, triumphs over the Light and Life‐giving God, the Sun; and all the
skill and learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic were required to
turn this triumph into a defeat.
It was the most ancient worship of all, that of the Third Race of our
Round, the Hermaphrodites, in which the _male_ Moon became sacred, when,
after the so‐called Fall, the sexes had become separated. Deus Lunus then
became an androgyne, male and female in turn; to finally serve, _for
purposes of sorcery_, as a dual power for the Fourth Root Race, the
Atlanteans. With the Fifth, our own Race, the Lunar‐solar worship divided
the nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps. It led to events
described æons later in the Mahâbhâratan War, which to the Europeans is
the fabulous, to the Hindûs and Occultists the historical, strife between
the Sûryavanshas and the Indovanshas. Originating in the dual aspect of
the Moon, the worship of the female and the male principles respectively,
it ended in distinct Solar and Lunar cults. Among the Semitic races, the
Sun was for a very long time feminine and the Moon masculine; the latter
notion being adopted by them from the Atlantean traditions. The Moon was
called the “Lord of the Sun,” Bel‐Shemesh, before the Shemesh worship. The
ignorance of the incipient reasons for such a distinction, and of Occult
principles, led the nations into anthropomorphic idol‐worship. During that
period which is absent from the Mosaic books, viz., from the exile from
Eden to the allegorical Flood, the Jews, with the rest of the Semites,
worshipped Dayanisi, דינאישי, the “Ruler of Men,” the “Judge,” or the Sun.
Though the Jewish canon and Christianism have made the Sun to become the
“Lord God” and “Jehovah” in the _Bible_, yet the same _Bible_ is full of
indiscreet traces of the androgyne Deity, which was Jehovah, the Sun, and
Astoreth, the Moon in its female aspect, and quite free from the present
metaphorical element given to it. God is a “consuming fire,” appears _in_,
and “is encompassed _by_ fire.” It was not only in vision that Ezekiel saw
the Jews “worshipping the Sun.”(640) The Baal of the Israelites—the
Shemesh of the Moabites and the Moloch of the Ammonites—was the identical
“Sun‐Jehovah,” and he is till now the “King of the Host of Heaven,” the
Sun, as much as Astoreth was the “Queen of Heaven,” or the Moon. The “Sun
of Righteousness” has _only now_ become a _metaphorical_ expression. But
the religion of every ancient nation had been primarily based upon the
Occult manifestations of a purely abstract Force or Principle now called
“God.” The very establishment of such worship shows, in its details and
rites, that the philosophers who evolved such systems of Nature,
subjective and objective, possessed profound knowledge, and were
acquainted with many facts of a scientific nature. For besides being
purely Occult, the rites of Lunar worship were based, as just shown, upon
a knowledge of Physiology—quite a modern science with us—Psychology,
sacred Mathematics, Geometry and Metrology, in their right applications to
symbols and figures, which are but glyphs recording observed natural and
scientific _facts_; in short upon a most minute and profound knowledge of
Nature. As we have just said, lunar magnetism generates life, preserves
and destroys it; and Soma embodies the triple power of the Trimûrti,
though it remains unrecognized by the profane to this day. The allegory
that makes Soma, the Moon, produced by the Churning of the Ocean of Life
(Space) by the Gods in another Manvantara, that is, in the pre‐genetic day
of our Planetary System, and the myth, which represents “the Rishis
milking the Earth, whose calf was Soma, the Moon,” have a deep
cosmographical meaning; for it is neither _our_ Earth which is milked, nor
was the Moon which we know the calf.(641) Had our wise men of Science
known as much of the mysteries of Nature as the ancient Âryans did, they
would surely never have imagined that the Moon was projected from the
Earth. Once more, the oldest of permutations in Theogony, the Son becoming
his own Father and the Mother generated by the Son, has to be remembered
and taken into consideration if the symbolical language of the Ancients is
to be understood by us. Otherwise mythology will be ever haunting the
Orientalists as simply “the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage
of human culture!”—as Renouf gravely observes.
The Ancients taught the auto‐generation, so to speak, of the Gods: the One
Divine Essence, _unmanifested_, perpetually begetting a Second‐Self,
_manifested_, which Second‐Self, androgynous in its nature, _gives birth,
in an immaculate way_, to everything macrocosmical and microcosmical in
this Universe. This was shown in the Circle and the Diameter, or the
Sacred Ten (10), a few pages back.
But our Orientalists, notwithstanding their extreme desire to discover one
homogeneous Element in Nature, _will not_ see it. Cramped in their
researches by such ignorance, the Âryanists and Egyptologists are
constantly led astray from truth in their speculations. Thus, de Rougé is
unable to understand, in the text which he translates, the meaning of
Ammon‐Ra saying to King Amenophes, who is supposed to be Memnon: “Thou art
my Son, I have begotten thee.” And, finding the same idea in many a text
and under various forms, this very Christian Orientalist is finally
compelled to exclaim:
For this idea to have entered the mind of a hierogrammatist, there
must have been in their religion a more or less defined doctrine,
_indicating as a possible fact that might come to pass, a divine
and immaculate incarnation under a human form._
Precisely. But why throw the explanation on to an impossible prophecy,
when the whole secret is explained by the later religion copying the
earlier?
This doctrine was universal, nor was it the mind of any one
hierogrammatist that evolved it; for the Indian Avatâras are a proof to
the contrary. After which, having come “to realize more clearly”(642) what
the “Divine Father and Son” were with the Egyptians, de Rougé still fails
to account for, and to perceive what were the functions attributed to, the
_feminine_ Principle in that primordial generation. He does not find it in
the Goddess Neïth, of Saïs. Yet he quotes the sentence of the Commander to
Cambyses, when introducing that king into the Saïtic temple: “I made known
to his Majesty the dignity of Saïs, which is the abode of Neïth, the great
[female] producer, _genitrix of the Sun_, who is the _first‐born, and who
is not begotten, but only brought forth_”—and hence is the fruit of an
Immaculate Mother.
How much more grandiose, philosophical and poetical—for whoever is able to
understand and appreciate it—is the real distinction made between the
Immaculate Virgin of the ancient Pagans and the modern Papal conception.
With the former, the ever‐youthful Mother Nature, the antitype of her
prototypes, the Sun and Moon, _generates_ and _brings forth_ her “mind‐
born” Son, the Universe. The Sun and Moon, as male‐female deities,
fructify the Earth, the microcosmical Mother, and the latter conceives and
brings forth, in her turn. With the Christians, the “First‐born”
(_primogenitus_) is indeed generated, _i.e._, begotten (_genitus, non
factus_), and positively _conceived and brought forth_: “_Virgo pariet_,”
explains the Latin Church. Thus does that Church drag down the noble
spiritual ideal of the Virgin Mary to the earth, and, making her “of the
earth earthy,” degrades the ideal she portrays to the lowest of the
anthropomorphic Goddesses of the rabble.
Truly, Neïth, Isis, Diana, etc., by whatever name she was called, was “a
demiurgical Goddess, at once visible and invisible, having her place in
Heaven, and _helping on the generation of species_”—the Moon, in short.
Her occult aspects and powers are numberless, and, in one of them, the
Moon becomes with the Egyptians Hathor, another aspect of Isis,(643) and
both of these Goddesses are shown suckling Horus. Behold in the Egyptian
Hall of the British Museum, Hathor worshipped by Pharaoh Thotmes, who
stands between her and the Lord of Heavens. The monolith was taken from
Karnac. The same Goddess has the following legend inscribed on her throne:
“_The Divine Mother and Lady, or Queen of Heaven_”; also the “_Morning
Star_,” and the “_Light of the Sea_”—_Stella Matutina_ and _Lux Maris_.
All the Lunar Goddesses had a dual aspect; one _divine_, the other
_infernal_. All were the Virgin Mothers of an _immaculately_ born Son—the
Sun. Raoul Rochette shows the Moon‐Goddess of the Athenians, Pallas, or
Cybele, Minerva, or again Diana, holding her child‐son on her lap, invoked
in her festivals as Μονογενὴς θεοῦ, the “One Mother of God,” sitting on a
lion, and surrounded by twelve personages; in whom the Occultist
recognizes the twelve great Gods, and the pious Christian Orientalist the
Apostles, or rather the Grecian Pagan prophecy thereof.
They are both right, for the Immaculate Goddess of the Latin Church is a
faithful copy of the older Pagan Goddesses; the number of the Apostles is
that of the twelve Tribes, and the latter are a personification of the
twelve great Gods, and of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac. Almost every
detail in the Christian dogma is borrowed from the Heathens. Semele, the
Wife of Jupiter and Mother of Bacchus, the Sun, is, according to Nonnus,
also “carried,” or made to ascend to Heaven after her death, where she
presides between Mars and Venus, under the name of the “Queen of the
World,” or the Universe, πανβασίλεια; “at the name of which,” as at the
names of Hathor, Hecate, and other infernal Goddesses, “all the demons
tremble.”(644)
“Σεμέλην τρέμουσι δαίμονες.” This Greek inscription on a small temple,
reproduced on a stone that was found by Beger, and copied by Montfaucon,
as De Mirville tells us, informs us of the stupendous fact, that the Magna
Mater of the old world was an impudent “plagiarism” of the Immaculate
Virgin Mother of his Church, perpetrated by the Demon. Whether so, or
_vice versâ_, is of no importance. That which is interesting to note is
the perfect identity between the _archaic copy_ and the _modern original_.
Did space permit we might show the inconceivable coolness and unconcern
exhibited by certain followers of the Roman Catholic Church, when they are
made to face the revelations of the Past. To Maury’s remark that “the
Virgin took possession of all the Sanctuaries of Ceres and Venus, and that
the Pagan rites, proclaimed and practised in honour of those Goddesses,
were in a great measure transferred to the Mother of Christ,”(645) the
advocate of Rome answers, that such _is_ the fact, and that it is just as
it should be, and quite natural.
As the dogma, the liturgy, and the rites professed by the Roman
Apostolical Church in 1862 are found engraved on monuments,
inscribed on papyri, and cylinders _hardly posterior to the
Deluge_, it does seem impossible to deny the existence of a _first
ante‐historical_ [Roman] _Catholicism of which our own is but the
faithful continuation_.... [But while the former was the
culmination, the “_summum_ of the impudence of demons and goëtic
necromancy” ... the latter is _divine_.] If in _our_ [Christian]
_Revelation_ [_l’Apocalypse_], Mary, clothed with the Sun and
having the Moon under her feet, has no longer anything in common
_with the humble servant_ [servante] _of Nazareth_ [_sic_], it is
because she has now become the greatest of theological and
cosmological powers in _our_ universe.(646)
Verily so, since Pindar thus sings of her “assumption”: “She sits _at the
right hand_ of her Father [Jupiter], ... and is more powerful than all the
other (Angels or) Gods”(647)—a hymn likewise applied to the Virgin. St.
Bernard also, quoted by Cornelius à Lapide, is made to address the Virgin
Mary in this wise: “The Sun‐Christ lives in thee and thou livest in
him.”(648)
Again the Virgin is admitted to be the Moon by the same unsophisticated
holy man. Being the Lucina of the Church, in childbirth the verse of
Virgil, “_Casta fove Lucina, tuus jam regnat Apollo_,” is applied to her.
“Like the Moon, the Virgin is the Queen of Heaven,” adds the innocent
saint.(649)
This settles the question. According to such writers as De Mirville, the
more similarity there exists between the Pagan conceptions and the
Christian dogmas, the more divine appears the Christian religion, and the
more is it seen to be the only truly inspired one, especially in its Roman
Catholic form. The unbelieving Scientists and Academicians who think they
see in the Latin Church quite the opposite of divine inspiration, and who
will not believe in the Satanic tricks of plagiarism by anticipation, are
severely taken to task. But then “they believe in nothing and reject even
the _Nabathean Agriculture_ as a romance and a pack of superstitious
nonsense,” complains the memorialist. “In their perverted opinion
Qû‐tâmy’s ‘idol of the Moon’ and the statue of the Madonna are one!” A
noble Marquis, twenty‐five years ago, wrote six huge volumes, or, as he
calls them “Mémoires to the French Academy,” with the sole object of
proving Roman Catholicism to be an inspired and revealed faith. As a proof
thereof, he furnishes numberless facts, all tending to show that the
entire Ancient World, ever since the Deluge, had, with the help of the
Devil, been systematically plagiarizing the rites, ceremonies, and dogmas
of the future Holy Church, which was to be born ages later. What would
that faithful son of Rome have said had he heard his co‐religionist, M.
Renouf, the distinguished Egyptologist of the British Museum, declaring in
one of his learned lectures, that neither “Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any
of their ideas from Egypt”?
But perhaps M. Renouf intended to say that it was the Egyptians, the
Greeks, and the Âryans, who borrowed their ideas from the Latin Church?
And if so, why, in the name of logic, do the Papists reject the additional
information which the Occultists may give them on Moon‐worship, since it
all tends to show that the worship of the Roman Catholic Church is as old
as the world—_of Sabæanism and Astrolatry_?
The reason of early Christian and later Roman Catholic Astrolatry, or the
symbolical worship of Sun and Moon, a worship identical with that of the
Gnostics, though less philosophical and pure than the “Sun‐worship” of the
Zoroastrians, is a natural consequence of its birth and origin. The
adoption by the Latin Church of such symbols as Water, Fire, Sun, Moon and
Stars, and many others, is simply a continuation by the early Christians
of the old worship of Pagan nations. Thus, Odin got his wisdom, power, and
knowledge, by sitting at the feet of Mimir, the thrice‐wise Jotun, who
passed his life by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, the crystalline Waters
of which increased his knowledge daily. “Mimir drew the highest knowledge
from the fountain, because the World was born of Water; hence primeval
Wisdom was to be found in that mysterious element.” The eye which Odin had
to pledge to acquire that knowledge may be “the Sun, which enlightens and
penetrates all things; his other eye being the Moon, whose reflection
gazes out of the deep, and which at last, when setting, sinks into the
Ocean.”(650) But it is something more than this. Loki, the Fire‐God, is
said to have hidden in the Water, as well as in the Moon, the light‐giver,
whose reflection he found therein. This belief that the Fire finds refuge
in the Water was not limited to the old Scandinavians. It was shared by
all nations and was finally adopted by the early Christians, who
symbolized the Holy Ghost under the shape of Fire, “cloven tongues like as
of fire”—the breath of the Father‐Sun. This Fire descends also into the
Water, or the Sea—Mare, Mary. The Dove was the symbol of the Soul with
several nations; it was sacred to Venus, the Goddess born from the sea‐
foam, and it became later the symbol of the Christian Anima Mundi, or Holy
Spirit.
One of the most occult chapters in the _Book of the Dead_ is that
entitled, “The transformation into the God giving Light to the Path of
Darkness,” wherein “Woman‐Light of the Shadow” serves Thot in his retreat
in the Moon. Thot‐Hermes is said to hide therein, because he is the
representative of the Secret Wisdom. He is the manifested Logos of its
light side; the concealed Deity or “Dark Wisdom” when he is supposed to
retire to the opposite hemisphere. Speaking of her power, the Moon calls
herself repeatedly: “The Light which shineth in Darkness,” the “Woman‐
Light.” Hence it became the accepted symbol of all the Virgin‐Mother
Goddesses. As the wicked “evil” Spirits warred against the Moon in days of
yore, so they are supposed to war now, without, however, being able to
prevail against the actual Queen of Heaven, Mary, the Moon. Hence, also,
the Moon was intimately connected in all the Pagan Theogonies with the
Dragon, her eternal enemy. The Virgin, or Madonna, stands on the mythical
Satan thus symbolized, who lies crushed and powerless, under her feet.
This, because the head and tail of the Dragon, which, to this day in
Eastern Astronomy, represent the ascending and descending nodes of the
Moon, were also symbolized in ancient Greece by the two serpents. Hercules
kills them on the day of his birth, and so does the Babe in his Virgin‐
Mother’s arms. As Mr. Gerald Massey aptly observes in this connection:
All such symbols figured their own facts from the first, and did
not pre‐figure others of a totally different order. The
iconography [and dogmas, too] had survived in Rome from a period
remotely pre‐Christian. _There was neither forgery nor
interpolation of types; nothing but a continuity of imagery with a
perversion of its meaning._
Section X. Tree, Serpent, and Crocodile Worship.
Object of horror or of adoration, men have for the serpent an
implacable hatred, or prostrate themselves before its genius. Lie
calls it, Prudence claims it, Envy carries it in its heart, and
Eloquence on its caduceus. In Hell it arms the whip of the Furies;
in Heaven Eternity makes of it its symbol.
DE CHÂTEAUBRIAND.
The Ophites asserted that there were several kinds of Genii, from God to
man; that the relative superiority of these was decided by the degree of
Light that was accorded to each; and they maintained that the Serpent had
to be constantly called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it
had rendered humanity. For it taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of
the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, he would raise his Being immensely
by the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire. Such was the exoteric
reason given.
It is easy to see whence is the primal idea of the dual, Janus‐like
character of the Serpent—the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the
most ancient, because the reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the
mammal. Hence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the savage tribes
who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and the
general association of the Serpent with the Tree. The legends about the
various meanings it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are
allegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on
ignorance and dark superstition. For instance, when Philostratus narrates
that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of
Serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the Serpent
being credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be
accepted literally.(651) As will be found more than once as we proceed,
Serpent and Dragon were names given to the Wise Ones, the Initiated Adepts
of olden times. It was their wisdom and their learning that were devoured
or assimilated by their followers, whence the allegory. When the
Scandinavian Sigurd is fabled to have roasted the heart of Fafnir, the
Dragon, whom he had slain, and thence to have become the wisest of men,
the meaning is the same. Sigurd had become learned in the runes and
magical charms; he had received the “Word” from an Initiate of the name of
Fafnir, or from a sorcerer, after which the latter died, as do many, after
“passing the word.” Epiphanius lets out a secret of the Gnostics in trying
to expose their “heresies.” The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for
honouring the Serpent: _it was because he taught the primeval men the
Mysteries_.(652) Verily so; but they did not have Adam and Eve in the
Garden in their minds when teaching this dogma, but simply that which is
stated above. The Nâgas of the Hindû and Tibetan Adepts were human Nâgas
(Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of
consecutive or serial rejuvenation, of Immortality and Time.
The numerous and extremely interesting readings, the interpretations and
facts about Serpent worship, given in Mr. Gerald Massey’s _Natural
Genesis_, are very ingenious and scientifically correct. But they are far
from covering the _whole_ of the meanings implied. They divulge only the
astronomical and physiological mysteries, with the addition of some cosmic
phenomena. On the lowest plane of materiality, the Serpent was, no doubt,
the “great emblem of Mystery in the Mysteries,” and was, very likely,
“adopted as a type of feminine pubescence, on account of its sloughing and
self‐renewal.” It was so, however, only with regard to mysteries
concerning terrestrial _animal_ life, for as the symbol of “_re‐clothing_
and re‐birth in the [universal] mysteries,” its “final phase,”(653) or
shall we rather say its incipient and culminating phases, was not of this
plane. These phases were generated in the pure realm of Ideal Light, and
having accomplished the round of the whole cycle of adaptations and
symbolism, the Mysteries returned from whence they had come, into the
essence of _immaterial_ causality. They belonged to the highest Gnôsis.
And surely this could have never obtained its name and fame solely on
account of its penetration into physiological and especially feminine
functions!
As a symbol, the Serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the
Tree itself; the “Tree of Life,” with which it was emblematically and
almost indissolubly connected. Whether viewed as a metaphysical or a
physical symbol, the Tree and Serpent, jointly, or separately, have never
been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the
breaking of idols, not for truth’s sake, but to glorify the most gross
matter. The revelations and interpretations in General Forlong’s _Rivers
of Life_ would have astounded the worshippers of the Tree and Serpent in
the days of archaic Chaldean and Egyptian wisdom; and even the early
Shaivas would have recoiled in horror at the theories and suggestions of
the author of the said work. “The notion of Payne Knight and Inman that
the Cross or Tau is simply a copy of the male organs in a triadic form is
radically false,” writes Mr. G. Massey, who proves what he says. But this
is a statement that could be as justly applied to almost all the modern
interpretations of ancient symbols. _The Natural Genesis_, a monumental
work of research and thought, the most complete on that subject that has
ever been published, covering as it does a wider field, and explaining
much more than all the Symbologists who have hitherto written, does not
yet go beyond the “psycho‐theistic” stage of ancient thought. Nor were
Payne Knight and Inman altogether wrong; except in entirely failing to see
that their interpretations of the Tree of Life, as the Cross and Phallus,
fitted the symbol only in the lowest and latest stage of the evolutionary
development of the idea of the Giver of Life. It was the last and the
grossest physical transformation of Nature, in animal, insect, bird and
even plant; for bi‐une, creative magnetism, in the form of the attraction
of contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of reptile
and bird as it does in that of man. Moreover, the modern Symbologists and
Orientalists, from first to last, being ignorant of the real Mysteries
revealed by Occultism, can necessarily see but this last stage. If told
that this mode of procreation, which the whole world of being has now in
common on this Earth, is but a passing phase, a physical means of
furnishing the conditions to and producing the phenomena of life, and that
it will alter with this and disappear with the next Root‐Race, they would
laugh at such a superstitious and unscientific idea. But the most learned
Occultists assert this because _they know it_. The universe of living
beings, of all those which procreate their species, is the living witness
to the various modes of procreation in the evolution of animal and human
species and races; and the Naturalist ought to sense this truth
intuitionally, even though he is yet unable to demonstrate it. How could
he, indeed, with the present modes of thought! The landmarks of the
archaic history of the Past are few and scarce, and those that men of
Science come across are mistaken for finger‐posts of our little era. Even
so‐called “universal (?) history” embraces but a tiny field in the almost
boundless space of the unexplored regions of our latest, Fifth Root‐Race.
Hence, every fresh sign‐post, every new glyph of the hoary Past that is
discovered, is added to the old stock of information, to be interpreted on
the same lines of preëxisting conceptions, and without any reference to
the special cycle of thought which that particular glyph may belong to.
How can Truth ever come to light if this method is never changed!
Thus, in the beginning of their joint existence as a glyph of Immortal
Being, the Tree and Serpent were divine imagery, truly. The Tree was
_reversed_, and its roots were generated in Heaven and grew out of the
Rootless Root of All‐Being. Its trunk grew and developed; crossing the
planes of the Plerôma, it shot out crossways its luxuriant branches, first
on the plane of hardly differentiated matter, and then downward till they
touched the terrestrial plane. Thus, the Ashvattha Tree of Life and Being,
whose destruction alone leads to immortality, is said in the
_Bhagavadgîtâ_ to grow with its roots above and its branches below.(654)
The roots represent the Supreme Being, or First Cause, the Logos; but one
has to go beyond those roots to _unite oneself with Krishna_, who, says
Arjuna, is “greater than Brahman, and First Cause ... the indestructible,
that which is, that which is not, and what is beyond them.”(655) Its
boughs are Hiranyagarbha (Brahmâ or Brahman in its highest manifestations,
say Shrîdhara Svâmin and Madhusûdana), the highest Dhyân Chohans or Devas.
The _Vedas_ are its leaves. He only who goes _beyond_ the roots shall
never return; that is to say, shall reïncarnate no more during this Age of
Brahmâ.
It is only when its pure boughs had touched the terrestrial mud of the
Garden of Eden, of our Adamic Race, that this Tree became soiled by the
contact and lost its pristine purity; and that the Serpent of Eternity,
the Heaven‐Born Logos, was finally degraded. In days of old, of the Divine
Dynasties on Earth, the now dreaded reptile was regarded as the first beam
of light that radiated from the abyss of Divine Mystery. Various were the
forms which it was made to assume, and numerous the natural symbols
adapted to it, as it crossed the æons of Time; as from Infinite Time
(Kâla) itself it fell into the space and time evolved out of human
speculation. These forms were cosmic and astronomical, theistic and
pantheistic, abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar Dragon
and the Southern Cross, the Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the
Hindû‐Buddhist Dragon, which ever threatens, yet never swallows the Sun
during its eclipses. Till then, the Tree remained ever green, for it was
sprinkled by the Waters of Life; the Great Dragon remained ever divine, so
long as it was kept within the precincts of the sidereal fields. But the
Tree grew and its lower boughs at last touched the Infernal Regions—our
Earth. Then the Great Serpent Nidhögg—he who devours the corpses of the
evil‐doers in the “Hall of Misery” (human life), so soon as they are
plunged into Hwergelmir, the roaring cauldron (of human passions)—gnawed
the reversed World‐Tree. The worms of materiality covered the once healthy
and mighty roots, and are now ascending higher and higher along the trunk;
while the Midgard Snake coiled at the bottom of the Seas, encircles the
Earth, and, through its venomous breath, makes her powerless to defend
herself.
The Dragons and Serpents of Antiquity are all seven‐headed—one head for
each Race, and “every head with seven hairs on it,” as the allegory has
it. Aye, from Ananta, the Serpent of Eternity, which carries Vishnu
through the Manvantara; from the original primordial Shesha, whose seven
heads become “one thousand heads” in the Purânic fancy, down to the seven‐
headed Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the Seven Principles throughout
Nature and in man; the highest or middle head being the seventh. It is not
of the Mosaic, Jewish Sabbath that Philo speaks, in his _Creation of the
World_, when saying that the world was completed “according to the perfect
nature of number 6.” For:
_When that Reason_ [_Nous_] _which is holy in accordance with the
number 7, has entered the soul_ [the living body rather], the
number 6 is thus arrested and all the mortal things which that
number makes.
And again:
Number 7 is the festival day of all the earth, the _birthday of
the world_. I know not whether any one would be able to celebrate
the number 7 in adequate terms.(656)
The author of _The Natural Genesis_ thinks that:
The septenary of stars seen in the Great Bear [the Saptarshis] and
seven‐headed Dragon furnished a visible origin for the symbolic
seven of time above. The goddess of the seven stars was the mother
of time, as Kep; whence Kepti and Sebti for the two times and
number 7. So this is the star of the Seven by name. Sevekh
(Kronus), the son of the goddess, has the name of the seven or
seventh. So has Sefekh Abu who builds the house on high, as Wisdom
(Sophia) built hers with seven pillars.... The primary kronotypes
were seven, and thus the beginning of time in heaven is based on
the number and the name of seven, on account of the starry
demonstrators. The seven stars as they turned round annually kept
pointing, as it were, with the forefinger of the right hand, and
describing a circle in the upper and lower heaven.(657) The number
7 naturally suggested a measure by seven, that led to what may be
termed _Sevening_, and to the marking and mapping out of the
circle in seven corresponding divisions which were assigned to the
seven great constellations; and thus was formed the celestial
heptanomis of Egypt in the heavens.
When the stellar heptanomis was broken up and divided into four
quarters, it was multiplied by four, and the twenty‐eight signs
took the place of the primary seven constellations; the lunar
zodiac of twenty‐eight signs being the registered result of
reckoning twenty‐eight days to the moon, or a lunar month.(658) In
the Chinese arrangement, the four sevens are given to four Genii
that preside over the four cardinal points,(659) or rather the
seven northern constellations make up the Black Warrior; the seven
eastern (Chinese autumn) constitute the White Tiger; the seven
southern are the Vermilion Bird; and the seven western (called
vernal) are the Azure Dragon. Each of these four spirits presides
over its heptanomis during one lunar week. The genitrix of the
first heptanomis (Typhon of the seven stars) now took a lunar
character.... In this phase we find the goddess Sefekh, whose name
signifies number 7, is the feminine word, or logos in place of the
mother of time, who was the earlier _Word_, as goddess of the
Seven Stars.(660)
The author shows that it was the Goddess of the Great Bear and Mother of
Time who was in Egypt from the earliest times the “Living Word,” and that
Sevekh‐Kronus, whose type was the Crocodile‐Dragon, the pre‐planetary form
of Saturn, was called her son and consort; he was her Word‐Logos.(661)
The above is quite plain, but it was not the knowledge of astronomy only
that led the Ancients to the process of _Sevening_. The primal cause goes
far deeper and will be explained in its place.
The above quotations are no digressions. They are brought forward as
showing (_a_) the reason why a full Initiate was called a Dragon, a Snake,
a Nâga; and (_b_) that our septenary division was used by the priests of
the earliest dynasties in Egypt, for the same reason, and on the same
basis, as by us. This needs further elucidation, however. As already
stated, what Mr. Gerald Massey calls the Four Genii of the four cardinal
points; and the Chinese, the Black Warrior, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird,
and Azure Dragon, are called in the Secret Books, the “Four Hidden Dragons
of Wisdom” and the “Celestial Nâgas.” Now, the seven‐headed or septenary
Dragon‐Logos is shown to have, in course of time, been split up, so to
speak, into _four_ heptanomic parts or twenty‐eight portions. Each week
has a distinct Occult character in the lunar month; each day of the
twenty‐eight has its special characteristics; for each of the twelve
constellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has
an Occult influence either for good or for evil. This represents the sum
of knowledge that men can acquire on this earth; yet few are those who
acquire it, and still fewer are the wise men who get to the root of
knowledge symbolized by the great Root‐Dragon, the Spiritual Logos of
these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of Dragons, and
they are the “Arhats of the Four Truths of the Twenty‐eight Faculties,” or
attributes, and have always been so called.
The Alexandrian Neo‐Platonists asserted that to become real Chaldees or
Magi, one had to master the science or knowledge of the periods of the
Seven Rectors of the World, in whom is all wisdom. And Jamblichus is
credited with another version, which does not, however, alter the meaning,
for he says:
The Assyrians have not only preserved the records of seven and
twenty myriads of years, as Hipparchus says they have, but
likewise of the whole apocatastases and periods of the Seven
Rulers of the World.(662)
The legends of every nation and tribe, whether civilized or savage, point
to the once universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the
Serpents. They are “charmers.” They hypnotize the bird with their eye, and
man himself very often does not overcome their fascinating influence;
therefore the symbol is a most fitting one.
The Crocodile is the Egyptian Dragon. It was the dual symbol of Heaven and
Earth, of Sun and Moon, and was made sacred, in consequence of its
amphibious nature, to Osiris and Isis. According to Eusebius, the
Egyptians represented the Sun in a Ship as its pilot, this ship being
carried along by a Crocodile, “to show the motion of the Sun in the Moist
(Space).”(663) The Crocodile was, moreover, the symbol of Lower Egypt
herself, the Lower being the more swampy of the two countries. The
Alchemists claim another interpretation. They say that the symbol of the
Sun in the Ship on the Ether of Space meant that the Hermetic Matter is
the principle, or basis, of Gold, or again the _philosophical_ Sun; the
Water, within which the Crocodile is swimming, is that Water, or Matter,
made liquid; the Ship herself, finally, representing the Vessel of Nature,
in which the Sun, or the sulphuric, igneous principle, acts as a pilot,
because it is the Sun which conducts the work by his action upon the Moist
or Mercury. The above is only for the Alchemists.
The Serpent became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only
during the Middle Ages. The early Christians as well as the Ophite
Gnostics, had their dual Logos: the Good and the Bad Serpent, the
Agathodæmon and the Kakodæmon. This is demonstrated by the writings of
Marcus, Valentinus, and many others, and especially in _Pistis‐
Sophia_—certainly a document of the earliest centuries of Christianity. On
the marble sarcophagus of a tomb, discovered in 1852 near the Porta Pia,
one sees the scene of the adoration of the Magi, “or else,” remarks the
late C. W. King, in _The Gnostics and their Remains_, “the prototype of
that scene, the ‘Birth of the New Sun’.” The mosaic floor exhibited a
curious design which might have represented either Isis suckling the babe
Harpocrates, or the Madonna nursing the infant Jesus. In the smaller
sarcophagi that surrounded the larger one, many leaden plates rolled like
scrolls were found, eleven of which can still be deciphered. The contents
of these ought to be regarded as final proof of a much‐vexed question, for
they show that either the early Christians, up to the VIth Century, were
_bonâ fide_ Pagans, or that dogmatic Christianity was borrowed wholesale,
and passed in full into the Christian Church—Sun, Tree, Serpent, Crocodile
and all.
On the first is seen Anubis ... holding out a scroll; at his feet
are two female busts: below all are two serpents entwined about
... a corpse swathed up like a mummy. In the second scroll ... is
Anubis, holding out a cross, the “Sign of Life.” Under his feet
lies the corpse encircled in the numerous folds of a huge serpent,
the Agathodæmon, guardian of the deceased.... In the third scroll
... the same Anubis bears on his arm an oblong object, ... held so
as to convert the outline of the figure into a complete Latin
cross. ... At the god’s foot is a rhomboid, the Egyptian “Egg of
the World,” towards which crawls a serpent coiled into a
circle.... Under the ... busts ... is the letter ω, repeated
_seven_ times in a line, reminding one of the “Names.” ... Very
remarkable also is the line of characters, apparently Palmyrene,
upon the legs of the first Anubis. As for the figure of the
_serpent_, supposing these talismans to emanate not from the Isiac
but the newer Ophite creed, it may well stand for that “True and
perfect Serpent,” who “leads forth the souls of all that put their
trust in him out of the Egypt of the body, and through the Red Sea
of Death into the Land of Promise, saving them on their way from
the Serpents of the Wilderness, that is, from the Rulers of the
Stars.”(664)
And this “true and perfect Serpent” is the seven‐lettered God who is now
credited with being Jehovah, and Jesus _one with him_. To this seven‐
vowelled God the candidate for Initiation is sent by the “First Mystery,”
in the _Pistis‐Sophia_, a work earlier than St. John’s _Revelation_, and
evidently of the same school. “The (Serpent of the) Seven Thunders uttered
these seven vowels,” but “seal up those things which the Seven Thunders
uttered, and write them not,” says _Revelation_. “Do ye seek after these
mysteries?”—inquires Jesus in _Pistis‐Sophia_. “No mystery is more
excellent than they [the seven vowels]; for they shall bring your souls
unto the Light of Lights”—_i.e._, true Wisdom. “Nothing, therefore, is
more excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only the
mystery of the _Seven Vowels_ and their _forty and nine_ Powers, and the
numbers thereof.”
In India, it was the mystery of the _Seven Fires_ and their Forty‐nine
Fires or aspects, or “the numbers thereof.”
These Seven Vowels are represented by the Svastika signs on the crowns of
the seven heads of the Serpent of Eternity, in India, among Esoteric
“Buddhists,” in Egypt, in Chaldæa, etc., and among the Initiates of every
other country. They are the Seven Zones of _post mortem_ ascent, in the
Hermetic writings, in each of which the “Mortal” leaves one of his Souls,
or Principles; until arrived on the plane above all Zones, he remains as
the great Formless Serpent of Absolute Wisdom, or the Deity Itself. The
seven‐headed Serpent has more than one signification in the arcane
teachings. It is the seven‐headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star of
the Lesser Bear; but it was also, and preëminently, the Serpent of
Darkness, inconceivable and incomprehensible, whose seven heads were the
seven Logoi, the reflections of the one and first‐manifested Light—the
Universal Logos.
Section XI. Demon est Deus Inversus.
This symbolical sentence, in its many‐sided forms, is certainly most
dangerous and iconoclastic in the face of all the dualistic later
religions, or rather theologies, and especially so in the light of
Christianity. Yet it is neither just nor correct to say that it is
Christianity which has conceived and brought forth Satan. As an
“Adversary,” the opposing Power required by the equilibrium and harmony of
things in Nature, as Shadow is required to make still brighter the Eight,
as Night to bring into greater relief the Day, and as Cold to make one
appreciate the more the comfort of Heat, so has Satan ever existed.
Homogeneity is one and indivisible. But if the homogeneous One and
Absolute is no mere figure of speech, and if Heterogeneity, in its
dualistic aspect, is its offspring, its bifurcous shadow or reflection,
then even that divine Homogeneity must contain in itself the essence of
both good and evil. If “God” is Absolute, Infinite, and the Universal Root
of all and everything in Nature and its Universe, whence comes Evil or
D’Evil if not from the same Golden Womb of the Absolute? Thus we are
forced either to accept the emanation of good and evil, of Agathodæmon and
Kakodæmon, as offshoots from the same trunk of the Tree of Being, or to
resign ourselves to the absurdity of believing in two eternal Absolutes!
Having to trace the origin of the idea to the very beginnings of the human
mind, it is but just, meanwhile, to give his due even to the proverbial
Devil. Antiquity knew of no isolated, thoroughly and absolutely bad “God
of evil.” Pagan thought represented good and evil as twin brothers, born
from the same mother—Nature; so soon as that thought ceased to be archaic,
Wisdom passed into Philosophy. In the beginning the symbols of good and
evil were mere abstractions, Light and Darkness; later their types were
chosen among the most natural and ever‐recurrent periodical cosmic
phenomena—the Day and Night, or the Sun and Moon. Then the Hosts of the
Solar and Lunar Deities were made to represent them, and the Dragon of
Darkness was contrasted with the Dragon of Light. The Host of Satan is a
Son of God, no less than the Host of the B’ne Alhim, the Children of God
who came to “present themselves before the Lord,” their Father.(665) “The
Sons of God” become the “Fallen Angels” only after perceiving that the
daughters of men _were fair_.(666) In the Indian philosophy, the Suras are
among the earliest and the brightest Gods, and become Asuras only when
dethroned by Brâhmanical fancy, Satan never assumed an anthropomorphic,
individualized shape, until the creation by man, of a “one _living_
personal God,” had been accomplished; and then merely as a matter of prime
necessity. A screen was needed; a scape‐goat to explain the cruelty,
blunders, and but too‐evident injustice, perpetrated by him for whom
absolute perfection, mercy and goodness were claimed. This was the first
Karmic effect of abandoning a philosophical and logical Pantheism, to
build, as a prop for lazy man, “a merciful Father in Heaven,” whose daily
and hourly actions, as Natura Naturans, the “comely Mother but stone
cold,” belie the assumption. This led to the primal twins, Osiris‐Typhon,
Ormazd‐Ahriman, and finally Cain‐Abel and the _tutti quanti_ of
contraries.
Having commenced by being synonymous with Nature, “God,” the Creator,
ended by being made its author. Pascal settles the difficulty very
cunningly by saying:
Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of
God; and defects, in order to show that she is _only_ his image.
The further back one recedes into the darkness of the prehistoric ages,
the more philosophical does the prototypic figure of the later Satan
appear. The first “Adversary,” in individual human form, that one meets
with in old Purânic literature, is one of her greatest Rishis and
Yogis—Nârada, surnamed the “Strife‐maker.”
And he is a Brahmaputra, a son of Brahmâ, the male. But of him later on.
Who the great “Deceiver” really is, one can ascertain by searching for
him, _with open eyes_ and an unprejudiced mind, in every old Cosmogony and
Scripture.
It is the anthropomorphized Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth,
when separated from the collective Hosts of his Fellow‐Creators, whom, so
to speak, he represents and synthesizes. It is _now_ the God of
Theologies. “The wish is father to the thought.” Once upon a time, a
philosophical symbol left to perverse human fancy; afterwards, fashioned
into a fiendish, deceiving, cunning, and jealous God.
As the Dragons and other Fallen Angels are described in other parts of
this work, a few words upon the much‐slandered Satan will be sufficient.
The student will do well to remember that, with every people, except the
Christian nations, the Devil is to this day no worse an entity than the
opposite aspect, in the dual nature of the so‐called Creator. This is only
natural. One cannot claim God as the synthesis of the whole Universe, as
Omnipresent and Omniscient and Infinite, and then divorce him from Evil.
As there is far more Evil than Good in the world, it follows on logical
grounds that either God must include Evil, or stand as the direct cause of
it, or else surrender his claims to Absoluteness. The Ancients understood
this so well that their philosophers, now followed by the Kabalists,
defined Evil as the “lining” of God or Good; _Demon est Deus inversus_,
being a very old adage. Indeed, Evil is but an antagonizing blind force in
Nature; it is reäction, opposition, and contrast—evil for some, good for
others. There is no _malum in se_; only the Shadow of Light, without which
Light could have no existence, even in our perceptions. If Evil
disappeared, Good would disappear along with it from Earth. The “Old
Dragon” was pure Spirit before he became Matter, _passive_ before he
became _active_. In the Syro‐Chaldean Magic both Ophis and Ophiomorphos
are joined in the Zodiac in the sign of the Androgyne Virgo‐Scorpio.
Before its fall on earth the Serpent was Ophis‐Christos, and after its
fall it became Ophiomorphos‐Chrestos. Everywhere the speculations of the
Kabalists treat of Evil as a _Force_, which is antagonistic, but at the
same time essential, to Good, as giving it vitality and existence, which
it could never have otherwise. There would be no _Life_ possible (in the
mâyâvic sense) without _Death_; no regeneration and reconstruction without
destruction. Plants would perish in eternal sunlight, and so would man,
who would become an automaton without the exercise of his free will, and
his aspiring towards that sunlight, which would lose its being and value
for him had he nothing but light. Good is infinite and eternal only in the
eternally concealed from us, and this is why we imagine it eternal. On the
manifested planes, one equilibrates the other. Few are those Theists,
believers in a Personal God, who do not make of Satan the shadow of God;
or who, confounding both, do not believe they have a right to pray to
their idol, asking its help and protection for the exercise of and
immunity for their evil and cruel deeds. “Lead us not into temptation” is
addressed daily to “our Father, in Heaven,” and not to the Devil, by
millions of Christian hearts. This they do, repeating the very words put
into the mouth of their Saviour, and yet do not give one thought to the
fact that their meaning is contradicted point blank by James, “the brother
of the Lord”:
Let do man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God
cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.(667)
Why, then, say that it is the Devil who tempts us, when the Church teaches
us, _on the authority of Christ_, that it is God who does so? Open any
pious volume in which the word “temptation” is defined in its theological
sense, and forthwith you find two definitions:
(1) Those afflictions and troubles _whereby God tries his people_;
(2) Those means and enticements which the Devil makes use of to
_ensnare_ and allure mankind.(668)
Accepted literally, the teachings of Christ and James contradict each
other, and what dogma can reconcile the two if the Occult meaning is
rejected?
Between the alternative allurements, wise will be that philosopher who
will be able to decide where God disappears to make room for the Devil!
Therefore, when we read that “the Devil is a liar and the father of it,”
that is an _incarnate lie_, and are also told in the same breath that
Satan, the Devil, was a Son of God and the most beautiful of his
Archangels, rather than believe that Father and Son are a gigantic,
personified and eternal Lie, we prefer to turn to Pantheism and to Pagan
philosophy for information.
Once that the key to _Genesis_ is in our hands, the scientific and
symbolical Kabalah unveils the secret. The Great Serpent of the Garden of
Eden and the “Lord God” are identical, and so are Jehovah and Cain—that
Cain who is referred to in Theology as the “murderer” and the Liar to God!
Jehovah tempts the King of Israel to number the people, and Satan tempts
him to do the same in another place. Jehovah turns into the Fiery Serpents
to bite those he is displeased with; and Jehovah informs the Brazen
Serpent that heals them.
These short, and seemingly contradictory, statements in the _Old
Testament_—contradictory because the two Powers are separated instead of
being regarded as the two faces of one and the same thing—are the echoes,
distorted out of recognition by exotericism and theology, of the universal
and philosophical dogmas in Nature, so well understood by the primitive
Sages. We find the same groundwork in several personifications in the
_Purânas_, only far more ample and philosophically suggestive.
Thus Pulastya, a “Son of God,” one of the first progeny, is made the
progenitor of Demons, the Râkshasas, the tempters and the devourers of
men. Pishâchâ, a female Demon, is a daughter of Daksha, a “Son of God”
too, and a God, and the mother of all the Pishâchas.(669) The Demons, so‐
called in the _Purânas_, are very extraordinary Devils when judged from
the standpoint of European and orthodox views, since all of them, Dânavas,
Daityas, Pishâchas, and Râkshasas, are represented as extremely pious,
following the precepts of the _Vedas_, some of them even being great
Yogins. But they oppose the clergy and ritualism, sacrifices and forms,
just as the head Yogins do to this day in India, and are no less respected
for it, though they are permitted to follow neither caste nor ritual;
hence all those Purânic Giants and Titans are called Devils. The
missionaries, ever on the watch to show, if they can, that the Hindû
traditions are nothing better than a reflection of the Jewish _Bible_,
have evolved a whole romance on the alleged identity of Pulastya with
Cain, and of the Râkshasas with the Cainites, the “Accursed,” the cause of
the “Noachian” Deluge. (See the work of Abbé Gorresio, who “etymologizes”
Pulastya’s name as meaning the “rejected,” hence Cain, if you please).
Pulastya dwells in Kedara, he says, which means a “dug‐up place,” a
“mine,” and Cain is shown, in tradition and the _Bible_, as the first
worker in metals and a miner thereof!
While it is very probable that the Gibborim, or Giants, of the _Bible_ are
the Râkshasas of the Hindûs, it is still more certain that both are
Atlanteans, and belong to the submerged races. However it may be, no Satan
could be more persistent in slandering his enemy, or more spiteful in his
hatred, than the Christian Theologians are in cursing him as the father of
every evil. Compare their vituperation and their opinions about the Devil
with the philosophical views of the Purânic Sages and their Christ‐like
mansuetude. When Parâshara, whose father was devoured by a Râkshasa, was
preparing himself to destroy, by magic arts, the whole race, his
grandsire, Vasishtha, after showing the irate Sage, on his own confession,
that there is Evil and Karma, but no “evil Spirits” speaks the following
suggestive words:
Let thy wrath be appeased: the Râkshasas are not culpable; thy
father’s death _was the work of Destiny_ [_Karma_]. Anger is the
passion of fools; it becometh not a wise man. _By whom, it may be
asked, is any one killed?_ Every man _reaps the consequences of
his own acts_. Anger, my son, is the destruction of all that man
obtains ... and prevents the attainment ... of emancipation. The
... sages shun wrath: be not thou, my child, subject to its
influence. Let no more of those _unoffending_ spirits of darkness
be consumed; let this thy sacrifice cease. Mercy is the might of
the righteous.(670)
Thus, every such “sacrifice” or prayer to God for help is no better than
_an act of Black Magic_. That which Parâshara prayed for, was the
destruction of the Spirits of Darkness, for his personal revenge. He is
called a Pagan, and the Christians have doomed him, as such, to Eternal
Hell. Yet, in what respect is the prayer of sovereigns and generals, who
pray before every battle for the destruction of their enemy, any better?
Such a prayer is in every case Black Magic of the worst kind, concealed
like a demon “Mr. Hyde” under a sanctimonious “Dr. Jekyll.”
In human nature, evil denotes only the polarity of Matter and Spirit, a
“struggle for life” between the two manifested Principles in Space and
Time, which Principles are one _per se_, inasmuch as they are rooted in
the Absolute. In Cosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved. The operations
of the two contraries produce harmony, like the centripetal and
centrifugal forces, which, being mutually inter‐dependent, are necessary
to each other, “in order that both should live.” If one should be
arrested, the action of the other would become immediately self‐
destructive.
Since the personification called Satan has been amply analyzed from its
triple aspect, in the _Old Testament_, Christian Theology and the ancient
Gentile attitude of thought, those who would learn more of the subject are
referred to _Isis Unveiled_(671) and the Second Part of Volume II of the
present work. The subject is here touched upon, and fresh explanations are
attempted, for a very good reason. Before we can approach the evolution of
Physical and Divine Man, we have first to master the idea of Cyclic
Evolution, to acquaint ourselves with the philosophies and beliefs of the
four Races which preceded our present Race, and to learn what were the
ideas of those Titans and Giants—Giants, verily, mentally, as well as
physically. The whole of antiquity was imbued with that philosophy which
teaches the involution of Spirit into Matter, the progressive, downward
cyclic descent, or active, self‐conscious evolution. The Alexandrian
Gnostics have sufficiently divulged the secrets of Initiations, and their
records are full of the “falling down of the Æons,” in their double
qualification of Angelic Beings and Periods; the one the natural evolution
of the other. On the other hand, Oriental traditions on both sides of the
“Black Water,” the Oceans that separate the two “Easts,” are equally full
of allegories about the downfall of the Plerôma, or that of the Gods and
Devas. One and all, they allegorized and explained the Fall as _the desire
to learn and acquire knowledge—the desire to know_. This is the natural
sequence of mental evolution, the Spiritual becoming transmuted into the
Material or Physical. The same law of descent into Materiality and of
reäscent into Spirituality asserted itself during the Christian era, the
reäction having only stopped just now, in our own special Sub‐race.
That which was allegorized in _Pymander_, perhaps ten millenniums ago, for
a triune mode of interpretation, and intended for a record of an
astronomical, anthropological, and even alchemical fact, namely, the
allegory of the Seven Rectors breaking through the Seven Circles of Fire,
was dwarfed into one material and anthropomorphic interpretation—the
Rebellion and Fall of the Angels. The multivocal, profoundly philosophical
narrative, under its poetical form of the “Marriage of Heaven with Earth,”
the love of Nature for Divine Form, and the Heavenly Man enraptured with
his own beauty mirrored in Nature, that is to say, Spirit attracted into
Matter, has now become, under theological handling, the Seven Rectors
disobeying Jehovah, self‐admiration generating Satanic pride, followed by
their Fall, Jehovah permitting no worship to be lost save upon himself. In
short, the beautiful Planet‐Angels, the glorious Cyclic Æons of the
Ancients, have become synthesized in their most orthodox shape in Samael,
the Chief of the Demons in the _Talmud_, “that Great Serpent with Twelve
Wings that draws down after himself, in his Fall, the Solar System, or the
Titans.” But Schemal—the _alter ego_ and the Sabean type of Samael—in his
philosophical and esoteric aspect, meant the “Year,” in its astrological
evil aspect, with its twelve months or “Wings” of unavoidable evils, in
Nature. In Esoteric Theogony both Schemal and Samael represented a
particular divinity.(672) With the Kabalists they are the “Spirit of the
Earth,” the Personal God that governs it, and therefore _de facto_
identical with Jehovah. For the Talmudists themselves admit that Samael is
a god‐name of one of the seven Elohim. The Kabalists, moreover, show the
two, Schemal and Samael, as a symbolical form of Saturn, Cronus; the
“Twelve Wings” standing for the twelve months, and the symbol in its
collectivity representing _a racial cycle_. Jehovah and Saturn are also
glyphically identical.
This leads, in its turn, to a very curious deduction from a Roman Catholic
dogma. Many renowned writers belonging to the Latin Church admit that a
difference exists, and should be made, between the Uranian Titans, the
antediluvian Giants, who were also Titans, and those post‐diluvian Giants,
in whom the Roman Catholics persist in seeing the descendants of the
mythical Ham. In clearer words, there is a difference to be made between
the cosmic, _primordial_ opposing Forces, guided by Cyclic Law, the
Atlantean human Giants, and the post‐diluvian great Adepts, whether of the
Right or the Left‐hand. At the same time they show that Michael, “the
_generalissimo_ of the fighting Celestial Host, the _bodyguard of
Jehovah_,” as it would seem, according to de Mirville, is also a Titan,
only with the adjective of “divine” before the cognomen. Thus those
“Uranides” who are called everywhere “Divine Titans”—and who, having
rebelled against Cronus, or Saturn, are therefore also shown to be the
enemies of Samael, also one of the Elohim, and synonymous with Jehovah in
his collectivity—are identical with Michael and his Host. In short, the
_rôles_ are reversed, all the combatants are confused, and no student is
able to distinguish clearly which is which. Esoteric explanation may,
however, bring some order into this confusion, in which Jehovah becomes
Saturn, and Michael and his Army, Satan and the Rebellious Angels, owing
to the indiscreet endeavours of the too faithful zealots to see a Devil in
every Pagan God. The true meaning is far more philosophical, and the
legend of the first “Fall” of the Angels assumes a scientific colouring
when correctly understood.
Cronus stands for endless, and hence immovable Duration, without
beginning, without end, beyond divided Time and beyond Space. Those
Angels, Genii, or Devas, who were born _to act in space and time_, that
is, to break through the _Seven Circles_ of the super‐spiritual planes
into the phenomenal, or circumscribed, super‐terrestrial regions, are said
allegorically to have _rebelled_ against Cronus, and fought the Lion who
was then the one living and highest God. When Cronus, in his turn, is
represented as mutilating Uranus, his father, the meaning of the allegory
is very simple. Absolute Time is made to become the finite and
conditioned; a portion is robbed from the whole, thus showing that Saturn,
the Father of the Gods, has been transformed from Eternal Duration into a
limited period. Cronus with his scythe cuts down even the longest and, to
us, seemingly endless cycles, which, for all that, are limited in
Eternity, and with the same scythe destroys the mightiest rebels. Aye, not
one will escape the scythe of Time! Praise the God or Gods, or flout one
or both, that scythe will not tremble one millionth of a second in its
ascending or descending course.
The Titans of Hesiod’s _Theogony_ were copied in Greece from the Suras and
Asuras of India. These Hesiodic Titans, the Uranides, which were once upon
a time numbered as only six, have been recently discovered, in an old
fragment relating to the Greek myth, to be _seven_, the seventh being
called Phoreg. Thus their identity with the Seven Rectors is fully
demonstrated. The origin of the War in Heaven and the Fall has, in our
mind, to be traced unavoidably to India, and perhaps far earlier than the
Purânic accounts thereof. For the Târakâmaya was in a later age, and there
are accounts of three distinct Wars to be traced in almost every
Cosmogony.
The first War happened in the night of time, between the Gods and
(A)‐suras, and lasted for the period of one Divine Year.(673) On this
occasion the Deities were defeated by the Daityas, under the leadership of
Hrâda. But afterwards, owing to a device of Vishnu, to whom the conquered
Gods applied for help, the latter defeated the Asuras. In the _Vishnu
Purâna_ no interval is found between the two Wars. In the Esoteric
Doctrine, however, one War takes place before the building of the Solar
System; another, on Earth, at the “creation” of man; and a third War is
mentioned as taking place at the close of the Fourth Race, between its
Adepts and those of the Fifth Race; that is, between the Initiates of the
“Sacred Island” and the Sorcerers of Atlantis. We shall notice the first
contest, as recounted by Parâshara, and endeavour to separate the two
accounts, which are purposely blended together.
It is there stated that as the Daityas and Asuras were engaged in the
duties of their respective Orders (Varnas) and followed the paths
prescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance—a queer
employment for _Demons_ if they are identical with our _Devils_, as it is
claimed—it was impossible for the Gods to destroy them. The prayers
addressed by the Gods to Vishnu are curious, as showing the ideas involved
in an anthropomorphic Deity. Having, after their defeat, “fled to the
northern shore of the Milky Ocean [Atlantic Ocean],”(674) the discomfited
Gods address many supplications “to the first of Beings, the divine
Vishnu,” and among others the following:
Glory to thee, who art one with the Saints, whose perfect nature
is ever blessed, and traverses, unobstructed, all permeable
elements. Glory to thee, _who art one with the Serpent‐Race,
double‐tongued, impetuous, cruel, insatiate of enjoyment_ and
abounding with wealth.... Glory to thee, ... O Lord, _who hast
neither colour nor extension_, nor bulk (_ghana_), _nor any
predicable qualities_, and whose essence (_rûpa_), purest of the
pure, is appreciable only by holy Paramarshis [the greatest of
Sages or Rishis]. We bow to thee, in the nature of Brahma,
uncreated, undecaying (_avyaya_); who _art in our bodies_, and _in
all other bodies, and in all living creatures_; and beside whom
nothing exists. We glorify that Vâsudeva, the lord (of all), who
is without soil, the seed of all things, exempt from dissolution,
unborn, eternal; being, in essence, Paramapadâtmavat [beyond the
condition of Spirit], and, in substance (_rûpa_), the whole of
this (Universe).(675)
The above is quoted as an illustration of the vast field offered by the
_Purânas_ to adverse and erroneous criticism, by every European bigot who
forms an estimate of an alien religion on mere external evidence. Any man
accustomed to subject what he reads to thoughtful analysis, will see at a
glance the incongruity of addressing the accepted “Unknowable,” the
formless, and attributeless Absolute, such as the Vedântins define
Brahman, as being “one with the Serpent‐Race, double‐tongued, cruel and
insatiable,” thus associating the abstract with the concrete, and
bestowing adjectives on that which is free from any limitations, and
conditionless. Even Professor Wilson, who, after living surrounded by
Brâhmans and Pandits in India for so many years, ought to have known
better—even that scholar lost no opportunity of criticizing the Hindû
Scriptures on this account. Thus, he exclaims:
The _Purânas_ constantly teach incompatible doctrines! According
to this passage,(676) the Supreme Being is not the inert cause of
creation only, but exercises the functions of an active
providence. The Commentator quotes a text of the _Veda_ in support
of this view: “Universal Soul entering into men, governs their
conduct.” Incongruities, however, are as frequent in the _Vedas_
as in the _Purânas_.
Less frequent, in sober truth, than in the Mosaic _Bible_. But prejudice
is great in the hearts of our Orientalists, especially in those of
“reverend” scholars. Universal Soul is _not_ the inert Cause of Creation
or (Para) Brahman, but simply that which we call the Sixth Principle of
_Intellectual_ Kosmos, on the manifested plane of being. It is Mahat, or
Mahâbuddhi, the Great Soul, the Vehicle of Spirit, the first primeval
reflection of the formless CAUSE, and that which is even _beyond_ Spirit.
So much for Professor Wilson’s uncalled‐for fling at the _Purânas_. As for
the apparently incongruous appeal to Vishnu by the defeated Gods, the
explanation is there, in the text of _Vishnu Purâna_, if Orientalists
would only notice it. There is Vishnu as Brahmâ, and Vishnu _in his two
aspects_, philosophy teaches. There is but one Brahman, “essentially
Prakriti and Spirit.”
This ignorance is truly and beautifully expressed in the praise of the
Yogins to Brahmâ, “the upholder of the earth,” when they say:
Those who have not practised devotion conceive erroneously of the
nature of the world. The ignorant, who do not perceive that this
Universe is of the nature of Wisdom, and judge of it as an object
of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual ignorance.
But they who know true Wisdom, and whose minds are pure, behold
this whole world _as one with Divine Knowledge_, as one with thee,
O God! Be favourable, O universal Spirit!(677)
Therefore, it is not Vishnu, “the inert cause of creation,” which
exercised the functions of an _Active_ Providence, but the Universal Soul,
that which, in its material aspect, Éliphas Lévi calls Astral Light. And
this Soul is, in its dual aspect of Spirit and Matter, the true
anthropomorphic God of the Theists; for this God is a _personification_ of
that Universal Creative Agent, both pure and impure, owing to its
manifested condition and differentiation in this Mâyâvic World—_God_ and
_Devil_, truly. But Professor Wilson failed to see how Vishnu, in this
character, closely resembles the Lord God of Israel, “especially in his
policy of deception, temptation, and cunning.”
In the _Vishnu Purâna_ this is made as plain as can be. For it is said
there, that:
At the conclusion of their prayers (_stotra_) the Gods beheld the
Sovereign Deity Hari (Vishnu) armed with the shell, the discus,
and the mace, _riding on Garuda._
Now Garuda is the Manvantaric Cycle, as will be shown in its place.
Vishnu, therefore, is the Deity _in Space and Time_, the peculiar God of
the Vaishnavas. Such Gods are called in Esoteric Philosophy _tribal_ or
_racial_; that is to say, one of the many Dhyânis or Gods, or Elohim, one
of whom was generally chosen for some special reason by a nation or a
tribe, and thus became gradually a “God _above all_ Gods,”(678) the
“highest God,” as Jehovah, Osiris, Bel, or any other of the Seven Regents.
“The tree is known by its fruit”; the nature of a God by his actions. We
must either judge these actions by the dead‐letter narratives, or must
accept them allegorically. If we compare the two—Vishnu, as the defender
and champion of the defeated Gods; and Jehovah, the defender and champion
of the “chosen” people, so called by antiphrasis, no doubt, as it is the
Jews who had chosen that “jealous” God—we shall find that both use deceit
and cunning. They do so on the principle of “the end justifying the
means,” in order to have the best of their respective opponents and
foes—the Demons. Thus while, according to the Kabalists, Jehovah assumes
the shape of the tempting Serpent in the Garden of Eden, sends Satan with
a special mission to tempt Job, harasses and wearies Pharaoh with Saraï,
Abraham’s wife, and “hardens” another Pharaoh’s heart against Moses, lest
there should be no opportunity for plaguing his victims “with great
plagues,” Vishnu is made in his _Purâna_ to resort to a trick no less
unworthy of any respectable God.
The defeated Gods addressed Vishnu as follows:
Have compassion upon us, O Lord, and protect us, who have come to
thee for succour from the Daityas (Demons)! They have seized upon
the three worlds, and appropriated the offerings which are our
portion, _taking care not to transgress the precepts of the Veda_.
Although _we, as well as they, are parts of thee_(679) ... engaged
[as they are] ... in the paths prescribed by the holy writ ... it
is impossible for us to destroy them. Do thou, whose wisdom is
immeasurable (Ameyâtman) instruct us _in some device_ by which we
may be able to exterminate the enemies of the Gods!
When the mighty Vishnu heard their request, he emitted from his
body an _illusory_ form (Mâyâmoha, the “deluder by illusion”)
which he gave to the Gods and thus spake: “This Mâyâmoha shall
_wholly beguile_ the Daityas, so that, being led astray from the
path of the _Vedas_, they may be put to death.... Go then and fear
not. Let this delusive vision precede you. It shall this day be of
great service unto you, O Gods!”
After this, the great Delusion (Mâyâmoha) having proceeded (to
earth), beheld the Daityas, engaged in ascetic penances, and
approaching them, in the semblance of a Digambara (naked
mendicant) with his head shaven ... he thus addressed them, in
gentle accents: “Ho, lords of the Daitya race, wherefore is it
that you practise these acts of penances?” etc.(680)
Finally the Daityas were seduced by the wily talk of Mâyâmoha, as Eve was
seduced by the advice of the Serpent. They became apostates to the
_Vedas_. As Dr. Muir translates the passage:
The great Deceiver, practising illusion, next beguiled other
Daityas, by means of many other sorts of heresy. In a very short
time, these Asuras (Daityas), deluded by the Deceiver [_who was
Vishnu_] abandoned the entire system founded on the ordinances of
the triple _Veda_. Some reviled the _Vedas_; others, the
ceremonial of sacrifice; and others, the Brâhmans. This (they
exclaimed), is a doctrine which will not bear discussion: the
slaughter (of animals, in sacrifice), is not conducive to
religious merit. (To say, that) oblations of butter consumed in
the fire produce any future reward, is the assertion of a
child.... If it be a fact that a beast slain in sacrifice is
exalted to heaven, why does not the worshipper slaughter his own
father?... Infallible utterances do not, great Asuras, fall from
the skies; it is only assertions founded on reasoning that are
accepted by me and by other [intelligent] persons like yourselves!
Thus by numerous methods the Daityas were unsettled by the great
Deceiver [_Reason_].... When the Daityas had entered on the path
of error, the Deities mustered all their energies and approached
to battle. Then followed a combat between the Gods and the Asuras;
and the latter, who had abandoned the right road, were smitten by
the former. In previous times they had been defended by the armour
of righteousness which they bore; but, when that had been
destroyed, they, also, perished.(681)
Whatever may be thought of the Hindûs, no enemy of theirs can regard them
as fools. A people, whose holy men and sages have left to the world the
greatest and most sublime philosophies that ever emanated from the minds
of men, must have known the difference between right and wrong. Even a
savage can discern white from black, good from bad, and deceit from
sincerity and truthfulness. Those who had narrated this event in the
biography of their God, must have seen that in this case it was that God
who was the Arch‐Deceiver, and the Daityas, who “never transgressed the
precepts of the _Vedas_,” who had the sunny side in the transaction, and
who were the true “Gods.” Thence there must have been, and _there is_ a
secret meaning hidden under this allegory. In no class of society, in no
nation, are deceit and craft considered as _divine_ virtues—except perhaps
in the clerical classes of Theologians and modern Jesuitism.
The _Vishnu Purâna_,(682) like all other works of this kind, passed at a
later period into the hands of the Temple‐Brâhmans, and the old MSS. have,
no doubt, been further tampered with by sectarians. But there was a time
when the _Purânas_ were esoteric works, and so they are still for the
Initiates who can read them with the key that is in their possession.
Whether the Brâhman Initiates will ever give out the full meaning of these
allegories, is a question with which the writer is not concerned. The
present object is to show that, while honouring the _Creative Powers_ in
their multiple forms, no philosopher could have, or ever has, accepted the
allegory for its true spirit, except, perhaps, some philosophers belonging
to the present “superior and civilized” Christian races. For, as shown,
Jehovah is not one whit the superior of Vishnu on the plane of ethics.
This is why the Occultists, and even some Kabalists, whether or not they
regard those creative Forces _as living and conscious Entities_—and one
does not see why they should not be so accepted—will never confuse the
Cause with the Effect, and accept the Spirit of the Earth for Parabrahman,
or Ain Suph. At all events they know well the true nature of what was
called by the Greeks Father‐Æther, Jupiter‐Titan, etc. They know that the
Soul of the Astral Light is divine, and its Body—the Light‐waves on the
lower planes—infernal. This Light is symbolized by the “Magic Head” in the
_Zohar_, the Double Face on the Double Pyramid; the black Pyramid rising
against a pure white ground, with _a white Head and Face within its black
Triangle_; the White Pyramid, inverted—the reflection of the first in the
dark Waters—showing the _black reflection of the white Face_.
This is the Astral Light, or _Demon est Deus Inversus_.
Section XII. The Theogony of the Creative Gods.
To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient Cosmology
necessitates the study and comparative analysis of all the great religions
of antiquity; for it is only by this method that the root‐idea can be made
plain. Exact Science, could it soar so high, in tracing the operations of
Nature to their ultimate and original sources, would call this idea the
Hierarchy of Forces. The original, transcendental and philosophical
conception was one. But as systems began to reflect more and more with
every age the idiosyncrasies of nations, and as the latter, after
separating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along its own
national or tribal groove, the main idea gradually became veiled by the
overgrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the Forces, or rather
the intelligent Powers of Nature, received divine honours to which they
were hardly entitled, in others—as now in Europe and the other _civilized_
lands—the very thought of such Forces being endowed with intelligence
seems absurd, and is proclaimed _unscientific_. Therefore one finds relief
in such statements as are found in the Introduction to _Asgard and the
Gods_; “Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors,” edited by W. S.
W. Anson, who says:
Although in Central Asia, or on the banks of the Indus, in the
Land of the Pyramids, and in the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and
even in the North, whither Kelts, Teutons and Slavs wandered, the
religious conceptions of the people have taken different forms,
_yet their common origin_ is still perceptible. We point out this
connection between the stories of the Gods, and the deep thought
contained in them, and their importance, in order that the reader
may see that _it is not a magic world of erratic fancy_ which
opens out before him, but that ... _Life and Nature_ formed the
basis of the existence and action of these divinities.(683)
And though it is impossible for any Occultist or student of Eastern
Esotericism to concur in the strange idea that, “the religious conceptions
of the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings
of civilization amongst the Germanic races,”(684) he is yet glad to find
such truths expressed as that: “These fairy tales are not senseless
stories written for the amusement of the idle; they embody the profound
religion of our forefathers.”(685)
Precisely so. Not only their Religion, but likewise their History. For a
myth, in Greek μῦθος, means oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth
from one generation to the other; and even in the modern etymology the
term stands for a _fabulous_ statement conveying some important truth; a
tale of some extraordinary personage whose biography has become overgrown,
owing to the veneration of successive generations, with rich popular
fancy, but which is no _wholesale_ fable. Like our ancestors, the
primitive Âryans, we believe firmly in the personality and intelligence of
more than one phenomenon‐producing Force in Nature.
As time rolled on, the archaic teaching grew dimmer; and the nations more
or less lost sight of the Highest and One Principle of all things, and
began to transfer the abstract attributes of the Causeless Cause to the
caused effects, which became in their turn causative, the Creative Powers
of the Universe; the great nations thus acted from fear of profaning the
Idea; the smaller, because they either failed to grasp it, or lacked the
power of philosophic conception needed to preserve it in all its
immaculate purity. But one and all, with the exception of the latest
Âryans, now become Europeans and Christians, show this veneration in their
Cosmogonies. As Thomas Taylor,(686) the most intuitional of all the
translators of the Greek Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived
the One Principle as the immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no
sane man would credit a planner and architect with having built with his
own hands the edifice he admires. On the testimony of Damascius in his
work, _On First Principles_ (Περὶ Πρώτων Ἀρχῶν), they referred to it as
the “Unknown Darkness.” The Babylonians passed over this principle in
silence. “To that God,” says Porphyry, in his _On Abstinence_ (Περί ἀποχῆς
τῶν ἐμψύχων), “who is above all things, neither external speech ought to
be addressed, nor yet that which is inward.” Hesiod begins his _Theogony_
with the words, “Chaos of all things was the first produced,”(687) thus
allowing the inference that its Cause or Producer must be passed over in
reverential silence. Homer in his poems ascends no higher than Night,
which he represents Zeus as reverencing. According to all the ancient
theologists, and the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the
immediate Artificer of the Universe, _is not the highest God_; any more
than Sir Christopher Wren in his physical, human aspect is the Mind in him
which produced his great works of art. Homer, therefore, is not only
silent with respect to the First Principle, but likewise with respect to
those two Principles immediately posterior to the First, the Æther and
Chaos of Orpheus and Hesiod, and the Bound and Infinity of Pythagoras and
Plato.(688) Proclus says of this Highest Principle that it is “the Unity
of Unities, and beyond the first Adyta ... more ineffable than all
Silence, and more occult than all Essence ... concealed amidst the
intelligible Gods.”(689)
To what was written by Thomas Taylor in 1797—namely, that the “Jews appear
to have ascended no higher ... than the _immediate_ Artificer of the
Universe,” as “Moses introduces a darkness on the face of the deep,
without even insinuating that there was any cause of its existence,”(690)
one might add something more. Never have the Jews in their _Bible_—a
purely esoteric, symbolical work—so profoundly degraded their metaphorical
deity as have the Christians, by accepting Jehovah as their one living yet
_personal_ God.
This First, or rather One, Principle was called the “Circle of Heaven,”
symbolized by the hierogram of a Point within a Circle or Equilateral
Triangle, the Point being the Logos. Thus, in the _Rig Veda_, wherein
Brahmâ is not even named. Cosmogony is preluded with the Hiranyagarbha,
the “Golden Egg,” and Prajâpati (later on Brahmâ), from whom emanate all
the Hierarchies of “Creators.” The Monad, or Point, is the original and is
the Unit from which follows the entire numeral system. This Point is the
First Cause, but THAT from which it emanates, or of which, rather, it is
the expression, the Logos, is passed over in silence. In its turn, the
universal symbol, the _Point __ within the Circle_, was not yet the
Architect, but the Cause of that Architect; and the latter stood to it in
precisely the same relation as the Point itself stood to the Circumference
of the Circle, which cannot be defined, according to Hermes Trismegistus.
Porphyry shows that the Monad and the Duad of Pythagoras are identical
with Plato’s Infinite and Finite, in _Philebus_, or what Plato calls the
ἄπειρον and πέρας. It is the latter only, the Mother, which is
substantial, the former being the “Cause of all Unity and measure of all
things”;(691) the Duad, Mûlaprakriti, the Veil of Parabrahman, being thus
shown to be the Mother of the Logos and, at the same time, his
Daughter—that is to say, the object of his perception—the produced
producer and the secondary cause of it. With Pythagoras, the Monad returns
into Silence and Darkness, as soon as it has evolved the Triad, from which
emanate the remaining 7 numbers of the 10 numbers which are at the base of
the Manifested Universe.
In the Norse Cosmogony it is again the same.
In the beginning was a great Abyss (Chaos), neither Day nor Night
existed; the Abyss was Ginnungagap, the yawning gulf, without
beginning, without end. All‐Father, the Uncreated, the Unseen,
dwelt in the Depth of the Abyss (Space) and _willed_, and what was
willed came into being.(692)
As in the Hindû Cosmogony, the evolution of the Universe is divided into
two acts, which are called in India the Prâkrita and Pâdma Creations.
Before the warm rays pouring from the Home of Brightness awaken life in
the Great Waters of Space, the Elements of the First Creation come into
view, and from them is formed the Giant Ymir, or Örgelmir (literally,
Seething Clay), Primordial Matter differentiated from Chaos. Then comes
the Cow Audumla, the Nourisher,(693) from whom is born Buri, the Producer,
whose son Bör (Born), by Bestla, the daughter of the Frost‐Giants, the
sons of Ymir, had three sons, Odin, Willi and We, or Spirit, Will, and
Holiness. This was when Darkness still reigned throughout Space, when the
Ases, the Creative Powers, or Dhyân Chohans, were not yet evolved, and the
Yggdrasil, the Tree of the Universe of Time and of Life, had not yet
grown, and there was, as yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of Heroes. The
Scandinavian legends of Creation, of our Earth and World, begin with Time
and human Life. All that precedes it is for them Darkness, wherein All‐
Father, the Cause of all, dwells. As observed by the editor of _Asgard and
the Gods_, though these legends have in them the idea of that All‐Father,
the original cause of all, “he is scarcely more than mentioned in the
poems,” not, as he thinks, because before the preaching of the Gospel, the
idea “could not rise to distinct conceptions of the Eternal,” but on
account of its deep esoteric character. Therefore, all the Creative Gods,
or _Personal_ Deities, begin at the secondary stage of Cosmic Evolution.
Zeus is born _in_, and _out_ of Cronus—Time. So is Brahmâ the production
and emanation of Kâla, “Eternity and Time,” Kâla being one of the names of
Vishnu. Hence we find Odin, the Father of _the Gods and of the Ases_, as
Brahmâ is the Father of _the Gods and of the Asuras_; and hence also the
androgyne character of all the chief Creative Gods, from the second Monad
of the Greeks down to the Sephira Adam Kadmon, the Brahmâ or Prajâpati‐
Vâch of the _Vedas_, and the androgyne of Plato, which is but another
version of the Indian symbol.
The best metaphysical definition of primeval Theogony, in the spirit of
the Vedântins, may be found in the “Notes on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_”, by T.
Subba Row. Parabrahman, the Unknown and the Incognizable, as the lecturer
tells his audience:
Is not Ego, it is not Non‐Ego, nor is it consciousness ... it is
not even Âtmâ ... but though not itself an object of knowledge, it
is yet capable of supporting and giving rise to every kind of
object and every kind of existence which becomes an object of
knowledge.... [It is] the one essence from which starts into
existence a centre of energy ... [which he calls the Logos].(694)
This Logos is the Shabda Brahman of the Hindûs, which he will not even
call Îshvara (the “Lord” God), lest the term should create confusion in
the people’s minds. It is the Avalokiteshvara of the Buddhists, the Verbum
of the Christians in its real _esoteric_ meaning, not in its theological
disfigurement.
It is, the first Jñâta, or the Ego in the Kosmos, and every other
Ego ... is but its reflection and manifestation.... It exists in a
latent condition in the bosom of Parabrahman, at the time of
Pralaya.... [During Manvantara] it has a consciousness and an
individuality of its own.... [It is a centre of energy, but] such
centres of energy are almost innumerable in the bosom of
Parabrahman. It must not be supposed, that [even] this Logos is
[_the_ Creator, or that it is] but a single centre of energy....
Their number is almost infinite.... [This] is the first Ego that
appears in Kosmos, and is the end of all evolution. [It is the
abstract Ego].... This is the _first_ manifestation [or aspect] of
Parabrahman.... When once it starts into existence as a conscious
being, ... from its objective standpoint, Parabrahman appears to
it as Mûlaprakriti. Please bear this in mind ... for here is the
root of the whole difficulty about Purusha and Prakriti felt by
the various writers on Vedântic philosophy.... This Mûlaprakriti
is material to it [the Logos], as any material object is material
to us. This Mûlaprakriti is no more Parabrahman than the bundle of
attributes of a pillar is the pillar itself; Parabrahman is an
unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mûlaprakriti is a sort of
veil thrown over it. Parabrahman by itself cannot be seen as it
is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it, and that
veil is the mighty expanse of Cosmic Matter.... Parabrahman, after
having appeared on the one hand as the Ego, and on the other as
Mûlaprakriti, acts as the one energy through the Logos.(695)
And the lecturer explains what he means by this acting of Something which
is _Nothing_, though it is the ALL, by a fine simile. He compares the
Logos to the Sun through which light and heat radiate, but whose energy,
light and heat, exist in some unknown condition in Space and are diffused
in Space only as _visible_ light and heat, the Sun being only the agent
thereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The quaternary is made up
by the _energizing light_ shed by the Logos.
The Hebrew Kabalists stated it in a manner which is esoterically identical
with the Vedântic. Ain Suph, they taught, could not be comprehended, could
not be located, nor named, though the Causeless Cause of all. Hence its
name, Ain Suph, is a term of negation, “the Inscrutable, the Incognizable,
and the Unnameable.” They made of it, therefore, a Boundless Circle, a
Sphere, of which human intellect, with the utmost stretch, could only
perceive the vault. In the words of one who has unriddled much in the
Kabalistical system most thoroughly, in one of its meanings, in its
numerical and geometrical esotericism:
Close your eyes, and from your own consciousness of perception try
and think outward to the extremest limits in every direction. You
will find that equal lines or rays of perception extend out evenly
in all directions, so that the utmost effort of perception will
terminate in the _vault of a sphere_. The limitation of this
sphere will, of necessity, be a great Circle, and the direct rays
of thought in any and every direction must be right line radii of
the circle. This, then, _must_ be, humanly speaking, the extremest
all‐embracing conception of the Ain Suph _manifest_, which
formulates itself as a geometrical figure, viz., of a circle, with
its elements of curved circumference and right line diameter
divided into radii. Hence, a geometrical shape is the first
recognizable means of connection between the Ain Suph and the
intelligence of man.(696)
This Great Circle, which Eastern Esotericism reduces to the Point within
the Boundless Circle, is the Avalokiteshvara, the Logos, or Verbum, of
which T. Subba Row speaks. But this Circle or manifested God is as unknown
to us, except through its _manifested_ Universe, as is the ONE, though
easier, or rather more possible to our highest conceptions. This Logos
which sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahman, during Pralaya, as our “Ego is
latent [in us] at the time of Sushupti,” or sleep, which cannot cognize
Parabrahman otherwise than as Mûlaprakriti—the latter being a Cosmic Veil
which is “the mighty expanse of Cosmic Matter”—is thus only an organ in
Cosmic Creation, through which radiate the Energy and Wisdom of
Parabrahman, _unknown to the Logos, as it is to ourselves_. Moreover, as
the Logos is as unknown to us as Parabrahman is unknown in reality to the
Logos, both Eastern Esotericism and the Kabalah, in order to bring the
Logos within the range of our conceptions, have resolved the abstract
synthesis into concrete images; viz., into the reflections or multiplied
aspects of that Logos, or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ Ormazd, Osiris, Adam
Kadmon, call it by any of such names you will; which aspects, or
manvantaric emanations, are the Dhyân Chohans, the Elohim, the Devas, the
Amshaspends, etc. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the latter,
according to T. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of Parabrahman, “the
highest trinity that we are capable of understanding,” which is
Mûlaprakriti, the Veil, the Logos, and the Conscious Energy of the latter,
or its Power and Light, called in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, Daiviprakriti; or
“Matter, Force and the Ego, or the one root of Self, of which every other
kind of self is but a manifestation or a reflection.” It is then only in
this Light of consciousness, of mental and physical perception, that
_practical_ Occultism can throw the Logos into visibility by geometrical
figures, which, when closely studied, will yield not only a scientific
explanation of the real, objective, existence(697) of the “Seven Sons of
the Divine Sophia,” which is this Light of the Logos, but will show, by
means of other yet undiscovered keys, that, with regard to Humanity, these
“Seven Sons” and their numberless emanations, centres of energy
personified, are an absolute necessity. Make away with them, and the
Mystery of Being and Mankind _will never be unriddled, nor even closely
approached_.
It is through this Light that everything is created. This Root of mental
SELF is also the root of physical _Self_, for this Light is the
permutation, in our manifested world, of Mûlaprakriti, called Aditi in the
_Vedas_. In its third aspect it becomes Vâch,(698) the Daughter and the
Mother of the Logos, as Isis is the Daughter and the Mother of Osiris, who
is Horns, and Moot, the Daughter, Wife, and Mother, of Ammon, in the
Egyptian Moon‐glyph. In the _Kabalah_, Sephira is the same as Shekinah,
and is, in another synthesis, the Wife, Daughter, and Mother of the
Heavenly Man, Adam Kadmon, and is even identical with him, just as Vâch is
identical with Brahmâ, and is called the female Logos. In the _Rig Veda_,
Vâch is “Mystic Speech,” by whom Occult Knowledge and Wisdom are
communicated to man, and thus Vâch is said to have “entered the Rishis.”
She is “generated by the Gods”; she is the Divine Vâch, the “Queen of
Gods”; and she is associated, like Sephira with the Sephiroth, with the
Prajâpatis in their work of creation. Moreover, she is called the “Mother
of the _Vedas_,” “since it is through her powers, [as Mystic _Speech_]
that Brahmâ revealed them, and also owing to her power that he produced
the Universe”; that is to say, through Speech, and words, synthesized by
the “Word” and numbers.(699)
But when Vâch is also spoken of as the daughter of Daksha, “the God who
lives in all the Kalpas,” her mâyâvic character is shown; during the
Pralaya she disappears, absorbed in the One, all‐devouring Ray.
But there are two distinct aspects in universal Esotericism, Eastern and
Western, in all these personations of the female Power in Nature, or
Nature the _noumenal_ and the _phenomenal_. One is its purely metaphysical
aspect, as described by the learned lecturer in his “Notes on the
_Bhagavad Gîtâ_”; the other terrestrial and physical, and at the same time
_divine_ from the stand‐point of practical human conception and Occultism.
They are all the symbols and personifications of Chaos, the Great Deep, or
the Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable Veil between the
INCOGNIZABLE and the Logos of Creation. “Connecting himself through his
mind with Vâch, Brahmâ [the Logos] created the Primordial Waters.” In the
_Katha Upanishad_ it is stated still more clearly:
Prajâpati was this Universe. _Vâch was a second to him._ He
associated with her ... she produced these creatures and again
reëntered Prajâpati.
This connects Vâch and Sephira with the Goddess Kwan‐Yin, the “Merciful
Mother,” the Divine Voice of the Soul, even in exoteric Buddhism, and with
the female aspect of Kwan‐Shai‐Yin, the Logos, the Verbum of Creation, and
at the same time with the Voice that speaks audibly to the Initiate,
according to Esoteric Budhism. Bath Kol, the Filia Vocis, the Daughter of
the Divine Voice of the Hebrews, responding from the Mercy Seat within the
Veil of the Temple is—a result.
And here we may incidentally point out one of the many unjust slurs thrown
by the “good and pious” missionaries in India on the religion of the land.
The allegory, in the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, that Brahmâ, as the Father of
men, performed the work of procreation by incestuous intercourse with his
own daughter Vâch, also called Sandhyâ, Twilight, and Shatarûpâ, of a
hundred forms, is incessantly thrown in the teeth of the Brâhmans, as
condemning their “detestable, false religion.” Besides the fact,
conveniently forgotten by the Europeans, that the Patriarch Lot is shown
guilty of the same crime under the _human form_, whereas it was under the
form of a buck that Brahmâ, or rather Prajâpati, accomplished the incest
with his daughter, who had that of a hind (_rohit_), the esoteric reading
of the third chapter of _Genesis_ shows the same. Moreover, there is
certainly a _cosmic_, and not a physiological, meaning attached to the
Indian allegory, since Vâch is a permutation of Aditi and Mûlaprakriti, or
Chaos, and Brahmâ a permutation of Nârâyana, the Spirit of God entering
into, and fructifying Nature; and, therefore, there is nothing phallic in
the conception at all.
As already stated, Aditi‐Vâch is the female Logos, or Verbum, the Word;
and Sephira in the _Kabalah_ is the same. These feminine Logoi are all
correlations, in their _noumenal_ aspect, of Light, and Sound, and Æther,
showing how well‐informed were the Ancients both in Physical Science, as
now known to the moderns, and also as to the birth of that Science in the
Spiritual and Astral spheres.
Our old writers said that Vâch is of four kinds. These are called
Parâ, Pashyantî, Madhyamâ, Vaikharî. This statement you will find
in the _Rig Veda_ itself and in several of the _Upanishads_.
Vaikharî Vâch is what we utter.
It is Sound, _Speech_, that again which becomes comprehensive and
objective to one of our physical senses and may be brought under the laws
of perception. Hence:
Every kind of Vaikharî Vâch exists in its Madhyamâ ... Pashyantî
and ultimately in its Parâ form.... The reason why this
Pranava(700) is called Vâch is this, that these four principles of
the great Kosmos correspond to these four forms of Vâch.... The
whole Kosmos in its objective form is Vaikharî Vâch; the Light of
the Logos is the Madhyamâ form; and the Logos itself the Pasyantî
form; while Parabrahman is the Parâ [beyond the Noumenon of all
Noumena] aspect of that Vâch.(701)
Thus Vâch, Shekinah, or the “Music of the Spheres” of Pythagoras, are one,
if we take for our example instances in the three most (apparently)
dissimilar religious philosophies in the world, the Hindû, the Greek and
the Chaldean Hebrew. These personations and allegories may be viewed under
_four_ chief and _three_ lesser aspects, or _seven_ in all, as in
Esotericism. The Parâ form is the ever subjective and latent Light and
Sound, which exist eternally in the bosom of the INCOGNIZABLE; when
transferred into the ideation of the Logos, or its latent Light, it is
called Pasyantî, and when it becomes that Light _expressed_, it is
Madhyamâ.
Now the _Kabalah_ gives the definition thus:
There are three kinds of Light, and that [the fourth] which
interpenetrates the others; (1) the clear and the penetrating, the
_objective_ Light, (2) the _reflected_ Light, and (3) the
_abstract_ Light.
The ten Sephiroth, the Three and the Seven, are called in the _Kabalah_
the Ten Words, DBRIM (Dabarim), the Numbers and the Emanations of the
Heavenly Light, which is both Adam Kadmon and Sephira, Prajâpati‐Vâch, or
Brahmâ. Light, Sound, Number, are the three factors of creation in the
_Kabalah_. Parabrahman cannot be known except through the luminous Point,
the Logos, which knows not Parabrahman but only Mûlaprakriti. Similarly
Adam Kadmon knew only Shekinah, though he was the Vehicle of Ain Suph.
And, as Adam Kadmon, he is, in the Esoteric interpretation, the total of
the Number Ten, the Sephiroth, himself being a Trinity, or the three
attributes of the Incognizable Deity in One.(702) “When the Heavenly Man
(or Logos) first assumed the form of the Crown(703) [Kether] and
identified himself with Sephira, he caused Seven splendid Lights to
emanate from it [the Crown],” which made in their totality Ten; so
Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, once he became separated from, yet identical with Vâch,
caused the seven Rishis, the seven Manus or Prajâpatis, to issue from that
Crown. In _exotericism_ one will always find 10 and 7, of either Sephira
or Prajâpati; in _esoteric_ rendering always 3 and 7, which yield also 10.
Only when divided, in the manifested sphere, into 3 and 7, they form
[circle with vertical line], the androgyne, and [circle containing an X],
or the figure X manifested and differentiated.
This will help the student to understand why Pythagoras esteemed the
Deity, the Logos, to be the Centre of Unity and Source of Harmony. We say
this Deity was the Logos, not the Monad that dwelleth in Solitude and
Silence, because Pythagoras taught that Unity being indivisible is _no
number_. And this is also why it was required of the candidate, who
applied for admittance into his school, that he should have already
studied as a preliminary step, the sciences of Arithmetic, Astronomy,
Geometry and _Music_, which were held to be the four divisions of
Mathematics.(704) Again, this explains why the Pythagoreans asserted that
the doctrine of Numbers, the chief of all in Esotericism, had been
revealed to man by the Celestial Deities; that the World had been called
forth out of Chaos by Sound, or Harmony, and constructed according to the
principles of musical proportion; that the seven planets which rule the
destiny of mortals have a harmonious motion and, as Censorinus says:
Intervals corresponding to musical diastemes, rendering various
sounds, so perfectly consonant, that they produce the sweetest
melody, which is inaudible to us, only by reason of the greatness
of the sound, which our ears are incapable of receiving.
In the Pythagorean Theogony, the Hierarchies of the Heavenly Host and Gods
were numbered, and also expressed numerically. Pythagoras had studied
Esoteric Science in India; therefore we find his pupils saying:
The Monad [the manifested One] is the principle of all things.
From the Monad and the indeterminate Duad (Chaos), Numbers; from
Numbers, Points; from Points, Lines; from Lines, Superficies; from
Superficies, Solids; from these, Solid Bodies, whose elements are
four, Fire, Water, Air, Earth; of all which transmuted
[correlated], and totally changed, the World consists.(705)
And this, if it does not unriddle the mystery altogether, may at any rate
lift a corner of the veil off those wondrous allegories that have been
thrown over Vâch, the most mysterious of all the Brâhmanical Goddesses;
she who is termed “the _melodious_ Cow who milked forth sustenance and
Water”—the Earth with all her mystic powers; and again she “who yields us
nourishment and sustenance”—the physical Earth. Isis is also mystic Nature
and also Earth; and her cow’s horns identify her with Vâch, who, after
being recognized in her highest form as Parâ, becomes, at the lower or
material end of creation, Vaikharî. Hence she is mystic, though physical,
Nature, with all her magic ways and properties.
Again, as Goddess of Speech and of Sound, and a permutation of Aditi, she
is Chaos, in one sense. At any rate, she is the “Mother of the Gods,” and
it is from Brahmâ, Îshvara or the Logos, and Vâch, as from Adam Kadmon and
Sephira, that the real _manifested_ Theogony has to start. Beyond, all is
Darkness and abstract speculation. With the Dhyân Chohans or the Gods, the
Seers, the Prophets and the Adepts in general are on firm ground. Whether
as Aditi, or the Divine Sophia of the Greek Gnostics, she is the mother of
the Seven Sons, the Angels of the Face, of the Deep, or the Great Green
One of the _Book of the Dead_. Says the _Book of Dzyan_, or Real
Knowledge, obtained through meditation:
_The Great Mother lay with the [triangle], and the |, and the
[square], the second | and the [five‐pointed star],_(_706_)_ in
her Bosom, ready to bring them forth, the valiant Sons of the
[square] [triangle] || [or 4,320,000, the Cycle], whose two Elders
are the [circle] [Circle] and the · [Point]._
At the beginning of every Cycle of 4,320,000, the Seven, or as some
nations had it Eight, Great Gods, descend to establish the new order of
things and to give the impetus to the new cycle. That _eighth_ God was the
unifying Circle, or Logos, separated and made distinct from its Host, in
exoteric dogma, just as the three divine _hypostases_ of the ancient
Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three distinct _personæ_. As
a Commentary says:
_The Mighty Ones perform their great works, and leave behind them
__ everlasting monuments to commemorate their visit, every time
they penetrate within our mâyâvic veil [atmosphere]._(707)
Thus we are taught that the great Pyramids were built under their direct
supervision, “when Dhruva [the then Pole‐star], was at his lowest
culmination, and the Krittikâs [Pleiades] looked over his head [were on
the same meridian but above] to watch the work of the Giants.” Thus, as
the first Pyramids were built at the beginning of a Sidereal Year, under
Dhruva (Alpha Polaris), it must have been over 31,000 years (31,105) ago.
Bunsen was right in admitting for Egypt an antiquity of over 21,000 years,
but this concession hardly exhausts truth and fact in this question. As
Mr. Gerald Massey says:
The stories told by Egyptian priests and others of time‐keeping in
Egypt are now beginning to look less like lies in the sight of all
who have escaped from biblical bondage. Inscriptions have lately
been found at Sakkarah, making mention of two Sothiac cycles ...
registered at that time, now some 6,000 years ago. Thus when
Herodotus was in Egypt, the Egyptians had—as now known—observed at
least five different Sothiac cycles of 1,461 years....
The priests informed the Greek enquirer that time had been
reckoned by them for so long that the sun had twice risen where it
then set, and twice set where it then arose. This ... can only be
realized as a fact in nature by means of two cycles of Precession,
or a period of 51,736 years.(708)
Mor Isaac(709) shows the ancient Syrians defining their World of the
“Rulers” and “Active Gods” in the same way as the Chaldeans. The lowest
World was the Sublunary—our own—watched by the _Angels_ of the first or
lower order; the one that came next in rank, was Mercury, ruled by the
_Archangels_: then came Venus, whose Gods were the _Principalities_; the
fourth was that of the Sun, the domain and region of the highest and
mightiest Gods of our system, the solar Gods of all nations; the fifth was
Mars, ruled by the _Virtues_; the sixth, that of Bel or Jupiter, was
governed by the _Dominions_; the seventh, the World of Saturn, by the
_Thrones_. These are the Worlds of Form. Above come the Four higher ones,
making Seven again, since the Three _highest_ are “unmentionable and
unpronounceable.” The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of
the _Cherubs_; the ninth, belonging to the _walking_ and numberless stars
on account of their distance, has the _Seraphs_; as to the tenth, Kircher,
quoting Mor Isaac, says that it is composed “of invisible stars that could
be taken, they said, for clouds, so massed are they in the zone that we
call Via Straminis, the Milky Way”; and he hastens to explain that “these
are the stars of Lucifer, engulfed with him in his terrible shipwreck.”
That which comes after and beyond the ten Worlds (our Quaternary), or the
Arûpa World, the Syrians could not tell. “All they knew was that it is
there that begins the vast and incomprehensible Ocean of the Infinite, the
abode of the True Divinity, without boundary or end.”
Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians. Hermes having
spoken of the Father‐Mother and Son, whose Spirit—collectively the Divine
Fiat—shapes the Universe, says: “Seven Agents [Media] were also formed, to
contain the Material [or manifested] Worlds within their respective
Circles, and the action of these Agents was named Destiny.” He further
enumerates seven and ten and twelve orders, but it would take too long to
detail them here.
As the _Rig Vidhâna_ together with the _Brahmânda Purâna_ and all such
works, whether describing the magic efficacy of the Rig Vedic _Mantras_,
or the future Kalpas, are declared by Dr. Weber and others to be modern
compilations “belonging probably only to the time of the _Purânas_,” it is
useless to refer the reader to their mystic explanations; and one may as
well simply quote from the archaic books utterly unknown to the
Orientalists. These works explain that which so puzzles the scholars,
namely that the Saptarshis, the “Mind‐born Sons” of Brahmâ, are referred
to in the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_ under one set of names; in the
_Mahâbhârata_ under another set; and that the _Vâyu Purâna_ makes even
_nine_ instead of _seven_ Rishis, by adding the names of Bhrigu and Daksha
to the list. But the same occurs in every exoteric Scripture. The Secret
Doctrine gives a long genealogy of Rishis, but separates them into many
classes. Like the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided into seven, and
even twelve, Classes, so are the Indian Rishis in their Hierarchies. The
first three Groups are the Divine, the Cosmical and the Sublunary. Then
come the Solar Gods of our System, the Planetary, the Submundane, and the
purely Human—the Heroes and the Mânushi.
At present, however, we are only concerned with the Pre‐cosmic, Divine
Gods, the Prajâpatis, or the Seven Builders. This Group is found
unmistakably in every Cosmogony. Owing to the loss of Egyptian archaic
documents, since, according to M. Maspero, “the materials and historical
data on hand to study the history of the religious evolution in Egypt are
neither complete nor very often intelligible,” the ancient Hymns and
inscriptions on the tombs must be appealed to, in order to have the
statements brought forward from the Secret Doctrine partially and
indirectly corroborated. One such shows that Osiris, like
Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, Adam Kadmon, Ormazd, and so many other Logoi, was the
chief and synthesis of the Group of “Creators” or Builders. Before Osiris
became the “One” and the _Highest_ God of Egypt, he was worshipped at
Abydos as the Head, or Leader, of the Heavenly Host of the Builders
belonging to the higher of the three Orders. The Hymn engraved on the
votive stele of a tomb from Abydos (3rd register) addresses Osiris thus:
Salutations to thee, O Osiris, elder son of Seb; thou the greatest
over the six Gods issued from the Goddess Noo [Primordial Water],
thou the great favourite of thy father Ra; Father of Fathers, King
of Duration, Master in the Eternity ... who, as soon as these
issued from thy Mother’s Bosom, gathered all the Crowns and
attached the Uræus [serpent or _naja_](710) on thy head; multiform
God, _whose name is unknown_ and who has many names in towns and
provinces.
Coming out from the Primordial Water crowned with the Uræus, which is the
serpent‐emblem of Cosmic Fire, and himself the _seventh_ over the six
Primary Gods, issued from Father‐Mother, Noo and Noot, the Sky, who can
Osiris be, but the chief Prajâpati, the chief Sephira, the chief
Amshaspend, Ormazd! That this latter Solar and Cosmic God stood, in the
beginning of religious evolution, in the same position as the Archangel,
“whose name was secret,” is certain. This Archangel was Michael, the
representative on earth of the _Hidden_ Jewish God; in short, it is his
“Face” that is said to have gone before the Jews like a “Pillar of Fire.”
Burnouf says: “The seven Amshaspends, who are most assuredly our
Archangels, designate also the personifications of the Divine
Virtues.”(711) And these Archangels, therefore, are as certainly the
Saptarshis of the Hindus, though it is next to impossible to class each
with its Pagan prototype and parallel, since, as in the case of Osiris,
they have all so “many names in towns and provinces.” Some of the most
important, however, will be shown in their order.
One thing is thus undeniably proven. The more we study their Hierarchies
and find out their identity, the more proofs we acquire that there is not
one of the past or present _personal_ Gods, known to us from the earliest
days of history, that does not belong to the third stage of cosmic
manifestation. In every religion we find the Concealed Deity forming the
ground work; then the Ray therefrom, that falls into primordial Cosmic
Matter, the _first_ manifestation; then the Androgyne result, the dual
Male and Female abstract Force personified, the _second_ stage; this
finally separates itself, in the _third_, into Seven Forces, called the
Creative Powers by all the ancient religions, and the Virtues of God by
the Christians. The later explanations and abstract metaphysical
qualifications have not prevented the Roman and Greek Churches from
worshipping these “Virtues” under the personifications and distinct names
of the Seven Archangels. In the _Book of Druschim_,(712) in the _Talmud_,
a distinction between these groups is given which is the correct
Kabalistical explanation. It says:
There are three Groups (or Orders) of Sephiroth. 1st. The
Sephiroth called the “Divine Attributes” [abstract]. 2nd. The
Physical or Sidereal Sephiroth [personal]—one group of _seven_,
the other of _ten_. 3rd. The metaphysical Sephiroth, or
periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth [Kether,
Chokmah and Binah], the rest of the seven being the (personal)
seven Spirits of the Presence [also of the planets].
The same division has to be applied to the primary, secondary and tertiary
evolution of Gods in every Theogony, if one wishes to translate the
meaning esoterically. We must not confuse the purely metaphysical
personifications of the _abstract_ attributes of Deity, with their
reflection—the Sidereal Gods. This reflection, however, is in reality the
objective expression of the abstraction; _living_ Entities and the models
formed on that divine Prototype. Moreover, the three metaphysical
Sephiroth, or the “periphrasis of Jehovah,” are _not_ Jehovah. It is the
latter himself, with the additional titles of Adonai, Elohim, Sabbaoth,
and the numerous names lavished on him, who is the periphrasis of the
Shaddai (שדי), the Omnipotent. The name is a circumlocution, indeed, a too
abundant figure of Jewish rhetoric, and has always been denounced by the
Occultists. To the Jewish Kabalists, and even the Christian Alchemists and
Rosicrucians, Jehovah was a convenient _screen_, unified by the folding of
its many panels, and adopted as a substitute; one name of an individual
Sephira being as good as another name, for those who had the secret. The
Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the Sidereal “Sum Total,” was invented for
no other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and
generation.(713) The real secret and _unpronounceable_ Name, the “Word
that is no word,” has to be sought in the seven names of the first Seven
Emanations, or the “Sons of the Fire,” in the secret Scriptures of all the
great nations, and even in the _Zohar_, the Kabalistic lore of the
smallest of all of them, viz., the Jewish. This word, composed of seven
letters in every tongue, is found embodied in the architectural remains of
every great sacred building in the world; from the Cyclopean remains on
Easter Island—part of a Continent buried under the seas nearer 4,000,000
years ago(714) than 20,000—down to the earliest Egyptian pyramids.
We shall have to enter more fully into this subject later on, and to bring
practical illustrations to prove the statements made in the text.
For the present it is sufficient to show, by a few instances, the truth of
what has been asserted at the beginning of this work, namely, that no
Cosmogony, the world over, with the sole exception of the Christian, has
ever attributed to the One Highest Cause, the Universal Deific Principle,
the immediate creation of our earth, or man, or anything connected with
these. This statement holds as well for the Hebrew or Chaldean _Kabalah_
as it does for _Genesis_, had the latter been ever thoroughly understood
and, what is still more important, correctly translated.(715) Everywhere
there is either a Logos—a “Light shining in Darkness,” truly—or the
Architect of the Worlds is esoterically in the plural number. The Latin
Church, paradoxical as ever, while applying the epithet of Creator to
Jehovah alone, adopts a whole Kyriel of names for the _working_ Forces of
the latter, names which betray the secret. For if the said Forces had
nought to do with “Creation” so‐called, why call them Elohim (Alhim), a
plural word; Divine Workmen and Energies (Ἐνέργειαι), incandescent
celestial stones (_lapides igniti cœlorum_); and especially Supporters of
the World (Κοσμοκράτορες), Governors or Rulers of the World (Rectores
Mundi), Wheels of the World (Rotæ), Auphanim, Flames and Powers, Sons of
God (B’ne Alhim), Vigilant Counsellors, etc.?
It is often asserted, and unjustly, as usual, that China, nearly as old a
country as India, had no Cosmogony. It was unknown to Confucius, and the
Buddhists extended their Cosmogony without introducing a Personal
God,(716) it is complained. The _Yi‐King_, “the very essence of ancient
thought and the combined work of the most venerated sages,” fails to show
a distinct Cosmogony. Nevertheless, one existed, and a very distinct one.
Only as Confucius did not admit of a future life(717) and the Chinese
Buddhists reject the idea of _One_ Creator, accepting one Cause and its
numberless effects, they are misunderstood by the believers in a Personal
God. The “Great Extreme,” as the commencement of “changes”
(transmigrations), is the shortest and, perhaps, the most suggestive of
all Cosmogonies for those who, like the Confucianists, love virtue for its
own sake and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to
reward and profit. The “Great Extreme” of Confucius produces “Two
Figures.” These Two produce in their turn the “Four Images”; these again
the “Eight Symbols.” It is complained that though the Confucianists see in
them “heaven, earth and man in miniature,” we can see in them anything we
like. No doubt, and so it is with regard to many symbols, especially those
of the latest religions. But they who know something of Occult numerals,
see in these “Figures” the symbol, however rude, of a harmonious
progressive Evolution of Kosmos and its Beings, both Heavenly and
Terrestrial. And any one who has studied the numerical evolution in the
primeval Cosmogony of Pythagoras—a contemporary of Confucius—can never
fail to find in his Triad, Tetraktys and Decad, emerging from the One and
solitary Monad, the same idea. Confucius is laughed at by his Christian
biographer for “talking of divination,” before and after this passage, and
is represented as saying:
The eight symbols determine good and ill fortune, and these lead
to great deeds. There are no imitable images greater than heaven
and earth. There are no changes greater than the four seasons
[meaning North, South, East and West, etc.]. There are no
suspended images brighter than the sun and moon. In preparing
things for use, there is none greater than the sage. In
determining good and ill‐luck there is nothing greater than the
_divining straws_ and the _tortoise_.(718)
Therefore, the “divining straws” and the “tortoise,” the “symbolic sets of
lines,” and the great sage who looks at them as they become one and two,
and two become four, and four become eight, and the other sets “three and
six,” are laughed to scorn, only because his wise symbols are
misunderstood.
So the author of the volume cited and his colleagues will no doubt scoff
at the Stanzas given in our text, for they represent _precisely the same
idea_. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian
style, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the most
abstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe.
At all events it may, perhaps, answer better to the requirements and the
scientific purposes of our age, than the cosmogonical essays of St.
Augustine and the Venerable Bede, though these were published over a
millennium later than the Confucian.
Confucius, one of the greatest sages of the ancient world, believed in
ancient magic, and practised it himself, “if we take for granted the
statements of _Kià‐yü_” and “he praised it to the skies in the _Yi‐king_,”
we are told by his reverend critic. Nevertheless, even in his age, 600
B.C., Confucius and his school taught the sphericity of the earth and even
the heliocentric system; while, at about thrice 600 years after the
Chinese philosopher, the Popes of Rome threatened and even burnt
“heretics” for asserting the same. He is laughed at for speaking of the
“Sacred Tortoise.” No unprejudiced person can see any great difference
between a Tortoise and a Lamb as candidates for sacredness, as both are
symbols and no more. The Ox, the Eagle,(719) and the Lion, and
occasionally the Dove are the “sacred animals” of the Western _Bible_; the
first three are found grouped round the Evangelists; the fourth,
associated with these, a human face, is a Seraph, _i.e._, a “fiery
serpent,” the Gnostic Agathodæmon probably.
The choice is curious, and shows how paradoxical were the first Christians
in their selections. For why should they have chosen these symbols of
Egyptian Paganism, when the Eagle is never mentioned in the _New
Testament_ save once, when Jesus refers to it as a _carrion_ eater,(720)
and in the _Old Testament_ it is called _unclean_; when the Lion is made a
point of comparison with Satan, both roaring for men to devour; and the
Oxen are driven out of the Temple? On the other hand the Serpent, brought
in as an exemplar of wisdom, is now regarded as the symbol of the Devil.
The esoteric pearl of Christ’s religion, degraded into Christian theology,
may indeed be said to have chosen a strange and unfitting _shell_ to be
born in and evolved from.
As explained, the Sacred Animals and the Flames or Sparks, within the Holy
Four, refer to the Prototypes of all that is found in the Universe in the
Divine Thought, in the Root, which is the Perfect Cube, or the Foundation
of the Kosmos, collectively and individually. They have all an occult
reference to primordial Cosmic Forms, and the first concretions, work, and
evolution of Kosmos.
In the earliest Hindû exoteric Cosmogonies, it is not even the Demiurge
who creates. For it is said in one of the _Purânas_:
The great Architect of the World gives the first impulse to the
rotatory motion of our planetary system by stepping in turn over
each planet and body.
It is this action “that causes each sphere to turn around itself, and all
around the Sun.” After which action, “it is the Brahmândika,” the Solar
and Lunar Pitris, the Dhyân Chohans, “who take charge of their respective
spheres [earths and planets], to the end of the Kalpa.” The Creators are
the Rishis, most of whom are credited with the authorship of the Mantras,
or Hymns, of the _Rig Veda_. They are sometimes _seven_, sometimes _ten_,
when they become Prajâpati, the Lord of Beings; then they rebecome the
_seven_ and the _fourteen_ Manus, as the representatives of the seven and
fourteen Cycles of Existence, or Days of Brahmâ, thus answering to the
seven Æons, when, at the end of the first stage of Evolution, they are
transformed into the seven stellar Rishis, the Saptarshis; while their
_human_ Doubles appear as Heroes, Kings and Sages on this earth.
The Esoteric Doctrine of the East having thus furnished and struck the
key‐note, which, under its allegorical garb, is, as may be seen, as
scientific as it is philosophical and poetical, every nation has followed
its lead. It is from the exoteric religions that we have to dig out the
root‐idea before we turn to esoteric truths, lest the latter should be
rejected. Furthermore, every symbol, in _every_ national religion, may be
read esoterically; and the proof of its being correctly read when
transliterated into its corresponding numerals and geometrical forms, may
be obtained from the extraordinary agreement of all glyphs and symbols,
however much they may externally vary among themselves. For in the origin
those symbols were all identical. Take, for instance, the opening
sentences in various Cosmogonies; in every case it is a Circle, an Egg, or
a Head. Darkness is always associated with this first symbol and surrounds
it, as is shown in the Hindû, the Egyptian, the Chaldeo‐Hebrew and even
the Scandinavian systems. Hence black ravens, black doves, black waters
and even black flames; the seventh tongue of Agni, the Fire‐God being
called Kâlî, the “Black,” since it was a black flickering flame. Two
“black” doves flew from Egypt and, settling on the oaks of Dodona, gave
their names to the Grecian Gods. Noah sends out a “black” raven after the
Deluge, which is a symbol for the Cosmic Pralaya, after which began the
real creation or evolution of our Earth and Humanity. Odin’s “black”
ravens fluttered round the Goddess Saga and “whispered to her of the past
and of the future.” Now what is the inner meaning of all those black
birds? It is that they are all connected with the primeval Wisdom, which
flows out of the pre‐cosmic Source of All, symbolized by the Head, the
Circle or the Egg; and they all have an identical meaning and relate to
the primordial Archetypal Man, Adam Kadmon, the Creative Origin of all
things, which is composed of the Host of Cosmic Powers—the Creative Dhyân
Chohans, beyond which all is Darkness.
Let us enquire of the wisdom of the Kabalah, even veiled and distorted as
it now is, to explain in its numerical language an approximate meaning, at
least of the word “raven.” This is its number value as given in the
_Source of Measures_:
The term Raven is used but once, and taken as Eth‐h’ orebv
את־הערב=678, or 113 × 6; while the Dove is mentioned five times.
Its value is 71, and 71 × 5=355. Six diameters, or the Raven,
crossing, would divide the circumference of a circle of 355 into
12 parts or compartments; and 355 subdivided for each unit by 6,
would equal 213‐0, or the Head [“beginning”] in the first verse of
_Genesis_. This divided, or subdivided, after the same fashion, by
2, or the 355 by 12, would give 213‐2, or the word B’râsh, ב־ראש,
or the first word of _Genesis_, with its prepositional prefix,
signifying the same concreted general form, astronomically, with
the one here intended.
Now the secret reading of the first verse in _Genesis_ being: “In Râsh
(B’râsh) or Head, developed Gods, the Heavens and the Earth”—it is easy to
comprehend the esoteric meaning of the Raven, once that the like meaning
of the Flood, or Noah’s Deluge, is ascertained. Whatever the many other
meanings of this emblematical allegory may be, its _chief_ meaning is that
of a new Cycle and a new Round—our Fourth Round.(721) The Raven, or the
Eth‐h’ orebv, yields the same numerical value as the Head, and returned
not to the Ark, while the Dove returned, carrying the olive‐branch; when
Noah, the new man of the new Race—whose prototype is Vaivasvata Manu,
prepared to leave the Ark, the Womb, or Argha, of terrestrial Nature, he
is the symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the
first three Races, who vanished from Earth for ever. Numerically, in the
_Kabalah_, Jehovah, Adam, Noah, are one. At best, then, it is Deity
descending on Ararat and later, on Sinai, to incarnate henceforth in man,
his _image_, through the natural process, the mother’s womb, whose symbols
are the Ark, the Mount (Sinai), etc., in _Genesis_. The Jewish allegory is
astronomical and physiological, rather than anthropomorphic.
And here lies the abyss between the Âryan and Semitic systems, though both
are built on the same foundation. As shown by an expounder of the
_Kabalah_:
The basic idea underlying the philosophy of the Hebrews was that
God contained all things within himself and that man was _his
image_; man, including woman [as androgynes; and that] geometry
(and numbers and measures applicable to astronomy) are contained
in the terms _man_ and _woman_; and the apparent incongruity of
such a mode was eliminated by showing the connection of man and
woman with a particular system of numbers and measures and
geometry, by the parturient time‐periods, which furnished the
connecting link between the terms used and the facts shown, and
perfected the mode used.(722)
It is argued that, the primal cause being absolutely incognizable, “the
symbol of its first _comprehensible manifestation_ was the conception of a
circle with its diameter line, so as at once to carry the idea of
geometry, phallicism, and astronomy”; and this was finally applied to the
“signification of simply human generative organs.” Hence the whole cycle
of events from Adam and the Patriarchs down to Noah is made to apply to
phallic and astronomical uses, the one regulating the other, as the lunar
periods, for instance. Hence, too, the _Genesis_ of the Hebrews begins
after their coming out of the Ark, and the end of the Flood, _i.e._, at
the Fourth Race. With the Aryan people it is different.
Eastern Esotericism has never degraded the One Infinite Deity, the
Container of all things, to such uses; and this is shown by the absence of
Brahmâ from the _Rig Veda_ and the modest positions occupied therein by
Rudra and Vishnu, who became the powerful and great Gods, the “Infinites”
of the exoteric creeds, ages later. But even they, “Creators” as they all
three maybe, are not the direct “Creators” and “forefathers of men.” The
latter are shown occupying a still lower scale, and are called the
Prajâpatis, the Pitris, our Lunar Ancestors, etc., but never the One
Infinite God. Esoteric Philosophy shows only _physical_ man as created in
the _image_ of the Deity; which Deity, however, is only the “_minor
Gods_.” It is the HIGHER‐SELF, the real EGO, who alone is divine and GOD.
Section XIII. The Seven Creations.
There was neither day nor night, nor sky nor earth, nor darkness
nor light, nor any other thing save only One, unapprehensive by
intellect, or That which is Brahma and Pums (Spirit) and Pradhâna
([crude] Matter).(723)
VISHNU PURÂNA (I. ii.)
In _Vishnu Purâna_, Parâshara says to Maitreya, his pupil:
I have thus explained to you, excellent Muni, six creations ...
the creation of the Arvâksrotas beings was the seventh, and was
that of man.(724)
Then he proceeds to speak of two additional and very mysterious creations,
variously interpreted by the commentators.
Origen, commenting upon the books written by Celsus, his Gnostic
opponent—books which were all destroyed by the prudent Church
Fathers—evidently answers the objections of his contradictor and reveals
his system at the same time. This was clearly _septenary_. But the
theogony of Celsus, the genesis of the stars or planets, and of sound and
colour, found as an answer satire, and no more. Celsus, you see, “desiring
to exhibit his learning,” speaks of a ladder of creation with _seven
gates_, and on the top of it the eighth, ever closed. The mysteries of the
Persian Mithras are explained and “musical reasons, moreover, are added.”
And to these again he strives “to add a second explanation connected also
with musical considerations,”(725) that is to say with the seven notes of
the scale, the seven Spirits of the Stars, etc.
Valentinus expatiates upon the power of the great Seven, who were summoned
to bring forth this universe after Ar(r)hetos, or the Ineffable, whose
name is composed of seven letters, had represented the first Hebdomad. The
name Ar(r)hetos indicates the sevenfold nature of the One, the Logos. “The
Goddess Rhea,” says Proclus, “is a Monad, Duad, and Heptad,” comprehending
in herself all the Titanidæ, “who are seven.”(726)
The Seven Creations are found in almost every _Purâna_. They are all
preceded by what Wilson translates as the “Indiscrete Principle,” Absolute
Spirit, independent of any relation with objects of sense.
They are: (1) Mahattattva, the Universal Soul, Infinite Intellect, or
Divine Mind; (2) Tanmâtras, Bhûta or Bhûtasarga, Elemental Creation the
first differentiation of Universal Indiscrete Substance; (3) Indriya or
Aindriyaka, Organic Evolution. “These three were the Prâkrita Creations,
the _developments of indiscrete nature_, preceded by the Indiscrete
Principle”; (4) Mukhya, “the Fundamental Creation (of perceptible things)
was that of inanimate bodies”;(727) (5) Tairyagyonya or Tiryaksrotas, was
that of animals; (6) Ûrdhvasrotas, or that of divinities(?);(728) (7)
Arvâksrotas, was that of man.(729)
This is the order given in the _exoteric_ texts. According to esoteric
teaching there are seven Primary, and seven Secondary “Creations”; the
former being the Forces _self‐evolving_ from the one _causeless_ FORCE;
the latter showing the manifested Universe emanating from the already
differentiated _divine_ Elements.
Esoterically, as well as exoterically, all the above enumerated Creations
stand for the seven periods of Evolution, whether after an Age or a Day of
Brahmâ. This is the teaching _par excellence_ of Occult Philosophy, which,
however, never uses the term “creation,” nor even that of evolution, with
regard to _Primary_ “Creation”; but calls all such Forces the “_aspects_
of the Causeless Force.” In the _Bible_, the seven periods are dwarfed
into the six Days of Creation and the seventh Day of Rest, and the
Westerns adhere to the letter. In the Hindû Philosophy, when the active
Creator has produced the World of Gods, the _Germs_ of all the
undifferentiated Elements, and the Rudiments of future Senses—the World of
Noumena, in short—the Universe remains unaltered for a Day of Brahmâ, a
period of 4,320,000,000 years. This is the _seventh_ passive Period, or
the “Sabbath” of Eastern Philosophy, following six periods of active
evolution. In the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, Brahma (neuter), the Absolute
Cause of all Causes, _radiates_ the Gods. Having radiated the Gods,
through its inherent nature, the work is interrupted. In the First Book of
_Manu_ it is said:
At the expiration of each Night (Pralaya), Brahma, having been
asleep, awakes, and, _through the sole energy of the motion_,
causes to emanate from _itself_ the Spirit [or mind], which in its
essence is, and yet is not.
In the _Sepher Yetzirah_, the Kabalistic “Book of Creation,” the author
has evidently reëchoed the words of Manu. In it the Divine Substance is
represented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless and
absolute; and as having 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.(730)
And this is the Kabalistic abstract Trinity, so unceremoniously
anthropomorphized by the Fathers. From this triple One emanated the whole
Kosmos. First from One emanated number Two, or Air, the creative element;
and then number Three, Water, proceeded from the Air; Ether or Fire
completes the mystic Four, the Arba‐il. In the Eastern doctrine, Fire is
the first Element—Ether, synthesizing the whole, since it contains all of
them.
In the _Vishnu Purâna_, the whole seven periods are given; and the
progressive Evolution of the “Spirit‐Soul,” and of the seven Forms of
Matter, or Principles, is shown. It is impossible to enumerate them in
this work. The reader is asked to peruse one of the _Purânas_.
R. Yehudah began, it is written: “Elohim said: Let there be a
firmament, in the midst of waters.” Come, see! At the time that
the Holy ... created the world, He [they] created 7 heavens Above.
He created 7 earths Below, 7 seas, 7 days, 7 rivers, 7 weeks, 7
years, 7 times, and 7,000 years that the world has been, ... the
seventh of all (the millennium).... So here are 7 earths Below,
they are all inhabited except those which are above, and those
which are below. And ... between each earth, a heaven (firmament)
is spread out between each other.... And there are in them [these
earths] creatures who look different one from the other; ... but
if you object and say that all the children of the world came out
from Adam, it is not so.... And the lower earths, where do they
come from? They are from _the chain of the earth_, and from the
Heaven above.(731)
Irenæus also is our witness—and a very unwilling one—that the Gnostics
taught the same system, veiling very carefully the true esoteric meaning.
This “veiling,” however, is identical with that of the _Vishnu Purâna_ and
others. Thus Irenæus writes of the Marcosians:
They maintain that first of all the four elements, fire, water,
earth and air, were produced after the image of the primary Tetrad
above, and that then if we add their operations, namely, heat,
cold, moisture and dryness, an exact likeness of the Ogdoad is
presented.(732)
Only this “likeness” and the Ogdoad itself is a blind, just as in the
seven creations of the _Vishnu Purâna_, to which two more are added, of
which the eighth, termed Anugraha, “possesses both the qualities of
goodness and darkness,” a Sânkhyan more than a Purânic idea. For Irenæus
says again, that:
They [the Gnostics] had a like eighth creation which was good and
bad, divine and human. They affirm that man was formed on the
_eighth day_. Sometimes they affirm that he was made on the
_sixth_ day, and at others on the eighth; unless, perchance, they
mean that his earthly part was formed on the sixth day and his
fleshly part [?] on the eighth day; these two being distinguished
by them.(733)
They were so “distinguished,” but not as Irenæus gives it. The Gnostics
had a superior, and an inferior Hebdomad in Heaven; and a third
terrestrial Hebdomad, on the plane of matter. Iaô, the Mystery God and the
Regent of the Moon, as given in Origen’s Chart, was the chief of these
superior “Seven Heavens,”(734) hence identical with the chief of the Lunar
Pitris, that name being given by them to the Lunar Dhyân Chohans. “They
affirm that these seven heavens are intelligent, and _speak of them as
being angels_,” writes the same Irenæus; and adds that on this account
they termed Iaô Hebdomas, while his mother was called Ogdoas, because, as
he explains, “she preserved the number of _the first begotten and primary
Ogdoad of the Plerôma_.”(735)
This “first begotten Ogdoad” was in Theogony the Second Logos, the
Manifested, because it was born of the Seven‐fold First Logos, hence it is
the eighth on this manifested plane; and in Astrolatry, it was the Sun,
Mârttânda, the eighth Son of Aditi, whom she rejects while preserving her
Seven Sons, _the planets_. For the Ancients have never regarded the Sun as
a planet, but as _a central and fixed Star_. This, then, is the second
Hebdomad born of the Seven‐rayed One, Agni, the Sun and what not, only not
the seven planets, which are Sûrya’s _Brothers_, not his _Sons_. With the
Gnostics, these Astral Gods were the Sons of Ialdabaoth(736) (from _ilda_,
child, and _baoth_ egg), the Son of Sophia Achamôth, the daughter of
Sophia or Wisdom, whose region is the Plerôma. Ialdabaoth produces from
himself these six stellar Spirits: Iaô (Jehovah), Sabaôth, Adoneus,
Eloæus, Oreus, Astaphæus,(737) and it is they who are the second, or
inferior Hebdomad. As to the third, it is composed of the seven primeval
men, the shadows of the Lunar Gods, projected by the first Hebdomad. In
this the Gnostics did not, as seen, differ much from the Esoteric
Doctrine, except that they veiled it. As to the charge made by Irenæus,
who was evidently ignorant of the true tenets of the “Heretics,” with
regard to man being created on the _sixth_ day, and man being created on
the _eighth_, this relates to the mysteries of the _inner_ man. It will
become comprehensible to the reader only after he has read Volume II, and
understood well the Anthropogenesis of the Esoteric Doctrine.
Ialdabaoth is a copy of Manu, who boasts:
O best of twice‐born men! Know that I (Manu) am he, the creator of
all this world, whom that male Virâj ... spontaneously
produced.(738)
He first creates the ten Lords of Being, the Prajâpatis, who, as verse 36
tells us, “produce seven other Manus.” Ialdabaoth boasts likewise: “I am
Father and God, and there is no one above me,” he exclaims. For which his
Mother coolly puts him down by saying: “Do not lie, Ialdabaoth, for the
Father of all, the _First_ Man (Anthrôpos) is above thee, and so is
Anthrôpos, the Son of Anthrôpos.”(739) This is a good proof that there
were three Logoi—besides the Seven born of the First—one of these being
the Solar Logos. And, again, who was that Anthrôpos himself, so much
higher than Ialdabaoth? The Gnostic records alone can solve this riddle.
In _Pistis‐Sophia_ the four‐vowelled name Ieou is generally accompanied by
the epithet of “the Primal, or First Man.” This shows again that the
Gnôsis was but an echo of our Archaic Doctrine. The names answering to
Parabrahman, to Brahmâ, and Manu, the first _thinking_ Man, are composed
of one‐vowelled, three‐vowelled and seven‐vowelled sounds. Marcus, whose
philosophy was certainly more Pythagorean than anything else, speaks of a
revelation to him of the seven Heavens sounding each one vowel, as they
pronounced the seven names of the seven Angelic Hierarchies.
When Spirit has permeated every minutest atom of the Seven Principles of
Kosmos, then the _Secondary_ Creation, after the above‐mentioned period of
rest, begins.
“The Creators [Elohim] outline in the _second_ ‘Hour’ the shape of man,”
says Rabbi Simeon in _The Nuchthemeron of the Hebrews_. “There are twelve
hours in the day,” says the _Mishna_, “and it is during these that
creation is accomplished.” The “twelve hours of the day” are again the
dwarfed copy, the faint, yet faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are
like the 12,000 Divine Years of the Gods, a cyclic blind. Every Day of
Brahmâ has 14 Manus, which the Hebrew Kabalists, following, however, in
this the Chaldeans, have disguised into 12 “Hours.”(740) The
_Nuchthemeron_ of Apollonius of Tyana is the same thing. “The Dodecahedron
lies concealed in the perfect Cube,” say the Kabalists. The mystic meaning
of this is, that the twelve great transformations of Spirit into
Matter—the 12,000 Divine Years—take place during the four great Ages, or
the first Mahâyuga. Beginning with the metaphysical and the supra‐human,
it ends in the physical and purely human natures of Kosmos and Man.
Eastern Philosophy can give the number of mortal years that run along the
line of spiritual and physical evolutions of the seen and the unseen, if
Western Science fails to do so.
Primary Creation is called the Creation of Light (Spirit); and the
Secondary, that of Darkness (Matter).(741) Both are found in
_Genesis_.(742) The first is the emanation of self‐born Gods (Elohim); the
second of physical Nature.
This is why it is said in the _Zohar_:
Oh, companions, companions, man as emanation was both man and
woman; as well on the side of the Father as on the side of the
Mother. And this is the sense of the words: And Elohim spake: “Let
there be Light and it was Light!” ... And this is the “two‐fold
Man”!
Light, however, on our plane, is Darkness in the higher spheres.
“Man and woman ... on the side of the FATHER” (Spirit) refers to Primary
Creation; and on the side of the Mother (Matter), to the Secondary. The
two‐fold Man is Adam Kadmon, the male and female abstract prototype and
the differentiated Elohim. Man proceeds from the Dhyân Chohan, and is a
“Fallen Angel,” a God in exile, as will be shown.
In India these creations were described as follows:(743)
(I) _The First Creation_: Mahattattva Creation, so‐called because it was
the primordial self‐evolution of that which had to become Mahat, the
“Divine Mind, conscious and intelligent”; esoterically, the “Spirit of the
Universal Soul.”
Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency (_the potency of that
cause_), every _produced_ cause comes by its proper nature.
And again:
Seeing that the potencies of all beings are understood _only_
through the knowledge of That (Brahma), which is beyond reasoning,
creation, and the like, such potencies are referable to Brahma.
THAT, then precedes the manifestation. “The first was Mahat,” says _Linga
Purâna_; for the One (the That) is neither _first_ nor _last_, but _all_.
Exoterically, however, this manifestation is the _work_ of the “Supreme
One”—a natural _effect_, rather, of an Eternal Cause; or, as the
Commentator says, it might have been understood to mean that Brahmâ was
then _created_ (?), being identified with Mahat, active intelligence, or
the operating will of the Supreme. Esoteric Philosophy renders it the
“operating _Law_.”
It is on the right comprehension of this tenet in the _Brâhmanas_ and
_Purânas_ that hangs, we believe, the apple of discord between the three
Vedântin Sects: the Advaita, Dvaita, and the Vishishthâdvaita. The first
argues rightly that Parabrahman, having no relation, as the absolute ALL,
to the manifested World, the Infinite having no connection with the
Finite, can neither _will_ nor _create_; that, therefore, Brahmâ, Mahat,
Îshvara, or whatever name the Creative Power may be known by, Creative
Gods and all, are simply an illusive aspect of Parabrahman in the
conception of the conceivers; while the other sects identify the
Impersonal Cause with the Creator, or Îshvara.
Mahat, or Mahâ‐Buddhi, is, with the Vaishnavas, however, Divine Mind, _in
active operation_, or, as Anaxagoras has it, “an ordering and disposing
Mind, which was the cause of all things”—Νοῦς ὁ διακοσμῶν τε καὶ πάντων
ἀίτιος.
Wilson saw at a glance the suggestive connection between Mahat and the
Phœnician Môt, or Mut, who was female with the Egyptians, the Goddess
Moot, the Mother, “which, like Mahat,” he says, “was the first product of
the mixture(?) of Spirit and Matter, and the first rudiment of Creation.”
“Ex connexione autem ejus Spiritus prodidit Môt.... Hinc ... seminium
omnis creaturæ et omnium rerum creatio,” says Brucker,(744) giving it a
still more materialistic and anthropomorphic colouring.
Nevertheless, the esoteric sense of the doctrine is seen, through every
exoteric sentence, on the very face of the old Sanskrit texts that treat
of primordial Creation.
The Supreme Soul, the _All‐permeant_ (Sarvaga) Substance of the
World, having entered [been drawn] into Matter [Prakriti] and
Spirit [Purusha], _agitated_ the _mutable and the immutable
principles_, the season of Creation [Manvantara] being arrived.
The Nous of the Greeks, which is (spiritual or divine) Mind, or Mens,
Mahat, operates upon Matter in the same way; it “enters into” and
“_agitates_” it:
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus,
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.
In the Phœnician Cosmogony also, “Spirit mixing with its own principles
gives rise to creation”;(745) the Orphic Triad shows an identical
doctrine; for there Phanes, or Erôs, Chaos, containing crude
_undifferentiated_ Cosmic Matter, and Chronos, Time, are the three co‐
operating principles, emanating from the Concealed and Unknowable Point,
which produce the work of “Creation.” And they are the Hindû Purusha
(Phanes), Pradhâna (Chaos) and Kâla (Chronos). The good Professor Wilson
does not like the idea, as no Christian clergyman, however liberal, would.
He remarks that: “the _mixture_ [of the Supreme Spirit or Soul with its
own principles] _is not mechanical_; it is _an influence or effect exerted
upon intermediate agents_ which produce effects.” The sentence in _Vishnu
Purâna_, “as fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, _and
not from any immediate operation upon mind itself_, so the Supreme
influenced the elements of creation,” the reverend and erudite Sanskritist
correctly explains by: “as perfumes do not delight the mind by actual
contact, but by the impression they make upon the sense of smelling, which
communicates it to the mind”; adding, “the entrance of the Supreme ...
into Spirit, as well as Matter, _is less intelligible_ than the view
elsewhere taken of it, as the _infusion_ of Spirit, identified with the
Supreme, into Prakriti or Matter alone.” He prefers the verse in _Pâdma
Purâna_: “He who is called the _male_ (spirit) of Prakriti ... that same
divine Vishnu entered into Prakriti.” This view is certainly more akin to
the plastic character of certain verses in the _Bible_ concerning the
Patriarchs, such as Lot and even Adam,(746) and others of a still more
anthropomorphic nature. But it is just that which led Humanity to
_Phallicism_; the Christian religion being honeycombed with it, from the
first chapter of _Genesis_ down to the _Revelation_.
The Esoteric Doctrine teaches that the Dhyân Chohans are the collective
aggregate of Divine Intelligence or Primordial Mind, and that the first
Manus, the seven “mind‐born” Spiritual Intelligences, are identical with
the former. Hence the Kwan‐Shi‐Yin, the “_Golden Dragon in whom are the
Seven_,” of Stanza III, is the Primordial Logos, or Brahmâ, the first
manifested Creative Power; and the Dhyânic Energies are the Manus, or Manu
Svâyambhuva _collectively_. The direct connection, moreover, between the
Manus and Mahat is easy to see. Manu is from the root _man_, to think; and
thinking proceeds from the mind. It is, in Cosmogony, the Pre‐nebular
Period.
(II) _The Second Creation_, Bhûta, was of the Rudimental Principles or
Tanmâtras; thence termed the Elemental Creation or Bhûtasarga. It is the
period of the first breath of the differentiation of the Pre‐cosmic
Elements, or Matter. Bhûtâdi means the “origin of the Elements,” and
precedes Bhûtasarga, the “creation,” or differentiation, of those Elements
in Primordial Âkâsha, Chaos or Vacuity.(747) In the _Vishnu Purâna_ it is
said to proceed along, and belong to, the triple aspect of Ahankâra,
translated Egotism, but meaning rather that untranslatable term “I‐am‐
ness,” that which first issues from Mahat, or Divine Mind; the first
shadowy outline of Self‐hood, for “pure” Ahankâra becomes “passionate” and
finally “rudimental” or initial: it is “the origin of conscious as of all
_unconscious_ being,” though the Esoteric school rejects the idea of
anything being “unconscious,” save on our plane of illusion and ignorance.
At this stage of the Second Creation, the Second Hierarchy of the Manus
appear, the Dhyân Chohans or Devas, who are the origin of Form (Rûpa), the
Chitrashikhandinas, “Bright‐crested,” or Rikshas; those Rishis who have
become the informing Souls of the Seven Stars (of the Great Bear).(748) In
astronomical and cosmogonical language, this Creation relates to the Fire‐
Mist Period, the first stage of Cosmic Life, after its Chaotic state,(749)
when Atoms issue from Laya.
(III) _The Third Creation_: the Third or Indriya Creation was the modified
form of Ahankâra, the conception of “I” (from Aham, “I”), termed the
Organic Creation, or Creation of the Senses, Aindriyaka. “These three were
the Prâkrita Creation, the [discrete] developments of indiscrete nature
preceded by the indiscrete principle.” “Preceded by,” ought to be replaced
here with “beginning with Buddhi”; for the latter is neither a discrete
nor an indiscrete quantity, but partakes of the nature of both, in man as
in Kosmos. A unit or human Monad on the plane of illusion, when once freed
from the three forms of Ahankâra and liberated from its terrestrial Manas,
Buddhi indeed becomes a continued quantity, both in duration and
extension, for it is eternal and immortal. Earlier it is stated, that the
Third Creation “abounding with the quality of goodness,” is termed
Ûrdhvasrotas; and a page or two further the Ûrdhvasrotas Creation is
referred to as “the sixth creation ... or that of the divinities.” This
shows plainly that earlier as well as later Manvantaras have been
purposely confused, to prevent the profane from perceiving the truth. This
is called “incongruity” and “contradictions” by the Orientalists. “The
three creations beginning with Intelligence are elemental, but the six
creations which proceed from the series of which Intellect is the first,
are the work of Brahmâ.”(750) Here “creations” mean everywhere _stages of
evolution_. Mahat, “Intellect” or Mind, which corresponds with Manas, the
former being on the cosmic, and the latter on the human plane, stands
here, too, lower than Buddhi or supra‐divine Intelligence. Therefore, when
we read in _Linga Purâna_ that “the first Creation was that of Mahat,
Intellect being the first in manifestation,” we must refer that
(specified) creation to the first evolution of our System or even our
Earth, none of the preceding ones being discussed in the _Purânas_, but
only occasionally hinted at.
This Creation of the first Immortals, or Devasarga, is the last of the
series, and has a universal meaning; it refers, namely, to Evolution in
general, and not specifically to our Manvantara, which begins with the
same over and over again, thus showing that it refers to several distinct
Kalpas. For it is said “at the close of the past [Pâdma] Kalpa the divine
Brahmâ awoke from his night of sleep and beheld the Universe void.” Then
Brahmâ is shown going once more over the “Seven Creations,” in the
secondary stage of evolution, repeating the first three on the objective
plane.
(IV) _The Fourth Creation_: the Mukhya or Primary, as it begins the series
of four. Neither the term “inanimate” bodies nor “immovable things,” as
translated by Wilson, gives a correct idea of the Sanskrit words used.
Esoteric Philosophy is not alone in rejecting the idea of any atom being
“inorganic,” for it is found also in orthodox Hindûism. Moreover, Wilson
himself says: “All the Hindû systems consider vegetable bodies as endowed
with life.”(751) Charâchara, or the synonymous sthâvara and jangama, is,
therefore, inaccurately rendered by “animate and inanimate,” “sentient
beings” and “unconscious,” or “conscious and unconscious beings,” etc.
“Locomotive and fixed” would be better, “since trees are considered to
possess souls.” The Mukhya is the “creation,” or rather organic evolution,
of the vegetable kingdom. In this Secondary Period, the three degrees of
the elemental or rudimental kingdoms are evolved in this World,
corresponding, _inversely_ in order, to the three Prâkritic Creations,
during the Primary Period of Brahmâ’s activity. As in that Period, in the
words of _Vishnu Purâna_, “the first creation was that of Mahat or
Intellect.... The second was that of the Rudimental Principles
(Tanmâtras).... The third was ... the creation of the senses
(Aindriyaka)”; so in this one, the order of the Elemental Forces stands
thus: (1) the _nascent_ Centres of Force, intellectual and physical; (2)
the Rudimentary Principles, _nerve force_, so to say; and (3) nascent
Apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, and is especially
developed in the third order of Elementals; these are succeeded by the
objective kingdom of minerals, in which this “apperception” is entirely
latent, to re‐develop only in the plants. The Mukhya Creation, then, is
the middle point between the three lower and the three higher kingdoms,
which represent the seven esoteric kingdoms of Kosmos, and of Earth.
(V) _The Fifth Creation_: the Tiryaksrotas or Tairyagyonya Creation,(752)
that of the “(sacred) animals,” corresponding on Earth only to the dumb
animal creation. That which is meant by “animals,” in the Primary
Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness, or of “apperception,”
that which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more
distinctly in the protistic Monera.(753) On our Globe, during the First
Round, animal “creation” precedes that of man, while the mammalian animals
evolve from man in our Fourth Round, on the physical plane. In the First
Round, the animal atoms are drawn into a cohesion of human physical form;
while in the Fourth, the reverse occurs according to magnetic conditions
developed during life. And this is “metempsychosis.”(754) This fifth Stage
of Evolution, called exoterically “Creation,” may be viewed in both the
Primary and Secondary Periods, one as the spiritual and cosmic, the other
as the material and terrestrial. It is archebiosis, or life‐origination;
“origination,” so far, of course, as the _manifestation_ of life on all
the seven planes is concerned. It is at this period of evolution that the
absolutely eternal universal motion, or vibration, that which is called in
Esoteric language the “Great Breath,” differentiates into the primordial,
first manifested Atom. More and more, as chemical and physical sciences
progress, does this Occult axiom find its corroboration in the world of
knowledge; the scientific hypothesis, that even the simplest elements of
matter are identical in their nature, and differ from each other only in
consequence of the various distributions of atoms in the molecule or speck
of substance, or of the modes of its atomic vibration, gains more ground
every day.
Thus, as the differentiation of the primordial germ of life has to precede
the evolution of the Dhyân Chohan of the _Third_ Group or Hierarchy of
Being in Primary Creation, before those Gods can become embodied in their
first ethereal form (rûpa), so animal creation has for the same reason to
_precede_ “divine man” on Earth. And this is why we find in the _Purânas_,
“the fifth, the Tairyagyonya Creation, was that of animals.”
(VI) _The Sixth Creation_: the Ûrdhvasrotas Creation, or that of
Divinities. But these Divinities are simply the Prototypes of the First
Race, the Fathers of their “mind‐born” progeny with the “soft bones.” It
is these who became the Evolvers of the “Sweat‐born”—an expression
explained in Volume II.
“Created beings,” explains the _Vishnu Purâna_, “although they are
destroyed [in their individual forms] at the periods of dissolution, yet
being affected by the good or evil acts of _former existences_, are never
exempted from their consequences. And when Brahmâ produces the world anew,
they are the progeny of his will.”
“_Collecting his mind into itself_ [yoga‐willing], Brahmâ creates the four
Orders of Beings, termed Gods, Demons, Progenitors, and Men”; Progenitors
here meaning the Prototypes and Evolvers of the first Root‐Race of men.
The Progenitors are the Pitris, and are of Seven Classes. They are said,
in _exoteric_ mythology, to be born of “Brahmâ’s side,” like Eve from the
rib of Adam.
Finally, the Sixth Creation is followed, and “Creation” in general closed
by:
(VII) _The Seventh Creation_: the evolution of the Arvâksrotas Beings,
“which was ... that of man.”
The “Eighth Creation” mentioned is no Creation at all: it is a “blind,”
for it refers to a purely mental process, the cognition of the “Ninth
Creation,” which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the Secondary,
of that which was a “Creation” in the Primary (Prâkrita) Creation.(755)
The Eighth, then, called Anugraha, the Pratyayasarga or Intellectual
Creation of the Sânkhyas,(756) is “the creation of which _we have a
notion_ [in its esoteric aspect], or to which we give intellectual assent
(Anugraha), in contradistinction to _organic creation_.” It is the correct
perception of our relations to the whole range of “Gods,” and especially
of those we bear to the Kumâras, the so‐called “Ninth Creation,” which is
in reality an aspect, or reflection, of the Sixth in our Manvantara (the
Vaivasvata). “There is a _ninth_, the Kaumâra Creation, which is both
primary and secondary,” says the _Vishnu Purâna_, the oldest of such
texts.(757) As an Esoteric text explains:
_The Kumâras, are the Dhyânis, derived immediately from the Supreme
Principle, who reäppear in the Vaivasvata Manu period, for the progress of
mankind._(758)
The translator of the _Vishnu Purâna_ corroborates it, by remarking that
“these sages ... live as long as Brahmâ; and they are only created by him
in the _First_ Kalpa, although their generation is very commonly, but
inconsistently, introduced in the [_Secondary_] Vârâha, or Pâdma Kalpa.”
Thus, the Kumâras are, exoterically, “the creation of Rudra or Nîlalohita,
a form of Shiva, by Brahmâ ... and of certain other mind‐born sons of
Brahmâ.” But, in the Esoteric teaching, they are the Progenitors of the
true spiritual Self in the physical man, the higher Prajâpatis, while the
Pitris, or lower Prajâpatis, are no more than the Fathers of the model, or
type of his physical form, made “in _their_ image.” Four (and occasionally
_five_) are mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three of the Kumâras
being secret.
“The four Kumâras [are] the mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ. Some specify
_seven_.”(759) All these seven Vaidhâtra, the patronymic of the Kumâras,
the “Maker’s Sons,” are mentioned and described in Îshvara Krishna’s
_Sânkhya Kârikâ_ with the Commentary of Gaudapâdâchârya (Shankarâchvrya’s
Paraguru) attached to it. It discusses the nature of the Kumâras, though
it refrains from mentioning _by name_ all the seven Kumâras, but calls
them instead the “seven sons of Brahmâ,” which they are, as they are
created by Brahmâ in Rudra. The list of names it gives us is: Sanaka,
Sanandana, Sanâtana, Kapila, Ribhu, and Panchashikha. But these again are
all _aliases_.
The exoteric four are Sanatkumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana; and the
esoteric three Sana, Kapila, and Sanatsujâta. Special attention is once
more drawn to this class of Dhyân Chohans, for herein lies the mystery of
generation and heredity hinted at in the Commentary on Stanza VII, in
treating of the Four Orders of Angelic Beings. Volume II explains their
position in the Divine Hierarchy. Meanwhile, let us see what the exoteric
texts say about them.
They say little; and to him who fails to read between the lines—nothing.
“We must have recourse, here, to other _Purânas_ for the elucidation of
this term,” remarks Wilson, who does not suspect for one moment that he is
in the presence of the “Angels of Darkness,” the mythical “great enemy” of
his Church. Therefore, he contrives to “elucidate” no more than that
“these [Divinities] _declining to create progeny_, [and thus rebelling
against Brahmâ], remained, as the name of the first [Sanatkumâra] implies,
ever boys, Kumâras; that is, ever pure and innocent, whence their creation
is called the Kaumâra.” The _Purânas_, however, may afford a little more
light. “Being ever as he was born, he is here called a youth; and hence
his name is well known as Sanatkumâra.”(760) In the _Shaiva Purânas_, the
Kumâras are always described as Yogins. The _Kurma Purâna_, after
enumerating them, says: “These five, O Brâhmans, were Yogins, who acquired
entire exemption from passion.” They are _five_, because two of the
Kumâras _fell_.
So untrustworthy are some translations of the Orientalists that in the
French translation of the _Hari Vamsha_, it is said: “The seven Prajâpati,
Rudra, Skanda (his son) and Sanatkumâra proceeded to create beings.”
Whereas, as Wilson shows, the original is: “These seven ... created
progeny; and so did Rudra, but Skanda and Sanatkumâra, _restraining their
power, abstained_ (from creation).” The “four orders of beings” are
referred to sometimes as Ambhâmsi, which Wilson renders as “literally
Waters” and believes it “a mystic term.” It is one, no doubt; but he
evidently failed to catch the _real_ Esoteric meaning. “Waters” and
“Water” stand as the symbol for Âkâsha, the “Primordial Ocean of Space,”
on which Nârâyana, the self‐born Spirit, moves, reclining on that _which
is its progeny_.(761) “Water is the body of Nara; thus we have heard the
name of Water explained. Since Brahmâ rests on the Water, therefore he is
termed Nârâyana.”(762) “Pure, Purusha created the Waters pure.” At the
same time Water is the _Third_ Principle in material Kosmos, and the third
in the realm of the Spiritual: _Spirit_ of Fire, Flame, Âkâsha, Ether,
Water, Air, Earth, are the cosmic, sidereal, psychic, spiritual and mystic
principles, _preëminently occult_, on every _plane_ of being. “Gods,
Demons, Pitris and Men,” are the four orders of beings to whom the term
Ambhâmsi is applied, because they are all the product of _Waters_
(mystically), of the Âkâshic Ocean, and of the _Third_ principle in
Nature. In the _Vedas_ it is a synonym of Gods. Pitris and Men on Earth
are the transformations or rebirths of Gods and Demons (Spirits) on a
higher plane. Water is, in another sense, the feminine principle. Venus
Aphrodite is the personified Sea, and the Mother of the God of Love, the
Generatrix of all the Gods, as much as the Christian Virgin Mary is Mare,
the Sea, the Mother of the Western God of Love, Mercy and Charity. If the
student of Esoteric Philosophy thinks deeply over the subject, he is sure
to find out all the suggestiveness of the term Ambhâmsi, in its manifold
relations to the Virgin in Heaven, to the Celestial Virgin of the
Alchemists, and even to the “Waters of Grace” of the modern Baptist.
Of all the seven great divisions of Dhyân Chohans, or Devas, there is none
with which humanity is more concerned than with the Kumâras. Imprudent are
the Christian Theologians who have degraded them into _Fallen_ Angels, and
now call them Satan and Demons; as among these heavenly denizens who
“refuse to create,” the Archangel Michael, the greatest patron Saint of
the Western and Eastern Churches, under his double name of St. Michael and
his supposed copy on earth, St. George conquering the Dragon, has to be
given one of the most prominent places.
The Kumâras, the Mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ‐Rudra, or Shiva, mystically the
howling and terrific _destroyer of human passions and physical senses_,
which are ever in the way of the development of the higher spiritual
perceptions and the growth of the _inner_ eternal man, are the progeny of
Shiva, the Mahâyogî, the great patron of all the Yogîs and Mystics of
India.
Shiva‐Rudra is the Destroyer, as Vishnu is the Preserver; and both are the
Regenerators of spiritual as well as of physical Nature. To live as a
plant, the _seed_ must die. To live as a conscious entity in the Eternity,
the passions and senses of man must die before his body does. “That to
live is to die and to die is to live,” has been too little understood in
the West. Shiva, the Destroyer, is the Creator and the Saviour of
Spiritual Man, as he is the good gardener of Nature. He weeds out the
plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to call
to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man.
The Kumâras, themselves then, being the “virgin ascetics,” refuse to
create the _material_ being Man. Well may they be suspected of a direct
connection with the Christian Archangel Michael, the “virgin combatant” of
the Dragon Apophis, whose victim is every Soul united too loosely to its
immortal Spirit, the Angel who, as shown by the Gnostics, _refused to
create_ just as the Kumâras did. Does not that patron Angel of the Jews
_preside_ over Saturn (Shiva or Rudra), and the Sabbath, the day of
Saturn? Is he not shown of the same essence with his Father (Saturn), and
called the Son of Time, Cronus, or Kâla, a form of Brahmâ (Vishnu and
Shiva)? And is not Old Time of the Greeks, with its scythe and sand‐glass,
identical with the Ancient of Days of the Kabalists; the latter “Ancient”
being one with the Hindû Ancient of Days, Brahmâ, in his _triune_ form,
whose name is also Sanat, the Ancient? Every Kumâra bears the prefix of
Sanat and Sana. And Shanaishchara is Saturn, the planet Shani, the King
Saturn, whose Secretary in Egypt was Thot‐Hermes the first. They are thus
identified both with the planet and the God (Shiva), who are, in their
turn, shown to be the prototypes of Saturn, who is the same as Bel, Baal,
Shiva, and Jehovah Sabbaoth, the Angel of the Face of whom is
Mikael—מיכאל, “who [is] as God.” He is the patron, and guardian Angel of
the Jews, as Daniel tells us; and, before the Kumâras were degraded, by
those who were ignorant of their very name, into Demons and Fallen Angels,
the Greek Ophites, the occultly inclined predecessors and precursors of
the Roman Catholic Church after its secession and separation from the
primitive Greek Church, had identified Michael with their Ophiomorphos,
the rebellious and opposing spirit. This means nothing more than the
reverse aspect, symbolically, of Ophis, the Divine Wisdom or Christos. In
the _Talmud_, Mikael is “Prince of Water” and the chief of the Seven
Spirits, for the same reason that one of his many prototypes, Sanatsujâta,
the chief of the Kumâras, is called Ambhâmsi, “Waters,” according to the
commentary on _Vishnu Purâna_. Why? Because the Waters is another name of
the Great Deep, the Primordial Waters of Space, or Chaos, and also means
Mother, Ambâ, meaning Aditi and Akâsha, the Celestial Virgin‐Mother of the
visible Universe. Furthermore, the “Waters of the Flood” are also called
the “Great Dragon,” or Ophis, Ophiomorphos.
The Rudras will be noticed in their septenary character of “Fire‐Spirits”
in the “Symbolism” attached to the Stanzas in Volume II. There we shall
also consider the Cross (3 + 4) under its primeval and later forms, and
shall use for purposes of comparison the Pythagorean numbers side by side
with Hebrew metrology. The immense importance of the number _seven_ will
thus become evident, as the root number of Nature. We shall examine it
from the standpoint of the _Vedas_ and the Chaldean Scriptures; as it
existed in Egypt thousands of years B.C., and as treated in the Gnostic
records; we shall show how its importance as a basic number has gained
recognition in Physical Science; and we shall endeavour to prove that the
importance attached to the number _seven_ throughout all antiquity was due
to no fanciful imaginings of uneducated priests, but to a profound
knowledge of Natural Law.
Section XIV. The Four Elements.
Metaphysically and esoterically, there is but _One Element_ in Nature, and
at the root of it is the Deity; and the so‐called _seven_ Elements, of
which _five_ have already manifested and asserted their existence, are the
garment, the veil, of that Deity, direct from the essence whereof comes
Man, whether considered physically, psychically, mentally or spiritually.
Four Elements only are generally spoken of in later antiquity, while five
only are admitted in philosophy. For the body of Ether is not fully
manifested yet, and its noumenon is still the “Omnipotent Father Æther,”
the synthesis of the rest. But what are these Elements, whose compound
bodies have now been discovered by Chemistry and Physics to contain
numberless sub‐elements, even the sixty or seventy of which no longer
embrace the whole number suspected? Let us follow their evolution from the
_historical_ beginnings, at any rate.
The Four Elements were fully characterized by Plato when he said that they
were _that_ “which _composes_ and _decomposes_ the _compound bodies_.”
Hence Cosmolatry was never, even in its worst aspect, the fetichism which
adores or worships the passive external form and matter of any object, but
looked ever to the Noumenon therein. Fire, Air, Water, Earth, were but the
visible garb, the symbols of the informing, invisible Souls or Spirits,
the Cosmic Gods, to whom worship was offered by the ignorant, and simple,
but respectful, recognition by the wiser. In their turn, the phenomenal
subdivisions of the noumenal Elements were informed by the Elementals, so‐
called, the “Nature Spirits” of lower grades.
In the Theogony of Môchus, we find Ether first, and then the Air; the two
principles from which Ulom, the Intelligible (νοητὸς) God, the visible
Universe of Matter, is born.(763)
In the Orphic hymns, the Erôs‐Phanes evolves from the Spiritual Egg, which
the Æthereal Winds impregnate, Wind being the “Spirit of God,” which is
said to move in Æther, “brooding over the Chaos,” the Divine Idea. In the
Hindû _Kathopanishad_, Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before
the Original Matter, and from their union springs the great Soul of the
World, “Mahâ‐Âtmâ, Brahman, the Spirit of Life”;(764) these latter
appellations being again identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima
Mundi; the Astral Light of the Theurgists and Kabalists being its last and
lowest division.
The Elements (στοιχεῖα) of Plato and Aristotle were thus the _incorporeal
principles_ attached to the four great divisions of our Cosmic World, and
it is with justice that Creuzer defines these primitive beliefs as “a
_species of magism_, a _psychic paganism_, and a _deification of
potencies_; a _spiritualization_ which placed the believers in a close
community with these potencies.”(765) So close, indeed, that the
Hierarchies of these Potencies, or Forces, have been classified on a
graduated scale of seven from the ponderable to the imponderable. They are
septenary, not as an artificial aid to facilitate their comprehension, but
in their real _cosmic_ gradation, from their chemical, or physical, to
their purely spiritual composition. Gods with the ignorant masses; Gods
independent and supreme; Demons with the fanatics, who, intellectual as
they often may be, are unable to understand the _spirit_ of the
philosophical sentence, _in pluribus unum_. With the Hermetic philosopher
they are Forces _relatively_ “blind” or “intelligent,” according to which
of the principles in them he deals with. It required long millenniums
before they found themselves finally, in our cultured age, degraded into
simple chemical elements.
At any rate, good Christians, and especially the Biblical Protestants,
ought to show more reverence for the Four Elements, if they would maintain
any for Moses. For the _Bible_ manifests the consideration and mystic
significance in which they were held by the Hebrew Lawgiver, on every page
of the _Pentateuch_. The tent which contained the Holy of Holies was a
Cosmic Symbol, sacred, in one of its meanings, to the Elements, the four
cardinal points, and Ether. Josephus shows it built in white, the colour
of Ether. And this explains also why, in the Egyptian and the Hebrew
temples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus,(766) a gigantic curtain,
supported by five pillars, separated the _sanctum sanctorum_—now
represented by the altar in Christian churches—wherein the priests alone
were permitted to enter, from the part accessible to the profane. By its
_four_ colours this curtain symbolized the four principal Elements, and
with the five pillars signified the knowledge of the divine that the
_five_ senses can enable man to acquire with the help of the _four_
Elements.
In Cory’s _Ancient Fragments_, one of the “Chaldean Oracles” expresses
ideas about the elements and Ether in language singularly like that of
_The Unseen Universe_, written by two eminent Scientists of our day.
It states that from Ether have come all things, and to it all will return;
that the images of all things are indelibly impressed upon it; and that it
is the store‐house of the germs, or of the remains of all visible forms,
and even ideas. It appears as if this case strangely corroborates our
assertion that whatever discoveries may be made in our days will be found
to have been anticipated by many thousand years by our “simple‐minded
ancestors.”
Whence came the Four Elements and the Malachim of the Hebrews? They have
been made to merge, by a theological sleight of hand on the part of the
Rabbins and the later Fathers of the Church, into Jehovah, but their
origin is identical with that of the Cosmic Gods of all other nations.
Their symbols, whether born on the shores of the Oxus, on the burning
sands of Upper Egypt, or in the wild forests, weird and glacial, which
cover the slopes and peaks of the sacred snowy mountains of Thessaly, or
again, in the pampas of America—their symbols, we repeat, when traced to
their source, are ever one and the same. Whether Egyptian or Pelasgian,
Âryan or Semitic, the Genius Loci, the Local God, embraced in its unity
all Nature; but not especially the four elements any more than one of
their creations, such as trees, rivers, mounts or stars. The Genius Loci,
a very late afterthought of the last sub‐races of the Fifth Root‐Race,
when the primitive and grandiose meaning had become nearly lost, was ever
the representative, in his accumulated titles, of all his colleagues. It
was the God of Fire, symbolized by thunder, as Jove or Agni; the God of
Water, symbolized by the fluvial bull, or some sacred river or fountain,
as Varuna, Neptune, etc.; the God of Air, manifesting in the hurricane and
tempest, as Vâyu and Indra; and the God or Spirit of the Earth, who
appeared in earthquakes, like Pluto, Yama, and so many others.
These were the Cosmic Gods, ever synthesizing all in one, as found in
every cosmogony or mythology. Thus, the Greeks had their Dodonean Jupiter,
who included in himself the four Elements and the four cardinal points,
and who was recognized, therefore, in old Rome under the pantheistic title
of Jupiter Mundus; and who now, in modern Rome, has become the Deus
Mundus, the one Mundane God, who is made to swallow all others, in the
latest theology, by the arbitrary decision of his special ministers.
As Gods of Fire, Air, and Water, they were _Celestial_ Gods; as Gods of
the Lower Region, they were _Infernal_ Deities; the latter adjective
applying simply to the _Earth_. They were “Spirits of the Earth” under
their respective names of Yama, Pluto, Osiris, the “Lord of the Lower
Kingdom,” etc., and their tellurial character sufficiently proves it. The
Ancients knew of no worse abode after death than the Kâma Loka, the Limbus
on this Earth.(767) If it is argued that the Dodonean Jupiter was
identified with Dis, or the Roman Pluto with the Dionysus Chthonius, the
Subterranean, and with Aïdoneus, the King of the Subterranean World,
wherein, according to Creuzer,(768) oracles were rendered, then it will
become the pleasure of the Occultists to prove that both Aïdoneus and
Dionysus are the bases of Adonaï, or Iurbo‐Adonaï, as Jehovah is called in
the _Codex Nazaræus_. “Thou shalt not worship the Sun, who is named
Adonaï, whose name is also Kadush and El‐El,”(769) and also “Lord
Bacchus.” Baal‐Adonis of the Sôds, or Mysteries, of the pre‐Babylonian
Jews became the Adonaï by the Massorah, the later vowelled Jehovah. Hence
the Roman Catholics are right. All these Jupiters are of the same family;
but Jehovah has to be included therein to make it complete. The Jupiter
Aërius or Pan, the Jupiter‐Ammon, and the Jupiter‐Bel‐Moloch, are all
correlations and one with Iurbo‐Adonaï, because they are all one Cosmic
Nature. It is that Nature and Power which creates the specific terrestrial
symbol, and the physical and material fabric of the latter, which proves
the Energy manifesting through it as _extrinsic_.
For primitive religion was something better than simple preöccupation
about physical phenomena, as remarked by Schelling; and principles, more
elevated than we modern Sadducees know of, “were hidden under the
transparent veil of such merely natural divinities as thunder, the winds,
and rain.” The Ancients knew and could distinguish the _corporeal_ from
the _spiritual_ Elements in the Forces of Nature.
The four‐fold Jupiter, as the four‐faced Brahmâ, the aërial, the
fulgurant, the terrestrial, and the marine God, the lord and master of the
four Elements, may stand as a representative for the great Cosmic Gods of
every nation. Although deputing power over the fire to Hephæstus‐Vulcan,
over the sea to Poseidon‐Neptune, and over the Earth to Pluto‐Aïdoneus,
the Aërial Jove was still all these; for Æther, from the first, had
preëminence over, and was the synthesis of, all the Elements.
Tradition tells of a grotto, a vast cave in the deserts of Central Asia,
whereinto light pours, through four seemingly natural apertures, or clefts
placed crossways at the four cardinal points. From noon till an hour
before sunset the light streams in, of four different colours, as averred,
red, blue, orange‐gold, and white, owing to some either natural or
artificially prepared conditions of vegetation and soil. The light
converges in the centre round a pillar of white marble with a globe upon
it, which represents our earth. It is named the “Grotto of Zarathustra.”
Included under the arts and sciences of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans,
the phenomenal manifestation of the Four Elements, which were justly
attributed by these believers to the intelligent interference of the
Cosmic Gods, assumed a scientific character. The Magic of the ancient
priests consisted, in those days, in addressing _their Gods in their own
language_.
_The speech of the men of the Earth cannot reach the Lords. Each must be
addressed in the language of his respective Element._
So says _The Book of Rules_, in a sentence which will be shown pregnant
with meaning, adding as an explanation of the nature of that
_element_‐language:
_It is composed of_ SOUNDS, _not words; of sounds, numbers and figures. He
who knows how to blend the three, will call forth the response of the
superintending Power_ [_the Regent‐God of the specific Element needed_].
Thus this “language” is that of _incantations_ or of _mantras_, as they
are called in India; sound being _the most potent and effectual magic
agent, and the first of the keys which opens the door of communication
between Mortals and Immortals_. He who believes in the words and teachings
of St. Paul, has no right to pick out from the latter those sentences only
which he chooses to accept, to the rejection of others; and St. Paul
teaches most undeniably the existence of Cosmic Gods and their presence
among us. Paganism preached a dual and simultaneous evolution, a
“creation” _spiritualem ac mundanum_, as the Roman Church has it, ages
before the advent of that Roman Church. Exoteric phraseology has changed
little with respect to Divine Hierarchies since the most palmy days of
Paganism, or “Idolatry.” Names alone have changed, together with claims
which have now become false pretences. For when, for instance, Plato put
in the mouth of the Highest Principle (Father Æther or Jupiter) the words,
“the Gods of the Gods of whom I am the _maker_, as I am the father of all
their works,” he knew the spirit of this sentence as fully, we suspect, as
St. Paul did, when saying: “For though there be that are called Gods,
whether in Heaven or in Earth, as there be Gods many and Lords
many....”(770) Both knew the sense and the meaning of what they put
forward in such guarded terms.
We cannot be taken to task by the Protestants for interpreting the verse
from the _Corinthians_ as we do; for, if the translation in the English
_Bible_ is made ambiguous, it is not so in the original texts, and the
Roman Catholic Church accepts the words of the Apostle in their true
sense. For a proof see St. Dionysius, the Areopagite, who was “_directly
inspired_ by the Apostle,” and “who wrote under his dictation,” as we are
assured by the Marquis de Mirville, whose works are approved by Rome, and
who says, commenting on that special verse: “And, though there are (in
fact) they who are called Gods, for it seems there are really _several
Gods_, withal and for all that, the _God‐Principle_ and the Superior God
ceases not to remain essentially _one_ and indivisible.”(771) Thus spoke
the old Initiates also, knowing that the worship of minor Gods could never
affect the “_God Principle_.” (772)
Says Sir W. Grove, F.R.S., speaking of the correlation of forces:
The ancients when they witnessed a natural phenomenon, removed
from ordinary analogies, and unexplained by any mechanical action
known to them, referred it to a soul, a spiritual or preternatural
power.... Air and gases were also at first deemed spiritual, but
subsequently they became invested with a more material character;
and the same words πνεῦμα, spirit, etc., were used to signify the
soul or a gas; the very word gas, from _geist_, a ghost or spirit,
affords us an instance of the gradual transmutation of a spiritual
into a physical conception.(773)
This, the great man of Science, in his preface to the sixth edition of his
work, considers to be the _only_ concern of exact Science, which has no
business to meddle with the _causes_.
Cause and effect are, therefore, in their abstract relation to
these forces, words solely of convenience. We are totally
unacquainted _with the ultimate generating power_ of each and all
of them, and probably shall ever remain so; we can only ascertain
the normal of their actions; we must humbly refer their causation
to one omnipresent influence, and content ourselves with studying
their effects and developing, by experiment, their mutual
relations.(774)
This policy once accepted, and the system virtually admitted in the above‐
quoted words, namely, the _spirituality_ of the “ultimate generating
power,” it would be more than illogical to refuse to recognize this
quality which is inherent in the _material elements_, or rather, in their
compounds, as present in the fire, air, water or earth. The Ancients knew
these powers so well, that, while concealing their true nature under
various allegories, for the benefit, or to the detriment, of the
uneducated rabble, they never departed from the multiple object in view,
while inverting them. They contrived to throw a thick veil over the
nucleus of truth concealed by the symbol, but they ever tried to preserve
the latter as a _record_ for future generations, sufficiently transparent
to allow their wise men to discern the truth behind the fabulous form of
the glyph or allegory. These ancient sages are accused of _superstition_
and _credulity_; and this too by the very nations, which, though learned
in all the modern arts and sciences, and cultured and wise in their
generation, accept to this day as their one living and infinite God, the
anthropomorphic “Jehovah” of the Jews!
What were some of these alleged “superstitions”? Hesiod believed, for
instance, that “the winds were the sons of the Giant Typhôeus,” who were
chained and unchained at will by Æolus, and the polytheistic Greeks
accepted it along with Hesiod. Why should they not, since the monotheistic
Jews had the same beliefs, with other names for their _dramatis personæ_,
and since Christians believe in the same to this day? The Hesiodic Æolus,
Boreas, etc., were named Kedem, Tzephum, Derum, and Ruach Hayum by the
“chosen people” of Israel. What is, then, the fundamental difference?
While the Hellenes were taught that Æolus tied and untied the winds, the
Jews believed as fervently that their Lord God, _with __“__smoke__”__
coming __“__out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth, ... rode upon a
cherub and did fly; and he was seen upon the wings of the wind__”_.(775)
The expressions of the two nations are either both figures of speech, or
both _superstitions_. We think they are neither; but only arise from a
keen sense of oneness with Nature, and a perception of the mysterious and
the intelligent behind every natural phenomenon, which the moderns no
longer possess. Nor was it “superstitious” in the Greek Pagans to listen
to the oracle of Delphi, when, at the approach of the fleet of Xerxes,
that oracle advised them to “sacrifice to the winds,” if the same has to
be regarded as _divine_ worship in the Israelites, who sacrificed as often
to the wind and also especially to the fire. Do they not say that their
“God is a consuming fire,”(776) who appeared generally as fire and
“encompassed by fire”? and did not Elijah seek for the “Lord” in the
“great strong wind, and in the earthquake”? Do not the Christians repeat
the same after them? Do not they, moreover, sacrifice to this day, to the
same “God of Wind and Water”? They do; because special prayers for rain,
dry weather, trade‐winds and the calming of storms on the seas, exist to
this hour in the prayer‐books of the three Christian Churches; and the
several hundred sects of the Protestant religion offer them to their God
upon every threat of calamity. The fact that they are no more answered by
Jehovah, than they were, probably, by Jupiter Pluvius, does not alter the
fact of these prayers being addressed to the Power, or Powers, supposed to
rule over the Elements, or of these Powers being identical in Paganism and
Christianity; or have we to believe that such prayers are crass idolatry
and absurd “superstition” _only_ when addressed by a Pagan to his “idol,”
and that the same superstition is suddenly transformed into “praiseworthy
piety” and “religion” whenever the name of the celestial addressee is
changed? But the tree _is_ known by its fruit. And the fruit of the
Christian tree being no better than that of the tree of Paganism, why
should the former command more reverence than the latter?
Thus, when we are told by the Chevalier Drach, a converted Jew, and by the
Marquis de Mirville, a Roman Catholic fanatic of the French aristocracy,
that in Hebrew “lightning” is a synonym of “fury,” and is always handled
by the “evil” Spirit; that Jupiter Fulgur or Fulgurans is also called by
the Christians Elicius, and denounced as the “soul of lightning,” its
Dæmon;(777) we have either to apply the same explanation and definitions
to the “Lord God of Israel,” under the same circumstances, or renounce our
right of abusing the Gods and creeds of other nations.
The foregoing statements, emanating as they do from two ardent and learned
Roman Catholics, are, to say the least, _dangerous_, in the presence of
the _Bible_ and its prophets. Indeed, if Jupiter, the “chief Dæmon of the
Pagan Greeks,” hurled his deadly thunder‐bolts and lightnings at those who
excited his wrath, so did the Lord God of Abraham and Jacob. For we read
that:
The Lord thundered from heaven, and the most High uttered his
voice. And he sent out arrows [thunder‐bolts] and scattered them
[Saul’s armies]; lightning, and discomfited them.(778)
The Athenians are accused of having sacrificed to Boreas; and this “Dæmon”
is charged with having submerged and wrecked 400 ships of the Persian
fleet on the rocks of Mount Pelion, and of having become so furious that
all the Magi of Xerxes could hardly counteract him by offering contra‐
sacrifices to Thetis.(779) Very fortunately, no authenticated instance is
on the records of Christian wars, showing a like catastrophe on the same
scale happening to one Christian fleet, owing to the “prayers” of its
enemy—another Christian nation. But this is from no fault of theirs, for
each prays as ardently to Jehovah for the destruction of the other, as the
Athenians prayed to Boreas. Both resorted to a neat little piece of black
magic _con amore_. Such abstinence from divine interference being hardly
due to lack of prayers, sent to a _common_ Almighty God for mutual
destruction, where, then, shall we draw the line between Pagan and
Christian? And who can doubt that all Protestant England would rejoice and
offer thanks to the Lord, if during some future war, 400 ships of the
hostile fleet were to be wrecked owing to such holy prayers? What is,
then, the difference, we ask again, between a Jupiter, a Boreas, and a
Jehovah? No more than this: The crime of one’s own next‐of‐kin, say of
one’s father, is always excused and often exalted, whereas the crime of
our neighbour’s parent is ever gladly punished by hanging. Yet the crime
is the same.
So far the “blessings of Christianity” do not seem to have made any
appreciable advance on the morals of the converted Pagans.
The above is not a defence of Pagan Gods, nor is it an attack on the
Christian Deity, nor does it mean belief in either. The writer is quite
impartial, and rejects the testimony in favour of both, neither praying
to, believing in, nor dreading any such “personal” and anthropomorphic
God. The parallels are brought forward simply as one more curious
exhibition of the illogical and blind fanaticism of the civilized
theologian. For, so far, there is not a very great difference between the
two beliefs, and there is none in their respective effects upon
_morality_, or spiritual nature. The “light of Christ” shines upon as
hideous features of the animal man now, as the “light of Lucifer” did in
days of old. Says the missionary Lavoisier, in the _Journal des Colonies_:
These unfortunate heathens in their superstition regard even the
Elements as something that has comprehension!... They still have
faith in their idol Vâyu—the God or, rather, Demon of the Wind and
Air ... they firmly believe in the efficacy of their prayers, and
in the powers of their Brâhmans over the winds and storms.
In reply to this, we may quote from _Luke_: “And he [Jesus] arose and
_rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and they ceased and there
was a calm_.”(780) And here is another quotation from a Prayer Book: “O
Virgin of the Sea, blessed Mother and Lady of the Waters, stay thy waves.”
This prayer of the Neapolitan and Provençal sailors, is copied textually
from that of the Phœnician mariners to their Virgin‐Goddess Astarte. The
logical and irrepressible conclusion arising from the parallels brought
forward, and the denunciation of the missionary, is that the _commands_ of
the Brâhmans to their Element‐Gods _not remaining_ “ineffectual,” the
power of the Brâhmans is thus placed on a par with that of Jesus.
Moreover, Astarte is shown not a whit weaker in potency than the “Virgin
of the Sea” of Christian sailors. It is not enough to give a dog a bad
name, and then hang him; the dog has to be proven guilty. Boreas and
Astarte may be “Devils” in theological fancy, but, as just remarked, the
tree has to be judged by its fruit. And once the Christians are shown to
be as immoral and as wicked as the Pagans ever were, what benefit has
Humanity derived from its change of Gods and Idols?
That which God and the Christian Saints are justified in doing, becomes in
simple mortals a crime, if successful. Sorcery and incantations are now
regarded as fables; yet from the Institutes of Justinian down to the laws
of England and America against witchcraft—obsolete but not repealed to
this day—such incantations, even when only suspected, were punished as
criminal. Why punish a chimera? And still we read of Constantine, the
Emperor, sentencing to death the philosopher Sopatrus for “unchaining the
winds,” and thus preventing ships laden with grain from arriving in time
to put an end to famine. Pausanias is derided when he affirms that he saw
with his own eyes “men who by simple prayers and incantations” stopped a
strong hail‐storm. This does not prevent modern Christian writers from
advising prayer during storm and danger, and believing in its efficacy.
Hoppo and Stadlein, two magicians and sorcerers, were sentenced to death
for “throwing charms on fruit” and transferring a harvest by magic arts
from one field to another, hardly a century ago, if we can believe
Sprenger, the famous writer, who vouches for it: “_Qui fruges excantassent
segetem pellicentes incantando_.”
Let us close by reminding the reader that, without the smallest shadow of
superstition, one may believe in the dual nature of every object on Earth,
in spiritual and material, in visible and invisible Nature, and that
Science virtually proves this, while denying its own demonstration. For
if, as Sir William Grove says, the electricity we handle is but the
_result_ of ordinary matter affected by something invisible, the
“_ultimate_ generating power” of every Force, the “one omnipresent
influence,” then it only becomes natural that one should believe as the
Ancients did; namely, that every Element is _dual_ in its nature.
“Ethereal Fire is the emanation of the Kabir proper; the Aërial is but the
union [correlation] of the former with Terrestrial Fire, and its guidance
and application on our earthly plane belongs to a Kabir of a lesser
dignity”—an Elemental, perhaps, as an Occultist would call it; and the
same may be said of every Cosmic Element.
No one will deny that the human being is possessed of various forces,
magnetic, sympathetic, antipathetic, nervous, dynamical, occult,
mechanical, mental, in fact of every kind of force; and that the physical
forces are all biological in their essence, seeing that they intermingle
with, and often merge into, those forces that we have named intellectual
and moral, the first being the vehicles, so to say, the upâdhis, of the
second. No one, who does not deny soul in man, would hesitate in saying
that their presence and commingling are the very essence of our being;
that they constitute the Ego in man, in fact. These potencies have their
physiological, physical, mechanical, as well as their nervous, ecstatic,
clairaudient, and clairvoyant phenomena, which are now regarded and
recognized as perfectly natural, even by Science. Why should man be the
only exception in Nature, and why cannot even the Elements have their
Vehicles, their Vâhanas, in what we call the Physical Forces? And why,
above all, should such beliefs be called “superstition” along with the
religions of old?
Section XV. On Kwan‐Shi‐Yin and Kwan‐Yin.
Like Avalokiteshvara, Kwan‐Shi‐Yin has passed through several
transformations, but it is an error to say of him that he is a modern
invention of the Northern Buddhists, for under another appellation he has
been known from the earliest times. The Secret Doctrine teaches that: “_He
who is the first to appear at Renovation will be the last to come before
Reäbsorption_ [_Pralaya_]”. Thus the Logoi of all nations, from the Vedic
Vishvakarman of the Mysteries down to the Saviour of the present civilized
nations, are the “Word” who was in the “Beginning,” or the reäwakening of
the energizing Powers of Nature, with the One ABSOLUTE. Born of Fire and
Water, before these became distinct Elements, It was the “Maker,” the
fashioner or modeller, of all things. “Without him was not anything made
that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men,” who
finally may be called as he ever has been, the Alpha and the Omega of
Manifested Nature. “The great Dragon of Wisdom is born of Fire and Water,
and into Fire and Water will all be reäbsorbed with him.”(781) As this
Bodhisattva is said “to assume any form he pleases,” from the beginning of
a Manvantara to its end, though his special birthday, or memorial day, is
celebrated according to the _Kin‐kwang‐ming‐King_, or “Luminous Sûtra of
Golden Light,” in the second month on the nineteenth day, and that of
Maitreya Buddha, in the first month on the first day, yet the two are one.
He will appear as Maitreya Buddha, the last of the Avatâras and Buddhas,
in the Seventh Race. This belief and expectation are universal throughout
the East. Only it is not in the Kali Yuga, our present terrifically
materialistic age of Darkness, the “Black Age,” that a new Saviour of
Humanity can ever appear. The Kali Yuga is “l’Age d’Or” (!) only in the
_mystic_ writings of some French pseudo‐Occultists.(782)
Hence the ritual in the exoteric worship of this Deity was founded on
magic. The Mantras are all taken from special books kept secret by the
priests, and each is said to work a magical effect; as the reciter or
reader, by simply chanting them, produces a secret causation which results
in immediate effects. Kwan‐Shi‐Yin is Avalokiteshvara, and both are forms
of the Seventh Universal Principle; while in its highest metaphysical
character this Deity is the synthetic aggregation of all the Planetary
Spirits, Dhyân Chohans. He is the “Self‐Manifested”; in short, the “Son of
the Father.” Crowned with seven dragons, above his statue there appears
the inscription Pu‐tsi‐k’iun‐ling, “the universal Saviour of all living
beings.”
Of course the name given in the archaic volume of the Stanzas is quite
different, but Kwan‐Yin is a perfect equivalent. In a temple of P’u‐to,
the sacred island of the Buddhists in China, Kwan‐Shi‐Yin is represented
floating on a black aquatic bird (Kâlahamsa), and pouring on the heads of
mortals the elixir of life, which, as it flows, is transformed into one of
the chief Dhyâni‐Buddhas, the Regent of a star called the “Star of
Salvation.” In his third transformation Kwan‐Yin is the informing Spirit
or Genius of Water. In China the Dalaï‐Lama is believed to be an
incarnation of Kwan‐Shi‐Yin, who in his third terrestrial appearance was a
Bodhisattva, while the Teshu Lama is an incarnation of Amitâbha Buddha, or
Gautama.
It may be remarked _en passant_ that a writer must indeed have a diseased
imagination to discover phallic worship everywhere, as do McClatchey and
Hargrave Jennings. The first discovers “the old phallic gods, represented
under two evident symbols, the Kheen or Yang, which is the _membrum
virile_, and the Khw‐an or Yin, the _pudendum muliebre_.”(783) Such a
rendering seems the more strange as Kwan‐Shi‐Yin (Avalokiteshvara) and
Kwan‐Yin, besides being now the patron Deities of the Buddhist ascetics,
the Yogîs of Tibet, are the Gods of chastity, and are, in their esoteric
meaning, not even that which is implied in the rendering of Mr. Rhys
Davids’ _Buddhism_: “The name Avalokiteshvara ... means ‘the Lord who
looks down from on high’.”(784) Nor is Kwan‐Shi‐Yin the “Spirit of the
Buddhas present in the Church,” but, literally interpreted, it means “the
Lord that is seen.” and in one sense, “the Divine Self perceived by
Self”—the human Self—that is, the Âtman or Seventh Principle, merged in
the Universal, perceived by, or the object of perception to, Buddhi, the
Sixth Principle, or Divine Soul in man. In a still higher sense,
Avalokiteshvara‐Kwan‐Shi‐Yin, referred to as the seventh Universal
Principle, is the Logos perceived by the Universal Buddhi, or Soul, as the
synthetic aggregate of the Dhyâni‐Buddhas; and is not the “Spirit of
Buddha present in the Church,” but the Omnipresent Universal Spirit
manifested in the temple of Kosmos or Nature. This Orientalistic etymology
of Kwan and Yin is on a par with that of Yoginî, which, we are told by Mr.
Hargrave Jennings, is a Sanskrit word, “in the dialects pronounced Jogi or
Zogee (!), and is ... equivalent with Sena, and exactly the same as Duti
or Dutica,” _i.e._, a sacred prostitute of the temple, worshipped as Yoni
or Shakti.(785) “The books of morality [in India] direct a faithful wife
to shun the society of Yogini or females who have been adored as
Sacti.”(786) Nothing should surprise us after this. And it is, therefore,
with hardly a smile that we find another preposterous absurdity quoted
about “Budh,” as being a name “which signifies not only the sun as the
source of generation but also the male organ.”(787) Max Müller, in
treating of “False Analogies,” says that “the most celebrated Chinese
scholar of his time, Abel Rémusat ... maintains that the three syllables I
Hi Wei [in the fourteenth chapter of the _Tao‐te‐King_] were meant for Je‐
ho‐vah”;(788) and again, Father Amyot “felt certain that the three persons
of the Trinity could be recognized” in the same work. And if Abel Rémusat,
why not Hargrave Jennings? Every scholar will recognize the absurdity of
ever seeing in Budh, the “enlightened” and the “awakened,” a “phallic
symbol.”
Kwan‐Shi‐Yin, then, is “the Son identical with his Father,” mystically, or
the Logos, the Word. He is called the “Dragon of Wisdom,” in Stanza III,
for all the Logoi of all the ancient religious systems are connected with,
and symbolized by, serpents. In old Egypt, the God Nahbkoon, “he who
unites the doubles,” was represented as a serpent on human legs, either
with or without arms. This was the Astral Light reüniting by its dual
physiological and spiritual potency the Divine‐Human to its purely Divine
Monad, the Prototype in “Heaven” or Nature. It was the emblem of the
resurrection of Nature; of Christ with the Ophites; and of Jehovah as the
brazen serpent healing those who looked at him. The serpent was also an
emblem of Christ with the Templars, as is shown by the Templar degree in
Masonry. The symbol of Knooph (Khnoom also), or the Soul of the World,
says Champollion, “is represented among other forms under that of a huge
serpent on human legs; this reptile, being the emblem of the Good Genius
and the veritable Agathodæmon, is sometimes bearded.”(789) This sacred
animal is thus identical with the serpent of the Ophites, and is figured
on a great number of engraved stones, called Gnostic or Basilidean gems.
It appears with various heads, human and animal, but its gems are always
found inscribed with the name ΧΝΟΥΒΙΣ (ChNOUBIS). This symbol is identical
with one which; according to Jamblichus and Champollion, was called the
“First of the Celestial Gods,” the God Hermes, or Mercury, with the
Greeks, to which God Hermes Trismegistus attributes the invention of, and
the first initiation of men into, Magic; and Mercury is Budh, Wisdom,
Enlightenment, or “Reäwakening” into the divine Science.
To close, Kwan‐Shi‐Yin and Kwan‐Yin are the two aspects, male and female,
of the same principle in Kosmos, Nature and Man, of Divine Wisdom and
Intelligence. They are the Christos‐Sophia of the mystic Gnostics, the
Logos and its Shakti. In their longing for the expression of some
mysteries never to be wholly comprehended by the profane, the Ancients,
knowing that nothing could be preserved in human memory without some
outward symbol, have chosen the, to us, often ridiculous images of the
Kwan‐Yins to remind man of his origin and inner nature. To the impartial,
however, the Madonnas in crinolines and the Christs in white kid gloves
must appear far more absurd than the Kwan‐Shi‐Yin and Kwan‐Yin in their
dragon‐garb. The subjective can hardly be expressed by the objective.
Therefore, since the symbolic formula attempts to characterize that which
is above scientific reasoning, and is as often far beyond our intellects,
it must needs go beyond that intellect in some shape or other, or else it
will fade out from human remembrance.
PART III. ADDENDA. ON OCCULT AND MODERN SCIENCE.
The knowledge of this nether world—
Say, friend, what is it, false or true?
The false, what mortal cares to know?
The true, what mortal ever knew?
Section I. Reasons for These Addenda.
Many of the doctrines contained in the foregoing seven Stanzas and
Commentaries having been studied and critically examined by some Western
Theosophists, certain of the Occult Teachings have been found wanting from
the ordinary stand‐point of modern scientific knowledge. They seemed to
encounter insuperable difficulties in the way of their acceptance, and to
require reconsideration in view of scientific criticism. Some friends have
already been tempted to regret the necessity of so often calling in
question the assertions of Modern Science. It appeared to them—and I here
repeat only their arguments—that “to run counter to the teachings of its
most eminent exponents, was to court a premature discomfiture in the eyes
of the Western World.”
It is, therefore, desirable to define, once and for all, the position
which the writer, who does not in this agree with her friends, intends to
maintain. So far as Science remains what in the words of Prof. Huxley it
is, viz., “organized common sense”; so far as its inferences are drawn
from accurate premisses, its generalizations resting on a purely inductive
basis, every Theosophist and Occultist welcomes respectfully and with due
admiration its contributions to the domain of cosmological law. There can
be no possible conflict between the teachings of Occult and so‐called
exact Science, wherever the conclusions of the latter are grounded on a
substratum of unassailable fact. It is only when its more ardent
exponents, over‐stepping the limits of observed phenomena in order to
penetrate into the arcana of Being, attempt to wrench the formation of
Kosmos and its _living_ Forces from Spirit, and to attribute all to blind
Matter, that the Occultists claim the right of disputing and calling in
question their theories. Science cannot, owing to the very nature of
things, unveil the mystery of the Universe around us. Science can, it is
true, collect, classify, and generalize upon phenomena; but the Occultist,
arguing from admitted metaphysical data, declares that the daring
explorer, who would probe the inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the
narrow limitations of sense, and transfer his consciousness into the
region of Noumena and the sphere of Primal Causes. To effect this, he must
develop faculties which, save in a few rare and exceptional cases, are
absolutely dormant, in the constitution of the off‐shoots of our present
Fifth Root‐Race in Europe and America. He can in no other conceivable
manner collect the facts on which to base his speculations. Is this not
apparent on the principles of Inductive Logic and Metaphysics alike?
On the other hand, whatever the writer may do, she will never be able to
satisfy both Truth and Science. To offer the reader a systematic and
uninterrupted version of the Archaic Stanzas is impossible. A gap of 43
verses or shlokas has to be left between the 7th, already given, and the
51st, which is the subject of Book II, though the latter are made to run
as from 1 onwards, for easier reading and reference. The mere appearance
of man on Earth occupies an equal number of Stanzas, which minutely
describe his primal evolution from the human Dhyân Chohans, the state of
the Globe at that time, etc., etc. A great number of names referring to
chemical substances and other compounds, which have now ceased to combine
together, and are therefore unknown to the later offshoots of our Fifth
Race, occupy a considerable space. As they are simply untranslatable, and
would remain in every case inexplicable, they are omitted, along with
those which cannot be made public. Nevertheless, even the little that is
given will irritate every follower and defender of dogmatic materialistic
Science who happens to read it.
In view of the criticism offered, it is proposed, before proceeding to the
remaining Stanzas, to defend those already given. That they are not in
perfect accord or harmony with Modern Science, we all know. But had they
been as much in agreement with the views of modern knowledge as is a
lecture by Sir William Thomson, they would have been rejected all the
same. For they teach belief in conscious Powers and Spiritual Entities; in
terrestrial, semi‐intelligent, and highly intellectual Forces on other
planes;(790) and in Beings that dwell around us in spheres imperceptible,
whether through telescope or microscope. Hence the necessity of examining
the beliefs of materialistic Science, of comparing its views about the
“Elements” with the opinions of the Ancients, and of analysing the
physical Forces as they exist in modern conceptions, before the Occultists
admit themselves to be in the wrong. We shall touch upon the constitution
of the Sun and planets, and the Occult characteristics of what are called
Devas and Genii, and are now termed by Science, Forces, or “modes of
motion,” and see whether Esoteric belief is defensible or not.
Notwithstanding the efforts made to the contrary, an unprejudiced mind
will discover that under Newton’s “agent, material or immaterial,”(791)
the agent which _causes gravity_, and in his personal _working_ God, there
is just as much of the metaphysical Devas and Genii, as there is in
Kepler’s Angelus Rector conducting each planet, and in the _species
immateriata_ by which the celestial bodies were carried along in their
courses, according to that Astronomer.
In Volume II, we shall have to openly approach dangerous subjects. We must
bravely face Science and declare, in the teeth of materialistic learning,
of Idealism, Hylo‐Idealism, Positivism and all‐denying modern Psychology,
that the true Occultist believes in “Lords of Light”; that he believes in
a Sun, which—far from being simply a “lamp of day” moving in accordance
with physical law, and far from being merely one of those Suns, which,
according to Richter, “are sun‐flowers of a higher light”—is, like
milliards of other Suns, the dwelling or the vehicle of a God, and of a
host of Gods.
In this dispute, of course, it is the Occultists who will be worsted. They
will be considered, on the _primâ facie_ aspect of the question, to be
ignoramuses, and will be labelled with more than one of the usual epithets
given to those whom the superficially judging public, itself ignorant of
the great underlying truths in Nature, accuses of believing in mediæval
superstitions. Let it be so. Submitting beforehand to every criticism in
order to go on with their task, they only claim the privilege of showing
that the Physicists are as much at loggerheads among themselves in their
speculations, as these speculations are with the teachings of Occultism.
The Sun is Matter, and the Sun is Spirit. Our ancestors, the “Heathen,”
like their modern successors, the Parsîs, were, and are, wise enough in
their generation to see in it the symbol of Divinity, and at the same time
to sense within, concealed by the physical symbol, the bright God of
Spiritual and Terrestrial Light. Such belief can be regarded as a
superstition only by rank Materialism, which denies Deity, Spirit, Soul,
and admits no intelligence outside the mind of man. But if too much wrong
superstition bred by “Churchianity,” as Laurence Oliphant calls it,
“renders a man a fool,” too much scepticism makes him mad. We prefer the
charge of folly in believing too much, to that of a madness which denies
everything, as do Materialism and Hylo‐Idealism. Hence, the Occultists are
fully prepared to receive their dues from Materialism, and to meet the
adverse criticism which will be poured on the author of this work, not for
writing it, but for believing in that which it contains.
Therefore the discoveries, hypotheses, and unavoidable objections which
will be brought forward by the scientific critics must be anticipated and
disposed of. It has also to be shown how far the Occult Teachings depart
from Modern Science, and whether the ancient or the modern theories are
the more logically and philosophically correct. The unity and mutual
relations of all parts of Kosmos were known to the Ancients, before they
became evident to modern Astronomers and Philosophers. And even if the
external and visible portions of the Universe, and their mutual relations,
cannot be explained in Physical Science, in any other terms than those
used by the adherents of the mechanical theory of the Universe, it does
not follow that the Materialist, who denies that the Soul of Kosmos (which
appertains to Metaphysical Philosophy) exists, has the right to trespass
upon that metaphysical domain. That Physical Science is trying to, and
actually does, encroach upon it, is only one more proof that “might is
right”; it does not justify the intrusion.
Another good reason for these Addenda is this. Since only a certain
portion of the Secret Teachings can be given out in the present age, the
doctrines would never be understood even by Theosophists, if they were
published without any explanations or commentary. Therefore they must be
contrasted with the speculations of Modern Science. Archaic Axioms must be
placed side by side with Modern Hypotheses, and the comparison of their
value must be left to the sagacious reader.
On the question of the “Seven Governors”—as Hermes calls the “Seven
Builders,” the Spirits which guide the operations of Nature, the animated
atoms of which are the shadows, in their own world, of their Primaries in
the Astral Realms—this work will, of course, have every Materialist
against it, as well as the men of Science. But this opposition can, at
most, be only temporary. People have laughed at everything unusual, and
have scouted every unpopular idea at first, and have then ended by
accepting it. Materialism and Scepticism are evils that must remain in the
world so long as man has not quitted his present gross form to don the one
he had during the First and Second Races of this Round. Unless Scepticism
and our present natural ignorance are equilibrated by Intuition and a
natural Spirituality, every being afflicted with such feelings will see in
himself nothing better than a bundle of flesh, bones, and muscles, with an
empty garret inside, which serves the purpose of storing his sensations
and feelings. Sir Humphrey Davy was a great Scientist, as deeply versed in
Physics as any theorist of our day, yet he loathed Materialism. He says:
I heard with disgust, in the dissecting‐rooms, the plan of the
Physiologist, of the gradual secretion of matter, and its becoming
endued with irritability, ripening into sensibility, and acquiring
such organs as were necessary, by its own inherent forces, and at
last rising into intellectual existence.
Nevertheless, Physiologists are not those who should be most blamed for
speaking of that only which they can see by, and estimate on the evidence
of, their physical senses. Astronomers and Physicists are, we consider,
far more illogical in their materialistic views than are even
Physiologists, and this has to be proved. Milton’s
... Light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
has become with the Materialists only
... Prime cheerer, light,
Of all material beings, first and best.
For the Occultists it is both Spirit and Matter. Behind the “mode of
motion,” now regarded as the “property of matter” and nothing more, they
perceive the radiant Noumenon. It is the “Spirit of Light,” the first‐born
of the Eternal pure Element, whose energy, or emanation, is stored in the
Sun, the great Life‐Giver of the Physical World, as the hidden concealed
Spiritual Sun is the Light‐ and Life‐Giver of the Spiritual and Psychic
Realms. Bacon was one of the first to strike the key‐note of Materialism,
not only by his inductive method—renovated from ill‐digested Aristotle—but
by the general tenor of his writings. He inverts the order of mental
Evolution when saying:
The first creation of God was the light of the sense; the last was
the light of the reason; and his Sabbath work ever since is the
illumination of the Spirit.
It is just the reverse. The light of Spirit is the eternal Sabbath of the
Mystic or Occultist, and he pays little attention to that of mere sense.
That which is meant by the allegorical sentence, “_Fiat Lux_,” is, when
esoterically rendered, “Let there be the ‘Sons of Light’,” or the Noumena
of all phenomena. Thus the Roman Catholics rightly interpret the passage
as referring to Angels, but wrongly as meaning Powers created by an
anthropomorphic God, whom they personify in the ever thundering and
punishing Jehovah.
These beings are the “Sons of Light,” because they emanate from, and are
self‐generated in, that infinite Ocean of Light, whose one pole is pure
_Spirit_ lost in the absoluteness of Non‐Being, and the other pole, the
_Matter_ in which it condenses, “crystallizing” into a more and more gross
type as it descends into manifestation. Therefore Matter, though it is, in
one sense, but the illusive dregs of that Light whose Rays are the
Creative Forces, yet has in it the full presence of the Soul thereof, of
that Principle, which none—not even the “Sons of Light,” evolved from its
ABSOLUTE DARKNESS—will ever know. The idea is as beautifully, as it is
truthfully, expressed by Milton, who hails the holy Light, which is the
... Offspring of Heaven, first‐born,
Or of th’ Eternal coëternal beam;
... Since God is Light,
And never but in unapproached Light
Dwelt from Eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.