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Title: The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4
Author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Release Date: June 1, 2017 [Ebook #54824]
Language: English
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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET DOCTRINE, VOL. 1 OF 4***
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 t 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 elay which has occurred in the appearance of this work. It has been ccasioned by ill‐health and the magnitude of the undertaking. Even the wo volumes now issued do not complete the scheme, nor do these treat xhaustively of the subjects dealt with in them. A large quantity of aterial has already been prepared, dealing with the history of Occultism s contained in the lives of the great Adepts of the Âryan Race, and howing the bearing of Occult Philosophy upon the conduct of life, as it s and as it ought to be. Should the present volumes meet with a avourable reception, no effort will be spared to carry out the scheme of he work in its entirety.
This scheme, it must be added, was not in contemplation when the reparation of the work was first announced. As originally announced, it as intended that _The Secret Doctrine_ should be an amended and enlarged ersion of _Isis Unveiled_. It was, however, soon found that the xplanations which could be added to those already put before the world, n the last‐named and other works dealing with Esoteric Science, were such s to require a different method of treatment; and consequently the resent 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 nd 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 nowledge of the language was acquired late in life. The English tongue is mployed because it offers the most widely‐diffused medium for conveying he 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 uthor claim the position of a revealer of mystic lore, now made public or the first time in the world’s history. For what is contained in this ork is to be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying he Scriptures of the great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden nder 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 f them one harmonious and unbroken whole. The sole advantage which the riter has over her predecessors, is that she need not resort to personal peculations and theories. For this work is a partial statement of what he herself has been taught by more advanced students, supplemented, in a ew details only, by the results of her own study and observation. The ublication of many of the facts herein stated has been rendered necessary y the wild and fanciful speculations in which many Theosophists and tudents of Mysticism have indulged, during the last few years, in their ndeavour, as they imagined, to work out a complete system of thought from he few facts previously communicated to them.
It is needless to explain that this book is not the Secret Doctrine in its ntirety, but a select number of fragments of its fundamental tenets, pecial attention being paid to some facts which have been seized upon by arious writers, and distorted out of all resemblance to the truth.
But it is perhaps desirable to state unequivocally that the teachings, owever fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these volumes, do not elong to the Hindû, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldæan, or the Egyptian eligion, nor to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism or Christianity exclusively. The
Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their rigins, the various religious schemes are now made to merge back into heir original element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown, eveloped, and become materialized.
It is more than probable that the book will be regarded by a large section f the public as a romance of the wildest kind; for who has ever even eard of the Book of Dzyan?
The writer, therefore, is fully prepared to take all the responsibility or what is contained in this work, and even to face the charge of having nvented the whole of it. That it has many shortcomings she is fully ware; all that she claims for it is that, romantic as it may seem to any, its logical coherence and consistency entitle this new Genesis to ank, at any rate, on a level with the “working hypotheses” so freely ccepted by Modern Science. Further, it claims consideration, not by eason of any appeal to dogmatic authority, but because it closely adheres o 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 ortuitous concurrence of atoms,” and to assign to man his rightful place n the scheme of the Universe; to rescue from degradation the archaic ruths which are the basis of all religions; to uncover, to some extent, he fundamental unity from which they all spring; finally, to show that he Occult side of Nature has never been approached by the Science of odern civilization.
If this is in any degree accomplished, the writer is content. It is ritten in the service of humanity, and by humanity and the future enerations it must be judged. Its author recognizes no inferior court of ppeal. Abuse she is accustomed to; calumny she is daily acquainted with; t 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 oints of detail in literary form, without touching at all more important atters. Had H. P. Blavatsky lived to issue the new edition, she would oubtless 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 reat loss.
Awkward phrases, due to imperfect knowledge of English, have been orrected; most of the quotations have been verified, and exact references iven—a work involving great labour, as the references in the previous ditions 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 iven to the consonants not present in our English alphabet combinations hat approximately express their sound‐values, and we have carefully nserted quantities, wherever they occur, on the vowels. In a few nstances we have incorporated notes in the text, but this has been very paringly done, and only when they obviously formed part of it.
We have added a copious Index for the assistance of students, and have ound it separately, so that reference to it may be facilitated. For the reat 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 ustomary to call its teachings “Esoteric Buddhism.” And, having become a abit—as an old proverb based on daily experience has it—“Error runs down n inclined plane, while Truth has to laboriously climb its way up hill.”
Old truisms are often the wisest. The human mind can hardly remain ntirely free from bias, and decisive opinions are often formed before a horough examination of a subject from all its aspects has been made. This s said with reference to the prevailing double mistake (_a_) of limiting
Theosophy to Buddhism; and (_b_) of confounding the tenets of the eligious philosophy preached by Gautama, the Buddha, with the doctrines roadly outlined in _Esoteric Buddhism_. Any thing more erroneous than his could hardly be imagined. It has enabled our enemies to find an ffective weapon against Theosophy, because, as an eminent Pâli scholar ery pointedly expressed it, there was in the volume named “neither
Esotericism nor Buddhism.” The esoteric truths, presented in Mr. Sinnett’s ork, ceased to be esoteric from the moment they were made public; nor did he book contain the religion of Buddha, but simply a few tenets from a itherto hidden teaching, which are now explained and supplemented by many ore in the present volumes. And even the latter, though giving out many undamental tenets from the SECRET DOCTRINE of the East, raise but a small orner of the dark veil. For no one, not even the greatest living Adept, ould be permitted to, or could—even if he would—give out promiscuously to mocking, unbelieving world that which has been so effectually concealed rom it for long æons and ages.
_Esoteric Buddhism_ was an excellent work with a very unfortunate title, hough 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 udging things by their appearance rather than by their meaning, and ecause the error has now become so universal, that even most of the
Fellows of the Theosophical Society have fallen victims to the same isconception. From the first, however, protests were raised by Brâhmans nd 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 as entirely unaware of the manner in which the author intended to spell he word “Budh‐ism.”
This has to be laid directly at the door of those who, having been the irst to bring the subject under public notice, neglected to point out the ifference between “Buddhism”—the religious system of ethics preached by he Lord Gautama, and so named from his title of _Buddha_, the
“Enlightened”—and “Budhism,” from _Budha_, Wisdom, or Knowledge (Vidyâ), he faculty of cognizing, from the Sanskrit root _Budh_, to know. We
Theosophists of India are ourselves the real culprits, although, at the ime, we did our best to correct the mistake.(1) To avoid this deplorable isnomer was easy; the spelling of the word had only to be altered, and by ommon consent both pronounced and written “Budhism,” instead of
“Buddhism.” Nor is the latter term correctly spelt and pronounced, as it ught to be called, in English, Buddhaïsm, and its votaries “Buddhaïsts.”
This explanation is absolutely necessary at the beginning of a work like he present. The Wisdom‐Religion is the inheritance of all the nations, he world over, in spite of the statement made in _Esoteric Buddhism_(2) hat “two years ago (_i.e._, in 1883), neither I, _nor any other European iving_, knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put nto a scientific shape,” etc. This error must have crept in through nadvertence. The present writer knew all that is “divulged” in _Esoteric
Buddhism_, and much more, _many years_ before it became her duty (in 1880) o impart a small portion of the Secret Doctrine to two _European_ entlemen, one of whom was the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_; and surely he present writer has the undoubted, though to her, rather equivocal, rivilege of being a European by birth and education. Moreover, a onsiderable part of the philosophy expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught in
America, even before _Isis Unveiled_ was published, to two Europeans and o my colleague, Colonel H. S. Olcott. Of the three teachers the latter entleman has had, the first was a Hungarian Initiate, the second an
Egyptian, the third a Hindû. As permitted, Colonel Olcott has given out ome of this teaching in various ways; if the other two have not, it has een simply because they were not allowed, their time for public work aving 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 uthority.
Âdi, or Âdhi Budha, the One, or the First, and Supreme Wisdom, is a term sed 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 arliest Âryans to the Unknown Deity; the word “Brahmâ” not being found in he _Vedas_ and the early works. It means the Absolute Wisdom, and
Âdibhûta is translated by Fitzedward Hall, “the primeval uncreated cause f 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 pplied to mortals, and finally appropriated to one whose unparalleled irtues and knowledge caused him to receive the title of the “Buddha of
Wisdom Unmoved.” _Bodha_ means the innate possession of divine intellect r understanding; _Buddha_, the acquirement of it by personal efforts and erit; while _Buddhi_ is the faculty of cognizing, the channel through hich divine knowledge reaches the Ego, the discernment of good and evil, lso 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, s reached,” Mukti being the same as Nirvana, _i.e._, freedom from the rammels of Mâyâ or Illusion. _Bodhi_ is likewise the name of a particular tate of trance‐condition, called Samâdhi, during which the subject eaches 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 re those also of the Brâhmans, simply because the name suggests what to hem, as Monotheists, are noxious doctrines. _Unwise_ is the correct term o use in their case. For in this age of crass and illogical materialism, he Esoteric Philosophy alone is calculated to withstand the repeated ttacks on all and everything man holds most dear and sacred in his inner piritual life. The true philosopher, the student of Esoteric Wisdom, ntirely loses sight of personalities, dogmatic beliefs and special eligions. Moreover, Esoteric Philosophy reconciles all religions, strips very one of its outward human garments, and shows the root of each to be dentical with that of every other great religion. It proves the necessity f a Divine Absolute Principle in Nature. It denies Deity no more than it oes 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 he gods of the so‐called monotheistic religions, gods created by man in is own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the
Ever‐Unknowable. Furthermore, the records we mean to place before the eader embrace the esoteric tenets of the whole world since the beginning f our humanity, and Buddhistic Occultism occupies therein only its egitimate 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 nacquainted with the tenets of the Wisdom‐Religion of antiquity—are but a ery small portion of the whole. The Hindû reformer limited his public eachings to the purely moral and physiological aspect of the Wisdom‐
Religion, to ethics and man alone. Things “unseen and incorporeal,” the ysteries of Being outside our terrestrial sphere, the great Teacher left ntirely untouched in his public lectures, reserving the Hidden Truths for select circle of his Arhats. The latter received their Initiation at the amous Saptaparna Cave (the Sattapanni of Mahâvansa) near Mount Baibhâr
(the Webhâra of the Pâli MSS.). This cave was in Râjâgriha, the ancient apital of Magadha, and was the Cheta Cave of Fa‐hian, as is rightly uspected by some archaeologists.(4)
Time and human imagination made short work of the purity and philosophy of hese teachings, once that they were transplanted from the secret and acred circle of the Arhats, during the course of their work of roselytism, 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 ay be seen in studying some of the so‐called “esoteric” Buddhist schools f antiquity in their modern garb, not only in China and other Buddhist ountries in general, but even in not a few schools of Tibet, which have een left to the care of uninitiated Lamas and Mongolian innovators.
Thus the reader is asked to bear in mind the very important difference etween _orthodox_ Buddhism—_i.e._, the public teachings of Gautama, the
Buddha—and his esoteric Budhism. His Secret Doctrine, however, differed in o wise from that of the initiated Brahmans of his day. The Buddha was a hild of Âryan soil, a born Hindû, a Kshatriya and a disciple of the
Twice‐born (the initiated Brâhmans) or Dvîjas. His teachings, therefore, ould not be different from their doctrines, for the whole Buddhist reform onsisted merely in giving out a portion of that which had been kept ecret from every man outside of the “enchanted” circle of ascetics and
Temple‐Initiates. Unable, owing to his pledges, to teach _all_ that had een imparted to him, though the Buddha taught a philosophy built upon the round‐work of the true esoteric knowledge, he gave to the world only its utward material body and kept its soul for his Elect. Many Chinese cholars among Orientalists have heard of the “Soul‐Doctrine.” None seem o have understood its real meaning and importance.
That doctrine was preserved secretly—too secretly, perhaps—within the anctuary. The mystery that shrouded its chief dogma and spiration—Nirvâna—has so tried and irritated the curiosity of those cholars who have studied it, that, unable to solve it logically and atisfactorily by untying its Gordian knot, they have cut it through by eclaring that Nirvâna means _absolute annihilation_.
Toward the end of the first quarter of this century a distinct class of iterature appeared in the world, which with every year became more efined in its tendency. Being based, _soi‐disant_, on the scholarly esearches of Sanskritists and Orientalists in general, it was considered cientific. Hindû, Egyptian, and other ancient religions, myths, and mblems were made to yield anything the symbologist wanted them to yield, nd thus often the rude _outward_ form was given out in place of the inner eaning. Works, most remarkable for their ingenious deductions and peculations, _circulo vicioso_—foregone conclusions generally taking the lace of premisses in the syllogisms of more than one Sanskrit and Pâli cholar—appeared rapidly in succession, over‐flooding the libraries with issertations on phallic and sexual worship rather than on real symbology, nd each contradicting the other.
This is the true reason, perhaps, why the outline of a few fundamental ruths from the Secret Doctrine of the Archaic Ages is now permitted to ee the light, after long millenniums of the most profound silence and ecrecy. I say advisedly “a _few_ truths,” because that which must remain nsaid could not be contained in a hundred such volumes, nor could it be mparted to the present generation of Sadducees. But even the little that s now given is better than complete silence upon these vital truths. The orld of to‐day, in its mad career towards the unknown, which the
Physicist is too ready to confound with the unknowable, whenever the roblem eludes his grasp, is rapidly progressing on the reverse plane to hat of spirituality. It has now become a vast arena, a true valley of iscord and of eternal strife, a necropolis, wherein lie buried the ighest and the most holy aspirations of our Spirit‐Soul. That soul ecomes 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; ut there is a fair minority of earnest students who are entitled to learn he few truths that may be given to them _now_; and now much more than ten ears ago, when _Isis Unveiled_ appeared, or even when the later attempts o explain the mysteries of esoteric science were published.
One of the greatest and perhaps the most serious objection to the orrectness and reliability of the whole work will be the preliminary
Stanzas. How can the statements contained in them be verified? True, hough a great portion of the Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mongolian works uoted in the present volumes is known to some Orientalists, yet the chief ork—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 ame. This is, of course, a great drawback to those who follow the methods f research prescribed by official Science; but to students of Occultism, nd to every genuine Occultist, this will be of little moment. The main ody of the doctrines given, however, is found scattered throughout undreds and thousands of Sanskrit MSS., some already ranslated—disfigured in their interpretations, as usual—others still aiting their turn. Every scholar, therefore, has an opportunity of erifying the statements herein made, and of checking most of the uotations. A few new facts, _new_ to the profane Orientalist only, and assages quoted from the Commentaries will be found difficult to trace.
Several of the teachings also have hitherto been transmitted orally, yet ven these in every instance are hinted at in the almost countless volumes f Brâhmanical, Chinese and Tibetan temple‐literature.
However it may be, and whatsoever is in store for the writer through alevolent criticism, one fact is quite certain. The members of several soteric schools—the seat of which is beyond the Himâlayas, and whose amifications may be found in China, Japan, India, Tibet, and even in
Syria, and also South America—claim to have in their possession the _sum otal_ of sacred and philosophical works in MSS. and print, all the works, n fact, that have ever been written, in whatever language or character, ince the art of writing began, from the ideographic hieroglyphs down to he 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 rofane to the ultimate discovery and comprehension of some of the ysteries of the Secret Science, owing to the combined efforts of the embers of these Brotherhoods, has been diligently searched for. It is dded, moreover, by those who know, that once found all such works were estroyed, save three copies of each which were preserved and safely tored away. In India, the last of these precious manuscripts were secured nd hidden during the reign of the Emperor Akbar.
Prof. Max Müller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort the riginal text of the _Vedas_ from the Brâhmans, and yet boasts that
European Orientalists have it.(6) That Europe has the _complete text_ is xceedingly doubtful, and the future may have very disagreeable surprises n store for the Orientalists.
It is maintained, furthermore, that every sacred book of this kind, the ext of which was not sufficiently veiled in symbolism, or which had any irect references to the ancient mysteries, was first carefully copied in ryptographic characters, such as to defy the art of the best and leverest palæographer, and then destroyed to the last copy. During
Akbar’s reign, some fanatical courtiers, displeased at the Emperor’s inful prying into the religions of the infidels, themselves helped the
Brâhmans to conceal their MSS. Such was Badáoní, who had an _undisguised orror_ 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 rypts and cave‐libraries, cut in the rock, whenever the Gonpa and
Lhakhang are situated in the mountains. Beyond the Western Tsaydam, in the olitary passes of Kuen‐lun there are several such hiding‐places. Along he ridge of Altyn‐tag, whose soil no European foot has ever trodden so ar, there exists a certain hamlet, lost in a deep gorge. It is a small luster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a poor‐looking emple 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 ollection of books, the number of which, according to the accounts given, s too large to find room even in the British Museum.
According to the same tradition the now desolate regions of the waterless and of Tarim—a veritable wilderness in the heart of Turkestan—were in ays of old covered with flourishing and wealthy cities. At present, a few erdant oases only relieve its dread solitude. One such, carpeting the epulchre of a vast city buried under the sandy soil of the desert, elongs to no one, but is often visited by Mongolians and Buddhists. The radition also speaks of immense subterranean abodes, of large corridors illed with tiles and cylinders. It may be an idle rumour, and it may be n actual fact.
All this will very likely provoke a smile of doubt. But before the reader ejects the truthfulness of the reports, let him pause and reflect over he following well‐known facts. The collective researches of Orientalists, nd especially of late years the labours of students of Comparative
Philology and the Science of Religion, have enabled them to ascertain that n incalculable number of MSS., and even of printed works _known to have xisted, are now to be no more found_. They have disappeared without eaving the slightest trace behind them. Were they works of no importance hey might, in the natural course of time, have been left to perish, and heir very names would have been obliterated from human memory. But this s not so, for, as now ascertained, most of them contained the true keys o works still extant, and now _entirely incomprehensible_, for the reater portion of their readers, _without these additional volumes of ommentaries 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 thics and religions, and seventy on magic, _one thousand_ in all. His reat work, however, the _Tao‐te‐King_, the _heart_ of his doctrine and he sacred scripture of the _Tao‐sse_, has in it, as Stanislas Julien hows, only “about 5,000 words,”(8) hardly a dozen of pages; yet Professor
Max Müller finds that “the text is unintelligible without commentaries, so hat M. Julien had to consult more than sixty commentators for the purpose f his translation, the earliest going back as far as the year 163 B.C.”, nd _not earlier_, as we see. During the four centuries and a half that receded this “earliest” of the commentators there was ample time to veil he 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 nd followers of Lao‐tse, simply laugh at the blunders and hypotheses of
European Chinese scholars; and tradition affirms that the commentaries to hich our Western Sinologues have access are not the real _occult_ ecords, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as lmost all the texts, have long _disappeared_ from the eyes of the rofane.
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 n 1881.
If our scholars turn to the ancient literature of the Semitic religions, o the Scriptures of Chaldea, the elder sister and instructress, if not he fountain‐head of the Mosaic Bible, the basis and starting‐point of
Christianity, what do they find? To perpetuate the memory of the ancient eligions of Babylon, to record the vast cycle of astronomical bservations of the Chaldean Magi, to justify the tradition of their plendid and preëminently occult literature, what now remains? Only a few ragments, which are _said to be_ by Berosus.
These, however, are almost valueless, even as a clue to the character of hat has disappeared, for they passed through the hands of his Reverence, he Bishop of Cæsarea—that self‐constituted censor and editor of the acred records of other men’s religions—and they doubtless to this day ear the mark of his eminently veracious and trustworthy hand. For what is he 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 he temple of Belus, from the astronomical and chronological records reserved 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 is _rôle_ of defender and champion of the new faith which had adopted the ormer scriptures and together with them an absurd chronology.
Now it is pretty certain that Eusebius did not spare the Egyptian ynchronistic tables of Manetho—so much so that Bunsen(11) charges him ith mutilating history most unscrupulously, and Socrates, a historian of he fifth century, and Syncellus, vice‐patriarch of Constantinople in the eginning of the eighth, denounce him as the most daring and desperate orger. Is it likely, then, that he dealt more tenderly with the Chaldean ecords, which were already menacing the new religion, so rashly accepted?
So that, with the exception of these more than doubtful fragments, the ntire Chaldean sacred literature has disappeared from the eyes of the rofane as completely as the lost Atlantis. A few facts that were ontained in the Berosian History are given later on, and may throw great ight 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_, he student if he strictly follows in this the data furnished by the
Orientalists themselves, will find that although the _Rig Veda_ contains nly about 10,580 verses, or 1,028 hymns, yet in spite of the _Brâhmanas_ nd the mass of glosses and commentaries, it is not understood correctly o this day. Why is this so? Evidently because the _Brâhmanas_, “the cholastic and oldest treatises on the primitive hymns,” _themselves equire a key_, which the Orientalists have failed to secure.
What, again, do the scholars say of Buddhist literature? Do they possess t in its completeness? Assuredly not. Notwithstanding the 325 volumes of he _Kanjur_ and _Tanjur_ of the Northern Buddhists, each volume, we are old, “weighing from four to five pounds,” nothing, in truth, is known of eal Lamaïsm. Yet the sacred canon is said in the _Saddharmâlankâra_(12) o contain 29,368,000 letters, or, exclusive of treatises and ommentaries, 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 etters. Notwithstanding, then, these 325 volumes (in reality there are
333, the _Kanjur_ comprising 108, and _Tanjur_ 225 volumes), “the ranslators, instead of supplying us with correct versions, have nterwoven them with their own commentaries, for the purpose of justifying he dogmas of their several schools.”(13) Moreover, “according to a radition preserved by the Buddhist schools, both of the South and of the
North, the sacred Buddhist Canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 racts, but most of them were lost, so that there remained but 6,000”—as he Professor tells his audience. Lost, as usual—for Europeans. But who an 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 iraculous. Had it been _vice versâ_, every one acquainted with the atural 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 ersecutions in, and emigrations from, India. But as it is well scertained that the Buddhist Arhats began their religious exodus, for the urpose of propagating the new faith beyond Kashmir and the Himâlayas, as arly 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 here to acquaint the “Son of Heaven” with the tenets of Buddhism, it does eem strange to hear the Orientalists speaking of such a loss as though it ere really possible. They do not seem to allow for one moment the ossibility that the texts may be lost only for the West and for hemselves, or that the Asiatic people should have the unparalleled oldness to keep their most sacred records out of the reach of foreigners, hus refusing to deliver them to the profanation and misuse even of races o “vastly superior” to themselves.
Judging by the expressed regrets and numerous confessions of almost every ne of the Orientalists,(16) the public may feel sufficiently sure, (_a_) hat the students of ancient religions have indeed very few data upon hich to build such final conclusions as they generally do about the old aiths, and (_b_) that such lack of data does not in the least prevent hem from dogmatizing. One would imagine that, thanks to the numerous ecords of the Egyptian theogony and mysteries, preserved in the classics nd 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 he too abstruse philosophies and Pantheism of India, of whose religion nd language Europe had hardly any idea before the beginning of the resent century. Along the Nile and on the face of the whole country, here stand to this hour, yearly and daily exhumed, ever fresh relics hich 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 hich alone they become intelligible have disappeared.
In fact so little acquainted are our greatest Egyptologists with the unerary rites of the Egyptians and the outward marks of the difference of ex on the mummies, that it has led to the most ludicrous mistakes. Only a ear or two ago, one of this kind was discovered at Boulaq, Cairo. The ummy of what was considered the wife of an unimportant Pharaoh, has, hanks to an inscription found on an amulet hung round its neck, turned ut to be that of Sesostris—the greatest King of Egypt!
Nevertheless, having found that “there is a natural connection between anguage and religion”; and that “there was a _common_ Âryan religion efore the separation of the Âryan race; a _common_ Semitic religion efore the separation of the Semitic race; and a _common_ Turanic religion efore the separation of the Chinese and the other tribes belonging to the
Turanian class”; having, in fact, discovered only “three ancient centres f religion” and “three centres of language”; and though as entirely gnorant of those primitive religions and languages as of their origin—the
Professor does not hesitate to declare “that a truly _historical basis_ or a scientific treatment of the principal religions of the world” has een gained!
A “scientific treatment” of a subject is no guarantee for its “historical asis”; and with such scarcity of data on hand, no Philologist, even among he most eminent, is justified in giving out his own conclusions for
_historical facts_. No doubt, the eminent Orientalist has thoroughly roved to the world’s satisfaction that, according to the phonetic rules f Grimm’s law, Odin and Buddha are two different personages, quite istinct from each other, and has proved it _scientifically_. When, owever, 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 ge of the _Veda_ and of Homer,”(18) he has not the slightest “historical asis” for it, but makes _history_ and _fact_ subservient to his own onclusions, which may be very “scientific” in the sight of Oriental cholars, but yet very wide of the mark of actual truth. The conflicting iews of the various eminent Philologists and Orientalists, from Martin
Haug down to Prof. Max Müller himself, on the subject of chronology, in he 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 f modern Comparative Mythology any better argument to bring forward to rush the contention of those learned writers who have insisted for the ast century or so that there must have been “fragments of a primeval evelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole race of mankind ... reserved 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 o time. And while a prominent Singhalese priest assured the writer that t was well known that the most important tracts, belonging to the
Buddhist sacred canon, were stored away in _countries and places naccessible to the European Pandits_, the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî, he greatest Sanskritist of his day in India, assured some members of the
Theosophical Society of the same fact with regard to ancient Brâhmanical orks. When told that Professor Max Müller had declared to the audiences f his _Lectures_ that the theory “_that there was a primeval reternatural revelation_ granted to the fathers of the human race, finds ut few supporters at present”—the holy and learned man laughed. His nswer was suggestive. “If Mr. ‘Moksh Mooller’ [as he pronounced the ame], 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 ind out that what crossed the Kâlapani [the black waters of the ocean] rom India to Europe were only the _bits of rejected copies of some assages from our sacred books_. There _was_ a ‘primeval revelation,’ and t still exists; nor will it ever be lost to the world, but will reäppear; hough the Mlechchhas will of course have to wait.”
Questioned further on the point, he would say no more. This was at Meerut, n 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 een well deserved, and no one was more to blame in that affair than the issionaries 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 esson. It made the Oriental scholars doubly cautious; but perchance it as also made some of them too shy and, in its reäction, has caused the endulum of foregone conclusions to swing too much the other way. For
“that first supply from the Brâhmanical market,” in answer to the demand f Colonel Wilford, has now created an evident necessity and desire in the
Orientalists to declare nearly every archaic Sanskrit manuscript so modern s to give the missionaries full justification for availing themselves of heir opportunity. That they do so and to the full extent of their mental owers, 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_ oncerning the now famous interpolations, for the benefit, and later on to he sorrow, of Colonel Wilford, do not at all interfere with the onclusions to which one who studies the Secret Doctrine must unavoidably ome. 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 ll they knew from the Chaldean records, the latter being mutilated later n by Eusebius. As to the Chaldeans, they assuredly got their primitive earning from the Brâhmans, for Rawlinson shows an undeniably Vedic nfluence in the early mythology of Babylon; and Colonel Vans Kennedy has ong ago justly declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of
Sanskrit and Brâhman learning. But all such proofs must lose their value, n the presence of the latest theory worked out by Prof. Max Müller. What t is everyone knows. The code of phonetic laws has now become a universal olvent for every identification and “connection” between the gods of many ations. Thus, though the Mother of Mercury (Budha, Thot‐Hermes, etc.) was
Maia, the mother of Gautama Buddha, also Mâyâ, and the mother of Jesus, ikewise Mâyâ (Illusion, for Mary is Mare, the Sea, the great Illusion ymbolically)—yet these three characters have no connection, nor can they ave any, since Bopp has “laid down his code of phonetic laws.”
In their efforts to collect together the many skeins of unwritten history, t is a bold step for our Orientalists to take, to deny _à priori_ verything that does not dove‐tail with their special conclusions. Thus, hile new discoveries are daily made of great arts and sciences having xisted far back in the night of time, yet even the knowledge of writing s refused to some of the most ancient nations, and they are credited with arbarism instead of culture. Nevertheless traces of an immense ivilization, even in Central Asia, are still to be found. This ivilization is undeniably _prehistoric_. And how can there be ivilization without a literature in some form, without annals or hronicles? Common sense alone ought to supplement the broken links in the istory of departed nations. The gigantic and unbroken wall of the ountains that hem in the whole table‐land of Tibet, from the upper course f the river Khuan‐Khé down to the Karakorum hills, witnessed a ivilization during millenniums of years, and should have strange secrets o 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 ould well vie with Babylon. A whole geological period has swept over the and, since those cities breathed their last, as the mounds of shifting and and the sterile and now dead soil of the immense central plains of he basin of Tarim testify. The borderlands alone are superficially known o the traveller. Within those table‐lands of sand there is water, and resh oases are found blooming there, wherein no European foot has ever et ventured, or trodden the now treacherous soil. Among these verdant ases there are some which are entirely inaccessible even to the profane ative traveller. Hurricanes may “tear up the sands and sweep whole plains way,” they are powerless to destroy that which is beyond their reach.
Built deep in the bowels of the earth, the subterranean stores are secure; nd as their entrances are concealed, there is little fear that anyone ould discover them, even should several armies invade the sandy wastes here—
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 roofs of ancient civilization are found even in comparatively populated egions of the same country. The oasis of Tchertchen, for instance, ituated about 4,000 feet above the level of the river Tchertchen‐Darya, s now surrounded in every direction by the ruins of archaic towns and ities. There, some 3,000 human beings represent the relics of about a undred extinct nations and races, the very names of which are now unknown o our ethnologists. An anthropologist would feel more than embarrassed to lass, divide and subdivide them; the more so, as the respective escendants of all these antediluvian races and tribes themselves know as ittle of their own forefathers as if they had fallen from the moon. When uestioned about their origin, they reply that they know not whence their athers had come, but had heard that their first, or earliest, men were uled by the great Genii of these deserts. This may be put down to gnorance and superstition, yet in view of the teachings of the Secret
Doctrine, the answer may be based upon primeval tradition. Alone the tribe f Khoorassan claims to have come from what is now known as Afghanistan, ong before the days of Alexander, and brings legendary lore to that ffect in corroboration. The Russian traveller Colonel (now General)
Prjevalsky found quite close to the oasis of Tchertchen the ruins of two normous cities, the oldest of which, according to local tradition, was estroyed 3,000 years ago by a hero and giant, and the other by Mongolians n 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 he shifting sands of the deserts. The same tradition exists on the Lob‐ or and in the oasis of Kerya.
The traces of such civilization, and these and like traditions, give us he right to credit other legendary lore, warranted by well educated and earned natives of India and Mongolia who speak of immense libraries eclaimed 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 f the ancient and prehistoric world. Proofs of its diffusion, authentic ecords of its history, a complete chain of documents, showing its haracter and presence in every land, together with the teaching of all ts great Adepts, exist to this day in the secret crypts of libraries elonging to the Occult Fraternity.
This statement is rendered more credible by a consideration of the ollowing facts: the tradition of the thousands of ancient parchments aved when the Alexandrian library was destroyed; the thousands of
Sanskrit works which disappeared in India in the reign of Akbar; the niversal tradition in China and Japan that the true ancient texts with he commentaries, which alone make them comprehensible, amounting to many housands of volumes, have long passed out of the reach of profane hands; he disappearance of the vast sacred and occult literature of Babylon; the oss of those keys which alone could solve the thousand riddles of the
Egyptian hieroglyphic records; the tradition in India that the real secret ommentaries which alone make the _Vedas_ intelligible, though no longer isible to profane eyes, still remain for the Initiate, hidden in secret aves and crypts; and an identical belief among the Buddhists, with regard o their secret books.
The Occultists assert that all these exist, safe from Western spoliating ands, to reäppear in some more enlightened age, for which, in the words f the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî, “the Mlechchhas [outcasts, savages, hose 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 ny desire to monopolise the life‐giving sacred lore. There were portions f the Secret Science that for incalculable ages had to remain concealed rom the profane gaze. But this was because the imparting to the nprepared multitude secrets of such tremendous importance was equivalent o giving a child a lighted candle in a powder magazine.
The answer to a question which has frequently arisen in the minds of tudents, when meeting with statements such as this, may well be outlined ere.
We can understand, they say, the necessity for concealing from the herd uch secrets as the Vril, or the rock‐destroying force, discovered by J.
W. Keely, of Philadelphia, but we cannot understand how any danger could rise from the revelation of such a purely philosophical doctrine, for nstance, 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 rinciple is correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race, and the human rinciples are, on every plane, correlated to seven‐fold occult forces, hose of the higher planes being of tremendous power. So that any eptenary division at once gives a clue to tremendous occult powers, the buse of which would cause incalculable evil to humanity; a clue which is, erhaps, no clue to the present generation—especially to Westerns, rotected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant materialistic isbelief in the occult—but a clue which would, nevertheless, have been ery real in the early centuries of the Christian era to people fully onvinced of the reality of Occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation hich made them rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst escription.
The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its ctual existence was never made a secret of by the Hierophants of the
Temples, wherein the MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and timulus to virtue. This is very old news, and was repeatedly made known y 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 orse in the policy of centuries.
Moreover, there is a well‐known fact—a very curious one, corroborated to he 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 t the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, more than ne Russian Mystic travelled to Tibet _viâ_ the Ural Mountains in search f knowledge and initiation in the unknown crypts of Central Asia. And ore than one returned years later, with a rich store of information such s could never have been given him anywhere in Europe. Several cases could e cited and well‐known names brought forward, but for the fact that such ublicity might annoy the surviving relatives of the late Initiates eferred to. Let any one look over the annals and history of Freemasonry n the archives of the Russian metropolis, and he will assure himself of he fact above stated.
This is a corroboration of what has been stated many times before, nfortunately, too indiscreetly. Instead of benefiting humanity, the irulent charges of deliberate invention and imposture with a purpose, urled at those who asserted a veritable, even if a little known fact, ave only generated bad Karma for the slanderers. But now the mischief is one, 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 ld as thinking man. Its tenets are not now published for the first time, ut 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 ounder, whether Âryan, Semitic or Turanian, who had _invented_ a new eligion, or revealed a new truth. These founders were all _transmitters_, ot original teachers. They were the authors of new forms and nterpretations, while the truths upon which their teachings were based ere as old as mankind. Thus out of the many truths revealed orally to man n the beginning, preserved and perpetuated in the Adyta of the temples hrough initiation, during the Mysteries and by personal transmission, hey selected one or more of such grand verities—actualities visible only o 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 eil of its own local and special symbolism, which, as time went on, eveloped into a more or less philosophical cultus, a Pantheon in mythical isguise. Therefore is Confucius, a very ancient legislator in historical hronology, 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 ays, “I only hand on: I cannot create new things. I believe in the ncients and therefore I love them.”(23)
The writer loves them too, and therefore believes in these ancients, and he modern heirs to their Wisdom. And believing in both, she now transmits hat which she has received and learnt herself, to all those who will ccept it. As to those who may reject her testimony—the great majority—she ill bear them no malice, for they will be as right in their way in enying, as she is right in hers in affirming, since they look at Truth rom two entirely different stand‐points. Agreeably with the rules of ritical scholarship, the Orientalist has to reject _à priori_ whatever vidence he cannot fully verify for himself. And how can a Western scholar ccept on hearsay that which he knows nothing about? Indeed, that which is iven in these volumes is selected from oral, as much as from written eachings. This first instalment of the esoteric doctrines is based upon
Stanzas, which are the records of a people unknown to ethnology. They are ritten, it is claimed, in a tongue absent from the nomenclature of anguages and dialects with which philology is acquainted; are said to manate from a source repudiated by Science—to‐wit, Occultism; and finally hey are offered through an agency, incessantly discredited before the orld by all those who hate unwelcome truths, or have some special hobby f their own to defend. Therefore, the rejection of these teachings may be xpected, and must be expected beforehand. No one styling himself a
“scholar,” in whatever department of exact Science, will permit himself to egard these teachings seriously. They will be derided and rejected _à riori_ in this century, but only in this one. For in the twentieth entury of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret
Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary, imply outlined; and finally that its teachings antedate the Vedas. This s no pretension to prophecy, but simply a statement based on the nowledge of facts. Every century an attempt is being made to show the orld that Occultism is no vain superstition. Once the door is permitted o 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, hough still, even now, very limited.
For have not even the _Vedas_ been derided, rejected and called “a modern orgery” even so recently as fifty years ago? Was not Sanskrit proclaimed t one time the progeny of, and a dialect derived from, the Greek, ccording to Lemprière and other scholars? About 1820, as Prof. Max Müller ells us, the sacred books of the Brâhmans, of the Magians, and of the
Buddhists, “were all but unknown, their very existence was doubted, and here was not a single scholar who could have translated a line of the
_Veda_ ... of the _Zend Avesta_, or ... of the Buddhist _Tripitaka_, and ow 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 roofs are given of its existence and records. But it will be centuries efore 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 ome ten years ago in _Isis Unveiled_ that: “The said key must be turned even times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but one urn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy e, who understands the whole!”
The same may be said of the whole Esoteric System. One turn of the key, nd no more, was given in _Isis Unveiled_. Much more is explained in these olumes. In those days the writer hardly knew the language in which the ork was written, and the disclosure of many things, freely spoken about ow, was forbidden. In Century the Twentieth, some disciple more informed, nd far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final nd irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta Vidyâ; and hat, like the once mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all eligions and philosophies now made known to the world has been for many ges 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 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 ontains 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 ortions of the esoteric teachings that have now escaped from confinement, nless the genuineness and authenticity, or at any rate the probability, f the existence of such teachings were first established. Such statements s will now be made, have to be shown as warranted by various authorities, uch as ancient philosophers, classical writers and even certain learned
Church Fathers, some of whom knew these doctrines because they had studied hem, had seen and read works written upon them; and some of whom had even een personally initiated into the ancient Mysteries, during the erformance of which the arcane doctrines were allegorically enacted. The riter will have to give historical and trustworthy names, and to cite ell‐known authors, ancient and modern, of recognized ability, good udgment, and truthfulness, as also to name some of the famous proficients n the secret arts and science, together with the mysteries of the latter, s they are divulged, or rather partially presented before the public in heir strange archaic form.
How is this to be done; what is the best way for achieving such an object, as been the ever‐recurring question. To make our plan clearer, an llustration may be attempted. When a tourist, coming from a well‐explored ountry, suddenly reaches the borderland of a _terra incognita_, hedged n, and shut out from view by a formidable barrier of impassable rocks, he ay still refuse to acknowledge himself baffled in his exploratory plans.
Ingress beyond is forbidden. But if he cannot visit the mysterious region ersonally, he may still find a means of examining it from as short a istance as can be arrived at. Helped by his knowledge of the landscapes eft behind, he can get a general and pretty correct idea of the ransmural view, if he will only climb to the loftiest summit of the ltitudes in front of him. Once there, he can gaze at it at his leisure, omparing that which he dimly perceives with that which he has just left elow, now that he is, thanks to his own efforts, beyond the line of the ists and the cloud‐capped cliffs.
Such a point of preliminary observation, cannot in these two volumes be ffered to those who would like to get a more correct understanding of the ysteries of the pre‐archaic periods given in the texts. But if the reader as patience, and will glance at the present state of beliefs and creeds n Europe, compare and check it with what is known to history of the ages irectly preceding and following the Christian era, then he will find all his in a future volume of the present work.
In the latter volume a brief recapitulation will be made of all the rincipal Adepts known to history, and the downfall of the Mysteries will e described, after which began the disappearance and the systematic and inal elimination from the memory of men of the real nature of Initiation nd the Sacred Science. From that time its teachings became occult, and
Magic sailed but too often under the venerable but frequently misleading ame of Hermetic Philosophy. As real Occultism had been prevalent among he Mystics during the centuries that preceded our era, so Magic, or ather Sorcery, with its Occult Arts, followed the beginning of
Christianity.
However great and zealous the fanatical efforts, during these early enturies, to obliterate every trace of the mental and intellectual labour f the Pagans, they were a failure; but the same spirit of the dark demon f bigotry and intolerance has ever since systematically perverted every right page written in the pre‐Christian periods. Even history, in her ncertain records, has preserved enough of that which has survived to hrow an impartial light upon the whole. Let, then, the reader tarry a ittle while with the writer on the spot of observation selected. He is sked to give all his attention to that millennium of the pre‐Christian nd the post‐Christian periods, divided by the year One of the Nativity.
This event—whether historically correct or not—has nevertheless been made o serve as a first signal for the erection of manifold bulwarks against ny 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 nd intentionally veiled interpretation of what is now known as the “New
Dispensation.”
However superhuman the efforts of the early Christian Fathers to bliterate the Secret Doctrine from the very memory of man, they all ailed. Truth can never be killed; hence the failure to sweep away ntirely from the face of the earth every vestige of that ancient Wisdom, nd to shackle and gag every witness who testified to it. Let one only hink of the thousands, perhaps millions, of MSS. burnt; of monuments, ith their too indiscreet inscriptions and pictorial symbols, pulverized o dust; of the bands of early hermits and ascetics roaming about among he ruined cities of Upper and Lower Egypt, in desert and mountain, valley nd highland, seeking for and eager to destroy every obelisk and pillar, croll or parchment they could lay their hands on, if only it bore the ymbol of the Tau, or any other sign borrowed and appropriated by the new aith—and he will then see plainly how it is that so little has remained f the records of the past. Verily, the fiendish spirit of fanaticism of arly and mediæval Christianity and of Islam has loved from the first to well 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 uilt their churches on heaven‐kissing hecatombs of human victims. Over he 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 iscern other words, that will point to the Karma for cunningly made‐up istory, for events purposely perverted, and for great characters landered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between the two cars f Jagannâtha—Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much, the other enying all. Wise is he who holds to the golden mid‐point, who believes in he eternal justice of things. Says Faizi Díwán, the “witness to the onderful 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 f the latter, and, though entirely independent of the earlier work, an ndispensable corollary to it. Much of what was in the former work could ardly be understood by Theosophists in those days. THE SECRET DOCTRINE ill now throw light on many a problem left unsolved in the first work, specially on the opening pages, which have never been understood.
As it was concerned simply with the philosophies within historical times nd the respective symbolism of the fallen nations, only a hurried glance ould 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 olumes explain that which was stated only on the first page of _Isis
Unveiled_ alone, and in a few allusions scattered hither and thither hroughout that work. Nor can the vast catalogue of the Archaic Sciences e attempted in the present volumes, before we have disposed of such remendous problems as cosmic and planetary Evolution, and the gradual evelopment of the mysterious humanities and races that preceded our
Adamic Humanity. Therefore, the present attempt to elucidate some ysteries of the Esoteric Philosophy has, in truth, nothing to do with the arlier work. The writer must be allowed to illustrate what is said by an nstance.
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_, ut even the _Sepher Jetzirah_(26)—the work attributed by the Hebrew
Kabalists to their Patriarch Abraham (!), the _Shu‐king_, China’s rimitive Bible, the sacred volumes of the Egyptian Thoth‐Hermes, the
_Purânas_ in India, the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_ and the _Pentateuch_ tself, are all derived from that one small parent volume. Tradition says, hat it was taken down in _Senzar_, the secret sacerdotal tongue, from the ords 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 ts language (the Senzar) was known to the Initiates of every nation, when he forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants f the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages of he 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 he evolution of these Races and of our fourth‐ and fifth‐race Humanity in he 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 llustration is symbolical, as every one can well understand, and covers he ground from the beginning. The old book, having described cosmic volution and explained the origin of everything on earth, including hysical man, after giving the true history of the Races, from the First own to our own Fifth Race, goes no further. It stops short at the eginning of the Kali Yuga, just 4,989 years ago, at the death of Krishna, he bright Sun‐god, the once living hero and reformer.
But there exists another book. None of its possessors regard it as very ncient, as it was born with, and is only as old as the Black Age, namely, bout 5,000 years. In about nine years hence, the first cycle of the first ive millenniums, that began with the great cycle of the Kali Yuga, will nd. And then the last prophecy contained in that book—the first volume of he prophetic record for the Black Age—will be accomplished. We have not ong to wait, and many of us will witness the dawn of the New Cycle, at he end of which not a few accounts will be settled and squared between he races. Volume II of the prophecies is nearly ready, having been in reparation since the time of Buddha’s grand successor, Shankarâchârya.
One more important point must be noticed, one that stands foremost in the eries of proofs given of the existence of one primeval, universal
Wisdom—at any rate for Christian Kabalists and students. The teachings ere, at least, partially known to several of the Fathers of the Church.
It is maintained, on purely historical grounds, that Origen, Synesius, and ven Clemens Alexandrinus, had themselves been initiated into the
Mysteries before adding to the Neo‐Platonism of the Alexandrian school hat of the Gnostics, under the Christian veil. More than this, some of he doctrines of the secret schools, though by no means all, were reserved 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 ogma of the Immaculate Conception. This accounts for the great ersecutions 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 f the supreme struggle, that ended in the Western world throttling the ld religions in favour of the new one, built on their bodies. From thence he 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 nfair means from the indiscreet gaze of posterity. Every issue was locked up, every record upon which hands could be laid, destroyed. Yet here remains enough, even among such mutilated records, to warrant us in aying that there is in them every requisite evidence of the actual xistence of a Parent Doctrine. Fragments have survived geological and olitical cataclysms, to tell the story; and every survival shows evidence hat the now secret Wisdom was once the one fountain head, the ever‐ lowing perennial source, from which were fed all the streamlets—the later eligions of all nations—from the first down to the last. This period, eginning 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 treaming from the æons of times gone by, unobscured by the hand of igotry and fanaticism.
This accounts for the necessity under which the writer has laboured of ver explaining the facts given from the hoariest past by evidence athered from the historical period, even at the risk of being once more harged with a lack of method and system. No other means was at hand. The ublic must be made acquainted with the efforts of many world‐adepts, of nitiated poets and writers in the classics of every age, to preserve in he records of humanity the knowledge at least of the existence of such a hilosophy, if not actually of its tenets. The Initiates of 1888 would ndeed remain incomprehensible and even a seemingly impossible myth, were ot like Initiates shown to have lived in every other age of history. This ould be done only by naming chapter and verse where mention may be found f these great characters, who were preceded and followed by a long and nterminable line of other famous antediluvian and postdiluvian Masters in he arts. Thus only could it be shown, on semi‐traditional and semi‐ istorical authority, that occult knowledge and the powers it confers on an, are not altogether fictions, but that they are as old as the world tself.
To my judges, past and future, therefore—whether they are serious literary ritics, or those howling dervishes in literature who judge a book ccording to the popularity or unpopularity of the author’s name, who, ardly glancing at its contents, fasten like lethal _bacilli_ on the eakest points of the body—I have nothing to say. Nor shall I condescend o notice those crack‐brained slanderers—fortunately very few in umber—who, hoping to attract public attention by throwing discredit on very writer whose name is better known than their own, foam and bark at heir very shadows. These, having first maintained for years that the octrines taught in the _Theosophist_, and which culminated in _Esoteric
Buddhism_, had been all _invented_ by the present writer, have finally urned round, and denounced _Isis Unveiled_ and the rest as a plagiarism rom Éliphas Lévi (!), Paracelsus (!!), and, _mirabile dictu_, Buddhism nd 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 is _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 n 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 he nosegay of _facts_—you will never be able to make away with these. You an only ignore them, and no more.
We may close with a parting word concerning this first volume. In an ntroduction prefacing chapters dealing chiefly with cosmogony, certain ubjects brought forward may be deemed out of place, but one more onsideration added to those already given has led me to touch upon them.
Every reader will inevitably judge the statements made from the stand‐ oint of his own knowledge, experience, and consciousness, basing his udgment on what he has already learnt. This fact the writer is constantly bliged to bear in mind; hence, also the frequent references in this first olume to matters which, properly speaking, belong to a later part of the ork, but which could not be passed by in silence, lest the reader should ook 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 ppreciate the Past. The errors of the day must be explained and swept way, yet it is more than probable—nay in the present case it amounts to ertitude—that once more the testimony of long ages and of history will ail to impress any but the very intuitional—which is equal to saying the ery few. But in this as in all like cases, the true and the faithful may onsole themselves by presenting the sceptical modern Sadducee with the athematical proof and memorial of his obdurate obstinacy and bigotry.
There still exists somewhere in the archives of the French Academy, the amous law of probabilities worked out by certain mathematicians for the enefit of sceptics by an algebraical process. It runs thus: If two ersons 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 robability will bear to its improbability the ratio of 35 to 1. If three uch evidences are joined together the certitude will become 215/216. The greement of ten persons giving each 1/2 of certitude will produce
1023/1024, etc., etc. The Occultist may remain satisfied with such ertitude, and care for no more.
PROEM: PAGES FROM A PRE‐HISTORIC RECORD.
An archaic Manuscript—a collection of palm leaves made impermeable to ater, fire, and air, by some specific and unknown process—is before the riter’s eye. On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull lack ground. On the following page, the same disk, but with a central oint. The first, the student knows, represents Kosmos in Eternity, before he reäwakening of still slumbering Energy, the Emanation of the World in ater systems. The point in the hitherto immaculate disk, Space and
Eternity in Pralaya, denotes the dawn of differentiation. It is the Point n 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, eriodically and by turns. The one circle is divine Unity, from which all roceeds, whither all returns: its circumference—a forcibly limited ymbol, in view of the limitation of the human mind—indicates the bstract, ever incognizable PRESENCE, and its plane, the Universal Soul, lthough the two are one. Only, the face of the disk being white, and the urrounding ground black, clearly shows that its plane is the sole nowledge, dim and hazy though it still is, that is attainable by man. It s on this plane that the manvantaric manifestations begin; for it is in his SOUL, that slumbers, during the Pralaya, the Divine Thought,(27) herein lies concealed the plan of every future cosmogony and theogony.
It is the ONE LIFE, eternal, invisible, yet omnipresent, without beginning r end, yet periodical in its regular manifestations—between which periods eigns 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, hich is Itself, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance he Great Breath,(28) which is the perpetual motion of the Universe, in he sense of limitless, ever‐present Space. That which is motionless annot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely otionless within the Universal Soul.
Almost five centuries B.C. Leucippus, the instructor of Democritus, aintained that Space was eternally filled with atoms actuated by a easeless motion, which, in due course of time, as they aggregated, enerated rotatory motion, through mutual collisions producing lateral ovements. Epicurus and Lucretius taught the same doctrine, adding however o the lateral motion of the atoms the idea of affinity—an Occult eaching.
From the beginning of man’s inheritance, from the first appearance of the rchitects of the globe he lives on, the unrevealed Deity was recognized nd considered under its only philosophical aspect—Universal Motion, the hrill of the creative Breath in Nature. Occultism sums up the One
Existence thus: “_Deity is an arcane, living [or moving] Fire, and the ternal witnesses to this unseen Presence, are Light, Heat,
Moisture_,”—this trinity including, and being the cause of, every henomenon in Nature.(29) Intra‐cosmic motion is eternal and ceaseless; osmic motion—the visible, or that which is subject to perception—is inite and periodical. As an eternal abstraction it is the Ever‐Present; s a manifestation, it is finite both in the coming direction and the pposite, the two being the Alpha and Omega of successive reconstructions.
Kosmos—the Noumenon—has nought to do with the causal relations of the henomenal World. It is only with reference to the intra‐cosmic Soul, the deal Kosmos in the immutable Divine Thought, that we may say: “It never ad a beginning nor will it have an end.” With regard to its body or osmic organization, though it cannot be said that it had a first, or will ver have a last construction, yet at each new Manvantara, its rganization may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it volves 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 ork. Though it contains nothing new to the Orientalist, as it now stands, ts esoteric interpretation may contain a good deal which has hitherto emained entirely unknown to the Western student.
The first illustration is a plain disk, [circle]. The second in the rchaic symbol shows a disk with a point in it, [circle with dot]—the irst differentiation in the periodical manifestations of the ever‐eternal
Nature, sexless and infinite, “Aditi in THAT,”(31) or potential Space ithin abstract Space. In its third stage the point is transformed into a iameter, [circle with line]. It now symbolizes a divine immaculate
Mother‐Nature within the all‐embracing absolute Infinitude. When the orizontal diameter is crossed by a vertical one, [circle with cross], it ecomes the Mundane Cross. Humanity has reached its Third Root‐Race; it is he sign for the origin of human Life. When the circumference disappears nd leaves only the [cross], it is a sign that the fall of man into matter s accomplished, and the Fourth Race begins. The cross within a circle ymbolizes pure Pantheism; when the cross is left uninscribed, it becomes hallic. It had the same and yet other meanings as a Tau inscribed within 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 eant the first manifestation of creative Nature—still passive, because eminine. The first shadowy perception of man connected with procreation s feminine, because man knows his mother more than his father. Hence emale deities were more sacred than male. Nature is therefore feminine, nd, to a degree, objective and tangible, and the Spirit Principle which ructifies it, is concealed.(32) By adding to the horizontal line in the ircle, a perpendicular, the Tau was formed, [T], the oldest form of the etter. It was the glyph of the Third Root‐Race to the day of its ymbolical Fall—_i.e._, when the separation of sexes by natural evolution ook place—when the figure became [circle with vertical line], or sexless ife modified or separated—a double glyph or symbol. With the sub‐races of ur Fifth Race it became in symbology the Sacr’, and in Hebrew N’cabvah, f the first‐formed Races;(33) then it changed into the Egyptian emblem of ife, [Ankh], and still later into the sign of Venus, [female symbol].
Then comes the Svastika (Thor’s Hammer, now the Hermetic Cross), entirely eparated from its circle, thus becoming purely phallic. The esoteric ymbol of Kali Yuga is the five‐pointed star reversed, with its two points
(horns) turned heavenward, thus [five‐pointed star], the sign of human orcery, a position every Occultist will recognize as one of the “left‐ and,” and used in ceremonial magic.
It is hoped that during the perusal of this work the erroneous ideas of he public in general with regard to Pantheism will be modified. It is rong and unjust to regard the Buddhists and Advaitin Occultists as
Atheists. If not all of them philosophers, they are, at any rate, all ogicians, their objections and arguments being based on strict reasoning.
Indeed, if the Parabrahman of the Hindûs may be taken as a representative f the hidden and nameless deities of other nations, this absolute
Principle will be found to be the prototype from which all the others were opied. Parabrahman is not “God,” because It is not _a_ God. “It is that hich is supreme, and not supreme (_paravara_).”(34) It is supreme as ause, not supreme as effect. Parabrahman is simply, as a Secondless
Reality, the all‐inclusive Kosmos—or rather the infinite Cosmic Space—in he highest spiritual sense, of course. Brahman (neuter) being the nchanging, 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 ognition.” 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 estruction, death, and evil.” “Fire and Flame destroy the body of an
Arhat, their essence makes him immortal.”(35) “The knowledge of the bsolute Spirit, like the effulgence of the sun, or like heat in fire, is aught else than the absolute Essence itself,” says Shankarâchârya. IT—is
“the Spirit of the Fire,” not Fire itself; therefore, “the attributes of he latter, Heat or Flame, are not the attributes of the Spirit, but of hat of which that Spirit is the unconscious cause.” Is not the above entence the true key‐note of later Rosicrucian philosophy? Parabrahman s, in short, the collective aggregate of Kosmos in its infinity and ternity, the “THAT” and “THIS” to which distributive aggregates can not e applied.(36) “In the beginning THIS was the Self, one only;”(37) and he great Shankarâchârya explains that “_This_” refers to the Universe
(Jagat); the words, “in the beginning,” meaning before the reproduction of he phenomenal Universe.
Therefore, when the Pantheists echo the _Upanishads_, which state, as in he Secret Doctrine, that “This” cannot create, they do not deny a
Creator, or rather a collective aggregate of creators; they simply refuse, ery logically, to attribute “creation” and especially formation—something inite—to an Infinite Principle. With them, Parabrahman is a passive ecause an absolute Cause, the unconditioned Mukta. It is only limited mniscience and omnipotence that are refused to the latter, because these re 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 onditioned from being connected with it. And if the Vedântins postulate ttributes as belonging simply to its emanation, calling it Îshvara _plus_
Mâyâ, and Avidyâ (Agnosticism and Nescience rather than Ignorance), it is ifficult to find any Atheism in this conception.(38) Since there can be either two Infinites nor two Absolutes in a Universe supposed to be oundless, this Self‐Existence can hardly be conceived of as creating ersonally. To the senses and in the perceptions of finite _beings_, THAT s 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 adiation, which, becoming periodically Brahmâ (the male‐female Potency), xpands itself into the manifested Universe. “Nârâyana moving on the
[abstract] Waters of Space,” is transformed into the Waters of concrete ubstance 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 his matter, to accept the death of Brahmâ, the Creator, at the expiration f every Age of this deity—100 Divine Years, a period which in our years equires fifteen figures to express. Yet no philosopher among them will iew this “death” in any other sense than as a temporary disappearance rom the manifested plane of existence, or as a periodical rest.
The Occultists are, therefore, at one with the Advaita Vedântin hilosophers as to the above tenet. They show, on philosophical grounds, he impossibility of accepting the idea of the absolute ALL creating or ven evolving the Golden Egg, into which it is said to enter in order to ransform itself into Brahmâ, the Creator, who later expands himself into he Gods and all the visible Universe. They say that absolute Unity cannot ass 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, r our plane of existence—is neither an object of, nor a subject to, erception. If one could suppose the eternal infinite All, the omnipresent
Unity, instead of being in Eternity, becoming through periodical anifestation a manifold Universe or a multiple Personality, that Unity ould cease to be one. Locke’s idea, that “pure space is capable of either resistance nor motion,” is incorrect. Space is neither a
“limitless void,” nor a “conditioned fulness,” but both. Being—on the lane of absolute abstraction—the ever‐incognizable Deity, which is void nly to finite minds,(39) and on that of mâyâvic perception, the Plenum, he absolute Container of all that is, whether manifested or unmanifested, t 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 bscondito_, and Brahmâ, the manifested, is the Logos, made male‐ emale(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 omposed of seven layers.
“_What is that which was, is, and will be, whether there is a Universe or ot; 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 bscondito_, that is rejected, but the “God” of human dogma, and his
_humanized_ “Word.” Man, in his infinite conceit and inherent pride and anity, shaped it himself with his sacrilegious hand out of the material e found in his own small brain‐fabric, and forced it upon his fellows as direct revelation from the one unrevealed SPACE.(41) The Occultist ccepts revelation as coming from divine yet still finite Beings, the anifested 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 hilosophically a Mâyâ, and cause of human Mâyâ. But this view does not revent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, or one Mahâmanvantara; nor from applying Âkâsha, the radiation of
Mûlaprakriti,(42) to practical purposes, connected as this World‐Soul is ith all natural phenomena known or unknown to Science.
The oldest religions of the world—exoterically, for the esoteric root or oundation is one—are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Next omes the Chaldean, the outcome of these, now entirely lost to the world, xcept in its disfigured Sabeanism as at present rendered by the rchæologists. Then, passing over a number of religions that will be entioned later, comes the Jewish, esoterically following in the line of
Babylonian Magism, as in the _Kabalah_; exoterically, a collection of llegorical legends, as in _Genesis_ and the _Pentateuch_. Read by the ight of the _Zohar_, the four initial chapters of _Genesis_ are the ragment of a highly philosophical page in the world’s cosmogony. Left in heir symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the ide of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To let them serve s 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 rotest against their spoliation, and the Jews have now certainly the etter of their traditional persecutors. The above‐named exoteric creeds ill 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 oming and going?—The Great Breath. Then, there are three Eternals?—No, __ he three are one. That which ever is is one, that which ever was is one, hat 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 ircumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless
Plane of the Circle, manifesting a Diameter only during the manvantaric eriods; the One is the indivisible Point found nowhere, perceived verywhere during those periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal, he Father and the Mother, the summit and base of the Father, the two xtremities 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 ithout inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from within outwardly, when t is nowhere—(i.e., Mâyâ,_(_43_)_ one of the Centres)._(_44_)_ It expands nd contracts [exhalation and inhalation]. When it expands, the Mother iffuses and scatters; when it contracts, the Mother draws back and ngathers. 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 arment is cold and radiant. Hot Breath is the Father who devours the rogeny of the many‐faced Element [heterogeneous], and leaves the single‐ aced ones [homogeneous]. Cool Breath is the Mother, who conceives, forms, rings 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 tated that Occult Science recognizes _seven_ Cosmic Elements—four ntirely physical, and the fifth (Ether) semi‐material, which will become isible in the Air towards the end of our Fourth Round, to reign supreme ver the others during the whole of the Fifth. The remaining two are as et absolutely beyond the range of human perception. They will, however, ppear as presentments during the Sixth and Seventh Races of this Round, nd will be fully known in the Sixth and Seventh Rounds respectively.(45)
These seven Elements with their numberless sub‐elements, which are far ore numerous than those known to Science, are simply _conditional_ odifications 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, ow quite freely advocated by Science, is not the Ether hypothesized by
Sir Isaac Newton—although he calls it by that name, having probably ssociated it in his mind with Æther, the “Father‐Mother” of antiquity. As
Newton intuitionally says, “Nature is a perpetual circulatory worker, enerating fluids out of solids, fixed things out of volatile, and olatile 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 osmogony of our own planetary system and of what is visible around it, fter a Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with regard to the evolution f the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they could not be nderstood by even the highest minds in this age, and there seem to be ery few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are allowed to speculate pon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say openly that not even the ighest Dhyâni‐Chohans have ever penetrated the mysteries beyond those oundaries that separate the milliards of solar systems from the Central
Sun, as it is called. Therefore, that which is given relates only to our isible 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 ecessary that he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental onceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to hich his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number, but n their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows; herefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself amiliar with these first, before entering on the perusal of the work tself.
The Secret Doctrine then, establishes three fundamental propositions:
I. An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable PRINCIPLE, on which ll speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human onception 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 he postulate that there is One Absolute Reality which antecedes all anifested, conditioned Being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause—dimly ormulated in the “Unconscious” and “Unknowable” of current European hilosophy—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 elation 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 he one hand, absolute Abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the ne thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or onceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing
Unconditioned Consciousness. Even our Western thinkers have shown that onsciousness is inconceivable to us apart from change, and motion best ymbolizes change, its essential characteristic. This latter aspect of the
One Reality, is also symbolized by the term the Great Breath, a symbol ufficiently graphic to need no further elucidation. Thus, then, the first undamental 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 iven.
Herbert Spencer has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert hat the nature of the “First Cause,”(48) which the Occultist more ogically derives from the Causeless Cause, the “Eternal,” and the
“Unknowable,” may be essentially the same as that of the consciousness hich wells up within us: in short, that the impersonal Reality pervading he Kosmos is the pure noumenon of thought. This advance on his part rings 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 onditioned existence, and of which conscious existence is a conditioned ymbol. But once that we pass in thought from this (to us) Absolute
Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or Consciousness) nd Matter, Subject and Object.
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as ndependent realities, but as the two symbols or aspects of the Absolute,
Parabrahman, which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether ubjective or objective.
Considering this metaphysical triad as the Root from which proceeds all anifestation, 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 osmic Evolution. On the other hand, Pre‐cosmic Root‐Substance
(Mûlaprakriti) is that aspect of the Absolute which underlies all the bjective planes of Nature.
Just as Pre‐cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual Consciousness, o Pre‐cosmic Substance is the substratum of Matter in the various grades f 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 rom Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual
Consciousness, since it is only through a vehicle (_upâdhi_) of matter hat consciousness wells up as “I am I,” a physical basis being necessary o focus a Ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity.
Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance would remain an empty bstraction, and no emergence of Consciousness could ensue.
The Manifested Universe, therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as t were, the very essence of its _Ex_‐istence as Manifestation. But just s the opposite poles of Subject and Object, Spirit and Matter, are but spects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the
Manifested Universe, there is “that” which links Spirit to Matter, Subject o 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 ther side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all anifestation, the Thought Divine transmitted and made manifest through he Dhyân Chohans,(50) the Architects of the visible World. Thus from
Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our Consciousness, from Cosmic Substance he several Vehicles in which that Consciousness is individualized and ttains to self—or reflective—consciousness; while Fohat, in its various anifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the nimating 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 ntelligent 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; eriodically “the playground of numberless Universes incessantly anifesting and disappearing,” called the “Manifesting Stars,” and the
“Sparks of Eternity.” “_The Eternity of the Pilgrim_(_51_)_ is like a wink f the Eye of Self‐Existence_,” as the _Book of Dyzan_ puts it. “_The ppearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux nd reflux._”
This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality f that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which hysical 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, hat it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely undamental Laws of the Universe.
Moreover, the Secret Doctrine teaches:
III. The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over‐Soul, he latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory ilgrimage for every Soul—a spark of the former—through the Cycle of
Incarnation, or Necessity, in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic Law, uring the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (Divine
Soul) can have an independent conscious existence before the spark which ssued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth Principle—or the OVER‐
SOUL—has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world f that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural mpulse, and then by self‐induced and self‐devised efforts, checked by its
Karma, thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the owest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest
Archangel (Dhyâni‐Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric Philosophy dmits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own
Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of etempsychoses and reïncarnations. This is why the Hindûs say that the
Universe is Brahman and Brahmâ, for Brahman is in every atom of the niverse, the six Principles in Nature being all the outcome—the variously ifferentiated aspects—of the Seventh and One, the only Reality in the
Universe whether cosmic or micro‐cosmic; and also why the permutations, sychic, spiritual and physical, on the plane of manifestation and form, f the Sixth (Brahmâ the vehicle of Brahman) are viewed by metaphysical ntiphrasis as illusive and mâyâvic. For although the root of every atom ndividually and of every form collectively, is that Seventh Principle or he One Reality, still, in its manifested phenomenal and temporary ppearance, it is no better than an evanescent illusion of our senses.
In its absoluteness, the One Principle under its two aspects, Parabrahman nd Mûlaprakriti, is sexless, unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical anvantaric emanation, or primal radiation, is also One, androgynous and henomenally finite. When the radiation radiates in its turn, all its adiations are also androgynous, to become male and female principles in heir lower aspects. After Pralaya, whether the Great or Minor Pralaya—the atter leaving the worlds _in statu quo_(52)—the first that reäwakes to ctive 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 osmic activity, and Father‐Mother at the first stage of reäwakening. In he _Kabalah_ it is also Father‐Mother‐Son. But whereas in the Eastern
Doctrine, these are the Seventh Principle of the Manifested Universe, or ts Atmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas (Spirit‐Soul‐Intelligence), the Triad branching off nd dividing into seven cosmical and seven human Principles, in the
Western _Kabalah_ of the Christian Mystics it is the Triad or Trinity, and ith their Occultists, the male‐female Jehovah, Jah‐Havah. In this lies he whole difference between the Esoteric and the Christian Trinities. The
Mystics and the Philosophers, the Eastern and Western Pantheists, ynthesize their pregenetic Triad in the pure divine abstraction. The rthodox, anthropomorphize it. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara—the three
Hypostases of the manifesting “Spirit of the Supreme Spirit,” by which itle Prithivî, the Earth, greets Vishnu in his first Avatâra—are the urely 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 he orthodox Christian separates his Personal Creative Deity into the hree Personages of the Trinity, and admits of no higher Deity. The atter, in Occultism, is the abstract Triangle; with the orthodox, the erfect Cube. The creative god or the aggregate gods are regarded by the
Eastern philosopher as _Bhrântidarshanatah_, “false appearances,” omething “conceived of, by reason of erroneous appearances, as a material orm,” and explained as arising from the illusive conception of the gotistic personal and human Soul (lower Fifth Principle). It is eautifully expressed in a revised translation in Fitzedward Hall’s notes o Wilson’s translation of the _Vishnu Purâna_. “That Brahma in its otality, has essentially the aspect of Prakriti, both evolved and nevolved [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 nevolved, and Time is the last.” Cronus is shown in the Orphic Theogony lso as being a generated god or agent.
At this stage of the reäwakening of the Universe, the sacred symbolism epresents 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 t altogether, though it is plainly shown in the _Zohar_. These sectarians egin at the end, and give, as the symbol of pregenetic Kosmos, [cross], alling it the “Union of the Rose and Cross,” the great mystery of occult eneration, from whence the name—Rosicrucian (Rose Cross)! This may be een from one of the most important and best known of their symbols, one hich has never been hitherto understood even by modern Mystics. It is hat of the Pelican tearing open its breast to feed its seven little nes—the real creed of the Brothers of the Rosie‐Cross and a direct utcome 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 ught 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 re not used here because they belong to our Esoteric nomenclature, but imply because they are more familiar to the students in the West. Both re the perfect equivalents of our one, three, and seven vowelled terms, hich 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 nherent reasonableness; nor can I pause to show how they are, in fact, ontained—though too often under a misleading guise—in every system of hought or philosophy worthy of the name.
Once that the reader has gained a clear comprehension of them and realized he light which they throw on every problem of life, they will need no urther justification in his eyes, because their truth will be to him as vident as the sun in heaven. I pass on, therefore, to the subject matter f the Stanzas as given in this volume, adding a skeleton outline of them, n the hope of thereby rendering the task of the student more easy, by lacing before him in a few words the general conception therein xplained.
The history of Cosmic Evolution, as traced in the Stanzas, is, so to say, he abstract algebraical formula of that evolution. Hence the student must ot expect to find there an account of all the stages and transformations hich intervene between the first beginnings of Universal Evolution and ur present state. To give such an account would be as impossible as it ould be incomprehensible to men who cannot grasp the nature of even the lane of existence next to that to which, for the moment, their onsciousness 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 f 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, ill the mind reels and is exhausted in the effort.
The seven Stanzas given in this volume represent the seven terms of this bstract formula. They refer to, and describe, the seven great stages of he 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 irst flutter of reäwakening Manifestation.
A moment’s thought shows that such a state can only be symbolized; to escribe it is impossible. Nor can it be symbolized except in negatives; or, since it is the state of Absoluteness _per se_, it can possess none f those specific attributes which serve us to describe objects in ositive terms. Hence that state can only be suggested by the negatives of ll those most abstract attributes which men feel rather than conceive, as he remotest limits attainable by their power of conception.
_Stanza II_ describes a stage which, to a Western mind, is so nearly dentical with that mentioned in Stanza I, that to express the idea of its ifference would require a treatise in itself. Hence it must be left to he intuition and the higher faculties of the reader to grasp, as far as e can, the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed it must be emembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather han 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 bsorption within the One, the earliest and highest stage in the formation f 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 he Septenary Hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, which are the active anifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, shapers, nd ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe, in the only ense in which the name “creator” is intelligible; they inform and guide t; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and control evolution, mbodying in themselves those manifestations of the One Law, which we know s the “Laws of Nature.”
Generically, they are known as the Dhyân Chohans, though each of the arious groups has its own designation in the Secret Doctrine.
This stage of evolution is spoken of in Hindû mythology as the “Creation f the Gods.”
_Stanza V_ describes the process of world‐formation. First, diffused
Cosmic Matter, then the “Fiery Whirlwind,” the first stage in the ormation of a nebula. This nebula condenses, and after passing through arious transformations, forms a Solar Universe, a Planetary Chain, or a ingle Planet, as the case may be.
_Stanza VI_ indicates the subsequent stages in the formation of a “World” nd brings the evolution of such a World down to its fourth great period, orresponding to the period in which we are now living.
_Stanza VII_ continues the history, tracing the descent of life down to he 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 heir modern translated version, as it would be worse than useless to make he subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of he original, with its puzzling style and words. Extracts are given from he Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit translations of the original Senzar
Commentaries and Glosses on the _Book of Dzyan_—now rendered for the first ime into a European language. It is almost unnecessary to state that only ortions of the seven Stanzas are here given. Were they published complete hey would remain incomprehensible to all save a few high Occultists. Nor s there any need to assure the reader that no more than most of the rofane, does the writer, or rather the humble recorder, understand those orbidden passages. To facilitate the reading, and to avoid the too requent reference to foot‐notes, it was thought best to blend together exts and glosses, using the Sanskrit and Tibetan proper names whenever hese could not be avoided, in preference to giving the originals: the ore so as the said terms are all accepted synonyms, the latter only being sed between a Master and his Chelâs (or Disciples).
Thus, were one to translate into English, using only the substantives and echnical terms as employed in one of the Tibetan and Senzar versions, hloka 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; lone Tho‐og Yinsin in night of Sun‐chan and Yong‐Grub [Paranishpanna], tc., etc._
This would sound like pure _Abracadabra_.
As this work is written for the instruction of students of Occultism, and ot for the benefit of Philologists, we may well avoid such foreign terms herever it is possible to do so. The untranslateable terms alone, ncomprehensible unless their meanings are explained, are left, but all uch terms are rendered in their Sanskrit form. Needless to remind the eader that these are, in almost every case, the late developments of the atter language, and pertain to the Fifth Root‐Race. Sanskrit, as now nown, was not spoken by the Atlanteans, and most of the philosophical erms used in the systems of the India of the Post‐Mahâbhâratan period are ot 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, s once more invited to regard all that follows as a fairy tale, if he ikes; at best as one of the yet unproven speculations of dreamers; and, t the worst, as an additional hypothesis to the many scientific ypotheses past, present and future, some exploded, others still ingering. It is not in any sense less scientific than are many of the so‐ alled scientific theories; and it is in every case more philosophical and robable.
In view of the abundant comments and explanations required, the references o the footnotes are marked in the usual way, while the sentences to be ommented upon are marked with letters. Additional matter will be found in he Chapters on Symbolism, which are often more full of information than he 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 nce 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, or there was no one to produce and get ensnared by them.
5. Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son ere once more one, and the Son had not yet awakened for the new Wheel and is 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 utbreathed by that which is, and yet is not. Naught was.
7. The Causes of Existence had been done away with; the Visible that was, nd the Invisible that is, rested in Eternal Non‐Being—the One Being.
8. Alone, the One Form of Existence stretched boundless, infinite, auseless, 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, nd 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, ested in the Bliss of Non‐Being.
2. ... Where was Silence? Where the ears to sense it? No, there was either Silence nor Sound; naught save Ceaseless Eternal Breath, which nows itself not.
3. The Hour had not yet struck; the Ray had not yet flashed into the Germ; he Mâtripadma had not yet swollen.
4. Her Heart had not yet opened for the One Ray to enter, thence to fall, s 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 oncealed 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 f 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 reathes 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 ondenses 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 preads in milk‐white Curds throughout the Depths of Mother, the Root that rows 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 anished 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 efulgent Glory—Bright Space, Son of Dark Space, who emerges from the
Depths of the great Dark Waters. It is Oeaohoo, the Younger, the ——. He hines 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 nto 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 he 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 ields 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; nd this Web is the Universe, spun out of the Two Substances made in One, hich 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 eturn into their Mother’s Bosom, at the end of the Great Day, and re‐ ecome one with her. When it is cooling, it becomes radiant. Its Sons xpand 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 urn 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, ssued from No‐Number.
2. Learn what we, who descend from the Primordial Seven, we, who are born rom 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 ithin 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 he 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 he Ten are the Arûpa Universe. Then come the Sons, the Seven Fighters, he 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, roduce 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: he swift Son of the Divine Sons, whose Sons are the Lipika, runs circular rrands. Fohat is the Steed, and the Thought is the Rider. He passes like ightning 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 eparates the Sparks of the Lower Kingdom, that float and thrill with joy n their radiant dwellings, and forms therewith the Germs of Wheels. He laces 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; he 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 he 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 rogressing 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, even 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 f 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, he Illusive Form of Sien‐Tchan and the Seven Elements.
2. The Swift and the Radiant One produces the seven Laya Centres, against hich 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 oncealed; Three manifested, Four concealed; Four produced, Three hidden;
Four and One Tsan revealed, Two and One‐Half concealed; Six to be anifested, One laid aside. Lastly, Seven Small Wheels revolving: one iving 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 ets them into motion; some one way, some the other way. They are cold, he akes them hot. They are dry, he makes them moist. They shine, he fans and ools 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 efuses. Two obey.
The Curse is pronounced. They will be born in the Fourth, suffer and cause uffering. This is the First War.
6. The Older Wheels rotated downward and upward.... The Mother’s Spawn illed the whole. There were Battles fought between the Creators and the
Destroyers, and Battles fought for Space; the Seed appearing and eäppearing continuously.
7. Make thy calculations, O Lanoo, if thou wouldst learn the correct age f thy Small Wheel. Its Fourth Spoke is our Mother. Reach the Fourth Fruit f the Fourth Path of Knowledge that leads to Nirvana, and thou shalt omprehend, 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; he Three from the One, the Four from the One, and the Five, from which he Three, the Five and the Seven. These are the Three‐fold and the Four‐ old downward; the Mind‐born Sons of the First Lord, the Shining Seven. It s they who are thou, I, he, O Lanoo; they who watch over thee and thy other, Bhûmî.
2. The One Ray multiplies the smaller Rays. Life precedes Form, and Life urvives the last atom. Through the countless Rays the Life‐Ray, the One, ike a Thread through many Beads.
3. When the One becomes Two, the Threefold appears, and the Three are One; nd 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 hot out by the Seven—their Flame—the Beams and Sparks of one Moon eflected in the running Waves of all the Rivers of Earth.
5. The Spark hangs from the Flame by the finest thread of Fohat. It ourneys 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 ombined 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 ho 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 yself, my image and my shadow. I have clothed myself in thee, and thou rt my Vâhan to the Day ‘Be With Us,’ when thou shalt re‐become myself and thers, thyself and me.” Then the Builders, having donned their first
Clothing, descend on radiant Earth and reign over Men—who are hemselves....
[_Thus ends this portion of the archaic narrative, dark, confused, almost ncomprehensible. An attempt will now be made to throw light into this arkness, 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 ncomprehensible DEITY, whose “Invisible Robes” are the mystic Root of all
Matter, and of the Universe. Space is the _one eternal thing_ that we can ost easily imagine, immovable in its abstraction and uninfluenced by ither the presence or absence in it of an objective Universe. It is ithout dimension, in every sense, and self‐existent. Spirit is the first ifferentiation from “THAT,” the Causeless Cause of both Spirit and
Matter. As taught in the Esoteric Catechism, it is neither “limitless oid,” 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 atter, and is coëternal and even one with Space in its abstract sense.
Root‐Nature is also the source of the subtile invisible properties in isible 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, hich is the basis of the Upâdhi or Vehicle of every phenomenon, whether hysical, psychic or mental. It is the source from which Âkâsha radiates.
By the “Seven Eternities,” æons or periods are meant. The word Eternity, s understood in Christian theology, has no meaning to the Asiatic ear, xcept in its application to the One Existence; nor is the term
“sempiternity,” the eternal only in futurity, anything better than a isnomer.(55) Such words do not and cannot exist in philosophical etaphysics, and were unknown till the advent of ecclesiastical
Christianity. The Seven Eternities mean the seven periods, or a period nswering in its duration to the seven periods, of a Manvantara, extending hroughout a Mahâkalpa or “Great Age” (100 Years of Brahmâ), making a otal of 311,040,000,000,000 of years; each Year of Brahmâ being composed f 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 alculations, in which, in order to arrive at the true total, every figure ust be 7x, x varying according to the nature of the cycle in the ubjective or real world; and every figure relating to, or representing, he different cycles—from the greatest to the smallest—in the objective or nreal world, must necessarily be multiples of seven. The key to this annot be given, for herein lies the mystery of esoteric calculations, and or the purposes of ordinary calculation it has no sense. “The number even,” says the _Kabalah_, “is the great number of the Divine Mysteries”; umber ten is that of all human knowledge (the Pythagorean Decad); 1,000 s the number ten to the third power, and therefore the number 7,000 is lso symbolical. In the Secret Doctrine the figure 4 is the male symbol nly on the highest plane of abstraction; on the plane of matter the 3 is he masculine and the 4 the feminine—the upright and the horizontal in the ourth stage of symbolism, when the symbols become the glyphs of the enerative 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 onsciousness as we travel through Eternal Duration, and it does not exist here no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced, but
“lies asleep.” The Present is only a mathematical line which divides that art of Eternal Duration which we call the Future, from that part which we all the Past. Nothing on earth has real duration, for nothing remains ithout change—or the same—for the billionth part of a second; and the ensation we have of the actuality of the division of Time known as the
Present, comes from the blurring of the momentary glimpse, or succession f glimpses, of things that our senses give us, as those things pass from he region of ideals, which we call the Future, to the region of memories hat we name the Past. In the same way we experience a sensation of uration in the case of the instantaneous electric spark, by reason of the lurred and continuing impression on the retina. The real person or thing oes not consist solely of what is seen at any particular moment, but is omposed of the sum of all its various and changing conditions from its ppearance in material form to its disappearance from earth. It is these
“sum‐totals” that exist from eternity in the Future, and pass by degrees hrough matter, to exist for eternity in the Past. No one would say that a ar of metal dropped into the sea came into existence as it left the air, nd ceased to exist as it entered the water, and that the bar itself onsisted only of that cross‐section thereof which at any given moment oincided with the mathematical plane that separates, and, at the same ime, joins, the atmosphere and the ocean. Even so of persons and things, hich, dropping out of the “to be” into the “has been,” out of the Future nto the Past—present momentarily to our senses a cross‐section, as it ere, of their total selves, as they pass through Time and Space (as
Matter) on their way from one eternity to another: and these two ternities constitute that Duration in which alone anything has true xistence, 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 nder Thought, Will and Feeling. During deep sleep ideation ceases on the hysical plane, and memory is in abeyance; thus for the time‐being “Mind s not,” because the organ, through which the Ego manifests ideation and emory on the material plane, has temporarily ceased to function. A oumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane of existence only by anifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle; and uring the long Night of rest called Pralaya, when all the Existences are issolved, the “Universal Mind” remains as a permanent possibility of ental action, or as that abstract absolute Thought, of which Mind is the oncrete relative manifestation. The Ah‐hi (Dhyân Chohans) are the ollective hosts of spiritual Beings—the Angelic Hosts of Christianity, he Elohim and “Messengers” of the Jews—who are the Vehicle for the anifestation of the Divine or Universal Thought and Will. They are the
Intelligent Forces that give to, and enact in, Nature her “Laws,” while hey themselves act according to Laws imposed upon them in a similar anner by still higher Powers; but they are not the “personifications” of he Powers of Nature, as erroneously thought. This Hierarchy of spiritual
Beings, through which the Universal Mind comes into action, is like an rmy—a host, truly—by means of which the fighting power of a nation anifests itself, and which is composed of army‐corps, divisions, rigades, regiments, and so forth, each with its separate individuality or ife, and its limited freedom of action and limited responsibilities; each ontained in a larger individuality, to which its own interests are ubservient, 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, hich is absolute Being, Existence and Consciousness. They were not, ecause 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 ffect of its antecedent cause, and a cause, in its turn, to its uccessor; the sum total of the Nidânas being based on the Four Truths, a octrine especially characteristic of the Hînayâna System.(60) They belong o the theory of the stream of catenated law which produces merit and emerit, and finally brings Karma into full sway. It is a system based pon the great truth that reïncarnation is to be dreaded, as existence in his world entails upon man only suffering, misery and pain; death itself eing unable to deliver man from it, since death is merely the door hrough which he passes to another life on earth after a little rest on ts 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 ontained such schools from time immemorial, and the Hînayâna and Mahâyâna
Schools both teach the same doctrine in reality. Yâna, or Vehicle, is a ystic expression, both “Vehicles” inculcating that man may escape the ufferings 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 verything that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, ince the appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer epends upon his power of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a ainting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and daubs of olour, while an educated eye sees instantly a face or a landscape.
Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute Existence which ontains in itself the noumena of all realities. The Existences belonging o every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyân Chohans, are, omparatively, like the shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless creen. Nevertheless all things are relatively real, for the cognizer is lso a reflection, and the things cognized are therefore as real to him as imself. Whatever reality things possess, must be looked for in them efore or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; or we cannot cognize any such existence directly, so long as we have ense‐instruments which bring only material existence into the field of ur consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both e and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our nly realities. But as we rise in the scale of development, we perceive hat in the stages through which we have passed, we mistook shadows for ealities, and that the upward progress of the Ego is a series of rogressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, t last, we have reached “reality”; but only when we shall have reached bsolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from he 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 roverb. Light is inconceivable except as coming from some source which is he cause of it: and as, in the case of Primordial Light, that source is nknown, though so strongly demanded by reason and logic, therefore it is alled “Darkness” by us, from an intellectual point of view. As to orrowed or secondary light, whatever its source, it can be only of a emporary mâyâvic character. Darkness, then, is the Eternal Matrix in hich the Sources of Light appear and disappear. Nothing is added to arkness to make of it light, or to light to make it darkness, on this our lane. They are interchangeable; and, scientifically, light is but a mode f darkness and _vice versâ_. Yet both are phenomena of the same oumenon—which is absolute darkness to the scientific mind, and but a gray wilight to the perception of the average Mystic, though to that of the piritual eye of the Initiate it is absolute light. How far we discern the ight that shines in darkness depends upon our powers of vision. What is ight to us is darkness to certain insects, and the eye of the clairvoyant ees illumination where the normal eye perceives only blackness. When the hole Universe was plunged in sleep—had returned to its one primordial lement—there was neither centre of luminosity, nor eye to perceive light, nd 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 f Kosmos—or Spirit and Substance, in a less allegorical aspect, the esultant of which is the Universe, or the “Son.” They are “once more ne,” 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 he following Dawn—as it does periodically. Kârana—Eternal Cause—was lone. To put it more plainly: Kârana is alone during the Nights of
Brahmâ. The previous objective Universe has dissolved into its one primal nd eternal Cause, and is, so to say, held in solution in Space, to ifferentiate again and crystallize out anew at the following Manvataric
Dawn, which is the commencement of a new Day or new activity of Brahmâ—the ymbol of a Universe. In esoteric parlance, Brahmâ is Father‐Mother‐Son, r Spirit, Soul and Body at once; each personage being symbolical of an ttribute, and each attribute or quality being a graduated efflux of
Divine Breath in its cyclic differentiation, involutionary and volutionary. 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 uring 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 ogmatic Latin Theology to watch over all the promontories and gulfs, in he Esoteric System the Dhyânis watch successively over one of the Rounds nd the great Root‐Races of our Planetary Chain. They are, moreover, said o send their Bodhisattvas, the human correspondents of the Dhyâni‐Buddhas uring every Round and Race. Out of the “Seven Truths” and Revelations, or ather revealed secrets, four only have been handed to us, as we are still n 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 ater on.
So far “there are only Four Truths, and Four _Vedas_”—say the Buddhists nd 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 evelation and revealers, the next Round will bring the Fifth, the ollowing the Sixth, and so on.
(b) “Paranishpanna” is the Absolute Perfection to which all Existences ttain at the close of a great period of activity, or Mahâmanvantara, and n which they rest during the succeeding period of repose. In Tibetan it s called “Yong‐Grub.” Up to the day of the Yogâchârya School the true ature of Paranirvâna was taught publicly, but since then it has become ntirely esoteric; hence so many contradictory interpretations of it. It s only a true Idealist who can understand it. Everything has to be viewed s ideal, with the exception of Paranirvâna, by him who would comprehend hat state, and acquire a knowledge of how Non‐Ego, Voidness, and Darkness re Three in One, and alone self‐existent and perfect. It is absolute, owever, only in a relative sense, for it must give room to still further bsolute perfection, according to a higher standard of excellence in the ollowing period of activity—just as a perfect flower must cease to be a erfect flower and die, in order to grow into a perfect fruit, if such a ode of expression may be permitted.
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything, orlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous development has neither onceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our “Universe” is only one of an nfinite number of Universes, all of them “Sons of Necessity,” because inks in the great cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing in the elation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and of a cause as egards its successor.
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an utbreathing and inbreathing of the “Great Breath,” which is eternal, and hich, being Motion, is one of the three symbols of the Absolute—Abstract
Space and Duration being the other two. When the Great Breath is rojected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is regarded as the reathing of the Unknowable Deity—the One Existence—which breathes out a hought, 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, hich we can only speak of as Absolute Existence, but cannot picture to ur 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 nly in relation to the phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have o 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 xistence, still is,” according to a precept in the Prasanga Madhyamika eaching, whose dogmas have been known ever since it broke away from the urely esoteric schools.(63) Our ideas, in short, on duration and time are ll derived from our sensations according to the laws of association.
Inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge, they evertheless can have no existence except in the experience of the ndividual Ego, and perish when its evolutionary march dispels the Mâyâ of henomenal existence. What is time, for instance, but the panoramic uccession of our states of consciousness? In the words of a Master, “I eel irritated at having to use these three clumsy words—Past, Present, nd Future—miserable concepts of the objective phases of the subjective hole, they are about as ill‐adapted for the purpose as an axe for fine arving.” One has to acquire Paramârtha lest one should become too easy a rey 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 xist, an outcome of Nidâna and Mâyâ. This desire for a sentient life hows itself in everything, from an atom to a sun, and is a reflection of he Divine Thought propelled into objective existence, into a law that the
Universe should exist. According to Esoteric teaching, the real cause of hat supposed desire, and of all existence, remains for ever hidden, and ts first emanations are the most complete abstractions mind can conceive.
These abstractions must of necessity be postulated as the cause of the aterial Universe which presents itself to the senses and intellect, and ust underlie the secondary and subordinate powers of Nature, which have een anthropomorphized and worshipped as “God” and “gods” by the common erd of every age. It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause; he attempt to do so makes the mind a blank. This is virtually the ondition to which the mind must come at last when we try to trace back he chain of causes and effects, but both Science and Religion jump to his condition of blankness much more quickly than is necessary, for they gnore the metaphysical abstractions which are the only conceivable causes f physical concretions. These abstractions become more and more concrete s they approach our plane of existence, until finally they phenomenalize n the form of the material Universe, by a process of conversion of etaphysics into physics, analogous to that by which steam can be ondensed into water, and water frozen into ice.
(b) The idea of “Eternal Non‐Being,” which is the “One Being,” will appear paradox to anyone who does not remember that we limit our ideas of Being o our present consciousness of Existence; making it a specific, instead f a generic term. An unborn infant, could it think in our acceptation of hat 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 ndeavour 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 aculties 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 ll the noumena which we know must underlie phenomena, and give them hatever shadow of reality they possess, but which we have not the senses r the intellect to cognize at present. The impalpable atoms of gold cattered through the substance of a ton of auriferous quartz may be mperceptible to the naked eye of the miner, yet he knows that they are ot only present there, but that they alone give his quartz any ppreciable value; and this relation of the gold to the quartz may faintly hadow forth that of the noumenon to the phenomenon. Only the miner knows hat the gold will look like when extracted from the quartz, whereas the ommon mortal can form no conception of the reality of things separated rom the Mâyâ which veils them, and in which they are hidden. Alone the
Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of his redecessors, directs the “Eye of Dangma” toward the essence of things on hich 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 f 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 omogeneous basis for apparently widely different things—heterogeneity eveloped from homogeneity. Biologists are now searching for their omogeneous protoplasm and Chemists for their protyle, while Science is ooking for the force of which electricity, magnetism, heat, and so forth, re the differentiations. The Secret Doctrine carries this idea into the egion of metaphysics, and postulates a “One Form of Existence” as the asis 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 he 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 hown by Fitzedward Hall, is scarcely so much the “Mother of the World,” r 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, t is the Svabhâvat of the Buddhist philosopher, the Eternal Cause and
Effect, omnipresent yet abstract, the self‐existent plastic Essence and he Root of all things, viewed in the same dual light as the Vedântin iews his Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti, the one under two aspects. It eems indeed extraordinary to find great scholars speculating on the ossibility of the Vedânta, and the Uttara Mîmânsâ especially, having been
“evoked by the teachings of the Buddhists”; whereas, on the contrary, it s Buddhism, the teaching of Gautama Buddha, that was “evoked” and ntirely upreared on the tenets of the Secret Doctrine, of which a partial ketch is here attempted, and on which, also, the _Upanishads_ are made to est.(67) According to the teachings of Shrî Shankarâchârya our contention s 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 ind comes into action; or as a Vedântin would express it, the individual s conscious in a different plane of his being. The term “Dreamless
Sleep,” in this case, is applied allegorically to the Universe to express condition somewhat analogous to that state of consciousness in man, hich, not being remembered in a waking state, seems a blank, just as the leep of the mesmerized subject seems to him an unconscious blank when he eturns to his normal condition, although he has been talking and acting s 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 isputations. The two terms “Âlaya,” and “Paramârtha,” have been the auses of dividing schools and splitting the truth into more different spects 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 hanges its nature periodically. Âlaya, though eternal and changeless in ts inner essence on the planes which are unreachable by either men or osmic gods (Dhyâni‐Buddhas), changes during the active life‐period with espect 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 trong 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 ondition next to it. Hence the disagreement. Thus, while the Yogâchâryas f the Mahâyâna School say that Âlaya (Nyingpo and Tsang in Tibetan) is he personification of the Voidness, and yet Âlaya is the basis of every isible and invisible thing, and that, though it is eternal and immutable n its essence, it reflects itself in every object of the Universe “like he moon in clear tranquil water”; other schools dispute the statement.
The same for Paramârtha. The Yogâchâryas interpret the term as that which s also dependent upon other things (_paratantra_); and the Madhyamikas ay that Paramârtha is limited to Paranishpanna or Absolute Perfection;
_i.e._, in the exposition of these “Two Truths” of the Four, the former elieve 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 bsolute knowledge before he becomes one with Paranirvâna. Parikalpita and
Paratantra are his two great enemies.”(72) Parikalpita (in Tibetan Kun‐ ag) is error, made by those unable to realize the emptiness and llusionary nature of all; who believe something to exist which does ot—_e.g._, the Non‐Ego. And Paratantra is that, whatever it is, which xists only through a dependent or causal connection, and which has to isappear as soon as the cause from which it proceeds is removed—_e.g._, he flame of a wick. Destroy or extinguish it, and light disappears.
Esoteric Philosophy teaches that everything lives and is conscious, but ot that all life and consciousness are similar to those of human or even nimal beings. Life we look upon as the One Form of Existence, manifesting n what is called Matter; or what, incorrectly separating them, we name
Spirit, Soul and Matter in man. Matter is the Vehicle for the anifestation of Soul on this plane of existence, and Soul is the Vehicle n 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 he human mind in this century, as a consequence of its liberation from nthropomorphic Theology. Science, it is true, contents itself with racing or postulating the signs of Universal Life, but has not yet been old enough to even whisper “Anima Mundi”! The idea of “crystalline life,” ow familiar to Science, would have been scouted half a century ago.
Botanists are now searching for the nerves of plants; not that they uppose that plants can feel or think as animals do, but because they elieve that some structure, bearing the same relation functionally to lant life that nerves bear to animal life, is necessary to explain egetable growth and nutrition. It seems hardly possible that Science, by he mere use of terms such as “force” and “energy,” can disguise from tself much longer the fact that things that have life are living things, hether 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 he Yogâchârya system of the contemplative Mahâyâna School, Âlaya is both he Universal Soul, Anima Mundi, and the Self of a progressed Adept. “He ho is strong in the Yoga can introduce at will his Âlaya by means of editation into the true nature of Existence.” “The Âlaya has an absolute ternal existence,” says Aryâsanga, the rival of Nâgârjuna.(73) In one ense it is Pradhâna, which is explained in _Vishnu Purâna_ as, “that hich is the unevolved cause, is emphatically called, by the most eminent ages, Pradhâna, original base, which is subtile Prakriti, _viz._, that hich is eternal, and which at once is [or comprehends what is] and [what] s not, or is mere process.”(74) “The indiscrete cause which is uniform, nd both cause and effect, and which those who are acquainted with first rinciples, call Pradhâna and Prakriti, is the incognizable Brahma who was efore all,”(75) _i.e._, Brahma does not put forth evolution itself or reate, but only exhibits various aspects of itself, one of which is
Prakriti, an aspect of Pradhâna. “Prakriti,” however, is an incorrect ord, and Âlaya would explain it better; for Prakriti is not the
“uncognizable Brahma.” It is a mistake of those who know nothing of the niversality of the Occult doctrines from the very cradle of the human aces, 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 hilosopher brought the teaching forward simply to oppose the too aterialistic conceptions of Democritus on cosmogony, based on the xoteric theory of _blindly_ driven atoms. Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, owever, was not its inventor, but only its propagator, as was also Plato.
That which he called Mundane Intelligence, Nous (Νοῦς), the principle that ccording to his views is absolutely separated and free from matter and cts with design, was called Motion, the One Life, or Jîvâtmâ, in India, ges before the year 500 B.C. Only the Âryan philosophers never endowed his principle, which with them is infinite, with the finite “attribute of hinking.”(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 chools of Schelling and Fichte have diverged widely from the primitive rchaic conception of an Absolute Principle, and have mirrored an aspect nly of the basic idea of the Vedânta. Even the “Absoluter Geist” shadowed orth by von Hartmann in his pessimistic philosophy of the “Unconscious,” hile it is, perhaps, the closest approximation made by European peculation to the Hindû Advaitin doctrines, yet similarly falls far short f the reality.
According to Hegel, the “Unconscious” would never have undertaken the vast nd laborious task of evolving the Universe, except in the hope of ttaining clear Self‐Consciousness. In this connection it is to be borne n mind that in designating Spirit, a term which the European Pantheists se as equivalent to Parabrahman, as Unconscious, they do not attach to he expression the connotation it usually bears. It is employed in the bsence of a better term to symbolize a profound mystery.
The “Absolute Consciousness behind phenomena,” they tell us, which is only ermed unconsciousness in the absence of any element of personality, ranscends human conception. Man, unable to form a single concept except n terms of empirical phenomena, is powerless from the very constitution f 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 ource whence it sprung and whither it must eventually return. As the ighest Dhyân Chohan, however, can but bow in ignorance before the awful ystery of Absolute Being; and since, even in that culmination of onscious existence—“the merging of the individual in the universal onsciousness,” 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, ow can it be said that the Unconscious and the Absolute can have even an nstinctive 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 spect 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, anifested in man, latent in the stone, has different degrees of power; nd this Pantheistic idea of a general Spirit‐Soul pervading all Nature is he oldest of all the philosophical notions. Nor was the Archæus a iscovery either of Paracelsus or of his pupil Van Helmont; for this same
Archæus is “Father‐Æther,” the manifested basis and source of the nnumerable phenomena of life—localized. The whole series of the umberless speculations of this kind are but variations on the same theme, he key‐note of which was struck in this “primeval revelation.”
(b) The term “Anupâdaka,” parentless, or without progenitors, is a ystical designation having several meanings in our philosophy. By this ame Celestial Beings, the Dhyân Chohans or Dhyâni‐Buddhas, are generally eant. These correspond mystically to the human Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, nown 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 arents 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 an also is an Anupâdaka in a latent state. Hence—when speaking of the
Universe in its formless, eternal, or absolute condition, before it was ashioned 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 f 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, nd esoterically the seven earths or spheres (Globes) of our Chain also.
The opening sentence of Stanza I, when mentioning “Seven Eternities,” pplies both to the Mahâkalpa or “the (Great) Age of Brahmâ,” as well as o the Solar Pralaya and subsequent resurrection of our Planetary System n a higher plane. There are many kinds of Pralaya (dissolution of a thing isible), as will be shown elsewhere.
(b) “Paranishpanna,” remember, is the _summum bonum_, the Absolute, hence he same as Paranirvâna. Besides being the final state, it is that ondition of subjectivity which has no relation to anything but the One
Absolute Truth (Paramârthasatya) on its own plane. It is that state which eads one to appreciate correctly the full meaning of Non‐Being, which, as xplained, is Absolute Being. Sooner or later, all that now _seemingly_ xists, will be in reality and actually in the state of Paranishpanna. But here 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 ill get heated through, but will not feel or appreciate the warmth, while man will. It is only “_with a mind clear and undarkened by Personality, nd an assimilation of the merit of manifold Existences devoted to Being n its collectivity_ [_the whole living and sentient Universe_],” that one ets 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 undamental one in Eastern psychology. Under this apparent contradiction n terms, there rests a fact of Nature, to realize which in the mind, ather than to argue about words, is the important thing. A familiar nstance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination. The uestion whether hydrogen and oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to orm water, is still a moot one; some arguing that since they are found gain when the water is decomposed, they must be there all the while; thers contending that as they actually turn into something totally ifferent, they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being; but either side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition f a thing, which has become something else and yet has not ceased to be tself. Existence as water for oxygen and hydrogen may be said to be a tate of Non‐Being, which is more real Being than their existence as ases; and it may faintly symbolize the condition of the Universe when it oes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the Nights of Brahmâ—to awaken or eäppear again, when the dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it to what we all existence.
(b) The “Breath” of the One Existence is only used in application to the piritual aspect of Cosmogony by Archaic Esotericism; in other cases, it s replaced by its equivalent on the material plane—Motion. The One
Eternal Element, or element‐containing Vehicle, is Space, dimensionless in very sense; coëxistent with which are Endless Duration, Primordial (hence
Indestructible) Matter, and Motion—Absolute “Perpetual Motion,” which is he “Breath” of the One Element. This Breath, as seen, can never cease, ot 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, hich is Brahmâ, or the Universe. Brahmâ, the four‐faced god, who, after ifting the Earth out of the waters, “accomplished the creation,” is held o be only the Instrumental, and not, as clearly implied, the Ideal Cause.
No Orientalist, so far, seems to have thoroughly comprehended the real ense of the verses in the _Purânas_, that treat of “creation.”
Therein Brahmâ is the cause of the potencies that are to be generated ubsequently for the work of “creation.” For instance, in the _Vishnu
Purâna_,(86) the translation, “and from him proceed the potencies to be reated, after they have become the real cause,” would perhaps be more orrectly rendered, “and from IT proceed the potencies that _will create_ s 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 eferred. “Worthiest of ascetics, through its potency—_i.e._, through the otency of that cause—every created thing comes by its inherent or proper ature.” If, “in the Vedânta and Nyâya, _nimitta_ is the efficient cause, s contrasted with _upâdâna_, the material cause, [and] in the Sânkhya,
_pradhâna_ implies the functions of both”; in the Esoteric Philosophy, hich reconciles all these systems, and the nearest exponent of which is he Vedânta as expounded by the Advaita Vedântists, none but the _upâdâna_ an 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 hat ideal even is a misnomer, when applied to that of which no human eason, even that of an Adept, can conceive.
To know itself or oneself, necessitates consciousness and perception to be ognized—both limited faculties in relation to any subject except
Parabrahman. Hence the “Eternal Breath which knows itself not.” Infinity annot 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 enses of those who describe this indescribable—it is unconsciousness and mmovableness. Concrete consciousness cannot be predicated of abstract onsciousness, any more than the quality wet can be predicated of ater—wetness being its own attribute and the cause of the wet quality in ther things. Consciousness implies limitations and qualifications; omething to be conscious of, and someone to be conscious of it. But
Absolute Consciousness contains the cognizer, the thing cognized and the ognition, all three in itself and all three _one_. No man is conscious of ore than that portion of his knowledge which happens to be recalled to is mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that e have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from nowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget is synonymous with ot to remember. How much greater must be the difficulty of finding terms o describe, and to distinguish between, abstract metaphysical facts or ifferences! It must not be forgotten, also, that we give names to things ccording to the appearances they assume for ourselves. We call Absolute
Consciousness “unconsciousness,” because it seems to us that it must ecessarily be so, just as we call the Absolute, “Darkness,” because to ur finite understanding it appears quite impenetrable; yet we recognize ully that our perception of such things does not do them justice. We nvoluntarily distinguish in our minds, for instance, between unconscious
Absolute Consciousness, and unconsciousness, by secretly endowing the ormer with some indefinite quality that corresponds, on a higher plane han our thoughts can reach, with what we know as consciousness in urselves. But this is not any kind of consciousness that we can manage to istinguish 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 ffulgent 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 ollectively form the “Germ;” or rather, as no atom can be made visible to ur physical eye, the collectivity of these (if the term can be applied to omething which is boundless and infinite) forms the noumenon of eternal nd 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 ther); fire standing in every philosophical and religious system, even in
Christianity, as a representation of the Spirit of Deity, the active, ale, generative principle; and ether, or the soul of matter, the light of he 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 eeds of the Lotus contain—even before they germinate—perfectly formed eaves, with the miniature shape of what one day, as perfect plants, they ill become: nature thus giving us a specimen of the preformation of its roduction ... the seeds of all phanerogamous plants bearing proper lowers containing an embryo plantlet ready formed.(89) This explains the entence, “The Mâtri‐Padma had not yet swollen”—the form being usually acrificed to the inner or root idea in archaic symbology.
The Lotus, or Padma, is, moreover, a very ancient and favourite symbol for he Cosmos itself, and also for man. The popular reasons given are, irstly, the fact just mentioned, that the Lotus‐seed contains within tself a perfect miniature of the future plant, which typifies the fact hat the spiritual prototypes of all things exist in the immaterial world, efore these things become materialized on earth. Secondly, the fact that he Lotus‐plant grows up through the water, having its root in the Ilus, r mud, and spreading its flower in the air above. The Lotus thus typifies he life of man and also that of the Cosmos; for the Secret Doctrine eaches that the elements of both are the same, and that both are eveloping in the same direction. The root of the Lotus sunk in the mud epresents material life, the stalk passing up through the water typifies xistence in the astral world, and the flower floating on the water and pening 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 nto differentiated objectivity, or even become the (to man, so far) nvisible Protyle of Science. But, as the “Hour strikes” and it becomes eceptive of the Fohatic impress of the Divine Thought—the Logos, or the ale aspect of the Anima Mundi, Alaya—its “Heart” opens. It ifferentiates, 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 ossible conception of Deity, which as an absolute Unity must remain orever 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 e 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 istinct objects, yet they are one tree. Say the Kabalists: “The Deity is ne, because It is infinite. It is triple, because It is ever anifesting.” This manifestation is triple in its aspects, for it equires, as Aristotle has it, three principles for every natural body to ecome objective: privation, form, and matter.(91) Privation meant in the ind of the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the rototypes 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 niversally diffused Essence on the manifested planes of Existence. And his Quaternary (Father, Mother, Son, as a Unity, and a Quaternary—as a iving manifestation) has been the means of leading to the very archaic dea of Immaculate Conception, now finally crystallized into a dogma of he Christian Church, which has carnalized this metaphysical idea beyond ny common sense. For one has but to read the _Kabalah_ and study its umerical methods of interpretation to find the origin of the dogma. It is urely 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 mmaculate source, personified by the “Mother,” for—the Abstract Deity eing sexless, and not even a Being but Be‐ness, or Life itself—that Male aving a “Mother” cannot have a “Father.” Let us render this in the athematical language of the author of _The Source of Measures_. Speaking f the “Measure of a Man” and his numerical (Kabalistic) value, he writes hat 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 he divine plane. The Son of the Immaculate Celestial Virgin (or the
Undifferentiated Cosmic Protyle, Matter in its infinitude) is born again n 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 acred Pythagorean number, the perfect Square, and a six‐faced Cube on arth. 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 ransformed 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, f not entirely, with our Solar System, and especially with our Planetary
Chain. The “Seven Sons,” therefore, are the creators of the latter. This eaching will be explained more fully hereafter.
Svabhâvat, the “Plastic Essence” that fills the Universe, is the root of ll things. Svabhâvat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the bstraction called in Hindû philosophy Mûlaprakriti. It is the body of the
Soul, and that which Ether would be to Âkâsha, the latter being the nforming principle of the former. Chinese mystics have made of it the ynonym of “Being.” In the Chinese translation of the _Ekashloka‐Shâstra_ f Nâgârjuna (the Lung‐shu of China), called the _Yih‐shu‐lu‐kia‐lun_, it s said that the term “Being,” or “Subhâva,” (Yeu in Chinese) means “the
Substance giving substance to itself”; it is also explained by him as eaning “without action and with action,” “the nature which has no nature f its own.” Subhâva, from which Svabhâvat, is composed of two words: _su_ air, 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 xpressed by finite thought—but in its totality, the Sat (an ntranslateable term), Absolute Being, with the Past and Future rystallized in an eternal Present, is that Thought itself reflected in a econdary or manifested cause. Brahman (neuter), as the Mysterium Magnum f Paracelsus, is an absolute mystery to the human mind. Brahmâ, the male‐ emale, the aspect and anthropomorphic reflection of Brahman, is onceivable to the perceptions of blind faith, though rejected by human ntellect when it attains its majority.
Hence the statement that during the prologue, so to say, of the drama of reation, or the beginning of cosmic evolution, the Universe, or the Son, ies still concealed “in the Divine Thought,” which had not yet penetrated nto the “Divine Bosom.” This idea, note well, is at the root, and forms he origin, of all the allegories about the “Sons of God” born of mmaculate 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 ividing the indivisible, is sanctified in Esoteric Philosophy. The latter ivides boundless Duration into unconditionally eternal and universal Time
(Kâla); and conditioned Time (Khandakâla). One is the abstraction or oumenon of infinite Time, the other its phenomenon appearing eriodically, as the effect of Mahat—the Universal Intelligence, limited y 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 ithout any origin—is, in short, parentless, Anupâdaka, as one with
Brahman—Prakriti, its phenomenon, is periodical and no better than a hantasm 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 ualities”; while with some Vedântins Mahat is a manifestation of
Prakriti, or Matter.
(_b_) Therefore, the “last Vibration of the Seventh Eternity” was “fore‐ rdained”—by no God in particular, but occurred in virtue of the eternal nd changeless Law which causes the great periods of Activity and Rest, alled so graphically, and at the same time so poetically, the Days and
Nights of Brahmâ. The expansion “from within without” of the Mother, alled elsewhere the “Waters of Space,” “Universal Matrix,” etc., does not llude to an expansion from a small centre or focus, but means the evelopment of limitless subjectivity into as limitless objectivity, ithout reference to size or limitation or area. “_The ever [to us] nvisible and immaterial Substance present in eternity, threw its eriodical Shadow from its own plane into the Lap of Mâyâ._” It implies hat this expansion, not being an increase in size—for infinite extension dmits 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 mbryo in its seed (a physical characteristic), but its prototype is resent in an ideal form in the Astral Light from “Dawn” to “Night” during he manvantaric period, like everything else, as a matter of fact, in this bjective Universe; from man to mite, from giant trees to the tiniest lades of grass.
All this, teaches the Hidden Science, is but the temporary reflection, the hadow of the eternal ideal prototype in Divine Thought; the word
“Eternity,” note well again, standing here only in the sense of “Æon,” as asting throughout the seemingly interminable, but still limited cycle of ctivity, called by us Manvantara. For what is the real esoteric meaning f 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 onsisting 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 ictionaries tell us that the term “Manu” is from the root _man_, “to hink”; hence “the thinking man.” But, esoterically, every Manu, as an nthropomorphized patron of his special cycle (or Round), is but the ersonified idea of the “Thought Divine” (as the Hermetic Pymander); each f the Manus, therefore, being the special god, the creator and fashioner f all that appears during his own respective cycle of being or
Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus’ (or Dhyân Chohans’) errands, and causes he ideal prototypes to expand from within without—that is, to cross radually, on a descending scale, all the planes, from the noumenal to the owest phenomenal, to bloom finally on the last into full objectivity—the cme 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” ike the “Germ.” The idea of the Breath of Darkness moving over “the lumbering 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 f the Eternal Breath of the unconscious All (or Parabrahaman) of the
Eastern Occultists. The Waters of Life, or Chaos—the female principle in ymbolism—are the vacuum (to our mental sight), in which lie the latent
Spirit and Matter. This it was that made Democritus assert, after his nstructor Leucippus, that the primordial principles of all were atoms and vacuum, in the sense of space, but not of empty space, for “Nature bhors a vacuum,” according to the Peripatetics and every ancient hilosopher.
In all Cosmogonies “Water” plays the same important part. It is the base nd source of material existence. Scientists, mistaking the word for the hing, understand by it the definite chemical combination of oxygen and ydrogen, thus giving a specific meaning to a term used by Occultists in a eneric sense, and which is employed in Cosmogony with a metaphysical and ystical meaning. Ice is not water, neither is steam, although all three ave 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 n the plane of metaphysical abstraction, or rather the plane whereon that hich we call a metaphysical abstraction, is a reality. The “Virgin‐Egg,” eing in one sense the abstract of all ova, or the power of becoming eveloped through fecundation, is eternal and for ever the same. And just s the fecundation of an egg takes place before it is dropped; so the non‐ ternal periodical Germ, which later becomes in symbolism the Mundane Egg, ontains in itself, when it emerges from the said symbol, “the promise and otency” of all the Universe. Though the idea _per se_ is, of course, an bstraction, a symbolical mode of expression, it is a true symbol, for it uggests the idea of infinity as an endless circle. It brings before the ind’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 anifestation. The symbol of an egg also expresses the fact taught in
Occultism that the primordial form of everything manifested, from atom to lobe, from man to angel, is spheroidal, the sphere being with all nations he emblem of eternity and infinity—a serpent swallowing its tail. To ealize the meaning, however, the sphere must be thought of as seen from ts centre. The field of vision, or of thought, is like a sphere whose adii proceed from one’s self in every direction, and extend out into pace, opening up boundless vistas all around. It is the symbolical circle f Pascal and the Kabalists, “whose centre is everywhere and circumference owhere”—a conception which enters into the compound idea of this emblem.
The “World‐Egg” is, perhaps, one of the most universally adopted symbols, ighly suggestive as it is, equally in the spiritual, physiological, and osmological sense. Therefore, it is found in every world‐theogony, where t is largely associated with the serpent symbol, the latter being verywhere, in philosophy as in religious symbolism, an emblem of ternity, infinitude, regeneration, and rejuvenation, as well as of isdom. The mystery of apparent self‐generation and evolution through its wn creative power, repeating in miniature, in the egg, the process of osmic evolution—both due to heat and moisture under the efflux of the nseen creative spirit—fully justified the selection of this graphic ymbol. The “Virgin‐Egg” is the microcosmic symbol of the macrocosmic rototype, the “Virgin Mother”—Chaos or the Primeval Deep. The male reator (under whatever name) springs forth from the virgin female, the
Immaculate Root fructified by the Ray. Who, if versed in astronomy and atural sciences, can fail to see its suggestiveness? Kosmos, as receptive
Nature, is an egg fructified—yet left immaculate; for once regarded as oundless, it could have no other representation than a spheroid. The
Golden Egg was surrounded by seven natural Elements, “four ready [ether, ire, air, water], three secret.” This may be found stated in _Vishnu
Purâna_, where elements are translated “envelopes,” and a _secret_ one is dded—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 ll 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 n the _Kabalah_, there are two kinds of numerals to be studied—the
Figures, often simple blinds, and the Sacred Numbers, the values of which re all known to the Occultists through Initiation. The former are but onventional glyphs; the latter, the basic symbols of all. That is to say, he one are purely physical, the other purely metaphysical, the two tanding in relation to each other as Matter stands to Spirit—the extreme oles of the One Substance.
As Balzac, the unconscious Occultist of French literature, says somewhere, he Number is to Mind the same as it is to Matter, “an incomprehensible gent.” Perhaps so to the profane, never to the initiated mind. Number is, s the great writer thought, an Entity, and, at the same time, a Breath manating from what he called God and what we call the ALL, the Breath hich alone could organize the physical Cosmos, “where naught obtains its orm but through the Deity, which is an effect of Number.” It is nstructive 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 s 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 ines, from the standpoint of Occult Science and Symbolism, as it is the ost complicated of glyphs. Herein are enshrined more than a dozen ymbols. To begin with, it contains the whole pantheon of mysterious bjects,(102) every one of them having some definite Occult meaning, xtracted from the Hindû allegorical “Churning of the Ocean” by the Gods.
Besides Amrita, the water of life or immortality, Surabhi, the “cow of lenty,” 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 roductive, the other the generative power in Nature: symbols connected ith both the solar and the cosmic deities. The specific properties, for
Occult purposes, of the “fourteen precious things,” being explained only t the Fourth Initiation, cannot be given here; but the following may be emarked. In the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_ it is stated that the Churning of he Ocean of Milk took place in the Satya Yuga, the first Age which mmediately 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 arth’s formation, and is in direct connection with another universal egend, 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 ame subjects often clashing with each other, _are preëminently occult orks_, hence used purposely as blinds. They are allowed to survive for ublic use and property only because they were and are absolutely nintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared from irculation 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 he “Six in One,” or _the Septenary Root from which all proceeds_. All epends upon the accent given to these seven vowels, which may be ronounced as one, three, or even seven syllables, by adding an _e_ after he final _o_. This mystic name is given out, because without a thorough astery of the triple pronunciation it remains for ever ineffectual.
“Is One” refers to the Non‐Separateness of all that lives and has its eing, 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 name for the manifested One Life, the eternal living Unity. The “Root” eans, 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 ow fecundated the Divine Egg, and calls cosmic matter to begin its long eries of differentiations. The “Curds” are the first differentiation, and robably also refer to that cosmic matter which is supposed to be the rigin of the Milky Way—the matter we know. This “matter,” which, ccording to the revelation received from the primeval Dhyâni‐Buddhas, is, uring the periodical Sleep of the Universe, of the ultimate tenuity onceivable to the eye of the perfect Bodhisattva—this matter, radiant and ool, becomes, at the first reawakening of cosmic motion, scattered hrough Space; appearing, when seen from the Earth, in clusters and lumps, ike 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 ppropriate allegorical representation of the condition of the Universe uring Pralaya, or the term of Absolute Rest, or Non‐Being, as it appears o our finite minds. The “Fire, and Heat, and Motion,” here spoken of, re, of course, not the fire, heat, and motion of Physical Science, but he underlying abstractions, the noumena, or the soul, of the essence of hese material manifestations—the “things in themselves,” which, as Modern
Science confesses, entirely elude the instruments of the laboratory, and hich even the mind cannot grasp, although it can equally as little avoid he conclusion that these underlying essences of things must exist. “Fire nd Water, or Father and Mother,” may be taken here to mean the divine Ray nd Chaos. “Chaos, from this union with Spirit obtaining sense, shone with leasure, and thus was produced the Protogonos [the first‐born Light],” ays a fragment of Hermas. Damascius calls it Dis, the “disposer of all hings.”(105)
According to the Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the rofane for once correctly, if only partially, “Light and Darkness are dentical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind”; and ccording to Robert Fludd, “Darkness adopted illumination in order to make tself visible.”(106) According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism,
Darkness is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of Light, ithout which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist.
Light is Matter, and Darkness pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, etaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute Light; while the latter in ll its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it an never be eternal, and is simply an Illusion, or Mâyâ.
Even in the mind‐baffling and science‐harassing _Genesis_,(107) light is reated out of darkness—“and darkness was upon the face of the deep”—and ot _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; nd 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 arkness 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 he _Book of Job_, he is called the “Son of God,” the bright star of the arly morning, Lucifer. There is a whole philosophy of dogmatic craft in he reason why the first Archangel, who sprang from the depths of Chaos, as 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 acrificed 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 he first thrill of the new Dawn into the great Cosmic Depths, from which t reëmerges differentiated as “Oeaohoo, the Younger” (the “New Life”), to e 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 hilosophers called the Logos, the Verbum of the Thought Divine; and econdly, because in Esoteric Philosophy this first manifestation, being he synthesis or the aggregate of Universal Wisdom, Oeaohoo, the “Son of he Sun,” contains in himself the Seven Creative Hosts (Sephiroth), and is hus 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 ttributes; 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 f monasteries.(117)
The higher gods of antiquity are all “Sons of the Mother” before they ecome “Sons of the Father.” The Logoi, like Jupiter or Zeus, son of
Cronus‐Saturn, “Infinite Time” (Kâla), in their origin were represented as ale‐female. Zeus is said to be the “beautiful virgin,” and Venus is made earded. Apollo was originally bisexual, so is Brahmâ‐Vâch in _Manu_ and he _Purânas_. Osiris is interchangeable with Isis, and Horus is of both exes. Finally in St. John’s vision in _Revelation_, the Logos, who is now onnected with Jesus, is hermaphrodite, for he is described as having emale 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 f politics and science. In Southern India the writer has seen a converted ative making pûjâ with offerings before a statue of Jesus clad in woman’s lothes and with a ring in its nose. On asking the meaning of this asquerade, we were answered that it was Jesu‐Maria blended in one, and hat it was done by the permission of the Padre, as the zealous convert ad no money to purchase two statues, or “idols” as they, very properly, ere called by a witness, another but a non‐converted Hindû. Blasphemous his will appear to a dogmatic Christian, but the Theosophist and the
Occultist must award the palm of logic to the converted Hindû. The soteric 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 hat 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 s derived from the other, linguistically and symbolically; surely, not he Sanskrit. The “One” and the “Dragon” are expressions used by the ncients in connection with their respective Logoi. Jehovah—esoterically
Elohim—is also the Serpent or Dragon that tempted Eve; and the Dragon is n old glyph for the Astral Light (Primordial Principle), “which is the
Wisdom of Chaos.” Archaic philosophy, recognizing neither Good nor Evil as fundamental or independent power, but starting from the Absolute ALL
(Universal Perfection eternally), traces both through the course of atural evolution to pure Light condensing gradually into form, and hence ecoming Matter or Evil. It was left with the early and ignorant Christian
Fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of this mblem into the absurd superstition called the “Devil.” They took this rom the later Zoroastrians, who saw Devils or Evil in the Hindû Devas, nd the word Evil has become by a double transmutation D’Evil (Diabolos,
Diable, Diavolo, Teufel). But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical iscrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent ymbolized divine Wisdom and Perfection, and has always stood for sychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence, Hermes calling the serpent he most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated into the Wisdom of
Hermes, following suit in _Genesis_; the Gnostic Serpent with the seven owels 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, n the Primordial Waters. Like the Logoi and the Hierarchies of Powers, owever, these serpents have to be distinguished one from the other.
Shesha or Ananta, the “Couch of Vishnu,” is an allegorical abstraction, ymbolizing infinite Time in Space, which contains the Germ and throws off eriodically the efflorescence of this Germ, the Manifested Universe; hereas, the Gnostic Ophis contains the same triple symbolism in its seven owels as the one, three and seven‐syllabled Oeaohoo of the archaic octrine; _i.e._, the First Unmanifested Logos, the Second Manifested, the
Triangle concreting into the Quaternary or Tetragrammaton, and the Rays of he 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 ivine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the lane of Matter. For the Astral Light, or the Ether, of the ancient
Pagans—the name Astral Light is quite modern—is Spirit‐Matter. Beginning ith the pure spiritual plane, it becomes grosser as it descends, until it ecomes Mâyâ, or the tempting and deceitful Serpent on our plane.
Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of is teaching: “Be ye wise as serpents,” he says. “_In the beginning, efore 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 f 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 hape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon the primordial aters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the nnular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth—which symbolizes not nly eternity and infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the odies formed within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as lso the Earth and Man, serpent‐like, periodically cast off their old kins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is surely not less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and hrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, he 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 ldest and the most spiritual of the Logoi of the Western Continent, ppears 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 xpounded. 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, ppears as Vishnu, says the _Sânkhya Sâra_.(120) Hence it has several spects, just as the Logos has. Mahat is called the Lord, in the _Primary_
Creation, and is, in this sense, Universal Cognition or Thought Divine; ut, “that Mahat which was first produced is (afterwards) called _Ego‐ sm_, 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._, hen Mahat develops into the feeling of Self‐Consciousness—I—then it ssumes the name of Egoism,” which, translated into our Esoteric hraseology, means—when Mahat is transformed into the human Manas (or even hat 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, he 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 ut One Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying and that ll the rest—as in the world of phenomena—are but so many various ifferentiated aspects and transformations (correlations, they are now alled) of that One, from macrocosmical down to microcosmical effects, rom super‐human down to human and sub‐human beings, the totality, in hort, of objective existence—then the first and chief difficulty will isappear and Occult Cosmology may be mastered. Thus in the Egyptian also s in the Indian Theogony there was a _Concealed_ Deity, the ONE, and a reative, androgynous god; Shoo being the god of creation, and Osiris in is original primary form, the god “whose name is unknown.”(122)
All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognize (_a_) the dentity of “Father‐Mother” with Primordial Æther, or Âkâsha (Astral
Light); and (_b_) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “Son,” osmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “_Fohat hardens and catters 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 atter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness.
“There exists a universal _agent unique_ of all forms and of life, that is alled Od, Ob, and Aour,(124) active and passive, positive and negative, ike 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 ither and thither_,” in zigzags. The Kabalah figures it with the Hebrew etter Teth, ט, whose symbol is the serpent which played such a prominent art in the Mysteries. Its universal value is nine, for it is the ninth etter of the alphabet, and the ninth door of the fifty portals, or ateways, that lead to the concealed mysteries of being. It is the magical gent _par excellence_, and designates in Hermetic philosophy “Life nfused into Primordial Matter,” the essence that composes all things, and he spirit that determines their form. But there are two secret Hermetical perations, one spiritual, the other material, correlative and for ever nited. 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 f 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 s intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of
Miletus (600 years B.C.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all hese philosophers, by showing that though each was right, the system of one 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 eply of the teacher to the pupil, contains in a single phrase one of the ost essential truths of Occult Philosophy. It indicates the existence of hings imperceptible to our physical senses which are of far greater mportance, more real and more permanent, than those that appeal to these enses themselves. Before the Lanoo can hope to understand the ranscendentally metaphysical problem contained in the first question, he ust be able to answer the second; while the very answer he gives to the econd 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 oncealed and the unrevealed Principle are many. In the earliest MSS. of
Indian literature this Unrevealed Abstract Deity has no name. It is enerally called “That” (Tad, in Sanskrit), and means all that is, was, nd will be, or that can be so received by the human mind.
Among such appellations given—of course, only in Esoteric Philosophy—as he “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 ysterious sacred name conveys to the profane ear no more than some rdinary, and often vulgar word, because it is concealed anagrammatically r otherwise. This word Hansa, or Hamsa, is just such a case. Hamsa is qual to “A‐ham‐sa”—three words meaning “I am He”; while divided in still nother way it will read “So‐ham,” “He [is] I.” In this single word is ontained, for him who understands the language of wisdom, the universal ystery, 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 ame given to Brahman (neuter), later on to the male Brahmâ, of Hamsa‐ âhana, “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 ound in the _Kabalah_, as witness the following extract from an npublished 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 he men of Modern Science will never understand it, since, in order to btain clear perception of it, one has first of all to admit the postulate f a universally diffused, omnipresent, eternal Deity in Nature; secondly, o have fathomed the mystery of electricity in its true essence; and hirdly, to credit man with being the septenary symbol, on the terrestrial lane, of the One Great Unit, the Logos, which is Itself the seven‐ owelled sign, the Breath crystallized into the Word.(125) He who believes n all this, has also to believe in the multiple combination of the seven lanets of Occultism and of the _Kabalah_, with the twelve zodiacal signs; nd attribute, as we do, to each planet and to each constellation an nfluence which, in the words of Mr. Ely Star (a French astrologer), “is roper to it, beneficent or maleficent, and this, after the planetary pirit which rules it, who, in his turn, is capable of influencing men and hings which are found in harmony with him and with which he has any ffinity.” For these reasons, and since few believe in the foregoing, all hat 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 hings, Divine Wisdom, Wisdom in Darkness beyond the reach of men. For all xoteric purposes, Hansa, as every Hindû knows, is a fabulous bird which, hen (in the allegory) given milk mixed with water for its food, separated he two, drinking the milk and leaving the water; thus showing inherent isdom—milk standing symbolically for spirit, and water for matter.
That this allegory is very ancient and dates from the very earliest rchaic period, is shown by the mention, in the _Bhâgavata Purâna_, of a ertain caste named Hamsa or Hansa, which was the “one caste” _par xcellence_; when far back in the mists of a forgotten past there was mong the Hindûs only “One Veda, One Deity, One Caste.” There is also a ange in the Himâlayas, described in the old books as being situated north f Mount Meru, called Hamsa, and connected with episodes pertaining to the istory of religious mysteries and initiations. As to Kâlahansa being the upposed Vehicle of Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, in the exoteric texts and ranslations of the Orientalists, it is quite a mistake. Brahman, the euter, is called by them Kâla‐hansa, and Brahmâ, the male, Hansa‐vâhana, ecause, forsooth, “his vehicle is a swan or goose.”(126) This is a purely xoteric gloss. Esoterically and logically, if Brahman, the infinite, is ll that is described by the Orientalists, and, agreeably with the
Vedântic texts, is an abstract deity, in no way characterized by the scription of any human attributes, and at the same time it is maintained hat 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 manation 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 he Universe, being, antiphrastically, itself an emanation of Darkness—for ur human intellect, at any rate. It is Brahmâ, then, who is Kâlahansa, nd the Ray, Hansa‐vâhana.
As to the strange symbol thus chosen, it is equally suggestive; the true ystic significance being the idea of a Universal Matrix, figured by the
Primordial Waters of the Deep, or the opening for the reception, and ubsequently for the issuing, of that One Ray (the Logos) which contains n itself the other Seven Procreative Rays or Powers (the Logoi or
Builders). Hence the choice by the Rosecroix of the aquatic fowl—whether wan or pelican(127)—with seven young ones, for a symbol, modified and dapted 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 nto the Mundane Egg, it emerges from it at the end of the divine ncubation as Brahmâ, or Prajâpati, the progenitor of the future Universe, nto which he expands. He is Purusha (Spirit), but he is also Prakriti
(Matter). Therefore it is only after separating itself into two alves—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 een adopted by the translators from the vocabulary of the old “Fire
Philosophers,”(130) in order to render more clearly the meaning of the rchaic terms and symbols employed in the original. Otherwise they would ave remained entirely unintelligible to a European reader. To a student f 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, he correlations of Electricity. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol!
Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of Fire—the creator, the reserver and the destroyer; of Light—the essence of our divine ancestors; f Flame—the soul of things. Electricity, the One Life at the upper rung f 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 irst formation into atoms, is generated on our plane by Cosmic Heat; and efore that period Cosmos, in the sense of dissociated matter, was not.
The first Primordial Matter, eternal and coëval with Space, “_which has either a beginning nor an end, [is] neither hot nor cold, but is of its wn special nature_,” says the Commentary. Heat and cold are relative ualities and pertain to the realms of the manifested worlds, which all roceed from the manifested Hyle, which, in its absolutely latent aspect, s referred to as the “Cold Virgin,” and when awakened to life, as the
“Mother.” The ancient Western cosmogonic myths state that at first there as only cold mist (the Father) and the prolific slime (the Mother, Ilus r Hyle), from which crept forth the Mundane Snake (Matter).(131)
Primordial Matter, then, before it emerges from the plane of the never‐ anifesting, and awakens to the thrill of action under the impulse of
Fohat, is but “a cool radiance, colourless, formless, tasteless, and evoid of every quality and aspect.” Even such are her First‐born, the
“Four Sons,” who “are One, and become Seven,”—the Entities, by whose ualifications and names the ancient Eastern Occultists called the four of he seven primal “Centres of Force,” or Atoms, that develop later into the reat Cosmic “Elements,” now divided into the seventy or so sub‐elements, nown to Science. The four “Primal Natures” of the first Dhyân Chohans are he so‐called (for want of better terms) Âkâshic, Ethereal, Watery and
Fiery. They answer, in the terminology of practical Occultism, to the cientific definitions of gases, which—to convey a clear idea to both
Occultists and laymen—may be defined as parahydrogenic,(132) paraoxygenic, xyhydrogenic, and ozonic, or perhaps nitrozonic; the latter forces, or ases (in Occultism, supersensuous, yet atomic substances), being the most ffective and active when energizing on the plane of more grossly ifferentiated matter. These elements are both electro‐positive and lectro‐negative. These and many more are probably the missing links of
Chemistry. They are known by other names in Alchemy and to Occultists who ractise phenomenal powers. It is by combining and recombining, or issociating, the “Elements” in a certain way, by means of Astral Fire, hat 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 nd retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the ground ... so is the
Universe derived from the undecaying one,” Brahmâ, for the “Germ of nknown 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 raphic and true, if the term Brahmâ, the “Creator,” is derived from the oot _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 uggestive in the light of the fire‐mist period, of which Modern Science peaks so much, and knows in reality so little.
Great heat breaks up the compound elements and resolves the heavenly odies into their Primeval One Element, explains the Commentary.
“_Once disintegrated into its primal constituent, by getting within the ttraction and reach of a focus, or centre of heat [energy], of which many re carried about to and fro in space, a body, whether alive or dead, will e vapourized, and held in the __‘__Bosom of the Mother,__’__ until Fohat, athering a few of the clusters of Cosmic Matter [nebulæ], will, by giving t an impulse, set it in motion anew, develop the required heat, and then eave it to follow its own new growth._”
The expanding and contracting of the “Web” _i.e._, the world‐stuff, or toms—express here the pulsatory movement; for it is the regular ontraction and expansion of the infinite and shoreless Ocean, of that hich we may call the noumenon of Matter, emanated by Svabhâvat, which auses the universal vibration of atoms. But it is also suggestive of omething else. It shows that the ancients were acquainted with that which s now the puzzle of many Scientists and especially of Astronomers—the ause of the first ignition of matter, or world‐stuff, the paradox of the eat produced by refrigerative contraction, and other such cosmic iddles—for it points unmistakably to a knowledge by the ancients of such henomena. “_There is heat internal and heat external in every atom_,” say he MSS. Commentaries, to which the writer has had access, “_the Breath of he Father [Spirit], and the Breath [or Heat] of the Mother [Matter]_”; nd they give explanations which show that the modern theory of the xtinction of the solar fires, by loss of heat through radiation, is rroneous. The assumption is false even on the Scientists’ own admission.
For, as Professor Newcomb(141) points out, “by losing heat a gaseous body ontracts, and the heat generated by the contraction exceeds that which it ad to lose in order to produce the contraction.” This paradox, that a ody gets hotter, as the shrinking produced by its getting colder is reater, has led to long disputes. The surplus of heat, it is argued, is ost by radiation, and to assume that the temperature is not lowered _pari assu_ with a decrease of volume under a constant pressure, is to set at aught the law of Charles. Contraction develops heat, it is true; but ontraction (from cooling) is incapable of developing the whole amount of eat at any time existing in the mass, or even of maintaining a body at a onstant temperature, etc. Professor Winchell tries to reconcile the aradox—only a seeming one in fact, as J. Homer Lane(142) proved—by uggesting “something besides heat.” “May it not be,” he asks, “simply a epulsion among the molecules, which varies according to some law of the istance”?(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 hraseology, 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 he “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 pon Matter. Some faint idea of the nature of Fohat may be gathered from he appellation “Cosmic Electricity,” sometimes applied to it; but, in his case, to the commonly known properties of electricity, must be added thers, including intelligence. It is of interest to note that Modern
Science has come to the conclusion, that all cerebration and brain‐ ctivity 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 he like, require explanation. They are connected with a great primordial nd universal mystery, and it is not easy to make it clear. There is a assage in the _Bhagavadgîtâ_, wherein Krishna, speaking symbolically and soterically, 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, re incomprehensible without a knowledge of Esotericism. These are all
_names of various deities_ which preside over the cosmo‐psychic Powers. We ften 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 he _Bhagavadgîtâ_, Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A., of Bombay, confesses e has “no clear notion of the meaning of these verses.” It seems quite lear, on the contrary, to him who knows the Occult doctrine. With these erses the mystic sense of the solar and lunar symbols are connected. The
Pitris are Lunar Deities and our Ancestors, because they _created the hysical man_. The Agnishvatta, the Kumâras (the Seven Mystic Sages), are
Solar Deities, though they are Pitris also; and these are the “Fashioners f the _Inner_ Man.” They are “The Sons of Fire,” because they are the irst Beings, called “Minds,” in the Secret Doctrine, evolved from
Primordial Fire. “The Lord ... is a consuming fire.”(149) “The Lord shall e 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 ire 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 e that sat upon him ... and his name is called the Word of God,”(152) mid flaming Fire. Fire is Æther in its purest form, and hence is not egarded as matter, but is the unity of Æther—the second, manifested eity—in its universality. But there are two “Fires,” and a distinction is ade between them in the Occult teachings. The first, or the purely
_formless_ and _invisible_ Fire, concealed in the _Central Spiritual Sun_, s 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_,” ays the Commentary. “_Therefore, those who have acquired it and are mancipated, are called __‘__Fires__’__._” Speaking of the _seven_ senses, ymbolized as Hotris, or Priests, Nârada says in _Anugitâ_: “Thus these even [senses, smell and taste, and colour, and sound, etc.,] are the auses of emancipation”; and the translator adds: “It is from these seven rom which the Self is to be emancipated. ‘I’ [in the sentence, ‘I am ... evoid of qualities’] must mean the Self, not the Brâhmana who peaks.”(153)
(_b_) The expression, “all is One Number, issued from No‐Number,” relates gain to that universal and philosophical tenet just explained in the ommentary 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 f a larger increment, up to the most indefinitely prolonged duration onceivable by the human intellect, but also that no manifested thing can e 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,” orroborates what is said in the first paragraph of the preceding ommentary on Stanza IV.
The distinction between the “Primordial” and the subsequent Seven Builders s 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 he other Manifested Quaternary and the Seven proceed from the Mother lone. It is the latter who is the immaculate Virgin‐Mother, who is vershadowed, not impregnated, by the Universal Mystery—when she emerges rom her state of Laya, or undifferentiated condition. In reality, they re, of course, all one; but their aspects on the various planes of Being re 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 ather to multiply—as did Michael in the latter system, and as did the ldest “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, nd so important in the study of Occultism that the subject can hardly be kimmed, even in such a large work as the present. It is on the
Hierarchies and the correct numbers of these Beings—invisible (to us) xcept upon very rare occasions—that the mystery of the whole Universe is uilt. The Kumâras, for instance, are called the “Four”—though in reality even in number—because Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana and Sanatkumâra are the hief Vaidhâtra (their patronymic name), who sprang from the “four‐fold ystery.” To make the whole clearer, we have to turn for our illustrations o tenets more familiar to some of our readers, namely the Brâhmanical.
According to _Manu_, Hiranyagarbha is Brahmâ, the first _male_, formed by he undiscernible Causeless Cause, in a “Golden Egg resplendent as the
Sun,” as states the _Hindû Classical Dictionary_; Hiranyagarbha meaning he Golden, or rather the Effulgent, Womb or Egg. The meaning tallies wkwardly with the epithet “male.” Surely the esoteric meaning of the entence is clear enough! In the _Rig Veda_ it is said—“THAT, the one Lord f all beings ... the one animating principle of gods and men,” arose, in he beginning, in the Golden Womb, Hiranyagarbha—which is the Mundane Egg, r Sphere of our Universe. That Being is surely androgynous, and the llegory 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 alue of the First‐born (later on the male and female Brahmâ‐Prajâpati), ho answers to the numbers 7, and 14, and 21 respectively. The Prajâpati, ike 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 ther seven, or again ten, if we separate the first three which exist in ne, 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 n one brain_.” So with the Sephiroth. They are either seven when counting rom 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 otal—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 henomenal from the noumenal Cosmos, which does not fall within the range f our present objective consciousness—this number, when not enlarged by ermutation 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 igures are counted, when added separately, one figure after another, hether crossways from right, or from left, they will always yield ourteen. Mathematically they represent the well‐known mathematical ormula, that the ratio of the diameter of a circle to the circumference s as 1 to 3.1415, or the value of π (pi), as it is called. This set of igures 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 arious cycles and ages of the “First‐born,” or 311,040,000,000,000 with ractions, and yield the same 1.3415 by a process we are not concerned ith at present. And it may be shown that Mr. Ralston Skinner, the author f _The Source of Measures_, reads the Hebrew word Alhim in the same umber values—by omitting, as said, the ciphers, and by permutation—13514: ince א (a) is 1; ל (l) is 3 (30); ה (h) is 5; י (i) is 1 (10); and מ (m) s 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 umberless, for it can fall under no calculation; in the manifested world, he 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 iameter 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 iameter standing for Nature, or the feminine principle. Therefore it is aid: “_In the World of Being, the One Point fructifies the Line, the
Virgin Matrix of Kosmos [the egg‐shaped zero], and the immaculate Mother ives birth to the Form that combines all forms_.” Prajâpati is called the irst procreating male, and “his mother’s husband.”(161) This gives the ey‐note to all the later “Divine Sons” from “Immaculate Mothers.” It is trongly corroborated by the significant fact that Anna, the name of the
Mother of the Virgin Mary, now represented by the Roman Catholic Church as aving given birth to her daughter in an immaculate way (“Mary conceived ithout 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 eaning the “Virgin of Light,” Astral Light in one of its multitudinous spects.
(_c_) The Devas, Pitris, Rishis; the Suras and the Asuras; the Daityas and
Âdityas; the Dânavas and Gandharvas, etc., etc., have all their synonyms n our Secret Doctrine, as well as in the _Kabalah_ and Hebrew Angelology; ut it is useless to give their ancient names, as it would only create onfusion. 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 enizens of the Sidereal World, are the modern copies of archaic rototypes. The very symbolism in their names, when transliterated and rranged, in Greek and Latin, are sufficient to show it, as will be proved n 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 age 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 ormed 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 rigin, 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 ey, 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 aterialized, though as yet imperfect, expression thereof. The “Army of he Voice” is a term closely connected with the mystery of Sound and
Speech, as an effect and corollary of the Cause—Divine Thought. As eautifully expressed by P. Christian, the learned author of _Histoire de a Magie_ and _L’Homme Rouge des Tuileries_, the words spoken by, as well s 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 lphabets, every letter has its occult meaning and its _rationale_: it is cause and an effect of a preceding cause, and a combination of these ery often produces the most magical effect. The vowels, especially, ontain the most occult and formidable potencies. The _Mantras_ (magical ather 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 he “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 resence and being, if eternal in its essence), the Number of the Numbers nd Numbered—the latter proceeding from the Voice, the feminine Vâch, “of he hundred forms,” Shatarûpâ, or Nature. It is from this Number, 10, or
Creative Nature, the Mother (the Occult cypher, or “0,” ever procreating nd multiplying in union with the unit “1,” or the Spirit of Life), that he whole Universe proceeds.
In the _Anugîtâ_,(164) a conversation is given between a Brâhmana and his ife 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_) ecoming lord, changes that intelligence, which does not understand Speech r Words, into the state of Apâna, and thus opens the Mind. Thereupon he ells 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 hinks; to Prajâpati, according to the commentator Arjuna Mishra), and sked him to destroy their doubts, and decide which of them preceded and as 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) our desires,” meaning that by Speech he acquired what he desired.
Thereupon again, the Self told her that there are two Minds, the “movable” nd the “immovable.” “The immovable is with me,” he said, “the movable is n your dominion” (_i.e._ of Speech), on the plane of matter. “To that you re 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 ilence upon the knowledge of certain secret and invisible things, erceptible only to the spiritual mind (the sixth sense), and which cannot e expressed by “noisy” or uttered speech. This chapter of _Anugîtâ_ xplains, says Arjuna Mishra, Prânâyâma, or regulation of the breath in
Yoga practices. This mode, however, without the previous acquisition of, r at least full understanding of, the two higher senses (of which there re seven, as will be shown), pertains rather to the lower Yoga. The Hatha o called was and still is discountenanced by the Arhats. It is injurious o the health, and alone can never develop into Râja Yoga. This story is uoted to show how inseparably connected in the metaphysics of old, are ntelligent beings, or rather “intelligences,” with every sense or unction, whether physical or mental. The Occult claim that there are even senses in man, and in nature, as there are seven states of onsciousness, is corroborated in the same work, Chapter vii, on
Pratyâhâra (the restraint and regulation of the senses, Prânâyâma being hat of the “vital winds” or breath). The Brâhmana, speaking of the nstitution of the seven sacrificial Priests (Hotris), says: “The nose and he eye, and the tongue, and the skin and the ear as the fifth [or smell, ight, taste, touch, and hearing], mind and understanding are the seven acrificial priests separately stationed,” which “dwelling in a minute pace (still) do not perceive each other,” on this sensuous plane, none of hem except mind. For mind says: “The nose smells not without me, the eye oes not take in colour, etc., etc. I am the eternal chief among all lements [_i.e._, senses]. Without me, the senses never shine, like an mpty dwelling, or like fires the flames of which are extinct. Without me, ll beings, like fuel half dried and half moist, fail to apprehend ualities 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, akes no cognizance of the senses in physical man. How well the ancients ere acquainted with the correlation of forces, and all the recently iscovered phenomena of mental and physical faculties and functions, and ith many more mysteries also—may be found in reading Chapters vii and iii of this priceless work in philosophy and mystic learning. See the uarrel of the senses about their respective superiority and their taking he Brahman, the Lord of all creatures, for their arbiter. “You are all reatest and not greatest [or superior to objects, as Arjuna Mishra says, one being independent of the other]. You are all possessed of one nother’s qualities. All are greatest in their own spheres and all support ne another. There is one unmoving [life‐wind or breath, the _yoga‐ nhalation_, 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_ nd 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 he Commentary, such is the first law of Nature, and because Nature eometrizes universally in all her manifestations. There is an inherent aw—not only in the primordial, but also in the manifested matter of our henomenal plane—by which Nature correlates her geometrical forms, and ater, also, her compound elements, and in which also there is no place or accident or chance. It is a fundamental law in Occultism, that there s no rest or cessation of motion in Nature.(166) That which seems rest is nly the change of one form into another, the change of substance going and in hand with that of form—so at least we are taught in Occult hysics, 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 ttracted to each other and form the Curds in the Ocean [of Space]. The arger lumps coalesce and receive new Spawn—in fiery Dots, Triangles and
Cubes, which ripen, and at the appointed time some of the lumps detach hemselves and assume spheroidal form, a process which they effect only hen not interfered with by the others. After which, Law No. —— comes into peration. Motion [the Breath] becomes the Whirlwind and sets them into otation._(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 lso 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, n the highest plane. The name is of Buddhist use and a synonym for the our‐fold Anima Mundi, the Kabalistic Archetypal World, from whence roceed the Creative, Formative, and Material Worlds; and the Scintillæ or
Sparks—the various other worlds contained in the last three. The Worlds re 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, ecomes a number, only when one of the other nine figures precedes it, and hus manifests its value and potency; the “Word” or Logos, in union with
“Voice” and Spirit(175) (the expression and source of Consciousness), tanding 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 ay be found in the oldest Sanskrit Scriptures. In the _Rig Veda_, Aditi, he “Boundless” or Infinite Space—translated by Prof. Max Müller, “the isible infinite, visible by the naked eye (!!); the endless expanse eyond 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 he heavenly bodies of our system were born—sun and planets. Thus she is escribed, allegorically, in this wise: “_Eight sons were born from the ody of Aditi; she approached the gods with seven, but cast away the ighth, Mârttânda_,” our sun. The seven sons called the Adityas are, osmically or astronomically, the seven planets; and the sun being xcluded from their number shows plainly that the Hindûs may have known, nd in fact knew, of a seventh planet, without calling it Uranus.(176) But soterically and theologically, so to say, the Adityas, in their primitive ost ancient meanings, are the eight, and twelve great gods of the Hindû
Pantheon. “The Seven allow the mortals to see their dwellings, but show hemselves only to the Arhats,” says an old proverb; “their dwellings” tanding here for the planets. The ancient Commentary gives the following llegory 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 heir age and merits. Bal‐i‐lu [Mârttânda] was not satisfied, though his ouse was the largest. He began [to work] as the huge elephants do. He reathed [drew in] into his stomach the vital airs of his brothers. He ought to devour them. The larger four were far away; far, on the margin
__ of their kingdom._(_177_)_ They were not robbed [affected], and aughed. Do your worst, Sir, you cannot reach us, they said. But the maller wept. They complained to the Mother. She exiled Bal‐i‐lu to the entre of her kingdom, from whence he could not move. [Since then] he
[only] watches and threatens. He pursues them, turning slowly round imself; they turning swiftly from him, and he following from afar the irection in which his brothers move on the path that encircles their ouses._(_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 eneral. Sûrya, himself only a reflection of the Central Spiritual Sun, is he prototype of all those bodies that evolved after him. In the _Vedas_ e is called Loka‐Chakshuh, the “Eye of the World” (our planetary world), nd 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 o, or scope allowed for, the esoteric meaning. Thus he is depicted as rawn by seven horses, and by one horse with seven heads; the former eferring to his seven planets, the latter to their one common origin from he 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 han one particular. The Occult Doctrine rejects the hypothesis born of he 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 ondensation of cosmic matter of course took place about a central ucleus, its parent Sun; but our Sun, it is taught, merely detached itself arlier than all the others, as the rotating mass contracted, and is their lder, bigger “brother” therefore, not their “father.” The eight Adityas, he “gods,” are all formed from the eternal substance (cometary atter(180)—the Mother), or the “world‐stuff,” which is both the fifth and he sixth Cosmic Principle, the Upâdhi, or Basis, of the Universal Soul, ust 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 lanets before the final formation of Cosmos, thus accounting for the eemingly disturbed position of the systems of several planets; the plane f the satellites of some (of Neptune and Uranus, for instance, of which he ancients knew nothing, it is said) being tilted over, thus giving them n appearance of retrograde motion. These planets are called the Warriors, he Architects, and are accepted by the Roman Church as the leaders of the eavenly Hosts, thus showing the same traditions. Having evolved from
Cosmic Space, the Sun, we are taught—before the final formation of the rimaries and the annulation of the planetary nebulæ—drew into the depths f his mass all the cosmic vitality he could, threatening to engulf his eaker “Brothers,” before the law of attraction and repulsion was finally djusted; after which, he began feeding on “the Mother’s refuse and weat”; in other words, on those portions of Æther (the “Breath of the
Universal Soul”), of the existence and constitution of which Science is as et absolutely ignorant. As a theory of this kind has been propounded by
Sir William Grove,(183) who theorizes that the systems “are gradually hanging by atmospheric additions or subtractions, or by accretions and iminutions arising from nebular substance,” and again that “the sun may ondense gaseous matter as it travels in space, and so heat may be roduced”—the archaic teaching seems scientific enough, even in this ge.(184) Mr. W. Mattieu Williams suggested that the diffused matter or
Ether, which is the recipient of the heat radiations of the Universe, is hereby drawn into the depths of the solar mass; expelling thence the reviously condensed and thermally exhausted Ether, it becomes compressed nd gives up its heat, to be in turn itself driven out in a rarefied and ooled state, to absorb a fresh supply of heat, which he supposes to be in his way taken up by the Ether, and again concentrated and redistributed y the Suns of the Universe.
This is about as close an approximation to the Occult teachings as Science ver imagined; for Occultism explains it by the “dead breath,” given back y Mârttânda, and his feeding on the “sweat and refuse” of “Mother Space.”
What could affect Neptune,(185) Saturn and Jupiter, but little, would have illed such comparatively small “Houses” as Mercury, Venus and Mars. As
Uranus was not known before the end of the eighteenth century, the name of he fourth planet mentioned in the allegory must remain to us, so far, a ystery.
The “Breath” of all the “Seven” is said to be Bhâskara, the Light‐Maker, ecause they (the planets) were all comets and suns in their origin. They volve into manvantaric life from Primeval Chaos (now the noumenon of rresolvable nebulæ), by aggregation and accumulation of the primary ifferentiations of eternal Matter, according to the beautiful expression n the Commentary, “_Thus the Sons of Light clothed themselves in the abric of Darkness_.” They are called allegorically the “Heavenly Snails,” n account of their (to us) formless Intelligences inhabiting unseen their tarry and planetary homes, and so to speak, carrying them, as the snails o, along with themselves in their revolution. The doctrine of a common rigin for all the heavenly bodies and planets was, as we see, inculcated y the archaic astronomers, before Kepler, Newton, Leibnitz, Kant,
Herschel and Laplace. Heat (the “Breath”), Attraction and Repulsion—the hree great factors of Motion—are the conditions under which all the embers of this primitive family are born, develop, and die; to be reborn fter a Night of Brahmâ, during which eternal Matter relapses periodically nto its primary undifferentiated state. The most attenuated gases can ive no idea of its nature to the modern Physicist. Centres of Forces at irst, the invisible Sparks, or primordial Atoms, differentiate into
Molecules, and become Suns—passing gradually into objectivity—gaseous, adiant, cosmic, the one “Whirlwind” (or Motion) finally giving the mpulse to the form, and the initial motion, regulated and sustained by he 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, he Law of Retribution, for they are the Recorders, or Annalists, who mpress on the (to us) invisible tablets of the Astral Light, “the great icture‐gallery of eternity”—a faithful record of every act, and even hought, 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 assive Universal Mind the ideal plan of the Universe, upon which the
“Builders” reconstruct the Kosmos after every Pralaya, it is they who tand parallel to the Seven Angels of the Presence, whom the Christians ecognize in the Seven “Planetary Spirits,” or the “Spirits of the Stars”; nd thus it is they who are the direct amanuenses of the Eternal
Ideation—or, as Plato calls it, the “Divine Thought.” The Eternal Record s no fantastic dream, for we meet with the same records in the world of ross 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 f the brain and, setting them in motion, scatters them throughout the niverse: they also think that “each particle of the existing matter must e a register of all that has happened.”(189) Thus the ancient doctrine as begun to acquire rights of citizenship in the speculations of the cientific world.
The forty “Assessors,” who stand in the region of Amenti as the accusers f 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 nderstood in their esoteric meaning. The Hindû Chitragupta who reads out he account of every Soul’s life from his register, called Agra‐Sandhânî; he Assessors who read theirs from the Heart of the Defunct, which becomes n open book before either Yama, Minos, Osiris, or Karma—are all so many opies 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 f every child, whose life is already traced in the Astral Light—not atalistically, but only because the Future, like the Past, is ever alive n 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 ill 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 anguage is comprehensible only to him who is thoroughly versed in Eastern llegory, and its purposely obscure phraseology. The question will surely e asked: Do the Occultists believe in all these “Builders,” “Lipika,” and
“Sons of Light,” as Entities, or are they merely imagery? To this the nswer is given as plainly: After due allowance for the imagery of ersonified Powers, we must admit the existence of these Entities, if we ould not reject the existence of Spiritual Humanity within physical ankind. For the hosts of these Sons of Light, the Mind‐born Sons of the irst manifested Ray of the Unknown All, are the very root of Spiritual
Man. Unless we want to believe the unphilosophical dogma of a specially reated soul for every human birth—a fresh supply of these pouring in aily, since “Adam”—we have to admit the Occult teachings. This will be xplained 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 hrough the human stage. And when we say human, this does not apply merely o our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals that inhabit any world,
_i.e._, to those Intelligences that have reached the appropriate quilibrium between matter and spirit, as _we_ have now, ever since the iddle 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 elf‐experience. Hegel, the great German thinker, must have known or ensed intuitionally this truth, when he said, that the Unconscious volved the Universe only “in the hope of attaining clear self‐ onsciousness,” in other words, of becoming Man; for this is also the ecret meaning of the oft recurring Purânic phrase, of Brahmâ being onstantly “moved by the desire to create.” This explains also the hidden
Kabalistic meaning of the saying: “The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and he spirit, a god.” The Mind‐born Sons, the Rishis, the Builders, etc., ere 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 ll its details and bearings; for the whole mystery of evolutionary reation is contained therein. A sentence or two in the Shloka vividly ecalls to mind similar sentences in the _Kabalah_ and the phraseology of he King Psalmist.(191) Both, when speaking of God, show him making the ind his messenger and his “ministers a flaming fire.” But in the Esoteric
Doctrine it is used figuratively. The “Fiery Whirl‐wind” is the ncandescent cosmic dust which only follows magnetically, as the iron ilings follow the magnet, the directing thought of the “Creative Forces.”
Yet, this cosmic dust is something more; for every atom in the Universe as the potentiality of self‐consciousness in it, and is, like the Monads f Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and _for_ itself. _It is an atom and an ngel_.
In this connection it should be noted that one of the luminaries of the odern Evolutionist School, Mr. A. R. Wallace, when discussing the nadequacy of “natural selection” as the sole factor in the development of hysical man, practically concedes the whole point here discussed. He olds 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 s only a logical deduction to extend it still further. No hard and fast ine 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, r the manifested subject which becomes the symbol of the Power directing t) 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 ruths and primal causes, becomes almost omnipotence when applied in the ight direction. Its antithesis is Dzyu‐mi, that which deals with llusions 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 s as well to say at once that, _according to the Orientalists_, there are ive Dhyânis who are the Celestial Buddhas, of whom the Human Buddhas are he manifestations in the world of form and matter. Esoterically, however, he Dhyâni‐Buddhas are seven, of whom five only have hitherto anifested,(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 his earth, each of whom has his particular divine prototype. So, for nstance, Amitâbha is the Dhyâni‐Buddha of Gautama Shâkyamuni, manifesting hrough 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 nner “God” of Gautama, who, in China, is called Amida (Buddha). They are, s Prof. Rhys Davids correctly states, “the glorious counterparts in the ystic world, free from the debasing conditions of this material life,” of very earthly mortal Buddha—the liberated Mânushi‐Buddhas appointed to overn the Earth in this Round. They are the “Buddhas of Contemplation,” nd are all Anupâdaka (parentless), _i.e._, self‐born of the divine ssence. The exoteric teaching—which says that every Dhyâni‐Buddha has the aculty of creating from himself an equally celestial son, a Dhyâni‐
Bodhisattva, who, after the decease of the Mânushi‐Buddha, has to carry ut 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 redited 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 osmogony, which differed widely from the later mythology, Eros is the hird 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 nother in the phenomenal and Cosmic World. In the latter, he is that ccult, electric, vital power, which, under the Will of the Creative
Logos, unites and brings together all forms, giving them the first mpulse, 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, nd the Gods still sleep in the bosom of “Father‐Mother.” He is an bstract philosophical idea. He produces nothing yet by himself; he is imply that potential creative Power, in virtue of whose action the
Noumenon of all future phenomena divides, so to speak, but to reunite in a ystic supersensuous act, and emit the creative Ray. When the “Divine Son” reaks forth, then Fohat becomes the propelling force, the active Power hich causes the One to become Two and Three—on the cosmic plane of anifestation. The triple One differentiates into the Many, and then Fohat s transformed into that force which brings together the elemental atoms, nd makes them aggregate and combine. We find an echo of this primeval eaching in early Greek mythology. Erebus and Nux are born out of Chaos, nd, 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 errestrial, 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 reation.
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 otality, viewed, in the Esoteric doctrine, from the standpoint of anifested Divine Thought, it represents the Hosts of the higher Creative
Dhyân Chohans. Simultaneously with the evolution of the Universal Mind, he Concealed Wisdom of Adi‐Buddha—the One Supreme and Eternal—manifests tself as Avalokiteshvara (or Manifested Îshvara), which is the Osiris of he Egyptians, the Ahura‐Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Heavenly Man of he Hermetic philosophers, the Logos of the Platonists, and the Âtman of he 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 he Intellectual Force accompanying such Ideation, becomes objectively the
Fohat of the Buddhist esoteric philosopher. Fohat, running along the seven rinciples of Âkâsha, acts upon manifested Substance, or the One Element, s declared above, and, by differentiating it into various centres of nergy, sets in motion the law of Cosmic Evolution, which, in obedience to he Ideation of the Universal Mind, brings into existence all the various tates 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 eaching of the Trans‐Himâlayan Esotericism. Every philosophy, however, as its own way of dividing these principles.
Fohat, then, is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental inding unity of all cosmic energies, on the unseen as on the manifested lanes, the action of which resembles—on an immense scale—that of a living
Force created by Will, in those phenomena where the seemingly subjective cts on the seemingly objective, and propels it to action. Fohat is not nly the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by he Occultists as an Entity; the forces it acts upon being cosmic, human nd terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all these planes espectively. On the earthly plane, its influence is felt in the magnetic nd active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer. On the osmic, it is present in the constructive power that, in the formation of hings—from the planetary system down to the glow‐worm and simple aisy—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 ade 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 o 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 ittle about its true nature; yet matter it is, as much as Ether is atter, 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 erception and experiment; yet it may be—and Occultism says it is—atomic; herefore it is matter. But even supposing it were unscientific to speak f 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 hich can be thought of without thinking of matter? Maxwell, a athematician and one of the greatest authorities upon Electricity and its henomena, said, years ago, that Electricity was matter, not motion erely. “If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are omposed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, ositive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary ortions, which behave like atoms of electricity.”(200) We will go further han this, and assert that Electricity is not only Substance, but that it s an emanation from an Entity, which is neither God nor Devil, but one of he numberless Entities that rule and guide our world, according to the ternal Law of Karma.
To return to Fohat, it is connected with Vishnu and Sûrya in the early haracter 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 alled the “Pervader” and the Manufacturer, because he shapes the atoms rom crude material.(201) In the sacred texts of the _Rig Veda_, Vishnu is lso “a manifestation of the Solar Energy, and is described as striding hrough the seven regions of the Universe in three steps,” the Vedic God aving little in common with the Vishnu of later times. Therefore the two re identical in this particular feature, and one is the copy of the ther.
The Three and Seven “Strides” refer to the seven spheres inhabited by man, n 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 o in the exoteric Hindû scriptures. But how strangely all these numbers re connected with like numbers in other cosmogonies and with their ymbols, can be seen from the comparisons and parallelisms made by tudents of old religions. The “three strides of Vishnu,” through the
“seven regions of the Universe,” of the _Rig Veda_, have been variously xplained by commentators as meaning fire, lightning and the sun, osmically, and as having been taken in the earth, the atmosphere, and the ky; more philosophically—and in the astronomical sense, very orrectly—they are explained by Aurnavâbha as being the various positions f the sun, rising, noon, and setting. Esoteric Philosophy alone explains t clearly, though the _Zohar_ has laid it down very philosophically and omprehensively. It is plainly demonstrated therein that in the beginning he Elohim (Alhim) were called Achad, “One,” or the “Deity, One in Many,” very simple idea in a pantheistic conception—pantheistic in its hilosophical sense, of course. Then came the change, “Jehovah is Elohim,” hus 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 mblematic, mutually and correlatively, of Spirit, Soul and Body (Man); of he Circle, transformed into Spirit, the Soul of the World and its Body
(or Earth). Stepping out of the Circle of Infinity, that no man omprehendeth, 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 volution into the “One in Many,” the Dhyâni‐Buddhas or the Elohim, or gain the Amshaspends, his third Step being taken into the generation of he flesh, or Man. And from Man, or Jah‐Hovah, “male‐female,” the _inner_ ivine 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 s 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, or 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, f the Logos falling as a ray into the spirit, then into the soul, and inally into the human physical form of man, in which it becomes Life.
The Kabalistic idea is identical with the Esotericism of the archaic eriod. This Esotericism is the common property of all, and belongs either to the Âryan Fifth Race, nor to any of its numerous sub‐races. It annot be claimed by the Turanians, so‐called, the Egyptians, Chinese,
Chaldeans, or by any of the seven divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but eally belongs to the Third and Fourth Root Races, whose descendants we ind in the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Âryans. The Circle was with very nation the symbol of the Unknown—“Boundless Space,” the abstract arb of an ever present abstraction—the Incognizable Deity. It represents imitless 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 is 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 ymbol of the invisible, while the Sun was the One Circle from which roceeded the cosmic orbs, of which he was considered the leader. Zeroâna, s the Chakra, or Circle, of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is, ccording to the definition of a Mystic, “a curve of such a nature that as o any, the least possible, part thereof, if the curve be protracted ither way, it will proceed and finally reënter upon itself, and form one nd the same curve—or that which we call the circle.” No better definition ould thus be given of the natural symbol and the evident nature of Deity, hich having its circumference everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore, ts central point also everywhere; in other words, is in every point of he Universe. The invisible Deity is thus also the Dhyân Chohans, or the
Rishis, the primitive seven, and the nine, without, and ten, including, heir synthetical unit, from which IT steps into Man.
Returning to Commentary 4 of Stanza IV, the reader now will understand hy, while the Trans‐Himâlayan Chakra has inscribed within it [triangle]
[square] [5‐point star with middle dot]—triangle, first line, square, econd 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 nagrammatically 31415—the astronomical π (pi), or the hidden meaning of he Dhyâni‐Buddhas, of the Gebers, the Giburim, the Kabeiri, and the
Elohim, all signifying “Great Men,” “Titans,” “Heavenly Men,” and, on arth, “Giants.”
The Seven was a Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to ore physiologically materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With them 7 was reëminently the generative number, and 9 the male causative one, forming s shown by the Kabalists the otz, עצ (90, 70), or “the Tree of the Garden f Eden,” the “double hermaphrodite rod” of the Fourth Race. This was the ymbol 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 he two letters—as shown above—one, the _ayin_, is a negative female etter, symbolically an eye; the the other a male letter, _tzâ_, a
_fish_‐hook or dart. Whereas with the Hindûs and Âryans generally, the ignificance was manifold, and related almost entirely to purely etaphysical and astronomical truths. Their Rishis and Gods, their Demons nd Heroes, have historical and ethical meanings.
Yet we are told by a Kabalist, who, in a work not yet published, contrasts he _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 he Hindû religious systems apparently by their _Shâstras_ and _Purânas_, robably the latter, and in their modern translations moreover, which isfigure them out of all recognition. It is to their philosophical ystems that we have to turn, to their esoteric teaching, if we would make point of comparison. No doubt the symbology of the _Pentateuch_, and ven 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 ater date than the Mosaic books? Hence, if there is any such great dentity as is claimed, it must be due to servile copying on the part of he Jews, not on that of the Egyptians. The glyphs of the Jews—and even heir language, the Hebrew—are not original. They are borrowed from the
Egyptians, from whom Moses got his Wisdom; from the Coptic, the probable insman, if not parent, of the old Phœnician and from the Hyksos, their
(alleged) ancestors, as Josephus shows.(204) Aye; but who are the Hyksos hepherds? And who the Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question, nd speculates and theorizes out of the depths of the respective onsciousnesses of her historians.(205) “Khamism, or old Coptic, is from
Western Asia, and contains some germ of the Semitic, thus bearing witness o 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 hat in archaic Esotericism and Âryan thought we find a grand philosophy, hereas in the Hebrew records we find only the most surprising ingenuity n inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual theogony.
That the Âryans never made their religion rest solely on physiological ymbols, as the old Hebrews have done, may be seen in the exoteric Hindû
Scriptures. That these accounts, also, are blinds is shown by their ontradicting each other, a different explanation being found in almost very _Purâna_ and epic poem. Read esoterically, however, they will all ield the same meaning. Thus one account enumerates seven worlds, xclusive of the nether worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen upper nd nether worlds have nothing to do with the classification of the
Septenary Chain and belong to the purely ethereal, invisible worlds. These ill be noticed elsewhere. Suffice it for the present to show that they re purposely referred to as though they belonged to the Chain. “Another numeration calls the seven worlds earth, sky, heaven, middle region, lace of birth, mansion of the blest, and abode of truth; placing the Sons f Brahmâ in the sixth division, and stating the fifth, or Jana‐loka, to e that where animals destroyed in the general conflagration are born gain.”(206) Some real Esoteric teaching is given in the subsequent hapters on Symbolism. He who is prepared for it will understand the idden 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 rimordial cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the six stages f consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into lobes or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric osmogony, that during the Kalpas (or Æons) of Life, Motion, which, during he periods of Rest, “_pulsates and thrills through every slumbering tom_”—assumes an evergrowing tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos o a new “Day,” to circular movement. “The Deity becomes a Whirlwind.” It ay be asked, as the writer has not failed to ask: Who is there to scertain the difference in that Motion, since all Nature is reduced to ts 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 ysteries which lie too far beyond our Planetary System and the visible
Cosmos, yet there were great seers and prophets in olden times who were nabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when he 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 articipating in the world’s creation—when the meaning refers to the nimating principle of the stars and planets; for, in the _Kabalah_, they re represented by the Auphanim, the Angels of the Spheres and Stars, of hich they are the informing Souls.(209)
This law of vortical movement in primordial matter is one of the oldest onceptions of Greek philosophy, whose first historical sages were nearly ll Initiates of the Mysteries. The Greeks had it from the Egyptians, and he 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 rom eternity.(210) Hicetas, Heraclides, Ecphantus, Pythagoras, and all is pupils, taught the rotation of the earth; and Âryabhata of India,
Aristarchus, Seleucus, and Archimedes calculated its revolution as cientifically as the Astronomers do now; while the theory of Elemental
Vortices was known to Anaxagoras, and maintained by him 500 years B.C., or early 2,000 before it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes, Swedenborg, and inally, with slight modifications, by Sir W. Thomson.(211) All such nowledge, if justice be only done, is an echo of the archaic doctrine, an ttempt to explain which is now being made. How men of the last few enturies have come to the same ideas and conclusions that were taught as xiomatic truths in the secrecy of the Adyta, dozens of millenniums ago, s a question that is treated separately. Some were led to it by the atural progress in Physical Science and by independent observation; thers—such as Copernicus, Swedenborg, and a few more—their great learning otwithstanding, owed their knowledge far more to intuitive than to cquired ideas, developed in the usual way by a course of study. That
Swedenborg, who could not possibly have known anything of the esoteric deas of Buddhism, independently came near the Occult teaching in his eneral conceptions, is shown by his essay on the Vortical Theory. In
Clissold’s translation of it, quoted by Prof. Winchell,(212) we find the ollowing _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 unction and blending together of pure Spirit and Matter, of the Arûpa and he Rûpa, of which the Triangles are a Symbol. This Double Triangle is a ign 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 ell as of Nature’s Principles; an evolution which takes place gradually, s does everything else in Nature. The Sixth Principle in Man (Buddhi, the
Divine Soul), though a mere breath, in our conceptions, is still something aterial when compared with Divine Spirit (Âtmâ), of which it is the arrier or vehicle. Fohat, in his capacity of Divine Love (Eros), the lectric power of affinity and sympathy, is shown, allegorically, trying o bring the pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from the One Absolute, into nion with the Soul, the two constituting in Man the Monad, and in Nature he 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 he beginning to the end of a Manvantara. They are the “Mystic Watchers” f the Christian Kabalists and Alchemists, and relate, symbolically as ell as cosmogonically, to the numerical system of the Universe. The umbers with which these Celestial Beings are connected, are extremely ifficult to explain, as each number refers to several groups of distinct deas, according to the particular group of “Angels” which it is intended o represent. Herein lies the _nodus_ in the study of symbology, with hich so many scholars, unable to untie it, have preferred dealing as
Alexander dealt with the Gordian knot; hence erroneous conceptions and eachings, as a direct result.
(_c_) The “First is the Second,” because the “First” cannot really be umbered or regarded as such, for the First is the realm of noumena in its rimary manifestation, the threshold to the World of Truth, or Sat, hrough which the direct energy that radiates from the One Reality—the
Nameless Deity—reaches us. Here again, the untranslateable term Sat (Be‐ ess) is likely to lead to an erroneous conception, since that which is anifested cannot be Sat, but is something phenomenal, not everlasting, or, 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 est. This “World of Truth,” in the words of the Commentary, can be escribed only as “_a bright star dropped from the Heart of Eternity; the eacon of hope on whose Seven Rays hang the Seven Worlds of Being_.” Truly o; since these are the Seven Lights whose reflections are the human mmortal Monads—the Âtmâ, or the irradiating Spirit of every creature of he human family. First, this Septenary Light; then the “Divine World”—the ountless lights lit at the primeval Light—the Buddhis, or formless Divine
Souls, of the last Arûpa (Formless) World, the “Sum Total,” in the ysterious 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 hee, burning in the dark midnight sky?__”_
_“__I sense one Flame, O Gurudeva, I see countless undetached sparks hining in it.__”_
_“__Thou sayest well. And now look around and into thyself. That light hich burns inside thee, dost thou feel it different in anywise from the ight 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 ompounds in Nature—from star to mineral atom, from the highest Dhyân
Chohan to the smallest infusorium, in the fullest acceptation of the term, nd whether applied to the spiritual, intellectual, or physical orlds—this unity is the one fundamental law in Occult Science. “The Deity s boundless and infinite expansion,” says an Occult axiom: hence, the ame of Brahmâ, as previously remarked.(218)
There is a deep philosophy underlying the earliest worship in the world, he 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 onfidently asserted that air is a mixture containing the gases oxygen and itrogen. We view the Universe and the Earth as matter composed of efinite chemical molecules. We speak of the primitive ten earths, ndowing each with a Greek or Latin name. We say that water is, hemically, a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. But what is Fire? It is the ffect of combustion, we are gravely answered. It is heat and light and otion, and a correlation of physical and chemical forces in general. And his scientific definition is philosophically supplemented by a heological one in Webster’s Dictionary, which explains fire as “the nstrument of punishment, or the punishment of the impenitent in another tate”—the “state,” by the bye, being supposed to be spiritual; but, alas! he presence of fire would seem to be a convincing proof of its material ature. Yet, speaking of the illusion of regarding phenomena as simple, ecause 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 erfect 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 hing. It is divine Substance._” Thus, not only the Fire‐Worshipper, the
Parsi, but even the wandering savage tribes of America, which proclaim hemselves “born of fire,” show more science in their creeds and truth in heir superstitions, than all the speculations of modern physics and earning. The Christian who says, “God is a living Fire,” and speaks of he Pentecostal “Tongues of Fire” and of the “Burning Bush” of Moses, is s much a fire‐worshipper as any other “Heathen.” Among the Mystics and
Kabalists, the Rosicrucians were those who defined Fire in the most orrect way. Procure a sixpenny lamp, keep it only supplied with oil, and ou will be able to light at its flame the lamps, candles, and fires of he 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 ormed the Arûpa and Rûpa [Worlds]: from One Light Seven Lights; from each f 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 oth the cosmic and the human Principles—the latter of which consist, in he exoteric division, of three (Spirit, Soul and Body), and, in the soteric calculation, of seven Principles—three Rays of the Essence and our Aspects.(222) Those who have studied Mr. Sinnett’s _Esoteric
Buddhism_ will easily grasp the nomenclature. There are two Esoteric chools beyond the Himâlayas, or rather one school, divided into two ections—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 he human Principles.
From a cosmic point of view, Fohat taking “Five Strides” refers here to he five upper planes of Consciousness and Being, the sixth and the eventh (counting downwards) being the astral and the terrestrial, or the wo lower planes.
(_b_) Four “Winged Wheels at each corner ... for the Four Holy Ones and heir Armies (Hosts).” These are the “Four Mahârâjahs,” or great Kings, of he Dhyân Chohans, the Devas, who preside each over one of the four ardinal points. They are the Regents, or Angels, who rule over the
Cosmical Forces of North, South, East and West, Forces having each a istinct Occult property. These Beings are also connected with Karma, as he latter needs physical and material agents to carry out its decrees, uch as the four kinds of winds, for instance, professedly admitted by
Science to have their respective evil and beneficent influences upon the ealth of mankind and every living thing. There is Occult philosophy in he Roman Catholic doctrine which traces the various public calamities, uch 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 he East,” says Ezekiel; while Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the Psalmist assure heir 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 rophecy. And this accounts also for St. Ambrose(223) declaring that it is recisely for this reason that “we curse the North Wind, and that during he ceremony of baptism we begin by turning towards the West [Sidereal], o 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 niversal and is now that of Christians, who call them, after St.
Augustine, “Angelic Virtues” and “Spirits,” when enumerated by themselves, nd “Devils,” when named by Pagans. But where is the difference between he 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 o 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 nly as meaning the incorporeal principles placed at each of the four reat divisions of our cosmical world, to supervise them. Thus, no more han Christians do Pagans _adore_ and _worship_ the Elements and the
(imaginary) cardinal points, but the “gods” that respectively rule over hem. For the Church, there are two kinds of Sidereal Beings, Angels and
Devils. For the Kabalist and Occultist, there is but one class, and either Occultist nor Kabalist makes any difference between the “Rectors f Light” and the “Rectores Tenebrarum,” or Cosmocratores, whom the Roman
Church imagines and discovers in the “Rectors of Light,” as soon as any ne 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 ithout “God’s” permission or order, but man himself—his deeds, or Karma, ttracting individually and collectively (as in the case of whole nations, ometimes) every kind of evil and calamity. We produce _Causes_, and these waken the corresponding powers in the Sidereal World, which are agnetically and irresistibly attracted to—and reäct upon—those who roduce such causes; whether such persons are practically the evil‐doers, r simply “thinkers” who brood mischief. For thought is matter, we are aught by Modern Science; and “every particle of the existing matter must e a register of all that has happened,” as Messrs. Jevons and Babbage in heir _Principles of Science_ tell the profane. Modern Science is every ay drawn more into the maëlstrom of Occultism; unconsciously, no doubt, till 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 atter”—a statement of almost unparalleled absurdity. Mental states and odily states are utterly contrasted as such. But that does not affect the osition that every thought, in addition to its physical accompaniment
(brain‐change), exhibits an objective—though to us supersensuously bjective—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 egative 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 etween mind and matter may be reduced to the following two hypotheses.
These show that both views equally exclude the possibility of an ndependent soul, distinct from the physical brain through which it unctions. They are:
(1.) _Materialism_, the theory which regards mental phenomena as the roduct of molecular change in the brain; _i.e._, as the outcome of a ransformation of motion into feeling (!). The cruder school once went so ar as to identify mind with a “peculiar mode of motion” (!!), but this iew is now happily regarded as absurd by most of the men of Science hemselves.
(2.)_ Monism_, or the Single Substance doctrine, is the more subtle form f negative psychology, which one of its advocates, Professor Bain, ably erms “guarded materialism.” This doctrine, which commands a very wide ssent, counting among its upholders such men as Lewes, Spencer, Ferrier, nd others, while positing thought and mental phenomena generally as adically contrasted with matter, regards them as the two sides, or spects, of one and the same substance in some of its conditions. Thought s thought, they say, is utterly contrasted with material phenomena, but t must be also regarded as only “the subjective side of nervous otion”—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 eparated the tabernacle from the place for the congregation. The Jews had he same. In both, the curtain was drawn over five pillars (the Pentacle), ymbolizing our five senses and five Root Races esoterically, while the our colours of the curtain represented the four cardinal points and the our terrestrial elements. The whole was an allegorical symbol. It is hrough the four high Rulers over the four points and elements that our ive senses may become cognizant of the hidden truths of Nature; and not t all, as Clemens would have it, that it is the elements _per se_ that urnished the Pagans with Divine Knowledge or the Knowledge of God.(226)
While the Egyptian emblem was spiritual, that of the Jews was purely aterialistic, and, indeed, honoured only the blind elements and the maginary “points.” For what was the meaning of the square Tabernacle aised by Moses in the wilderness, if it had not the same cosmical ignificance? “Thou shalt make an hanging ... of blue, purple, and scarlet
... five pillars of shittim wood for the hanging ... four brazen rings in he four corners thereof ... boards of fine wood for the four sides,
North, South, West, and East ... of the Tabernacle ... with Cherubims of unning work.”(227) The Tabernacle and the square courtyard, Cherubim and ll, were precisely the same as those in the Egyptian temples. The square orm of the Tabernacle meant just the same thing as it still means, to his day, in the exoteric worship of the Chinese and Tibetans—the four ardinal points signifying that which the four sides of the pyramids, belisks, and other such square erections mean. Josephus takes care to xplain the whole thing. He declares that the Tabernacle pillars were the ame as those raised at Tyre to the four elements, which were placed on edestals whose four angles faced the four cardinal points; adding that
“the angles of the pedestals had the four figures of the Zodiac” on them, hich represented the same orientation.(228)
The idea may be traced in the Zoroastrian caves, in the rock‐cut temples f India, and in all the sacred square buildings of antiquity that have urvived to this day. This is shown definitely by Layard, who finds the our cardinal points, and the four primitive elements, in the religion of very country, under the shape of square obelisks, the four sides of the yramids, 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 f Ezekiel (ch. i.) with what is known of Chinese Buddhism, even in its xoteric teachings, and examine the outward shape of these “Great Kings of he Devas.” In the opinion of the Rev. Joseph Edkins, “they preside each ver 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 our Celestial Beings are precisely this. The Hindûs, however, happen to ivide the world into seven continents, exoterically as well as soterically; and their four Cosmic Devas are eight, presiding over the ight 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 ame time they are the four living creatures, “who have the likeness of a an,” 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 hese Gandharvas, the “Sweet Songsters,” the Asuras, Kinnaras, and Nâgas, re the allegorical descriptions of the Four Mahârâjahs. The Seraphim are he 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 eavenly choristers ... not to be reached by sinful men ... because uarded by Serpents.” They are called the Avengers, and the “Winged
Wheels.”
Their mission and character being explained, let us see what the Christian ible‐interpreters say of the Cherubim. “The word signifies in Hebrew, ulness of knowledge; these angels are so called from their exquisite
Knowledge, and were therefore used for the punishment of men who affected ivine Knowledge.” (Interpreted by Cruden in his _Concordance_, from
_Genesis_ iii. 24.) Very well; and vague as the information is, it shows hat the Cherub placed at the gate of the Garden of Eden, after the
“Fall,” suggested to the venerable interpreters the idea of punishment onnected with forbidden Science or divine Knowledge—one that generally eads 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 he allegory is suggestive. From Meru, the abode of gods, to Eden, the istance is very small, and from the Hindû Serpents to the Ophite
Cherubim, the third out of the seven of which was the Dragon, the eparation 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‐ roups. It is impossible, even in such a large work as this, to enter into minute examination of even the three principal Groups, as it would emand an extra volume. The Builders are the representatives of the first
“Mind‐Born” Entities, therefore of the primeval Rishi‐Prajâpati; also of he 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 he “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, nd of the Planets especially. They rule the destinies of men who are all orn under one or other of their constellations; the Second and Third
Groups pertaining to other systems have the same functions, and all rule arious departments in Nature. In the Hindû exoteric Pantheon they are the uardian deities who preside over the eight points of the compass—the four ardinal 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 hief; their elephants and spouses pertaining of course to fancy and fterthought, though all of them have an Occult significance.
The Lipika, a description of whom is given in Commentary 6 of Stanza IV, re the Spirits of the Universe, whereas the Builders are only our own lanetary deities. The former belong to the most Occult portion of osmogenesis, which cannot be given here. Whether the Adepts—even the ighest—know this angelic order in the completeness of its triple degrees, r only the lower one connected with the records of our world, is omething which the writer is unprepared to say, and she would rather ncline to the latter supposition. Of its highest grade one thing only is aught: 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 he 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 nother 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 nto sub‐groups of Heptads, Enneads, Dodecads, and so on, until the mind s lost in this endless enumeration of celestial Hosts and Beings, each aving its distinct task in the ruling of the visible Cosmos during its xistence.
(_a_) The Esoteric meaning of the first sentence of the Shloka is, that hose who have been called Lipikas, the Recorders of the Karmic Ledger, ake 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, n the planes of Illusion, of Adi (the “First”) or of Eka (the “One”); and his One is the collective aggregate, or totality, of the principal
Creators or Architects of this visible Universe. In Hebrew Occultism their ame is both Achath, feminine, “One,” and Achad, “One” again, but asculine. The Monotheists have taken, and are still taking, advantage of he 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 eason and logic, as the term Elohim is a plural noun, identical with the lural word Chiim, often compounded with it. The sentence in the _Sepher
Yetzirah_ and elsewhere, “Achath‐Ruach‐Elohim‐Chiim,” denotes the Elohim s androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it ould 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 hich no speculation is possible; and the second One on the plane of
Emanations. The former can neither emanate nor be divided, as it is ternal, absolute, and immutable; but the second, being, so to speak, the eflection 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, he Protyle differentiates into the Elements. But these, unless they eturn into their primal Element, can never cross beyond the Laya, or ero‐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, t is not even consciousness, as it cannot be related to matter or nything conditioned. It is not Ego nor is it Non‐Ego, nor even Âtmâ, but erily 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 ot having quite reached the goal—may cross the Circle of “Pass Not,” only n the Day “Be With Us”; that day when man, freeing himself from the rammels 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 ecome 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 ircumscribe these figures, is thus again shown to contain the symbols of
31415, or the coëfficient constantly used in mathematical tables, the alue π (pi), the geometrical figures standing here for numerical figures.
According to the general philosophical teachings, this Ring is beyond the egion of what are called nebulæ in astronomy. But this is as erroneous a onception as that of the topography and descriptions, given in Purânic nd other exoteric Scriptures, about the 1008 worlds of the Deva‐loka orlds and firmaments. There are worlds, of course, in the esoteric as ell as in the profane scientific teachings, at such incalculable istances that the light of the nearest of them, though it has only just eached our modern “Chaldees,” may have left its luminary long before the ay on which the words, “Let there be Light,” were pronounced; but these re 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 hich he deals, and then stops short. The Physicist or the Astronomer ounts billions of miles beyond the nebulæ, and then he also stops short.
The semi‐initiated Occultist also will represent this laya‐point to imself as existing on some plane which, if not physical, is still onceivable 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, ut that it exists in the absoluteness of Infinity. In this “Infinity” of he full Initiate, there is neither height, breadth nor thickness, but all s fathomless profundity, reaching down from the physical to the “para‐ etaphysical.” In using the word “down,” essential depth—“nowhere and verywhere”—is meant, not depth of physical matter.
If one carefully searches through the exoteric and grossly anthropomorphic llegories of popular religions, even in these the doctrine embodied in he 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 ead of the released soul that, after reaching Moksha—a state of bliss eaning “release from Bandha,” or bondage—bliss is enjoyed by it in a lace called Paramapada, which place is not material, but made of
Suddasattva, the essence, of which the body of Îshvara—the “Lord”—is ormed. There, Muktas or Jîvâtmâs (Monads) who have attained Moksha, are ever again subject to the qualities of either matter or Karma. “But if hey choose, _for the __ sake of doing good to the world_, they may ncarnate on earth.”(238) The way to Paramapada, or the immaterial worlds, rom this world, is called Devayâna. When a person has attained Moksha and he 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 ine of this Ring, nor will any do so until the day of the next Pralaya, or it is the boundary that separates the Finite—however infinite in man’s ight—from the truly Infinite. The Spirits referred to, therefore, as hose 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 hat, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively—_God_. But so must e, mortal men, appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale of its pecial capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging inger of a Personal God in the hand of the urchin who, under the impulse f mischief, destroys, in one moment, its ant‐hill, the labour of many eeks—long years in the chronology of insects. The ant, feeling it cutely, may also, like man, attribute the undeserved calamity to a ombination of providence and sin, and see in it the result of the sin of ts first parent. Who knows, and who can affirm or deny? The refusal to dmit, in the whole Solar System, of any other reasonable and intellectual eings than ourselves on the human plane, is the greatest conceit of our ge. All that Science has a right to affirm, is that there are no nvisible Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It annot deny point‐blank the possibility of there being worlds within orlds, under conditions totally different to those that constitute the ature of our world; nor can it deny that there may be a certain limited ommunication between some of these worlds and our own. The greatest hilosopher of European birth, Emmanuel Kant, assures us that such a ommunication 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 he purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong Hierarchies that an occasionally be seen and heard by men, and that do communicate with heir progeny of the Earth; a progeny which is indissolubly linked with hem, each Principle in man having its direct source in the nature of hese great Beings, who furnish us respectively with the invisible lements in us. Physical Science is welcome to speculate upon the hysiological mechanism of living beings, and to continue her fruitless fforts in trying to resolve our feelings, our sensations, mental and piritual, into functions of their organic vehicles. Nevertheless, all hat will ever be accomplished in this direction has already been done, nd Science can go no farther. She is before a dead wall, on the face of hich she traces, as she imagines, great physiological and psychic iscoveries, every one of which will be shown later on to be no better han cobwebs, spun by her scientific fancies and illusions. The tissues of ur objective framework alone are subservient to the analysis and esearches of Physiological Science. The six higher Principles in them ill evade for ever the hand that is guided by an animus, which purposely gnores and rejects the Occult Sciences. All that modern physiological esearch in connection with psychological problems has, and owing to the ature of things could have shown, is that every thought, sensation, and motion is attended with a re‐marshalling of the molecules of certain erves. The inference drawn by scientists of the type of Büchner, Vogt, nd others, that thought is molecular motion, necessitates the fact of our ubjective consciousness being made a complete abstraction.
The Great Day “Be With Us,” then, is an expression, the only merit of hich lies in its literal translation. Its significance is not so easily evealed to a public, unacquainted with the mystic tenets of Occultism, or ather of Esoteric Wisdom or “Budhism.” It is an expression peculiar to he latter, and as hazy for the profane as that of the Egyptians, who alled the same the Day “Come To Us,” which is identical with the ormer—though the word “be,” in this sense, might be still better replaced ith either of the two terms “remain” or “rest with us,” as it refers to hat long period of Rest which is called Paranirvâna. “Le Jour de ‘Viens à ous’! C’est le jour où Osiris a dit au Soleil: Viens! Je le vois encontrant le Soleil dans l’Amenti.”(243) The Sun here stands for the
Logos (or Christos, or Horus), as the central Essence synthetically, and s a diffused essence of radiated Entities, different in substance, but ot in essence. As expressed by the _Bhagavadgîtâ_ lecturer, “it must not e supposed that the Logos is but a single centre of energy which is anifested by Parabrahman. There are innumerable others. Their number is lmost 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 he Symbol of the Four sacred Forces or Powers—Tetraktys—so the Circle hows 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 scend,” during the course of cyclic evolution, shall cross the “iron‐ ound 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, r the “Unknown Darkness,” which shall then become for all of them Light, uring 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 he Last Judgment of the Christians, which has been sorely materialized in heir religion.(244)
As in the exoteric interpretation of the Egyptian rites, the soul of every efunct person—from the Hierophant down to the sacred bull Apis—became an
Osiris, was Osirified (the Secret Doctrine, however, teaching that the eal 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 ery Essence of the “Seven” (its highest Principle becoming immediately nshrined in the Seventh Cosmic Element), has to perform its septenary yration throughout the Cycle of Being and Forms, from the highest to the owest; and then again from man to God. At the threshold of Paranirvâna, t 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 he equivalents of the original terms are preserved. The real Esoteric omenclature cannot be given, as it would only confuse the reader. The
Brâhmanical doctrine has no equivalents for these. Vâch seems, in many an spect, to approach the Chinese Kwan‐Yin, but there is no regular worship f Vâch under this name in India, as there is of Kwan‐Yin in China. No xoteric religious system has ever adopted a female Creator, and thus, rom the first dawn of popular religions, woman has been regarded and reated as inferior to man. It is only in China and Egypt that Kwan‐Yin nd Isis are placed on a par with the male gods. Esotericism ignores both exes. Its highest Deity is as sexless as it is formless, neither Father or Mother; and its first manifested beings, celestial and terrestrial like, become only gradually androgynous to finally separate into distinct exes.
(_a_) “The Mother of Mercy and Knowledge” is called the “Triple” of Kwan‐
Shai‐Yin, because in her correlations, metaphysical and cosmical, she is he “Mother, the Wife and the Daughter” of the Logos, just as in the later heological 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 he 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 etaphysical theogony—the “Mother,” or abstract ideal Matter,
Mûlaprakriti, the Root of Nature; from the metaphysical standpoint, a orrelation of Adi‐Budha, manifested in the Logos, Avalokiteshvara; and rom the purely Occult and cosmical, Fohat, the “Son of the Son,” the ndrogynous energy resulting from this “Light of the Logos,” which anifests in the plane of the objective Universe as the hidden, as much as he 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 r Word, “Speech,” as the expression of Thought. Thus may be traced the onnection with, and even the origin of, the Hebrew Bath‐Kol, the
“Daughter of the Divine Voice,” or Verbum, or the male and female Logos, he “Heavenly Man,” or Adam Kadmon, who is at the same time Sephira. The atter was surely anticipated by the Hindû Vâch, the goddess of Speech, or f the Word. For Vâch—the daughter and the female portion, as is stated, f 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, he 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 ustenance and water [the female principle] ... who yields us nourishment nd sustenance,” as Mother‐Nature. She is associated in the work of reation with Prajâpati. She is male and female _ad libitum_, as Eve is ith 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 re 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 wo parts, male and female, and creating in the latter, who is Vâch,
Virâj, who is himself, or Brahmâ again. A learned Vedântin Occultist peaks 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 ero in the same sense that Chemists do. It indicates, in Esotericism, a oint at which the reckoning of differentiation begins. From these
Centres—beyond which Esoteric Philosophy allows us to perceive the dim etaphysical outlines of the “Seven Sons” of Life and Light, the Seven
Logoi of the Hermetic and all other philosophers—begins the ifferentiation 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 een given in the Commentary on Stanza V. As well said in the
_Bhagavadgîtâ_ Lectures, “The whole cosmos must necessarily exist in the ne source of energy from which this light [Fohat] emanates.” Whether we ount the principles in cosmos and man as seven or only as four, the orces of, and in, physical Nature are Seven; and it is stated by the same uthority that, “Prajnâ, or the capacity of perception, exists in seven ifferent aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter.” For,
“just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated atter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions.”(252) So oes 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 ll such manifestations as light, heat, sound, adhesion, etc., etc., and s the “spirit” of electricity, which is the Life of the Universe. As an bstraction, we will call it the One Life; as an objective and evident
Reality, we speak of a septenary scale of manifestation, which begins at he upper rung with the One Unknowable Causality, and ends as Omnipresent
Mind and Life, immanent in every atom of Matter. Thus, while Science peaks of its evolution through brute matter, blind force, and senseless otion, the Occultists point to _Intelligent_ Law and _Sentient_ Life, and dd that Fohat is the guiding Spirit of all this. Yet he is no personal od 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, r rather one of the Seven Creators called Elohim), and we the Messenger f 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), re 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 ormation of the primitive (though compound) seven Elements on our Earth.
Of these, four Elements are now fully manifested, while the fifth—Ether—is nly 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 rimarily 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 ire‐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 f time followed by the next. No World, and no heavenly body, could be onstructed on the objective plane, had not the Elements been already ufficiently differentiated from their primeval Ilus, resting in Laya. The atter term is a synonym of Nirvâna. It is, in fact, the Nirvânic issociation of all substances, merged after a Life‐Cycle into the latency f their primary conditions. It is the luminous but bodiless shadow of the
Matter that _was_, the realm of negativeness—wherein lie latent during heir 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 odern 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 nowledge of the compound nature of the simplest molecule. From him we earn that such a thing as a really simple molecule entirely homogeneous s _terra incognita_ in Chemistry. “Where are we to draw the line?” he sks; “is there no way out of this perplexity? Must we either make the lementary examinations so stiff that only 60 or 70 candidates can pass, r must we open the examination doors so wide that the number of dmissions is limited only by the number of applicants?” And then the earned 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 tatement. Their initiated philosophers at any rate, can hardly come under uch an imputation, since it is they who have invented allegories and eligious 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 ever have been blessed with such posterity, with so many sons and aughters, elements born _from_ and _within_ each respective Element.
Alchemy and Occult phenomena would have been a delusion and a snare, even n theory, had the Ancients been ignorant of the potentialities and orrelative functions and attributes, of every element that enters into he composition of Air, Water, Earth, and even Fire—the latter a _terra ncognita_ to this day to Modern Science, which is obliged to call it otion, evolution of light and heat, state of ignition—defining it by its utward aspects in short, in ignorance of its nature.
But what Modern Science seems to fail to perceive, is that, differentiated s may have been those simple chemical atoms—which archaic philosophy alled “the creators of their respective parents,” fathers, brothers, usbands of their mothers, and these mothers the daughters of their own ons, like Aditi and Daksha, for example—differentiated as these elements ere 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 olids generally) existed in their present form, representing the only hree states of matter recognized by Science; for all these and even Fire re productions already recombined by the atmospheres of completely formed lobes, so that in the first periods of the earth’s formation they were omething quite _sui generis_. Now that the conditions and laws ruling our
Solar System are fully developed, and that the atmosphere of our earth, as f 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, f molecules, or rather of atoms, correlating, and thus changing their ombining equivalents on every planet. Some men of Science, and these mong the greatest Physicists and Chemists, begin to suspect this fact, hich has been known for ages to the Occultists. The spectroscope shows nly the probable similarity (on external evidence) of terrestrial and idereal substance; it is unable to go any farther, or to show whether or ot atoms gravitate towards one another in the same way, and under the ame conditions, as they are supposed to do on our planet, physically and hemically. The scale of temperature, from the highest degree to the owest that can be conceived of, may be imagined to be one and the same in nd for the whole Universe; nevertheless, its properties, other than those f dissociation and reässociation, differ on every planet; and thus atoms nter into new forms of existence, undreamed of, and incognizable to,
Physical Science. As already expressed in _Five Years of Theosophy_,(256) he essence of cometary matter, for instance, “is totally different from ny of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest
Chemists and Physicists of the earth are acquainted.” And even that atter, during rapid passage through our atmosphere, undergoes a certain hange in its nature.
Thus not only the elements of our planet, but even those of all its isters in the Solar System, differ in their combinations as widely from ach other, as from the cosmic elements beyond our solar limits. This is gain corroborated by the same man of Science in the lecture referred to bove, who quotes Clerk Maxwell, saying “that the elements are not bsolutely 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 omparison 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 any Fohats as there are worlds, each varying in power and degree of anifestation. 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 onsider as conscious and _intelligent_ Forces. This, no doubt, to the isgust of scientific minds. Nevertheless the Occultists, who have good easons for it, consider all the forces of Nature as veritable, though upersensuous, states of Matter; and as possible objects of perception to eings 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 ncessant differentiation. “_The Mother sleeps, yet is ever breathing_.”
And every breath sends out into the plane of manifestation her protean roducts, which, carried on by the wave of efflux, are scattered by Fohat, nd driven toward or beyond this or another planetary atmosphere. Once aught by the latter, the atom is lost; its pristine purity is gone for ver, unless fate dissociates it by leading it to a “current of efflux”
(an Occult term meaning quite a different process from that which the rdinary word implies), when it may be carried once more to the borderland here it had previously perished, and taking its flight, not into Space
_above_ but into Space _within_, be brought under a state of differential quilibrium and happily reabsorbed. Were a truly learned Occultist‐
Alchemist to write the “Life and Adventures of an Atom,” he would secure hereby the supreme scorn of the modern Chemist, though perchance also his ubsequent gratitude. Indeed, if such an imaginary Chemist happened to be ntuitional, and would for a moment step out of the habitual groove of trictly “Exact Science,” as the Alchemists of old did, he might be repaid or his audacity. However it may be, “_The Breath of the Father‐Mother ssues cold and radiant, and gets hot and corrupt, to cool once more and e 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, ot and transformed. Thus, the higher atmosphere of every globe, being its outh, 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 llotropize sluggish oxygen into ozone to a measure of alchemical ctivity, reducing it to its pure essence (for which there are means), ould discover thereby a substitute for an “Elixir of Life” and prepare it or practical use.
(_b_) The process referred to as the “Small Wheels, one giving birth to he other,” takes place in the sixth region from above, and on the plane f the most material world of all in the manifested Kosmos—our terrestrial lane. These “Seven Wheels” are our Planetary Chain. By “Wheels” the arious spheres and centres of forces are generally meant; but in this ase 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 hose that had existed in preceding Manvantaras and went into Pralaya; for he 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 erfection with every new appearance, but the Substance‐Matter and Forces re all one and the same. And this Law acts on every planet through minor nd varying laws.
The “Imperishable [Laya] Centres” have a great importance, and their eaning must be fully understood, if we would have a clear conception of he Archaic Cosmogony, whose theories have now passed into Occultism. At resent, 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 athematical point.
(_b_) Bear in mind that Fohat, the constructive Force of Cosmic
Electricity, is said, metaphorically, to have sprung, like Rudra from the ead 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 fter time, whenever any two of his “Son‐Brothers” indulge in _too close ontact_—whether an embrace or a fight. To avoid this, he unites and binds ogether those of unlike nature, and separates those of similar emperaments. This, as any one can see, relates, of course, to electricity enerated by friction, and to the law of attraction between two objects of nlike, and repulsion between those of like polarity. The Seven Son‐
Brothers, however, represent and personify the seven forms of cosmic agnetism, called in Practical Occultism the “Seven Radicals,” whose oöperative and active progeny are, among other energies, Electricity,
Magnetism, Sound, Light, Heat, Cohesion, etc. Occult Science defines all hese as super‐sensuous effects in their hidden behaviour, and as bjective phenomena in the world of sense; the former requiring abnormal aculties to perceive them, the latter cognizable by our ordinary physical enses. They all pertain to, and are the emanations of, still more upersensuous spiritual qualities, not personated by, but belonging to, eal and conscious Causes. To attempt a description of such Entities would e worse than useless. The reader must bear in mind that, according to our eaching which regards this phenomenal Universe as a Great Illusion, the earer a body is to the Unknown Substance, the more it approaches Reality, s being the farther removed from this world of Mâyâ. Therefore, though he molecular constitution of these bodies is not deducible from their anifestations, on this plane of consciousness, they nevertheless, from he standpoint of the Adept Occultist, possess a distinctive objective if ot material structure, in the relatively noumenal—as opposed to the henomenal—Universe. Men of science may term them force or forces enerated by matter, or “modes of its motion,” if they will; Occultism ees in these effects Elementals (Forces), and, in the direct causes roducing them, intelligent Divine Workmen. The intimate connection of hese Elementals, guided by the unerring hand of the Rulers, with the lements of pure Matter—their correlation we might call it—results in our errestrial phenomena, such as light, heat, magnetism, etc., etc. Of ourse we shall never agree with the American Substantialists(259) who all every force and energy—whether light, heat, electricity or ohesion—an “entity”; for this would be equivalent to calling the noise roduced by the rolling of the wheels of a vehicle an entity—thus onfusing and identifying that “noise” with the “driver” _outside_, and he guiding “Master Intelligence” _within_ the vehicle. But we do ertainly 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 mperceptible, secondary causes, and in themselves the effects of primary auses behind the veil of all terrestrial phenomena. Electricity, light, eat, etc., have been aptly termed the “Ghosts or Shadows of Matter in
Motion,” _i.e._, supersensuous states of Matter whose effects only we are ble to cognize. To expand, then, the simile given above. The sensation of ight is like the sound of the rolling wheels—a purely phenomenal effect, aving no existence outside the observer. The proximate exciting cause of he sensation is comparable to the driver—a supersensuous state of matter n motion, a Nature‐Force or Elemental. But, behind this—just as the owner f 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 nfinitesimal Infusoria. It is Fohat who guides the transfer of the rinciples from one planet to the other, from one star to another child‐ tar. When a planet dies, its informing principles are transferred to a aya or sleeping centre, with potential but latent energy in it, which is hus awakened into life and begins to form itself into a new sidereal ody.
It is most remarkable that, while honestly confessing their entire gnorance of the true nature of even terrestrial matter—primordial ubstance being regarded more as a dream than as a sober reality—the
Physicists should, nevertheless, set themselves up as judges of that atter, and claim to know what it is able and is not able to do, in arious combinations. Scientists know this matter hardly skin‐deep, and et they will dogmatize. It is “a mode of motion” and nothing else! But he “force” that is inherent in a living person’s breath, when blowing a peck of dust from the table, is also, undeniably, “a mode of motion.” It s as undeniably not a quality of the matter, or the particles of the peck, and it emanates from the living and thinking Entity that breathed, hether the impulse originated consciously or unconsciously. Indeed, to ndow matter—something of which nothing is so far known—with an inherent uality called force, of the nature of which still less is known, is to reate a far more serious difficulty than that which lies in the cceptation of the intervention of our “Nature‐Spirits” in every natural henomenon.
The Occultists—who, if they would express themselves correctly, do not say hat matter, but only the _substance_ or _essence_ of matter, (_i.e._,
Mûlaprakriti, the Root of all) is indestructible and eternal—assert that ll the so‐called Forces of Nature, electricity, magnetism, light, heat, tc., etc., far from being modes of motion of material particles, are _in sse_, _i.e._, in their ultimate constitution, the differentiated aspects f that Universal Motion which is discussed and explained in the first ages of this volume. When Fohat is said to produce Seven Laya Centres, it eans that, for formative or creative purposes, the _Great Law_—Theists ay call it God—stays, or rather modifies, its perpetual motion on seven nvisible points within the area of the Manifested Universe. “_The Great
Breath digs through Space seven holes into Laya, to cause them to ircumgyrate during Manvantara_,” says the Occult Catechism. We have said hat Laya is what Science may call the zero‐point or line; the realm of bsolute negativeness, or the one real absolute Force, the _noumenon_ of he Seventh State of that which we ignorantly call and recognize as
“Force”; or again the noumenon of Undifferentiated Cosmic Substance, which s itself an unreachable and unknowable object for finite perception; the oot and basis of all states of objectivity and also subjectivity; the eutral axis, not one of the many aspects, but its centre. It may serve to lucidate the meaning, if we try to imagine a “neutral centre”—the dream f those who would discover perpetual motion. A “neutral centre” is, in ne aspect, the limiting point of any given set of senses. Thus, imagine wo consecutive planes of matter; each of these corresponding to an ppropriate set of perceptive organs. We are forced to admit that between hese two planes of matter an incessant circulation takes place; and if we ollow the atoms and molecules of, say, the lower in their transformation pwards, they will come to a point where they pass altogether beyond the ange of the faculties we are using on the lower plane. In fact, for us he matter of the lower plane there vanishes from our perception—or ather, it passes on to the higher plane, and the state of matter orresponding to such a point of transition must certainly possess pecial, 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 ...
uickens matter into activity and evolution.
The Primordial Atom (Anu) cannot be multiplied either in its pregenetic tate, or its primogeneity; therefore it is called the “Sum Total,” of ourse, figuratively, as that “Sum Total” is boundless. That which is the byss of nothingness to the Physicist, who knows only the world of visible auses and effects, is the boundless Space of the Divine Plenum to the
Occultist. Among many other objections to the doctrine of an endless volution and involution, or reäbsorption of the Kosmos, a process which, ccording to the Brâhmanical and Esoteric Doctrine, is without beginning r end, the Occultist is told that it cannot be, since “by all the dmissions of modern scientific philosophy it is a necessity of nature to un down.” If the tendency of nature “to run down” is to be considered so orcible an objection to Occult Cosmogony, how, we may ask, do your
Positivists and Free‐thinkers and Scientists account for the phalanx of ctive stellar systems around us? They had eternity to “run down” in; why, hen, is not the Kosmos a huge inert mass? Even the moon is only ypothetically believed to be a dead planet, “run down,” and Astronomy oes not seem to be acquainted with many such dead planets.(261) The query s unanswerable. But apart from this, it must be noted that the idea of he amount of “transformable energy” in our little system coming to an nd, is based purely on the fallacious conception of a “white‐hot, ncandescent sun,” perpetually radiating away its heat without ompensation into space. To this we reply that nature runs down and isappears from the objective plane, only to reëmerge after a time of rest ut of the subjective, and to reäscend once more. Our Kosmos and Nature ill 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, hat is our scientific philosophy but that which was so justly and so olitely defined by Kant as the “science of the _limits_ to our nowledge?” To what have the many attempts made by Science to bind, onnect, and define all the phenomena of organic life, by mere physical nd chemical manifestations, brought it? To speculation generally—mere oap‐bubbles, that have burst one after the other before the men of
Science were permitted to discover real facts. All this would have been voided, and the progress of knowledge would have proceeded with gigantic trides, had only Science and its philosophy abstained from accepting ypotheses merely on the one‐sided knowledge of _their_ “matter.” The ehaviour of Uranus and Neptune—whose satellites, four and one in number espectively, revolved, it was thought, in their orbits from East to West, hereas all the other satellites rotate from West to East—is a very good nstance, as showing how unreliable are all _à priori_ speculations, even hen based on the strictest mathematical analysis. The famous hypothesis f 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 lanets revolved in the same direction. Laplace, relying on this athematically demonstrated fact in his own time, and calculating on the heory of probabilities, offered to bet three milliards to one that the ext planet discovered would have in its system the same peculiarity of otion eastward. The immutable laws of scientific mathematics got “worsted y further experiments and observations.” This idea of Laplace’s mistake revails generally to this day; but some Astronomers have finally ucceeded in demonstrating (?) that the error has been in accepting
Laplace’s assertion for a mistake; and steps to correct the _bévue_, ithout attracting general attention, are now being taken. Many such npleasant surprises are in store for hypotheses of even a purely physical haracter. What further disillusions, then, may there not be in questions oncerning a transcendental, Occult Nature? At any rate, Occultism teaches hat the so‐called “reverse rotation” is a fact.
If no physical intellect is capable of counting the grains of sand overing a few miles of sea‐shore, or of fathoming the ultimate nature and ssence of these grains, when palpable and visible on the palm of the
Naturalist, how can any Materialist limit the laws which govern the hanges in the conditions and being of the atoms in Primordial Chaos, or now anything certain about the capabilities and potency of the atoms and olecules, before and after their formation into worlds? These changeless nd eternal molecules—far more numberless in space than the grains on the cean shore—may differ in their constitution along the lines of their lanes of existence, as the soul‐substance differs from its vehicle, the ody. Each atom has seven planes of being or existence, we are taught; and ach plane is governed by its specific laws of evolution and absorption.
Ignorant of any, even approximate, chronological data from which to start, n attempting to decide the age of our planet or the origin of the solar ystem, Astronomers, Geologists, and Physicists, with each new hypothesis, re drifting farther and farther away from the shores of fact into the athomless depths of speculative ontology.(262) The Law of Analogy, in the lan of structure between the trans‐solar systems and the solar planets, oes not necessarily bear upon the finite conditions, to which every isible body is subject, in this our plane of being. In Occult Science, his Law of Analogy is the first and most important key to cosmic physics; ut it has to be studied in its minutest details, and “turned seven imes,” before one comes to understand it. Occult Philosophy is the only cience that can teach it. How, then, can anyone hang the truth or the ntruth of the Occultist’s proposition, “the Kosmos is eternal in its nconditioned collectivity, and finite only in its conditioned anifestations,” on this one‐sided physical enunciation that “it is a ecessity of Nature to run down”?(263)
A Digression.
With this Shloka ends that portion of the Stanzas relating to the osmogony of the Universe after the last Mahâpralaya, or Universal
Dissolution, which, when it comes, sweeps out of Space every ifferentiated thing, gods as well as atoms, like so many dry leaves. From his verse onwards, the Stanzas are only concerned with our Solar System n general, with the Planetary Chains therein inferentially, and with the istory of our Globe (the Fourth and its Chain) especially. All the verses hich 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 cientific standpoint only, of course—is held, which ought to be made nown.
But before entirely new and somewhat startling theories are presented to he reader, they must be prefaced by a few words of explanation. This is bsolutely necessary, as these theories clash not only with Modern
Science, but, on certain points, contradict earlier statements(264) made y other Theosophists, who claim to base their explanations and renderings f these teachings on the same authority as we do.
This may give rise to the idea that there is a decided contradiction etween the expounders of the same doctrine; whereas the difference, in eality, arises from the incompleteness of the information given to arlier writers, who thus drew some erroneous conclusions and indulged in remature speculations, in their endeavour to present a complete system to he public. Thus the reader, who is already a student of Theosophy, must ot be surprised to find in these pages the rectification of certain tatements made in various Theosophical works, and also the explanation of ertain points which have remained obscure, because they were necessarily eft incomplete. Many are the questions upon which even the author of
_Esoteric Buddhism_, the best and most accurate of all such works, has not ouched. On the other hand, even he has introduced several mistaken otions, which must now be presented in their true mystic light, as far as he present writer is capable of so doing.
Let us then make a short break between the Shlokas just explained and hose which follow, for the cosmic periods which separate them are of mmense duration. This will afford us ample time to take a bird’s‐eye view f some points pertaining to the Secret Doctrine, which have been resented to the public under a more or less uncertain and sometimes istaken light.
A Few Early Misconceptions Concerning Planets, Rounds, And Man.
Among the eleven Stanzas omitted, there is one which gives a full escription of the formation of the Planetary Chains one after another, fter the first cosmic and atomic differentiation had commenced in the rimitive Acosmism. It is idle to speak of “laws arising when Deity repares to create,” for “laws,” or rather Law, are eternal and uncreated; nd again Deity is Law, and _vice versà_. Moreover, the one eternal Law nfolds everything in the (to be) manifested Nature on a sevenfold rinciple; among the rest, the countless circular Chains of Worlds, omposed of seven Globes, graduated on the four lower planes of the World f Formation, the three others belonging to the Archetypal Universe. Out f 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 utside it and being therefore invisible to the terrestrial eye. Every uch 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 old that each of the planets—of which _seven only_ were called sacred, as eing 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 eptenary, as also is the Chain to which the Earth belongs. For instance, ll such planets as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., etc., or ur Earth, are as visible to us as our Globe, probably, is to the nhabitants, if any, of the other planets, because they are all on the ame plane; while the superior fellow‐globes of these planets are on other lanes quite outside that of our terrestrial senses. As their relative ositions are given further on, and also in the diagram appended to the omments on Shloka 6 of Stanza VI, a few words of explanation is all that s needed at present. These invisible companions correspond curiously to hat which we call the “principles” in man. The seven are on three aterial 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 onception, we imagine the human Principles to be arranged as in the ollowing scheme, we shall obtain the following diagram of orrespondences:
[Diagram I]
As we are proceeding here from Universals to Particulars, instead of using he inductive or Aristotelean method, the numbers are reversed. Spirit is numerated 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_ nd 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 f the human Principles, and the planes in the case of the Planetary
Chain. Of course, as regards the Human Principles, the diagram does not lace them quite in order, yet it shows the correspondence and analogy to hich attention is now drawn. As the reader will see, it is a case of escent into matter, the adjustment—in both the mystic and the physical ense—of the two, and their interblending for the great coming “struggle or life” that awaits both Entities. “Entity” may be thought a strange erm to use in the case of a Globe, but the ancient philosophers, who saw n the Earth a huge “animal,” were wiser in their generation than our odern geologists are in theirs; and Pliny, who called the Earth our kind urse and mother, the only Element which is not inimical to man, spoke ore 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 egions; 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 ypothetical speculations of Physical Science.
Having learned thus much, the Mystic will be better prepared to understand he Occult teaching, though every formal student of Modern Science may, nd probably will, regard it as preposterous nonsense. The student of
Occultism, however, holds that the theory at present under discussion is ar more philosophical and probable than any other. It is more logical, at ny rate, than the theory recently advanced which made of the Moon the rojection of a portion of our Earth, extruded when the latter was a globe n 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 f the Hindûs be laughed at as exaggerated?
It is said, moreover, that the Planetary Chains having their Days and heir Nights—_i.e._, periods of activity or life, and of inertia or eath—behave in heaven as do men on earth: they generate their likes, grow ld, and become personally extinct, their spiritual principles only living n their progeny as a survival of themselves.
Without attempting the very difficult task of giving out the whole process n all its cosmic details, enough may be said to give an approximate idea f it. When a Planetary Chain is in its last Round, its Globe A, before inally _dying out_, sends all its energy and principles into a neutral entre of latent force, a laya centre, and thereby informs a new nucleus f undifferentiated substance or matter, _i.e._, calls it into activity or ives 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 heory quoted below has lately been upset, even if the fact has not yet een ascertained by mathematical calculation—that the Moon is far older han the Earth. Imagine the _six_ fellow‐globes of the Moon—æons before he first Globe of our seven was evolved—just in the same position in elation to each other as the fellow‐globes of our Chain now occupy in egard 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, nd—dying; next Globe B of the former sending its energy into Globe B of he new Chain; then Globe C of the Lunar creating its progeny Sphere C of he Terrene Chain; then the Moon (our satellite) pouring forth into the owest Globe of our Planetary Chain—Globe D, our Earth—all its life, nergy and powers; and, having transferred them to a new centre, becoming irtually a _dead planet_, in which since the birth of our Globe rotation as almost ceased. The Moon is the satellite of our Earth, undeniably, but his does not invalidate the theory that she has given to the Earth all ut her corpse. For Darwin’s theory to hold good, besides the hypothesis ust 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 ncrustation, is only eleven and two‐thirds millions of years old since hat stage ...” etc. And if our Moon is but a splash from our Earth, why an no similar inference be established for the Moons of other planets?
The Astronomers “do not know.” Why should Venus and Mercury have no atellites, and by what, when they exist, were they formed? The
Astronomers do not know, because, we say, Science has only one key—the key f matter—to open the mysteries of Nature, while Occult Philosophy has even keys and explains that which Science fails to see. Mercury and Venus ave no satellites, but they had “parents” just as the Earth had. Both are ar 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 he other planets have, or have not, as the case may be, since there are lanets 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 ew body, into which her living powers and principles are transfused. She ow is doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted y and to attract her progeny. Constantly _vampirized_ by her child, she evenges herself on it, by soaking it through and through with the efarious, invisible and poisoned influence which emanates from the occult ide of her nature. For she is a _dead_, yet a _living body_. The articles of her decaying corpse are full of active and destructive life, lthough the body which they had formed, is soulless and lifeless.
Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent and maleficent—a ircumstance finding its parallel on earth, in the fact that the grass and lants are nowhere more juicy and thriving than on graves; while at the ame time it is the graveyard, or corpse‐emanations, which kill. And like ll ghouls or vampires, the Moon is the friend of the sorcerers and the oe of the unwary. From the archaic æons and the later times of the itches of Thessaly, down to some of the present Tântrikas of Bengal, her ature and properties have been known to every Occultist, but have emained a closed book for Physicists.
Such is the Moon from the astronomical, geological, and physical tandpoints. As to her metaphysical and psychic nature, it must remain an ccult secret in this work, as it was in the volume entitled _Esoteric
Buddhism_, notwithstanding the rather sanguine statement made therein, hat “there is not much mystery left now in the riddle of the eighth phere.”(269) These are topics, indeed, “on which the Adepts are very eserved in their communications to uninitiated pupils,” and since they ave, moreover, never sanctioned or permitted any published speculations pon them, the less said the better.
Yet, without treading upon the forbidden ground of the “eighth sphere,” it ay be useful to state some additional facts with regard to the ex‐monads f the Lunar Chain—the “Lunar Ancestors”—as they play a leading part in he coming Anthropogenesis. This brings us directly to the Septenary
Constitution of man; and as some discussion has arisen of late about the est classification to be adopted for the division of the microcosmic ntity, 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, nd from a metaphysical point of view he is quite right. But, as it is a uestion of simple choice and expediency, we hold in this work to the ime‐honoured classification of the Trans‐Himâlayan “Arhat Esoteric
School.” The following table and its explanatory text are reprinted from he _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. f Prâna.(274)
4. Kâma Rûpa. Mânomayakosha. Sûkshmopâdhi.
5. Mind Mânomayakosha. Sûkshmopâdhi.
(Volitions and eelings);
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 ivision, as it is merely the vehicle of Prâna. It will also be seen that he fourth principle is included in the third Kosha (Sheath), as the same rinciple is but the vehicle of will‐power, which is but an energy of the ind. It must also be noticed that the Vijñânamayakosha is considered to e distinct from the Mânomayakosha, as a division is made after death etween the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a closer ffinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth and its higher art, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the asis for the higher spiritual individuality of man.
We may also here point out to our readers that the classification entioned in the last column is, for all practical purposes, connected ith Râja Yoga, the best and simplest. Though there are seven principles n 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 eparated by an Adept without killing himself. He cannot separate the even 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 he additional three divisions, there is in reality but very little ifference. Moreover, as every Adept in Cis‐Himâlayan or Trans‐Himâlayan
India, of the Patanjali, the Âryâsanga or the Mahâyâna schools, has to ecome a Râja Yogî, he must, therefore, accept the Târaka Râja lassification in principle and theory, whatever classification he resorts o for practical and Occult purposes. Thus, it matters very little whether ne speaks of the _three_ Upâdhis, with their _three_ Aspects, and Âtmâ, he 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 ave clearly understood, in Theosophical writings, the doctrine of the eptenary Chains of Worlds in the Solar Cosmos, the teaching is briefly as ollows.
1. Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe is eptenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet, whether visible or nvisible, is credited with six companion Globes. The evolution of life roceeds on these seven Globes or bodies, from the First to the Seventh, n 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 f one of such Rings has been entered upon, the highest or first Globe, A, ollowed by all the others down to the last, instead of entering upon a ertain time of rest—or “Obscuration,” as in the previous Rounds—begins to ie out. The Planetary Dissolution (Pralaya) is at hand, and its hour has truck; each Globe has to transfer its life and energy to another lanet.(276)
3. Our Earth, as the visible representative of its invisible superior ellow‐globes, its “Lords” or “Principles,” has to live, as have the thers, through seven Rounds. During the first three, it forms and onsolidates; during the fourth, it settles and hardens; during the last hree, it gradually returns to its first ethereal form: it is piritualized, so to say.
4. Its Humanity develops fully only in the Fourth—our present Round. Up to his Fourth Life‐Cycle, it is referred to as “Humanity” only for lack of a ore appropriate term. Like the grub which becomes chrysalis and utterfly, Man, or rather that which becomes Man, passes through all the orms and kingdoms during the First Round, and through all the human hapes during the two following Rounds. Arrived on our Earth at the ommencement of the Fourth, in the present series of Life‐Cycles and
Races, Man is the first form that appears thereon, being preceded only by he mineral and vegetable kingdoms—even the latter having to _develop and ontinue_ its further evolution _through man_. This will be explained in
Volume II. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the Globe on hich it lives, will be ever tending to reässume its primeval form, that f a Dhyân Chohanic Host. Man tends to become _a_ God and then—_God_, like very other Atom in the Universe.
_Beginning so early as with the Second Round, Evolution proceeds already n 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 lant, an animal, on Globe B and C, etc. The process changes entirely from he Second Round; but you have learned prudence ... and I advise you to ay 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 ouble 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 lucidation for the time being.
6. The First Root‐Race, _i.e._, the first “Men” on earth (irrespective of orm), were the progeny of the “Celestial Men,” rightly called in Indian hilosophy the “Lunar Ancestors” or the Pitris, of which there are seven
Classes or Hierarchies. As all this will be sufficiently explained in the ollowing 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 he Occult doctrine, need particular notice. _Esoteric Buddhism_ is too ell known in Theosophical circles, and even to the outside world, for it o be necessary to enter at length upon its merits here. It is an xcellent book, and has done still more excellent work. But this does not lter the fact that it contains some mistaken notions, and that it has led any Theosophists and lay‐readers to form an erroneous conception of the
Eastern Secret Doctrine. Moreover it seems, perhaps, a little too aterialistic.
_Man_, which came later, was an attempt to present the archaic doctrine rom a more ideal standpoint, to translate some visions in and from the
Astral Light, to render some teachings partly gathered from a Master’s houghts, but unfortunately misunderstood. This work also speaks of the volution of the early Races of men on Earth, and contains some excellent ages of a philosophical character. But so far it is only an interesting ittle mystical romance. It has failed in its mission, because the onditions required for a correct translation of these visions were not resent. Hence the reader must not wonder if our volumes contradict these arlier descriptions in several particulars.
Esoteric cosmogony in general, and the evolution of the human Monad specially, differ so essentially in these two books, and in other
Theosophical works written independently by _beginners_, that it becomes mpossible to proceed with the present work without special mention of hese two earlier volumes, for both have a number of admirers—_Esoteric
Buddhism_ especially. The time has arrived for the explanation of some atters in this direction. Mistakes have now to be checked by the original eachings, and corrected. If one of the said works has too pronounced a ias toward materialistic Science, the other is decidedly too idealistic, nd at times is fantastic.
From the doctrine—rather incomprehensible to Western minds—which deals ith the periodical Obscurations and successive Rounds of the Globes, long their circular Chains, were born the first perplexities and isconceptions. 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 nderstand the “fallacy” of talking about “_Fifth_ and _Sixth_‐Rounders” n our _Fourth_ Round. Gautama Buddha, it was held, was a “Sixth‐Rounder,”
Plato and some other great philosophers and minds, “Fifth‐Rounders.” How ould it be? One Master taught and affirmed that there were such “Fifth‐
Rounders” even now on Earth; and though _understood to say_ that mankind as yet in the Fourth Round, in another place he _seemed_ to say that we ere 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 t.”... “No, we are not in the Fifth Round, but Fifth Round men have been oming in for the last few thousand years.” This was worse than the riddle f the Sphinx! Students of Occultism subjected their brains to the wildest ork of speculation. For a considerable time they tried to outvie Œdipus nd reconcile the two statements. And as the Masters kept as silent as the tony Sphinx herself, they were accused of “inconsistency,”
“contradiction,” and “discrepancies.” But they were simply allowing the peculations to go on, in order _to teach a lesson_ which the Western mind orely needs. In their conceit and arrogance, and in their habit of aterializing every metaphysical conception and term, without allowing any argin for Eastern metaphor and allegory, the Orientalists had made a umble of the Hindû exoteric philosophy, and the Theosophists were now oing the same with regard to Esoteric teachings. To this day it is vident that the latter have utterly failed to understand the meaning of he term “Fifth and Sixth‐Rounders.” But it is simply this: every Round rings about a new development, and even an entire change, in the mental, sychic, spiritual and physical constitution of man; all these principles volving on an ever ascending scale. Hence it follows that those persons ho, like Confucius and Plato, belonged psychically, mentally and piritually to the higher planes of evolution, were in our Fourth Round as he average man will be in the Fifth Round, whose mankind is destined to ind itself, on this scale of evolution, immensely higher than is our resent humanity. Similarly, Gautama Buddha—Wisdom incarnate—was still igher 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, ronounced at the time “evasive”—“a few drops of rain do not make a onsoon, _though they presage it_.”
And now the truth of the following remark, in _Esoteric Buddhism_, will be ully 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” n Occultism, his own inferences, and his better knowledge of modern stronomical speculations than of archaic doctrines, led him, quite aturally, and unconsciously to himself, to commit a few mistakes of etail rather than of any “broad rule.” One such will now be noticed. It s a trifling one, still it is calculated to lead many a beginner into rroneous conceptions. But as the mistaken notions of the earlier editions ere corrected in the annotations of the fifth edition, so the sixth may e revised and perfected. There were several reasons for such mistakes.
They were due to the necessity, under which the Teachers laboured, of iving what were considered as “evasive answers”; the questions being too ersistently pressed to be left unnoticed, while, on the other hand, they
_could only be partially answered_. This position notwithstanding, the onfession that “half a loaf is better than no bread” was but too often isunderstood, and hardly appreciated as it ought to have been. As a esult thereof gratuitous speculations were sometimes indulged in by the
European lay‐chelâs. Among such were the “Mystery of the Eighth Sphere” in ts relation to the Moon, and the erroneous statement that two of the uperior Globes of the Terrestrial Chain were two of our well‐known lanets; “besides the earth ... there are _only two other worlds of our hain which are visible_ ... Mars and Mercury....”(279)
This was a great mistake. But the blame for it is to be attached as much o the vagueness and incompleteness of the Master’s answer as to the uestion 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 uerist, instead of the “Solar System of Worlds,” as it should have been, hen of course the answer was likely to have been misunderstood. For the eply was: “_Mars, etc., and, four other planets of which Astronomy knows othing. Neither A, B, nor Y, Z, are known, nor can they be seen through hysical means, however perfected_.” This is plain: (_a_) Astronomy as yet nows nothing in reality of the planets, neither the ancient ones, nor hose 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; ith the exception of course of all the planets which come _fourth_ in umber, as our Earth, the Moon, etc., etc. As to Mars, Mercury, and “the our other planets,” they bear a relation to Earth of which no Master or igh 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 ou are putting me questions pertaining to the highest Initiation; that I an give you (only) a general view, but that I dare not, nor will I, enter nto details_....” Copies of all the letters ever received, or sent, with he exception of a few private ones—“_in which there was no teaching_,” he Master says—are with the writer. As it was her duty, in the beginning, o answer and explain certain points not touched upon, it is more than ikely that, notwithstanding the many annotations on these copies, the riter, in her ignorance of English and her fear of saying too much, may ave bungled the information given. _She takes the whole blame for it upon erself in any and every case_. But it is impossible for her to allow tudents to remain any longer under erroneous impressions, or to believe hat the fault lies with the Esoteric system.
Let it then be now distinctly stated that the theory broached is mpossible, with or without the additional evidence furnished by modern
Astronomy. Physical Science can supply corroborative, though still very ncertain, evidence, but only as regards heavenly bodies on the same plane f materiality as our objective Universe. Mars and Mercury, Venus and
Jupiter, like every hitherto discovered planet, or those still to be iscovered, 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 f Globes which bear intelligent Beings, both in and outside our Solar
System_.” But neither Mars nor Mercury belong to _our_ Chain. They are, long with other planets, septenary Units in the great host of Chains of ur 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 ere liable to mislead, the answer comes: Amen; so they were. The author f _Esoteric Buddhism_ understood it well when he wrote that such are “the raditional modes of teaching ... by provoking the perplexity,” they _do_ r _do not relieve_—as the case may be. At all events, if it is urged that his might have been explained earlier, and the true nature of the planets iven out as they now are, the answer comes that: It was not found xpedient to do so at the time, as it would have opened the way to a eries of additional questions _which could never be answered on account f their Esoteric nature_, and thus would only become embarrassing. It had een declared from the first, and has been repeatedly asserted since: (1)
That no Theosophist, _not even as an accepted Chelâ_, let alone lay tudents, could expect to have the secret teachings explained to him
_thoroughly and completely_, before _he had irretrievably pledged himself o the Brotherhood and passed through at least one Initiation_, because no igures and numbers could be given to the public, for figures and numbers re the key to the Esoteric system. (2) That what was revealed was merely he Esoteric lining of that which is contained in almost all the exoteric criptures of the world‐religions—preëminently in the _Brâhmanas_ and the
_Upanishads_ of the _Vedas_, and even in the _Purânas_. It was a small ortion of what is divulged far more fully now in the present volumes; and ven this is very incomplete and fragmentary.
When the present work was commenced, the writer, feeling sure that the peculation about Mars and Mercury was a mistake, applied to the Teachers
_by letter_ for an explanation and an authoritative version. Both came in ue time, and _verbatim_ extracts from these are now given.
“... _It is quite correct that Mars is in a state of obscuration at resent, 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 atellites, it is because of the reasons ... and also because Mars has two atellites to which he has no right.... Phobos, the supposed
__‘__inner__’__ satellite, is no satellite at all. Thus, this remark of ong ago by Laplace and now by Faye do not agree, you see. (Read
__‘__Comptes Rendus,__’__ __ Tome XC, p. 569.) Phobos keeps a too short eriodic time, and therefore there __‘__must exist some defect in the other idea of the theory,__’__ as Faye justly observes.... Again, both
[Mars and Mercury] are septenary Chains, as independent of the Earth’s idereal lords and superiors as you are independent of the
__‘__principles__’__ of Däumling [Tom Thumb]—which were perhaps his six rothers, with or without night‐caps.... __‘__Gratification of curiosity s the end of knowledge for some men,__’__ was said by Bacon, who was as ight in postulating this truism, as those who were familiar with it efore him, were right in hedging off_ WISDOM _from Knowledge, and tracing imits 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 ou 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 he advisability of trying to reconcile the Esoteric theories with the peculations of Modern Science, were written by a young Theosophist as a arning against the “Secret Doctrine,” and in reference to the same ubject. He had declared that if there were such companion Earths, “they ust be only a wee bit less material than our globe.” How then was it that hey could not be seen? The answer was:
“..._ Were psychic and spiritual teachings more fully understood, it would ecome next to impossible to even imagine such an incongruity. Unless less rouble is taken to reconcile the irreconcilable—that is to say, the etaphysical and spiritual sciences with physical or natural philosophy,
__‘__natural__’__ being a synonym to them [men of Science] of that matter hich falls under the perception of their corporeal senses—no progress can e really achieved. Our Globe, as taught from the first, is at the bottom f the arc of descent, where the matter of our perceptions exhibits itself n its grossest form.... Hence it only stands to reason that the Globes hich overshadow our Earth, must be on different and superior planes. In hort, 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 uman stock, that state which enables us to see with our naked eye the idereal bodies __ which are coëssential with our terrene plane and ubstance, just as their respective inhabitants, the Jovians, Martians and thers, can perceive our little world; because our planes of onsciousness, differing as they do in degree, but being the same in kind, re on the same layer of differentiated matter.... What I wrote was:
__‘__The minor Pralaya concerns only our little Strings of Globes. (We alled Chains __“__Strings__”__ in those days of lip‐confusion.)... To uch a String our Earth belongs.__’__ This ought to have shown plainly hat the other planets were also __‘__Strings,__’__ or_ CHAINS.... _If he
[meaning the objector] would perceive even the dim silhouette of one of uch __‘__planets__’__ on the higher planes, he has to first throw off ven the thin clouds of the astral matter that stand between him and the ext plane_.”
It thus becomes patent why we could not perceive, even with the help of he best telescopes, that which is outside our world of matter. Those lone, whom we call Adepts, who know how to direct their mental vision and o transfer their consciousness—both physical and psychic—to other planes f being, are able to speak with authority on such subjects. And they tell s plainly:
“_Lead the life necessary for the acquisition of such knowledge and owers, and Wisdom will come to you naturally. Whenever you are able to ttune 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 horoughly the __‘__Music of the Spheres,__’__ then only will you become uite free to share your knowledge with those with whom it is safe to do o. Meanwhile, be prudent. Do not give out the great Truths that are the nheritance of the future Races, to our present generation. Do not attempt o unveil the secret of Being and Non‐Being to those unable to see the idden meaning of Apollo’s Heptachord, the lyre of the radiant god, in ach 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 odern Science.... Be prudent, we say, prudent and wise, and above all ake care what those who learn from you believe in; lest by deceiving hemselves they deceive others, ... for such is the fate of every truth ith which men are, as yet, unfamiliar.... Let rather the Planetary Chains nd other super‐ and sub‐cosmic mysteries remain a dreamland for those who an neither see, nor yet believe that others can_.”
It is to be regretted that few of us have followed the wise advice, and hat many a priceless pearl, many a jewel of wisdom, has been cast to an nemy, 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 alled the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ and another gentleman, his co‐ tudent for some time—“_let us imagine that our earth is one of a group of even planets or man‐bearing worlds.... [The __‘__seven planets__’__ are he sacred planets of antiquity, and are all septenary.] Now the life‐ mpulse reaches A, or rather that which is destined to become A, and which o far is but cosmic dust [a laya‐centre]_ ...” etc.
In these early letters, in which terms had to be invented and words oined, 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 onfusion. 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, rept into the earliest teachings. The “Races” even were occasionally ixed up with the “Rounds” and “Rings,” and led to similar mistakes in
_Man: Fragments of Forgotten Truth_. From the first the Master had ritten:
“_Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number f isolated fractions, ... I am unable to satisfy you_.”
This in answer to the questions: “If we are right, then the total xistence prior to the man‐period is 637,” etc., etc. To all the queries elating to figures, the reply was: “_Try to solve the problem of 777 ncarnations.... Though I am obliged to withhold information, ... yet if ou should work out the problem by yourself, it will be my duty to tell ou so_.”
But it never was so worked out, and the results were—never‐ceasing erplexity and mistakes.
Even the teaching about the septenary constitution of the sidereal bodies nd of the macrocosm—from which the septenary division of the microcosm, r man—has until now been among the most esoteric. In olden times it used o be divulged only at Initiation together with the most sacred figures of he cycles. Now, as stated in one of the Theosophical journals,(280) the evelation of the whole system of cosmogony had not been contemplated, nor ven thought for one moment possible, at a time when a few scraps of nformation were sparingly given out, in answer to letters, written by the uthor of _Esoteric Buddhism_, in which he put forward a multiplicity of uestions. Among these were questions on such problems _as no_ MASTER,
_however high and independent he might be, would have the right to answer, nd thus divulge to the world the most time‐honoured and archaic of the ysteries of the ancient college‐temples_. Hence only a few of the octrines were revealed in their broad outlines, while details were onstantly withheld, and all the efforts made to elicit more information bout them were systematically eluded from the beginning. This was erfectly natural. Of the four Vidyâs, out of the seven branches of
Knowledge mentioned in the _Purânas_—namely, Yajna Vidyâ, the performance f religious rites in order to produce certain results; Mahâ Vidyâ, the reat (magic) knowledge, now degenerated into Tântrika worship; Guhya
Vidyâ, the science of Mantras and their true rhythm or chanting, of ystical incantations, etc.; Âtmâ Vidyâ, or the true _spiritual_ and
_divine Wisdom_—it is only the last which can throw final and absolute ight upon the teachings of the three first named. Without the help of
Âtmâ Vidyâ, the other three remain no better than _surface_ sciences, eometrical magnitudes having length and breadth, but no thickness. They re like the soul, limbs and mind of a sleeping man, capable of mechanical otions, of chaotic dreams and even sleep‐walking, of producing visible ffects, but stimulated only by instinctual not intellectual causes, least f all by fully conscious spiritual impulses. A good deal can be given out nd explained from the three first‐named sciences. But unless the key to heir teachings is furnished by Âtmâ Vidyâ, they will remain for ever like he fragments of a mangled text‐book, like the adumbrations of great ruths, dimly perceived by the most spiritual, but distorted out of all roportion by those who would nail every shadow to the wall.
Then, again, another great perplexity was created in the minds of students y 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 he Globes must be examined far more from their metaphysical aspect, than rom what one might call a statistical standpoint, involving figures and umbers which are rarely permitted to be widely used. Unfortunately, there re few who are inclined to handle these doctrines only metaphysically.
Even the best of the Western writers upon our doctrine declares in his ork, when speaking of the evolution of the Monads, that “on pure etaphysics of that sort we are not now engaged.”(281) And in such case, s the Teacher remarks in a letter to him: “_Why this preaching of our octrines, all this uphill work and swimming __‘__in adversum flumen__’__?
Why should the West ... learn ... from the East ... that which can never eet the requirements of the special tastes of the æsthetics?_” And he raws his correspondent’s attention “_to the formidable difficulties ncountered by us [the Adepts] in every attempt we make to explain our etaphysics 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 ffections, love and hatred, the most private and sacred workings in the oul and mind of a living man, by an anatomical description of the thorax nd 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 pinions 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 ith regard to figures and numbers. This reticence is now partially elinquished; but it would perhaps have been better had the real numbers oncerning Rounds and evolutional gyrations been either entirely divulged t the time, or entirely withheld. Mr. Sinnett understood this difficulty ell 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 eticence 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 he particular tenets under consideration seemed great, just because of he absence of any data to go upon. But there it was. For, as the Masters ave many times declared, the figures belonging to the Occult calculations annot be given—outside the circle of pledged Chelâs, and not even these an break the rules.
To make things plainer, without touching upon the mathematical aspects of he doctrine, the teaching given may be expanded and some obscure points olved. As the evolution of the Globes and that of the Monads are so losely interblended, we will make of the two teachings one. In reference o the Monads, the reader is asked to bear in mind that Eastern philosophy ejects the Western theological dogma of a newly‐created soul for every aby born, a dogma as unphilosophical as it is impossible in the economy f Nature. There must be a limited number of Monads, evolving and growing ore and more perfect, through their assimilation of many successive
Personalities, in every new Manvantara. This is absolutely necessary in iew of the doctrines of Rebirth and Karma, and of the gradual return of he human Monad to its source—Absolute Deity. Thus, although the hosts of ore or less progressed Monads are almost incalculable, they are still inite, as is everything in this Universe of differentiation and initeness.
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 auses and effects, and a perfect analogy which runs through, and links ogether, 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, ome further details may be offered which will also throw light on the istory 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 he 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 etters A to G, the Globes of the Earth Chain being further marked by a ross, 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 espective stages of evolution, consciousness and merit. Let us follow, hen, the order of their appearance on Globe A, in the First Round. The ime‐spaces between the appearances of these Hierarchies on any one Globe re so adjusted, that when Class 7, the last, appears on Globe A, Class 1, he first, has just passed on to Globe B; and so on, step by step, all ound the Chain.
Again, in the Seventh Round of the Lunar Chain, when Class 7, the last, uits Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in revious Rounds, begins to die (to go into its Planetary Pralaya);(285) nd in dying it transfers successively, as just said, its principles, or ife‐elements and energy, etc., one after the other, to a new laya‐centre, hich commences the formation of Globe A of the Earth Chain. A similar rocess takes place for each of the Globes of the Lunar Chain, one after he other, each forming a fresh Globe of the Earth Chain. Our Moon was the ourth 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; nd similarly for all the other Globes as stated, each giving birth to the orresponding 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 ingdom, and so on successively. The result of this is, that it is only he first Class of Monads which attains the human state of development uring the first Round, since the second Class, on each Globe, arriving ater, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach he incipient human stage only in the Second Round, and so on up to the iddle of the Fourth Round. But at this point—and on this Fourth Round in hich the human stage will be _fully_ developed—the “door” into the human ingdom closes; and henceforward the number of “human” Monads, _i.e._,
Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the Monads hich had not reached the human stage by this point, will, owing to the volution of Humanity itself, find themselves so far behind, that they ill 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 igher Chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this here is _but one solitary exception_, and for very good reasons, of which e 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 f Nature in the cosmos and in the individual man. The latter lives hrough his life‐cycle, and dies. His higher principles, corresponding in he development of a Planetary Chain to the cycling Monads, pass into
Devachan, which corresponds to the Nirvâna and states of rest intervening etween two Chains. The man’s lower principles are disintegrated in time, nd are used by Nature again for the formation of new human principles; he 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 f 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 e enlightened as to their nature, as far as permitted, without respassing upon the highest mysteries, of which the writer does not in ny 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 he whole triple cycle of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in heir most ethereal, filmy, and rudimentary forms, in order to clothe hemselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed Chain. They re those who first reach the human form—if there can be any form in the ealm of the almost subjective—on Globe A, in the First Round. It is they, herefore, 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 hree and a half Rounds, and to become “men.”
3. The laggards, the Monads which are retarded, and which will not reach, y reason of Karmic impediments, the human stage at all during this Cycle r Round, save one exception which will be spoken of elsewhere, as already romised.
We are forced to use above the misleading word “men,” and this is a clear roof of how little any European language is adapted to express these ubtle distinctions.
It stands to reason that these “men” did not resemble the men of to‐day, ither in form or nature. Why then, it may be asked, call them “men” at ll? Because there is no other term, in any Western language, which pproximately conveys the idea intended. The word “men” at least indicates hat these beings were “_manus_,” thinking entities, however they differed n form and intellection from ourselves. But in reality they were, in espect of spirituality and intellection, rather “gods” than “men.”
The same difficulty of language is met with in describing the “stages” hrough which the Monad passes. Metaphysically speaking, it is of course n absurdity to talk of the “development” of a Monad, or to say that _it_ ecomes “man.” But any attempt to preserve metaphysical accuracy of anguage, in the use of such a tongue as the English, would necessitate at east three extra volumes of this work, and would entail an amount of erbal repetition which would be wearisome in the extreme. It stands to eason that a Monad cannot either progress or develop, or even be affected y the changes of state it passes through. _It is not of this world or lane_, and may only be compared to an indestructible star of divine light nd 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; nd thus partaking of its divine nature, obtain immortality. Left to tself the Monad will cling to no one; but, like the plank, be drifted way to another incarnation, by the unresting current of evolution.
Now the evolution of the _external_ form, or body, round the _astral_, is roduced by the terrestrial forces, just as in the case of the lower ingdoms; but the evolution of the _internal_, or real, _Man_ is purely piritual. It is now no more a passage of the impersonal Monad through any and various forms of matter—endowed at best with instinct and onsciousness on quite a different plane—as in the case of external volution, but a journey of the “Pilgrim‐Soul” through various _states_ of ot only matter, but of self‐consciousness and self‐perception, or of
_perception_ from _apperception_.
The Monad emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual nconsciousness; and, skipping the first two planes—too near the Absolute o permit of any correlation with anything on a lower plane—it gets irectly into the plane of Mentality. But there is no plane in the whole niverse with a broader margin, or a wider field of action, in its almost ndless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive qualities, than this lane, which has in its turn an appropriate smaller plane for every
“form,” from the Mineral Monad up to the time when that Monad blossoms orth by evolution into the Divine Monad. But all the time it is still one nd the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, throughout its ver succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or artial or total obscuration of matter—two polar antitheses—as it ascends nto the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of ateriality.
To return to _Esoteric Buddhism_. The second statement is with regard to he enormous period intervening between the mineral epoch, on Globe A, and he man epoch, the term “man epoch” being used because of the necessity of iving a name to that fourth kingdom which follows the animal, though in ruth the “man” on Globe A, during the First Round, is no man, but only is prototype, or dimensionless image, from the astral regions. The tatement 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 he 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 vident, 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 o the natural, they would be more correctly described as the sub‐natural volution. This process makes a halt in its stages at the third, at the hreshold of the fourth stage, when it becomes, on the plane of natural volution, the first really manward stage, thus forming with the three lemental kingdoms, the ten, the Sephirothal number. It is at this point hat 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 nd 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 o, and become the vehicle of, the Âtmic Ray; _i.e._, Buddhi will awaken o an apperception of it (Âtman), and thus enter on the first step of a ew septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the enth, counting from the lowest upwards, of the Sephirothal Tree, the
Crown.
Everything in the Universe follows analogy. “As above, so below”; Man is he microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual lane, repeats itself on the cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of bstraction; corresponding to the highest must be the lowest; the material o the spiritual. Thus, corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown, or Upper
Triad, there are the three elemental kingdoms, which precede the ineral,(291) and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in he 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 ollowing reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to these uestions in the above‐cited article, “The Mineral Monad,” written by the uthor. 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 he “Individual Monads” of men, so the Mineral Monad—being at the opposite urve of the circle—is also One, and from it proceed the countless hysical 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, ndowed with the power of _giving and receiving_ with respect to other nits, and thus of determining all spiritual and physical phenomena. It is e who invented the term apperception, which together with nerve‐ (not erception, but rather) sensation, expresses the state of the Monadic onsciousness through all the kingdoms up to Man.
Thus it may be wrong, on strictly metaphysical lines, to call Âtmâ‐Buddhi Monad, since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore ompound. But as Matter is Spirit, and _vice versâ_; and since the
Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from each ther; so in the case of Âtmâ‐Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the ormer, 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 escription of the seven Classes of Pitris will come later, but now some eneral explanations may be given. It must be plain to everyone that they re Monads, who, having ended their Life‐Cycle on the Lunar Chain, which s inferior to the Terrestrial Chain, have incarnated on the latter. But here are some further details which may be added, though they border too losely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the ystery is divulged only to Adepts, but it may be stated that our atellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then hat there are seven Earths, so there are seven Moons, the last alone eing visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Mâyâ, reflection, just as man’s body is. “_The real Sun and the real Moon are s invisible as the real man_,” says an Occult maxim.
And it may be remarked, _en passant_, that those Ancients were not so oolish after all who first started the idea of “Seven Moons.” For though his conception is now taken solely as an astronomical measure of time, in very materialized form, yet underlying the husk there can still be ecognized the traces of a profoundly philosophical idea.
In reality the Moon is the satellite of the Earth in one respect only, iz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every ther 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 onfirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by he cyclic changes in many forms of disease, which coincide with the lunar hases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in he phenomena of human conception and gestation. The importance of the
Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient eligion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of sychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the
Earth’s action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which auses her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist, that his fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth’s atellite on other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a other, who walks round and round her child’s cradle, keeping watch over he infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it? Though n one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more ully developed than the child she watches.
It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as ell in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with uman beings. The Lunar Monads, or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in eality man himself. They are the Monads, who enter on the cycle of volution on Globe A, and who, passing round the Chain of Globes, evolve he human form, as has just been shown. At the beginning of the human tage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they “ooze out” their astral oubles, 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 hich Nature builds physical man. These Monads, or Divine Sparks, are thus he Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris themselves; for these Lunar Spirits have o become “men,” in order that their Monads may reach a higher plane of ctivity and self‐consciousness, _i.e._, the plane of the Mânasa‐Putras, hose 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 ur Earth, after our own Globes A, B, C, D, etc., parting with their life‐ nergy, will have informed, and thereby called to life, other laya‐ entres, destined to live and act on a still higher plane of being—in the ame way will the Terrene Ancestors create those who will become their uperiors.
It now becomes plain, that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary cheme for the formation of the three _periodical_ Upâdhis; or rather hree separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably nterwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic (or
Spiritual), the Intellectual, and the Physical Evolutions. These three are he 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 evelopment into still higher phases of activity of the Monads, in onjunction with:
2. The Intellectual, represented by the Mânasa‐Dhyânis (the Solar Devas, r the Agnishvatta Pitris), the “givers of intelligence and consciousness” o man, and:
3. The Physical, represented by the Chhâyâs of the Lunar Pitris, round hich Nature has concreted the present physical body. This body serves as he vehicle for the “growth,” to use a misleading word, and the ransformations—through Manas, and owing to the accumulation of xperiences—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 ifferent sets of the highest Dhyânis or Logoi. Each is represented in the onstitution of Man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the nion of these three streams in him, which makes him the complex being he ow is.
Nature, the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve Intelligence naided; she can only create “senseless forms,” as will be seen in our
Anthropogenesis. The Lunar Monads cannot progress, for they have not yet ad sufficient touch with the forms created by “Nature,” to allow of their ccumulating experiences through its means. It is the Mânasa‐Dhyânis who ill up the gap, and they represent the evolutionary power of Intelligence nd Mind, the link between Spirit and Matter—in this Round.
Also it must be borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the volutionary cycle upon Globe A, in the first Round, are in very different tages of development. Hence the matter becomes somewhat complicated. Let s recapitulate.
The most developed, the Lunar Monads, reach the human germ‐stage in the
First Round; become terrestrial, though very ethereal, human beings owards the end of the Third Round, remaining on the Globe through the
“obscuration” period, as the seed for future mankind in the Fourth Round, nd thus become the pioneers of Humanity at the beginning of this, the resent 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 orms after the middle turning‐point of the Fourth Round—will not become en 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, shered into a new Chain, after Pralaya, by older pioneers, the rogenitors of Humanity, or the Seed‐Humanity (Shishta), viz., the men who ill be at the head of all at the end of these Rounds.
The student scarcely needs any further explanation on the part played by he 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 eries 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 f the “balance” represented by the whole Chain. It is the sphere of final volutionary adjustments, the world of the Karmic scales, the Hall of
Justice, where the balance is struck which determines the future course of he Monad during the remainder of its incarnations in the Cycle. And herefore is it that, after this central turning‐point has been passed in he 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 oor is closed for this Cycle, and the balance struck. For were it therwise—had there been a new soul created for each of the countless illiards of human beings that have passed away, and had there been no eïncarnation—it would become difficult indeed to provide room for the isembodied “spirits”; nor could the origin and cause of suffering ever be ccounted for. It is the ignorance of the Occult tenets, and the nforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious education, hich have created Materialism and Atheism as a protest against the sserted 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 hese “animals” are later than, and even half descended from, man; their ast descendants being the anthropoid and other apes. These “human resentments” are in truth only the distorted copies of the early umanity. 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 fforts 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 bject—Man; Man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this Earth; he __“__Monad,__”__ in its absolute totality and awakened condition—as he culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth._
_2. The Dhyânis [Pitris] are those who have evolved their Bhuta [Doubles] rom themselves, which Rûpa [Form] has become the vehicle of Monads
[Seventh and Sixth principles] that had completed their cycle of ransmigration in the three preceding Kalpas [Rounds]. Then, they [the
Astral Doubles] became the men of the first Human Race of the Round. But hey 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 o our own Fifth Race, the external shapes which covered those divine
Astral Doubles, have changed and consolidated with every sub‐race; the orm and physical structure of the fauna changing at the same time, as hey 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 hey go on changing with every Root‐Race, and every _chief_ sub‐race, down o the last one of the Seventh in this Round.
_3. The inner, now concealed, man, was then [in the beginnings] the xternal man. The progeny of the Dhyânis [Pitris], he was __“__the son ike unto his father.__”__ Like the lotus, whose external shape assumes radually the form of the model within itself, so did the form of man in he beginning evolve from within without. After the cycle in which man egan to procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal ingdom, it became the reverse. The human fœtus follows now in its ransformations all the forms that the physical frame of man assumed, hroughout the three Kalpas [Rounds], during the tentative efforts at lastic formation around the Monad, by senseless, because imperfect, atter, in her blind wanderings. In the present age, the physical embryo s a plant, a reptile, an animal, before it finally becomes man, evolving ithin himself his own ethereal counterpart, in his turn. In the beginning t was that counterpart [astral man] which, being senseless, got entangled n the meshes of matter._
But this “man” belongs to the Fourth Round. As shown, the Monad had passed hrough, journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form, hroughout every kingdom of nature, during the three preceding Rounds. But he Monad which becomes human, is _not the Man_. In this Round—with the xception of the highest mammals after man, the anthropoids destined to ie out in this our race, when their Monads will be liberated and pass nto the astral human forms, or the highest elementals, of the Sixth and he 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 estined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower lementals of their respective realms. These “elementals” will become uman 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 f our day have not existed at any time since the middle of the Miocene eriod, when, like all cross breeds, they began to show a tendency, more nd more marked as time went on, to return to the type of their first arent, 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 heir fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes—an extinct pecies 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 f the Third Race were gods from another plane, who had become “senseless” ortals. This subject had already been touched upon in _Isis Unveiled_, welve years ago, as plainly as was then possible. The reader is there eferred to the Brâhmans, if he would know the reason of the regard they ave 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 age. 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 he human Monad, which has once reached the level of humanity, ever ncarnates again in the form of an animal.
The cycle of “metempsychosis” for the human Monad is closed, for we are in he Fourth Round and the Fifth Root‐Race. The reader will have to bear in ind—at any rate one who has made himself acquainted with _Esoteric
Buddhism_—that the Stanzas which follow in this volume and the next speak f the evolution in our Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the urning‐point, after which, matter, having reached its lowest depths, egins to strive onward and to become spiritualized, with every new race nd with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to ee contradiction where there is none, for in _Esoteric Buddhism_ Rounds re 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 eformation and evolutionary perfection.
Finally, to close this digression anent various, but unavoidable, isconceptions, we must refer to a statement in _Esoteric Buddhism_, which as produced a very fatal impression upon the minds of many Theosophists.
One unfortunate sentence, from the work just referred to, is constantly rought forward to prove the materialism of the doctrine. The author, eferring 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 imply, as we believe it is, a _lapsus calami_, may remain an open uestion.
It is really with surprise that we have ascertained the fact, that
_Esoteric Buddhism_ was so little understood by some Theosophists, as to ave led them into the belief that it thoroughly supported Darwinian volution, and especially the theory of the descent of man from a ithecoid ancestor. As one member writes: “I suppose you realize that hree‐fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that, as far as he evolution of man is concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one nother.” Nothing of the kind was ever realized, nor is there any great arrant for it, so far as we know, in _Esoteric Buddhism_. It has been epeatedly stated, that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the roundwork of the modern teachings, but neither Occultism nor Theosophy as ever supported the wild theories of the present Darwinists—least of ll the descent of man from an ape. Of this, more hereafter. But one has nly 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 hat any careful student should have been so misled, unless he is prepared o charge the author with a gross contradiction.
Every Round repeats the evolutionary work of the preceding Round, on a igher scale. With the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just entioned, the Monadic inflow, or inner evolution, is at an end till the ext Manvantara. It can never be too often repeated that the full‐blown uman Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new crop of andidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next Cycle. Thus here 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 ountenance to this inference. Besides which, the Occultists themselves re ready to concede _partial_ correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis, in ater details, bye‐laws of evolution, and after the midway point of the
Fourth Race. Of that which has taken place, Physical Science can really now nothing, for such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of nvestigation. But what the Occultists have never admitted, nor will they ver admit, is that man was _an ape in __ this or any other Round_; or hat he ever could be one, however much he may have been “ape‐like.” This s 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‐ amed 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,” he Occultists answer by pointing to the explanation of the Master, Mr.
Sinnett’s Teacher, which would contradict these lines, were they written n the spirit attributed to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the riter, together with others, two years ago (1886), with additional arginal remarks, to quote from, in the _Secret Doctrine_.
It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the Western tudent, in reconciling some facts, previously given, with the evolution f man from the animal, _i.e._, from the mineral, vegetable and animal ingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine of analogy and orrespondences. 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 xplains this by hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal aces of Dhyân Chohans. Concerning this it says:
“_These __‘__failures__’__ are too far progressed and spiritualized to be hrown back forcibly from Dhyân Chohanship into the vortex of a new rimordial evolution through the lower kingdoms_....”
After which, a hint only is given about the mystery contained in the llegory 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 etribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the lementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop ittle by little the full type of humanity._”
These Dhyân Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as o 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, as an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyâni, as man), non‐intelligent but super‐ piritual; and correspondingly, on the law of analogy, in the First Race f the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races and sub‐races, ... he rows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still reponderatingly ethereal.... He is sexless, and, like the animal and egetable, he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser urroundings._
“_Round II. He [man] is still gigantic and ethereal, but growing firmer nd more condensed in body; a more physical man yet still less intelligent han spiritual (1), for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than s the physical frame...._
“_Round III. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first he form of a giant‐ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than piritual. For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his rimordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality
(2). In the last half of the Third Round, his gigantic stature decreases, nd his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, hough still more an ape than a Deva.... [All this is almost exactly epeated 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 hich, from the Fourth Race, language is perfected and knowledge ncreases. At this half‐way point of the Fourth Round [as of the Fourth, r Atlantean, Root‐Race], humanity passes the axial point of the minor anvantaric cycle ... the world teeming with the results of intellectual ctivity and spiritual decrease...._”
This is from the authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and dditional explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes.
“_(1) ... The original letter contained general teaching—a __‘__bird’s‐eye iew__’__—and particularized nothing.... To speak of __‘__physical an,__’__ while limiting the statement to the early Rounds, would be rifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous __‘__coats of kin.__’__... The first __‘__Nature,__’__ the first __‘__body,__’__ the irst __‘__mind__’__ on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe n 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] rimordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human entality, and you have the true version on your thumb‐nail...._”
These are the words of the Teacher; text, words and sentences in brackets, nd explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an normous difference in such terms as “objectivity” and “subjectivity,”
“materiality” and “spirituality,” when the same terms are applied to ifferent planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its elative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left o his own speculations, an author who, however eager to learn, was yet uite inexperienced in these abstruse teachings, has fallen into an error.
Nor was the difference between the Rounds and the Races sufficiently efined in the letters received, since nothing of the kind had been equired before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the ifference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master:
“_The teachings were imparted under protest.... They were, so to say, muggled goods ... and when I remained face to face with only one orrespondent, the other, Mr. ... had so far tossed all the cards into onfusion, 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 o warrant the assurance, that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any
Adept believed in, unless metaphorically, the preposterous modern theory f the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape—an anthropoid of he actual animal kind. To this day the world is more full of ape‐like men han the woods are of men‐like apes. The ape is sacred in India because ts origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick eil of allegory. Hanumâna is the son of Pavana (Vâyu, “God of the wind”) y 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 hole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The “men” of the Third Race
(who separated) were “Gods,” by their spirituality and purity, though enseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.
These “men” of the Third Race, the ancestors of the Atlanteans, were just uch ape‐like, intellectually senseless, giants as were those beings, who, uring the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it as these Third Race “men” who, through promiscuous connection with animal pecies lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages ater (in the Tertiary period only), the remote ancestor of the real ape, s we find it now in the pithecoid family.
And if this is found clashing with the statement which shows the animal ater 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 hich Zoölogy does not even dream in our own; _and the modes of eproduction were not identical_ with the notions which modern Physiology as upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such uestions in public, but there is _no_ contradiction or impossibility in his whatever.
Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, id not teach the evolution of “man” from the “ape.” Nor does the author f _Esoteric Buddhism_ assert it anywhere in his work in so many words; ut, owing to his inclination towards Modern Science, he uses language hich might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the
Fourth, the Atlantean, Race, however much he may have looked physically ike a “gigantic ape”—“the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a an”—was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The Lemuro‐Atlantean as a highly civilized Race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better istory than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he as higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization f the day: at any rate, the Lemuro‐Atlantean of the closing Third Race as 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 eading the additional detailed explanations, in the Anthropogenesis and ts Commentaries, in Volume II. Between this Shloka and Shloka 4, extend ong ages; and there now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another æon. The rama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act; but for clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn ack before he can proceed onward. For this verse belongs to the general
Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Volume II will give a etailed account of the “creation,” or rather formation, of the first uman beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or, s they are called, the First, Second, and the Third Root‐Races. As the olid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its rotoplasmic phantom, so did man.
(_a_) That which is meant by the qualification the “Fourth,” is explained s the Fourth Round, only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can qually 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 ourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we are in he Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium etween Spirit and Matter had to take place.
It was, as we shall see, at this period—during the highest point of ivilization and knowledge, and also of human intellectuality, of the
Fourth, Atlantean Race—that, owing to the final crisis of the hysiologico‐spiritual adjustment of the races, humanity branched off into wo diametrically opposite paths: the _Right‐_ and the _Left‐hand_ Paths f 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 f the Fifth [our Race]._
Says the Commentary explaining the Shloka:
_The Holy Youths [the Gods] refused to multiply and create species after heir likeness, after their kind. __“__They are not fit Forms [Rûpas] for s. They have to grow.__”__ They refuse to enter the Chhâyâs [Shadows or
Images] of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling prevailed from the eginning, 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,” ropagation 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 nto generation, not the Fall of mortal Man. It has already been stated hat, to become self‐conscious, Spirit must pass through every cycle of eing, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man. Spirit _per se_ s an unconscious negative _abstraction_. Its purity is inherent, not cquired by merit; hence, as already shown, to become the highest Dhyân
Chohan, it is necessary for each Ego to attain to full self‐consciousness s 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 epeat the Eastern Esoteric teaching:
_A Dhyâni has to be an Âtmâ‐Buddhi; once the Buddhi‐Manas breaks loose rom the immortal Âtmâ, of which it (Buddhi) is the vehicle, Âtman passes nto Non‐Being, which is Absolute Being._
This means that the purely Nirvânic state is a passage of Spirit back to he ideal abstraction of Be‐ness, which has no relation to the plane on hich 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 he cause, which could but create bad results, had been generated; and hat the effects of this Karmic cause could lead the Beings that ounteracted the laws of Nature, and thus impeded her legitimate progress, nly to bad incarnations, hence to suffering.
(_c_) “There were many Wars,” all referring to struggles of adjustment, piritual, cosmical and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the volution of man, as he is now. The Powers or pure Essences that were
“told to create,” relate to a mystery explained, as already said, lsewhere. It is not only one of the most hidden secrets of Nature—that of eneration, over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their eads together—but likewise a divine function which involves that great eligious, or rather dogmatic, mystery, the so‐called “Fall” of the
Angels. Satan and his rebellious host, when the meaning of the allegory is xplained, will thus prove to have refused to create physical man, only to ecome the direct Saviours and Creators of divine Man. The symbolical eaching is more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as ill be seen later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind functioning edium, impelled and guided by fathomless Law, the “rebellious” Angel laimed and enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his right f 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 he 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 uthor’s meaning. A _fall_, however, “from the natural into the upernatural and the animal”—supernatural meaning the purely spiritual in his 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_, he 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 urer spirit, to his aid, who fails still worse. This is a repetition of he failure of the “Fathers,” the Lords of Light, who fail one after the ther.(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 s the Zoroastrian, and detects a germ of the dogmatic and dualistic eligions of the future, a germ which has grown into such a luxuriant tree n 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 esire to reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church Dogmas, did their best o make of the “Astral Light” only and preeminently the Plerôma of the arly 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 he Absolute, is still dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never to be iewed otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes. The difference which xists between its “Light” and its “Living Fire,” ought ever to be present n 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_, n 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 emi‐exoteric _Kabalah_.(314) But these contain the description of the ystic natures of the first Group of Dhyân Chohans in the _regimen ignis_, he region and “rule (or government) of fire,” divided into three classes, ynthesized by the first, which makes _four_ or the “Tetraktys.” If one tudies the commentaries attentively, he will find the same progression in he angelic natures, _viz_., from the _passive_ down to the _active_; the ast of these Beings are as near to the Ahamkâra Element—the region or lane wherein _Egoship_, or the feeling of _I‐am‐ness_, is beginning to be efined—as the first are near to the undifferentiated Essence. The former re 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, utside the circle of Mosaic Jews, about Jehovah. He was identified by all he Gnostics with the evil, rather than with the good principle. For them, e was Ilda‐Baoth, the “Son of Darkness,” whose mother, Sophia Achamôth, as the daughter of Sophia, the Divine Wisdom—the female Holy Ghost of the arly 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, r connecting link between matter and pure spirit—and the physical.(316)
Ilda‐Baoth—a compound name, made up of _Ilda_ (ילד), child, and _Baoth_; he latter from בהוצ an egg, and בהות, chaos, emptiness, void, or esolation; or the Child born in the Egg of Chaos, like Brahmâ—or Jehovah, s simply one of the Elohim, the Seven Creative Spirits, and one of the ower Sephiroth. Ilda‐Baoth produces from himself seven other Gods,
“Stellar Spirits,” or the Lunar Ancestors,(317) for they are all the ame.(318) They are all _in his own image_, the “Spirits of the Face,” and he reflections one of the other, who become darker and more material, as hey successively recede from their originator. They also inhabit seven egions disposed like a stair, for its steps mount and descend the scale f spirit and matter.(319) With Pagans and Christians, with Hindûs and
Chaldeans, with Greek as with Roman Catholics—the texts varying slightly n their interpretations—they all were the Genii of the seven planets, and f the seven planetary spheres of our septenary Chain, of which Earth is he lowest. This connects the “Stellar” and “Lunar” Spirits with the igher 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 he philosophical Gnostics, were the God and the Archangels now worshipped y 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 ound in _Revelation_ xii, as quoted a few pages back.
Thus “Satan,” once he ceases to be viewed in the superstitious, dogmatic, nphilosophical spirit of the Churches, grows into the grandiose image of ne who makes of a _terrestrial_, a _divine_ Man; who gives him, hroughout the long cycle of Mahâkalpa, the law of the Spirit of Life, and akes 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, owever they may break the flow of the narrative, are necessary for the lucidation of the whole scheme—we must return once more to Cosmogony. The hrase “Older Wheels” refers to the Worlds, or Globes, of our Chain as hey were during the previous Rounds. The present Stanza, when explained soterically, is found embodied entirely in Kabalistic works. Therein will e found the very history of the evolution of those countless Globes, hich evolve after a periodical Pralaya, rebuilt from old material into ew forms. The previous Globes disintegrate and reäppear, transformed and erfected for a new phase of life. In the _Kabalah_, worlds are compared o sparks which fly from under the hammer of the great Architect—_Law_, he Law which rules all the smaller Creators.
The following comparative diagram shows the identity between the two ystems, the Kabalistic and the Eastern. The three upper are the three igher planes of consciousness, revealed and explained in both schools nly to the Initiates; the lower represent the four lower planes—the owest being our plane, or the visible Universe.
[Diagram III]
These seven _planes_ correspond to the seven _states_ of consciousness in an. It remains with him to attune the three higher states in himself to he three higher planes in Kosmos. But before he can attempt to attune, he ust awaken the three “seats” to life and activity. And how many are apable 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” tands for the “World‐Germ,” viewed by Science as material particles in a ighly attenuated condition, but in Occult Physics as “spiritual articles,” _i.e._, supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval ifferentiation. To see and appreciate the difference—the immense gulf hat separates terrestrial matter from the finer grades of supersensuous atter—every Astronomer, every Chemist and Physicist ought to be a
_Psychometer_, to say the least; he ought to be able to sense for himself hat difference in which he now refuses to believe. Mrs. Elizabeth Denton, ne of the most learned, and also one of the most materialistic and ceptical 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 f her scepticism, one of the most wonderful psychometers. This is what he describes in one of her experiments. A particle of a meteorite was laced on her forehead, in an envelope, and the lady, not being aware of hat 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 n 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 bsolute light; in other words, absolute darkness, as Physical Science ries to prove. This “shadow” appears under the form of primordial matter, llegorized—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 n this the primordial “fire‐mist,” it is welcome to do so. Whether one ay or the other, whether Fohat or the famous Force of Science, nameless nd as difficult of definition as our Fohat himself, that Something
“caused the Universe to move with circular motion,” as Plato has it; or, s the Occult teaching expresses it:
_The Central Sun causes Fohat to collect primordial dust in the form of alls, to impel them to move in converging lines and finally to approach
__ each other and aggregate.... Being scattered in Space, without order or ystem, the World‐Germs come into frequent collision until their final ggregation, after which they become Wanderers [Comets]. Then the battles nd struggles begin. The older [bodies] attract the younger, while others epel them. Many perish, devoured by their stronger companions. Those that scape become worlds._(324)
When carefully analyzed and reflected upon, this will be found as cientific as Science can make it, even at our late period.
We have been assured, that there exist several modern works of speculative ancy upon such struggles for life in sidereal heaven, especially in the
German language. We rejoice to hear it, for ours is an Occult teaching ost 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 ife and supremacy, and of the “survival of the fittest,” among the Hosts bove as of the Hosts below, runs throughout both the volumes of our arlier work, written in 1876. But the idea is not ours, it is that of ntiquity. Even the Purânic writers have ingeniously interwoven allegory ith cosmic facts and human events. Any symbologist may discern their stro‐cosmical allusions, even though he be unable to grasp the whole eaning. The great “wars in heaven,” in the _Purânas_; the wars of the
Titans, in Hesiod and other classical writers; the “struggles” also etween Osiris and Typhon, in the Egyptian myth; and even those in the
Scandinavian legends; all refer to the same subject. Northern Mythology efers to it as the battle of the Flames, the sons of Muspel who fought on he field of Wigred. All these relate to Heaven and Earth, and have a ouble, and often even a triple, meaning and esoteric application to hings above as to things below. They severally relate to astronomical, heogonical and human struggles; to the adjustment of orbs, and the upremacy among nations and tribes. The “struggle for existence” and the
“survival of the fittest” reigned supreme from the moment that Kosmos anifested into being, and could hardly escape the observant eye of the ncient Sages. Hence the incessant fights of Indra, the God of the
Firmament, with the Asuras—degraded from high Gods into cosmic Demons—and ith Vritra or Ahi; the battles fought between stars and constellations, etween moons and planets—later on incarnated as kings and mortals. Hence lso the War in Heaven of Michael and his Host against the Dragon—Jupiter nd Lucifer Venus—when a third of the stars of the rebellious Host was urled down into Space, and “its place was found no more in Heaven.” As we rote 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 ssertion that all the worlds (stars, planets, etc.)—as soon as a nucleus f primordial substance, in the laya (undifferentiated) state, is informed y the freed principles of a just _deceased_ sidereal body—become first omets, and then suns, to cool down to inhabitable worlds, is a teaching s old as the Rishis.
Thus the Secret Books, as we see, distinctly teach an astronomy that would ot be rejected even by modern speculation, could the latter thoroughly nderstand its teachings.
For archaic astronomy and the ancient physical and mathematical sciences xpressed views identical with those of Modern Science, and many of far ore momentous import. A “struggle for life” and a “survival of the ittest,” in the worlds above and on our planet here below, are distinctly aught. This teaching, however, although it would not be entirely rejected y Science, is sure to be repudiated as an integral whole. For it avers hat there are only seven self‐born primordial “Gods,” emanated from the rinitarian One. In other words, it means that all the worlds, or sidereal odies—always on strict analogy—are formed one from the other, after the rimordial manifestation at the beginning of the Great Age is ccomplished.
The birth of the celestial bodies in space is compared to a multitude of ilgrims at the Festival of the Fires. Seven ascetics appear on the hreshold of the temple with seven lighted sticks of incense. At the light f these the first row of pilgrims light their incense sticks. After hich, every ascetic begins whirling his stick around his head in space, nd furnishes the rest with fire. Thus with the heavenly bodies. A laya‐ entre is lighted and awakened into life by the fires of another
“pilgrim,” after which, the new “centre” rushes into space and becomes a omet. It is only after losing its velocity, and hence its fiery tail, hat the Fiery Dragon settles down into quiet and steady life, as a egular respectable citizen of the sidereal family. Therefore it is said:
_Born in the unfathomable depths of Space, out of the homogeneous Element alled the World‐Soul, every nucleus of cosmic matter, suddenly launched nto being, begins life under the most hostile circumstances. Through a eries of countless ages, it has to conquer for itself a place in the nfinitudes. It circles round and round, between denser and already fixed odies, moving by jerks, and pulling towards some given point or centre hat attracts it, and, like as a ship drawn into a channel dotted with eefs and sunken rocks, trying to avoid other bodies that draw and repel t in turn. Many perish, their mass disintegrating through stronger asses, and, when born within a system, chiefly within the insatiable tomachs of various Suns. Those which move slower, and are propelled into n elliptic course, are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others, oving in parabolic curves, generally escape destruction, owing to their elocity._
Some very critical readers will perhaps imagine that this teaching, as to he cometary stage passed through by all heavenly bodies, is in ontradiction with the statements just made as to the Moon being the other of the Earth. They will perhaps fancy that intuition is needed to armonize 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 aya‐centre—a lump of cosmic protoplasm, homogeneous and latent—when uddenly animated or fired up, should rush from its bed in space, and hirl throughout the abysmal depths, in order to strengthen its omogeneous organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated lements? And why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become n 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 he equator, the ecliptic, and the two parallels of declination, or the ropics, to preside over the _climates_ of which are placed the Four
Mystical Entities. Then again: “_Other Seven [Sons] are commissioned to reside over the seven hot, and seven cold Lokas [the Hells of the rthodox Brâhmans] at the two ends of the Egg of Matter [our Earth and its oles]._” The seven Lokas are elsewhere also called the “Rings” and the
“Circles.” The Ancients made the polar circles _seven_ instead of two, as o the Europeans; for Mount Meru, which is the North Pole, is said to have even 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 ombined_,” and that the Four Sons, on the _middle_ Four‐fold Circle, “SAW
_their Father’s Songs and_ HEARD _his solar‐selenic Radiance_,” are xplained, in the Commentary, in these words: “_The agitation of the
Fohatic Forces at the two cold ends [North and South Poles] of the Earth, hich results in a multicoloured radiance at night, has in it several of he properties of Âkâsha [Ether], Colour and Sound as well_.”
“Sound is the characteristic of Âkâsha [Ether]: it generates Air, the roperty 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 etter comprehended, if the reader remembers the Aurora Borealis and
Australis, both of which take place at the very centres of terrestrial lectric and magnetic forces. The two Poles are said to be the store‐ ouses, the receptacles and liberators, at the same time, of cosmic and errestrial Vitality (Electricity), from the surplus of which the Earth, ad it not been for these two natural safety‐valves, would have been rent o pieces long ago. At the same time it is a theory that has lately become n axiom, that the phenomenon of the polar lights is accompanied by, and roductive of, strong sounds, like whistling, hissing and cracking. See
Professor Humboldt’s works on the Aurora Borealis, and his correspondence egarding 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 ur 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, r rather of their constituent particles of matter, are described as ollows: (1) _homogeneous_; (2) _aëriform_ and _radiant_—gaseous; (3)
_curd‐like_ (nebulous); (4) _atomic, ethereal_—beginning of motion, hence f differentiation; (5) _germinal, fiery_—differentiated, but composed of he germs only of the Elements, in their earliest states, they having even states, when completely developed on our earth; (6) _four‐fold, apoury_—the future Earth; (7) _cold_—and depending on the Sun for life nd light.
To calculate its age, however, as the pupil is asked to do in the Stanza, s 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 o 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 ake for our basis the above figures, we have first of all to eliminate rom the 100 Years of Brahmâ, or 311,040,000,000,000 years, two Years aken up by the Sandhyâs (Twilights), which leaves 98, as we have to bring t to the mystical combination 14 x 7. But _we_ have no knowledge at what ime precisely the evolution and formation of our little Earth began.
Therefore, it is impossible to calculate its age, unless the time of its irth is given—which the Teachers refuse to do, so far. At the close of his Volume and in Volume II, however, some chronological hints will be iven. We must remember, moreover, that the law of analogy holds good for he 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 hat the Curds (World‐Stuff) become Wanderers (Comets); these become tars; and the stars (the centres of vortices), _our sun and planets_—to ut it briefly. This cannot be so very _unscientific_, since Descartes lso thought that “the planets rotate on their axes, because they were nce lucid stars, the centres of vortices.”
(_b_) There are four grades of Initiation mentioned in exoteric works, hich are known respectively in Sanskrit as Srotâpanna, Sakridâgâmin,
Anâgâmin, and Arhan; the Four Paths to Nirvâna, in this our Fourth Round, earing 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 imself, the _initiated_ candidate, becomes Chelâ (Pupil) to a higher
Initiate. Three higher grades have still to be conquered by the Arhan who ould reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. There are those who have eached it even in this Fifth Race of ours, but the faculties necessary or the attainment of these higher grades will be fully developed, in the verage 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 nd 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 heir Hierarchy, the highest on Earth and our Terrestrial Chain. This
“Root‐Base” has a name which can only be translated into English by everal 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 t was intellectually inactive, is supposed to have been constantly lunged in a kind of blank or abstract contemplation, as required by the onditions of the Yoga state. In the first or earlier portion of the xistence 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, roduced 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 roduction, as a portion of the Race was already animated with the divine park of spiritual, superior intelligence. This progeny was not a race. It as at first a Wondrous Being, called the “Initiator,” and after him a roup of semi‐divine and semi‐human Beings. “Set apart” in archaic genesis or certain purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated he highest Dhyânis—“Munis and Rishis from previous Manvantaras”—_to form he 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 ay, remained, it is explained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind.
The “Being” just referred to, who has to remain nameless, is the _Tree_ rom which, in subsequent ages, all the great _historically_ known Sages nd Hierophants, such as the Rishi Kapila, Hermes, Enoch, Orpheus, etc., ave branched off. As objective _man_, he is the mysterious (to the rofane—the ever invisible, yet ever present) Personage, about whom egends are rife in the East, especially among the Occultists and the tudents of the Sacred Science. It is he who changes form, yet remains ver 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 ature 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 ill the last Day of this Life‐Cycle. Why does the Solitary Watcher remain t 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 oes not know—aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its Heaven? Because the onely, sore‐footed Pilgrims, on their journey back to their Home, are ever sure, to the last moment, of not losing their way, in this limitless esert of Illusion and Matter called Earth‐Life. Because he would fain how the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a oluntary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating imself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has acrificed himself for the sake of Mankind, though but a few elect may rofit by the GREAT SACRIFICE.
It is under the direct, silent guidance of this _Mahâ‐Guru_ that all the ther less divine Teachers and Instructors of Mankind became, from the irst awakening of human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It s through these “Sons of God” that infant Humanity learned its first otions of all the arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge; nd it is They who laid the first foundation‐stone of those ancient ivilizations that so sorely puzzle our modern generation of students and cholars.
Let those who doubt this statement, explain, on any other equally easonable grounds, the mystery of the extraordinary knowledge possessed y the Ancients—who, some pretend, developed from lower and animal‐like avages, the “cave‐men” of the palæolithic age! Let them turn, for nstance, to such works as those of Vitruvius Pollio of the Augustan age, n architecture, in which all the rules of proportion are those _anciently aught at Initiations_, if they would acquaint themselves with this truly ivine art, and understand the _deep esoteric significance hidden in every ule and law of proportion_. No man descended from a palæolithic cave‐ weller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of hought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated
Rishis and Devas of the Third Root Race who handed on their knowledge, rom 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 enerations 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 ave superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy the just roportions. It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of onstruction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal Gods; and the en 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, nd the 127 towns in Europe which were found “Cyclopean in origin” by the
French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest‐Architects, the escendants of those first taught by the “Sons of God,” and justly called he “Builders.” This is what appreciative posterity says of these escendants:
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 e well to remind the reader of what was said there(333) concerning a ertain Sacred Island in Central Asia, and to refer him for further etails to the Section, entitled “The Sons of God and the Sacred Island,” ttached to Stanza IX of Volume II. A few more explanations, however, hough thrown out in a fragmentary form, may help the student to obtain a limpse into the present mystery.
To state at least one detail concerning these mysterious “Sons of God” in lain words: it is from them, these Brahmaputras, that the high Dvijas, he initiated Brâhmans of old, claimed descent, while the modern Brâhman ould have the lower castes believe literally that they (the Brâhmans) ssued direct from the mouth of Brahmâ. Such is the Esoteric teaching; and t adds moreover that, although those descended (spiritually, of course) rom the “Sons of Will and Yoga” became in time divided into opposite exes, as their “Kriyâshakti” progenitors did themselves later on; yet ven their degenerate descendants have, down to the present day, retained veneration and respect for the creative function, and still regard it in he light of a religious ceremony, whereas the more civilized nations onsider it as a mere animal function. Compare the Western views and ractice in these matters with the Institutions of Manu, in regard to the aws of Grihastha, or married life. The true Brâhman is, thus, indeed “he hose seven forefathers have drunk the juice of the Moon‐plant (Soma),” nd 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 his Race, psychic and physical intellect being dormant and consciousness till undeveloped, its spiritual conceptions were quite unconnected with ts physical surroundings; that _divine_ man dwelt in his animal—though xternally human—form; that, if there was instinct in him, no self‐ onsciousness came to enlighten the darkness of the latent Fifth
Principle. When the Lords of Wisdom, moved by the law of evolution, nfused into him the spark of consciousness, the first feeling it awoke to ife and activity was a sense of solidarity, of one‐ness with his piritual creators. As the child’s first feeling is for its mother and urse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in rimitive man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who ere yet outside, and independent of him. _Devotion_ arose out of that eeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his nature; for it is he only one which is natural in his heart, which is innate in him, and hich we find alike in the human babe and the young of the animal. This eeling of irrepressible, instinctive aspiration in primitive man is eautifully, and one may say intuitionally, described by Carlyle, who xclaims:
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 ower in the Asiatic Âryan heart, from the Third Race direct, through its irst Mind‐born Sons, the fruits of Kriyâshakti. As time rolled on, the oly caste of Initiates produced, but rarely, from age to age, such erfect creatures; beings apart, inwardly, though the same as those who roduced 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 enizens of higher spheres, who took forthwith their abodes in these orms, born of _Spiritual Will_ and the natural divine power in man. It as a child of pure spirit, mentally unalloyed with any tincture of arthly element. Its physical frame alone was of time and of life, for it rew 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 e 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 he tooth of time, but the roots of his inner being remained for ever ndecaying and strong, because they grew and expanded in heaven, and not n earth. He was the first of the _First_, and he was the Seed of all the thers. There were other Sons of Kriyâshakti produced by a second piritual 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 ge—aye, even in our own—there have been great intellects who have nderstood the problem correctly.
But how comes our physical body to the state of perfection it is now found n? Through millions of years of evolution, of course, yet never through, r 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 ineral atom. But none of these has, like man, the consciousness of the ature of that “Highest Being,”(335) as none has that divine harmony in ts form, which man possesses. It is, as Novalis said, and no one since as 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 igns of the Zodiac; the Seven of the manifesting scale being connected, oreover, 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, r the “four bodies and the three faculties,” exoterically, of Brahmâ and he 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 f as the “Fiery Lions” and the “Lions of Life,” whose esotericism is ecurely hidden in the zodiacal sign of Leo. It is the _nucleole_ of the uperior Divine World. They are the Formless Fiery Breaths, identical in ne 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 ystem, in the “Beginnings,” as taught by both the Shinto and the Buddhist ects. In this system, Anthropogenesis precedes Cosmogenesis, as the ivine merges into the human, and creates—midway in its descent into atter—the visible Universe; the legendary personages, remarks everentially Omoie, “having to be understood as the stereotyped mbodiment of the higher [secret] doctrine, and its sublime truths.” To tate this old system at full length would occupy too much of our space; a ew words on it, however, cannot be out of place. The following is a short ynopsis of this Anthropo‐Cosmogenesis, and shows how closely the most eparated nations echoed one and the same archaic teaching.
When all was as yet Chaos (Kon‐ton), three spiritual Beings appeared on he 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 elestial nor the terrestrial substance had yet differentiated, “nor had he essence of things been formed.”
(_b_) In the _Zohar_—which, as now arranged and reëdited by Moses de Leon, ith the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics, in the XIIIth entury, and corrected and revised still later by many Christian hands, is nly 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 f the One, the manifested “Heavenly Man” (the First Cause), as its
Chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vâhana, in Sanskrit) or Vehicle, to descend nto, and manifest itself in, the phenomenal world. But the Kabalists either make it plain how the Absolute can use anything, or exercise any ttribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of attributes; or do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato’s Logos), he 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, he Source of Light, or Propatôr, which is the Unmanifested Logos, or the bstract Idea, and not Ain Suph, whose Ray uses Adam Kadmon—“male and emale”—or the Manifested Logos, the objective Universe, as a Chariot, hrough which to manifest. But in the _Zohar_ we read the following ncongruity: “_Senior occultatus est, et absconditus; Microprosopus anifestus est, et non manifestus_.”(344) This is a fallacy, since
Microprosopus, or the Microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, nd is destroyed during the Mahâpralayas. Rosenroth’s _Kabbala_ is no uide, 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 he Three descending Groups. Having their potential being in the higher
Group, they now become distinct and separate Entities. These are called he Virgins of Life, the Great Illusion, etc., etc., and collectively the ix‐pointed star. The latter, in almost every religion, is the symbol of he 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 layed sad havoc with this magnificent symbol. Indeed, the
Microprosopus—who is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the nmanifested eternal Logos, “one with the Father”—has finally been rought, by centuries of incessant efforts of sophistry and of paradoxes, o 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 requently 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, he Lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial lane. The Microprosopus is, as just said, the Logos manifested, and of uch there are many. Of this, however, later on. The six‐pointed star efers to the six Forces or Powers of Nature, the six planes, principles, tc., etc., all synthesized by the seventh, or the central point in the tar. All these, the upper and lower Hierarchies included, emanate from he Heavenly or Celestial Virgin, the Great Mother in all religions, the
Androgyne, the Sephira Adam Kadmon. Sephira is the Crown, Kether, in the bstract principle only, as a mathematical x, the unknown quantity. On the lane 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 ot 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 ifferentiation, it becomes Fohat, or the “Seven Sons.” The former is ymbolized 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 xpressions:
_The first after the One is Divine Fire; the second, Fire and Ether; the hird 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 he 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 he “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, orresponding to Spirit and Soul, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi, whose names are legion, re still formless, but more definitely “substantial.” They are the first ifferentiation in the Secondary Evolution or “Creation”—a misleading ord. As the name shows, they are the Prototypes of the incarnating Jîvas r Monads, and are composed of the Fiery Spirit of Life. It is through hese that passes, like a pure solar beam, the Ray which is furnished by hem with its future Vehicle, the Divine Soul, Buddhi. These are directly oncerned 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 ucleus appears, having within itself the germ and potency of all niversal as well as of all terrestrial life, it is the Three‐fold just amed, which differentiate. The male ethereal principle (Yo) ascends, and he female grosser or more material principle (In) is precipitated into he universe of substance, when a separation occurs between the celestial nd the terrestrial. From this, the female, the Mother, the first udimentary objective being is born. It is ethereal, without form or sex, nd yet it is from it and the Mother that the Seven Divine Spirits are orn, from whom will emanate the seven “creations”; just as in the _Codex
Nazaræus_ from Karabtanos and the Mother Spiritus the seven “evilly isposed” (material) spirits are born. It would be too long to give here he Japanese names, but in translation they stand in this order:
(1.) The “Invisible Celibate,” which is the Creative Logos of the non‐ reating “Father,” or the creative potentiality of the latter made anifest.
(2.) The “Spirit [or God] of the rayless Depths [Chaos],” which becomes ifferentiated 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 ual nature, the former containing the potentiality of the male element, he latter that of the female element. These two were one, as yet nconscious of being two.
In this duality were contained (_a_) Isu no gai no Kami, the male, dark nd muscular Being; and (_b_) Eku gai no Kami, the female, fair and weaker r 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 he 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 f cloud and water, thrust his jewelled spear into the depths, and dry and appeared. Then the two separated to explore Onokoro, the newly‐ reated island‐world.” (Omoie.)
Such are the Japanese exoteric fables, the rind that conceals the kernel f 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, onscious, spiritual Souls. They are called the “Imperishable Jîvas,” and onstitute, through the Order below their own, the first Group of the irst Septenary Host—the great mystery of human, conscious and ntellectual Being. For the latter is the field wherein lies concealed,
_in its privation_, the Germ that will _fall into generation_. That Germ ill become the spiritual potency in the physical cell, that guides the evelopment of the embryo, and that is the cause of the hereditary ransmission of faculties, and all the inherent qualities in man. The
Darwinian theory, however, of the transmission of acquired faculties is either taught nor accepted in Occultism. Evolution, in the latter, roceeds on quite other lines; the physical, according to Esoteric eaching, evolving gradually from the spiritual, mental, and psychic. This nner soul of the physical cell—the “spiritual plasm” that dominates the erminal plasm—is the key that must open one day the gates of the _terra ncognita_ of the Biologist, now called the dark mystery of Embryology. It s worthy of notice that Modern Chemistry, while rejecting, as a uperstition of Occultism and Religion as well, the theory of substantial nd invisible Beings, called Angels, Elementals, etc.—without, of course, aving ever looked into the philosophy of these incorporeal Entities, or hought over them—should, owing to observation and discovery, have been nconsciously forced to recognize and adopt the same ratio of progression nd order, in the evolution of chemical atoms, as Occultism does for both ts Dhyânis and Atoms—analogy being its first law. As seen above, the very irst Group of the Rûpa Angels is quaternary, an element being added to ach in descending order. So also are the atoms, in the phraseology of
Chemistry, monatomic, diatomic, triatomic, tetratomic, etc., progressing ownwards.
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 hey are on earth, but noumenal homogeneous Elements—the Spirits of the ormer. Then follow the Septenary Groups or Hosts. Placed on parallel ines with the atoms in a diagram, the natures of these Beings would be een to correspond, in their downward scale of progression, to composite lements in a mathematically identical manner as to analogy. This refers, f 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 hemical atoms of Science—from the hypothetical Helium down to
Uranium—they would of course be found to differ. For the latter have, as orrespondents on the Astral Plane, only the four lowest orders—the three igher principles in the atom, or rather molecule, or chemical element, eing perceptible to the initiated Dangma’s eye alone. But then, if
Chemistry desired to find itself on the right path, it would have to orrect its tabular arrangement by that of the Occultists—which it might efuse to do. In Esoteric Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds o, and depends on, its higher noumenon—the Being to whose essence it elongs; 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 arallel lines, and drawing its attributes from above as well as below.
The number seven, as applied to the term Septenary Host, above mentioned, oes not imply only seven Entities, but seven Groups or Hosts, as xplained before. The highest Group, the Asuras born in Brahmâ’s first ody, which turned into “Night,” are septenary, _i.e._, divided like the
Pitris into seven Classes, three of which are bodiless (arûpa) and four ith bodies.(347) They are in fact more truly our Pitris (Ancestors) than he Pitris who projected the first physical man.
(_f_) The _Fifth Order_ is a very mysterious one, as it is connected with he microcosmic pentagon, the five‐pointed star, representing man. In
India and Egypt, these Dhyânis were connected with the Crocodile, and heir abode is in Capricornus. But these are convertible terms in Indian
Astrology, for the tenth sign of the Zodiac, which is called Makara, is oosely translated “Crocodile.” The word itself is occultly interpreted in arious ways, as will be shown further on. In Egypt, the Defunct—whose ymbol is the pentagram, or the five‐pointed star, the points of which epresent the limbs of a man—was shown emblematically transformed into a rocodile. Sebekh, or Sevekh (or “Seventh”), as Mr. Gerald Massey says, howing it to be the type of intelligence, is a dragon in reality, not a rocodile. He is the “Dragon of Wisdom,” or Manas, the Human Soul, Mind, he Intelligent Principle, called in our Esoteric Philosophy the _Fifth_
Principle.
Says the defunct “Osirified,” in the _Book of the Dead_, or _Ritual_, nder 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 cquires 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 soteric “Buddhism,” for it alludes directly to the Fifth Principle
(Manas), or the most spiritual part of its essence rather, which merges nto, is absorbed by, and made one with Âtmâ‐Buddhi, after the death of an. For Sekhem is the residence, or Loka, of the God Khem (Horus‐Osiris, r 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 ermanent 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 oncealed under the false personality, the triple‐crocodile of Egypt, the ymbol of the higher Trinity, or human Triad, Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas.
One of the explanations of the real though hidden meaning of this Egyptian eligious glyph is easy. The crocodile is the first to await and meet the evouring fires of the morning sun, and very soon came to personify the olar heat. When the sun arose, it was like the arrival on earth, and mong men, of the “divine soul which informs the Gods.” Hence the strange ymbolism. 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 lso symbolizes the fifth principle esoterically; and, as already stated,
Mr. Gerald Massey shows that the crocodile was the “seventh Soul, the upreme one of seven—the Seer unseen.” Even exoterically Sekhem is the esidence of the God Khem, and Khem is Horus avenging the death of his ather Osiris, hence punishing the sins of man, when he becomes a isembodied Soul. Thus the defunct Osirified became the God Khem, who
“gleans the field of Aanroo”; that is, he gleans either his reward or unishment, 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 oth the spiritual and physical aspects of the Universe; the two poles, so o say, of Mahat, the Universal Intelligence, and the dual nature of man, he spiritual and the physical. Hence its number Five, doubled and made nto Ten, connecting it with Makara, the tenth sign of the Zodiac.
(_g_) The _Sixth_ and _Seventh Orders_ partake of the lower qualities of he Quaternary. They are conscious ethereal Entities, as invisible as
Ether, which are shot out, like the boughs of a tree, from the first entral Group of the Four, and shoot out in their turn numberless side
Groups, the lower of which are the Nature‐Spirits, or Elementals, of ountless kinds and varieties; from the formless and unsubstantial—the deal Thoughts of their creators—down to atomic, though, to human erception, invisible organisms. The latter are considered as the “spirits f atoms,” for they are the first remove (backwards) from the physical tom—sentient, if not intelligent creatures. They are all subject to
Karma, and have to work it out through every cycle. For, as the Doctrine eaches, there are no such privileged Beings in the Universe, whether in ur 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 ecome one; he cannot be born or appear suddenly on the plane of life as a ull‐blown Angel. The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvantara will ind 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 f 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 class of Beings—perfect only by virtue of the special immaculate nature nherent in them—in the face of suffering and struggling humanity, and ven of the lower creation, would be the symbol of an eternal injustice uite Satanic in character, an ever present crime. It is an anomaly and an mpossibility in Nature. Therefore the “Four” and the “Three” have to ncarnate as all other beings have. This Sixth Group, moreover, remains lmost inseparable from man, who draws from it all but his highest and owest principles, or his spirit and body; the five middle human rinciples being the very essence of those Dhyânis. Paracelsus calls them he Flagæ; the Christians, the Guardian Angels; the Occultists, the
Ancestors, the Pitris. They are the Six‐fold Dhyân Chohans, having the six piritual Elements in the composition of their bodies—in fact, men, minus he physical body.
Alone, the Divine Ray, the Âtman, proceeds directly from the One. When sked how this can be? How is it possible to conceive that these “Gods,” r Angels, can be at the same time their own emanations and their personal elves? Is it in the same sense as in the material world, where the son s, in one way, his father, being his blood, the bone of his bone and the lesh of his flesh? To this the Teachers answer: Verily it is so. But one as to go deep into the mystery of Being, before one can fully comprehend his 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 xplained elsewhere—of a Life‐Thread, Sûtrâtmâ, running through successive enerations. How, then, can this be explained? By resorting to a simile, o a familiar illustration, though necessarily imperfect, as all our vailable analogies must be. Before resorting to it, however, I would ask, hether it seems unnatural, least of all “supernatural,” to any one of us, hen we consider the process of the growth and development of a fœtus into healthy baby weighing several pounds? Evolving from what? From the egmentation of an infinitesimally small ovum and a spermatozoön! And fterwards we see the baby develop into a six‐foot man! This refers to the tomic and physical expansion, from the microscopically small into omething exceedingly large; from the unseen, to the naked eye, into the isible and objective. Science has provided for all this; and, I dare say, er theories, embryological, biological and physiological, are correct nough, so far as exact observation of the material goes. Nevertheless, he two chief difficulties of the science of Embryology—namely, what are he forces at work in the formation of the fœtus, and the _cause_ of
“hereditary transmission” of likeness, physical, moral or mental—have ever been properly answered; nor will they ever be solved, till the day hen Scientists condescend to accept the Occult theories. But if this hysical phenomenon astonishes no one, except in so far as it puzzles the
Embryologists, why should our intellectual and inner growth, the evolution f the Human‐Spiritual to the Divine‐Spiritual, be regarded as, or seem, ore impossible than the other?
The Materialists and the Evolutionists of the Darwinian school would be ll‐advised to accept the newly worked‐out theories of Professor
Weissmann, the author of _Beiträge zur Descendenzlehre_, with regard to ne of the two mysteries of Embryology, as above specified, which he seems o think he has solved; for, when it is fully solved, Science will have tepped into the domain of the truly Occult, and passed for ever out of he realm of transformation, as taught by Darwin. The two theories are rreconcilable, from the standpoint of Materialism. Regarded from that of he Occultists, however, the new theory solves all these mysteries. Those ho are not acquainted with the discovery of Professor Weissmann—at one ime 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 he formation of an organism, alone and unaided determining, by means of onstant segmentation and multiplication, the correct image of the future an, or animal, in its physical, mental and psychic characteristics. It is his cell which impresses on the face and form of the new individual the eatures of the parents, or of some distant ancestor; it is this cell, gain, which transmits to him the intellectual and mental idiosyncracies f his sires, and so on. This Plasm is the immortal portion of our bodies, eveloping by means of a process of successive assimilations. Darwin’s heory, viewing the embryological cell as the essence or extract from all ther cells, is set aside; it is incapable of accounting for hereditary ransmission. There are but two ways of explaining the mystery of eredity: either the substance of the germinal cell is endowed with the aculty of crossing the whole cycle of transformations that lead to the onstruction of a separate organism, and then to the reproduction of dentical germinal cells; or, _these germinal cells do not have their enesis at all in the body of the individual, but proceed directly from he ancestral germinal cell passed from father to son through long enerations_. It is the latter hypothesis that Weissmann has adopted and orked upon, and it is to this cell that he traces the immortal portion of an. So far, so good; and when this almost correct theory is accepted, how ill Biologists explain the first appearance of this everlasting cell?
Unless man “grew” like the immortal “Topsy,” and was not born at all, but ell from the clouds, how was that embryological cell generated in him?
Complete the Physical Plasm, mentioned above, the “Germinal Cell” of man ith all its material potentialities, with the “Spiritual Plasm,” so to ay, or the fluid that contains the five lower principles of the Six‐ rincipled Dhyâni—and you have the secret, if you are spiritual enough to nderstand it.
Now to the promised simile.
_When the seed of the animal man is cast into the soil of the animal oman, that seed cannot germinate unless it has been fructified by the ive 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 ineral atom, it is connected with the lowest principles of the Spirits of he Earth (the Six‐fold Dhyânis); in the vegetable particle, with their __ econd—the Prâna (Life); in the animal, with all these plus the third and he 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 ut one of the Beams of the Universal Sun, for each rational creature eceives the temporary loan only of that which has to return to its ource. 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 ffspring of the Elohim of Life, or Pitris; in its qualitative and hysical aspect, it is the direct progeny of the “Ancestors,” the lowest
Dhyânis, or Spirits of the Earth; for its moral, psychic and spiritual ature, it is indebted to a Group of divine Beings, the name and haracteristics of which will be given in Volume II. Collectively, men are he handiwork of Hosts of various Spirits; distributively, the tabernacles f those Hosts; and occasionally and individually, the vehicles of some of hem. 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 endulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing
Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive Third Root‐Race in pirituality. During its childhood, mankind was wholly composed of that
Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits that animated the monstrous nd gigantic tabernacles of clay of the Fourth Race, built by and composed f countless myriads of Lives, as our bodies are also now. This sentence ill be explained later on in the present Commentary. Science, dimly erceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other infinitesimals in the uman body, and see in them only occasional and abnormal visitors, to hich diseases are attributed. Occultism—which discerns a Life in every tom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or ater—affirms that our whole body is built of such Lives; the smallest acterium under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an lephant to the tiniest infusoria.
The “tabernacles” mentioned above have improved in texture and symmetry of orm, growing and developing with the Globe that bears them; but the hysical improvement has taken place at the expense of the spiritual Inner
Man and of Nature. The three middle principles, in earth and man, became ith every Race more material; the Soul stepping back to make room for the
Physical Intellect; the essence of the Elements becoming the material and omposite elements now known.
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the “Lord God”; ut he _is_ the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into the ingular number and masculine gender. The first Dhyânis, commissioned to
“create” man in their image, could only throw off their Shadows, as a elicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. Man is, eyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his reators and fashioners were many. Nor can it be said that the “Lord God reathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life,” unless that God is dentified with the “One Life,” omnipresent though invisible, and unless he 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 nimal, as such, could ever attain in this cycle of incarnation. It is wing to the inadequate distinctions made by the Jews, and now by our
Western metaphysicians, who are unable to understand, and hence to accept, ore than a triune man—Spirit, Soul, Body—that the “Breath of Life” has een confused with the immortal “Spirit.” This applies also directly to he Protestant theologians, who in translating a certain verse in the
Fourth Gospel(356) have entirely perverted its meaning. This istranslation runs, “the _wind_ bloweth where it listeth,” instead of
“the _spirit_ goeth where it willeth,” as in the original, and also in the ranslation of the Greek Eastern Church.
The learned and very philosophical author of _New Aspects of Life_ would mpress upon his reader that the Nephesh Chiah (Living Soul), according to he 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 rom which, the Soul, which he seems to place higher than the Spirit, is eveloped. Considered _functionally_ and from the standpoint of activity, he Soul stands undeniably higher, in this finite and conditioned world of
Mâyâ. The Soul, he says, “is ultimately produced from the animated body of an.” Thus the author identifies “Spirit” (Âtmâ) with the “Breath of Life” imply. The Eastern Occultists will demur to this statement, for it is ased on the erroneous conception that Prâna and Âtmâ, or Jîvâtmâ, are one nd the same thing. The author supports the argument, by showing that with he ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and even Latins, Ruach, Pneuma and Spiritus eant Wind—with the Jews undeniably, and with the Greeks and Romans very robably; the Greek word Anemos (Wind) and the Latin Animus (Soul) having suspicious relation.
This is very far fetched. But a legitimate battle‐field for deciding this uestion is hardly to be found, since Dr. Pratt seems to be a practical, atter‐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 hey call the One Life (Parabrahman) the Great Breath and the Whirlwind, hey disconnect the seventh principle entirely from matter, and deny that t has any relation to, or connection with it.
Thus the philosophy of man’s psychic, spiritual and mental relations with is physical functions is in almost inextricable confusion. Neither the ld Âryan nor the Egyptian psychology is now properly understood; nor can hey be assimilated, without accepting the Esoteric septenary, or, at any ate, the Vedântic quinquepartite division of the human inner principles.
Failing which, it will be for ever impossible to understand the etaphysical and purely psychic, and even physiological, relations between he 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, ne by one, of all these principles—materialized for the sake of clearness nto ethereal entities or bodies. We must, moreover, remind those who try o 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: t is immortal, “coëval with, and disappearing with, the Solar Boat,” that s, 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 eturn to Tiaou every _night_. This expresses the periodical existences of he Ego.(357)
The Shadow, the Astral Form, is annihilated, “devoured by the Uræus,”(358) he Manes will be annihilated; the two Twins (the Fourth and Fifth
Principles) will be scattered; but the Soul‐Bird, “the Divine Swallow, and he Uræus of Flame” (Manas and Âtmâ‐Buddhi) will live in the eternity, for hey 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 en, and the Egyptians make of the Moon‐God, Taht‐Esmun, the first human ncestor.
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 he Seven Rishis, and is called Riksha, and Chitrashikandinas.
Like alone produces like. The Earth gives Man his body, the Gods (Dhyânis) ive him his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which these
Gods are often the animating principle. Spirit (Âtman) is one, and ndiscrete. 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 emisphere, or the infernal region of the Egyptians, placed by them on the
_concealed side of the Moon_. The human being, in their Esotericism, came ut from the Moon—a triple mystery, astronomical, physiological and sychical, at once; he crossed the whole cycle of existence, and then eturned 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 eavens, which is an allegorical assimilation to Ra, the Sun; then having rossed the Noot, the Celestial Abyss, returning once more to Tiaou; an ssimilation to Osiris, who, as the God of life and reproduction, inhabits he Moon. Plutarch(360) shows the Egyptians celebrating a festival called
“The Ingress of Osiris into the Moon.” In the _Ritual_,(361) life is romised after death; and the renovation of life is placed under the atronage of Osiris‐Lunus, because the Moon was the symbol of life‐ enewals or reïncarnations, owing to its growth, waning, dying, and eäppearance 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 xplained in a Louvre papyrus:(364) “Couplings and conceptions abound when e [Osiris‐Lunus] is seen in heaven on that day.” Says Osiris: “O sole adiant beam of the Moon! I issue from the circulating multitudes [of tars].... 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 etter than the moderns, the real occult influences of the lunar body upon he mysteries of conception. In the oldest systems we find the Moon always ale. Thus Soma, with the Hindûs, is a kind of sidereal Don Juan, a
“King,” and the father, albeit illegitimate, of Budha—Wisdom. This relates o Occult Knowledge, a wisdom gathered through a thorough acquaintance ith lunar mysteries, including those of sexual generation. And later, hen the Moon became connected with the female Goddesses, with Diana,
Isis, Artemis, Juno, etc., this connection was also due to a thorough nowledge 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, t any rate, as the occult properties of the Moon and its hidden nfluences on generation are concerned—then, there would be little need to ear increase of the population, or to resort to the questionable iterature of the Malthusians for its arrest. For it is the Moon and her onjunctions that regulate conceptions, and every Astrologer in India nows it. During the previous Races, and at least at the beginning of the resent one, those who indulged in marital relations during certain lunar hases that made those relations sterile, were regarded as sorcerers and inners. 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 re perpetrated because of the complete ignorance of such Occult nfluences.
But, primarily, the Sun and Moon were the only visible and, by their ffects, so to say, _tangible_, psychic and physiological deities—the
Father and the Son—while Space or Air in general, or that expanse of eaven called Noot by the Egyptians, was the concealed Spirit or Breath of he two. The Father and Son were interchangeable in their functions, and orked together harmoniously in their effects upon terrestrial nature and umanity; hence they were regarded as _one_, though _two_ as personified
Entities. They were both males, and both had their distinct though ollaborative work in the causative generation of humanity. So much from he astronomical and cosmic standpoints, viewed and expressed in ymbolical language, which became in our last races theological and ogmatic. But behind this veil of cosmic and astrological symbols, there ere the occult mysteries of anthropography and the primeval genesis of an. And in this, no knowledge of symbols, or even the key to the post‐ iluvian symbolical language of the Jews, will or can help, save only with eference to that which has been laid down in national scriptures for xoteric uses; the sum of which, however cleverly veiled, was but the mallest portion of the real primitive history of each people, and often, oreover, as in the Hebrew Scriptures, related merely to the terrestrial uman, and not to the divine life of that nation. That psychic and piritual element belonged to the MYSTERIES and INITIATION. There were hings never recorded in scrolls, but which, as in Central Asia, were ngraved on rocks and in subterranean crypts.
Nevertheless, there was a time when the whole world was “of one lip and of ne knowledge,” and man knew more of his origin than he does now; and thus new that the Sun and Moon, however large a part they may play in the onstitution, growth and development of the human body, were not the irect causative agents of his appearance on Earth; for these agents, in ruth, 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 hat:
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 o our physical senses. To our spiritual perceptions, however, and to our nner spiritual eye, the Elohim, or Dhyânis, are no more an abstraction han our soul and spirit are to us. Reject the one and you reject the ther, since that which is the _surviving_ Entity _in us_, is partly the irect emanation from, and partly those celestial Entities _themselves_.
One thing is certain; the Jews were perfectly acquainted with sorcery and arious maleficent forces: but, with the exception of some of their great rophets and seers like Daniel and Ezekiel—Enoch belonging to a far istant race, as a generic character, and not to any nation but to ll—they knew little of, nor would they deal with, the real divine
Occultism; their national character being averse to anything which had no irect bearing upon their own ethnical, tribal and individual enefits—witness their own prophets, and the curses thundered by them gainst the “stiff‐necked race.” But even the _Kabalah_ plainly shows the irect 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, eaning in it, then and then only will Occultists be ready to pass the alm 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, metaphysical figment, and a reality only when put in his proper place as n emanation and a Sephira—we have a right to maintain that the _Zohar_, s witnessed by the _Book of Numbers_, at any rate, gave out originally, efore the Christian Kabalists had disfigured it, and still gives out, the ame 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, ust 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 eflection, the Ray, differentiates the Water of Space; or, in the words f the _Book of the Dead_: “Chaos ceases, through the effulgence of the
Ray of Primordial Light dissipating total darkness, by the help of the reat magic power of the Word of the [Central] Sun.” Chaos becomes male‐ emale, and Water, incubated by Light, and the Three‐fold Being issues as ts “First‐born.” “Ra [or Osiris‐Ptah] creates his own Limbs [like
Brahmâ], by creating the Gods destined to personify his phases,” during he 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 ystery of man and his origin, is still more difficult to comprehend. In rder to form a clear conception of what is meant by the One becoming Two, nd then being transformed into the Three‐fold, the student has to make imself thoroughly acquainted with what we call Rounds. If he refers to
_Esoteric Buddhism_—the first attempt to sketch out an approximate outline f archaic cosmogony—he will find that by a Round is meant the serial volution of nascent material Nature, of the seven Globes of our
Chain,(368) with their mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms; man being ncluded in the latter and standing at the head of it, during the whole eriod 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 atter from Globe A to Globe G, it is one Round. In the middle of the ourth revolution, which is our present Round, “Evolution has reached its cme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical an, and, from this point, begins its work spirit‐ward.” All this needs ittle repetition, as it is well explained in _Esoteric Buddhism_. That hich was hardly touched upon, however, and of which the little that was aid has misled many, is the origin of man, and it is upon this that a ittle more light may now be thrown, just enough to make the Stanza more omprehensible, as the process will be fully explained only in its egitimate place, in Volume II.
Now every Round, on the descending scale, is but a repetition in a more oncrete form of the Round which preceded it, just as every Globe, down to ur Fourth Sphere the actual Earth, is a grosser and more material copy of he more shadowy Sphere which precedes it, each in order, on the three igher planes.(369) On its way upwards, on the ascending arc, Evolution piritualizes and etherealizes, so to speak, the general nature of all, ringing it on to a level with the plane on which the twin Globe on the pposite arc is placed; the result being, that when the seventh Globe is eached, in whatever Round, the nature of everything that is evolving eturns to the condition it was in at its starting point—_plus_, every ime, a new and superior degree in the states of consciousness. Thus it ecomes 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 ame order—save details based on local conditions and time—as in the receding Round. Again, it must be explained and remembered that, as the ork of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different Group of so‐ alled Creators, or Architects, so is that of every Globe; that is, it is nder the supervision and guidance of special Builders and Watchers—the arious Dhyân Chohans.
“Creators” is an incorrect word to use, as no other religion, not even the ect of the Visishthadvaitîs in India, one which anthropomorphizes even
Parabrahman, believes in creation _ex nihilo_, as Christians and Jews do, ut only in evolution out of preëxisting materials.
The Group of the Hierarchy which is commissioned to “create” men is a pecial Group, then; yet it evolved shadowy man in this Cycle, just as a igher and still more spiritual Group evolved him in the Third Round. But s it is the Sixth, on the downward scale of Spirituality—the last and
Seventh being the Terrestrial Spirits (Elementals), which gradually form, uild and condense his physical body—this Sixth Group evolves no more than he future man’s shadowy form, a filmy, hardly visible, transparent copy f 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 orm, and make of it the Rational Man. This is one of those subjects upon hich very little may be said to the general public. It is a Mystery ruly, but only to him who is prepared to reject the existence of ntellectual and conscious Spiritual Beings in the Universe, and to limit ull Consciousness to man alone, and that only as a “function of the rain.” Many are those among the Spiritual Entities, who have incarnated odily in man, since his first appearance, and who, for all that, still xist 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 arth without, however, abandoning its status and functions in the upersensuous regions. If this needs explanation, we can do no better than emind the reader of like cases in so‐called “Spiritualism”; though such ases are very rare, at least as regards the nature of the Entity ncarnating, or taking temporary possession of a medium. For the so‐called
“spirits” that may occasionally possess themselves of the bodies of ediums are not the Monads, or Higher Principles, of disembodied
Personalities. Such “spirits” can only be either Elementaries, r—Nirmânakâyas. Just as certain persons, whether by virtue of a peculiar rganization, or through the power of acquired mystic knowledge, can be een in their “double” in one place, while their body is many miles away; o the same thing can occur in the case of superior Beings.
Man, philosophically considered, is, in his outward form, simply an nimal, 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 xistence, the “_Ego Sum_,” necessitates self‐consciousness, and an animal an only have direct consciousness, or instinct. This was so well nderstood by the ancients, that even the Kabalists made of soul and body wo Lives, independent of each other. In the _New Aspects of Life_, the uthor 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 ith 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, ould die and man be still living on earth. That is to say, the Soul could ree itself from and quit the tabernacle for various reasons, such as nsanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc. The possibility of the
“Soul”—that is, the eternal Spiritual Ego—dwelling in the unseen worlds, hile its body goes on living on Earth, is a preeminently Occult doctrine, specially in Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. Many are the _soulless_ men mong us, for the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists s well as in persons “who advance in holiness and never turn back.”
Therefore, that which living men (Initiates) can do, the Dhyânis, who have o physical body to hamper them, can do still better. This was the belief f the antediluvians, and it is fast becoming that of modern intellectual ociety in “Spiritualism,” as well as in the Greek and Roman Churches, hich teach the ubiquity of their Angels. The Zoroastrians regarded their
Amshaspends as dual entities (Ferouers), applying this duality—in Esoteric hilosophy, at any rate—to all the spiritual and invisible denizens of the umberless worlds in space, which are visible to our eye. In a note of
Damascius (sixth century) on the Chaldean Oracles, we have ample evidence f the universality of this doctrine, for he says: “In these Oracles, the even Cosmocratores of the World [‘the World‐Pillars’], mentioned likewise y St. Paul, are double; one set being commissioned to rule the superior orlds, the spiritual and the sidereal, and the other to guide and watch ver the worlds of matter.” Such is also the opinion of Jamblichus, who akes an evident distinction between the Archangels and the
Archontes.(371)
The above may be applied, of course, to the distinction made between the egrees or orders of Spiritual Beings, and it is in this sense that the
Roman Catholic Church tries to interpret and teach the difference; for hile the Archangels are in her teaching divine and holy, she denounces heir “Doubles” as Devils. But the word Ferouer is not to be understood in his sense, for it means simply the reverse or the opposite side of some ttribute or quality. Thus when the Occultist says that the “Demon is the nverse of God”—evil, the reverse of the medal—he does not mean two eparate actualities, but two aspects or facets of the same Unity. But the est man living, side by side with an Archangel—as described in
Theology—would appear a fiend. Hence a certain reason in depreciating a ower “Double,” immersed far deeper in matter than its original. But still here is as little cause to regard them as Devils, and this is precisely hat the Roman Catholics maintain against all reason and logic.
This identity between the Spirit and its material “Double”—in man it is he reverse—explains still better the confusion, already alluded to in his work, in the names and individualities, as well as in the numbers, of he 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 hese Progenitors of our mankind, but every human being, we are taught, as his prototype in the Spiritual Spheres, which prototype is the highest ssence of his Seventh Principle. Thus the seven Manus become fourteen, he Root‐Manu being the Prime Cause, and the Seed‐Manu its Effect; and rom 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 elief 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 ssence of the Three‐fold, the Four‐fold and the Five‐fold which contain ll the preceding. Panchâshikha, agreeably to _Padma Purâna_,(372) is one f the seven _Kumâras_ who go to Shveta Dvîpa to worship Vishnu. We shall ee, further on, what connection there is between the “celibate” and haste Sons of Brahmâ, who refuse “to multiply,” and terrestrial mortals.
Meanwhile, it is evident that the “Man‐Plant, Saptaparna,” thus refers to he seven principles, and that man is compared to this seven‐leaved plant, hich is so sacred among Buddhists. The Egyptian allegory, in the _Book of he Dead_, that relates to the “reward of the Soul,” is as suggestive of ur septenary doctrine as it is poetical. The Deceased is allotted a piece f land in the field of Aanroo, wherein the Manes, the deified shades of he dead, glean, as the harvest they have sown by their actions in life, he corn seven cubits high, which grows in a territory divided into seven nd fourteen portions. This corn is the food on which they will live and rosper, or that will kill them, in Amenti, the realm of which the Aanroo‐ ield is a domain. For, as said in the hymn,(373) the Deceased is either estroyed therein, or becomes pure spirit for the Eternity, in consequence f 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 raphic.
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, ssimilated by the first two after every terrestrial life. The “Four
Wicks,” that go out and are extinguished, are the Quaternary, the four ower 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 ction 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‐ reating 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, bove which one and the same moon is shining, so our evanescent
Personalities—the illusive envelopes of the immortal Monad‐Ego—twinkle and ance on the waves of Mâyâ. They appear and, as the thousands of sparks roduced by the moon‐beams, last only so long as the Queen of the Night adiates 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 efore, 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 even Globes of the Planetary Chain and the seven Rounds, or the forty‐ ine stations of active existence that are before the “Spark,” or Monad, t 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 ubstantial nature of Life, the independent nature of which is denied by
Modern Science, because that Science is unable to comprehend it. The eïncarnationists and believers in Karma alone dimly perceive, that the hole secret of Life is in the unbroken series of its manifestations, hether in, or apart from, the physical body. Because even if:
Life, like a dome of many‐coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity—
et it is itself part and parcel of that Eternity; for Life alone can nderstand Life.
What is that “Spark” which “hangs from the Flame”? It is Jîva, the Monad n conjunction with Manas, or rather its aroma—that which remains from ach Personality, when worthy, and hangs from Âtmâ‐Buddhi, the Flame, by he Thread of Life. In whatever way it is interpreted, and into whatever umber of principles the human being is divided, it may be easily shown hat 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 he last‐mentioned, the Kabalistic works offer abundant proof of this tatement. The entire system of the Kabalistic numerals is based on the ivine Septenary hanging from the Triad, thus forming the Decad, and its ermutations 7, 5, 4, and 3, which, finally, all merge into the _One_ tself; 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; herefore 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 owest on all the other planes of conscious existence. The Chaldean _Book f 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 y the brow of Macroprosopus; 2. Chokmah (Wisdom, a male Principle), by is right shoulder; and 3. Binah (Intelligence, a female Principle), by he left shoulder.” Then come the _seven_ Limbs, or Sephiroth, on the lanes of manifestation; the totality of these four planes being epresented 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 ormer when counting from the first Globe above, the latter if reckoned by he 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 ystic 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 he regeneration, on the day of “Sabbath.” For the “_Seventh_ Day” again as 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 verything else becoming again what they were before—Protyle or
Undifferentiated Substance. “Sabbath” means Rest, or Nirvâna. It is not he “_seventh_ day” after _six_ days, but a period the duration of which quals 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 s equal to his Day. If the Christians will follow Jewish customs, they ught to adopt the spirit and not the dead letter thereof. They should ork one week of seven days and _rest_ seven days. That the word “Sabbath” ad a mystic significance, is disclosed in the contempt shown by Jesus for he Sabbath day, and by what is said in _Luke_.(385) Sabbath is there aken for the _whole week_. See the Greek text where the week is called
“Sabbath.” Literally, “I fast twice in the Sabbath.” Paul, an Initiate, new 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 he Kabalah as contained in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_, not as isrepresented by its now disfigured copy, the _Kabalah_ of the Christian
Mystics—is very small indeed, being confined to unimportant divergences of orm and expression. Thus Eastern Occultism refers to our Earth as the
Fourth World, the lowest of the Chain, above which run upward on both urves the six Globes, three on each side. The _Zohar_, on the other hand, alls the Earth the lower, or the _seventh_, adding that upon the six epend all things which are in it (Microprosopus). The “Smaller Face
[smaller because manifested and finite] is formed of _six_ Sephiroth,” ays the same work. “Seven Kings come and _die in the thrice‐destroyed
World_ [Malkuth, our Earth, destroyed after each of the Three Rounds which t has gone through]. And their reign [that of the Seven Kings] will be roken up.”(388) This relates to the Seven Races, _five_ of which have lready 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 f 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 inds of “Ancestors,” the two preceding Races which give birth to animal nd to rational man.
It will be shown in Volume II, that the number seven, as well as the octrine of the septenary constitution of man, was preëminent in all the ecret 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 aithfully following even the septenary division of man, for the diagram e gives in his _Clef des Grands Mystères_(389) is septenary. This may be een at a glance, however cleverly the correct thought is veiled. One eeds also only to look at the diagram, the “Formation of the Soul,” in
Mathers’ _Kabbalah Unveiled_,(390) from the above mentioned, work of Lévi, o 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 he Breath of (animal) Life in man—the Breath of Life, _instinctual_ in he animal; and Manas is the Third Soul—the human in its light side, and nimal, in its connection with Samaël or Kâma. Nephesh is really the
“Breath of (animal) Life” breathed into Adam, the Man of Dust; it is onsequently 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 s the Plastic Mediator; not Manas, the intelligent medium between the pper Triad and the lower Quaternary. But there are many such strange and urious transformations to be found in the Kabalistic works—a convincing roof that this literature has become a sad jumble. We do not accept the lassification, except in this one particular, in order to show the points f agreement.
We will now give in tabular form what the very cautious Éliphas Lévi says n explanation of his diagram, and what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches—and ompare 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 lothed light; and this light is Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas. riple.
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. he rind [body] of the Image
[Astral Soul].
6. The Image is double, because 6. Too uselessly apocalyptic. t reflects the good and the Why not say that the Astral ad. 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 t renews its life by the after every new incarnation it estruction of forms. [But adds to Âtmâ‐Buddhi something of
Nephesh, the “Breath of Life,” itself; and thus, assimilating s a misnomer, and a useless itself to the Monad, shares its uzzle to the student.] immortality.
2. Ruach progresses by the 2. Buddhi becomes conscious by volution 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, ithout oblivion and forgets, nor remembers. It does estruction. 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. hat offers the riddle of birth.
7. The fatal Image [the Astral] 7. The Astral, through Kâma ndows Nephesh with its (Desire), is ever drawing Manas ptitudes; but Ruach is able to down into the sphere of material ubstitute for it the Image passions and desires. But if the onquered in accordance with the _better_ Man, or Manas, tries to nspirations 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 now the real tenet, or distorted it to suit himself and his objects. Thus e 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 tself in clothing itself [with Ego when it incarnates; and Body]; and personality endures something remains of that nly when the garment is Personality through Manas, when erfect. the latter is perfect enough to
assimilate Buddhi.
3. The Angels aspire to become 3. Correct. en; a Perfect Man, a Man‐God, s above all the Angels.
4. Every 14,000 years the soul 4. Within a period, a Great Age, ejuvenates, and rests in the or a Day of Brahmâ, 14 Manus ubilean 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 lant, 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 nforms Divine Man, between whom and his predecessor animal man, there is ll the difference in the world. _Genesis_ begins its anthropology at the rong end—evidently for a blind—and lands nowhere. The introductory hapters of _Genesis_ were never meant to represent even a remote allegory f the creation of _our_ Earth. They embrace a metaphysical conception of ome indefinite period, in eternity, when successive attempts were being ade by the law of evolution at the formation of universes. The idea is lainly 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 f quicksilver on a plate blend into one mass—the Logoi appear in their otality as the first “Male and Female,” or Adam Kadmon, the “Fiat Lux” of he _Bible_, as we have already seen. But this transformation did not take lace on our Earth, nor on any material plane, but in the Spacial Depths f 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 he lowest form of matter—the mineral. After a sevenfold gyration encased n 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 he forms of vegetable matter, into what is termed animal matter, it has ow reached the point at which it has become the germ, so to speak, of the nimal, 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 initeness, is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides the material hich will be needed for its future human form, the Monad requires (_a_) a piritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape itself into; and
(_b_) an intelligent consciousness, to guide its evolution and progress, either of which is possessed by the homogeneous Monad, or by senseless hough living matter. The Adam of dust requires the Soul of Life to be reathed into him: the two middle Principles, which are the _sentient_
Life of the irrational animal and the Human Soul, for the former is rrational without the latter. It is only when, from a potential ndrogyne, man has become separated into male and female, that he will be ndowed with this conscious, rational, individual Soul (Manas), “the rinciple, or the intelligence, of the Elohim,” to receive which, he has o eat of the fruit of Knowledge from the Tree of Good and Evil. How is he o obtain all this? The Occult Doctrine teaches that while the Monad is ycling on downward into matter, these very Elohim, or Pitris—the lower
Dhyân Chohans—are evolving, _pari passu_ with it, on a higher and more piritual plane, descending also relatively into matter, on their own lane of consciousness, when, after having reached a certain point, they ill meet the incarnating senseless Monad, encased in the lowest matter, nd blending the two potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce hat terrestrial symbol of the “Heavenly Man” in space—PERFECT MAN. In the
Sânkhya Philosophy, Purusha (Spirit) is spoken of as something impotent nless it mounts on the shoulders of Prakriti (Matter), which, left alone, s—senseless. But in the Secret Philosophy they are viewed as graduated.
Spirit and Matter, though one and the same thing in their origin, when nce they are on the plane of differentiation, begin each of them their volutionary progress in contrary directions—Spirit falling gradually into
Matter, and the latter ascending to its original condition, that of a pure piritual Substance. Both are inseparable, yet ever separated. On the hysical plane, two like poles will always repel each other, while the egative and the positive are mutually attracted; so do Spirit and Matter tand 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 houlders for the formation of the Perfect Man—rudimentary man of the irst Two and a Half Races being only the _first_, gradually evolving into he _most perfect, of mammals_—the Celestial Ancestors (Entities from receding Worlds, called in India the Shishta) step in on this our plane, nd incarnate in the physical or animal man, as the Pitris had stepped in efore them for the formation of the latter. Thus the two processes for he two “creations”—the animal and the divine man—differ greatly. The
Pitris shoot out from their ethereal bodies still more ethereal and hadowy similitudes of themselves, or what we should now call “doubles,” r “astral forms,” in their own likeness.(395) This furnishes the Monad ith its first dwelling, and blind matter with a model around and upon hich to build henceforth. But _Man is still incomplete_. From Svâyambhuva
Manu,(396) from whom descended the seven primitive Manus, or Prajâpatis, ach of whom gave birth to a primitive Race of men, down to the _Codex
Nazaræus_, in which Karabtanos, or Fetahil, blind concupiscent Matter, egets on his Mother, Spiritus, seven Figures, each of which stands as the rogenitor of one of the primeval seven Races—this doctrine has left its mpress 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, he 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 ouse of the tabernacle of the Soul, the Doctrine teaches a strange esson; so strange that unless thoroughly explained, and as thoroughly omprehended, it is only the exact science of the future that is destined o fully vindicate the theory.
It has been stated before now that Occultism does not accept anything norganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by Science, “inorganic ubstance,” means simply that the latent life, slumbering in the molecules f so‐called “inert matter,” is incognizable. ALL IS LIFE, and every atom f even mineral dust is a LIFE, though beyond our comprehension and erception, because it is outside the range of the laws known to those who eject Occultism. “The very atoms,” says Tyndall, “seem instinct with a esire for life.” Whence, then, we would ask, comes the tendency “to run nto organic form”? Is it in any way explicable except according to the eachings of Occult Science?
_The Worlds, to the profane, are built up of the known Elements. To the onception of an Arhat, these Elements are themselves, collectively, a
Divine Life; distributively, on the plane of manifestations, the umberless and countless crores of Lives. Fire alone is_ ONE, _on the lane of the One Reality: on that of manifested, hence illusive, Being, ts particles are fiery Lives which live and have their being at the xpense of every other Life that they consume. Therefore they are named he_ “DEVOURERS.” ... _Every visible thing in this Universe was built by uch_ LIVES, _from conscious and divine primordial man down to the nconscious agents that construct matter.... From the_ ONE LIFE, _formless nd uncreate, proceeds the Universe of Lives. First was manifested from he Deep [Chaos] cold luminous Fire [gaseous light?], which formed the
Curds in Space [irresolvable nebulæ, perhaps?] ... These fought, and a reat heat was developed by the encountering and collision, which produced otation. Then came the first manifested_ MATERIAL _Fire, the hot Flames, he Wanderers in Heaven [Comets]. Heat generates moist vapour; that forms olid water [?]; then dry mist, then liquid mist, watery, that puts out he 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 queous mist, which yields the third World‐Element_—WATER; _and from the reath of all [atmospheric]_ AIR _is born. These four are the four Lives f the first four Periods [Rounds] of Manvantara. The three last will ollow_.
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 pon this subject, he would say, that the organic cells are endowed with a ital potency that does not cease its activity with the cessation of a urrent of oxygen towards them, and does not, on that account, break off ts relations with life itself, which is supported by the influence of hat gas? “I would add,” continues Pasteur, “that the evolution of the erm is accomplished by means of complicated phenomena, among which we ust class processes of fermentation”; and life, according to Claude
Bernard and Pasteur, is nothing else than a process of fermentation. That here exist in Nature Beings, or Lives, that can live and thrive without ir, even on our Globe, has been demonstrated by the same Scientists.
Pasteur found that many of the lower lives, such as vibriones, and other icrobes and bacteria, could exist without air, which, on the contrary, illed them. They derived the oxygen necessary for their multiplication rom the various substances that surrounded them. He calls them _ærobes_, iving on the tissues of our matter, when the latter has ceased to form a art of an integral and living whole (then called very unscientifically by
Science “dead matter”), and _anærobes_. The one kind binds oxygen, and ontributes greatly to the destruction of animal life and vegetable issues, furnishing to the atmosphere materials which enter, later on, nto the constitution of other organisms; the other finally destroys, or ather annihilates, the so‐called organic substance; ultimate decay being mpossible without their participation. Certain germ‐cells, such as those f yeast, develop and multiply in air, but when deprived of it, they will dapt themselves to life without air and become ferments, absorbing oxygen rom substances coming in contact with them, and thereby ruining the atter. The cells in fruit, when lacking free oxygen, act as ferments and timulate fermentation. “Therefore the vegetable cell, in this case, anifests its life as an anærobic being. Why, then, should an organic cell orm, in this case, an exception?” asks Professor Bogolubof. Pasteur shows hat in the substance of our tissues and organs, the cell, not finding ufficient oxygen for itself, stimulates fermentation in the same way as he fruit‐cell, and Claude Bernard thought that Pasteur’s idea of the ormation of ferments found its application and corroboration in the fact hat urea increases in the blood during strangulation. LIFE therefore is verywhere in the Universe, and, Occultism teaches us, it is also in the tom.
“Bhûmi appears with six sisters,” says the Commentary. It is a Vedic eaching that “there are three Earths, corresponding to three Heavens, and ur Earth [the fourth] is called Bhûmi.” This is the explanation given by ur exoteric Western Orientalists. But the esoteric meaning, and allusion o 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 r 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 nto Spirit; the lowest one, Bhûmi, our Earth, forming the turning point, o 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 evelops one of the Compound Elements, as now known to Science, which ejects the primitive nomenclature, preferring to subdivide them into onstituents. If Nature is the “Ever‐Becoming” on the manifested plane, hen these Elements are to be regarded in the same light: they have to volve, progress, and increase to the manvantaric end.
Thus the First Round, we are taught, developed but one Element, and a ature and humanity in what may be spoken of as one aspect of
Nature—called by some, very unscientifically, though it may be so _de acto_, “one‐dimensional space.”
The Second Round brought forth and developed two Elements, Fire and Earth; nd _its_ humanity, adapted to this condition of Nature, if we can give he name humanity to beings living under conditions now unknown to men, as—to use again a familiar phrase in a strictly figurative sense, the nly way in which it can be used correctly—a “two‐dimensional” species.
The processes of natural development which we are now considering will at nce elucidate and discredit the fashion of speculating on the attributes f _two_, _three_, and _four_ or more _dimensional_ space; but, in assing, it is worth while to point out the real significance of the ound, but incomplete, intuition that has prompted—among Spiritualists and
Theosophists, and several great men of Science, for the matter of hat(398)—the use of the modern expression, the “fourth dimension of pace.” To begin with, the superficial absurdity of assuming that Space tself is measurable in any direction is of little consequence. The amiliar phrase can only be an abbreviation of the fuller form—the
“_fourth dimension of matter, in Space_.”(399) But even thus expanded, it s an unhappy phrase, because while it is perfectly true that the progress f evolution may be destined to introduce us to new characteristics of atter, those with which we are already familiar are really more numerous han the three dimensions. The qualities, or what is perhaps the best vailable term, the characteristics of matter, must clearly bear a direct elation always to the senses of man. Matter has extension, colour, motion
(molecular motion), taste and smell, corresponding to the existing senses f man, and the next characteristic it develops—let us call it for the oment “Permeability”—will correspond to the next sense of man, which we ay call “Normal Clairvoyance.” Thus, when some bold thinkers have been hirsting for a fourth dimension, to explain the passage of matter through atter, and the production of knots upon an endless cord, they have been n want of a _sixth characteristic_ of matter. The three dimensions belong eally to only one attribute, or characteristic, of matter—extension; and opular common sense justly rebels against the idea that, under any ondition of things, there can be more than three of such dimensions as ength, breadth and thickness. These terms, and the term “dimension” tself, all belong to one plane of thought, to one stage of evolution, to ne characteristic of matter. So long as there are foot‐rules within the esources of cosmos, to apply to matter, so long will they be able to easure it three ways and no more; just as, from the time the idea of easurement first occupied a place in the human understanding, it has been ossible to apply measurement in three directions and no more. But these onsiderations do not in any way militate against the certainty that, in he progress of time, as the faculties of humanity are multiplied, so will he characteristics of matter be multiplied also. Meanwhile, the xpression is far more incorrect than even the familiar phrase of the un’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 iguratively referred to as two‐dimensional. But here another _caveat_ ust be entered. This loose and figurative expression may be regarded—on ne plane of thought, as we have just seen—as equivalent to the second haracteristic of matter, corresponding to the second perceptive faculty r sense of man. But these two linked scales of evolution are concerned ith the processes going on within the limits of a single Round. The uccession of primary aspects of Nature, with which the succession of
Rounds is concerned, has to do, as already indicated, with the development f the Elements—in the Occult sense—Fire, Air, Water, Earth. We are only n the Fourth Round, and our catalogue so far stops short. The order in hich these Elements are mentioned, in the last sentence but one, is the orrect one for Esoteric purposes and in the Secret Teachings. Milton was ight when he spoke of the “Powers of Fire, Air, Water, Earth”; the Earth, uch as we know it now, had no existence before the Fourth Round, hundreds f millions of years ago, the commencement of our geological Earth. The
Globe, says the Commentary, was “_fiery, cool and radiant, as its ethereal en and animals, during the First Round_”—a contradiction or paradox in he opinion of our present Science—“_luminous and more dense and heavy, uring the Second Round; watery during the Third_.” Thus are the Elements eversed.
The centres of consciousness of the Third Round, destined to develop into umanity as we know it, arrived at a perception of the third Element,
Water. If we had to frame our conclusions according to the _data_ urnished us by Geologists, then we would say that there was no real ater, even during the Carboniferous Period. We are told that gigantic asses of carbon, which existed formerly spread in the atmosphere, as arbonic acid, were absorbed by plants, while a large proportion of that as was mixed in the water. Now, if this be so, and we have to believe hat all the carbonic acid which went to compose those plants that formed ituminous coal, lignite, etc., and went towards the formation of lime‐ tone, and so on, that all this was at that period in the atmosphere in aseous form, then, there must have been seas and oceans of liquid arbonic acid! But how then could the Carboniferous Period be preceded by he Devonian and Silurian Ages—those of fishes and molluscs—on that ssumption? Barometric pressure, moreover, must have exceeded several undred times the pressure of our present atmosphere. How could organisms, ven so simple as those of certain fishes and molluscs, stand that? There s a curious work by Blanchard, on the Origin of Life, wherein he shows ome strange contradictions and confusions in the theories of his olleagues, and which we recommend to the reader’s attention.
Those of the Fourth Round have added Earth as a state of matter to their tock, as well as the three other Elements in their present ransformation.
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 ne 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, hat primordial fluid which was required, according to Moses, to make a
“Living Soul.” And this may account for the flagrant discrepancies and nscientific statements found in _Genesis_. Separate the first from the econd chapter; read the former as a scripture of the Elohists, and the atter as that of the far later Jehovists; still one finds, if one reads etween the lines, the same order in which created things appear; namely,
Fire (Light), Air, Water, and Man (or Earth). For the sentence of the irst chapter (the Elohistic), “In the beginning God created the heaven nd the earth,” is a mistranslation; it is not “the heaven and the earth,” ut the duplex, or dual, Heaven, the _upper_ and the _lower_ Heavens, or he separation of Primordial Substance that was light in its upper, and ark in its lower portions (the manifested Universe), in its duality of he _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 ivide the waters from the waters,” _i.e._, “the waters which were under he firmament [our manifested visible Universe] from the waters which were
_above_ the firmament [the (to us) invisible planes of being].” In the econd chapter (the Jehovistic), plants and herbs are created before ater, just as in the first, _light_ is produced before the _sun_. “God ade the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field _before it as 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 bsurdity unless the esoteric explanation is accepted. The plants _were_ reated before they were in the earth—_for there was no earth then such as t is now_; and the herb of the field was in existence before it grew as t 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 o, but—only so far as _Black_ Magic is concerned, and on the lowest lanes of what we call Ether, the noumenon of which is Âkâsha; and even his would be held incorrect by orthodox Occultists. The “Astral Light” is imply the older “Sidereal Light” of Paracelsus; and to say that
“everything which exists has been evolved from it, and it preserves and eproduces all forms,” as he does, is to enunciate truth only in the econd proposition. The first is erroneous; for if all that exists was volved _through_ (or _viâ_) it, this is not the Astral Light, since the atter is not the container of _all_ things but, at best, only the eflector 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 he 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 xplain them by the occasional addition of a word or two, to show the ifference 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 an—J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia. For others, however, it _is_ discovered, et must remain almost useless. “So far shalt thou go....”
All the above is as practical as it is correct, save one error, which we ave explained. Éliphas Lévi commits a great blunder in always identifying he Astral Light with what we call Âkâsha. What it really is will be xpounded 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 xoteric writings flatly contradict the assertion. No Hindû has ever istaken Prakriti—the Astral Light being only above the lowest plane of
Prakriti, the Material Kosmos—for the “immortal Spirit.” Prakriti is ever alled Mâyâ, Illusion, and is doomed to disappear with the rest, the Gods ncluded, at the hour of the Pralaya. As it is shown that Âkâsha is not ven 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 ccasionally confused Âkâsha with Prakriti, with Ether, and even with the isible Sky! It is true also that those who have invariably translated the erm Âkâsha by “Ether”—Wilson, for instance—finding it called “the aterial cause of sound” possessing, moreover, this _one single property_, ave ignorantly imagined it to be “material,” in the physical sense. True, gain, that if the characteristics are accepted literally, then, since othing material or physical, and therefore conditioned and temporary, can e immortal—according to metaphysics and philosophy—it would follow that
Âkâsha is neither infinite nor immortal. But all this is erroneous, since oth the words Pradhâna, Primeval Matter, and Sound, as a property, have een misunderstood; the former term (Pradhâna) being certainly synonymous ith 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 ollowing sentence from _Vishnu Purâna_.(401) “There was neither day nor ight, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness, nor light, nor any other thing, ave 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 nother 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 he Pralaya, yet is it held as infinite and immortal. The literal ranslation is given as: “One Prâdhânika Brahma Spirit: THAT was”; and the
Commentator interprets the compound term as a substantive, not as a erivative word used attributively, _i.e._, like something “conjoined with
Pradhâna.” The student has to note, moreover, that the Purânic is a ualistic system, not evolutionary, and that, in this respect, far more ill be found, from an Esoteric standpoint, in the Sânkhya, and even in he _Mânava‐Dharma‐Shâstra_, however much the latter differs from the ormer. 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, he ever‐invisible agent, courted even by Physical Science. Nor is it
Astral Light. It is, as said, the _noumenon_ of the seven‐fold ifferentiated 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 he Logos, for he is called Îshvara, Brahmâ, Bhâva, etc.(404) He is, in hort, the “Creator,” or the Divine Mind in creative operation, “the Cause f 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, n 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 ansions,” may be contrasted with the Occult saying, “In our Mother’s ouse are seven mansions,” or planes, the lowest of which is above and round us—the Astral Light.
The Elements, whether simple or compound, could not have remained the same ince the commencement of the evolution of our Chain. Everything in the
Universe progresses steadily in the Great Cycle, while incessantly going p and down in the smaller Cycles. Nature is never stationary during
Manvantara, as it is ever _becoming_,(406) not simply _being_; and ineral, vegetable, and human life are always adapting their organisms to he then reigning Elements; and therefore _those_ Elements were then itted for them, as they are now for the life of present humanity. It will nly be in the next, or Fifth, Round that the fifth Element, Ether—the ross body of Âkâsha, if it can be called even that—will, by becoming a amiliar fact of Nature to all men, as Air is familiar to us now, cease to e, as at present, hypothetical and an “agent” for so many things. And nly during that Round will those higher senses, the growth and evelopment of which Âkâsha subserves, be susceptible of a complete xpansion. As already indicated, a _partial_ familiarity with the haracteristic of matter—Permeability—which should be developed oncurrently with the sixth sense, may be expected to develop at the roper period in this Round. But with the next Element added to our esources, in the next Round, Permeability will become so manifest a haracteristic of matter, that the densest forms of this Round will seem o 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 escription given of the Higher LIVES, we must direct our attention, at resent, simply to the earthly Beings and the Earth itself. The latter, we re told, is built up for the _First_ Round by the “Devourers,” which isintegrate and differentiate the germs of other Lives in the Elements; retty much, it must be supposed, as in the present stage of the world, he _ærobes_ do, when, undermining and loosening the chemical structure in n organism, they transform animal matter, and generate substances that ary 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 article, or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life n it, however latent and unconscious.
_Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active Life; it is drawn into he vortex of_ MOTION _[the Alchemical Solvent of Life]; Spirit and Matter re __ the two States of the_ ONE, _which is neither Spirit nor Matter, oth being the Absolute Life, latent.... Spirit is the first ifferentiation of [and in]_ SPACE; _and Matter the first differentiation f 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 norganic atom, whether single or complex, and there is life even in Laya, ust as a man in a profound cataleptic state—to all appearance a corpse—is till a living being.
When the “Devourers”—in whom the men of Science are invited to see, with ome 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, ave differentiated the “Fire Atoms,” by a peculiar process of egmentation, the latter become Life‐Germs, which aggregate according to he laws of cohesion and affinity. Then the Life‐Germs produce Lives of nother 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 ualifications, save a cold brightness, no form, no colour; it is only owards the end of the First Round that it developed one Element, which, rom 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 s now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light, which Éliphas
Lévi calls the “Imagination of Nature,” probably to avoid giving it its orrect name, as others do.
Speaking of it, in his Preface to the _Histoire de la Magie_, Éliphas Lévi ays:
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_ soterically explained, _is the body of those Spirits themselves, and heir very essence. Our physical light is the manifestation on our plane_, nd the reflected radiance, of the Divine Light, emanating from the ollective Body of those who are called the “Lights” and the “Flames.” But o other Kabalist has ever had the talent of heaping up one contradiction n the other, of making one paradox chase another in the same sentence, nd in such flowing language, as Éliphas Lévi. He leads his reader through he most lovely valleys, to strand him after all on a desert and barren ock.
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 orn._
The _Second_ Round brings into manifestation the second Element—AIR; an lement, the purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would se it. In Europe there have been two Occultists only who have discovered nd even partially applied it in practice, though its composition has lways been known among the highest Eastern Initiates. The ozone of the odern Chemists is poison compared with the real Universal Solvent, which ould 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, ts second Principle. The second corresponds to the sixth [Principle]; the econd is Life continuous, the other, temporary._
The _Third_ Round developed the third Principle—WATER; while the _Fourth_ ransformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our Globe into the ard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. Bhûmi has reached er fourth Principle. To this it may be objected that the law of analogy, o much insisted upon, is broken. Not at all. Earth will reach her true ltimate form—her body shell—inversely in this to man, only toward the end f the Manvantara, after the Seventh Round. Eugenius Philalethes was right hen he assured his readers, “on his word of honour,” that no one had yet een the “Earth,” _i.e._, Matter in its essential form. Our Globe is, so ar, 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 he _middle_ Principle, the real Animal Centre, whereas our Body is but ts shell, the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in s acts all its life. Every intellectual Theosophist will understand my eal meaning. Thus the idea that the human tabernacle is built by ountless Lives, just in the same way as was the rocky crust of our Earth, as nothing repulsive in it for the true Mystic. Nor can Science oppose he Occult teaching, for it is not because the microscope will ever fail o detect the ultimate living atom or life, that it can reject the octrine.
(_c_) Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organisms of oth man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; hat from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with very breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, ærobes, anærobes, nd 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 tones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings; which, with the xception of the larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as egards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its ay to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory.
Chemistry and Physiology are the two great magicians of the future, which re destined to open the eyes of mankind to great physical truths. With very day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the lant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and an—is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents f all being found to be identical, Chemical Science may well say that here is no difference between the matter which composes the ox, and that hich 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 aisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant and of the tree which shelters t from the sun. Each particle—whether you call it organic or norganic—_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 ggregation universes, and the ephemeral vehicles ready to receive the ransmigrating soul, and as eternally destroys and changes the _forms_, nd expels the souls from their temporary abodes. It creates and kills; it s self‐generating and self‐destroying; it brings into being, and nnihilates, that mystery of mysteries, the _living body_ of man, animal, r plant, every second in time and space; and it generates equally life nd death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, and even the agreeable and isagreeable, the beneficent and maleficent sensations. It is that ysterious LIFE, represented collectively by countless myriads of Lives, hat follows in its own sporadic way the hitherto incomprehensible law of
Atavism; that copies family resemblances, as well as those it finds mpressed in the Aura of the generators of every future human being; a ystery, in short, that will receive fuller attention elsewhere. For the resent, one instance may be cited in illustration. Modern Science is eginning to find out that ptomaine, the alkaloid poison generated by ecaying corpses and matter—a Life also, extracted with the help of olatile ether, yields a smell as strong as that of the freshest orange‐ lossoms; but that free from oxygen, such alkaloids yield either a most ickening, disgusting smell, or a most agreeable aroma, which recalls that f the most delicately scented flowers; and it is suspected that such lossoms owe their agreeable smell to the poisonous ptomaine. The venomous ssence of certain fungi, also, is nearly identical with the venom of the obra of India, the most deadly of serpents. The French savants Arnaud,
Gautier, and Villiers, have found in the saliva of living men the same enomous alkaloid as in that of the toad, the salamander, the cobra, and he trigonocephalus of Portugal. It is proven that venom of the deadliest ind, whether called ptomaine, or leucomaine, or alkaloid, is generated by iving men, animals and plants. Gautier also discovered an alkaloid in the resh carcase and brains of an ox, and a venom which he calls anthocreatinine, similar to the substance extracted from the poisonous aliva of reptiles. It is the muscular tissues, the most active organs in he animal economy, that are suspected of being the generators or factors f venoms, which have the same importance as carbonic acid and urea in the unctions of life, and are the ultimate products of inner combustion. And hough it is not yet fully determined whether poisons can be generated by he animal systems of living beings, without the participation and nterference of microbes, it is ascertained that the animal does produce enomous substances in its physiological or living state.
Thus, having discovered the effects, Science has to find their _primary_ auses; 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 hange, in addition to pathological phenomena, diseases—nay, life itself, r rather the objective phenomena of life, produced by certain conditions nd changes in the tissues of the body, which allow and force life to act n 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 re identical. This is not true. The Fiery Lives are the seventh and ighest sub‐division of the plane of matter, and correspond in the ndividual with the One Life of the Universe, though only on that plane of atter. The microbes of Science are the first and lowest sub‐division on he second plane—that of material Prâna, or Life. The physical body of man ndergoes a complete change of structure every seven years, and its estruction and preservation are due to the alternate functions of the
Fiery Lives, as Destroyers and Builders. They are Builders by sacrificing hemselves, in the form of vitality, to restrain the destructive influence f the microbes, and, by supplying the microbes with what is necessary, hey compel them under that restraint to build up the material body and ts cells. They are Destroyers also, when that restraint is removed, and he microbes, unsupplied with vital constructive energy, are left to run iot as destructive agents. Thus, during the first half of a man’s life, he first _five_ periods of seven years each, the Fiery Lives are ndirectly engaged in the process of building up man’s material body; Life s on the ascending scale, and the force is used in construction and ncrease. After this period is passed, the age of retrogression commences, nd, the work of the Fiery Lives exhausting their strength, the work of estruction and decrease also commences.
An analogy between cosmic events in the descent of Spirit into Matter, for he first half of a Manvantara (planetary as well as human), and its scent, 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 estraining influence of the Fiery Lives on the lowest sub‐division of the econd plane, the microbes, is confirmed by the fact mentioned in the heory of Pasteur above referred to, that the cells of the organs, when hey do not find sufficient oxygen for themselves, adapt themselves to hat condition and form _ferments_, which, by absorbing oxygen from ubstances which come in contact with them, produce their destruction.
Thus the process is commenced by one cell robbing its neighbour of the ource of its vitality, when the supply is insufficient; and the estruction 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 t the same time Destroyers also. However it may be, one thing is certain n this: the knowledge of these primary causes, and of the ultimate ssence of every Element, of its Lives, their functions, properties, and onditions of change—constitutes the basis of MAGIC. Paracelsus was, erhaps, 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 n end to his life years before the time allotted him by Nature, hysiological Magic would have fewer secrets for the civilized world than t 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 o in company with the Life‐microbes? With the latter nothing, except that hey avail themselves of the tabernacle of clay prepared by them; with ivine perfect Man everything, since “Fish, Sin and Moon” conjointly ompose the three symbols of the immortal Being.
This is all that can be given. Nor does the writer pretend to know more of hese strange symbols than may be inferred about them from exoteric eligions—from the mystery, perhaps, which underlies the Matsya (Fish)
Avatâra of Vishnu, the. Chaldean Oannes, the Man‐Fish, recorded in the mperishable 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 he 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, ith child‐birth, because of the influence of the Moon on women and onception, the Occult and actual connection of our satellite with ecundation is to this day unknown to Physiology, which regards every opular practice in this connection as gross superstition. As it is seless to discuss these in detail, we can only stop for the present to otice the lunar symbology casually, to show that the said superstition elongs to the most ancient beliefs, and even to Judaism—the basis of
Christianity. With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was hild‐giving, and the Esotericism of the _Bible_, interpreted abalistically, shows undeniably that the Holy of Holies in the Temple was imply the symbol of the womb. This is now proven beyond doubt and cavil, y the _numerical_ reading of the _Bible_ in general, and of _Genesis_ specially. This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from he 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 normous difference in the spirit of interpretation and the original eaning 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 eaning of the symbols. It was the last and most fatal turning from the ighway of truth and divine knowledge into the side path of fiction, aised 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] ecomes more strong with every Change,” is another psychological mystery, hat will find its explanation in Volume II. For the present, it will uffice to say that the “Watcher” and his “Shadows”—the latter numbering s many as there are reïncarnations for the Monad—are one. The Watcher, or he 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 oral turpitude breaks the connection, and he runs loose and astray into he “Lunar Path”—to use the Occult expression—_is an individual Dhyân
Chohan, distinct from others, with a kind of spiritual Individuality of ts own_, during one special Manvantara. Its Primary, the Spirit (Âtman), s 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 ate, 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 nto his Dhyân Chohan, “myself and others, thyself and I,” as the Stanza as it, means that in Paranirvâna—when Pralaya will have reduced not only aterial and psychical bodies, but even the spiritual Egos, to their riginal principle—the Past, Present, and even Future Humanities, like all hings, 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 orshippers of a _personal_ deity, and believers in an unphilosophical aradise—are inclined to suppose? Neither. It is worse than useless to eturn to the question of implied atheism, in that which is _spirituality_ f a most refined character. To see in Nirvâna annihilation, amounts to aying of a man plunged in a sound _dreamless_ sleep—_one that leaves no mpression on the physical memory and brain, because the sleeper’s Higher
Self is then in its original state of Absolute Consciousness_—that he, oo, is annihilated. The latter simile answers to one side of the question nly—the most material; since _reäbsorption_ is by no means such a
“dreamless sleep,” but, on the contrary, _Absolute_ Existence, an nconditioned unity, or a state, to describe which human language is bsolutely and hopelessly inadequate. The only approach to anything like a omprehensive conception of it can be attempted solely in the panoramic isions of the Soul, through spiritual ideations of the divine Monad. Nor s the Individuality—_nor even the essence of the Personality_, if any be eft behind—lost, because reäbsorbed. For, however limitless from a human tandpoint, the paranirvânic state, yet it has a limit in Eternity. Once eached, the same Monad will _reëmerge_ therefrom, as a still higher eing, on a far higher plane, to recommence its cycle of perfected ctivity. The human mind, in its present stage of development, cannot ranscend, scarcely can it reach this plane of thought. It totters here, n the brink of incomprehensible Absoluteness and Eternity.
(_b_) The “Watchers” reign over men during the whole period of Satya Yuga nd 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 ations. All were carefully recorded. In the views of symbologists this
Mythopœic Age is of course regarded as only a fairy tale. But since raditions and even chronicles of such Dynasties of _Divine_ Kings, of
Gods reigning over men, followed by Dynasties of Heroes or Giants, exist n the annals of every nation, it is difficult to understand how all the eoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast oceans and elong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and
Mexicans, as well as the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same “fairy ales” in the same order of events.(412) However, as the Secret Doctrine eaches _history_—which, although esoteric and traditional, is, none the ess, more reliable than profane history—we are entitled to our beliefs as uch as anyone else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine ays that the Dhyâni‐Buddhas of the two higher Groups, namely, the
Watchers or the Architects, furnished the many and various races with ivine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught humanity their arts nd sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that ad just shaken off their Vehicles of the lower Kingdoms, and who had, herefore, lost every recollection of their divine origin, the great piritual truths of the transcendental Worlds.
Thus, as expressed in the Stanza, the Watchers “descend on radiant Earth nd reign over men, _who are themselves_.” The reigning Kings had finished heir cycle on Earth and other Worlds, in the preceding Rounds. In the uture Manvantaras they will have risen to higher Systems than our lanetary World; and it is the Elect of our Humanity, the Pioneers on the ard and difficult path of Progress, who will take the places of their redecessors. The next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own
Life‐Cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a Mankind whose Monads ay now be still imprisoned—semi‐conscious—in the most intellectual of the nimal kingdom, while their lower principles may be animating, perhaps, he highest specimens of the vegetable world.
Thus proceed the cycles of the septenary evolution, in Seven‐fold Nature; he spiritual or divine; the psychic or semi‐divine; the intellectual; the assional, the instinctual, or _cognitional_; the semi‐corporeal; and the urely material or physical natures. All these evolve and progress yclically, passing from one into another, in a double, centrifugal and entripetal, way, _one_ in their ultimate essence, _seven_ in their spects. The lowest, of course, is that depending upon and subservient to ur five physical senses, which are in truth _seven_, as shown later, on he authority of the oldest _Upanishads_. Thus far, for individual, human, entient, animal and vegetable life, each the microcosm of its higher acrocosm. The same for the Universe, which manifests periodically, for urposes of the collective progress of the countless Lives, the utbreathings of the One Life; in order that, through the Ever‐Becoming, very cosmic atom in this infinite Universe, passing from the formless and he intangible, through the mixed natures of the semi‐terrestrial, down to atter in full generation, and then back again, reäscending at each new eriod higher and nearer the final goal; that each atom, we say, may each, _through individual merits and efforts_, that plane where it re‐ ecomes the One Unconditioned ALL. But between the Alpha and the Omega here is the weary “Road,” hedged in by thorns, that goes down first, hen—
Winds up hill all the way;
Yes, to the very end....
Starting upon the long journey immaculate, descending more and more into inful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in manifested
Space—the Pilgrim, having struggled through, and suffered in, every form f Life and Being, is only at the bottom of the valley of matter, and half hrough his cycle, when he has identified himself with collective
Humanity. This, _he has made in his own image_. In order to progress pwards and homewards, the “God” has now to ascend the weary uphill path f the Golgotha of Life. It is the martyrdom of self‐conscious existence.
Like Vishvakarman, he has to sacrifice _himself to himself_, in order to edeem all creatures, to resurrect from the Many into the One Life. Then e ascends into Heaven indeed; where, plunged into the incomprehensible
Absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvâna, he reigns unconditionally, and hence he will re‐descend again, at the next “Coming,” which one portion f humanity expects in its dead‐letter sense as the “Second Advent,” and he 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 inished. However incomplete and feeble as an exposition, it is, at any ate, an approximation—using the word in a mathematical sense—to that hich is the oldest basis for all subsequent cosmogonies. The attempt to ender in a European tongue the grand panorama of the ever periodically ecurring Law, impressed upon the plastic minds of the first Races endowed ith 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 his work must be forgiven for the sake of the motive.
As a whole, neither the foregoing nor what follows can be found in full nywhere. It is not taught in any of the six Indian schools of philosophy, or 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 ny longer graven on Assyrian tile or granite wall. The Books of the
Vedânta—the “last word of human knowledge”—give out but the metaphysical spect of this world‐cosmogony; and their priceless thesaurus, the
_Upanishads_—_Upa‐ni‐shad_ being a compound word, expressing the conquest f ignorance by the revelation of _secret_, _spiritual_ knowledge—now equires the additional possession of a master‐key, to enable the student o get at their full meaning. The reason for this I venture to state here s I learned it from a Master.
The name _Upanishad_, is usually translated “esoteric doctrine.” These reatises form part of Shruti, or “revealed” Knowledge, Revelation in hort, and are generally attached to the Brâhmana portion of the _Vedas_, s 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 ldest 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 f all human knowledge, but they have ceased to_ REVEAL _it_, since the ays 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 hem—and this, in all the _Upanishads_—invariably and constantly points to heir ancient origin, and proves (_a_) that they were written, in some of heir portions, _before_ the caste system became the tyrannical nstitution which it still is; and (_b_) that half of their contents have een eliminated, while some of them have been rewritten and abridged. “The reat Teachers of the higher Knowledge and the Brâhmans are continually epresented as going to Kshatriya [military‐caste] kings to become their upils.” As Professor Cowell pertinently remarks, the _Upanishads_
“breathe an entirely different spirit [from other Brâhmanical writings], a reedom of thought unknown in any earlier work, except in the _Rig Veda_ ymns themselves.” The second fact is explained by a tradition recorded in ne of the MSS. on Buddha’s life. It says that the _Upanishads_ were riginally attached to their _Brâhmanas_ after the beginning of a reform, hich 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 ole and exclusive keeping of the temple‐Brâhmans—while no one else had he right to study or even read them outside of the _sacred_ caste. Then ame Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu. After _learning_ the whole of the
Brâhmanical wisdom in the _Rahasya_, or the _Upanishads_, and finding that he teachings differed little, if at all, from those of the “Teachers of
Life” inhabiting the snowy ranges of the Himâlayas,(415) the disciple of he Brâhmans, feeling indignant because the Sacred Wisdom was thus ithheld from all but Brâhmans, determined, by popularizing it, to save he whole world. Then it was that the Brâhmans, seeing that their Sacred
Knowledge and Occult Wisdom was falling into the hands of the Mlechchhas, bridged the texts of the _Upanishads_, which originally contained thrice he matter of the _Vedas_ and the _Brâhmanas_ together, without altering, owever, one word of the texts. They simply detached from the MSS. the ost 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 he correctness of Buddha’s teaching by appealing to their _Upanishads_, ilenced for ever on the chief questions. Such is the esoteric tradition eyond the Himâlayas.
Shrî Shankarâchârya, the greatest Initiate living in the historical ages, rote many a Bhâshya (Commentary) on the _Upanishads_. But his original reatises, as there are reasons to suppose, have not yet fallen into the ands of the Philistines, for they are too jealously preserved in his onasteries (mathams). And there are still weightier reasons to believe hat the priceless Bhâshyas on the Esoteric Doctrine of the Brâhmans, by heir greatest expounder, will remain for ages still a dead letter to most f the Hindûs, except the Smârtava Brâhmans. This sect, founded by
Shankarâchârya, which is still very powerful in Southern India, is now lmost the only one to produce students who have preserved sufficient nowledge to comprehend the dead letter of the Bhâshyas. The reason for his, I am informed, is that they alone have occasionally real Initiates t their head in their mathams, as for instance, in the Shringa‐giri, in he Western Ghâts of Mysore. On the other hand, there is no sect, in that esperately exclusive caste of the Brâhmans, more exclusive than is the
Smârtava; and the reticence of its followers, to say what they may know of he Occult sciences and the Esoteric Doctrine, is only equalled by their ride and learning.
Therefore the writer of the present statement must be prepared beforehand o meet with great opposition, and even the denial of such statements as re brought forward in this work. Not that any claim to infallibility, or o perfect correctness in every detail of all which is herein written, has ver been put forward. Facts are there, and they can hardly be denied.
But, owing to the intrinsic difficulties of the subjects treated of, and he almost insurmountable limitations of the English tongue, as of all ther European languages, to express certain ideas, it is more than robable that the writer has failed to present the explanations in the est and the clearest form; yet all that could be done, under every dverse circumstance, has been done, and this is the utmost that can be xpected of any writer.
Let us recapitulate and, by the vastness of the subjects expounded, show ow difficult, if not impossible, it is to do them full justice.
(1) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages, and its osmogony alone is the most stupendous and elaborate of all systems, even s veiled in the exotericism of the _Purânas_. But such is the mysterious ower of Occult symbolism, that the facts which have actually occupied ountless generations of initiated seers and prophets to marshal, set down nd explain, in the bewildering series of evolutionary progress, are all ecorded on a few pages of geometrical signs and glyphs. The flashing gaze f those seers has penetrated into the very kernel of matter, and recorded he soul of things there, where an ordinary profane observer, however earned, would have perceived but the external work of form. But Modern
Science believes not in the “soul of things,” and hence will reject the hole system of ancient cosmogony. It is useless to say that the system in uestion is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals; that it is an ninterrupted record, covering thousands of generations of seers, whose espective experiences were made to test and verify the traditions, passed n orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and xalted Beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity; that for long ges, the “Wise Men” of the Fifth Race, of the stock saved and rescued rom the last cataclysm and the shifting of continents, passed their lives
_in learning, not teaching_. How did they do so? It is answered: by hecking, testing, and verifying, in every department of Nature, the raditions of old, by the independent visions of great Adepts; that is to ay, men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, nd spiritual organizations, to the utmost possible degree. No vision of ne Adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions—so btained as to stand as independent evidence—of other Adepts, and by enturies of experience.
(2) The fundamental law in that system, the central point from which all merges, around and towards which all gravitates, and upon which is hung ll 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 lane of the manifested Universe, an Illusion, while it remains a
“Principle” in the beginningless and endless abstract, visible and nvisible, SPACE. It is the omnipresent Reality; impersonal, because it ontains all and everything. Its _Impersonality_ is the _fundamental onception_ of the System. It is latent in every atom in the Universe, and s 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 f the philosophy. For though the noun may be derived in this case from he verb _esse_, “to be,” yet IT cannot be identified with a “being” of ny kind, that can be conceived by human intellect. IT is best described s neither Spirit nor Matter, but both. Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti are
One, in reality, yet TWO in the universal conception of the Manifested, ven in the conception of the One Logos, the first “Manifestation,” to hich, 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 nconditioned and absolute.
(4) The Universe, with everything in it, is called Mâyâ, because all is emporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire‐fly to that of the un. Compared to the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the hangelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent ever‐ hanging forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher, no etter than a will‐o’‐the‐wisp. Yet, the Universe is real enough to the onscious 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 ts own plane of perception. We men must remember that, simply because
_we_ do not perceive any signs of consciousness which we can recognize, ay, in stones, we have no right to say that _no consciousness exists here_. There is no such thing as either “dead” or “blind” matter, as here is no “blind” or “unconscious” Law. These find no place among the onceptions of Occult Philosophy. The latter never stops at surface ppearances, and for it the noumenal Essences have more reality than their bjective counterparts; wherein it resembles the system of the mediæval
Nominalists, for whom it was the universals that were the realities, and he particulars which existed only in name and human fancy.
(6) The Universe is worked and _guided_, from _within outwards_. As above o it is below, as in heaven so on earth; and man, the microcosm and iniature 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, ct, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is roduced and preceded by _internal_ feeling or emotion, will or volition, nd thought or mind. As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man’s xternal body, can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given hrough one of the three functions named, so with the external or anifested Universe. The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated y almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a ission to perform, and who—whether we give them one name or another, hether we call them Dhyân Chohans or Angels—are “Messengers,” in the ense only that they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary nfinitely in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence; nd to call them all pure Spirits, without any of the earthly alloy “which ime is wont to prey upon,” is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each f these Beings either _was_, or prepares to become, a man, if not in the resent, then in a past or a coming Manvantara. They are _perfected_, when ot _incipient_, men; and in their higher, less material, spheres differ orally from terrestrial human beings only in that they are devoid of the eeling of personality, and of the _human_ emotional nature—two purely arthly characteristics. The former, or the “perfected,” have become free rom these feelings, because (_a_) they have no longer fleshly bodies—an ver‐numbing weight on the Soul; and (_b_), the pure spiritual element eing left untrammelled and more free, they are less influenced by Mâyâ han man can ever be, unless he is an Adept who keeps his two ersonalities—the spiritual and the physical—entirely separated. The ncipient Monads, having never yet had terrestrial bodies, can have no ense of personality or _Ego_‐ism. That which is meant by “personality” eing a limitation and a relation, or, as defined by Coleridge,
“individuality existing in itself but with a nature as a ground,” the term annot of course be applied to non‐human Entities; but, as a fact insisted pon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings, high or low, have ither individuality or personality as separate Entities, _i.e._, they ave no individuality in the sense in which a man says, “_I am myself_ and o one else”; in other words, they are conscious of no such distinct eparateness as men and things have on earth. Individuality is the haracteristic of their respective Hierarchies, not of their units; and hese characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which hese Hierarchies belong: the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the
One Divine, the purer and the less accentuated is that individuality in he Hierarchy. They are finite in all respects, with the exception of heir 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 xtinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in those who sense these
“Lives.” Having sprung into being under the quickening influence of the ncreated Beam, the reflection of the great Central Sun that radiates on he shores of the River of Life, it is the Inner Principle in them which elongs to the Waters of Immortality, while its differentiated clothing is s perishable as man’s body. Therefore Young was right in saying that
Angels are men of a superior kind ...
nd no more. They are neither “ministering” nor “protecting” Angels, nor re 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 rotection is as foolish as to believe that their sympathy may be secured y any kind of propitiation; for they are, as much as man himself is, the laves and creatures of immutable Karmic and Cosmic Law. The reason for his is evident. Having no elements of personality in their essence, they an have no personal qualities, such as are attributed by men, in exoteric eligions, to their anthropomorphic God—a jealous and exclusive God, who ejoices and feels wrathful, is pleased with sacrifice, and is more espotic in his vanity than any finite foolish man. Man, being a compound f the essences of all these celestial Hierarchies, may succeed in making imself, as such, superior, in one sense, to any Hierarchy or Class, or ven combination of them. “Man can neither propitiate nor command the
Devas,” it is said. But, by paralyzing his lower personality, and arriving hereby at the full knowledge of the _non‐separateness_ of his Higher Self rom the One Absolute SELF, man can, even during his terrestrial life, ecome as “one of us.” Thus it is, by eating of the fruit of knowledge, hich 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 rotect him in every particular.
The chief difficulty which prevents men of Science from believing in ivine as well as in nature spirits is their Materialism. The main mpediment before the Spiritualist which hinders him from believing in the ame, while preserving a blind belief in the “Spirits” of the Departed, is he general ignorance of all—except some Occultists and Kabalists—about he true essence and nature of Matter. It is on the acceptance or ejection 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 s of other conscious Beings, besides the Spirits of the Dead. It is on he right comprehension of the primeval Evolution of Spirit‐Matter, and ts real Essence, that the student has to depend for the further lucidation in his mind of the Occult Cosmogony, and for the only sure lue 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 nd non‐intelligent Elementals are all _future_ men. The fact alone, that Spirit is endowed with intelligence, is a proof to the Occultist that uch a Being must have been a _man_, and acquired his knowledge and ntelligence throughout the human cycle. There is but one indivisible and bsolute Omniscience and Intelligence in the Universe, and this thrills hroughout every atom and infinitesimal point of the whole Kosmos, which as no bounds, and which people call Space, considered independently of nything contained in it. But the first differentiation of its
_reflection_ in the Manifested World is purely spiritual, and the Beings enerated in it are not endowed with a consciousness that has any relation o the one we conceive of. They can have no human consciousness or ntelligence before they have acquired such, personally and individually.
This may be a mystery, yet it is a fact in Esoteric Philosophy, and a very pparent one too.
The whole order of Nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher ife. There is design in the action of the seemingly blindest forces. The hole process of evolution, with its endless adaptations, is a proof of his. The immutable laws that weed out the weak and feeble species, to ake room for the strong, and which ensure the “survival of the fittest,” hough so cruel in their immediate action, all are working toward the rand 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 emi‐intelligent beings (Elementals), guided by High Planetary Spirits
(Dhyân Chohans), whose collective aggregate forms the Manifested Verbum of he Unmanifested Logos, and constitutes one and the same time the Mind of he Universe and its immutable Law.
For Nature, taken in its abstract sense, _cannot_ be “unconscious,” as it s 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 o vegetation and even to minerals _a consciousness of their own_? All he an say is, that this consciousness is beyond his comprehension.
Three distinct representations of the Universe, in its three distinct spects, are impressed upon our thoughts by the Esoteric Philosophy: the
_Pre‐existing_, evolved from the _Ever‐existing_, and the _Phenomenal_—the orld of illusion, the reflection, and shadow thereof. During the great ystery and drama of life, known as the Manvantara, real Kosmos is like he objects placed behind the white screen upon which shadows are thrown.
The actual figures and things remain invisible, while the wires of volution are pulled by unseen hands. Men and things are thus but the eflections, _on_ the white field, of the realities _behind_ the snares of
Mahâmâyâ, or the Great Illusion. This was taught in every philosophy, in very religion, ante‐ as well as post‐diluvian, in India and Chaldea, by he Chinese as by the Grecian Sages. In the former countries these three
Universes were allegorized, in exoteric teachings, by the three Trinities, manating 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 he first _ideal_ two. Hence Esoteric Philosophy passes over the ecessarianism of this purely metaphysical conception, and calls the first ne, only, the Ever‐Existing. This is the view of every one of the six reat 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 ortion of the work, to show the archaic teachings to be on their very ace more _scientific_ (in the modern sense of the word) than any other ncient Scriptures left to be judged on their exoteric aspect. Since, owever, as before confessed, this work _withholds far more than it gives ut_, the student is invited to use his own intuitions. Our chief care is o elucidate that which has already been given out, and, to our regret, ery incorrectly at times; to supplement the knowledge hinted at—whenever nd wherever possible—by additional matter; and to bulwark our doctrines gainst the too strong attacks of modern Sectarianism, and more especially gainst those of our latter‐day Materialism, very often miscalled Science, hereas, in reality, the words “Scientists” and “Sciolists” ought alone to ear the responsibility for the many illogical theories offered to the orld. In its great ignorance, the public, while blindly accepting verything that emanates from “authorities,” and feeling it to be its duty o regard every _dictum_ coming from a man of Science as a proven fact—the ublic, we say, is taught to scoff at anything brought forward from
“heathen” sources. Therefore, as materialistic Scientists can be fought olely with their own weapons—those of controversy and argument—an
Addendum is added to each Volume contrasting the respective views, and howing how even great authorities may often err. We believe that this can e done effectually, by showing the weak points of our opponents, and by roving their too frequent sophisms, which are made to pass for scientific
_dicta_, to be incorrect. We hold to Hermes and his “Wisdom,” in its niversal character; they—to Aristotle, as against intuition and the xperience of the Ages, fancying that Truth is the exclusive property of he Western world. Hence the disagreement. As Hermes says: “Knowledge iffers 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 rain and its intellect; thus emphasizing the contrast between the aboriously acquired knowledge of the senses and Mind (Manas), and the ntuitive omniscience of the Spiritual Divine Soul (Buddhi).
Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a remote future, e hope to have so far proven the following facts:
(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the sense underlying he Sanskrit word Nâstika, a rejection of idols, including every nthropomorphic 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 tone of it, but, furnishing the plan, has left all the manual labour to he 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 mperfect _extra‐cosmic God_, but only the aggregate of the Dhyân Chohans nd the other Forces.
(3) The Dhyân Chohans are dual in their character; being composed of (_a_) he irrational _brute Energy_, inherent in Matter, and (_b_) the ntelligent Soul, or cosmic Consciousness, which directs and guides that
Energy, and which is the _Dhyân Chohanic Thought, reflecting the Ideation f the Universal Mind_. This results in a perpetual series of physical anifestations and _moral effects_ on Earth, during manvantaric periods, he whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is not always erfect; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding
Intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even very ften results in evident failures—therefore, neither the collective Host
(Demiurge), nor any of the working Powers individually, are proper ubjects for divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the grateful everence of humanity, however, and man ought to be ever striving to help he divine evolution of _Ideas_, by becoming, to the best of his ability, _co‐worker with Nature_, in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and ncognizable Kârana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have ts shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our eart—invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through the “still small oice” of our spiritual consciousness. Those who worship before it, ought o do so in the silence and the sanctified solitude of their Souls; making heir Spirit the sole mediator between them and the Universal Spirit, heir good actions the only priests, and their sinful intentions the only isible and objective sacrificial victims to the _Presence_.
“When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are ... but enter nto _thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father hich 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 ords 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 s it is arbitrary and devoid of reason. Whatever Science may think, owever—and _exact_ Science is a fickle dame, as we all know by xperience—Occultism knows and teaches differently, as it has done from ime immemorial, from Manu and Hermes down to Paracelsus and his uccessors.
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 he 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 ighest Western philosophy, “the innate, eternal, and self‐existing Ideas” f Plato, now reflected by Von Hartmann. The “Unknowable” of Herbert
Spencer bears but a faint resemblance to that transcendental Reality elieved in by Occultists, often appearing merely a personification of a
“force behind phenomena”—an infinite and eternal Energy, from which all hings proceed, whereas the author of the _Philosophy of the Unconscious_ as come (in this respect only) as near to a solution of the great Mystery s mortal man can. Few have been those, whether in ancient or mediæval hilosophy, who have dared to approach the subject or even hint at it.
Paracelsus mentions it inferentially, and his ideas are admirably ynthesized by Dr. F. Hartmann, F.T.S., in his _Paracelsus_, from which we ave just quoted.
All the Christian Kabalists understood well the Eastern root idea. The ctive 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 he two contrary Forces, the centripetal and the centrifugal Forces, which re male and female, positive and negative, physical and spiritual, the wo being the one _Primordial_ Force, and thus causing it to become bjective on the plane of Illusion. In other words, that dual motion ransfers Cosmos from the plane of the Eternal Ideal into that of finite anifestation, or from the _noumenal_ to the _phenomenal_ plane.
Everything that _is_, _was_, and _will be_, eternally IS, even the ountless Forms, which are finite and perishable only in their objective, ut not in their _ideal_ form. They existed as Ideas, in the Eternity, nd, when they pass away, will exist as reflections. Occultism teaches hat no form can be given to anything, either by Nature or by man, whose deal type does not already exist on the subjective plane: more than this; hat no form or shape can possibly enter man’s consciousness, or evolve in is imagination, which does not exist in prototype, at least as an pproximation. Neither the form of man, nor that of any animal, plant or tone, has ever been “created”; and it is only on this plane of ours that t commenced “becoming,” that is to say, objectivizing into its present ateriality, or expanding _from within outwards_, from the most sublimated nd supersensuous essence into its grossest appearance. Therefore _our_ uman forms have existed in the Eternity as astral or ethereal prototypes; ccording to which models, the Spiritual Beings, or Gods, whose duty it as to bring them into objective being and terrestrial life, evolved the rotoplasmic forms of the future Egos from _their own_ essence. After hich, when this human Upâdhi, or basic mould, was ready, the natural errestrial Forces began to work on these supersensuous moulds, _which ontained, besides their own, the elements of all the past vegetable and uture animal forms of this Globe_. Therefore, man’s _outward_ shell assed through every vegetable and animal body, before it assumed the uman 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 nto 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 hat Paracelsus anticipated the modern discovery of the ‘potency of atter’ three hundred years ago.”
The Magnus Limbus, then, or Yliaster, of Paracelsus is simply our old riend “Father‐Mother,” _within_, before it appeared in Space. It is the
Universal Matrix of Kosmos, personified in the dual character of Macrocosm nd Microcosm, or the Universe and our Globe,(421) by Aditi‐Prakriti, piritual and physical Nature. For we find it explained in Paracelsus hat:
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 niversal in antiquity, and that the basic ideas upon Spirit, Matter and he Universe, or upon God, Substance and Man, were identical. Taking the wo most ancient religious philosophies on the globe, Hindûism and
Hermeticism, from the Scriptures of India and Egypt, the identity of the wo is easily recognizable.
This becomes apparent to one who reads the latest translation and endering of the “Hermetic Fragments” just mentioned, by our late lamented riend, Dr. Anna Kingsford. Disfigured and tortured as these have been in heir passage through sectarian Greek and Christian hands, the translator as most ably and intuitionally seized the weak points and tried to remedy hem 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 n some passages by Christian “smoothing,” was nevertheless written by a hilosopher, while most of the so‐called “Hermetic Fragments” are the roduction 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 he “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 enerations of Mystics of every shade, and (_b_) that great discernment as to be used before accepting a Fragment as esoteric teaching only ecause it is undeniably ancient. Let us now compare the above with a like nvocation 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 t; but, for the profane masses, as suggestive as is the Hermetic prayer f an anthropomorphic Being. We must respect the feeling that dictated oth; but we cannot help finding it in full disharmony with its inner eaning, even with that which is found in the same Hermetic treatise where t 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 s Occult; and many are the passages in the Hermetic Fragments that belong odily to the Secret Doctrine.
This Doctrine teaches that the whole Universe is ruled by intelligent and emi‐intelligent Forces and Powers, as stated from the very beginning.
Christian Theology admits and even _enforces_ belief in such, but makes an rbitrary division and refers to them as “Angels” and “Devils.” Science enies the existence of both, and ridicules the very idea. Spiritualists elieve in the “Spirits of the Dead,” and outside these deny entirely any ther kind or class of invisible beings. The Occultists and Kabalists are hus the only rational expounders of the ancient traditions, which have ow culminated in dogmatic faith on the one hand, and dogmatic denial on he other. For both belief and unbelief each embrace but one small corner f the infinite horizons of spiritual and physical manifestations: and hus both are right from their respective standpoints, yet both are wrong n believing that they can circumscribe the whole within their own special nd narrow barriers, for—they can never do so. In this respect, Science,
Theology, and even Spiritualism show little more wisdom than the ostrich, hen it hides its head in the sand at its feet, feeling sure that there an be thus nothing beyond its own point of observation and the limited rea occupied by its foolish head.
As the only works now extant upon the subject under consideration, within each of the profane of the Western “civilized” races, are the above‐ entioned Hermetic Books, or rather Hermetic Fragments, we may contrast hem in the present case with the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy. To uote for this purpose from any other would be useless, since the public nows nothing of the Chaldean works, which are translated into Arabic and reserved by some Sufi Initiates. Therefore the “Definitions of
Asclepios,” as lately compiled and glossed by Dr. Anna Kingsford, F.T.S., ome of which sayings are in remarkable agreement with the Eastern
Esoteric Doctrine, have to be resorted to for comparison. Though not a few assages bear a strong impression of some later Christian hand, yet on the hole the characteristics of the Genii and Gods are those of Eastern eachings, although concerning other things there are passages which iffer 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 heological sense—the guardian spirits of the human race; “those who dwell n the neighbourhood of the immortals, and thence watch over human ffairs,” as Hermes has it. In Esoteric parlance, they are called
Chitkala, some of which are those who have furnished man with his fourth nd 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 onsequences of acts and species of knowledge are selected for the use of he soul,” or conscience, the _inner voice_ in man. With the Yogins, Chit s 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 piritual affinity a Chitkala, when it develops sufficiently in man. This s 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)
vii. _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 ts Objective Subjectivity, like the film from a Divine Breath to the gaze f the entranced seer. It spreads as it issues from Laya_(_433_)_ hroughout Infinity as a colourless spiritual fluid. It is on the Seventh
Plane, and in its Seventh State, in our Planetary World._(434)
viii. _It is Substance to_ OUR _spiritual sight. It cannot be called so y men in their Waking State; therefore they have named it in their gnorance __“__God‐Spirit.__”_
ix. _It exists everywhere and forms the first Upâdhi [Foundation] on hich our World [Solar System] is built. Outside the latter, it is to be ound in its pristine purity only between [the Solar Systems or] the Stars f the Universe, the Worlds already formed or forming; those in Laya esting meanwhile in its bosom. As its substance is of a different kind rom that known on Earth, the inhabitants of the latter, seeing_ THROUGH
IT, _believe in their illusion and ignorance that it is empty space. There s not one finger’s breadth [angula] of void Space in the whole Boundless
[Universe]...._
x. _Matter or Substance is septenary within our World, as it is so beyond t. Moreover, each of its states or principles is graduated into seven egrees of density. Sûrya [the Sun], in its visible reflection, exhibits he first or lowest state of the seventh, the highest state of the
Universal_ PRESENCE, _the pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of he 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, hose corporeal substance belongs to the fifth division of the seventh rinciple of the Mother‐Substance, and is, therefore, four degrees higher han the solar reflected substance. As there are seven Dhâtu [principal ubstances in the human body], so there are seven Forces in Man and in all
Nature._
xi. _The real substance of the Concealed [Sun] is nucleus of __ Mother‐
Substance._(_435_)_ It is the Heart and Matrix of all the living and xisting Forces in our Solar Universe. It is the Kernel from which proceed o 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 eet in their Seventh Essence every eleventh year. He who tells thee he as seen the Sun, laugh at him,_(_436_)_ as if he had said that the Sun oves really onward in his diurnal path...._
xiii. _It is on account of his septenary nature, that the Sun is spoken f by the ancients as one who is driven by seven horses equal to the etres of the Vedas; or, again, that, though he is identified with the even Gana [Classes of Being] in his orb, he is distinct from hem,_(_437_)_ as he is, indeed; as also that he has Seven Rays, as indeed e has...._
xv. _The Seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, self‐born from he inherent power in the Matrix of Mother‐Substance. It is they who send he seven principal Forces, called Rays, which at the beginning of Pralaya ill centre into seven new Suns for the next Manvantara. The energy, from hich they spring into conscious existence in every Sun, is what some eople call Vishnu, which is the Breath of the __ABSOLUTENESS__._
_We call it the One Manifested life—itself a reflection of the
Absolute...._
xvii. _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 hysical universe gravitates towards_ ITS _manifested centre—cosmically._
xviii. _The former—the Initial Existence—which may be called, while in his state of being, the_ ONE LIFE, _is, as explained, a Film for creative r formative purposes. It manifests in seven states, which, with their eptenary sub‐divisions, are the Forty‐nine Fires mentioned in sacred ooks...._
xix. _The first is the ... __“__Mother__”__ [Prima_ MATERIA]. _Separating tself into its primary seven states, it proceeds down cyclically; when aving consolidated itself in its_ LAST _principle, as_ GROSS MATTER,(438)
_it revolves around itself and informs, with the seventh emanation of the ast, 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 rinciple is:_
_(a) In the Mineral, the Spark that lies latent in it, and is called to ts evanescent being by the Positive awakening the Negative [and so orth]...._
_(b) In the Plant, it is that vital and intelligent Force which informs he 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 hing 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 ower; its instinct and qualities; its characteristics and special diosyncrasies...._
_(d) To Man, it gives all that it bestows on all the rest of the anifested units in Nature; but develops, furthermore, the reflection of ll its __“__Forty‐nine Fires__”__ in him. Each of his seven principles is n 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, he seventh. The third furnishes him with the Brain Stuff on the physical lane, 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 esides in the Fire provoked out of its latent into active being; for the hole of the seven sub‐divisions of the ... principle reside in the errestrial Fire. It whirls in the breeze, blows with the hurricane, and ets the air in motion, which element participates in one of its rinciples also. Proceeding cyclically, it regulates the motion of the ater, attracts and repels the waves,_(_439_)_ according to fixed laws, of hich 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 nd the Flower, the Action and the Thought. It is in the Sun, and is as resent in the glow‐worm. Not an atom can escape it. Therefore, the ncient 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 soteric, though not covering the tenth part of _what might be said_. For ne thing, the six names of the six Forces mentioned are those of the six
Hierarchies of Dhyân Chohans, synthesized by their Primary, the eventh—who personify the Fifth Principle of Cosmic Nature, or of the
“Mother” in its mystical sense. The enumeration alone of the Yoga Powers ould 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, he 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 niversal 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 nd 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 he Dead,” as in Spiritualism; or, again, Bhûts and Devas, Shaitan or
Djin, as they are still called in India and Mussulman countries—_they are ll one and the same thing_—ILLUSION. Let not this, however, be isunderstood in the sense into which the great philosophical doctrine of he Vedântists has been lately perverted by Western schools.
All that which _is_, emanates from the ABSOLUTE, which, by reason of this ualification alone, stands as the One and Only Reality—hence, everything xtraneous to this Absolute, the generative and causative Element, _must_ e an Illusion, most undeniably. But this is only so from the purely etaphysical view. A man who regards himself as mentally sane, and is so egarded by his neighbours, calls the visions of an _insane_ rother—hallucinations which make the victim either _happy or supremely retched_, as the case may be—likewise illusions and fancies. But, where s 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 hings which his physician or keeper may see? Everything is relative in his Universe, everything is an Illusion. But the experience of any plane s an actuality for the percipient being, whose consciousness is on that lane, though the said experience, regarded from the purely metaphysical tandpoint, may be conceived to have no objective reality. But it is not gainst 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, ave no objective being, and are said to exist merely as “modes of otion,” “sensations and _affections_ of matter.”
Neither the Occultists generally, nor the Theosophists, reject, as rroneously believed by some, the views and theories of the Modern
Scientists only because these views are opposed to Theosophy. The first ule of our Society is to render unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s. Theosophists, herefore, are the first to recognize the intrinsic value of Science. But hen its high priests resolve consciousness into a secretion from the grey atter of the brain, and everything else in Nature into a mode of motion, e protest against the doctrine as being unphilosophical, self‐ ontradictory, and simply absurd, from a _scientific_ point of view, as uch 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 ecrets for him who can see in it; and the mysteries concealed within its ncessantly disturbed waves _are there_, the whole body of Materialists nd 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, nd 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 s sure to produce vacuity in the brain of a Materialist. Nevertheless, hough Âkâsha is certainly not the Ether of Science—not even the Ether of he Occultist who defines the latter as one of the principles of Âkâsha nly—it is as certainly, together with its primary, the cause of sound, a sychical and spiritual, not a material cause by any means. The relations f Ether to Âkâsha may be defined by applying to both Âkâsha and Ether the ords used of the God in the _Vedas_, “So himself was indeed (his own) on,” one being the progeny of the other and yet itself. This may be a ifficult 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 emain 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 ediæval ages, whereas Scandinavians and Norwegians had actually reached nd settled in that very old “New World” several centuries before. But, as Columbus was born to re‐discover, and to force the Old World to believe n antipodal countries, so will there be born Scientists who will discover he marvels now claimed by Occultists to exist in the regions of Ether, ith their varied and multiform denizens and conscious Entities. Then,
_nolens volens_, Science will have to accept the old “superstition,” as it as several others. And having been once forced to accept it, its learned rofessors in all probability—judging from past experience, as in the case f Mesmerism and Magnetism, now re‐baptized Hypnotism—will father the hing and reject the name. The choice of the new appellation will, in its urn, depend on the “modes of motion”—the new name for the older
“automatic physical processes among the nerve fibrils of the [scientific] rain” of Moleschott—and also, most likely, upon the last meal of the amer, since, according to the founder of the new Hylo‐Idealistic Scheme,
“cerebration is generically the same as chylification.”(449) Thus, were ne to believe this preposterous proposition, the new name of the archaic ruth would have to take its chance on the inspiration of the namer’s iver, and then only would these truths have a chance of becoming cientific!
But, TRUTH, however distasteful to the generally blind majority, has lways had her champions ready to die for her, and it is not the
Occultists who will protest against its adoption by Science under whatever ew 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 ppropriated by its ex‐traducers without the least acknowledgment or hanks. Nitrogen has added considerably to chemical knowledge, but its iscoverer, Paracelsus, is to this day called a “quack.” How profoundly rue 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 uite ripe for the reception of Occult truths. Such perchance will be the etrospect furnished to the advanced thinkers of the Sixth Root‐Race of he history of the acceptance of Esoteric Philosophy—fully and nconditionally. Meanwhile the generations of our Fifth Race will continue o be led away by prejudice and preconceptions. Occult Sciences will have he finger of scorn pointed at them from every street‐corner, and everyone ill seek to ridicule and crush them in the name, and for the greater lory, of Materialism and its so‐called Science. The present Volumes, owever, show, in an anticipatory answer to several of the forthcoming
Scientific objections, the true and mutual positions of the defendant and laintiff. The Theosophists and Occultists stand arraigned by public pinion, which still holds high the banner of the inductive Sciences. The atter have, then, to be examined; and it must be shown how far their chievements and discoveries in the realm of natural law are opposed, not o much to our claims, as to facts in nature. The hour has now struck to scertain whether the walls of the modern Jericho are so impregnable, that o blast of the Occult trumpet is ever likely to make them crumble.
The so‐called “Forces,” with Light and Electricity heading them, and the onstitution 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 eachings, while revealing some of the hitherto secret tenets of the atter.
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 eveal it to the vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should escape rom it and fall outside._
A few years later, a corner of the Veil of Isis had to be lifted; and now nother and a larger rent is made.
But old and time‐honoured errors—such as become with every day more laring and self‐evident—stand arrayed in battle‐order now, as they did hen. Marshalled by blind conservatism, conceit and prejudice, they are onstantly on the watch, ready to strangle every truth, which, awakening rom its age‐long sleep, happens to knock for admission. Such has been the ase 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 ruths, is as certain as that it gives _life_ and _regeneration_ to those ho 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 hatsoever nation, large or small, and preëminently in the traditions of he 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 raditional event in the folk‐lore of a people, has ever, at any time, een pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual istorical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees with those ymbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth othing more than additional proof of the superstitious bent of mind of he Ancients, and who believe that all mythologies sprang from, and are uilt upon, _solar myths_. Such superficial thinkers have been admirably isposed of by Mr. Gerald Massey, the poet and Egyptologist, in a lecture n “Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern.” His pointed criticism is worthy of eproduction in this part of our work, as it echoes so well our own eelings, expressed openly so far back as 1875, when _Isis Unveiled_ was ritten.
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 stronomical aspect. Selenography, however, is the least esoteric of the ivisions of lunar Symbology. To master thoroughly—if one is permitted to oin a new word—Selenognosis, one must become proficient in more than its stronomical meaning. The Moon is intimately related to the Earth, as hown in the Stanzas, and is more directly concerned with all the ysteries 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, uring the last and the present centuries, have induced the most nprejudiced students, and of course every Occultist, to see that without he help of symbology—with its seven departments, of which the moderns now nothing—no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood.
Symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation ad its own peculiar methods of expression. In short, no Egyptian papyrus, o Indian olla, no Assyrian tile, no Hebrew scroll, should be read and nterpreted _literally_.
This every scholar now knows. The able lectures of Mr. Gerald Massey alone re sufficient to convince any fair‐minded Christian that to accept the ead‐letter of the _Bible_ is equivalent to falling into a grosser error nd 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 ruth‐searching Orientalists—whether Âryanists or Egyptologists—seem to emain blind, is that every symbol on papyrus or olla is a many‐faced iamond, each of whose facets not only includes several interpretations, ut also relates to several sciences. This is instanced in the just quoted nterpretation of the cat symbolizing the moon—an example of sidereo‐ errestrial imagery; for the moon has with other nations many other eanings besides.
As a learned Mason and Theosophist, the late Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown n his _Royal Masonic Cyclopædia_, there is a great difference between
_emblem_ and _symbol_. The former “comprises a larger series of thoughts han a symbol, which may be said rather to illustrate some single special dea.” Hence, the symbols—lunar, or solar, for example—of several ountries, each illustrating such a special idea, or series of ideas, form ollectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is “a concrete visible picture r sign representing principles, or a series of principles, _recognizable y those who have received certain instructions_ [Initiates].” To put it till plainer, an emblem is usually _a series of graphic pictures_ viewed nd explained allegorically, and unfolding an idea in panoramic views, one fter the other. Thus the _Purânas_ are written emblems. So are the Mosaic nd 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 ack earlier than the Middle Ages. How much more proper, then, that the tudents of the oldest archaic school should be careful not to divulge ecrets of far more importance to humanity (as being dangerous in ignorant ands) than any of the so‐called “Masonic Secrets,” which have now become hose of Polichinelle, as the French say! But this restriction can apply nly to the psychological or rather psycho‐physiological and cosmical ignificance of symbol and emblem, and even to that only partially. For hough an Adept is compelled to refuse to impart the conditions and means hat lead to any correlation of Elements—whether psychic or physical—which ay produce harmful as well as beneficent results; yet he is ever ready to mpart to the earnest student the secret of the ancient thought, in nything that has respect to history concealed under mythological ymbolism, and thus to furnish a few more land‐marks for a retrospective iew of the past, in so far as it furnishes useful information with regard o the origin of man, the evolution of the Races and geognosy. And yet it s the crying complaint to‐day, not only among Theosophists, but also mong the few profane interested in the subject: Why do not the Adepts eveal that which they know? To this, one might answer: Why should they, ince one knows beforehand that no man of Science will accept it, even as hypothesis, much less as a theory or axiom. Have you so much as accepted r believed in the A B C of the Occult Philosophy contained in the
_Theosophist_, _Esoteric Buddhism_, and other works and periodicals? Has ot even the little which has been given, been ridiculed and derided, and ade to face the “animal‐” and “ape‐theory” of Huxley and Hæckel, on the ne hand, and the rib of Adam and the apple on the other? Notwithstanding uch an unenviable prospect, however, a mass of facts is given in the resent 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 reat them.
The proofs brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are cattered widely throughout the old scriptures of ancient civilizations.
The _Purânas_, the _Zend Avesta_, and the old classics, are full of such acts; but no one has ever taken the trouble of collecting and collating hem together. The reason for this is that all such events were recorded ymbolically; and that the best scholars, the most acute minds, among our
Âryanists and Egyptologists, have been too often darkened by one or nother preconception, and still oftener, by one‐sided views of the secret eaning. Yet even a parable is a spoken symbol: a fiction or a fable, as ome think; an allegorical representation, we say, of life‐realities, vents, and facts. And just as a moral was ever drawn from a parable, such oral being an actual truth and fact in human life, so a historical, real vent was deduced, by those versed in the hieratic sciences, from emblems nd symbols recorded in the ancient archives of the temples. The religious nd esoteric history of every nation was embedded in symbols; it was never xpressed literally in so many words. All the thoughts and emotions, all he learning and knowledge, revealed and acquired, of the early Races, ound their pictorial expression in allegory and parable. Why? Because
_the spoken word has a potency not only unknown to, but even unsuspected nd naturally disbelieved in_, by the modern “sages.” Because sound and hythm are closely related to the four Elements of the Ancients; and ecause such or another vibration in the air is sure to awaken the orresponding Powers, union with which produces good or bad results, as he case may be. No student was ever allowed to recite historical, eligious, or real events of any kind, in so many unmistakable words, lest he Powers connected with the event should be once more attracted. Such vents were narrated only during Initiation, and every student had to ecord them in corresponding symbols, drawn out of his own mind and xamined later by his Master, before they were finally accepted. Thus by egrees was the Chinese Alphabet created, as just before it the hieratic ymbols were fixed upon in old Egypt. In the Chinese language, the haracters of which may be read in any language, and which, as just said, s only a little less ancient than the Egyptian alphabet of Thoth, every ord has its corresponding symbol in a pictorial form. This language ossesses many thousands of such symbol‐letters, or logograms, each onveying the meaning of a whole word; for letters proper, or an alphabet s we understand it, do not exist in the Chinese language, any more than hey did in the Egyptian, till a far later period.
Thus a Japanese who does not understand one word of Chinese, meeting with Chinaman who has never heard the language of the former, will ommunicate in writing with him, and they will understand each other erfectly—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 ithout a preparatory acquaintance with at least the metaphysical symbols.
Nor would it be just to enter upon an esoteric reading of symbolism, ithout giving due honour to one who has rendered it the greatest service n this century, by discovering the chief key to ancient Hebrew symbology, trongly 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 hanks. A Mystic and a Kabalist by nature, he has laboured for many years n this direction, and his efforts have certainly been crowned with great uccess. 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 anguage and a system of science imparted to early mankind by a more dvanced mankind, so much higher as to be _divine_ in the sight of that nfant humanity: by a “mankind,” in short, from other spheres; an idea hich contains nothing supernatural in it, but the acceptance or rejection f which depends upon the degree of conceit and arrogance in the mind of im to whom it is stated. For, if the professors of modern knowledge would nly confess that, though they know nothing of the future of the isembodied man—or rather will accept nothing—yet this future may be regnant with surprises and unexpected revelations to them, once their
Egos are rid of their gross bodies—then materialistic unbelief would have ewer chances than it has. Who of them knows, or can tell, what may happen hen once the Life‐Cycle of this Globe is run down, and our mother Earth erself 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 assing on to other spheres—will not become in their turn the “divine” nstructors of a new mankind generated by them on a new Globe, called to ife and activity by the disembodied “principles” of our Earth? All this ay have been the experience of the Past, and these strange records lie mbedded in the “Mystery Language” of the pre‐historic ages, the language ow called SYMBOLISM.
Section II. The Mystery Language and Its Keys.
Recent discoveries made by great mathematicians and Kabalists thus prove, eyond a shadow of doubt, that every theology, from the earliest down to he latest, has sprung, not only from a common source of abstract beliefs, ut from one universal Esoteric, or Mystery, Language. These scholars hold he key to the universal language of old, and have turned it successfully, hough only _once_, in the hermetically closed door leading to the Hall of
Mysteries. The great archaic system known from prehistoric ages as the acred Wisdom‐Science, one that is contained and can be traced in every ld as well as in every new religion, had, and still has, its universal anguage—suspected by the Mason Ragon—the language of the Hierophants, hich has seven “dialects,” so to speak, each referring, and being pecially appropriate, to one of the seven mysteries of Nature. Each had ts own symbolism. Nature could thus be either read in its fulness, or iewed 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 articular, experience in interpreting the allegorical writings of the
Âryans and the hieratic records of old Egypt. This is because they will ever remember that all the ancient records were written in a language hich was universal and known to all nations alike in days of old, but hich is now intelligible only to the few. Like the Arabic figures which re understandable to men of every nation, or like the English word _and_, hich becomes _et_ for the Frenchman, _und_ for the German, and so on, yet hich may be expressed for all civilized nations in the simple sign &—so ll the words of that Mystery Language signified the same thing to each an, of whatever nationality. There have been several men of note who have ried to reëstablish such a universal and _philosophical_ tongue,
Delgarme, Wilkins, Leibnitz; but Demaimieux, in his _Pasigraphie_, is the nly one who has proven its possibility. The scheme of Valentinius, called he “Greek Kabalah,” based on the combination of Greek letters, might erve as a model.
The many‐sided facets of the Mystery Language have led to the adoption of idely 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 o the Mystery Tongue, however, having always been in the keeping of the ighest among the initiated Hierophants of antiquity; it is only the artial use of a few out of the seven which passed, through the treason of ome early Church Fathers—ex‐Initiates of the Temples—into the hands of he new sect of the Nazarenes. Some of the early Popes were Initiates, but he last fragments of their knowledge have now fallen into the power of he Jesuits, who have turned them into a system of sorcery.
It is maintained that _India_—not confined to its present limits, but ncluding its ancient boundaries—is the only country in the world which till has among her sons Adepts, who have the knowledge of all the seven ub‐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 hree in the days of Berosus. As for the Hebrews, in all their writings hey show no more than a thorough knowledge of the astronomical, eometrical and numerical systems of symbolizing the human, and especially he 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 ogmas may often have been altered, the esoteric never. He does not take nto account the sacred immutability of the primitive truths, revealed nly during the mysteries of Initiation. The Egyptian priests _had orgotten much, they altered nothing_. The loss of a great part of the rimitive teaching was due to the sudden deaths of the great Hierophants, ho passed away before they had time to reveal _all_ to their successors, ostly in the absence of worthy heirs to the knowledge. Yet they have reserved 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 ind (1) Osiris saying he is Toom—the creative force in Nature, giving orm to all beings, spirits and men, self‐generated and self‐ xistent—issued from Noon, the celestial river, called Father‐Mother of he Gods, the primordial deity, which is Chaos or the Deep, impregnated by he unseen Spirit. (2) He has found Shoo, the solar force, on the Stairway n the City of the Eight (the two squares of Good and Evil), and he has nnihilated the Children of Rebellion, the evil principles in Noon
(Chaos). (3) He is the Fire and Water, Noon the Primordial Parent, and he reated the Gods out of his Limbs—fourteen Gods (twice seven), seven dark nd seven light Gods—the seven Spirits of the Presence of the Christians, nd the seven dark Evil Spirits.
(4) He is the Law of Existence and Being, the Bennoo, or Phœnix, the Bird f Resurrection in Eternity, in whom Night follows Day, and Day Night—an llusion to the periodical cycles of cosmic resurrection and human eïncarnation. For what else can this mean? “The Wayfarer who crosses illions 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 uccession, the other engulfing them, to restore them back. (5) He speaks f the Seven Luminous Ones who follow their Lord, Osiris, who confers ustice, in Amenti.
All this is now shown to have been the source and origin of Christian ogmas. That which the Jews had from Egypt, through Moses and other
Initiates, was confused and distorted enough in later days; but that which he Church got from both, is still more misinterpreted.
Yet the system of the former, in this special department of symbology—the ey, namely, to the mysteries of astronomy as connected with those of eneration and conception—is now proven identical with those ideas in ncient religions which have developed the phallic element of theology.
The Jewish system of sacred measures, applied to religious symbols, is the ame, so far as geometrical and numerical combinations go, as those of
Greece, Chaldæa and Egypt, for it was adopted by the Israelites during the enturies of their slavery and captivity among the two latter ations.(458) What was this system? It is the intimate conviction of the uthor of _The Source of Measures_ that: “the Mosaic Books were intended, y a mode of art‐speech, to set forth a geometrical and numerical system f exact science, which should serve as an origin of measures.” Piazzi
Smyth believes similarly. This system and these measures are found by some cholars to be identical with those used in the construction of the Great
Pyramid: but this is only partially so. “The foundation of these measures as the Parker ratio,” says Ralston Skinner, in _The Source of Measures_.
The author of this very extraordinary work has discovered it, he says, in he use of the integral ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a ircle, discovered by John A. Parker, of New York. This ratio is 6561 for iameter, and 20612 for circumference. Furthermore, that this geometrical atio was the very ancient and probably the divine origin of what have now ecome, through exoteric handling and practical application, the British inear measures, “the underlying unit of which, viz., the _inch_, was ikewise 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 easurements 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 uestion of ancient arts and sciences. Speaking of “the multitude of elations independent of the Pyramid, which have turned up while the
Pyramidalists have been endeavouring to connect the Pyramid with the solar ystem,” 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 he Mysteries and of the series of Initiations was based: hence, the onstruction of the Pyramid, the everlasting record and the indestructible ymbol of these Mysteries and Initiations on Earth, as the courses of the tars are in Heaven. The cycle of Initiation was a reproduction in iniature of that great series of cosmic changes to which astronomers have iven the name of the Tropical or Sidereal Year. Just as, at the close of he cycle of the Sidereal Year (25,868 years), the heavenly bodies return o the same relative positions as they occupied at its outset, so at the lose of the cycle of Initiation the Inner Man has regained the pristine tate of divine purity and knowledge from which he set out on his cycle of errestrial incarnation.
Moses, an Initiate into the Egyptian Mystagogy, based the religious ysteries of the new nation which he created, upon the same abstract ormulæ derived from this Sidereal Cycle, symbolized by the form and easurements of the Tabernacle, which he is supposed to have constructed n the Wilderness. On these data, the later Jewish High Priests onstructed the allegory of Solomon’s Temple—a building which never had a eal existence, any more than had King Solomon himself, who is as much a olar myth as is the still later Hiram Abif of the Masons, as Ragon has ell demonstrated. Thus, if the measurements of this allegorical Temple, he 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 atter 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 ead it, to feel a growing conviction that the hidden meaning of the llegories and parables of both _Testaments_ is now unveiled. But that he wes 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 o certain whether the measures of the Great Pyramid adopted by the
Biblical Pyramidalists are beyond suspicion. A proof of this is to be ound 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 alculations, which their authors call “biassed.” We gather that nearly very one of Piazzi Smyth’s measurements differs from the later and more arefully made measurements of Mr. Petrie, who concludes the Introduction o 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 roposition especially, we have consulted some eminent mathematicians, and his is the substance of what they say:
Parker’s reasoning rests on sentimental, rather than on mathematical, onsiderations, 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 elied upon in mathematical reasoning. The same observation applies, even ore 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 he 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 adius, 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 nscribed in a triangle, and therefore not the radius of the triangle at ll—and granting for the moment the other fanciful and mathematical ropositions united in his premisses, why must we conclude that, if the quilateral triangle and circle are opposite in all the elements of their onstruction, the diameter of any defined circle is in the opposite uplicate ratio of the diameter of any given equivalent triangle? What ecessary connection is there between the premisses and the conclusion?
The reasoning is of a kind not known in geometry, and would not be ccepted by strict mathematicians.
Whether the archaic Esoteric system originated the British inch or not, is f little consequence, however, to the strict and true metaphysician. Nor oes Mr. Ralston Skinner’s esoteric reading of the _Bible_ become ncorrect, merely because the measurements of the Pyramid may not be found o 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 scertain whether the measures used in the evolution of the symbolic eligion of the Âryans, in the construction of their temples, in the igures given in the _Purânas_, and especially in their chronology, their stronomical symbols, the duration of the cycles, and other computations, ere, or were not, the same as those used in the Biblical measurements and lyphs. For this will prove that the Jews, unless they took their sacred ubit and measurements from the Egyptians—Moses being an Initiate of their
Priests—must have got those notions from India. At any rate they passed hem on to the early Christians. Hence, it is the Occultists and Kabalists ho are the true heirs to the Knowledge, or the Secret Wisdom, which is till found in the _Bible_; for they alone now understand its real eaning, whereas profane Jews and Christians cling to the husks and dead etter thereof. That it was this system of measures which led to the nvention 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 ow demonstrated by the author of the _Source of Measures_. But the latter nd Mr. Piazzi Smyth both seem to labour under the impression that (_a_) he priority of the system belongs to the Israelites, the Hebrew language eing the divine language, and that (_b_) this universal language belongs o direct revelation!
The latter hypothesis is correct only in the sense shown in the last aragraph of the preceding Section; but we have yet to agree as to the ature and character of the divine “Revealer.” The former hypothesis as to riority will for the profane, of course depend on (_a_) the internal and xternal evidence of the revelation, and (_b_) on each scholar’s ndividual preconceptions. This, however, cannot prevent either the
Theistic Kabalist, or the Pantheistic Occultist, from believing each in is way; neither of the two convincing the other. The data furnished by istory are too meagre and unsatisfactory for either of them to prove to he sceptic which of them is right.
On the other hand, the proofs afforded by tradition are too constantly ejected 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 side, Science, in its departments of Philology and Comparative Religion, ill find itself finally taken to task, and be compelled to admit the ommon claim.
One by one the claims become admitted, as one Scientist after another is ompelled to recognize the facts given out from the Secret Doctrine; hough he rarely, if ever, recognizes that he has been anticipated in his tatements. 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 ations 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 ust been published at that time. Then the New York press arose in arms
(the _Sun_ and the _World_ newspapers chiefly) against our presuming to orrect or find fault with such a star of learning. In that work, we had aid, 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 ur ideas from the “craze” of Shaw, an English writer who had maintained hat 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 ears 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 arrow upward passage leading to the King’s Chamber had a “narrow gate” ndeed; the same “strait gate” which “leadeth unto life,” or the new piritual re‐birth alluded to by Jesus in Matthew;(463) and that it was of his gate in the Initiation Temple, that the writer, who recorded the ords alleged to have been spoken by an Initiate, was thinking.
Thus the greatest scholars of Science, instead of pooh‐poohing that upposed “farrago of absurd fiction and superstitions,” as the Brâhmanical iterature is generally termed, will endeavour to learn the symbolical niversal language, with its numerical and geometrical keys. But here, gain, 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 ntirety, since even the _Vedas_ are not complete. Every old religion is ut 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 he full secret, with its _seven_ keys. Comparisons will be instituted, nd as much as possible will be explained in this work; the rest is left o the student’s personal intuition. In saying that Eastern Occultism has he secret, it is not as if a “complete” or even an approximate knowledge as claimed by the writer, which would be absurd. What I know, I give out; hat 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 hich has hitherto been discovered in the _Bible_ by some scholars, is uite sufficient to demonstrate the claim—mathematically. As Judaism vailed itself of two keys out of the seven, and as these two keys have ow been re‐discovered, it becomes no longer a matter of individual peculation and hypothesis, least of all of “coincidence,” but one of a orrect reading of the Biblical texts, just as anyone acquainted with rithmetic reads and verifies an addition sum. In fact, all we have said n _Isis Unveiled_ is now found corroborated in the _Egyptian Mystery_, or
_The Source of Measures_, by such readings of the _Bible_ with the umerical and geometrical keys.
A few years longer, and this system will kill the dead‐letter reading of he _Bible_, as it will that of all the other exoteric faiths, by showing he dogmas in their real, naked meaning. And then this undeniable meaning, owever incomplete, will unveil the mystery of Being, and will, moreover, ntirely change the modern scientific systems of Anthropology, Ethnology nd especially that of Chronology. The element of Phallicism, found in very God‐name and narrative in the _Old_, and to some degree in the
_New_, _Testament_, may also in time considerably change modern aterialistic views on Biology and Physiology.
Divested of their modern repulsive crudeness, such views of Nature and man ill, on the authority of the celestial bodies and their mysteries, unveil he evolutions of the human mind and show how natural was such a course of hought. The so‐called phallic symbols have become offensive only because f the element of materiality and animality in them. In the beginning, uch symbols were but natural, as they originated with the archaic races, hich, issuing to their personal knowledge from an androgyne ancestry, ere the first phenomenal manifestations in their own sight of the eparation of the sexes and the ensuing mystery of creating in their turn.
If later races, especially the “chosen people,” have degraded them, this oes not affect the origin of the symbols. This little Semitic tribe—one f the smallest branchlets from the commingling of the fourth and fifth ub‐races, the Mongolo‐Turanian and the so‐called Indo‐European, after the inking of the great Continent—could only accept its symbology in the pirit 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 s it became later under the handling of Ezra, who remodelled the whole
_Pentateuch_. To take an instance, the glyph of Pharaoh’s daughter (the oman), the Nile (the Great Deep and Water), and the baby‐boy found loating therein in the ark of rushes, was not primarily composed for, or y, Moses. It was anticipated in the fragments found on the Babylonian iles, in the story of King Sargon, who lived far earlier than Moses.
In his _Assyrian Antiquities_,(464) Mr. George Smith says: “In the palace f Sennacherib at Kouyunjik, I found another fragment of the curious istory of Sargon ... published in my translation in the _Transactions of he 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 ear 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 eighbouring 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 ound 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 he Chaldean and Assyrian Kings by two thousand years more, Sargon must ave preceded Moses by 2,000 years at the least. The confession is uggestive, but the figures lack a cypher or two.
Now, what is the logical inference? Most assuredly, that which gives us he right to say that the story told of Moses by Ezra had been learned by im while at Babylon, and that he applied the allegory told of Sargon to he Jewish lawgiver. In short, that _Exodus_ was never written by Moses, ut was re‐fabricated from old materials by Ezra.
And if so, then why should not other symbols and glyphs far more crude in heir phallic element have been added by this adept in the later Chaldean nd Sabæan phallic worship? We are taught that the primeval faith of the
Israelites was quite different from that which was developed centuries ater 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 orks, and to connect its secret system with Indian, Chaldean, and
Egyptian symbolism. The whole cycle of Biblical glyphs and numbers, as uggested by astronomical observations—Astronomy and Theology being losely connected—is found in Indian exoteric, as well as esoteric, ystems. These figures and their symbols, the signs of the Zodiac, the lanets, their aspects and nodes—the last term having now passed even into ur modern Botany—are known in Astronomy as Sextiles, Quartiles and so on, nd have been used for ages and æons by the archaic nations, and in one ense have the same meaning as the Hebrew numerals. The earliest forms of lementary geometry must have certainly been suggested by the observation f the heavenly bodies and their groupings. Hence, the most archaic ymbols in Eastern Esotericism are a circle, a point, a triangle, a quare, a pentagon, and a hexagon, and other plane figures with various ides and angles. This shows the knowledge and use of geometrical ymbology to be as old as the world.
Starting from this, it becomes easy to understand how Nature herself, even ithout the help of their divine instructors, could have taught primeval ankind the first principles of a numerical and geometrical symbol‐ anguage.(471) Hence we find numbers and figures used as an expression and record of thought in every archaic symbolical Scripture. They are ever he same, with certain variations only, arising from the first figures.
Thus the evolution and correlation of the mysteries of Kosmos, of its rowth and development—spiritual and physical, abstract and concrete—were irst recorded in geometrical changes of shape. Every Cosmogony began with circle, a point, a triangle and a square, up to number 9, when it was ynthesized by the first line and a circle—the Pythagorean mystic Decad, he sum of all, involving and expressing the mysteries of the entire
Kosmos; mysteries recorded a hundred times more fully in the Hindû system han elsewhere, for him who can understand its mystic language. The umbers 3 and 4, in their combination 7, and also 5, 6, 9, and 10, are the ery corner‐stones of Occult Cosmogonies. This Decad and its thousand ombinations are found in every portion of the globe. One recognizes it in he caves and rock‐cut temples of Hindûstan and Central Asia; in the
Pyramids and Lithoi of Egypt and America; in the Catacombs of Ozimandyas; n the mounds of the snow‐capped Caucasian fastnesses; in the ruins of
Palenque; in Easter Island; everywhere whither the foot of ancient man has ver journeyed. The 3 and the 4, the triangle and the square, or the niversal male and female glyphs, showing the first aspect of the evolving eity, are stamped for ever in the Southern Cross in the Heavens, as in he Egyptian Crux Ansata. As well expressed by the author of _The Source f 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 rchaic Cosmogony. Meanwhile we may profit by the evidence collected by he same author, in the section which he rightly calls the “Primordial
Vestiges of these Symbols,” to show the identity of symbols and their soteric 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 ymbols of the evolution of races from Gods—and yet behold Science epudiating the idea of a human race other than one made in _our_ image;
Theology clinging to its 6,000 years of Creation; Anthropology teaching ur 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 uperstitious fool, and even a liar, abstain from furnishing proofs—as ood as any existent—only because that day, when all the Seven Keys shall e delivered unto Science, or rather the men of learning and research in he department of symbology, has not yet dawned? In the face of the rushing discoveries of Geology and Anthropology with regard to the ntiquity of man, shall we—in order to avoid the usual penalty that awaits very one who strays outside the beaten paths of either Theology or
Materialism—hold to the 6,000 years and “special creation” or accept in ubmissive admiration our genealogy and descent from the ape? Not so, as ong as it is known that the Secret Records hold the said Seven Keys to he mystery of the genesis of man. Faulty, materialistic, and biassed as he scientific theories may be, they are a thousand times nearer the truth han the vagaries of Theology. The latter are in their death agony for very one but the most uncompromising bigot and fanatic. Or rather, some f its defenders must have lost their reason. For what can one think when, n the face of the dead‐letter absurdities of the _Bible_, these are still ublicly supported, and as fiercely as ever, and one finds the Theologians aintaining that though “the Scriptures carefully refrain [?] from making ny direct contribution to scientific knowledge, they have _never_ tumbled 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 o its face, stating what the Secret Doctrine teaches us, and being fully repared to bear the consequences.
But let us see whether Science, in its materialistic speculations, and ven Theology, in its death‐rattle and supreme struggle to reconcile the
6,000 years since Adam with Sir Charles Lyell’s _Geological Evidences of he Antiquity of Man_, do not themselves unconsciously give us a helping and. Ethnology, on the confession of some of its most learned votaries, inds it already impossible to account for the varieties in the human ace, unless the hypothesis of the _creation of several Adams_ be ccepted. They speak of “a white Adam and a black Adam, a red Adam and a ellow Adam.”(475) Were they Hindûs enumerating the rebirths of Vâmadeva, rom the _Linga Purâna_, they could say little more. For, enumerating the epeated births of Shiva, they show him in one Kalpa of a _white_ omplexion, in another of a _black_ colour, in still another of a _red_ olour, after which the Kumâra becomes “four youths of a _yellow_ colour.”
This strange “coincidence,” as Mr. Proctor would say, speaks only in avour of scientific intuition, as Shiva‐Kumâra simply represents, llegorically, the human Races during the genesis of man. But it has led o another intuitional phenomenon—in the theological ranks this time. The nknown author of _Primeval Man_, in a desperate effort to screen the
Divine Revelation from the merciless and eloquent discoveries of Geology nd Anthropology, remarking that “it would be unfortunate if the defenders f the _Bible_ should be driven into the position of either surrendering he inspiration of Scripture, or denying the conclusions of
Geologists”—finds a compromise. Nay, he devotes a thick volume to proving his fact: “Adam was not the _first man_(476) created upon this earth.”
The exhumed relics of pre‐Adamic man, “instead of shaking our confidence n Scripture, supply additional proof of its veracity.”(477) How so? In he simplest way imaginable; for the author argues that, henceforth “we
[the clergy] are enabled to leave scientific men to pursue their studies ithout attempting to coërce them by the fear of heresy.” This must be a elief 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 he pre‐Adamic race of “Angels that sinned.” Satan was the “first prince f this world,” we read. Having died in consequence of his rebellion, he emained 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 ow‐a‐days before her gay modern lovers—might even derive a moral lesson rom this daughter of Satan, created in the exuberant fancy of her first uman biographer. These pictures—and to appreciate them at their true alue they must be examined in the volume that describes them—are all uggested with a view to reconcile the infallibility of revealed Scripture ith Sir Charles Lyell’s _Antiquity of Man_, and other damaging scientific orks. But this does not prevent truth and fact appearing at the oundation of these vagaries, which the author has not dared to sign with is own, or even a borrowed, name. For, his pre‐Adamic Races—not Satanic ut simply Atlantean, and the Hermaphrodites before the latter—are entioned 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 reat Root‐Races, and of the seven Kalpas. Though the genesis of man, and ven the geology, of Esotericism will surely be rejected by Science, just s much as the Satanic and pre‐Adamic Races, yet if the Scientists, having o other way out of their difficulties, are compelled to choose between he two, we feel certain that—Scripture notwithstanding—once the Mystery
Language is approximately mastered, it is the archaic teaching that will e 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 ower “principles” of what we call Primordial Substance (Âkâsha, in
Sanskrit), one of the dreams of old, which has now again become the dream f Modern Science. It is the greatest, as it is the boldest, of the urviving speculations of ancient philosophers. For the Occultists, owever, both Ether and the Primordial Substance are realities. To put it lainly, 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 ntiquity, except in allegory. In the oldest Âryan race, the Hindû, the orship of the intellectual classes at no time ever consisted in an doration of marvellous form and art, however fervent, as with the Greeks; n adoration, which led later on to anthropomorphism. But while the Greek hilosopher adored form, and the Hindû sage alone “perceived the true elation of earthly beauty and eternal truth”—the uneducated of every ation understood neither, at any time.
They do not understand it even now. The evolution of the God‐idea proceeds pace with man’s own intellectual evolution. So true is it that the oblest ideal to which the religious spirit of one age can soar, will ppear but a gross caricature to the philosophic mind in a succeeding poch! The philosophers themselves had to be _initiated into perceptive ysteries_, before they could grasp the correct idea of the Ancients in elation to this most metaphysical subject. Otherwise—outside such
Initiation—for every thinker there will be a “thus far shalt thou go and o farther” mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as clearly and as nmistakably as there is one for the progress of any nation or race in its ycle by the law of Karma. Outside of Initiation, the ideals of ontemporary religious thought must always have their wings clipped, and emain unable to soar higher; for idealistic, as well as realistic, hinkers, and even free‐thinkers, are but the outcome and the natural roduct of their respective environments and periods. The ideals of each re but the necessary results of their temperaments, and the outcome of hat phase of intellectual progress to which a nation, in its ollectivity, has attained. Hence, as already remarked, the highest lights of modern Western metaphysics have fallen far short of the truth.
Much of current Agnostic speculation on the existence of the “First Cause” s little better than veiled Materialism—the terminology alone being ifferent. Even so great a thinker as Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks of the
“Unknowable” occasionally in terms that demonstrate the lethal influence f materialistic thought, which, like the deadly Sirocco, has withered and lighted 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 s clear that he has grasped solely the _physical_ aspect of the Mystery f Being—the Energies of Cosmic Substance only. The coeternal aspect of he One Reality, Cosmic Ideation, is absolutely omitted from onsideration, and as to its Noumenon, it seems non‐existent in the mind f the great thinker. Without doubt, this one‐sided mode of dealing with he problem is due largely to the pernicious Western practice of ubordinating Consciousness to Matter, or regarding it as a “bye‐product” f molecular motion.
From the early ages of the Fourth Race, when Spirit alone was worshipped nd the Mystery was made manifest, down to the last palmy days of Grecian rt, at the dawn of Christianity, the Hellenes alone had dared publicly to aise an altar to the “Unknown God.” Whatever St. Paul may have had in his rofound mind, when declaring to the Athenians that this “Unknown,” which hey ignorantly worshipped, was the true God announced by himself—that
Deity _was not_ “Jehovah,” nor was he “the maker of the world and all hings.” For it is not the “God of Israel” but the “Unknown” of the ncient and modern Pantheist that “dwelleth not in temples _made with ands_.”(480)
Divine Thought cannot be defined, nor can its meaning be explained, except y the numberless manifestations of Cosmic Substance, in which the former s _sensed_ spiritually by those who can do so. To say this, after having efined it as the Unknown Deity, abstract, impersonal, sexless, which must e placed at the root of every Cosmogony and its subsequent evolution, is quivalent to saying nothing at all. It is like attempting a ranscendental equation of conditions, having in hand for deducing the rue value of its terms only a number of _unknown_ quantities. Its place s found in the old primitive symbolic charts, in which, as already shown, t is represented by a boundless darkness, on the ground of which appears he first central point in white—thus symbolizing coëval and coëternal
Spirit‐Matter making its appearance in the phenomenal world, before its irst differentiation. When “the One becomes Two,” it may then be referred o as Spirit _and_ Matter. To “Spirit” is referable every manifestation of
Consciousness, reflective or direct, and of “unconscious purposiveness”—to dopt a modern expression used in Western _philosophy_, so‐called—as videnced in the Vital Principle, and Nature’s submission to the majestic equence of immutable Law. “Matter” must be regarded as objectivity in its urest abstraction, the self‐existing basis, whose septenary manvantaric ifferentiations constitute the objective reality underlying the phenomena f each phase of conscious existence. During the period of Universal
Pralaya, Cosmic Ideation is non‐existent; and the variously differentiated tates of Cosmic Substance are resolved back again into the primary state f abstract potential objectivity.
Manvantaric impulse commences with the reäwakening of Cosmic Ideation, the
Universal Mind, concurrently with, and parallel to, the primary emergence f Cosmic Substance—the latter being the manvantaric vehicle of the ormer—from its undifferentiated pralayic state. Then, Absolute Wisdom irrors itself in its Ideation; which, by a transcendental process, uperior to and incomprehensible by human Consciousness, results in Cosmic
Energy, Fohat. Thrilling through the bosom of inert Substance, Fohat mpels it to activity, and guides its primary differentiations on all the even planes of Cosmic Consciousness. There are thus Seven Protyles—as hey are now called, whereas Âryan antiquity named them the Seven
Prakritis, or Natures—serving, severally, as the _relatively_ homogeneous ases, which in the course of the increasing heterogeneity, in the volution of the Universe, differentiate into the marvellous complexity resented by phenomena on the planes of perception. The term “relatively” s used designedly, because the very existence of such a process, esulting in the primary segregations of undifferentiated Cosmic Substance nto its septenary bases of evolution, compels us to regard the Protyle of ach plane as only a _mediate_ phase assumed by Substance in its passage rom abstract, into full objectivity. The term Protyle is due to Mr.
Crookes, the eminent Chemist, who has given that name to _pre‐matter_, if ne may so call primordial and purely homogeneous substance, suspected, if ot actually yet found, by Science in the ultimate composition of the tom. But the incipient segregation of primordial matter into atoms and olecules 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 ecently detected the possibility of its existence on our plane.
Cosmic Ideation is said to be non‐existent during pralayic periods, for he simple reason that there is no one, and nothing, to perceive its ffects. There can be no manifestation of consciousness, semi‐ onsciousness, or even “unconscious purposiveness,” except through a ehicle of Matter; that is to say, on this our plane, wherein human onsciousness, _in its normal state_, cannot soar beyond what is known as ranscendental metaphysics, it is only through some molecular aggregation, r fabric, that Spirit wells up in a stream of individual or sub‐conscious ubjectivity. And as Matter existing apart from perception is a mere bstraction, both of these aspects of the Absolute—Cosmic Substance and
Cosmic Ideation—are mutually interdependent. In strict accuracy, to avoid onfusion and misconception, the term “Matter” ought to be applied to the ggregate of objects of possible perception, and the term “Substance” to
Noumena; for inasmuch as the phenomena of _our_ plane are the creations of he perceiving Ego—the modifications of its own subjectivity—all the
“states of matter representing the aggregate of perceived objects” can ave but a relative and purely phenomenal existence for the children of ur plane. As the modern Idealists would say, the coöperation of Subject nd Object results in the sense‐object, or phenomenon.
But this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that it is the same n all other planes; that the coöperation of the two, on the planes of heir septenary differentiation, results in a septenary aggregate of henomena which are likewise non‐existent _per se_, though concrete ealities for the Entities of whose experience they form a part, in the ame manner as the rocks and rivers around us are real from the stand‐ oint 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 hing. From the stand‐point of the highest metaphysics, the whole
Universe, Gods included, is an Illusion (Mâyâ). But the illusion of him ho is in himself an illusion differs on every plane of consciousness; and e have no more right to dogmatize about the possible nature of the erceptive faculties of an Ego on, say, the sixth plane, than we have to dentify our perceptions with, or make them a standard for, those of an nt, in _its_ mode of consciousness. Cosmic Ideation focussed in a
Principle, or Upâdhi (Basis), results as the consciousness of the ndividual 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 f matter) of Buddhi—resting on the experience of Manas as its Basis—as a tream of Spiritual Intuition.
The pure Object apart from consciousness is unknown to us, while living on he plane of our three‐dimensional world, for we know only the mental tates 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 o more, and do not know how to divorce our all‐perceiving Ego from the hraldom 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 he experience of every plane. But not till the Unit is merged in the ALL, hether on this or any other plane, and Subject and Object alike vanish in he absolute negation of the Nirvânic State—negation, again, only _from ur plane_—not until then, is scaled that peak of Omniscience, the
Knowledge of Things‐in‐themselves, and the solution of the yet more awful iddle approached, before which even the highest Dhyân Chohan must bow in ilence and ignorance—the Unspeakable Mystery of that which is called by he Vedântins, Parabrahman.
Therefore, such being the case, all those who have sought to give a name o the Incognizable Principle have simply degraded it. Even to speak of
Cosmic Ideation—save in its _phenomenal_ aspect—is like trying to bottle p 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 peculation in every age? What can it be finally, even in its _phenomenal_ re‐differentiation? Even _that_ is the All of manifested Nature nd—_nothing_ to our senses. It is mentioned under various names in every osmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown to be, to this day, he ever grasp‐eluding Proteus in Nature. We touch and do not feel it; we ook at it without seeing it; we breathe it and do not perceive it; we ear and smell it without the smallest cognition that it is there; for it s in every molecule of that which, in our illusion and ignorance, we egard as Matter in any of its states, or conceive as a feeling, a hought, an emotion. In short, it is the Upâdhi, or Vehicle, of every ossible phenomenon, whether physical, mental, or psychic. In the opening entences 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 ycle of manifestation. It is termed Chaos, and the Face of the Waters, ncubated 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 he 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 emove from an _emanation_ of “Intelligence, associated with
Ignorance”—which is the high Principle, the _deific_ Entity worshipped by he Greeks and Latins under the name of “Pater, Omnipotens Æther,” and
“Magnus Æther,” in its collective aggregate. The septenary gradation, and he innumerable sub‐divisions and differences, made by the Ancients etween the powers of Ether collectively—from its outward fringe of ffects, with which our Science is so familiar, up to the “Imponderable
Substance,” once admitted as the “Ether of Space,” but now about to be ejected—have been ever a vexing riddle for every branch of knowledge. The
Mythologists and Symbologists of our day, confused by this ncomprehensible glorification on the one hand, and degradation on the ther, of the same deified Entity and in the same religious systems, are ften driven to the most ludicrous mistakes. The Church, firm as a rock in ach and all of her early errors of interpretation, has made of Ether the bode of her Satanic legions. The whole Hierarchy of the “Fallen” Angels s 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.; hus 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 ot against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, gainst the rulers of the darkness of this world.”(482) Further, St. Paul entions the spiritual malices (“wickedness,” in English texts), in the
Air—_spiritualia nequitiæ cœlestibus_—the Latin texts giving various names o these “malices,” the innocent “Elementals.” But the Church is right his time, though wrong in calling them all Devils. The Astral Light, or ower Ether, _is_ full of conscious, semi‐conscious and unconscious ntities; only the church has less _power_ over them than over invisible icrobes 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, espectively. The former said: “Consult it only when it is without form or igure”—_absque formâ et figurâ_—which means, without flames or burning oals. “When it has a form, _heed it not_”; teaches Psellus, “but when it s formless, obey it, for it is then _sacred fire_, and all it will reveal hee 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 otency. Virgil calls Jupiter, _Pater Omnipotens Æther_, and the “Great
Æther.”(484) The Hindûs have also placed it among their deities, under the ame of Âkâsha, the synthesis of Ether. And the author of the Homœomerian
System of philosophy, Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, firmly believed that the piritual prototypes of all things, as well as their elements, were to be ound in the boundless Æther, where they were generated, whence they volved, and whither they returned—an Occult teaching.
It thus becomes clear that it is from Æther, in its highest synthetic spect, 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 ncient philosophies with Âkâsha, incorrectly translated Ether, and also ith Mâyâ, Illusion, of which Îshvara is the male aspect. We shall speak urther on of the Intelligent Principle, or rather of the invisible mmaterial properties, in the visible and material elements, that “sprang rom 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 s _was_ known to the ancient philosophers long before the time of
Moses—Æther, with all its mysterious and occult properties, containing in tself the germs of universal creation. The Upper Æther, or Âkâsha, is the
Celestial Virgin and Mother of every existing form and being, from whose osom, as soon as “incubated” by the Divine Spirit, are called into xistence Matter and Life, Force and Action. Æther is the Aditi of the
Hindûs, and it is Âkâsha. Electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and hemical action are so little understood even now, that fresh facts are onstantly widening the range of our knowledge. Who knows where ends the ower of this protean giant—Æther; or whence its mysterious origin? Who, e mean, that denies the Spirit that works in it, and evolves out of it ll visible forms?
It will be an easy task to show that the cosmogonical legends all over the orld are based on a knowledge among the Ancients of those sciences, which ave, in our days, allied themselves in support of the doctrine of volution; and that further research may demonstrate that these Ancients ere far better acquainted with the fact of evolution itself, embracing oth 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 deas. Mostly lost, to the Western world, in their original form, isfigured by later interpolations and additions, they have, nevertheless, reserved quite enough of their ancient spirit to show its character.
“Removing the darkness, the Self‐existent Lord [Vishnu, Nârâyana, etc.] ecame manifest; and, wishing to produce beings from his Essence, created, n 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, nknowable, 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 wo, and from the upper portion he forms the heaven, from the lower the arth, and from the middle the sky and “the perpetual place of aters.”(486)
Directly following these verses, however, there is something more mportant for us, as it entirely corroborates our Esoteric teachings. From erse 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 ate, according to the western Orientalists, is 1,000 A.D., helps us with is remarks to the elucidation of the truth. He shows himself either nwilling to give out more, because he knew what had to be kept from the rofane, or else he was really puzzled. Still, what he does give out makes he 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,” ecomes 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 he 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 ructifying Principle. It is [circle split by vertical line], or 10 (ten), he Decad. On the plane of the Septenary, or _our_ World, only, it is alled Brahmâ. On that of the Unified Decad, in the realm of Reality, this ale Brahmâ is an Illusion.
14. “From Self (_Âtmanah_) he created Mind, _which is and is not_; and rom Mind, Ego‐ism [Self‐Consciousness] (_a_), the ruler (_b_), the Lord.”
(_a_) The Mind is Manas. Medhâtithi, the commentator, justly observes here hat it is the reverse of this, and shows already interpolation and earranging; 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 y Colebrooke, “Mind, _serving both for sense and action_, is an organ by ffinity, 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 ffinity both with Âtmâ‐Buddhi and with the lower Four Principles. Hence, ur teaching: namely, that Manas follows Âtmâ‐Buddhi to Devachan, and that he Lower Manas, that is to say, the dregs or residue of Manas, remains ith 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, ot “the ruler,” as do the Orientalists. Thus also they translate the ollowing shloka:
16. “He also, having made the subtile parts of those six [the great Self nd the five organs of sense], of unmeasured brightness, to enter into the lements 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 rightness, by elements of self, created all beings.”
The latter reading must be the correct one, since He, the Self, is what we all Âtmâ, and thus constitutes the seventh principle, the synthesis of he “six.” Such is also the opinion of the editor of the _Mânava Dharma
Shâstra_, who seems to have intuitionally entered far deeper into the pirit of the philosophy than has the translator, the late Dr. Burnell; or he hesitates little between the text of Kullûka Bhatta and the ommentary of Medhâtithi. Rejecting the _tanmâtra_, or subtile elements, nd the _âtmamâtra_ of Kullûka Bhatta, he says, applying the principles to he Cosmic Self:
“The six appear rather to be the _manas_ plus the five principles of ther, air, fire, water, earth; ‘having united five portions of those six ith the spiritual element [the _seventh_] he (thus) created all existing hings;’ ... _âtmamâtra_ is therefore the spiritual atom as opposed to the lementary, 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, o the wise call his form Sharîra.”
And he adds that “elements” mean here portions, or parts (or principles), hich reading is borne out by verse 19, which says:
“This non‐eternal (Universe) arises then from the Eternal, by means of the ubtile elements of forms of _those seven_ very glorious Principles
(_Purusha_).”
Commenting upon which emendation of Medhâtithi, the editor remarks: “the ive 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, hen 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 erse 27 as “those which are called the atomic destructible portions,” and hich are, therefore, “distinct from the atoms of the Nyâya.”
This creative Brahmâ, issuing from the Mundane or Golden Egg, unites in imself both the male and female principles. He is, in short, the same as ll the creative Protologoi. Of Brahmâ, however, it could not be said, as f Dionysos, “πρωτόγονον διφυῆ τρίγονον βακχεῖον Ἅνακτα Ἄγριον ἀρρητὸν
κρύφιον δικέρωτα δίμορφον”—a lunar Jehovah, Bacchus truly, with David ancing nude before his _symbol_ in the ark—because no licentious Dionysia ere ever established in his name and honour. All such public worship was xoteric, and the great universal symbols were distorted universally, as hose of Krishna are now by the Vallabâchâryas of Bombay, the followers of he “infant” God. But are these popular Gods the _true_ Deity? Are _they_ he 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 hrough the _Seven Letters_ of the Name of Jehovah who, having usurped the lace of the Unknown Limitless, was given by his devotees his Seven Angels f the Presence—his Seven Principles. But, indeed, they are mentioned in lmost every school. In the pure Sânkhya philosophy Mahat, Ahamkâra and he five Tanmâtras are called the Seven Prakritis, or Natures, and are ounted from Mahâ‐Buddhi, or Mahat, down to Earth.(490)
Nevertheless, however disfigured by Ezra for Rabbinical purposes is the riginal Elohistic version, however repulsive at times is even the
_esoteric_ meaning in the Hebrew scrolls, far more so indeed than its utward veil or cloaking may be—once the Jehovistic portions are liminated, the Mosaic Books are found full of purely Occult and priceless nowledge, especially in the first six chapters.
Read by the aid of the _Kabalah_, one finds a matchless temple of Occult ruths, a well of deeply concealed beauty, hidden under a structure, the
_visible_ architecture of which, notwithstanding its apparent symmetry, is nable to stand the criticism of cold reason, or to reveal the age of its idden truth, for it belongs to all the ages. There is more Wisdom oncealed under the exoteric _fables_ of the _Purânas_ and _Bible_ than in ll the exoteric _facts_ and science in the literature of the world, and ore Occult true Science, than there is of exact knowledge in all the cademies. Or, in plainer and stronger language, there is as much esoteric isdom in some portions of the _exoteric Purânas_ and _Pentateuch_, as here is of nonsense and of designedly childish fancy, when read only in he dead‐letter and murderous interpretations of the great dogmatic eligions, 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 f eternity(491)—“God” fashions the Heaven and the Earth; and the latter s “without form and void,” while the former is in fact not Heaven, but he “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 nd “_made_ the firmament.” “And God said let there be light.” And “there as light.” Now the latter does not mean light at all, but, as in the
_Kabalah_, the androgyne Adam Kadmon, or Sephira (Spiritual Light), for hey are one; or, according to the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_, the
_secondary_ Angels, the first being the Elohim, who are the aggregate of hat “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 ho obeys, the Elohim, the known quantity acting in and with _x_, or the oëfficient of the unknown quantity, the Forces of the One Force. All this s Occultism, and is found in the archaic Stanzas. It is perfectly mmaterial 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,” ays the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_. From it proceeds periodically the
Energy, which is reflected in the Deep, or Chaos, the store‐house of uture Worlds, and, once awakened, stirs up and fructifies the latent
Forces, which are the ever present eternal potentialities in it. Then wake 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 vidently repeated the words of Manu. In it, the Divine Substance is epresented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless and bsolute; 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 rom One emanated number Two, or Air (the Father), the creative Element; nd then number Three, Water (the Mother), proceeded from Air; Ether or
Fire completes the Mystic Four, the Arbo‐al.(495) When the Concealed of he Concealed wanted to reveal Himself, he first made a Point [the
Primordial Point, or the first Sephira, Air, or Holy Ghost,] shaped into a acred Form, [the Ten Sephiroth, or the Heavenly Man,] and covered it with rich and splendid Garment, _that is the World_.(496)
“He maketh the Wind His messengers, flaming Fire His servants”;(497) says he _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 nown so far, and which are only “children of necessity,” as is Ether lso. 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 he right to call these substances “chemical elements,” for these are not
“primordial principles of self‐existing essences, out of which the niverse was fashioned,” according to Plato. Such ideas associated with he word “element” were good enough for the old Greek Philosophy, but
Modern Science rejects them; for, as Mr. William Crookes says: “they are nfortunate terms,” and experimental Science will have “nothing to do with ny kind of essences except those which it can see, smell, or taste. It eaves others to the metaphysicians....” We must feel grateful even for so uch!
This “Primordial Substance” is called by some Chaos. Plato and the
Pythagoreans named it the Soul of the World, after it had been impregnated y the Spirit of that which broods over the Primeval Waters, or Chaos. It s 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 ervades Space and all things. It is the invisible, imponderable Spirit of hings, and the invisible, but only too tangible, fluid that radiates from he fingers of the healthy magnetizer, for it is Vital Electricity—Life tself. 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 ind 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 ranches growing from the same trunk and shooting forth the same esultants. And in this appellation of “Living Fire” we may also discover he meaning of the puzzling sentence in the _Zend Avesta_: there is “a
Fire that gives knowledge of the future, science and amiable speech”; that s to say, which develops an extraordinary eloquence in the sibyl, the ensitive, 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 he Risha Havurah,” the White Head, whose Will causes the fiery fluid to low in 370 currents in every direction of the Universe. It is identical ith the “Serpent that runs with 370 leaps” of the _Siphrah Dtzenioutha_, he Serpent, which, when the “Perfect Man,” the Metatron, _is raised_, hat is to say, when the _Divine_ Man indwells in the _animal_ man, ecomes _three_ Spirits, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas, in our Theosophical hraseology.
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 tanding for Dhyân Chohans, Devas, Sephiroth, Amshaspends, Archangels, tc. The Ether of Science—the Ilus of Berosus, or the Protyle of
Chemistry—constitutes, so to speak, the _rude_ material, relatively, out f which the above‐named Builders, following the plan traced out for them ternally in the Divine Thought, fashion the Systems in the Kosmos. They re “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 he objection: You never saw them. And we ask the Materialists: Have you ver seen Ether, or your Atoms, or, again, your Force? Moreover, one of he 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 uiding action of “higher intelligences” as a “_necessary_ part of the reat 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, ut have a historical as well as a scientific foundation. “Myths,” justly bserves Pococke, “are now proved to be _fables_, just in proportion as
_we misunderstand_ them; _truths_, in proportion as _they were once nderstood_.”
The most distinct and the one prevailing idea, found in all ancient eaching, with reference to Cosmic Evolution and the first “creation” of ur Globe with all its products, organic and _inorganic_—strange word for n 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 he One Immutable, Parabrahman‐Mûlaprakriti, the Eternal One‐Root. The ormer of these, in its aspect of the Central Point turned inward, so to ay, into regions quite inaccessible to human intellect, is Absolute
Abstraction; whereas, in its aspect as Mûlaprakriti, the Eternal Root of ll, 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 ejected as absurd fables. Nevertheless, Occult Science—which has survived ven the Great Flood that submerged the Antediluvian Giants and with them heir very memory, save the record preserved in the Secret Doctrine, the
_Bible_ and other Scriptures—still holds the Key to all the world roblems.
Let us, then, apply this Key to the rare fragments of long‐forgotten
Cosmogonies, and by means of their scattered portions endeavour to eestablish the once Universal Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine. The Key its them all. No one can seriously study ancient philosophies without erceiving that the striking similitude of conception in all of them, in heir exoteric form very frequently, and in their hidden spirit nvariably, is the result of no mere coincidence, but of a concurrent esign; and that, during the youth of mankind, there was but one language, ne knowledge, one universal religion, when there were no churches, no reeds or sects, but when every man was a priest unto himself. And, if it s shown that already in those early ages which are shut out from our ight by the exuberant growth of tradition, human religious thought eveloped in uniform sympathy in every portion of the globe; then, it ecomes evident that that thought, born under whatever latitude, in the old North or the burning South, in the East or West, was inspired by the ame revelations, and that man was nurtured under the protecting shadow of he same _Tree of Knowledge_.
Section IV. Chaos: Theos: Kosmos.
These three are the containment of Space; or, as a learned Kabalist has efined it: “Space, the all‐containing uncontained, is the primary mbodiment of simple Unity ... boundless extension.”(508) But, he asks gain: “boundless extension of what?”—and makes the correct reply: “The
Unknown Container of All, the _Unknown First Cause_.” This is a most orrect definition and answer; most esoteric and true, from every aspect f Occult Teaching.
_Space_, which, in their ignorance and with their iconoclastic tendency to estroy every philosophic idea of old, the modern wiseacres have roclaimed “an abstract idea” and a “void,” is, in reality, the Container nd the Body of the Universe in its Seven Principles. It is a Body of imitless extent, whose Principles, in Occult phraseology—each being in ts turn a septenary—manifest in our phenomenal World only the grossest abric of their _sub‐divisions_. “No one has ever seen the Elements in heir fulness,” the Doctrine teaches. We have to search for our Wisdom in he original expressions and synonyms of the primeval peoples. Even the
Jews, the latest of these, show the same idea, in their Kabalistic eachings, when they speak of the seven‐headed Serpent of Space, called he “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 f the Breath of Life. In the “Forces” of Science we see but the _material ffect_ 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 eing synonymous—it represented and contained in itself all the Elements n their rudimentary, undifferentiated State. They made Æther, the fifth
Element, the synthesis of the other four; for the Æther of the Greek hilosophers was not its Dregs, although indeed they knew more than
Science does now of these Dregs (Ether), which are rightly enough supposed o act as an agent for many Forces that manifest on Earth. Their Æther was he Âkâsha of the Hindûs; the Ether accepted in Physics is but one of its ub‐divisions, on our plane, the Astral Light of the Kabalists with all ts _evil_ as well as its good effects.
Seeing that the Essence of Æther, or the Unseen Space, was considered ivine, as being the supposed Veil of Deity, it was regarded as the Medium etween this life and the next. The Ancients considered that when the irecting active Intelligences—the Gods—retired from any portion of Æther n _our_ Space, or the four realms which they superintend, then that articular region was left in the possession of _evil_, so called by eason 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 heir 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 r Deity, which, before its first manifestation—when it became Will, ommunicating 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 nd 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 n the geometrical form of the dodecahedron, and its “First‐Begotten” was orn of Chaos and Primordial Light—the Central Sun. This First‐Born, owever, was only the aggregate of the Host of the Builders, the first
Constructive Forces, who are called in ancient Cosmogonies, the Ancients, orn of the Deep or Chaos, and the First Point. He is the Tetragrammaton, o‐called, at the head of the Seven lower Sephiroth. This was also the elief of the Chaldeans. Philo, the Jew, speaking very flippantly of the irst 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 he dead‐letter even of the old philosophies as now extant. But even in hese, Chaos, Theos, Kosmos and Space are identified in all Eternity, as he One Unknown Space, the last word on which will never, perhaps, be nown, before our Seventh Round. Nevertheless, the allegories and etaphysical symbols about the primeval and _perfect_ Cube, are emarkable, even in the exoteric _Purânas_.
There, also, Brahmâ is Theos, evolving out of Chaos, or the Great Deep, he Waters, over which Spirit or Space—the Spirit moving over the face of he future boundless Kosmos—is silently hovering, in the first hour of eäwakening. It is also Vishnu, sleeping on Ananta‐Shesha, the great
Serpent of Eternity, of which Western Theology, ignorant of the _Kabalah_, he only key that opens the secrets of the _Bible_, has made—the Devil. It s 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 ot, 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 osom of Vishnu. Sprung from this Chaos and Darkness, Brahmâ, the
Architect of the World, poised on a lotus‐leaf, floated [moved] upon the aters, unable to discern anything but water and darkness.” Perceiving uch a dismal state of things, Brahmâ soliloquizes in consternation: “Who m I? Whence came I?” Then he hears a voice:(516) “Direct your thoughts to
Bhagavat.” Brahmâ, rising from his natatory position, seats himself upon he lotus, in an attitude of contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal, ho, pleased with this evidence of piety, disperses the primeval darkness nd opens his understanding. “After this Brahmâ issues from the Universal
Egg [Infinite Chaos] as Light, for his understanding is now opened, and he ets 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 ossible with the Egyptian Cosmogony, which, in its opening sentences, hows Athtor,(517) or Mother Night, representing Illimitable Darkness, as he Primeval Element which covered the Infinite Abyss, animated by Water nd the Universal Spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone in Chaos.
Similarly in the Jewish Scriptures, the history of the creation opens with he 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, imitless 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 he Demiurge, in the _Bible_ the Elohim, or Alhim, who fashion Kosmos out f Chaos, and who are the collective Theos, male‐female, Spirit and
Matter. “By a series (_yom_) of foundations (_hasoth_), the Alhim caused arth 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 hapter. 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 he Movers, the Runners, the Theoi (from θέειν to run), who do the work of ormation, the Messengers of the Manvantaric Law, who have now become in
Christianity simply the “Messengers” (Malachim). This seems to be also the ase 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 he Rishis; the term Rishi, according to Professor Mahadeo Kunte, being onnected with the word to move, to lead on, applied to them in their errestrial 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 s 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 or God being derived from the attribute of _Goodness_. To the Latin races t 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 emale, and Yod is the phallic _hook_. Hence the Saxon _Godh_, the
Germanic _Gott_, and the English _God_. This symbolic term may be said to epresent the Creator of Physical Humanity, on the _terrestrial_ plane; ut surely it had nothing to do with the Formation, or “Creation,” of ither Spirit, Gods, or Kosmos?
Chaos‐Theos‐Kosmos, the Triple Deity, is _all in all_. Therefore, it is aid to be male and female, good and evil, positive and negative; the hole series of contrasted qualities. When latent, in Pralaya, it is ncognizable and becomes the Unknowable Deity. It can be known only in its ctive functions; hence as Matter‐Force and _living_ Spirit, the orrelations and outcome, or the expression, on the visible plane, of the ltimate 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 even (so far the five) Elements, each divisible into forty‐nine—seven imes seven—sub‐elements, with about seventy of which Chemistry is cquainted. Every Cosmical Element, such as Fire, Air, Water, Earth, artaking 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 t 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 he One Element, the Incognizable, represented in the world of phenomena y Æther. They are “the immortal Gods who give birth and life to all.”
In _The Philosophical Writings of Solomon Ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol_, in reating 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 even, as briefly given in _Esoteric Buddhism_.
The Hindûs have an endless series of allegories to express this idea. In he Primordial Chaos, before it became developed into the Sapta Samudra, r Seven Oceans—emblematical of the Seven Gunas, or conditioned Qualities, omposed 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 llegorical Churning of the Ocean by the Gods. Amrita is beyond any Guna, or it is _unconditioned_, _per se_; but when once fallen into phenomenal reation, it became mixed with Evil, Chaos, with latent Theos in it, efore Kosmos was evolved. Hence we find Vishnu, the personification of
Eternal Law, periodically calling forth Kosmos into activity, or, in llegorical phraseology, churning out of the Primitive Ocean, or Boundless
Chaos, the Amrita of Eternity, reserved only for the Gods and Devas; and n the task he has to employ Nâgas and Asuras, or Demons in exoteric
Hindûism. The whole allegory is highly philosophical, and indeed we find t repeated in every ancient system of philosophy. Thus we find it in
Plato, who having fully embraced the ideas which Pythagoras had brought rom India, compiled and published them in a form more intelligible than he original mysterious numerals of the Samian Sage. Thus the Kosmos is he “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 nd 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 econd Horus is this Idea going forth from the Logos, becoming clothed ith Matter, and assuming an actual existence.(526)
The _Chaldean Oracles_ speak of the “Mundane God, eternal, boundless, oung and old, of winding form.”(527) This “winding form” is a figure to xpress the vibratory motion of the Astral Light, with which the ancient riests were perfectly well acquainted, though the name “Astral Light” was nvented 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‐ neumatological education.” _Satis eloquentiæ, sapientiæ parum!_
Cosmolatry, like Pantheism, in its ultimate expression, may be made to xpress 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, as 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_ ransformations, from Brahmâ‐Purusha, through the Seven _Divine_ Rishis nd 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 nd the Chaldeo‐Judaic, the latter having made confusion still more onfused 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 nown 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 omplaining bitterly of the Gnostics, and saying: “our Heretics hold ... hat Propatôr is known but to the Only‐begotten Son(529) [who is Brahmâ], hat is to the Mind [Nous],” Irenæus failed to mention that the Jews did he same in their real _secret_ books. Valentinus, “the profoundest doctor f 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, ather, 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 reated. “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, owever, speaks neither of “creation,” nor of “evolution,” in the sense in hich the exoteric religions do. All these personified Powers are not volutions from one another, but so many aspects of the one and sole anifestation 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 hat 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 ame plane of abstract ideals as the Higher, or Greater Countenance,
Macroprosopus. The latter is, in the Chaldean _Kabalah_, a pure bstraction, the Word or Logos, or Dabar in Hebrew; which Word, though it ecomes in fact a plural number, or Words, D(a)B(a)R(i)M, when it reflects tself, 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 nything else.”(530) And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who tands next God, the “Second God,” when he speaks of “the Second God, who s his [the Highest God’s] Wisdom.”(531) Deity is not God. It is No‐thing, nd 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 s they are by the Church Fathers, anything better than the distorted hells of the original speculations. Nor were they, moreover, ever _open_ o the public or general reader; for had their hidden meaning or sotericism been revealed, it would have been no more an esoteric eaching, and this could never have been. Marcus, the chief of the
Marcosians, who flourished in the middle of the second century, and taught hat Deity had to be viewed under the symbol of _four_ syllables, gave out ore of the esoteric truths than any other Gnostic. But even he was never ell 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 uite erroneous, and divulges only one more esoteric riddle. This teaching f Marcus was that of the early Kabalists and is ours. For he makes of
Deity the Number 30, in four syllables, which, translated esoterically, eans a Triad or Triangle, and a Quaternary or a Square, in all seven, hich, on the lower plane, made the seven divine or Secret Letters of hich the God‐name is composed. This requires demonstration. In his
_Revelation_, speaking of divine mysteries expressed by means of letters nd numbers, Marcus narrates how the Supreme “Tetrad came down” unto him
“from the region which cannot be seen nor named, _in a female form_, ecause _the world would have been unable to bear her appearing in a male igure_,” and revealed to him “the generation of the universe, _untold efore to either_ Gods or men.”
The first sentence already contains a double meaning. Why should the pparition of a female figure be more easily borne, or listened to, by the orld than a male figure? On the face of it, this appears nonsensical. But o one who is acquainted with the Mystery Language, it is quite clear and imple. Esoteric Philosophy, or the Secret Wisdom, was symbolized by a emale form, while a male figure stood for the Unveiled Mystery. Hence, he 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, r attributes, are also four syllabled, twelve, forty‐two, and even eventy‐two syllabled words! The Tetrad shows to Marcus the Truth in the hape of a naked woman, and letters every limb of that figure, calling her ead Α Ω, her neck Β Ψ, shoulders and hands Γ Χ, etc. In this, Sephira is asily recognized; the head, or Crown, Kether, being numbered 1; the rain, or Chokmah, 2; the Heart, or Intelligence, Binah, 3; and the other even Sephiroth representing the limbs of the body. The Sephirothic Tree s the Universe, and Adam Kadmon personifies it in the West, as Brahmâ epresents it in India.
Throughout, the Ten Sephiroth are represented as divided into the Three igher, or the spiritual Triad, and the lower Septenary. The true esoteric eaning of the sacred number Seven though cleverly veiled, in the _Zohar_, s 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) oth of these Kabalists being supported by the best ancient authorities, hese words have a dual and secret meaning. _Braisheeth barah Elohim_ eans, that the _six_, over which stands the _seventh_ Sephira, belong to he lower material class, or, as the author says: “Seven ... are applied o 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 he 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 hought of its authors, the earlier and great Hebrew Initiates, who got his Secret Wisdom in Babylonia from the Chaldean Hierophants, just as
Moses got his in Egypt. The Zoharic system cannot very well be judged by ts translations into Latin and other tongues, when all its ideas were oftened and made to fit in with the views and policy of its Christian rrangers; for its original ideas are identical with those of all other eligious systems. The various Cosmogonies show that the Universal Soul as considered by every archaic nation as the Mind of the Demiurgic
Creator; and that it was called the Mother, Sophia, or the female Wisdom, ith 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 f 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, hen, the Logoi of all countries and religions are correlative, in their exual 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 alled the Hidden One, and is connected only indirectly with
“Creation,”(539) as it can act only through the Dual Force emanating from he Eternal Essence. Even Æsculapius, called the “Saviour of all,” is dentical, according to ancient classical writers, with the Egyptian Ptah, he Creative Intellect, or Divine Wisdom, and with Apollo, Baal, Adonis nd Hercules:(540) and Ptah, in one of its aspects, is the Anima Mundi; he 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, nd even, in its lower aspect, the Astral Light. For Ptah was originally he 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 e is shown to be the first to unveil the face of the dead mummy, to call he Soul to _life in his bosom_. Kneph, the Eternal Unrevealed, is epresented by the snake‐emblem of eternity encircling a water‐urn, with ts head hovering over the “Waters,” which it incubates with its reath—another form of the one original idea of “Darkness,” with its Ray oving 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 andsome 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 hem had the aquatic animals and plants sacred to them, the ibis, the wan, 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 ong 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 ill, think, nor act. To do this, it has to become Finite, and _it_ does o by its Ray penetrating into the Mundane Egg, or Infinite Space, and manating from it as a Finite God. All this is left to the Ray latent in he 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 ltimate Essence. The Hebrews did not adopt the Egg as a symbol, but they ubstituted for it the “Duplex Heavens,” for, translated correctly, the entence “God made the heavens and the earth” would read: “In and out of is own Essence, as a Womb [the Mundane Egg], God created the Two
Heavens.” The Christians, however, have chosen the Dove, the bird and not he egg, as the symbol of their Holy Ghost.
“Whoever acquaints himself with Hud, the Mercabah and the Lahgash [secret peech or incantation], will learn the secret of secrets.” Lahgash is early 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 nd the Crown, Kether. It is only through her that the “Un‐bounded Wisdom” ould 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 nbroken lines; the third, the left side, is dotted. It is through the atter that emerges Sephira. Spreading in every direction, she finally ncompasses the whole Triangle. In this emanation the triple Triad is ormed. From the invisible Dew falling from the higher Uni‐triad, the
“Head,”—thus leaving 7 Sephiroth only—Sephira _creates_ Primeval Waters, r in other words, Chaos takes shape. It is the first stage towards the olidification of Spirit which, through various modifications, will roduce 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, he female element of procreation, with the egg and the bird that ecundates it.
When Sephira emerges as an Active Power from within the Latent Deity, she s female; when she assumes the office of a Creator, she becomes a male; ence, she is androgyne. She is the “Father and Mother, Aditi,” of the
Hindû Cosmogony and of the Secret Doctrine. If the oldest Hebrew scrolls ad been preserved, the modern Jehovah‐worshipper would have found that any and uncomely were the symbols of the “Creative God.” The frog in the oon, typical of his generative character, was the most frequent. All the irds and animals now called “unclean” in the _Bible_ have been the ymbols of this Deity, in days of old. A mask of uncleanness was placed ver them, in order to preserve them from destruction, because they were o sacred. The brazen serpent is not a bit more poetical than the goose or wan, 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, r Intelligence, a feminine passive potency, represented by the divine ame 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 hich issued the other seven Sephiroth. Thus, the first Jewish Triad,
Sephira, Chokmah and Binah, is the Hindû Trimûrti.(543) However veiled ven in the _Zohar_, and still more in the exoteric Pantheon of India, very particular connected with one is reproduced in the other. The
Prajâpatis are the Sephiroth. Ten with Brahmâ, they dwindle to seven when he Trimûrti, or the Kabalistic Triad, are separated from the rest. The even 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 ncomprehensible and inactive, in its Absoluteness, and can be connected ith the Building of the Universe only in an indirect way. In both, the rimeval 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 heir Prajâpatis and Sephiroth—in their totality, represent primarily the
Archetypal Man, the Protologos; and it is only in their secondary aspect hat 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, f 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], hich was used as a Vâhana to descend with into the Universal Mother, and o 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 ountain of life.”(545) “The seventh palace, the fountain of life, is the irst in the order from above.”(546) Hence the Kabalistic tenet on the ips of the very Kabalistic Solomon, who says in _Proverbs_: “Wisdom hath uilded 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 traws in a stack, in comparison to that which will be disclosed as the ork proceeds. If we turn to the Chinese Cosmogony, the most hazy of all, ven 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, nd Tien, Heaven, come later on. The “Great Extreme” of Confucius gives he same idea, his “straws” notwithstanding. The latter are a source of reat amusement to the missionaries, who laugh at every “heathen” eligion, despise and hate that of their brother Christians of other enominations, 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 ame of Parabrahman, in the Vedântic philosophy, in which Parabrahman is escribed as smaller than the smallest atom, and greater than the greatest phere or universe, Anagrânîyas and Mahatoruvat. In the first verses of he Akkadian _Genesis_, as found in the cuneiform texts on the Babylonian iles or Lateres Coctiles, and as translated by George Smith, we find Anu, he 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, he 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 erhaps seem little calculated to answer its sacred character. A goose, or ven a swan, will, no doubt, be thought an unfit symbol to represent the randeur of the Spirit. Nevertheless, it must have had some deep Occult eaning, since it figures not only in every Cosmogony and World‐religion, ut was also chosen by the Crusaders, among the mediæval Christians, as he Vehicle of the Holy Ghost, which was supposed to be leading the army o 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 he 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 wan, and so also does Brahmâ; and the root of all this is that mystery of ysteries—the Mundane Egg. One should learn the reason of a symbol before epreciating it. The dual element of Air and Water is that of the ibis, wan, goose and pelican, of crocodiles and frogs, lotus flowers and water ilies, etc.; and the result is the choice of the most unseemly symbols by he modern as much as by the ancient Mystics. Pan, the great God of
Nature, was generally figured in company with aquatic birds, geese specially, and so were other Gods. If later on, with the gradual egeneration of religion, the Gods to whom geese were sacred, became riapic deities, it does not, therefore, follow that water‐fowls were made acred to Pan and other phallic deities, as some scoffers even of ntiquity would have it,(550) but that the abstract and divine power of
Procreative Nature had become grossly anthropomorphized. Nor does the swan f Leda show “priapic doings and her enjoyment thereof,” as Mr. Hargrave
Jennings chastely expresses it; for the myth is but another version of the ame philosophical idea of Cosmogony. Swans are frequently found ssociated with Apollo, as they are the emblems of Water and Fire, and lso of the Sun‐light, before the separation of the Elements.
Our modern symbologists might profit by some remarks made by a well‐known riter, 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 he Cosmogony of every people on the earth, and was revered both on ccount of its form and of its inner mystery. From the earliest mental onceptions of man, it has been known as that which represented most uccessfully the origin and secret of Being. The gradual development of he imperceptible germ within the closed shell; the inward working, ithout any apparent outward interference of force, which from a latent
_nothing_ produced an active _something_, needing naught save heat; and hich, having gradually evolved into a concrete, living creature, broke ts shell, appearing to the outward senses of all as a self‐generated and elf‐created being; all this must have been a standing miracle from the eginning.
The Secret Teaching explains the reason for this reverence by the ymbolism of the prehistoric races. In the beginnings, the “First Cause” ad no name. Later it was pictured in the fancy of the thinkers as an ever nvisible, mysterious Bird that dropped an Egg into Chaos, which Egg ecame the Universe. Hence Brahmâ was called Kâlahansa, the “Swan in
[Space and] Time.” Becoming the Swan of Eternity, Brahmâ, at the beginning f each Mahâmanvantara, lays a Golden Egg, which typifies the great
Circle, or [circle] itself a symbol for the Universe and its spherical odies.
A second reason for the Egg having been chosen as the symbolical epresentation 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 nown from the beginning of symbology, since it was so universally dopted. The first manifestation of the Kosmos in the form of an Egg was he most widely diffused belief of Antiquity. As Bryant shows,(552) it was 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 f as having laid an Egg, or the Universe, an “Egg conceived at the hour f the Great One of the Dual Force.”(553)
Ra is shown like Brahmâ gestating in the Egg of the Universe. The Deceased s “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 he great clucking Hen, the Egg of Seb, who issues from it like a awk.”(556)
Among the Greeks the Orphic Egg is described by Aristophanes, and was part f the Dionysiac and other Mysteries, during which the Mundane Egg was onsecrated and its significance explained; Porphyry also shows it to be a epresentation 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 elief, unless the latter is accepted as purely allegorical and ymbolical. It can only have typified the Ark as a synonym of the Moon, he Argha which carries the universal seed of life; but had surely nothing o do with the Ark of the _Bible_. Anyhow, the belief that the Universe xisted in the beginning in the shape of an Egg was general. And as Wilson ays:
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 s proven by the great Indian scholar, the late Svâmi Dayanand Sarasvatî, n 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 imself 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 prang from the Mundane Egg, and from whom the Mortals and Immortals were erived. 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, he Egg to which is given Life among the Gods.”(560) The Solar God xclaims: “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 s 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 he decimal notation. The 10, being the sacred number of the Universe, was ecret and esoteric, both as regards the unit and cipher, or zero, the ircle. Moreover, Professor Max Müller tells that “the two words _cipher_ nd _zero_, which are but one, are sufficient to prove that our figures re borrowed from the Arabs.”(562) Cipher is the Arabic _cifron_, and eans “empty,” a translation of the Sanskrit _sunyan_, or “nought,” says he Professor.(563) The Arabs had their figures from Hindûstan, and never laimed the discovery for themselves. As to the Pythagoreans, we need but urn to the ancient manuscripts of Boethius’ treatise, _De Arithmetica_, omposed 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 uotes from the Pythagorean Moderatus,(565) says that the numerals of
Pythagoras were “hieroglyphical symbols, by means whereof he explained deas 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 race of decimal notation in them, and Max Müller states very clearly that ntil now he has found but nine letters, the initials of the Sanskrit umerals; on the other hand, we have records as ancient, to supply the anted proof. We speak of the sculptures and the sacred imagery in the ost ancient temples of the far East. Pythagoras derived his knowledge rom India; and we find Professor Max Müller corroborating this statement, t least so far as to allow that the Neo‐Pythagoreans were the first eachers of “ciphering,” among the Greeks and Romans; that they “at
Alexandria, or in Syria, became acquainted with the Indian figures, and dapted them to the Pythagorean Abacus.” This cautious admission implies hat Pythagoras himself was acquainted with only _nine_ figures. Thus we ight reasonably answer that, although we possess no certain proof, xoterically, that the decimal notation was known to Pythagoras, who lived t the very close of the archaic ages,(566) yet we have sufficient vidence to show that the full numbers, as given by Boethius, were known o the Pythagoreans, even before Alexandria was built.(567) This evidence e find in Aristotle, who says that “some philosophers hold that ideas and umbers are of the same nature, and amount to _ten_ in all.”(568) This, we elieve, will be sufficient to show that the decimal notation was known mong them at least as early as four centuries B.C., for Aristotle does ot 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 een used by the mankind of the earliest archaic ages, since the whole stronomical and geometrical portion of the secret sacerdotal language was uilt upon the number 10, or the combination of the male and female rinciples, and since the “Pyramid of Cheops,” so‐called, is built upon easures of this decimal notation, or rather upon the digits and their ombinations with the _nought_. Of this, however, sufficient has been said n _Isis Unveiled_, and it is useless to repeat it.
The symbolism of the Lunar and Solar Deities is so inextricably mixed up, hat it is next to impossible to separate from each other such glyphs as he Egg, the Lotus, and the “Sacred” Animals. The Ibis, for instance, was eld in the greatest veneration in Egypt. It was sacred to Isis, who is ften represented with the head of that bird, and also sacred to Mercury r 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 ighting and exterminating the winged serpents which came every spring rom Arabia, and infested the country. The other was sacred to the Moon, ecause the latter planet is white and brilliant on her external side, ark and black on that side which she never turns to the Earth. Moreover, he Ibis kills land serpents, and makes the most terrible havoc amongst he eggs of the crocodile, and thus saves Egypt from having the Nile over‐ nfested by those horrible saurians. The bird is credited with doing this n the moonlight, and thus being helped by Isis, whose sidereal symbol is he Moon. But the more correct esoteric truth underlying these popular yths 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 ciences. This simply means that the _ibis religiosa_ had, and has,
“magical” properties in common with many other birds, the albatross reëminently, and the mythical white swan, the Swan of Eternity or Time, he Kâlahansa.
Were it otherwise, indeed, why should all the ancient peoples, who were no ore fools than we are, have had such a superstitious dread of killing ertain birds? In Egypt, he who killed an Ibis, or the Golden Hawk, the ymbol 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 recepts, forbids their slaughter as a heinous crime. In our age, we laugh t every kind of divination. Yet why should so many generations have elieved in divination by birds, and even in Oömancy, which is said by
Suidas to have been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how, under certain onditions, to perceive in the yolk and white of an egg, that which the ird 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 ost abstruse mathematical calculations, has now fallen into the depths of egradation; and to‐day it is the old cooks and fortune‐tellers who read he future for servant‐girls in search of husbands, from the white of an gg in a glass.
Nevertheless, even Christians have to this day their sacred birds; for nstance, the Dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost. Nor have they neglected he 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 our animals are, in reality, the symbols of the four Elements, and of the our _lower_ Principles in man. Nevertheless, they correspond physically nd materially to the four constellations that form, so to speak, the
_suite_ or _cortège_ of the Solar God, and which, during the winter olstice, occupy the four cardinal points of the zodiacal circle. These our “animals” may be seen in many of the Roman Catholic _New Testaments_ n which the “portraits” of the Evangelists are given. They are the nimals 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 ut of these seven systems, viz., the anthropological, the psychic and the stronomical. The two chief interpretations, the highest and the lowest, he spiritual and the physiological, were preserved in the greatest ecrecy, until the latter fell into the dominion of the profane. Thus far, ith regard only to the pre‐historic Hierophants, with whom that which has ow become purely—or impurely—phallic, was a science as profound and as ysterious as Biology and Physiology are now. This was their exclusive roperty, the fruit of their studies and discoveries. The other two were hose which dealt with the Creative Gods, or Theogony, and with creative an; that is to say, with the ideal and the practical Mysteries. These nterpretations were so cleverly veiled and combined, that many were those ho, while arriving at the discovery of one meaning, were baffled in nderstanding the significance of the others, and could never unriddle hem sufficiently to commit dangerous indiscretions. The highest, the irst and the fourth—Theogony in relation to Anthropogony—were almost mpossible 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 arious incenses. This was hatched by a peculiar process, and a cerastes r horned viper was produced. The same was done in the Indian temples, in ntiquity, in the case of the cobra. The Creative God emerges from the Egg hat issues from the mouth of Kneph, as a winged Serpent, for the Serpent s the symbol of the All‐Wisdom. With the Hebrews the same Deity is lyphed by the Flying or “Fiery Serpents” of Moses in the Wilderness; and ith the Alexandrian Mystic she becomes the Orphio‐Christos, the Logos of he 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 he Christ and the Crucifixion, whereas, in truth, it has a far nearer elation to the _mystery of generation_, when dissociated from the Egg ith 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 he 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 urning “Fiery” Messengers, or the Serpent Gods, the Nâgas of India.
Without the Egg it was a purely phallic symbol, but when associated herewith, it related to cosmic creation. The Brazen Serpent had no such oly meaning as the Protestants would ascribe to it; nor was it, in fact, lorified above the Fiery Serpents, _for the bite of which it was only a atural remedy_; the symbological meaning of the word “Brazen” being the eminine principle, and that of “Fiery,” or “Gold,” the masculine rinciple.
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 here was no water_,(571) after which “the Lord sent fiery serpents” to ite 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 he serpent of brass ... _lived_” (?). After that the “Lord,” gathering he people together at the well of Beer, gave them water, and grateful
Israel sang this song, “Spring up, O well.” When, after studying ymbology, the Christian reader comes to understand the innermost meaning f these three symbols, Water, Brazen, and Serpent, and a few more, _in he sense given to them in the Holy Bible_, he will hardly like to connect he sacred name of his Saviour with the Brazen Serpent incident. The
Seraphim (שרפים) or Fiery Winged Serpents, are no doubt connected with, nd inseparable from, the idea of the “Serpent of Eternity—God,” as xplained 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 heir 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 ettles 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 he Egg. Ra, the Mighty One, remains in his Egg, during the struggle etween 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 o 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 atrix; whereas the Tau, which was associated with it, was only the symbol f life and birth in _generation_. The Mundane Egg was placed in Khoom, he Water of Space, or the feminine _abstract_ Principle; Khoom becoming, ith the “fall” of mankind into generation and phallicism, Ammon the
Creative God. When Ptah, the “Fiery God,” carries the Mundane Egg in his and, then the symbolism becomes quite terrestrial and concrete in its ignificance. In conjunction with the Hawk, the symbol of Osiris‐Sun, the ymbol is dual, and relates to both Lives—the mortal and the immortal. The ngraving of a papyrus in Kircher’s _Œdipus Egyptiacus_,(574) shows an egg loating 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 he Amenti, will gestate in this Egg of Immortality, to be reborn herefrom into a new life on earth. For this Egg, in the Esoteric
Doctrine, is Devachan, the Abode of Bliss; the Winged Scarabæus also being nother symbol of it. The Winged Globe is but another form of the Egg, and as 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 ell as to his spiritual regeneration.
In the _Theogony_ of Mochus, we find Æther first, and then Air, the two rinciples 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 ove in Æther.(576) In the Hindû _Kathopanishad_, Purusha, the Divine
Spirit, already stands before the Original Matter, “from whose union prings 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 llegories 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 drop of heavenly dew, a pearl, and then an Egg. In such cases, of which here are too many to enumerate separately, the Egg gives birth to the our Elements within the fifth, Æther, and is covered with seven overings, which become later on the seven upper and the seven lower orlds. Breaking in two, the shell becomes the Heaven, and the contents he 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, 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 hich was born Garuda, the Vehicle of Vishnu; the latter allegory having a elation to our Earth, as Garuda is the Great Cycle.
The Egg was sacred to Isis; and therefore the priests of Egypt never ate ggs.
Isis is almost always represented holding a Lotus in one hand, and in the ther 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, he bright Gemini. And though the Buddhists do not attribute the same rigin to their Founder, yet, no more than the ancient Egyptians or the odern Brâhmans, do they eat eggs, lest they should destroy the germ of ife latent in them, and thereby commit sin. The Chinese believe that heir First Man was born from an Egg, which Tien dropped down from Heaven o Earth into the Waters.(578) This egg‐symbol is still regarded by some s representing the idea of the origin of life, which is a scientific ruth, though the human _ovum_ is invisible to the naked eye. Therefore we ee 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 anctuary; 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 n actual existence.(579) Horus, the “Elder,” or Haroiri, is an ancient spect of the Solar God, contemporary with Ra and Shoo; Haroiri is often istaken for Hor (Horsusi), Son of Osiris and Isis. The Egyptians very ften represented the rising Sun under the form of Hor, the Elder, rising rom a full‐blown Lotus, the Universe, when the solar disk is always found n 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, hough their functions are different. Khnoom is the “modeller of men,” ashioning 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 outh, and who is, therefore, Brahmâ. The Shadow of the Deity, Kosmic and
Universal, of that which broods over and permeates the Egg with its ivifying Spirit, until the Germ contained in it is ripe, was the Mystery
God whose name was unpronounceable. It is Ptah, however, “he who opens,” he opener of Life and Death,(581) who proceeds from the Egg of the World o 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 alled into being by Horus‐Apollo, the Sun‐God, who caused it to evolve ut 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 ay that this _Purâna_, like the _Skanda_, is “no longer procurable in a ollective body,” but “is represented by a variety of Khandas and
Mâhâtmyas professing to be derived from it.” The _Brahmânda Purâna_ is escribed as “that which has declared in 12,200 verses, the magnificence f the Egg of Brahmâ, and in which an account of the future Kalpas is ontained, as revealed by Brahmâ.”(583) Quite so, and much more, erchance.
In the Scandinavian Cosmogony, placed by Professor Max Müller, in point of ime, as “far anterior to the _Vedas_,” in the poem of Wöluspa, the Song f the Prophetess, the Mundane Egg is again discovered in the Phantom‐Germ f the Universe, which is represented as lying in the Ginnungagap, the Cup f Illusion, Mâyâ, the Boundless and Void Abyss. In this World’s Matrix, ormerly 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 lew a scorching Wind which dissolved the frozen Waters and cleared the
Mist. These Waters (Chaos), called the Streams of Eliwagar, distilling in ivifying drops, fell down and created the Earth and the Giant Ymir, who ad 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 our rivers of Eden, etc.—which “four” are symbolized by the Cube in all ts various and mystical meanings.
The Christians—especially the Greek and Latin Churches—have fully adopted he symbol, and see in it a commemoration of life eternal, of salvation nd of resurrection. This is found in, and corroborated by, the time‐ onoured custom of exchanging “Easter Eggs.” From the Anguinum, the “Egg” f the Pagan Druid, whose name alone made Rome tremble with fear, to the ed Easter Egg of the Slavonian peasant, a cycle has passed. And yet, hether in civilized Europe, or among the abject savages of Central
America, we find the same archaic, primitive thought, if we will only earch for it, and do not—in the haughtiness of our fancied mental and hysical 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 etween the Manus) and Pralaya, or Dissolution; one referring to the
Active Periods of the Universe; the other to its times of relative and omplete Rest, whether they occur at the end of a Day or an Age, or Life, f Brahmâ. These Periods, which follow each other in regular succession, re also called Small and Great Kalpas, the Minor and the Mahâ Kalpas; hough, properly speaking, the Mahâ Kalpa is never a Day, but a whole Life r Age of Brahmâ, for it is said in the _Brahma Vaivarta_: “Chronologers ompute a Kalpa by the Life of Brahmâ. Minor Kalpas, as Samvarta and the est, are numerous.” In sober truth they are infinite; for they have never ad a commencement; or, in other words, there never was a _first_ Kalpa, or will there ever be a _last_, in Eternity.
One Parârdha, or half of the existence of Brahmâ, in the ordinary cceptation 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 resent one is the Varâha,(584) the “Boar” Incarnation, or Avatâra.
One thing is to be especially noted by the scholar who studies the Hindû eligion from the _Puranâs_. He must never take the statements found herein literally, and in one sense only; and those especially, which oncern the Manvantaras, or Kalpas, have to be understood in their several eferences. Thus these Ages relate, in the same language, to both the reat and the small periods, to Mahâ Kalpas and to Minor Cycles. The
Matsya, or Fish Avatâra, happened before the Varâha or Boar Avatâra; the llegories, therefore, must relate to both the Padma and the present
Manvantara, and also to the Minor Cycles which have occurred since the eäppearance of our Chain of Worlds and the Earth. And as the Matsya
Avatâra of Vishnu and Vaivasvata’s Deluge are correctly connected with an vent that happened on our Earth during this Round, it is evident that, hile 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 eological period. Not even Esoteric Philosophy can claim to know, except y analogical inference, that which took place before the reäppearance of ur Solar System, and previous to the last Mahâ Pralaya. But it teaches istinctly, that after the first geological disturbance of the Earth’s xis, which ended in the sweeping down to the bottom of the seas of the hole Second Continent, with its primeval races—of which successive
Continents, or “Earths,” Atlantis was the fourth—there came another isturbance owing to the axis again resuming its previous degree of nclination as rapidly as it had changed it: when the Earth was indeed nce 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 hem now, says the tradition. As will be shown in Volume II, the omputation of periods, in exoteric Hindûism, refers to both the great osmic and the small terrestrial events and cataclysms, and the same may e 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 ears B.C.”—applies also to the Great Deluge, at the time of the first inking of Atlantis. He is the “Yudishthira,(585) born on the mountain of he 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 lsewhere, and may therefore be left aside for the present. Suffice it to emark, 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 he Manvantaras, has ever yet been unriddled by our very learned
Orientalists, who have therefore cut the Gordian Knot by proclaiming the hole “a figment of the Brâhmanical brain.” So be it, and may the great cholars 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 he _popular_ belief about them. For once it agrees with Esotericism.
Of the Pralaya, before which fourteen Manvantaras elapse, having over them s many presiding Manus, and at whose close occurs the Incidental, or
Brahmâ’s Dissolution, it is said in _Vishnu Purâna_, in condensed araphrase:
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 entioned in old Hindû books. The first of these, as Wilson shows, is alled Naimittika,(588) “Occasional” or “Incidental,” caused by the ntervals of Brahmâ’s Days; it is the destruction of creatures, of all hat 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 verything that exists is resolved into the Primal Element, to be emodelled at the end of that longer Night. The third, Âtyantika, does not oncern the Worlds, or the Universe, but only the Individualities of some eople. It is thus the Individual Pralaya, or Nirvâna, after having eached which, there is no more future existence possible, no rebirth till fter the Mahâ Pralaya. The latter Night—lasting as it does
311,040,000,000,000 years, with the possibility also of being almost oubled in the case of the lucky Jîvanmukta who reaches Nirvâna at an arly period of a Manvantara—is long enough to be regarded as _eternal_, f not endless. The _Bhâgavata Purâna_(589) speaks of a fourth kind of
Pralaya, the Nitya, or Constant Dissolution, and explains it as the change hich takes place imperceptibly in everything in this Universe from the lobe down to the atom, without cessation. It is growth and decay—life and eath.
When the Mahâ Pralaya arrives, the inhabitants of Svar‐loka, the Upper
Sphere, disturbed by the conflagration, seek refuge “with the Pitris, heir Progenitors, the Manus, the Seven Rishis, the various orders of
Celestial Spirits and the Gods, in Mahar‐loka.” When the latter is reached lso, 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 ecome reëmbodied, in similar capacities as their former, when the world s 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 trong Wind, which blows for another hundred Divine Years until all clouds re 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 ests in Nirvâna, or in _That_ for which there is neither Day nor Night.
All the other Pralayas are periodical, and follow the Manvantaras in egular succession, as the night follows the day of every human creature, nimal, and plant. The Cycle of Creation of the Lives of Kosmos is run own; the energy of the Manifested “Word” having its growth, culmination, nd decrease, as have all things temporary, however long their duration.
The Creative Force is Eternal as noumenal; as a phenomenal manifestation, n 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 annot be said to be anywhere.
The Jewish Kabalists felt the necessity of this _immutability_ in an ternal, infinite Deity, and therefore applied the same thought to the nthropomorphic God. The idea is poetical, and very appropriate in its pplication. 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 temporary substitute, like Brahmâ, the male, a substitute and an aspect f THAT which is immutable, and which, therefore, can take no part in the
Days, or Nights, nor have any concern whatever with reäction or issolution.
While the Eastern Occultists have seven modes of interpretation, the Jews ave only four; namely, the real‐mystical, the allegorical, the moral, and he literal or Pashut. The latter is the key of the exoteric Churches and ot worth discussion. Here are several sentences, which, read in the irst, or mystical key, show the identity of the foundations of onstruction in every Scripture. They are given in Isaac Myer’s excellent ook 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, r Logos, and who are called, therefore, the Builders of the Lower or
Physical Universe, all belonging Below. These Six [6‐pointed star with iddle dot], whose essence is of the _Seventh_, are the Upâdhi, the Base r 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 n 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 o the Highest. The “_Second_ ‘Earth’ does not come into calculation,” ecause it is _no Earth_, but the Chaos, or Abyss of Space, in which ested the Paradigmatic, or Model Universe, in the Ideation of the Over‐
Soul, brooding over it. The term “Curse” is here very misleading, for it eans simply Doom or Destiny, or _that fatality which sent it forth_ into he objective state. This is shown by that “Earth,” under the “Curse,” eing described as “without form and void,” in whose abysmal depths the
“Breath” of the Elohim, or collective Logoi, produced, or so to say hotographed, the first Divine Ideation of the _things to be_. This rocess is repeated after every Pralaya before the beginnings of a new
Manvantara, or Period of sentient individual Being. “Thirteen depend on hirteen Forms,” refers to the thirteen Periods, personified by the hirteen Manus, with Svâyambhuva, the fourteenth—13, instead of 14, being n 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 eaning of the “six thousand Years” which “hang in the first six Words,” as again to be sought in the Indian Wisdom. They refer to the primordial ix (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 xisted before the Third, _Separated_ Race. As they were Shadows, and enseless, 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”; hat is to say, primeval men were “unconscious.” “Therefore, the rimordial (seven) Kings died,” _i.e._, were destroyed.(602) Now, who are hese 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_, nd the Seventh Principle, both macrocosmic and microcosmic, and also the
Pralaya after the Seventh Period, the Night, which has the same duration s the Day, of Brahmâ. “It was rendered entirely desolate during twelve ours.” It is in the Thirteenth (twice six and the synthesis) that verything 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 iven 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 n India, and it seems to coincide with that of the Western Age. Anyhow, t 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 nd sins of this Kali Yuga. For after saying that the “barbarians” will be asters 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 f 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 evotion (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” f Kali Yuga are well described, and fit in admirably even with that which ne sees and hears in Europe and other civilized and Christian lands in he 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 ttached to them, their importance and significance increasing with their ntiquity. Such is the Lotus. It is the flower sacred to Nature and her
Gods, and represents the Abstract and the Concrete Universes, standing as he 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, ho made of it a messenger, as do now the Christians, who have replaced it ith the water‐lily.
In the Christian religion, in every picture of the Annunciation, Gabriel, he Archangel, appears to the Virgin Mary, holding in his hand a spray of ater‐lilies. This spray, typifying Fire and Water, or the idea of reation 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, ere Osiris and Horus constantly represented by the Egyptians in ssociation with the Lotus‐flower, both being Sun‐Gods or Gods of Fire; ust 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 ation 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 he 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 he _Bhagavad Gîtâ_. And Sir W. Jones shows, as already noted in the
Stanzas, that the seeds of the Lotus, even before they germinate, contain erfectly‐formed leaves, the miniature shapes of what they will become one ay, 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 our 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, nd develops into concrete form, from its ideal prototype, everything hich is born of Water, or Primordial Earth—evolved Brahmâ. The Lotus‐ lower, represented as growing out of Vishnu’s navel, the God who rests in he Waters of Space on the Serpent of Infinity, is the most graphic symbol ver 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 ikewise shown floating on a Lotus‐flower, at the “Creation,” and during he “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 ...
ings an English Orientalist and poet, Sir Monier Williams.
The underlying idea, in this symbol, is very beautiful, and, furthermore, hows an identical parentage in all the religious systems. Whether as the
Lotus or water‐lily, it signifies one and the same philosophical idea; amely, 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 gnorance, has disappeared in its own realm of Eternal Light, leaving ehind itself only its Divine Manifested Ideation, the Creative Logoi have heir understanding opened, and they see in the Ideal World, hitherto oncealed in the Divine Thought, the archetypal forms of all, and proceed o copy and build, or fashion, upon these models, forms evanescent and ranscendent.
At this stage of Action, the Demiurge is not yet the Architect. Born in he Twilight of Action, he has yet to first perceive the Plan, to realize he Ideal Forms, which lie buried in the Bosom of Eternal Ideation, just s the future lotus‐leaves, the immaculate petals, are concealed within he seed of that plant.
In Esoteric Philosophy the Demiurge, or Logos, regarded as the Creator, is imply an abstract term, an idea, like the word “army.” As the latter is he all‐embracing term for a body of active forces, or working nits—soldiers, so is the Demiurge the qualitative compound of a multitude f Creators or Builders. Burnouf, the great Orientalist, seized the idea erfectly, when he said that Brahmâ does _not_ create the Earth, any more han 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 ook for the origin and explanation of the verse in the Jewish Cosmogony hich reads: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth ... the fruit‐tree ielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself.”(614) In all the rimitive religions, the Creative God is the “Son of the Father,” that is o say, his Thought made visible; and before the Christian era, from the
Trimûrti of the Hindûs down to the three Kabalistic Heads of the criptures, as explained by the Jews, the Triune Godhead of each nation as 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 ad also its esoteric symbology, the Lotus, in time, became the carrier nd container of a more terrestrial idea. No dogmatic religion has ever scaped having the sexual element in it; and to this day it soils the oral beauty of the root idea of symbology. The following is quoted from he 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 antheistic conceptions, _impersonal_ and reverential, of the archaic hilosophers of the prehistoric ages. It is not so, however, when applied o sinful humanity, to the gross ideas attached to _personality_.
Therefore, no pantheistic philosopher would fail to find the remarks that ollow the above, and which represent the anthropomorphism of Judean ymbology, other than dangerous for the sacredness of true religion, and itting only for our materialistic age, which is the direct outcome and esult of that anthropomorphic character. For this is the key‐note to the ntire spirit and essence of the _Old __ Testament_, as the MS. states, reating 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 rimitive Âryans. This is proven by the fact that, in the Vedic period, heir women were not placed apart from men in _penetralia_, or Zenanas.
This seclusion began when the Mahommedans—the next heirs to Hebrew ymbolism, after Christian ecclesiasticism—had conquered the land and radually enforced their ways and customs upon the Hindûs. The pre‐ and ost‐Vedic woman was as free as man; and no impure terrestrial thought was ver mixed with the religious symbology of the early Âryans. The idea and pplication are purely Semitic. This is corroborated by the writer of the aid intensely learned and Kabalistic revelation, when he closes the bove‐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 ver nameless, as the early Pantheists did, than degrade the sacredness of hat Ideal of Ideals, by dragging down its symbols into such nthropomorphic 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 rocreative functions of mankind with an “original sin” element, it is a
_religious duty_ to have a son. A Brâhman, in days of old, having ccomplished his mission of human creator, retired to the jungle, and assed the rest of his days in religious meditation. He had accomplished is duty to nature, as mortal man and its co‐worker, and henceforth gave ll his thoughts to the spiritual and immortal portion of himself, egarding the terrestrial as a mere illusion, an evanescent dream—which, ndeed it is. With the Semite, it was different. He invented a temptation f flesh in a garden of Eden, and showed his God—esoterically, the Tempter nd the Ruler of Nature—_cursing for ever_ an act, which was in the ogical 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 acred, as to choose the organ, the perpetrator of the _original sin_, as he fittest and most sacred symbol to represent that God, who is shown as randing its entering into function as disobedience and everlasting _sin!_
Who can ever fathom the paradoxical depths of the Semitic mind! And this aradoxical element, _minus_ its innermost significance, has now passed ntirely 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 he 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 ince, at the same time, a number of purely Egyptian symbols and Pagan ogmas in general—the Trinity, for example—have been copied by, and ncorporated into, the Synoptics and St. John, it becomes evident that the dentity of those symbols was known to the writers of the _New Testament_, hoever they may have been. They must have been also aware of the priority f the Egyptian Esotericism, since they have adopted several symbols which ypify purely Egyptian conceptions and beliefs, in their outward and nward meaning, and which are not to be found in the Jewish Canon. One of hese is the water‐lily in the hands of the Archangel, in the early epresentations of his appearance to the Virgin Mary; and these symbolical mages 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 nd other Sacred Animals, with all their combinations, esoterically yield n 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 re purely Âryan, though they became common property during the branching ff of the Fifth Race. To give an example; letters, as well as numbers, ere all mystic, whether in combination, or taken separately. The most acred of all is the letter M. It is both feminine and masculine, or ndrogyne, 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 glyph for the waves, thus [three triangles]. In the Âryan Esotericism, s 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 etter Ma is equivalent to, and corresponds with, the number 5, which is omposed 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, gain, is often symbolized by a Pentagon, the latter being a sacred sign, divine Monogram. Maitreya is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha, and he Kalkî Avatâra of the Brâhmans, the last Messiah who will come at the ulmination 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, nd are the Sons of Mâyâ, the “Mother”; in Egypt, Moot; in Greece,
Minerva, Divine Wisdom; of Mary, or Miriam, Myrrha, etc., the Mother of he 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, lso the ten divisions of the _Rig Veda_. The most sacred names in India enerally 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 e see even Moses, found in the Water of the Nile, with the symbolical onsonant in his name. And Pharaoh’s daughter “called his name Moses; and he 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 ith 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 ymbol of the womb, or with the water‐lily, which has the same ignification.
In the relics of ancient Egypt, the greater the antiquity of the votive ymbols and emblems of the objects exhumed, the oftener are Lotus‐flowers nd Water found in connection with the Solar Gods. The God Khnoom, the
Moist Power, or Water, as Thales taught, being the principle of all hings, 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, he sacred Scribe of Amenti, wearing the solar disk as head gear, sits ith a bull’s head—the sacred bull of Mendes being a form of Thot—and a uman body, on a full blown Lotus. Finally, it is the Goddess Hiqit, under er shape of a frog, who rests on the Lotus, thus showing her connection ith water. And it is from the unpoetical shape of this frog‐symbol, ndeniably the glyph of the most ancient of the Egyptian Deities, that the
Egyptologists have been vainly trying to unravel the mystery and functions f the Goddess. Its adoption in the Church, by the early Christians, shows hat they knew it better than our modern Orientalists. The “frog or toad
Goddess” was one of the chief Cosmic Deities connected with Creation, on ccount of this animal’s amphibious nature, and chiefly because of its pparent resurrection, after long ages of solitary life, enshrined in old alls, in rocks, etc. She not only participated in the organization of the
World, together with Khnoom, but was also connected with _the dogma of esurrection_.(621) There must have been some very profound and sacred eaning attached to this symbol, since, notwithstanding the risk of being harged with a disgusting form of zoölatry, the early Egyptian Christians dopted it in their Churches. A frog or toad, enshrined in a Lotus‐flower, r simply without the latter emblem, was the form chosen for the _Church‐ amps_, on which were engraved the words, “Ἐγώ εἰμι ἀναστάσις”—I am the esurrection.(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 hilosophical. The ancient Greeks brought it into prominence, and the odern poets have worn it threadbare. The Queen of Night, riding in the ajesty of her peerless light in Heaven, throwing all, even Hesperus, into arkness, and spreading her silver mantle over the whole Sidereal World, as ever been a favourite theme with all the poets of Christendom, from
Milton and Shakespeare down to the latest versifier. But the refulgent amp of night, with her suite of stars unnumbered, spoke only to the magination of the profane. Until lately, Religion and Science had nought o do with the beautiful mythos. Yet, the cold chaste Moon, she, who, in he 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....
tands in closer relations to Earth than any other sidereal orb. The Sun s the Giver of Life to the whole Planetary System; the Moon is the Giver f Life to our Globe; and the early races understood and knew it, even in heir infancy. She is the Queen, and she is the King. She was King Soma efore she became transformed into Phœbe and the chaste Diana. She is reëminently the Deity of the Christians, through the Mosaic and
Kabalistic Jews, though the civilized world may have remained ignorant of he fact for long ages; in fact, ever since the last initiated Father of he 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, ith the Greeks, Diana on Earth, who presided over child‐birth and life; ith the Egyptians, she was Hekat (Hecate) in Hell, the Goddess of Death, ho ruled over magic and enchantments. More than this; as the personified
Moon, whose phenomena are triadic, Diana‐Hecate‐Luna is the _three in ne_. For she is _Diva triformis_, _tergemina_, _triceps_, three heads on ne 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 rominent in the _Bible_, so sacred in the seventh day, or Sabbath, came o 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 hereof being typified by one quarter of the Moon.
It is worth the trouble of presenting, in this work, a bird’s‐eye view of he origin and development of the lunar myth and worship, in historical ntiquity, on our side of the globe. Its earlier origin is untraceable by
_exact_ Science, which rejects all tradition; while for Theology, which, nder the guidance of the crafty Popes, has put a brand on every fragment f literature that does not bear the _imprimatur_ of the Church of Rome, ts archaic history is a sealed book. Whether the Egyptian or the Âryan
Hindû religious philosophy is the more ancient—the Secret Doctrine says it s 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 revail to this day throughout the whole world; with some openly, with thers—as, for instance, in Christian symbology—secretly. The cat, a lunar ymbol, was sacred to Isis, who was the Moon in one sense, just as Osiris as the Sun, and is often seen on the top of the Sistrum in the hand of he 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, ecause Isis, as the Moon, was particularly worshipped in that city of ysteries. The astronomical symbolism connected with it has already been iven 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 at, it is said, seems to follow the lunar phases in their growth and ecline, and its orbs shine like two stars in the darkness of night. Hence he mythological allegory which shows Diana hiding in the Moon, under the hape of a cat, when she was seeking, in company with other Deities, to scape 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,” he Sun.
The same with the Cynocephalus. The dog‐headed ape was a glyph to ymbolize 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, ho 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 he lotus, is a glyph of the “philosophical” Mercury; but when seen with a eed, or a roll of parchment, he stands for Hermes, the secretary and dviser of Isis, as Hanumâna filled the same office with Râma.
Though the regular Sun‐Worshippers, the Parsîs, are few, yet not only is he bulk of the Hindû mythology and history based upon, and interblended ith, these two worships, but so is even the Christian religion itself.
From their origin down to our modern day, it has coloured the theologies f both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches. Indeed, the difference etween the Aryan Hindû and the Âryan European faiths is very small, if nly the fundamental ideas of both are taken into consideration. Hindûs re proud of calling themselves Sûryavanshas and Chandravanshas, of the
_Solar_ and _Lunar_ Dynasties. The Christians pretend to regard this as dolatry, and yet they adhere to a religion entirely based upon Solar and
Lunar worship. It is vain and useless for the Protestants to exclaim gainst the Roman Catholics for their “Mariolatry,” based on the ancient ult of lunar Goddesses, when they themselves worship Jehovah, reëminently a _lunar_ God; and when both Churches have accepted in their heologies the _Sun_‐Christ and the _Lunar_ Trinity.
What is known of Chaldean Moon‐Worship, of the Babylonian God, Sin, called y the Greeks Deus Lunus, is very little; and that little is apt to islead the profane student, who fails to grasp the esoteric significance f the symbols. As popularly known to the ancient profane philosophers and riters—for those who were initiated were pledged to silence—the Chaldeans ere the worshippers of the Moon under _her_, and _his_, various names, ust as were the Jews, who came after them.
In the unpublished MS. on the Art‐Speech, already mentioned, giving a key o the formation of the ancient symbolical language, a logical _raison ’être_ is brought forward for this double worship. It is written by a onderfully well‐informed and acute scholar and Mystic, who gives it in he comprehensive form of a hypothesis. The latter, however, forcibly ecomes a proven fact in the history of religious evolution in human hought, to anyone who has ever had a glimpse into the secret of ancient ymbology. 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, ossessed in common by the human race, and connected with the periodical anifestations, such that “the connection between the two kinds of henomena ... 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 ey that opens the mystery of Theogony, or the evolution of the anvantaric Gods, is more complicated, and has nothing phallic in it.
There, all is mystical and divine. But the Jews, beyond connecting Jehovah irectly with the Moon as a generative God, preferred to ignore the higher
Hierarchies, and have made their Patriarchs of some of these zodiacal onstellations and planetary Gods, thus euhemerizing the purely heosophical 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 hows, in clear language, that which the writer has always insisted upon, amely, that the God with which the Christians have burdened themselves, as no better than the lunar symbol of the reproductive or generative aculty in Nature. They have ever ignored even the Hebrew secret God of he Kabalists, Ain Suph, a conception as grand as Parabrahman in the arliest 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 ow many are there among the students of the _Kabalah_ who know anything f them except in their distorted Latin translations? Let us glance at the dea which led the ancient Jews to adopt a substitute for the Ever‐
Unknowable, and which has misled the Christians into mistaking the ubstitute 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 ighest or spiritual down to the lowest or terrestrial plane; and limited y the Jews to the latter. With them, therefore, the number seven has cquired the most prominent place in their exoteric religion, a cult of xternal forms and empty rituals; take, for instance, their Sabbath, the eventh day sacred to their Deity, the Moon, symbolical of the generative
Jehovah. But, with other nations, the number seven was typical of heogonic evolution, of Cycles, Cosmic Planes, and the Seven Forces and
Occult Powers in Kosmos, as a Boundless Whole, whose first upper Triangle as unreachable to the finite intellect of man. While other nations, herefore, busied themselves, in their forcible limitation of Kosmos in
Space and Time, only with its septenary manifested plane, the Jews centred his number solely in the Moon, and based all their sacred calculations hereupon. Hence we find the thoughtful author of the MS. just quoted, emarking, 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 dols; 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,” he 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 hem the worship of their forefathers, of Soma, and his son Budha, which fterwards became that of the Chaldeans. Yet such adoration, apart from opular Astrolatry and Heliolatry, was in no sense _idolatry_. No more, at ny 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 oudly 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 nything else ever did the true character of Jehovah, or YHVH, in the rimitive conception of the Hebrew Kabalists. It is now found in the hilosophy 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 he Kabalists the Great Sea: therefore Binah, whose divine names are
Jehovah, Yah, and Elohim, is simply the Chaldean Tiamat, the Female Power, he Thalatth of Berosus, who presides over the Chaos, and was made out ater by Christian Theology to be the Serpent and the Devil. She‐He (Yah‐ ovah) is the supernal Hé, and Eve. This Yah‐hovah then, or Jehovah, is dentical with our Chaos—Father, Mother, Son—on the material plane, and in he 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 ell as physically. And if, astronomically, the Moon is one of the seven lanets of the Ancient World, in Theogony she is one of the Regents hereof—with Christians now as much as with Pagans, the former referring o her under the name of one of their Archangels, and the latter under hat of one of their Gods.
Therefore the meaning of the “fairy tale,” translated by Chwolsohn from he Arabic translation of an old Chaldean MS., of Qû‐tâmy being instructed y the _idol_ of the Moon, is easily understood. Seldenus tells us the ecret, as well as Maimonides in his _Guide to the Perplexed_.(633) The orshippers of the Teraphim, or the Jewish Oracles, “carved images, and laimed that the light of the principal stars [planets] permeating these hrough and through, the Angelic Virtues [or the Regents of the stars and lanets] conversed with them, teaching them many most useful things and rts.” And Seldenus explains that the Teraphim were built and composed fter the position of certain planets, those which the Greeks called
στοιχεῖα, and according to figures that were located in the sky, and alled 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 rightened the men of Science, and made them proclaim the work “either an pocryphon, or a fairy tale, unworthy of the notice of an Academician.” At he same time, as shown, zealous Roman Catholics and Protestants etaphorically tore it to pieces; the former because “it described the orship of demons,” the latter because it was “ungodly.” Once more, all re wrong. It is _not_ a fairy tale; and, as far as the pious Churchmen re concerned, the same worship may be shown in their Scriptures, however isfigured by translation. Solar and Lunar worship and also the worship of he 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 ccomplished 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 igured not only at Heliopolis by the twelve stones called “Mysteries of he Elements” (_Elementorum Arcana_), but also in Solomon’s Temple, and, s pointed out by various writers, in several old Italian churches and ven 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 eanings than the lunar symbol. The sex was, of course, dual. With some it as male; as, for instance, the Hindû “King Soma,” and the Chaldean Sin; ith 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 he Medes and Persians Anaïtis, as shown by an inscription of Colœ:
Ἀρτέμιδι Ἀνάειτι. But, we are now concerned chiefly with the most chaste nd pure of the virgin Goddesses, Luna‐Artemis, to whom Pamphôs was the irst to give the surname of Καλλίστη, and of whom Hippolytus wrote:
Καλλίστα πολὺ παρθένων.(636) This Artemis‐Lochia, the Goddess that resided at conception and childbirth, is, in her functions and as the riple Hecate, the Orphic Deity, the predecessor of the God of the Rabbins nd pre‐Christian Kabalists, and his lunar type. The Goddess Τρίμορφος was he personified symbol of the various and successive aspects represented y the Moon in each of her three phases; and this interpretation was lready that of the Stoics,(637) while the Orpheans explained the epithet
Τρίμορφος by the three kingdoms of Nature over which she reigned. Jealous, loodthirsty, revengeful and exacting, Hecate‐Luna is a worthy counterpart f the “jealous God” of the Hebrew prophets.
The whole riddle of the Solar and Lunar worship, as now traced in the hurches, hangs indeed on this world‐old mystery of lunar phenomena. The orrelative forces in the “Queen of Night,” that lie latent for Modern
Science, but are fully active to the knowledge of Eastern Adepts, explain ell the thousand and one images under which the Moon was represented by he 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 and, and Apollo, Dionysus, Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, Atys, Thammuz, etc., n 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 unctions, as Father, Son, and Husband, into one, and the Goddesses were dentified as Wife, Mother, and Sister of the male God; the former ynthesizing the human attributes as the “Sun, the Giver of Life,” the atter merging all the other titles in the grand synthesis known as Maia,
Maya, Maria, etc., a generic name. Maia, in its forced derivation, has ome to mean with the Greeks, “mother,” from the root _ma_ (nurse), and ven gave its name to the month of May, which was sacred to all these
Goddesses before it became consecrated to Mary.(638) Its primitive eaning, however, was Mâyâ, Durgâ, translated by the Orientalists as
“inaccessible,” but meaning in truth the “unreachable,” in the sense of llusion and unreality, as being the source and cause of spells, the ersonification of illusion.
In religious rites, the Moon served a dual purpose. Personified as a emale Goddess for exoteric purposes, or as a male God in allegory and ymbol, in Occult Philosophy our satellite was regarded as a sexless
Potency to be well studied, because it was to be dreaded. With the nitiated 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 r 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 even phases, in the original Esoteric division, are divided into three stronomical phenomena and four purely psychic phases. That the Moon was ot 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 llegorized by the Moon standing for the Genius of Evil that, for the ime, triumphs over the Light and Life‐giving God, the Sun; and all the kill and learning of the ancient Hierophants in Magic were required to urn 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, fter the so‐called Fall, the sexes had become separated. Deus Lunus then ecame an androgyne, male and female in turn; to finally serve, _for urposes of sorcery_, as a dual power for the Fourth Root Race, the
Atlanteans. With the Fifth, our own Race, the Lunar‐solar worship divided he nations into two distinct, antagonistic camps. It led to events escribed æons later in the Mahâbhâratan War, which to the Europeans is he fabulous, to the Hindûs and Occultists the historical, strife between he Sûryavanshas and the Indovanshas. Originating in the dual aspect of he Moon, the worship of the female and the male principles respectively, t 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 otion being adopted by them from the Atlantean traditions. The Moon was alled the “Lord of the Sun,” Bel‐Shemesh, before the Shemesh worship. The gnorance of the incipient reasons for such a distinction, and of Occult rinciples, led the nations into anthropomorphic idol‐worship. During that eriod 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, orshipped 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 ndiscreet traces of the androgyne Deity, which was Jehovah, the Sun, and
Astoreth, the Moon in its female aspect, and quite free from the present etaphorical element given to it. God is a “consuming fire,” appears _in_, nd “is encompassed _by_ fire.” It was not only in vision that Ezekiel saw he 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 f Righteousness” has _only now_ become a _metaphorical_ expression. But he 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 ites, that the philosophers who evolved such systems of Nature, ubjective and objective, possessed profound knowledge, and were cquainted with many facts of a scientific nature. For besides being urely Occult, the rites of Lunar worship were based, as just shown, upon knowledge of Physiology—quite a modern science with us—Psychology, acred Mathematics, Geometry and Metrology, in their right applications to ymbols and figures, which are but glyphs recording observed natural and cientific _facts_; in short upon a most minute and profound knowledge of
Nature. As we have just said, lunar magnetism generates life, preserves nd destroys it; and Soma embodies the triple power of the Trimûrti, hough it remains unrecognized by the profane to this day. The allegory hat 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 f our Planetary System, and the myth, which represents “the Rishis ilking the Earth, whose calf was Soma, the Moon,” have a deep osmographical meaning; for it is neither _our_ Earth which is milked, nor as the Moon which we know the calf.(641) Had our wise men of Science nown as much of the mysteries of Nature as the ancient Âryans did, they ould surely never have imagined that the Moon was projected from the
Earth. Once more, the oldest of permutations in Theogony, the Son becoming is own Father and the Mother generated by the Son, has to be remembered nd taken into consideration if the symbolical language of the Ancients is o be understood by us. Otherwise mythology will be ever haunting the
Orientalists as simply “the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage f 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, n an immaculate way_, to everything macrocosmical and microcosmical in his 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 omogeneous Element in Nature, _will not_ see it. Cramped in their esearches by such ignorance, the Âryanists and Egyptologists are onstantly led astray from truth in their speculations. Thus, de Rougé is nable 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 y Son, I have begotten thee.” And, finding the same idea in many a text nd under various forms, this very Christian Orientalist is finally ompelled 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, hen the whole secret is explained by the later religion copying the arlier?
This doctrine was universal, nor was it the mind of any one ierogrammatist that evolved it; for the Indian Avatâras are a proof to he contrary. After which, having come “to realize more clearly”(642) what he “Divine Father and Son” were with the Egyptians, de Rougé still fails o account for, and to perceive what were the functions attributed to, the
_feminine_ Principle in that primordial generation. He does not find it in he 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 o 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 s 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 nderstand 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 rototypes, the Sun and Moon, _generates_ and _brings forth_ her “mind‐ orn” Son, the Universe. The Sun and Moon, as male‐female deities, ructify the Earth, the microcosmical Mother, and the latter conceives and rings forth, in her turn. With the Christians, the “First‐born”
(_primogenitus_) is indeed generated, _i.e._, begotten (_genitus, non actus_), and positively _conceived and brought forth_: “_Virgo pariet_,” xplains the Latin Church. Thus does that Church drag down the noble piritual ideal of the Virgin Mary to the earth, and, making her “of the arth earthy,” degrades the ideal she portrays to the lowest of the nthropomorphic Goddesses of the rabble.
Truly, Neïth, Isis, Diana, etc., by whatever name she was called, was “a emiurgical 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 oth of these Goddesses are shown suckling Horus. Behold in the Egyptian
Hall of the British Museum, Hathor worshipped by Pharaoh Thotmes, who tands 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 n her festivals as Μονογενὴς θεοῦ, the “One Mother of God,” sitting on a ion, and surrounded by twelve personages; in whom the Occultist ecognizes 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 aithful copy of the older Pagan Goddesses; the number of the Apostles is hat of the twelve Tribes, and the latter are a personification of the welve great Gods, and of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac. Almost every etail in the Christian dogma is borrowed from the Heathens. Semele, the
Wife of Jupiter and Mother of Bacchus, the Sun, is, according to Nonnus, lso “carried,” or made to ascend to Heaven after her death, where she resides 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 ames of Hathor, Hecate, and other infernal Goddesses, “all the demons remble.”(644)
“Σεμέλην τρέμουσι δαίμονες.” This Greek inscription on a small temple, eproduced on a stone that was found by Beger, and copied by Montfaucon, s 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 he perfect identity between the _archaic copy_ and the _modern original_.
Did space permit we might show the inconceivable coolness and unconcern xhibited by certain followers of the Roman Catholic Church, when they are ade 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 he Pagan rites, proclaimed and practised in honour of those Goddesses, ere in a great measure transferred to the Mother of Christ,”(645) the dvocate of Rome answers, that such _is_ the fact, and that it is just as t 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 ight hand_ of her Father [Jupiter], ... and is more powerful than all the ther (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 im.”(648)
Again the Virgin is admitted to be the Moon by the same unsophisticated oly 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 aint.(649)
This settles the question. According to such writers as De Mirville, the ore similarity there exists between the Pagan conceptions and the
Christian dogmas, the more divine appears the Christian religion, and the ore is it seen to be the only truly inspired one, especially in its Roman
Catholic form. The unbelieving Scientists and Academicians who think they ee in the Latin Church quite the opposite of divine inspiration, and who ill not believe in the Satanic tricks of plagiarism by anticipation, are everely taken to task. But then “they believe in nothing and reject even he _Nabathean Agriculture_ as a romance and a pack of superstitious onsense,” complains the memorialist. “In their perverted opinion
Qû‐tâmy’s ‘idol of the Moon’ and the statue of the Madonna are one!” A oble Marquis, twenty‐five years ago, wrote six huge volumes, or, as he alls them “Mémoires to the French Academy,” with the sole object of roving Roman Catholicism to be an inspired and revealed faith. As a proof hereof, he furnishes numberless facts, all tending to show that the ntire Ancient World, ever since the Deluge, had, with the help of the
Devil, been systematically plagiarizing the rites, ceremonies, and dogmas f the future Holy Church, which was to be born ages later. What would hat faithful son of Rome have said had he heard his co‐religionist, M.
Renouf, the distinguished Egyptologist of the British Museum, declaring in ne of his learned lectures, that neither “Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any f 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 nformation which the Occultists may give them on Moon‐worship, since it ll tends to show that the worship of the Roman Catholic Church is as old s the world—_of Sabæanism and Astrolatry_?
The reason of early Christian and later Roman Catholic Astrolatry, or the ymbolical 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 doption 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 f the old worship of Pagan nations. Thus, Odin got his wisdom, power, and nowledge, by sitting at the feet of Mimir, the thrice‐wise Jotun, who assed his life by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, the crystalline Waters f which increased his knowledge daily. “Mimir drew the highest knowledge rom 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 o pledge to acquire that knowledge may be “the Sun, which enlightens and enetrates all things; his other eye being the Moon, whose reflection azes 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 aid to have hidden in the Water, as well as in the Moon, the light‐giver, hose reflection he found therein. This belief that the Fire finds refuge n the Water was not limited to the old Scandinavians. It was shared by ll nations and was finally adopted by the early Christians, who ymbolized the Holy Ghost under the shape of Fire, “cloven tongues like as f 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 everal nations; it was sacred to Venus, the Goddess born from the sea‐ oam, 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 ntitled, “The transformation into the God giving Light to the Path of
Darkness,” wherein “Woman‐Light of the Shadow” serves Thot in his retreat n the Moon. Thot‐Hermes is said to hide therein, because he is the epresentative of the Secret Wisdom. He is the manifested Logos of its ight side; the concealed Deity or “Dark Wisdom” when he is supposed to etire to the opposite hemisphere. Speaking of her power, the Moon calls erself 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 ore, so they are supposed to war now, without, however, being able to revail against the actual Queen of Heaven, Mary, the Moon. Hence, also, he 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 ills 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 an; 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 o be constantly called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it ad rendered humanity. For it taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of he Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, he would raise his Being immensely y the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire. Such was the exoteric eason given.
It is easy to see whence is the primal idea of the dual, Janus‐like haracter of the Serpent—the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the ost ancient, because the reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the ammal. Hence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the savage tribes ho think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and the eneral association of the Serpent with the Tree. The legends about the arious meanings it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are llegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on gnorance and dark superstition. For instance, when Philostratus narrates hat 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 eing credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be ccepted 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 f olden times. It was their wisdom and their learning that were devoured r 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, he meaning is the same. Sigurd had become learned in the runes and agical 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 o expose their “heresies.” The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for onouring 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 tated above. The Nâgas of the Hindû and Tibetan Adepts were human Nâgas
(Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of onsecutive or serial rejuvenation, of Immortality and Time.
The numerous and extremely interesting readings, the interpretations and acts about Serpent worship, given in Mr. Gerald Massey’s _Natural
Genesis_, are very ingenious and scientifically correct. But they are far rom covering the _whole_ of the meanings implied. They divulge only the stronomical and physiological mysteries, with the addition of some cosmic henomena. On the lowest plane of materiality, the Serpent was, no doubt, he “great emblem of Mystery in the Mysteries,” and was, very likely,
“adopted as a type of feminine pubescence, on account of its sloughing and elf‐renewal.” It was so, however, only with regard to mysteries oncerning terrestrial _animal_ life, for as the symbol of “_re‐clothing_ nd re‐birth in the [universal] mysteries,” its “final phase,”(653) or hall we rather say its incipient and culminating phases, was not of this lane. These phases were generated in the pure realm of Ideal Light, and aving accomplished the round of the whole cycle of adaptations and ymbolism, the Mysteries returned from whence they had come, into the ssence of _immaterial_ causality. They belonged to the highest Gnôsis.
And surely this could have never obtained its name and fame solely on ccount of its penetration into physiological and especially feminine unctions!
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 lmost indissolubly connected. Whether viewed as a metaphysical or a hysical symbol, the Tree and Serpent, jointly, or separately, have never een so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the reaking of idols, not for truth’s sake, but to glorify the most gross atter. The revelations and interpretations in General Forlong’s _Rivers f Life_ would have astounded the worshippers of the Tree and Serpent in he days of archaic Chaldean and Egyptian wisdom; and even the early
Shaivas would have recoiled in horror at the theories and suggestions of he author of the said work. “The notion of Payne Knight and Inman that he Cross or Tau is simply a copy of the male organs in a triadic form is adically false,” writes Mr. G. Massey, who proves what he says. But this s a statement that could be as justly applied to almost all the modern nterpretations of ancient symbols. _The Natural Genesis_, a monumental ork of research and thought, the most complete on that subject that has ver been published, covering as it does a wider field, and explaining uch more than all the Symbologists who have hitherto written, does not et go beyond the “psycho‐theistic” stage of ancient thought. Nor were
Payne Knight and Inman altogether wrong; except in entirely failing to see hat their interpretations of the Tree of Life, as the Cross and Phallus, itted the symbol only in the lowest and latest stage of the evolutionary evelopment of the idea of the Giver of Life. It was the last and the rossest physical transformation of Nature, in animal, insect, bird and ven plant; for bi‐une, creative magnetism, in the form of the attraction f contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of reptile nd bird as it does in that of man. Moreover, the modern Symbologists and
Orientalists, from first to last, being ignorant of the real Mysteries evealed by Occultism, can necessarily see but this last stage. If told hat this mode of procreation, which the whole world of being has now in ommon on this Earth, is but a passing phase, a physical means of urnishing the conditions to and producing the phenomena of life, and that t will alter with this and disappear with the next Root‐Race, they would augh at such a superstitious and unscientific idea. But the most learned
Occultists assert this because _they know it_. The universe of living eings, of all those which procreate their species, is the living witness o the various modes of procreation in the evolution of animal and human pecies and races; and the Naturalist ought to sense this truth ntuitionally, even though he is yet unable to demonstrate it. How could e, indeed, with the present modes of thought! The landmarks of the rchaic 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 o‐called “universal (?) history” embraces but a tiny field in the almost oundless 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 iscovered, is added to the old stock of information, to be interpreted on he same lines of preëxisting conceptions, and without any reference to he 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 lanes of the Plerôma, it shot out crossways its luxuriant branches, first n the plane of hardly differentiated matter, and then downward till they ouched the terrestrial plane. Thus, the Ashvattha Tree of Life and Being, hose 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 as to go beyond those roots to _unite oneself with Krishna_, who, says
Arjuna, is “greater than Brahman, and First Cause ... the indestructible, hat which is, that which is not, and what is beyond them.”(655) Its oughs are Hiranyagarbha (Brahmâ or Brahman in its highest manifestations, ay Shrîdhara Svâmin and Madhusûdana), the highest Dhyân Chohans or Devas.
The _Vedas_ are its leaves. He only who goes _beyond_ the roots shall ever 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 ontact and lost its pristine purity; and that the Serpent of Eternity, he 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 f light that radiated from the abyss of Divine Mystery. Various were the orms which it was made to assume, and numerous the natural symbols dapted 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 peculation. These forms were cosmic and astronomical, theistic and antheistic, abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar Dragon nd the Southern Cross, the Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the
Hindû‐Buddhist Dragon, which ever threatens, yet never swallows the Sun uring its eclipses. Till then, the Tree remained ever green, for it was prinkled by the Waters of Life; the Great Dragon remained ever divine, so ong 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 vil‐doers in the “Hall of Misery” (human life), so soon as they are lunged into Hwergelmir, the roaring cauldron (of human passions)—gnawed he reversed World‐Tree. The worms of materiality covered the once healthy nd mighty roots, and are now ascending higher and higher along the trunk; hile the Midgard Snake coiled at the bottom of the Seas, encircles the
Earth, and, through its venomous breath, makes her powerless to defend erself.
The Dragons and Serpents of Antiquity are all seven‐headed—one head for ach Race, and “every head with seven hairs on it,” as the allegory has t. Aye, from Ananta, the Serpent of Eternity, which carries Vishnu hrough the Manvantara; from the original primordial Shesha, whose seven eads become “one thousand heads” in the Purânic fancy, down to the seven‐ eaded Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the Seven Principles throughout
Nature and in man; the highest or middle head being the seventh. It is not f the Mosaic, Jewish Sabbath that Philo speaks, in his _Creation of the
World_, when saying that the world was completed “according to the perfect ature 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 f 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 hat led the Ancients to the process of _Sevening_. The primal cause goes ar deeper and will be explained in its place.
The above quotations are no digressions. They are brought forward as howing (_a_) the reason why a full Initiate was called a Dragon, a Snake, Nâga; and (_b_) that our septenary division was used by the priests of he earliest dynasties in Egypt, for the same reason, and on the same asis, as by us. This needs further elucidation, however. As already tated, what Mr. Gerald Massey calls the Four Genii of the four cardinal oints; and the Chinese, the Black Warrior, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, nd Azure Dragon, are called in the Secret Books, the “Four Hidden Dragons f 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 peak, into _four_ heptanomic parts or twenty‐eight portions. Each week as a distinct Occult character in the lunar month; each day of the wenty‐eight has its special characteristics; for each of the twelve onstellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has n Occult influence either for good or for evil. This represents the sum f knowledge that men can acquire on this earth; yet few are those who cquire it, and still fewer are the wise men who get to the root of nowledge symbolized by the great Root‐Dragon, the Spiritual Logos of hese visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of Dragons, and hey are the “Arhats of the Four Truths of the Twenty‐eight Faculties,” or ttributes, 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 redited with another version, which does not, however, alter the meaning, or 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 o the once universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the
Serpents. They are “charmers.” They hypnotize the bird with their eye, and an himself very often does not overcome their fascinating influence; herefore 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 mphibious nature, to Osiris and Isis. According to Eusebius, the
Egyptians represented the Sun in a Ship as its pilot, this ship being arried 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 erself, 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 he principle, or basis, of Gold, or again the _philosophical_ Sun; the
Water, within which the Crocodile is swimming, is that Water, or Matter, ade liquid; the Ship herself, finally, representing the Vessel of Nature, n which the Sun, or the sulphuric, igneous principle, acts as a pilot, ecause it is the Sun which conducts the work by his action upon the Moist r Mercury. The above is only for the Alchemists.
The Serpent became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only uring 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 he marble sarcophagus of a tomb, discovered in 1852 near the Porta Pia, ne sees the scene of the adoration of the Magi, “or else,” remarks the ate C. W. King, in _The Gnostics and their Remains_, “the prototype of hat scene, the ‘Birth of the New Sun’.” The mosaic floor exhibited a urious design which might have represented either Isis suckling the babe
Harpocrates, or the Madonna nursing the infant Jesus. In the smaller arcophagi that surrounded the larger one, many leaden plates rolled like crolls were found, eleven of which can still be deciphered. The contents f these ought to be regarded as final proof of a much‐vexed question, for hey show that either the early Christians, up to the VIth Century, were
_bonâ fide_ Pagans, or that dogmatic Christianity was borrowed wholesale, nd passed in full into the Christian Church—Sun, Tree, Serpent, Crocodile nd 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 redited with being Jehovah, and Jesus _one with him_. To this seven‐ owelled God the candidate for Initiation is sent by the “First Mystery,” n the _Pistis‐Sophia_, a work earlier than St. John’s _Revelation_, and vidently of the same school. “The (Serpent of the) Seven Thunders uttered hese seven vowels,” but “seal up those things which the Seven Thunders ttered, and write them not,” says _Revelation_. “Do ye seek after these ysteries?”—inquires Jesus in _Pistis‐Sophia_. “No mystery is more xcellent than they [the seven vowels]; for they shall bring your souls nto the Light of Lights”—_i.e._, true Wisdom. “Nothing, therefore, is ore excellent than the mysteries which ye seek after, saving only the ystery of the _Seven Vowels_ and their _forty and nine_ Powers, and the umbers 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 he seven heads of the Serpent of Eternity, in India, among Esoteric
“Buddhists,” in Egypt, in Chaldæa, etc., and among the Initiates of every ther 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, r Principles; until arrived on the plane above all Zones, he remains as he great Formless Serpent of Absolute Wisdom, or the Deity Itself. The even‐headed Serpent has more than one signification in the arcane eachings. It is the seven‐headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star of he Lesser Bear; but it was also, and preëminently, the Serpent of
Darkness, inconceivable and incomprehensible, whose seven heads were the even 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 angerous and iconoclastic in the face of all the dualistic later eligions, 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 hings in Nature, as Shadow is required to make still brighter the Eight, s Night to bring into greater relief the Day, and as Cold to make one ppreciate 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 ualistic aspect, is its offspring, its bifurcous shadow or reflection, hen even that divine Homogeneity must contain in itself the essence of oth good and evil. If “God” is Absolute, Infinite, and the Universal Root f 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 orced 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 esign 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 ind, it is but just, meanwhile, to give his due even to the proverbial
Devil. Antiquity knew of no isolated, thoroughly and absolutely bad “God f evil.” Pagan thought represented good and evil as twin brothers, born rom 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 vil were mere abstractions, Light and Darkness; later their types were hosen among the most natural and ever‐recurrent periodical cosmic henomena—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 ho came to “present themselves before the Lord,” their Father.(665) “The
Sons of God” become the “Fallen Angels” only after perceiving that the aughters of men _were fair_.(666) In the Indian philosophy, the Suras are mong the earliest and the brightest Gods, and become Asuras only when ethroned by Brâhmanical fancy, Satan never assumed an anthropomorphic, ndividualized shape, until the creation by man, of a “one _living_ ersonal God,” had been accomplished; and then merely as a matter of prime ecessity. A screen was needed; a scape‐goat to explain the cruelty, lunders, and but too‐evident injustice, perpetrated by him for whom bsolute perfection, mercy and goodness were claimed. This was the first
Karmic effect of abandoning a philosophical and logical Pantheism, to uild, as a prop for lazy man, “a merciful Father in Heaven,” whose daily nd hourly actions, as Natura Naturans, the “comely Mother but stone old,” belie the assumption. This led to the primal twins, Osiris‐Typhon,
Ormazd‐Ahriman, and finally Cain‐Abel and the _tutti quanti_ of ontraries.
Having commenced by being synonymous with Nature, “God,” the Creator, nded by being made its author. Pascal settles the difficulty very unningly 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, he more philosophical does the prototypic figure of the later Satan ppear. The first “Adversary,” in individual human form, that one meets ith 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 im, _with open eyes_ and an unprejudiced mind, in every old Cosmogony and
Scripture.
It is the anthropomorphized Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, hen separated from the collective Hosts of his Fellow‐Creators, whom, so o speak, he represents and synthesizes. It is _now_ the God of
Theologies. “The wish is father to the thought.” Once upon a time, a hilosophical symbol left to perverse human fancy; afterwards, fashioned nto a fiendish, deceiving, cunning, and jealous God.
As the Dragons and other Fallen Angels are described in other parts of his 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 pposite aspect, in the dual nature of the so‐called Creator. This is only atural. 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 rounds that either God must include Evil, or stand as the direct cause of t, or else surrender his claims to Absoluteness. The Ancients understood his so well that their philosophers, now followed by the Kabalists, efined Evil as the “lining” of God or Good; _Demon est Deus inversus_, eing 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 thers. There is no _malum in se_; only the Shadow of Light, without which
Light could have no existence, even in our perceptions. If Evil isappeared, Good would disappear along with it from Earth. The “Old
Dragon” was pure Spirit before he became Matter, _passive_ before he ecame _active_. In the Syro‐Chaldean Magic both Ophis and Ophiomorphos re 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 all it became Ophiomorphos‐Chrestos. Everywhere the speculations of the
Kabalists treat of Evil as a _Force_, which is antagonistic, but at the ame time essential, to Good, as giving it vitality and existence, which t could never have otherwise. There would be no _Life_ possible (in the âyâvic sense) without _Death_; no regeneration and reconstruction without estruction. Plants would perish in eternal sunlight, and so would man, ho would become an automaton without the exercise of his free will, and is aspiring towards that sunlight, which would lose its being and value or him had he nothing but light. Good is infinite and eternal only in the ternally concealed from us, and this is why we imagine it eternal. On the anifested planes, one equilibrates the other. Few are those Theists, elievers in a Personal God, who do not make of Satan the shadow of God; r who, confounding both, do not believe they have a right to pray to heir idol, asking its help and protection for the exercise of and mmunity for their evil and cruel deeds. “Lead us not into temptation” is ddressed daily to “our Father, in Heaven,” and not to the Devil, by illions of Christian hearts. This they do, repeating the very words put nto the mouth of their Saviour, and yet do not give one thought to the act that their meaning is contradicted point blank by James, “the brother f 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 s, _on the authority of Christ_, that it is God who does so? Open any ious volume in which the word “temptation” is defined in its theological ense, 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 ther, and what dogma can reconcile the two if the Occult meaning is ejected?
Between the alternative allurements, wise will be that philosopher who ill 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,” hat 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, ersonified and eternal Lie, we prefer to turn to Pantheism and to Pagan hilosophy for information.
Once that the key to _Genesis_ is in our hands, the scientific and ymbolical 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 im to do the same in another place. Jehovah turns into the Fiery Serpents o 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 eing regarded as the two faces of one and the same thing—are the echoes, istorted out of recognition by exotericism and theology, of the universal nd 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 rogenitor of Demons, the Râkshasas, the tempters and the devourers of en. Pishâchâ, a female Demon, is a daughter of Daksha, a “Son of God” oo, and a God, and the mother of all the Pishâchas.(669) The Demons, so‐ alled in the _Purânas_, are very extraordinary Devils when judged from he standpoint of European and orthodox views, since all of them, Dânavas,
Daityas, Pishâchas, and Râkshasas, are represented as extremely pious, ollowing the precepts of the _Vedas_, some of them even being great
Yogins. But they oppose the clergy and ritualism, sacrifices and forms, ust as the head Yogins do to this day in India, and are no less respected or it, though they are permitted to follow neither caste nor ritual; ence all those Purânic Giants and Titans are called Devils. The issionaries, ever on the watch to show, if they can, that the Hindû raditions are nothing better than a reflection of the Jewish _Bible_, ave evolved a whole romance on the alleged identity of Pulastya with
Cain, and of the Râkshasas with the Cainites, the “Accursed,” the cause of he “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 orker in metals and a miner thereof!
While it is very probable that the Gibborim, or Giants, of the _Bible_ are he 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 ould be more persistent in slandering his enemy, or more spiteful in his atred, than the Christian Theologians are in cursing him as the father of very evil. Compare their vituperation and their opinions about the Devil ith the philosophical views of the Purânic Sages and their Christ‐like ansuetude. When Parâshara, whose father was devoured by a Râkshasa, was reparing himself to destroy, by magic arts, the whole race, his randsire, Vasishtha, after showing the irate Sage, on his own confession, hat there is Evil and Karma, but no “evil Spirits” speaks the following uggestive 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 estruction of the Spirits of Darkness, for his personal revenge. He is alled 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 ray 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 ike 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 he Absolute. In Cosmos, the equilibrium must be preserved. The operations f the two contraries produce harmony, like the centripetal and entrifugal forces, which, being mutually inter‐dependent, are necessary o each other, “in order that both should live.” If one should be rrested, the action of the other would become immediately self‐ estructive.
Since the personification called Satan has been amply analyzed from its riple aspect, in the _Old Testament_, Christian Theology and the ancient
Gentile attitude of thought, those who would learn more of the subject are eferred to _Isis Unveiled_(671) and the Second Part of Volume II of the resent work. The subject is here touched upon, and fresh explanations are ttempted, 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 our Races which preceded our present Race, and to learn what were the deas of those Titans and Giants—Giants, verily, mentally, as well as hysically. The whole of antiquity was imbued with that philosophy which eaches the involution of Spirit into Matter, the progressive, downward yclic descent, or active, self‐conscious evolution. The Alexandrian
Gnostics have sufficiently divulged the secrets of Initiations, and their ecords are full of the “falling down of the Æons,” in their double ualification of Angelic Beings and Periods; the one the natural evolution f 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 f 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 o learn and acquire knowledge—the desire to know_. This is the natural equence of mental evolution, the Spiritual becoming transmuted into the
Material or Physical. The same law of descent into Materiality and of eäscent into Spirituality asserted itself during the Christian era, the eäction having only stopped just now, in our own special Sub‐race.
That which was allegorized in _Pymander_, perhaps ten millenniums ago, for triune mode of interpretation, and intended for a record of an stronomical, anthropological, and even alchemical fact, namely, the llegory of the Seven Rectors breaking through the Seven Circles of Fire, as dwarfed into one material and anthropomorphic interpretation—the
Rebellion and Fall of the Angels. The multivocal, profoundly philosophical arrative, under its poetical form of the “Marriage of Heaven with Earth,” he love of Nature for Divine Form, and the Heavenly Man enraptured with is own beauty mirrored in Nature, that is to say, Spirit attracted into
Matter, has now become, under theological handling, the Seven Rectors isobeying Jehovah, self‐admiration generating Satanic pride, followed by heir Fall, Jehovah permitting no worship to be lost save upon himself. In hort, the beautiful Planet‐Angels, the glorious Cyclic Æons of the
Ancients, have become synthesized in their most orthodox shape in Samael, he 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 hilosophical and esoteric aspect, meant the “Year,” in its astrological vil aspect, with its twelve months or “Wings” of unavoidable evils, in
Nature. In Esoteric Theogony both Schemal and Samael represented a articular divinity.(672) With the Kabalists they are the “Spirit of the
Earth,” the Personal God that governs it, and therefore _de facto_ dentical with Jehovah. For the Talmudists themselves admit that Samael is god‐name of one of the seven Elohim. The Kabalists, moreover, show the wo, Schemal and Samael, as a symbolical form of Saturn, Cronus; the
“Twelve Wings” standing for the twelve months, and the symbol in its ollectivity representing _a racial cycle_. Jehovah and Saturn are also lyphically identical.
This leads, in its turn, to a very curious deduction from a Roman Catholic ogma. Many renowned writers belonging to the Latin Church admit that a ifference exists, and should be made, between the Uranian Titans, the ntediluvian Giants, who were also Titans, and those post‐diluvian Giants, n whom the Roman Catholics persist in seeing the descendants of the ythical Ham. In clearer words, there is a difference to be made between he 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, nly with the adjective of “divine” before the cognomen. Thus those
“Uranides” who are called everywhere “Divine Titans”—and who, having ebelled against Cronus, or Saturn, are therefore also shown to be the nemies of Samael, also one of the Elohim, and synonymous with Jehovah in is collectivity—are identical with Michael and his Host. In short, the
_rôles_ are reversed, all the combatants are confused, and no student is ble to distinguish clearly which is which. Esoteric explanation may, owever, bring some order into this confusion, in which Jehovah becomes
Saturn, and Michael and his Army, Satan and the Rebellious Angels, owing o the indiscreet endeavours of the too faithful zealots to see a Devil in very Pagan God. The true meaning is far more philosophical, and the egend of the first “Fall” of the Angels assumes a scientific colouring hen correctly understood.
Cronus stands for endless, and hence immovable Duration, without eginning, without end, beyond divided Time and beyond Space. Those
Angels, Genii, or Devas, who were born _to act in space and time_, that s, to break through the _Seven Circles_ of the super‐spiritual planes nto the phenomenal, or circumscribed, super‐terrestrial regions, are said llegorically to have _rebelled_ against Cronus, and fought the Lion who as then the one living and highest God. When Cronus, in his turn, is epresented as mutilating Uranus, his father, the meaning of the allegory s very simple. Absolute Time is made to become the finite and onditioned; a portion is robbed from the whole, thus showing that Saturn, he Father of the Gods, has been transformed from Eternal Duration into a imited period. Cronus with his scythe cuts down even the longest and, to s, seemingly endless cycles, which, for all that, are limited in
Eternity, and with the same scythe destroys the mightiest rebels. Aye, not ne will escape the scythe of Time! Praise the God or Gods, or flout one r both, that scythe will not tremble one millionth of a second in its scending 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 time numbered as only six, have been recently discovered, in an old ragment relating to the Greek myth, to be _seven_, the seventh being alled Phoreg. Thus their identity with the Seven Rectors is fully emonstrated. The origin of the War in Heaven and the Fall has, in our ind, 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 re 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 ccasion 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 entioned 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 ontest, as recounted by Parâshara, and endeavour to separate the two ccounts, which are purposely blended together.
It is there stated that as the Daityas and Asuras were engaged in the uties of their respective Orders (Varnas) and followed the paths rescribed by holy writ, practising also religious penance—a queer mployment for _Demons_ if they are identical with our _Devils_, as it is laimed—it was impossible for the Gods to destroy them. The prayers ddressed by the Gods to Vishnu are curious, as showing the ideas involved n an anthropomorphic Deity. Having, after their defeat, “fled to the orthern 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 orms an estimate of an alien religion on mere external evidence. Any man ccustomed to subject what he reads to thoughtful analysis, will see at a lance the incongruity of addressing the accepted “Unknowable,” the ormless, and attributeless Absolute, such as the Vedântins define
Brahman, as being “one with the Serpent‐Race, double‐tongued, cruel and nsatiable,” thus associating the abstract with the concrete, and estowing adjectives on that which is free from any limitations, and onditionless. Even Professor Wilson, who, after living surrounded by
Brâhmans and Pandits in India for so many years, ought to have known etter—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 s great in the hearts of our Orientalists, especially in those of
“reverend” scholars. Universal Soul is _not_ the inert Cause of Creation r (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 eflection 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 he apparently incongruous appeal to Vishnu by the defeated Gods, the xplanation is there, in the text of _Vishnu Purâna_, if Orientalists ould only notice it. There is Vishnu as Brahmâ, and Vishnu _in his two spects_, 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 xercised the functions of an _Active_ Providence, but the Universal Soul, hat which, in its material aspect, Éliphas Lévi calls Astral Light. And his Soul is, in its dual aspect of Spirit and Matter, the true nthropomorphic God of the Theists; for this God is a _personification_ of hat Universal Creative Agent, both pure and impure, owing to its anifested condition and differentiation in this Mâyâvic World—_God_ and
_Devil_, truly. But Professor Wilson failed to see how Vishnu, in this haracter, closely resembles the Lord God of Israel, “especially in his olicy of deception, temptation, and cunning.”
In the _Vishnu Purâna_ this is made as plain as can be. For it is said here, 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 he 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 f whom was generally chosen for some special reason by a nation or a ribe, 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 ust either judge these actions by the dead‐letter narratives, or must ccept them allegorically. If we compare the two—Vishnu, as the defender nd champion of the defeated Gods; and Jehovah, the defender and champion f 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 nd cunning. They do so on the principle of “the end justifying the eans,” in order to have the best of their respective opponents and oes—the Demons. Thus while, according to the Kabalists, Jehovah assumes he shape of the tempting Serpent in the Garden of Eden, sends Satan with special mission to tempt Job, harasses and wearies Pharaoh with Saraï,
Abraham’s wife, and “hardens” another Pharaoh’s heart against Moses, lest here should be no opportunity for plaguing his victims “with great lagues,” Vishnu is made in his _Purâna_ to resort to a trick no less nworthy 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 educed 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 s fools. A people, whose holy men and sages have left to the world the reatest and most sublime philosophies that ever emanated from the minds f men, must have known the difference between right and wrong. Even a avage can discern white from black, good from bad, and deceit from incerity and truthfulness. Those who had narrated this event in the iography of their God, must have seen that in this case it was that God ho was the Arch‐Deceiver, and the Daityas, who “never transgressed the recepts of the _Vedas_,” who had the sunny side in the transaction, and ho were the true “Gods.” Thence there must have been, and _there is_ a ecret meaning hidden under this allegory. In no class of society, in no ation, are deceit and craft considered as _divine_ virtues—except perhaps n the clerical classes of Theologians and modern Jesuitism.
The _Vishnu Purâna_,(682) like all other works of this kind, passed at a ater period into the hands of the Temple‐Brâhmans, and the old MSS. have, o doubt, been further tampered with by sectarians. But there was a time hen 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 llegories, is a question with which the writer is not concerned. The resent object is to show that, while honouring the _Creative Powers_ in heir multiple forms, no philosopher could have, or ever has, accepted the llegory for its true spirit, except, perhaps, some philosophers belonging o 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 egard those creative Forces _as living and conscious Entities_—and one oes 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, r Ain Suph. At all events they know well the true nature of what was alled 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 ower planes—infernal. This Light is symbolized by the “Magic Head” in the
_Zohar_, the Double Face on the Double Pyramid; the black Pyramid rising gainst 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 ark 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 ecessitates the study and comparative analysis of all the great religions f antiquity; for it is only by this method that the root‐idea can be made lain. 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 onception was one. But as systems began to reflect more and more with very age the idiosyncrasies of nations, and as the latter, after eparating, settled into distinct groups, each evolving along its own ational or tribal groove, the main idea gradually became veiled by the vergrowth of human fancy. While in some countries the Forces, or rather he intelligent Powers of Nature, received divine honours to which they ere hardly entitled, in others—as now in Europe and the other _civilized_ ands—the very thought of such Forces being endowed with intelligence eems absurd, and is proclaimed _unscientific_. Therefore one finds relief n 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 f the most famous nations of antiquity are connected with the beginnings f civilization amongst the Germanic races,”(684) he is yet glad to find uch truths expressed as that: “These fairy tales are not senseless tories written for the amusement of the idle; they embody the profound eligion of our forefathers.”(685)
Precisely so. Not only their Religion, but likewise their History. For a yth, in Greek μῦθος, means oral tradition, passed from mouth to mouth rom one generation to the other; and even in the modern etymology the erm stands for a _fabulous_ statement conveying some important truth; a ale of some extraordinary personage whose biography has become overgrown, wing to the veneration of successive generations, with rich popular ancy, but which is no _wholesale_ fable. Like our ancestors, the rimitive Âryans, we believe firmly in the personality and intelligence of ore than one phenomenon‐producing Force in Nature.
As time rolled on, the archaic teaching grew dimmer; and the nations more r less lost sight of the Highest and One Principle of all things, and egan to transfer the abstract attributes of the Causeless Cause to the aused effects, which became in their turn causative, the Creative Powers f 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 ower of philosophic conception needed to preserve it in all its mmaculate 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 ranslators of the Greek Fragments, shows, no nation has ever conceived he One Principle as the immediate creator of the visible Universe, for no ane man would credit a planner and architect with having built with his wn hands the edifice he admires. On the testimony of Damascius in his ork, _On First Principles_ (Περὶ Πρώτων Ἀρχῶν), they referred to it as he “Unknown Darkness.” The Babylonians passed over this principle in ilence. “To that God,” says Porphyry, in his _On Abstinence_ (Περί ἀποχῆς
τῶν ἐμψύχων), “who is above all things, neither external speech ought to e addressed, nor yet that which is inward.” Hesiod begins his _Theogony_ ith the words, “Chaos of all things was the first produced,”(687) thus llowing the inference that its Cause or Producer must be passed over in everential silence. Homer in his poems ascends no higher than Night, hich he represents Zeus as reverencing. According to all the ancient heologists, and the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato, Zeus, or the mmediate Artificer of the Universe, _is not the highest God_; any more han Sir Christopher Wren in his physical, human aspect is the Mind in him hich produced his great works of art. Homer, therefore, is not only ilent with respect to the First Principle, but likewise with respect to hose 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 f Unities, and beyond the first Adyta ... more ineffable than all
Silence, and more occult than all Essence ... concealed amidst the ntelligible Gods.”(689)
To what was written by Thomas Taylor in 1797—namely, that the “Jews appear o have ascended no higher ... than the _immediate_ Artificer of the
Universe,” as “Moses introduces a darkness on the face of the deep, ithout even insinuating that there was any cause of its existence,”(690) ne might add something more. Never have the Jews in their _Bible_—a urely esoteric, symbolical work—so profoundly degraded their metaphorical eity 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,” ymbolized 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, he “Golden Egg,” and Prajâpati (later on Brahmâ), from whom emanate all he Hierarchies of “Creators.” The Monad, or Point, is the original and is he 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 he expression, the Logos, is passed over in silence. In its turn, the niversal symbol, the _Point __ within the Circle_, was not yet the
Architect, but the Cause of that Architect; and the latter stood to it in recisely the same relation as the Point itself stood to the Circumference f the Circle, which cannot be defined, according to Hermes Trismegistus.
Porphyry shows that the Monad and the Duad of Pythagoras are identical ith Plato’s Infinite and Finite, in _Philebus_, or what Plato calls the
ἄπειρον and πέρας. It is the latter only, the Mother, which is ubstantial, the former being the “Cause of all Unity and measure of all hings”;(691) the Duad, Mûlaprakriti, the Veil of Parabrahman, being thus hown 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 roducer and the secondary cause of it. With Pythagoras, the Monad returns nto Silence and Darkness, as soon as it has evolved the Triad, from which manate the remaining 7 numbers of the 10 numbers which are at the base of he 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 wo acts, which are called in India the Prâkrita and Pâdma Creations.
Before the warm rays pouring from the Home of Brightness awaken life in he Great Waters of Space, the Elements of the First Creation come into iew, and from them is formed the Giant Ymir, or Örgelmir (literally,
Seething Clay), Primordial Matter differentiated from Chaos. Then comes he Cow Audumla, the Nourisher,(693) from whom is born Buri, the Producer, hose son Bör (Born), by Bestla, the daughter of the Frost‐Giants, the ons 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 rown, and there was, as yet, no Walhalla, or Hall of Heroes. The
Scandinavian legends of Creation, of our Earth and World, begin with Time nd 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 he Gods_, though these legends have in them the idea of that All‐Father, he original cause of all, “he is scarcely more than mentioned in the oems,” not, as he thinks, because before the preaching of the Gospel, the dea “could not rise to distinct conceptions of the Eternal,” but on ccount of its deep esoteric character. Therefore, all the Creative Gods, r _Personal_ Deities, begin at the secondary stage of Cosmic Evolution.
Zeus is born _in_, and _out_ of Cronus—Time. So is Brahmâ the production nd 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 ndrogyne character of all the chief Creative Gods, from the second Monad f 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 ersion of the Indian symbol.
The best metaphysical definition of primeval Theogony, in the spirit of he Vedântins, may be found in the “Notes on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_”, by T.
Subba Row. Parabrahman, the Unknown and the Incognizable, as the lecturer ells 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 all Îshvara (the “Lord” God), lest the term should create confusion in he people’s minds. It is the Avalokiteshvara of the Buddhists, the Verbum f the Christians in its real _esoteric_ meaning, not in its theological isfigurement.
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 s _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, ight and heat, exist in some unknown condition in Space and are diffused n Space only as _visible_ light and heat, the Sun being only the agent hereof. This is the first triadic hypostasis. The quaternary is made up y the _energizing light_ shed by the Logos.
The Hebrew Kabalists stated it in a manner which is esoterically identical ith the Vedântic. Ain Suph, they taught, could not be comprehended, could ot be located, nor named, though the Causeless Cause of all. Hence its ame, Ain Suph, is a term of negation, “the Inscrutable, the Incognizable, nd the Unnameable.” They made of it, therefore, a Boundless Circle, a
Sphere, of which human intellect, with the utmost stretch, could only erceive the vault. In the words of one who has unriddled much in the
Kabalistical system most thoroughly, in one of its meanings, in its umerical 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 he Boundless Circle, is the Avalokiteshvara, the Logos, or Verbum, of hich T. Subba Row speaks. But this Circle or manifested God is as unknown o us, except through its _manifested_ Universe, as is the ONE, though asier, or rather more possible to our highest conceptions. This Logos hich sleeps in the bosom of Parabrahman, during Pralaya, as our “Ego is atent [in us] at the time of Sushupti,” or sleep, which cannot cognize
Parabrahman otherwise than as Mûlaprakriti—the latter being a Cosmic Veil hich 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 he 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 ynthesis into concrete images; viz., into the reflections or multiplied spects of that Logos, or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ Ormazd, Osiris, Adam
Kadmon, call it by any of such names you will; which aspects, or anvantaric emanations, are the Dhyân Chohans, the Elohim, the Devas, the
Amshaspends, etc. Metaphysicians explain the root and germ of the latter, ccording to T. Subba Row, as the first manifestation of Parabrahman, “the ighest trinity that we are capable of understanding,” which is
Mûlaprakriti, the Veil, the Logos, and the Conscious Energy of the latter, r 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 ind of self is but a manifestation or a reflection.” It is then only in his Light of consciousness, of mental and physical perception, that
_practical_ Occultism can throw the Logos into visibility by geometrical igures, which, when closely studied, will yield not only a scientific xplanation of the real, objective, existence(697) of the “Seven Sons of he Divine Sophia,” which is this Light of the Logos, but will show, by eans of other yet undiscovered keys, that, with regard to Humanity, these
“Seven Sons” and their numberless emanations, centres of energy ersonified, are an absolute necessity. Make away with them, and the
Mystery of Being and Mankind _will never be unriddled, nor even closely pproached_.
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 ermutation, 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 s Horns, and Moot, the Daughter, Wife, and Mother, of Ammon, in the
Egyptian Moon‐glyph. In the _Kabalah_, Sephira is the same as Shekinah, nd 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 dentical with Brahmâ, and is called the female Logos. In the _Rig Veda_,
Vâch is “Mystic Speech,” by whom Occult Knowledge and Wisdom are ommunicated 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 f the _Vedas_,” “since it is through her powers, [as Mystic _Speech_] hat Brahmâ revealed them, and also owing to her power that he produced he Universe”; that is to say, through Speech, and words, synthesized by he “Word” and numbers.(699)
But when Vâch is also spoken of as the daughter of Daksha, “the God who ives 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 spect, 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 he Primordial Waters of Space, the impenetrable Veil between the
INCOGNIZABLE and the Logos of Creation. “Connecting himself through his ind 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 he female aspect of Kwan‐Shai‐Yin, the Logos, the Verbum of Creation, and t the same time with the Voice that speaks audibly to the Initiate, ccording to Esoteric Budhism. Bath Kol, the Filia Vocis, the Daughter of he 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 y 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 en, performed the work of procreation by incestuous intercourse with his wn daughter Vâch, also called Sandhyâ, Twilight, and Shatarûpâ, of a undred forms, is incessantly thrown in the teeth of the Brâhmans, as ondemning their “detestable, false religion.” Besides the fact, onveniently forgotten by the Europeans, that the Patriarch Lot is shown uilty of the same crime under the _human form_, whereas it was under the orm of a buck that Brahmâ, or rather Prajâpati, accomplished the incest ith his daughter, who had that of a hind (_rohit_), the esoteric reading f the third chapter of _Genesis_ shows the same. Moreover, there is ertainly 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 nto, and fructifying Nature; and, therefore, there is nothing phallic in he conception at all.
As already stated, Aditi‐Vâch is the female Logos, or Verbum, the Word; nd Sephira in the _Kabalah_ is the same. These feminine Logoi are all orrelations, in their _noumenal_ aspect, of Light, and Sound, and Æther, howing how well‐informed were the Ancients both in Physical Science, as ow 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 bjective to one of our physical senses and may be brought under the laws f 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, f we take for our example instances in the three most (apparently) issimilar religious philosophies in the world, the Hindû, the Greek and he 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 ransferred into the ideation of the Logos, or its latent Light, it is alled 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_ he 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, he 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 he Number Ten, the Sephiroth, himself being a Trinity, or the three ttributes of the Incognizable Deity in One.(702) “When the Heavenly Man
(or Logos) first assumed the form of the Crown(703) [Kether] and dentified himself with Sephira, he caused Seven splendid Lights to manate from it [the Crown],” which made in their totality Ten; so
Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, once he became separated from, yet identical with Vâch, aused 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 r 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], r 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 his Deity was the Logos, not the Monad that dwelleth in Solitude and
Silence, because Pythagoras taught that Unity being indivisible is _no umber_. And this is also why it was required of the candidate, who pplied for admittance into his school, that he should have already tudied 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 he doctrine of Numbers, the chief of all in Esotericism, had been evealed to man by the Celestial Deities; that the World had been called orth out of Chaos by Sound, or Harmony, and constructed according to the rinciples of musical proportion; that the seven planets which rule the estiny 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 ere 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 ift a corner of the veil off those wondrous allegories that have been hrown over Vâch, the most mysterious of all the Brâhmanical Goddesses; he 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 ourishment and sustenance”—the physical Earth. Isis is also mystic Nature nd also Earth; and her cow’s horns identify her with Vâch, who, after eing recognized in her highest form as Parâ, becomes, at the lower or aterial 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 s Chaos, in one sense. At any rate, she is the “Mother of the Gods,” and t 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 s Aditi, or the Divine Sophia of the Greek Gnostics, she is the mother of he 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 ations had it Eight, Great Gods, descend to establish the new order of hings and to give the impetus to the new cycle. That _eighth_ God was the nifying Circle, or Logos, separated and made distinct from its Host, in xoteric dogma, just as the three divine _hypostases_ of the ancient
Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three distinct _personæ_. As 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 upervision, “when Dhruva [the then Pole‐star], was at his lowest ulmination, and the Krittikâs [Pleiades] looked over his head [were on he same meridian but above] to watch the work of the Giants.” Thus, as he 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, ut 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 ower order; the one that came next in rank, was Mercury, ruled by the
_Archangels_: then came Venus, whose Gods were the _Principalities_; the ourth was that of the Sun, the domain and region of the highest and ightiest 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 overned by the _Dominions_; the seventh, the World of Saturn, by the
_Thrones_. These are the Worlds of Form. Above come the Four higher ones, aking Seven again, since the Three _highest_ are “unmentionable and npronounceable.” The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of he _Cherubs_; the ninth, belonging to the _walking_ and numberless stars n account of their distance, has the _Seraphs_; as to the tenth, Kircher, uoting Mor Isaac, says that it is composed “of invisible stars that could e taken, they said, for clouds, so massed are they in the zone that we all Via Straminis, the Milky Way”; and he hastens to explain that “these re 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 here that begins the vast and incomprehensible Ocean of the Infinite, the bode of the True Divinity, without boundary or end.”
Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians. Hermes having poken of the Father‐Mother and Son, whose Spirit—collectively the Divine
Fiat—shapes the Universe, says: “Seven Agents [Media] were also formed, to ontain the Material [or manifested] Worlds within their respective
Circles, and the action of these Agents was named Destiny.” He further numerates seven and ten and twelve orders, but it would take too long to etail them here.
As the _Rig Vidhâna_ together with the _Brahmânda Purâna_ and all such orks, whether describing the magic efficacy of the Rig Vedic _Mantras_, r the future Kalpas, are declared by Dr. Weber and others to be modern ompilations “belonging probably only to the time of the _Purânas_,” it is seless to refer the reader to their mystic explanations; and one may as ell simply quote from the archaic books utterly unknown to the
Orientalists. These works explain that which so puzzles the scholars, amely that the Saptarshis, the “Mind‐born Sons” of Brahmâ, are referred o 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 o the list. But the same occurs in every exoteric Scripture. The Secret
Doctrine gives a long genealogy of Rishis, but separates them into many lasses. Like the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided into seven, and ven twelve, Classes, so are the Indian Rishis in their Hierarchies. The irst three Groups are the Divine, the Cosmical and the Sublunary. Then ome the Solar Gods of our System, the Planetary, the Submundane, and the urely 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 nmistakably in every Cosmogony. Owing to the loss of Egyptian archaic ocuments, since, according to M. Maspero, “the materials and historical ata on hand to study the history of the religious evolution in Egypt are either complete nor very often intelligible,” the ancient Hymns and nscriptions on the tombs must be appealed to, in order to have the tatements brought forward from the Secret Doctrine partially and ndirectly corroborated. One such shows that Osiris, like
Brahmâ‐Prajâpati, Adam Kadmon, Ormazd, and so many other Logoi, was the hief and synthesis of the Group of “Creators” or Builders. Before Osiris ecame 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 elonging to the higher of the three Orders. The Hymn engraved on the otive 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 erpent‐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 eginning of religious evolution, in the same position as the Archangel,
“whose name was secret,” is certain. This Archangel was Michael, the epresentative 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 ith its Pagan prototype and parallel, since, as in the case of Osiris, hey have all so “many names in towns and provinces.” Some of the most mportant, however, will be shown in their order.
One thing is thus undeniably proven. The more we study their Hierarchies nd find out their identity, the more proofs we acquire that there is not ne of the past or present _personal_ Gods, known to us from the earliest ays of history, that does not belong to the third stage of cosmic anifestation. In every religion we find the Concealed Deity forming the round 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 inally separates itself, in the _third_, into Seven Forces, called the
Creative Powers by all the ancient religions, and the Virtues of God by he Christians. The later explanations and abstract metaphysical ualifications have not prevented the Roman and Greek Churches from orshipping these “Virtues” under the personifications and distinct names f the Seven Archangels. In the _Book of Druschim_,(712) in the _Talmud_, 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 volution of Gods in every Theogony, if one wishes to translate the eaning esoterically. We must not confuse the purely metaphysical ersonifications of the _abstract_ attributes of Deity, with their eflection—the Sidereal Gods. This reflection, however, is in reality the bjective expression of the abstraction; _living_ Entities and the models ormed on that divine Prototype. Moreover, the three metaphysical
Sephiroth, or the “periphrasis of Jehovah,” are _not_ Jehovah. It is the atter himself, with the additional titles of Adonai, Elohim, Sabbaoth, nd the numerous names lavished on him, who is the periphrasis of the
Shaddai (שדי), the Omnipotent. The name is a circumlocution, indeed, a too bundant 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 ts 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 o other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and eneration.(713) The real secret and _unpronounceable_ Name, the “Word hat 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 reat nations, and even in the _Zohar_, the Kabalistic lore of the mallest of all of them, viz., the Jewish. This word, composed of seven etters in every tongue, is found embodied in the architectural remains of very 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 ears 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 ractical illustrations to prove the statements made in the text.
For the present it is sufficient to show, by a few instances, the truth of hat has been asserted at the beginning of this work, namely, that no
Cosmogony, the world over, with the sole exception of the Christian, has ver attributed to the One Highest Cause, the Universal Deific Principle, he immediate creation of our earth, or man, or anything connected with hese. This statement holds as well for the Hebrew or Chaldean _Kabalah_ s it does for _Genesis_, had the latter been ever thoroughly understood nd, what is still more important, correctly translated.(715) Everywhere here 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 he latter, names which betray the secret. For if the said Forces had ought to do with “Creation” so‐called, why call them Elohim (Alhim), a lural word; Divine Workmen and Energies (Ἐνέργειαι), incandescent elestial stones (_lapides igniti cœlorum_); and especially Supporters of he 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 ountry 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 hought and the combined work of the most venerated sages,” fails to show 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 umberless 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 ll Cosmogonies for those who, like the Confucianists, love virtue for its wn sake and try to do good unselfishly without perpetually looking to eward and profit. The “Great Extreme” of Confucius produces “Two
Figures.” These Two produce in their turn the “Four Images”; these again he “Eight Symbols.” It is complained that though the Confucianists see in hem “heaven, earth and man in miniature,” we can see in them anything we ike. No doubt, and so it is with regard to many symbols, especially those f the latest religions. But they who know something of Occult numerals, ee in these “Figures” the symbol, however rude, of a harmonious rogressive Evolution of Kosmos and its Beings, both Heavenly and
Terrestrial. And any one who has studied the numerical evolution in the rimeval Cosmogony of Pythagoras—a contemporary of Confucius—can never ail to find in his Triad, Tetraktys and Decad, emerging from the One and olitary Monad, the same idea. Confucius is laughed at by his Christian iographer for “talking of divination,” before and after this passage, and s 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 ines,” and the great sage who looks at them as they become one and two, nd two become four, and four become eight, and the other sets “three and ix,” are laughed to scorn, only because his wise symbols are isunderstood.
So the author of the volume cited and his colleagues will no doubt scoff t the Stanzas given in our text, for they represent _precisely the same dea_. The old archaic map of Cosmogony is full of lines in the Confucian tyle, of concentric circles and dots. Yet all these represent the most bstract and philosophical conceptions of the Cosmogony of our Universe.
At all events it may, perhaps, answer better to the requirements and the cientific purposes of our age, than the cosmogonical essays of St.
Augustine and the Venerable Bede, though these were published over a illennium later than the Confucian.
Confucius, one of the greatest sages of the ancient world, believed in ncient magic, and practised it himself, “if we take for granted the tatements of _Kià‐yü_” and “he praised it to the skies in the _Yi‐king_,” e 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 he 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 etween a Tortoise and a Lamb as candidates for sacredness, as both are ymbols and no more. The Ox, the Eagle,(719) and the Lion, and ccasionally the Dove are the “sacred animals” of the Western _Bible_; the irst three are found grouped round the Evangelists; the fourth, ssociated with these, a human face, is a Seraph, _i.e._, a “fiery erpent,” the Gnostic Agathodæmon probably.
The choice is curious, and shows how paradoxical were the first Christians n 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) nd in the _Old Testament_ it is called _unclean_; when the Lion is made a oint 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 n 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, ay indeed be said to have chosen a strange and unfitting _shell_ to be orn 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 f the Kosmos, collectively and individually. They have all an occult eference to primordial Cosmic Forms, and the first concretions, work, and volution of Kosmos.
In the earliest Hindû exoteric Cosmogonies, it is not even the Demiurge ho 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 round the Sun.” After which action, “it is the Brahmândika,” the Solar nd Lunar Pitris, the Dhyân Chohans, “who take charge of their respective pheres [earths and planets], to the end of the Kalpa.” The Creators are he Rishis, most of whom are credited with the authorship of the Mantras, r Hymns, of the _Rig Veda_. They are sometimes _seven_, sometimes _ten_, hen they become Prajâpati, the Lord of Beings; then they rebecome the
_seven_ and the _fourteen_ Manus, as the representatives of the seven and ourteen Cycles of Existence, or Days of Brahmâ, thus answering to the even Æons, when, at the end of the first stage of Evolution, they are ransformed 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 ey‐note, which, under its allegorical garb, is, as may be seen, as cientific as it is philosophical and poetical, every nation has followed ts lead. It is from the exoteric religions that we have to dig out the oot‐idea before we turn to esoteric truths, lest the latter should be ejected. Furthermore, every symbol, in _every_ national religion, may be ead esoterically; and the proof of its being correctly read when ransliterated into its corresponding numerals and geometrical forms, may e obtained from the extraordinary agreement of all glyphs and symbols, owever much they may externally vary among themselves. For in the origin hose symbols were all identical. Take, for instance, the opening entences in various Cosmogonies; in every case it is a Circle, an Egg, or Head. Darkness is always associated with this first symbol and surrounds t, as is shown in the Hindû, the Egyptian, the Chaldeo‐Hebrew and even he Scandinavian systems. Hence black ravens, black doves, black waters nd even black flames; the seventh tongue of Agni, the Fire‐God being alled Kâlî, the “Black,” since it was a black flickering flame. Two
“black” doves flew from Egypt and, settling on the oaks of Dodona, gave heir 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 eal creation or evolution of our Earth and Humanity. Odin’s “black” avens fluttered round the Goddess Saga and “whispered to her of the past nd of the future.” Now what is the inner meaning of all those black irds? It is that they are all connected with the primeval Wisdom, which lows 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 he primordial Archetypal Man, Adam Kadmon, the Creative Origin of all hings, 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 t now is, to explain in its numerical language an approximate meaning, at east 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 omprehend the esoteric meaning of the Raven, once that the like meaning f the Flood, or Noah’s Deluge, is ascertained. Whatever the many other eanings of this emblematical allegory may be, its _chief_ meaning is that f 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 ot 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, repared to leave the Ark, the Womb, or Argha, of terrestrial Nature, he s the symbol of the purely spiritual, sexless and androgyne man of the irst three Races, who vanished from Earth for ever. Numerically, in the
_Kabalah_, Jehovah, Adam, Noah, are one. At best, then, it is Deity escending on Ararat and later, on Sinai, to incarnate henceforth in man, is _image_, through the natural process, the mother’s womb, whose symbols re the Ark, the Mount (Sinai), etc., in _Genesis_. The Jewish allegory is stronomical and physiological, rather than anthropomorphic.
And here lies the abyss between the Âryan and Semitic systems, though both re 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 ymbol of its first _comprehensible manifestation_ was the conception of a ircle with its diameter line, so as at once to carry the idea of eometry, phallicism, and astronomy”; and this was finally applied to the
“signification of simply human generative organs.” Hence the whole cycle f events from Adam and the Patriarchs down to Noah is made to apply to hallic and astronomical uses, the one regulating the other, as the lunar eriods, for instance. Hence, too, the _Genesis_ of the Hebrews begins fter their coming out of the Ark, and the end of the Flood, _i.e._, at he 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” f the exoteric creeds, ages later. But even they, “Creators” as they all hree maybe, are not the direct “Creators” and “forefathers of men.” The atter 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 he _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, ariously interpreted by the commentators.
Origen, commenting upon the books written by Celsus, his Gnostic pponent—books which were all destroyed by the prudent Church
Fathers—evidently answers the objections of his contradictor and reveals is system at the same time. This was clearly _septenary_. But the heogony of Celsus, the genesis of the stars or planets, and of sound and olour, found as an answer satire, and no more. Celsus, you see, “desiring o exhibit his learning,” speaks of a ladder of creation with _seven ates_, 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 ith musical considerations,”(725) that is to say with the seven notes of he scale, the seven Spirits of the Stars, etc.
Valentinus expatiates upon the power of the great Seven, who were summoned o bring forth this universe after Ar(r)hetos, or the Ineffable, whose ame is composed of seven letters, had represented the first Hebdomad. The ame Ar(r)hetos indicates the sevenfold nature of the One, the Logos. “The
Goddess Rhea,” says Proclus, “is a Monad, Duad, and Heptad,” comprehending n herself all the Titanidæ, “who are seven.”(726)
The Seven Creations are found in almost every _Purâna_. They are all receded 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 irst differentiation of Universal Indiscrete Substance; (3) Indriya or
Aindriyaka, Organic Evolution. “These three were the Prâkrita Creations, he _developments of indiscrete nature_, preceded by the Indiscrete
Principle”; (4) Mukhya, “the Fundamental Creation (of perceptible things) as that of inanimate bodies”;(727) (5) Tairyagyonya or Tiryaksrotas, was hat 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 eaching there are seven Primary, and seven Secondary “Creations”; the ormer being the Forces _self‐evolving_ from the one _causeless_ FORCE; he latter showing the manifested Universe emanating from the already ifferentiated _divine_ Elements.
Esoterically, as well as exoterically, all the above enumerated Creations tand 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, owever, never uses the term “creation,” nor even that of evolution, with egard to _Primary_ “Creation”; but calls all such Forces the “_aspects_ f the Causeless Force.” In the _Bible_, the seven periods are dwarfed nto 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 ndifferentiated Elements, and the Rudiments of future Senses—the World of
Noumena, in short—the Universe remains unaltered for a Day of Brahmâ, a eriod of 4,320,000,000 years. This is the _seventh_ passive Period, or he “Sabbath” of Eastern Philosophy, following six periods of active volution. In the _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, Brahma (neuter), the Absolute
Cause of all Causes, _radiates_ the Gods. Having radiated the Gods, hrough 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 as evidently reëchoed the words of Manu. In it the Divine Substance is epresented as having alone existed from the eternity, boundless and bsolute; 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 nthropomorphized by the Fathers. From this triple One emanated the whole
Kosmos. First from One emanated number Two, or Air, the creative element; nd then number Three, Water, proceeded from the Air; Ether or Fire ompletes the mystic Four, the Arba‐il. In the Eastern doctrine, Fire is he first Element—Ether, synthesizing the whole, since it contains all of hem.
In the _Vishnu Purâna_, the whole seven periods are given; and the rogressive Evolution of the “Spirit‐Soul,” and of the seven Forms of
Matter, or Principles, is shown. It is impossible to enumerate them in his 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 aught the same system, veiling very carefully the true esoteric meaning.
This “veiling,” however, is identical with that of the _Vishnu Purâna_ and thers. 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 even creations of the _Vishnu Purâna_, to which two more are added, of hich the eighth, termed Anugraha, “possesses both the qualities of oodness and darkness,” a Sânkhyan more than a Purânic idea. For Irenæus ays 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 ad a superior, and an inferior Hebdomad in Heaven; and a third errestrial 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 uperior “Seven Heavens,”(734) hence identical with the chief of the Lunar
Pitris, that name being given by them to the Lunar Dhyân Chohans. “They ffirm that these seven heavens are intelligent, and _speak of them as eing angels_,” writes the same Irenæus; and adds that on this account hey termed Iaô Hebdomas, while his mother was called Ogdoas, because, as e 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 he 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 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 he seven planets, which are Sûrya’s _Brothers_, not his _Sons_. With the
Gnostics, these Astral Gods were the Sons of Ialdabaoth(736) (from _ilda_, hild, and _baoth_ egg), the Son of Sophia Achamôth, the daughter of
Sophia or Wisdom, whose region is the Plerôma. Ialdabaoth produces from imself these six stellar Spirits: Iaô (Jehovah), Sabaôth, Adoneus,
Eloæus, Oreus, Astaphæus,(737) and it is they who are the second, or nferior Hebdomad. As to the third, it is composed of the seven primeval en, the shadows of the Lunar Gods, projected by the first Hebdomad. In his the Gnostics did not, as seen, differ much from the Esoteric
Doctrine, except that they veiled it. As to the charge made by Irenæus, ho was evidently ignorant of the true tenets of the “Heretics,” with egard to man being created on the _sixth_ day, and man being created on he _eighth_, this relates to the mysteries of the _inner_ man. It will ecome comprehensible to the reader only after he has read Volume II, and nderstood 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 ells 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 ere three Logoi—besides the Seven born of the First—one of these being he Solar Logos. And, again, who was that Anthrôpos himself, so much igher than Ialdabaoth? The Gnostic records alone can solve this riddle.
In _Pistis‐Sophia_ the four‐vowelled name Ieou is generally accompanied by he 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 f one‐vowelled, three‐vowelled and seven‐vowelled sounds. Marcus, whose hilosophy was certainly more Pythagorean than anything else, speaks of a evelation to him of the seven Heavens sounding each one vowel, as they ronounced 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 est, begins.
“The Creators [Elohim] outline in the _second_ ‘Hour’ the shape of man,” ays Rabbi Simeon in _The Nuchthemeron of the Hebrews_. “There are twelve ours in the day,” says the _Mishna_, “and it is during these that reation is accomplished.” The “twelve hours of the day” are again the warfed copy, the faint, yet faithful, echo of primitive Wisdom. They are ike 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 his the Chaldeans, have disguised into 12 “Hours.”(740) The
_Nuchthemeron_ of Apollonius of Tyana is the same thing. “The Dodecahedron ies concealed in the perfect Cube,” say the Kabalists. The mystic meaning f this is, that the twelve great transformations of Spirit into
Matter—the 12,000 Divine Years—take place during the four great Ages, or he first Mahâyuga. Beginning with the metaphysical and the supra‐human, t 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 ine 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 econd 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 wo‐fold Man is Adam Kadmon, the male and female abstract prototype and he 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 he 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 hen _created_ (?), being identified with Mahat, active intelligence, or he 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 rgues rightly that Parabrahman, having no relation, as the absolute ALL, o 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 onception 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 ctive 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 he mixture(?) of Spirit and Matter, and the first rudiment of Creation.”
“Ex connexione autem ejus Spiritus prodidit Môt.... Hinc ... seminium mnis creaturæ et omnium rerum creatio,” says Brucker,(744) giving it a till more materialistic and anthropomorphic colouring.
Nevertheless, the esoteric sense of the doctrine is seen, through every xoteric sentence, on the very face of the old Sanskrit texts that treat f 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 ives rise to creation”;(745) the Orphic Triad shows an identical octrine; for there Phanes, or Erôs, Chaos, containing crude
_undifferentiated_ Cosmic Matter, and Chronos, Time, are the three co‐ perating principles, emanating from the Concealed and Unknowable Point, hich produce the work of “Creation.” And they are the Hindû Purusha
(Phanes), Pradhâna (Chaos) and Kâla (Chronos). The good Professor Wilson oes not like the idea, as no Christian clergyman, however liberal, would.
He remarks that: “the _mixture_ [of the Supreme Spirit or Soul with its wn principles] _is not mechanical_; it is _an influence or effect exerted pon intermediate agents_ which produce effects.” The sentence in _Vishnu
Purâna_, “as fragrance affects the mind from its proximity merely, _and ot from any immediate operation upon mind itself_, so the Supreme nfluenced the elements of creation,” the reverend and erudite Sanskritist orrectly explains by: “as perfumes do not delight the mind by actual ontact, but by the impression they make upon the sense of smelling, which ommunicates it to the mind”; adding, “the entrance of the Supreme ... nto Spirit, as well as Matter, _is less intelligible_ than the view lsewhere 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 ivine Vishnu entered into Prakriti.” This view is certainly more akin to he plastic character of certain verses in the _Bible_ concerning the
Patriarchs, such as Lot and even Adam,(746) and others of a still more nthropomorphic nature. But it is just that which led Humanity to
_Phallicism_; the Christian religion being honeycombed with it, from the irst chapter of _Genesis_ down to the _Revelation_.
The Esoteric Doctrine teaches that the Dhyân Chohans are the collective ggregate of Divine Intelligence or Primordial Mind, and that the first
Manus, the seven “mind‐born” Spiritual Intelligences, are identical with he 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 anifested 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 hinking 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 eriod of the first breath of the differentiation of the Pre‐cosmic
Elements, or Matter. Bhûtâdi means the “origin of the Elements,” and recedes Bhûtasarga, the “creation,” or differentiation, of those Elements n Primordial Âkâsha, Chaos or Vacuity.(747) In the _Vishnu Purâna_ it is aid to proceed along, and belong to, the triple aspect of Ahankâra, ranslated Egotism, but meaning rather that untranslatable term “I‐am‐ ess,” that which first issues from Mahat, or Divine Mind; the first hadowy outline of Self‐hood, for “pure” Ahankâra becomes “passionate” and inally “rudimental” or initial: it is “the origin of conscious as of all
_unconscious_ being,” though the Esoteric school rejects the idea of nything being “unconscious,” save on our plane of illusion and ignorance.
At this stage of the Second Creation, the Second Hierarchy of the Manus ppear, the Dhyân Chohans or Devas, who are the origin of Form (Rûpa), the
Chitrashikhandinas, “Bright‐crested,” or Rikshas; those Rishis who have ecome the informing Souls of the Seven Stars (of the Great Bear).(748) In stronomical and cosmogonical language, this Creation relates to the Fire‐
Mist Period, the first stage of Cosmic Life, after its Chaotic state,(749) hen Atoms issue from Laya.
(III) _The Third Creation_: the Third or Indriya Creation was the modified orm of Ahankâra, the conception of “I” (from Aham, “I”), termed the
Organic Creation, or Creation of the Senses, Aindriyaka. “These three were he Prâkrita Creation, the [discrete] developments of indiscrete nature receded by the indiscrete principle.” “Preceded by,” ought to be replaced ere with “beginning with Buddhi”; for the latter is neither a discrete or an indiscrete quantity, but partakes of the nature of both, in man as n Kosmos. A unit or human Monad on the plane of illusion, when once freed rom the three forms of Ahankâra and liberated from its terrestrial Manas,
Buddhi indeed becomes a continued quantity, both in duration and xtension, 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 eferred to as “the sixth creation ... or that of the divinities.” This hows plainly that earlier as well as later Manvantaras have been urposely confused, to prevent the profane from perceiving the truth. This s called “incongruity” and “contradictions” by the Orientalists. “The hree creations beginning with Intelligence are elemental, but the six reations which proceed from the series of which Intellect is the first, re the work of Brahmâ.”(750) Here “creations” mean everywhere _stages of volution_. Mahat, “Intellect” or Mind, which corresponds with Manas, the ormer being on the cosmic, and the latter on the human plane, stands ere, too, lower than Buddhi or supra‐divine Intelligence. Therefore, when e 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 nly occasionally hinted at.
This Creation of the first Immortals, or Devasarga, is the last of the eries, and has a universal meaning; it refers, namely, to Evolution in eneral, and not specifically to our Manvantara, which begins with the ame 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 econdary stage of evolution, repeating the first three on the objective lane.
(IV) _The Fourth Creation_: the Mukhya or Primary, as it begins the series f four. Neither the term “inanimate” bodies nor “immovable things,” as ranslated 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 imself says: “All the Hindû systems consider vegetable bodies as endowed ith life.”(751) Charâchara, or the synonymous sthâvara and jangama, is, herefore, inaccurately rendered by “animate and inanimate,” “sentient eings” and “unconscious,” or “conscious and unconscious beings,” etc.
“Locomotive and fixed” would be better, “since trees are considered to ossess souls.” The Mukhya is the “creation,” or rather organic evolution, f the vegetable kingdom. In this Secondary Period, the three degrees of he elemental or rudimental kingdoms are evolved in this World, orresponding, _inversely_ in order, to the three Prâkritic Creations, uring the Primary Period of Brahmâ’s activity. As in that Period, in the ords 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 hus: (1) the _nascent_ Centres of Force, intellectual and physical; (2) he Rudimentary Principles, _nerve force_, so to say; and (3) nascent
Apperception, which is the Mahat of the lower kingdoms, and is especially eveloped in the third order of Elementals; these are succeeded by the bjective kingdom of minerals, in which this “apperception” is entirely atent, to re‐develop only in the plants. The Mukhya Creation, then, is he middle point between the three lower and the three higher kingdoms, hich represent the seven esoteric kingdoms of Kosmos, and of Earth.
(V) _The Fifth Creation_: the Tiryaksrotas or Tairyagyonya Creation,(752) hat of the “(sacred) animals,” corresponding on Earth only to the dumb nimal creation. That which is meant by “animals,” in the Primary
Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness, or of “apperception,” hat which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more istinctly in the protistic Monera.(753) On our Globe, during the First
Round, animal “creation” precedes that of man, while the mammalian animals volve 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; hile in the Fourth, the reverse occurs according to magnetic conditions eveloped during life. And this is “metempsychosis.”(754) This fifth Stage f Evolution, called exoterically “Creation,” may be viewed in both the
Primary and Secondary Periods, one as the spiritual and cosmic, the other s the material and terrestrial. It is archebiosis, or life‐origination;
“origination,” so far, of course, as the _manifestation_ of life on all he seven planes is concerned. It is at this period of evolution that the bsolutely eternal universal motion, or vibration, that which is called in
Esoteric language the “Great Breath,” differentiates into the primordial, irst manifested Atom. More and more, as chemical and physical sciences rogress, does this Occult axiom find its corroboration in the world of nowledge; the scientific hypothesis, that even the simplest elements of atter are identical in their nature, and differ from each other only in onsequence of the various distributions of atoms in the molecule or speck f substance, or of the modes of its atomic vibration, gains more ground very day.
Thus, as the differentiation of the primordial germ of life has to precede he evolution of the Dhyân Chohan of the _Third_ Group or Hierarchy of
Being in Primary Creation, before those Gods can become embodied in their irst 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 s these who became the Evolvers of the “Sweat‐born”—an expression xplained in Volume II.
“Created beings,” explains the _Vishnu Purâna_, “although they are estroyed [in their individual forms] at the periods of dissolution, yet eing affected by the good or evil acts of _former existences_, are never xempted from their consequences. And when Brahmâ produces the world anew, hey 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 ere 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, n _exoteric_ mythology, to be born of “Brahmâ’s side,” like Eve from the ib of Adam.
Finally, the Sixth Creation is followed, and “Creation” in general closed y:
(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,” or it refers to a purely mental process, the cognition of the “Ninth
Creation,” which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the Secondary, f 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 otion_ [in its esoteric aspect], or to which we give intellectual assent
(Anugraha), in contradistinction to _organic creation_.” It is the correct erception of our relations to the whole range of “Gods,” and especially f those we bear to the Kumâras, the so‐called “Ninth Creation,” which is n reality an aspect, or reflection, of the Sixth in our Manvantara (the
Vaivasvata). “There is a _ninth_, the Kaumâra Creation, which is both rimary and secondary,” says the _Vishnu Purâna_, the oldest of such exts.(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 ankind._(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 n the _First_ Kalpa, although their generation is very commonly, but nconsistently, introduced in the [_Secondary_] Vârâha, or Pâdma Kalpa.”
Thus, the Kumâras are, exoterically, “the creation of Rudra or Nîlalohita, 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 rue 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 ype of his physical form, made “in _their_ image.” Four (and occasionally
_five_) are mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three of the Kumâras eing secret.
“The four Kumâras [are] the mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ. Some specify
_seven_.”(759) All these seven Vaidhâtra, the patronymic of the Kumâras, he “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 t refrains from mentioning _by name_ all the seven Kumâras, but calls hem instead the “seven sons of Brahmâ,” which they are, as they are reated by Brahmâ in Rudra. The list of names it gives us is: Sanaka,
Sanandana, Sanâtana, Kapila, Ribhu, and Panchashikha. But these again are ll _aliases_.
The exoteric four are Sanatkumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana; and the soteric three Sana, Kapila, and Sanatsujâta. Special attention is once ore drawn to this class of Dhyân Chohans, for herein lies the mystery of eneration and heredity hinted at in the Commentary on Stanza VII, in reating of the Four Orders of Angelic Beings. Volume II explains their osition in the Divine Hierarchy. Meanwhile, let us see what the exoteric exts 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 his term,” remarks Wilson, who does not suspect for one moment that he is n the presence of the “Angels of Darkness,” the mythical “great enemy” of is Church. Therefore, he contrives to “elucidate” no more than that
“these [Divinities] _declining to create progeny_, [and thus rebelling gainst Brahmâ], remained, as the name of the first [Sanatkumâra] implies, ver boys, Kumâras; that is, ever pure and innocent, whence their creation s called the Kaumâra.” The _Purânas_, however, may afford a little more ight. “Being ever as he was born, he is here called a youth; and hence is name is well known as Sanatkumâra.”(760) In the _Shaiva Purânas_, the
Kumâras are always described as Yogins. The _Kurma Purâna_, after numerating them, says: “These five, O Brâhmans, were Yogins, who acquired ntire 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 rogeny; and so did Rudra, but Skanda and Sanatkumâra, _restraining their ower, abstained_ (from creation).” The “four orders of beings” are eferred to sometimes as Ambhâmsi, which Wilson renders as “literally
Waters” and believes it “a mystic term.” It is one, no doubt; but he vidently failed to catch the _real_ Esoteric meaning. “Waters” and
“Water” stand as the symbol for Âkâsha, the “Primordial Ocean of Space,” n which Nârâyana, the self‐born Spirit, moves, reclining on that _which s its progeny_.(761) “Water is the body of Nara; thus we have heard the ame of Water explained. Since Brahmâ rests on the Water, therefore he is ermed Nârâyana.”(762) “Pure, Purusha created the Waters pure.” At the ame time Water is the _Third_ Principle in material Kosmos, and the third n the realm of the Spiritual: _Spirit_ of Fire, Flame, Âkâsha, Ether,
Water, Air, Earth, are the cosmic, sidereal, psychic, spiritual and mystic rinciples, _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 re the transformations or rebirths of Gods and Demons (Spirits) on a igher 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, he Sea, the Mother of the Western God of Love, Mercy and Charity. If the tudent of Esoteric Philosophy thinks deeply over the subject, he is sure o find out all the suggestiveness of the term Ambhâmsi, in its manifold elations 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 ith which humanity is more concerned than with the Kumâras. Imprudent are he Christian Theologians who have degraded them into _Fallen_ Angels, and ow call them Satan and Demons; as among these heavenly denizens who
“refuse to create,” the Archangel Michael, the greatest patron Saint of he Western and Eastern Churches, under his double name of St. Michael and is supposed copy on earth, St. George conquering the Dragon, has to be iven one of the most prominent places.
The Kumâras, the Mind‐born Sons of Brahmâ‐Rudra, or Shiva, mystically the owling and terrific _destroyer of human passions and physical senses_, hich are ever in the way of the development of the higher spiritual erceptions 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 lant, the _seed_ must die. To live as a conscious entity in the Eternity, he passions and senses of man must die before his body does. “That to ive is to die and to die is to live,” has been too little understood in he 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 lants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to call o life the perceptions of the spiritual, man.
The Kumâras, themselves then, being the “virgin ascetics,” refuse to reate the _material_ being Man. Well may they be suspected of a direct onnection with the Christian Archangel Michael, the “virgin combatant” of he Dragon Apophis, whose victim is every Soul united too loosely to its mmortal Spirit, the Angel who, as shown by the Gnostics, _refused to reate_ 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 alled 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, dentical with the Ancient of Days of the Kabalists; the latter “Ancient” eing one with the Hindû Ancient of Days, Brahmâ, in his _triune_ form, hose 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 dentified both with the planet and the God (Shiva), who are, in their urn, 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 he Jews, as Daniel tells us; and, before the Kumâras were degraded, by hose who were ignorant of their very name, into Demons and Fallen Angels, he Greek Ophites, the occultly inclined predecessors and precursors of he Roman Catholic Church after its secession and separation from the rimitive Greek Church, had identified Michael with their Ophiomorphos, he rebellious and opposing spirit. This means nothing more than the everse aspect, symbolically, of Ophis, the Divine Wisdom or Christos. In he _Talmud_, Mikael is “Prince of Water” and the chief of the Seven
Spirits, for the same reason that one of his many prototypes, Sanatsujâta, he chief of the Kumâras, is called Ambhâmsi, “Waters,” according to the ommentary on _Vishnu Purâna_. Why? Because the Waters is another name of he Great Deep, the Primordial Waters of Space, or Chaos, and also means
Mother, Ambâ, meaning Aditi and Akâsha, the Celestial Virgin‐Mother of the isible Universe. Furthermore, the “Waters of the Flood” are also called he “Great Dragon,” or Ophis, Ophiomorphos.
The Rudras will be noticed in their septenary character of “Fire‐Spirits” n the “Symbolism” attached to the Stanzas in Volume II. There we shall lso consider the Cross (3 + 4) under its primeval and later forms, and hall use for purposes of comparison the Pythagorean numbers side by side ith Hebrew metrology. The immense importance of the number _seven_ will hus become evident, as the root number of Nature. We shall examine it rom the standpoint of the _Vedas_ and the Chaldean Scriptures; as it xisted in Egypt thousands of years B.C., and as treated in the Gnostic ecords; we shall show how its importance as a basic number has gained ecognition in Physical Science; and we shall endeavour to prove that the mportance attached to the number _seven_ throughout all antiquity was due o no fanciful imaginings of uneducated priests, but to a profound nowledge of Natural Law.
Section XIV. The Four Elements.
Metaphysically and esoterically, there is but _One Element_ in Nature, and t the root of it is the Deity; and the so‐called _seven_ Elements, of hich _five_ have already manifested and asserted their existence, are the arment, 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 nly are admitted in philosophy. For the body of Ether is not fully anifested yet, and its noumenon is still the “Omnipotent Father Æther,” he synthesis of the rest. But what are these Elements, whose compound odies have now been discovered by Chemistry and Physics to contain umberless sub‐elements, even the sixty or seventy of which no longer mbrace 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 ere _that_ “which _composes_ and _decomposes_ the _compound bodies_.”
Hence Cosmolatry was never, even in its worst aspect, the fetichism which dores or worships the passive external form and matter of any object, but ooked ever to the Noumenon therein. Fire, Air, Water, Earth, were but the isible garb, the symbols of the informing, invisible Souls or Spirits, he Cosmic Gods, to whom worship was offered by the ignorant, and simple, ut respectful, recognition by the wiser. In their turn, the phenomenal ubdivisions of the noumenal Elements were informed by the Elementals, so‐ alled, the “Nature Spirits” of lower grades.
In the Theogony of Môchus, we find Ether first, and then the Air; the two rinciples 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 he Æthereal Winds impregnate, Wind being the “Spirit of God,” which is aid to move in Æther, “brooding over the Chaos,” the Divine Idea. In the
Hindû _Kathopanishad_, Purusha, the Divine Spirit, already stands before he Original Matter, and from their union springs the great Soul of the
World, “Mahâ‐Âtmâ, Brahman, the Spirit of Life”;(764) these latter ppellations being again identical with the Universal Soul, or Anima
Mundi; the Astral Light of the Theurgists and Kabalists being its last and owest division.
The Elements (στοιχεῖα) of Plato and Aristotle were thus the _incorporeal rinciples_ attached to the four great divisions of our Cosmic World, and t is with justice that Creuzer defines these primitive beliefs as “a
_species of magism_, a _psychic paganism_, and a _deification of otencies_; a _spiritualization_ which placed the believers in a close ommunity with these potencies.”(765) So close, indeed, that the
Hierarchies of these Potencies, or Forces, have been classified on a raduated scale of seven from the ponderable to the imponderable. They are eptenary, not as an artificial aid to facilitate their comprehension, but n their real _cosmic_ gradation, from their chemical, or physical, to heir purely spiritual composition. Gods with the ignorant masses; Gods ndependent and supreme; Demons with the fanatics, who, intellectual as hey often may be, are unable to understand the _spirit_ of the hilosophical sentence, _in pluribus unum_. With the Hermetic philosopher hey are Forces _relatively_ “blind” or “intelligent,” according to which f the principles in them he deals with. It required long millenniums efore they found themselves finally, in our cultured age, degraded into imple chemical elements.
At any rate, good Christians, and especially the Biblical Protestants, ught to show more reverence for the Four Elements, if they would maintain ny for Moses. For the _Bible_ manifests the consideration and mystic ignificance in which they were held by the Hebrew Lawgiver, on every page f 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 ardinal points, and Ether. Josephus shows it built in white, the colour f Ether. And this explains also why, in the Egyptian and the Hebrew emples, according to Clemens Alexandrinus,(766) a gigantic curtain, upported by five pillars, separated the _sanctum sanctorum_—now epresented by the altar in Christian churches—wherein the priests alone ere permitted to enter, from the part accessible to the profane. By its
_four_ colours this curtain symbolized the four principal Elements, and ith 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 deas 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; hat the images of all things are indelibly impressed upon it; and that it s the store‐house of the germs, or of the remains of all visible forms, nd even ideas. It appears as if this case strangely corroborates our ssertion that whatever discoveries may be made in our days will be found o have been anticipated by many thousand years by our “simple‐minded ncestors.”
Whence came the Four Elements and the Malachim of the Hebrews? They have een 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 rigin 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 ands of Upper Egypt, or in the wild forests, weird and glacial, which over the slopes and peaks of the sacred snowy mountains of Thessaly, or gain, in the pampas of America—their symbols, we repeat, when traced to heir source, are ever one and the same. Whether Egyptian or Pelasgian,
Âryan or Semitic, the Genius Loci, the Local God, embraced in its unity ll Nature; but not especially the four elements any more than one of heir creations, such as trees, rivers, mounts or stars. The Genius Loci, very late afterthought of the last sub‐races of the Fifth Root‐Race, hen the primitive and grandiose meaning had become nearly lost, was ever he representative, in his accumulated titles, of all his colleagues. It as 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, s Varuna, Neptune, etc.; the God of Air, manifesting in the hurricane and empest, as Vâyu and Indra; and the God or Spirit of the Earth, who ppeared in earthquakes, like Pluto, Yama, and so many others.
These were the Cosmic Gods, ever synthesizing all in one, as found in very cosmogony or mythology. Thus, the Greeks had their Dodonean Jupiter, ho included in himself the four Elements and the four cardinal points, nd who was recognized, therefore, in old Rome under the pantheistic title f 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 atest theology, by the arbitrary decision of his special ministers.
As Gods of Fire, Air, and Water, they were _Celestial_ Gods; as Gods of he Lower Region, they were _Infernal_ Deities; the latter adjective pplying simply to the _Earth_. They were “Spirits of the Earth” under heir 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 n this Earth.(767) If it is argued that the Dodonean Jupiter was dentified with Dis, or the Roman Pluto with the Dionysus Chthonius, the
Subterranean, and with Aïdoneus, the King of the Subterranean World, herein, according to Creuzer,(768) oracles were rendered, then it will ecome 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 he _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 he Roman Catholics are right. All these Jupiters are of the same family; ut 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 orrelations and one with Iurbo‐Adonaï, because they are all one Cosmic
Nature. It is that Nature and Power which creates the specific terrestrial ymbol, and the physical and material fabric of the latter, which proves he Energy manifesting through it as _extrinsic_.
For primitive religion was something better than simple preöccupation bout physical phenomena, as remarked by Schelling; and principles, more levated than we modern Sadducees know of, “were hidden under the ransparent veil of such merely natural divinities as thunder, the winds, nd rain.” The Ancients knew and could distinguish the _corporeal_ from he _spiritual_ Elements in the Forces of Nature.
The four‐fold Jupiter, as the four‐faced Brahmâ, the aërial, the ulgurant, the terrestrial, and the marine God, the lord and master of the our Elements, may stand as a representative for the great Cosmic Gods of very nation. Although deputing power over the fire to Hephæstus‐Vulcan, ver the sea to Poseidon‐Neptune, and over the Earth to Pluto‐Aïdoneus, he Aërial Jove was still all these; for Æther, from the first, had reëminence over, and was the synthesis of, all the Elements.
Tradition tells of a grotto, a vast cave in the deserts of Central Asia, hereinto light pours, through four seemingly natural apertures, or clefts laced crossways at the four cardinal points. From noon till an hour efore sunset the light streams in, of four different colours, as averred, ed, blue, orange‐gold, and white, owing to some either natural or rtificially prepared conditions of vegetation and soil. The light onverges in the centre round a pillar of white marble with a globe upon t, which represents our earth. It is named the “Grotto of Zarathustra.”
Included under the arts and sciences of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans, he phenomenal manifestation of the Four Elements, which were justly ttributed by these believers to the intelligent interference of the
Cosmic Gods, assumed a scientific character. The Magic of the ancient riests consisted, in those days, in addressing _their Gods in their own anguage_.
_The speech of the men of the Earth cannot reach the Lords. Each must be ddressed in the language of his respective Element._
So says _The Book of Rules_, in a sentence which will be shown pregnant ith 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 ho knows how to blend the three, will call forth the response of the uperintending Power_ [_the Regent‐God of the specific Element needed_].
Thus this “language” is that of _incantations_ or of _mantras_, as they re called in India; sound being _the most potent and effectual magic gent, and the first of the keys which opens the door of communication etween Mortals and Immortals_. He who believes in the words and teachings f St. Paul, has no right to pick out from the latter those sentences only hich he chooses to accept, to the rejection of others; and St. Paul eaches most undeniably the existence of Cosmic Gods and their presence mong us. Paganism preached a dual and simultaneous evolution, a
“creation” _spiritualem ac mundanum_, as the Roman Church has it, ages efore the advent of that Roman Church. Exoteric phraseology has changed ittle with respect to Divine Hierarchies since the most palmy days of
Paganism, or “Idolatry.” Names alone have changed, together with claims hich have now become false pretences. For when, for instance, Plato put n 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 heir 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, hether in Heaven or in Earth, as there be Gods many and Lords any....”(770) Both knew the sense and the meaning of what they put orward in such guarded terms.
We cannot be taken to task by the Protestants for interpreting the verse rom 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 ense. For a proof see St. Dionysius, the Areopagite, who was “_directly nspired_ by the Apostle,” and “who wrote under his dictation,” as we are ssured by the Marquis de Mirville, whose works are approved by Rome, and ho says, commenting on that special verse: “And, though there are (in act) 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 eases not to remain essentially _one_ and indivisible.”(771) Thus spoke he old Initiates also, knowing that the worship of minor Gods could never ffect 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 ork, considers to be the _only_ concern of exact Science, which has no usiness 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‐ uoted words, namely, the _spirituality_ of the “ultimate generating ower,” it would be more than illogical to refuse to recognize this uality which is inherent in the _material elements_, or rather, in their ompounds, as present in the fire, air, water or earth. The Ancients knew hese powers so well, that, while concealing their true nature under arious allegories, for the benefit, or to the detriment, of the neducated rabble, they never departed from the multiple object in view, hile inverting them. They contrived to throw a thick veil over the ucleus of truth concealed by the symbol, but they ever tried to preserve he latter as a _record_ for future generations, sufficiently transparent o allow their wise men to discern the truth behind the fabulous form of he glyph or allegory. These ancient sages are accused of _superstition_ nd _credulity_; and this too by the very nations, which, though learned n all the modern arts and sciences, and cultured and wise in their eneration, accept to this day as their one living and infinite God, the nthropomorphic “Jehovah” of the Jews!
What were some of these alleged “superstitions”? Hesiod believed, for nstance, that “the winds were the sons of the Giant Typhôeus,” who were hained and unchained at will by Æolus, and the polytheistic Greeks ccepted it along with Hesiod. Why should they not, since the monotheistic
Jews had the same beliefs, with other names for their _dramatis personæ_, nd 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__”__ oming __“__out of his nostrils and fire out of his mouth, ... rode upon a herub 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 oth _superstitions_. We think they are neither; but only arise from a een sense of oneness with Nature, and a perception of the mysterious and he intelligent behind every natural phenomenon, which the moderns no onger possess. Nor was it “superstitious” in the Greek Pagans to listen o the oracle of Delphi, when, at the approach of the fleet of Xerxes, hat oracle advised them to “sacrifice to the winds,” if the same has to e regarded as _divine_ worship in the Israelites, who sacrificed as often o 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 he same after them? Do not they, moreover, sacrifice to this day, to the ame “God of Wind and Water”? They do; because special prayers for rain, ry weather, trade‐winds and the calming of storms on the seas, exist to his hour in the prayer‐books of the three Christian Churches; and the everal hundred sects of the Protestant religion offer them to their God pon 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 act of these prayers being addressed to the Power, or Powers, supposed to ule over the Elements, or of these Powers being identical in Paganism and
Christianity; or have we to believe that such prayers are crass idolatry nd absurd “superstition” _only_ when addressed by a Pagan to his “idol,” nd that the same superstition is suddenly transformed into “praiseworthy iety” and “religion” whenever the name of the celestial addressee is hanged? 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 hould 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, hat in Hebrew “lightning” is a synonym of “fury,” and is always handled y the “evil” Spirit; that Jupiter Fulgur or Fulgurans is also called by he Christians Elicius, and denounced as the “soul of lightning,” its
Dæmon;(777) we have either to apply the same explanation and definitions o the “Lord God of Israel,” under the same circumstances, or renounce our ight 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 he _Bible_ and its prophets. Indeed, if Jupiter, the “chief Dæmon of the
Pagan Greeks,” hurled his deadly thunder‐bolts and lightnings at those who xcited his wrath, so did the Lord God of Abraham and Jacob. For we read hat:
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” s charged with having submerged and wrecked 400 ships of the Persian leet on the rocks of Mount Pelion, and of having become so furious that ll the Magi of Xerxes could hardly counteract him by offering contra‐ acrifices to Thetis.(779) Very fortunately, no authenticated instance is n the records of Christian wars, showing a like catastrophe on the same cale happening to one Christian fleet, owing to the “prayers” of its nemy—another Christian nation. But this is from no fault of theirs, for ach 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 agic _con amore_. Such abstinence from divine interference being hardly ue to lack of prayers, sent to a _common_ Almighty God for mutual estruction, where, then, shall we draw the line between Pagan and
Christian? And who can doubt that all Protestant England would rejoice and ffer thanks to the Lord, if during some future war, 400 ships of the ostile fleet were to be wrecked owing to such holy prayers? What is, hen, 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 ne’s father, is always excused and often exalted, whereas the crime of ur neighbour’s parent is ever gladly punished by hanging. Yet the crime s the same.
So far the “blessings of Christianity” do not seem to have made any ppreciable 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 mpartial, and rejects the testimony in favour of both, neither praying o, believing in, nor dreading any such “personal” and anthropomorphic
God. The parallels are brought forward simply as one more curious xhibition of the illogical and blind fanaticism of the civilized heologian. For, so far, there is not a very great difference between the wo beliefs, and there is none in their respective effects upon
_morality_, or spiritual nature. The “light of Christ” shines upon as ideous features of the animal man now, as the “light of Lucifer” did in ays 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 as 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 rom that of the Phœnician mariners to their Virgin‐Goddess Astarte. The ogical and irrepressible conclusion arising from the parallels brought orward, and the denunciation of the missionary, is that the _commands_ of he Brâhmans to their Element‐Gods _not remaining_ “ineffectual,” the ower 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 f the Sea” of Christian sailors. It is not enough to give a dog a bad ame, 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 ree has to be judged by its fruit. And once the Christians are shown to e 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 imple mortals a crime, if successful. Sorcery and incantations are now egarded as fables; yet from the Institutes of Justinian down to the laws f England and America against witchcraft—obsolete but not repealed to his day—such incantations, even when only suspected, were punished as riminal. Why punish a chimera? And still we read of Constantine, the
Emperor, sentencing to death the philosopher Sopatrus for “unchaining the inds,” and thus preventing ships laden with grain from arriving in time o put an end to famine. Pausanias is derided when he affirms that he saw ith his own eyes “men who by simple prayers and incantations” stopped a trong hail‐storm. This does not prevent modern Christian writers from dvising prayer during storm and danger, and believing in its efficacy.
Hoppo and Stadlein, two magicians and sorcerers, were sentenced to death or “throwing charms on fruit” and transferring a harvest by magic arts rom one field to another, hardly a century ago, if we can believe
Sprenger, the famous writer, who vouches for it: “_Qui fruges excantassent egetem pellicentes incantando_.”
Let us close by reminding the reader that, without the smallest shadow of uperstition, one may believe in the dual nature of every object on Earth, n spiritual and material, in visible and invisible Nature, and that
Science virtually proves this, while denying its own demonstration. For f, 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 nfluence,” 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 nion [correlation] of the former with Terrestrial Fire, and its guidance nd application on our earthly plane belongs to a Kabir of a lesser ignity”—an Elemental, perhaps, as an Occultist would call it; and the ame may be said of every Cosmic Element.
No one will deny that the human being is possessed of various forces, agnetic, sympathetic, antipathetic, nervous, dynamical, occult, echanical, mental, in fact of every kind of force; and that the physical orces are all biological in their essence, seeing that they intermingle ith, and often merge into, those forces that we have named intellectual nd moral, the first being the vehicles, so to say, the upâdhis, of the econd. No one, who does not deny soul in man, would hesitate in saying hat their presence and commingling are the very essence of our being; hat they constitute the Ego in man, in fact. These potencies have their hysiological, physical, mechanical, as well as their nervous, ecstatic, lairaudient, and clairvoyant phenomena, which are now regarded and ecognized as perfectly natural, even by Science. Why should man be the nly exception in Nature, and why cannot even the Elements have their
Vehicles, their Vâhanas, in what we call the Physical Forces? And why, bove all, should such beliefs be called “superstition” along with the eligions of old?
Section XV. On Kwan‐Shi‐Yin and Kwan‐Yin.
Like Avalokiteshvara, Kwan‐Shi‐Yin has passed through several ransformations, but it is an error to say of him that he is a modern nvention of the Northern Buddhists, for under another appellation he has een known from the earliest times. The Secret Doctrine teaches that: “_He ho 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 ations, are the “Word” who was in the “Beginning,” or the reäwakening of he energizing Powers of Nature, with the One ABSOLUTE. Born of Fire and
Water, before these became distinct Elements, It was the “Maker,” the ashioner or modeller, of all things. “Without him was not anything made hat was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men,” who inally 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, nd 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 Manvantara to its end, though his special birthday, or memorial day, is elebrated 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, n the Seventh Race. This belief and expectation are universal throughout he East. Only it is not in the Kali Yuga, our present terrifically aterialistic 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 agic. The Mantras are all taken from special books kept secret by the riests, and each is said to work a magical effect; as the reciter or eader, by simply chanting them, produces a secret causation which results n immediate effects. Kwan‐Shi‐Yin is Avalokiteshvara, and both are forms f the Seventh Universal Principle; while in its highest metaphysical haracter this Deity is the synthetic aggregation of all the Planetary
Spirits, Dhyân Chohans. He is the “Self‐Manifested”; in short, the “Son of he Father.” Crowned with seven dragons, above his statue there appears he inscription Pu‐tsi‐k’iun‐ling, “the universal Saviour of all living eings.”
Of course the name given in the archaic volume of the Stanzas is quite ifferent, but Kwan‐Yin is a perfect equivalent. In a temple of P’u‐to, he sacred island of the Buddhists in China, Kwan‐Shi‐Yin is represented loating on a black aquatic bird (Kâlahamsa), and pouring on the heads of ortals the elixir of life, which, as it flows, is transformed into one of he chief Dhyâni‐Buddhas, the Regent of a star called the “Star of
Salvation.” In his third transformation Kwan‐Yin is the informing Spirit r Genius of Water. In China the Dalaï‐Lama is believed to be an ncarnation 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 magination to discover phallic worship everywhere, as do McClatchey and
Hargrave Jennings. The first discovers “the old phallic gods, represented nder two evident symbols, the Kheen or Yang, which is the _membrum irile_, and the Khw‐an or Yin, the _pudendum muliebre_.”(783) Such a endering seems the more strange as Kwan‐Shi‐Yin (Avalokiteshvara) and
Kwan‐Yin, besides being now the patron Deities of the Buddhist ascetics, he Yogîs of Tibet, are the Gods of chastity, and are, in their esoteric eaning, not even that which is implied in the rendering of Mr. Rhys
Davids’ _Buddhism_: “The name Avalokiteshvara ... means ‘the Lord who ooks 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 he 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 ynthetic aggregate of the Dhyâni‐Buddhas; and is not the “Spirit of
Buddha present in the Church,” but the Omnipresent Universal Spirit anifested in the temple of Kosmos or Nature. This Orientalistic etymology f 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 r Dutica,” _i.e._, a sacred prostitute of the temple, worshipped as Yoni r Shakti.(785) “The books of morality [in India] direct a faithful wife o shun the society of Yogini or females who have been adored as
Sacti.”(786) Nothing should surprise us after this. And it is, therefore, ith hardly a smile that we find another preposterous absurdity quoted bout “Budh,” as being a name “which signifies not only the sun as the ource of generation but also the male organ.”(787) Max Müller, in reating of “False Analogies,” says that “the most celebrated Chinese cholar 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‐ o‐vah”;(788) and again, Father Amyot “felt certain that the three persons f the Trinity could be recognized” in the same work. And if Abel Rémusat, hy not Hargrave Jennings? Every scholar will recognize the absurdity of ver seeing in Budh, the “enlightened” and the “awakened,” a “phallic ymbol.”
Kwan‐Shi‐Yin, then, is “the Son identical with his Father,” mystically, or he Logos, the Word. He is called the “Dragon of Wisdom,” in Stanza III, or all the Logoi of all the ancient religious systems are connected with, nd symbolized by, serpents. In old Egypt, the God Nahbkoon, “he who nites the doubles,” was represented as a serpent on human legs, either ith or without arms. This was the Astral Light reüniting by its dual hysiological and spiritual potency the Divine‐Human to its purely Divine
Monad, the Prototype in “Heaven” or Nature. It was the emblem of the esurrection of Nature; of Christ with the Ophites; and of Jehovah as the razen serpent healing those who looked at him. The serpent was also an mblem 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, ays Champollion, “is represented among other forms under that of a huge erpent on human legs; this reptile, being the emblem of the Good Genius nd the veritable Agathodæmon, is sometimes bearded.”(789) This sacred nimal is thus identical with the serpent of the Ophites, and is figured n a great number of engraved stones, called Gnostic or Basilidean gems.
It appears with various heads, human and animal, but its gems are always ound inscribed with the name ΧΝΟΥΒΙΣ (ChNOUBIS). This symbol is identical ith 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 he 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, f 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 ysteries never to be wholly comprehended by the profane, the Ancients, nowing that nothing could be preserved in human memory without some utward 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, owever, the Madonnas in crinolines and the Christs in white kid gloves ust appear far more absurd than the Kwan‐Shi‐Yin and Kwan‐Yin in their ragon‐garb. The subjective can hardly be expressed by the objective.
Therefore, since the symbolic formula attempts to characterize that which s above scientific reasoning, and is as often far beyond our intellects, t must needs go beyond that intellect in some shape or other, or else it ill 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 he ordinary stand‐point of modern scientific knowledge. They seemed to ncounter insuperable difficulties in the way of their acceptance, and to equire reconsideration in view of scientific criticism. Some friends have lready been tempted to regret the necessity of so often calling in uestion the assertions of Modern Science. It appeared to them—and I here epeat only their arguments—that “to run counter to the teachings of its ost eminent exponents, was to court a premature discomfiture in the eyes f the Western World.”
It is, therefore, desirable to define, once and for all, the position hich the writer, who does not in this agree with her friends, intends to aintain. So far as Science remains what in the words of Prof. Huxley it s, viz., “organized common sense”; so far as its inferences are drawn rom accurate premisses, its generalizations resting on a purely inductive asis, every Theosophist and Occultist welcomes respectfully and with due dmiration its contributions to the domain of cosmological law. There can e no possible conflict between the teachings of Occult and so‐called xact Science, wherever the conclusions of the latter are grounded on a ubstratum of unassailable fact. It is only when its more ardent xponents, over‐stepping the limits of observed phenomena in order to enetrate 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 uestion their theories. Science cannot, owing to the very nature of hings, unveil the mystery of the Universe around us. Science can, it is rue, collect, classify, and generalize upon phenomena; but the Occultist, rguing from admitted metaphysical data, declares that the daring xplorer, who would probe the inmost secrets of Nature, must transcend the arrow limitations of sense, and transfer his consciousness into the egion of Noumena and the sphere of Primal Causes. To effect this, he must evelop faculties which, save in a few rare and exceptional cases, are bsolutely dormant, in the constitution of the off‐shoots of our present
Fifth Root‐Race in Europe and America. He can in no other conceivable anner collect the facts on which to base his speculations. Is this not pparent on the principles of Inductive Logic and Metaphysics alike?
On the other hand, whatever the writer may do, she will never be able to atisfy both Truth and Science. To offer the reader a systematic and ninterrupted version of the Archaic Stanzas is impossible. A gap of 43 erses 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 s from 1 onwards, for easier reading and reference. The mere appearance f man on Earth occupies an equal number of Stanzas, which minutely escribe his primal evolution from the human Dhyân Chohans, the state of he Globe at that time, etc., etc. A great number of names referring to hemical substances and other compounds, which have now ceased to combine ogether, and are therefore unknown to the later offshoots of our Fifth
Race, occupy a considerable space. As they are simply untranslatable, and ould remain in every case inexplicable, they are omitted, along with hose which cannot be made public. Nevertheless, even the little that is iven 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 emaining Stanzas, to defend those already given. That they are not in erfect accord or harmony with Modern Science, we all know. But had they een as much in agreement with the views of modern knowledge as is a ecture by Sir William Thomson, they would have been rejected all the ame. For they teach belief in conscious Powers and Spiritual Entities; in errestrial, semi‐intelligent, and highly intellectual Forces on other lanes;(790) and in Beings that dwell around us in spheres imperceptible, hether through telescope or microscope. Hence the necessity of examining he beliefs of materialistic Science, of comparing its views about the
“Elements” with the opinions of the Ancients, and of analysing the hysical Forces as they exist in modern conceptions, before the Occultists dmit themselves to be in the wrong. We shall touch upon the constitution f 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 otion,” and see whether Esoteric belief is defensible or not.
Notwithstanding the efforts made to the contrary, an unprejudiced mind ill discover that under Newton’s “agent, material or immaterial,”(791) he agent which _causes gravity_, and in his personal _working_ God, there s just as much of the metaphysical Devas and Genii, as there is in
Kepler’s Angelus Rector conducting each planet, and in the _species mmateriata_ by which the celestial bodies were carried along in their ourses, according to that Astronomer.
In Volume II, we shall have to openly approach dangerous subjects. We must ravely face Science and declare, in the teeth of materialistic learning, f Idealism, Hylo‐Idealism, Positivism and all‐denying modern Psychology, hat the true Occultist believes in “Lords of Light”; that he believes in Sun, which—far from being simply a “lamp of day” moving in accordance ith physical law, and far from being merely one of those Suns, which, ccording to Richter, “are sun‐flowers of a higher light”—is, like illiards of other Suns, the dwelling or the vehicle of a God, and of a ost of Gods.
In this dispute, of course, it is the Occultists who will be worsted. They ill be considered, on the _primâ facie_ aspect of the question, to be gnoramuses, and will be labelled with more than one of the usual epithets iven to those whom the superficially judging public, itself ignorant of he great underlying truths in Nature, accuses of believing in mediæval uperstitions. Let it be so. Submitting beforehand to every criticism in rder to go on with their task, they only claim the privilege of showing hat the Physicists are as much at loggerheads among themselves in their peculations, as these speculations are with the teachings of Occultism.
The Sun is Matter, and the Sun is Spirit. Our ancestors, the “Heathen,” ike their modern successors, the Parsîs, were, and are, wise enough in heir generation to see in it the symbol of Divinity, and at the same time o sense within, concealed by the physical symbol, the bright God of
Spiritual and Terrestrial Light. Such belief can be regarded as a uperstition only by rank Materialism, which denies Deity, Spirit, Soul, nd admits no intelligence outside the mind of man. But if too much wrong uperstition bred by “Churchianity,” as Laurence Oliphant calls it,
“renders a man a fool,” too much scepticism makes him mad. We prefer the harge of folly in believing too much, to that of a madness which denies verything, as do Materialism and Hylo‐Idealism. Hence, the Occultists are ully prepared to receive their dues from Materialism, and to meet the dverse criticism which will be poured on the author of this work, not for riting it, but for believing in that which it contains.
Therefore the discoveries, hypotheses, and unavoidable objections which ill be brought forward by the scientific critics must be anticipated and isposed of. It has also to be shown how far the Occult Teachings depart rom Modern Science, and whether the ancient or the modern theories are he more logically and philosophically correct. The unity and mutual elations of all parts of Kosmos were known to the Ancients, before they ecame evident to modern Astronomers and Philosophers. And even if the xternal and visible portions of the Universe, and their mutual relations, annot be explained in Physical Science, in any other terms than those sed by the adherents of the mechanical theory of the Universe, it does ot follow that the Materialist, who denies that the Soul of Kosmos (which ppertains to Metaphysical Philosophy) exists, has the right to trespass pon that metaphysical domain. That Physical Science is trying to, and ctually does, encroach upon it, is only one more proof that “might is ight”; it does not justify the intrusion.
Another good reason for these Addenda is this. Since only a certain ortion of the Secret Teachings can be given out in the present age, the octrines would never be understood even by Theosophists, if they were ublished without any explanations or commentary. Therefore they must be ontrasted with the speculations of Modern Science. Archaic Axioms must be laced side by side with Modern Hypotheses, and the comparison of their alue 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 toms of which are the shadows, in their own world, of their Primaries in he Astral Realms—this work will, of course, have every Materialist gainst it, as well as the men of Science. But this opposition can, at ost, be only temporary. People have laughed at everything unusual, and ave scouted every unpopular idea at first, and have then ended by ccepting it. Materialism and Scepticism are evils that must remain in the orld so long as man has not quitted his present gross form to don the one e had during the First and Second Races of this Round. Unless Scepticism nd our present natural ignorance are equilibrated by Intuition and a atural Spirituality, every being afflicted with such feelings will see in imself nothing better than a bundle of flesh, bones, and muscles, with an mpty garret inside, which serves the purpose of storing his sensations nd 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 peaking of that only which they can see by, and estimate on the evidence f, their physical senses. Astronomers and Physicists are, we consider, ar 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,
as 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 otion,” now regarded as the “property of matter” and nothing more, they erceive the radiant Noumenon. It is the “Spirit of Light,” the first‐born f 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, ot only by his inductive method—renovated from ill‐digested Aristotle—but y 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 soterically rendered, “Let there be the ‘Sons of Light’,” or the Noumena f all phenomena. Thus the Roman Catholics rightly interpret the passage s referring to Angels, but wrongly as meaning Powers created by an nthropomorphic God, whom they personify in the ever thundering and unishing Jehovah.
These beings are the “Sons of Light,” because they emanate from, and are elf‐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 ype as it descends into manifestation. Therefore Matter, though it is, in ne 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 hat 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 ruthfully, 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.
Section II. Modern Physicists are Playing at Blind Man’s Buff.
And now Occultism puts to Science the question: Is light a body, or is it ot? Whatever the answer of the latter, the former is prepared to show hat, to this day, the most eminent Physicists have no real knowledge on he subject. To know what light is, and whether it is an actual substance r a mere undulation of the “ethereal medium,” Science has first to learn hat Matter, Atom, Ether, Force, are in reality. Now, the truth is, that t knows nothing of any of these, and admits its ignorance. It has not ven agreed what to believe in, as dozens of hypotheses on the same ubject, emanating from various and very eminent Scientists, are ntagonistic to each other and often self‐contradictory. Thus their earned speculations may, with a stretch of good‐will, be accepted as
“working hypotheses” in a secondary sense, as Stallo puts it. But being adically inconsistent with each other, they must finally end by mutually estroying themselves. As declared by the author of _Concepts of Modem
Physics_:
It must not be forgotten that the several departments of science
are simply arbitrary divisions of science at large. In these
several departments the same physical object may be considered
under different aspects. The physicist may study its molecular
relations, while the chemist determines its atomic constitution.
But when they both deal with the same element or agent, it cannot
have one set of properties in physics, and another set
contradictory of them, in chemistry. If the physicist and chemist
alike assume the existence of ultimate atoms absolutely invariable
in bulk and weight, the atom cannot be a cube or oblate spheroid
for physical, and a sphere for chemical purposes. A group of
constant atoms cannot be an aggregate of extended and absolutely
inert and impenetrable masses in a crucible or retort, and a
system of mere centres of force as part of a magnet or of a
Clamond battery. The universal æther cannot be soft and mobile to
please the chemist, and rigid‐elastic to satisfy the physicist; it
cannot be continuous at the command of Sir William Thomson and
discontinuous on the suggestion of Cauchy or Fresnel.(792)
The eminent Physicist, G. A. Hirn, may likewise be quoted as saying the ame thing in the 43rd Volume of the _Mémoires de l’Académie Royale de
Belgique_, which we translate from the French, as cited:
When one sees the assurance with which to‐day are affirmed
doctrines which attribute the collectivity, the universality of
the phenomena to the motions alone of the atom, one has a right to
expect to find likewise unanimity in the qualities assigned to
this unique being, the foundation of all that exists. Now, from
the first examination of the particular systems proposed, one
finds the strangest deception; one perceives that the atom of the
chemist, the atom of the physicist, that of the metaphysician, and
that of the mathematician ... have absolutely nothing in common
but the name! The inevitable result is the existing subdivision of
our sciences, each of which, in its own little pigeon‐hole,
constructs an atom which satisfies the requirements of the
phenomena it studies, without troubling itself in the least about
the requirements proper to the phenomena of the neighbouring
pigeon‐hole. The metaphysician banishes the principles of
attraction and repulsion as dreams; the mathematician, who
analyses the laws of elasticity and those of the propagation of
light, admits them implicitly, without even naming them.... The
chemist cannot explain the grouping of the atoms, in his often
complicated molecules, without attributing to his atoms specific
distinguishing qualities; _for the physicist and the
metaphysician, partisans of the modern doctrines, the atom is, on
the contrary, always and everywhere the same_. What am I saying?
There is no agreement even in one and the same science as to the
properties of the atom. Each constructs an atom to suit his own
fancy, in order to explain some special phenomenon with which he
is particularly concerned.(793)
The above is the photographically correct image of Modern Science and
Physics. The “pre‐requisite of that incessant play of the ’scientific magination’,” which is so often found in Professor Tyndall’s eloquent iscourses, is vivid indeed, as is shown by Stallo, and for contradictory ariety it leaves far behind it any “phantasies” of Occultism. However hat may be, if physical theories are confessedly “mere formal, xplanatory, didactic devices,” and if, to use the words of a critic of
Stallo, “atomism is only a symbolical graphic system,”(794) then the
Occultist can hardly be regarded as assuming too much, when he places longside of these “devices” and “symbolical systems” of Modern Science, he symbols and devices of Archaic Teachings.
“An Lumen Sit Corpus, Nec Non?”
Most decidedly light is not a body, we are told. Physical Sciences say ight is a force, a vibration, the undulation of Ether. It is the property r quality of Matter, or even an affection thereof—never _a body_!
Just so. For this discovery, the knowledge, whatever it may be worth, that ight or caloric is not a motion of _material particles_, Science is hiefly, if not solely indebted, to Sir William Grove. It was he who in a ecture at the London Institution, in 1842, was the first to show that
“heat, light,(795) may be considered as affections of matter itself, and ot of a distinct ethereal, ‘imponderable,’ fluid [a state of matter
_now_] permeating it.”(796) Yet, perhaps, for some Physicists—as for
Œrsted, a very eminent Scientist—Force and Forces were tacitly “Spirit
[and hence Spirits] in Nature.” What several rather mystical Scientists aught was that light, heat, magnetism, electricity and gravity, etc., ere not the final Causes of the visible phenomena, including planetary otion, but were themselves the secondary _effects of other Causes_, for hich Science in our day cares very little, but in which Occultism elieves; for the Occultists have exhibited proofs of the validity of heir claims in every age. And in what age were there no Occultists and no
Adepts?
Sir Isaac Newton held to the Pythagorean corpuscular theory, and was also nclined to admit its consequences; which made the Comte de Maistre hope, t one time, that Newton would ultimately lead Science back to the ecognition of the fact that Forces and the Celestial Bodies _were ropelled and guided by Intelligences_.(797) But de Maistre counted ithout his host. The innermost thoughts and ideas of Newton were erverted, and of his great mathematical learning only the mere physical usk was turned to account.
According to one atheistic Idealist, Dr. Lewins:
When Sir Isaac, in 1687 ... showed mass and atom acted upon ... by
innate activity ... he effectually disposed of Spirit, Anima, or
Divinity, as supererogatory.
Had poor Sir Isaac foreseen to what use his successors and followers would pply his “gravity,” that pious and religious man would surely have uietly eaten his apple, and never have breathed a word about any echanical ideas connected with its fall.
Great contempt is shown by Scientists for Metaphysics generally and for
Ontological Metaphysics especially. But whenever the Occultists are bold nough to raise their diminished heads, we see that Materialistic,
Physical Science is honey‐combed with Metaphysics;(798) that its most undamental principles, while inseparably wedded to transcendentalism, are evertheless, in order to show Modern Science divorced from such “dreams,” ortured and often ignored in the maze of contradictory theories and ypotheses. A very good corroboration of this charge lies in the fact that
Science finds itself absolutely compelled to accept the “hypothetical”
Ether, and to try to explain it on the materialistic grounds of atomo‐ echanical laws. This attempt has led directly to the most fatal iscrepancies and radical inconsistencies between the assumed nature of
Ether and its physical behaviour. A second proof is found in the many ontradictory statements made about the Atom—the most metaphysical object n creation.
Now, what does the modern science of Physics know of Ether, the first oncept of which belongs undeniably to ancient Philosophers, the Greeks aving borrowed it from the Âryans, and the origin of modern Ether being ound in, and disfigured from, Âkâsha? This disfigurement is claimed as a odification and refinement of the idea of Lucretius. Let us then examine he modern concept, from several scientific volumes containing the dmissions of the Physicists themselves.
As Stallo shows, the existence of Ether is accepted in Physical Astronomy, n ordinary Physics, and in Chemistry.
By the astronomers, this æther was originally regarded as a fluid
of extreme tenuity and mobility, offering no sensible resistance
to the motions of celestial bodies, and the question of its
continuity or discontinuity was not seriously mooted. Its main
function in modern astronomy has been to serve as a basis for
hydro‐dynamical theories of gravitation. In physics this fluid
appeared for some time in several _rôles_ in connection with the
“imponderables” [so cruelly put to death by Sir William Grove],
some physicists going so far as to identify it with one or more of
them.(799)
Stallo then points out the change caused by the kinetic theories; that rom the date of the dynamical theory of heat, Ether was chosen in Optics s a substratum for luminous undulations. Next, in order to explain the ispersion and polarization of light, Physicists had to resort once more o their “scientific imagination,” and forthwith endowed the Ether with
(_a_) atomic or molecular structure, and (_b_) with an enormous lasticity, “so that its resistance to deformation far exceeded that of he most rigid elastic bodies.” This necessitated the _theory of the ssential discontinuity of Matter_, hence of Ether. After having accepted his discontinuity, in order to account for dispersion and polarization, heoretical impossibilities were discovered with regard to such ispersion. Cauchy’s “scientific imagination” saw in Atoms “material oints without extension,” and he proposed, in order to obviate the most ormidable obstacles to the undulatory theory (namely, some well‐known echanical theorems which stood in the way), to assume that the ethereal edium of propagation, instead of being continuous, should consist of articles separated by sensible distances. Fresnel rendered the same ervice to the phenomena of polarization. E. B. Hunt upset the theories of oth.(800) There are now men of Science who proclaim them “materially allacious,” while others—the “atomo‐mechanicalists”—cling to them with esperate tenacity. The supposition of an _atomic_ or _molecular onstitution_ of Ether is upset, moreover, by thermo‐dynamics, for Clerk
Maxwell showed that such a medium would be simply _gas_.(801) The ypothesis of “finite intervals” is thus proven of no avail as a upplement to the undulatory theory. Besides, eclipses fail to reveal any uch variation of colour as is supposed by Cauchy, on the assumption that he chromatic rays are propagated with different velocities. Astronomy has ointed out more than one phenomenon absolutely at variance with this octrine.
Thus, while in one department of Physics the atomo‐molecular constitution f the Ether is accepted in order to account for one special set of henomena, in another department such a constitution is found to be quite ubversive of a number of well‐ascertained facts; and Hirn’s charges are hus justified. Chemistry deemed it
Impossible to concede the enormous elasticity of the æther without
depriving it of those properties, upon which its serviceableness
in the construction of chemical theories mainly depended.
This ended in a final transformation of Ether.
The exigencies of the atomo‐mechanical theory have led
distinguished mathematicians and physicists to attempt a
substitution for the traditional atoms of matter, of peculiar
forms of vortical motion in a universal, homogeneous,
incompressible, and _continuous_ material medium [Ether].(802)
The present writer—claiming no great scientific education, but only a olerable acquaintance with modern theories, and a better one with Occult
Sciences—picks up weapons against the detractors of the Esoteric Teaching n the very arsenal of Modern Science. The glaring contradictions, the utually‐destructive hypotheses of world‐renowned Scientists, their isputes, their accusations and denunciations of each other, show plainly hat, whether accepted or not, the Occult Theories have as much right to a earing as any of the so‐called learned and academical hypotheses. Thus, hether the followers of the Royal Society choose to accept Ether as a
_continuous_ or as a _discontinuous_ fluid matters little, and is ndifferent for the present purpose. It simply points to one certainty:
Official Science _knows nothing to this day of the constitution of Ether_.
Let Science call it Matter, if it likes; only neither as Âkâsha, nor as he one sacred Æther of the Greeks, is it to be found in any of the states f Matter known to modern Physics. It is Matter on quite another plane of erception and being, and it can neither be analyzed by scientific pparatus, nor appreciated or even conceived by the “scientific magination,” unless the possessors thereof study the Occult Sciences.
That which follows proves this statement.
It is clearly demonstrated by Stallo as regards the crucial problems of odern Physics, as was done by De Quatrefages and several others in those f Anthropology, Biology, etc., that, in their efforts to support their ndividual hypotheses and systems, most of the eminent and learned
Materialists very often utter the greatest fallacies. Let us take the ollowing case. Most of them reject _actio in distans_—one of the undamental principles in the question of Æther or Âkâsha in
Occultism—while, as Stallo justly observes, there is no physical action
“which, on close examination, does not resolve itself into _actio in istans_”; and he proves it.
Now, metaphysical arguments, according to Professor Lodge,(803) are
“unconscious appeals to experience.” And he adds that if such an xperience _is not conceivable_, then it does not exist. In his own words:
If a highly‐developed mind or set of minds, find a doctrine about
some comparatively simple and fundamental matter absolutely
unthinkable, it is an evidence ... that the unthinkable state of
things has no existence.
And thereupon, toward the end of his lecture, the Professor indicates that he explanation of cohesion, as well as of gravity, “is to be looked for n the vortex‐atom theory of Sir William Thomson.”
It is needless to stop to inquire whether it is to this vortex‐atom heory, also, that we have to look for the dropping down on earth of the irst life‐germ by a passing meteor or comet—Sir William Thomson’s ypothesis. But Prof. Lodge might be reminded of the wise criticism on his ecture in Stallo’s _Concepts of Modem Physics_. Noticing the above‐quoted eclaration by the Professor, the author asks
Whether ... the elements of the vortex‐atom theory are familiar,
or even possible, facts of experience? For, if they are not,
clearly that theory is obnoxious to the same criticism which is
said to invalidate the assumption of _actio in distans_.(804)
And then the able critic shows clearly what the Ether is not, nor can ever e, notwithstanding all scientific claims to the contrary. And thus he pens widely, if unconsciously, the entrance door to our Occult Teachings.
For, as he says:
The medium in which the vortex‐movements arise is, according to
Professor Lodge’s own express statement (_Nature_, vol. xxvii. p.
305), “a perfectly homogeneous, incompressible, continuous body,
incapable of being resolved into simple elements or atoms; it is,
in fact, continuous, not molecular.” And after making this
statement Professor Lodge adds: “_There is no other body of which
we can say this, and hence the properties of the æther must be
somewhat different from those of ordinary matter_.” It appears,
then, that the whole vortex‐atom theory, which is offered to us as
a substitute for the “metaphysical theory” of _actio in distans_,
rests upon the hypothesis of the existence of a material medium
which is utterly unknown to experience, and which has properties
_somewhat_ different(805) from those of ordinary matter. Hence
this theory, instead of being, as is claimed, a reduction of an
unfamiliar fact of experience to a familiar fact, is, on the
contrary, a reduction of a fact which is perfectly familiar, to a
fact which is not only unfamiliar, but wholly unknown, unobserved
and unobservable. Furthermore, the alleged vortical motion of, or
rather in, the assumed ethereal medium is ... _impossible_,
because “motion in a perfectly homogeneous, incompressible, and
therefore continuous fluid, is not sensible motion.”... It is
manifest, therefore ... that, wherever the vortex‐atom theory may
land us, it certainly does not land us anywhere in the region of
physics, or in the domain of _veræ causæ_.(806) And I may add
that, inasmuch as the hypothetical undifferentiated(807) and
undifferentiable medium is clearly an involuntary reïfication of
the old ontological concept _pure being_, the theory under
discussion has all the attributes of an inapprehensible
metaphysical phantom.(808)
A “phantom,” indeed, which can be made apprehensible only by Occultism.
From such scientific Metaphysics to Occultism there is hardly one step.
Those Physicists who hold the view that the atomic constitution of Matter s consistent with its penetrability, need not go far out of their way to e able to account for the greatest phenomena of Occultism, now so derided y Physical Scientists and Materialists. Cauchy’s “material points without xtension” are Leibnitz’s Monads, and at the same time are the materials ut of which the “Gods” and other invisible Powers clothe themselves in odies. The disintegration and reïntegration of “material” particles ithout extension, as a chief factor in phenomenal manifestations, ought o suggest themselves very easily as a clear possibility, at any rate to hose few scientific minds which accept M. Cauchy’s views. For, disposing f that property of Matter which they call impenetrability, by simply egarding the Atoms as “material points exerting on each other attractions nd repulsions which vary with the distances that separate them,” the
French theorist explains that:
From this it follows that, if it pleased the author of nature
simply to modify the laws according to which the atoms attract or
repel each other, we might instantly see the hardest bodies
penetrating each other, the smallest particles of matter occupying
immense spaces, or the largest masses reducing themselves to the
smallest volumes, the entire universe concentrating itself, as it
were, in a single point.(809)
And that “point,” _invisible on our plane of perception and matter_, is uite visible to the eye of the Adept who can follow and see it present on ther planes. For the Occultists, who say that the author of Nature _is
Nature itself_, something indistinct and inseparable from the Deity, it ollows that those who are conversant with the Occult laws of Nature, and now how to change and provoke new conditions in Ether, may—_not_ modify he laws, but work and do the same in accordance with these immutable aws.
Section III. Is Gravitation a Law?
The corpuscular theory has been unceremoniously put aside; but ravitation—the principle that all bodies attract each other with a force roportional directly to their masses, and inversely to the squares of the istances between them—survives to this day and reigns, supreme as ever, n the alleged ethereal waves of Space. As a hypothesis, it had been hreatened with death for its inadequacy to embrace all the facts resented to it; as a physical law, it is the King of the late and once ll‐potent “Imponderables.” “It is little short of blasphemy ... an insult o Newton’s grand memory to doubt it!”—is the exclamation of an American eviewer of _Isis Unveiled_. Well; what is finally that invisible and ntangible God in whom we should believe on blind faith? Astronomers who ee in gravitation an easy‐going solution for many things, and a universal orce which allows them to calculate planetary motions, care little about he Cause of Attraction. They call Gravity a law, a cause in itself. We all the forces acting under that name effects, and very secondary ffects, too. One day it will be found that the scientific hypothesis does ot answer after all; and then it will follow the corpuscular theory of ight, and be consigned to rest for many scientific æons in the archives f all exploded speculations. Has not Newton himself expressed grave oubts about the nature of Force and the corporeality of the “Agents,” as hey were then called? So has Cuvier, another scientific light shining in he night of research. He warns his readers, in the _Révolution du Globe_, bout the doubtful nature of the so‐called Forces, saying that “it is not o sure whether those agents were not after all Spiritual Powers [_des gents spirituels_].” At the outset of his _Principia_, Sir Isaac Newton ook the greatest care to impress upon his school that he did not use the ord “attraction,” with regard to the mutual action of bodies in a hysical sense. To him it was, he said, a purely mathematical conception, nvolving no consideration of real and primary physical causes. In a assage of his _Principia_,(810) he tells us plainly that, physically onsidered, attractions are rather impulses. In Section xi (Introduction), e expresses the opinion that “there is some subtle spirit by the force nd action of which all movements of matter are determined”;(811) and in is _Third Letter_ to Bentley he says:
It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without
the mediation of something else _which is not material_, operate
upon and affect other matter, without mutual contact, as it must
do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and
inherent in it.... That gravity should be innate, inherent and
essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a
distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else
by and through which their action may be conveyed from one to
another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who
has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can
ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting
constantly according to certain laws; but _whether this agent be
material or immaterial_ I have left to the consideration of my
readers.
At this, even Newton’s contemporaries got frightened—at the apparent eturn of Occult Causes into the domain of Physics. Leibnitz called his rinciple of attraction “an incorporeal and inexplicable power.” The upposition of an attractive faculty and a perfect void was characterized y Bernoulli as “revolting,” the principle of _actio in distans_ finding hen no more favour than it does now. Euler, on the other hand, thought he action of gravity was due to either a _Spirit_ or some subtle medium.
And yet Newton knew of, if he did not accept, the Ether of the Ancients.
He regarded the intermediate space between the sidereal bodies as vacuum.
Therefore he believed in “subtle Spirit” and Spirits as we do, guiding the o‐called attraction. The above‐quoted words of the great man have roduced poor results. The “absurdity” has now become a dogma in the case f pure Materialism, which repeats: “No Matter without Force, no Force ithout Matter; Matter and Force are inseparable, eternal and ndestructible [_true_]; there can be no independent Force, since all
Force is an inherent and necessary property of Matter [_false_]; onsequently, there is no immaterial Creative Power.” Oh, poor Sir Isaac!
If, leaving aside all the other eminent men of Science who agreed in pinion with Euler and Leibnitz, the Occultists claim as their authorities nd supporters Sir Isaac Newton and Cuvier only, as above cited, they need ear little from Modern Science, and may loudly and proudly proclaim their eliefs. But the hesitation and doubts of the above cited authorities, and f many others, too, whom we could name, did not in the least prevent cientific speculation from wool‐gathering in the fields of brute matter ust as before. First it was matter and an imponderable fluid distinct rom it; then came the imponderable fluid so much criticized by Grove; hen Ether, which was at first discontinuous and then became continuous; fter which came the “mechanical” Forces. These have now settled in life s “modes of motion,” and the Ether has become more mysterious and roblematical than ever. More than one man of Science objects to such rude materialistic views. But then, from the days of Plato, who epeatedly asks his readers not to confuse _incorporeal_ Elements with heir Principles—the transcendental or spiritual Elements; from those of he great Alchemists, who, like Paracelsus, made a great difference etween a phenomenon and its cause, or the Noumenon; to Grove, who, though e sees “no reason to divest universally diffused matter of the functions ommon to all matter,” yet uses the term Forces where his critics, “who do ot attach to the word any idea of a specific action,” say Force; from hose days to this, nothing has proved competent to stem the tide of rutal Materialism. Gravitation is the sole cause, the acting God, and
Matter is its prophet, said the men of Science only a few years ago.
They have changed their views several times since then. But do the men of
Science understand the innermost thought of Newton, one of the most piritual‐minded and religious men of his day, any better now than they id then? It is certainly to be doubted. Newton is credited with having iven the death‐blow to the Elemental Vortices of Descartes—the idea of
Anaxagoras, resurrected, by the bye—though the last modern “vortical toms” of Sir William Thomson do not, in truth, differ much from the ormer. Nevertheless, when his disciple Forbes wrote in the Preface to the hief work of his master a sentence declaring that “attraction was the ause of the system,” Newton was the first to solemnly protest. That which n the mind of the great mathematician assumed the shadowy, but firmly ooted image of God, as the Noumenon of all,(812) was called more hilosophically by ancient and modern Philosophers and Occultists—“Gods,” r the creative fashioning Powers. The modes of expression may have been ifferent, and the ideas more or less philosophically enunciated by all acred and profane Antiquity; but the fundamental thought was the ame.(813) For Pythagoras the Forces were Spiritual Entities, Gods, ndependent of planets and Matter as we see and know them on Earth, who re the rulers of the Sidereal Heaven. Plato represented the planets as oved by an intrinsic Rector, one with his dwelling, like “a boatman in is boat.” As for Aristotle, he called those rulers “_immaterial_ ubstances”;(814) though as one who had never been initiated, he rejected he Gods as Entities.(815) But this did not prevent him from recognizing he fact that the stars and planets “were not inanimate masses but acting nd living bodies indeed.” As if sidereal spirits were the “diviner ortions of their phenomena (τὰ θειότερα τῶν φανερῶν).”(816)
If we look for corroboration in more modern and scientific times, we find
Tycho Brahe recognizing in the stars a triple force, divine, spiritual and ital. Kepler, putting together the Pythagorean sentence, “the Sun, uardian of Jupiter,” and the verses of David, “He placed his throne in he Sun,” and “the Lord is the Sun,” etc., said that he understood erfectly how the Pythagoreans could believe that all the Globes isseminated through Space were rational Intelligences (_facultates atiocinativæ_), circulating round the Sun, “in which resides a pure pirit of fire; the source of the general harmony.”(817)
When an Occultist speaks of Fohat, the energizing and guiding Intelligence n the Universal Electric or Vital Fluid, he is laughed at. Withal, as now hown, the nature neither of electricity, nor of life, nor even of light, s to this day understood. The Occultist sees in the manifestation of very force in Nature, the action of the quality, or the special haracteristic of its Noumenon; which Noumenon is a distinct and ntelligent Individuality _on the other side of the manifested mechanical
Universe_. Now the Occultist does not deny—on the contrary he will support he view—that light, heat, electricity and so on are affections, not roperties or qualities, of Matter. To put it more clearly: Matter is the ondition, the necessary basis or vehicle, a _sine quâ non_, for the anifestation of these Forces, or Agents, on this plane.
But in order to gain the point, the Occultists have to examine the redentials of the law of gravity, first of all, of “Gravitation, the King nd Ruler of Matter,” under every form. To do so effectually, the ypothesis, in its earliest appearance, has to be recalled to mind. To egin with, is it Newton who was the first to discover it? The _Athenæum_ f Jan. 26, 1867, has some curious information upon this subject. It says:
Positive evidence can be adduced that Newton derived all his
knowledge of Gravitation and its laws from Bœhme, with whom
Gravitation or Attraction is the first property of Nature.... For
with him, his [Bœhme’s] system shows us the inside of things,
while modern physical science is content with looking at the
outside.
Then again:
The science of electricity, which was not yet in existence when he
[Bœhme] wrote, is there anticipated [in his writings]; and not
only does Bœhme describe all the now known phenomena of that
force, but he even gives us the origin, generation, and birth of
electricity, itself.
Thus Newton, whose profound mind easily read between the lines, and athomed the spiritual thought of the great Seer, in its mystic rendering, wes his great discovery to Jacob Bœhme, the nursling of the Genii,
Nirmânakâyas who watched over and guided him, of whom the author of the rticle in question so truly remarks:
Every new scientific discovery goes to prove his profound and
intuitive insight into the most secret workings of Nature.
And having _discovered_ gravity, Newton, in order to render possible the ction of attraction in space, had, so to speak, to annihilate every hysical obstacle capable of impeding its free action; Ether among others, hough he had more than a presentiment of its existence. Advocating the orpuscular theory, he made an _absolute vacuum_ between the heavenly odies. Whatever may have been his suspicions and inner convictions about
Ether; however many friends he may have unbosomed himself to—as in the ase of his correspondence with Bentley—his teachings never showed that he ad any such belief. If he was “persuaded that the power of attraction ould not be exerted by matter across a vacuum,”(818) how is it that so ate as 1860, French astronomers, Le Couturier, for instance, combated
“the _disastrous_ results of the theory of vacuum established by the great an”? Le Couturier says:
Il n’est plus possible aujourd’hui, de soutenir comme Newton, que
les corps célestes se mouvent au milieu du vide immense des
espaces.... Parmi les conséquences de la théorie du vide établie
par Newton, il ne reste plus debout que le mot “attraction.”...
Nous voyous venir le jour ou le mot attraction disparaîtra du
vocabulaire scientifique.(819)
Professor Winchell writes:
These passages [Letter to Bentley] show what were his views
respecting the nature of the interplanetary medium of
communication. Though declaring that the heavens “are void of
sensible matter,” he elsewhere excepted “perhaps some very thin
vapours, steams, and effluvia, arising from the atmospheres of the
earth, planets, and comets, and from such an exceedingly rare
ethereal medium as we have elsewhere described.”(820)
This only shows that even such great men as Newton have not always the ourage of their opinions. Dr. T. S. Hunt
Called attention to some long‐neglected passages in Newton’s
works, from which it appears that a belief in such universal,
intercosmical medium gradually took root in his mind.(821)
But such attention was never called to the said passages before Nov. 28,
1881, when Dr. Hunt read his “Celestial Chemistry, from the time of
Newton.” As Le Couturier says:
Till then the idea was universal, even among the men of Science,
that Newton had, while advocating the corpuscular theory, preached
a _void_.
The passages had been “long neglected,” no doubt because they contradicted nd clashed with the preconceived pet theories of the day, till finally he undulatory theory imperiously required the presence of an “ethereal edium” to explain it. This is the whole secret.
Anyhow, it is from this theory of Newton of a universal void, taught, if ot believed in by himself, that dates the immense scorn now shown by odern Physics for ancient. The old sages had maintained that “Nature bhorred a vacuum,” and the greatest mathematicians of the world—read of he Western races—had discovered the antiquated “fallacy” and exposed it.
And now Modern Science, however ungracefully, vindicates Archaic
Knowledge, and has, moreover, to vindicate Newton’s character and powers f observation at this late hour, after having neglected, for one century nd a half, to pay any attention to such very important assages—perchance, because it was wiser not to attract any notice to hem. Better late than never!
And now Father Æther is _re‐welcomed_ with open arms and wedded to ravitation, linked to it for weal or woe, until the day when it, or both, hall be replaced by something else. Three hundred years ago it was
_plenum_ everywhere, then it became one dismal _vacuity_; later still the idereal ocean‐beds, dried up by Science, rolled onward once more their thereal waves. _Recede ut procedas_ must become the motto of exact
Science—“exact,” chiefly, in finding itself inexact every leap‐year.
But we will not quarrel with the great men. They had to go back to the arliest “Gods of Pythagoras and old Kanâda” for the very backbone and arrow of their correlations and “newest” discoveries, and this may well fford good hope to the Occultists for their minor Gods. For we believe in
Le Couturier’s prophecy about gravitation. We know the day is approaching hen an absolute reform will be demanded in the present modes of Science y the Scientists themselves, as was done by Sir William Grove, F.R.S.
Till that day there is nothing to be done. For if gravitation were ethroned to‐morrow, the Scientists would discover some other new mode of echanical motion the day after.(822) Rough and up‐hill is the path of rue Science, and its days are full of vexation of spirit. But in the face f its “thousand” contradictory hypotheses offered as explanations of hysical phenomena, there has been no better hypothesis than
“motion”—however paradoxically interpreted by Materialism. As may be found n the first pages of this Volume, Occultists have nothing to say against
Motion,(823) the Great Breath of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s “Unknowable.” But, elieving that everything on Earth is the shadow of something in Space, hey believe in smaller “Breaths,” which, living, intelligent and ndependent of all but Law, blow in every direction during manvantaric eriods. These Science will reject. But whatever may be made to replace ttraction, _alias_ gravitation, the result will be the same. Science will e as far then from the solution of its difficulties as it is now, unless t comes to some compromise with Occultism, and even with Alchemy—a upposition which will be regarded as an impertinence, but remains, evertheless, a fact. As Faye says:
Il manque quelque chose aux géologues pour faire la géologie de la
Lune; c’est d’être astronomes. À la vérité, il manque aussi
quelque chose aux astronomes pour aborder avec fruit cette étude,
c’est d’être géologues.(824)
But he might have added, with still more pointedness:
Ce qui manque à tous les deux, c’est l’intuition du mystique.
Let us remember Sir William Grove’s wise “concluding remarks,” on the ltimate structure of Matter, or the minutiæ of molecular actions, which, e thought, man will never know.
Much harm has already been done by attempting hypothetically to
dissect matter and to discuss the shapes, sizes, and numbers of
atoms, and their atmospheres of heat, ether, or electricity.
Whether the regarding electricity, light, magnetism, etc., as
simply motions of ordinary matter, be or be not admissible,
certain it is that all past theories have resolved, and all
existing theories do resolve, the action of these forces into
motion. Whether it be that, on account of our familiarity with
motion, we refer other affections to it, as to a language which is
most easily construed, and most capable of explaining them, or
whether it be that it is in reality the only mode in which our
minds, as contra‐distinguished from our senses, are able to
conceive material agencies, certain it is that since the period at
which the mystic notions of spiritual or preternatural powers were
applied to account for physical phenomena, all hypotheses framed
to explain them have resolved them into motion.
And then the learned gentleman states a purely Occult tenet:
The term perpetual motion, which I have not infrequently used in
these pages, is itself equivocal. If the doctrines here advanced
be well founded, all motion is, in one sense, perpetual. In
masses, whose motion is stopped by mutual concussion, heat or
motion of the particles is generated; and thus the motion
continues, so that if we could venture to extend such thoughts to
the universe, we should assume the same amount of motion affecting
the same amount of matter for ever.(825)
This is precisely what Occultism maintains, and on the same principle, hat:
Where force is made to oppose force, and produce static
equilibrium, the balance of preëxisting equilibrium is affected,
and fresh motion is started equivalent to that which is withdrawn
into a state of abeyance.
This process finds intervals in the Pralaya, but is eternal and ceaseless s the “Breath,” even when the manifested Kosmos rests.
Thus, supposing attraction or gravitation should be given up in favour of he Sun being a huge magnet—a theory already accepted by some Physicists—a agnet that acts on the planets as attraction is now supposed to do, hereto, or how much farther, would it lead the Astronomers from where hey are now? Not an inch farther. Kepler came to this “curious ypothesis” nearly 300 years ago. He had not discovered the theory of ttraction and repulsion in Kosmos, for it was known from the days of
Empedocles, by whom the two opposite forces were called “love” and
“hate”—words implying the same idea. But Kepler gave a pretty fair escription of cosmic magnetism. That such magnetism exists in Nature, is s certain as that gravitation does not; not at any rate, in the way in hich it is taught by Science, which has never taken into consideration he different modes in which the dual Force, that Occultism calls ttraction and repulsion, may act within our Solar System, the Earth’s tmosphere and beyond in the Kosmos.
As the great Humboldt writes:
Trans‐solar space has not hitherto shown any phenomenon analogous
to our solar system. It is a peculiarity of _our_ system, that
matter should have condensed within it in nebulous rings, the
nuclei of which condense into earths and moons. I say again,
heretofore, _nothing of the kind has ever been observed beyond our
planetary system_.(826)
True, that since 1860 the Nebular Theory has sprung up, and being better nown, a few identical phenomena were supposed to be observed beyond the
Solar System. Yet the great man is quite right; and no _earths_ or _moons_ an be found, _except in appearance_, beyond, or of the same order of
Matter as found in, our System. Such is the Occult Teaching.
This was proven by Newton himself; for there are many phenomena in our
Solar System, which he confessed his inability to explain by the law of ravitation; “such were the uniformity in the directions of planetary ovements, the nearly circular forms of the orbits, and their remarkable onformity to one plane.”(827) And if there is one single exception, then he law of gravitation has no right to be referred to as a universal law.
“These adjustments,” we are told, “Newton, in his general Scholium, ronounces to be ‘the work of an intelligent and all‐powerful Being’.”
Intelligent that “Being” may be; as to “all‐powerful,” there would be very reason to doubt the claim. A poor “God” he, who would work upon inor details and leave the most important to secondary forces! The overty of this argument and logic is surpassed only by that of Laplace, ho, seeking very correctly to substitute Motion for Newton’s “all‐ owerful Being,” and ignorant of the true nature of that Eternal Motion, aw in it a blind physical law. “Might not those arrangements be an effect f the laws of motion?” he asks, forgetting, as do all our modern
Scientists, that this law and this motion are a vicious circle, so long as he _nature of both_ remains unexplained. His famous answer to Napoleon:
“_Dieu est devenu une hypothèse inutile_,” could be correctly made only by ne who adhered to the philosophy of the Vedântins. It becomes a pure allacy, if we exclude the interference of operating, intelligent, owerful (never “all‐powerful”) Beings, who are called “Gods.”
But we would ask the critics of the mediæval Astronomers, why should
Kepler be denounced as most unscientific, for offering just the same olution as did Newton, only showing himself more sincere, more consistent nd even more logical? Where may be the difference between Newton’s “all‐ owerful Being” and Kepler’s Rectores, his Sidereal and Cosmic Forces, or
Angels? Kepler again is criticized for his “curious hypothesis which made se of a vortical movement within the solar system,” for his theories in eneral, and for favouring Empedocles’ idea of attraction and repulsion, nd “solar magnetism” in particular. Yet several modern men of Science, as ill be shown—Hunt, if Metcalfe is to be excluded, Dr. Richardson, tc.—very strongly favour the same idea. He is half excused, however, on he plea that:
To the time of Kepler no interaction between masses of matter had
been distinctly recognized which was generically different from
magnetism.(828)
Is it _distinctly_ recognized now? Does Professor Winchell claim for
Science any serious knowledge whatever of the nature of either electricity r magnetism—except that both seem to be the effects of some result rising from an undetermined cause.
The ideas of Kepler, when their theological tendencies are weeded out, are urely Occult. He saw that:
(I) The Sun is a great Magnet.(829) This is what some eminent modern
Scientists and also the Occultists believe in.
(II) The Solar substance is immaterial.(830) In the sense, of course, of
Matter existing in states unknown to Science.
(III) For the constant motion and restoration of the Sun’s energy and lanetary motion, he provided the perpetual care of a Spirit, or Spirits.
The whole of Antiquity believed in this idea. The Occultists do not use he word Spirit, but say Creative Forces, which they endow with ntelligence. But we may call them Spirits also. We shall be taken to task or contradiction. It will be said that while we deny God, we admit Souls nd operative Spirits, and quote from bigoted Roman Catholic writers in upport of our argument. To this we reply: We deny the anthropomorphic God f the Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle in Nature. We combat
Protestants and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological eliefs of human and sectarian origin. We agree with them in their belief n Spirits and intelligent operative Powers, though we do not worship
“Angels” as the Roman Latinists do.
This theory is tabooed a great deal more on account of the “Spirit” that s given room in it, than of anything else. Herschell, the elder, believed n it likewise, and so do several modern Scientists. Nevertheless
Professor Winchell declares that “a hypothesis more fanciful, and less in ccord with the requirements of physical principles, has not been offered n ancient or modern times.”(831)
The same was said, once upon a time, of the universal Ether, and now it is ot only accepted perforce, but is advocated as the only possible theory o explain certain mysteries.
Grove’s ideas, when he first enunciated them in London about 1840, were enounced as unscientific; nevertheless, his views on the Correlation of
Forces are now universally accepted. It would, very likely, require one ore conversant with Science than is the writer, to combat with any uccess some of the now prevailing ideas about gravitation and other imilar “solutions” of cosmic mysteries. But, let us recall a few bjections that came from recognized men of Science; from Astronomers and
Physicists of eminence, who rejected the theory of rotation, as well as hat of gravitation. Thus one reads in the _French Encyclopædia_ that
“Science agrees, in the face of all its representatives, that it is
_impossible_ to explain the _physical_ origin of the rotatory motion of he solar system.”
If the question is asked: “What causes rotation?” We are answered: “It is he centrifugal force.” “And this force, what is it that produces it?”
“The force of rotation,” is the grave answer.(832) It will be well, erhaps, to examine both these theories as being directly or indirectly onnected.
Section IV. The Theories of Rotation in Science.
Considering that “final cause is pronounced a chimera, and the First Great
Cause is remanded to the sphere of the Unknown,” as a reverend gentleman ustly complains, the number of hypotheses put forward, a nebula of them, s most remarkable. The profane student is perplexed, and does not know in hich of the theories of _exact_ Science he has to believe. We give below ypotheses enough for every taste and power of brain. They are all xtracted from a number of scientific volumes.
Current Hypotheses explaining the Origin of Rotation.
Rotation has originated:
(_a_) By the collision of nebular masses wandering aimlessly in Space; or y attraction, “in cases where no actual impact takes place.”
(_b_) By the tangential action of currents of nebulous matter (in the case f an amorphous nebula) descending from higher to lower levels,(833) or imply by the action of the central gravity of the mass.(834)
“It is a fundamental principle in physics that _no rotation could be enerated in such a mass by the action of its own parts_. As well attempt o change the course of a steamer by pulling at the deck railing,” remarks n this Prof. Winchell in _World‐Life_.(835)
Hypotheses of the Origin of Planets and Comets.
(_a_) We owe the birth of the planets (1) to an explosion of the Sun—a arturition of its central mass;(836) or (2) to some kind of disruption of he nebular rings.
(_b_) “The comets are strangers to the planetary system.”(837) “The comets re undeniably generated in our solar system.”(838)
(_c_) The “_fixed_ stars are motionless,” says one authority. “All the tars are actually in motion,” answers another authority. “Undoubtedly very star is in motion.”(839)
(_d_) “For over 350,000,000 years, the slow and majestic movement of the un around its axis has never for a moment ceased.”(840)
(_e_) “Maedler believes that ... our sun has Alcyone in the Pleiades for he centre of its orbit, and consumes 180,000,000 of years in completing a ingle revolution.”(841)
(_f_) “The sun has existed no more than 15,000,000 of years, and will emit eat for no longer than 10,000,000 years more.”(842)
A few years ago this eminent Scientist was telling the world that the time equired for the Earth to cool from incipient incrustation to its present tate, could not exceed 80,000,000 years.(843) the encrusted age of the orld is only 40,000,000, or half the duration once allowed, and the Sun’s ge is only 15,000,000, have we to understand that the Earth was at one ime independent of the Sun?
Since the ages of the Sun, of the planets, and of the Earth, as they are tated in the various scientific hypotheses of the Astronomers and
Physicists, are given elsewhere below, we have said enough to show the isagreement between the ministers of Modern Science. Whether we accept he _fifteen_ million years of Sir William Thomson or the _thousand_ illions of Mr. Huxley, for the rotational evolution of our Solar System, t will always come to this; that by accepting self‐generated rotation for he heavenly bodies composed of inert Matter and yet moved by their own nternal motion, for millions of years, this teaching of Science amounts o:
(_a_) An evident denial of that fundamental physical law, which states hat “a body in motion tends constantly to inertia, _i.e._, to continue in he same state of motion or rest, unless it is stimulated into further ction by a superior active force.”
(_b_) An original impulse, which culminates in an unalterable motion, ithin a resisting Ether that Newton had declared incompatible with that otion.
(_c_) Universal gravity, which, we are taught, always tends to a centre in ectilinear descent—alone the cause of the revolution of the whole Solar
System, which is performing an eternal double gyration, each body around ts axis and orbit. Another occasional version is:
(_d_) A magnet in the Sun; or, that the said revolution is due to a agnetic force, which acts, just as gravitation does, in a straight line, nd varies inversely as the square of the distance.(844)
(_e_) The whole acting under invariable and changeless laws, which are, evertheless, often shown variable, as during some well‐known freaks of lanets and other bodies, as also when the comets approach or recede from he Sun.
(_f_) A Motor Force always proportionate to the mass it is acting upon; ut independent of the specific nature of that mass, to which it is roportionate; which amounts to saying, as Le Couturier does, that:
Without that force independent from, and of quite another nature
than, the said mass, the latter, were it as huge as Saturn, or as
tiny as Ceres, would always fall with the same rapidity.(845)
A mass, furthermore, which derives its weight from the body on which it eighs.
Thus neither Laplace’s perceptions of a solar atmospheric fluid, which ould extend beyond the orbits of the planets, nor Le Couturier’s lectricity, nor Foucault’s heat,(846) nor this, nor the other, can ever elp any of the numerous hypotheses about the origin and permanency of otation to escape from this squirrel’s wheel, any more than can the heory of gravity itself. This mystery is the Procrustean bed of Physical
Science. If Matter is passive, as we are now taught, the simplest movement annot be said to be an essential property of Matter—the latter being onsidered simply as an inert mass. How, then, can such a complicated ovement, compound and multiple, harmonious and equilibrated, lasting in he eternities for millions and millions of years, be attributed simply to ts own inherent force, unless the latter is an Intelligence? A physical ill is something new—a conception that the Ancients would never have ntertained, indeed! For over a century all distinction between body and orce has been made away with. “Force is but the property of a body in otion,” say the Physicists; “life—the property of our animal organs—is ut the result of their molecular arrangement,” answer the Physiologists.
As Littré teaches:
In the bosom of that aggregate which is named planet, are
developed all the forces immanent in matter ... _i.e._, that
matter possesses _in itself_ and _through itself_ the forces that
are proper to it ... and which are _primary_, not _secondary_.
Such forces are the property of weight, the property of
electricity, of terrestrial magnetism, the property of life....
Every planet can develop life ... as earth, for instance, which
had not always mankind on it, and now bears (_produit_) men.(847)
An Astronomer says:
We talk of the weight of the heavenly bodies, but since it is
recognized that weight decreases in proportion to the distance
from the centre, it becomes evident that, at a certain distance,
that weight must be forcibly reduced to zero. Were there any
_attraction_ there would be equilibrium.... And since the modern
school recognizes neither a _beneath_ nor an _above_ in universal
space, it is not clear what should cause the earth to fall, were
there even no gravitation, nor attraction.(848)
Methinks the Count de Maistre was right in solving the question in his own heological way. He cuts the Gordian knot by saying:—“The planets rotate ecause they are made to rotate ... and the modern physical system of the niverse is a physical impossibility.”(849) For did not Herschell say the ame thing when he remarked that there is a Will needed to impart a ircular motion, and another Will to restrain it?(850) This shows and xplains how a retarded planet is cunning enough to calculate its time so ell as to hit off its arrival at the fixed minute. For, if Science ometimes succeeds, with great ingenuity, in explaining some of such toppages, retrograde motions, angles outside the orbits, etc., by ppearances resulting from the inequality of their progress and ours in he course of our mutual and respective orbits, we still know that there re others, and “very real and considerable deviations,” according to
Herschell, “which cannot be explained except by the mutual and irregular ction of those planets and by the perturbing influence of the sun.”
We understand, however, that there are, besides those little and ccidental perturbations, continuous perturbations called
“secular”—because of the extreme slowness with which the irregularity ncreases and affects the relations of the elliptic movement—and that hese perturbations can be corrected. From Newton, who found that this orld needed repairing very often, down to Reynaud, all say the same. In is _Ciel et Terre_, the latter says:
The orbits described by the planets are far from immutable, and
are, on the contrary, subject to a perpetual mutation in their
position and form.(851)
Proving gravitation and the peripatetic laws to be as negligent as they re quick to repair their mistakes. The charge as it stands seems to be hat:
These orbits are alternately widening and narrowing, their great
axis lengthens and diminishes, or oscillates at the same time from
right to left around the sun, the plane itself, in which they are
situated, raising and lowering itself periodically while pivoting
around itself with a kind of tremor.
To this, De Mirville, who believes in intelligent “workmen” invisibly uling the Solar System—as we do—observes very wittily:
_Voilà, certes_, a voyage which has little in it of mechanical
precision; at the utmost, one could compare it to a steamer,
pulled to and fro and tossed on the waves, retarded or
accelerated, all and each of which impediments might put off its
arrival indefinitely, were there not the intelligence of a pilot
and engineers to catch up the time lost, and to repair the
damages.(852)
The law of gravity, however, seems to be becoming an obsolete law in tarry heaven. At any rate those long‐haired sidereal Radicals, called omets, appear to be very poor respecters of the majesty of that law, and o beard it quite impudently. Nevertheless, and though presenting in early every respect “phenomena not yet fully understood,” comets and eteors are credited by the believers in Modern Science with obeying the ame laws and consisting of the same Matter, “as the suns, stars and ebulæ,” and even “the earth and its inhabitants.”(853)
This is what one might call taking things on trust, aye, even to blind aith. But exact Science is not to be questioned, and he who rejects the ypotheses imagined by her students—gravitation, for instance—would be egarded as an ignorant fool for his pains; yet we are told by the just ited author a queer legend from the scientific annals.
The comet of 1811 had a tail 120 millions of miles in length and
25 millions of miles in diameter at the widest part, while the
diameter of the nucleus was about 127,000 miles, more than ten
times that of the earth.
He tells us that:
In order that bodies of this magnitude, passing near the earth,
should not affect its motion or change the length of the year by
even a single second, their actual substance must be inconceivably
rare.
It must be so indeed, yet:
The extreme tenuity of a comet’s mass is also proved by the
phenomenon of the tail, which, as the comet approaches the sun, is
thrown out sometimes to a length of 90 millions of miles in a few
hours. And what is remarkable, this tail is thrown out against the
force of gravity by some repulsive force, probably electrical, so
that it always points away from the sun [!!!].... And yet, thin as
the matter of comets must be, it obeys the common Law of Gravity
[!?], and whether the comet revolves in an orbit within that of
the outer planets, or shoots off into the abysses of space, and
returns only after hundreds of years, its path is, at each
instant, regulated by the same force as that which causes an apple
to fall to the ground.(854)
Science is like Cæsar’s wife, and must not be suspected—this is evident.
But it can be respectfully criticized, nevertheless, and at all events, it ay be reminded that the “apple” is a dangerous fruit. For the second time n the history of mankind, it may become the cause of the Fall—this time, f “exact” Science. A comet whose tail defies the law of gravity right in he Sun’s face can hardly be credited with obeying that law.
In a series of scientific works on Astronomy and the Nebular Theory, ritten between 1865 and 1866, the present writer, a poor tyro in Science, as counted in a few hours, no less than thirty‐nine contradictory ypotheses offered as explanations for the self‐generated, primitive otatory motion of the heavenly bodies. The writer is no Astronomer, no
Mathematician, no Scientist; but she was obliged to examine these errors n defence of Occultism, in general, and what is still more important, in rder to support the Occult Teachings concerning Astronomy and Cosmology.
Occultists were threatened with terrible penalties for questioning cientific truths. But now they feel braver; Science is less secure in its
“impregnable” position than they were led to expect, and many of its trongholds are built on very shifting sands.
Thus, even this poor and unscientific examination of it has been useful, nd it has certainly been very instructive. We have learned a good many hings, in fact, having especially studied with particular care those stronomical data, that would be the most likely to clash with our eterodox and “superstitious” beliefs.
Thus, for instance, we have found there, concerning gravitation, the axial nd orbital motions, that synchronous movement having been once overcome, n the early stage, this was enough to originate a rotatory motion till he end of Manvantara. We have also come to know, in all the aforesaid ombinations of possibilities with regard to incipient rotation, most omplicated in every case, some of the causes to which it may have been ue, as well as some others to which it ought and should have been due, ut, in some way or other, was not. Among other things, we are informed hat incipient rotation may be provoked with equal ease in a mass in gneous fusion, and in one that is characterized by glacial opacity.(855)
That gravitation is a law which nothing can overcome, but which is, evertheless, overcome, in and out of season, by the most ordinary elestial or terrestrial bodies—the tails of impudent comets, for nstance. That we owe the universe to the holy Creative Trinity, called
Inert Matter, Senseless Force and Blind Chance. Of the real essence and ature of any of these three, Science knows nothing, but this is a rifling detail. Ergo, we are told that, when a mass of cosmic or nebular
Matter—whose nature is entirely unknown, and which may be in a state of usion (Laplace), or dark and cold (Thomson), for “this intervention of eat is itself a pure hypothesis” (Faye)—decides to exhibit its mechanical nergy under the form of rotation, it acts in this wise. It (the mass) ither bursts into spontaneous conflagration, or it remains inert, enebrous, and frigid, both states being equally capable of sending it, ithout any adequate cause, spinning through Space for millions of years.
Its movements may be retrograde, or they may be direct, about a hundred arious reasons being offered for both motions, in about as many ypotheses; anyhow, it joins the maze of stars, whose origin belongs to he same miraculous and spontaneous order—for:
_The nebular theory does not profess to discover the_ ORIGIN _of
things, but only a stadium in material history._(856)
Those millions of suns, planets, and satellites, composed of inert matter, ill whirl on in most impressive and majestic symmetry round the irmament, moved and guided only, notwithstanding their inertia, “by their wn internal motion.”
Shall we wonder, after this, if learned Mystics, pious Roman Catholics, nd even such learned Astronomers as were Chaubard and Godefroy,(857) have referred the _Kabalah_ and the ancient systems to the modern dreary and ontradictory exposition of the Universe? The _Zohar_ makes a distinction, t any rate, between “the Hajaschar [the ‘Light Forces’], the Hachoser
[‘Reflected Lights’], and the simple _phenomenal exteriority_ of their piritual types.”(858)
The question of “gravity” may now be dismissed, and other hypotheses xamined. That Physical Science knows nothing of “Forces” is clear. We may lose the argument, however, by calling to our help one more man of
Science—Professor Jaumes, Member of the Academy of Medicine at
Montpellier. Says this learned man, speaking of Forces:
A cause is that which is essentially acting in the genealogy of
phenomena, in every production as in every modification. I said
that activity (or force) was invisible.... To suppose it corporeal
and _residing in the properties of matter_ would be a gratuitous
hypothesis.... To reduce all the causes to God, ... would amount
to embarrassing oneself with a hypothesis hostile to many
verities. But to speak of _a plurality of forces_ proceeding from
the Deity and possessing inherent powers of their own, is not
unreasonable, ... and I am disposed to admit phenomena produced by
intermediate agents called Forces or Secondary Agents. The
_distinction_ of Forces is the principle of the division of
Sciences; so many real and separate Forces, so many mother‐
Sciences.... No; Forces are not suppositions and abstractions, but
realities, and the only acting realities whose attributes can be
determined with the help of direct observation and induction.(859)
Section V. The Masks of Science. Physics Or Metaphysics?
If there is anything like progress on earth, Science will some day have to ive up, _nolens volens_, such monstrous ideas as her physical, self‐ uiding laws, void of Soul and Spirit, and will then have to turn to the
Occult Teachings. It has already done so, however altered may be the itle‐pages and revised editions of the Scientific Catechism. It is now ver half a century since, in comparing modern with ancient thought, it as found that, however different our Philosophy may appear from that of ur ancestors, it is, nevertheless, composed only of additions and ubtractions taken from the old Philosophy and transmitted drop by drop hrough the filter of antecedents.
This fact was well known to Faraday, and to other eminent men of Science.
Atoms, Ether, Evolution itself—all come to Modern Science from ancient otions, all are based on the conceptions of the archaic nations.
“Conceptions” for the profane, under the shape of allegories; plain truths aught during the Initiations to the Elect, which truths have been artially divulged through Greek writers and have descended to us. This oes not mean that Occultism has ever had the same views on Matter, Atoms nd Ether as may be found in the exotericism of the classical Greek riters. Yet, if we may believe Mr. Tyndall, even Faraday was an
Aristotelean, and was more an Agnostic than a Materialist. In his
_Faraday, as a Discoverer_,(860) the author shows the great Physicist sing “old reflections of Aristotle” which are “concisely found in some of is works.” Faraday, Boscovitch, and all others, however, who see, in the
Atoms and molecules, “centres of force,” and in the corresponding element,
Force, an Entity by itself, are far nearer the truth, perchance, than hose, who, denouncing them, denounce at the same time the “old orpuscular Pythagorean theory”—one, by the way, which never passed to osterity as the great Philosopher really taught it—on the ground of its
“delusion that the conceptual elements of matter can be grasped as eparate and real entities.”
The chief and most fatal mistake and fallacy made by Science, in the view f the Occultists, lies in the idea of the possibility of such a thing xisting in Nature as inorganic, or dead Matter. Is anything dead or norganic which is capable of transformation or change?—Occultism asks.
And is there anything under the sun which remains immutable or changeless?
For a thing to be _dead_ implies that it had been at some time _living_.
When, at what period of cosmogony? Occultism says that in all cases Matter s the most active, when it appears inert. A wooden or a stone block is otionless and impenetrable to all intents and purposes. Nevertheless, and
_de facto_, its particles are in ceaseless eternal vibration which is so apid that to the physical eye the body seems absolutely devoid of motion; nd the spacial distance between those particles in their vibratory motion s—considered from another plane of being and perception—as great as that hich separates snow flakes or drops of rain. But to Physical Science this ill be an absurdity.
This fallacy is nowhere better illustrated than in the scientific work of German _savant_, Professor Philip Spiller. In this cosmological reatise, the author attempts to prove that:
No material constituent of a body, no atom, is in itself
originally endowed with force, but that every such atom is
absolutely dead, and without any inherent power to act at a
distance.(861)
This statement, however, does not prevent Spiller from enunciating an
Occult doctrine and principle. He asserts _the independent substantiality f Force_, and shows it as an “incorporeal stuff” (_unkörperlicher Stoff_) r Substance. Now _Substance_ is not _Matter_ in Metaphysics, and for rgument’s sake it may be granted that it is a wrong expression to use.
But this is due to the poverty of European languages, and especially to he paucity of scientific terms. Then this “stuff” is identified and onnected by Spiller with the Æther. Expressed in Occult language it might e said with more correctness that this “Force‐Substance” is the ever‐ ctive phenomenal positive Ether—Prakriti; while the omnipresent all‐ ervading Æther is the Noumenon of the former, the substratum of all, or
Âkâsha. Nevertheless, Stallo falls foul of Spiller, as he does of the
Materialists. He is accused of “utter disregard of the fundamental orrelation of Force and Matter,” of neither of which Science knows nything certain. For this “hypostasized half‐concept” is, in the view of ll other Physicists, not only _imponderable_, but destitute of cohesive, hemical, thermal, electric, and magnetic forces, of all of which orces—according to Occultism—Æther is the Source and Cause.
Therefore Spiller, with all his mistakes, exhibits more intuition than oes any other modern Scientist, with the exception, perhaps, of Dr.
Richardson, the theorist on “Nerve‐Force,” or Nervous Ether, also on “Sun‐
Force and Earth‐Force.”(862) For Æther, in Esotericism, is the very uintessence of all possible energy, and it is certainly to this Universal
Agent (composed of many agents) that are due all the manifestations of nergy in the material, psychic and spiritual worlds.
What, in fact, are electricity and light? How can Science know that one is fluid and the other a “mode of motion”? Why is no reason given why a ifference should be made between them, since both are considered as orce‐correlations? Electricity is a fluid, we are told, immaterial and ion‐molecular—though Helmholtz thinks otherwise—and the proof of it is hat we can bottle it up, accumulate it and store it away. Then, it must e simply Matter, and no peculiar “fluid.” Nor is it only “a mode of otion,” for motion could hardly be stored in a Leyden jar. As for light, t is a still more extraordinary “mode of motion”; since, “marvellous as t may appear, light [also] can _actually be stored up for use_,” as was emonstrated by Grove nearly half a century ago.
Take an engraving which has been kept for some days in the dark,
expose it to full sunshine—that is, insulate it for 15 minutes;
lay it on sensitive paper in a dark place, and at the end of 24
hours it will have left an impression of itself on the sensitive
paper, the whites coming out as blacks.... There seems to be no
limit for the reproduction of engravings.(863)
What is it that remains fixed, nailed, so to say, on the paper? It is a
Force certainly that fixed the thing, but what is _that thing_, the esidue of which remains on the paper?
Our learned men will get out of this by some scientific technicality; but hat is it that is intercepted, so as to imprison a certain quantity of it n glass, paper, or wood? Is it “Motion” or is it “Force”? Or shall we be old that what remains behind is only the effect of the Force or Motion?
Then what is this Force? Force or Energy is a quality; but every quality ust belong to a something, or a somebody. In Physics, Force is defined as
“that which changes or tends to change any physical relation between odies, whether mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, etc.”
But it is not that Force or that Motion which remains behind on the paper, hen the Force or Motion has ceased to act; and yet something, which our hysical senses cannot perceive, has been left there, to become a cause in ts turn and to produce effects. What is it? It is not Matter, as defined y Science—_i.e._, Matter in any of its known states. An Alchemist would ay it was a spiritual secretion—and he would be laughed at. But yet, when he Physicist said that electricity, stored up, is a fluid, or that light ixed on paper is still sunlight—that was _Science_. The newest uthorities have, indeed, rejected these explanations as “exploded heories,” and have now deified “Motion” as their sole idol. But, surely, hey and their idol will one day share the fate of their predecessors! An xperienced Occultist, one who has verified the whole series of Nidânas, f causes and effects, that finally project their last effect on to this ur plane of manifestations, one who has traced Matter back to its
Noumenon, holds the opinion that the explanation of the Physicist is like alling anger, or its effects—the exclamation provoked by it—a secretion r a fluid, and man, the cause of it, its _material_ conductor. But, as
Grove prophetically remarked, the day is fast approaching when it will be onfessed that the Forces we know are but the phenomenal manifestations of
Realities we know nothing about—but which were known to the Ancients, and y them worshipped.
He made one still more suggestive remark which ought to have become the otto of Science, but has not. Sir William Grove said that: “_Science hould have neither desires nor prejudices. Truth should be her sole im_.”
Meanwhile, in our days, Scientists are more self‐opinionated and bigoted han even the Clergy. For they minister to, if they do not actually orship, “Force‐Matter,” which is their _Unknown God_. And how unknown it s, may be inferred from the many confessions of the most eminent
Physicists and Biologists, with Faraday at their head. Not only, he said, ould he never presume to pronounce whether Force was a property or unction of Matter, but he actually did not know what was meant by the ord Matter.
There was a time, he added, when he believed he knew something of Matter.
But the more he lived, and the more carefully he studied it, the more he ecame convinced of his utter ignorance of the nature of Matter.(864)
This ominous confession was made, we believe, at a Scientific Congress at
Swansea. Faraday held a similar opinion, however, as stated by Tyndall:
What do we know of the atom apart from its force? You imagine a
nucleus which maybe called _a_ and surround it by forces which may
be called _m_; to my mind the _a_ or nucleus vanishes and the
substance consists of the powers _m_. And, indeed, what notion can
we form of the nucleus independent of its powers? What thought
remains on which to hang the imagination of an _a_ independent of
the acknowledged forces?
The Occultists are often misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, hey apply to the Essence of Force, _under certain aspects_, the escriptive epithet of _Substance_. Now the names for the varieties of
Substance on different planes of perception and being are legion. Eastern
Occultism has a special appellation for each kind; but Science—like
England, in the recollection of a witty Frenchman, blessed with thirty‐six eligions and only one fish‐sauce—has but one name for all, namely
“Substance.” Moreover, neither the orthodox Physicists nor their critics eem to be very certain of their premisses, and are as apt to confuse the ffects as they are the causes. It is incorrect, for instance, to say, as
Stallo does, that “Matter can no more be realized or conceived as mere ositive spatial presence than as a concretion of forces,” or that “Force s nothing without mass, and mass is nothing without force”—for one is the
Noumenon and the other the phenomenon. Again; Schelling, when saying that
It is a mere delusion of the phantasy that something, we know not
what, remains after we have denuded an object of all the
predicates belonging to it,(865)
ould never have applied the remark to the realm of transcendental
Metaphysics. It is true that pure Force is _nothing_ in the world of
Physics; it is All in the domain of Spirit. Says Stallo:
If we reduce the mass upon which a given force, however small,
acts to its limit zero—or, mathematically expressed, until it
becomes infinitely small—the consequence is that the velocity of
the resulting motion is infinitely great, and that the “thing” ...
is at any given moment neither here nor there, but everywhere—that
there is no real presence; it is impossible, therefore, to
construct matter by a synthesis of forces.(866)
This may be true in the phenomenal world, inasmuch as the illusive eflection of the One Reality of the supersensual world may appear true to he dwarfed conceptions of a Materialist. It is absolutely incorrect when he argument is applied to things in what the Kabalists call the upermundane spheres. Inertia, so‐called, is Force, according to
Newton,(867) and for the student of Esoteric Sciences the greatest of the
Occult Forces. A body can only conceptually, only on this plane of llusion, be considered divorced from its relations with other odies—which, according to the physical and mechanical sciences, give rise o its attributes. In fact, it can never be so detached; death itself eing unable to detach it from its relation with the Universal Forces, of hich the One Force, or Life, is the synthesis: the inter‐relation simply ontinues on another plane. But what, if Stallo is right, can Dr. James
Croll mean when, in speaking “On the Transformation of Gravity,” he brings orward the views advocated by Faraday, Waterston, and others? For he says ery plainly that gravity
Is a force pervading Space external to bodies, and that, on the
mutual approach of the bodies, the force is not increased, as is
generally supposed, but the bodies merely pass into a place where
the force exists with greater intensity.(868)
No one will deny that a Force, whether gravity, electricity, or any other
Force, which exists _outside_ bodies and in open Space—be it Ether or a acuum—must be _something_, and not a pure _nothing_, when conceived apart rom a mass. Otherwise it could hardly exist in one place with a greater nd in another with reduced “intensity.” G. A. Hirn declares the same in is _Théorie Mécanique de l’Univers_. He tries to demonstrate:
That the atom of the chemists is not an entity of pure convention,
or simply an explicative device, but that it exists really, that
its volume is unalterable, and that consequently it is _not_
elastic [!!]. Force, therefore, is not in the atom; it is _in the
space_ which separates the atoms from each other.
The above‐cited views, expressed by two men of Science of great eminence n their respective countries, show that it is not in the least
_unscientific_ to speak of the substantiality of the so‐called Forces.
Subject to some future specific name, this Force is Substance of some ind, and can be nothing else; and perhaps one day Science will be the irst to reädopt the derided name of phlogiston. Whatever may be the uture name given to it, to maintain that Force does not reside in the
Atoms, but only in the “space between them,” may be scientific enough; evertheless it is not true. To the mind of an Occultist it is like saying hat water does not reside in the drops of which the ocean is composed, ut only in the space between those drops!
The objection that there are two distinct schools of Physicists, by one of hich
This force is assumed to be an independent substantial entity,
which is not a property of matter nor essentially related to
matter,(869)
s hardly likely to help the profane to any clearer understanding. It is, n the contrary, more calculated to throw the question into still greater onfusion than ever. For Force is, then, neither this nor the other. By iewing it as “an independent substantial entity,” the theory extends the ight hand of fellowship to Occultism, while the strange contradictory dea that it is not “related to Matter otherwise than by its power to act pon it,”(870) leads Physical Science to the most absurd contradictory ypotheses. Whether “Force” or “Motion” (Occultism, seeing no difference etween the two, never attempts to separate them), it cannot act for the dherents of the atomo‐mechanical theory in one way, and for those of the ival school in another. Nor can the Atoms be, in one case, absolutely niform in size and weight, and in another, vary in their weight
(Avogadro’s law). For, in the words of the same able critic:
While the absolute equality of the primordial units of mass is
thus an essential part of the very foundations of the mechanical
theory, the whole modern science of chemistry is based upon a
principle directly subversive of it—a principle of which it has
recently been said that “it holds the same place in chemistry that
the law of gravitation does in astronomy.”(871) This principle is
known as the law of Avogadro or Ampère.(872)
This shows that either modern Chemistry, or modern Physics, is entirely rong in the respective fundamental principles. For if the assumption of
Atoms of different specific gravities is deemed absurd, on the basis of he atomic theory in Physics; and if Chemistry, nevertheless, on this very ssumption, meets with “unfailing experimental verification,” in the ormation and transformation of chemical compounds; then it becomes pparent that it is the atomo‐mechanical theory which is untenable. The xplanation of the latter, that “the differences of weight are only ifferences of density, and differences of density are differences of istance between the particles contained in a given space,” is not really alid, because, before a Physicist can argue in his defence that “as in he atom there is no multiplicity of particles and no void space, hence ifferences of density or weight are impossible in the case of atoms,” he ust first know what an Atom is, in reality, and that is just what he annot know. He must bring it under the observation of at least one of his hysical senses—and that he cannot do: for the simple reason that no one as ever seen, smelt, heard, touched or tasted an Atom. The Atom belongs holly to the domain of Metaphysics. It is an entified abstraction—at any ate for Physical Science—and has nought to do with Physics, strictly peaking, as it can never be brought to the test of retort or balance. The echanical conception, therefore, becomes a jumble of the most conflicting heories and dilemmas, in the minds of the many Scientists who disagree on his, as on other subjects; and its evolution is beheld with the greatest ewilderment by the Eastern Occultist, who follows this scientific strife.
To conclude, on the question of gravity. How can Science presume to know nything certain of it? How can it maintain its position and its ypotheses against those of the Occultists, who see in gravity only ympathy and antipathy, or attraction and repulsion, caused by physical olarity on our terrestrial plane, and by spiritual causes outside its nfluence? How can they disagree with the Occultists before they agree mong themselves? Indeed one hears of the Conservation of Energy, and in he same breath of the perfect hardness and inelasticity of the Atoms; of he kinetic theory of gases being identical with “potential energy,” so alled, and, at the same time, of the elementary units of mass being bsolutely hard and inelastic! An Occultist opens a scientific work and eads as follows:
Physical atomism derives all the qualitative properties of matter
from the forms of atomic motion. The _atoms themselves remain as
elements utterly devoid of quality_.(873)
And further:
Chemistry in its ultimate form must be atomic mechanics.(874)
And a moment after he is told that:
Gases consist of atoms which behave like solid, _perfectly
elastic_ spheres.(875)
Finally, to crown all, Sir W. Thomson is found declaring that:
We are forbidden by the modern theory of the conservation of
energy to assume inelasticity, or anything short of perfect
elasticity of the ultimate molecules whether of ultra‐mundane or
mundane matter.(876)
But what do the men of true Science say to all this? By the “men of true
Science” we mean those who care too much for truth and too little for ersonal vanity to dogmatize on anything, as do the majority. There are everal among them—perhaps more than dare openly publish their secret onclusions, for fear of the cry “Stone him to death!”—men, whose ntuitions have made them span the abyss that lies between the terrestrial spect of Matter, and the, to us, on our plane of illusion, subjective,
_i.e._, transcendentally objective Substance, and have led them to roclaim the existence of the latter. Matter, to the Occultist, it must be emembered, is that totality of existences in the Kosmos, which falls ithin any of the planes of possible perception. We are but too well aware hat the orthodox theories of sound, heat and light, are against the
Occult Doctrines. But, it is not enough for the men of Science, or their efenders, to say that they do not deny dynamic power to light and heat, nd to urge, as a proof, the fact that Mr. Crookes’ radiometer has nsettled no views. If they would fathom the ultimate nature of these
Forces, they have first to admit their _substantial_ nature, however
_supersensuous_ that nature may be. Neither do the Occultists deny the orrectness of the vibratory theory.(877) Only they limit its functions to ur Earth—declaring its inadequacy on other planes than ours, since
Masters in the Occult Sciences perceive the Causes that produce ethereal ibrations. Were all these only the fictions of the Alchemists, or dreams f the Mystics, such men as Paracelsus, Philalethes, Van Helmont, and so any others, would have to be regarded as worse than visionaries; they ould become impostors and deliberate mystificators.
The Occultists are taken to task for calling the Cause of light, heat, ound, cohesion, magnetism, etc., etc., a Substance.(878) Mr. Clerk
Maxwell has stated that the pressure of strong sunlight on a square mile s about 3‐¼ lbs. It is, they are told, “the energy of the myriad ether aves”; and when they call it a Substance impinging on that area, their xplanation is proclaimed unscientific.
There is no justification for such an accusation. In no way—as already ore than once stated—do the Occultists dispute the explanations of
Science, as affording a solution of the immediate objective agencies at ork. Science only errs in believing that, because it has detected in ibratory waves the _proximate_ cause of these phenomena, it has, herefore, revealed _all_ that lies beyond the threshold of Sense. It erely traces the sequence of phenomena on a plane of effects, illusory rojections from the region that Occultism has long since penetrated. And he latter maintains that those etheric tremors are not set up, as sserted by Science, by the vibrations of the molecules of known bodies, he Matter of our terrestrial objective consciousness, but that we must eek for the ultimate Causes of light, heat, etc., in Matter existing in upersensuous states—states, however, as fully objective to the spiritual ye of man, as a horse or a tree is to the ordinary mortal. Light and heat re the ghost or shadow of Matter in motion. Such states can be perceived y the Seer or the Adept during the hours of trance, under the Sushumnâ
Ray—the first of the Seven Mystic Rays of the Sun.(879)
Thus, we put forward the Occult teaching which maintains the reality of a upersubstantial and supersensible essence of that Âkâsha—not Ether, which s only an aspect of the latter—the nature of which cannot be inferred rom its remoter manifestations, its merely phenomenal phalanx of effects, n this terrene plane. Science, on the contrary, informs us that heat can ever be regarded as Matter in any conceivable state. To cite a most mpartial critic, one whose authority no one can call in question, as a eminder to Western dogmatists, that the question cannot be in any way onsidered as settled:
There is no fundamental difference between light and heat ... each
is merely a metamorphosis of the other.... Heat is light in
complete repose. Light is heat in rapid motion. Directly light is
combined with a body, it becomes heat; but when it is thrown off
from that body it again becomes light.(880)
Whether this is true or false we cannot tell, and many years, perhaps many enerations, will have to elapse before we shall be able to tell.(881) We re also told that the two great obstacles to the fluid (?) theory of heat ndoubtedly are:
(1) The production of heat by friction—excitation of molecular motion.
(2) The conversion of heat into mechanical motion.
The answer given is: There are fluids of various kinds. Electricity is alled a fluid, and so was heat quite recently, but it was on the upposition that heat was some imponderable substance. This was during the upreme and autocratic reign of Matter. When Matter was dethroned, and
Motion was proclaimed the sole sovereign ruler of the Universe, heat ecame a “mode of motion.” We need not despair; it may become something lse to‐morrow. Like the Universe itself, Science is ever becoming, and an never say, “I am that I am.” On the other hand, Occult Science has its hangeless traditions from prehistoric times. It may err in particulars; t can never become guilty of a mistake in questions of Universal Law, imply because that Science, justly referred to by Philosophy as the
Divine, was born on higher planes, and was brought to Earth by Beings who ere wiser than man will be, even in the Seventh Race of his Seventh
Round. And _that_ Science maintains that Forces are not what modern earning would have them; _e.g._, magnetism is not a “mode of motion”; nd, in this particular case, at least, exact Modern Science is sure to ome to grief some day. Nothing, at the first blush, can appear more idiculous, more outrageously absurd than to say, for instance: The Hindû nitiated Yogî knows really ten times more than the greatest European
Physicist of the ultimate nature and constitution of light, both solar and unar. Yet why is the Sushumnâ Ray believed to be that Ray which furnishes he Moon with its borrowed light? Why is it “the Ray cherished by the nitiated Yogî”? Why is the Moon considered as the Deity of the Mind, by hose Yogîs? We say, because light, or rather all its Occult properties, very combination and correlation of it with other forces, mental, sychic, and spiritual, was perfectly known to the old Adepts.
Therefore, although Occult Science may be less well‐informed than modern
Chemistry as to the behaviour of compound elements in various cases of hysical correlation, yet it is immeasurably higher in its knowledge of he ultimate Occult states of Matter, and of the true nature of Matter, han all the Physicists and Chemists of our modern day put together.
Now, if we state the truth openly and in full sincerity, namely, that the ncient Initiates had a far wider knowledge of Physics, as a Science of
Nature, than is possessed by our Academies of Science, all taken together, he statement will be characterized as an impertinence and an absurdity; or Physical Sciences are considered to have been carried in our age to he apex of perfection. Hence, the twitting query: Can the Occultists meet uccessfully the two points, namely (_a_) the production of heat by riction—excitation of molecular motion; and (_b_) the conversion of heat nto mechanical force, if they hold to the old exploded theory of heat eing a substance or a fluid?
To answer the question, it must first be observed that the Occult Sciences o not regard either electricity, or any of the Forces supposed to be enerated by it, as Matter in any of the states known to Physical Science; o put it more clearly, none of these Forces, so‐called, is a solid, gas, r fluid. If it did not look pedantic, an Occultist would even object to lectricity being called a fluid—as it is an effect and not a cause. But ts Noumenon, he would say, is a Conscious Cause. The same in the cases of
“Force” and the “Atom.” Let us see what an eminent Academician, Butlerof, he Chemist, had to say about these two abstractions. This great man of
Science argues:
What is Force? What is it from a strictly scientific stand‐point,
and as warranted by the law of conservation of energy? Conceptions
of Force are resumed by our conceptions of this, that, or another
mode of motion. Force is thus simply the passage of one state of
motion into another state of the same; of electricity into heat
and light, of heat into sound or some mechanical function, and so
on.(882) The first time electric fluid was produced by man on
earth it must have been by friction; hence, as well known, it is
heat that produces it by disturbing its zero state,(883) and
electricity exists no more on earth _per se_ than heat or light,
or any other force. They are all correlations, as Science says.
When a given quantity of heat, assisted by a steam engine, is
transformed into mechanical work, we speak of steam power (or
force). When a falling body strikes an obstacle in its way,
thereby generating heat and sound—we call it the power of
collision. When electricity decomposes water or heats a platinum
wire, we speak of the force of the electric fluid. When the rays
of the sun are intercepted by the thermometer bulb and its
quicksilver expands, we speak of the calorific energy of the sun.
In short, when one state of a determined quantity of motion
ceases, another state of motion equivalent to the preceding takes
its place, and the result of such a transformation or correlation
is—Force. In all cases where such a transformation, or the passage
of one state of motion into another, is entirely absent, there no
force is possible. Let us admit for a moment an absolutely
homogeneous state of the Universe, and our conception of Force
falls down to nought.
Therefore it becomes evident that the Force, which Materialism
considers as the cause of the diversity that surrounds us, is in
sober reality only an effect, a result of that diversity. From
such point of view Force is not the cause of motion, but a result,
while the cause of that Force, or forces, is not the Substance or
Matter, but Motion itself. Matter thus must be laid aside, and
with it the basic principle of Materialism, which has become
unnecessary, as Force brought down to a state of motion can give
no idea of the Substance. If Force is the result of motion, then
it becomes incomprehensible why that motion should become witness
to Matter and not to Spirit or a Spiritual essence. True, our
reason cannot conceive of a motion minus something moving (and our
reason is right); but the nature or _esse_ of that something
moving remains to Science entirely unknown; and the Spiritualist,
in such case, has as much right to attribute it to a “Spirit,” as
a Materialist to creative and all‐potential Matter. A Materialist
has no special privileges in this instance, nor can he claim any.
The law of the conservation of energy, as thus seen, is shown to
be illegitimate in its pretensions and claims in this case. The
“great dogma”—_no force without matter and no matter without
force_—falls to the ground, and loses entirely the solemn
significance with which Materialism has tried to invest it. The
conception of Force still gives no idea of Matter, and compels us
in no way to see in it “the origin of all origins.”(884)
We are assured that Modern Science is not Materialistic; and our own onviction tells us that it cannot be so, when its learning is real. There s good reason for this, well defined by some Physicists and Chemists hemselves. Natural Sciences cannot go hand in hand with Materialism. To e at the height of their calling, men of Science have to reject the very ossibility of Materialistic doctrines having aught to do with the Atomic
Theory; and we find that Lange, Butlerof, Du Bois Reymond—the last robably unconsciously—and several others, have proved it. And this is, urthermore, demonstrated by the fact, that Kanâda in India, and Leucippus nd Democritus in Greece, and after them Epicurus—the earliest Atomists in
Europe—while propagating their doctrine of definite proportions, believed n Gods or supersensuous Entities, at the same time. Their ideas upon
Matter thus differed from those now prevalent. We must be allowed to make ur statement clearer by a short synopsis of the ancient and modern views f Philosophy upon Atoms, and thus prove that the Atomic Theory kills
Materialism.
From the standpoint of Materialism, which reduces the beginnings of all to
Matter, the Universe consists, in its fulness, of Atoms and vacuity. Even eaving aside the axiom taught by the Ancients, and now absolutely emonstrated by telescope and microscope, that Nature abhors a vacuum, hat is an Atom? Professor Butlerof writes:
It is, we are answered by Science, the limited division of
Substance, the indivisible particle of Matter. To admit the
divisibility of the atom, amounts to an admission of an infinite
divisibility of Substance, which is equivalent to reducing
Substance to _nihil_, or nothingness. Owing to a feeling of self‐
preservation alone, Materialism cannot admit infinite
divisibility; otherwise, it would have to bid farewell for ever to
its basic principle and thus sign its own death‐warrant.(885)
Büchner, for instance, like a true dogmatist in Materialism declares that:
To accept infinite divisibility is absurd, and amounts to doubting
the very existence of Matter.
The Atom is indivisible then, saith Materialism? Very well. Butlerof nswers:
See now what a curious contradiction this fundamental principle of
the Materialists is leading them into. The atom is _indivisible_,
and at the same time we know it to be _elastic_. An attempt to
deprive it of elasticity is unthinkable; it would amount to an
absurdity. Absolutely non‐elastic atoms could never exhibit a
single one of those numerous phenomena that are attributed to
their correlations. Without any elasticity, the atoms could not
manifest their energy, and the Substance of the Materialists would
remain weeded of every force. Therefore, if the Universe is
composed of atoms, then those atoms must be elastic. It is here
that we meet with an insuperable obstacle. For, what are the
conditions requisite for the manifestation of elasticity? An
elastic ball, when striking against an obstacle, is flattened and
contracts, which it would be impossible for it to do, were not
that ball to consist of particles, the relative position of which
experiences at the time of the blow a temporary change. This may
be said of elasticity in general; no elasticity is possible
without change with respect to the position of the compound
particles of an elastic body. This means that the elastic body is
changeful and consists of particles, or, in other words, that
elasticity can pertain only to those bodies that are divisible.
And the atom _is_ elastic.(886)
This is sufficient to show how absurd are the simultaneous admissions of he non‐divisibility and of the elasticity of the Atom. The Atom is lastic, _ergo_, the Atom is divisible, and must consist of particles, or f sub‐atoms. And these sub‐atoms? They are either non‐elastic, and in uch case they represent no dynamic importance, or, they are elastic also; nd in that case, they, too, are subject to divisibility. And thus _ad nfinitum_. But infinite divisibility of Atoms resolves Matter into simple entres of Force, _i.e._, precludes the possibility of conceiving Matter s an objective substance.
This vicious circle is fatal to Materialism. It finds itself caught in its wn nets, and no issue out of the dilemma is possible for it. If it says hat the Atom is indivisible, then it will have Mechanics asking it the wkward question:
How does the Universe move in this case, and how do its forces
correlate? A world built on absolutely non‐elastic atoms, is like
an engine without steam, it is doomed to eternal inertia.(887)
Accept the explanations and teachings of Occultism, and—the blind inertia f Physical Science being replaced by the intelligent active Powers behind he veil of Matter—motion and inertia become subservient to those Powers.
It is on the doctrine of the illusive nature of Matter, and the infinite ivisibility of the Atom, that the whole Science of Occultism is built. It pens limitless horizons to Substance, informed by the divine breath of ts Soul in every possible state of tenuity, states still undreamed of by he most spiritually disposed Chemists and Physicists.
The above views were enunciated by an Academician, the greatest Chemist in
Russia, and a recognized authority even in Europe, the late Professor
Butlerof. True, he was defending the phenomena of the Spiritualists, the aterializations, so‐called, in which he believed, as Professors Zöllner nd Hare did, as Mr. A. Russel Wallace, Mr. W. Crookes, and many another
Fellow of the Royal Society, do still, whether openly or secretly. But his rgument with regard to the nature of the Essence that acts behind the hysical phenomena of light, heat, electricity, etc., is no less cientific and authoritative for all that, and applies admirably to the ase in hand. Science has no right to deny to the Occultists their claim o a more profound knowledge of the so‐called Forces, which, they say, are nly the effects of causes generated by Powers, substantial, yet upersensuous, and beyond any kind of Matter with which Scientists have itherto become acquainted. The most Science can do is to assume and to aintain the attitude of Agnosticism. Then it can say: Your case is no ore proven than is ours; but we confess to knowing nothing in reality ither about Force or Matter, or about that which lies at the bottom of he so‐called correlation of Forces. Therefore, time alone can prove who s right and who is wrong. Let us wait patiently, and meanwhile show utual courtesy, instead of scoffing at each other.
But to do this requires a boundless love of truth and the surrender of hat prestige—however false—of infallibility, which the men of Science ave acquired among the ignorant and flippant, though cultured, masses of he profane. The blending of the two Sciences, the Archaic and the Modern, equires first of all the abandonment of the actual Materialistic lines.
It necessitates a kind of religious Mysticism and even the study of old
Magic, which our Academicians will never take up. The necessity is easily xplained. Just as in old Alchemical works the real meaning of the
Substances and Elements mentioned is concealed under the most ridiculous etaphors, so are the physical, psychic, and spiritual natures of the
Elements (say of Fire) concealed in the _Vedas_;, and especially in the
_Purânas_, under allegories comprehensible only to the Initiates. Had they o meaning, then indeed all these long legends and allegories about the acredness of the three types of Fire, and the _Forty‐Nine original
Fires_—personified by the Sons of Daksha’s Daughters and the Rishis, their
Husbands, “who with the first Son of Brahmâ and his three descendants onstitute the Forty‐nine Fires”—would be idiotic verbiage and no more.
But it is not so. Every Fire has a distinct function and meaning in the orlds of the physical and the spiritual. It has, moreover, in its ssential nature a corresponding relation to one of the human psychic aculties, besides its well determined chemical and physical potencies hen coming in contact with terrestrially differentiated Matter. Science as no speculations to offer upon Fire _per se_; Occultism and ancient eligious Science have. This is shown even in the meagre and purposely eiled phraseology of the _Purânas_, where, as in the _Vâyu Purâna_, many f the qualities of the personified Fires are explained. Thus, Pâvaka is
Electric Fire, or Vaidyuta; Pavamâna, the Fire produced by Friction, or
Nirmathya: and Shuchi is Solar Fire, or Saura(888)—all these three being he sons of Abhimânin, the Agni (Fire), eldest son of Brahmâ and of Svâhâ.
Pâvaka, moreover, is made parent to Kavyavâhana, the Fire of the Pitris:
Shuchi to Havyaváhana, the Fire of the Gods; and Pavamâna to Saharaksha, he Fire of the Asuras. Now all this shows that the writers of the
_Purânas_ were perfectly conversant with the Forces of Science and their orrelations, as well as with the various qualities of the latter in their earing upon those psychic and physical phenomena which receive no credit nd are now unknown to Physical Science. Very naturally, when an
Orientalist, especially one with materialistic tendencies, reads that hese are only appellations of Fire employed in the invocations and ituals, he calls this “Tântrika superstition and mystification”; and he ecomes more careful to avoid errors in spelling than to give attention to he secret meaning attached to the personifications, or to seek their xplanation in the physical correlations of Forces, so far as these are nown. So little credit, indeed, is given to the ancient Âryans for nowledge, that even such glaring passages as that in _Vishnu Purâna_, are eft without any notice. Nevertheless, what can this sentence mean?
Then ether, air, light, water, and earth, severally united with
the properties of sound and the rest, existed as distinguishable
according to their qualities, ... but, possessing many and various
energies and being unconnected, they could not, without
combination, create living beings, not having blended with each
other. Having combined therefore with one another, they assumed
through their mutual association, the character of one mass of
entire unity; and, from the direction of Spirit, etc.(889)
This means, of course, that the writers were perfectly acquainted with orrelation, and were well posted about the origin of Kosmos from the
“Indiscrete Principle,” Avyaktânugrahena, as applied to Parabrahman and
Mûlaprakriti conjointly, and not to “Avyakta, either First Cause, or
Matter,” as Wilson gives it. The old Initiates knew of no “miraculous reation,” but taught the evolution of Atoms, on our physical plane, and heir first differentiation from Laya into Protyle, as Mr. Crookes has uggestively named Matter, or primordial substance, _beyond_ the zero‐ ine—there where we place Mûlaprakriti, the Root‐Principle of the World‐
Stuff and of all in the World.
This can be easily demonstrated. Take, for instance, the newly‐published atechism of the Vishishthâdvaita Vedântins, an orthodox and exoteric ystem, yet fully enunciated and taught in the XIth century(890) at a time hen European “Science” still believed in the squareness and flatness of he Earth of Cosmas Indicopleustes of the VIth century. It teaches that efore Evolution began, Prakriti, Nature, was in a condition of Laya, or f absolute homogeneity, as “Matter exists in two conditions, the Sûkshma, r latent and undifferentiated, and the Sthûla, or differentiated, ondition.” Then it became Anu, atomic. It teaches of Suddasattva—“a ubstance not subject to the qualities of Matter, from which it is quite ifferent,” and adds that out of that Substance the bodies of the Gods, he inhabitants of Vaikunthaloka, the Heaven of Vishnu, are formed. That very particle or atom of Prakriti contains Jîva (divine life), and is the
Sharîra (body) of that Jîva which it contains, while every Jîva is in its urn the Sharîra of the Supreme Spirit, as “Parabrahman pervades every
Jîva, as well as every particle of Matter.” Dualistic and anthropomorphic s may be the philosophy of the Vishishthâdvaita, when compared with that f the Advaita—the non‐dualists—it is yet supremely higher in logic and hilosophy than the Cosmogony accepted either by Christianity or by its reat opponent, Modern Science. The followers of one of the greatest minds hat ever appeared on Earth, the Advaita Vedântins are called Atheists, ecause they regard all save Parabrahman, the Secondless, or the Absolute
Reality as an illusion. Yet the wisest Initiates came from their ranks, as lso the greatest Yogîs. The _Upanishads_ show that they most assuredly new not only what is the causal substance in the effects of friction, and hat their forefathers were acquainted with the conversion of heat into echanical force, but that they were also acquainted with the Noumenon of very spiritual as well as of every cosmic phenomenon.
Truly the young Brâhman who graduates in the Universities and Colleges of
India with the highest honours; who starts in life as an M.A. and an
LL.B., with a tail initialed from Alpha to Omega after his name, and a ontempt for his national Gods proportioned to the honours received in his ducation in Physical Science; truly he has but to read in the light of he latter, and with an eye to the correlation of physical Forces, certain assages in his _Purânas_, if he would learn how much more his ancestors new than he will ever know—unless he becomes an Occultist. Let him turn o the allegory of Purûravas and the celestial Gandharva,(891) who urnished the former with a vessel full of heavenly fire. The primeval ode of obtaining fire by friction has its scientific explanation in the
_Vedas_, and is pregnant with meaning for him who reads between the lines.
The Tretâgni (sacred triad of fires) obtained by the attrition of sticks ade of the wood of the Ashvattha tree, the Bo‐tree of Wisdom and
Knowledge, sticks “as many finger‐breadths long as there are syllables in he Gâyatrî,” must have a secret meaning, or else the writers of the
_Vedas_ and _Purânas_ were no sacred writers but mystificators. That it as such a meaning, the Hindu Occultists are a proof, and they alone are ble to enlighten Science, as to why and how the Fire, that was primevally
One, was made three‐fold (tretâ) in our present Manvantara, by the Son of
Ilâ (Vâch), the Primeval Woman after the Deluge, the wife and daughter of
Vaivasvata Manu. The allegory is suggestive, in whatever _Purâna_ it may e read and studied.
Section VI. An Attack on the Scientific Theory of Force by a Man of
Science.
The wise words of several English men of Science have now to be quoted in ur favour. Ostracized for “principle’s sake” by the few, they are tacitly pproved of by the many. That one of them preaches almost Occult octrines—in some things identical with, and often amounting to a public ecognition of, our “Fohat and his seven Sons,” the Occult Gandharva of he _Vedas_—will be recognized by every Occultist, and even by some rofane readers.
If such readers will open Volume V of the _Popular Science Review_,(892) hey will find in it an article on “Sun‐Force and Earth‐Force,” by Dr. E.
W. Richardson, F.R.S., which reads as follows:
At this moment, when the theory of mere motion as the origin of
all varieties of force is again becoming the prevailing thought,
it were almost heresy to reöpen a debate, which for a period
appears, by general consent, to be virtually closed; but I accept
the risk, and shall state, therefore, what were the precise views
of the immortal heretic, whose name I have whispered to the
readers, (Samuel Metcalfe,) respecting Sun‐Force. Starting with
the argument on which nearly all physicists are agreed, that there
exist in nature two agencies—matter which is ponderable, visible,
and tangible, and a something which is imponderable, invisible,
and appreciable only by its influence on matter—Metcalfe maintains
that the imponderable and active agency which he calls “caloric”
is _not a mere form of motion_, not a vibration amongst the
particles of ponderable matter, but _itself a material substance
flowing from the sun_ through space,(893) filling the voids
between the particles of solid bodies, and conveying by sensation
the property called heat. The nature of caloric, or Sun‐Force, is
contended for by him on the following grounds:
(i) That it may be added to, and abstracted from other bodies and
measured with mathematical precision.
(ii) That it augments the volume of bodies, which are again
reduced in size by its abstraction.
(iii) That it modifies the forms, properties, and conditions of
all other bodies.
(iv) That _it passes by radiation through the most perfect
vacuum_(894) that can be formed, in which it produces the same
effects on the thermometer as in the atmosphere.
(v) That it exerts mechanical and chemical forces which nothing
can restrain, as in volcanoes, the explosion of gunpowder, and
other fulminating compounds.
(vi) That it operates in a sensible manner on the nervous system,
producing intense pain; and when in excess, disorganization of the
tissues.
As against the vibratory theory, Metcalfe further argues that if
caloric were a _mere property or quality_, it could not augment
the volume of other bodies; for this purpose it must itself have
volume, it must occupy space, and it must, therefore, be a
material agent. If caloric were _only the effect of vibratory
motion_ amongst the particles of ponderable matter, _it could not
radiate from hot bodies_ without the simultaneous transition of
the vibrating particles; but the fact stands out that heat can
radiate from material ponderable substance without loss of weight
of such substance.... With this view as to the material nature of
caloric or sun‐force; with the impression firmly fixed on his mind
that “everything in Nature is composed of two descriptions of
matter, the one essentially active and ethereal, the other passive
and motionless,”(895) Metcalfe based the hypothesis that the sun‐
force, or caloric, is a self‐active principle. For its own
particles, he holds, it has repulsion; for the particles of all
ponderable matter it has affinity; it attracts the particles of
ponderable matter with forces which vary inversely as the squares
of the distance. It thus acts _through_ ponderable matter. If
universal space were filled with caloric, sun‐force, alone
(without ponderable matter), caloric would also be inactive and
would constitute a boundless ocean of powerless or quiescent
ether, because it would then have nothing on which to act, while
ponderable matter, however inactive of itself, has “certain
properties by which it modifies and controls the actions of
caloric, both of which are governed by immutable laws that have
their origin in the mutual relations and specific properties of
each.”
And he lays down a law which he believes is absolute, and which is
thus expressed:
“By the attraction of caloric for ponderable matter, it unites and
holds together all things; by its self‐repulsive energy it
separates and expands all things.”
This, of course, is almost the Occult explanation of cohesion. Dr.
Richardson continues:
As I have already said, _the tendency of modern teaching is to
rest upon the hypothesis __ ... that heat is motion_, or, as it
would, perhaps, be better stated, a specific force or form of
motion.(896)
But this hypothesis, popular as it is, is not one that ought to be
accepted to the exclusion of the simpler views of the material
nature of sun‐force, and of its influence in modifying the
conditions of matter. _We do not yet know sufficient to be
dogmatic._(897)
The hypothesis of Metcalfe respecting sun‐force and earth‐force is
not only very simple, but most fascinating.... Here are two
elements in the universe, the one is ponderable matter.... The
second element is the all‐pervading ether, solar fire. It is
_without weight, substance, form, or colour; it is matter
infinitely divisible_, and its particles repel each other; its
rarity is such that we have no word, except ether,(898) by which
to express it. It pervades and fills space, but alone it too is
quiescent—dead.(899) We bring together the two elements, the inert
matter, the self‐repulsive ether [?] and thereupon dead [?]
ponderable matter is vivified; [_Ponderable matter may be inert
but never dead—this is Occult Law._] ... through the particles of
the ponderable substance the ether [_Ether’s second principle_]
penetrates, and, so penetrating, it combines with the ponderable
particles and holds them in mass, holds them together in bond of
union; they are dissolved in the ether.
This distribution of solid ponderable matter through ether
extends, according to the theory before us, to everything that
exists at this moment. The ether is all‐pervading. The human body
itself is charged with the ether [_Astral Light rather_]; its
minute particles are held together by it; the plant is in the same
condition; the most solid earth, rock, adamant, crystal, metal,
all are the same. But there are differences in the capacities of
different kinds of ponderable matter to receive sun‐force, and
upon this depends the various changing conditions of matter; the
solid, the liquid, the gaseous condition. Solid bodies have
attracted caloric in excess over fluid bodies, and hence their
firm _cohesion_; when a portion of molten zinc is poured upon a
plate of solid zinc, the molten zinc becomes as solid because
there is a rush of caloric from the liquid to the solid, and in
the equalization the particles, previously loose or liquid, are
more closely brought together.... Metcalfe himself, dwelling on
the above‐named phenomena, and accounting for them by the unity of
principle of action, which has already been explained, sums up his
argument in very clear terms, in a comment on the densities of
various bodies. “Hardness and softness,” he says, “solidity and
liquidity, are not essential conditions of bodies, but depend on
the relative proportions of ethereal and ponderable matter of
which they are composed. The most elastic gas may be reduced to
the liquid form by the abstraction of caloric, and again converted
into a firm solid, the particles of which would cling together
with a force proportional to their augmented affinity for caloric.
On the other hand, by adding a sufficient quantity of the same
principle to the densest metals, their attraction for it is
diminished when they are expanded into the gaseous state, and
their cohesion is destroyed.”
Having thus quoted at length the heterodox views of the great
“heretic”—views that to be correct, need only a little alteration of terms ere and there—Dr. Richardson, undeniably an original and liberal thinker, roceeds to sum up these views, and continues:
I shall not dwell at great length on this unity of sun‐force and
earth‐force, which this theory implies. But I may add that out of
it, or out of the hypothesis of mere motion as force, and of
virtue without substance, we may gather, as the nearest possible
approach to the truth on this, the most complex and profound of
all subjects, the following inferences:
(_a_) Space, inter‐stellary, inter‐planetary, inter‐material,
inter‐organic, is not a vacuum, but is filled with a subtle fluid
or gas, which for want of a better term(900) we may still call, as
the ancients did, _Aith‐ur_—Solar Fire—Æther. This fluid,
unchangeable in composition, indestructible, invisible,(901)
pervades everything and all [_ponderable_] matter,(902) the pebble
in the running brook, the tree overhanging, the man looking on, is
charged with the ether in various degrees; the pebble less than
the tree, the tree less than man. All in the planet is in like
manner so charged! A world is built up in ethereal fluid, and
moving through a sea of it.
(_b_) The ether, whatever its nature is, is from the sun and from
the suns:(903) the suns are the generators of it, the store‐houses
of it, the diffusers of it.(904)
(_c_) Without the ether there could be no motion; without it
particles of ponderable matter could not glide over each other;
without it there could be no impulse to excite those particles
into action.
(_d_) Ether determines the constitution of bodies. Were there no
ether there could be no change of constitution in substance;
water, for instance, could only exist as a substance, compact and
insoluble beyond any conception we could form of it. It could
never even be ice, never fluid, never vapour, except for ether.
(_e_) Ether connects sun with planet, planet with planet, man with
planet, man with man. Without ether there could be no
communication in the Universe; no light, no heat, no phenomenon of
motion.
Thus we find that Ether and elastic Atoms are, in the alleged mechanical onception of the Universe, the Spirit and Soul of Kosmos, and that the heory—put it in any way and under any disguise—always leaves a more idely opened issue for men of Science to speculate upon beyond the line f modern Materialism(905) than the majority avails itself of. Atoms,
Ether, or both, modern speculation cannot get out of the circle of ancient hought; and the latter was soaked through with archaic Occultism.
Undulatory or corpuscular theory—it is all one. It is speculation from the spects of phenomena, not from the knowledge of the essential nature of he cause and causes. When Modern Science has explained to its audience he late achievements of Bunsen and Kirchoff; when it has shown the seven olours, the primary of a ray which is decomposed in a fixed order on a creen; and has described the respective lengths of luminous waves, what as it proved? It has justified its reputation for exactness in athematical achievement by measuring even the length of a luminous ave—“varying from about seven hundred and sixty millionths of a illimètre at the red end of the spectrum to about three hundred and inety‐three millionths of a millimètre at the violet end.” But when the xactness of the calculation with regard to the effect on the light‐wave s thus vindicated, Science is forced to admit that the Force, which is he supposed cause, is _believed_ to produce “inconceivably minute ndulations” in some medium—“generally regarded as identical with the thereal medium”(906)—and that medium itself is still only—a “hypothetical gent”!
Auguste Comte’s pessimism with respect to the possibility of knowing some ay the chemical composition of the Sun, has not, as has been averred, een belied thirty years later by Kirchoff. The spectroscope has helped us o see that the elements, with which the modern Chemist is familiar, must n all probability be present in the Sun’s outward “robes”—_not in the Sun tself_; and, taking these “robes,” the solar cosmic veil, for the Sun tself, the Physicists have declared its luminosity to be due to ombustion and flame, and mistaking the vital principle of that luminary or a purely material thing, have called it “chromosphere.”(907) We have nly hypotheses and theories so far, not law—by any means.
Section VII. Life, Force, or Gravity.
The imponderable fluids have had their day; mechanical Forces are less alked about; Science has put on a new face for this last quarter of a entury; but gravitation has remained, owing its life to new combinations fter the old ones had nearly killed it. It may answer scientific ypotheses very well, but the question is whether it answers as well to ruth, and represents a fact in nature. Attraction by itself is not ufficient to explain even planetary motion; how can it then presume to xplain the rotatory motion in the infinitudes of Space? Attraction alone ill never fill all the gaps, unless a special impulse is admitted for very sidereal body, and the rotation of every planet with its satellites s shown to be due to some one cause combined with attraction. And even hen, says an Astronomer,(908) Science would have to name that cause.
Occultism has named it for ages, and so have all the ancient Philosophers; ut then all such beliefs are now proclaimed exploded superstitions. The xtra‐cosmic God has killed every possibility of belief in intra‐cosmic ntelligent Forces; yet who, or what, is the original “pusher” in that otion? Says Francœur:(909)
When we have learned the cause, _unique et speciale_, that pushes,
we will be ready to combine it with the one which attracts.
And again:
Attraction between the celestial bodies is only repulsion: it is
the sun that drives them incessantly onward; for otherwise, their
motion would stop.
If ever this theory of the Sun‐Force being the primal cause of all life on arth, and of all motion in heaven, is accepted, and if that other far older theory of Herschell, about certain organisms in the Sun, is ccepted even as a provisional hypothesis, then will our teachings be indicated, and Esoteric allegory will be shown to have anticipated Modern
Science by millions of years, probably, for such are the Archaic
Teachings. Mârttânda, the Sun, watches and threatens his seven brothers, he planets, without abandoning the central position to which his Mother,
Aditi, relegated him. The Commentary(910) says:
_He pursues them, turning slowly around himself, ... following
from afar the direction in which his brothers move, on the path
that encircles their houses_—or the orbit.
It is the sun‐fluids or emanations that impart all motion, and awaken all nto life, in the Solar System. It is attraction and repulsion, but not as nderstood by modern Physics or according to the law of gravity, but in armony with the laws of _manvantaric motion_ designed from the early
Sandhyâ, the Dawn of the rebuilding and higher reformation of the System.
These laws are immutable; but the motion of all the bodies—which motion is iverse and alters with every minor Kalpa—is regulated by the Movers, the
Intelligences within the Cosmic Soul. Are we so very wrong in believing ll this? Well, here is a great and modern man of Science who, speaking of ital electricity, uses language far more akin to Occultism than to modern
Materialistic thought. We refer the sceptical reader to an article on “The
Source of Heat in the Sun,” by Robert Hunt, F.R.S.,(911) who, speaking of he luminous envelope of the Sun and its “peculiar curdy appearance,” ays:
Arago proposed that this envelope should be called the
Photosphere, a name now generally adopted. By the elder Herschell,
the surface of this photosphere was compared to mother‐of‐
pearl.... It resembles the ocean on a tranquil summer‐day, when
its surface is slightly crisped by a gentle breeze.... Mr. Nasmyth
has discovered a more remarkable condition than any that had
previously been suspected, ... objects which are peculiarly lens‐
shaped ... like “willow leaves,” ... different in size ... not
arranged in any order, ... crossing each other in all directions
... with an irregular motion among themselves.... They are seen
approaching to and receding from each other, and sometimes
assuming new angular positions, so that the appearance ... has
been compared to a dense shoal of fish, which, indeed, they
resemble in shape.... The size of these objects gives a grand idea
of the gigantic scale upon which physical (?) operations are
carried out in the sun. They cannot be less than 1,000 miles in
length, and from two to three hundred miles in breadth. The most
probable conjecture which has been offered respecting those leaf
or lens‐like objects, is that the photosphere(912) is an immense
ocean of gaseous matter [what kind of “matter”?] ... in a state of
intense [apparent] incandescence, and that they are perspective
projections of the sheets of flame.
Solar “flames” seen through telescopes are reflections, says Occultism.
But the reader has already seen what Occultists have to say to this.
Whatever they [those sheets of flame] may be, it is evident they
are the immediate sources of solar heat and light. Here we have a
surrounding envelope of photogenic matter,(913) which pendulates
with mighty energies, and by communicating its motion to the
ethereal medium in stellar space, produces heat and light in far
distant worlds. We have said that those forms have been compared
to certain organisms, and Herschell says, “Though it would be too
daring to speak of such organizations as _partaking of life_ [why
not?],(914) yet we do not know that vital action is competent to
develop heat, light, and electricity.”... Can it be that there is
truth in this fine thought? May the pulsing of vital matter in the
central sun of our system be the source of all that life which
crowds the earth, and without doubt overspreads the other planets,
to which the sun is the mighty minister?
Occultism answers these queries in the affirmative; and Science will find his to be the case, one day.
Again, Mr. Hunt writes:
But regarding Life—Vital Force—as a power far more exalted than
either light, heat, or electricity, and indeed capable of exerting
a controlling power over them all [this is absolutely Occult] ...
we are certainly disposed to view with satisfaction that
speculation which supposes the photosphere to be the primary seat
of vital power, and to regard with a poetic pleasure that
hypothesis which refers the solar energies to Life.(915)
Thus, we have an important scientific corroboration for one of our undamental dogmas—namely, that (_a_) the Sun is the store‐house of Vital
Force, which is the Noumenon of Electricity; and (_b_) that it is from its ysterious, never‐to‐be‐fathomed depths, that issue those life‐currents hich thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living thing n Earth. For see what another eminent Physician says, who calls this, our ife‐fluid, “Nervous Ether.” Change a few sentences in the article, xtracts from which now follow, and you have another quasi‐Occult treatise n Life‐Force. It is again Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., who gives his iews as follows on “Nervous Ether,” as he has on “Sun‐Force” and “Earth‐
Force”:
The idea attempted to be conveyed by the theory is, that between
the molecules of the matter, solid or fluid, of which the nervous
organisms, and, indeed, of which all the organic parts of a body
are composed, there exists a refined subtle medium, vaporous or
gaseous, which holds the molecules in a condition for motion upon
each other, and for arrangement and reärrangement of form; a
medium by and through which all motion is conveyed; by and through
which the one organ or part of the body is held in communion with
the other parts, by which and through which the outer living world
communicates with the living man; a medium, which, being present,
enables the phenomena of life to be demonstrated, and which, being
universally absent, leaves the body actually dead.
And the whole Solar System falls into Pralaya—the author might have added.
But let us read further:
I use the word ether in its general sense as meaning a very light,
vaporous or gaseous matter; I use it, in short, as the astronomer
uses it when he speaks of the ether of Space, by which he means a
subtle but material medium.... When I speak of a _nervous_ ether,
I do not convey that the ether is existent in nervous structure
only: I believe truly that it is a special part of the nervous
organization; but, as nerves pass into all structures that have
capacities for movement and sensibilities, so the nervous ether
passes into all such parts; and as the nervous ether is, according
to my view, a direct product from blood, so we may look upon it as
a part of the atmosphere of the blood.... The evidence in favour
of the existence of an elastic medium pervading the nervous matter
and capable of being influenced by simple pressure is all‐
convincing.... In nervous structure there is, unquestionably, a
true nervous fluid, as our predecessors taught.(916) The precise
chemical (?)(917) composition of this fluid is not yet well known;
the physical characters of it have been little studied. Whether it
moves in currents, we do not know; whether it circulates, we do
not know; whether it is formed in the centres and passes from them
to the nerves, or whether it is formed everywhere where blood
enters nerve, we do not know. The exact uses of the fluid we do
not consequently know. It occurs to my mind, however, that the
veritable fluid of nervous matter is not of itself sufficient to
act as the subtle medium that connects the outer with the inner
universe of man and animal. I think—and this is the modification I
suggest to the older theory—there must be another form of matter
present during life; a matter which exists in the condition of
vapour or gas, which pervades the whole nervous organism,
surrounds as an enveloping atmosphere(918) each molecule of
nervous structure, and is the medium of all motion, communicated
to and from the nervous centres.... When it is once fairly
presented to the mind that during life _there is in the animal
body a finely diffused form of matter_, a vapour filling every
part—and even stored in some parts; a matter constantly renewed by
the vital chemistry; a matter as easily disposed of as the breath,
after it has served its purpose—a new flood of light breaks on the
intelligence.(919)
A new flood of light is certainly thrown on the wisdom of ancient and ediæval Occultism and its votaries. For Paracelsus wrote the same thing ore than three hundred years ago, in the sixteenth century, as follows:
The whole of the Microcosm is potentially contained in the Liquor
Vitæ, a nerve fluid ... in which is contained the nature, quality,
character, and essence of beings.(920)
The Archæus is an essence that is equally distributed in all parts
of the human body.... The Spiritus Vitæ takes its origin from the
Spiritus Mundi. Being an emanation of the latter, it contains the
elements of all cosmic influences, and is therefore the cause by
which the action of the stars [cosmic forces] upon the invisible
body of man [his vital _Linga Sharîra_] may be explained.(921)
Had Dr. Richardson studied all the secret works of Paracelsus, he would ot have been obliged to confess so often, “we do not know,” “it is not nown to us,” etc. Nor would he ever have written the following sentence, ecanting the best portions of his independent rediscovery.
It may be urged that in this line of thought is included no more
than the theory of the existence of the ether ... supposed to
pervade space.... It may be said that this universal ether
pervades all the organism of the animal body as from without, and
as part of every organization. This view would be Pantheism
physically discovered, _if it were true_ [!!]. It fails to be true
because it would destroy the individuality of every individual
sense.(922)
We fail to see this, and we _know_ it is not so. Pantheism _may_ be
“physically rediscovered.” It was known, seen, and felt by the whole of ntiquity. Pantheism manifests itself in the vast expanse of the starry eavens, in the breathing of the seas and oceans, and in the quiver of ife of the smallest blade of grass. Philosophy rejects one _finite_ and
_imperfect_ God in the universe, the anthropomorphic deity of the
Monotheist as represented by his followers. It repudiates, in its name of
_Philo‐theo‐sophia_, the grotesque idea that Infinite, Absolute Deity hould, or rather could, have any direct or indirect relation to finite llusive evolutions of Matter, and therefore it cannot imagine a universe
_outside_ that Deity, or the absence of that Deity from the smallest speck f animate or inanimate Substance. This does not mean that every bush, ree or stone is God or _a_ God; but only that every speck of the anifested material of Kosmos belongs to, and is the Substance of, God, owever low it may have fallen in its cyclic gyration through the
Eternities of the Ever‐Becoming; and also that every such speck ndividually, and Kosmos collectively, is an aspect and a reminder of that niversal One Soul—which Philosophy refuses to call God, thus limiting the ternal and ever‐present Root and Essence.
Why either the Ether of Space or “Nervous Ether” should “destroy the ndividuality of every sense,” seems incomprehensible to one acquainted ith the real nature of that “Nervous Ether” under its Sanskrit, or rather
Esoteric and Kabalistic name. Dr. Richardson agrees that:
If we did not individually produce the medium of communication
between ourselves and the outer world, if it were produced from
without and adapted to one kind of vibration alone, there were
fewer senses required than we possess: for, taking two
illustrations only—ether of light is not adapted for sound, and
yet we hear as well and see; while air, the medium of motion of
sound, is not the medium of light, and yet we see and hear.
This is not so. The opinion that Pantheism “fails to be true because it ould destroy the individuality of every individual sense” shows that all he conclusions of the learned doctor are based on the modern physical heories, though he would fain reform them. But he will find it impossible o do this unless he allows the existence of spiritual senses to replace he gradual atrophy of the physical. “We see and hear,” in accordance (of ourse, in Dr. Richardson’s mind) with the explanations of the phenomena f sight and hearing, afforded by that same Materialistic Science which ostulates that we cannot see and hear otherwise. The Occultists and
Mystics know better. The Vedic Âryans were as familiar with the mysteries f sound and colour on the physical plane as are our Physiologists, but hey had also mastered the secrets of both on planes inaccessible to the
Materialist. They knew of a double set of senses; spiritual and material.
In a man who is deprived of one or more senses, the remaining senses ecome the more developed; for instance, the blind man will recover his ight through the senses of touch, of hearing, etc., and he who is deaf ill be able to hear through sight, by seeing _audibly_ the words uttered y the lips and mouth of the speaker. But these are cases that belong to he world of Matter still. The spiritual senses, those that act on a igher plane of consciousness, are rejected _à priori_ by Physiology, ecause the latter is ignorant of the Sacred Science. It limits the action f Ether to vibrations, and, dividing it from air—though air is simply ifferentiated and compound Ether—makes it assume functions to fit in with he special theories of the Physiologist. But there is more real Science n the teachings of the _Upanishads_, when these are correctly understood, han the Orientalists, who do not understand them at all, are ready to dmit. Mental as well as physical correlations of the seven senses—seven n the physical and seven on the mental planes—are clearly explained and efined in the _Vedas_, and especially in the _Upanishad_ called
_Anugîtâ_:
The indestructible and the destructible, such is the double
manifestation of the Self. Of these the indestructible is the
existent [the true essence or nature of Self, the underlying
principles], the manifestation as an individual (entity) is called
the destructible.(923)
Thus speaks the Ascetic in the _Anugîtâ_, and also:
Every one who is twice‐born [initiated] knows such is the teaching
of the ancients.... Space is the first entity.... Now Space
[Âkâsha, or the Noumenon of Ether] has one quality ... and that is
stated to be sound only ... [and the] qualities of sound [are]
Shadja, Rishabha, together with Gândhâra, Madhyama, Panchama, and
beyond these [should be understood to be] Nishâda and Dhaivata
[the Hindû gamut].(924)
These seven notes of the scale are the principles of sound. The qualities f every Element, as of every sense, are septenary, and to judge and ogmatize on them from their manifestation on the material or objective lane—likewise sevenfold in itself—is quite arbitrary. For it is only by he SELF emancipating itself from these seven causes of illusion, that we an acquire the knowledge (Secret Wisdom) of the qualities of objects of ense on their dual plane of manifestation, the visible and the invisible.
Thus it is said:
Hear me ... state this wonderful mystery.... Hear also the
assignment of causes exhaustively. The nose, and the tongue, and
the eye, and the skin, and the ear as the fifth [organ of sense]
mind and understanding,(925) these seven [senses] should be
understood to be the causes of (the knowledge of) qualities.
Smell, and taste, and colour, sound, and touch as the fifth, the
object of the mental operation, and the object of the
understanding [the highest spiritual sense or perception], these
seven are causes of action. He who smells, he who eats, he who
sees, he who speaks, and he who hears as the fifth, he who thinks,
and he who understands, these seven should be understood to be the
causes of the agents. These [the agents] being possessed of
qualities (sattva, rajas, tamas), enjoy their own qualities,
agreeable and disagreeable.(926)
The modern commentators, failing to comprehend the subtle meaning of the ncient Scholiasts, take the sentence, “causes of the agents,” to mean
“that the powers of smelling, etc., when attributed to the Self, make him ppear as an agent, as an active principle” (!), which is entirely anciful. These “seven” are understood to be the causes of the agents, ecause “the objects are causes, as their enjoyment causes an impression.”
It means esoterically that they, these seven senses, are caused by the gents, which are the “deities,” for otherwise what does, or can, the ollowing sentence mean? “Thus,” it is said, “these seven [senses] are the auses of emancipation”—_i.e._, when these causes are made ineffectual.
And, again, the sentence, “among the learned [the wise Initiates] who nderstand everything, the qualities _which are in the position_ [in the ature, rather] _of the deities_, each in its place,” etc., means simply hat the “learned” understand the nature of the Noumena of the various henomena; and that “qualities,” in this instance, mean the qualities of he high Planetary or Elementary Gods or Intelligences, which rule the lements and their products, and not at all the “senses,” as the modern ommentator thinks. For the learned do not suppose their senses to have ught to do with them, any more than with their SELF.
Then we read in the _Bhagavadgîtâ_ of _Krishna_, the Deity, saying:
Only some know me truly. Earth, water, fire, air, space [or
Âkâsha, Æther], mind, understanding and egoism [or the perception
of all the former on the illusive plane], ... this is a lower form
of my nature. Know (that there is) another (form of my) nature,
and higher than this, which is animate, O you of mighty arms! and
by which this universe is upheld.... All this is woven upon me,
like numbers of pearls upon a thread.(927) I am the taste in the
water, O son of Kuntî! I am the light of the sun and moon. I am
... sound (“_i.e._, the occult essence which underlies all these
and the other qualities of the various things mentioned”—Transl.),
in space ... the fragrant smell in the earth, refulgence in the
fire ... etc.(928)
Truly, then, one should study Occult Philosophy before one begins to seek or and verify the mysteries of Nature on its surface alone, as he alone
“who knows the truth about the qualities of Nature, who understands the reation of all entities ... is emancipated” from error. Says the
Preceptor:
Accurately understanding the great (tree) of which the unperceived
[Occult Nature, the root of all] is the sprout from the seed
[Parabrahman], which consists of the understanding [Mahat, or the
Universal Intelligent Soul] as its trunk, the branches of which
are the great egoism,(929) in the holes of which are the sprouts,
namely, the senses, of which the great [occult, or invisible]
elements are the flower‐bunches,(930) the gross elements [the
gross objective matter], the smaller boughs, which are always
possessed of leaves, always possessed of flowers ... which is
eternal and the seed of which is the Brahman [the Deity]; and
cutting it with that excellent sword—knowledge [Secret Wisdom]—one
attains immortality and casts off birth and death.(931)
This is the Tree of Life, the Ashvattha tree, after the cutting of which nly, Man, the slave of life and death, can be emancipated.
But the men of Science know nought, nor will they hear of the “Sword of
Knowledge” used by the Adepts and Ascetics. Hence the one‐sided remarks of ven the most liberal among them, based on and flowing from undue mportance given to the arbitrary divisions and classification of Physical
Science. Occultism heeds them very little, and Nature heeds them still ess. The whole range of physical phenomena proceeds from the Primary of
Æther—Âkâsha, as dual‐natured Âkâsha proceeds from undifferentiated Chaos, o‐called, the latter being the primary aspect of Mûlaprakriti, the Root‐
Matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of Parabrahman. Modern
Science may divide its hypothetically conceived Ether in as many ways as t likes; the real Æther of Space will remain as it is throughout. It has ts seven “principles,” as all the rest of Nature has, and where there was o Æther there would be _no_ “sound,” as it is the vibrating sounding‐ oard in Nature in all its seven differentiations. This is the first ystery the Initiates of old have learned. Our present normal physical enses were, from our present point of view, abnormal in those days of low and progressive downward evolution and fall into Matter. And there as a day when all that in our modern times is regarded as exceptional, so uzzling to the Physiologists now compelled to believe in them—such as hought‐transference, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.; in short, all hat is now called “wonderful and abnormal”—when all that and much more elonged to the senses and faculties common to all humanity. We are, owever, cycling back and cycling forward; that is to say, that having ost in spirituality what we acquired in physical development until almost he end of the Fourth Race, we are now as gradually and imperceptibly osing in the physical all that we regain once more in the spiritual eëvolution. This process must go on, until the period which will bring he Sixth Root‐Race on a line parallel with the spirituality of the Second
Race, a long extinct mankind.
But this will hardly be understood at present. We must return to Dr.
Richardson’s hopeful, though somewhat incorrect hypothesis about “Nervous
Ether.” Under the misleading translation of the word as “Space,” Âkâsha as just been shown in the ancient Hindû system as the “first born” of the
One, having but one quality, “Sound,” which is septenary. In Esoteric anguage this One is the Father‐Deity, and Sound is synonymous with the
Logos, Verbum, or Son. Whether consciously or otherwise, it must be the atter; and Dr. Richardson, while preaching an Occult doctrine, chooses he lowest form of the septenary nature of that Sound, and speculates upon t, adding:
The theory, I offer, is that the nervous ether is an _animal
product_. In different classes of animals it may differ in
physical quality so as to be adapted to the special wants of the
animal, but essentially it plays one part in all animals, and is
produced, in all, in the same way.
Herein lies the nucleus of error leading to all the resultant mistaken iews. This “Nervous Ether” is the lowest principle of the Primordial
Essence which is Life. It is Animal Vitality diffused in all Nature, and cting according to the conditions it finds for its activity. It is not an
“animal product,” but the living animal, the living flower and plant, are ts products. The animal tissues only absorb it according to their more or ess morbid or healthy state—as do physical materials and structures (in heir primogenial state, _nota bene_)—and, from the moment of the birth of he Entity, are regulated, strengthened, and fed by it. It descends in a arger supply to vegetation in the Sushumnâ Sun‐Ray which lights and feeds he Moon, and it is through her beams that it pours its light upon, and enetrates man and animal, more during their sleep and rest, than when hey are in full activity. Therefore Dr. Richardson errs again in stating hat:
The nervous ether is not, according to my idea of it, _in itself
active, nor an excitant of animal motion in the sense of a force_;
but it is essential as supplying the conditions by which the
motion is rendered possible. [It is _just the reverse_.].... It is
the conductor of all vibrations of heat, of light, of sound, of
electrical action, of mechanical friction.(932) It holds the
nervous system throughout in perfect tension, during states of
life [true]. By exercise it is disposed of [_rather generated_]
... and when demand for it is greater than the supply, its
deficiency is indicated by nervous collapse or exhaustion.(933) It
accumulates in the nervous centres during sleep, bringing them, if
I may so speak, to their due tone, and therewith raising the
muscles to awakening and renewed life.
Just so; this is quite correct and comprehensible. Therefore:
The body fully renewed by it, presents capacity for motion,
fulness of form, _life_. The body bereft of it presents inertia,
the configuration of shrunken death, _the evidence of having lost
something physical that was in it when it lived_.
Modern Science denies the existence of a “vital principle.” This extract s a clear proof of its grand mistake. But this “physical something,” that e call life‐fluid—the Liquor Vitæ of Paracelsus—has not deserted the ody, as Dr. Richardson thinks. It has only changed its state from ctivity to passivity, and has become latent, owing to the too morbid tate of the tissues, on which it has hold no longer. Once the _rigor ortis_ is absolute, the Liquor Vitæ will reäwaken into action, and will egin its work on the atoms _chemically_. Brahmâ‐Vishnu, the Creator and he Preserver of Life, will have transformed himself into Shiva the
Destroyer.
Lastly Dr. Richardson writes:
The nervous ether may be poisoned; it may, I mean, have diffused
through it, by simple gaseous diffusion, other gases or vapours
derived from without; it may derive from within products of
substances swallowed and ingested, or gases of decomposition
produced during disease in the body itself.(934)
And the learned gentleman might have added on the same Occult principle:
That the “Nervous Ether” of one person can be poisoned by the “Nervous
Ether” of another person or by his “auric emanations.” But see what
Paracelsus said of this “Nervous Ether”:
The Archæus is of a magnetic nature, and attracts or repulses
other sympathetic or antipathetic forces belonging to the same
plane. The less power of resistance for astral influences a person
possesses, the more will he be subject to such influences. The
vital force is not enclosed in man, but radiates [within and]
around him like a luminous sphere [aura] and it may be made to act
at a distance.... It may poison the essence of life [_blood_] and
cause diseases, or it may purify it after it has been made impure,
and restore the health.(935)
That the two, “Archæus” and “Nervous Ether,” are identical, is shown by he English Scientist, who says that _generally_ the tension of it may be oo high or too low; that it may be so:
Owing to local changes in the nervous matter it invests.... Under
sharp excitation it may vibrate as if in a storm and plunge every
muscle under cerebral or spinal control into uncontrolled
motion—unconscious convulsions.
This is called nervous excitation, but no one, except the Occultist, knows he reason of such nervous perturbation, or explains the primary causes of t. The principle of Life may kill when too exuberant, as much as when here is too little of it. But this “principle” on the manifested plane, hat is to say, our plane, is but the effect and the result of the ntelligent action of the “Host,” or collective Principle, the manifesting
Life and Light. It is itself subordinate to, and emanates from, the ever‐ nvisible, eternal and Absolute One Life, in a descending and reäscending cale of hierarchic degrees, a true septenary ladder, with Sound, the
Logos, at the upper end, and the Vidyâdharas(936), the inferior Pitris, at he lower.
Of course, the Occultists are fully aware of the fact that the vitalist
“fallacy,” so derided by Vogt and Huxley, is, nevertheless, still ountenanced in very high scientific quarters, and, therefore, they are appy to feel that they do not stand alone. Thus, Professor de Quatrefages rites:
It is very true that we do not know _what_ life _is_; but no more
do we know _what_ the force _is_ that set the stars in motion....
Living beings are heavy, and therefore subject to gravitation;
they are the seat of numerous and various physico‐chemical
phenomena which are indispensable to their existence, and which
must be referred to the action of etherodynamy [electricity, heat,
etc.]. But these phenomena are here manifested under the influence
of another force.... Life is not antagonistic to the inanimate
forces, but it governs and rules their action by its laws.(937)
Section VIII. The Solar Theory.
A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE COMPOUND AND SINGLE ELEMENTS OF SCIENCE AS
AGAINST THE OCCULT TEACHINGS. HOW FAR THIS THEORY, AS GENERALLY
ACCEPTED, IS SCIENTIFIC.
In his reply to Dr. Gull’s attack on the theory of Vitality, which is nseparably connected with the Elements of the Ancients in the Occult
Philosophy, Professor Beale, the great Physiologist, has a few words as uggestive as they are beautiful:
There is a mystery in life—a mystery which has never been
fathomed, and which appears greater, the more deeply the phenomena
of life are studied and contemplated. In living centres—far more
central than the centres seen by the highest magnifying powers, in
centres of living matter, where the eye cannot penetrate, but
towards which the understanding may tend—proceed changes of the
nature of which the most advanced physicists and chemists fail to
afford us the conception: nor is there the slightest reason to
think that the nature of these changes will ever be ascertained by
physical investigation, inasmuch as they are certainly of an order
or nature totally distinct from that to which any other phenomenon
known to us can be relegated.
This “mystery,” or the origin of the Life Essence, Occultism locates in he same Centre as the nucleus of _prima materia_ of our Solar System, for hey are one.
As says the Commentary:
_The Sun is the heart of the Solar World [System] and its brain is hidden ehind the [visible] Sun. Thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve‐ entre of the great body, and the waves of the life‐essence flow into each rtery and vein.... The planets are its limbs and pulses._
It has been stated elsewhere(938) that Occult philosophy denies that the
Sun is a globe in combustion, but defines it simply as a world, a glowing phere, the real Sun being hidden behind, and the visible Sun being only ts reflection, its shell. The Nasmyth willow leaves, mistaken by Sir John
Herschell for “solar inhabitants,” are the reservoirs of solar vital nergy; “the vital electricity that feeds the whole system; the sun _in bscondito_ being thus the storehouse of our little Cosmos, self‐ enerating its vital fluid, and ever receiving as much as it gives out,” nd the visible Sun only a window cut into the real solar palace and resence, which, however, shews without distortion the interior work.
Thus, during the manvantaric solar period, or life, there is a regular irculation of the vital fluid throughout our System, of which the Sun is he heart—like the circulation of the blood in the human body; the Sun ontracting as rhythmically as the human heart does at every return of it.
Only, instead of performing the round in a second or so, it takes the olar blood ten of its years to circulate, and a whole year to pass hrough its auricle and ventricle before it washes the lungs, and passes hence back to the great arteries and veins of the System.
This, Science will not deny, since Astronomy knows of the fixed cycle of leven years when the number of solar spots increases,(939) the increase eing due to the contraction of the Solar Heart. The Universe, our World n this case, breathes, just as man and every living creature, plant, and ven mineral does upon the Earth; and as our Globe itself breathes every wenty‐four hours. The dark region is not due to the “absorption exerted y the vapours issuing from the bosom of the sun, and interposed between he observer and the photosphere,” as Father Secchi would have it,(940) or are the spots formed “by the matter [heated gaseous matter] itself hich the irruption projects upon the solar disk.” The phenomenon is imilar to the regular and healthy pulsation of the heart, as the life luid passes through its hollow muscles. Could the human heart be made uminous, and the living and throbbing organ made visible, so as to have t reflected upon a screen, such as is used by lecturers on Astronomy to how the moon, for instance, then every one would see the sun‐spot henomena repeated every second, and that they were due to contraction and he rushing of the blood.
We read in a work on Geology that it is the dream of Science that:
All the recognized chemical elements will one day be found but
modifications of a single material element.(941)
Occult Philosophy has taught this since the existence of human speech and anguage, adding, however, on the principle of the immutable law of nalogy, “as it is above, so it is below,” another of its axioms, that here is neither Spirit nor Matter, in reality, but only numberless spects of the One ever‐hidden Is, or Sat. The homogeneous primordial
Element is simple and single, _only on the terrestrial plane_ of onsciousness and sensation, since Matter, after all, is nothing more than he sequence of our own states of consciousness, and Spirit an idea of sychic intuition. Even on the next higher plane, that single element hich is defined on our Earth by current Science, as the ultimate ndecomposable constituent of some kind of Matter, would be pronounced in he world of a higher spiritual perception to be something very complex ndeed. Our purest water would be found to yield, instead of its two eclared simple elements of oxygen and hydrogen, many other constituents, ndreamed of by our modern terrestrial Chemistry. As in the realm of
Matter, so in the realm of Spirit, the shadow of that which is cognized on he plane of objectivity exists on that of pure subjectivity. The speck of he perfectly homogeneous Substance, the sarcode of the Hæckelian Moneron, s now viewed as the archebiosis of terrestrial existence (Mr. Huxley’s rotoplasm)(942); and Bathybius Hæckelii has to be traced to its pre‐ errestrial archebiosis. This is first perceived by the Astronomers at its hird stage of evolution, and in the “secondary creation,” so‐called. But he students of Esoteric Philosophy understand well the secret meaning of he Stanza:
Brahmâ ... has essentially the _aspect of_ Prakriti, both evolved
and unevolved.... Spirit, O Twice‐born [Initiate], is the leading
_aspect_ of Brahmâ. The next is a two‐fold aspect [of Prakriti and
Purusha] ... both evolved and unevolved; and Time is the
last!(943)
Anu is one of the names of Brahmâ, as distinct from Brahman, and it means
“atom”; anîyâmsam anîyasâm, “the most atomic of the atomic,” the
“immutable and imperishable (achyuta) Purushottama.”
Surely, then, the elements now known to us—be their number whatever it ay—as they are understood and defined at present, are not, nor can they e, the _primordial_ Elements. Those were formed from “the _curds of the old radiant Mother_” and “_the fire‐seed of the hot Father_,” who “are ne,” or, to express it in the plainer language of Modern Science, those
Elements had their genesis in the depths of the primordial Fire‐mist, the asses of incandescent vapour of the irresolvable nebulæ; for, as
Professor Newcomb shows,(944) resolvable nebulæ do not constitute a class f proper nebulæ. More than half of those, he thinks, which were at first istaken for nebulæ, are what he calls “starry clusters.”
The elements now known have arrived at their state of permanency in this
Fourth Round and Fifth Race. They have a short period of rest before they re propelled once more on their upward spiritual evolution, when the
“living fire of Orcus” will dissociate the most irresolvable, and scatter hem again into the primordial One.
Meanwhile the Occultist goes further, as has been shown in the
Commentaries on the Seven Stanzas. Hence he can hardly hope for any help r recognition from Science, which will reject both his “anîyâmsam nîyasâm,” the absolutely spiritual Atom, and his Mânasaputras or Mind‐ orn Men. In resolving the “single material element” into one absolute rresolvable Element, Spirit, or Root‐Matter, thus placing it at once utside the reach and province of Physical Philosophy—he has, of course ut little in common with the orthodox men of Science. He maintains that
Spirit and Matter are two Facets of the unknowable Unity, their apparently ontrasted aspects depending, (_a_) on the various degrees of ifferentiation of Matter, and (_b_) on the grades of consciousness ttained by man himself. This is, however, Metaphysics, and has little to o with Physics—however great in its own terrestrial limitation that hysical Philosophy may now be.
Nevertheless, once that Science admits, if not the actual existence, at ny rate, the possibility of the existence, of a Universe with its umberless forms, conditions, and aspects built out of a “single
Substance,”(945) it has to go further. Unless it also admits the ossibility of One Element, or the One Life of the Occultists, it will ave to hang up that “single Substance,” especially if limited to only the olar nebulæ, in mid air, like the coffin of Mahomet, though minus the ttractive magnet that sustained that coffin. Fortunately for the peculative Physicists, if we are unable to state with any degree of recision what the nebular theory does imply, we have, thanks to Professor
Winchell, and several dissident Astronomers, been able to learn what it oes not imply.
Unfortunately, this is far from clearing even the most simple of the roblems that have vexed, and do still vex, the men of learning in their earch after truth. We have to proceed with our enquiries, starting with he earliest hypotheses of Modern Science, if we would discover _where_ nd _why_ it sins. Perchance it may be found that Stallo is right, after ll, and that the blunders, contradictions and fallacies made by the most minent men of learning are simply due to their abnormal attitude. They re, and want to remain Materialistic _quand même_, and yet “the general rinciples of the atomo‐mechanical theory—the basis of modern Physics—are ubstantially identical with the cardinal doctrines of ontological
Metaphysics.” Thus, “the fundamental errors of ontology become apparent in roportion to the advance of physical science.”(946) Science is oneycombed with metaphysical conceptions, but the Scientists will not dmit the charge, and fight desperately to put atomo‐mechanical masks on urely incorporeal and spiritual laws in Nature, on our plane—refusing to dmit their substantiality even on other planes, the bare existence of hich they reject _à priori_.
It is easy to show, however, how Scientists, wedded to their materialistic iews, have, ever since the days of Newton, endeavoured to put false masks n fact and truth. But their task is becoming every year more difficult; nd every year also, Chemistry, beyond all the other sciences, approaches earer and nearer the realm of the Occult in Nature. It is assimilating he very truths taught by the Occult Sciences for ages, but hitherto itterly derided. “Matter is eternal,” says the Esoteric Doctrine. But the
Matter the Occultists conceive of in its _laya_, or _zero_ state, is not he matter of Modern Science, not even in its most rarefied gaseous state.
Mr. Crookes’ “radiant matter” would appear Matter of the grossest kind in he realm of the beginnings, as it becomes pure Spirit before it returns ack even to its first point of differentiation. Therefore, when the Adept r Alchemist adds that, though Matter is eternal, for it is Pradhâna, yet
Atoms are born at every new Manvantara, or reconstruction of the universe, t is no such contradiction as a Materialist, who believes in nothing eyond the Atom, might think. There is a difference between _manifested_ nd _unmanifested_ Matter, between Pradhâna, the beginningless and endless ause, and Prakriti, or the manifested effect. Says the Shloka:
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, and
is not, a mere process.(947)
That which in modern phraseology is referred to as Spirit and Matter, is
ONE in eternity as the Perpetual Cause, and it is neither Spirit nor
Matter, but IT—rendered in Sanskrit by TAD, “that”—all that is, was, or ill be, all that the imagination of man is capable of conceiving. Even he exoteric Pantheism of Hindûism renders it as no monotheistic
Philosophy ever did, for in superb phraseology its Cosmogony begins with he well‐known words:
There was neither day nor night, neither heaven nor earth, neither
darkness nor light. And there was not aught else apprehensible by
the senses or by the mental faculties. There was then, however,
one Brahma, essentially Prakriti [Nature] and Spirit. For the two
aspects of Vishnu which are other than his supreme essential
aspect are Prakriti and Spirit, O Brâhman. _When_ these two other
_aspects_ of his no longer subsist, but are dissolved, _then_ that
_aspect_ whence form and the rest, _i.e._, _creation_, proceed
_anew_, is denominated time, O twice‐born.
It is that which is dissolved, or the illusionary _dual_ aspect of That, he essence of which is eternally One, that we call Eternal Matter, or
Substance, formless, sexless, inconceivable, even to our sixth sense or ind,(948) in which, therefore, we refuse to see that which Monotheists all a personal, anthropomorphic God.
How are these two propositions—that “Matter is eternal,” and that “the
Atom is periodical, and not eternal”—viewed by exact Modern Science? The aterialistic Physicist will criticize and laugh them to scorn. The iberal and progressive man of Science, however, the true and earnest cientific searcher after truth, such as the eminent Chemist, Mr. Crookes, ill corroborate the probability of the two statements. For hardly had the cho of his lecture on the “Genesis of the Elements” died away—the lecture hich, delivered by him before the Chemical Section of the British
Association, at the Birmingham meeting in 1887, so startled every volutionist who heard or read it—than there came another in March, 1888.
Once more the President of the Chemical Society brought before the world f Science and the public the fruits of some new discoveries in the realm f Atoms, and these discoveries justified the Occult Teachings in every ay. They are more startling even than the statements made by him in the irst lecture, and well deserve the attention of every Occultist,
Theosophist, and Metaphysician. This is what he says in his “Elements and
_Meta_‐Elements,” thus justifying Stallo’s charges and prevision, with the earlessness of a scientific mind which loves Science for truth’s sake, egardless of any consequences to his own glory and reputation. We quote is own words:
Permit me, gentlemen, now to draw your attention for a short time
to a subject which concerns the fundamental principles of
chemistry, a subject which may lead us to admit the possible
existence of bodies which, though neither compounds nor mixtures,
are not elements in the strictest sense of the word—bodies which I
venture to call “meta‐elements.” To explain my meaning it is
necessary for me to revert to our conception of an element. What
is the criterion of an element? Where are we to draw the line
between distinct existence and identity? No one doubts that
oxygen, sodium, chlorine, sulphur are separate elements; and when
we come to such groups as chlorine, bromine, iodine, etc., we
still feel no doubt, although were degrees of “elementicity”
admissible—and to that we may ultimately have to come—it might be
allowed that chlorine approximates much more closely to bromine
than to oxygen, sodium, or sulphur. Again, nickel and cobalt are
near to each other, very near, though no one questions their claim
to rank as distinct elements. Still I cannot help asking what
would have been the prevalent opinion among chemists had the
respective solutions of these bodies and their compounds presented
identical colours, instead of colours which, approximately
speaking, are mutually complementary. Would their distinct nature
have even now been recognized? When we pass further and come to
the so‐called rare earths the ground is less secure under our
feet. Perhaps we may admit scandium, ytterbium, and others of the
like sort to elemental rank; but what are we to say in the case of
praseo‐ and neo‐dymium, between which there may be said to exist
no well‐marked chemical difference, their chief claim to separate
individuality being slight differences in basicity and
crystallizing powers, though their physical distinctions, as shown
by spectrum observations, are very strongly marked? Even here we
may imagine the disposition of the majority of chemists would
incline toward the side of leniency, so that they would admit
these two bodies within the charmed circle. Whether in so doing
they would be able to appeal to any broad principle is an open
question. If we admit these candidates how in justice are we to
exclude the series of elemental bodies or meta‐elements made known
to us by Krüss and Nilson? Here the spectral differences are well
marked, while my own researches on didymium show also a slight
difference in basicity between some at least of these doubtful
bodies. In the same category must be included the numerous
separate “elements”—commonly so‐called—have been and are being
split up. Where then are we to draw the line? The different
groupings shade off so imperceptibly the one into the other that
it is impossible to erect a definite boundary between any two
adjacent bodies and to say that the body on this side of the line
is an element, while the one on the other side is non‐elementary,
or merely something which simulates or approximates to an element.
Wherever an apparently reasonable line might be drawn it would no
doubt be easy at once to assign most bodies to their proper side,
as in all cases of classification the real difficulty comes in
when the border‐line is approached. Slight chemical differences,
of course, are admitted, and, up to a certain point, so are well‐
marked physical differences. What are we to say, however, when the
only chemical difference is an almost imperceptible tendency for
the one body—of a couple or of a group—to precipitate before the
other? Again, there are cases where the chemical differences reach
the vanishing point, although well‐marked physical differences
still remain. Here we stumble on a new difficulty: in such
obscurities what is chemical and what is physical? Are we not
entitled to call a slight tendency of a nascent amorphous
precipitate to fall down in advance of another a “physical
difference”? And may we not call coloured reactions depending on
the amount of some particular acid present and varying, according
to the concentration of the solution and to the solvent employed,
“chemical differences”? I do not see how we can deny elementary
character to a body which differs from another by well‐marked
colour, or spectrum‐reactions, while we accord it to another body
whose only claim is a very minute difference in basic powers.
Having once opened the door wide enough to admit some spectrum
differences, we have to inquire how minute a difference qualifies
the candidate to pass? I will give instances from my own
experience of some of these doubtful candidates.
Here the great Chemist gives several cases of the very extraordinary ehaviour of molecules and earths, apparently the same, but which yet, hen examined very closely, were found to exhibit differences which, owever minute, still show that none of them are simple bodies, and that he 60 or 70 elements accepted in chemistry can no longer cover the round. Their name, apparently, is legion, but as the so‐called “periodic heory” stands in the way of an unlimited multiplication of elements, Mr.
Crookes is obliged to find some means of reconciling the new discovery ith the old theory. “That theory,” he says:
Has received such abundant verification that we cannot lightly
accept any interpretation of phenomena which fails to be in
accordance with it. But if we suppose the elements reïnforced by a
vast number of bodies slightly differing from each other in their
properties, and forming, if I may use the expression, aggregations
of nebulæ where we formerly saw, or believed we saw, separate
stars, the periodic arrangement can no longer be definitely
grasped. No longer, that is, if we retain our usual conception of
an element. Let us, then, modify this conception. For “element”
read “elementary group”—such elementary groups taking the place of
the old elements in the periodic scheme—and the difficulty falls
away. In defining an element, let us take not an external
boundary, but an internal type. Let us say, _e.g._, the smallest
ponderable quantity of yttrium is an assemblage of ultimate atoms
almost infinitely more like each other than they are to the atoms
of any other approximating element. It does not necessarily follow
that the atoms shall all be absolutely alike among themselves. The
atomic weight which we ascribed to yttrium, therefore, merely
represents a mean value around which the actual weights of the
individual atoms of the “element” range within certain limits. But
if my conjecture is tenable, could we separate atom from atom, we
should find them varying within narrow limits on each side of the
mean. The very process of fractionation implies the existence of
such differences in certain bodies.
Thus fact and truth have once more forced the hand of “exact” Science, and ompelled it to enlarge its views and change its terms, which, masking the ultitude, reduced them to one body—like the Septenary Elohim and their osts transformed by the materialistic religionists into one Jehovah.
Replace the chemical terms “molecule,” “atom,” “particle,” etc., by the ords “Hosts,” “Monads,” “Devas,” etc., and one might think the genesis of
Gods, the primeval evolution of manvantaric _intelligent_ Forces, was eing described. But the learned lecturer adds to his descriptive remarks omething still more suggestive; whether consciously or unconsciously, who noweth? For he says:
Until lately such bodies passed muster as elements. They had
definite properties, chemical and physical; they had recognized
atomic weights. If we take a pure dilute solution of such a body,
yttrium for instance, and if we add to it an excess of strong
ammonia, we obtain a precipitate which appears perfectly
homogeneous. But if instead we add very dilute ammonia in quantity
sufficient only to precipitate one‐half of the base present, we
obtain no immediate precipitate. If we stir up the whole
thoroughly so as to insure a uniform mixture of the solution and
the ammonia, and set the vessel aside for an hour, carefully
excluding dust, we may still find the liquid clear and bright,
without any vestige of turbidity. After three or four hours,
however, an opalescence will declare itself, and the next morning
a precipitate will have appeared. Now let us ask ourselves, What
can be the meaning of this phenomenon? The quantity of precipitant
added was insufficient to throw down more than half the yttria
present, therefore a process akin to selection has been going on
for several hours. The precipitation has _evidently not been
effected at random_, those molecules of the base being decomposed
which happened to come in contact with a corresponding molecule of
ammonia, for we have taken care that the liquids should be
uniformly mixed, so that one molecule of the original salt would
not be more exposed to decomposition than any other. If, further,
we consider the time which elapses before the appearance of a
precipitate, we _cannot avoid coming to the conclusion that the
action which has been going on for the first few hours is of a
selective character_. The problem is not why a precipitate is
produced, but what determines or directs some atoms to fall down
and others to remain in solution. Out of the multitude of atoms
present, _what power is it that directs each atom to choose the
proper path? We may picture to ourselves some directive force
passing the atoms one by one in review, selecting one for
precipitation and another for solution till all have been
adjusted._
The italics in the above passage are ours. Well may a man of Science ask imself: What power is it that directs each Atom? and what is the meaning f its character being _selective_? Theists would solve the question by nswering “God”; and would thereby solve nothing philosophically.
Occultism answers on its own Pantheistic grounds, and teaches the student bout Gods, Monads, and Atoms. The learned lecturer sees in it that which s his chief concern: the finger‐posts and the traces of a path which may ead to the discovery, and the full and complete demonstration, of an omogeneous element in Nature. He remarks:
In order that such a selection can be effected there evidently
must be some slight differences between which it is possible to
select, and this difference almost certainly must be one of
basicity, so slight as to be imperceptible by any test at present
known, but susceptible of being nursed and encouraged to a point
when the difference can be appreciated by ordinary tests.
Occultism, which knows of the existence and presence in Nature of the One
Eternal Element, at the first differentiation of which the roots of the
Tree of Life are periodically struck, needs no scientific proofs. It says:
Ancient Wisdom has solved the problem ages ago. Aye; earnest, as well as ocking reader, Science is slowly but surely approaching our domains of he Occult. It is forced by its own discoveries to adopt _nolens volens_ ur phraseology and symbols. Chemical Science is now compelled, by the ery force of things, to accept even our illustration of the evolution of he Gods and Atoms, so suggestively and undeniably figured in the Caduceus f Mercury, the God of Wisdom, and in the allegorical language of the
Archaic Sages. Says a Commentary in the Esoteric Doctrine:
_The trunk of the_ ASVATTHA (the tree of Life and Being, the ROD of the
Caduceus) _grows from and descends at every Beginning_ (every new
Manvantara) _from the two dark wings of the Swan_ (HANSA) _of Life. The wo Serpents, the ever‐living and its illusion_ (Spirit and matter) _whose wo heads grow from the one head between the wings, descend along the runks interlaced in close embrace. The two tails join on earth_ (the anifested Universe) _into one, and this is the great illusion, O Lanoo!_
Every one knows what the Caduceus is, modified considerably by the Greeks.
The original symbol—with the triple head of the serpent—became altered nto a rod with a knob, and the two lower heads were separated, thus isfiguring somewhat the original meaning. Yet it is as good an llustration as can be for our purpose, this laya rod, entwined by two erpents. Verily the wonderful powers of the magic Caduceus were sung by ll the ancient poets, with a very good reason for those who understood he secret meaning.
Now what says the learned President of the Chemical Society of Great
Britain, in that same lecture, which has any reference to, or bearing pon, our above‐mentioned doctrine? Very little; only this—and nothing ore:
In the Birmingham address already referred to I asked my audience
to picture the action of two forces on the original protyle—one
being time, accompanied by a lowering of temperature; the other,
swinging to and fro like a mighty pendulum, having periodic cycles
of ebb and swell, rest and activity, being intimately connected
with the imponderable matter, essence, or source of energy we call
electricity. Now, a simile like this effects its object if it
fixes in the mind the particular fact it is intended to emphasize,
but it must not be expected necessarily to run parallel with all
the facts. Besides the lowering of temperature with the periodic
ebb and flow of electricity, positive or negative, requisite to
confer on the newly‐born elements their particular atomicity, it
is evident that a third factor must be taken into account. Nature
does not act on a flat plane; she demands space for her cosmogenic
operations, and if we introduce space as the third factor, all
appears clear. Instead of a pendulum, which, though to a certain
extent a good illustration, is impossible as a fact, let us seek
some more satisfactory way of representing what I conceive may
have taken place. Let us suppose the zigzag diagram not drawn upon
a plane, but projected in space of three dimensions. What figure
can we best select to meet all the conditions involved? Many of
the facts can be well explained by supposing the projection in
space of Professor Emerson Reynolds’ zigzag curve to be a spiral.
This figure is, however, inadmissible, inasmuch as the curve has
to pass through a point neutral as to electricity and chemical
energy twice in each cycle. We must, therefore, adopt some other
figure. A figure of eight (8), or lemniscate, will foreshorten
into a zigzag just as well as a spiral, and it fulfils every
condition of the problem.
A lemniscate for the evolution downward, from Spirit into Matter; another orm of a spiral, perhaps, in its reinvolutionary path onward, from Matter nto Spirit; and the necessary gradual and final reabsorption into the
_laya_ state, that which Science calls, in her own way, “the point neutral s to electricity,” or the _zero_ point. Such are the Occult facts and tatement. They may be left with the greatest security and confidence to
Science, to be justified some day. Let us hear some more, however, about his primordial genetic type of the symbolical Caduceus.
Such a figure will result from three very simple simultaneous
motions. First, a simple oscillation backwards and forwards
(suppose east and west); secondly, a simple oscillation at right
angles to the former (suppose north and south) of half the
periodic time—_i.e._, twice as fast; and thirdly, a motion at
right angles to these two (suppose downwards), which, in its
simplest form, would be with unvarying velocity. If we project
this figure in space we find on examination that the points of the
curves, where chlorine, bromine, and iodine are formed, come close
under each other; so also will sulphur, selenium, and tellurium;
again, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony; and in like manner other
series of analogous bodies. It may be asked whether this scheme
explains how and why the elements appear in this order? Let us
imagine a cyclical translation in space, each evolution witnessing
the genesis of the group of elements which I previously
represented as produced during one complete vibration of the
pendulum. Let us suppose that one cycle has thus been completed,
the centre of the unknown creative force in its mighty journey
through space having scattered along its track the primitive
atoms—the seeds, if I may use the expression—which presently are
to coalesce and develop into the groupings now known as lithium,
beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium,
magnesium, aluminium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, and chlorine.
What is most probably the form of track now pursued? Were it
strictly confined to the same plane of temperature and time, the
next elementary groupings to appear would again have been those of
lithium, and the original cycle would have been eternally
repeated, producing again and again the same 14 elements. The
conditions, however, are not quite the same. Space and electricity
are as at first, but temperature has altered, and thus, instead of
the atoms of lithium being supplemented with atoms in all respects
analogous with themselves, the atomic groupings which come into
being when the second cycle commences form, not lithium, but its
lineal descendant, potassium. Suppose, therefore, the _vis
generatrix_ travelling to and fro in cycles along a lemniscate
path, as above suggested, while simultaneously temperature is
declining and time is flowing on—variations which I have
endeavoured to represent by the downward sink—each coil of the
lemniscate track crosses the same vertical line at lower and lower
points. Projected in space, the curve shows a central line neutral
as far as electricity is concerned, and neutral in chemical
properties—positive electricity on the north, negative on the
south. Dominant atomicities are governed by the distance east and
west from the neutral centre line, monatomic elements being one
remove from it, diatomic two removes, and so on. In every
successive coil the same law holds good.
And, as if to prove the postulate of Occult Science and Hindû philosophy, hat, at the hour of the Pralaya, the two aspects of the Unknowable Deity,
“the Swan in darkness,” Prakriti and Purusha, Nature or Matter in all its orms and Spirit, no longer subsist but are absolutely dissolved, we learn he conclusive scientific opinion of the great English Chemist, who caps is proofs by saying:
We have now traced the formation of the chemical elements from
knots and voids in a primitive, formless fluid. We have shown the
possibility, nay, the probability that the atoms are not eternal
in existence, but share with all other created beings the
attributes of decay and death.
Occultism says _amen_ to this, as the scientific “possibility” and
“probability” are for it facts, demonstrated beyond the necessity for urther proof, or for any extraneous physical evidence. Nevertheless, it epeats with as much assurance as ever: “MATTER IS ETERNAL, becoming tomic (its aspect) only periodically.” This is as sure as that the other roposition, which is almost unanimously accepted by Astronomers and
Physicists—namely, that the wear and tear of the body of the Universe is teadily going on, and that it will finally lead to the extinction of the
Solar Fires and the destruction of the Universe—is quite erroneous on the ines traced by men of Science. There will be, as there ever were in time nd eternity, periodical dissolutions of the manifested Universe, such as partial Pralaya after every Day of Brahmâ; and a Universal Pralaya—the
Mahâ‐Pralaya—only after the lapse of every Age of Brahmâ. But the cientific causes for such dissolution, as brought forward by exact
Science, have nothing to do with the true causes. However that may be,
Occultism is once more justified by Science, for Mr. Crookes said:
We have shown, from arguments drawn from the chemical laboratory,
that in matter which has responded to every test of an element,
there are minute shades of difference which may admit of
selection. We have seen that the time‐honoured distinction between
elements and compounds no longer keeps pace with the developments
of chemical science, but must be modified to include a vast array
of intermediate bodies—“meta‐elements.” We have shown how the
objections of Clerk‐Maxwell, weighty as they are, may be met; and
finally, we have adduced reasons for believing that primitive
matter was formed by the act of a generative force, throwing off
at intervals of time atoms endowed with varying quantities of
primitive forms of energy. If we may hazard any conjectures as to
the source of energy embodied in a chemical atom, we may, I think,
premise that the heat radiations propagated outwards through the
ether from the ponderable matter of the universe, by some process
of nature not yet known to us, are transformed at the confines of
the universe into the primary—the essential—motions of chemical
atoms, which, the instant they are formed, gravitate inwards, and
thus restore to the universe the energy which otherwise would be
lost to it through radiant heat. If this conjecture be well
founded, Sir William Thomson’s startling prediction of the final
decrepitude of the universe through the dissipation of its energy
falls to the ground. In this fashion, gentlemen, it seems to me
that the question of the elements may be provisionally treated.
Our slender knowledge of these first mysteries is extending
steadily, surely, though slowly.
By a strange and curious coincidence even our Septenary doctrine seems to orce the hand of Science. If we understand rightly, Chemistry speaks of ourteen groupings of primitive atoms—lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, itrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, aluminium, silicon, hosphorus, sulphur and chlorine; and Mr. Crookes, speaking of the
“dominant atomicities,” enumerates seven groups of these, for he says:
As the mighty focus of creative energy goes round, we see it in
successive cycles sowing in one tract of space seeds of lithium,
potassium, rubidium, and cæsium; in another tract, chlorine,
bromine, and iodine; in a third, sodium, copper, silver, and gold;
in a fourth, sulphur, selenium, and tellurium; in a fifth,
beryllium, calcium, strontium, and barium; in a sixth, magnesium,
zinc, cadmium, and mercury; in a seventh, phosphorus, arsenic,
antimony, and bismuth [which makes seven groupings on the one
hand. And after showing] ... in other tracts the other
elements—namely, aluminium, gallium, indium, and thallium;
silicon, germanium, and tin; carbon, titanium, and zirconium ...
[he adds] while a natural position near the neutral axis is found
for the three groups of elements relegated by Professor Mendeleeff
to a sort of Hospital for Incurables—his eighth family.
It might be interesting to compare these seven, and the eighth family of
“incurables,” with the allegories concerning the seven primitive sons of
“Mother, Infinite Space,” or Aditi, and the eighth son rejected by her.
Many a strange coincidence may thus be found between “those intermediate inks ... named meta‐elements” or elementoids, and those whom Occult
Science names their Noumenoi, the intelligent Minds and Rulers of those roupings of Monads and Atoms. But this would lead us too far. Let us be ontent with finding the confession of the fact that:
This deviation from absolute homogeneity should mark the
constitution of these molecules or aggregations of matter which we
designate elements and will perhaps be clearer if we return in
imagination to the earliest dawn of our material universe, and,
face to face with the Great Secret, try to consider the processes
of elemental evolution.
Thus finally Science, in the person of its highest representatives, in rder to make itself clearer to the profane, adopts the phraseology of uch old Adepts as Roger Bacon, and returns to the “protyle.” All this is opeful and suggestive of the “signs of the times.”
Indeed these “signs” are many and multiply daily; but none are more mportant than those just quoted. For now the chasm between the Occult
“superstitious and unscientific” teachings and those of “exact” Science is ompletely bridged, and one, at least, of the few eminent Chemists of the ay is in the realm of the infinite possibilities of Occultism. Every new tep he will take will bring him nearer and nearer to that mysterious
Centre, from which radiate the innumerable paths that lead down Spirit nto Matter, and which transform the Gods and the living Monads into man nd sentient Nature.
But we have something more to say on this subject in the following
Section.
Section IX. The Coming Force. Its Possibilities And Impossibilities.
Shall we say that Force is “moving Matter,” or “Matter in motion,” and a anifestation of Energy; or that Matter and Force are the phenomenal ifferentiated aspects of the one primary, undifferentiated Cosmic
Substance?
This query is made with regard to that Stanza which treats of FOHAT and is “Seven brothers or Sons,” in other words, of the _cause_ and the
_effects_ of Cosmic Electricity, the Brothers or Sons of Occult parlance eing the seven primary forces of Electricity, whose purely phenomenal, nd hence grossest, effects are alone cognizable by Physicists on the osmic and especially on the terrestrial plane. These include, among other hings, Sound, Light, Colour, etc. Now what does Physical Science tell us f these “Forces”? SOUND, it says, is a sensation produced by the impact f atmospheric molecules on the tympanum, which, by setting up delicate remors in the auditory apparatus, thus communicate their vibrations to he brain. LIGHT is the sensation caused by the impact of inconceivably inute vibrations of ether on the retina of the eye.
So, too, say we. But these are simply the effects produced in our tmosphere and its immediate surroundings, all, in fact, which falls ithin the range of our terrestrial consciousness. Jupiter Pluvius sent is symbol in drops of rain, of water composed, as is believed, of two
“elements,” which Chemistry dissociates and recombines. The compound olecules are in its power, but their atoms still elude its grasp.
Occultism sees in all these Forces and manifestations a ladder, the lower ungs of which belong to exoteric Physics, and the higher are traced to a iving, intelligent, invisible Power, which is, as a rule, the nconcerned, but, exceptionally, the conscious, Cause of the sense‐born henomena designated as this or that natural law.
We say and maintain that SOUND, for one thing, is a tremendous Occult ower; that it is a stupendous force, of which the electricity generated y a million of Niagaras could never counteract the smallest potentiality hen directed with Occult Knowledge. Sound may be produced of such a ature that the pyramid of Cheops would be raised in the air, or that a ying man, nay, one at his last breath, would be revived and filled with ew energy and vigour.
For Sound generates, or rather attracts together, the elements that roduce an _ozone_ the fabrication of which is beyond Chemistry, but is ithin the limits of Alchemy. It may even _resurrect_ a man or an animal hose astral “vital body” has not been irreparably separated from the hysical body by the severance of the magnetic or odic chord. _As one aved thrice from death_ by that power, the writer ought to be credited ith personally knowing something about it.
And if all this appears too _unscientific_ to be even noticed, let Science xplain to what mechanical and physical laws, known to it, are due the ecently produced phenomena of the so‐called Keely motor. What is it that cts as the formidable generator of invisible but tremendous force, of hat power which is not only capable of driving an engine of 25 horse‐ ower, but has even been employed to bodily lift the machinery? Yet this s done simply by drawing a fiddle‐bow across a tuning fork, as has been epeatedly proven. For the Etheric Force, discovered by John Worrell
Keely, of Philadelphia, well‐known in America and Europe, is no allucination. Notwithstanding his failure to utilize it—a failure rognosticated and maintained by some Occultists from the first—the henomena exhibited by the discoverer during the last few years have been onderful, almost miraculous, not in the sense of the _supernatural_(949) ut of the _superhuman_. Had Keely been permitted to succeed, he might ave reduced a whole army to atoms in the space of a few seconds, as asily as he reduced a dead ox to that condition.
The reader is now asked to give serious attention to that newly‐discovered otency, which the discoverer has named Inter‐Etheric Force, and Forces.
In the humble opinion of the Occultists, as of his immediate friends, Mr.
Keely was, and still is, at the threshold of some of the greatest secrets f the Universe; of that chiefly on which is built the whole mystery of hysical Forces, and the Esoteric significance of the “Mundane Egg” ymbolism. Occult Philosophy, viewing the manifested and the unmanifested
Kosmos as a UNITY, symbolizes the ideal conception of the former by that
“Golden Egg” with two poles in it. It is the positive pole that acts in he manifested World of Matter, while the negative loses itself in the nknowable Absoluteness of SAT—_Be‐ness_.(950) Whether this agrees with he philosophy of Mr. Keely, we cannot tell, nor does it really much atter. Nevertheless, his ideas about the ethero‐material construction of he Universe look strangely like our own, being _in this respect_ nearly dentical. This is what we find him saying in an able pamphlet compiled by
Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore, an American lady of wealth and position, whose ncessant efforts in the pursuit of truth can never be too highly ppreciated:
Mr. Keely, in explanation of the working of his engine, says: “In
the conception of any machine heretofore constructed, the medium
for inducing a neutral centre has never been found. If it had, the
difficulties of perpetual‐motion seekers would have ended, and
this problem would have become an established and operating fact.
It would only require an introductory impulse of a few pounds, on
such a device, to cause it to run for centuries. In the conception
of my vibratory engine, I did not seek to attain perpetual motion;
but a circuit is formed that actually has _a neutral centre_,
which is in a condition to be vivified by my vibratory ether, and,
while under operation by said substance, is really a machine that
is virtually independent of the mass (or globe),(951) and it is
the wonderful velocity of the vibratory circuit which makes it so.
Still, with all its perfection, it requires to be fed with the
vibratory ether to make it an independent motor.... All structures
require a foundation in strength according to the weight of the
mass they have to carry, but the foundations of the universe rest
on a vacuous point far more minute than a molecule; in fact, to
express this truth properly, on an _inter‐etheric point_, which
requires an infinite mind to understand it. To look down into the
depths of an etheric centre is precisely the same as it would be
to search into the broad space of heaven’s ether to find the end,
with this difference: that one is the positive field, while the
other is the negative field.”
This is, as may easily be seen, precisely the Eastern Doctrine. Mr.
Keely’s inter‐etheric point is the laya‐point of the Occultists; this, owever, does not require “an infinite mind to understand it,” but only a pecific intuition and ability to trace its hiding‐place in this World of
Matter. Of course, the _laya centre_ cannot be produced, but an _inter‐ theric vacuum_ can be—as is proved by the production of bell‐sounds in pace. Mr. Keely speaks as an unconscious Occultist, nevertheless, when he emarks, in his theory of planetary suspension:
As regards planetary volume, we would ask in a scientific point of
view, How can the immense difference of volume in the planets
exist without disorganizing the harmonious action that has always
characterized them? I can only answer this question properly by
entering into a progressive analysis, starting on the rotating
etheric centres that were fixed by the Creator(952) with their
attractive or accumulative power. If you ask what power it is that
gives to each etheric atom its inconceivable velocity of rotation
(or introductory impulse), I must answer that no finite mind will
ever be able to conceive what it is. The philosophy of
accumulation is the only proof that such a power has been given.
The area, if we can so speak, of such an atom presents to the
attractive or magnetic, the elective or propulsive, all the
receptive force and all the antagonistic force that characterize a
planet of the largest magnitude; consequently, as the accumulation
goes on, the perfect equation remains the same. When this minute
centre has once been fixed, the power to rend it from its position
would necessarily have to be so great as to displace the most
immense planet that exists. When this atomic neutral centre is
displaced, the planet must go with it. The neutral centre carries
the full load of any accumulation from the start, and remains the
same, for ever balanced in the eternal space.
Mr. Keely illustrates his idea of “a neutral centre” in this way:
We will imagine that, after an accumulation of a planet of any
diameter, say, 20,000 miles, more or less, for the size has
nothing to do with the problem, there should be a displacement of
all the material, with the exception of a crust 5,000 miles thick,
leaving an intervening void between this crust and a centre of the
size of an ordinary billiard ball, it would then require a force
as great to move this small central mass as it would to move the
shell of 5,000 miles thickness. Moreover, this small central mass
would carry the load of this crust for ever, keeping it
equidistant; and there could be no opposing power, however great,
that could bring them together. The imagination staggers in
contemplating the immense load which bears upon this point of
centre, where weight ceases.... This is what we understand by a
neutral centre.
And this is what Occultists understand by a laya centre.
The above is pronounced to be “unscientific” by many. But so is everything hat is not sanctioned and kept on the strictly orthodox lines of Physical
Science. Unless the explanation given by the inventor himself is ccepted—and his explanations, being quite _orthodox_ from the Spiritual nd the Occult standpoints, if not from that of materialistic speculative
Science, called _exact_, are therefore ours in this particular—what can
Science answer to facts already seen, which it is no longer possible for nyone to deny? Occult Philosophy divulges few of its most important vital ysteries. It drops them like precious pearls, one by one, far and wide part, and even this only when forced to do so by the evolutionary tidal ave that carries on Humanity slowly, silently, but steadily, toward the awn of the Sixth Race mankind. For once out of the safe custody of their egitimate heirs and keepers, those mysteries cease to be Occult: they all into the public domain, and have to run the risk of becoming curses ore often than blessings in the hands of the selfish—of the Cains of the uman race. Nevertheless, whenever such individuals as the discoverer of
Etheric Force are born, men with peculiar psychic and mental apacities,(953) they are generally and more frequently helped, than llowed to go unassisted, groping on their way; if left to their own esources, they very soon fall victims to martyrdom or become the prey of nscrupulous speculators. But they are helped only on the condition that hey should not become, whether consciously or unconsciously, an dditional peril to their age: _a danger to the poor_, now offered in aily holocaust by the less wealthy to the very wealthy.(954) This ecessitates a short digression and an explanation.
Some twelve years back, during the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the riter, in answering the earnest queries of a Theosophist, one of the arliest admirers of Mr. Keely, repeated to him what she had heard in uarters, information from which she could never doubt.
It had been stated that the inventor of the “Self‐Motor” was what is alled, in the jargon of the Kabalists, a “_natural‐born_ magician.” That e was and would remain unconscious of the full range of his powers, and ould work out merely those which he had found out and ascertained in his wn nature—_firstly_, because, attributing them to a wrong source, he ould never give them full sway; and _secondly_, because it was beyond his ower to pass to others that which was _a capacity inherent in his own pecial nature_. Hence, the whole secret could not be made over ermanently to anyone, for practical purposes or use.(955)
Individuals born with such a capacity are not very rare. That they are not eard of more frequently is due to the fact that they live and die, in lmost every case, in utter ignorance that they are possessed of abnormal owers. Mr. Keely possesses powers which are called abnormal, just because hey happen to be as little known, in our day, as was the circulation of he blood before Harvey’s time. Blood existed, and it behaved as it does t present in the first man born from woman; and so exists and has existed n man that _principle_ which can control and guide etheric vibratory
Force. At any rate, it exists in all those mortals whose _Inner Selves_ re _primordially connected, by reason of their direct descent, with that roup of Dhyân‐Chohans_ who are called “the first‐born of Æther.” Mankind, sychically considered, is divided into various groups, each group being onnected with one of the Dhyânic Groups that first formed _psychic_ man
(see paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the Commentary to Stanza VII.). Mr.
Keely—being greatly favoured in this respect, and besides his psychic emperament, being, moreover, intellectually a genius in mechanics—may chieve most wonderful results. He has achieved some already—more than any ortal man, _not initiated into the final Mysteries_, has achieved in this ge up to the present day. What he has done is—as his friends justly say f him—certainly quite sufficient “to demolish with the hammer of Science he idols of Science”—the idols of matter with the feet of clay. Nor would he writer for a moment think of contradicting Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore, hen, in her paper on “Psychic Force and Etheric Force,” she states that
Mr. Keely, as a Philosopher:
Is great enough in soul, wise enough in mind, and sublime enough
in courage to overcome all difficulties, and to stand at last
before the world as the greatest discoverer and inventor in the
world.
And again she writes:
Should Keely do no more than lead scientists from the dreary
realms where they are groping into the open field of elemental
force, where gravity and cohesion are disturbed in their haunts
and diverted to use; where, from unity of origin, emanates
infinite energy in diversified forms, he will achieve immortal
fame. Should he demonstrate, to the destruction of materialism,
that the universe is animated by a mysterious principle to which
matter, however perfectly organized, is absolutely subservient, he
will be a greater spiritual benefactor to our race than the modern
world has yet found in any man. Should he be able to substitute,
in the treatment of disease, the finer forces of nature for the
grossly material agencies which have sent more human beings to
their graves than war, pestilence and famine combined, he will
merit and receive the gratitude of mankind. All this and more will
he do, if he and those who have watched his progress, day by day
for years, are not too sanguine in their expectations.
The same lady, in her pamphlet, _Keely’s Secrets_,(956) brings forward the ollowing passage from an article, written in the _Theosophist_ a few ears ago, by the writer of the present volume:
The author of No. 5 of the pamphlets issued by the Theosophical
Publication Society, _What is Matter and What is Force_, says
therein: “The men of science have just found out ‘a fourth state
of matter,’ whereas the Occultists have penetrated years ago
beyond the sixth, and therefore do not infer, but know of, the
existence of the seventh, the last.” This knowledge comprises one
of the secrets of Keely’s so‐called “compound secret.” It is
already known to many that his secret includes “the augmentation
of energy,” the insulation of the ether, and the adaptation of
dynaspheric force to machinery.
It is just because Keely’s discovery would lead to a knowledge of one of he most Occult secrets, a secret which can never be allowed to fall into he hands of the masses, that his failure to push his discoveries to their ogical end seems certain to Occultists. But of this more presently. Even n its limitations this discovery may prove of the greatest benefit. For:
Step by step, with a patient perseverance which some day the world
will honour, this man of genius has made his researches,
overcoming the colossal difficulties which again and again raised
up in his path what seemed to be (to all but himself)
insurmountable barriers to further progress: but never has the
world’s index finger so pointed to an hour when all is making
ready for the advent of the new form of force that mankind is
waiting for. Nature, always reluctant to yield her secrets, is
listening to the demands made upon her by her master, necessity.
The coal mines of the world cannot long afford the increasing
drain made upon them. Steam has reached its utmost limits of
power, and does not fulfil the requirements of the age. It knows
that its days are numbered. Electricity holds back, with bated
breath, dependent upon the approach of her sister colleague. Air
ships are riding at anchor, as it were, waiting for the force
which is to make aërial navigation something more than a dream. As
easily as men communicate with their offices from their homes by
means of the telephone, so will the inhabitants of separate
continents talk across the ocean. Imagination is palsied when
seeking to foresee the grand results of this marvellous discovery,
when once it is applied to art and mechanics. In taking the throne
which it will force steam to abdicate, dynaspheric force will rule
the world with a power so mighty in the interests of civilization,
that no finite mind can conjecture the results. Laurence Oliphant,
in his preface to _Scientific Religion_, says: “A new moral future
is dawning upon the human race—one, certainly, of which it stands
much in need.” In no way could this new moral future be so widely,
so universally, commenced as by the utilizing of dynaspheric force
to beneficial purposes in life.
The Occultists are ready to admit all this with the eloquent writer.
Molecular vibration is, undeniably, “Keely’s legitimate field of esearch,” and the discoveries made by him will prove wonderful—yet _only n his hands_ and _through himself_. The world so far will get but that ith which it can be safely entrusted. The truth of this assertion has, erhaps, not yet quite dawned upon the discoverer himself, since he writes hat he is absolutely certain that he will accomplish all that he has romised, and that he will then give it out to the world; but it must dawn pon him, and at no very far distant date. And what he says in reference o his work is a good proof of it:
In considering the operation of my engine, the visitor, in order
to have even an approximate conception of its _modus operandi_,
must discard _all thought of engines that are operated upon the
principle of pressure and exhaustion, by the expansion of steam or
other analogous gas which impinges upon an abutment, such as the
piston of a steam‐engine_. My engine has neither piston nor
eccentrics, nor is there one grain of pressure exerted in the
engine, whatever may be the size or capacity of it. My system, in
every part and detail, both in the developing of my power and in
every branch of its utilization, _is based and founded on
sympathetic vibration_. In no other way would it be possible to
awaken or develop my force, and equally impossible would it be to
operate my engine upon any other principle.... This, however, is
the true system; and henceforth all my operations will be
conducted in this manner—that is to say, my power will be
generated, my engines run, my cannon operated, _through a wire_.
It has been only after years of incessant labour, and the making
of almost innumerable experiments, involving not only the
construction of a great many most peculiar mechanical structures,
and the closest investigation and study of the phenomenal
properties of the substance “ether,” _per se_, produced, that I
have been able to dispense with complicated mechanism, and to
obtain, as I claim, _mastery over the subtle and strange force
with which I am dealing_.
The passages underlined by us, are those which bear directly on the Occult ide of the application of the vibratory Force, that which Mr. Keely calls
“sympathetic vibration.” The “wire” is already a step below, or downward rom the pure Etheric plane into the Terrestrial. The discoverer has roduced marvels—the word “miracle” is not too strong—when acting through he inter‐etheric Force alone, the fifth and sixth principles of Âkâsha.
From a generator six feet long, he has come down to one “no larger than an ld‐fashioned silver watch”; and this by itself is a miracle of
_mechanical_, but not of spiritual, genius. As was well said by his great atroness and defender, Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore:
The two forms of force which he has been experimenting with, and
the phenomena attending them, are the very antithesis of each
other.
One was generated and acted upon by and through himself. No one, who hould have repeated the thing done by himself, _could have produced the ame results_. It was truly Keely’s Ether that acted, while Smith’s or
Brown’s Ether would have remained for ever barren of results. For Keely’s ifficulty has hitherto been to produce a machine which would develop and egulate the Force without the intervention of any “will power” or ersonal influence of the operator, whether conscious or unconscious. In his he has failed, so far as others were concerned, for _no one but imself_ could operate on his “machines.” Occultly this was a far more dvanced achievement than the “success” which he anticipates from his ire, but the results obtained from the fifth and sixth planes of the
Etheric, or Astral, Force, _will never be permitted to serve for purposes f commerce and traffic_. That Keely’s organism is directly connected with he production of his marvellous results is proven by the following tatement, emanating from one who knows the great discoverer intimately.
At one time the shareholders of the “Keely Motor Co.” put a man in
his workshop for the express purpose of discovering his secret.
After six months of close watching, he said to J. W. Keely one
day: “I know how it is done, now.” They had been setting up a
machine together, and Keely was manipulating the stop‐cock which
turned the force on and off. “Try it, then,” was the answer. The
man turned the cock, and nothing came. “Let me see you do it
again,” the man said to Keely. The latter complied, and the
machinery operated at once. Again the other tried, but without
success. Then Keely put his hand on his shoulder and told him to
try once more. He did so, with the result of an instantaneous
production of the current.
This fact, if true, settles the question.
We are told that Mr. Keely defines electricity “as a certain form of tomic vibration.” In this he is quite right; but this is Electricity on he terrestrial plane, and through terrestrial correlations. He estimates—
Molecular vibrations at 100,000,000 per second.
Inter‐molecular vibrations at 300,000,000 per second.
Atomic vibrations at 900,000,000 per second.
Inter‐atomic vibrations at 2,700,000,000 per second.
Ætheric vibrations at 8,100,000,000 per second.
Inter‐Ætheric vibrations at 24,300,000,000 per second.
This proves our point. There are no vibrations that could be counted or ven estimated at an _approximate_ rate beyond “the realm of the fourth
Son of Fohat,” to use an Occult phrase, or that motion which corresponds o the formation of Mr. Crookes’ radiant matter, lightly called some years go the “fourth state of matter”—_on this our plane_.
If the question is asked why Mr. Keely was not allowed to pass a certain imit, the answer is easy; it was because that, which he has unconsciously iscovered, is the terrible sidereal Force, known to, and named by the
Atlanteans Mash‐mak, and by the Âryan Rishis in their Astra Vidyâ by a ame that we do not like to give. It is the Vril of Bulwer Lytton’s
_Coming Race_, and of the coming Races of our mankind. The name Vril may e a fiction; the Force itself is a fact, as little doubted in India as is he existence of the Rishis, since it is mentioned in all the secret ooks.
It is this vibratory Force, which, when aimed at an army from an Agni‐ atha, fixed on a flying vessel, a balloon, according to the instructions ound in Astra Vidyâ, would reduce to ashes 100,000 men and elephants, as asily as it would a dead rat. It is allegorized in the _Vishnu Purâna_, n the _Râmâyana_ and other works, in the fable about the sage Kapila hose “glance made a mountain of ashes of King Sagara’s 60,000 sons,” and hich is explained in the Esoteric Works, and referred to as the
Kapilâksha—Kapila’s Eye.
And is it this Satanic Force that our generations are to be allowed to add o their stock of Anarchist’s baby‐toys, known as melenite, dynamite lock‐work, explosive oranges, “flower baskets,” and such other innocent ames? Is it this destructive agency, which, once in the hands of some odern Attila, a bloodthirsty Anarchist, for instance, would in a few days educe Europe to its primitive chaotic state, with no man left alive to ell the tale—is it this Force which is to become the common property of ll men alike?
What Mr. Keely has already done is grand and wonderful in the extreme; here is enough work before him in the demonstration of his new system to
“humble the pride of those scientists who are materialistic, by revealing hose mysteries which lie behind the world of matter,” without, _nolens olens_, revealing it to all. For surely Psychics and Spiritualists, of hom there are a good number in European armies, would be the first to ersonally experience the fruits of the revelation of such mysteries.
Thousands of them would speedily find themselves in blue Ether, perhaps ith the populations of whole countries to keep them company, were such a
Force to be even entirely discovered, let alone made publicly known. The iscovery in its completeness is by several thousand—or shall we say undred thousand—years too premature. It will be in its appointed place nd time only when the great roaring flood of starvation, misery, and nderpaid labour ebbs back again—as it will when the just demands of the any are at last happily attended to; when the proletariat exists but in ame, and the pitiful cry for bread, that rings unheeded throughout the orld, has died away. This may be hastened by the spread of learning, and y new openings for work and emigration, with better prospects than now xist, _and on some new continent that may appear_. Then only will Keely’s
Motor and Force, as originally contemplated by himself and his friends, be n demand, because it will then be more needed by the poor than by the ealthy.
Meanwhile the Force he has discovered will work through wires, and, if he ucceeds, this will be quite sufficient to make of him the greatest iscoverer of the age in the present generation.
What Mr. Keely says of _Sound_ and _Colour_ is also correct from the
Occult standpoint. Hear him talk as though he were the nursling of the
“Gods‐Revealers,” and as if he had gazed all his life into the depths of
Father‐Mother Æther.
In comparing the tenuity of the atmosphere with that of the etheric flows, btained by his invention for breaking up the molecules of air by ibration, Keely says:
It is as platinum to hydrogen gas. Molecular separation of air
brings us to the first sub‐division only; inter‐molecular, to the
second; atomic, to the third; inter‐atomic, to the fourth;
etheric, to the fifth; and inter‐etheric, to the sixth sub‐
division, or positive association with luminiferous ether.(957) In
my introductory argument I have contended that this is the
vibratory envelope of all atoms. In my definition of atom I do not
confine myself to the sixth sub‐division where this luminiferous
ether is developed in its crude form, as far as my researches
prove.(958) I think this idea will be pronounced by the physicists
of the present day, a wild freak of the imagination. Possibly, in
time, a light may fall upon this theory that will bring its
simplicity forward for scientific research. At present I can only
compare it to some planet in a dark space, where the light of the
sun of science has not yet reached it.... I assume that sound,
like odour, is a real substance of unknown and wonderful tenuity,
emanating from a body where it has been induced by percussion and
throwing out absolute corpuscles of matter, inter‐atomic
particles, with velocity of 1,120 feet per second; _in vacuo_
20,000. The substance which is thus disseminated is a part and
parcel of the mass agitated, and, if kept under this agitation
continuously, would, in the course of a certain cycle of time,
become thoroughly absorbed by the atmosphere; or, more truly,
would pass through the atmosphere to an elevated point of tenuity
corresponding to the condition of sub‐division that governs its
liberation from its parent body.... The sounds from vibratory
forks, set so as to produce etheric chords, while disseminating
their tones (compound), permeate most thoroughly all substances
that come under the range of their atomic bombardment. The
clapping of a bell _in vacuo_ liberates these atoms with the same
velocity and volume as one in the open air; and were the agitation
of the bell kept up continuously for a few millions of centuries
it would thoroughly return to its primitive element; and, if the
chamber were hermetically sealed, and strong enough, the vacuous
volume surrounding the bell would be brought to a pressure of many
thousands of pounds to the square inch, by the tenuous substance
evolved. In my estimation, sound truly defined is the disturbance
of atomic equilibrium, rupturing actual atomic corpuscles; and the
substance thus liberated must certainly be a certain order of
etheric flow. Under these conditions, is it unreasonable to
suppose that, if this flow were kept up, and the body thus robbed
of its element, it would in time disappear entirely? All bodies
are formed primitively from this highly tenuous ether, animal,
vegetable, and mineral, and they are only returned to their high
gaseous condition when brought under a state of differential
equilibrium.... As regards odour, we can only get some definite
idea of its extreme and wondrous tenuity by taking into
consideration that a large area of atmosphere can be impregnated
for a long series of years from a single grain of musk; which, if
weighed after that long interval, will be found to be not
appreciably diminished. The great paradox attending the flow of
odorous particles is that they can be held under confinement in a
glass vessel! Here is a substance of much higher tenuity than the
glass that holds it, and yet it cannot escape. It is as a sieve
with its meshes large enough to pass marbles, and yet holding fine
sand which cannot pass through; in fact, a molecular vessel
holding an atomic substance. This is a problem that would confound
those who stop to recognize it. But infinitely tenuous as odour
is, it holds a very crude relation to the substance of sub‐
division that governs a magnetic flow (a flow of sympathy, if you
please to call it so). This sub‐division comes next to sound, but
is above sound. The action of the flow of a magnet coincides
somewhat to the receiving and distributing portion of the human
brain, giving off at all times a depreciating ratio of the amount
received. It is a grand illustration of the control of mind over
matter, which gradually depreciates the physical till dissolution
takes place. The magnet on the same ratio gradually loses its
power and becomes inert. If the relations that exist between mind
and matter could be equated and so held, we would live on in our
physical state eternally, as there would be no physical
depreciation. But this physical depreciation leads, at its
terminus, to the source of a much higher development—viz., the
liberation of the pure ether from the crude molecular; which, in
my estimation, is to be much desired.(959)
It may be remarked that, save for a few small divergencies, no Adept nor
Alchemist could have better explained these theories, in the light of
Modern Science, however much the latter may protest against these novel iews. In all its fundamental principles, if not in its details, this is
Occultism pure and simple; and moreover, it is modern Natural Philosophy s well.
This new Force, or whatever Science may call it, the effects of which are ndeniable—as is admitted by more than one Naturalist and Physicist who as visited Mr. Keely’s laboratory and personally witnessed its tremendous ffects—what is it? Is it a “mode of motion,” also, _in vacuo_, since here is no Matter to generate it except Sound—another “mode of motion,” o doubt, a _sensation_ caused, like Colour, by vibrations? Fully as we elieve in these vibrations as the proximate, the immediate, cause of such ensations, we as absolutely reject the one‐sided scientific theory that here is _no factor_ to be considered as external to us, other than theric or atmospheric vibrations.
In this case the American Substantialists are not wrong, though they are oo anthropomorphic and material in their views for these to be accepted y Occultists, when they argue through Mrs. M. S. Organ, M.D., that:
There must be positive entitative properties in objects which have
a constitutional relation to the nerves of animal sensations, or
there can be no perception. No impression of any kind can be made
upon brain, nerve, or mind—no stimulus to action—unless there is
an actual and direct communication of a substantial force.
[“Substantial” as far as it appears, in the usual sense of the
word, in this universe of Illusion and Mâyâ, of course; not in
reality.] That force may be the most refined and sublimated
immaterial Entity [?]. Yet it must exist; for no sense, element,
or faculty of the human being can have a perception, or be
stimulated into action, without some substantial force coming in
contact with it. This is the fundamental law pervading the whole
organic and mental world. In the true philosophical sense there is
no such thing as independent action: for every force or substance
is correlated to some other force or substance. We can with just
as much truth and reason assert that no substance possesses any
inherent gustatory property or any olfactory property—that taste
and odour are simply sensations caused by vibrations; and hence
mere illusions of animal perceptions.
There _is_ a transcendental set of causes put in motion, so to speak, in he occurrence of these phenomena, which, _not being in relation to our arrow range of cognition_, can only be understood and traced to their ource and their nature, by the spiritual faculties of the Adept. They re, as Asclepios puts it to the King, “incorporeal corporealities,” such s “appear in the mirror,” and “abstract forms” that we see, hear, and mell, in our dreams and visions. What have the “modes of motion,” light, nd ether to do with these? Yet we see, hear, smell and touch them, _ergo_ hey are as much _realities_ to us in our dreams, as any other thing on his plane of Mâyâ.
Section X. On the Elements and Atoms.
When the Occultist speaks of Elements, and of human Beings who lived uring those geological ages, the duration of which it is found as mpossible to determine—according to the opinion of one of the best
English Geologists(960)—as the nature of Matter, it is because he knows hat he is talking about. When he says Man and Elements, he means neither an in his present physiological and anthropological form, nor the lemental Atoms, those hypothetical conceptions, existing at present in cientific minds, the entitative abstractions of Matter in its highly ttenuated state; nor, again, does he mean the compound Elements of
Antiquity. In Occultism the word Element in every case means _Rudiment_.
When we say “Elementary Man,” we mean either the proëmial, incipient ketch of man, in its unfinished and undeveloped condition, hence in that orm which now lies latent in physical man during his life‐time, and takes hape only occasionally and under certain conditions; or, that form which or a time survives the material body, and which is better known as an
Elementary.(961) With regard to Element, when the term is used etaphysically, it means, in distinction to the mortal, the incipient
Divine Man; and, in its physical usage, it means inchoate Matter in its irst undifferentiated condition, or in the Laya state, the eternal and ormal condition of Substance, which differentiates only periodically; uring that differentiation, Substance is really in an abnormal state—in ther words, it is but a transitory illusion of the senses.
As to the Elemental Atoms, so‐called, the Occultists refer to them by that ame with a meaning analogous to that which is given by the Hindû to
Brahmâ, when he calls him Anu, the Atom. Every Elemental Atom, in search f which more than one Chemist has followed the path indicated by the
Alchemists, is, in their firm belief, when not _knowledge_, a Soul; not ecessarily a disembodied Soul, but a Jîva, as the Hindûs call it, a entre of Potential Vitality, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the ase of compound Souls, an intelligent active Existence, from the highest o the lowest order, a form composed of more or less differentiations. It equires a Metaphysician—and an Eastern Metaphysician—to understand our eaning. All those Atom‐Souls are differentiations from the One, and are n the same relation to it as is the Divine Soul, Buddhi, to its informing nd inseparable Spirit, Âtmâ.
Modern Physics, in borrowing from the Ancients their Atomic Theory, forgot ne point, the most important point of the doctrine; hence they have got nly the husks and will never be able to get the kernel. In adopting hysical Atoms, they omitted the suggestive fact that, from Anaxagoras to
Epicurus, to the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all these
Philosophers believed more or less in _animated_ Atoms, not in invisible pecks of so‐called “brute” matter. According to them, rotatory motion was enerated by larger (read, more divine and pure) Atoms forcing other Atoms ownwards; the lighter ones being simultaneously thrust upward. The
Esoteric meaning of this is the ever cyclic curve of differentiated
Elements downward and upward through intercyclic phases of existence, ntil each again reaches its starting‐point or birthplace. The idea was etaphysical as well as physical; the hidden interpretation embracing Gods r Souls, in the shape of Atoms, as the _causes_ of all the _effects_ roduced on Earth by the _secretions_ from the divine bodies.(962) No
Ancient Philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists, ever dissociated
Spirit from Matter, or Matter from Spirit. Everything originated in the
One, and, proceeding from the One, must finally return to the One.
Light becomes heat, and consolidates into fiery particles; which,
from being ignited, become cold, hard particles, round and smooth.
And this is called Soul, imprisoned in its robe of matter.(963)
Atoms and Souls were synonymous in the language of the Initiates. The octrine of “whirling Souls,” Gilgoolem, in which so many learned Jews ave believed,(964) had no other meaning esoterically. The learned Jewish
Initiates never meant Palestine alone by the Promised Land, but they meant he same Nirvâna as do the learned Buddhist and Brahman—the bosom of the
Eternal ONE, symbolized by that of Abraham, and by Palestine as its ubstitute on Earth.
Surely no educated Jew ever believed this allegory in its literal sense, hat the bodies of Jews contain within them a principle of Soul which annot rest, if the bodies are deposited in a foreign land, until, by a rocess called the “whirling of the Soul” the immortal particle reaches nce more the sacred soil of the “Promised Land.”(965) The meaning of this s evident to an Occultist. The process was supposed to be accomplished by kind of metempsychosis, the psychic spark being conveyed through bird, east, fish, and the most minute insect.(966) The allegory relates to the
_Atoms of the body_, each of which has to pass through every form, before ll reach the final state, which is the first starting‐point of the eparture of every Atom—its primitive Laya state. But the primitive eaning of Gilgoolem, or the “Revolution of Souls,” was the idea of the eïncarnating Souls or Egos. “All the Souls go into the Gilgoolah,” into a yclic or revolving process; _i.e._, they all proceed on the cyclic path f re‐births. Some Kabalists interpret this doctrine to mean only a kind f purgatory for the souls of the wicked. But this is not so.
The passage of the Soul‐Atom “through the seven Planetary Chambers” had he same metaphysical and physical meaning. It had the latter when it was aid to dissolve into Ether. Even Epicurus, the model Atheist and
Materialist, knew so much and believed so much in the ancient Wisdom, that e taught that the Soul—entirely distinct from immortal Spirit, when the ormer is enshrined _latent_ in it, as it is in every atomic speck—was omposed of a fine, tender essence, formed from the _smoothest, roundest, nd finest atoms_.(967)
And this shows that the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less losely by all profane Antiquity, meant by the term Atom, a Soul, a Genius r Angel, the first‐born of the ever‐concealed Cause of all causes; and in his sense their teachings become comprehensible. They asserted, as do heir successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, Angels or Demons, not utside, nor independent of, the Universal Plenum, but within it. Only his Plenum, during the life‐cycles, is infinite. They admitted and taught good deal of that which modern Science now teaches—namely, the existence f a primordial World‐Stuff or Cosmic Substance, eternally homogeneous, xcept during its periodic existence; then, universally diffused hroughout infinite Space, it differentiates, and gradually forms sidereal odies from itself. They taught the revolution of the Heavens, the Earth’s otation, the Heliocentric System, and the Atomic Vortices—Atoms being in eality Souls and Intelligences. These “Atomists” were spiritual, most ranscendental, and philosophical Pantheists. It is not they who would ave ever conceived or dreamed that monstrous contrasted progeny, the ightmare of our modern civilized race: inanimate material and self‐ uiding Atoms, on the one hand, and an extra‐cosmic God on the other.
It may be useful to show what the Monad was, and what its origin, in the eachings of the old Initiates.
Modern exact Science, as soon as it began to grow out of its teens, erceived the great, and to it hitherto esoteric, axiom, that nothing, hether in the spiritual, psychic, or physical realm of Being, could come nto existence out of nothing. There is no cause in the manifested
Universe without its adequate effects, whether in Space or Time; nor can here be an effect without its primal cause, which itself owes its xistence to a still higher one—the final and absolute Cause having to emain to man for ever an incomprehensible Causeless Cause. But even this s no solution, and must be viewed, if at all, from the highest hilosophical and metaphysical standpoints, otherwise the problem had etter be left unapproached. It is an abstraction, on the verge of which uman reason—however trained in metaphysical subtleties—trembles, hreatening to collapse. This may be demonstrated to any European, who ould undertake to solve the problem of existence, by the articles of aith of the true Vedântin for instance. Let him read and study the ublime teachings of Shankarâchârya, on the subject of Soul and Spirit, nd the reader will realize what is now said.(968)
While the Christian is taught that the human Soul is a breath of God, eing created by him for sempiternal existence, having a beginning, but no nd—and therefore never to be called eternal—the Occult Teaching says:
Nothing is created, it is only transformed. Nothing can manifest itself in his Universe—from a globe down to a vague, rapid thought—that was not in he Universe already; everything on the subjective plane is an eternal
_is_; as everything on the objective plane is an _ever‐becoming_—because ll is transitory.
The Monad—a truly “indivisible thing,” as defined by Good, who did not ive it the sense we now do—is here rendered as the Âtmâ, in conjunction ith Buddhi and the higher Manas. This trinity is one and eternal, the atter being absorbed in the former at the termination of all conditioned nd illusive life. The Monad, then, can be traced through the course of ts pilgrimage and in its changes of transitory vehicles, only from the ncipient stage of the manifested Universe. In Pralaya, the intermediate eriod between two Manvantaras, it loses its name, as it loses it when the eal One Self of man merges into Brahman, in cases of high Samâdhi (the
Turîya state), or final Nirvâna; in the words of Shankara:
When the disciple having attained that primeval consciousness,
absolute bliss, of which the nature is truth, which is without
form and action, abandons this illusive body that has been assumed
by the _Âtmâ_ just as an actor (abandons) the dress (put on).
For Buddhi, the Anandamaya Sheath, is but a mirror which reflects absolute liss; and, moreover, that reflection itself is yet not free from gnorance, and is _not_ the Supreme Spirit, since it is subject to onditions, is a spiritual modification of Prakriti, and is an effect;
Âtmâ alone is the one real and eternal substratum of all, the Essence and
Absolute Knowledge, the Kshetrajña. Now that the Revised Version of the
Gospels has been published and the most glaring mistranslations of the old ersions are corrected, one can understand better the words in 1 _John_ v.
6: “It is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is truth.”
The words that follow in the mistranslated version about the “three itnesses,” hitherto supposed to stand for “the Father, the Word, and the
Holy Ghost,” show the real meaning of the writer very clearly, thus still ore forcibly identifying his teaching in this respect with that of
Shankarâchârya. For what can the sentence mean, “there are three that bear itness ... the Spirit and the Water and the Blood”—if it bears no elation to, nor connection with, the more philosophical statement of the reat Vedântin teacher, who, speaking of the Sheaths—the principles in an—Jîva, Vijñânamaya, etc., which _are_, in their physical manifestation,
“Water and Blood” or Life, adds that Âtmâ, Spirit, alone is what remains fter the subtraction of the Sheaths and that it is the Only Witness, or ynthesized unity. The less spiritual and philosophical school, solely ith an eye to a Trinity, made three witnesses out of “one,” thus onnecting it more with Earth than with Heaven. It is called in Esoteric
Philosophy the “One Witness,” and, while it rests in Devachan, is referred o as the “Three Witnesses to Karma.”
Âtmâ, our seventh principle, being identical with the Universal Spirit, nd man being one with it in his essence, what is then the Monad proper?
It is that homogeneous spark which radiates in millions of rays from the rimeval Seven;—of which Seven something will be said further on. It is he EMANATING SPARK FROM THE UNCREATED RAY—a mystery. In the esoteric, and ven exoteric Buddhism of the North, Âdi‐Buddha (Chogi Dangpoi Sangye), he One Unknown, without beginning or end, identical with Parabrahman and
Ain Suph, emits a bright Ray from its Darkness.
This is the Logos, the First, or Vajradhara, the Supreme Buddha, also alled Dorjechang. As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but ends into the world of manifestation his Heart—the “Diamond Heart,”
Vajrasattva or Dorjesempa. This is the Second Logos of Creation, from whom manate the seven—in the exoteric blind the five—Dhyâni‐Buddhas, called he Anupâdaka, the “Parentless.” These Buddhas are the primeval Monads rom the World of Incorporeal Being, the Arûpa World, wherein the
Intelligences (on that plane only) have neither shape nor name, in the xoteric system, but have their distinct seven names in the Esoteric
Philosophy. These Dhyâni‐Buddhas emanate, or create from themselves, by irtue of Dhyâna, celestial Selves—the super‐human Bodhisattvas. These, ncarnating at the beginning of every human cycle on Earth as mortal men, ecome occasionally, owing to their personal merit, Bodhisattvas among the
Sons of Humanity, after which they may reäppear as Mânushi, or Human,
Buddhas. The Anupâdaka, or Dhyâni‐Buddhas, are thus identical with the
Brâhmanical Mânasaputra, Mind‐born Sons—whether of Brahmâ, or of either of he other two Trimûrtian Hypostases; they are identical also with the
Rishis and Prajâpatis. Thus, a passage is found in _Anugîtâ_, which, read soterically, shows plainly, though under another imagery, the same idea nd system. It says:
Whatever entities there are in this world, moveable or immoveable,
they are the very first to be dissolved [at Pralaya]; and next the
developments produced from the elements [from which the visible
universe is fashioned]; and (after) these developments [evolved
entities], all the elements. Such is the upward gradation among
entities. Gods, Men, Gandharvas, Pishâchas, Asuras, Râkshasas, all
have been created by Nature [Svabhâva, or Prakriti, plastic
Nature], not by actions, nor by a cause [not by any physical
cause]. These Brâhmanas [the Rishi Prajâpati?], the creators of
the world, are born here (on earth) again and again. And whatever
is produced from them is dissolved in due time in those very five
great elements [the five, or rather seven, Dhyâni‐Buddhas, also
called “Elements” of Mankind], like billows in the ocean. These
great elements are in every way (beyond) the elements that make up
the world [the gross elements]. And he who is released, even from
these five elements [the Tanmâtras],(969) goes to the highest
goal. The Lord Prajâpati [Brahmâ] created all this by the mind
only [by Dhyâna, or abstract meditation and mystic powers, like
the Dhyâni‐Buddhas].(970)
Evidently then, these Brâhmanas are identical with the terrestrial
Bodhisattvas of the heavenly Dhyâni‐Buddhas. Both, as primordial, ntelligent “Elements,” become the Creators or the Emanators of the Monads estined to become human in that cycle; after which they evolve hemselves, or, so to say, expand into their own Selves as Bodhisattvas or
Brâhmanas, in heaven and earth, to become at last simple men. “The reators of the world are born here, on earth again and again”—truly. In he Northern Buddhist system, or the popular exoteric religion, it is aught that every Buddha, while preaching the Good Law on Earth, manifests imself simultaneously in three Worlds: in the Formless World as a Dhyâni‐
Buddha, in the World of Forms as a Bodhisattva, and in the World of
Desire, the lowest or our World, as a man. Esoterically the teaching iffers. The divine, purely Âdi‐Buddhic Monad manifests as the universal
Buddhi, the Mahâ‐Buddhi or Mahat, in Hindû philosophies, the spiritual, mniscient and omnipotent Root of divine Intelligence, the highest Anima
Mundi or the Logos. This descends “like a flame spreading from the eternal
Fire, immoveable, without increase or decrease, ever the same to the end” f the cycle of existence, and becomes Universal Life on the Mundane
Plane. From this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like seven fiery ongues, the Sons of Light, the Logoi of Life; then the Dhyâni‐Buddhas of ontemplation, the concrete forms of their formless Fathers, the Seven
Sons of Light, _still themselves_, to whom maybe applied the Brâhmanical ystic phrase: “Thou art THAT”—Brahman. It is from these Dhyâni‐Buddhas hat emanate their Chhâyâs or Shadows, the Bodhisattvas of the celestial ealms, the prototypes of the super‐terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the errestrial Buddhas, and finally of men. The Seven Sons of Light are also alled Stars.
The star under which a human Entity is born, says the Occult Teaching, ill remain for ever its star, throughout the whole cycle of its ncarnations in one Manvantara. _But this is not his astrological star._
The latter is concerned and connected with the _Personality_; the former ith the _Individuality_. The Angel of that Star, or the Dhyâni‐Buddha onnected with it, will be either the guiding, or simply the presiding,
Angel, so to say, in every new rebirth of the Monad, _which is part of his wn essence_, though his vehicle, man, may remain for ever ignorant of his fact. The Adepts have each their Dhyâni‐Buddha, their elder “Twin‐
Soul,” and they know it, calling it “Father‐Soul,” and “Father‐Fire.” It s only at the last and supreme Initiation, however, when placed face to ace with the bright “Image” that they learn to recognize it. How much did
Bulwer Lytton know of this mystic fact, when describing, in one of his ighest inspirational moods, Zanoni face to face with his Augoeides?
The Logos, or both the unmanifested and the manifested Word, is called by he Hindûs, Îshvara, the Lord, though the Occultists give it another name.
Îshvara, say the Vedântins, is the highest consciousness in Nature. “This ighest consciousness,” answer the Occultists, “is only a synthetic unit n the World of the manifested Logos—or on the plane of illusion; for it s the sum total of Dhyân Chohanic consciousness.” “O wise man, remove the onception that _Not‐Spirit is Spirit_”—says Shankarâchârya. Âtmâ is Not‐
Spirit in its final Parabrahmic state; Îshvara, or Logos, is Spirit; or, s Occultism explains, it is a compound unity of manifested living
Spirits, the parent‐source and nursery of all the mundane and terrestrial
Monads, _plus_ their divine Reflection, which emanate from, and return nto, the Logos, each in the culmination of its time. There are seven hief Groups of such Dhyân Chohans, which groups will be found and ecognized in every religion, for they are the primeval Seven Rays.
Humanity, Occultism teaches us, is divided into seven distinct Groups, ith their sub‐divisions, mental, spiritual, and physical. Hence there are even chief planets, the spheres of the indwelling seven Spirits, under ach of which is born one of the human Groups which is guided and nfluenced thereby. There are only seven planets _specially_ connected ith Earth, and twelve houses, but the possible combinations of their spects are countless. As each planet can stand to each of the others in welve different aspects, their combinations must be almost infinite; as nfinite, in fact, as the spiritual, psychic, mental, and physical apacities in the numberless varieties of the _genus homo_, each of which arieties is born under one of the seven planets and one of the said ountless planetary combinations.(971)
The Monad, then, viewed as One, is above the seventh principle in Kosmos nd man; and as a Triad, it is the direct radiant progeny of the said ompound Unit, not the Breath of “God,” as that Unit is called, nor reating out of _nihil_; for such an idea is quite unphilosophical, and egrades Deity, dragging It down to a finite, attributive condition. As ell expressed by the translator of the _Crest‐Jewel of Wisdom_—though
Îshvara is “God.”
Unchanged in the profoundest depths of Pralayas and in the
intensest activity of Manvantaras, [still] beyond [him] is ÂTMÂ,
round whose pavilion is the darkness of eternal MÂYÂ.(972)
The “Triads” born under the same Parent‐Planet, or rather the Radiations f one and the same Planetary Spirit or Dhyâni‐Buddha are, in all their fter lives and rebirths, sister, or “twin” souls, on this Earth. The idea s the same as that of the Christian Trinity, the “Three in One,” only it s still more metaphysical: the Universal “Over‐Spirit,” manifesting on he two higher planes, those of Buddhi and Mahat. These are the three
Hypostases, metaphysical, but never personal.
This was known to every high Initiate in every age and in every country:
“I and my Father are one,” said Jesus.(973) When he is made to say, lsewhere: “I ascend to _my_ Father and _your_ Father,”(974) it meant that hich has just been stated. The identity, and at the same time the llusive differentiation of the _Angel_‐Monad and the _Human_‐Monad is hown in the sentences: “My Father is _greater_ than I”;(975) “Glorify
_your_ Father _which is in Heaven_”;(976) “Then shall the righteous shine orth as the sun in the kingdom of _their_ Father” (not _our_
Father).(977) So again Paul asks: “Know ye not ye are the _temple_ of God, nd that the _Spirit of God dwelleth_ in you?”(978) All this was simply eant to show that the group of disciples and followers attracted to him elonged to the same Dhyâni‐Buddha, Star, or Father, and that this again elonged to the same planetary realm and division as he did. It is the
_knowledge_ of this Occult Doctrine that found expression in the review of
_The Idyll of the White Lotus_, when T. Subba Row wrote:
Every Buddha meets at his last Initiation all the great Adepts who
reached Buddhahood during the preceding ages ... every class of
Adepts has its own bond of spiritual communion which knits them
together.... The only possible and effectual way of entering into
such brotherhood ... is by bringing oneself within the influence
of the Spiritual light which radiates from one’s own Logos. I may
further point out here ... that such communion is only possible
between persons whose souls derive their life and sustenance from
the same divine Ray, and that, as seven distinct Rays radiate from
the “Central Spiritual Sun,” all Adepts and Dhyân Chohans are
divisible into seven classes, each of which is guided, controlled,
and overshadowed by one of the seven forms or manifestations of
the divine Wisdom.(979)
It is then the Seven Sons of Light,—called after their planets and often dentified with them by the rabble, namely, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury,
Mars, Venus, and _presumably_ the Sun and Moon, for the modern critic, who oes no deeper than the surface of old religions(980)—which are, according o the Occult Teachings, our heavenly Parents, or synthetically our
“Father.” Hence, as already remarked, Polytheism is really more hilosophical and correct, as to fact and Nature, than is anthropomorphic
Monotheism. Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, the four exoteric lanets, and the three others, which must remain unnamed, were the eavenly bodies in direct astral and psychic communication, morally and hysically, with the Earth, its Guides, and Watchers; the visible orbs urnishing our Humanity with its outward and inward characteristics, and heir Regents or Rectors with our Monads and spiritual faculties. In order o avoid creating new misconceptions, let it be stated that among the hree Secret Orbs, or Star‐Angels, neither Uranus nor Neptune were ncluded; not only because they were unknown under these names to the ncient Sages, but because they, like all other planets, however many here may be, are the Gods and Guardians of other septenary Chains of
Globes within our System.
Nor do the two great planets last discovered depend entirely on the Sun, s do the rest of the planets. Otherwise, how can we explain the fact that
Uranus receives 1/390th part of the light received by our Earth, while
Neptune receives only 1/900th part; and that their satellites show a eculiarity of inverse rotation found in no other planets of the Solar
System? At any rate, what we say applies to Uranus, though the fact has gain been disputed recently.
This subject will, of course, be considered as a mere vagary, by all those ho confuse the universal order of Being with their own systems of lassification. Here, however, simple facts from Occult Teachings are tated, to be either accepted or rejected, as the case may be. There are etails which, on account of their great metaphysical abstraction,
_cannot_ be entered upon. Hence, we merely state that only seven of our lanets are as intimately related to our Globe, as the Sun is to all the odies subject to him in his System. Of these bodies the poor little umber of _primary_ and _secondary_ planets known to Astronomy, looks retched enough, in truth.(981) Therefore, it stands to reason that there re a great number of planets, small and large, that have not been iscovered yet, but of the existence of which ancient Astronomers—all of hem initiated Adepts—must certainly have been aware. But, as the relation f these to the Gods was sacred, it had to remain arcane, as did also the ames of various other planets and stars.
Besides this, even the Roman Catholic Theology speaks of “_seventy_ lanets that preside over the destinies of the nations of this globe;” nd, save the erroneous application, there is more truth in this tradition han in exact modern Astronomy. The seventy planets are connected with the eventy elders of the people of Israel,(982) and the Regents of these lanets are meant, not the orbs themselves; the word seventy is a play and blind upon the 7 × 7 of the subdivisions. Each people and nation, as we ave already said, has its _direct_ Watcher, Guardian and Father in
Heaven—a Planetary Spirit. We are willing to leave their own national God,
Jehovah, to the descendants of Israel, the worshippers of Sabaoth or
Saturn; for, indeed, the Monads of the people chosen by him are his own, nd the _Bible_ has never made any secret of it. Only the text of the
Protestant English _Bible_ is, as usual, in disagreement with those of the
Septuagint and the Vulgate. Thus, while in the former we read:
When the Most High [not Jehovah] divided to the nations their
inheritance ... he set the bounds of the people according to the
number of the children of Israel.(983)
In the _Septuagint_ the text reads “according to the number of the
Angels,” Planet‐Angels, a version more concordant with truth and fact.
Moreover, all the texts agree that “the Lord’s [Jehovah’s] portion is his eople; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance”;(984) and this settles the uestion. The “Lord” Jehovah took Israel _for his portion_; what have ther nations to do with that particular national Deity? Let then, the
“Angel Gabriel” watch over Iran and “Mikael‐Jehovah” over the Hebrews.
These are not the Gods of other nations, and it is difficult to see why
Christians should have selected a God against whose commandments Jesus was he first to rise in rebellion.
The planetary origin of the Monad, or Soul, and of its faculties was aught by the Gnostics. On its way to the Earth, as on its way back from he Earth, each soul born in, and from, the “Boundless Light,”(985) had to ass through the seven planetary regions either way. The pure Dhyâni and
Devas of the oldest religions had become, in course of time, with the
Zoroastrians, the Seven Devs, the ministers of Ahriman, “each chained to is planet”;(986) with the Brâhmans, the Asuras and some of the
Rishis—good, bad and indifferent; among the Egyptian Gnostics it was
Thoth, or Hermes, who was the chief of the Seven whose names are given by
Origen as Adonai, genius of the Sun; Tao, of the Moon; Eloi, of Jupiter;
Sabaoth, of Mars; Orai, of Venus; Astaphai, of Mercury; and Ildabaoth
(Jehovah), of Saturn. Finally, the _Pistis‐Sophia_, which the greatest odern authority on exoteric Gnostic beliefs, the late Mr. C. W. King, efers to as “that precious monument of Gnosticism”—this old document choes the archaic belief of the ages, while distorting it to suit ectarian purposes. The Astral Rulers of the Spheres, the planets, create he Monads, or Souls, from their own substance out of “the tears of their yes, and the sweat of their torments,” endowing the Monads with a spark f their substance which is the Divine Light. It will be shown in Volume
II why these “Lords of the Zodiac and Spheres” have been transformed by ectarian Theology into the Rebellious Angels of the Christians, who took hem from the Seven Devs of the Magi, without understanding the ignificance of the allegory.(987)
As usual, that which _is_, and _was_ from its beginning, divine, pure, and piritual in its earliest unity, became—by reason of its differentiation hrough the distorted prism of man’s conceptions—human and impure, as eflecting man’s own sinful nature. Thus, in time, the planet Saturn ecame reviled by the worshippers of other Gods. The nations born under
Saturn—the Jewish, for instance, with whom he became Jehovah, after being onsidered as a son of Saturn, or Ilda‐Baoth, by the Ophites, and in the
Book of Jasher—were eternally fighting with those born under Jupiter,
Mercury, or any other planet, except Saturn‐Jehovah; genealogies and rophecies notwithstanding, Jesus _the Initiate_ (or Jehoshua)—the type rom whom the “historical” Jesus was copied—was not of pure Jewish blood, nd thus recognized no Jehovah; nor did he worship any planetary God eside his own “Father,” whom he knew, and with whom he communed, as every igh Initiate does, “Spirit to Spirit and Soul to Soul.” This can hardly e taken exception to, unless the critic explains to every one’s atisfaction the strange sentences put into the mouth of Jesus during his isputes with the Pharisees by the author of the Fourth Gospel:
I know that ye are Abraham’s seed(988).... I speak that which I
have seen with my Father; and ye do that which ye have seen with
your Father.... Ye do the deeds of your Father.... Ye are of your
Father, the Devil.... He was a murderer from the beginning, and
abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he
speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the
father of it.(989)
This “Father” of the Pharisees was Jehovah, for he was identical with
Cain, Saturn, Vulcan, etc.—the planet under which they were born, and the
God whom they worshipped. Evidently there must be an Occult meaning sought n these words and admonitions, however mistranslated, since they are ronounced by one who threatened with hell‐fire anyone who says to his rother simply Raca, fool.(990) And evidently, again, the planets are not erely spheres, twinkling in Space, and made to shine for no purpose, but hey are the domains of various Beings with whom the uninitiated are so ar unacquainted, but who have, nevertheless, a mysterious, unbroken, and owerful connection with men and globes. Every heavenly body is the temple f a God, and these Gods themselves are the temples of God, the Unknown
“_Not_ Spirit.” There is nothing profane in the Universe. All Nature is a onsecrated place, as Young says:
Each of these Stars is a religious house.
Thus can all exoteric religions be shown to be the falsified copies of the
Esoteric Teaching. It is the priesthood which has to be held responsible or the reaction of our day in favour of Materialism. It is by worshipping nd enforcing on the masses the worship of the shells of pagan deals—personified for purposes of allegory—that the latest exoteric eligion has made of Western lands a Pandemonium, in which the higher lasses worship the golden calf, and the lower and ignorant masses are ade to worship an idol with feet of clay.
Section XI. Ancient Thought in Modern Dress.
Modern _Science is Ancient Thought distorted_, and no more. We have seen, owever, what intuitional Scientists think, and are busy about; and now he reader shall be given a few more proofs of the fact that more than one
F.R.S. is unconsciously approaching the derided Secret Sciences.
With regard to Cosmogony and primeval matter, modern speculations are ndeniably ancient thought, “improved” by contradictory theories of recent rigin. The whole foundation belongs to Grecian and Indian Archaic
Astronomy and Physics, in those days called always Philosophy. In all the
Âryan and Greek speculations, we meet with the conception of an all‐ ervading, unorganized, and homogeneous Matter, or Chaos, re‐named by odern Scientists “nebular condition of the world‐stuff.” What Anaxagoras alled Chaos in his _Homoiomeria_ is now called “primitive fluid” by Sir
William Thomson. The Hindû and Greek Atomists—Kanâda, Leucippus,
Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, etc.—are now reflected, as in a clear irror, in the supporters of the Atomic Theory of our modern days, eginning with Leibnitz’s Monads, and ending with the Vortical Atoms of
Sir William Thomson.(991) True, the corpuscular theory of old is rejected, nd the undulatory theory has taken its place. But the question is, hether the latter is so firmly established as not to be liable to be ethroned like its predecessor? Light, from its metaphysical aspect, has een fully treated in _Isis Unveiled_:
Light is the first begotten, and the first emanation of the
Supreme, and Light is Life, says the Evangelist [and the
Kabalist]. Both are electricity—the life principle, the Anima
Mundi—pervading the Universe, the electric vivifier of all things.
Light is the great Protean magician, and under the divine Will of
the Architect(992) [or rather the _Architects_, the “Builders,”
called _One_ collectively], its multifarious, omnipotent waves
gave birth to every form as well as to every living being. From
its swelling electric bosom, spring _Matter_ and _Spirit_. Within
its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action,
and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena; it vitalizes and
disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its
Primordial Point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of
worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies. It was at the ray
of this First Mother, one in three, that “God,” according to
Plato, “lighted a Fire which we now call the Sun,”(993) and which
is _not_ the cause of either light or heat, but merely the focus,
or, as we might say, the lens, by which the Rays of the Primordial
Light become materialized, are concentrated upon our Solar System,
and produce all the correlations of forces.(994)
This is the Ether, as just explained in the views of Metcalfe, repeated by
Dr. Richardson, save for the submission of the former to some details of he modern undulatory theory. We do not say that we deny the theory; we ssert only that it needs completion and reärrangement. But the Occultists re by no means the only heretics in this respect; for Mr. Robert Hunt,
F.R.S. finds that:
The undulatory theory does not account for the results of his
experiments.(995) Sir David Brewster, in his _Treatise on Optics_,
showing “that the colours of vegetable life arise ... from a
specific attraction which the particles of these bodies exercise
over the differently‐coloured rays of light,” and that “it is by
the light of the sun that the coloured juices of plants are
elaborated, that the colours of bodies are changed, etc.,” remarks
that it is not easy to allow “that such effects can be produced by
the mere vibration of an ethereal medium.” And he is _forced_, he
says, “by this class of facts, to reason as if light was
_material_” [?]. Professor Josiah P. Cooke, of Harvard University,
says that he “cannot agree ... with those who regard the wave‐
theory of light as an established principle of science.”(996)
Herschell’s doctrine, that the intensity of light, in effect of
each undulation, “is inversely as the square of the distance from
the luminous body,” if correct, damages a good deal, if it does
not kill, the undulatory theory. That he is right, was proved
repeatedly by experiments with photometers; and though it begins
to be much doubted, the undulatory theory is still alive.(997)
To this remark of Sir David Brewster—“forced to reason as if light was aterial”—there is a good deal to reply. Light, in one sense, is certainly s material as is electricity itself. And if electricity is not material, f it is only a “mode of motion,” how is it that it can be _stored up_ in
Faure’s accumulators? Helmholtz says that electricity must be as atomic as atter; and Mr. W. Crookes, F.R.S., supported the view in his address at
Birmingham, in 1886, to the Chemical Section of the British Association, f which he was President. This is what Helmholtz says:
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.(998)
Here we have to repeat that which was already said in Section VIII, that here is but one science that can henceforth direct modern research into he one path which will lead to the discovery of the whole, hitherto
Occult, truth, and it is the youngest of all—Chemistry, as it now stands eformed. There is no other, not excluding Astronomy, that can so nerringly guide scientific intuition, as can Chemistry. Two proofs of his are to be found in the world of Science—two great Chemists, each mong the greatest in his own country, namely, Mr. Crookes and the late
Professor Butlerof: the one is a thorough believer in abnormal phenomena; he other was as fervid a Spiritualist, as he was great in the natural ciences. It becomes evident that, while pondering over the ultimate ivisibility of Matter, and in the hitherto fruitless chase after the lement of negative atomic weight, the scientifically trained mind of the
Chemist must feel irresistibly drawn towards those ever‐shrouded worlds, o that mysterious Beyond, whose measureless depths seem to close against he approach of the too materialistic hand that would fain draw aside its eil. “It is the unknown and the ever‐unknowable,” warns the Monist‐
Agnostic. “Not so,” answers the persevering Chemist. “We are on the track nd we are not daunted, and fain would we enter the mysterious region hich ignorance tickets unknown.”
In his Presidential Address at Birmingham Mr. Crookes said:
There is but one unknown—the ultimate substratum of Spirit
[Space]. That which is not the Absolute and the One is, in virtue
of that very differentiation, however far removed from the
physical senses, always accessible to the spiritual human mind,
which is a coruscation of the undifferentiable Integral.
Two or three sentences, at the very close of his lecture on the _Genesis f the Elements_, showed the eminent Scientist to be on the royal road to he greatest discoveries. He has been for some time overshadowing “the riginal protyle,” and he has come to the conclusion that “he who grasps he Key will be permitted to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of reation.” Protyle, as the great Chemist explains:
... is a word analogous to protoplasm, to express the idea of the
original primal matter existing before the evolution of the
chemical elements. The word I have ventured to use for this
purpose is compounded of πρὸ (earlier than) and ὕλη (the stuff of
which things are made). The word is scarcely a new coinage, for
600 years ago Roger Bacon wrote in his _Arte Chymiae_, “The
elements are made out of ὕλη and every element is converted into
the nature of another element.”
The _knowledge_ of Roger Bacon did not come to this wonderful old agician(999) by inspiration, but because he studied ancient works on
Magic and Alchemy, and had a key to the real meaning of their language.
But see what Mr. Crookes says of Protyle, next neighbour to the nconscious Mûlaprakriti of the Occultists:
Let us start at the moment when the first element came into
existence. Before this time, matter, as we know it, was not. It is
equally impossible to conceive of matter without energy, as of
energy without matter; from one point of view both are convertible
terms. Before the birth of atoms, all those forms of energy, which
become evident when matter acts upon matter, could not have
existed(1000)—they were locked up in the protyle as latent
potentialities only. Coincident with the creation of atoms, all
those attributes and properties, which form the means of
discriminating one chemical element from another, start into
existence fully endowed with energy.(1001)
With every respect due to the great knowledge of the lecturer, the
Occultist would put it otherwise. He would say that no Atom is ever
“created,” for the Atoms are eternal within the bosom of the One Atom—“the
Atom of Atoms”—viewed during Manvantara as the Jagad‐Yoni, the material ausative womb of the World. Pradhâna, unmodified Matter—that which is the irst form of Prakriti, or material, visible, as well as invisible
Nature—and Purusha, Spirit, are eternally one; and they are Nirupâdhi, ithout adventitious qualities or attributes, only during Pralaya, and hen beyond any of the planes of consciousness of existence. The Atom, as nown to modern science, is inseparable from Purusha, which is Spirit, but s now called “energy” in Science. The Protyle Atom has not been omminuted or subtilized: it has simply passed into that plane, which is o plane, but the eternal state of everything beyond the planes of llusion. Both Purusha and Pradhâna are immutable and unconsumable, or
Aparinâmin and Avyaya, in eternity; and both may be referred to during the
Mâyâvic periods as Vyaya and Parinâmin, or that which can expand, pass way and disappear, and which is “modifiable.” In this sense Purusha, ust, of course, be held distinct in our conceptions from Parabrahman.
Nevertheless that, which is called “energy” or “force” in Science, and hich has been explained as a dual force by Metcalfe, is never, in fact, nd cannot be, energy alone; for it is the Substance of the World, its
Soul, the All‐permeant, Sarvaga, in conjunction with Kâla, Time. The three re the trinity in one, during Manvantara, the all‐potential Unity, which cts as three distinct things on Mâyâ, the plane of illusion. In the
Orphic philosophy of ancient Greece they were called Phanes, Chaos, and
Chronos—the triad of the Occult Philosophers of that period.
But see how closely Mr. Crookes brushes the “Unknowable,” and what otentialities there are for the acceptance of Occult truths in his iscoveries. He continues, speaking of the evolution of Atoms:
Let us pause at the end of the first complete vibration and
examine the result. We have already found the elements of water,
ammonia, carbonic acid, the atmosphere, plant and animal life,
phosphorus for the brain, salt for the seas, clay for the solid
earth ... phosphates and silicates sufficient for a world and
inhabitants not so very different from what we enjoy at the
present day. True the human inhabitants would have to live in a
state of more than Arcadian simplicity, and the absence of calcic
phosphate would be awkward as far as the bone is
concerned.(1002)... At the lower end of our curve ... we see a
great hiatus.... This oasis, and the blanks which precede and
follow it, may be referred with much probability to the particular
way in which our earth developed into a member of our solar
system. If this be so, it may be that on our earth only these
blanks occur, and not generally throughout the universe.
This justifies several assertions in the Occult works.
Firstly, that neither the stars nor the Sun can be said to be constituted f those terrestrial elements with which the Chemist is familiar, though hey are all present in the Sun’s outward robes—as well as a host more of lements so far unknown to Science.
Secondly, that our globe has its own special laboratory on the far‐away utskirts of its atmosphere, crossing which, every Atom and molecule hanges and differentiates from its primordial nature.
And thirdly, that though no element present on our Earth could ever ossibly be found wanting in the Sun, there are many others there which ave either not reached, or not as yet been discovered on our globe.
Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies in the
process of formation; or, though present in them, these elements,
on account of their present state, may not respond as yet to the
usual scientific tests.(1003)
Mr. Crookes speaks of helium, an element of still lower atomic weight than ydrogen, an _element purely hypothetical_ as far as our earth is oncerned, though existing in abundance in the chromosphere of the Sun.
Occult Science adds that not one of the elements regarded as such by
Chemistry really deserves the name.
Again we find Mr. Crookes speaking with approbation of
Dr. Carnelly’s weighty argument in favour of the compound nature
of the so‐called elements, from their analogy to the compound
radicles.
Hitherto, Alchemy alone, within the historical period, and in the so‐ alled civilized countries, has succeeded in obtaining a real _element_, r a particle of homogeneous Matter, the _Mysterium Magnum_ of Paracelsus.
But then that was before Lord Bacon’s day.(1004)
... Let us now turn to the upper portion of the scheme. With
hydrogen of atomic weight = 1, there is little room for other
elements, save, perhaps, for hypothetical _Helium_. But what if we
get “through the looking‐glass,” and cross the zero line in search
of new principles—what shall we find on the other side of zero?
Dr. Carnelly asks for an element of negative atomic weight; here
is ample room and verge enough for a shadow series of such
unsubstantialities. Helmholtz says that electricity is probably as
atomic as matter; is electricity one of the negative elements, and
the luminiferous ether another? Matter, as we now know it, does
not here exist; the forms of energy which are apparent in the
motions of matter are as yet only latent possibilities. _A
substance of negative weight is not inconceivable._(1005) But can
we form a clear conception of a body which combines with other
bodies in proportions expressible by negative qualities?(1006)
A genesis of the elements such as is here sketched out would not
be confined to our little solar system, but would probably follow
the same general sequence of events in every centre of energy now
visible as a star.
Before the birth of atoms to gravitate towards one another, no
pressure could be exercised; but at the outskirts of the fire‐mist
sphere, within which all is protyle—at the shell on which the
tremendous forces involved in the birth of a chemical element
exert full sway—the fierce heat would be accompanied by
gravitation sufficient to keep the newly‐born elements from flying
off into space. As temperature increases, expansion and molecular
motion increase, molecules tend to fly asunder, and their chemical
affinities become deadened; but the enormous: pressure of the
gravitation of the mass of atomic matter, outside what I may for
brevity call the birth‐shell, would counteract the action of heat.
Beyond the birth‐shell would be a space in which no chemical
action could take place, owing to the temperature there being
above what is called the dissociation‐point for compounds. In this
space the lion and the lamb would lie down together: phosphorus
and oxygen would mix without union; hydrogen and chlorine would
show no tendency to closer bonds; and even fluorine, that
energetic gas which chemists have only isolated within the last
month or two, would float about free and uncombined.
Outside this space of free atomic matter would be another shell,
in which the formed chemical elements would have cooled down to
the combination point, and the sequence of events so graphically
described by Mr. Mattieu Williams in _The Fuel of the Sun_ would
now take place, culminating in the solid earth and the
commencement of geological time (p. 19).
This is, in strictly scientific, but beautiful language, the description f the evolution of the differentiated Universe in the Secret Teachings.
The learned gentleman closes his address in words, every sentence of which s like a flash of light from beyond the dark veil of materiality, itherto thrown upon the exact sciences, and is a step forward towards the
_Sanctum Sanctorum_ of the Occult. Thus he says:
We have glanced at the difficulty of defining an element; we have
noticed, too, the revolt of many leading physicists and chemists
against the ordinary acceptation of the term element; we have
weighed the improbability of their eternal existence,(1007) or
_their origination by chance_. As a remaining alternative, we have
suggested their origin by a process of evolution like that of the
heavenly bodies according to Laplace, and the plants and animals
of our globe according to Lamarck, Darwin, and Wallace.(1008) In
the general array of the elements, as known to us, we have seen a
striking approximation to that of the organic world.(1009) In lack
of direct evidence of the decomposition of any element, we have
sought and found indirect evidence.... We have next glanced at the
view of the genesis of the elements; and lastly we have reviewed a
scheme of their origin suggested by Professor Reynolds’ method of
illustrating the periodic classification(1010).... Summing up all
the above considerations we cannot, indeed, venture to assert
positively _that our so‐called elements have been evolved from one
primordial matter; but we may contend that the balance of
evidence, I think, fairly weighs in favour of this speculation_.
Thus inductive Science, in its branches of Astronomy, Physics, and
Chemistry, while advancing timidly towards the conquest of Nature’s ecrets in her final effects on our terrestrial plane, recedes to the days f Anaxagoras and the Chaldees in its discoveries of (_a_) the origin of ur phenomenal world, and (_b_) the modes of formation of the bodies that ompose the Universe. And having, for their cosmogonical hypotheses to urn back to the beliefs of the earliest philosophers, and the systems of he latter—systems that were all based on the teachings of a universal
Secret Doctrine with regard to primeval Matter, with its properties, unctions, and laws—have we not the right to hope that the day is not far ff when Science will show a better appreciation of the Wisdom of the
Ancients than it has hitherto done?
No doubt Occult Philosophy could learn a good deal from exact Modern
Science; but the latter, on the other hand, might profit by ancient earning in more than one way, and chiefly in Cosmogony. It might learn, or instance, the mystical signification, alchemical and transcendental, f the many _imponderable_ substances that fill interplanetary space, and hich, interpenetrating each, are the direct cause, at the lower end, of he production of natural phenomena manifesting through so‐called ibration. The knowledge of the _real_, not the hypothetical, nature of
Ether, or rather of the Âkâsha, and other mysteries, in short, can alone ead to the knowledge of Forces. It is that Substance against which the
Materialistic school of the Physicists rebels with such fury, especially n France,(1011) and which exact Science has to advocate notwithstanding.
They cannot make away with it without incurring the risk of pulling down he pillars of the Temple of Science, like a modern Samson, and of getting uried under its roof.
The theories built upon the rejection of Force, outside and independent of
Matter pure and simple, have all been shown to be fallacious. They do not, nd cannot, cover the ground, and many of the scientific data are thus roved to be unscientific. “Ether produced Sound” is said in the
_Purânas_, and the statement is laughed at. Sound is the result of the ibrations of the _air_, we are corrected. And what is air? Could it exist f there were no etheric medium in Space to buoy up its molecules? The ase stands simply thus. Materialism cannot admit the existence of nything outside Matter, because with the acceptance of an imponderable
Force—the source and head of all the physical Forces—other _intelligent_
Forces would have to be virtually admitted, and that would lead Science ery far. For it would have to accept as a sequel the presence in Man of a till more spiritual power—entirely independent, for once, of any kind of
Matter about which Physicists know anything. Hence, apart from a ypothetical Ether of Space and gross physical bodies, the whole sidereal nd unseen Space is, in the sight of Materialists, one boundless _void_ in
Nature—blind, unintelligent, useless.
And now the next question is: What is that Cosmic Substance, and how far an one go in suspecting its nature or in wrenching from it its secrets, hus feeling justified in giving it a name? How far, especially, has
Modern Science gone in the direction of those secrets, and what is it oing to solve them? The latest hobby of Science, the Nebular Theory, may fford us some answer to this question. Let us then examine the redentials of this Nebular Theory.
Section XII. Scientific and Esoteric Evidence for, and Objections to, the
Modern Nebular Theory.
Of late, Esoteric Cosmogony has been frequently opposed by the phantom of his theory and its ensuing hypotheses. “Can this most scientific teaching e denied by your Adepts?” it is asked. “Not entirely,” is the reply, “but he admissions of the men of Science themselves _kill_ it; and there emains nothing for the Adepts to deny.”
To make of Science an integral _whole_ necessitates, indeed, the study of piritual and psychic, as well as of physical, Nature. Otherwise it will ver be like the anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane from the oint of view of his shell‐side, and in ignorance of the interior work.
Even Plato, the greatest Philosopher of his country, was guilty, before is Initiation, of such statements as that liquids pass into the stomach hrough the lungs. Without metaphysics, as Mr. H. J. Slack says, _real_
Science is inadmissible.
The nebulæ exist; yet the Nebular Theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a tate of entire elemental dissociation. It is gaseous and—something else esides, which can hardly be connected with gases as these are known to
Physical Science; and it is self‐luminous. But that is all. The sixty‐two
“coincidences” enumerated by Professor Stephen Alexander,(1012) confirming he Nebular Theory, may all be explained by Esoteric Science; though, as his is not an astronomical work, the refutations are not attempted at resent. Laplace and Faye come nearer to the correct theory than any; but f the speculations of Laplace there remains little in the present theory eyond its general features.
Nevertheless, says John Stuart Mill:
There is in Laplace’s theory nothing hypothetical; it is an
example of legitimate reasoning from present effect to its past
cause; it assumes nothing more than that objects which really
exist obey the laws which are known to be obeyed by all
terrestrial objects resembling them.(1013)
From such an eminent logician as was Mill, this would be valuable, if it ould only be proved that “terrestrial objects resembling” celestial bjects at such a distance as are the nebulæ, _resemble those objects in eality, and not only in appearance_.
Another of the fallacies, from the Occult standpoint, embodied in the odern theory as it now stands, is the hypothesis that the Planets were ll detached from the Sun; that they are bone of his bone, and flesh of is flesh; whereas the Sun and the Planets are only co‐uterine brothers, aving the same nebular origin, but in a different mode from that ostulated by modern Astronomy.
The many objections raised by some opponents of the modern Nebular Theory gainst the homogeneity of original diffuse Matter, on the ground of the niformity in the composition of the fixed Stars, do not affect the uestion of that homogeneity at all, but only the theory itself. Our solar ebula may not be completely homogeneous, or, rather, it may fail to eveal itself as such to the Astronomers, and yet be _de facto_ omogeneous. The Stars do differ in their constituent materials, and even xhibit elements quite unknown on Earth; nevertheless, this does not ffect the point that Primeval Matter—Matter as it appeared even in its irst differentiation from its laya‐condition(1014)—is yet to this day omogeneous, at immense distances, in the depths of infinitude, and ikewise at points not far removed from the outskirts of our Solar System.
Finally, there does not exist one single fact brought forward by the earned objectors against the Nebular Theory (false as it is, and hence, llogically enough, fatal to the hypothesis of the homogeneity of Matter), hat can withstand criticism. One error leads to another. A false premiss ill naturally lead to a false conclusion, although an inadmissible nference does not necessarily affect the validity of the major roposition of the syllogism. Thus, one may leave every side‐issue and nference from the evidence of spectra and lines, as simply provisional or the present, and abandon all matters of detail to Physical Science.
The duty of the Occultist lies with the _Soul_ and _Spirit_ of Cosmic
Space, not merely with its illusive appearance and behaviour. That of fficial Physical Science is to analyze and study its _shell_—the Ultima
Thule of the Universe and Man, in the opinion of Materialism.
With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories f such men of learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir William
Herschell, who believed in a Spiritual World, that Occult Cosmogony might reat, and attempt a satisfactory compromise. But the views of those
Physicists differed vastly from the latest modern speculations. Kant and
Herschell had in their mind’s eye speculations upon the origin and the inal destiny, as well as upon the present aspect, of the Universe, from a ar more philosophical and psychic standpoint; whereas modern Cosmology nd Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mysteries of
Being. The result is what might be expected: complete failure and nextricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so‐called
Scientific Theories, and in this Theory as in all others.
The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a
Primeval Matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in
Astronomy, as everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had lready taught that the sidereal bodies were formed through the rogressive condensation of a primordial _pregenetic_ Matter, which had lmost a negative weight, and was spread out through Space in an extremely ublimated condition.
Tycho Brahé, who viewed the Milky Way as an ethereal substance, thought he new star that appeared in Cassiopeia, in 1572, had been formed out of hat Matter.(1015) Kepler believed that the star of 1606 had likewise been ormed out of the ethereal substance that fills the universe.(1016) He ttributed to that same Ether the apparition of a luminous ring round the
Moon, during the total eclipse of the Sun observed at Naples in
1605.(1017) Still later, in 1714 the existence of a self‐luminous Matter as recognized by Halley in the _Philosophical Transactions_. Finally, the ournal of this name published in 1811 the famous hypothesis of the minent Astronomer, Sir William Herschell, on the transformation of the ebulæ into Stars,(1018) and after this the Nebular Theory was accepted by he Royal Academies.
In _Five Years of Theosophy_, on p. 245, may be read an article headed,
“Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?” The answer there given is:
_No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative ruth of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the resent, as well as the entire error of the many so‐called
__“__exploded__”__ old theories, which, during the last century, have ollowed each other in such rapid succession._
This was asserted at the time to be “an evasive answer.” Such disrespect o official Science, it was argued, must be justified by the replacement f the _orthodox_ speculation by another theory more complete, and having firmer ground to stand upon. To this there is but one reply: It is seless to give out isolated theories with regard to things embodied in a omplete and consecutive system, for, when separated from the main body of he teaching, they would necessarily lose their vital coherence and would hus do no good when studied independently. To be able to appreciate and ccept the Occult views on the Nebular Theory, we must study the whole
Esoteric cosmogonical system. And the time has hardly arrived for the
Astronomers to be asked to accept Fohat and the Divine Builders. Even the ndeniably correct surmises of Sir William Herschell, which had nothing
“supernatural” in them, as to the Sun’s being called a “globe of fire,” erhaps metaphorically, and his early speculations about the nature of hat which is now called the Nasmyth Willow‐leaf Theory, only caused that ost eminent of all Astronomers to be smiled at by other, far less minent, colleagues, who saw and now see in his ideas purely “imaginative nd fanciful theories.” Before the whole Esoteric System could be given ut and appreciated by the Astronomers, the latter would have to return to ome of those “antiquated ideas,” not only to those of Herschell, but also o the dreams of the oldest Hindû Astronomers, and thus abandon their own heories, which are none the less “fanciful” because they have appeared early eighty years later than the one, and many thousands of years later han the others. Foremost of all they would have to repudiate their ideas f the Sun’s solidity and incandescence; the Sun “glowing” most ndeniably, but not “burning.” Then the Occultists state, with regard to he “willow‐leaves,” that those “objects,” as Sir William Herschell called hem, are the immediate sources of the solar light and heat. And though he Esoteric Teaching does not regard these as he did—namely, as
“organisms” partaking of the nature of life, for the Solar “Beings” will ardly place themselves within telescopic focus—yet it asserts that the hole Universe is full of such “organisms,” conscious and active according o the proximity or distance of their planes to, or from, our plane of onsciousness; and finally that the great Astronomer was right while peculating on those supposed “organisms,” in saying that “we do not know hat vital action is incompetent to develop at once heat, light, and lectricity.” For, at the risk of being laughed at by the whole world of
Physicists, the Occultists maintain that all the “Forces” of the
Scientists have their origin in the Vital Principle, the One Life ollectively of our Solar System—that “Life” being a portion, or rather ne of the _aspects_, of the One Universal LIFE.
We may, therefore—as in the article under consideration, wherein, on the uthority of the Adepts, it was maintained that it is “sufficient to make _résumé_ of what the solar Physicists do not know”—we may, we maintain, efine our position with regard to the modern Nebular Theory and its vident incorrectness, by simply pointing out facts diametrically opposed o it in its present form. And to begin with, what does it teach?
Summarizing the aforesaid hypotheses, it becomes plain that Laplace’s heory—now made quite unrecognizable, moreover—was an unfortunate one. He ostulates in the first place Cosmic Matter, existing in a state of iffuse nebulosity “so fine that its presence could hardly have been uspected.” No attempt is made by him to penetrate into the Arcana of
Being, except as regards the immediate evolution of our small Solar
System.
Consequently, whether one accepts or rejects his theory in its bearing pon the immediate cosmological problems presented for solution, he can nly be said to have thrown back the mystery a little further. To the ternal query: “Whence Matter itself; whence the evolutionary impetus etermining its cyclic aggregations and dissolutions; whence the exquisite ymmetry and order into which the primeval Atoms arrange and group hemselves?” no answer is attempted by Laplace. All we are confronted ith, is a sketch of the _probable_ broad principles on which the actual rocess is assumed to be based. Well, and what is this now celebrated note n the said process? What has he given so wonderfully new and original, hat its ground‐work, at any rate, should have served as a basis for the odern Nebular Theory? The following is what one gathers from various stronomical works.
Laplace thought that, in consequence of the condensation of the atoms of he primeval nebula, according to the “law” of gravity, the now gaseous, r perhaps, partially liquid mass, acquired a rotatory motion. As the elocity of this rotation increased, it assumed the form of a thin disc; inally, the centrifugal force overpowering that of cohesion, huge rings ere detached from the edge of the whirling incandescent masses, and these ings contracted necessarily by gravitation (as accepted) into spheroidal odies, which would necessarily still continue to preserve the orbit reviously occupied by the outer zone from which they were eparated.(1019) The velocity of the outer edge of each nascent planet, he aid, exceeding that of the inner, there results a rotation on its axis.
The more dense bodies would be thrown off last; and finally, during the reliminary state of their formation, the newly‐segregated orbs in their urn throw off one or more satellites. In formulating the history of the upture and planetation of rings Laplace says:
Almost always each ring of vapours must have broken up into
numerous masses, which, moving with a nearly uniform velocity,
must have continued to circulate at the same distance around the
sun. These masses must have taken a spheroidal form with a motion
of rotation in the same direction as their revolution, since the
inner molecules (those nearest the sun) would have less actual
velocity than the exterior ones. They must then have formed as
many planets in a state of vapour. But, if one of them was
sufficiently powerful to unite successively, by its attraction,
all the others around its centre, the ring of vapours must have
been thus transformed into a single spheroidal mass of vapours
circulating around the sun with a rotation in the same direction
as its revolution. The latter case has been the more common, but
the solar system presents us the first case, in the four small
planets which move between Jupiter and Mars.
While few will be found to deny the “magnificent audacity of this ypothesis,” it is impossible not to recognize the insurmountable ifficulties with which it is attended. Why, for instance, do we find that he satellites of Neptune and Uranus display a retrograde motion? Why, in pite of its closer proximity to the Sun, is Venus less dense than the
Earth? Why, again, is the more distant Uranus denser than Saturn? How is t that there are so many variations in the inclination of their axes and rbits in the supposed progeny of the central orb; that such startling ariations in the size of the Planets are noticeable; that the satellites f Jupiter are more dense by ·288 than their primary; that the phenomena f meteoric and cometary systems still remain unaccounted for? To quote he words of a Master:
_They_ [the Adepts] _find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is nable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for very oblate spheroid, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are resented by the relative density of some planets. How, indeed, can any alculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, hose rotation is, we are told, only __“__about one‐third that of the
Earth, and its density only about one‐fourth greater than the Earth,__”__ hould have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the atter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be
__“__twenty‐seven times greater, and its density only about one‐fifth that f the Earth__”__ should have its polar compression seventeen times reater than that of the Earth? Or why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity ifty‐five times greater than Mercury for centripetal force to contend ith, should have its polar compression only three times greater than
Mercury’s? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in he Central Forces, as taught by Modern Science, even when told that the quatorial matter of the Sun, with more than four times the centrifugal elocity of the Earth’s equatorial surface, and only about one‐fourth part f the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any endency to bulge at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at he poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the Sun, with nly one‐fourth of our Earth’s density for the centrifugal force to work pon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more han one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily, so far as he __“__Adepts__”__ are aware._
_Therefore, do they_ [the Adepts] _say, that the great men of Science of he West, knowing ... next to nothing either about cometary matter, entrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulæ, or the hysical constitution of the Sun, the Stars, or even the Moon, are mprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the __“__central mass f the Sun,__”__ whirling out into space planets, comets, and what not....
We maintain that it_ [the Sun] _evolves out only the life‐principle, the
Soul of these __ bodies, giving and receiving it back, in our little Solar
System, as the __“__Universal Life‐Giver__”__ ... in the Infinitude and
Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One
Macrocosm as man is the former when compared with his own little Solar
Cosmos._(1020)
The essential power of all the cosmic and terrestrial Elements to generate ithin themselves a regular and harmonious series of results, a oncatenation of causes and effects, is an irrefutable proof that they are ither animated by an _Intelligence_, _ab extrâ_ or _ab intrâ_, or conceal uch within or behind the “manifested veil.” Occultism does not deny the ertainty of the mechanical origin of the Universe; it only claims the bsolute necessity of mechanicians of some sort behind or within those
Elements—a dogma with us. It is not the fortuitous assistance of the Atoms f Lucretius, as he himself knew well, that built the Kosmos and all in t. Nature herself contradicts such a theory. Celestial Space, containing
Matter so attenuated as Ether, cannot be called on, with or without ttraction, to explain the common motion of the sidereal hosts. Although he perfect accord of their inter‐revolution indicates clearly the resence of a mechanical cause in Nature, Newton, who of all men had most ight to trust to his deductions, was nevertheless forced to abandon the dea of ever explaining the original impulse given to the millions of rbs, by merely the laws of _known_ Nature and its material Forces. He ecognized fully the limits that separate the action of natural Forces rom that of the _Intelligences_ that set the immutable laws in order and ction. And if a Newton had to renounce such hope, which of the modern aterialistic pigmies has the right of saying: “I know better?”
A cosmogonical theory, to become complete and comprehensible, has to start ith a Primordial Substance diffused throughout boundless Space, _of an ntellectual and divine nature_. That Substance must be the Soul and
Spirit, the Synthesis and Seventh Principle of the manifested Kosmos, and, o serve as a spiritual Upâdhi to this, there must be the sixth, its ehicle—Primordial Physical Matter, so to speak, though its nature must scape for ever our limited _normal_ senses. It is easy for an Astronomer, f endowed with an imaginative faculty, to build a theory of the emergence f the Universe out of Chaos, by simply applying to it the principles of echanics. But such a Universe will always prove a Frankenstein’s monster ith respect to its scientific human creator; it will lead him into ndless perplexities. The application of mechanical laws only can never arry the speculator beyond the objective world; nor will it unveil to men he origin and final destiny of Kosmos. This is whither the Nebular Theory as led Science. In sober fact and truth this Theory is twin sister to hat of Ether, and both are the offspring of necessity; one is as ndispensable to account for the transmission of light, as is the other to xplain the problem of the origin of the Solar Systems. The question with
Science is, how the same homogeneous Matter(1021) could, obeying the laws f Newton, give birth to bodies—Sun, Planets, and their satellites—subject o conditions of identity of motion, and formed of such heterogeneous lements.
Has the Nebular Theory helped to solve the problem, even if applied solely o bodies considered as inanimate and material? We say: most decidedly ot. What progress has it made since 1811, when first Sir William
Herschell’s paper, with its facts based on observation and showing the xistence of nebular matter, made the sons of the Royal Society “shout for oy”? Since then a still greater discovery, through spectrum analysis, has ermitted the verification and corroboration of Sir William Herschell’s onjecture. Laplace demanded some kind of primitive “world‐stuff” to prove he idea of progressive world‐evolution and growth. Here it is, as offered wo millenniums ago.
The “world‐stuff,” now called nebulæ, was known from the highest ntiquity. Anaxagoras taught that, upon differentiation, the resulting ommixture of heterogeneous substances remained motionless and norganized, until finally the “Mind”—the collective body of Dhyân
Chohans, we say—began to work upon, and communicated to, them motion and rder.(1022) This theory is now taken up, so far as concerns its first ortion; the last, that of any “Mind” interfering, being rejected.
Spectrum analysis reveals the existence of nebulæ formed entirely of gases nd luminous vapours. Is this the primitive nebular Matter? The spectra eveal, it is said, the physical conditions of the Matter which emits osmic light. The spectra of the resolvable and the irresolvable nebulæ re shown to be entirely different, the spectra of the latter showing heir physical state to be that of glowing gas or vapour. The bright lines f one nebula reveal the existence of hydrogen, and of other material ubstances known and unknown. The same as to the atmospheres of the Sun nd Stars. This leads to the direct inference that a Star is formed by the ondensation of a nebula; hence that even the metals themselves are formed n earth by the condensation of hydrogen or of some other primitive atter, some ancestral cousin to helium, perhaps, or some yet unknown tuff. _This does not clash with the Occult Teachings._ And this is the roblem that Chemistry is trying to solve; and it must succeed sooner or ater in the task, accepting _nolens volens_, when it does, the Esoteric
Teaching. But when this does happen, it will kill the Nebular Theory as it ow stands.
Meanwhile Astronomy cannot accept in any way, if it is to be regarded as n _exact_ Science, the present theory of the filiation of Stars—even if
Occultism does so in its own way, seeing that it explains this filiation ifferently—because Astronomy has _not one single physical datum_ to show or it. Astronomy could anticipate Chemistry in proving the existence of he fact, if it could show a planetary nebula exhibiting a spectrum of hree or four bright lines, gradually condensing and transforming into a
Star, with a spectrum all covered with a number of dark lines. But
The question of the variability of the nebulæ, even as to their
form, is yet one of the mysteries of Astronomy. The data of
observation possessed so far are of too recent an origin, too
uncertain, to permit us to affirm anything.(1023)
Since its discovery, the magic power of the spectroscope has revealed to ts adepts only one single transformation of a Star of this kind; and even hat showed directly the reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of he Nebular Theory; for it revealed _a Star transforming itself into a lanetary nebula_. As related in _The Observatory_,(1024) the temporary
Star, discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt in the constellation Cygnus, in
November, 1876, exhibited a spectrum broken by very brilliant lines.
Gradually, the continuous spectrum and most of the lines disappeared, eaving finally one single brilliant line, which appeared to coincide with he green line of the nebula.
Though this metamorphosis is not irreconcileable with the hypothesis of he nebular origin of the Stars, nevertheless this single solitary case ests on no observation whatever, least of all on direct observation. The ccurrence may have been due to several other causes. Since Astronomers re inclined to think our Planets are tending toward precipitation into he Sun, why should not that Star have blazed up owing to a collision of uch precipitated Planets, or, as many suggest, the appulse of a Comet? Be hat as it may, the only known instance of star‐transformation since 1811 s not favourable to the Nebular Theory. Moreover, on the question of this
Theory, as on all others, Astronomers disagree.
In our own age, and before Laplace ever thought of it, Buffon, being very uch struck by the identity of motion in the Planets, was the first to ropose the hypothesis that the Planets and their satellites originated in he bosom of the Sun. Forthwith and for this purpose, he invented a pecial Comet, supposed to have torn out, by a powerful oblique blow, the uantity of matter necessary for their formation. Laplace gave its dues to he “Comet” in his _Exposition du Système du Monde_.(1025) But the idea as seized and even improved upon by a conception of the alternate volution, from the Sun’s central mass, of Planets _apparently_ without eight or influence on the motion of the visible Planets—and as evidently ithout any more existence than the likeness of Moses in the Moon.
But the modern theory is also a variation on the systems elaborated by
Kant and Laplace. The idea of both was that, at the origin of things, all hat Matter which now enters into the composition of the planetary bodies as spread over all the space comprized in the Solar System—and even eyond. It was a nebula of extremely small density, and its condensation radually gave birth, by a mechanism that has hitherto never been xplained, to the various bodies of our System. This is the original
Nebular Theory, an _incomplete_ yet faithful repetition—a short chapter ut of the large volume of universal Esoteric Cosmogony—of the teachings f the Secret Doctrine. And both systems, Kant’s and Laplace’s, differ reatly from the modern Theory, redundant with conflicting _sub_‐theories nd fanciful hypotheses. Say the Teachers:
_The essence of cometary matter_ [and of that which composes the
Stars] ... _is totally different from any of the chemical or
physical characteristics with which the greatest Chemists and
Physicists of the earth are familiar.... While the spectroscope
has shown the probable similarity_ [owing to the chemical action
of terrestrial light upon the intercepted rays] _of terrestrial
and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the
variously progressed orbs of space, have not been detected, nor
proven to be identical with those observed on our own
planet._(1026)
Mr. Crookes says almost the same in the fragment quoted from his lecture,
_Elements and Meta‐Elements_. C. Wolf, Member of the Institute, Astronomer f the Observatory, Paris, observes:
At the utmost the nebular hypothesis can only show in its favour,
with W. Herschell, the existence of planetary nebulæ in various
degrees of condensation, and of spiral nebulæ, with nuclei of
condensation on the branches and centre.(1027) But, in fact, the
knowledge of the bond that unites the nebulæ to the stars is yet
denied to us; and lacking as we do direct observation, we are even
debarred from establishing it on the analogy of chemical
composition.(1028)
Even if the men of Science—leaving aside the difficulty arising out of uch undeniable variety and heterogeneity of matter in the constitution of ebulæ—did admit, with the Ancients, that the origin of all the visible nd invisible heavenly bodies must be sought for in one primordial omogeneous world‐stuff, in a kind of _Pre_‐Protyle,(1029) it is evident hat this would not put an end to their perplexities. Unless they admit lso that our actual visible Universe is merely the Sthûla Sharîra, the ross body, of the sevenfold Kosmos, they will have to face another roblem; especially if they venture to maintain that its now visible odies are the result of the condensation of that one and single
Primordial Matter. For mere observation shows them that the operations hich produced the actual Universe are far more complex than could ever be mbraced in that theory.
First of all, there are two distinct classes of “irresolvable” nebulæ, as
Science itself teaches.
The telescope is unable to distinguish between these two classes, but the pectroscope can do so, and notices an essential difference between their hysical constitutions.
The question of the resolvability of the nebulæ has been often
presented in too affirmative a manner and quite contrary to the
ideas expressed by the illustrious experimenter with the spectra
of these constellations—Mr. Huggins. Every nebula whose spectrum
contains only bright lines is gaseous, it is said, and hence is
irresolvable; every nebula with a continuous spectrum must end by
resolving into stars with an instrument of sufficient power. This
assumption is contrary at once to the results obtained, and to
spectroscopic theory. The “Lyra” nebula, the “Dumb‐bell” nebula,
the central region of the nebula of Orion, appear resolvable, and
show a spectrum of bright lines; the nebula of Canes Venatici is
not resolvable, and gives a continuous spectrum. Because, indeed,
the spectroscope informs us of the physical state of the
constituent matter of the stars, but affords us no notions of
their modes of aggregation. A nebula formed of gaseous globes (or
even of nuclei, faintly luminous, surrounded by a powerful
atmosphere) would give a spectrum of lines and be still
resolvable; such seems to be the state of Huggins’ region in the
Orion nebula. A nebula formed of solid or fluidic particles in a
state of incandescence, a true cloud, will give a continuous
spectrum and will be irresolvable.
Some of these nebulæ, Wolf tells us,
Have a spectrum of three or four bright lines, others a continuous
spectrum. The first are gaseous, the others formed of a
pulverulent matter. The former must constitute a veritable
atmosphere: it is among these that the solar nebula of Laplace has
to be placed. The latter form an _ensemble_ of particles that may
be considered as independent, and the rotation of which obeys the
laws of internal weight: such are the nebulæ adopted by Kant and
Faye. Observation allows us to place the one as the other at the
very origin of the planetary world. But when we try to go beyond
and ascend to the primitive chaos which has produced the totality
of the heavenly bodies, we have first to account for the actual
existence of these two classes of nebulæ. If the primitive chaos
were a cold luminous gas,(1030) one could understand how the
contraction resulting from attraction could have heated it and
made it luminous. We have to explain the condensation of this gas
to the state of incandescent particles, the presence of which is
revealed to us in certain nebulæ by the spectroscope. If the
original chaos was composed of such particles, how did certain of
their portions pass into the gaseous state, while others have
preserved their primitive condition?
Such is the synopsis of the objections and difficulties in the way of the cceptance of the Nebular Theory, brought forward by the French _savant_, ho concludes this interesting argument by declaring that:
The first part of the cosmogonical problem—what is the primitive
matter of chaos; and how did that matter give birth to the sun and
stars?—thus remains to this day in the domain of romance and of
mere imagination.(1031)
If this is the last word of Science upon the subject, whither then should e turn in order to learn what the Nebular Theory is supposed to teach?
What, in fact, is this theory? What it _is_, no one seems to know for ertain. What it is not—we learn from the erudite author of _World‐Life_.
He tells us that it:
i. Is not a theory of the evolution of the Universe. It is
primarily a genetic explanation of the phenomena of the solar
system, and accessorily a co‐ordination in a common conception of
the principal phenomena in the stellar and nebular firmament, as
far as human vision has been able to penetrate.
ii. It does not regard the comets as involved in that particular
evolution which has produced the Solar System. [The Esoteric
Doctrine does, because it, too, “recognizes the comets as forms of
cosmic existence co‐ordinated with earlier stages of nebular
evolution”; and it actually assigns _to them chiefly_ the
formation of all worlds.]
iii. _It does not deny an antecedent history of the luminous fire
mist_—[the _secondary_ stage of evolution in the Secret Doctrine]
[and] ... makes no claim to having reached an absolute beginning.
[And even it allows that this] fire mist may have previously
existed in a cold, non‐luminous and invisible condition.
iv. [And that finally] _it does not profess to discover the_
ORIGIN _of things, but only a stadium in material history_....
[leaving] the philosopher and the theologian as free as they ever
were to seek the origin of the modes of being.(1032)
But this is not all. Even the greatest philosopher of England—Mr. Herbert
Spencer—arrayed himself against this fantastic theory by saying that (_a_)
“The problem of existence is not resolved” by it; (_b_) the nebular ypothesis “throws no light upon the origin of diffused matter”; and (_c_) hat “the nebular hypothesis (as it now stands) implies a First
Cause.”(1033)
The latter, we are afraid, is more than our modern Physicists have argained for. Thus, it seems that the poor “hypothesis” can hardly expect o find help or corroboration even in the world of the Metaphysicians.
Considering all this, the Occultists believe they have a right to present
_their_ Philosophy, however misunderstood and ostracized it may be at resent. And they maintain that this failure of the Scientists to discover he truth is entirely due to their Materialism and their contempt for ranscendental Sciences. Yet although the scientific minds in our century re as far from the true and correct doctrine of Evolution as ever, there ay be still some hope left for the future, for even now we find another
Scientist giving us a faint glimmer of it.
In an article in the _Popular Science Review_ on “Recent Researches in
Minute Life,” we find Mr. H. J. Slack, F.C.S., Sec. R.M.S., saying:
There is an evident convergence of all sciences, from physics to
chemistry and physiology, toward some doctrine of evolution and
development, of which the facts of Darwinism will form part, but
what ultimate aspect this doctrine will take, there is little, if
any, evidence to show, and perhaps it will not be shaped by the
human mind until metaphysical as well as physical inquiries are
much more advanced.(1034)
This is a happy forecast indeed. The day _may_ come, then, when “Natural
Selection,” as taught by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer, will, in its ltimate modification, form only _a part_ of our Eastern doctrine of
Evolution, which will be Manu and Kapila _Esoterically explained_.
Section XIII. Forces—Modes of Motion or Intelligences?
This is, then, the last word of Physical Science up to the present year,
1888. Mechanical laws will never be able to prove the homogeneity of
Primeval Matter, except inferentially and as a desperate necessity, when here will remain no other issue—as in the case of Ether. Modern Science s secure only in its own domain and region; within the physical oundaries of our Solar System, beyond which everything, every particle of
Matter, is different from the Matter it knows, and where Matter exists in tates of which Science can form no idea. _This_ Matter, which is truly omogeneous, is beyond human perception, if perception is tied down merely o the five senses. We feel its effects through those INTELLIGENCES which re the results of its primeval differentiation, whom we name Dhyân
Chohans, called in the Hermetic works the “Seven Governors”; those to whom
Pymander, the “Thought Divine,” refers as the “Building Powers,” and whom
Asklepios calls the “Supernal Gods.” This Matter—the real Primordial
Substance, the Noumenon of all the “matter” we know of—some of our
Astronomers even have been led to believe in, for they despair of the ossibility of ever accounting for rotation, gravitation, and the origin f any mechanical physical laws, unless these INTELLIGENCES be admitted by
Science. In the above‐quoted work upon Astronomy by Wolf,(1035) the author ndorses fully the theory of Kant, and the latter theory, if not in its eneral aspect, at any rate in some of its features, reminds one strongly f certain Esoteric Teachings. Here we have the world’s system “reborn rom its ashes,” through a nebula—the emanation from the bodies, dead and issolved in Space, resultant of the _incandescence_ of the Solar
Centre—reänimated by the combustible matter of the Planets. In this heory, generated and developed in the brain of a young man hardly twenty‐ ive years of age, who had never left his native place, Königsberg, a mall town of Northern Prussia, one can hardly fail to recognize either he presence of an inspiring external power, or an evidence of the
_reïncarnation_ which the Occultists see in it. It fills a gap which
Newton, with all his genius, failed to bridge. And surely it is our
Primeval Matter, Âkâsha, that Kant had in view, when he postulated a niversally pervading primordial Substance, in order to solve Newton’s ifficulty, and his failure to explain, by natural forces alone, the rimitive impulse imparted to the Planets. For, as he remarks in Chapter iii, if it is once admitted that the perfect harmony of the Stars and
Planets and the coincidence of their orbital planes prove the existence of natural Cause, which would thus be the Primal Cause, “that Cause cannot eally be the matter which fills to‐day the heavenly spaces.” It must be hat which filled Space—was Space—originally, whose motion in ifferentiated Matter was the origin of the actual movements of the idereal bodies; and which, “in condensing itself in those very bodies, hus abandoned the space that is to‐day found void.” In other words, it is f that same Matter that are now composed the Planets, Comets, and the Sun imself, and that Matter, having originally formed itself into those odies, has preserved its inherent quality of motion; which quality, now entred in their nuclei, directs all motion. A very slight alteration of ords in this is needed, and a few additions, to make of it our Esoteric
Doctrine.
The latter teaches that it is this original, primordial Prima Materia, ivine and intelligent, the direct emanation of the Universal Mind, the
Daiviprakriti—the Divine Light(1036) emanating from the Logos—which formed he nuclei of all the “self‐moving” orbs in Kosmos. It is the informing, ver‐present moving‐power and life‐principle, the Vital Soul of the Suns,
Moons, Planets, and even of our Earth; the former latent, the latter ctive—the invisible Ruler and Guide of the gross body attached to, and onnected with, its Soul, which is the spiritual emanation, after all, of hese respective Planetary Spirits.
Another quite Occult Doctrine is the theory of Kant, that the Matter of hich the inhabitants and the animals of other Planets are formed is of _a ighter and more subtle nature and of a more perfect conformation, in roportion to their distance from the Sun_. The latter is too full of
Vital Electricity, of the physical, life‐giving principle. Therefore, the en on Mars are more ethereal than we are, while those on Venus are more ross, though far more intelligent, if less spiritual.
The last doctrine is not quite ours—yet these Kantian theories are as etaphysical, and as transcendental as any Occult Doctrines; and more than ne man of Science would, if he but _dared_ speak his mind, accept them as
Wolf does. From this Kantian Mind and Soul of the Suns and Stars to the
Mahat (Mind) and Prakriti of the _Purânas_ there is but a step. After all, he admission of this by Science would be only the admission of a natural ause, whether it would or would not stretch its belief to such etaphysical heights. But then Mahat, the Mind, is a “God,” and Physiology dmits “mind” only as a temporary function of the material brain, and no ore.
The Satan of Materialism now laughs at all alike, and denies the visible s well as the invisible. Seeing in light, heat, electricity, and even in he phenomenon of _life_, only properties inherent in Matter, it laughs henever life is called the _Vital Principle_, and derides the idea of its eing independent of and distinct from the organism.
But here again scientific opinions differ as in everything else, and there re several men of Science who accept views very similar to ours.
Consider, for instance, what Dr. Richardson, F.R.S. (elsewhere quoted at ength) says of that “Vital Principle,” which he calls “Nervous Ether”:
I speak only of a veritable _material agent_, refined, it may be,
to the world at large, but _actual and substantial_: an agent
having quality of weight and of volume, an agent susceptible of
chemical combination, and thereby of change of physical state and
condition, an agent passive in its action, moved always, that is
to say, by influences apart from itself,(1037) obeying other
influences, an agent possessing no initiative power, no _vis_ or
_energeia naturæ_,(1038) but still playing a most important, if
not a primary part in the production of the phenomena resulting
from the action of the _energeia_ upon visible matter.(1039)
As Biology and Physiology now deny, _in toto_, the existence of a Vital
Principle, this extract, together with De Quatrefages’ admission, is a lear confirmation that there are men of Science who take the same views bout “things Occult” as do Theosophists and Occultists. These recognize a istinct Vital Principle independent of the organism—material, of course,
_as physical Force cannot be divorced from Matter_, but of a Substance xisting in a state unknown to Science. _Life for them is something more han the mere interaction of molecules and atoms._ There is a Vital
Principle without which no molecular combinations could ever have resulted n a living organism, least of all in the so‐called “inorganic” Matter of ur plane of consciousness.
By “molecular combinations” are meant, of course, those of the Matter of ur present illusive perceptions, which Matter energizes only on this, our lane. And this is the chief point at issue.(1040)
Thus the Occultists are not alone in their beliefs. Nor are they so oolish, after all, in rejecting even the “gravity” of Modern Science long with other _physical_ laws, and in accepting instead _attraction_ nd _repulsion_. They see, moreover, in these two opposite Forces only the wo _aspects_ of the Universal Unit, called _Manifesting Mind_; in which spects, Occultism, through its great Seers, perceives an innumerable Host f operative Beings: cosmic Dhyân Chohans, Entities, whose essence, in its
_dual_ nature, is the Cause of all terrestrial phenomena. For that essence s con‐substantial with the universal Electric Ocean, which is LIFE; and eing dual, as said—positive and negative—it is the emanations of that uality that act now on Earth under the name of “modes of motion”; even
Force having now become objectionable as a word, for fear it should lead omeone, even in thought, to separate it from Matter! It is, as Occultism ays, the dual _effects_ of that dual essence, which have now been called entripetal and centrifugal forces, now negative and positive poles, or olarity, heat and cold, light and darkness, etc.
And it is further maintained that even the Greek and Roman Catholic
Christians are wiser in believing, as they do—even if blindly connecting nd tracing them all to an anthropomorphic God—in Angels, Archangels,
Archons, Seraphs, and Morning Stars, in all those theological _deliciæ umani generis_, in short, that rule the Cosmic Elements, than Science is, n disbelieving in them altogether, and in advocating its mechanical
Forces. For these act very often with more than human intelligence and ertinency. Nevertheless, that intelligence is denied and attributed to lind chance. But, as De Maistre was right in calling the law of ravitation merely a _word_ which replaced “the thing unknown,” so are we ight in applying the same remark to all the other Forces of Science. And f it is objected that the Count was an ardent Roman Catholic, then we may ite Le Couturier, as ardent a Materialist, who said the same thing, as id also Herschell and many others.(1041)
From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a Star to a rush‐light, from he Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being—the world of Form nd Existence is an immense chain, the links of which are all connected.
The Law of Analogy is the first key to the world‐problem, and these links ave to be studied coördinately in their Occult relations to each other.
When, therefore, the Secret Doctrine—postulating that conditioned or imited space (location) has no real being except in this world of llusion, or, in other words, in our perceptive faculties—teaches that very one of the higher, as of the lower worlds, is interblended with our wn objective world; that millions of things and beings are, in point of ocalization, around and _in_ us, as we are around, with, and in them; his is no mere metaphysical figure of speech, but a sober fact in Nature, owever incomprehensible to our senses.
But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism before criticizing hat it asserts. For example, the Doctrine refuses—as Science does, in one ense—to use the words “above” and “below,” “higher” and “lower,” in eference to _invisible_ spheres, since here they are without meaning.
Even the terms “East” and “West” are merely conventional, necessary only o aid our human perceptions. For though the Earth has its two fixed oints in the poles, North and South, yet both East and West are variable elatively to our own position on the Earth’s surface, and in consequence f its rotation from West to East. Hence, when “other worlds” are entioned—whether better or worse, more spiritual or still more material, hough both invisible—the Occultist does not locate these spheres either utside or inside our Earth, as the theologians and the poets do; for heir location is nowhere in the space known to, or conceived by, the rofane. They are, as it were, blended with our world—interpenetrating it nd interpenetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and irmaments visible to us; there are still greater numbers beyond those isible to the telescope, and many of the latter kind do not belong to our
_objective_ sphere of existence. Although as invisible as if they were illions of miles beyond our Solar System, they are yet with us, near us,
_within_ our own world, as objective and material to their respective nhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation of these worlds to urs is not that of a series of egg‐shaped boxes enclosed one within the ther, like the toys called Chinese nests; each is entirely under its own pecial laws and conditions, having no direct relation to our sphere. The nhabitants of these, as already said, may be, for all we know, or feel, assing _through_ and _around_ us as if through empty space, their very abitations and countries being interblended with ours, though not isturbing our vision, because we have not yet the faculties necessary for iscerning them. Yet by their spiritual sight the Adepts, and even some eers and sensitives, are always able to discern, whether in a greater or maller degree, the presence and close proximity to us of Beings ertaining to other spheres of life. Those of the spiritually higher orlds communicate only with those terrestrial mortals who ascend to them, hrough individual efforts, on to the higher plane they are occupying.
_The sons of Bhûmi_ [Earth] _regard the Sons of Deva‐lokas_ [Angel‐ pheres] _as their Gods; and the Sons of lower kingdoms look up to the men f Bhûmi as to their Devas_ [Gods]; _men remaining unaware of it in their lindness.... They_ [men] _tremble before them while using them_ [for agical purposes].... _The First Race of Men were the __“__Mind‐born
Sons__”__ of the former. They_ [the Pitris and Devas] _are our rogenitors_.(1042)
“Educated people,” so‐called, deride the idea of Sylphs, Salamanders,
Undines, and Gnomes; the men of Science regard any mention of such uperstitions as an insult; and with a contempt of logic and common good ense, that is often the prerogative of “accepted authority,” they allow hose, whom it is their duty to instruct, to labour under the absurd mpression that in the whole Kosmos, or at any rate in our own atmosphere, here are no other conscious, intelligent beings, save ourselves.(1043)
Any other humanity (composed of distinct _human_ beings) save a mankind ith two legs, two arms, and a head with man’s features on it, would not e called human; though the etymology of the word would seem to have ittle to do with the general appearance of a creature. Thus, while
Science sternly rejects even the possibility of there being such (to us, enerally) invisible creatures, Society, while believing in it all
_secretly_, is made to deride the idea openly. It hails with mirth such orks as the _Comte de Gabalis_, and fails to understand that _open satire s the securest mask_.
Nevertheless, such invisible worlds do exist. Inhabited as thickly as is ur own, they are scattered throughout apparent Space in immense numbers; ome far more material than our own world, others gradually etherealizing ntil they become formless and are as “breaths.” The fact that our hysical eye does not see them, is no reason for disbelieving in them.
Physicists cannot see their Ether, Atoms, “modes of motion,” or Forces.
Yet they accept and teach them.
If we find, even in the natural world with which we are acquainted, Matter ffording a partial analogy to the difficult conception of such invisible orlds, there seems little difficulty in recognizing the possibility of uch a presence. The tail of a Comet, which, though attracting our ttention by virtue of its luminosity, yet does not disturb or impede our ision of objects, which we perceive through and beyond it, affords the irst stepping‐stone toward a proof of the same. The tail of a Comet asses rapidly across our horizon, and we should neither feel it, nor be ognizant of its passage, but for the brilliant coruscation, often erceived only by a few interested in the phenomenon, while everyone else emains ignorant of its presence and of its passage _through_, or across, portion of our globe. This tail may, or may not, be an integral portion f the being of the Comet, but its tenuity subserves our purpose as an llustration. Indeed, it is no question of superstition, but simply a esult of transcendental Science, and of logic still more, to admit the xistence of worlds formed of even far more attenuated Matter than the ail of a Comet. By denying such a possibility, Science has for the last entury played into the hands of neither Philosophy nor true Religion, but imply into those of Theology. To be able to dispute the better the lurality of even material worlds, a belief thought by many churchmen ncompatible with the teachings and doctrines of the _Bible_,(1044)
Maxwell had to calumniate the memory of Newton, and to try and convince is public that the principles contained in the Newtonian philosophy are hose “which lie at the foundation of all atheistical systems.”(1045)
“Dr. Whewell disputed the plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific vidence,” writes Professor Winchell.(1046) And if even the habitability f physical worlds, of Planets, and distant Stars which shine in myriads ver our heads is so disputed, how little chance is there for the cceptance of invisible worlds within the apparently transparent space of ur own!
But, if we can conceive of a world composed of Matter still more ttenuated to _our_ senses than the tail of a Comet, hence of inhabitants n it who are as ethereal, in proportion to _their_ Globe, as we are in omparison with _our_ rocky, hard‐crusted Earth, no wonder if we do not erceive them, nor sense their presence or even existence. Only, in what s the idea contrary to Science? Cannot men and animals, plants and rocks, e supposed to be endowed with quite a different set of senses from those e possess? Cannot their organisms be born, develop, and exist, under ther laws of being than those that rule our little world? Is it bsolutely necessary that every corporeal being should be clothed in
“coats of skin” like those that Adam and Eve were provided with in the egend of Genesis? Corporeality, we are told, however, by more than one an of Science, “may exist under very divergent conditions.” Professor A.
Winchell—arguing upon the plurality of worlds—makes the following remarks:
It is not at all improbable that substances of a refractory nature
might be so mixed with other substances, known or unknown to us,
as to be capable of enduring vastly greater vicissitudes of heat
and cold than is possible with terrestrial organisms. The tissues
of terrestrial animals are simply suited to terrestrial
conditions. Yet even here we find different types and species of
animals adapted to the trials of extremely dissimilar
situations.... That an animal should be a quadruped or a biped is
something not depending on the necessities of organization, or
instinct, or intelligence. That an animal should possess just five
senses is not a necessity of percipient existence. There may be
animals on the earth with neither smell nor taste. There may be
beings on other worlds, and even on this, who possess more
numerous senses than we. The possibility of this is apparent when
we consider the high probability that other properties and other
modes of existence lie among the resources of the Cosmos, and even
of terrestrial matter. There are animals which subsist where
rational man would perish—in the soil, in the river, and the sea
... [and why not _human_ beings of different organizations, in
such case?].... Nor is incorporated rational existence conditioned
on warm blood, nor on any temperature which does not change the
forms of matter of which the organism may be composed. There may
be intelligences corporealized after some concept not involving
the processes of injection, assimilation, and reproduction. Such
bodies would not require daily food and warmth. They might be lost
in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through
the tempests of an Arctic winter, or plunged in a volcano for a
hundred years, and yet retain consciousness and thought. It is
conceivable. Why might not psychic natures be enshrined in
indestructible flint and platinum? These substances are no further
from the nature of intelligence than carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
lime. But, not to carry the thought to such an extreme [?], might
not high intelligence be embodied in frames as indifferent to
external conditions as the sage of the western plains, or the
lichens of Labrador, the rotifers which remain dried for years, or
the bacteria which pass living through boiling water.... These
suggestions are made simply to remind the reader how little can be
argued respecting the necessary conditions of intelligent,
organized existence, from the standard of corporeal existence
found upon the earth. Intelligence is, from its nature, as
universal and as uniform as the laws of the universe. Bodies are
merely the local fitting of intelligence to particular
modifications of universal matter or force.(1047)
Do not we know through the discoveries of that same all‐denying Science hat we are surrounded by myriads of invisible lives? If these microbes, acteria and the _tutti quanti_ of the infinitesimally small, are nvisible to us by virtue of their minuteness, cannot there be, at the ther pole, beings as invisible owing to the quality of their texture or atter—to its tenuity, in fact? Conversely, as to the effects of cometary atter, have we not another example of a half visible form of Life and
Matter? The ray of sunlight entering our apartment reveals in its passage yriads of tiny beings living their little life and ceasing to be, ndependent and heedless of whether they are or are not perceived by our rosser materiality. And so again, of the microbes and bacteria and such‐ ike unseen beings in other elements. We passed them by, during those long enturies of dreary ignorance, after the lamp of knowledge in the heathen nd highly philosophical systems had ceased to throw its bright light on he ages of intolerance and bigotry of early Christianity; and we would ain pass them by again now.
And yet these lives surrounded us _then_ as they do now. They have worked n, obedient to their own laws, and it is only as they have been gradually evealed by Science that we have begun to take cognizance of them and of he effects produced by them.
How long has it taken the world to become what it now is? If it can be aid that even up to the present day cosmic dust, “which has never elonged to the earth before,”(1048) reaches our Globe, how much more ogical is it to believe—as the Occultists do—that through the countless illions of years that have rolled away since that dust aggregated and ormed the Globe we live in round its nucleus of _intelligent_ Primeval
Substance, many humanities—differing from our present mankind as greatly s the humanity which will evolve millions of years hence will differ from ur races—appeared but to disappear from the face of the Earth, as will ur own. These primitive and far‐distant humanities are denied, because, s Geologists think, they have left no tangible relics of themselves. All race of them is swept away, and therefore they have never existed. Yet heir relics—though very few of them, truly—are to be found, and they must e discovered by geological research. But, even if they were never to be et with, there would be no reason to say that no men could have ever ived in the geological periods to which their presence on earth is ssigned. For their organisms needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no eeding; the author of _World‐Life_ is right, and there is no extravagance n believing as we do, that as, on scientific hypotheses, there may be to his day “psychic natures enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum,” o there were psychic natures enshrined in forms of equally indestructible
Primeval Matter—the real forefathers of our Fifth Race.
When, therefore, as in Volume II, we speak of men who inhabited this Globe
18,000,000 years ago, we have in mind neither the men of our present aces, nor the present atmospheric laws, thermal conditions, etc. The
Earth and Mankind, like the Sun, Moon, and Planets, all have their growth, hanges, development, and gradual evolution in their life‐periods; they re born, become infants, then children, adolescent, grown‐up, they grow ld, and finally die. Why should not Mankind be also under this universal aw? Says Uriel to Enoch:
Behold, I have showed thee all things, O Enoch.... Thou seest the
sun, the moon, and those which conduct the stars of heaven, which
cause all their operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In
the days of sinners the years shall be shortened ... everything
done on earth shall be subverted ... the moon shall change its
laws.(1049)
The “days of sinners” meant the days when Matter would be in its full sway n Earth, and man would have reached the apex of physical development in tature and animality. That came to pass during the period of the
Atlanteans, about the middle point of their Race, the Fourth, which was rowned, as prophesied by Uriel. Since then man has been decreasing in hysical stature, strength, and years, as will be shown in Volume II. But s we are at the mid‐point of our sub‐race of the Fifth Root‐Race—the acme f materiality in each—the animal propensities, though more refined, are one the less developed; and this is most marked in civilized countries.
Section XIV. Gods, Monads and Atoms.
Some years ago we remarked that:
The Esoteric Doctrine may well be called ... the “Thread
Doctrine,” since, like Sûtrâtmâ [in the Vedânta Philosophy](1050),
it passes through and strings together all the ancient
philosophical religious systems, and ... reconciles and explains
them.(1051)
We now say it does more. It not only reconciles the various and apparently onflicting systems, but it checks the discoveries of modern exact
Science, showing some of them to be necessarily correct, since they are ound corroborated in the Ancient Records. All this will, no doubt, be egarded as terribly impertinent and disrespectful, a veritable crime of
_lèse‐science_; nevertheless, it is a fact.
Science is, undeniably, ultra‐materialistic in our days; but it finds, in ne sense, its justification. Nature behaving ever esoterically _in actu_, nd being, as the Kabalists say, _in abscondito_, can only be judged by he profane through her appearance, and that appearance is always eceitful on the physical plane. On the other hand, the Naturalists refuse o blend Physics with Metaphysics, the Body with its informing Soul and
Spirit. They prefer to ignore the latter. This is a matter of choice with ome, while the minority very sensibly strive to enlarge the domain of
Physical Science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of Metaphysics, o distasteful to some Materialists. These Scientists are wise in their eneration. For all their wonderful discoveries will go for nothing, and emain for ever _headless_ bodies, unless they lift the veil of Matter and train their eyes to see _beyond_. Now that they have studied Nature in he length, breadth, and thickness of her physical frame, it is time to emove the skeleton to the second plane, and search within the unknown epths for the living and real entity, for its _sub_‐stance—the noumenon f evanescent Matter.
It is only by acting along such lines that some truths, now called
“exploded superstitions,” will be discovered to be facts, and the relics f ancient knowledge and wisdom.
One of such “degrading” beliefs—degrading in the opinion of the all‐ enying Sceptic—is found in the idea that Kosmos, besides its objective lanetary inhabitants, its humanities in other inhabited worlds, is full f invisible, intelligent _Existences_. The so‐called Arch‐Angels, Angels nd Spirits, of the West, copies of their prototypes, the Dhyân Chohans, he Devas and Pitris, of the East, are not real Beings, but fictions. On his point materialistic Science is inexorable. To support its position, t upsets its own axiomatic law of uniformity and of continuity in the aws of Nature, and all the logical sequence of analogies in the evolution f Being. The masses of the profane are asked, and are made to believe hat the accumulated testimony of History—which shows even the “Atheists” f old, such men as Epicurus and Democritus, as believers in _Gods_—is alse; and that Philosophers like Socrates and Plato, asserting such xistences, were mistaken enthusiasts and fools. If we hold our opinions erely on historical grounds, on the authority of legions of the most minent Sages, Neo‐Platonists, and Mystics in all ages, from Pythagoras own to the eminent Scientists and Professors of the present century, who, f they reject “Gods,” believe in “Spirits,” are we to consider such uthorities to be as weak‐minded and foolish as any Roman Catholic easant, who believes in and prays to his once human Saint, or the
Archangel St. Michael? But is there no difference between the belief of he peasant and that of the Western heirs of the Rosicrucians and
Alchemists of the Middle Ages? Is it the Van Helmonts, the Khunraths, the
Paracelsuses and Agrippas, from Roger Bacon down to St. Germain, who were ll blind enthusiasts, hysteriacs or cheats, or is it the handful of odern Sceptics—the “leaders of thought”—who are struck with the cecity of egation? The latter is the case, we opine. It would indeed be a
_miracle_, quite an abnormal fact in the realm of probabilities and logic, ere that handful of negators to be the sole custodians of _truth_, while he million‐strong hosts of believers in Gods, Angels, and Spirits—in
Europe and America alone—namely, Greek and Latin Christians, Theosophists,
Spiritualists, Mystics, etc., should be no better than deluded fanatics nd hallucinated mediums, and often no higher than the victims of eceivers and impostors! However varying in their external presentations nd dogmas, beliefs in the Hosts of invisible Intelligences of various rades have all the same foundation. Truth and error are mixed in all. The xact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries of Nature are to e found only in Eastern Esoteric Science. So vast and so profound are hese that scarcely even a few, a very few of the highest Initiates—those
_whose very existence is known but to a small number of Adepts_—are apable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, and one by one acts and processes in Nature’s workshops are permitted to find their way nto exact Science, while mysterious help is given to rare individuals in nravelling its arcana. It is at the close of great Cycles, in connection ith racial development, that such events generally take place. We are at he very close of the cycle of 5,000 years of the present Âryan Kali Yuga; nd between this time and 1897 there will be a large rent made in the Veil f Nature, and materialistic Science will receive a death‐blow.
Without throwing any discredit upon time‐honoured beliefs, in any irection, we are forced to draw a marked line between blind faith, volved by theologies, and knowledge due to the independent researches of ong generations of Adepts; between, in short, faith and Philosophy. There ave been, in all ages, undeniably learned and good men who, having been eared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized convictions. For
Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of departure in the rama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of Calvary is the relude to the hoped‐for Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the oundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex.
For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames f their respective theologies: one self‐created _personal_ God, and an mpyrean ringing with the Hallelujas of _created_ Angels; the rest,
_false_ Gods, Satan and fiends.
Theo‐Philosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of
æons—in time and space in our Round and Globe—the mysteries of Nature (at ny rate, those which it is lawful for our Races to know) were recorded by he pupils of those same, now invisible, “Heavenly Men,” in geometrical igures and symbols. The keys thereto passed from one generation of “Wise
Men” to another. Some of the symbols thus passed from the East to the
West, brought from the Orient by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of is famous “Triangle.” The latter figure, along with the square and ircle, are more eloquent and scientific descriptions of the order of the volution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, as well as physical, han volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed “Geneses.” The ten
Points inscribed within that “Pythagorean Triangle” are worth all the heogonies and angelologies ever emanated from the theological brain. For e who interprets these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points idden)—on their very face, and in the order given—will find in them the ninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to
Terrestrial Man. And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the rder in which were evolved the Kosmos, our Earth, and the primordial
Elements by which the latter was generated. Begotten in the invisible
“Depths,” and in the Womb of the same “Mother” as its fellow‐globes—he who asters the mysteries of our own Earth will have mastered those of all thers.
Whatever ignorance, pride or fanaticism may suggest to the contrary,
Esoteric Cosmology can be shown to be inseparably connected with both
Philosophy and Modern Science. The Gods and Monads of the Ancients—from
Pythagoras down to Leibnitz—and the Atoms of the present materialistic chools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the old Greek Atomists) re only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human frame, which egins with body and ends with Spirit. In the Occult Sciences they can be tudied separately, but they can never be mastered unless they are viewed n their mutual correlations during their life‐cycle, and as a Universal
Unity during Pralayas.
La Pluche shows sincerity, but gives a poor idea of his philosophical apacities, when declaring his personal views on the Monad or the
Mathematical Point. He says:
A point is enough to put all the schools in the world in a
combustion. But what need has man to know that point, since the
creation of such a small being is beyond his power? _À fortiori_,
philosophy acts against probability when, from that point which
absorbs and disconcerts all her meditations, she presumes to pass
on to the generation of the world.
Philosophy, however, could never have formed its conception of a logical, niversal, and absolute Deity, if it had had no Mathematical Point within he Circle upon which to base its speculations. It is only the manifested
Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the nfinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that makes a reconciliation etween Philosophy and Theology possible—on condition that the latter hould abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because Christian heology has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical igures, that it has evolved its self‐created human and personal God, the onstrous Head whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and
Damnation. This is so true, that even those clergymen who are Masons, and ho would be Philosophers, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, athered upon the Ancient Sages the queer idea that:
The Monad represented [with them] the throne of the Omnipotent
Deity, placed in the centre of the empyrean to indicate
T.G.A.O.T.U. [_read_ the “Great Architect of the Universe”].(1052)
A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean.
Nor did the “Hierogram within a Circle, or equilateral Triangle,” ever ean “the exemplification of the unity of the divine Essence”; for this as exemplified by the plane of the boundless Circle. What it really meant as the triune coëqual Nature of the first differentiated Substance, or he con‐substantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, Matter and the
Universe—their “Son”—which proceeds from the Point, the real, Esoteric
Logos, or Pythagorean Monad. For the Greek Monas signifies “Unity” in its rimary sense. Those unable to seize the difference between the Monad—the
Universal Unit—and the Monads or the manifested Unity, as also between the ver‐hidden and the revealed Logos, or the Word, ought never to meddle ith Philosophy, let alone with the Esoteric Sciences. It is needless to emind the educated reader of Kant’s Thesis to demonstrate his second
Antinomy.(1053) Those who have read and understood it will see clearly the ine we draw between the _absolutely ideal_ Universe and the invisible hough manifested Kosmos. Our Gods and Monads are not the Elements of xtension itself, but only those of the invisible Reality which is the asis of the manifested Kosmos. Neither Esoteric Philosophy, nor Kant, to ay nothing of Leibnitz, would ever admit that extension can be composed f simple or unextended parts. But theologian‐philosophers will not grasp his. The Circle and the Point—the latter retiring into and merging with he former, after having emanated the first three Points and connected hem with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second
Triangle in the Manifested World—have ever been an insuperable obstacle to heological flights into dogmatic empyreans. On the authority of this
Archaic Symbol, a male, personal God, the Creator and Father of all, ecomes a third‐rate emanation, the Sephira standing fourth in descent, nd on the left hand of Ain Suph, in the Kabalistic Tree of Life. Hence, he Monad is degraded into a Vehicle—a “Throne”!
The Monad—the emanation and reflection only of the Point, or Logos, in the henomenal World—becomes, as the apex of the manifested equilateral
Triangle, the “Father.” The left side or line is the Duad, the “Mother,” egarded as the evil, counteracting principle;(1054) the right side epresents the “Son,” “his Mother’s Husband” in _every_ Cosmogony, as eing one with the apex; the base line is the universal plane of roductive Nature, unifying on the phenomenal plane Father‐Mother‐Son, as hese were unified in the apex, in the supersensuous World.(1055) By ystic transmutation they became the Quaternary—the Triangle became the
Tetraktys.
This transcendental application of geometry to cosmic and divine heogony—the Alpha and the Omega of mystical conception—was dwarfed after
Pythagoras by Aristotle. By omitting the Point and the Circle, and taking o account of the apex, he reduced the metaphysical value of the idea, and hus limited the doctrine of magnitude to a simple Triad—the _line_, the
_surface_, and the _body_. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have nterpreted these three geometrical figures as Space, Force, and
Matter—“the potencies of an interacting Unity.” Materialistic Science, erceiving but the base line of the _manifested_ Triangle—the plane of
Matter—translates it practically as (Father)‐_Matter_, (Mother)‐_Matter_, nd (Son)‐_Matter_, and theoretically as Matter, Force, and Correlation.
But to the average Physicist, as remarked by a Kabalist:
Space, and Force, and Matter, are what signs in Algebra are to the
Mathematician, merely conventional symbols, or Force as Force, and
Matter as Matter, are as absolutely unknowable as is the assumed
empty space in which they are held to interact.(1056)
Symbols represent abstractions, and on these
The physicist bases reasoned hypotheses of the origin of things
... he sees three needs in what he terms creation: A place wherein
to create. A medium by which to create. A material from which to
create. And in giving a logical expression to this hypothesis
through the terms space, force, matter, he believes he has proved
the existence of that which each of these represents as he
conceives it to be.(1057)
The Physicist who regards Space merely as a representation of our mind, or xtension unrelated to things in it, which Locke defined as capable of either resistance nor motion; the paradoxical Materialist, who would have _void_ there, where he can see no Matter, would reject with the utmost ontempt the proposition that Space is
A substantial though [apparently an absolutely] unknowable living
Entity.(1058)
Such is, nevertheless, the Kabalistic teaching, and it is that of Archaic
Philosophy. Space is the _real_ World, while our world is an artificial ne. It is the One Unity throughout its infinitude: in its bottomless epths as on its illusive surface; a surface studded with countless henomenal Universes, Systems and mirage‐like Worlds. Nevertheless, to the
Eastern Occultist, who is an objective Idealist at bottom, in the _real_
World, which is a Unity of Forces, there is “a connection of all Matter in he Plenum,” as Leibnitz would say. This is symbolized in the Pythagorean
Triangle.
It consists of Ten Points inscribed pyramid‐like (from one to four) within ts three sides, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean
Decad. The upper single point is a Monad, and represents a Unit‐Point, hich is _the_ Unity whence all proceeds. All is of the same essence with t. While the ten points within the equilateral Triangle represent the henomenal world, the three sides enclosing the pyramid of points are the arriers of _noumenal_ Matter, or Substance, that separate it from the orld of Thought.
Pythagoras considered a _point_ to correspond in proportion to
unity; a _line_ to 2; a _superfice_ to 3; a _solid_ to 4; and he
defined a point as a monad having position, and the beginning of
all things; a line was thought to correspond with duality, because
it was produced by the first motion from indivisible nature, and
formed the junction of two points. A superfice was compared to the
number three because it is the first of all causes that are found
in figures; for a circle, which is the principal of all round
figures, comprises a triad, in centre—space—circumference. But a
triangle, which is the first of all rectilineal figures, is
included in a ternary, and receives its form according to that
number; and was considered by the Pythagoreans to be the author of
all sublunary things. The four points at the base of the
Pythagorean triangle correspond with a solid or cube, which
combines the principles of length, breadth, and thickness, for no
solid can have less than four extreme boundary points.(1059)
It is argued that “the human mind cannot conceive an indivisible unit hort of the annihilation of the idea with its subject.” This is an error, s the Pythagoreans have proved, and a number of Seers before them, lthough there is a special training needed for the conception, and lthough the profane mind can hardly grasp it. But there are such things s “_Meta‐mathematics_” and “_Meta‐geometry_.” Even Mathematics pure and imple proceed from the universal to the particular, from the mathematical ndivisible point to solid figures. The teaching originated in India, and as taught in Europe by Pythagoras, who, throwing a veil over the Circle nd the Point—which no living man can define except as incomprehensible bstractions—laid the origin of the differentiated cosmic Matter in the ase of the Triangle. Thus the latter became the earliest of geometrical igures. The author of _New Aspects of Life_, dealing with the Kabalistic
Mysteries, objects to the objectivization, so to speak, of the Pythagorean onception and the use of the equilateral triangle, and calls it a
“misnomer.” His argument that a solid equilateral body—
One whose base, as well as each of its sides, form equal
triangles—must have four co‐equal sides or surfaces, while a
triangular plane will as necessarily possess five,(1060)
—demonstrates on the contrary the grandeur of the conception in all its
Esoteric application to the idea of the _pregenesis_, and the genesis of
Kosmos. Granted, that an ideal Triangle, depicted by mathematical, maginary lines,
Can have no sides at all, being simply a phantom of the mind to
which, if sides be imputed, these must be the sides of the object
it constructively represents.(1061)
But in such case most of the scientific hypotheses are no better than
“phantoms of the mind”; they are unverifiable, except on inference, and ave been adopted merely to answer scientific necessities. Furthermore, he ideal Triangle—“as the abstract idea of a triangular body, and, herefore, as the type of an abstract idea”—accomplished and carried out o perfection the double symbolism intended. As an emblem applicable to he objective idea, the simple triangle became a solid. When repeated in tone, facing the four cardinal points, it assumed the shape of the
Pyramid—the symbol of the phenomenal merging into the noumenal Universe of hought, at the apex of the four triangles; and, as an “imaginary figure onstructed of three mathematical lines,” it symbolized the subjective pheres—these lines “enclosing a mathematical space—which is equal to othing enclosing nothing.” And this because, to the senses and the ntrained consciousness of the Profane and the Scientist, everything eyond the line of differentiated Matter—_i.e._, outside of, and beyond he realm of even the most Spiritual _Substance_—has to remain for ever
_equal to nothing_. It is the Ain Suph—the _No Thing_.
Yet these “phantoms of the mind” are in truth no greater abstractions than he abstract ideas in general as to evolution and physical evelopment—_e.g._, Gravity, Matter, Force, etc.—on which the exact
Sciences are based. Our most eminent Chemists and Physicists are earnestly ursuing the not hopeless attempt of finally tracing to its hiding‐place he Protyle, or the basic line of the Pythagorean Triangle. The latter is, s we have said, the grandest conception imaginable, for it symbolizes oth the ideal and the visible universes.(1062) For if
_The possible unit is only a possibility as an actuality of
nature, as an individual of any kind_, [and as] every individual
natural object is capable of division, and by division loses its
unity, or ceases to be a unit,(1063)
his is true only of the realm of exact Science in a world as deceptive as t is illusive. In the realm of Esoteric Science the Unit divided _ad nfinitum_, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division he planes of the only eternal REALITY. The eye of the Seer can follow it nd behold it in all its pregenetic glory. This same idea of the reality f the subjective, and the unreality of the objective Universe, is found t the bottom of the Pythagorean and Platonic Teachings—limited to the
Elect alone; for Porphyry, speaking of the Monad and the Duad, says that he former only was considered substantial and real, “that most simple
Being, the cause of all unity and the measure of all things.”
But the Duad, although the origin of Evil, or Matter—hence _unreal_ in
Philosophy—is still Substance during Manvantara, and is often called the
Third Monad, in Occultism, and the connecting line as between two Points, r Numbers, which proceeded from THAT, “which was before all Numbers,” as xpressed by Rabbi Barahiel. And from this Duad proceeded all the
Scintillas of the three Upper and the four Lower Worlds or Planes—which re in constant interaction and correspondence. This is a teaching which he Kabalah has in common with Eastern Occultism. For in the Occult
Philosophy there is the “ONE Cause” and the “Primal Cause,” the latter hus becoming, paradoxically, the Second, as is clearly expressed by the uthor of the _Qabbalah, from the Philosophical Writings of Ibn Gabirol_, ho says:
In the treatment of the Primal Cause, two things must be
considered, the Primal Cause _per se_, and the relation and
connection of the Primal Cause with the visible and unseen
universe.(1064)
Thus he shows the early Hebrews, as the later Arabians, following in the teps of the Oriental Philosophy, such as the Chaldean, Persian, Hindû, tc. Their Primal Cause was designated at first,
By the triadic שדי Shaddaï, the [triune] Almighty, subsequently by
the Tetragrammaton, יהוה, YHVH symbol of the Past, Present, and
Future,(1065)
nd, let us add, of the eternal IS, or the I AM. Moreover, in the Kabalah he name YHVH (or Jehovah) expresses a He and a She, male and female, two n one, or Chokmah and Binah, and his, or rather their Shekinah or ynthesizing Spirit (or Grace), which again makes of the Duad a Triad.
This is demonstrated in the Jewish Liturgy for Pentecost, and the prayer:
“In the name of Unity, of the Holy and Blessed Hû [He], and His
She’keenah, the Hidden and Concealed Hû, blessed be YHVH [the
Quaternary] for ever.” Hû is said to be masculine and YaH
feminine, together they make the יהוה אחד _i.e._, one YHVH. One,
but of a male‐female nature. The She’keenah is always considered
in the Qabbalah as feminine.(1066)
And so it is considered in the exoteric _Purânas_, for Shekinah is no more han Shakti—the female double of any God—in such case. And so it was with he early Christians, whose Holy Spirit was feminine, as Sophia was with he Gnostics. But in the transcendental Chaldean Kabalah, or _Book of
Numbers_, Shekinah is sexless, and the purest abstraction, a state, like
Nirvâna, neither subject nor object, nor anything except an absolute
PRESENCE.
Thus it is only in the anthropomorphized systems—such as the Kabalah has ow for the most part become—that Shekinah‐Shakti is feminine. As such she ecomes the Duad of Pythagoras, the two straight lines which can form no eometrical figure and are the symbol of Matter. Out of this Duad, when nited in the basic line of the Triangle on the lower plane (the upper
Triangle of the Sephirothal Tree), emerge the Elohim, or Deity in Cosmic
Nature, with the true Kabalists the _lowest_ designation, translated in he _Bible_ “God.”(1067) Out of these (the Elohim) issue the Scintillas.
The Scintillas are the “Souls,” and these Souls appear in the three‐fold orm of Monads (Units), Atoms and Gods—according to our Teaching. As says he _Esoteric Catechism_:
_Every Atom becomes a visible complex unit_ [a molecule], _and once ttracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, assing through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man_.
Again:
_God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body_
[Âtmâ, Manas, and Sthûla Sharîra] _in man_.
In their septenary aggregation they are the “Heavenly Man,” in the
Kabalistic sense; thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of he Heavenly. Once again:
_The Monads_ [Jîvas] _are the Souls of the Atoms; both are the fabric in hich the Chohans_ [Dhyânîs, Gods] _clothe themselves when a form is eeded_.
This relates to cosmic and sub‐planetary Monads, not to the super‐cosmic
Monads, the Pythagorean Monad, as it is called, in its synthetic haracter, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present issertation are treated, from the standpoint of their individuality, as
_Atomic Souls_, before these Atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For his descent into _concrete_ Matter marks the medial point of their own ndividual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their ndividuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of errestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly stablished between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, owever, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and ribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes herein the eye of the most intuitional Chemist and Physicist cannot reach hem—unless, indeed, he develops in himself highly clairvoyant faculties.
It is well known that Leibnitz came very near the truth several times, but e defined Monadic Evolution incorrectly, a thing not to be wondered at, ince he was not an Initiate, nor even a Mystic, but only a very ntuitional Philosopher. Yet no Psycho‐physicist ever came nearer than has e to the Esoteric general outline of evolution. This evolution—viewed rom its several standpoints, _i.e._, as the _Universal_ and the
_Individualized_ Monad, and the chief aspects of the Evolving Energy after ifferentiation, the purely Spiritual, the Intellectual, the Psychic and he Physical—may be thus formulated as an invariable law: a descent of
Spirit into Matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a eäscent from the depths of materiality towards its _status quo ante_, ith a corresponding dissipation of concrete form and substance up to the
Laya‐state, or what Science calls the “zero‐point,” and beyond.
These states—once the spirit of Esoteric Philosophy is grasped—become bsolutely necessary from simple logical and analogical considerations.
Physical Science having now ascertained, through its department of
Chemistry, the invariable law of this evolution of Atoms—from their
“protylean” state down to that of a physical and then a chemical particle, r molecule—cannot well reject these states as a general law. And once it s forced by its enemies—Metaphysics and Psychology(1068)—out of its lleged impregnable strongholds, it will find it more difficult than it ow appears to refuse room in the Spaces of SPACE to Planetary Spirits
(Gods), Elementals, and even the Elementary Spooks or Ghosts, and others.
Already Figuier and Paul D’Assier, two Positivists and Materialists, have uccumbed before this logical necessity. Other and still greater
Scientists will follow in that intellectual “Fall.” They will be driven ut of their position not by spiritual, theosophical, or any other hysical or even mental phenomena, but simply by the enormous _gaps_ and
_chasms_ that open daily and will still be opening before them, as one iscovery follows the other, until they are finally knocked off their feet y the ninth wave of simple common sense.
We may take as an example, Mr. W. Crookes’ latest discovery of what he has amed Protyle. In the _Notes on the Bhagavad Gîtâ_, by one of the best etaphysicians and Vedântic scholars in India, the lecturer, referring autiously to “things Occult” in that great Indian Esoteric work, makes a emark as suggestive as it is strictly correct. He says:
Into the details of the evolution of the solar system itself, it
is not necessary for me to enter. You may gather some idea _as to
the way_ in which the various elements start into existence from
these three principles into which Mûlaprakriti [the Pythagorean
Triangle] is differentiated, by examining the lecture delivered by
Professor Crookes a short time ago upon the so‐called elements of
modern chemistry. This lecture will give you some idea of the way
in which these so‐called elements spring from Vishvânara,(1069)
the most objective of these three principles, which seems to stand
in the place of the _protyle_ mentioned in that lecture. Except in
a few particulars, this lecture seems to give the outlines of the
theory of physical evolution on the plane of Vishvânara, and is,
so far as I know, the nearest approach made by modern
investigators to the real occult theory on the subject.(1070)
These words will be reëchoed and approved by every Eastern Occultist. Much rom the lectures by Mr. Crookes has already been quoted in Section XI. A econd lecture has been delivered by him, as remarkable as the first, on he “Genesis of the Elements,”(1071) and also a third one. Here we have lmost a corroboration of the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy concerning he mode of primeval evolution. It is, indeed, as near an approach, made y a great scholar and specialist in Chemistry,(1072) to the Secret
Doctrine, as could be made apart from the application of the Monads and
Atoms to the dogmas of pure transcendental Metaphysics, and their onnection and correlation with “Gods and intelligent conscious Monads.”
But Chemistry is now on its ascending plane, thanks to one of its highest
European representatives. It is impossible for it to go back to that day hen Materialism regarded its _sub_‐elements as absolutely simple and omogeneous bodies, which it had raised, in its blindness, to the rank of
Elements. The mask has been snatched off by too clever a hand for there to e any fear of a new disguise. And after years of pseudology, of bastard olecules parading under the name of Elements, behind and beyond which here could be nought but void, a great professor of Chemistry asks once ore:
What are these elements, whence do they come, what is their
signification?... These elements perplex us in our researches,
baffle us in our speculations, and haunt us in our very dreams.
They stretch like an unknown sea before us—mocking, mystifying,
and murmuring strange revelations and possibilities.(1073)
Those who are heirs to primeval revelations have taught these
“possibilities” in every century, but have never found a fair hearing. The ruths inspired into Kepler, Leibnitz, Gassendi, Swedenborg, etc., were ver alloyed with their own speculations in one or another predetermined irection—hence were distorted. But now one of the great truths has dawned pon an eminent professor of exact Modern Science, and he fearlessly roclaims as a fundamental axiom that Science has not made itself cquainted, so far, with real simple Elements. For Mr. Crookes tells his udience:
If I venture to say that our commonly received elements are not
simple and primordial, that they have _not_ arisen by chance or
have _not_ been created in a desultory and mechanical manner, but
have been evolved from simpler matters—or perhaps, indeed, from
one sole kind of matter—I do but give formal utterance to an idea
which has been, so to speak, for some time “in the air” of
science. Chemists, physicists, philosophers of the highest merit,
declare explicitly their belief that the seventy (or thereabouts)
elements of our text‐books are not the pillars of Hercules which
we must never hope to pass.... Philosophers in the present as in
the past—men who certainly have not worked in the laboratory—have
reached the same view from another side. Thus Mr. Herbert Spencer
records his conviction that “the chemical atoms are produced from
the true or physical atoms by processes of evolution under
conditions which chemistry has not yet been able to produce.”...
And the poet has forestalled the philosopher. Milton (_Paradise
Lost_, Book V.) makes the Archangel Raphael say to Adam instinct
with the evolutionary idea, that the Almighty had created
... “One first matter, all
Indued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance.”
Nevertheless, the idea would have remained crystallized “in the air of
Science,” and would not have descended into the thick atmosphere of
Materialism and profane mortals for years to come, perhaps, had not Mr.
Crookes bravely and fearlessly reduced it to its simple constituents, and hus publicly forced it on scientific notice. Says Plutarch:
An idea is a Being incorporeal, which has no subsistence by
itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and
becomes the cause of the manifestation.(1074)
The revolution produced in old Chemistry by Avogadro was the first page in he volume of “New Chemistry.” Mr. Crookes has now turned the second page, nd is boldly pointing _to what may be the last_. For Protyle once ccepted and recognized—as invisible Ether was, both being logical and cientific necessities—Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it ill reäppear in its reïncarnation as—“New Alchemy,” or “Meta‐chemistry.”
The discoverer of radiant matter will have vindicated in time the Archaic
Âryan works on Occultism, and even the _Vedas_ and _Purânas_. For what are he manifested “Mother,” the “Father‐Son‐Husband” (Aditi and Daksha, a orm of Brahmâ, as Creators), and the “Son”—the three “First‐born”—but imply Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which in its terrestrial manifestation s called Nitrogen. Even the exoteric descriptions of the “First‐born”
Triad give all the characteristics of these three “gases.” Priestley, the
“discoverer” of Oxygen, or of that which was known in the highest ntiquity!
Yet all the ancient, mediæval, and modern Poets and Philosophers have been nticipated even in the exoteric Hindû books as to the Elemental Vortices naugurated by the Universal Mind—Descartes’ “Plenum” of Matter ifferentiated into particles; Leibnitz’s “ethereal fluid”; and Kant’s
“primitive fluid” dissolved into its elements; Kepler’s solar vortex and ystemic vortices; in short, through Anaxagoras, down to Galileo,
Torricelli, and Swedenborg, and after them to the latest speculations by
European Mystics—all this is found in the Hindû Hymns, or Mantras, to the
“Gods, Monads and Atoms,” in their Fulness, for they are inseparable. In
Esoteric Teachings, the most transcendental conceptions of the Universe nd its mysteries, as also the most seemingly materialistic speculations, re found reconciled, because these Sciences embrace the whole scope of volution from Spirit to Matter. As declared by an American Theosophist:
The Monads [of Leibnitz] may from one point of view be called
_force_, from another _matter_. To Occult Science, _force_ and
_matter_ are only two sides of the same substance.(1075)
Let the reader remember these “Monads” of Leibnitz, every one of which is living mirror of the Universe, every Monad reflecting every other, and ompare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit Shlokas translated y Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the
Divine Mind,
Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of
the world, and cast reflection from its own face on every atom.
When, therefore, Mr. Crookes declares that:
If we can show how the so‐called chemical elements might have been
generated we shall be able to fill up a formidable gap in our
knowledge of the universe,
he answer is ready. The theoretical knowledge is contained in the
Esoteric meaning of every Hindû cosmogony in the _Purânas_; the practical emonstration thereof—is in the hands of those who will not be recognized n _this_ century, save by the very few. The scientific possibilities of arious discoveries, that must inexorably lead exact Science into the cceptation of Eastern Occult views, which contain all the requisite aterial for the filling of those “gaps,” are, so far, at the mercy of
Modern Materialism. It is only by working in the direction taken by Mr.
William Crookes that there is any hope for the recognition of a few, itherto Occult, truths.
Meanwhile, any one thirsting to have a glimpse at a practical diagram of he evolution of primordial Matter—which, separating and differentiating nder the impulse of cyclic law, divides itself on a general view into a eptenary gradation of _Substance_—can do no better than examine the lates attached to Mr. Crookes’ lecture, _Genesis of the Elements_, and onder well over some passages of the text. In one place he says:
Our notions of a chemical element have expanded. Hitherto the
molecule has been regarded as an aggregate of two or more atoms,
and no account has been taken of the architectural design on which
these atoms have been joined. We may consider that the structure
of a chemical element is more complicated than has hitherto been
supposed. Between the molecules we are accustomed to deal with in
chemical reactions and ultimate atoms as first created, come
smaller molecules or aggregates of physical atoms; these sub‐
molecules differ one from the other, according to the position
they occupy in the yttrium edifice.
Perhaps this hypothesis can be simplified if we imagine yttrium to
be represented by a five‐shilling piece. By chemical fractionation
I have divided it into five separate shillings, and find that
these shillings are not counterparts, but like the carbon atoms in
the benzol ring, have the impress of their position, 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, stamped on them.... If I throw my shillings into the melting‐
pot or dissolve them chemically, the mint stamp disappears and
they all turn out to be silver.(1076)
This will be the case with all the Atoms and molecules when they have eparated from their compound forms and bodies—when Pralaya sets in.
Reverse the case, and imagine the dawn of a new Manvantara. The pure
“silver” of the absorbed material will once more separate into SUBSTANCE, hich will generate “Divine Essences” whose “Principles”(1077) are the
Primary Elements, the Sub‐elements, the Physical Energies, and subjective nd objective Matter; or, as these are epitomized—GODS, MONADS, and ATOMS.
If leaving for one moment the metaphysical or transcendental side of the uestion—dropping out of the present consideration the supersensuous and ntelligent Beings and Entities believed in by the Kabalists and
Christians—we turn to the theory of atomic evolution, the Occult Teachings re still found corroborated by exact Science and its confessions, so far, t least, as regards the supposed “simple” Elements, now suddenly degraded nto poor and distant relatives, not even second cousins to the latter.
For we are told by Mr. Crookes that:
Hitherto, it has been considered that if the atomic weight of a
metal, determined by different observers, setting out from
different compounds, was always found to be constant ... then such
metal must rightly take rank among the simple or elementary
bodies. We learn ... that this is no longer the case. Again, we
have here wheels within wheels. Gadolinium is not an element but a
compound. ... We have shown that yttrium is a complex of five or
more new constituents. And who shall venture to gainsay that each
of these constituents, if attacked in some different manner, and
if the result were submitted to a test more delicate and searching
than the radiant‐matter test, might not be still further
divisible? Where, then, is the actual ultimate element? As we
advance it recedes like the tantalizing mirage lakes and groves
seen by the tired and thirsty traveller in the desert. Are we in
our quest for truth to be thus deluded and baulked? The very idea
of an element, as something absolutely primary and ultimate, seems
to be growing less and less distinct.(1078)
In _Isis Unveiled_, we said:
This mystery of first creation, which was ever the despair of
Science, is unfathomable unless we accept the doctrine of Hermes.
Could he [Darwin] remove his quest from the visible universe into
the invisible, he might find himself on the right path. But then,
he would be following in the footsteps of the Hermetists.(1079)
Our prophecy begins to assert itself.
But between Hermes and Huxley there is a middle course and point. Let the en of Science only throw a bridge half‐way, and think seriously over the heories of Leibnitz. We have shown _our_ theories with regard to the volution of Atoms—their last formation into compound chemical molecules eing produced within our terrestrial workshops in the Earth’s atmosphere nd not elsewhere—as strangely agreeing with the evolution of Atoms shown n Mr. Crookes’ plates. Several times already it has been stated in this olume that Mârttânda, the Sun, had evolved and aggregated, together with is seven smaller Brothers, from his Mother Aditi’s bosom, that bosom eing Prima _Mater_‐ia—the lecturer’s primordial Protyle. Esoteric
Doctrines teach the existence of
An antecedent form of energy having periodic cycles of ebb and
swell, rest and activity.(1080)
And behold a great scholar in Science now asking the world to accept this s one of his postulates! We have shown the “Mother,” fiery and hot, ecoming gradually cool and radiant, and this same Scientist claims as his econd postulate—a _scientific necessity_, it would seem—
An internal action, akin to cooling, operating slowly in the
protyle.
Occult Science teaches that the “Mother” lies stretched in Infinity, uring Pralaya, as the great Deep, the “_dry_ Waters of Space,” according o the quaint expression in the _Catechism_, and becomes _wet_ only after he separation and the moving over its face of Nârâyana, the
_Spirit which is invisible Flame, which never burns, but sets on fire all hat it touches, and gives it life and generation._(1081)
And now Science tells us that “the first‐born element ... most nearly llied to protyle” would be “_hydrogen_ ... which for some time would be he only existing form of matter” in the Universe. What says _Old_
Science? It answers: Just so; but we would call Hydrogen (and Oxygen), hich—in the pre‐geological and even pre‐genetic ages—instils the fire of ife into the “Mother” by incubation, the _spirit_, the _noumenon_, of hat which becomes in its grossest form Oxygen and Hydrogen and Nitrogen n Earth—Nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an earth‐born ement for uniting other gases and fluids, and serving as a sponge to arry in itself the Breath of Life, pure air.(1082) Before these gases and luids become what they are in _our_ atmosphere, they are interstellar
Ether; still earlier and on a _deeper_ plane—something else, and so on _in nfinitum_. The eminent and learned gentleman must pardon an Occultist for uoting him at such length; but such is the penalty of a Fellow of the
Royal Society who approaches so near the precincts of the Sacred Adytum of
Occult Mysteries as virtually to overstep the forbidden boundaries.
But it is time to leave Modern Physical Science and turn to the sychological and metaphysical side of the question. We would only remark hat to the “two very reasonable postulates” required by the eminent ecturer, “to get a glimpse of some few of the secrets so darkly hidden” ehind “the door of the Unknown,” a third should be added(1083)—lest no attering at it should avail; the postulate that Leibnitz stood on a firm roundwork of fact and truth in his speculations. The admirable and houghtful synopsis of these speculations—as given by John Theodore Mertz n his “Leibnitz”—shows how nearly he has brushed the hidden secrets of
Esoteric Theogony in his _Monadologie_. And yet this philosopher has ardly risen in his speculations above the first planes, the lower rinciples of the Cosmic Great Body. His theory soars to no loftier eights than those of the _manifested_ life, self‐consciousness and ntelligence, leaving the regions of the earlier post‐genetic mysteries ntouched, as his ethereal fluid is post‐planetary.
But this third postulate will hardly be accepted by the modern men of
Science; and, like Descartes, they will prefer keeping to the properties f external things, which, like extension, are incapable of explaining the henomenon of motion, rather than accept the latter as an independent
Force. They will never become anti‐Cartesian in this generation; nor will hey admit that:
This property of inertia is not a purely geometrical property;
that it points to the existence of something in external bodies
which is not extension merely.
This is Leibnitz’s idea as analyzed by Mertz, who adds that he called this
“something” Force, and maintained that external things were endowed with
Force, and that in order to be the bearers of this Force they must have a
Substance, for they are not lifeless and inert masses, but the centres and earers of Form—a purely Esoteric claim, since Force was with Leibnitz an
_active_ principle—the division between Mind and Matter disappearing by his conclusion.
The mathematical and dynamical enquiries of Leibnitz would not
have led to the same result in the mind of a purely scientific
enquirer. But Leibnitz was not a scientific man in the modern
sense of the word. Had he been so, he might have worked out the
conception of energy, defined mathematically the ideas of force
and mechanical work, and arrived at the conclusion that even for
purely scientific purposes it is desirable to look upon force, not
as a primary quantity, but as a quantity derived from some other
value.
But, luckily for truth:
Leibnitz was a philosopher; and as such he had certain primary
principles, which biassed him in favour of certain conclusions,
and his discovery that external things were substances endowed
with force was at once used for the purpose of applying these
principles. One of these principles was the law of continuity, the
conviction that all the world was connected, that there were no
gaps and chasms which could not be bridged over. The contrast of
extended thinking substances was unbearable to him. The definition
of the extended substances had already become untenable: it was
natural that a similar enquiry was made into the definition of
mind, the thinking substance.
The divisions made by Leibnitz, however incomplete and faulty from the tandpoint of Occultism, show a spirit of metaphysical intuition to which o man of Science, not Descartes, not even Kant, has ever reached. With im there existed ever an infinite gradation of thought. Only a small ortion of the contents of our thoughts, he said, rises into the clearness f apperception, “into the light of perfect consciousness.” Many remain in confused or obscure state, in the state of “perceptions”; but they are here. Descartes denied soul to the animal. Leibnitz, as do the
Occultists, endowed “the whole creation with mental life, this being, ccording to him, capable of infinite gradations.” And this, as Mertz ustly observes:
At once widened the realm of mental life, destroying the contrast
of _animate_ and _inanimate matter_; it did yet more—it reäcted on
the conception of matter, of the extended substance. For it became
evident that external or material things presented the property of
extension to our senses only, not to our thinking faculties. The
mathematician, in order to calculate geometrical figures, had been
obliged to divide them into an infinite number of infinitely small
parts, and the physicist saw no limit to the divisibility of
matter into atoms. The bulk through which external things seemed
to fill space was a property which they acquired only through the
coarseness of our senses.... Leibnitz followed these arguments to
some extent, but he could not rest content in assuming that matter
was composed of a finite number of very small parts. His
mathematical mind forced him to carry out the argument _in
infinitum_. And what became of the atoms then? They lost their
extension and they retained only their property of resistance;
they were the centres of force. They were reduced to mathematical
points.... But if their extension in space was nothing, _so much
fuller was their inner life_. Assuming that inner existence, such
as that of the human mind, is a new dimension, not a geometrical
but a metaphysical dimension, ... having reduced the geometrical
extension of the atoms to nothing, Leibnitz endowed them with an
infinite extension in the direction of their metaphysical
dimension. After having lost sight of them in the world of space,
the mind has, as it were, to dive into a metaphysical world to
find and grasp the real essence of what appears in space merely as
a mathematical point.... As a cone stands on its point, or a
perpendicular straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one
mathematical point, but may extend infinitely in height and depth,
so the essences of _things real_ have only a punctual existence in
this physical world of space; but have an infinite depth of inner
life in the metaphysical world of thought.(1084)
This is the spirit, the very root of Occult doctrine and thought. The
“Spirit‐Matter” and “Matter‐Spirit” extend infinitely _in depth_, and like he “essence of things” of Leibnitz, our essence of _things real_ is at he _seventh depth_; while the _unreal_ and gross matter of Science and he external world, is at the lowest extreme of our perceptive senses. The
Occultist knows the worth or worthlessness of the latter.
The student must now be shown the fundamental distinction between the ystem of Leibnitz(1085) and that of Occult Philosophy, on the question of he Monads, and this may be done with his _Monadologie_ before us. It may e correctly stated that were Leibnitz’ and Spinoza’s systems reconciled, he essence and spirit of Esoteric Philosophy would be made to appear.
From the shock of the two—as opposed to the Cartesian system—emerge the ruths of the Archaic Doctrine. Both oppose the Metaphysics of Descartes.
His idea of the contrast of two Substances—Extension and Thought—radically iffering from each other and mutually irreducible, is too arbitrary and oo un‐philosophical for them. Thus Leibnitz made of the two Cartesian
Substances two attributes of one universal Unity, in which he saw God.
Spinoza recognized but one universal indivisible Substance, an absolute
ALL, like Parabrahman. Leibnitz, on the contrary, perceived the existence f a plurality of Substances. There was but One for Spinoza; for Leibnitz n infinitude of Beings, _from_, and _in_, the One. Hence, though both dmitted but _One Real Entity_, while Spinoza made it impersonal and ndivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine nd semi‐divine Beings. Spinoza was a _subjective_, Leibnitz an
_objective_ Pantheist, yet both were great Philosophers in their intuitive erceptions.
Now, if these two teachings were blended together and each corrected by he other—and foremost of all the One Reality weeded of its ersonality—there would remain as sum total a true spirit of Esoteric
Philosophy in them; the impersonal, attributeless, absolute Divine
Essence, which is no “being” but the root of all Being. Draw a deep line n your thought between that ever‐incognizable Essence, and the as nvisible, yet comprehensible Presence, Mûlaprakriti or Shekinah, _from eyond_ and _through which_ vibrates the Sound of the Verbum, and from hich evolve the numberless Hierarchies of intelligent Egos, of conscious s of semi‐conscious, “apperceptive” and “perceptive” Beings, whose
Essence is spiritual Force, whose Substance is the Elements, and whose
Bodies (when needed) are the Atoms—and our Doctrine is there. For, says
Leibnitz:
The primitive element of every material body being force, which
has none of the characteristics of [objective] matter—it can be
conceived but can never be the object of any imaginative
representation.
That which was for him the primordial and ultimate element in everybody nd object was thus not the material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more r less extended, as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, mmaterial and metaphysical Atoms, “mathematical points,” or _real ouls_—as explained by Henri Lachelier (Professeur Agrégé de Philosophie), is French biographer.
That which exists outside of us in an absolute manner, are Souls
whose essence is force.(1086)
Thus, _reality_ in the manifested world is composed of a _unity of units_, o to say, immaterial—from our standpoint—and infinite. These Leibnitz alls Monads, Eastern Philosophy Jîvas, while Occultism, with the
Kabalists and all the Christians, gives them a variety of names. With us, s with Leibnitz, they are “the expression of the universe,”(1087) and very physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, etaphysical Point. His distinction between “perception” and
“apperception” is the philosophical though dim expression of the Esoteric
Teachings. His “reduced universes,” of which “there are as many as there re Monads”—is the chaotic representation of our Septenary System with its ivisions and sub‐divisions.
As to the relation his Monads bear to our Dhyân Chohans, Cosmic Spirits,
Devas, and Elementals, we may reproduce briefly the opinion of a learned nd thoughtful Theosophist, Mr. C. H. A. Bjerregaard, on the subject. In n excellent paper, “On the Elementals, the Elementary Spirits, and the
Relationship between Them and Human Beings,” read by him before the Âryan
Theosophical Society of New York, Mr. Bjerregaard thus distinctly ormulates his opinion:
To Spinoza, substance is dead and inactive, but to Leibnitz’s
penetrating powers of mind everything is living activity and
active energy. In holding this view, he comes infinitely nearer
the Orient than any other thinker of his day, or after him. His
discovery that _an active energy forms the essence of substance_
is a principle that places him in direct relationship to the Seers
of the East.(1088)
And the lecturer proceeds to show that to Leibnitz Atoms and Elements are
_Centres of Force_, or rather “spiritual beings whose very nature it is to ct,” for the
Elementary particles are vital forces, not acting mechanically,
but from an internal principle. They are incorporeal spiritual
units [“substantial,” however, but not “immaterial” in our sense]
inaccessible to all change from without ... [and] indestructible
by any external force. Leibnitz’ monads differ from atoms in the
following particulars, which are very important for us to
remember, otherwise we shall not be able to see the difference
between Elementals and mere matter. Atoms are not distinguished
from each other, they are qualitatively alike; but one monad
differs from every other monad qualitatively; and every one is a
peculiar world to itself. Not so with the atoms; they are
absolutely alike quantitatively and qualitatively, and possess no
individuality of their own.(1089) Again, the atoms [molecules,
rather] of materialistic philosophy can be considered as extended
and divisible, while the monads are mere “metaphysical points” and
indivisible. Finally, and this is a point where these monads of
Leibnitz closely resemble the Elementals of mystic philosophy,
these monads are representative beings. Every monad reflects every
other. Every monad is a living mirror of the Universe within its
own sphere. And mark this, for upon it depends the power possessed
by these monads, and upon it depends the work they can do for us;
in mirroring the world, the monads are not mere passive reflective
agents, but _spontaneously self active_; they produce the images
spontaneously, as the soul does a dream. In every monad,
therefore, the adept may read everything, even the future. Every
monad—or Elemental—is a looking‐glass that can speak.
It is at this point that Leibnitz’s philosophy breaks down. There is no rovision made, nor any distinction established, between the “Elemental”
Monad and that of a high Planetary Spirit, or even the Human Monad or
Soul. He even goes so far as to sometimes doubt whether
God has ever made anything but monads or substances without
extension.(1090)
He draws a distinction between Monads and Atoms,(1091) because, as he epeatedly states:
Bodies with all their qualities are only phenomenal, like the
rainbow. _Corpora omnia cum omnibus qualitatibus suis non sunt
aliud quam phenomena bene fundata, ut Iris._(1092)
But soon after he finds a provision for this in a substantial orrespondence, a certain metaphysical bond between the Monads—_vinculum ubstantiale_. Esoteric Philosophy, teaching an _objective_
Idealism—though it regards the objective Universe and all in it as Mâyâ,
Temporary Illusion—draws a practical distinction between Collective
Illusion, Mahâmâyâ, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the bjective relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this
Illusion lasts. The Adept, therefore, _may_ read the future in an
Elemental Monad, but he has to draw together for this object a great umber of them, as each Monad represents only a portion of the Kingdom it elongs to.
It is not in the object, but in the modification of the cognition
of the object that the monads are limited. They all tend
(confusedly) to the infinite, to the whole, but they are limited
and distinguished by the degrees of distinctness in their
perception.(1093)
And as Leibnitz explains:
All the portions of the universe are distinctly represented in the
monads, but some are reflected in one monad, some in another.
A number of Monads could represent simultaneously the thoughts of the two illion inhabitants of Paris.
But what say the Occult Sciences to this, and what do they add?
They say that what is called collectively Monads by Leibnitz—roughly iewed, and leaving every subdivision out of calculation, for the resent—may be separated into three distinct Hosts,(1094) which, counted rom the highest planes, are, firstly, “Gods,” or conscious, spiritual
Egos; the intelligent Architects, who work after the plan in the Divine
Mind. Then come the Elementals, or “Monads,” who form collectively and nconsciously the grand Universal Mirrors of everything connected with heir respective realms. Lastly, the “Atoms,” or material molecules, which re informed in their turn by their “perceptive” Monads, just as every ell in a human body is so informed. There are shoals of such _informed_
Atoms which, in their turn, inform the molecules; an infinitude of Monads, r Elementals proper, and countless spiritual Forces—Monadless, for they re pure incorporealities,(1095) except under certain laws, when they ssume a form—not _necessarily_ human. Whence the substance that clothes hem—the apparent organism they evolve around their centres? The Formless
(Arûpa) Radiations, existing in the harmony of Universal Will, and being hat we term the collective or the aggregate of Cosmic Will on the plane f the subjective Universe, unite together an infinitude of Monads—each he mirror of its own Universe—and thus individualize for the time being n independent Mind, omniscient and universal; and by the same process of agnetic aggregation they create for themselves objective, visible bodies, ut of the interstellar Atoms. For Atoms and Monads, associated or issociated, simple or complex, are, from the moment of the first ifferentiation, but the “principles,” corporeal, psychic and spiritual, f the “Gods”—themselves the Radiations of Primordial Nature. Thus, to the ye of the Seer, the higher Planetary Powers appear under two aspects: the ubjective—as _influences_, and the objective—as mystic _forms_, which, nder Karmic law, become a _Presence_, Spirit and Matter being One, as epeatedly stated. Spirit is Matter _on the seventh plane_; Matter is
Spirit at the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both are—Mâyâ.
Atoms are called Vibrations in Occultism; also Sound—collectively. This oes not interfere with Mr. Tyndall’s scientific discovery. He traced, on he lower rung of the ladder of monadic being, the whole course of the
_atmospheric_ Vibrations—and this constitutes the _objective_ part of the rocess in Nature. He has traced and recorded the rapidity of their motion nd transmission; the force of their impact; their setting up vibrations n the tympanum and their transmission of these to the otoliths, etc., ill the vibration of the auditory nerve commences—and a new phenomenon ow takes place: the _subjective_ side of the process or the _sensation_ f sound. Does he perceive or see it? No; for his specialty is to discover he behaviour of Matter. But why should not a Psychic see it, a spiritual
Seer, whose inner Eye is opened, one who can see through the veil of
Matter? The waves and undulations of Science are all produced by Atoms ropelling their molecules into activity _from within_. Atoms fill the mmensity of Space, and by their continuous vibration _are_ that MOTION hich keeps the wheels of Life perpetually going. It is that inner work hat produces the natural phenomenon called the correlation of Forces.
Only, at the origin of every such “Force,” there stands the _conscious_ uiding Noumenon thereof—Angel or God, Spirit or Demon, ruling powers, yet he same.
As described by Seers—those who can see the motion of the interstellar hoals, and follow them clairvoyantly in their evolution—they are azzling, like specks of virgin snow in radiant sunlight. Their velocity s swifter than thought, quicker than any mortal physical eye can follow, nd, as well as can be judged from the tremendous rapidity of their ourse, the motion is circular. Standing on an open plain, on a mountain ummit especially, and gazing into the vast vault above and the spatial nfinitudes around, the whole atmosphere seems ablaze with them, the air oaked through with these dazzling coruscations. At times, the intensity f their motion produces flashes like the Northern Lights in the Aurora
Borealis. The sight is so marvellous, that, as the Seer gazes into this nner world, and feels the scintillating points shoot past him, he is illed with awe at the thought of other, still greater mysteries, that lie eyond, and within, this radiant ocean.
However imperfect and incomplete this explanation on “Gods, Monads and
Atoms,” it is hoped that some students and Theosophists, at least, will eel that there may indeed be a close relation between Materialistic
Science and Occultism, which is the complement and missing soul of the ormer.
Section XV. Cyclic Evolution and Karma.
It is the spiritual evolution of the _inner_, immortal Man that forms the undamental tenet of the Occult Sciences. To realize even distantly such a rocess, the student has to believe (_a_) in the One Universal Life, ndependent of Matter (or what Science regards as Matter); and (_b_) in he individual Intelligences that animate the various manifestations of his Principle. Mr. Huxley does not believe in Vital Force; others
Scientists do. Dr. J. H. Hutchinson Stirling’s work _As regards
Protoplasm_ has made no small havoc of this dogmatic negation. Professor
Beale’s decision also is in favour of a Vital Principle; and Dr. B. W.
Richardson’s lectures on Nervous Ether have been sufficiently quoted.
Thus, opinions are divided.
The One Life is closely related to the One Law which governs the World of
Being—KARMA. Exoterically, this is simply and literally “action,” or ather an “effect‐producing cause.” Esoterically, it is quite a different hing in its far‐reaching moral effects. It is the unerring LAW OF
RETRIBUTION. To say to those ignorant of the real significance, haracteristics, and awful importance of this eternal immutable Law, that o theological definition of a Personal Deity can give an idea of this mpersonal, yet ever present and active Principle, is to speak in vain.
Nor can it be called Providence. For Providence, with the Theists—the
Protestant Christians, at any rate—rejoices in a personal male gender, hile with the Roman Catholics it is a female potency. “Divine Providence empers His blessings to secure their better effects,” Wogan tells us.
Indeed “He” tempers them, which Karma—a sexless principle—does not.
Throughout the first two Parts, it has been shown that, at the first lutter of renascent life, Svabhâvat, “_the Mutable Radiance of the
Immutable Darkness unconscious in Eternity_,” passes, at every new rebirth f Kosmos, from an inactive state into one of intense activity; that it ifferentiates, and then begins its work through that differentiation.
This work is KARMA.
The Cycles are also subservient to the effects produced by this activity.
_The one Cosmic Atom becomes seven Atoms on the plane of Matter, and each s transformed into a centre of energy; that same Atom becomes seven Rays n the plane of Spirit; and the seven creative Forces of Nature, radiating rom the Root‐Essence ... follow, one the right, the other the left path, eparate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet in close embrace. What unites hem? Karma._
The Atoms emanated from the Central Point emanate in their turn new entres of energy, which, under the potential breath of Fohat, begin their ork from within without, and multiply other minor centres. These, in the ourse of evolution and involution, form in their turn the roots or eveloping causes of new effects, from worlds and “man‐bearing” globes, own to the genera, species, and classes of all the seven kingdoms, of hich we know only _four_. For as says the _Book of the Aphorisms of Tson‐ a‐pa_:
The blessed workers have received the Thyan‐kam, in the eternity.
Thyan‐kam is the power or knowledge of guiding the impulses of Cosmic
Energy in the right direction.
The true Buddhist, recognizing no “personal God,” nor any “Father” and
“Creator of Heaven and Earth,” still believes in an _Absolute
Consciousness_, Adi‐Buddhi; and the Buddhist Philosopher _knows_ that here are Planetary Spirits, the Dhyân Chohans. But though he admits of
“Spiritual Lives,” yet, as they are temporary in eternity, even they, ccording to his Philosophy, are “the Mâyâ of the Day,” the Illusion of a
“Day of Brahmâ,” a short Manvantara of 4,320,000,000 years. The Yin‐Sin is ot for the speculations of men, for the Lord Buddha has strongly rohibited all such enquiry. If the Dhyân Chohans and all the Invisible
Beings—the Seven Centres and their direct Emanations, the minor centres of
Energy—are the direct reflex of the One Light, yet men are far removed rom these, since the whole of the visible Kosmos consists of “_self‐ roduced_ beings, the creatures of Karma.” Thus regarding a personal God
“as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the magination of ignorant men,”(1096) they teach that only “two things are
[objectively] eternal, namely Âkâsha and Nirvâna”; and that these are
_one_ in reality, and but a Mâyâ when divided.
Everything has come out of Âkâsha [or Svabhâvat on our earth] in
obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and after a certain
existence passes away. No thing ever came out of nothing. We do
not believe in miracles; hence we deny creation and cannot
conceive of a creator.(1097)
If a Vedântic Brahman of the Advaita Sect, were asked whether he believed n the existence of God, he would probably answer, as Jacolliot was nswered—“I am myself ‘God’;” while a Buddhist (a Sinhalese especially) ould simply laugh, and say in reply, “There is no God; no Creation.” Yet he root Philosophy of both Advaita and Buddhist scholars is _identical_, nd both have the same respect for animal life, for both believe that very creature on Earth, however small and humble, “is an immortal portion f the immortal Matter”—Matter having with them quite another significance rom that which it has with either Christian or Materialist—and that every reature is subject to Karma.
The answer of the Brâhman would have suggested itself to every ancient
Philosopher, Kabalist, and Gnostic of the early days. It contains the very pirit of the Delphic and Kabalistic commandments, for Esoteric Philosophy olved, ages ago, the problem of what man _was_, _is_, and _will be_; his rigin, life‐cycle—interminable in its duration of successive incarnations r rebirths—and his final absorption into the Source from which he tarted.
But it is not Physical Science that we can ever ask to read man for us, as he riddle of the Past, or of the Future; since no Philosopher can tell us ven what man is, as known to both Physiology and Psychology. In doubt hether man was a God or a beast, Science has now connected him with the atter and derives him from an animal. Certainly the task of analyzing and lassifying the human being as a _terrestrial animal_ may be left to
Science, which Occultists, of all men, regard with veneration and respect.
They recognize its ground and the wonderful work it has done, the progress chieved in Physiology, and even—to a degree—in Biology. But man’s
_inner_, spiritual, psychic, or even moral, nature cannot be left to the ender mercies of an ingrained Materialism; for not even the higher sychological Philosophy of the West is able, in its present ncompleteness and tendency towards a decided Agnosticism, to do justice o the inner man; especially to his higher capacities and perceptions, and o those states of consciousness, across the road to which such uthorities as Mill draw a strong line, saying “So far, and no farther halt thou go.”
No Occultist would deny that man—together with the elephant and the icrobe, the crocodile and the lizard, the blade of grass and the rystal—is, in his physical formation, the simple product of the volutionary forces of Nature through a numberless series of ransformations; but he puts the case differently.
It is not against zoölogical and anthropological discoveries, based on the ossils of man and animal, that every Mystic and believer in a Divine Soul nwardly revolts, but only against the uncalled‐for conclusions built on reconceived theories and made to fit in with certain prejudices. The remisses of Scientists may or may not be always true; and as some of hese theories live but a short life, the deductions therefrom must ever e one‐sided with materialistic Evolutionists. Yet it is on the strength f such very ephemeral authority, that most of the men of Science requently receive honours where they deserve them the least.(1098)
To make the working of Karma—in the periodical renovations of the
Universe—more evident and intelligible to the student when he arrives at he origin and evolution of man, he has now to examine with us the
Esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles upon Universal Ethics. The question s, do those mysterious divisions of time, called Yugas and Kalpas by the
Hindûs, and so very graphically, κύκλοι, cycles, rings or circles, by the
Greeks, have any bearing upon, or any direct connection with, human life?
Even exoteric Philosophy explains that these perpetual circles of time are ver returning on themselves, periodically and intelligently, in Space and
Eternity. There are “Cycles of Matter,”(1099) and there are “Cycles of
Spiritual Evolution,” and racial, national, and individual Cycles. May not
Esoteric speculation allow us a still deeper insight into their workings?
This idea is beautifully expressed in a very clever scientific work.
The possibility of rising to a comprehension of a system of
coördination so far outreaching in time and space all range of
human observations, is a circumstance which signalizes the power
of man to transcend the limitations of changing and inconsistent
matter, and assert his superiority over all insentient and
perishable forms of being. There is a method in the succession of
events, and in the relation of coëxistent things, which the mind
of man seizes hold of; and by means of this as a clue, he runs
back or forward over æons of material history of which human
experience can never testify. Events germinate and unfold. They
have a past which is connected with their present, and we feel a
well‐justified confidence that a future is appointed which will be
similarly connected with the present and the past. This continuity
and unity of history repeat themselves before our eyes in all
conceivable stages of progress. The phenomena furnish us the
grounds for the generalization of two laws which are truly
_principles of scientific divination_, by which alone the human
mind penetrates the sealed records of the past and the unopened
pages of the future. The first of these is the law of evolution,
or, to phrase it for our purpose, _the law of correlated
successiveness or organized history in the individual_,
illustrated in the changing phases of every single maturing system
of results.... These thoughts summon into our immediate presence
the measureless past and the measureless future of material
history. They seem almost to open vistas through infinity, and to
endow the human intellect with an existence and a vision exempt
from the limitations of time and space and finite causation, and
lift it up towards a sublime apprehension of the Supreme
Intelligence whose dwelling place is eternity.(1100)
According to the teachings, Mâyâ—the illusive appearance of the arshalling of events and actions on this Earth—changes, varying with ations and places. But the chief features of one’s life are always in ccordance with the “Constellation” under which one is born, or, we should ay, with the characteristics of its animating principle or the Deity that resides over it, whether we call it a Dhyân Chohan, as in Asia, or an
Archangel, as with the Greek and Latin Churches. In ancient Symbolism it as always the Sun—though the Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was eant—that was supposed to send forth the chief Saviours and Avatâras.
Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avatâras, and so many ther incarnations of the highest Seven. The closer the approach to one’s
Prototype, in “Heaven,” the better for the mortal whose Personality was hosen, by his own _personal_ Deity (the Seventh Principle), as its errestrial abode. For, with every effort of will toward purification and nity with that “Self‐God,” one of the lower Rays breaks, and the piritual entity of man is drawn higher and ever higher to the Ray that upersedes the first, until, from Ray to Ray, the Inner Man is drawn into he one and highest Beam of the Parent‐Sun. Thus, “the events of humanity
_do_ run coördinately with the number forms,” since the single units of hat humanity proceed one and all from the same source—the Central Sun and ts _shadow_, the visible. For the equinoxes and solstices, the periods nd various phases of the solar course, astronomically and numerically xpressed, are only the concrete symbols of the eternally living verity, hough they do seem _abstract ideas_ to uninitiated mortals. And this xplains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical elations, shown by several authors.
Yes; “our destiny _is_ written in the stars”! Only, the closer the union etween the mortal reflection Man and his celestial Prototype, the less angerous the external conditions and subsequent reïncarnations—which either Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of ll is it _fatalism_. The latter implies a blind course of some still linder power, but man is a free agent during his stay on earth. He cannot scape his _ruling_ Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths that lead im in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery—if such is ecreed to him—either in the snowy white robes of the martyr, or in the oiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course; for there are
_external_ and _internal conditions_ which affect the determination of our ill upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the two.
Those who believe in Karma have to believe in Destiny, which, from birth o death, every man weaves thread by thread round himself, as a spider his eb; and this Destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the nvisible Prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate _astral_, or nner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity alled man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must revail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and mplacable _Law of Compensation_ steps in and takes its course, faithfully ollowing the fluctuations of the fight. When the last strand is woven, nd man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he inds himself completely under the empire of this _self‐made_ Destiny. It hen either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or arries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own actions, nd this is—KARMA.
A Materialist, treating of the periodical creations of our globe, has xpressed it in a single sentence:
The whole _past_ of the earth is nothing but an unfolded
_present_.
The writer was Büchner, who little suspected that he was repeating an xiom of the Occultists. It is quite true also, as Burmeister remarks, hat:
The historical investigation of the development of the earth has
proved that _now_ and _then_ rest upon the same base; that the
past has been developed in the same manner as the present rolls
on; and that the forces which were in action ever remained the
same.(1101)
The Forces—their Noumena rather—are the same, of course; therefore, the henomenal Forces must be the same also. But how can any one feel so sure hat the attributes of Matter have not altered under the hand of Protean
Evolution? How can any Materialist assert with such confidence, as is done y Rossmassler, that:
This eternal conformity in the essence of phenomena renders it
certain that fire and water possessed at all times the same powers
and ever will possess them.
Who are they “that darken counsel with words without knowledge,” and where ere the Huxleys and Büchners when the foundations of the Earth were laid y the Great Law? This same homogeneity of Matter and immutability of atural laws, which are so much insisted upon by Materialism, are a undamental principle of the Occult Philosophy; but this unity rests upon he inseparability of Spirit from Matter, and, if the two were once ivorced, the whole Kosmos would fall back into Chaos and Non‐being.
Therefore, it is absolutely _false_, and but an additional demonstration f the great conceit of our age, to assert, as men of Science do, that all he great geological changes and terrible convulsions of the past have een produced _by ordinary and known physical Forces_. For these Forces ere but the tools and final means for the accomplishment of certain urposes, acting periodically, and apparently mechanically, through an nward impulse mixed up with, but beyond their material nature. There is a urpose in every important act of Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and eriodical. But spiritual Forces having been usually confused with the urely physical, the former are denied by, and therefore, because left nexamined, have to remain unknown to Science.(1102) Says Hegel:
The history of the World begins with its general aim, the
realization of the Idea of Spirit—only in an _implicit_ form (_an
sich_), that is, as Nature; a hidden, most profoundly hidden
unconscious instinct, and the whole process of History ... is
directed to rendering this unconscious impulse a conscious one.
Thus appearing in the form of merely natural existence, natural
will—that which has been called the subjective side—physical
craving, instinct, passion, private interest, as also opinion and
subjective conception—spontaneously present themselves at the very
commencement. This vast congeries of volitions, interests and
activities constitute the instruments and means of the World‐
Spirit for attaining its object; bringing it to consciousness and
realizing it. And this aim is none other than finding
itself—coming to itself—and contemplating itself in concrete
actuality. But that those manifestations of vitality on the part
of individuals and peoples, in which they seek and satisfy their
own purposes, are at the same time the means and instruments of a
higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing—which they
realize unconsciously—might be made a matter of question; rather
has been questioned ... on this point I announced my view at the
very outset, and asserted our hypothesis ... and our belief that
Reason governs the World and has consequently governed its
history. In relation to this independently universal and
substantial existence—all else is subordinate, subservient to it,
and the means for its development.(1103)
No Metaphysician or Theosophist could demur to these truths, which are all mbodied in Esoteric Teachings. There _is_ a predestination in the eological life of our globe, as in the history, past and future, of races nd nations. This is closely connected with what we call Karma, and what
Western Pantheists called Nemesis and Cycles. The law of evolution is now arrying us along the ascending arc of _our_ cycle, when the effects will e once more re‐merged into, and re‐become the now neutralized causes, and ll things affected by the former will have regained their original armony. This will be the cycle of our special Round, a moment in the uration of the Great Cycle, or Mahâyuga.
The fine philosophical remarks of Hegel are found to have their pplication in the teachings of Occult Science, which shows Nature ever cting with a given purpose, whose results are always dual. This was tated in our first Occult volumes, in the following words:
As our Planet revolves once every year around the Sun, and at the
same time turns once in every twenty‐four hours upon its own axis,
thus traversing minor circles within a larger one, so is the work
of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced within
the Great Saros. The revolution of the physical world, according
to the ancient doctrine, is attended by a like revolution in the
world of intellect—the spiritual evolution of the world proceeding
in cycles, like the physical one. Thus we see in history a regular
alternation of ebb and flow in the tide of human progress. The
great kingdoms and empires of the world, after reaching the
culmination of their greatness, descend again, in accordance with
the same law by which they ascended; till, having reached the
lowest point, humanity reässerts itself and mounts up once more,
the height of its attainment being, by this law of ascending
progression by cycles, somewhat higher than the point from which
it had before descended.(1104)
But these cycles—wheels within wheels, so comprehensively and ingeniously ymbolized by the various Manus and Rishis in India, and by the Kabiri in he West(1105)—_do not affect all mankind at one and the same time_.
Hence, as we see, the difficulty of comprehending, and of discriminating etween them, with regard to their physical and spiritual effects, without aving thoroughly mastered their relations with, and action upon, the espective positions of nations and races, in their destiny and evolution.
This system cannot be comprehended if the spiritual action of these eriods—_preördained_, so to say, by Karmic law—is separated from their hysical course. The calculations of the best Astrologers would fail, or t any rate remain imperfect, unless this dual action is thoroughly taken nto consideration and mastered upon these lines. And this mastery can be chieved only through INITIATION.
The Grand Cycle includes the progress of mankind from the appearance of rimordial man of ethereal form. It runs through the inner Cycles of man’s rogressive evolution from the ethereal down to the semi‐ethereal and urely physical; down to the redemption of man from his “coat of skin” and atter, after which it continues running its course downward and then pward again, to meet at the culmination of a Round, when the Manvantaric
Serpent “swallows its tail” and seven Minor Cycles are passed. These are he great Racial Cycles which affect equally all the nations and tribes ncluded in that special Race; but there are minor and national, as well s tribal, Cycles within these, which run their course independently of ach other. They are called in Eastern Esotericism the Karmic Cycles. In he West—since Pagan Wisdom has been repudiated as having grown from and een developed by the Dark Powers, supposed to be at constant war with and n opposition to the little tribal Jehovah—the full and awful significance f the Greek Nemesis, or Karma, has been entirely forgotten. Otherwise
Christians would have better realized the profound truth that Nemesis is ithout attributes; that while the dreaded Goddess is absolute and mmutable as a Principle, it is we ourselves—nations and individuals—who ropel it to action and give the impulse to its direction. Karma‐Nemesis s the creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who ake of her either a Fury or a rewarding Angel. Yea—
Wise are they who worship Nemesis(1106)
—as the Chorus tells Prometheus. And as unwise they, who believe that the
Goddess may be propitiated by any sacrifices and prayers, or have her heel diverted from the path it has once taken. “The triform Fates and ver mindful Furies” are her attributes only on Earth, and begotten by urselves. There is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet those aths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, ho prepare them. Karma‐Nemesis is the synonym of Providence, _minus_ esign, goodness, and every other _finite_ attribute and qualification, so nphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a Philosopher ill not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying t with Karma‐Nemesis, he will nevertheless teach that it guards the good nd watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes he evil‐doer—aye, even to his seventh rebirth—so long, indeed, as the ffect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in he Infinite World of Harmony has not been finally reädjusted. For the nly decree of Karma—an eternal and immutable decree—is absolute Harmony n the world of Matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, herefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or unish ourselves, according as we work with, through and along with
Nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or—breaking hem.
Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and armony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of these ays—which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and ntricate, while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism, and a hird, simple Chance, with neither Gods nor Devils to guide them—would urely disappear, if we would but attribute all of them to their correct ause. With right knowledge, or at any rate with a confident conviction hat our neighbours would no more work to hurt us than we would think of arming them, two‐thirds of the world’s evil would vanish into thin air.
Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma‐Nemesis would have neither cause to ork for, nor weapons to act through. It is the constant presence in our idst of every element of strife and opposition, and the division of aces, nations, tribes, societies and individuals into Cains and Abels, olves and lambs, that is the chief cause of the “ways of Providence.” We ut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, hile we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of espectability and duty, and then we complain because these windings are o intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our wn making, and the riddles of life that _we will not_ solve, and then ccuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an ccident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could ot be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. If one reaks the laws of Harmony, or, as a theosophical writer expresses it, the
“laws of life,” one must be prepared to fall into the chaos oneself has roduced. For, according to the same writer:
The only conclusion one can come to is that these laws of life are
their own avengers; and consequently that every avenging angel is
only a typified representation of their reäction.
Therefore, if any one is helpless before these immutable laws, it is not urselves, the artificers of our destinies, but rather those Angels, the uardians of Harmony. Karma‐Nemesis is no more than the spiritual ynamical effect of causes produced, and forces awakened into activity, by ur own actions. It is a law of Occult dynamics that “a given amount of nergy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far reater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective lane of existence.”
This condition of things will last till man’s spiritual intuitions are ully opened, and this will not be until we fairly cast off our thick oats of Matter; until we begin acting from _within_, instead of ever ollowing impulses from _without_, impulses produced by our physical enses and gross selfish body. Until then the only palliatives for the vils of life are union and harmony—a Brotherhood _in actu_, and Altruism ot simply in name. The suppression of one single bad _cause_ will uppress not one, but many bad effects. And if a Brotherhood, or even a umber of Brotherhoods, may not be able to prevent nations from ccasionally cutting each other’s throats, still unity in thought and ction, and philosophical research into the mysteries of being, will lways prevent some persons, who are trying to comprehend that which has itherto remained to them a riddle, from creating additional causes of ischief in a world already so full of woe and evil. Knowledge of Karma ives the conviction that if
... virtue in distress, and vice in triumph
Make atheists of mankind,(1107)
t is only because mankind has ever shut its eyes to the great truth that an is himself his own saviour and his own destroyer. He need not accuse
Heaven and the Gods, Fates and Providence, of the apparent injustice that eigns in the midst of humanity. But let him rather remember and repeat his fragment of Grecian wisdom, which warns man to forbear accusing
_That_ which
Just, though mysterious, leads us on unerring
Through ways unmark’d from guilt to punishment;
nd such are now the ways on which the great European nations move onward.
Every nation and tribe of the Western Âryans, like their Eastern brethren f the Fifth Race, has had its Golden and its Iron Age, its period of omparative irresponsibility, or its Satya Age of purity, and now, several f them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali Yuga, an age black with orrors.
On the other hand, it is true that the exoteric Cycles of every nation ave been rightly derived from, and shown to depend on, sidereal motions.
The latter are inseparably blended with the destinies of nations and men.
But, in the purely physical sense, Europe knows of no Cycles other than he astronomical, and it makes its computations accordingly. Nor will it ear of any other than _imaginary_ circles or circuits in the starry eavens that gird them,
With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.
But with the Pagans—of whom Coleridge rightly says, “Time, cyclical time, as their abstraction of the Deity,” that “Deity” manifesting coördinately ith, and only through, Karma, and being that Karma‐Nemesis itself—the
Cycles meant something more than a mere succession of events, or a eriodical space of time of more or less prolonged duration. For they were enerally marked with recurrences of a more varied and intellectual haracter than are exhibited in the periodical return of seasons or of ertain constellations. Modern wisdom is satisfied with astronomical omputations and prophecies, based on unerring mathematical laws. Ancient
Wisdom added to the cold shell of Astronomy the vivifying elements of its oul and spirit—Astrology. And, as the sidereal motions _do_ regulate and etermine other events on Earth besides potatoes and the periodical iseases of that useful vegetable—a statement which, not being amenable to cientific explanation, is merely derided, while none the less ccepted—these events have to submit to predetermination, by simple stronomical computations. Believers in Astrology will understand our eaning, sceptics will laugh at the belief and mock the idea. Thus they hut their eyes, ostrich‐like, to their own fate.(1108)
This because their little _historical_ period, so called, allows them no argin for comparison. Sidereal heaven is before them; and though their piritual vision is still unopened, and the atmospheric dust of errestrial origin seals their sight and chains it within the limits of hysical systems, still they do not fail to perceive the movements and ote the behaviour of meteors and comets. They record the periodical dvents of those wanderers and “flaming messengers,” and prophesy, in onsequence, earthquakes, meteoric showers, the apparition of certain tars, comets, etc. Are they, then, soothsayers after all? No; they are earned Astronomers.
Why, then, should Occultists and Astrologers, as learned as these
Astronomers, be disbelieved when they prophesy the return of some cyclic vent on the same mathematical principles? Why should the claim that they
_know_ this return be ridiculed? Their forefathers and predecessors, aving recorded the recurrence of such events in their time and day, hroughout a period embracing hundreds of thousands of years, the onjunction of the same constellations must necessarily produce, if not uite the same, at any rate similar, effects. Are the prophecies to be erided, because of the claim made for hundreds of thousands of years of bservation, and for millions of years for the human Races? In its turn,
Modern Science is laughed at by those who hold to Biblical chronology, for ts far more modest geological and anthropological figures. Thus Karma djusts even human laughter, at the mutual expense of sects, learned ocieties, and individuals. Yet in the prognostication of _such_ future vents, at any rate, all foretold on the authority of cyclic recurrences, o psychic phenomenon is involved. It is neither _prevision_, nor
_prophecy_; any more than is the signalling of a comet or star, several ears before its appearance. It is simply knowledge, and mathematically orrect computations, which enable the _Wise Men of the East_ to foretell, or instance, that England is on the eve of such or another catastrophe; hat France is nearing such a point of her Cycle; and that Europe in eneral is threatened with, or rather is on the eve of, a cataclysm, to hich her own Cycle of racial Karma _has led her_. Our view of the eliability of the information depends, of course, on our acceptation or ejection of the claim for a tremendous period of historical observation.
Eastern Initiates maintain that they have preserved records of racial evelopment and of events of universal import ever since the beginning of he Fourth Race—their knowledge of events preceding that epoch being raditional. Moreover, those who believe in Seership and in Occult Powers ill have no difficulty in crediting the general character, at least, of he information given, even if it be traditional, once the tradition is hecked and corrected by clairvoyance and Esoteric Knowledge. But in the resent case no such metaphysical belief is claimed as our chief ependence, for proof is given—on what, to every Occultist, is quite cientific evidence—the records preserved through the Zodiac for ncalculable ages.
It is now amply proved that even horoscopes and judiciary Astrology are ot quite based on fiction, and that Stars and Constellations, onsequently, have an occult and mysterious influence on, and connection ith, individuals. And if with the latter, why not with nations, races, nd mankind as a whole? This, again, is a claim made on the authority of he Zodiacal records. We shall then enquire how far the Zodiac was known o the Ancients, and how far it is forgotten by the Moderns.
Section XVI. The Zodiac and its Antiquity.
“All men are apt to have a high conceit of their own understanding, and to e tenacious of the opinions they profess,” said Jordan, justly adding to his—“and yet almost all men are guided by the understandings of others, ot by their own; and may be said more truly to adopt, than to beget, heir opinions.”
This is doubly true in regard to scientific opinions upon hypotheses ffered for consideration—the prejudice and preconceptions of
“authorities,” so called, often deciding upon questions of the most vital mportance for history. There are several such predetermined opinions held y our learned Orientalists, and few are more unjust or illogical than the eneral error with regard to the antiquity of the Zodiac. Thanks to the obby of some German Orientalists, English and American Sanskritists have ccepted Professor Weber’s opinion that the peoples of India had no idea r knowledge of the Zodiac prior to the Macedonian invasion, and that it s from the Greeks that the ancient Hindûs imported it into their country.
We are further told, by several other “authorities,” that no Eastern ation knew of the Zodiac before the Hellenes kindly acquainted their eighbours with their invention. And _this_, in the face of the _Book of
Job_, which is declared, even by themselves, to be the oldest in the
Hebrew canon, and certainly prior to Moses; a book which speaks of the
_making_ of “Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades [Osh, Kesil, and Kimah] and the hambers of the South”(1109); of Scorpio and the Mazaruth—the _twelve igns_(1110); words which, if they mean anything, imply knowledge of the
Zodiac even among the nomadic Arabian tribes. The _Book of Job_ is alleged o have preceded Homer and Hesiod by at least one thousand years—the two
Greek poets having themselves flourished some eight centuries before the
Christian era (!!). Though, by the bye, one who prefers to believe
Plato—who shows Homer flourishing far earlier—could point to a number of
Zodiacal signs mentioned in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, in the Orphic oems, and elsewhere. But since the cock‐and‐bull hypothesis of some odern critics that, so far from Orpheus, not even Homer or Hesiod has ver existed, it would seem time lost to mention these archaic authors at ll. The Arabian Job will suffice; unless, indeed, his volume of amentations, along with the poems of the two Greeks, to which we may add hose of Linus, should now also be declared to be the patriotic forgery of he Jew Aristobulus. But if the Zodiac was known in the days of Job, how ould the civilized and philosophical Hindûs have remained ignorant of it?
Risking the arrows of modern criticism—rather blunted by misuse—the reader ay make himself acquainted with Bailly’s learned opinion upon the ubject. Inferred speculations may be shown to be erroneous. Mathematical alculations stand on more secure grounds. Taking as a starting point everal astronomical references in _Job_, Bailly devised a very ingenious eans of proving that the earliest founders of the Science of the Zodiac elonged to an antediluvian, primitive people. The fact that he seems illing to see some of the Biblical patriarchs in Thoth, Seth, and in the
Chinese Fohi, does not interfere with the validity of his proof as to the ntiquity of the Zodiac.(1111) Even accepting, for argument’s sake, his autious 3700 years B.C. as the correct age of the Zodiacal Science, this ate proves in the most irrefutable way that it was not the Greeks who nvented the Zodiac, for the simple reason that they did not exist as a ation thirty‐seven centuries B.C.—at any rate not as a _historical_ race dmitted by the critics. Bailly then calculated the period at which the onstellations manifested the atmospheric influence called by Job the
“sweet influences of the Pleiades,”(1112) in Hebrew Kimah; that of Orion,
Kesil; and that of the desert rains with reference to Scorpio, the eighth onstellation; and found that in presence of the eternal conformity of hese divisions of the Zodiac, and of the names of the Planets applied in he same order everywhere and always, and in presence of the impossibility f attributing it all to chance and “coincidence”—“which never creates uch similarities”—a very great antiquity indeed must be allowed for the
Zodiac.(1113)
Again, if the _Bible_ is supposed to be an authority on any matter—and here are some who still regard it as such, whether from Christian or
Kabalistical considerations—then the Zodiac is clearly mentioned in _II
Kings_, xxiii. 5. Before the “book of the law” was “found” by Hilkiah, the igh priest, the signs of the Zodiac were known and worshipped. These were eld in the same adoration as the Sun and Moon, since the
priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense ...
unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to
all the host of heaven,
r to the “twelve signs or constellations,” as the marginal note in the
English _Bible_ explains, had followed the injunction for centuries. They ere stopped in their idolatry only by King Josiah, 624 B.C.
The _Old Testament_ is full of allusions to the twelve zodiacal signs, and he whole scheme is built upon it—heroes, personages, and events. Thus in he dream of Joseph, who saw eleven “Stars” bowing to the twelfth, which as _his_ “Star,” the Zodiac is referred to. The Roman Catholics have iscovered in it, moreover, a prophecy of Christ, who is that twelfth
Star, they say, and the others the eleven apostles; the absence of the welfth being also regarded as a prophetic allusion to the treachery of
Judas. The twelve sons of Jacob, again, are a reference to the same, as is ustly pointed out by Villapandus.(1114) Sir James Malcolm, in his
_History of Persia_,(1115) shows the _Dabistan_ echoing all such raditions about the Zodiac. He traces the invention of it to the palmy ays of the Golden Age of Iran, remarking that one of the said traditions aintains that the Genii of the Planets are represented under the same hapes and figures they had assumed when _they showed themselves to everal holy prophets_, and thus led to the establishment of the rites ased on the Zodiac.
Pythagoras, and after him Philo Judæus, held the number 12 as very sacred.
This duodenary number is _perfect_. It is that of the signs of the
Zodiac, which the sun visits in twelve months, and it is to honour
that number that Moses divided his nation into twelve tribes,
established the twelve cakes of the shew‐bread, and placed twelve
precious stones upon the breast‐plate of the pontiffs.(1116)
According to Seneca, Berosus taught prophecy of every future event and ataclysm by the Zodiac; and the times fixed by him for the conflagration f the World—Pralaya—and for a deluge, are found to answer to the times iven in an ancient Egyptian papyrus. Such a catastrophe comes at every enewal of the cycle of the Sidereal Year of 25,868 years. The names of he Akkadian months were called by, and derived from, the names of the igns of the Zodiac, and the Akkadians are far earlier than the Chaldæans.
Mr. Proctor shows, in his _Myths and Marvels of Astronomy_, that the ncient Astronomers had acquired a system of the most accurate Astronomy
2,400 years B.C.; the Hindûs date their Kali Yuga from a great periodical onjunction of the Planets thirty‐one centuries B.C.; but, withal, it was he Greeks, belonging to the expedition of Alexander the Great, who were he instructors of the Âryan Hindûs in Astronomy!
Whether the origin of the Zodiac is Âryan or Egyptian, it is still of an mmense antiquity. Simplicius, in the sixth century A.D., writes that he ad always heard that the Egyptians had kept astronomical observations and ecords for a period of 630,000 years. This statement appears to frighten
Mr. Gerald Massey, who remarks on it that:
If we read this number of years by the month which Euxodus said
the Egyptians termed a year, _i.e._, a course of time, that would
still yield the length of two cycles of precession [51,736
years].(1117)
Diogenes Laërtius carried back the astronomical calculations of the
Egyptians to 48,863 years before Alexander the Great.(1118) Martianus
Capella corroborates this by telling posterity that the Egyptians had ecretly studied Astronomy for over 40,000 years, before they imparted heir knowledge to the world.(1119)
Several valuable quotations are made in _Natural Genesis_ with the view of upporting the author’s theories, but they justify the teaching of the
Secret Doctrine far more. For instance, Plutarch is quoted from his _Life f Sulla_, saying:
One day when the sky was serene and clear, there was heard in it
the sound of a trumpet, so loud, shrill, and mournful, that it
affrighted and astonished the world. The Tuscan sages said that it
portended a new race of men, and a renovation of the world; for
they affirmed that there were eight several kinds of men, all
being different in life and manners; and that Heaven had allotted
each its time, which was limited by the circuit of the great year
[25,868 years].(1120)
This reminds one strongly of our Seven Races of men, and of the eighth—the
“animal man”—descended from the later Third Race; as also of the uccessive submersions and destruction of the continents which finally isposed of almost all that Race. Says Iamblichus:
The Assyrians have not only preserved the memorials of seven‐and‐
twenty myriads of years [270,000 years], as Hipparchus says they
have, but likewise of the whole apocatastases and periods of the
Seven Rulers of the World.(1121)
This is as nearly as possible the calculation of the Esoteric Doctrine.
For 1,000,000 years are allowed for our present Root‐Race (the Fifth), and bout 850,000 years have passed since the submersion of the last large sland—part of the continent of Atlantis—the Ruta of the Fourth Race, the
Atlanteans; while Daitya, a small island inhabited by a mixed race, was estroyed about 270,000 years ago, during the Glacial Period or hereabouts. But the Seven Rulers, or the seven great Dynasties of the
Divine Kings, belong to the traditions of every great people of antiquity.
Wherever twelve are mentioned, they are invariably the twelve signs of the
Zodiac.
So patent is this fact, that the Roman Catholic writers—especially among he French Ultramontanes—have tacitly agreed to connect the twelve Jewish
Patriarchs with the Signs of the Zodiac. This is done in a kind of rophetico‐mystic way, which sounds to pious and ignorant ears like a ortentous token, a tacit divine recognition of the “chosen people of
God,” whose finger has purposely traced in heaven, from the beginning of reation, the numbers of these patriarchs. For instance, curiously enough, hese writers, De Mirville among others, recognize all the characteristics f the twelve Signs of the Zodiac, in the words addressed by the dying
Jacob to his Sons, and in his definitions of the future of each
Tribe.(1122) Moreover, the respective banners of the same tribes are said o have exhibited the same symbols and the same names as the Signs, epeated in the twelve stones of the Urim and Thummim, and on the twelve ings of the two Cherubs. Leaving to the said Mystics the proof of xactitude in the alleged correspondence, we quote it as follows: Man, or
Aquarius, is in the sphere of Reuben, who is declared as “unstable as ater” (the Vulgate has it, “_rushing_ like water”); Gemini, in that of
Simeon and Levi, because of their strong fraternal association; Leo, in hat of Judah, “the strong Lion” of his tribe, “the lion’s whelp”; Pisces, n Zabulon, who “shall dwell at the haven of the sea”; Taurus, in
Issachar, because he is “a strong ass couching down,” etc., and therefore ssociated with the stables; (Virgo‐) Scorpio, in Dan, who is described as
“a serpent, an adder in the path that biteth,” etc.; Capricornus in
Naphtali, who is “a hind (a deer) let loose”; Cancer, in Benjamin, for he s “ravenous”; Libra, the Balance, in Asher, whose “bread shall be fat”;
Sagittarius in Joseph, because “his bow abode in strength.” To make up for he twelfth Sign, Virgo, made independent of Scorpio, we have Dinah, the nly daughter of Jacob. Tradition shows the _alleged_ tribes carrying the welve signs on their banners. But indeed the _Bible_, in addition to the bove, is filled with theo‐cosmological and astronomical symbols and ersonifications.
It remains to wonder, and to query—if the actual, living Patriarchs’ estiny was so indissolubly wound up with the Zodiac—how it is that, after he loss of the ten tribes, the ten signs also out of the twelve have not iraculously disappeared from the sidereal fields? But this is of no great oncern. Let us rather busy ourselves with the history of the Zodiac tself.
The reader may be reminded of some opinions expressed as to the Zodiac by everal of the highest authorities in Science.
Newton believed that the invention of the Zodiac could be traced as far ack as the expedition of the Argonauts; and Dulaure fixed its origin at
6,500 years B.C., just 2,496 years before the creation of the world, ccording to the _Bible_ chronology.
Creuzer thought that it was very easy to show that most of the Theogonies ere intimately connected with religious calendars, and were related to he Zodiac as to their prime origin; if not to the Zodiac known to us now, hen to something very analogous with it. He felt certain that the Zodiac nd its mystic relations are at the bottom of all the mythologies, under ne form or another, and that it had existed in the old form for ages, efore it was brought out in the present defined astronomical garb, owing o some singular coördination of events.(1123)
Whether the “genii of the planets,” our Dhyân Chohans of supra‐mundane pheres, showed themselves to “holy prophets,” or not, as claimed in the
_Dabistan_, it would seem that great laymen and warriors were favoured in he same way in days of old in Chaldæa, when astrological Magic and
Theophania went hand in hand.
Xenophon, no ordinary man, narrates of Cyrus ... that at the
moment of his death he thanked the Gods and heroes, for having so
often instructed him themselves about the signs in heaven—ἐν
οὐρανίοις σημείοις.(1124)
Unless the Science of the Zodiac is admitted to be of the highest ntiquity and universality, how can we account for its Signs being traced n the oldest Theogonies? Laplace is said to have felt struck with mazement at the idea of the days of Mercury (Wednesday), Venus (Friday),
Jupiter (Thursday), Saturn (Saturday), and others, being related to the ays of the week in the same order and with the same names in India as in
Northern Europe.
Try, if you can, with the present system of autochthonous
civilizations, so much in fashion in our day, to explain how
nations with no ancestry, no traditions or birthplace in common,
could have succeeded in inventing a kind of celestial
phantasmagoria, a veritable _imbroglio_ of sidereal denominations,
without sequence or object, having no figurative relation with the
constellations they represent, and still less, apparently, with
the phases of our terrestrial life they are made to signify,
—had there not been a _general_ intention and a _universal_ cause and elief, at the root of all this!(1125) Most truly has Dupuis asserted the ame:
Il est impossible de découvrir le moindre trait de ressemblance
entre les parties du ciel et les figures que les astronomes y ont
_arbitrairement_ tracées; et de l’autre côté, _le hasard est
impossible_.(1126)
Most certainly chance is “_impossible_.” There is no “chance” in Nature, herein everything is mathematically coördinate, and inter‐related in its nits. Says Coleridge:
Chance is but the pseudonym of God [or Nature], for those
particular cases which He does not choose to subscribe openly with
His sign manual.
Replace the word “God” by Karma, and it will become an Eastern axiom.
Therefore, the sidereal “prophecies” of the Zodiac, as they are called by
Christian Mystics, never point to any one particular event, however solemn nd sacred it may be for some one portion of humanity, but to ever‐ ecurrent, periodical laws in Nature, understood only by the Initiates of he Sidereal Gods themselves.
No Occultist, no Astrologer of Eastern birth, will ever agree with
Christian Mystics, or even with Kepler’s mystical Astronomy, his great cience and erudition notwithstanding; and this because, if his premisses re quite correct, his deductions therefrom are one‐sided and biassed by
Christian preconceptions. Where Kepler finds a prophecy directly pointing o the Saviour, other nations see a symbol of an eternal law, decreed for he actual Manvantara. Why see in Pisces a direct reference to Christ—one f the several world‐reformers, a Saviour for his direct followers, but nly a great and glorious Initiate for all the rest—when that onstellation shines as a symbol of all the past, present, and future
Spiritual Saviours, who dispense light and dispel mental darkness?
Christian symbologists have tried to prove that this sign belonged to
Ephraim, Joseph’s son, the _elect_ of Jacob, and that therefore, it was at he moment of the Sun’s entering into the sign of Pisces, the Fish, that he “Elect Messiah,” the Ἰχθὺς of the first Christians, had to be born.
But if Jesus of Nazareth was that Messiah, was he really born at that
“moment,” or was his birth‐hour thus fixed by the adaptation of
Theologians, who sought only to make their preconceived ideas fit in with idereal facts and popular belief? Everyone is aware that the real time nd year of the birth of Jesus are totally unknown. And it is the
Jews—whose forefathers made the word Dag signify both “Fish” and “Messiah” uring the forced development of their rabbinical language—who are the irst to deny this Christian claim. And what of the further facts that
Brâhmans connect their “Messiah,” the eternal Avatâra Vishnu, with a Fish nd the Deluge, and that the Babylonians also made a Fish and a Messiah of heir Dag‐On, the Man‐Fish and Prophet?
There are learned iconoclasts among Egyptologists, who say that:
When the Pharisees sought a “sign from heaven,” Jesus said, “there
shall no sign be given .... but the sign of the prophet Jonas.”
(_Mat._, xvi. 4.).... The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan or
Fish‐Man of Nineveh.... Assuredly there was no other sign than
that of the Sun reborn in Pisces. The voice of the Secret Wisdom
says those who are looking for signs can have no other than that
of the returning Fish‐Man Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonas—who could not
be made flesh.
It would appear that Kepler maintained it as a positive fact that, at the oment of the “incarnation,” all the planets were in conjunction in the ign Pisces, called by the Jewish Kabbalists the “constellation of the
Messiah.” Kepler averred:
It is in this constellation that the star of the Magi is to be
found.
This statement, quoted from Dr. Sepp(1127) by De Mirville, emboldened the atter to remark that:
All the Jewish traditions, while announcing that star that many
nations have seen [!],(1128) further added that it would absorb
the seventy planets that preside over the destinies of various
nations on this globe.(1129) “In virtue of those natural
prophecies,” says Dr. Sepp, “it was written in the stars of the
firmament that the Messiah would be born in the lunar year of the
world 4320, in that memorable year when the entire choir of the
planets would be celebrating its jubilee.”(1130)
There was indeed a rage, at the beginning of the present century, for laiming restoration from the Hindûs for an alleged robbery from the Jews f their “Gods,” patriarchs, and chronology. It was Wilford who recognized
Noah in Prithî and in Satyavrata, Enos in Dhruva, and even Assur in
Îshvara. After being residents for so many years in India, some
Orientalists, at least, ought to have known that it was not the Brâhmans lone who had these figures, or who had divided their Great Age into four inor ages. Nevertheless writers in the _Asiatic Researches_ indulged in he most extravagant speculations. S. A. Mackey, the Norwich “philosopher, stronomer, and shoemaker,” argues very pertinently:
Christian theologians think it their duty to write against the
long periods of Hindû chronology, and in them it may be
pardonable: but when a man of learning crucifies the names and the
numbers of the ancients, and wrings and twists them into a form,
which means something quite foreign to the intention of the
ancient authors; but which, so mutilated, fits in with the _birth_
of some _maggot_ preëxisting in his own brain with so much
exactness that he _pretends_ to be amazed at the discovery, I
cannot think him quite so pardonable.(1131)
This is intended to apply to Captain (later Colonel) Wilford, but the ords may fit more than one of our modern Orientalists. Colonel Wilford as the first to crown his unlucky speculations on Hindû chronology and he _Purânas_ by connecting the 4,320,000 years with biblical chronology, y simply dwarfing the figures to 4,320 years—the supposed lunar year of he Nativity—and Dr. Sepp has simply plagiarized the idea from this allant officer. Moreover, he persisted in seeing in them Jewish property, s well as Christian prophecy, thus accusing the Âryans of having helped hemselves to Semitic revelation, whereas the reverse was the case. The
Jews, moreover, need not be accused of directly despoiling the Hindûs, of hose figures Ezra probably knew nothing. They had evidently and ndeniably borrowed them from the Chaldeans, along with the Chaldean Gods.
They turned the 432,000 years of the Chaldean Divine Dynasties(1132) into
4,320 lunar years from the world’s creation to the Christian era; as to he Babylonian and Egyptian Gods, they quietly and modestly transformed hem into Patriarchs. Every nation was more or less guilty of such efashioning and adaptation of a Pantheon—once common to all—of universal nto national and tribal Gods and Heroes. It was Jewish property in its ew Pentateuchal garb, and no one of the Israelites has ever forced it pon any other nation—least of all upon the European.
Without stopping to notice this very unscientific chronology more than is ecessary, we may yet make a few remarks that may be found to the point.
The 4,320 _lunar_ years of the world—in the _Bible_ the _solar_ years are sed—are not fanciful, as such, even if their application is quite rroneous; for they are only the distorted echo of the primitive Esoteric, nd later of the Brâhmanical doctrine concerning the Yugas. A Day of
Brahmâ equals 4,320,000,000 years, as also does a Night of Brahmâ, or the uration of Pralaya, after which a _new_ “sun” rises triumphantly over a
_new_ Manvantara, for the Septenary Chain it illuminates. The teaching had enetrated into Palestine and Europe centuries before the Christian ra,(1133) and was present in the minds of the Mosaic Jews, who based upon t their small Cycle, though it received full expression only through the
Christian chronologers of the _Bible_, who adopted it, as also the 25th of
December, the day on which all the _solar_ Gods were said to have been ncarnated. What wonder, then, that the Messiah was _made_ to be born in
“the _lunar_ year of the world 4,320”? The “Sun of Righteousness and
Salvation” had once more arisen and had dispelled the pralayic darkness of
Chaos and Nonbeing on the plane of our objective little Globe and Chain.
Once the subject of the adoration was settled upon, it was easy to make he supposed events of his birth, life, and death, fit in with the
Zodiacal exigencies and the old traditions, though they had to be somewhat emodelled for the occasion.
Thus what Kepler said, as a great Astronomer, becomes comprehensible. He ecognized the grand and universal importance of all such planetary onjunctions, “each of which”—as he has well said—“is a _climacteric_ year f Humanity.”(1134) The rare conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars has ts significance and importance on account of its certain great results, n India and China as much as it has in Europe, for the respective Mystics f these countries. And it is certainly now no better than a mere ssumption to maintain that Nature had only Christ in view, in building er (to the profane) fantastic and meaningless constellations. If it is laimed that it was no hazard that could lead the archaic architects of he Zodiac, thousands of years ago, to mark the figure of Taurus with the sterisk _a_, with no better or more valid proof of it being _prophetic_ f the Verbum or Christ than that the _aleph_ of Taurus means the “one” nd the “first,” and that Christ was also the _alpha_ or the “one,” then his “proof” may be shown to be strangely invalidated in more than one ay. To begin with, the Zodiac existed before the Christian era, at all vents; further, all the Sun‐Gods—Osiris, for instance—had been mystically onnected with the constellation Taurus and were all called by their espective votaries the “First.” Further, the compilers of the mystical pithets given to the Christian Saviour were all more or less acquainted ith the significance of the Zodiacal signs; and it is easier to suppose hat they should have arranged their claims so as to match the mystic igns, than that the latter should have shone as a prophecy for one ortion of humanity, for millions of years, taking no heed of the umberless generations that had gone before, and of those that were to be orn hereafter.
We are told:
It is not simple chance that, in certain spheres, has placed on a
throne the head of this bull [Taurus] trying to push back a Dragon
with the ansated _cross_; we should know that this constellation
of Taurus was called “_the great city of God_ and _the mother of
revelations_,” and also “_the interpreter of the divine voice_,”
the Apis Pacis of Hermontis, in Egypt, which [as the patristic
fathers would assure the world] is said to have proffered oracles
that related to the birth of the Saviour.(1135)
To this theological assumption there are several answers. Firstly, the nsated Egyptian cross, or Tau, the Jaina cross, or Svastika, and the
Christian cross, have all the same meaning. Secondly, no peoples or ations except the Christians gave the significance to the Dragon that is iven to it now. The Serpent was the symbol of WISDOM; and the Bull,
Taurus, the symbol of physical or terrestrial _generation_. Thus the Bull, ushing off the Dragon, or spiritual Divine Wisdom, with the Tau, or
Cross—which is esoterically “the foundation and framework of all onstruction”—would have an entirely phallic, physiological meaning, had t not had yet another significance unknown to our Biblical scholars and ymbologists. At any rate, it has no special reference to the Verbum of
St. John, except, perhaps, in a general sense. The Taurus—which, by the ay, is no lamb, but a bull—was sacred in every Cosmogony, with the Hindûs s with the Zoroastrians, with the Chaldees as with the Egyptians. So uch, every schoolboy knows.
It may perhaps help to refresh the memory of our Theosophists if we refer hem to what was said of the Virgin and the Dragon, and the universality f periodical births and re‐births of World‐Saviours—Solar Gods—in _Isis
Unveiled,_(1136) with regard to certain passages in _Revelation_.
In 1853, the savant known as Erard‐Mollien read before the Institute of
France a paper tending to prove the antiquity of the Indian Zodiac, in the igns of which were found the root and philosophy of all the most mportant religious festivals of that country; the lecturer tried to emonstrate that the origin of these religious ceremonies goes back into he night of time to at least 3,000 B.C. The Zodiac of the Hindûs, he hought, was long anterior to the Zodiac of the Greeks, and differed from t much in some particulars. In it one sees the Dragon on a Tree, at the oot of which the Virgin, Kanyâ‐Durgâ, one of the most ancient Goddesses, s placed on a Lion dragging after it the solar car. He said:
This is the reason why this Virgin Durgâ is not the simple
_memento_ of an astronomical fact, but verily the most ancient
divinity of the Indian Olympus. She is evidently the same whose
return was announced in all the Sibylline books—the source of the
inspiration of Virgil—an epoch of universal renovation.... And
why, since the months are still named after this Indian solar
Zodiac, by the Malayalim‐speaking people [of southern India],
should that people have abandoned it to take that of the Greeks?
Everything proves, on the contrary, that these zodiacal figures
were transmitted to the Greeks by the Chaldeans, who got them from
the Brâhmans.(1137)
But all this is very poor testimony. Let us, however, remember also that hich was said and accepted by the contemporaries of Volney, who remarks hat as Aries was in its fifteenth degree 1,447 B.C., it follows that the irst degree of Libra could not have coincided with the vernal equinox ater than 15,194 years B.C.; if we add to this, he argues, the 1,790 ears that have passed since the birth of Christ, it appears that 16,984 ears must have elapsed since the origin of the Zodiac.(1138)
Dr. Schlegel, moreover, in his _Uranographie Chinoise_, assigns to the
Chinese Astronomical Sphere an antiquity of 18,000 years.(1139)
Nevertheless, as opinions quoted without adequate proofs are of little vail, it may be more useful to turn to scientific evidence. M. Bailly, he famous French Astronomer of the last century, Member of the Academy, tc., asserts that the Hindû systems of Astronomy are by far the oldest, nd that from them the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews erived their knowledge. In support of these views he says:
The astronomers who preceded the epoch 1491 are, first, the
Alexandrian Greeks; Hipparchus, who flourished 125 years before
our era, and Ptolemy, 260 years after Hipparchus. Following these
were the Arabs, who revived the study of astronomy in the ninth
century. These were succeeded by the Persians and the Tartars, to
whom we owe the tables of Nassireddin in 1269, and those of Ulug‐
beg in 1437. Such is the succession of events in Asia as known
prior to the Indian epoch 1491. What, then, is an epoch? It is the
observation of the longitude of a star at a given moment, the
place in the sky where it was seen, and which serves as a point of
reference, a starting‐point from which to calculate both the past
and future positions of the star from its observed motion. But an
epoch is useless unless the motion of the star has been
determined. A people, new to science and obliged to borrow a
foreign astronomy, finds no difficulty in fixing an epoch, since
the only observation needed is one which can be made at any
moment. But what it needs above all, what it is obliged to borrow,
are those elements which depend on accurate determination, and
which require continuous observation; above all, those motions
which depend on time, and which can only be accurately determined
by centuries of observation. These motions, then, must be borrowed
from a nation which has made such observations, and has behind it
the labours of centuries. We conclude, therefore, that a new
people will not borrow the epochs of an ancient one, without also
borrowing from them the “average motions.” Starting from this
principle we shall find that the Hindû epochs 1491 and 3102 could
not have been derived from those of either Ptolemy or Ulug‐beg.
There remains the supposition that the Hindûs, comparing their
observations in 1491 with those previously made by Ulug‐beg and
Ptolemy, used the intervals between these observations to
determine the average motions. The date of Ulug‐beg is too recent
for such a determination; while those of Ptolemy and Hipparchus
were barely remote enough. But if the Hindû motions had been
determined from these comparisons, the epochs would be connected
together. Starting from the epochs of Ulug‐beg and Ptolemy we
should arrive at all those of the Hindûs. Hence foreign epochs
were either unknown or useless to the Hindûs.(1140)
We may add to this another important consideration. When a nation
is obliged to borrow from its neighbours the methods or the
average motions of its astronomical tables, it has even greater
need to borrow, besides these, the knowledge of the inequalities
of the motions of the heavenly bodies, the motions of the apogee,
of the nodes, and of the inclination of the ecliptic; in short,
all those elements the determination of which requires the art of
observing, some instrumental appliances, and great industry. All
these astronomical elements, differing more or less with the
Greeks of Alexandria, the Arabs, the Persians and the Tartars,
exhibit no resemblance whatever with those of the Hindûs. The
latter, therefore, borrowed nothing from their neighbours.
If the Hindûs did not borrow their epoch, they must have possessed
a real one of their own, based on their own observations; and this
must be either the epoch of the year 1491 after, or that of the
year 3102 before our era, the latter preceding by 4,592 years the
epoch 1491. We have to choose between these two epochs and to
decide which of them is based on observation. But before stating
the arguments which can and must decide the question, we may be
permitted to make a few remarks to those who may be inclined to
believe that it is modern observations and calculations which have
enabled the Hindûs to determine the past positions of the heavenly
bodies. It is far from easy to determine the celestial movements
with sufficient accuracy to ascend the stream of time for 4,592
years, and to describe the phenomena which must have occurred at
that period. We possess to‐day excellent instruments; exact
observations have been made for some two or three centuries, which
already permit us to calculate with considerable accuracy the
average motions of the Planets; we have the observations of the
Chaldeans, of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy, which, owing to their
remoteness from the present time, permit us to fix these motions
with greater certainty. Still we cannot undertake to represent
with invariable accuracy the observations throughout the long
period intervening between the Chaldeans and ourselves; and still
less can we undertake to determine with exactitude events
occurring 4,592 years before our day. Cassini and Maier have each
determined the secular motion of the moon, and they differ by 3m.
43s. This difference would give rise in forty‐six centuries to an
uncertainty of nearly three degrees in the moon’s place. Doubtless
one of these determinations is more accurate than the other; and
it is for observations of very great antiquity to decide between
them. But in very remote periods, where observations are lacking,
it follows that we are uncertain as to the phenomena. How, then,
could the Hindûs have calculated back from the year 1491 A.D. to
the year 3102 before our era, if they were only recent students of
Astronomy?
The Orientals have never been what we are. However high an opinion
of their knowledge we may form from the examination of their
Astronomy, we cannot suppose them ever to have possessed that
great array of instruments which distinguishes our modern
observatories, and which is the product of simultaneous progress
in various arts, nor could they have possessed that genius for
discovery, which has hitherto seemed to belong exclusively to
Europe, and which, supplying the place of time, causes the rapid
progress of science and of human intelligence. If the Asiatics
have been powerful, learned and wise, it is power and time which
have produced their merit and success of all kinds. Power has
founded or destroyed their empires; now it has erected edifices
imposing by their bulk, now it has reduced them to venerable
ruins; and while these vicissitudes alternated with each other,
patience accumulated knowledge; and prolonged experience produced
wisdom. It is the antiquity of the nations of the East which has
erected their scientific fame.
If the Hindûs possessed in 1491 a knowledge of the heavenly
motions sufficiently accurate to enable them to calculate
backwards for 4592 years, it follows that they could only have
obtained this knowledge from very ancient observations. To grant
them such knowledge, while refusing them the observations from
which it is derived, is to suppose an impossibility; it would be
equivalent to assuming that at the outset of their career they had
already reaped the harvest of time and experience. While on the
other hand, if their epoch of 3102 is assumed to be real, it would
follow that the Hindûs had simply kept pace with successive
centuries down to the year 1491 of our era. Thus, time itself was
their teacher; they knew the motions of the heavenly bodies during
these periods, because they had seen them; and the duration of the
Hindû people on earth is the cause of the fidelity of its records
and the accuracy of its calculations.
It would seem that the problem as to which of the two epochs of
3102 and 1491 is the real one ought to be solved by one
consideration, viz., that the ancients in general, and
particularly the Hindûs, as we may see by the arrangement of their
Tables, calculated, and therefore observed, eclipses only. Now,
there was no eclipse of the sun at the moment of the epoch 1491;
and no eclipse of the moon either fourteen days before or after
that moment. Therefore the epoch 1491 is not based on an
observation. As regards the epoch 3102, the Brâhmans of Tirvaloor
place it at sunrise on February 18th. The sun was then in the
first point of the Zodiac according to its true longitude. The
other Tables show that at the preceding midnight the moon was in
the same place, but according to its average longitude. The
Brâhmans tell us also that this first point, the origin of their
Zodiac, was, in the year 3102, 54 degrees behind the equinox. It
follows that the origin—the first point of their Zodiac—was
therefore in the sixth degree of Aquarius.
There occurred, therefore, about this time and place an average
conjunction; and indeed this conjunction is given in our best
Tables: La Caille’s for the sun and Maier’s for the moon. There
was no eclipse of the sun, the moon being too distant from her
node; but fourteen days later, the moon having approached the
node, must have been eclipsed. Maier’s tables, used without
correction for acceleration, give this eclipse; but they place it
during the day when it could not have been observed in India.
Cassini’s tables give it as occurring at night, which shows that
Maier’s motions are too rapid for distant centuries, when the
acceleration is not allowed for; and which also proves that in
spite of the improvement of our knowledge we can still be
uncertain as to the actual aspect of the heavens in past times.
Therefore we believe that, as between the two Hindû epochs, the
real one is the year 3102, because it was accompanied by an
eclipse which could be observed, and which must have served to
determine it. This is a first proof of the truth of the longitude
assigned by the Hindûs to the sun and the moon at this instant;
and this proof would perhaps be sufficient, were it not that this
ancient determination becomes of the greatest importance for the
verification of the motions of these bodies, and must therefore be
borne out by every possible proof of its authenticity.
We notice, 1st, that the Hindûs seem to have combined two epochs
together into the year 3102. The Tirvaloor Brâhmans reckon
primarily from the first moment of the Kali Yuga; but they have a
second epoch placed 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s. later. The latter is the
true astronomical epoch, while the former seems to be a civil era.
But if this epoch of the Kali Yuga had no reality, and was the
mere result of a calculation, why should it be thus divided? Their
calculated astronomical epoch would have become that of the Kali
Yuga, which would have been placed at the conjunction of the sun
and the moon, as is the case with the epochs of the three other
Tables. They must have had some reason for distinguishing between
the two; and this reason can only be due to the circumstances and
the time of the epoch; which therefore could not be the result of
calculation. This is not all; starting from the solar epoch
determined by the rising of the sun on February 18th, 3102, and
tracing back events 2d. 3h. 32m. 30s., we come to 2h. 27m. 30s.
a.m. of February 16th, which is the instant of the beginning of
Kali Yuga. It is curious that this age has not been made to
commence at one of the four great divisions of the day. It might
be suspected that the epoch should be midnight, and that the 2h.
27m. 30s. are a meridian correction. But whatever may have been
the reason for fixing on this moment, it is plain that were this
epoch the result of calculation, it would have been just as easy
to carry it back to midnight, so as to make the epoch correspond
to one of the chief divisions of the day, instead of placing it at
a moment fixed by the fraction of a day.
2nd. The Hindûs assert that at the first moment of Kali Yuga there
was a conjunction of all the planets; and their Tables show this
conjunction while ours indicate that it might actually have
occurred. Jupiter and Mercury were in exactly the same degree of
the ecliptic; Mars being 8° and Saturn 17° distant from it. It
follows that about this time, or some fifteen days after the
commencement of Kali Yuga, and as the sun advanced in the Zodiac,
the Hindûs saw four planets emerge successively from the Sun’s
rays; first Saturn, then Mars, then Jupiter and Mercury, and these
planets appeared united in a somewhat small space. Although Venus
was not among them, the taste for the marvellous caused it to be
called a general conjunction of all the planets. The testimony of
the Brâhmans here coïncides with that of our Tables; and this
evidence, the result of a tradition, must be founded on actual
observation.
3rd. We may remark that this phenomenon was visible about a
fortnight after the epoch, and exactly at the time when the
eclipse of the moon must have been observed, which served to fix
the epoch. The two observations mutually confirm each other; and
whoever made the one must have made the other also.
4th. We may believe also that the Hindûs made at the same time a
determination of the place of the moon’s node; this seems
indicated by their calculation. They give the longitude of this
point of the lunar orbit for the time of their epoch, and to this
they add as a constant 40m., which is the node’s motion in 12d.
14h. It is as if they stated that this determination was made
thirteen days after their epoch, and that to make it correspond to
that epoch, we must add the 40m. through which the node has
retrograded in the interval. This observation is, therefore, of
the same date as that of the lunar eclipse; thus giving three
observations, which are mutually confirmatory.
5th. It appears from the description of the Hindû Zodiac given by
M. C. Gentil, that on it the places of the stars named the Eye of
Taurus and the Wheat‐ear of Virgo, can be determined for the
commencement of the Kali Yuga. Now, comparing these places with
the actual positions, reduced by our precession of the equinoxes
to the moment in question, we see that the point of origin of the
Hindû Zodiac must lie between the fifth and sixth degree of
Aquarius. The Brâhmans, therefore, were right in placing it in the
sixth degree of that sign, the more so since this small difference
may be due to the proper motion of the stars, which is unknown.
Thus it was yet another observation which guided the Hindûs in
this fairly accurate determination of the first point of their
movable Zodiac.
It does not seem possible to doubt the existence in antiquity of
observations of this date. The Persians say that four beautiful
stars were placed as guardians at the four corners of the world.
Now it so happens that at the commencement of Kali Yuga, 3,000 or
3,100 years before our era, the Eye of the Bull and the Heart of
the Scorpion were exactly at the equinoctial points, while the
Heart of the Lion and the Southern Fish were pretty near the
solstitial points. An observation of the rising of the Pleiades in
the evening, seven days before the autumnal equinox, also belongs
to the year 3000 before our era. This and similar observations are
collected in Ptolemy’s calendars, though he does not give their
authors; and these, which are older than those of the Chaldeans,
may well be the work of the Hindûs. They are well acquainted with
the constellation of the Pleiades, and while we call it vulgarly
the “Poussinière,” they name it Pillaloo‐codi—the “Hen and
chickens.” This name has, therefore, passed from people to people,
and comes to us from the most ancient nations of Asia. We see that
the Hindûs must have observed the rising of the Pleiades, and have
made use of it to regulate their years and their months; for this
constellation is also called Krittikâ. Now they have a month of
the same name, and this coïncidence can only be due to the fact
that this month was announced by the rising or setting of the
constellation in question.
But what is even more decisive as showing that the Hindûs observed
the stars, and in the same way that we do, marking their position
by their longitude, is a fact mentioned by Augustinus Riccius
that, according to observations attributed to Hermes, and made
1,985 years before Ptolemy, the brilliant star in the Lyre and
that in the heart of the Hydra were each seven degrees in advance
of their respective positions as determined by Ptolemy. This
determination seems very extraordinary. The stars advance
regularly with respect to the equinox: and Ptolemy ought to have
found the longitudes 28 degrees in excess of what they were 1,985
years before his time. Besides, there is a remarkable peculiarity
about this fact, the same error or difference being found in the
positions of both stars; therefore the error was due to some cause
affecting both stars equally. It was to explain this peculiarity
that the Arab Thebith imagined the stars to have an oscillatory
movement, causing them to advance and recede alternately. This
hypothesis was easily disproved; but the observations attributed
to Hermes remained unexplained. Their explanation, however, is
found in Hindû Astronomy. At the date fixed for these
observations, 1,985 years before Ptolemy, the first point of the
Hindû Zodiac was 35 degrees in advance of the equinox; therefore
the longitudes reckoned for this point are 35 degrees in excess of
those reckoned from the equinox. But after the lapse of 1,985
years the stars would have advanced 28 degrees, and there would
remain a difference of only 7 degrees between the longitudes of
Hermes and those of Ptolemy, and the difference would be the same
for the two stars, since it is due to the difference between the
starting‐points of the Hindû Zodiac and that of Ptolemy, which
reckons from the equinox. This explanation is so simple and
natural that it must be true. We do not know whether Hermes, so
celebrated in antiquity, was a Hindû, but we see that the
observations attributed to him are reckoned in the Hindû manner,
and we conclude that they were made by the Hindûs, who, therefore,
were able to make all the observations we have enumerated, and
which we find noted in their Tables.
6th. The observation of the year 3102, which seems to have fixed
their epoch, was not a difficult one. We see that the Hindûs,
having once determined the moon’s daily motion of 13° 10´ 35´´,
made use of it to divide the Zodiac into 27 constellations,
related to the period of the moon, which takes about 27 days to
describe it.
It was by this method that they determined the positions of the
stars in this Zodiac; it was thus they found that a certain star
of the Lyre was in 8s 24°, the Heart of the Hydra in 4s 7°,
longitudes which are ascribed to Hermes, but which are calculated
on the Hindû Zodiac. Similarly, they discovered that the Wheat‐ear
of Virgo forms the commencement of their fifteenth constellation,
and the Eye of Taurus the end of the fourth; these stars being the
one in 6s 6° 40´, the other in 1s 23° 20´ of the Hindû Zodiac.
This being so, the eclipse of the moon which occurred fifteen days
after the Kali Yuga epoch, took place at a point between the
Wheat‐ear of Virgo and the star θ of the same constellation. These
stars are very approximately a constellation apart, the one
beginning the fifteenth, the other the sixteenth. Thus it would
not be difficult to determine the moon’s place by measuring her
distance from one of these stars; from this they deduced the
position of the sun, which is opposite to the moon, and then,
knowing their average motions, they calculated that the moon was
at the first point of the Zodiac according to her average
longitude at midnight on the 17th‐18th February of the year 3102
before our era, and that the sun occupied the same place six hours
later according to his true longitude; an event which fixes the
commencement of the Hindû year.
7th. The Hindûs state that 20,400 years before the age of Kali
Yuga, the first point of their Zodiac coincided with the vernal
equinox, and that the sun and moon were in conjunction there. This
epoch is obviously fictitious;(1141) but we may enquire from what
point, from what epoch, the Hindûs set out in establishing it.
Taking the Hindû values for the revolution of the sun and moon,
viz., 363d. 6h. 12m. 30s., and 27d. 7h. 43m. 13s., we have—
20,400 revolutions of the sun = 7,451,277d. 2h.
272,724 revolutions of the moon = 7,451,277d. 7h.
Such is the result obtained by starting from the Kali Yuga epoch;
and the assertion of the Hindûs, that there was a conjunction at
the time stated, is founded on their Tables; but if, using the
same elements, we start from the era of the year 1491, or from
another placed in the year 1282, of which we shall speak later,
there will always be a difference of almost one or two days. It is
both just and natural, in verifying the Hindû calculations, to
take those among their elements which give the same result as they
had themselves arrived at, and to set out from that one among
their epochs which enables us to arrive at the fictitious epoch in
question. Hence, since to make this calculation they must have set
out from their real epoch, the one which was founded on an
observation and not from any of those which were derived by this
very calculation from the former, it follows that their real epoch
was that of the year 3102 before our era.
8th. The Tirvaloor Brâhmans give the moon’s motion as 7s 20° 0´
7´´ on the movable Zodiac, and as 9k 7° 45´ 1´´ as referred to the
equinox in a great period of 1,600,984 days, or 4,386 years and 94
days. We believe this motion to have been determined by
observation; and we must state at the outset that this period is
of an extent which renders it but ill suited to the calculation of
the mean motions.
In their astronomical calculations the Hindûs make use of periods
of 248, 3,031, and 12,372 days; but, apart from the fact that
these periods, though much too short, do not present the
inconvenience of the former, they contain an exact number of
revolutions of the moon referred to its apogee. They are in
reality mean motions. The great period of 1,600,984 days is not a
sum of accumulated revolutions; there is no reason why it should
contain 1,600,984 rather than 1,600,985 days. It would seem that
observation alone must have fixed the number of days and marked
the beginning and end of the period. This period ends on the 21st
of May, 1282 of our era, at 5h. 15m. 30s. at Benares. The moon was
then in apogee, according to the
Hindûs, and her longitude was .. 7B 13° 45´ 1´´
Maier gives the longitude as .. 7 13 53 48
And places the apogee at .. .. 7 14 6 54
The determination of the moon’s place by the Brâhmans thus differs
only by nine minutes from ours, and that of the apogee by twenty‐
two minutes, and it is very evident that they could only have
obtained this agreement with our best Tables and this exactitude
in the celestial positions by observation. If then, observation
fixed the end of this period, there is every reason to believe
that it determined its commencement. But then this motion,
determined directly, and from nature, would of necessity be in
close agreement with the true motions of the heavenly bodies.
And in fact the Hindû motion during this long period of 4,883
years, does not differ by a minute from that of Cassini, and
agrees equally with that of Maier. Thus two peoples, the Hindûs
and the Europeans, placed at the two extremities of the world, and
perhaps as distant by their institutions, have obtained precisely
the same results as regards the moon’s motions; and an agreement
which would be inconceivable, if it were not based on the
observation and mutual imitation of nature. We must remark that
the four Tables of the Hindûs are all copies of the same
Astronomy. It cannot be denied that the Siamese Tables existed in
1687, when they were brought from India by M. de la Loubère. At
that time the tables of Cassini and Maier were not in existence,
and thus the Hindûs were already in possession of the exact motion
contained in these Tables, while we did not yet possess it. It
must, therefore, be admitted that the accuracy of this Hindû
motion is the point of observation. It is exact throughout this
period of 4,383 years, because it was taken from the sky itself;
and if observation determined its close, it fixed its commencement
also. It is the longest period which has been observed and of
which the recollection is preserved in the annals of Astronomy. It
has its origin in the epoch of the year 3102 B.C., and it is a
demonstrative proof of the reality of that epoch.(1142)
Bailly is referred to at such length, as he is one of the few scientific en who have tried to do full justice to the Astronomy of the Âryans. From
John Bentley down to Burgess’ _Sûrya‐Siddhânta_, not one Astronomer has een fair enough to the most learned people of Antiquity. However istorted and misunderstood the Hindû Symbology may be, no Occultist can ail to do it justice once that he knows something of the Secret Sciences; or will he turn away from their metaphysical and mystical interpretation f the Zodiac, even though the whole Pleiades of Royal Astronomical
Societies rise in arms against their mathematical rendering of it. The escent and reäscent of the Monad or Soul cannot be disconnected from the
Zodiacal signs, and it looks more natural, in the sense of the fitness of hings, to believe in a mysterious sympathy between the metaphysical Soul nd the bright constellations, and in the influence of the latter on the ormer, than in the absurd notion that the creators of Heaven and Earth ave placed in Heaven the types of twelve vicious Jews. And if, as the uthor of _The Gnostics and their Remains_ asserts, the aim of all the
Gnostic schools and the later Platonists
was to accommodate the old faith to the influence of Buddhistic
theosophy, the very essence of which was that the innumerable gods
of the Hindû mythology were but names for the Energies of the
First Triad in its successive Avatârs or manifestations unto man,
hither can we better turn to trace these theosophic ideas to their very oot, than to the old Indian wisdom? We say again: Archaic Occultism would emain incomprehensible to all, if it were to be rendered otherwise than hrough the more familiar channels of Buddhism and Hindûism. For the ormer is the emanation of the latter; and both are children of one other—ancient Lemuro‐Atlantean Wisdom.
Section XVII. Summary of the Position.
The reader has had the whole case presented to him from both sides, and it emains with him to decide whether its summary stands in our favour or ot. If there were such a thing as a void, a vacuum in Nature, one ought o find it produced, according to a physical law, in the minds of helpless dmirers of the “lights” of Science, who pass their time in mutually estroying their teachings. If ever the theory that “two lights make arkness” found its application it is in this case, where one‐half of the
“lights” imposes its forces and “modes of motion” on the belief of the aithful, and the other half opposes the very existence of the same.
“Ether, Matter, Energy”—the sacred hypostatical trinity, the three rinciples of the truly _unknown_ God of Science, called by them PHYSICAL
NATURE!
Theology is taken to task and ridiculed for believing in the union of hree persons in one Godhead—one God as to substance, three persons as to ndividuality; and we are laughed at for our belief in unproved and nprovable doctrines, in Angels and Devils, Gods and Spirits. And, indeed, hat which made the Scientists win the day over Theology in the Great
“Conflict between Religion and Science,” was precisely the argument that either the identity of that substance, nor the triple individuality laimed—after having been conceived, invented, and worked out in the epths of Theological Consciousness—could be proved to exist by any cientific inductive process of reasoning, least of all by the evidence of ur senses. Religion must perish, it is said, because it teaches
“mysteries.” “Mystery is the negation of Common Sense,” and Science repels t. According to Mr. Tyndall, Metaphysics is “fiction,” like poetry. The an of Science “takes nothing on trust”; rejects everything “that is not roven to him,” while the Theologian accepts “everything on blind faith.”
The Theosophist and the Occultist, who take nothing on trust, not even
_exact_ Science, the Spiritualist who denies dogma but believes in Spirits nd in _invisible but potent influences_, all share in the same contempt.
Very well, then; what we have to do now, is to examine for the last time hether _exact_ Science does not act precisely in the same way as do
Theosophy, Spiritualism, and Theology.
In a work by Mr. S. Laing, considered a standard book on Science, _Modern
Science and Modern Thought_, the author of which, according to the audatory review of the _Times_, “exhibits with much power and effect the mmense discoveries of Science, and its numerous victories over old pinions, whenever they have the rashness to challenge conclusions with t,” we read as follows:
What is the material universe composed of? Ether, Matter, Energy.
We stop to ask, What is Ether? And Mr. Laing answers in the name of
Science:
Ether is not actually known to us by any test of which the senses
can take cognizance, but is a sort of mathematical substance which
we are compelled to assume in order to account for the phenomena
of light and heat.(1143)
And what is Matter? Do you know more about it than you do about the
“hypothetical” agent, Ether?
In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigations can
tell us ... nothing directly of the composition of living matter,
and ... it is also in strictness true, that we know nothing about
the compositions of any [material] body whatever as it is.(1144)
And Energy? Surely you can define the third person of the Trinity of your
Material Universe? We can take the answer from any book on Physics:
Energy is that which is only known to us by its effects.
Pray explain, for this is rather hazy.
[In mechanics there is actual and potential energy: work actually
performed, and the capacity for performing it. As to the nature of
molecular Energy or Forces], the various phenomena which bodies
present show that their molecules are under the influence of two
contrary forces, one which tends to bring them together, and the
other to separate them.... The first force ... is called
_molecular attraction_ ... the second force is due to the _vis
viva_, or moving force.(1145)
Just so: it is the nature of this _moving force_, of this _vis viva_, that e want to know. What is it?
“We do not know!” is the invariable answer. “It is an empty shadow of my magination,” explains Mr. Huxley in his _Physical Basis of Life_.
Thus the whole structure of Modern Science is built on a kind of
“mathematical abstraction,” on a Protean “Substance which eludes the enses” (Dubois Reymond), and on _effects_, the shadowy and illusive will‐ ’‐the wisps of a _something_ entirely unknown to, and beyond the reach f, Science. “_Self‐moving_” Atoms! _Self‐moving_ Suns, Planets, and
Stars! But who, then, or _what_ are they all, if they are self‐endowed ith motion? Why then should you, Physicists, laugh at and deride our
“Self‐moving Archæus”? Mystery is rejected and scorned by Science, and as
Father Felix has truly said:
She cannot escape it. Mystery is the fatality of Science.
The language of the French preacher is ours, and we quote it in _Isis
Unveiled_. Who—he asks—who of you, men of Science:
Has been able to penetrate the secret of the formation of a body,
the generation of a single atom? What is there, I will not say at
the centre of a sun, but at the centre of an atom? Who has sounded
to the bottom the abyss in a grain of sand? The grain of sand,
gentlemen, has been studied four thousand years by science; she
has turned and returned it; she divides it and subdivides it; she
torments it with her experiments; she vexes it with her questions
to snatch from it the final word as to its secret constitution;
she asks it, with an insatiable curiosity: “Shall I divide thee
infinitesimally?” Then suspended over this abyss, science
hesitates, she stumbles, she feels dazzled, she becomes dizzy, and
in despair says: “I DO NOT KNOW.”
But if you are so fatally ignorant of the genesis and hidden
nature of a grain of sand, how should you have an intuition as to
the generation of a single living being? Whence in the living
being does life come? Where does it commence? What is the life
principle?(1146)
Do the men of Science deny all these charges? By no means: for here is a onfession of Tyndall, which shows how powerless is Science, even over the orld of Matter.
The first marshalling of the atoms, on which all subsequent action
depends, baffles a keener power than that of the microscope....
Through pure excess of complexity, and long before observation can
have any voice in the matter, the most highly trained intellect,
the most refined and disciplined imagination, retires in
bewilderment from the contemplation of the problem. We are struck
dumb by an astonishment which no microscope can relieve, doubting
not only the power of our instrument, but even whether we
ourselves possess the intellectual elements which will ever enable
us to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of nature.
How little is known of the material Universe, indeed, has now been uspected for years, on the very admissions of these men of Science hemselves. And now there are some Materialists who would even make away ith Ether—or whatever Science calls the infinite Substance, the noumenon f which the Buddhists call Svabhâvat—as well as with Atoms, too dangerous oth on account of their ancient philosophical, and their present
Christian and theological, associations. From the earliest Philosophers, hose records passed to posterity, down to our present age—which, if it enies Invisible Beings in Space, can never be so insane as to deny a
Plenum of some sort—the Fulness of the Universe has been an accepted elief. And what it was said to contain, one learns from Hermes
Trismegistus (in Dr. Anna Kingsford’s able rendering), who is made to say:
Concerning the void ... my judgment is that it does not exist,
that it never has existed, and that it never will exist, for all
the various parts of the universe are filled, as the earth also is
complete and full of bodies, differing in quality and in form,
having their species and their magnitude, one larger, one smaller,
one solid, one tenuous. The larger ... are easily perceived; the
smaller ... are difficult to apprehend, or altogether invisible.
We know only of their existence by the sensation of feeling,
wherefore many persons deny such entities to be bodies, and regard
them as simply spaces,(1147) but it is impossible there should be
such spaces. For if indeed there should be anything outside the
universe ... then it would be a space occupied by intelligible
beings analogous to its [the universe’s] Divinity.... I speak of
the genii, for I hold they dwell with us, and of the heroes who
dwell above us, between the earth and the higher airs; wherein are
neither clouds nor any tempest.(1148)
And we “hold” it too. Only, as already remarked, no Eastern Initiate would peak of spheres “_above_ us, between the earth and the airs,” even the ighest, as there is no such division or measurement in Occult speech, no
_above_, as no _below_, but an eternal _within, within two other withins_, r the planes of subjectivity merging gradually into that of terrestrial bjectivity—this being for _man_ the last one, his own plane. This ecessary explanation may be closed here by giving, in the words of
Hermes, the belief on this particular point of the whole world of Mystics:
There are many orders of the Gods; and in all there is an
intelligible part. It is not to be supposed they do not come
within the range of our senses; on the contrary, we perceive them,
better even than those which are called visible.... There are then
Gods, superior to all appearances; after them come the Gods whose
principle is spiritual; these Gods being sensible, in conformity
with their double origin, manifest all things by a sensible
nature, each of them illuminating his works one by another.(1149)
The supreme Being of heaven, or of all that is comprehended under
this name, is Zeus, for it is by heaven that Zeus gives life to
all things. The supreme Being of the sun is light, for it is by
the disk of the sun that we receive the benefit of the light. The
thirty‐six horoscopes of the fixed stars have for supreme Being,
or prince, him whose name is _Pantomorphos_, or having all forms,
because he gives divine forms to divers types. The seven planets,
or wandering spheres, have for supreme Spirits Fortune and
Destiny, who uphold the eternal stability of the laws of Nature
throughout incessant transformation and perpetual agitation. The
ether is the instrument or medium by which all is produced.(1150)
This is quite philosophical and in accordance with the spirit of Eastern
Esotericism: for all the Forces, such as Light, Heat, Electricity, etc., re called the “Gods”—Esoterically.
This, indeed, must be so, since the Esoteric Teachings in Egypt and India ere identical. And, therefore, the personification of Fohat, synthesizing ll the manifesting Forces in Nature is a legitimate result. Moreover, as ill be shown later, the real and Occult Forces in Nature only now begin o be known—and even in this case, by heterodox, not orthodox,
Science,(1151) though their existence, in one instance at any rate, is orroborated and certified by an immense number of educated people, and ven by some official men of Science.
The statement, moreover, in Stanza VI—that Fohat sets in motion the rimordial World‐Germs, or the aggregation of Cosmic Atoms and Matter,
“some one way, some the other way,” in the opposite direction—looks rthodox and scientific enough. For there is, at all events, in support of his position, one fact fully recognized by Science, and it is this. The eteoric showers, periodical in November and August, belong to a system oving in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The aphelion of this ring is
1,732 millions of miles beyond the orbit of Neptune, its plane is inclined o the Earth’s orbit at an angle of 64° 3´, and the direction of the eteoric swarm moving round this orbit _is contrary to that of the Earth’s evolution_.
This fact, recognized only in 1833, shows it to be the modern rediscovery f what was very anciently known. Fohat turns with his two hands in ontrary directions the “seed” and the “curds,” or Cosmic Matter; in learer language, is turning particles in a highly attenuated condition, nd nebulæ.
Outside the boundaries of the Solar System, it is other Suns, and specially the mysterious Central Sun—the “Abode of the Invisible Deity” s some reverend gentlemen have called it—that determines the motion and he direction of bodies. That motion serves also to differentiate the omogeneous Matter, round and between the several bodies, into Elements nd Sub‐elements unknown to our Earth, and these are regarded by Modern
Science as distinct individual Elements, whereas they are merely temporary ppearances, changing with every small cycle within the Manvantara, some
Esoteric works calling them “Kalpic Masks.”
Fohat is the key in Occultism which opens and unriddles the multiform ymbols and allegories in the so‐called mythology of every nation; emonstrating the wonderful Philosophy and the deep insight into the ysteries of Nature, contained in the Egyptian and Chaldean as well as in he Âryan religions. Fohat, shown in his true character, proves how deeply ersed were all those prehistoric nations in every Science of Nature, now alled the physical and chemical branches of Natural Philosophy. In India,
Fohat is the scientific aspect of both Vishnu and Indra, the latter older nd more important in the _Rig Veda_ than his sectarian successor; while n Egypt, Fohat was known as Toom issued of Noot,(1152) or Osiris in his haracter of a primordial God, creator of heaven and of beings.(1153) For
Toom is spoken of as the Protean God who _generates other Gods_ and gives imself the form he likes; the “Master of Life, giving their vigour to the
Gods.”(1154) He is the _overseer_ of the Gods, and he “who creates spirits nd gives them shape and life”; he is “the North Wind and the Spirit of he West”; and finally the “Setting Sun of Life,” or the vital electric orce that leaves the body at death; wherefore the Defunct begs that Toom hould give him the breath from his _right_ nostril (positive electricity) hat he might live in his _second_ form. Both the hieroglyph, and the text f chapter xlii in the _Book of the Dead_, show the identity of Toom and
Fohat. The former represents a man standing erect with the hieroglyph of he _breaths_ in his hands. The latter says:
I open to the chief of An (Heliopolis). I am Toom. I cross the
water spilt by Thot‐Hapi, the lord of the horizon, and am the
divider of the earth [Fohat divides Space and, with his Sons, the
Earth into seven zones]....
I cross the heavens; I am the two Lions. I am Ra, I am Aam, I eat
my heir.(1155).... I glide on the soil of the field of
Aanroo,(1156) given me by the master of limitless eternity. I am a
germ of eternity. I am Toom, to whom eternity is accorded.
The very words used by Fohat in the XIth Book, and the very titles given im. In the Egyptian Papyri the whole Cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine is ound scattered about in isolated sentences, even in the _Book of the
Dead_. Number seven is quite as much insisted upon and emphasized therein s in the _Book of Dzyan_. “The Great Water [the Deep or Chaos] is said to e seven cubits deep”—“cubits” standing here of course for divisions, ones, and principles. Therein, “in the great Mother, all the Gods, and he Seven Great Ones are born.” Both Fohat and Toom are addressed as the
“Great Ones of the Seven Magic Forces,” who, “conquer the Serpent Apap” or
Matter.(1157)
No student of Occultism, however, ought to be betrayed, by the usual hraseology used in the translations of Hermetic Works, into believing hat the ancient Egyptians or Greeks spoke of, and referred, monk‐like, at very moment in conversation, to a Supreme Being, God, the “One Father and
Creator of all,” etc., in the way found on every page of such ranslations. No such thing indeed; and those texts _are not the original
Egyptian_ texts. They are Greek compilations, the earliest of which does ot go beyond the early period of Neo‐Platonism. No Hermetic work written y Egyptians—as we may see by the _Book of the Dead_—would speak of the ne universal God of the Monotheistic systems; the one _Absolute_ Cause of ll, was as unnameable and unpronounceable in the mind of the ancient
Philosopher of Egypt, as it is for ever _Unknowable_ in the conception of
Mr. Herbert Spencer. As for the Egyptian in general, as M. Maspero well emarks, whenever he
Arrived at the notion of divine Unity, the God One was never “God”
simply. M. Lepage‐Renouf very justly observed that the word
Nouter, Nouti, “God” had never ceased to be _a generic name_ to
become a personal one.
Every God was the “one living and unique God” with them. Their
Monotheism was purely geographical. If the Egyptian of Memphis
proclaimed the Unity of Phtah to the exclusion of Ammon, the
Thebeian Egyptian proclaimed the unity of Ammon to the exclusion
of Phtah [as we now see done in India in the case of the Shaivas
and the Vaishnavas]. Ra, the “One God” at Heliopolis is not the
same as Osiris, the “One God” at Abydos, and can be worshipped
side by side with him, without being absorbed by him. The one God
is but the God of the nome or the city, Nouter Nouti, and does not
exclude the existence of the one God of the neighbouring town or
nome. In short, whenever we are speaking of Egyptian Monotheism,
we ought to speak of the Gods One of Egypt, and not of the One
God.(1158)
It is by this feature, preëminently Egyptian, that the authenticity of the arious so‐called _Hermetic Books_, ought to be tested; and it is totally bsent from the Greek fragments known under this name. This proves that a
Greek Neo‐Platonic, or perhaps a Christian hand, had no small share in the diting of such works. Of course the fundamental Philosophy is there, and n many a place—intact. But the style has been altered and smoothed in a onotheistic direction, as much, if not more than that of the Hebrew
Genesis in its Greek and Latin translations. They _may_ be _Hermetic_ orks, but not works written by either of the two Hermes—or rather, by
Thot Hermes, the directing Intelligence of the Universe(1159) or by Thot is terrestrial incarnation called Trismegistus, of the Rosetta stone.
But all is doubt, negation, iconoclasm and brutal indifference, in our age f a hundred “isms” and no religion. Every idol is broken save the Golden
Calf.
Unfortunately, no nation or nations can escape their Karmic fate, any more han can units and individuals. History itself is dealt with by the so‐ alled historians as unscrupulously as legendary lore. For this, Augustin
Thierry has made the _amende honorable_, if one may believe his iographers. He deplored the erroneous principle that made all the _would‐ e_ historiographers lose their way, and each presume to correct radition, “that _vox populi_ which nine times out of ten is _vox Dei_”; nd he finally admitted that _in legend alone rests real history_; for he dds:
Legend is living tradition, and three times out of four it is
truer than what we call History.(1160)
While Materialists deny everything in the Universe, save Matter,
Archæologists are trying to dwarf Antiquity, and seek to destroy every laim of Ancient Wisdom by tampering with Chronology. Our present‐day
Orientalists and historical writers are to Ancient History that which the hite ants are to the buildings in India. More dangerous even than those
Termites, the modern Archæologists—the “authorities” of the future in the atter of Universal History—are preparing for the history of past nations he fate of certain edifices in tropical countries. As said Michelet:
History will tumble down and break into atoms in the lap of the
twentieth century, devoured to its foundations by her annalists.
Very soon, indeed, under their combined efforts, it will share the fate of hose ruined cities in both Americas, which lie deeply buried under mpassable virgin forests. Historical facts will remain concealed from iew by the inextricable jungles of modern hypotheses, denials and cepticism. But very happily _actual_ History repeats herself, for she roceeds, like everything else, in cycles; and dead facts, and events eliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism, will ascend once ore and reappear on the surface.
In Volume II, the very fact that a work with pretensions to Philosophy, hich is also an exposition of the most abstruse problems, has to be ommenced by tracing the evolution of mankind from what are regarded as upernatural beings—Spirits—will arouse the most malevolent criticism.
Believers in, and the defenders of, the Secret Doctrine, however, will ave to bear the accusation of madness _and worse_, as philosophically as or long years already the writer has done. Whenever a Theosophist is axed with insanity, he ought to reply by quoting from Montesquieu’s
_Lettres Persanes_:
By opening so freely their lunatic asylums to their supposed
madmen, men only seek to assure each other that they are not
themselves mad.
[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]
FOOTNOTES
1 See _Theosophist_, June, 1883.
2 _Preface_ to the original edition.
3 _Dan_, in modern Chinese and Tibetan phonetics _Chhan_, is the
general term for the esoteric schools and their literature. In the
old books, the word _Janna_ is defined as “reforming one’s self by
meditation and knowledge,” a second _inner_ birth. Hence _Dzan_,
_Djan_ phonetically; the _Book of Dzyan_. See Edkins, _Chinese
Buddhism_, p. 129, note.
4 Mr. Beglor, the chief engineer at Buddhagâya, and a distinguished
archæologist, was the first, we believe, to discover it.
5 See _Isis Unveiled_, Vol. II, p. 27.
6 _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 23.
7 _Ain í Akbari_, translated by Dr. Blochmann, quoted by Max Müller,
_op. cit._
8 _Tao‐te‐King_, p. xxvii.
9 Max Müller, _op. cit._, p. 114.
10 Found out and proven only _now_, through the discoveries made by
George Smith (see his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_), and which,
thanks to this Armenian forger, have misled all the “civilized
nations” for over 1,500 years into accepting Jewish derivations for
direct _Divine_ Revelation.
11 _Egypt’s Place in History_, i. 200.
12 Spence Hardy, _The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists_, p. 66.
13 E. Schlagintweit, _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 77.
14 Lassen (_Ind. Althersumkunde_, II, 1,072) shows a Buddhist monastery
erected in the Kailâs. Range in 137 B.C.; and General Cunningham,
one earlier than that.
15 Rev. J. Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 87.
16 See, for example, Max Müller’s _Lectures_.
17 _Op. cit._, p. 118.
18 _Op. cit._, p. 318.
19 _Asiatic Researches_, I, 272.
20 See Max Müller, _op. cit._, pp. 288 _et seq._ This relates to the
clever forgery, on leaves inserted in old Purânic MSS., and written
in correct and archaic Sanskrit, of all that the Pandits had heard
from Colonel Wilford about Adam and Abraham, Noah and his three
sons, etc., etc.
21 From a lecture by N. M. Prjevalsky.
22 Lün‐Yü (§ I a); Schott, _Chinesische Literatur_, p. 7; quoted by Max
Müller.
23 _Life and Teachings of Confucius_, p. 96.
24 Op. cit., p. 257.
25 The name is used in the sense of the Greek word ἅνθρωπς.
26 Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Chananea, who died about A.D. 72, openly declared
that he had performed “miracles” by means of the book _Sepher
Jetzirah_, and challenged every sceptic. Franck, quoting from the
Babylonian _Talmud_, names two other thaumaturgists, Rabbis Chanina
and Oshoi. (See _Jerusalem Talmud_, _Sanhedrin_, c. 7, etc.; and
Franck, _Die Kabbalah_, pp. 55, 56). Many of the mediæval
Occultists, Alchemists, and Kabalists have made the same claim; and
even the late modern Magus, Éliphas Lévi, publicly asserts it in his
books on Magic.
27 It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the term Divine
Thought, like that of Universal Mind, must not be regarded as even
vaguely shadowing forth an intellectual process akin to that
exhibited by man. The “Unconscious,” according to von Hartmann,
arrived at the vast creative, or rather evolutionary plan, “by a
clairvoyant wisdom superior to all consciousness,” which in Vedântic
language would mean absolute Wisdom. Only those who realize how far
intuition soars above the tardy processes of ratiocinative thought
can form the faintest conception of that absolute Wisdom which
transcends the ideas of Time and Space. Mind, as we know it, is
resolvable into states of consciousness, of varying duration,
intensity, complexity, etc., all, in the ultimate, resting on
sensation, which is again Mâyâ. Sensation, again, necessarily
postulates limitation. The Personal God of orthodox Theism
perceives, thinks, and is affected by emotion; he repents and feels
“fierce anger.” But the notion of such mental states clearly
involves the unthinkable postulate of the externality of the
exciting stimuli, to say nothing of the impossibility of ascribing
changelessness to a being whose emotions fluctuate with events in
the worlds he presides over. The conceptions of a Personal God as
changeless and infinite are thus unpsychological and, what is worse,
unphilosophical.
28 Plato proves himself an Initiate, when saying in _Cratylus_ that
θεός is derived from θέειν, to move, to run, for the first
astronomers who observed the motions of the heavenly bodies called
the planets θεοί, gods. Later the word produced another term,
ἀλήθεια—the breath of God.
29 Nominalists, arguing with Berkeley that “it is impossible ... to
form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving”
(_Principles of Human Knowledge_, Introd., par. 10), may put the
question, What is that body, the producer of that motion? Is it a
substance? Then you are believers in a Personal God? etc., etc. This
will be answered farther on, in a further part of this work;
meanwhile, we claim our rights of Conceptionalists as against
Roscelini’s materialistic views of Realism and Nominalism. “Has
science,” says one of its ablest advocates, Edward Clodd, “revealed
anything that weakens or opposes itself to the ancient words in
which the essence of all religion, past, present, and to come, is
given; to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly before thy God?”
And we agree, provided we connote by the word God, not the crude
anthropomorphism which is still the backbone of our current
theology, but the symbolic conception of that which is the Life and
Motion of the Universe, to know which in the physical order is to
know time past, present, and to come, in the existence of
successions of phenomena; to know which, in the moral, is to know
what has been, is, and will be, within human consciousness. ( See _Science and the Emotions_, a Discourse delivered at South Place
Chapel, Finsbury, London, December 27th, 1885.)
30 _Isis Unveiled_, II, 264‐5.
31 Rig Veda.
32 We are told by the Western mathematicians and some American
Kabalists, that in the _Kabalah_ also “the value of the Jehovah name
is that of the diameter of a circle.” Add to this the fact that
Jehovah is the third of the Sephiroth, Binah, a feminine word, and
you have the key to the mystery. By certain Kabalistic
transformations this name, which is androgynous in the first
chapters of _Genesis_, becomes in its transformations entirely
masculine, Cainite and phallic. The choosing of a deity among the
pagan gods and making of it a special national God, to call upon it
as the “One Living God,” the “God of Gods,” and then proclaiming
this worship monotheistic, does not change it into the One Principle
whose “Unity admits not of multiplication, change, or form,”
especially in the case of a priapic deity, as Jehovah is now
demonstrated to be.
33 See that suggestive work, _The Source of Measures_, where the author
explains the real meaning of the word _Sacr’_ from which “sacred,”
“sacrament,” are derived, words which have now become synonyms of
holiness, though purely phallic!
34 _Mândûkya Upanishad_, I. 28.
35 _Bodhimür_, Book II.
36 See the _Vedânta Sâra_, by Major G. A. Jacob; and also _The
Aphorisms of Shândilya_, translated by Cowell, p. 42.
37 _Aitareya Upanishad._
38 Nevertheless, prejudiced and rather fanatical Christian Orientalists
would like to prove this to be pure Atheism. For proof of this,
compare Major Jacob’s _Vedânta Sâra_. Yet, the whole of antiquity
echoes the thought:
Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est
Immortali ævo summa cum pace fruatur—
as Lucretius has it—a purely Vedântic conception.
39 The very names of the two chief deities, Brahmâ and Vishnu, ought to
have long ago suggested their esoteric meanings. Brahman, or Brahm,
is derived by some from the root _brih_, to grow or to expand (see
_Calcutta Review_, vol. lxvi., p. 14); Vishnu, from the root _vish_,
to pervade, to enter into the nature of the essence; Brahmâ‐Vishnu
thus being infinite Space, of which the Gods, the Rishis, the Manus,
and all in this Universe are simply the Potencies (Vibhûtayah).
40 See Manu’s account of Brahmâ separating his body into male and
female, the latter the female Vâch, in whom he creates Virâj, and
compare this with the esotericism of Chapters II, III, and IV of
_Genesis_.
41 Occultism is indeed “in the air” at the close of this our century.
Among many other works recently published, we would recommend
especially to students of theoretical Occultism who would not
venture beyond the realm of our special human plane, _New Aspects of
Life and Religion_, by Henry Pratt, M.D. It is full of esoteric
dogmas and philosophy, the latter, however, in the concluding
chapters, rather limited by what seems to be a spirit of conditioned
positivism. Nevertheless, what is said of Space as “the Unknown
First Cause,” merits quotation.
“This unknown something, thus recognized as, and identified with,
the primary embodiment of Simple Unity, is invisible and impalpable
[as _abstract_ space, granted]: and because invisible and
impalpable, therefore incognizable. And this incognizability has led
to the error of supposing it to be a simple void, a mere receptive
capacity. But, even viewed as an absolute void, space must be
admitted to be either self‐existent, infinite, and eternal, or to
have had a first cause outside, behind, and beyond itself.
“And yet could such a cause be found and defined, this would only
lead to the transferring thereto of the attributes otherwise
accruing to space, and thus merely throw the difficulty of
origination a step farther back, without gaining additional light as
to primary causation.” (_Op. cit._, p. 5.)
This is precisely what has been done by the believers in an
anthropomorphic creator, an extra‐cosmic, instead of an intra‐cosmic
God. Many of Dr. Pratt’s subjects—most of them we may say—are old
Kabalistic ideas and theories which he presents in quite a new
garb—“New Aspects” of the Occult in Nature, indeed. Space, however,
viewed as a Substantial Unity—the living Source of Life—is, as the
Unknown Causeless Cause, the oldest dogma in Occultism, millenniums
earlier than the Pater‐Æther of the Greeks and Latins. So are “Force
and Matter, as Potencies of Space, inseparable, and the unknown
revealers of the Unknown.” They are all found in Âryan philosophy
personified as Vishvakarman, Indra, Vishnu, etc., etc. Still they
are expressed very philosophically, and under many unusual aspects,
in the work referred to.
42 In contradistinction to the manifested Universe of matter, the term
Mûlaprakriti (from _mûla_, root, and prakriti, nature), or the
unmanifested primordial Matter—called by Western Alchemists Adam’s
Earth—is applied by the Vedântins to _Parabrahman_. Matter is dual
in religious metaphysics, and in esoteric teachings septenary, like
everything else in the Universe. As Mûlaprakriti, it is
undifferentiated and eternal: as Vyakta, it becomes differentiated
and conditioned, according to _Shvetâshvatara Upanishad_, I, 8, and
_Devî Bhâgavata Purâna_. The author of the Four lectures on the
_Bhagavad Gîtâ_, in speaking of Mûlaprakriti, says: “From its [the
Logos’] objective standpoint, Parabrahman appears to it as
Mûlaprakriti.... Of course this Mûlaprakriti is material to it, as
any material object is material to us.... Parabrahman is an
unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mûlaprakriti is a sort of
veil thrown over it.” (_Theosophist_, VIII, 304.)
43 Esoteric Philosophy, regarding every finite thing as Mâyâ (or the
illusion of ignorance), must necessarily view in the same light
every intra‐cosmic planet and body, seeing that it is something
organized, hence finite. The sentence, therefore, “it proceeds from
without inwardly, etc.”, in its first clause, refers to the dawn of
the Mahâmanvantara, or the great reëvolution after one of the
complete periodical dissolutions of every compound form in Nature,
from planet to molecule, into its ultimate essence or element; and
in its second clause, to the partial or local Manvantara, which may
be a solar or even a planetary one.
44 By Centre, a centre of energy or a cosmic focus is meant; when the
so‐called “creation,” or formation, of a planet, is accomplished by
that force which is designated by Occultists Life and by Science
Energy, then the process takes place from within outwardly, every
atom being said to contain in itself the creative energy of the
divine Breath. And, whereas after an Absolute Pralaya, when the
preëxisting material consists but of One Element, and Breath “is
everywhere,” the latter acts from without inwardly; after a Minor
Pralaya, when everything having remained _in statu quo_—in a
refrigerated state, so to say, like the moon—then at the first
flutter of Manvantara, the planet or planets begin their
resurrection to life from within outwardly.
45 In the evolutionary cycles of ideas, it is curious to notice how
ancient thought seems to be reflected in modern speculation. Had Mr.
Herbert Spencer read and studied ancient Hindû philosophers when he
wrote a certain passage in his _First Principles_ (p. 482)? Or is it
an independent flash of inner perception that made him say half
correctly, half incorrectly, “motion as well as matter, being fixed
in quantity [?], it would seem that the change in the distribution
of matter which motion effects, coming to a limit in whichever
direction it is carried [?], the indestructible motion thereupon
necessitates a reverse distribution. Apparently, the universally
coëxistent forces of attraction and repulsion which, as we have
seen, necessitate rhythm in all minor changes throughout the
Universe, also necessitate rhythm in the totality of its
changes—produce now an immeasurable period during which the
attracting forces predominating, cause universal concentration, and
then an immeasurable period, during which the repulsive forces
predominating, cause universal diffusion—alternate eras of evolution
and dissolution.”
46 Whatever the news of Physical Science upon the subject, Occult
Science has been teaching for ages that Âkâsha (of which Ether is
the grossest form), the Fifth universal cosmic Principle—to which
corresponds and from which proceeds human Manas—is, cosmically, a
radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative in its
physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and portions,
immutable in its higher principles. In the creative condition it is
called the Sub‐Root; and in conjunction with radiant heat, it
recalls “dead worlds to life.” In its higher aspect it is the Soul
of the World; in its lower—the Destroyer.
47 _Hypoth._, 1675.
48 The “First” presupposes necessarily something which is the “first
brought forth,” “the first in time, space, and rank”—and therefore
finite and conditioned. The “first” _cannot be Absolute_ for it is a
manifestation. Therefore, Eastern Occultism calls the Abstract All
the One Causeless Cause, the Rootless Root, and limits the “First
Cause” to the Logos, in the sense that Plato gives to this term.
49 See T. Subba Row’s four able lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, in
_The Theosophist_, Feb. 1887.
50 Called by Christian theology, Archangels, Seraphs, etc., etc.
51 “Pilgrim” is the appellation given to our Monad (the Two in one)
during its cycle of incarnations. It is the only immortal and
eternal Principle in us, being an indivisible part of the integral
whole—the Universal Spirit, from which it emanates, and into which
it is absorbed at the end of the cycle. When it is said to emanate
from the One Spirit, an awkward and incorrect expression has to be
used for lack of appropriate words in English. The Vedântins call it
Sûtrâtmâ (Thread‐Soul), but their explanation differs somewhat from
that of the Occultists; to explain which difference, however, is
left to the Vedântins themselves.
52 It is not the physical organisms that remain _in statu quo_, least
of all their psychic principles, during the great Cosmic or even
Solar Pralayas, but only their âkâshic or astral “photographs.” But
during the Minor Pralayas, once overtaken by the “Night,” the
planets remain intact, though dead, just as a huge animal, caught
and embedded in the polar ice, remains the same for ages.
53 Thus Spencer, who, nevertheless, like Schopenhauer and von Hartmann,
only reflects an aspect of the old esoteric philosophers, and hence
lands his readers on the bleak shore of Agnostic despair—reverently
formulates the grand mystery; “that which persists unchanging in
quantity, but ever changing in form, under these sensible
appearances which the Universe presents to us, is an unknown and
unknowable power, which we are obliged to recognize as without limit
in Space and without beginning or end in Time.” It is only daring
Theology—never Science or Philosophy—which seeks to gauge the
Infinite and unveil the Fathomless and Unknowable.
54 Space.
55 It is stated in Book II, ch. viii, of _Vishnu Purâna_: “By
immortality is meant existence to the end of the Kalpa”; and Wilson,
the translator, remarks in a foot‐note: “This, according to the
_Vedas_, is all that is to be understood of the immortality [or
eternity] of the gods; they perish at the end of universal
dissolution [or Pralaya].” And Esoteric Philosophy says: “They
‘perish’ not, but are _reäbsorbed_.”
56 Celestial Beings.
57 And hence to manifest it.
58 Nirvâna. Nippang in Chinese; Neibban in Burmese; Moksha in India.
59 Nidâna and Mâyâ. The “Twelve” Nidânas (in Tibetan Ten‐brel Chug‐nyi)
are the chief causes of existence, effects generated by a
concatenation of causes produced.
60 See Wassilief, _Der Buddhismus_, pp. 97‐128.
61 The term “Wheel” is the symbolical expression for a world or globe,
which shows that the ancients were aware that our Earth was a
revolving globe, not a motionless square as some Christian Fathers
taught. The “Great Wheel” is the whole duration of our Cycle of
Being, or Mahâkalpa, _i.e._, the whole revolution of our special
Chain of seven Globes or Spheres from beginning to end; the “Small
Wheels” meaning the Rounds, of which there are also seven.
62 Absolute Perfection, Paranirvâna, which is Yong‐Grub.
63 See Dzungarian _Mani Kumbum_, the “Book of the 10,000 Precepts.”
Also consult Wassilief’s _Der Buddhismus_, pp. 327 and 357, etc.
64 In clearer words: One has to acquire true Self‐Consciousness in
order to understand Samvriti, or the “origin of delusion.”
Paramârtha is the synonym of the term Svasamvedanâ, or the
“reflection which analyses itself.” There is a difference in the
interpretation of the meaning of Paramârtha between the Yogâchâryas
and the Madhyamikas, neither of whom, however, explain the real and
true esoteric sense of the expression.
65 In India it is called the “Eye of Shiva,” but beyond the Great Range
it is known in Esoteric phraseology as “Dangma’s Opened Eye.” Dangma
means a purified soul, one who has become a Jîvanmukta, the highest
Adept, or rather a Mahâtmâ so‐called. His “Opened Eye” is the inner
spiritual eye of the seer; and the faculty which manifests through
it, is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood, _i.e._, the power
of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of spiritual
intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable.
This faculty is intimately connected with the “third eye,” which
mythological tradition ascribes to certain races of men.
66 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. 21.
67 And yet, one, _claiming authority_, namely, Sir Monier Williams,
Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, has just denied the fact.
This is what he taught his audience, on June the 4th, 1888, in his
annual address before the Victoria Institute of Great Britain:
“Originally, Buddhism set its face against all solitary asceticism
... to attain sublime heights of knowledge. It had no occult, no
esoteric system of doctrine ... withheld from ordinary men” (!!).
And, again: “... When Gautama Buddha began his career, the later and
lower form of Yoga seems to have been little known.” And then,
contradicting himself, the learned lecturer forthwith informs his
audience that “we learn from _Lalita‐Vistara_ that various forms of
bodily torture, self‐maceration, and austerity were common in
Gautama’s time.” (!!) But the lecturer seems quite unaware that this
kind of torture and self‐maceration is precisely the lower form of
Yoga, _Hatha_ Yoga, which was “little known” and yet so “common” in
Gautama’s time.
68 It is even argued that all the Six Darshanas, or Schools of
Philosophy, show traces of Buddha’s influence, being either taken
from Buddhism or due to Greek teaching! (See Weber, Max Müller,
etc.) We labour under the impression that Colebrooke, “the highest
authority” in such matters, had long ago settled the question by
showing that “the Hindûs were in this instance the teachers, not the
learners.”
69 Soul, as the basis of all, Anima Mundi.
70 Absolute Being and Consciousness, which are Absolute Non‐Being and
Unconsciousness.
71 “Paramârthasatya” is self‐consciousness; Svasamvedanâ, or self‐
analyzing reflection—from _parama_, above everything, and _artha_,
comprehension; _satya_ meaning absolute true being, or _esse_. In
Tibetan Paramârthasatya is Dondampaidenpa. The opposite of this
absolute reality, or actuality, is Samvritisatya—the relative truth
only—Samvriti meaning “false conception” and being the origin of
Illusion, Mâyâ; in Tibetan Kundzabchidenpa, “illusion‐creating
appearance.”
72 _Aphorisms of the Bodhisattvas._
73 Âryâsanga was a pre‐Christian Adept and founder of a Buddhist
esoteric school, though Csoma de Körös places him, for some reasons
of his own, in the seventh century A.D. There was another Aryâsanga,
who lived during the first centuries of our era, and the Hungarian
scholar most probably confuses the two.
74 _Vâyu Purâna_.
75 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson, I. 20.
76 Finite self‐consciousness, I mean. For how can the _Absolute_ attain
this otherwise than simply as an _aspect_, the highest of which
aspects known to us is human consciousness?
77 See Schwegler’s _Handbook of the History of Philosophy_, in
Sterling’s translation, p. 28.
78 Vajrapâni or Vajradhara means the diamond‐holder; in Tibetan
Dorjesempa, _sempa_ meaning the soul; its adamantine quality
referring to its indestructibility in the hereafter. The explanation
with regard to the Anupâdaka given in the _Kâla Chakra_, the first
in the Gyut division of the _Kanjur_, is half esoteric. It has
misled the Orientalists into erroneous speculations with respect to
the Dhyâni‐Buddhas and their earthly correspondencies, the Mânushi‐
Buddhas. The real tenet is hinted at in a subsequent volume, and
will be more fully explained in its proper place.
79 To quote Hegel again, who with Schelling practically accepted the
Pantheistic conception of periodical Avatâras (special incarnations
of the World‐Spirit in Man, as seen in the case of all the great
religious reformers): “The essence of man is spirit ... only by
stripping himself of his finiteness and surrendering himself to pure
self‐consciousness does he attain the truth. Christ‐man, as man in
whom the Unity of God‐man [identity of the individual with the
universal Consciousness as taught by the Vedântins and some
Advaitees] appeared, has, in his death and history generally,
himself presented the eternal history of Spirit—a history which
every man has to accomplish in himself, in order to exist as
Spirit.”—_Philosophy of History_, Sibree’s English Translation, p.
340.
80 Chohanic, Dhyâni‐Buddhic.
81 Rûpa.
82 Arûpa.
83 “Mother of the Gods,” Aditi, or Cosmic Space. In the _Zohar_, she is
called Sephira, the Mother of the Sephiroth, and Shekinah in her
primordial form, _in abscondita_.
84 Hence Non‐Being is “Absolute Being,” in Esoteric Philosophy. In the
tenets of the latter even Âdi‐Buddha (the First or Primeval Wisdom)
is, while manifested, in one sense an Illusion, Mâyâ, since all the
gods, including Brahmâ, have to die at the end of the Age of Brahmâ;
the abstraction called Parabrahman—whether we call it Ain Suph, or
with Herbert Spencer the Unknowable—alone being the One Absolute
Reality. The One Secondless Existence is Advaita, “Without a
Second,” and all the rest is Mâyâ, so teaches the Advaita
Philosophy.
85 Motion.
86 Wilson, I. iv.
87 Mother‐Lotus.
88 An unpoetical term, yet still very graphic.
89 Gross, _The Heathen Religion_, p. 195.
90 _Precepts for Yoga_.
91 A Vedântin of the Visishthadvaita Philosophy would say that, though
the only independent Reality, Parabrahman is inseparable from His
Trinity. That He is three, “Parabrahman, Chit, and Achit,” the last
two being dependent Realities unable to exist separately; or, to
make it clearer, Parabrahman is the Substance—changeless, eternal,
and incognizable—and Chit (Âtmâ) and Achit (Anâtmâ) and its
qualities, as form and colour are the qualities of any object. The
two are the garment, or body, or rather aspect (sharîra) of
Parabrahman. But an Occultist would find much to say against this
claim, and so would the Advaiti Vedântin.
92 _Sc._, Sons.
93 Simultaneously.
94 Moves.
95 Periodical.
96 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, I. 40.
97 Triangle.
98 Quaternary.
99 Hiranyagarbha.
100 The three hypostases of Brahmâ, or Vishnu, the three Avasthâs.
101 Number, truly; but never Motion. It is Motion which begets the
Logos, the Word, in Occultism.
102 The “fourteen precious things.” The narrative or allegory is found
in the _Shatapatha Brâmanah_ and others. The Japanese Secret Science
of the Buddhist Mystics, the Yamabooshi, has “seven precious
things.” We will speak of them, hereafter.
103 “The original for Understanding is Sattva, which Shankara renders
Antaskarana. ‘Refined,’ he says, ‘by sacrifices and other
sanctifying operations.’ In the _Katha_, at p. 148, Sattva is
rendered by Shankara to mean Buddhi—a common use of the word.”
(_Bhagavadgîtâ_, etc., translated by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A.;
edited by Max Müller, p. 193.) Whatever meaning various schools may
give the term, Sattva is the name given among Occult students of the
Âryâsanga School to the dual Monad, or Âtmâ‐Buddhi, and Âtmâ‐Buddhi
on this plane corresponds to Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti on the
higher plane.
104 Amrita.
105 Cory’s _Ancient Fragments_, p. 314.
106 On Rosenkranz.
107 i. 2.
108 _John_, i. 4.
109 Lanoo is a student, a Chelâ who studies practical Esotericism.
110 “Whom thou knowest now as Kwan‐Shai‐Yin.”—_Comment._
111 Eka is One; Chatur, Four; Tri, Three; and Sapta, Seven.
112 “Tridasha,” or Thirty, three times ten, alludes to the Vedic deities
in round numbers, or more accurately 33—a sacred number. They are
the 12 Âdityas, the 8 Vasus, the 11 Rudras, and the 2 Ashvins—the
twin sons of the Sun and Sky. This is the root‐number of the Hindû
Pantheon, which enumerates 33 crores, or three hundred and thirty
millions of gods and goddesses.
113 Stars.
114 The Upper Space.
115 Element.
116 The Gnostic Sophia, “Wisdom,” who is the “Mother” of the Ogdoad
(Aditi, in a certain sense, with her eight sons), is the Holy Ghost
and the Creator of all, as in the ancient systems. The “Father” is a
far later invention. The earliest manifested Logos was female
everywhere—the mother of the seven planetary powers.
117 See _Chinese Buddhism_, by the Rev. Joseph Edkins, who always gives
correct facts, although his conclusions are very frequently
erroneous.
118 _Book of Sarparâjni_.
119 By “God, the Father,” the seventh principle in Man and Kosmos are
here unmistakably meant, this principle being inseparable in its
Esse and Nature from the seventh cosmic principle. In one sense it
is the Logos of the Greeks and the Avalokiteshvara of the Esoteric
“Buddhists.”
120 Fitzedward Hall’s edition, in the _Bibliotheca Indica_, p. 16.
121 _Anugîtâ_, ch. xxvi, K. T. Telang’s Translation, p. 333.
122 See Mariette’s _Abydos_, II. 63, and III. 413, 414, No. 1,122.
123 _Book of Dzyan_, III.
124 Od is the pure life‐giving Light, or magnetic fluid; Ob the
messenger of death used by sorcerers, the nefarious evil fluid; Aour
is the synthesis of the two, Astral Light proper. Can the
Philologists tell why Od—a term used by Reichenbach to denominate
the vital fluid—is also a Tibetan word meaning light, brightness,
radiancy? It also means “sky” in an Occult sense. Whence the root of
the word? But Âkâsha is not quite Ether, but far higher than that,
as will be shown.
125 This is again similar to the doctrine of Fichte and German
Pantheists. The former reveres Jesus as the great teacher who
inculcated the unity of the spirit of man with the God‐Spirit or
Universal Principle (the Advaita doctrine). It is difficult to find
a single speculation in Western metaphysics which has not been
anticipated by archaic Eastern philosophy. From Kant to Herbert
Spencer, it is all a more or less distorted echo of the Dvaita,
Advaita, and Vedântic doctrines generally.
126 Compare Dowson’s _Dictionary of Hindû Mythology_, p. 57.
127 Whether the genus of the bird be _cygnus_, _anser_, or _pelecanus_,
it is no matter, as it is an aquatic bird floating or moving on the
waters like the Spirit, and then issuing from those waters to give
birth to other beings. The true significance of the symbol of the
Eighteenth Degree of the Rosecroix is precisely this, though it was
later on poetised into the motherly feeling of the pelican rending
its bosom to feed its seven little ones with its blood.
128 The reason why Moses forbids eating the pelican and swan
(_Deuteronomy_, xiv. 16, 17), classing the two among the unclean
fowls, and permits eating “the bald locusts, beetles, and the
grasshopper after his kind” (_Leviticus_ xi. 22.), is a purely
physiological one, and has to do with mystic symbology only in so
far as the word “unclean,” like every other word, ought not to be
understood literally; for it is esoteric like all the rest, and may
as well mean “holy” as not. It is a very suggestive blind in
connection with certain superstitions—_e.g._, that of the Russian
people, who will not use the pigeon for food; not because it is
“unclean” but because the “Holy Ghost” is credited with having
appeared under the form of a dove.
129 Chaos.
130 Not the Mediæval Alchemists, but the Magi and Fire‐Worshippers, from
whom the Rosicrucians, or the Philosophers _per ignem_, the
successors of the Theurgists, borrowed all their ideas concerning
Fire, as a mystic and divine element.
131 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 146.
132 “Para” gives the force of beyond, outside.
133 Purusha.
134 Prakriti.
135 I, I. 7.
136 The Web.
137 The Father.
138 The Root of Matter.
139 The Elements, with their respective Powers, or Intelligences.
140 The Web.
141 _Popular Astronomy_, pp. 507, 508.
142 _American Journal of Science_, July, 1870.
143 Winchell, _World‐Life_, pp. 83‐5.
144 Of the Atoms.
145 The Universe.
146 Primeval Light.
147 This is said in view of the fact that the flame from a fire is
inexhaustible, and that the lights of the whole Universe could be
lit from one simple rush‐light without diminishing the flame.
148 Chap. viii., p. 80, Telang’s Translation.
149 _Deuteronomy_, iv 24.
150 _Thess._, i. 7, 8.
151 _Acts_, ii. 3.
152 _Rev._, xix. 13.
153 Telang’s Translation, _Sacred Books of the East_, viii. 278.
154 Dhyân Chohans.
155 Formless.
156 With Bodies.
157 Pitris.
158 The Four, represented in the Occult numerals by the Tetraktys, the
Sacred or Perfect Square, is a Sacred Number with the Mystics of
every nation and race. It has one and the same significance in
Brâhmanism, Buddhism, in Kabalism and in the Egyptian, Chaldean and
other numerical systems.
159 In the _Kabalah_, the same numbers, viz., 1065 are a value of
Jehovah, since the numerical values of the three letters which
compose his name—Jod, Vau and twice Hé—are respectively 10 (י), 6
(ו) and 5 (ה); or again thrice seven, 21. “Ten is the Mother of the
Soul, for Life and Light are therein united,” says Hermes. “For
number one is born of the Spirit and the number ten from Matter
[Chaos, feminine]; the unity has made the ten, the ten the unity.”
(_Book of the Keys_.) By means of Temura, the anagrammatical method
of the _Kabalah_, and the knowledge of 1065 (21), a universal
science may be obtained regarding Cosmos and its mysteries (Rabbi
Yogel). The Rabbis regard the numbers 10, 6, and 5 as the most
sacred of all.
160 The reader may be told that an American Kabalist has now discovered
the same number for the Elohim. It came to the Jews from Chaldæa.
See “Hebrew Metrology,” in _The Masonic Review_, July, 1885,
McMillan Lodge, No. 141.
161 We find the same expression in Egypt. Mout signifies, for one thing,
“Mother,” and shows the character assigned to her in the triad of
that country. She was no less the mother than the wife of Ammon, one
of the principal titles of the god being “the husband of his
mother.” The goddess Mout, or Mût, is addressed as “Our Lady,” the
“Queen of Heaven” and “of the Earth,” thus “sharing these titles
with the other mother goddesses, Isis, Hathor, etc.” (Maspero).
162 The Sparks.
163 The permutation of Oeaohoo. The literal signification of the word
is, among the Eastern Occultists of the North, a circular wind,
whirlwind; but in this instance, it is a term to denote the
ceaseless and eternal Cosmic Motion, or rather the Force that moves
it, which Force is tacitly accepted as the Deity, but never named.
It is the eternal Kârana, the ever‐acting Cause.
164 vi. 15. The _Anugîtâ_ forms part of the Ashvamedha Parvan of the
_Mahâbhârata_. The translator of the _Bhagavadgîtâ_, edited by Max
Müller, regards it as a continuation of the _Bhagavadgîtâ_. Its
original is one of the oldest _Upanishads_.
165 This shows the modern metaphysicians, added to all past and present
Hegels, Berkeleys, Schopenhauers, Hartmanns, Herbert Spencers, and
even the modern Hylo‐Idealists to boot, no better than the pale
copyists of hoary antiquity.
166 It is the knowledge of this law that permits and helps the Arhat to
perform his Siddhis, or various phenomena, such as the
disintegration of matter, the transport of objects from one place to
another, etc.
167 These are ancient Commentaries attached with modern Glossaries to
the Stanzas, for the Commentaries in their symbolical language are
usually as difficult to understand as the Stanzas themselves.
168 In a polemical scientific work, _The Modern Genesis_ (p. 48), the
Rev. W. B. Slaughter, criticizing the position assumed by the
astronomers, says: “It is to be regretted that the advocates of this
[nebular] theory have not entered more largely into the discussion
of it [the beginning of rotation] No one condescends to give us the
_rationale_ of it. How does the process of cooling and contracting
the mass impart to it a rotatory motion?” (Quoted by Winchell,
_World‐Life_, p. 94.) It is not materialistic Science that can ever
solve it. “_Motion is eternal in the unmanifested, and periodical in
the manifest_,” says an Occult teaching. It is “_when heat caused by
the descent of Flame into primordial matter causes its particles to
move, which motion becomes the Whirlwind_.” A drop of liquid assumes
a spheroidal form owing to its atoms moving around themselves in
their ultimate, unresolvable, and noumenal essence; unresolvable for
Physical Science, at any rate. The question is amply treated later
on.
169 The x, the unknown quantity.
170 Which makes Ten, or the perfect number, applied to the “Creator,”
the name given to the totality of the Creators blended by the
Monotheists into One, as the “Elohim,” Adam Kadmon or Sephira, the
Crown—are the androgyne synthesis of the ten Sephiroth, who stand
for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the popularized
_Kabalah_. The Esoteric Kabalists, however, following the Eastern
Occultists, divide the upper Sephirothal triangle (or Sephira,
Chokmah and Binah) from the rest, which leaves seven Sephiroth. As
for Svabhâvat, the Orientalists explain the term as meaning the
universal plastic matter diffused through space, with, perhaps, half
an eye to the Ether of Science. But the Occultists identify it with
“Father‐Mother” on the mystic plane.
171 Arûpa.
172 Boundless Circle.
173 Subjective, Formless.
174 Bhâskara.
175 This refers to the Abstract Thought and concrete Voice, or the
manifestation thereof, the effect of the Cause. Adam Kadmon, or
Tetragrammaton, is the Logos in the _Kabalah_. Therefore this Triad
answers in the latter to the highest Triangle of Kether, Chokmah and
Binah, the last a female potency, and at the same time the male
Jehovah, as partaking of the nature of Chokmah, or the male Wisdom.
176 The Secret Doctrine teaches that the Sun is a central star and not a
planet. Yet the ancients knew of and worshipped seven great gods,
excluding the Sun and Earth. Which was that “Mystery God” they set
apart? Of course not Uranus, only discovered by Herschel in 1781.
But could it not be known by another name? Says Ragon: “Occult
Sciences having discovered through astronomical calculations that
the number of the planets must be seven, the ancients were led to
introduce the Sun into the scale of the celestial harmonies, and
make him occupy the vacant place. Thus, every time they perceived an
influence that pertained to none of the six planets known, they
attributed it to the Sun.... The error seems important, but was not
so in practical results, if the astrologers replaced Uranus by the
Sun, which ... is a central Star relatively motionless, turning only
on its axis and regulating time and measure; and which cannot be
turned aside from its true functions.” (_Maçonnerie Occulte_, p.
447.) The nomenclature of the days of the week is also faulty. “The
Sun‐day ought to be Uranus‐day (Urani dies, Urandi),” adds the
learned writer.
177 Planetary System.
178 “The Sun rotates on its axis always in the same direction in which
the planets revolve in their respective orbits,” astronomy teaches
us.
179 See _Anugîtâ_, Telang, x. 9; and _Aitareya Brâhmana_, Haug, p. 1.
180 This essence of cometary matter, Occult Science teaches, is totally
different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with
which Modern Science is acquainted. It is homogeneous in its
primitive form beyond the Solar Systems, and differentiates entirely
once it crosses the boundaries of our Earth’s region; vitiated by
the atmospheres of the planets and the already compound matter of
the interplanetary stuff, it is heterogeneous only in our manifested
world.
181 Manas—the Mind‐Principle, or the Human Soul.
182 Buddhi—the Divine Soul.
183 See _Correlation of Physical Forces_, 1843, p. 81; and _Address to
the British Association_, 1866.
184 Very similar ideas were those of W. Mattieu Williams, in _The Fuel
of the Sun_; of Dr. C. William Siemens, _On the Conservation of
Solar Energy_ (_Nature_, XXV, 440‐444, March 9, 1882); and also of
Dr. P. Martin Duncan in an _Address_, as the President of the
Geological Society, London, May, 1877. See _World‐Life_, by
Alexander Winchell, LL.D., p. 53, _et seq_.
185 When we speak of Neptune, it is not as an Occultist but as a
European. The true Eastern Occultist will maintain that, whereas
there are many yet undiscovered planets in our system, Neptune does
not really belong to it, in spite of its _apparent_ connection with
our Sun and the influence of the latter upon it. This connection is
mâyâvic, imaginary, they say.
186 Word, Voice and Spirit.
187 These are the four “Immortals,” which are mentioned in the _Atharva
Veda_ as the “Watchers” or Guardians of the four quarters of the
sky. (See Ch. lxxvi., 1‐4, _et seq_.)
188 _Conflict between Religion and Science_, pp. 132 and 133.
189 _Principles of Science_, II. 455.
190 _Les Mystères de l’Horoscope_, Ely Star, p. xi.
191 _Psalms_, civ. 4.
192 The difference between the Builders, the Planetary Spirits, and the
Lipika must not be lost sight of. (See Shlokas 5 and 6 of this
Commentary.)
193 That is, he is under the influence of their guiding thought.
194 Cosmic mists.
195 The World to be.
196 Atoms.
197 See A. P. Sinnett’s _Esoteric Buddhism_, 5th annotated edition, pp.
171‐173.
198 The first and greatest Tibetan Reformer who founded the “Yellow‐
Caps,” Gelukpas. He was born in the year 1355 A.D., in the district
of Amdo, and was the Avatâra of Amitâbha, the celestial name of
Gautama Buddha.
199 T. Subba Row seems to identify him with, and to call him, the Logos.
(See his _Lectures on the Bhagavadgîtâ_, in the _Theosophist_, vol.
ix.)
200 Helmholtz, _Faraday Lecture_, 1881.
201 It is well known that sand, when placed on a metal plate in
vibration, assumes a series of regular figures of various
descriptions. Can Science give a _complete_ explanation of this
fact?
202 See _The Masonic Cyclopædia_, Mackenzie; and _The Pythagorean
Triangle_, Oliver.
203 Ormazd is the Logos, the “First Born,” and the Sun.
204 _Against Apion_, I, 25.
205 See _Isis Unveiled_, II., 430‐438.
206 See Dowson’s _Hindû Classical Dictionary_.
207 The mineral atoms.
208 Gaseous clouds.
209 See _Kabbalah Denudata_, “De Anima,” p. 113.
210 “The doctrine of the rotation of the earth about an axis was taught
by the Pythagorean Hicetas, probably as early as 500 B.C. It was
also taught by his pupil Ecphantus, and by Heraclides, a pupil of
Plato. The immobility of the sun and the orbital rotation of the
earth were shown by Aristarchus of Samos as early as 281 B.C. to be
suppositions accordant with facts of observation. The heliocentric
theory was also taught about 150 B.C., by Seleucus of Seleucia on
the Tigris. [It was taught 500 B.C. by Pythagoras.—H.P.B.] It is
said also that Archimedes, in a work entitled _Psammites_,
inculcated the heliocentric theory. The sphericity of the earth was
distinctly taught by Aristotle, who appealed for proof to the figure
of the earth’s shadow on the moon in eclipses. (Aristotle, _De
Cælo_, lib. II., cap, XIV.) The same idea was defended by Pliny.
(_Nat. Hist._, II., 65.) These views seem to have been lost from
knowledge for more than a thousand years....” (Winchell, _World‐
Life_, 551‐2.)
211 _On Vortex Atoms_.
212 _Op. cit._, 567.
213 Abridged from _Principia Rerum Naturalium_.
214 The Lipika.
215 That is: the First is now the Second World.
216 The Formless Universe of Thought.
217 The Shadowy World of Primal Form, or the Intellectual.
218 In the _Rig Veda_, we find the names Brahmanaspati and Brihaspati
alternating with, and equivalent to, each other. Also see
_Brihadâranyaka Upanishad_; Brihaspati is a deity called the “Father
of the Gods.”
219 _Logic_, II. 125.
220 Having already taken the first three.
221 Hosts.
222 The four Aspects are the body, its life or vitality, and the
“double” of the body—the triad which disappears with the death of
the person—and the Kâma Rûpa which disintegrates in Kâma Loka.
223 _On Amos_, iv.
224 _Theol. Cir._, I. vii.
225 See _The Occult World_, pp. 89, 90.
226 Thus the sentence, “Natura Elementorum obtinet revelationem Dei”
(Clemens, _Stromata_, IV. 6), is applicable to both or neither.
Consult the _Zends_, II. 228, and Plutarch _De Iside_, as compared
by Layard, _Académie des Inscriptions_, 1854, Vol. XV.
227 _Exodus_ xxvi, xxvii.
228 _Antiquities_, I. VIII, ch. xxii.
229 _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 216.
230 “Man” was here substituted for “Dragon.” Compare the Ophite Spirits.
The Angels recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, who correspond
to these “Faces,” were with the Ophites: Dragon—Raphael;
Lion—Michael; Bull, or Ox—Uriel; and Eagle—Gabriel. The four keep
company with the four Evangelists, and preface the Gospels.
231 _Ezekiel_, i.
232 The Jews, save the Kabalists, having no names for East, West, South,
and North, expressed the idea by words signifying before, behind,
right and left, and very often confounded the terms exoterically,
thus making the blinds in the _Bible_ more confused and difficult to
interpret. Add to this the fact that out of the forty‐seven
translators of King James’ Bible “only three understood Hebrew, and
of these two died before the Psalms were translated” (_Royal Masonic
Cyclopædia_), and one may easily understand what reliance can be
placed on the English version of the _Bible_. In this work the Douay
Roman Catholic version is generally followed.
233 The vertical line or the figure 1.
234 Circle.
235 Also for those who, etc.
236 The Formless World and the World of Forms.
237 _Theosophist_, Feb., 1877, p. 303.
238 These voluntary reïncarnations are referred to in our Doctrine as
Nirmânakâyas—the surviving spiritual principles of men.
239 Sûkshma Sharîra, “dream‐like” illusive body, with which are clothed
the inferior Dhyânis of the celestial Hierarchy.
240 Compare this Esoteric tenet with the Gnostic doctrine found in
_Pistis‐Sophia_ (Knowledge‐Wisdom), in which treatise Sophia
(Achamôth) is shown lost in the waters of Chaos (Matter), on her way
to the Supreme Light, and Christos delivering and helping her on the
right Path. Note well, that “Christos” with the Gnostics meant the
Impersonal Principle, the Âtman of the Universe, and the Âtmâ within
every man’s soul—and not Jesus; though in the old Coptic MS., in the
British Museum, “Christos” is replaced by “Jesus” and other terms.
241 _A Catechism of the Visishthadvaita Philosophy_, by N.
Bhâshiyacharya, F.T.S., late Pandit of the Adyar Library.
242 _Träume eines Geistersehers_, quoted by C. C. Massey, in his preface
to Von Hartmann’s _Spiritismus_.
243 _Le Livre des Morts_, Paul Pierret, Chap. xvii. p. 61.
244 See also for other data on this peculiar expression, the Day of
“Come To Us,” _The Funerary Ritual of the Egyptians_, by Viscount de
Rougé.
245 Chaos.
246 Our Universe.
247 _The Theosophist_, Feb., 1887, p. 305.
248 _Op. cit._, p. 306.
249 Madhya is said of something whose commencement and end are unknown,
and Para means infinite. These expressions all relate to infinitude
and to division of time.
250 _Op. cit._, p. 307.
251 From the Sanskrit _Laya_, the point of matter where every
differentiation has ceased.
252 _Five Years of Theosophy_, Art., “Personal and Impersonal God,” p.
200.
253 Elements.
254 Fraction.
255 Presidential Address before the Royal Society of Chemists, March,
1888.
256 P. 242.
257 Worlds.
258 A period of 311,040,000,000,000 years, according to Brâhmanical
calculations.
259 See the _Scientific Arena_, a monthly journal devoted to current
philosophical teaching and its bearing upon the religious thought of
the age. New York: A. Wilford Hall, Ph.D., LL.D., Editor, July,
August, and September, 1886.
260 Such, we believe, is the name applied to what he also calls “Etheric
Centres,” by J. W. Keely, of Philadelphia, the inventor of the
famous “Motor”—destined, as his admirers have hoped, to
revolutionize the motor power of the world.
261 The moon is _dead_ only so far as regards her _inner_
principles—_i.e._, _psychically_ and _spiritually_, however absurd
the statement may seem. Physically, she is only as a semi‐paralysed
body may be. She is aptly referred to in Occultism as the “Insane
Mother,” the great sidereal _lunatic_.
262 Occultists, however, having the most perfect faith in their own
exact records, astronomical and mathematical, calculate the age of
humanity, and assert that men (as separate sexes) have existed in
this Round just 18,618,727 years, as the Brâhmanical teachings and
even some Hindû calendars declare.
263 The commentaries on the Stanzas are resumed on p. 213.
264 In _Esoteric Buddhism_ and _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_.
265 Many more planets are enumerated in the Secret Books than in modern
astronomical works.
266 p. 48.
267 See, in _Esoteric Buddhism_, “The Constitution of Man,” and the
“Planetary Chain.”
268 Winchell’s _World‐Life_.
269 P. 113 (5th edition).
270 pp. 185‐6.
271 Kosha is “sheath” literally, the sheath of every principle.
272 Sthûla‐upâdhi, or basis of the principle.
273 Life.
274 The Astral Body, or Linga Sharîra.
275 Buddhi.
276 See Diagram II, p. 195.
277 Extract from the Teacher’s letters on various topics.
278 We are not concerned with the other Globes in this work except
incidentally.
279 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 136.
280 _Lucifer_, May, 1888.
281 _Esoteric Buddhism_ (5th ed.), p. 46.
282 _Op. cit._, p. 49.
283 _Op. cit._, p. 140.
284 p. 177 _supra_.
285 Occultism divides the periods of Rest (Pralaya) into several kinds:
there is the _Individual_ Pralaya of each Globe, as humanity and
life pass on to the next—seven minor Pralayas in each Round; the
_Planetary_ Pralaya, when seven Rounds are completed; the _Solar_
Pralaya, when the whole system is at an end; and finally the
_Universal_ Pralaya, Mahâ or Brahmâ Pralaya, at the close of the Age
of Brahmâ. These are the chief Pralayas or “destruction periods.”
There are many other minor ones, but with these we are not concerned
at present.
286 Pp. 48, 49.
287 _Ibid._
288 “Physical” here means differentiated for cosmical purposes and work;
that “physical side,” nevertheless, if objective to the apperception
of beings from other planes, is yet quite subjective to us on our
plane.
289 Pp. 276 _et seq_.
290 _Ibid._
291 See diagram, _op. cit._, p. 277.
292 _Op. cit._, pp. 273‐4.
293 _Op. cit._, p. 274‐5.
294 II. 278‐9.
295 P. 48.
296 The _Natures_ of the seven Hierarchies or Classes of Pitris and
Dhyân Chohans which compose our nature and bodies are here meant.
297 Round, or revolution of Life and Being round the seven smaller
Wheels.
298 Thirds.
299 Race.
300 P. 235.
301 _Rev._, xii. 7‐9.
302 See Vol. II, Shloka 17.
303 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 299, 300. Compare also Dunlap, _Sôd: the Son of
the Man_, pp. 51 _et seq._
304 On the authority of Irenæus, of Justin Martyr and of the _Codex_
itself, Dunlap shows that the Nazarenes regarded “Spirit” as a
_female and evil_ Power, in its connection with our Earth.
305 Fetahil is identical with the host of the Pitris, who “created man”
as a “shell” only. He was, with the Nazarenes, the King of Light,
and the Creator; but in this instance he is the unlucky Prometheus,
who fails to get hold of the Living Fire necessary for the formation
of the Divine Soul, as he is ignorant of the secret name, the
ineffable or incommunicable name of the Kabalists.
306 The spirit of Matter and Concupiscence; Kâma Rûpa _minus_ Manas,
Mind.
307 _Codex Nazaræus_, ii. 233.
308 This Mano of the Nazarenes strangely resembles the Hindû Manu, the
Heavenly Man of the _Rig Veda_.
309 “I am the true _Vine_, and my father is the husbandman.” (_John_,
xv. 1.)
310 With the Gnostics, Christ, as well as Michael who is identical with
him in some respects, was the “Chief of the Æons.”
311 _Codex Nazaræus_, i. 135.
312 See the Cosmogony of Pherecydes.
313 I. 301, note.
314 They are found, however, in the Chaldean _Book of Numbers_.
315 _Op. cit._, II. 183 _et seq._
316 For the difference between _nous_, the higher divine Wisdom, and
psyche, the lower and terrestrial, see _St. James_, iii. 15‐17.
317 Jehovah’s connection with the Moon in the _Kabalah_ is well known to
students.
318 For the Nazarenes, see _Isis Unveiled_, II. 131 and 132. The true
followers of the true Christos were all Nazarenes and _Christians_,
and were the opponents of the later Christians.
319 See the diagram of the Lunar Chain of seven worlds, p. 195, where,
as in our own or any other Chain, the upper worlds are spiritual,
while the lowest, whether Moon, Earth, or any other planet, is dark
with matter.
320 The whole Kosmos. The reader is reminded that in the Stanzas Kosmos
often means only our own Solar System, not the Infinite Universe.
321 This is purely astronomical.
322 For a clearer explanation of the above, see “Saptaparna” in the
Index.
323 _Op. cit._, III. 346.
324 _Book of Dzyan_.
325 See _Index_, at the words “Evolution,” “Darwin,” “Kapila,” “Battle
of Life,” etc.
326 _Isis Unveiled_, II. 260.
327 _Vishnu Purâna_.
328 Chain.
329 Earth.
330 Kenealy, _Book of God_, p. 118.
331 Acosta, vi. 14.
332 Kenealy, _Ibid._
333 I, 587‐93.
334 That which was _natural_ in the sight of primitive man, has only now
become _miracle_ to us; and that which was to him a miracle, could
never be expressed in our language.
335 There is no nation in the world in which the feeling of devotion, or
of religious mysticism, is more developed and prominent than in the
Hindû people. See what Max Müller says of this idiosyncrasy and
national feature in his works. This is a direct inheritance from the
primitive _conscious_ men of the Third Race.
336 _Lectures on Heroes_.
337 Vehicle.
338 Âtman.
339 Âtmâ‐Buddhi, Spirit‐Soul. This relates to the cosmic principles.
340 Again.
341 Avalokiteshvara.
342 Builders. The seven creative Rishis, now connected with the
constellation of the Great Bear.
343 Earth.
344 Rosenroth, _Liber Mysterii_ IV. 1.
345 _Genesis_ i.
346 _Auszüge aus dem Zohar_, pp. 13‐15.
347 See _Vishnu Purâna_, Book I.
348 Ch. lxxxviii.
349 Ch. lxiv. 29, 30.
350 _Ibid._, 34, 35.
351 A World, when called a “higher World,” is not higher by reason of
its location, but because it is superior in quality or essence. Yet
such a World is generally understood by the profane as “Heaven,” and
located above our heads.
352 Of Form, the Sthûla Sharîra, External Body.
353 Pearls.
354 Ἄνθρωπος, a work on Occult Embryology, Book I.
355 Namely, a congenital idiot.
356 _John_ iii, 8.
357 Ch. cxlviii.
358 _Ibid._, cxlix. 51.
359 _The Seven Souls of Man_, p. 2; a Lecture by Gerald Massey.
360 _De Iside et Osiride_, xliii.
361 Ch. xli.
362 iv. 5.
363 Mariette’s _Abydos_, plate 51.
364 P. Pierret, _Études Égyptologiques_.
365 _Ritual_, ch. ii.
366 Linked into.
367 _Op. cit._, xvii. 4.
368 Several inimical critics are anxious to prove that no Seven
Principles of Man, or Septenary Constitution of our Chain, were
taught in our earlier volumes, _Isis Unveiled_. Though in that work
the doctrine could only be hinted at, there are many passages,
nevertheless, in which the Septenary Constitution of both Man and
the Chain is openly mentioned. Speaking of the Elohim (II. 420), it
is said: “They remain over the seventh heaven (or spiritual world),
for it is they who, according to the Kabalists, formed in succession
the six material worlds, or rather, attempts at worlds, that
preceded our own, which, they say, is the seventh.” Our Globe, in
the diagram representing the Chain, is, of course, the seventh and
lowest; though, as the evolution on these Globes is cyclic, it is
the fourth, on the descending arc of matter. And again (II. 367) it
is written: “In the Egyptian notions, _as in those of all other
faiths founded on philosophy_, man was not merely ... a union of
soul and body; he was a trinity, when spirit was added to it.
Besides, that doctrine made him consist of ... body, ... astral
form, or shadow, ... animal soul, ... the higher soul, and ...
terrestrial intelligence ... [and] a sixth principle, etc.,
etc.”—the seventh—SPIRIT. So clearly are these principles mentioned,
that even in the _Index_ (II. 683), one finds “Six Principles of
Man,” the seventh being, in strict truth, the synthesis of the six,
and _not_ a principle but a ray of the Absolute ALL.
369 See Diagram III, p. 221.
370 pp. 340‐351, “Genesis of the Soul.”
371 _De Mysteriis_, ii. 3.
372 _Asiatic Researches_, xi. 99, 100.
373 Ch. xxxii. 9.
374 Their Upper Triad.
375 Bhûmi or Prithivî.
376 _Book of the Dead_, i. 7. Compare also _Mysteries of Rostan_.
377 Kingdom.
378 Kingdom.
379 The first Shadow of the Physical Man.
380 Man.
381 The Moon.
382 See _Mantuan Codex_.
383 The formation of the “Living Soul,” or Man, would render the idea
more clearly. A “Living Soul” is a synonym of Man in the _Bible_.
These are our seven “Principles.”
384 _Ha Idra Zuta Kadisha_, xxii. 746.
385 xviii. 12.
386 _Hebrews_, iv.
387 Cruden, _sub voce_.
388 _Book of Numbers_, 1. viii. 3.
389 p. 389.
390 Plate VII. p. 37.
391 Esotericism teaches the same. But Manas is not Nephesh; nor is the
latter the Astral, but the Fourth Principle, and also the Second,
Prâna, for Nephesh is the “Breath of Life” in man, as in beast or
insect; of physical, material life, which has no spirituality in it.
392 Éliphas Lévi, whether purposely or otherwise, has confused the
numbers: with us his No. 2 is No. 1 (Spirit); and by making of
Nephesh both the Plastic Mediator and Life, he thus makes in reality
only six principles, because he repeats the first two.
393 _Zohar_, “Idra Suta,” Book iii., p. 292b.
394 1. 302.
395 Read, in _Isis Unveiled_ (ii. 297‐303), the doctrine of the _Codex
Nazaræus_. Every tenet of our teaching is found there under a
different form and allegory.
396 _Manu_, Bk. I.
397 The word “Sin” is curious, but has a particular Occult relation to
the Moon, besides being its Chaldean equivalent.
398 Professor Zöllner’s theory has been more than welcomed by several
Scientists, who are also Spiritualists; Professors Butlerof and
Wagner, of St. Petersburg, for instance.
399 “The giving reality to abstractions is the error of Realism. Space
and Time are frequently viewed as separated from all the concrete
experiences of the mind, instead of being generalizations of these
in certain aspects.” (Bain, _Logic_, Part II. p. 389.)
400 _The Mysteries of Magic_, by A. E. Waite.
401 Wilson, I. 23, 24.
402 _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 169.
403 In the Sânkhya philosophy, the seven Prakritis, or “productive
productions,” are Mahat, Ahamkâra, and the _five_ Tanmâtras. See _Sânkhya Kârikâ_, III., and the Commentary thereon.
404 See _Linga Purâna_, Prior Section, lxx. 12 _et seq._; and _Vâyu
Purâna_, ch. iv., but especially the former _Purâna_—Prior Section,
viii. 67‐74.
405 _Vishnu Purâna_, Book vi., ch. iv. No use to say so to the Hindûs,
who know their _Purânas_ by heart, but very useful to remind our
Orientalists and those Westerns who regard Wilson’s translations as
authoritative, that, in his English translation of the _Vishnu
Purâna_, he is guilty of the most ludicrous contradictions and
errors. So on this identical subject of the seven Prakritis, or the
seven zones of Brahmâ’s Egg, the two accounts differ totally. In
Vol. i. p. 40, the Egg is said to be externally invested by seven
envelopes. Wilson comments: “by Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and
Ahamkâra”—which last word does not exist in the Sanskrit texts. And
in Vol. v. p. 198, of the same _Purâna_, it is written: “in this
manner were the seven forms of nature (Prakriti) reckoned from Mahat
to Earth” (?). Between Mahat, or Mahâ‐Buddhi, and “Water, etc.”, the
difference is very considerable.
406 According to the great metaphysician Hegel also. For him Nature was
a _perpetual becoming_. A purely Esoteric conception. Creation or
Origin, in the Christian sense of the term, is absolutely
unthinkable. As the above‐quoted thinker said: “God (the Universal
Spirit) _objectivizes himself as Nature_, and again rises out of
it.”
407 _Book of Dzyan_, Comm. III, par. 18.
408 P. 19.
409 Primitive, or First Man.
410 Reïncarnation.
411 Vehicle.
412 See, for example, _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the
Quichés_, by Augustus le Plongeon, who shows the identity between
the Egyptian rites and beliefs and those of the people he describes.
The ancient hieratic alphabets of the Mayas and the Egyptians are
almost identical.
413 In _The Theosophist_, 1881.
414 T. Subba Row, _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 154.
415 Also called the “Sons of Wisdom” and of the “Fire‐Mist,” and the
“Brothers of the Sun,” in the Chinese records. Si‐dzang (Tibet) is
mentioned, in the MSS. of the sacred library of the province of Fo‐
Kien, as the great seat of Occult learning from time immemorial,
ages before Buddha. The Emperor Yu, the “Great” (2,207 B.C.), a
pious Mystic and great Adept, is said to have obtained his Knowledge
from the “Great Teachers of the Snowy Range” in Si‐dzang.
416 _Matt._ vi. 5, 6.
417 _The Virgin of the World_, pp. 134‐5.
418 _Paracelsus_, Franz Hartmann, M.D., p. 44.
419 This word is explained by Dr. Hartmann, from the original texts of
Paracelsus before him, as follows. According to this great
Rosicrucian; “Mysterium is everything out of which something may be
developed, which is only germinally contained in it. A seed is the
‘Mysterium’ of a plant, an egg that of a living bird, etc.”
420 _Op. cit._, pp. 41, 42.
421 It is only the mediæval Kabalists who, following the Jewish and one
or two Neo‐Platonists, applied the term Microcosm to man. Ancient
philosophy called the Earth the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, and man
the outcome of the two.
422 “This doctrine, preached 300 years ago,” remarks the translator, “is
identical with the one that has revolutionized modern thought, after
having been put into new shape and elaborated by Darwin. It is still
more elaborated by Kapila in the Sânkhya philosophy.”
423 The Eastern Occultist says that they are guided and informed by
Spiritual Beings, the Workmen in the invisible Worlds, and behind
the veil of Occult Nature, or Nature _in abscondito_.
424 Wilson, I. ii., (Vol. I. 35).
425 A frequent expression in the said “Fragments,” to which we take
exception. The _Universal Mind_ is not a _Being_ or “God.”
426 _The Virgin of the World_, p. 47. “Asclepios,” Pt. I.
427 _Divine Pymander_, ix. 64.
428 _The Virgin of the World_, p. 153.
429 _Op. cit._, pp. 139, 140. Fragments from the “Physical Eclogues” and
“Florilegium” of Stobæus.
430 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. ii, Wilson, I. 13‐15.
431 _Op. cit._, pp. 135‐138.
432 This teaching does not refer to Prakriti‐Purusha beyond the
boundaries of our small universe.
433 The ultimate quiescent state; the Nirvânic condition of the Seventh
Principle.
434 The teaching is all given from our plane of consciousness.
435 Or the “dream of Science,” the primeval really homogeneous matter,
which no mortal can make objective in this Race, or Round either.
436 “Vishnu, in the form of his active energy, neither ever rises nor
sets, and is at once, the _seven‐fold sun_ and distinct from it,”
says _Vishnu Purâna_, II. xi., (Wilson, II. 296).
437 “In the same manner as a man approaching a mirror placed upon a
stand, beholds in it his own image, so the energy (or reflection) of
Vishnu [the Sun] is never disjoined but remains ... in the Sun (as
in a mirror), that is there stationed.” (_Ibid._, _loc. cit._)
438 Compare the Hermetic “Nature” “going down cyclically into matter
when she meets the ‘Heavenly Man’.”
439 The writers of the above knew perfectly well the physical cause of
the tides, of the waves, etc. It is the informing Spirit of the
whole cosmic solar body that is meant here, and which is referred to
whenever such expressions are used from the mystic point of view.
440 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 110, 111, art., “The Twelve Signs of
the Zodiac.”
441 See Stanzas III and IV, and the Commentaries thereupon, and
especially compare the comments on Stanza IV, concerning the Lipika
and the four Mahârâjahs, the agents of Karma.
442 And “Gods” or Dhyânis, too, not only the Genii or “guided Forces.”
443 The meaning of this is that as man is composed of all the Great
Elements—Fire, Air, Water, Earth and Ether—the Elementals which
respectively belong to these Elements feel attracted to man by
reason of their coëssence. That Element which predominates in a
certain constitution will be the ruling Element throughout life. For
instance, if man has a preponderance of the earthly, gnomic Element,
the Gnomes will lead him towards assimilating metals—money and
wealth, and so on. “Animal man is the son of the animal elements out
of which his Soul [life] was born, and animals are the mirrors of
man,” says Paracelsus. (_De Fundamento Sapientiæ._) Paracelsus was
cautious, and wanted the _Bible_ to agree with what he said, and
therefore did not say all.
444 Cyclic progress in development.
445 The God in man and often the incarnation of a God, a highly
Spiritual Dhyân Chohan in him, besides the presence of his own
Seventh Principle.
446 Now, what “God” is meant here? Not God the “Father,” the
anthropomorphic fiction; for that God is the Elohim collectively,
and has no being apart from the Host. Besides, such a God is finite
and imperfect. It is the high Initiates and Adepts who are meant
here by the “few in number.” And it is precisely such men who
believe in “Gods”, and know no “God” but one Universal unrelated and
unconditioned Deity.
447 _The Virgin of the World_, pp. 104‐5, “The Definitions of
Asclepios.”
448 P. 120.
449 _National Reformer_, January 9th, 1887. Article “Phreno‐Kosmo‐
Biology,” by Dr. Lewins.
450 This is Cyclic law; but this law itself is often defied by human
stubbornness.
451 Vol. I. p. 256.
452 _Sepher Jetzirah._
453 As far as “Divine Revelation” is concerned, we agree. Not so with
regard to “human history.” For there is “history” in most of the
allegories and “myths” of India; and events, real actual events, are
concealed under them.
454 When the “false theologies” disappear, then true prehistoric
realities will be found, contained especially in the mythology of
the Âryans and ancient Hindûs, and even the pre‐Homeric Hellenes.
455 See Section VII, “Deus Lunus.”
456 From an MS.
457 _Guide au Musée de Boulaq_, pp. 148, 149.
458 As we said in _Isis Unveiled_ (II. 438‐9): “To the present moment,
in spite of all controversies and researches, History and Science
remain as much as ever in the dark as to the origin of the Jews.
They may as well be the exiled Chandâlas of old India, the
‘bricklayers’ mentioned by Veda‐Vyâsa and Manu, as the Phœnicians of
Herodotus, or the Hyksos of Josephus, or the descendants of Pali
shepherds, or a mixture of all these. The _Bible_ names the Tyrians
as a kindred people and claims dominion over them.... Yet whatever
they may have been, they became a hybrid people, not long after the
time of Moses, for the _Bible_ shows them freely intermarrying not
alone with the Canaanites, but with every other nation or race they
came in contact with.”
459 _Knowledge_, Vol. I; see also Petrie’s letter to _The Academy_, Dec.
17, 1881.
460 _The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid_, p. 9.
461 _Op. cit._, I. 519.
462 _The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid_, p. 93.
463 vii. 13 _et seq._
464 P. 224.
465 Vol. I. Part I. 46.
466 x. 10.
467 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 442‐3.
468 _Exodus_, 11. 21.
469 George Smith, _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 299, 300.
470 II. 3.
471 As a reminder how the _esoteric_ religion of Moses was crushed
several times, and the worship of Jehovah, as reëstablished by
David, put in its place, by Hezekiah for instance, compare _Isis
Unveiled_ (II. 436‐42). Surely there must have been some very good
reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished almost all the High Priests
of Judæa, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the alleged “Books
of Moses,” the _Pentateuch_ of the Synagogue and the _Talmud_?
472 Once more, remember the Hindû Wittoba crucified in space; the
significance of the “sacred sign,” the Svastika; Plato’s Decussated
Man in Space, etc.
473 See farther on the description given of the early Âryan Initiation:
of Vishvakarman crucifying the Sun, Vikarttana, shorn of his
beams—on a cruciform lathe.
474 _Primeval Man Unveiled; or the Anthropology of the Bible_, by the
author (unknown) of _The Stars and the Angels_, 1870, p. 14.
475 _Op. cit._, p. 195.
476 Especially in the face of the evidence furnished by the authorized
_Bible_ itself in _Genesis_ (iv. 16, 17), which shows Cain going to
the land of Nod and there marrying a wife.
477 _Ibid._, p. 194.
478 _Ibid._, p. 55.
479 _Ibid._, pp. 206‐7.
480 _Acts_, xvii. 23, 24.
481 _Taittirîyaka Upanishad_, Second Vallî, First Anuvâka.
482 _Ephesians_, vi, 12.
483 _Oracles of Zoroaster_, “Effatum,” xvi.
484 _Georgica_, Book II. 325.
485 _Isis Unveiled._
486 _Op. cit._, I. 5‐13, Burnell’s translation.
487 The ideal apex of the Pythagorean Triangle.
488 See A. Coke Burnell’s translation, edited by Ed. W. Hopkins, Ph. D.
489 Ahamkâra, as universal Self‐Consciousness, has a triple aspect, as
has also Manas. For this “conception of I,” or the Ego, is either
_sattva_, “pure quietude,” or appears as _rajas_, “active,” or
remains _tamas_, “stagnant,” in darkness. It belongs to Heaven and
Earth, and assumes the properties of Ether.
490 See _Sânkhya Kârikâ_ III, and Commentaries.
491 The word “eternity,” by which Christian theologians interpret the
term “for ever and ever,” does not exist in the Hebrew tongue.
“Oulam,” says Le Clerc, only imports a time when beginning or end is
not known. It does not mean “infinite duration,” and the term “for
ever,” in the _Old Testament_, only signifies a “long time.” Nor is
the word “eternity” used in the Christian sense in the _Purânas_.
For in _Vishnu Purâna_, it is clearly stated that by “eternity” and
“immortality” only “existence to the end of the Kalpa” is meant.
(Book II. chap. viii.)
492 Orphic Theogony is purely Oriental and Indian in its spirit. The
successive transformations it has undergone, have now separated it
widely from the spirit of ancient Cosmogony, as may be seen by
comparing it even with Hesiod’s _Theogony_. Yet the truly Âryan
Hindû spirit breaks forth everywhere in both the Hesiodic and Orphic
systems. (See the remarkable work of James Darmesteter, “Cosmogonies
Âryennes,” in his _Essais Orientaux_.) Thus the original Greek
conception of Chaos is that of the Secret Wisdom Religion. In
Hesiod, therefore, Chaos is infinite, boundless, endless and
beginningless in duration, an abstraction and a visible presence at
the same time, Space filled with darkness, which is primordial
matter in its _pre‐cosmic_ state. For in its etymological sense,
Chaos is Space, according to Aristotle, and Space is the ever Unseen
and Unknowable Deity, in our philosophy.
493 The _manifested_ Spirit: Absolute, Divine Spirit is one with
absolute Divine Substance; Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti are one in
essence. Therefore, Cosmic Ideation and Cosmic Substance, in their
primal character, are one also.
494 _Sepher Yetzirah_, Chap. I. Mishna ix.
495 _Ibid._ It is from “Arba” that Abram is derived.
496 _Zohar_, I. 2a.
497 _Sepher Yetzirah_, Mishna ix. 10.
498 _Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection_.
499 Plato, _Timæus_.
500 Suidas, _sub voc._ “Tyrrhenia.” See Cory’s _Ancient Fragments_, p.
309, 2nd ed.
501 The reader will understand that by “years” is meant “ages,” not mere
periods of 13 lunar months each.
502 See the Greek translation by Philon Byblius.
503 Cory, _Op. cit._, p. 3.
504 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 342.
505 Mithras was regarded among the Persians as the _theos ek petras_—the
God from the rock.
506 Bordj is called a fire‐mountain, a volcano: therefore it contains
fire, rock, earth and water; the male, or active, and the female, or
passive, elements. The myth is suggestive.
507 _Op. cit._, I. 156.
508 Henry Pratt, M.D., _New Aspects of Life_.
509 _Siphrah Dtzenioutha_, i. 16.
510 Damascius, in his Theogony, calls it Dis, “the disposer of all
things.” Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, p. 314.
511 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 341.
512 “Migration of Abraham,” 32.
513 With the Greeks, the River‐Gods, all of them the Sons of the
Primeval Ocean—Chaos, in its masculine aspect—were the respective
ancestors of the Hellenic races. For them the Ocean was the Father
of the Gods; and thus in this connection they had anticipated the
theories of Thales, as rightly observed by Aristotle. (_Metaph._ I.
3‐5.)
514 xxvi. 5.
515 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 133‐4.
516 The Spirit, or hidden voice of the Mantras; the active manifestation
of the latent force, or Occult potency.
517 Orthography of the _Archaic Dictionary_.
518 We do not mean the current or accepted _Bible_, but the _real_
Jewish Scripture, now kabatistically explained.
519 See _Genesis_, ii. 4.
520 It is “unutterable” for the simple reason that it is non‐existent.
It _never_ was either a _name_, or any _word_ at all, but an _idea_
that could not be expressed. A substitute was created for it in the
century preceding our era.
521 The Cosmic Tabernacle of Moses, erected by him in the Desert, was
_square_, representing the four Cardinal Points and the four
Elements, as Josephus tells his readers. (_Antiq._ I. viii. ch.
xxii.) The idea was taken from the pyramids in Egypt, and also in
Tyre, where the pyramids became pillars. The Genii, or Angels, have
their abodes in these four points respectively.
522 Isaac Myer’s _Qabbalah_, published 1888, p. 415.
523 As, for instance, in _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. I.
524 Plutarch, _De Iside et Osiride_, lvi.
525 _Spirit History of Man_, p. 88.
526 Movers, _Phoinizer_, 268.
527 Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, 240.
528 _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. I. Ch. iv., Fitzedward Hall’s rendering.
529 Just as Mûlaprakriti is known only to Îshvara, the Logos, as he is
called by T. Subba Row.
530 Franck, _Die Kabbala_, 126.
531 Philo, _Quæst. et Solut._
532 Franck, _Op. cit._, 153.
533 The “Seven Angels of the Face,” with the Christians.
534 _Philosophumena_, vi. 42.
535 _The Kabbalah Unveiled_, 47.
536 _Qabbalah_, 233.
537 p. 79.
538 Arnobius, VI. xii.
539 We employ the term as one accepted and sanctioned by use, and
therefore more comprehensible to the reader.
540 See Dunlap, _Sôd: the Mysteries of Adoni_, 23.
541 With the ancient Jews, as shown by Le Clerc, the word Oulom meant
simply a time whose beginning or end was not known. The term
“Eternity,” properly speaking, did not exist in the Hebrew tongue
with the meaning applied by Vedântins to Parabrahman, for instance.
542 _Zohar_, Part I. fol. 20a.
543 In the Indian Pantheon the double‐sexed Logos is Brahmâ, the
Creator, whose seven “Mind‐born” Sons are the primeval Rishis—the
Builders.
544 Says Rabbi Simeon: “Oh, companions, companions, man as an 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_.” (_Auszüge ans dem Sohar_, 13, 15.) Light, then,
in _Genesis_, stood for the Androgyne Ray, or “Heavenly Man.”
545 _Zohar_, iii. 290.
546 _Op. cit._, ii. 261.
547 ix. 1.
548 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, 62, 63.
549 The Seven Swans that are believed to descend from Heaven on Lake
Mânsarovara, are in the popular fancy the Seven Rishis of the Great
Bear, who assume that form to visit the locality where the _Vedas_
were written.
550 See Petronius, _Satyricon_, cxxxvi.
551 _Progress of Religious Ideas_, I. 17 _et seq._
552 iii. 165.
553 Ch. liv. 3.
554 Ch. xxii. 1.
555 Ch. xlii. 13.
556 Ch. liv. 1, 2; ch. lxxvii. i.
557 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. 39.
558 _Op. cit._, _ibid._
559 Ch. xvii. 50, 51.
560 Ch. xlii. 13.
561 Ch. lxxx. 9.
562 See Max Müller’s “Our Figures.”
563 A Kabalist would be rather inclined to believe that as the Arabic
_cifron_ was taken from the Indian _sunyan_, nought, so the Jewish
Kabalistic Sephiroth (_Sephrim_) were taken from the word _cipher_,
not in the sense of emptiness, but in that of creation by number and
degrees of evolution. And the Sephiroth are 10 or [circle split by
vertical line].
564 See King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, 370 (2nd ed.).
565 _De Vita Pithag._
566 The year of his birth is given as 608 B.C.
567 That is to say 332 B.C.
568 _Metaphysics_, vii., F.
569 _Euterpe_, 75, 76.
570 _De Cultu Egypt._
571 xxi. 5 _et seq._
572 II _Kings_, xviii. 4.
573 _Supra_, pp. 386, 387.
574 III. 124.
575 Movers, _Phoinizer_, 282.
576 See _Isis Unveiled_, I. 56.
577 Weber, _Akad‐Vorles_, 213, _et seq._
578 The Chinese seem to have thus anticipated Sir William Thomson’s
theory that the first living germ had dropped to the earth from some
passing comet. Query: Why should this be called _scientific_ and the
Chinese idea a superstitious, foolish theory?
579 Compare Movers, _Phoinizer_, 268.
580 His triadic Goddesses are Sati and Anouki.
581 Ptah was originally the god of Death, of Destruction, like Shiva. He
is a Solar God only by virtue of the Sun’s fire killing as well as
vivifying. He was the national God of Memphis, the radiant and
“fair‐faced” God.
582 _Book of Numbers._
583 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, I. Pref. lxxxiv‐v.
584 There is a curious piece of information in the Buddhist esoteric
traditions. The exoteric or allegorical biography of Gautama Buddha
shows this great Sage dying of an indigestion of “pork and rice”; a
very prosaic end, indeed, with little of the solemn element in it!
This is explained as an allegorical reference to his having been
born in the “Boar” or Varâha Kalpa, when Vishnu assumed the form of
that animal to raise the Earth out of the “Waters of Space.” Now as
the Brâhmans descend direct from Brahmâ and are, so to speak,
identified with him; and as they are at the same time the mortal
enemies of Buddha and Buddhism, we have this curious allegorical
hint and combination. The Brâhmanism of the Boar or Varâha Kalpa has
slaughtered the religion of Buddha in India, swept it from its face.
Therefore Buddha, who is identified with his philosophy, is said to
have died from the effects of eating of the flesh of a wild hog. The
very idea of one who established the most rigorous vegetarianism and
respect for animal life—even to refusing to eat eggs as being
vehicles of latent life—dying of an indigestion of meat, is absurdly
contradictory and has puzzled more than one Orientalist. But the
present explanation, however, unveils the allegory, and makes clear
all the rest. The Varâha, however, is no simple Boar, but seems to
have meant at first some antediluvian lacustrine animal “delighting
to sport in water.” (_Vâyu Purâna._)
585 According to Colonel Wilford, the conclusion of the “Great War” took
place in 1370 B.C., (_Asiatic Researches_, xi. 116.); according to
Bentley, 575 B.C.!! We may yet hope, before the end of this century,
to see the Mahâbhâratan epic proclaimed identical with the wars of
the great Napoleon.
586 See _Royal Asiat. Soc._ ix. 364.
587 Bk. vi. ch. iii.
588 In the Vedânta and Nyâya, Nimitta, from which Naimittika, is
rendered as the Efficient Cause, when antithesized with Upâdâna, the
Physical or Material Cause. In the Sânkhya, Pradhâna is a cause
inferior to Brahmâ, or rather Brahmâ being himself a cause, is
superior to Pradhâna. Hence “Incidental” is a wrong translation, and
ought to be rendered, as shown by some scholars, “Ideal” Cause: even
Real Cause would have been better.
589 XII. iv, 35.
590 _Vâyu Purâna._
591 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, VI, iii.
592 The chief Kumâra, or Virgin‐God, a Dhyân Chohan who refuses to
create. A prototype of St. Michael, who also refuses to do so.
593 See concluding lines in Section, “Chaos: Theos: Kosmos.”
594 _Ibid._, iv.
595 This prospect would hardly suit Christian theology, which prefers an
eternal, everlasting Hell for its followers.
596 The term “Elements” must be here understood to mean not only the
visible and physical elements, but also that which St. Paul calls
Elements—the Spiritual, Intelligent Potencies—Angels and Demons in
their manvantaric forms.
597 When this description is correctly understood by Orientalists, in
its esoteric significance, then it will be found that this cosmic
correlation of World‐Elements may explain the correlation of
physical forces better than those now known. At any rate,
Theosophists will perceive that Prakriti has _seven forms_, or
principles, “reckoned from Mahat to Earth.” The “Waters” mean here
the mystic “Mother”; the Womb of Abstract Nature, in which the
Manifested Universe is conceived. The seven “zones” have reference
to the Seven Divisions of that Universe, or the Noumena of the
Forces that bring it into being. It is all allegorical.
598 _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. VI. Ch. iv., Wilson’s mistakes being corrected
and the original terms put in brackets.
599 As it is the Mahâ, the Great, or so‐called Final, Pralaya which is
here described, every thing is reäbsorbed into its original One
Element; the “Gods themselves, Brahmâ and the rest” being said to
die and disappear during that long “Night.”
600 The “Builders” of the Stanzas.
601 From the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_, c. i. § 16 _et seq._; as quoted in
Myer’s _Qabbalah_, 232‐3.
602 Compare the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_.
603 Bk. I. Ch. iii.
604 pp. 219, 221.
605 See Jacolliot’s _Les Fils de Dieu_, and _L’Inde des Brahmes_, p.
230.
606 If this is not prophetic, what is?
607 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. IV. Ch. xxiv.
608 The _Matsya Purâna_ gives Katâpa.
609 _Vishnu Purâna_, _Ibid._
610 Max Müller translates the name as Morya, of the Morya dynasty, to
which Chandragupta belonged. (See _History of Ancient Sanskrit
Literature_). In _Matsya Purâna_, chapter cclxxii, the dynasty of
ten Moryas, or Maureyas, is spoken of. In the same chapter, it is
stated that the Moryas will one day reign over India, after
restoring the Kshattriya race many thousand years hence. Only that
reign will be purely spiritual and “not of this world.” It will be
the kingdom of the next Avatâra. Colonel Tod believes the name
Morya, or Maurya, a corruption of Mori, a Rajpût tribe, and the
commentary on the _Mahâvanso_ thinks that some princes have taken
their name Maurya from their town called Mori, or as Professor Max
Müller gives it, Morya‐Nâgara, which is more correct, after the
original _Mahâvanso_. The Sanskrit Encyclopedia, _Vâchaspattya_, we
are informed by our Brother, Devan Bâdhâdur R. Ragoonath Rao, of
Madras, places Katâpa (Kalâpa) on the northern side of the
Himâlayas, hence in Tibet. The same is stated in the _Bhâgavata
Purâna_, Skanda xii.
611 _Ibid._, ch. iv. The _Vayu Purâna_ declares that Moru will
reëstablish the Kshattriyas in the Nineteenth coming Yuga. ( See _Five Years of Theosophy_, 483, art. “The Moryas and Koothoomi.”)
612 See _Dissertations Relating to Asia_.
613 Ch. lxxxi.
614 I. 11.
615 In the Indian _Purânas_, it is Vishnu, the First, and Brahmâ, the
Second Logos, or the Ideal and Practical Creators, who are
respectively represented, one as manifesting the Lotus, the other as
issuing from it.
616 Not the efforts, however, of the trained psychic faculties of an
Initiate into Eastern Metaphysics, and the Mysteries of Creative
Nature. It is the Profane of the past ages, who have degraded the
pure ideal of cosmic creation into an emblem of mere human
reproduction and sexual functions: it is the Esoteric Teachings, and
the Initiates of the Future, whose mission it is, and will be, to
redeem and ennoble once more the primitive conception, so sadly
profaned by its crude and gross application to exoteric dogmas and
personations, by theological and ecclesiastical religionists. The
silent worship of abstract or noumenal Nature, the only divine
manifestation, is the one ennobling religion of Humanity.
617 Surely the words of the old Initiate into the _primitive_ Mysteries
of Christianity, “Know ye not ye are the Temple of God” (1
_Corinth_, iii. 16), could not be applied in _this_ sense to _men_;
though the meaning _was_, undeniably, so stated, in the minds of the
Hebrew compilers of the _Old Testament_. And here is the abyss that
lies between the symbolism of the _New Testament_ and the Jewish
canon. This gulf would have remained, and have ever widened, had not
Christianity, especially and most glaringly the Latin Church, thrown
a bridge over it. Modern Popery has now spanned it entirely, by its
dogma of the two immaculate conceptions, and the anthropomorphic
and, at the same time idolatrous, character it has conferred upon
the Mother of its God.
618 It was so carried _only_ in the Hebrew _Bible_, and its servile
copyist, Christian theology.
619 The same idea is carried out exoterically in the incidents of the
exodus from Egypt. The Lord God tempts Pharaoh sorely, and “plagues
him with great plagues,” lest the king should escape punishment, and
thus afford no pretext for one more triumph to his “chosen people.”
620 _Exodus_, ii. 10. Even to the seven daughters of the Midianite
priest, who came to draw _water_, and whom Moses helped to _water_
their flock; for which service the Midian gives Moses his daughter
Zipporah, or Sippara, the _shining_ Wave, as wife. (_Exod._ ii.
16‐21.) All this has the same secret meaning.
621 With the Egyptians it was the resurrection in rebirth, after 3,000
years of purification, either in Devachan or the “Fields of Bliss.”
622 Such “frog‐Goddesses” may be seen at Boulak, in the Cairo Museum.
For the statement about the Church‐lamps and inscriptions, the
learned ex‐director of the Boulak Museum, M. Gaston Maspero, must be
held responsible. (See his _Guide au Musée de Boulaq_, p. 146.)
623 The Goddess Τρίμορφος in the statuary of Alcamenes.
624 Ancient Mythology includes ancient Astronomy as well as Astrology.
The planets were the hands pointing out, on the dial of our Solar
System, the hours of certain periodical events. Thus, Mercury was
the _messenger_, appointed to keep time during the daily solar and
lunar phenomena, and was otherwise connected with the God and
Goddess of Light.
625 A caricatured and dwarfed Vedântin notion of Parabrahman containing
within _itself_ the whole Universe, as being that boundless Universe
itself, and _nothing existing outside of itself_.
626 Just as they are to this day in India; the bull of Shiva, and the
cow representing several Shaktis or Goddesses.
627 Hence the worship of the Moon by the Hebrews.
628 “_Male_ and _female_, created he them.”
629 Because it was too sacred. It is referred to as THAT in the _Vedas_.
It is the “Eternal Cause,” and cannot, therefore, be spoken of as a
“First Cause,” a term implying the absence of Cause, at one time.
630 _Pneumatologie: Des Esprits_, tom. III. p. 117; “Archéologie de la
Vierge Mère.”
631 p. 23.
632 Myer’s _Qabbalah_, 335‐6.
633 _Moreh Nebhuchim_, III. xxx.
634 See _De Diis Syriis_, Teraph., II. Synt. p. 31.
635 I. i. 21.
636 See _Pausanias_, viii. 35‐8.
637 Cornutus, _De Natura Deorum_, xxxiv. 1.
638 The Roman Catholics are indebted for the idea of consecrating the
month of May to the Virgin to the pagan Plutarch, who shows that
“May is sacred to Maia (Μαῖα) or Vesta” (Aulus Gellius, _sub voc._
Maia), our mother‐earth, our nurse and nourisher, personified.
639 Thot‐Lunus is the Budha‐Soma of India, or Mercury and the Moon.
640 _Ezekiel_, viii. 16.
641 The Earth flees for her life, in the allegory, before Prithu, who
pursues her. She assumes the shape of a cow, and, trembling with
terror, runs away and hides even in the regions of Brahmâ.
Therefore, it is _not_ our Earth. Again, in every _Purâna_, the calf
changes name. In one it is Manu Svâyambhuva, in another Indra, in a
third the Himavat (Himâlayas) itself, while Meru was the milker.
This is a deeper allegory than one may be inclined to think.
642 His _clear_ realization is, that the Egyptians _prophesied_ Jehovah
(!) and his incarnated Redeemer (the good serpent), etc.; even to
identifying Typhon with the _wicked_ dragon of the garden of Eden.
And this passes as serious and sober _science_!
643 Hathor is the _infernal_ Isis, the Goddess preëminently of the West
or the Nether World.
644 This is from De Mirville, who proudly confesses the similarity, and
he _ought to know_. See “Archéologie de la Vierge Mère,” in his _Des
Esprits_, pp. 111‐113.
645 _Magie_, p. 153.
646 De Mirville, _Ibid._, pp. 116 and 119.
647 _Hymns to Minerva_, p. 19.
648 _Sermon sur la Sainte Vierge._
649 _Apoc._, ch. xii.
650 Wägner and McDowall, _Asgard and the Gods_, p. 86.
651 See _De Vitâ Apollionii_, I. xiv.
652 _Adv. Hæres._ xxxvii.
653 Gerald Massey, _The Natural Genesis_, I. 340.
654 Ch. xv.
655 Ch. xi.
656 _De Mundi Opif._, _Par._, pp. 30 and 419.
657 For the same reason the division of the principles in man into seven
is thus reckoned, as they describe the same circle in the higher and
lower human nature.
658 Thus the septenary division is the oldest and preceded the four‐fold
division. It is the root of archaic classification.
659 In Chinese Buddhism and Esotericism, the Genii are represented by
four Dragons—the Mahârâjahs of the Stanzas.
660 _Op. cit._, II. 312‐13.
661 _Ibid._, I. 321.
662 Proclus, _Tim._, I.
663 _Prep. Evang._, I. iii. 3.
664 _Op. cit._, pp. 366‐8.
665 _Job_, ii.
666 _Genesis_, vi.
667 _James_, i. 13.
668 _James_, i. 2, 12; _Matth._, vi. 13. See Cruden, _sub voc._
669 _Padma Purâna._
670 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. i.
671 Vol. II. ch. x.
672 See Chwolsohn, _Nabathean Agriculture_, II. 217.
673 One Day of Brahmâ lasts 4,320,000,000 years—multiply this by 360!
The A‐suras (No‐gods, or Demons) are here still Suras, Gods higher
in hierarchy than such secondary Gods as are not even mentioned in
the _Vedas_. The duration of the War shows its significance, and
also shows that the combatants are only the personified Cosmic
Powers. It is evidently for sectarian purposes and out of _odium
theologicum_ that the illusive form Mâyâmoha, assumed by Vishnu, was
attributed in later reärrangements of old texts to Buddha and the
Daityas, as in the _Vishnu Purâna_, unless it was a fancy of Wilson
himself. He also fancied he found an allusion to Buddhism in the
_Bhagavadgîtâ_, whereas, as proved by K. T. Telang, he had only
confused the Buddhists and the older Chârvâka materialists. The
version exists nowhere in other _Purânas_ if the inference does, as
Professor Wilson claims, in the _Vishnu Purâna_; the translation of
which, especially of Book III. ch. xviii, where the reverend
Orientalist arbitrarily introduces Buddha, and shows him teaching
Buddhism to Daityas, led to another “great war” between himself and
Col. Vans Kennedy. The latter charged him publicly with wilfully
distorting Purânic texts. “I affirm,” wrote the Colonel at Bombay,
in 1840, “that the _Purânas_ do not contain what Professor Wilson
has stated is contained in them; ... until such passages are
produced I may be allowed to repeat my former conclusions that
Professor Wilson’s opinion, that the _Purânas_ as now extant are
compilations made between the eighth and seventeenth centuries
[A.D.!], rests solely _on gratuitous assumptions and unfounded
assertions_, and that his reasoning in support of it is either
futile, fallacious, contradictory, or improbable.” (See _Vishnu
Purâna_, trans. by Wilson, edit, by Fitzedward Hall, Vol. V,
Appendix.)
674 This statement belongs to the _third_ War, since the terrestrial
continents, seas and rivers are mentioned in connection with it.
675 _Vishnu Purâna_, III. xvii (Wilson, Vol. III. 204‐5).
676 Book I. chap. xvii (Wilson, Vol. II. 36), in the story of
Prahlâda—the Son of Hiranyakashipu, the Purânic Satan, the great
enemy of Vishnu, and the King of the Three Worlds—into whose heart
Vishnu entered.
677 _Ibid._, I. iv (Wilson, Vol. I. 64).
678 II _Chronicles_, ii. 5.
679 “There was a day when the _Sons of God_ came before the Lord, and
Satan came _with his brothers_, also before the Lord.” (_Job_ ii.,
Abyss., Ethiopic text.)
680 _Ibid._, Vol. III. 205‐7.
681 _Journal of the Royal Asiat. Society_, xix. 302.
682 Wilson’s opinion that the _Vishnu Purâna_ is a production _of our
era_, and that in its present form it is not earlier than between
the VIIIth and the XVIIth (!!) century, is absurd beyond noticing.
683 P. 3.
684 _Ibid._, p. 2.
685 _Ibid._, p. 21.
686 See _The Monthly Magazine_, for April, 1797.
687 Ἤτοι μὲν πρώτιστα Χάος γ’eνετ᾽ (l. 166); γένετο being considered in
antiquity as meaning: “was _generated_” and not simply “_was_.” ( See Taylor’s “Introd. to the _Parmenides_ of Plato,” p. 260.)
688 It is the confusion between the “Bound,” and the “Infinite,” that
Kapila overwhelms with sarcasms in his disputations with the Brâhman
Yogis, who claim in their mystical visions to see the “Highest One.”
689 _Ibid._
690 See T. Taylor’s article in his _Monthly Magazine_, quoted in the
_Platonist_ of Feb., 1887, edited by T. M. Johnson, F.T.S., Osceola,
Missouri.
691 _Vit. Pythag._, p. 47.
692 _Asgard and the Gods_, 22.
693 Vâch—the “melodious cow, who milks sustenance and Water,” and yields
us “nourishment and sustenance,” as described in the _Rig Veda_.
694 _The Theosophist_, Feb., 1887, pp. 302‐3.
695 _Ibid._, p. 304.
696 _The Masonic Review_, June, 1886.
697 Objective—in the world of Mâyâ, of course; still as real as we are.
698 “In the course of cosmic manifestation, this Daiviprakriti, instead
of being the Mother of the Logos, should, strictly speaking, be
called his Daughter.” (“Notes on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_,” _op. cit._,
p. 305.)
699 The wise men who, like Stanley Jevons amongst the moderns, invented
a method to make the incomprehensible assume a tangible form, could
only do so by resorting to numbers and geometrical figures.
700 The Pranava, Om, is a mystic term pronounced by the Yogis during
meditation; of the terms called, according to exoteric commentators,
Vyâkritis, or Aum, Bhûh, Bhuvah, Svah, (Om, Earth, Sky, Heaven),
Pranava is, perhaps, the most sacred. They are pronounced with
breath suppressed. See _Manu_ II. 76‐81, and Mitakshara commenting
on the _Yâjnavâkhya‐Smriti_, I. 23. But the esoteric explanation
goes a great deal further.
701 “Lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_,” _ibid._, p. 307.
702 It is this Trinity that is allegorized by the “Three Steps of
Vishnu,” which mean—Vishnu being considered as the Infinite in
exotericism—that from Parabrahman issued Mûlaprakriti, Purusha (the
Logos) and Prakriti; the four forms—with itself, the synthesis—of
Vâch. And in the _Kabalah_, Ain Suph, Shekinah, Adam Kadmon and
Sephira, the four, or the three, emanations being distinct—yet One.
703 Chaldean _Book of Numbers_. In the current _Kabalah_ the name
Jehovah replaces that of Adam Kadmon.
704 Justin Martyr tells us that, owing to his ignorance of these four
sciences, he was rejected by the Pythagoreans as a candidate for
admission into their school.
705 Diogenes Laërtius, in _Vit. Pythag._
706 31415, or π, the synthesis, or the Host _unified_ in the Logos and
the Point, called in Roman Catholicism the “Angel of the Face,” and
in Hebrew, Michael, מיכאל, “who [is like unto, or the same] as God,”
the manifested representation.
707 Appearing at the beginning of Cycles, as also of every Sidereal
Year, of 25,868 years. Therefore, the Kabeira or Kabarim received
their name in Chaldæa, for it means the Measures of Heaven, from
_Kob_, “measure of,” and _Urim_, “Heavens.”
708 _The Natural Genesis_, II. 316.
709 See Kircher’s _Œdipus Ægypt._, II. 423.
710 This Egyptian word Naja reminds one a good deal of the Indian Nâga,
the Serpent‐God. Brahmâ and Shiva and Vishnu are all crowned and
connected with Nâgas—a sign of their cyclic and cosmic character.
711 _Comment. on the Yashna_, 174.
712 First Treatise, p. 59.
713 Says the translator of Avicebron’s _Qabbalah_ of this “Sum Total”:
“The letter of Kether is י (Yod), of Binah ה (Heh), together YaH,
the feminine Name; the third letter, that of ’Hokhmah, is ו (Vav),
making together יהו YHV of יהוה YHVH, the Tetragrammaton, and really
the complete symbols of its efficaciousness. The last ה (Heh) of
this Ineffable Name _being always applied to the Six Lower and the
last, together the Seven_ remaining Sephiroth.” (Myer’s _Qabbalah_,
p. 263). Thus the Tetragrammaton is holy only in its abstract
synthesis. As a Quaternary containing the lower Seven Sephiroth, _it
is phallic_.
714 The statement will, of course, be found preposterous and absurd, and
simply laughed at. But if one believes in the final submersion of
Atlantis, 850,000 years ago, as taught in _Esoteric Buddhism_—the
gradual first sinking having begun during the Eocene Age—one has
also to accept the statement for the so‐called Lemuria, the
continent of the Third Root‐Race, which was first nearly destroyed
by combustion, and then submerged. As the Commentary teaches: “_The
First Earth having been purified by the Forty‐nine Fires, her
people, born of Fire and Water, could not die ...; the Second Earth
[with its Race] disappeared as vapour vanishes in the air ...; the
Third Earth had everything consumed on it after the Separation, and
went down into the lower Deep [the Ocean]. This was twice eighty‐two
Cyclic Years ago._” Now a Cyclic Year is what we call a Sidereal
Year, and is founded on the Precession of the Equinoxes. The length
of this Sidereal Year is 25,868 years, and the period mentioned in
the Commentary is, therefore, in all equal to 4,242,352 years. More
details will be found in Volume II. Meanwhile, this doctrine is
embodied in the “Kings of Edom.”
715 The same reserve is found in the _Talmud_ and in every national
system of religion whether monotheistic or exoterically
polytheistic. From the superb religious poem by the Kabalist Rabbi
Solomon ben Yehudah Ibn Gabirol, the “Kether Malchuth,” we select a
few definitions given in the prayers of Kippûr: “Thou art One, the
beginning of all numbers, and the foundation of all edifices; Thou
art One, and in the secret of Thy unity the wisest of men are lost,
because they know it not. Thou art One, and Thy Unity is never
diminished, never extended, and cannot be changed. Thou art One, but
_not as an element of numeration; for Thy Unity admits not of
multiplication, change or form_. Thou art Existent; but the
understanding and vision of mortals cannot attain to thy existence,
nor determine for thee the Where, the How, and the Why. Thou art
Existent, but in thyself alone, there being none other that can
exist with thee. Thou art Existent, before all time and without
place. Thou art Existent, and thy existence is so profound and
secret that none can penetrate and discover thy secrecy. Thou art
living, but within no time that can be fixed or known; Thou art
living, but not by a spirit or a soul, for _Thou art Thyself_, the
Soul of all Souls.” There is a distance between this Kabalistical
Deity and the Biblical Jehovah, the spiteful and revengeful God of
Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, who tempted the first and wrestled with the
last. No Vedântin but would repudiate such a Parabrahman!
716 Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, ch. xx. And very wisely have they acted.
717 If he rejected it, it was on the ground of what he calls the
“changes,” in other words, rebirths of man, and constant
transformations. He denied immortality to the Personality of man, as
we do, not to Man.
718 He may be laughed at by the Protestants; but the Roman Catholics
have no right to mock him, without becoming guilty of blasphemy and
sacrilege. For it is over 200 years since Confucius was canonized as
a Saint in China by the Roman Catholics, who have thereby obtained
many converts among the ignorant Confucianists.
719 The animals regarded as sacred in the _Bible_ are by no means few in
number; as, for instance, the Goat, the Azaz‐el, or God of Victory.
As Aben Ezra says: “If thou art capable of comprehending the mystery
of Azazel, thou wilt learn the mystery of His [God’s] name, for it
has similar associates in Scriptures. I will tell thee by allusion
one portion of the mystery; when thou shalt have _thirty three years
of age_ thou wilt comprehend me.” So with the mystery of the
Tortoise. Rejoicing over the poetry of biblical metaphors,
associating “incandescent stones,” “sacred animals,” etc., with the
name of Jehovah, and quoting from the _Bible de Vence_ (XIX. 318) a
pious French writer says: “Indeed all of them are Elohim, _like
their God_”; for, these Angels, “ ‘assume,’ _through a holy
usurpation_, ‘the very divine name of Jehovah each time they
represent him’.” (De Mirville, _Des Esprits_.) No one ever doubted
that the Name must have been _assumed_, when under the guise of the
Infinite, One Incognizable, the Malachim, or Messengers, descended
to eat and drink with men. But if the Elohim and even lower Beings,
_assuming_ the God‐name, were and are still worshipped, why should
the same Elohim be called Devils, when appearing under the names of
other Gods?
720 _Matth._, xxiv. 28.
721 Bryant is right in saying “Druid bardism says of Noah that when he
came out of the ark (the birth of a new cycle), after a stay therein
of a year and a day, that is 364 + 1=365 days, he was congratulated
by Neptune upon his birth from the waters of the Flood, who wished
him a _Happy New Year_.” The “Year,” or cycle, esoterically, was the
new race of men, _born from woman_, after the Separation of the
Sexes, which is the secondary meaning of the allegory; its primary
meaning being the beginning of the Fourth Round, or the _new_
Creation.
722 From an unpublished MS.
723 Or literally: “One Prâdhânika Brahma Spirit: THAT was.” The
“Prâdhânika Brahma Spirit” is Mûlaprakriti and Parabrahman.
724 Wilson, _Vishnu Purâna_, I. 73‐5.
725 Origen, _Contra Celsum_, VI. xxii.
726 _Timæus._
727 “And the fourth creation is _here_ the primary, for _things_
immovable are emphatically known as primary”—according to a
commentary translated by Fitzedward Hall in his editing of Wilson’s
translation.
728 How can “divinities” have been created _after_ the animals? The
esoteric meaning of the expression “animals” is the _germs of all
animal life_, including man. Man is called a _sacrificial animal_,
that is, the only one among the animal creation who sacrifices to
the Gods. Moreover, by “sacred animals” the twelve Signs of the
Zodiac are often meant in the sacred texts, as already stated.
729 _Vishnu Purâna_, _ibid._
730 _Op. cit._, I. ix.
731 Myer’s _Qabbalah_, 415‐16.
732 _Contra Hær._, I. xvii. 1.
733 _Ibid._, I. xxx.
734 Superior to the Spirits, or “Heavens,” of the Earth only.
735 _Ibid._, I. v. 2.
736 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 183.
737 See also King’s _Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 97. Other sects
regarded Jehovah as Ialdabaoth himself. King identifies him with
Saturn.
738 _Ordinances of Manu_, I. 33.
739 _Irenæus_, _op. cit._, I. xxx. 6.
740 Elsewhere, however, the identity is revealed. See _supra_ the
quotation from Iba Gabirol and his 7 heavens, 7 earths, etc.
741 This must not be confused with _precosmic_ “DARKNESS,” the Divine
ALL.
742 I. 2; and also at the beginning of II.
743 The quotations that follow in treating of the seven Creations,
except when otherwise stated, are all from _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. I.
Ch. i‐v.
744 I. 240.
745 Brucker, _ibid._
746 Compare _Genesis_ xix. 34‐8 and iv. 1.
747 Vishnu is both Bhûtesha, “Lord of the Elements,” and of all things,
and Vishvarûpa, “Universal Substance” or Soul.
748 Compare, for their “post‐types,” the Treatise written by Trithemius,
Agrippa’s master, in the sixteenth century, “Concerning the Seven
Secondaries, or Spiritual Intelligences, who, after God, actuate the
Universe,” which, in addition to secret cycles and several
prophecies, discloses certain facts and beliefs about the Genii, or
the Elohim, which preside over and guide the septenary stages of the
World’s Course.
749 From the first, the Orientalists have found themselves beset with
great difficulties in regard to any possible order in the Purânic
“Creations.” Brahman is very often confused by Wilson with Brahmâ,
for which he is criticized by his successors. The _Original Sanscrit
Texts_ are preferred by Mr. Fitzedward Hall for the translation of
the _Vishnu Purâna_, to the text used by Wilson. “Had Professor
Wilson enjoyed the advantages which are now at the command of the
student of Indian philosophy, unquestionably he would have expressed
himself differently,” says the editor of his work. This reminds one
of the answer given by one of Thomas Taylor’s admirers to those
scholars who criticized his translations of Plato: “Taylor might
have known less Greek than his critics, but he knew more Plato.” Our
present Orientalists disfigure the _mystic_ sense of the Sanskrit
texts far more than Wilson ever did, though the latter is undeniably
guilty of very gross errors.
750 _Vâyu Purâna._
751 _Collected Works_, III. 381.
752 Professor Wilson translates as though animals were higher in the
scale of “creation” than divinities, or angels, although the truth
about the Devas is very plainly stated further on. This “Creation,”
says the text, is both Primary (Prâkrita) and Secondary (Vaikrita).
It is the Secondary, as regards the origin of the Gods from Brahmâ,
the _personal_ anthropomorphic _creator_ of our material universe;
it is the Primary as affecting Rudra, who is the immediate
production of the First Principle. The term Rudra is not only a
title of Shiva, but embraces agents of creation, angels and men, as
will be shown further on.
753 Neither plant nor animal, but an existence between the two.
754 _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 276, art., “Mineral Monad.”
755 “These notions,” remarks Professor Wilson, “the birth of Rudra and
the saints, seem to have been _borrowed_ from the Shaivas, and to
have been awkwardly engrafted upon the Vaishnava system.” The
esoteric meaning ought to have been consulted before venturing such
a hypothesis.
756 See _Sânkhya Kârikâ_, v. 46. p. 146.
757 Parâshara, the Vedic Rishi, who received the _Vishnu Purâna_ from
Pulastya and taught it to Maitreya, is placed by the Orientalists at
various epochs. As correctly observed, in the _Hindû Classical
Dictionary_: “Speculations as to his era differ widely, from 575
B.C. to 1391 B.C., and _cannot be trusted_.” Quite so; but they are
no more untrustworthy than any other date, as assigned by the
Sanskritists, so famous in the department of arbitrary fancy.
758 They may indeed mark a “special” or extra “creation,” since it is
they who, by incarnating themselves within the senseless human
shells of the two first Root‐Races, and a great portion of the Third
Root‐Race, create, so to speak, a _new race_: that of thinking,
self‐conscious and _divine_ men.
759 _Hindû Classical Dictionary._
760 _Linga Purâna_, Prior Section, lxx. 174.
761 See _Manu_, I. 10.
762 See _Linga_, _Vâyu_ and _Mârkandeya Purânas_.
763 Movers, _Phoinizer_, 282.
764 Weber, _Akad. Vorles_, 213, 214, etc.
765 IX. 850.
766 _Stromata_, I. v. 6.
767 The Gehenna of the _Bible_ was a valley near Jerusalem, where the
monotheistic Jews immolated their children to Moloch, if the word of
the prophet Jeremiah is to be believed. The Scandinavian Abode of
Hel or Hela was a frigid region—Kâma Loka again—and the Egyptian
Amenti a place of purification. (See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 11.)
768 I. vi. i.
769 _Cod. Naz._, I. 47; see also _Psalms_, lxxxix. 18.
770 I _Cor._, viii. 5.
771 _Concerning Divine Names_, traduction Darboy, 364.
772 See de Mirville, _Des Esprits_, ii. 322.
773 _The Correlation of Physical Forces_, p. 89.
774 _Ibid._, xiv.
775 II _Sam._, xxii. 9, 11.
776 _Deut._, iv. 24.
777 _Op. cit._, III. 415.
778 II _Sam._, xxii. 14, 15.
779 Herodotus, _Polymnia_, 190, 191.
780 viii. 24.
781 _Fa‐hwa‐King._
782 See _La Mission des Juifs_.
783 _China Revealed_, as quoted in Hargrave Jennings’ _Phallicism_, p.
273.
784 p. 202.
785 _Op. cit._, p. 60.
786 _Ibid._
787 O’Brien, _Round Towers of Ireland_, p. 61, quoted by Hargrave
Jennings in his _Phallicism_, p. 246.
788 _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 332.
789 _Pantheon_, text 3.
790 Their intellection, of course, being of quite a different nature to
any we can conceive of on Earth.
791 See his Third Letter to Bentley.
792 _Concepts of Modern Physics_, pp. xi, xii, Introd. to 2nd Ed.
793 “Recherches expérimentales sur la relation qui existe entre la
résistance de l’air et sa température,” p. 68, translated from
Stallo’s quotation.
794 From the criticism of _Concepts of Modern Physics_, in _Nature_. See Stallo’s work, p. xvi of Introduction.
795 Mr. Robert Ward, discussing the questions of Heat and Light in the
November _Journal of Science_, 1881, shows us how utterly ignorant
is Science about one of the commonest facts of Nature—the heat of
the Sun. He says: “The question of the temperature of the sun has
been the subject of investigation with many scientists: Newton, one
of the first investigators of this problem, tried to determine it,
and after him all the scientists who have been occupied with
calorimetry have followed his example. All have believed themselves
successful, and have formulated their results with great confidence.
The following, in the chronological order of the publication of the
results, are the temperatures (in centigrade degrees) found by each
of them: Newton, 1,699,300°; Pouillet, 1,461°; Tollner, 102,200°;
Secchi, 5,344,840°; Ericsson, 2,726,700°; Fizeau, 7,500°; Waterston,
9,000,000°; Spoëren, 27,000°; Deville, 9,500°; Soret, 5,801,846°;
Vicaire, 1,500°; Rosetti, 20,000°. The difference is as 1,400°
against 9,000,000°, or no less than 8,998,600°!! There probably does
not exist in science a more astonishing contradiction than that
revealed in these figures.” And yet without doubt if an Occultist
were to give out an estimate, each of these gentlemen would
vehemently protest in the name of “exact” Science at the rejection
of his special result.
796 See _Correlation of the Physical Forces_, Preface.
797 _Soirées_, vol. ii.
798 Stallo’s above‐cited work, _Concepts of Modern Physics_, a volume
which has called forth the liveliest protests and criticisms, is
recommended to anyone inclined to doubt this statement. “The
professed antagonism of science to metaphysical speculation,” he
writes, “has led the majority of scientific specialists to assume
that the methods and results of empirical research are wholly
independent of the control of the laws of thought. They either
silently ignore, or openly repudiate, the simplest canons of logic,
including the laws of non‐contradiction, and ... resent with the
utmost vehemence every application of the rule of consistency to
their hypotheses and theories ... and they regard an examination (of
them) ... in the light of these laws as an impertinent intrusion of
‘_à priori_ principles and methods’ into the domains of empirical
science. Persons of this cast of mind find no difficulty in holding
that atoms are absolutely inert, and at the same time asserting that
these atoms are perfectly elastic; or in maintaining that the
physical universe, in its last analysis, resolves itself into ‘dead’
matter and motion, and yet denying that all physical energy is in
reality kinetic; or in proclaiming that all phenomenal differences
in the objective world are ultimately due to the various motions of
absolutely simple material units, and, nevertheless, repudiating the
proposition that these units are equal.” (p. xix.) The blindness of
eminent Physicists to some of the most obvious consequences of their
own theories is marvellous. “When Prof. Tait, in conjunction with
Prof. Stewart, announces that ‘matter is simply passive’ (_The
Unseen Universe_, sec. 104), and then, in connection with Sir
William Thomson, declares that ‘matter has an innate power of
resisting external influences’ (_Treat. on Nat. Phil._, Vol. I. sec.
216), it is hardly impertinent to inquire how these statements are
to be reconciled. When Prof. Du Bois Reymond ... insists upon the
necessity of reducing all the processes of nature to motions of a
substantial, indifferent substratum, _wholly destitute of quality_
(_Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens_, p. 5), having declared
shortly before in the same lecture that ‘resolution of all changes
in the material world into motions of atoms _caused by their
constant central forces_ would be the completion of natural
science,’ we are in a perplexity from which we have the right to be
relieved.” (Pref. xliii.)
799 Stallo, _loc. cit._, p. x.
800 _Silliman’s Journal_, vol. viii. pp. 364 _et seq._
801 See Clerk Maxwell’s _Treatise on Electricity_, and compare with
Cauchy’s _Mémoire sur la Dispersion de la Lumière_.
802 Stallo, _loc. cit._, p. x.
803 _Nature_, vol. xxvii. p. 304.
804 _Op. cit._, p. xxiv.
805 “_Somewhat_ different!” exclaims Stallo. “The real import of this
‘somewhat’ is, that the medium in question _is not, in any
intelligible sense, material at all_, having none of the properties
of matter.” All the properties of matter depend upon differences and
changes, and the “hypothetical” Ether here defined is not only
destitute of differences, but incapable of difference and change—in
the physical sense let us add. This proves that if Ether is
“matter,” it is so only as something visible, tangible and existing,
for _spiritual_ senses alone; that it is a Being indeed—but not of
our plane—Pater Æther, or Âkâsha.
806 _Veræ causæ_ for Physical Science are mâyâvic or illusionary causes
for the Occultist, and _vice versâ_.
807 Very much “differentiated,” on the contrary, since the day it left
its _laya_ condition.
808 _Op. cit._, pp. xxiv‐xxvi.
809 _Sept Leçons de Physique Générale_, p. 38, _et seq._, Ed. Moigno.
810 Defin. 8, B. I. Prop. 69, “Scholium.”
811 See _Modern Materialism_, by the Rev. W. F. Wilkinson.
812 “Attraction,” Le Couturier, a Materialist, writes, “has now become
for the public that which it was for Newton himself—a simple word,
an Idea” (_Panorama des Mondes_), since its cause is unknown.
Herschell virtually says the same, when remarking, that whenever
studying the motion of the heavenly bodies, and the phenomena of
attraction, he feels penetrated at every moment with the idea of
“the existence of causes that act for us under a veil, disguising
their direct action.” (_Musée des Sciences_, August, 1856.)
813 If we are taken to task for believing in operating Gods and Spirits
while rejecting a personal God, we answer to the Theists and
Monotheists: Admit that your Jehovah is _one of the Elohim_, and we
are ready to recognize him. Make of him, as you do, the Infinite,
the ONE and the Eternal God, and we will never accept him in this
character. Of tribal Gods there were many; the One Universal Deity
is a principle, an abstract Root‐Idea, which has nought to do with
the unclean work of finite Form. We do not worship the Gods, we only
honour Them, as beings superior to ourselves. In this we obey the
Mosaic injunction, while Christians disobey their
_Bible_—missionaries foremost of all. “Thou shalt not revile the
Gods,” says one of them—Jehovah—in _Exodus_, xxii. 28; but at the
same time in verse 20 it is commanded: “He that sacrificeth to any
God, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.” Now in
the original texts it is not “God” but Elohim—and we challenge
contradiction—and Jehovah is one of the Elohim, as proved by his own
words in _Genesis_, iii. 22, when “the Lord God said: Behold the Man
is become as one of us.” Hence both those who worship and sacrifice
to the Elohim, the Angels, and to Jehovah, and those who revile the
Gods of their fellowmen, are far greater transgressors than the
Occultists or than any Theosophist. Meanwhile many of the latter
prefer believing in some one “Lord” or other, and are quite welcome
to do as they like.
814 To liken the “immateriate species to wooden iron,” and to laugh at
Spiller for referring to them as “incorporeal matter” does not solve
the mystery. (See _Concepts of Modern Physics_, p. 165 _et infra_.)
815 See _Vossius_, Vol. II. p. 528.
816 _De Carlo_, I. 9.
817 _De Motibus Planetarum Harmonicis_, p. 248.
818 _World‐Life_, Prof. Winchell, LL.D., pp. 49 and 50.
819 _Panorama des Mondes_, pp. 47 and 53.
820 Newton, _Optics_, III. Query 28, 1704; quoted in _World‐Life_, p.
50.
821 _Ibid._
822 When read in a fair and unprejudiced spirit, Sir Isaac Newton’s
works are an ever ready witness to show how he must have hesitated
between gravitation and attraction, impulse, and some other _unknown
cause_, to explain the regular course of the planetary motion. But
see his _Treatise on Colour_ (Vol. III. Question 31). We are told by
Herschell that Newton left with his successors the duty of drawing
all the scientific conclusions from his discovery. How Modern
Science has abused the privilege of building its newest theories
upon the law of gravitation, may be realized when one remembers how
profoundly religious was that great man.
823 The materialistic notion that because, in Physics, real or sensible
motion is impossible in pure space or vacuum, therefore, the eternal
Motion of and in Cosmos—regarded as infinite Space—is a _fiction_,
only shows once more that such expressions of Eastern metaphysics as
“pure Space,” “pure Being,” the “Absolute” etc., have never been
understood in the West.
824 From Winchell’s _World‐Life_, p. 379.
825 _Correl. Phys. Forces_, p. 173.
826 See _Revue Germanique_ of the 31st Dec. 1860, art., “Lettres et
Conversations d’Alexandre Humboldt.”
827 Prof. Winchell.
828 _World‐Life_, p. 553.
829 But see _Astronomie du Moyen Age_, by Delambre.
830 See _Isis Unveiled_, I. 270, 271.
831 _World‐Life_, 554.
832 Godefroy, _Cosmogonie de la Révélation_.
833 The terms “high” and “low” being only relative to the position of
the observer in Space, any use of those terms tending to convey the
impression that they stand for abstract realities, is necessarily
fallacious.
834 Jacob Ennis, _The Origin of the Stars_.
835 P. 99, note.
836 If such is the case, how does Science explain the comparatively
small size of the planets nearest the Sun? The theory of meteoric
aggregation is only a step farther from truth than the nebular
conception, and has not even the quality of the latter—its
metaphysical element.
837 Laplace, _Système du Monde_, p. 414, ed. 1824.
838 Faye, _Comptes Rendus_, t. xc. pp. 640‐2.
839 Wolf.
840 _Panorama des Mondes_, Le Couturier.
841 _World‐Life_, Winchell, p. 140.
842 Sir William Thomson’s lecture on “The latent dynamical theory
regarding the probable origin, total amount of heat, and duration of
the Sun,” 1887.
843 Thomson and Tait, _Natural Philosophy_. And even on these figures
Bischof disagrees with Thomson, and calculates that 350,000,000
years would be required for the Earth to cool from a temperature of
20,000° to 200° centigrade. This is, also, the opinion of Helmholtz.
844 Coulomb’s Law.
845 _Musée des Sciences_, 15 August, 1857.
846 _Panorama des Mondes_, p. 55.
847 _Revue des Deux Mondes_, July 15, 1860.
848 _Cosmographie._
849 _Soirées._
850 _Discours_, 165.
851 p. 28.
852 _Des Esprits_, III. 155, Deuxième Mémoire.
853 Laing’s _Modern Science and Modern Thought_.
854 _Ibid._, p. 17.
855 _Heaven and Earth._
856 Winchell, _World‐Life_, p. 196.
857 _L’Univers expliqué par la Révélation_, and _Cosmogonie de la
Révélation_. But see De Mirville’s _Deuxième Mémoire_. The author, a
terrible enemy of Occultism, was yet one who wrote great truths.
858 See _Kabbala Denudata_, II. 67.
859 “Sur la Distinction des Forces,” published in the _Mémoires de
l’Académie des Sciences de Montpellier_, Vol. II. fasc. i, 1854.
860 P. 123.
861 _Der Weltæther als Kosmische Kraft_, p. 4.
862 See _Popular Science Review_, Vol. V. pp. 329‐34.
863 See _Correlation of Physical Forces_, p. 110.
864 See Buckwell’s _Electric Science_.
865 Schelling, _Ideen_, etc., p. 18.
866 _Op. cit._, p. 161.
867 _Princ._, Def. iii.
868 _Philosophical Magazine_, Vol. II. p. 252.
869 _Concepts of Modern Physics_, xxxi., Introductory to the 2nd
Edition.
870 _Loc. cit._
871 J. P. Cooke, _The New Chemistry_, p. 13.
872 “It imports that equal volumes of all substances, when in the
gaseous state, and under like conditions of pressure and
temperature, contain the same number of molecules—whence it follows
that the weights of the molecules are proportional to the specific
gravities of the gases; that therefore, these being different, the
weights of the molecule are different also; and inasmuch as the
molecules of certain elementary substances are monatomic (consist of
but one atom each) while the molecules of various other substances
contain the same number of atoms, that the ultimate atoms of such
substances are of different weights.” (_Concepts of Modern Physics_,
p. 34.) As shown further on in the same volume, this cardinal
principle of modern theoretical chemistry is in utter and
irreconcilable conflict with the first proposition of the atomo‐
mechanical theory—namely, the absolute equality of the primordial
units of mass.
873 Wundt, _Die Theorie der Materie_, p. 381.
874 Nazesmann, _Thermochemie_, p. 150.
875 Krœnig, Clausius, Maxwell, etc., _Philosophical Magazine_, Vol. XIX.
p. 18.
876 _Philosophical Magazine_, Vol. XIV. p. 321.
877 Referring to the “Aura,” one of the Masters says in the _Occult
World_: “How could you make yourself understood by, command in fact,
those semi‐intelligent Forces, whose means of communication with us
are not through spoken words, but through sounds and colours in
correlation between the vibrations of the two.” It is this
“correlation” that is unknown to Modern Science, although it has
been many times explained by the Alchemists.
878 The Substance of the Occultist, however, is to the most refined
Substance of the Physicist, what Radiant Matter is to the leather of
the Chemist’s boots.
879 The names of the Seven Rays—which are, Sushumnâ, Harikesha,
Vishvakarman, Vishvatryarchâs, Sannaddha, Sarvâvasu and Svarâj—are
all mystical, and each has its distinct application in a distinct
state of consciousness, for Occult purposes. The Sushumnâ, which, as
said in the Nirukta (11, 6), is only to light up the Moon, is the
Ray nevertheless cherished by the initiated Yogîs. The totality of
the Seven Rays spread through the Solar System constitutes, so to
say, the physical Upâdhi (Basis) of the Ether of Science; in which
Upâdhi, light, heat, electricity, etc., the Forces of orthodox
Science, correlate to produce their terrestrial effects. As psychic
and spiritual effects, they emanate from, and have their origin in,
the supra‐solar Upâdhi, in the Æther of the Occultist—or Âkâsha.
880 Leslie’s _Fluid Theory of Light and Heat_.
881 Buckle’s _History of Civilization_, Vol. III. p. 384.
882 On the plane of manifestation and illusionary matter it may be so;
not that it is nothing more, for it is vastly more.
883 Neutral, or Laya.
884 _Scientific Letters_, Professor Butlerof.
885 _Ibid._
886 _Ibid._
887 _Ibid._
888 Called the “drinker of waters,” solar heat causing water to
evaporate.
889 I. ii. (Wilson, I. 38.)
890 Its founder, Râmânujâchârya, was born A.D. 1017.
891 The Gandharva of the _Veda_ is the deity who knows and reveals the
secrets of heaven and divine truths to mortals. Cosmically, the
Gandharvas are the aggregate Powers of the Solar Fire, and
constitute its Forces; psychically, the Intelligence residing in the
Sushumnâ, the Solar Ray, the highest of the Seven Rays; mystically,
the Occult Force in the Soma, the Moon, or lunar plant, and the
drink made of it; physically, the phenomenal, and spiritually, the
noumenal, causes of Sound and the “Voice of Nature.” Hence, they are
called the 6,333 heavenly singers, and musicians of Indra’s Loka,
who personify, even in number, the various and manifold sounds in
Nature, both above and below. In the later allegories they are said
to have mystic power over women, and to be fond of them. The
Esoteric meaning is plain. They are one of the forms, if not the
prototypes, of Enoch’s Angels, the Sons of God, who saw that the
daughters of men were fair (_Gen._, vi.), who married them, and
taught the daughters of Earth the secrets of Heaven.
892 Pp. 329‐334.
893 Not only “through space,” but filling every point of our Solar
System, for it is the physical residue, so to say, of Ether, its
“lining” (envelope) on our plane; Ether having to serve other cosmic
and terrestrial purposes besides being the “agent” for transmitting
light. It is the Astral Fluid or Light of the Kabalists, and the
Seven Rays of Sun‐Vishnu.
894 What need, then, of etheric waves for the transmission of light,
heat, etc., if _this_ substance can pass through vacuum.
895 And how can it be otherwise? Gross ponderable matter is the body,
the shell, of Matter or Substance, the female passive principle; and
this Fohatic Force is the second principle, Prâna—the male and the
active. On our globe this Substance is the second principle of the
septenary Element—Earth; in the atmosphere, it is that of Air, which
is the cosmic gross body; in the Sun it becomes the Solar Body and
that of the Seven Rays; in Sidereal Space it corresponds with
another principle, and so on. The whole is a homogeneous Unity
alone, the parts are all differentiations.
896 Or the reverberation, and for Sound repercussion, _on our plane_ of
that which is a perpetual motion of that Substance on higher planes.
Our world and senses are ceaselessly victims of Mâyâ.
897 An honest admission, this.
898 Yet it is not Ether, but only one of the principles of Ether, the
latter being itself one of the principles of Âkâsha.
899 And so does Prâna (Jîva) pervade the whole living body of man; but
alone, without having an atom to act upon, it would be
quiescent—dead; _i.e._, would be in Laya, or, as Mr. Crookes has it,
“locked in Protyle.” It is the action of Fohat upon a compound or
even upon a simple, body that produces life. When a body dies, it
passes into the same polarity as its male energy, and repels
therefore the active agent, which, losing hold of the whole, fastens
on the parts or molecules, this action being called chemical.
Vishnu, the Preserver, transforms himself into Rudra‐Shiva, the
Destroyer—a correlation seemingly unknown to Science.
900 Verily, unless the Occult terms of the Kabalists are adopted!
901 “Unchangeable” only during manvantaric periods, after which it
merges once more into Mûlaprakriti; “invisible” for ever, in its own
essence, but seen in its reflected coruscations, called the Astral
Light by the modern Kabalists. Yet, conscious and grand Beings,
clothed in that same Essence, move in it.
902 One has to add ponderable, to distinguish it from that Ether which
is Matter still, though a substratum.
903 The Occult Sciences reverse the statement, and say that it is the
Sun, and all the Suns that are from it, which emanate at the
manvantaric dawn from the Central Sun.
904 Here, we decidedly beg to differ from the learned gentleman. Let us
remember that this Ether—whether Âkâsha, or its lower principle,
Ether, is meant by the term—is septenary. Âkâsha is Aditi in the
allegory, and the mother of Mârttânda, the Sun, the Devamâtri,
Mother of the Gods. In the Solar System, the Sun is her Buddhi and
Vâhana, the Vehicle, hence the sixth principle; in Kosmos all the
Suns are the Kâma Rûpa of Âkâsha and so is ours. It is only when
regarded as an individual Entity in his own Kingdom, that Sûrya, the
Sun, is the seventh principle of the great body of Matter.
905 To be more correct, let us rather call it Agnosticism. Brutal but
frank Materialism is more honest than Janus‐faced Agnosticism in our
days. Western Monism, so‐called, is the Pecksniff of modern
Philosophy, turning a pharisaical face to Psychology and Idealism,
and its natural face of a Roman Augur, swelling his cheek with his
tongue, to Materialism. Such Monists are worse than Materialists;
because, while looking at the Universe and at psycho‐spiritual man
from the same negative stand‐point, the latter put their case far
less plausibly than do sceptics of Mr. Tyndall’s or even of Mr.
Huxley’s stamp. Herbert Spencer, Bain and Lewes are more dangerous
to universal truths than is Büchner.
906 _Geology_, by Professor A. Winchell.
907 See _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 245‐262—Arts. “Do the Adepts deny
the Nebular Theory?” and “Is the Sun merely a Cooling Mass?”—for the
true Occult teaching.
908 _Philosophie Naturelle_, art. 142.
909 _Astronomie_, p. 342.
910 Commentary on Stanza IV, _ante_, pp. 126‐7.
911 _Popular Science Review_, Vol. IV. p. 148.
912 And the _central mass_, too, as will be found, or rather the centre
of the reflection.
913 This “matter” is just like the reflection in a mirror of the flame
from a “photogenic” lamp‐wick.
914 See _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 258, for an answer to this
speculation of Herschell.
915 _Ibid._, p. 156.
916 Paracelsus for one, who called it Liquor Vitæ, and Archæus.
917 _Alchemical_ “composition,” rather.
918 “This vital force ... radiates around man like a luminous sphere,”
says Paracelsus in _Paragranum_.
919 _Popular Science Review_, Vol. X. pp. 380‐3.
920 _De Generatione Hominis._
921 _De Viribus Membrorum_. See _Life of Paracelsus_, by Franz Hartmann,
M.D., F.T.S.
922 P. 384.
923 Ch. xiii; Telang’s translation, p. 292.
924 _Ibid._, ch. xxxvi; p. 385.
925 The division of the physical senses into five, comes to us from a
great antiquity. But while adopting the number, no modern
Philosopher has asked himself how these senses could exist, _i.e._,
be perceived and used in a self‐conscious way, unless there were the
_sixth_ sense, mental perception, to register and record them;
and—this for the Metaphysicians and Occultists—the _seventh_ to
preserve the spiritual fruitage and remembrance thereof, as in a
Book of Life which belongs to Karma. The Ancients divided the senses
into five, simply because their teachers, the Initiates, stopped at
_hearing_, as being that sense which developed on the physical
plane, or rather, got dwarfed and limited to this plane, only at the
beginning of the Fifth Race. The Fourth Race already had begun to
lose the _spiritual_ condition, so preëminently developed in the
Third Race.
926 _Ibid._, ch. x: pp. 277, 278.
927 _Mundakopanishad_, p. 298.
928 _Bhagavadgîtâ_, ch. vii; _ibid._, pp. 73, 74.
929 Ahamkâra, I suppose, that “Egoship,” or “Ahamship,” which leads to
every error.
930 The Elements are the five Tanmâtras of earth, water, fire, air and
ether, the producers of the grosser elements.
931 _Anugîtâ_, ch. xx; _ibid._, p. 313.
932 The conductor in the sense of Upâdhi—a material or physical basis;
but, as the second principle of the universal Soul and Vital Force
in Nature, it is intelligently guided by the fifth principle
thereof.
933 And too great an exuberance of it in the nervous system leads as
often to disease and death. If it were the animal system which
generated it, such would not be the case, surely. Hence, the latter
emergency shows its independence of the system, and its connection
with the Sun‐Force, as Metcalfe and Hunt explain.
934 P. 387.
935 _Paragranum; Life of Paracelsus_, by Dr. F. Hartmann.
936 In a recent work on Symbolism in Buddhism and Christianity—in
Buddhism and Roman Catholicism, rather, many later rituals and
dogmas in Northern Buddhism, in its popular exoteric form, being
identical with those of the Latin Church—some curious facts are to
be found. The author of this volume, with more pretensions than
erudition, has indiscriminately crammed into his work ancient and
modern Buddhist teachings, and has sorely confused Lamaïsm with
Buddhism. On page 404 of this volume, called _Buddhism in
Christendom, or Jesus the Essene_, our _pseudo_‐Orientalist devotes
himself to criticizing the “Seven Principles” of the “Esoteric
Buddhists,” and attempts to ridicule them. On page 405, the closing
page, he speaks enthusiastically of the Vidyâdharas, “the seven
great legions of dead men made wise.” Now, these Vidyâdharas, whom
some Orientalists call “demi‐gods,” are in fact, exoterically, a
kind of Siddhas, “affluent in devotion,” and, esoterically, they are
identical with the seven classes of Pitris, one class of which endow
man in the Third Race with Self‐consciousness, by incarnating in the
human shells. The “Hymn to the Sun,” at the end of his queer volume
of mosaic, which endows Buddhism with a Personal God (!!), is an
unfortunate thrust at the very proofs so elaborately collected by
the unlucky author.
Theosophists are fully aware that Mr. Rhys Davids has likewise
expressed his opinion on their beliefs. He said that the theories
propounded by the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ “were not Buddhism,
and were not esoteric.” The remark is the result of (_a_) the
unfortunate mistake of writing “Buddhism” instead of “Budhaïsm,” or
“Budhism,” _i.e._, of connecting the system with Gautama’s religion
instead of with the Secret Wisdom taught by Krishna, Shankarâchârya,
and many others, as much as by Buddha; and (_b_) of the
impossibility of Mr. Rhys Davids knowing anything of the true
Esoteric Teachings. Nevertheless as he is the greatest Pâli and
Buddhist scholar of the day, whatever he may say is entitled to
respectful hearing. But when one who knows no more of exoteric
Buddhism on Scientific and Materialistic lines, than he knows of
Esoteric Philosophy, defames those whom he honours with his spite,
and assumes with the Theosophists the airs of a profound scholar,
one can only smile or—heartily laugh at him.
937 _The Human Species_, pp. 10, 11.
938 _The Theosophist._
939 Not only does it not deny the occurrence, though attributing it to a
wrong cause, as always, each theory contradicting every other (see
the theories of Secchi, of Faye, and of Young), the spots depending
on the superficial accumulation of vapours cooler than the
photosphere (?), etc., etc., but we have men of Science who
_astrologize_ upon the spots. Professor Jevons attributes all the
great periodical commercial crises to the influence of the sun‐spots
every eleventh cyclic year. (See his _Investigations into Currency
and Finance_.) This is worthy of praise and encouragement surely.
940 _Le Soleil_, II. 184.
941 _World‐Life_, p. 48.
942 Unfortunately, as these pages are being written, the “archebiosis of
terrestrial existence” has turned, under a somewhat stricter
chemical analysis, into a simple precipitate of sulphate of
lime—hence, from the scientific standpoint, not even an organic
substance! _Sic transit gloria mundi!_
943 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson, I. 16, Fitzedward Hall’s rendering.
944 _Popular Astronomy_, p. 444.
945 In his _World‐Life_ (page 48), in the appended footnotes, Professor
Winchell says, “It is generally admitted that at excessively high
temperatures matter exists in a state of dissociation—that is, no
chemical combination can exist”; and, to prove the unity of Matter,
would appeal to the spectrum, which in every case of homogeneity
will show a _bright_ line, whereas in the case of several molecular
arrangements existing—in the nebulæ say, or a star—“the spectrum
should consist of two or three bright lines”! This would be no proof
either way to the Physicist‐Occultist, who maintains that beyond a
certain limit of visible Matter, no spectrum, no telescope and no
microscope are of any use. The unity of Matter, of that which is
real cosmic Matter to the Alchemist, or “Adam’s Earth” as the
Kabalists call it, can hardly be proved or disproved, by either the
French _savant_ Dumas, who suggests “the composite nature” of the
“elements” on “certain relations of atomic weights,” or even by Mr.
Crookes’ “radiant matter,” though his experiments may seem “to be
best understood on the hypothesis of the homogeneity of the elements
of matter, and the continuity of the states of matter.” For all this
does not go beyond _material_ Matter, so to say, even in what is
shown by the spectrum, that modern “eye of Shiva” of physical
experiments. It is only of this Matter, that H. St. Claire Deville
could say that “when bodies, deemed to be simple, combine with one
another, they vanish, they are individually annihilated”; simply
because he could not follow those bodies in their further
transformation in the world of spiritual cosmic Matter. Verily
Modern Science will never be able to dig deep enough into the
cosmological formations to find the Roots of the World‐Stuff or
Matter, unless she works on the same lines of thought as the
mediæval Alchemist did.
946 _Concepts of Modern Physics_, p. vi.
947 Book I. ch. II. p. 25. _Vishnu Purâna_, Fitzedward Hall’s
Translation.
948 _Vide_ in preceding Section VII., “Life, Force, or Gravity,”
quotation from _Anugitâ_.
949 The word “supernatural” implies _above or outside_ nature. Nature
and Space are one. Now Space for the metaphysician exists outside
any act of sensation, and is a purely subjective representation,
notwithstanding the contention of Materialism, which would connect
it forcibly with one or another datum of sensation. For our senses,
it is fairly subjective when independent of anything within it. How
then can any phenomenon, or anything else, step outside, or be
performed beyond, that which has no limits? But when spatial
extension becomes simply conceptual, and is thought of in an idea
connected with certain actions, as by the Materialists and the
Physicists, then again they have hardly a right to define and claim
that which can, or cannot, be produced by Forces generated within
even limited spaces, as they have not even an approximate idea of
what those Forces are.
950 It is not correct, when speaking of Idealism, to show it based upon
“the old ontological assumptions that things or entities exist
independently of each other, and otherwise than as terms of
relations” (Stallo). At any rate, it is incorrect to say so of
Idealism in Eastern Philosophy and _its_ cognition, for it is just
the reverse.
951 Independent, in a certain sense, but not _disconnected_ with it.
952 “By Fohat, more likely,” would be an Occultist’s reply.
953 The reason for such psychic capacities is given farther on.
954 The above was written in 1886, at a time when hopes of success for
the “Keely Motor” were at their highest. Every word then said by the
writer proved true, and now only a few remarks are added with regard
to the failure of Mr. Keely’s expectations, so far, a failure now
admitted by the discoverer himself. Though, however, the word
_failure_ is here used, the reader should understand it in a
relative sense, for, as Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore explains: “What Mr.
Keely does admit is that, baffled in applying vibratory force to
mechanics, upon his first and second lines of experimental research,
he was obliged either to confess a _commercial_ failure, or to try a
third departure from his base or principle, seeking success through
another channel.” And this “channel” is on the _physical_ plane.
955 We learn that these remarks are not applicable to Mr. Keely’s latest
discovery; time alone can show the exact limit of his achievements.
956 _Theosophical Siftings_, No. 9.
957 This is also the division made by the Occultists, under other names.
958 Quite so, since there is the _seventh_ beyond, which begins the same
enumeration from the first to the last, on another and higher plane.
959 From Mrs. Bloomfield‐Moore’s paper, _The New Philosophy_.
960 In answer to a friend, that eminent Geologist writes: “I can only
say, in reply to your letter, that it is at present, and perhaps
always will be, impossible to reduce, even approximately, geological
time into years, or even into millenniums.” (Signed, William
Pengelly, F.R.S.)
961 Plato, in speaking of the irrational, turbulent Elements, “composed
of fire, air, water, and earth,” means Elementary Dæmons. ( See _Timæus_.)
962 Plato in the _Timæus_ uses the word “secretions” of turbulent
Elements.
963 Valentinus’ _Esoteric Treatise on the Doctrine of Gilgul_.
964 See Mackenzie’s _Royal Masonic Cyclopædia_.
965 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 152.
966 See Mackenzie, _ibid._, _sub voc._
967 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 317.
968 _Viveka Chudamani_, translated by Mohini M. Chatterji, as “The Crest
Jewel of Wisdom.” See _Theosophist_, July and August, 1886.
969 The Tanmâtras are literally the type or rudiment of an element
devoid of qualities; but esoterically, they are the primeval Noumena
of that which becomes in the progress of evolution, a Cosmic
Element, in the sense given to the term in Antiquity, not in that of
Physics. They are the Logoi, the seven emanations or rays of the
Logos.
970 Ch. xxxvi; Telang’s translation, pp. 387‐8.
971 See _Theosophist_, August, 1886.
972 The now universal error of attributing to the Ancients the knowledge
of only seven planets, simply because they mentioned no others, is
based on the same general ignorance of their Occult doctrines. The
question is not whether they were, or were not, aware of the
existence of the later discovered planets; but whether the reverence
paid by them to the four exoteric and three secret Great Gods—the
Star‐Angels, had not some special reason. The writer ventures to say
there was such a reason, and it is this. Had they known of as many
planets as we do now—and this question can hardly be decided at
present, either way—they would still have only connected the seven
with their religious worship, because these seven are directly and
specially connected with our Earth, or, using esoteric phraseology,
with our septenary Ring of Spheres.
973 _John_, x. 30.
974 _Ibid._, xx. 17.
975 _Ibid._, xiv. 28.
976 _Matt._, v. 16.
977 _Ibid._, xiii. 43.
978 1 _Cor._, iii. 16.
979 _Theosophist_, Aug., 1886.
980 These are planets accepted for purposes of Judicial Astrology only.
The astro‐theogonical division differed from the above. The Sun,
being a central _star_ and not a planet, stands, with _its_ seven
planets, in more occult and mysterious relations to _our_ Globe than
is generally known. The Sun was, therefore, considered the great
Father of all the Seven “Fathers,” and this accounts for the
variations found between the Seven and Eight Great Gods of Chaldean
and other countries. Neither the Earth, nor the Moon, its satellite,
nor yet the stars, for another reason, were anything more than
_substitutes used for Esoteric purposes_. Yet, even with the
exclusion of the Sun and the Moon from the calculation, the Ancients
seem to have known of _seven_ planets. How many more are known to
us, so far, if we throw out the Earth and Moon? _Seven_, and no
more: Seven primary or principal planets, the rest _planetoids_
rather than planets.
981 When one remembers that under the powerful telescope of Sir William
Herschell, that eminent Astronomer—gauging merely that portion of
heaven in the equatorial plane, the approximate centre of which is
occupied by our Earth—saw in one quarter of an hour, 16,000 stars
pass; and applying this calculation to the totality of the “Milky
Way” he found in it no less than eighteen millions of Suns, one
wonders no longer that Laplace, in conversation with Napoleon I,
should have called God a _hypothesis_—perfectly useless to speculate
upon for _exact_ Physical Science, at any rate. Occult Metaphysics
and transcendental Philosophy will alone be able to lift the
smallest corner of the impenetrable veil in this direction.
982 _Numb._, xi. 16.
983 _Deut._, xxxii. 8, 9.
984 _Ibid._, 9.
985 C. W. King in _The Gnostics and their Remains_ (p. 344), identifies
it with “that _summum bonum_ of Oriental aspiration, the Buddhist
Nirvâna, ‘perfect repose, the Epicurean _Indolentia_’;” a view that
looks flippant enough in its expression, though not quite untrue.
986 See Origen’s Copy of the Chart, or Diagramma of the Ophites.
987 See also Section XIV.
988 Abraham and Saturn are identical in astro‐symbology, and he is the
forefather of the Jehovistic Jews.
989 _John_, viii. 37, 38, 41, 44.
990 _Matthew_, v. 22.
991 The Elemental Vortices inaugurated by the “Mind” have not been
improved by their modern transformation.
992 I have often been taken to task for using expressions in _Isis_
denoting belief in a _personal_ and anthropomorphic God. This is
_not_ my idea. Kabalistically speaking, the “Architect” is the
generic name for the Sephiroth, the Builders of the Universe, as the
“Universal Mind” represents the collectivity of the Dhyân Chohanic
Minds.
993 _Timæus._
994 I. 258.
995 _Researches on Light in its Chemical Relations_.
996 _Modern Chemistry._
997 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 137.
998 _Faraday Lectures_, 1881.
999 Thus, what the writer of the present work said ten years ago in
_Isis Unveiled_ was, it seems, prophetic. These are the words: “Many
of these mystics, by following what they were taught by some
treatises, secretly preserved from one generation to another,
achieved discoveries which would not be despised even in our modern
days of exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar, was laughed at as a
quack, and is now generally numbered among ‘pretenders’ to magic
art; but his discoveries were nevertheless accepted, and are now
used by those who ridicule him the most. Roger Bacon belonged by
right, if not by fact, to that Brotherhood which includes all those
who study the Occult Sciences. Living in the thirteenth century,
almost a contemporary, therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas
Aquinas, his discoveries—such as gunpowder and optical glasses, and
his mechanical achievements—were considered by everyone as so many
miracles. He was accused of having made a compact with the Evil
One.” (Vol. I, pp. 64, 65.)
1000 Just so; “those forms of energy ... _which become evident_ ...” in
the laboratory of the Chemist and Physicist; but _there are other
forms of energy_ wedded to _other forms_ of matter, _which are
supersensuous_, yet are known to the Adepts.
1001 _Presidential Address_, p. 16.
1002 It is just the existence of such worlds on other planes of
consciousness that is asserted by the Occultist. The Secret Science
teaches that the primitive race was boneless, and that there are
worlds invisible to us, peopled as our own, besides the
_populations_ of Dhyân Chohans.
1003 _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 258 _et seq._
1004 Says Mr. Crookes in the same address: “The first riddle which we
encounter in chemistry is: ‘What are the elements?’ Of the attempts
hitherto made to define or explain an element, none satisfy the
demands of the human intellect. The text books tell us that an
element is ‘a body which has not been decomposed;’ that it is ‘a
something to which we can add, but from which we can take nothing,’
or ‘a body which increases in weight with every chemical change.’
Such definitions are doubly unsatisfactory: they are provisional,
and may cease to‐morrow to be applicable in any given case. They
take their stand, not on any attribute of the things to be defined,
but on the limitations of human power: they are confessions of
intellectual impotence.”
1005 And the lecturer quotes Sir George Airy, who says (in _Faraday’s
Life and Letters_, Vol. II., p. 354): “I can easily conceive that
there are plenty of bodies about us not subject to this intermutual
action, and therefore not subject to the law of gravitation.”
1006 The Vedântic philosophy conceives of such; but then it is not
physics, but metaphysics, called by Mr. Tyndall “poetry” and
“fiction.”
1007 In the form they are now, we conceive?
1008 And to Kapila and Manu—especially and originally.
1009 Here is a scientific corroboration of the eternal law of
correspondences and analogy.
1010 This method of illustrating the periodic law in the classification
of elements is, in the words of Mr. Crookes, proposed by Professor
Emerson Reynolds, of Dublin University, who ... “points out that in
each period, the general properties of the elements vary from one to
another, with approximate regularity until we reach the _seventh
member_, which is in more or less striking contrast with the first
element of the same period, as well as with the first of the next.
Thus chlorine, the seventh member of Mendeleef’s third period,
contrasts sharply with both sodium, the first member of the same
series, and with potassium, the first member of the next series;
whilst on the other hand, sodium and potassium are closely
analogous. The six elements, whose atomic weights intervene between
sodium and potassium, vary in properties, step by step, until
chlorine, the contrast to sodium, is reached. But from chlorine to
potassium, the analogue of sodium, there is a change in properties
_per saltum_..... If we thus recognize a contrast in properties—more
or less decided—between the first and the last members of each
series, we can scarcely help admitting the existence of a point of
mean variation within each system. In general the _fourth_ element
of each series possesses the property we might expect a transition‐
element to exhibit.... Thus for the purpose of graphic translation,
Professor Reynolds considers that the fourth member of a
period—silicon, for example—may be placed at the apex of a
symmetrical curve, which shall represent for that particular period,
the direction in which the properties of the series of elements vary
with rising atomic weights.”
Now, the writer humbly confesses complete ignorance of modern
Chemistry and its mysteries. But she is pretty well acquainted with
the Occult Doctrine with regard to _correspondences of types and
antetypes_ in nature, and to perfect analogy as a fundamental law in
Occultism. Hence she ventures on a remark which will strike every
Occultist, however it may be derided by orthodox Science. This
method of illustrating the periodic law in the behaviour of
elements, whether or not still a hypothesis in Chemistry, _is a law
in Occult Sciences_. Every well‐read Occultist knows that the
_seventh_ and _fourth_ members—whether in a septenary chain of
worlds, the septenary hierarchy of angels, or in the constitution of
man, animal, plant, or mineral atom—that the _seventh_ and _fourth_
members, we say, in the geometrically and mathematically uniform
workings of the immutable laws of Nature, always play a distinct and
specific part in the septenary system. From the stars twinkling high
in heaven, to the sparks flying asunder from the rude fire built by
the savage in his forest; from the hierarchies and the essential
constitution of the Dhyân Chohans—organized for diviner
apprehensions and a loftier range of perception than the greatest
Western Psychologist ever dreamed of, down to Nature’s
_classification_ of species among the humblest insects; finally from
Worlds to Atoms, everything in the Universe, from great to small,
proceeds in its spiritual and physical evolution, cyclically and
septennially, showing its seventh and fourth number (the latter the
turning point) behaving in the same way as is shown in that periodic
law of Atoms. Nature never proceeds _per saltum_. Therefore, when
Mr. Crookes remarks on this that he does not “wish to infer that the
gaps in Mendeleef’s table, and in this graphic representation of it
[the diagram showing the evolution of Atoms] necessarily mean that
there are elements actually existing to fill up the gaps; these gaps
may only mean that at the birth of the elements there was an easy
potentiality of the formation of an element which would fit into the
place”—an Occultist would respectfully remark to him that the latter
hypothesis can only hold good, if the septenary arrangement of Atoms
is not interfered with. This is _the one law_, and an infallible
method that must always lead one who follows it to success.
1011 A group of electricians has just protested against the new theory of
Clausius, the famous professor of the University of Bonn. The
character of the protest is shown in the signature, which has “Jules
Bourdin, in the name of the group of Electricians, which had the
honour of being introduced to Professor Clausius in 1881, and whose
war‐cry (_cri de ralliement_) is _À bas l’Ether_”—down with Ether,
even; they want Universal _Void_, you see!
1012 _Smithsonian Contributions_, xxi., Art. 1. pp. 79‐97.
1013 _System of Logic_, p. 229.
1014 Beyond the zero‐line of action.
1015 _Progymnasmata_, p. 795.
1016 _De Stellâ Novâ in Pede Serpentarii_, p. 115.
1017 _Hypothèses Cosmogoniques_, p. 2, C. Wolf, 1886.
1018 See _Philosophical Transactions_, p. 269, _et seq._
1019 Laplace conceived that the external and internal zones of the ring
would rotate with the same angular velocity, which would be the case
with a solid ring; but the principle of equal areas requires the
inner zones to rotate more rapidly than the outer. (_World‐Life_, p.
121.) Prof. Winchell points out a good many mistakes of Laplace; but
as a geologist he is not infallible himself in his “astronomical
speculations.”
1020 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 249‐251, Art. “Do the Adepts deny the
Nebular Theory?”
1021 Had Astronomers, in their present state of knowledge, merely held to
the hypothesis of Laplace, which was simply the formation of the
Planetary System, it might in time have resulted in something like
an approximate truth. But the two parts of the general problem—that
of the formation of the Universe, or the formation of the Suns and
Stars from the Primitive Matter, and then the development of the
Planets round their Sun—rest on quite different facts in Nature and
are even so viewed by Science itself. They are at the opposite poles
of Being.
1022 Aristotle’s _Physica_, viii. 1.
1023 _Hypothèses Cosmogoniques_, p. 3, Wolf.
1024 Vol. I., p. 185, quoted by Wolf, p. 3. Wolf’s argument is here
summarised.
1025 Note vii. Summarized from Wolf, p. 6.
1026 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 241, 242, and 239.
1027 But the spectra of these nebulæ have never yet been ascertained.
When they _are_ found with bright lines, then only may they be
cited.
1028 _Hypothèses Cosmogoniques_, p. 3.
1029 Mr. Crookes’ Protyle must not be regarded as the _primary_ stuff,
out of which the Dhyân Chohans, in accordance with the immutable
laws of Nature, wove our Solar System. This Protyle cannot even be
the Prima Materia of Kant, which that great mind saw used up in the
formation of the worlds, and thus existing no longer in a diffused
state. Protyle is a _mediate_ phase in the progressive
differentiation of Cosmic Substance from its normal undifferentiated
state. It is, then, the aspect assumed by Matter in its middle
passage into full objectivity.
1030 See Stanza III, Commentary 9, (p. 109) about “Light,” or “_Cold_
Flame,” where it is explained that the “Mother”—Chaos—is a cold
Fire, a cool Radiance, colourless, formless, devoid of every
quality. “_Motion as the One Eternal_ IS, _and contains the
potentialities of every quality in the Manvantaric Worlds_,” it is
said.
1031 _Hypothèses Cosmogoniques_, pp. 4, 5.
1032 _World‐Life_, p. 196.
1033 _Westminster Review_, XX., July 27, 1868.
1034 Vol. XIV. p. 252.
1035 _Hypothèses Cosmogoniques._
1036 Which “Light” we call Fohat.
1037 This is a mistake, which implies a material agent, distinct from the
influences which move it, _i.e._, blind matter and perhaps “God”
again, whereas this One Life is the very God and Gods “Itself.”
1038 The same error.
1039 _Popular Science Review_, Vol. X.
1040 “Is the Jîva a myth, as Science says, or is it not?” ask some
Theosophists, wavering between materialistic and idealistic Science.
The difficulty of really grasping Esoteric problems concerning the
“ultimate state of Matter” is again the old crux of the _objective_
and the _subjective_. What is Matter? Is the Matter of our present
objective consciousness anything but our _sensations_? True, the
sensations we receive come _from without_, but can we really—except
in terms of phenomena—speak of the “gross matter” of this plane as
an entity apart from and independent of us? To all such arguments
Occultism answers: True, in _reality_ Matter is not independent of,
or existent outside, our perceptions. Man is an _illusion_: granted.
But the existence and actuality of other, still more illusive, but
not less _actual_, entities than we are, is not a claim which is
lessened, but rather strengthened, by this doctrine of Vedântic and
even Kantian Idealism.
1041 See _Musée des Sciences_, August, 1856.
1042 Book II. of the _Commentary on the Book of Dzyan_.
1043 Even the question of the plurality of worlds inhabited by sentient
creatures is rejected, or is approached with the greatest caution!
And yet see what the great astronomer, Camille Flammarion, says in
his _Pluralité des Mondes_.
1044 Nevertheless, it may be shown on the testimony of the _Bible_
itself, and of such good Christian theologians as Cardinal Wiseman,
that this plurality is taught in both the _Old_ and the _New
Testaments_.
1045 See _Plurality of Worlds_, Vol. II.
1046 See on this _La Pluralité des Mondes Habités_, par C. Flammarion,
wherein is given a list of the many men of Science who have written
to prove the theory.
1047 _World‐Life_, pp. 496‐498, _et seq._
1048 _World‐Life._
1049 _The Book of Enoch._ Trans. by Archbishop Laurence, Ch. LXXIX.
1050 The Âtmâ, or Spirit, the Spiritual SELF, passing like a thread
through the five Subtle Bodies, or Principles, Koshas, is called
“Thread‐soul,” or Sûtrâtmâ in Vedântic Philosophy.
1051 “The Septenary Principle,” _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 197.
1052 _Pythagorean Triangle_, by the Rev. G. Oliver, p. 36.
1053 See Kant’s _Critique de la Raison Pure_, Barui’s transl., II. 54.
1054 Plutarch, _De Placitis Philosophorum_.
1055 In the Greek and Latin Churches—which regard marriage as one of the
sacraments—the officiating priest during the marriage ceremony
represents the apex of the triangle; the bride, its left feminine
side, and the bridegroom the right side, while the base line is
symbolized by the row of witnesses, the bridesmaids and best men.
But behind the priest there is the Holy of Holies, with its
mysterious containments and symbolic meaning, inside of which no one
but the consecrated priests should enter. In the early days of
Christianity the marriage ceremony was a mystery and a true symbol.
Now, however, even the Churches have lost the true meaning of this
symbolism.
1056 _New Aspects of Life and Religion_, by Henry Pratt, M.D., p. 7. Ed.
1886.
1057 _Ibid._, pp. 7, 8.
1058 _Ibid._, p. 9.
1059 _Pythagorean Triangle_, by the Rev. G. Oliver, pp. 18, 19.
1060 P. 387.
1061 P. 387.
1062 In the World of Form, symbolism finding expression in the Pyramids,
has in them both triangle and square, four co‐equal triangles or
surfaces, four basic points, and the fifth—the apex.
1063 Pp. 385, 386.
1064 _Op. cit._ By Isaac Myer. P. 174.
1065 P. 175.
1066 P. 175.
1067 “The lowest designation, or the Deity in Nature, the more general
term Elohim, is translated God.” (P. 175.) Such recent works as the
_Qabbalah_ of Mr. Isaac Myer, and of Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers,
fully justify our attitude towards the Jehovistic Deity. It is not
the transcendental, philosophical, and highly metaphysical
abstraction of the original Kabalistic thought—Ain‐Suph‐Shekinah‐
Adam‐Kadmon, and all that follows—that we oppose, but the
crystallization of all these into the highly unphilosophical,
repulsive, and anthropomorphic Jehovah, the androgynous and _finite_
deity, for which eternity, omnipotence, and omniscience are claimed.
We do not war against the _Ideal Reality_, but the hideous
theological _Shadow_.
1068 Let not the word “Psychology” cause the reader, by association of
ideas, to carry his thought to modern “Psychologists,” so‐called,
whose _Idealism_ is another name for uncompromising Materialism, and
whose pretended Monism is no better than a mask to conceal the void
of final annihilation—even of consciousness. Here _spiritual_
Psychology is meant.
1069 “Vishvânara is not merely the manifested objective world, but the
one physical basis [the horizontal line of the triangle] from which
the whole objective world starts into existence.” And this is the
Cosmic Duad, the Androgynous Substance. Only beyond this is the true
Protyle.
1070 T. Subba Row. See _Theosophist_, Feb. 1887.
1071 By W. Crookes, F.R.S., V.P.C.S., delivered at the Royal Institution,
London, on Friday, February 18th, 1887.
1072 How true it is will be fully demonstrated only on that day when Mr.
Crookes’ discovery of radiant matter will have resulted in a further
elucidation with regard to the true source of light, and will have
revolutionized all the present speculations. Further familiarity
with the northern streamers of the _aurora borealis_ may help the
recognition of this truth.
1073 _Genesis of the Elements_, p. 1.
1074 _De Placit. Philos._
1075 _The Path_, I. 10, p. 297.
1076 P. 11.
1077 Corresponding on the cosmic scale with the Spirit, Soul, Mind, Life,
and the three Vehicles—the Astral, the Mâyâvic and the Physical
Bodies (of mankind), whatever division is made.
1078 _Ibid._ p. 16.
1079 Vol. I, p. 429.
1080 _Ibid._, p. 21.
1081 “The Lord is a consuming _fire_.” “In him was _life_, and the life
was the light of men.”
1082 Which if separated _alchemically_ would yield the Spirit of Life,
and its Elixir.
1083 Foremost of all, the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature
as _inorganic_ substances or bodies. Stones, minerals, rocks, and
even chemical “atoms” are simply organic units in profound lethargy.
Their coma has an end and their inertia becomes activity.
1084 _Ibid._, p. 144.
1085 The orthography of the name—as spelt by himself—is Leibniz. He was
of Slavonian descent though born in Germany.
1086 _Monadologie_, Introd.
1087 “Leibnitz’s dynamism,” says Professor Lachelier, “would offer but
little difficulty if, with him, the monad had remained a simple atom
of _blind force_. But....” One perfectly understands the perplexity
of Modern Materialism!
1088 _The Path_, I. 10, p. 297.
1089 Leibnitz was an _absolute_ Idealist in maintaining that “material
atoms are contrary to reason.” (_Système Nouveau_, Erdmann, p. 126,
col. 2.) For him Matter was a simple representation of the Monad,
whether human or atomic. Monads, he thought (as do we), are
everywhere. Thus the human soul is a Monad, and every cell in the
human body has its Monad, as has every cell in animal, vegetable,
and even in the so‐called _inorganic_ bodies. His Atoms are the
molecules of modern Science, and his Monads those _simple atoms_
that Materialistic Science takes on faith, though it will never
succeed in _interviewing_ them—except in imagination. But Leibnitz
is rather contradictory in his views about Monads. He speaks of his
“Metaphysical Points” and “Formal Atoms,” at one time as
_realities_, occupying space; at another as pure spiritual _ideas_;
then he again endows them with objectivity and aggregates and
positions in their co‐relations.
1090 _Examen des Principes du P. Malebranche._
1091 The Atoms of Leibnitz have, in truth, nothing but the name in common
with the atoms of the Greek Materialists, or even the molecules of
Modem Science. He calls them “Formal Atoms,” and compares them to
the “Substantial Forms” of Aristotle. (See _Système Nouveau_, § 3.)
1092 Letter to Father Desbosses, _Correspondence_, xviii.
1093 _Monadologie_, § 60. Leibnitz, like Aristotle, calls the “created”
or _emanated_ Monads (the Elementals issued from Cosmic Spirits or
Gods)—Entelechies, Ἐντελέχειαι, and “incorporeal automata.”
(_Monadologie_ § 18.)
1094 These three “rough divisions” correspond to Spirit, Mind (or Soul),
and Body, in the human constitution.
1095 Brother C. H. A. Bjerregaard, in the lecture already mentioned,
warns his audience not to regard the Sephiroth too much as
_individualities_, but to avoid at the same time seeing in them
_abstractions_. “We shall never arrive at the truth,” he says, “much
less the power of associating with these celestials, until we return
to the simplicity and fearlessness of the primitive ages, when men
mixed freely with the gods, and the gods descended among men and
guided them in truth and holiness.” (P. 296.) “There are several
designations for ‘angels’ in the Bible, which clearly show that
beings like the elementals of the Kabbala and the monads of
Leibnitz, must be understood by that term rather than that which is
commonly understood. They are called ‘morning stars,’ ‘flaming
fires,’ ‘the mighty ones,’ and St. Paul sees them in his cosmogonic
vision as ‘Principalities and Powers.’ Such names as these preclude
the idea of personality, and we find ourselves compelled to think of
them as impersonal existences ... as an _influence_, a spiritual
substance, or _conscious_ force.” (Pp. 321, 322.)
1096 _Buddhist Catechism_, by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical
Society, p. 51.
1097 _Ibid._ 51, 52.
1098 We refer those who would regard the statement as an impertinence or
irreverence levelled at accepted Science, to Dr. James Hutchinson
Stirling’s work _As regards Protoplasm_, which is a defence of a
Vital Principle _versus_ the Molecularists—Huxley, Tyndall, Vogt,
and Co.—and request them to examine whether it is true or not to say
that, though the scientific premisses may not be always correct,
they are, nevertheless, accepted, to fill up a gap or a hole in some
beloved materialistic hobby. Speaking of protoplasm and the organs
of man, as “viewed by Mr. Huxley,” the author says: “Probably then,
in regard to any continuity in protoplasm of power, of form, or of
substance, we have seen _lacunæ_ enow. Nay, Mr. Huxley himself can
be adduced in evidence on the same side. Not rarely do we find in
his essay admissions of _probability_, where it is _certainty_ that
is alone in place. He says, for example: ‘It is more than probable
that _when_ the vegetable world is thoroughly explored we _shall_
find all plants in possession of the same powers.’ When a conclusion
is decidedly announced, it is rather disappointing to be told, as
here, that the premisses are still to collect [!!].... Again, here
is a passage in which he is seen to cut his own ‘_basis_’ from
beneath his own feet. After telling us that all forms of protoplasm
consist of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen ‘in very complex
union,’ he continues: ‘To this complex combination, _the nature of
which has never been determined with exactness_ [!!], the name of
_protein_ has been applied.’ This, plainly, is an identification, on
Mr. Huxley’s own part, of protoplasm and _protein_; and what is said
of one, being necessarily true of the other, it follows that he
admits the nature of protoplasm never to have been determined with
exactness, and that even in his eyes the _lis_ is still _sub
judice_. This admission is strengthened by the words, too, ‘If we
use this term (protein) with such _caution_ as may properly arise
out of our _comparative ignorance_ of the things for which it
stands’ ” ... etc. (pp. 33 and 34, ed. 1872, in reply to Mr. Huxley
in _Yeast_).
This is the eminent Huxley, the king of physiology and biology, who
is proven playing at blind man’s buff with _premisses_ and _facts_!
What may not the “smaller fry” of Science do after this!
1099 “The Cycles of Matter,” a name given by Professor Winchell to an
Essay written in 1860.
1100 _World‐Life_, pp. 535, 548.
1101 Quoted in Büchner’s _Force and Matter_.
1102 Men of Science will say: We deny, because nothing of the kind has
ever come within the scope of our experience. But, as argued by
Charles Richet, the Physiologist: “So be it, but have you at least
demonstrated the contrary?... Do not, at any rate, deny _à priori_.
Actual Science is not sufficiently advanced to give you such
right.”—_La Suggestion Mentale et le Calcul des Probabilités._
1103 _Lectures on the Philosophy of History_, p. 26. Sibree’s Eng.
Transl.
1104 _Isis Unveiled_, Vol. 1, p. 34.
1105 This symbolism does not prevent these now seemingly mythic
personages from having ruled the Earth once upon a time under the
human form of actual living, though truly divine and god‐like Men.
The opinion of Colonel Vallancey—and also of Count de Gebelin—that
the “names of the Kabiri appear to be all allegorical, and to have
signified no more [?] than an almanac of the vicissitudes of the
seasons—calculated for the operations of agriculture” (_Collect. de
Reb. Hibern._, No. 13, Præf. Sect. 5), is as absurd as his assertion
that Æon, Cronus, Saturn and Dagon are all one, namely, the
“Patriarch Adam.” The Kabiri were the instructors of mankind in
agriculture, because they were the Regents over the seasons and
Cosmic Cycles. Hence it was they who regulated, as Planetary Spirits
or Angels (Messengers), the _mysteries_ of the _art_ of agriculture.
1106 “Who dread Karma‐Nemesis,” would be better.
1107 Dryden.
1108 Not all, however, for there are men of Science awakening to truth.
This is what we read: “Whatever way we turn our eyes we encounter a
mystery ... all in Nature for us is the unknown.... Yet they are
numerous, those superficial minds for whom nothing can be produced
by natural forces outside of facts observed long ago, consecrated in
books and grouped more or less skilfully with the help of theories
whose ephemeral duration ought, by this time, to have demonstrated
their insufficiency, .... I do not pretend to contest the
possibility of invisible beings, of a nature different from ours and
capable of moving matter to action. Profound philosophers have
admitted this in all epochs, as a consequence of the great law of
continuity which rules the universe. That intellectual life, which
we see starting in some way from non‐being (_néant_) and gradually
reaching man, can it stop abruptly at man to reäppear only in the
infinite, in the sovereign regulator of the world? This is little
probable.” Therefore, “I no more deny the existence of spirits than
I deny soul, while I yet try to explain certain facts without this
hypothesis.” _The Non‐Defined Forces, Historical and Experimental
Researches_, p. 3. (Paris, 1877.) The author is A. de Rochas, a
well‐known man of Science in France, and his work is one of the
signs of the time.
1109 ix. 9.
1110 xxxviii. 31, 32.
1111 _Astronomie Antique._
1112 The Pleiades, as all know, are the seven stars beyond the Bull,
which appear at the beginning of spring. They have a very Occult
meaning in the Hindû Esoteric Philosophy, and are connected with
_Sound_ and other mystic principles in Nature.
1113 See _Astronomie Antique_, pp. 63 to 74.
1114 _Temple de Jerusalem_, Vol. II, Part II, Chap. xxx.
1115 Ch. vii.
1116 Quoted by De Mirville, _Des Esprits_, iv. p. 58.
1117 _Natural Genesis_, ii. p. 318.
1118 _Proœm_, 2.
1119 _Astronomy of the Ancients_, Lewis, p. 264.
1120 _Natural Genesis_, ii. p. 319.
1121 Proclus, _In Timæum_, i.
1122 _Genesis_, xlix.
1123 Creuzer, iii. p. 930.
1124 _Cyropædia_, viii. p. 7, as quoted in _Des Esprits_, iv. p. 55.
1125 _Des Esprits_, iv. pp. 59, 60.
1126 _Origine de tous les Cultes_, “Zodiaque.”
1127 _Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ_, I. p. 9.
1128 Whether many nations have seen that identical star, or not, we all
know that the sepulchres of the “three Magi”—who rejoice in the
quite Teutonic names of Kaspar and Melchior, Balthazar being the
only exception, and the two having little of the Chaldean ring in
them—are shown by the priests in the famous cathedral of Cologne,
where the Magian bodies are not only supposed, but firmly believed
to have been buried.
1129 This tradition about the “seventy planets” that preside over the
destinies of nations, is based on the Occult cosmogonical teaching
that besides our own septenary chain of World‐Planets, there are
many more in the Solar System.
1130 _Des Esprits_, iv. p. 67.
1131 _The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated_; Part the
Second, or The Key of Urania: pp. 23, 24. Ed. 1823.
1132 Every scholar is aware, of course, that the Chaldeans claimed the
same digits (432), or 432,000, for their Divine Dynasties as the
Hindûs do for their Mahâyuga, namely 4,320,000. Therefore has Dr.
Sepp, of Munich, undertaken to support Kepler and Wilford in their
charge that the Hindûs borrowed them from the Christians, and the
Chaldeans from the Jews, who, it is claimed, expected their Messiah
in the lunar year of the world 4,320!!! As these figures, according
to ancient writers, were based by Berosus on the 120 Saroses—each of
the divisions meaning six Neroses of 600 years each, making a sum
total of 432,000 years—they would appear to be peremptory, remarks
De Mirville (_Des Esprits_, iii. p. 24). So the pious professor of
Munich undertook to explain them _in the correct way_. He claims to
have solved the riddle by showing that “the saros being composed,
according to Pliny, of 222 synodial months, to wit, 18 years 6/10,”
the calculator naturally fell back on the figures “given by Suidas,”
who affirmed that the “120 saroses made 2,222 sacerdotal and cyclic
years, which equalled 1,656 solar years.” (_Vie de Notre Seigneur
Jésus Christ_, ii. p. 417.)
But Suidas said nothing of the kind; and, even supposing he had, he
would prove little, if anything, by such a statement. The Neroses
and Saroses were the same thorn in the side of _uninitiated_ ancient
writers as the apocalyptic 666 of the “Great Beast” is in that of
the modern, and the former figures have found their unlucky Newtons,
as have the latter.
1133 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. p. 132.
1134 The reader has to bear in mind that the phrase “climacteric year”
has more than the usual significance, when used by Occultists and
Mystics. It is not only a critical period, during which some great
change is periodically expected, whether in human or cosmic
constitution, but it likewise pertains to universal spiritual
changes. The Europeans called every 63rd year the “grand
climacteric,” and perhaps justly supposed those years to be the
years produced by multiplying 7 into the odd numbers 3, 5, 7 and 9.
But 7 is the real scale of Nature, in Occultism, and 7 has to be
multiplied in quite a different way and method than is as yet known
to European nations.
1135 _Des Espirits_; iv. p. 61.
1136 ii. p. 490.
1137 See _Recueil de l’Académie des Inscriptions_, 1853, quoted in _Des
Esprits_, iv. p. 62.
1138 _Ruins of Empires_, p. 360.
1139 See pp. 54, 196, _et seqq_.
1140 For a detailed scientific proof of this conclusion, see page 121 of
M. Bailly’s work, where the subject is discussed technically.
1141 Why it should be “fictitious” can never be made plain by European
Scientists.
1142 Bailly’s _Traité de l’Astronomie Indienne et Orientale_, pp. xx. _et
seq._ Ed. 1787.
1143 Ch. III. “On Matter.”
1144 _Lecture on Protoplasm_, by Mr. Huxley.
1145 Ganot’s _Physics_, p. 68, Atkinson’s Translation.
1146 See Vol. I. pp. 338, 339, quoted from _Le Mystère et la Science_,
Conférences, Père Félix de Notre Dame.
1147 Behold the work of Cycles and their periodical return! Those who
denied such “Entities” (Forces) to be bodies, and called them
“Spaces,” were the prototypes of our modern “science‐struck” public,
and their official teachers, who speak of the Forces of Nature as
the imponderable energy of Matter and as modes of motion, and yet
hold electricity, for one, as being as _atomic as Matter_
itself—(Helmholtz). Inconsistency and contradiction reign as much in
official as in heterodox Science.
1148 _The Virgin of the World_ of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, rendered
into English by Dr. Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. Pp. 83, 84.
1149 “Hermes here includes as Gods the sensible Forces of Nature, the
elements and phenomena of the Universe,” remarks Dr. A. Kingsford in
a foot‐note explaining it very correctly. So does Eastern
Philosophy.
1150 _Ibid._, pp. 64, 65.
1151 See also Section IX, THE COMING FORCE.
1152 “O Toom, Toom! issued from the great [female] which is in the bosom
of the waters [the great Deep or Space], luminous through the two
Lions,” the dual Force, or power of the two _solar eyes_, or the
electro‐positive and the electro‐negative forces. See _Book of the
Dead_, ch. iii.
1153 See _Book of the Dead_, chapter xvii.
1154 Chapter lxxix.
1155 An image expressing the succession of divine functions, the
transmutation of one form into another, or the correlation of
forces. Aam is the electro‐positive force, devouring all others, as
Saturn devoured his progeny.
1156 Aanroo is in the domain of Osiris, a field divided into _fourteen_
sections, “surrounded with an _iron_ enclosure, within which grows
the _corn of life seven_ cubits high,” the Kâma Loka of the
Egyptians. Those only of the dead, who know the names of the
janitors of the “seven halls,” will be admitted into Amenti _for
ever_; _i.e._, those who have passed through the Seven Races of each
Round—otherwise they will rest in the _lower fields_; and it
represents also the seven successive Devachans, or Lokas. In Amenti
one becomes pure spirit for the eternity (xxx. 4); while in Aanroo
the “soul of the spirit,” or the Defunct, is _devoured_ each time by
Uræus—the Serpent, Son of the Earth (in another sense the primordial
vital principles in the Sun), _i.e._, the Astral Body of the
deceased or the “Elementary” fades out and disappears in the “Son of
the Earth,” _limited_ time. The soul quits the fields of Aanroo and
goes on earth under any shape it likes to assume. (See chapter
xcix., _Book of the Dead_.)
1157 See _Book of the Dead_, chapter cviii. 4.
1158 Maspero in the _Guide au Musée de Boulaq_, p. 152. Ed. 1883.
1159 See _Book of the Dead_, ch. xciv.
1160 _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1865, pp. 157 and 158.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and ost other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions hatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms f the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online t www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, ou will have to check the laws of the country where you are located efore using this eBook.
Title: The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4
Author: H. P. Blavatsky
Release date: April 4, 2017 [eBook #54488]
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET DOCTRINE, VOL. 2 OF 4 ***
The Secret Doctrine
The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
By
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Author of "Isis Unveiled."
Third and Revised Edition.
SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH.
"There is no Religion higher than Truth."
Volume II.
Anthropogenesis
The Theosophical Publishing House
London
1893
CONTENTS
Preliminary Notes on The Archaic Stanzas, and the Four Pre-Historic
Continents.
Part I. Anthropogenesis.
Text.
Stanza I.
Stanza II.
Stanza III.
Stanza IV.
Stanza V.
Stanza VI.
Stanza VII.
Stanza VIII.
Stanza IX.
Stanza X.
Stanza XI.
Stanza XII.
Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their
Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
Stanza I. Beginnings of Sentient Life.
Two Antediluvian Astronomers.
Stanza II. Nature Unaided Fails.
Creation of Divine Beings in the Exoteric Accounts.
Stanza II.--_Continued._
The Chronology of the Brâhmans.
Stanza III. Attempts To Create Man.
Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.
On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.
Stanza IV.--_Continued._
Stanza V. The Evolution of the Second Race.
The Divine Hermaphrodite.
Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The "Sweat-Born."
A Few Words About "Deluges" And "Noahs."
Stanza VII. From The Semi-Divine Down To The First Human Races.
I. Fission.
II. Budding.
III. Spores.
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism.
V. True Sexual Union.
Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall.
What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.
Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.
Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.
The "Sons Of God" And The "Sacred Island."
Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.
Archaic Teachings In The "Purânas" And "Genesis." Physical
Evolution.
A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.
Are Giants A Fiction?
The Races With The "Third Eye."
The Primeval Manus Of Humanity.
Stanza XI. The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth
Races.
Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.
Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.
Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.
The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.
Our Divine Instructors.
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.
Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.
The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged
Continents.
Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic
Traditions.
The "Curse" From A Philosophical Point Of View.
Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza
XII.
Conclusion.
Part II. The Archaic Symbolism Of The World-Religions.
Section I. Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in Every Scripture.
Section II. Adam=Adami.
Section III. The "Holy of Holies." Its Degradation.
Section IV. On the Myth of the "Fallen Angels" in its Various Aspects.
A. The Evil Spirit: Who, And What?
B. The Gods Of Light Proceed From The Gods Of Darkness.
C. The Many Meanings Of The "War In Heaven."
Section V. Is Plerôma Satan's Lair?
Section VI. Prometheus, the Titan.
His Origin In Ancient India.
Section VII. Enoďchion-Henoch.
Section VIII. The Symbolism of the Mystery-Names Iao and Jehovah, with
their Relation to the Cross and Circle.
A. Cross And Circle.
B. The Fall Of The Cross Into Matter.
Section IX. The Upanishads in Gnostic Literature.
Section X. The Cross and the Pythagorean Decad.
Section XI. The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.
A. Saptaparna.
B. The Tetraktys In Relation To The Heptagon.
C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.
D. The Septenary In The Exoteric Works.
E. Seven In Astronomy, Science, And Magic.
F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists.
Part III. Addenda. Science And The Secret Doctrine Contrasted.
Section I. Archaic, or Modern Anthropology?
Section II. The Ancestors Mankind is Offered by Science.
Plastidular Souls, And Conscious Nerve-Cells.
Section III. The Fossil Relics of Man and the Anthropoid Ape.
A. Geological Facts Bearing On The Question Of Their Relationship.
B. Western Evolutionism: The Comparative Anatomy Of Man And The
Anthropoid In No Way A Confirmation Of Darwinism.
C. Darwinism And The Antiquity Of Man: The Anthropoids And Their
Ancestry.
Section IV. Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the
Antiquity of Man.
A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe,
Animal Evolution, And Man.
B. On Chains Of Planets And Their Plurality.
C. Supplementary Remarks On Esoteric Geological Chronology.
Section V. Organic Evolution and Creative Centres.
A. The Origin And Evolution Of The Mammalia: Science And Esoteric
Phylogeny.
B. The European Palćolithic Races: Whence, And How Distributed.
Section VI. Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in
History.
A. Some Statements About The Sacred Islands And Continents In The
Classics, Explained Esoterically.
Section VII. Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of
Several Submerged Continents.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber's Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter t Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PSI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}.
My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
JOHN vii. 16.
Modern Science insists upon the doctrine of evolution; so do human
reason and the Secret Doctrine, and the idea is corroborated by
the ancient legends and myths, and even by the _Bible_ itself,
when it is read between the lines. We see a flower slowly
developing from a bud, and the bud from its seed. But whence the
latter, with all its predetermined programme of physical
transformation, and its invisible, therefore _spiritual_, forces
which gradually develop its form, colour, and odour? The word
_evolution_ speaks for itself. The germ of the present human race
must have preëxisted in the parent of this race, as the seed, in
which lies hidden the flower of next summer, was developed in the
capsule of its parent flower; the parent may be but _slightly_
different, but it still differs from its future progeny. The
antediluvian ancestors of the present elephant and lizard were,
perhaps, the mammoth and the plesiosaurus; why should not the
progenitors of our human race have been the "giants" of the
_Vedas_, the _Voluspa_, and the _Book of Genesis_? While it is
positively absurd to believe the "transformation of species" to
have taken place according to some of the more materialistic views
of the Evolutionists, it is but natural to think that each genus,
beginning with the molluscs and ending with monkey-man, has
modified from its own primordial and distinctive form.--ISIS
UNVEILED, I. 152-3.
PRELIMINARY NOTES ON THE ARCHAIC STANZAS, AND THE FOUR PRE-HISTORIC
CONTINENTS.
Facies totius universi, quamvis infinitis modis variet,
Manet tamen semper eadem.--SPINOZA.
The Stanzas, with the Commentaries thereon, in this Volume, are drawn from he same Archaic Records as the Stanzas on Cosmogony in Volume I. As far s possible a verbatim translation is given: but some of the Stanzas are oo obscure to be understood without explanation, and therefore, as in
Volume I, they are first given in full as they stand, and then, when taken erse by verse with their Commentaries, an attempt is made to make them learer, by words added in foot-notes, in anticipation of the fuller xplanation of the Commentary.
As regards the Evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three ew propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to Modern Science as ell as to current religious dogmas. It teaches: (_a_) the simultaneous volution of seven human Groups on seven different portions of our globe;
(_b_) the birth of the _astral_, before the _physical_ body, the former eing a model for the latter; and (_c_) that man, in this Round, preceded very mammalian--the anthropoids included--in the animal kingdom.(1)
The Secret Doctrine is not alone in speaking of primeval Men born imultaneously on the seven divisions of our Globe. In the _Divine
Pymander_ of Hermes Trismegistus, we find the same seven primeval Men(2) volving from Nature and the Heavenly Man, in the collective sense of the ord, namely, from the Creative Spirits; and in the fragments of Chaldćan ablets, collected by George Smith, on which is inscribed the Babylonian
Legend of Creation, in the first column of the Cutha tablet, seven human
Beings "with the faces of ravens," that is to say, of black swarthy omplexions, whom "the [seven] Great Gods created," are mentioned. Or, as xplained in lines 16, 17 and 18:
In the midst of the earth they grew up and became great,
And increased in number,
Seven kings, brothers of the same family.(3)
These are the seven Kings of Edom to whom reference is made in the
_Kabalah_; the First Race, which was _imperfect_, that is to say, was born efore the "balance" (sexes) existed, and which was therefore estroyed.(4)
Seven Kings, brethren, appeared and begat children, 6,000 in
number were their peoples. The God Nergas [death] destroyed them.
"How did he destroy them?" By bringing into equilibrium [or
balance] those who did not yet exist.(5)
They were "destroyed," as a Race, by being merged in their own progeny (by xudation): that is to say, the sexless Race reďncarnated in the
(potentially) bisexual; the latter, in the androgynes; these again, in the exual, the later Third Race. Were the tablets less mutilated, they would e found to contain word for word the same account as is given in the
Archaic Records and in Hermes, at least as regards the fundamental facts, f not as regards minute details; for Hermes is a good deal disfigured by istranslations.
It is quite certain that the seeming supernaturalism of these teachings, lthough allegorical, is so diametrically opposed to the dead-letter tatements of the Bible,(6) as well as to the latest hypotheses of
Science, that it will evoke passionate denial. The Occultists, however, now that the traditions of Esoteric Philosophy must be the right ones, imply because they are the most logical, and reconcile every difficulty.
Besides, we have the Egyptian _Books of Thoth_, and _Book of the Dead_, nd the Hindű _Purânas_ with their seven Manus, as well as the Chaldćo-
Assyrian accounts, whose tiles mention seven primitive Men, or Adams, the eal meaning of which name may be ascertained by means of the _Kabalah_.
Those who know anything of the Samothracian Mysteries will also remember hat the generic name of the Kabiri was the "Holy Fires," which created on even localities of the island of Electria, or Samothrace, the "Kabir born f the Holy Lemnos"--the island sacred to Vulcan.
According to Pindar, this Kabir, whose name was Adamas,(7) was, in the raditions of Lemnos, the type of the primitive man born from the bosom of he Earth. He was the archetype of the first males in the order of eneration, and was one of the seven autochthonous ancestors or rogenitors of mankind.(8) If, coupling with this the fact that Samothrace as colonized by the Phoenicians, and before them by the mysterious
Pelasgians who came from the East, we also remember the identity of the
"Mystery" Gods of the Phoenicians, Chaldćans, and Israelites, it will be asy to discover whence came also the confused account of the Noachian
Deluge. It has become undeniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their rimitive ideas about creation from Moses, who had them from the
Egyptians, compiled their Genesis and first cosmogonic traditions, when ewritten by Ezra and others, from the Chaldćo-Akkadian account. It is, herefore, sufficient to examine the Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform and ther inscriptions to find also therein, scattered here and there, not nly the original meaning of the name Adam, Admi, or Adami, but also the reation of seven Adams or roots of Men, born of Mother Earth, physically, nd of the Divine Fire of the Progenitors, spiritually or astrally. The
Assyriologists, ignorant of the Esoteric teachings, could hardly be xpected to pay any greater attention to the mysterious and ever-recurring umber _seven_ on the Babylonian cylinders, than they pay to it on finding t in _Genesis_ and the rest of the _Bible_. Yet the numbers of the ncestral spirits and their seven groups of human progeny are on the ylinders, notwithstanding the dilapidated condition of the fragments, and re to be found as plainly, as they are in _Pymander_ and in the _Book of he Concealed Mystery_ of the _Kabalah_. In the latter Adam Kadmon is the
Sephirothal Tree, as also the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil."
And that Tree, says verse 32, "hath around it seven columns," or palaces, f the seven creative Angels operating in the Spheres of the seven Planets n our Globe. As Adam Kadmon is a _collective_ name, so also is the name f the man Adam. Says George Smith, in his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_:
The word Adam used in these legends for the first human being is
evidently _not a proper name, but is only used as a term for
mankind_. Adam appears as a proper name in _Genesis_, but
certainly in some passages is only used in the same sense as the
Assyrian word.(9)
Moreover, neither the Chaldćan nor the Biblical Deluge, with their stories f Xisuthrus and Noah, is based on the universal or even on the Atlantean
Deluges, recorded in the Indian allegory of Vaivasvata Manu. They are the xoteric allegories based on the Esoteric Mysteries of Samothrace. If the lder Chaldćans knew the Esoteric truth concealed in the Purânic legends, he other nations were aware only of the Samothracian Mystery, and llegorized it. They adapted it to their astronomical and anthropological, r rather phallic, notions. Samothrace is known historically to have been amous in antiquity for a deluge, which submerged the country and reached he top of the highest mountains; an event which happened before the age f the Argonauts. It was overflowed very suddenly by waters from the
Euxine, which had been regarded up to that time as a lake.(10) But the
Israelites had, moreover, another legend upon which to base their llegory, the legend of the Deluge, that transformed the present Gobi
Desert into a sea _for the last time_, some 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, nd which drove many Noahs and their families to the surrounding ountains. As the Babylonian accounts are only now restored from hundreds f thousands of broken fragments--the mound of Kouyunjik alone having ielded from Layard's excavations upwards of twenty thousand fragments of nscriptions--the proofs here cited are comparatively scanty; yet such as hey are, they corroborate almost every one of our teachings; three most ertainty, at the very least. These are:
(1) That the race which was the first to fall into generation was a dark ace (zalmat-qaqadi), which they call the Adamu or Dark Race, and that
Sarku, or the Light Race, remained pure for a long while subsequently.
(2) That the Babylonians recognized two principal Races at the time of the
Fall, the Race of the Gods, the Ethereal Doubles of the Pitris, having receded these two. This is Sir H. Rawlinson's opinion. These Races are ur Second and Third Root-Races.
(3) That these seven Gods, each of whom created a Man, or Group of men, ere "the Gods imprisoned or incarnated." These Gods were: the God Zi; the
God Zi-ku, Noble Life, Director of Purity; the God Mir-ku, Noble Crown,
"Saviour from death of the Gods [later on] imprisoned," and the creator of
"the dark races which his hand has made"; the God Libzu, "wise among the
Gods"; the God Nissi; the God Suhhab; and Hea or Sa, their synthesis, the
God of Wisdom and of the Deep, identified with Oannes-Dagon, at the time f the Fall, and called, collectively, the Demiurge, or Creator.(11)
There are two "Creations" so-called, in the Babylonian fragments, and as
_Genesis_ has adhered to this, we find its first two chapters istinguished as the Elohite and the Jehovite Creations. Their proper rder, however, is not preserved in these or in any other exoteric ccounts. Now these "Creations," according to the Occult Teachings, refer espectively to the formation of the primordial seven Men by the
Progenitors, the Pitris, or Elohim, and to that of the human Groups after he Fall.
All this will be examined in the light of Science and comparisons drawn rom the scriptures of all the ancient nations, the _Bible_ included, as e proceed. Meanwhile, before we turn to the Anthropogenesis of the rehistoric Races, it may be useful to agree upon the names to be given to he Continents on which the four great Races, which preceded our Adamic
Race, were born, lived, and died. Their archaic and Esoteric names were any, and varied with the language of the nation which mentioned them in ts annals and scriptures. That which in the _Vendîdâd_, for instance, is eferred to as Airyana Vaęjô(12) wherein was born the original
Zoroaster,(13) is called in the Purânic literature Shveta Dvîpa, Mount
Meru, the Abode of Vishnu, etc.; and in the Secret Doctrine is simply amed the "Land of the Gods," under their chiefs, the "Spirits of this
Planet."
Therefore, in view of the possible, and even very probable confusion, that ay arise, it is considered more convenient to adopt, for each of the four
Continents constantly referred to, a name more familiar to the cultured eader. It is proposed, then, to call the first Continent, or rather the irst _terra firma_ on which the First Race was evolved by the divine
Progenitors:
I. The Imperishable Sacred Land.
The reason for the name is that it is stated that: this "Imperishable
Sacred Land" never shared the fate of the other Continents, because it is he only one whose destiny it is to last from the beginning to the end of he Manvantara throughout each Round. It is the cradle of the first man nd the dwelling of the last _divine_ mortal, chosen as a Shishta for the uture seed of humanity. Of this mysterious and sacred land very little an be said, except, perhaps, according to a poetical expression in one of he Commentaries, that the "_Pole-star has its watchful eye upon it, from he dawn to the close of the twilight of a Day of the Great Breath_."(14)
II. The Hyperborean.
This will be the name chosen for the second Continent, the land which tretched out its promontories southward and westward from the North Pole o receive the Second Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known s Northern Asia. Such was the name given by the oldest Greeks to the far- ff and mysterious region, whither their tradition made Apollo, the
Hyperborean, travel every year. Astronomically, Apollo is, of course, the
Sun, who, abandoning his Hellenic sanctuaries, loved to annually visit his ar-away country, where the Sun was said to never set for one half of the ear. "{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}," says a verse in the
Odyssey.(15)
But historically, or better, perhaps, ethnologically and geologically, the eaning is different. The land of the Hyperboreans, the country that xtended beyond Boreas, the frozen-hearted God of snows and hurricanes, ho loved to slumber heavily on the chain of Mount Rhipćus, was neither an deal country, as surmized by the Mythologists, nor yet a land in the eighbourhood of Scythia and the Danube.(16) It was a real Continent, a
_bonâ fide_ land, which knew no winter in those early days, nor have its orry remains more than one night and day during the year, even now. The octurnal shadows never fall upon it, said the Greeks; for it is the "Land f the Gods," the favourite abode of Apollo, the God of light, and its nhabitants are his beloved priests and servants. This may be regarded as oetized _fiction_ now; but it was poetized _truth_ then.
III. Lemuria.
The third Continent, we propose to call Lemuria. The name is an invention, r an idea, of Mr. P. L. Sclater, who, between 1850 and 1860, asserted on oological grounds the actual existence, in prehistoric times, of a
Continent which he showed to have extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and
Sumatra. It included some portions of what is now Africa; but otherwise his gigantic Continent, which stretched from the Indian Ocean to
Australia, has now wholly disappeared beneath the waters of the Pacific, eaving here and there only some of its highland tops which are now slands. Mr. A. R. Wallace, the Naturalist, writes Mr. Charles Gould:
Extends the Australia of Tertiary periods to New Guinea and the
Solomon Islands, and perhaps to Fiji, and from its marsupial types
infers a connection with the northern continent during the
Secondary period.(17)
The subject is treated at length elsewhere.(18)
IV. Atlantis.
Thus we name the fourth Continent. It would be the first historical land, ere the traditions of the Ancients to receive more attention than they ave hitherto. The famous island of Plato of that name was but a fragment f this great Continent.(19)
V. Europe.
The fifth Continent was America; but, as it is situated at the Antipodes, t is Europe and Asia Minor, almost coëval with it, which are generally eferred to by the Indo-Aryan Occultists as the fifth. If their teaching ollowed the appearance of the Continents in their geological and eographical order, then this classification would have to be altered. But s the sequence of the Continents is made to follow the order of evolution f the Races, from the First to the Fifth, our Âryan Root-Race, Europe ust be called the fifth great Continent. The Secret Doctrine takes no ccount of islands and peninsulas, nor does it follow the modern eographical distribution of land and sea. Since the day of its earliest eachings and the destruction of the great Atlantis, the face of the Earth as changed more than once. There was a time when the delta of Egypt and
Northern Africa belonged to Europe, before the formation of the Straits of
Gibraltar and a further upheaval of the Continent entirely changed the ace of the map of Europe. The last serious change occurred some 12,000 ears ago,(20) and was followed by the submersion of Plato's little
Atlantic island, which he calls Atlantis after its parent continent.
Geography was part of the Mysteries, in days of old. Says the _Zohar_:
These secrets [of land and sea] were divulged to the _men of the
secret science_, but not to the geographers.(21)
The claim that physical man was originally a colossal pre-tertiary giant, nd that he existed 18,000,000 years ago, must of course appear reposterous to admirers of, and believers in, modern learning. The whole
_posse comitatus_ of Biologists will turn away from the conception of this
Third Race Titan of the Secondary Age, a being fit to fight successfully ith the then gigantic monsters of the air, sea, and land; so his orefathers, the ethereal prototypes of the Atlantean, had little need to ear that which could not hurt them. The modern Anthropologist is quite elcome to laugh at our Titans, as he laughs at the Biblical Adam, and as he Theologian laughs at the former's pithecoid ancestor. The Occultists nd their severe critics may feel that they have pretty well mutually quared their accounts by this time. Occult Sciences claim less and give ore, at all events, than either Darwinian Anthropology or Biblical
Theology.
Nor ought the Esoteric Chronology to frighten anyone; for, with regard to igures, the greatest authorities of the day are as fickle and as ncertain as the Mediterranean waves. As regards the duration of the eological periods alone, the learned men of the Royal Society are all opelessly at sea, and jump from one million to five hundred millions of ears with the utmost ease, as will be seen more than once during this omparison.
Take one instance for our present purpose--the calculations of Mr. Croll.
Whether, according to this authority, 2,500,000 years represent the time ince the beginning of the Tertiary Age, or the Eocene period, as an
American geologist makes him say;(22) or whether again Mr. Croll "allows ifteen millions since the beginning of the Eocene period," as quoted by n English geologist,(23) both sets of figures cover the claims made by he Secret Doctrine.(24) For assigning as the latter does from four to ive million years between the incipient and the final evolution of the
Fourth Root-Race, on the Lemuro-Atlantean Continents; one million years or the Fifth, or Âryan Race, to the present date; and about 850,000 since he submersion of the last large peninsula of the great Atlantis--all this ay have easily taken place within the 15,000,000 years conceded by Mr.
Croll to the Tertiary Age. But, chronologically speaking, the duration of he period is of secondary importance, as we have, after all, certain
American Scientists to fall back upon. These gentlemen, unmoved by the act that their assertions are called not only dubious but absurd, yet aintain that man existed so far back as in the Secondary Age. They have ound human footprints on rocks of that formation; and furthermore, M. de
Quatrefages finds no valid scientific reason why man should not have xisted during the Secondary Age.
The Ages and periods in Geology are, in sober truth, purely conventional erms, as they are still barely delineated, and, moreover, no two
Geologists or Naturalists agree as to the figures. Thus, there is a wide argin for choice offered to the Occultist by the learned fraternity.
Shall we take for one of our supports Mr. T. Mellard Read? This gentleman, n a paper on "Limestone as an Index of Geological Time," read by him in
1878 before the Royal Society, claims that the _minimum_ time required for he formation of the sedimentary strata and the elimination of the alcareous matter is in round numbers 600 million years;(25) or shall we sk support for our chronology from Mr. Darwin's works, wherein, according o his theory, he demands for the organic transformations from 300 to 500 illion years? Sir Charles Lyell and Prof. Houghton were satisfied with lacing the beginning of the Cambrian Age at 200 and 240 millions of years go, respectively. Geologists and Zoologists claim the maximum time, hough Mr. Huxley, at one time, placed the beginning of the incrustation f the earth at 1,000 million years ago, and would not surrender a illennium of it.
But the main point for us lies not in the agreement or disagreement of the
Naturalists as to the duration of geological periods, but rather in their erfect accord on one point, for a wonder, and this a very important one.
They all agree that during the Miocene Age--whether one or ten million ears ago--Greenland and even Spitzbergen, the remnants of our second or
Hyperborean Continent, "had an almost tropical climate." Now the pre-
Homeric Greeks had preserved a vivid tradition of this "Land of the
Eternal Sun," whither their Apollo journeyed yearly. Science tells us:
During the Miocene age, Greenland (in N. Lat. 70°) developed an
abundance of trees, such as the yew, the redwood, the sequoia,
allied to the Californian species, beeches, planes, willows, oaks,
poplars and walnuts, as well as a magnolia and a zamia.(26)
In short Greenland had southern plants unknown to northern regions.
And now arises this natural question. If the Greeks, in the days of Homer, new of a Hyperborean land, _i.e._, a blessed land beyond the reach of
Boreas, the God of winter and of the hurricane, an ideal region which the ater Greeks and their writers have vainly tried to locate beyond Scythia, country where nights were short and days long, and beyond that a land here the Sun never set and the palm grew freely--if they knew of all this, ho then told them of it? In their day, and for ages previously, Greenland ust certainly have been already covered with perpetual snows, with never- hawing ice, just as it is now. Everything tends to show that the land of he short nights and the long days was Norway or Scandinavia, beyond which as the blessed land of eternal light and summer. For the Greeks to know f this, the tradition must have descended to them from some people more ncient than themselves, who were acquainted with those climatic details f which the Greeks themselves could know nothing. Even in our day,
Science suspects that beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the
Arctic Pole, there exists a sea which never freezes and a continent which s ever green. The Archaic Teachings, and also the _Purânas_--for one who nderstands their allegories--contain the same statements. Suffice, then, or us the strong probability that, during the Miocene period of Modern
Science, at a time when Greenland was an almost tropical land, there lived people, now unknown to history.
NOTE.
The reader is requested to bear in mind that the following Sections are ot strictly consecutive in order of time. In Part I the Stanzas which orm the skeleton of the exposition are given, and certain important oints commented upon and explained. In the subsequent Sections of Parts
II and III various additional details are gathered, and a fuller xplanation of the subject is attempted.
PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS.
Twelve Stanzas From the "Book Of Dzyan,"(27)
With Commentaries.
In primeval times, a maiden,
Beauteous Daughter of the Ether,
Passed for ages her existence
In the great expanse of Heaven.
Seven hundred years she wandered,
Seven hundred years she laboured,
Ere her first-born was delivered.
Ere a beauteous duck descending,
Hastens toward the water-mother,
Lightly on the knee she settles,
Finds a nesting-place befitting,
Where to lay her eggs in safety.
Lays her eggs within, at pleasure,
Six, the golden eggs she lays there,
Then a Seventh, an egg of iron.
_Kalevala_ (CRAWFORD).
Text.
Stanza I.
1. The Lha which turns the Fourth is Servant to the Lha(s) of the Seven, hey who revolve, driving their Chariots around their Lord, the One Eye of ur World. His Breath gave Life to the Seven. It gave Life to the First.
2. Said the Earth: "Lord of the Shining Face, my House is empty.... Send hy Sons to people this Wheel. Thou hast sent thy Seven Sons to the Lord f Wisdom. Seven times doth he see thee nearer to himself, seven times ore doth he feel thee. Thou hast forbidden thy Servants, the small Rings, o catch thy Light and Heat, thy great Bounty to intercept on its passage.
Send now to thy Servant the same."
3. Said the Lord of the Shining Face: "I shall send thee a Fire when thy ork is commenced. Raise thy voice to other Lokas; apply to thy Father, he Lord of the Lotus, for his Sons.... Thy People shall be under the rule f the Fathers. Thy Men shall be mortals. The Men of the Lord of Wisdom, ot the Sons of Soma, are immortal. Cease thy complaints. Thy Seven Skins re yet on thee.... Thou art not ready. Thy Men are not ready."
4. After great throes she cast off her old Three and put on her new Seven
Skins, and stood in her first one.
Stanza II.
5. The Wheel whirled for thirty crores more. It constructed Rűpas; soft
Stones that hardened, hard Plants that softened. Visible from invisible,
Insects and small Lives. She shook them off her back whenever they overran he Mother.... After thirty crores, she turned round. She lay on her back: n her side.... She would call no Sons of Heaven, she would ask no Sons of
Wisdom. She created from her own Bosom. She evolved Water-Men, terrible nd bad.
6. The Water-Men, terrible and bad, she herself created from the remains f others. From the dross and slime of her First, Second, and Third, she ormed them. The Dhyâni came and looked ... the Dhyâni from the bright
Father-Mother, from the White Regions they came, from the Abodes of the mmortal Mortals.
7. Displeased they were. "Our Flesh is not there. No fit Rűpas for our
Brothers of the Fifth. No Dwellings for the Lives. Pure Waters, not urbid, they must drink. Let us dry them."
8. The Flames came. The Fires with the Sparks; the Night-Fires and the
Day-Fires. They dried out the turbid dark Waters. With their heat they uenched them. The Lhas of the High, the Lhamayin of Below, came. They lew the Forms which were two- and four-faced. They fought the Goat-Men, nd the Dog-Headed Men, and the Men with fishes' bodies.
9. Mother-Water, the Great Sea, wept. She arose, she disappeared in the
Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth.
10. When they were destroyed, Mother Earth remained bare. She asked to be ried.
Stanza III.
11. The Lord of the Lords came. From her Body he separated the Waters, and hat was Heaven above, the First Heaven.
12. The great Chohans called the Lords of the Moon, of the Airy Bodies:
"Bring forth Men, Men of your nature. Give them their Forms within. She ill build Coverings without. Males-Females will they be. Lords of the
Flame also...."
13. They went each on his allotted Land; Seven of them, each on his Lot.
The Lords of the Flame remain behind. They would not go, they would not reate.
Stanza IV.
14. The Seven Hosts, the Will-Born Lords, propelled by the Spirit of Life-
Giving, separate Men from themselves, each on his own Zone.
15. Seven times seven Shadows of Future Men were born, each of his own
Colour and Kind. Each inferior to his Father. The Fathers, the Boneless, ould give no Life to Beings with Bones. Their progeny were Bhűta, with either Form nor Mind. Therefore they are called the Chhâyâ Race.
16. How are the Manushya born? The Manus with minds, how are they made?
The Fathers called to their help their own Fire, which is the Fire that urns in Earth. The Spirit of the Earth called to his help the Solar Fire.
These Three produced in their joint efforts a good Rűpa. It could stand, alk, run, recline, or fly. Yet it was still but a Chhâyâ, a Shadow with o Sense....
17. The Breath needed a Form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed a
Gross Body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed the Spirit of Life; he Solar Lhas breathed it into its Form. The Breath needed a Mirror of ts Body; "We gave it our own!"--said the Dhyânis. The Breath needed a
Vehicle of Desires; "It has it!"--said the Drainer of Waters. But Breath eeds a Mind to embrace the Universe; "We cannot give that!"--said the
Fathers. "I never had it!"--said the Spirit of the Earth. "The Form would e consumed were I to give it mine!"--said the Great Fire.... Man remained n empty senseless Bhűta.... Thus have the Boneless given Life to those ho became Men with Bones in the Third.
Stanza V.
18. The First were the Sons of Yoga. Their sons, the children of the
Yellow Father and the White Mother.
19. The Second Race was the product by budding and expansion, the A-sexual rom the Sexless.(28) Thus was, O Lanoo, the Second Race produced.
20. Their Fathers were the Self-born. The Self-born, the Chhâyâ from the rilliant Bodies of the Lords, the Fathers, the Sons of Twilight.
21. When the Race became old, the old Waters mixed with the fresher
Waters. When its Drops became turbid, they vanished and disappeared in the ew Stream, in the hot Stream of Life. The Outer of the First became the
Inner of the Second. The old Wing became the new Shadow, and the Shadow of he Wing.
Stanza VI.
22. Then the Second evolved the Egg-born, the Third. The Sweat grew, its
Drops grew, and the Drops became hard and round. The Sun warmed it; the
Moon cooled and shaped it; the Wind fed it until its ripeness. The White
Swan from the Starry Vault overshadowed the big Drop. The Egg of the
Future Race, the Man-swan of the later Third. First male-female, then man nd woman.
23. The Self-born were the Chhâyâs, the Shadows from the Bodies of the
Sons of Twilight. Neither water nor fire could destroy them. Their sons ere.
Stanza VII.
24. The Sons of Wisdom, the Sons of Night, ready for rebirth, came down.
They saw the vile forms of the First Third. "We can choose," said the
Lords, "we have wisdom." Some entered the Chhâyâs. Some projected a Spark.
Some deferred till the Fourth. From their own Rűpa they filled the Kâma.
Those who entered became Arhats. Those who received but a Spark, remained estitute of knowledge; the Spark burned low. The Third remained mind- ess. Their Jîvas were not ready. These were set apart among the Seven.
They became narrow-headed. The Third were ready. "In these shall we well," said the Lords of the Flame and of the Dark Wisdom.
25. How did the Mânasa, the Sons of Wisdom, act? They rejected the Self- orn. They are not ready. They spurned the Sweat-born. They are not quite eady. They would not enter the first Egg-born.
26. When the Sweat-born produced the Egg-born, the twofold, the mighty, he powerful with bones, the Lords of Wisdom said: "Now shall we create."
27. The Third Race became the Vâhan of the Lords of Wisdom. It created
Sons of Will and Yoga, by Kriyâshakti it created them, the Holy Fathers,
Ancestors of the Arhats....
Stanza VIII.
28. From the drops of sweat, from the residue of the substance, matter rom dead bodies of men and animals of the Wheel before, and from cast-off ust, the first animals were produced.
29. Animals with bones, dragons of the deep, and flying Sarpas were added o the creeping things. They that creep on the ground got wings. They of he long necks in the water became the progenitors of the fowls of the ir.
30. During the Third, the boneless animals grew and changed; they became nimals with bones, their Chhâyâs became solid.
31. The animals separated the first. They began to breed. The two-fold man eparated also. He said: "Let us as they; let us unite and make reatures." They did....
32. And those which had no Spark took huge she-animals unto them. They egat upon them dumb races. Dumb they were themselves. But their tongues ntied. The tongues of their progeny remained still. Monsters they bred. A ace of crooked red-hair-covered monsters going on all fours. A dumb race o keep the shame untold.
Stanza IX.
33. Seeing which, the Lhas who had not built men, wept, saying:
34. "The Amânasa have defiled our future abodes. This is Karma. Let us well in the others. Let us teach them better, lest worse should happen."
They did....
35. Then all men became endowed with Manas. They saw the sin of the indless.
36. The Fourth Race developed speech.
37. The one became two; also all the living and creeping things that were till one, giant fish, birds and serpents with shell-heads.
Stanza X.
38. Thus, two by two, on the seven Zones, the Third Race gave birth to the
Fourth; the Sura became A-sura.
39. The First, on every Zone, was moon-coloured; the Second yellow like old; the Third red; the Fourth brown, which became black with sin. The irst seven human shoots were all of one complexion. The next seven began ixing.
40. Then the Third and Fourth became tall with pride. "We are the kings; e are the gods."
41. They took wives fair to look upon. Wives from the mindless, the arrow-headed. They bred monsters, wicked demons, male and female, also
Khado, with little minds.
42. They built temples for the human body. Male and female they orshipped. Then the Third Eye acted no longer.
Stanza XI.
43. They built huge cities. Of rare earths and metals they built. Out of he fires vomited, out of the white stone of the mountains and of the lack stone, they cut their own images, in their size and likeness, and orshipped them.
44. They built great images nine yatis high, the size of their bodies.
Inner fires had destroyed the land of their fathers. The water threatened he Fourth.
45. The first great waters came. They swallowed the seven great islands.
46. All holy saved, the unholy destroyed. With them most of the huge nimals, produced from the sweat of the earth.
Stanza XII.
47. Few remained. Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red emained. The moon-coloured were gone for ever.
48. The Fifth produced from the holy stock remained; it was ruled over by he first Divine Kings.
49. ... The Serpents who re-descended, who made peace with the Fifth, who aught and instructed it....
Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their
Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas.
Stanza I. Beginnings of Sentient Life.
1. The Lha, or Spirit of the Earth. 2. Invocation of the Earth to
the Sun. 3. What the Sun answers. 4. Transformation of the Earth.
1. THE LHA (_a_) WHICH TURNS THE FOURTH(29) IS SERVANT TO THE LHA(S) OF
THE SEVEN(30) (_b_), THEY WHO REVOLVE, DRIVING THEIR CHARIOTS AROUND THEIR
LORD, THE ONE EYE(31) OF OUR WORLD. HIS BREATH GAVE LIFE TO THE SEVEN.(32)
IT GAVE LIFE TO THE FIRST (_c_).
"_They are all Dragons of Wisdom_," adds the Commentary (_d_).
(_a_) "Lha" is the ancient term in Trans-Himâlayan regions for "Spirit," ny celestial or _super-human_ Being, and it covers the whole series of eavenly hierarchies, from an Archangel, or Dhyâni, down to an Angel of arkness, or terrestrial Spirit.
(_b_) This expression shows in plain language that the Spirit-Guardian of ur Globe, which is the fourth in the Chain, is subordinate to the chief
Spirit (or God) of the Seven Planetary Genii or Spirits. As already xplained, the Ancients had, in their Kyriel of Gods, seven chief Mystery-
Gods, whose leader was, _exoterically_, the visible Sun, or the eighth, nd, _Esoterically_, the Second Logos, the Demiurge. The Seven--who have ow, in the Christian religion, become the "Seven Eyes of the Lord"--were he Regents of the seven _chief_ planets; but these were not reckoned ccording to the enumeration devised later by people who had forgotten, or ho had an inadequate notion of, the real Mysteries, and included neither he Sun, the Moon, nor the Earth. The Sun was the chief, exoterically, of he twelve Great Gods, or zodiacal constellations; and, Esoterically, the
Messiah, the Christos--the subject "anointed" by the Great Breath, or the
One--surrounded by his twelve subordinate powers, also subordinate, in urn, to each of the seven Mystery-Gods of the planets.
"_The Seven Higher make the Seven Lhas create the world_," states a
Commentary; which means that our Earth--to leave aside the rest--was
"created" or fashioned by Terrestrial Spirits, the Regents being simply he supervisors. This is the first germ of that which grew later into the
Tree of Astrology and Astrolatry. The Higher Ones were the Cosmocratores, he fabricators of our Solar System. This is borne out by all the ancient
Cosmogonies, such as those of Hermes, of the Chaldćans, of the Aryans, of he Egyptians, and even of the Jews. The Signs of the Zodiac--the "_Sacred
Animals_" or "Heaven's Belt"--are as much the Bne' Alhim--Sons of the Gods r the Elohim--as the Spirits of the Earth; but they are prior to them.
Soma and Sin, Isis and Diana, are all lunar Gods or Goddesses, called the
Fathers and Mothers of our Earth, which is subordinate to them. But these, n their turn, are subordinate to their "Fathers" and "Mothers"--the latter eing interchangeable and varying with each nation--the Gods and their
Planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Bel, Brihaspati, etc.
(_c_) "His Breath gave Life to the Seven," refers as much to the Sun, who ives life to the Planets, as to the "High One," the _Spiritual Sun_, who ives life to the whole Kosmos. The astronomical and astrological keys pening the gate leading to the mysteries of Theogony can be found only in he later glossaries, which accompany the Stanzas.
In the apocalyptic Shlokas of the Archaic Records, the language is as ymbolical, if less mythical, than in the _Purânas_. Without the help of he later Commentaries, compiled by generations of Adepts, it would be mpossible to understand the meaning correctly. In the ancient
Cosmogonies, the visible and the invisible worlds are the double links of ne and the same chain. As the Invisible Logos, with its Seven
Hierarchies--each represented or personified by its chief Angel or
Rector--form one POWER, the inner and the invisible; so, in the world of
Forms, the Sun and the seven chief Planets constitute the visible and ctive potency; the latter Hierarchy being, so to speak, the visible and bjective Logos of the Invisible and--except in the lowest grades--ever- ubjective Angels.
Thus--to anticipate a little by way of illustration--every Race in its volution is said to be born under the direct influence of one of the
Planets; Race the First receiving its breath of life from the Sun, as will e seen later on; while the Third Humanity--those who fell into generation, r from androgynes became separate entities, one male and the other emale--is said to be under the direct influence of Venus, "_the
__'__little sun__'__ in which the solar orb stores his light_."
The summary of the Stanzas in Volume I showed the genesis(33) of Gods and en taking rise in, and from, one and the same Point, which is the One
Universal, Immutable, Eternal, and Absolute UNITY. In its primary anifested aspect we have seen it become: (1) in the sphere of objectivity nd Physics, PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE and FORCE--centripetal and centrifugal, ositive and negative, male and female, etc.; (2) in the world of
Metaphysics, the SPIRIT OF THE UNIVERSE, or Cosmic Ideation, called by ome the LOGOS.
This Logos is the apex of the Pythagorean Triangle. When the Triangle is omplete it becomes the Tetraktys, or the Triangle in the Square, and is he dual symbol of the four-lettered Tetragrammaton in the manifested
Kosmos, and of its radical triple Ray in the unmanifested--its Noumenon.
Put more metaphysically, the classification given here of Cosmic
Ultimates, is more one of convenience than of absolute philosophical ccuracy. At the commencement of a great Manvantara, Parabrahman manifests s Műlaprakriti and then as the Logos. This Logos is equivalent to the
"Unconscious Universal Mind," etc., of Western Pantheists. It constitutes he Basis of the _subject_-side of manifested Being, and is the source of ll manifestations of individual consciousness. Műlaprakriti or Primordial
Cosmic Substance, is the foundation of the _object_-side of things--the asis of all objective evolution and cosmo-genesis. Force, then, does not merge with Primordial Substance from Parabrahmanic latency. It is the
_transformation into energy of the supra-conscious thought of the Logos_, nfused, so to speak, into the objectivation of the latter out of otential latency in the One Reality. Hence spring the wondrous laws of
Matter; hence the "primal impress" so vainly discussed by Bishop Temple.
Force thus is _not synchronous_ with the first objectivation of
Műlaprakriti. Nevertheless as, apart from it, the latter is absolutely and ecessarily inert--_a mere abstraction_--it is unnecessary to weave too fine cobweb of subtleties as to the order of succession of the Cosmic
Ultimates. Force _succeeds_ Műlaprakriti; but, _minus_ Force, Műlaprakriti s for all practical intents and purposes non-existent.(34)
The Heavenly Man or Tetragrammaton, who is the Protogonos, Tikkoun, the
Firstborn from the passive Deity and the first manifestation of that
Deity's Shadow, is the Universal Form and Idea, which engenders the
Manifested Logos, Adam Kadmon, or the four-lettered symbol, in the
Kabalah, of the Universe itself, also called the Second Logos. The Second prings from the First and develops the Third Triangle;(35) from the last f which (the lower host of Angels) _Men_ are generated. It is with this hird aspect that we shall deal at present.
The reader must bear in mind that there is a great difference between the
Logos and the Demiurgos, for one is _Spirit_ and the other is _Soul_; or s Dr. Wilder has it:
Dianoia and Logos are synonymous, Nous being superior and closely
in affinity with {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, one being the superior apprehending,
the other the comprehending--one noëtic and the other phrenic.
Moreover, Man was regarded in several systems as the Third Logos. The
Esoteric meaning of the word Logos--Speech or Word, Verbum--is the rendering n objective expression, as in a photograph, of the concealed thought. The
Logos is the mirror reflecting DIVINE MIND, and the Universe is the mirror f the Logos, though the latter is the _esse_ of that Universe. As the
Logos reflects _all_ in the Universe of Plerôma, so Man reflects in imself all that he sees and finds in _his_ Universe, the Earth. It is the
Three Heads of the Kabalah--"_unum intra alterum, et alterum super lterum._"(36) "Every Universe (World or Planet) has its own Logos," says he Doctrine. The Sun was always called by the Egyptians the "Eye of
Osiris," and was himself the Logos, the First-begotten, or Light made anifest to the world, "which is the Mind and divine Intellect of the
Concealed." It is only by the seven-fold Ray of this Light that we can ecome cognizant of the Logos through the Demiurge, regarding the latter s the "Creator" of our Planet and everything pertaining to it, and the ormer as the guiding Force of that "Creator"--good and bad at the same ime, the origin of good and the origin of evil. This "Creator" is neither ood nor bad _per se_, but its differentiated aspects in Nature make it ssume one or the other character. With the invisible and the unknown
Universes disseminated through Space, none of the Sun-Gods had anything to o. The idea is expressed very clearly in the Books of Hermes, and in very ancient folk-lore. It is symbolized generally by the Dragon and the
Serpent--the Dragon of Good and the Serpent of Evil, represented on Earth y the right and the left-hand Magic. In the epic poem of Finland, the
_Kalevala_,(37) the origin of the Serpent of Evil is given: it is born rom the spittle of Suoyatar, and endowed with a Living Soul by the
Principle of Evil, Hisi. A strife is described between the two, the "thing f evil," the Serpent or Sorcerer, and Ahti, the Dragon of the white agician, Lemminkainen. The latter is one of the seven sons of Ilmatar, he virgin "daughter of the air," she "who fell from heaven into the sea," efore Creation, _i.e._, Spirit transformed into the matter of sensuous ife. There is a world of meaning and Occult thought in the following few ines, admirably rendered by Dr. J. M. Crawford, of Cincinnati. The hero
Lemminkainen,
Hews the wall with might of magic,
Breaks the palisade in pieces,
Hews to atoms _seven_ pickets,
Chops the _serpent-wall_ to fragments.
When the monster little heeding,
Pounces with his mouth of venom
At the head of Lemminkainen.
But the hero, quick recalling,
Speaks the _master-words of knowledge_,
Words that came from distant ages,
Words his ancestors had taught him.
(_d_) In China the men of Fohi, or the "Heavenly Man," are called the welve Tien-Hoang, the twelve Hierarchies of Dhyânis or Angels, with human aces, and dragon bodies; the Dragon standing for Divine Wisdom or
Spirit;(38) and they create men by incarnating themselves in seven figures f clay--earth and water--made in the shape of these Tien-Hoang, a third llegory.(39) The twelve Ćsers of the Scandinavian Eddas do the same. In he Secret Catechism of the Druses of Syria--a legend which is repeated ord for word by the oldest tribes about and around the Euphrates--men were reated by the "Sons of God," who descended on Earth, and after gathering even Mandragoras, they animated the roots, which forthwith became en.(40)
All these allegories point to one and the same origin--to the dual and riple nature of man; dual, as male and female; triple, as being of piritual and psychic essence _within_, and of a material fabric without.
2. SAID THE EARTH, "LORD OF THE SHINING FACE,(41) MY HOUSE IS EMPTY....
SEND THY SONS TO PEOPLE THIS WHEEL.(42) THOU HAST SENT THY SEVEN SONS TO
THE LORD OF WISDOM (_A_). SEVEN TIMES DOTH HE SEE THEE NEARER TO HIMSELF;
SEVEN TIMES MORE DOTH HE FEEL THEE (_B_). THOU HAST FORBIDDEN THY
SERVANTS, THE SMALL RINGS, TO CATCH THY LIGHT AND HEAT, THY GREAT BOUNTY
TO INTERCEPT ON ITS PASSAGE. SEND NOW TO THY SERVANT THE SAME!"
(_a_) The "Lord of Wisdom" is Mercury, or Budha.
(_b_) The modern Commentary explains the words as a reference to a well- nown astronomical fact, that Mercury receives seven times more light and eat from the Sun than the Earth, or even the beautiful Venus, which eceives but twice the amount falling on our insignificant Globe. Whether he fact was known in antiquity may be inferred from the prayer of the
"Earth Spirit" to the Sun as given in the text.(43) The Sun, however, efuses to people the Globe, as it is not ready to receive life as yet.
Mercury, as an astrological Planet, is still more Occult and mysterious han Venus. It is identical with the Mazdean Mithra, the Genius, or God,
"established between the Sun and the Moon, the perpetual companion of the
'Sun' of Wisdom." Pausanias (Bk. v.) shows him as having an altar in ommon with Jupiter. He had wings to express his attendance upon the Sun n its course; and he was called the Nuntius and Sun-wolf, "_solaris uminis particeps_." He was the leader and evocator of Souls, the great
Magician and the Hierophant. Virgil depicts him as taking his wand to voke from Orcus the souls plunged therein--_tum virgam capit, hac animas lle evocat Orco_.(44) He is the Golden-coloured Mercury, the {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} whom the Hierophants forbade to name. He is symbolized in Grecian ythology by one of the "dogs" (vigilance), which watch over the celestial lock (Occult Wisdom), or Hermes Anubis, or again Agathodćmon. He is the
Argus watching over the Earth, mistaken by the latter for the Sun itself.
It is through the intercession of Mercury that the Emperor Julian prayed o the Occult Sun every night; for, as says Vossius:
All the theologians assert that _Mercury and the Sun are one_....
He was the most eloquent and the most wise of all the Gods, which
is not to be wondered at, since _Mercury is in such close
proximity to the Wisdom and the Word of God_ [the Sun] that he was
confused with both.(45)
Vossius here utters a greater Occult truth than he suspected. The Hermes f the Greeks is closely related to the Hindű Saramâ and Sârameya, the ivine watchman, "who watches over the golden flock of stars and solar ays."
In the clearer words of the Commentary:
_The Globe, propelled onward by the Spirit of the Earth and his six
Assistants, gets all its vital forces, life, and powers through the medium f the seven planetary Dhyânis from the Spirit of the Sun. They are his essengers of Light and Life._
_Like each of the Seven Regions of the Earth, each of the seven_(_46_)_
First-born [the primordial Human Groups] receives its light and life from ts own especial Dhyâni--spiritually, and from the Palace [House, the
Planet] of that Dhyâni--physically; so with the seven great Races to be orn on it. The First is born under the Sun; the Second under Brihaspati
[Jupiter]; the Third under Lohitânga [Mars, the __"__Fiery-bodied,__"__ nd also under Venus or Shukra]; the Fourth, under Soma [the Moon, our
Globe also, the Fourth Sphere being born under and from the Moon] and
Shani, Saturn,_(_47_)_ the Krűra-lochana [Evil-eyed], and the Asita [the
Dark]; the Fifth, under Budha [Mercury]._
_So also with man and every __"__man__"__ [every principle] in man. Each ets its specific quality from its Primary [the Planetary Spirit], herefore every man is a septenate [or a combination of principles, each aving its origin in a quality of that special Dhyâni]. Every active power r force __ of the Earth comes to her from one of the seven Lords. Light omes through Shukra [Venus], who receives a triple supply, and gives one- hird of it to the Earth. Therefore the two are called __"__Twin- isters,__"__ but the Spirit of the Earth is subservient to the
__"__Lord__"__ of Shukra. Our wise men represent the two Globes, one over, he other under the double Sign [the primeval Svastika bereft of its four rms, or the cross, {~CROSS OF JERUSALEM~}]._(48)
The "double sign" is, as every student of Occultism knows, the symbol of he male and the female principles in Nature, of the positive and the egative, for the Svastika or {~UNKNOWN~} is all that and much more. All antiquity, ver since the birth of Astronomy--imparted to the Fourth Race by one of he Kings of the Divine Dynasty--and also of Astrology, represented Venus n its astronomical tables as a _Globe poised over a Cross_, and the
Earth, as a _Globe under a Cross_. The Esoteric meaning of this is the
Earth fallen into generation, or into the production of its species hrough sexual union. But the later Western nations have not failed to ive it quite a different interpretation. They explained the sign through heir Mystics--guided by the light of the Latin Church--as meaning that our
Earth and all on it were redeemed _by the Cross_, while Venus--otherwise
Lucifer or Satan--was trampling upon it. Venus is the most Occult, owerful, and mysterious of all the Planets; the one whose influence upon, nd relation to, the Earth is most prominent. In exoteric Brâhmanism,
Venus or Shukra--a male deity(49)--is the son of Bhrigu, one of the
Prajâpati and a Vedic sage, and is Daitya-Guru, or the priest-instructor f the primeval giants. The whole history of Shukra in the _Purânas_, efers to the Third and Fourth Races. As says the Commentary:
_It is through Shukra that the __"__double ones__"__ [the hermaphrodites] f the Third [__Root-Race__] descended from the first __"__Sweat- orn.__"__ Therefore it is represented under the symbol [Symbol: circle ith horizontal line through it] [the circle and diameter], during the
Third [Race], and [Symbol: circle with horizontal line through it, and nother from center to bottom], during the Fourth._
This needs explanation. The diameter, when found isolated in a circle, tands for female Nature; for the first ideal World, _self-generated_ and
_self-impregnated_ by the universally diffused Spirit of Life--thus also eferring to the primitive Root-Race. It becomes androgynous as the Races nd all else on Earth develop into their physical forms, and the symbol is ransformed into a circle with a diameter from which runs a vertical line, xpressive of male and female, not separated as yet--the first and earliest
Egyptian Tau; [Symbol: circle with horizontal line through it, and another rom center to bottom] after which it becomes {~CROSS OF JERUSALEM~}, or male female eparated(50) and fallen into generation. Venus (the Planet), is ymbolized by the sign of a globe over a cross, which shows the former as residing over the natural generation of man. The Egyptians symbolized
Ankh, "life," by the ansated cross, or {~ANKH~}, which is only another form of
Venus (Isis), {~FEMALE SIGN~}, and meant, Esoterically, that mankind and all animal life ad stepped out of the divine spiritual circle and had fallen into hysical male and female generation. This sign, from the end of the Third
Race, has the same phallic significance as the "_Tree_ of Life" in Eden.
Anouki, a form of Isis, is the Goddess of Life; and Ankh was taken by the
Hebrews from the Egyptians. It was introduced into the language by Moses, ne learned in the Wisdom of the priests of Egypt, with many other ystical words. The word Ankh in Hebrew, with the personal suffix, means
"my life"--my being--which "is the personal pronoun Anochi," from the name f the Egyptian Goddess Anouki.(51)
In one of the most ancient Catechisms of Southern India, Madras
Presidency, the hermaphrodite Goddess Ardhanârî,(52) has the ansated ross, the Svastika, the "male and female sign," right in the central art, to denote the pre-sexual state of the Third Race. Vishnu, who is now epresented with a lotus growing out of his navel--or the Universe of
Brahmâ evolving out of the central point, Nara--is shown in one of the ldest carvings as double-sexed (Vishnu and Lakshmî) standing on a lotus- eaf floating on the water, the water rising in a semicircle and pouring hrough the Svastika, "the source of generation," or of the descent of an.
Pythagoras calls Shukra-Venus the _Sol alter_, the "other Sun." Of the
"seven Palaces of the Sun," that of Lucifer-Venus is the third in
Christian and Jewish Kabalah, the _Zohar_ making of it the abode of
Samael. According to the Occult Doctrine, this Planet is our Earth's
_primary_, and its spiritual prototype. Hence, Shukra's car (Venus-
Lucifer's) is said to be drawn by an _Ogdoad_ of "_earth-born_ horses," hile the steeds of the chariots of the other Planets are different.
_Every sin committed on Earth is felt by Ushanas-Shukra. The Guru of the
Daityas is the Guardian Spirit of the Earth and Men. Every change on
Shukra is felt on, and reflected by, the Earth._
Shukra, or Venus, is thus represented as the Preceptor of the Daityas, the iants of the Fourth Race, who, in the Hindű allegory, at one time btained the sovereignty of all the Earth, and defeated the minor Gods.
The Titans of the Western allegory also are as closely connected with
Venus-Lucifer, which was identified by later Christians with Satan. And, s Venus, equally with Isis, was represented with cow's horns on her head, he symbol of mystic Nature--one convertible with, and significant of, the
Moon, since all these were lunar Goddesses--the configuration of this
Planet is now placed by theologians between the horns of the mystic
Lucifer.(53) It is owing to the fanciful interpretation of the archaic radition, which states that Venus changes simultaneously (geologically) ith the Earth, that whatever takes place on the one takes place on the ther, and that many and great were their common changes--it is for these easons that St. Augustine repeats it, applying the several changes of onfiguration, colour, and even of the orbital paths, to that heologically-woven character of Venus-Lucifer. He even goes so far in his ious fancy as to connect the last changes of the Planet with the Noachian nd mythical Deluge alleged to have taken place 1796 B.C.(54)
As Venus has no satellites, it is stated allegorically, that Âsphujit
(this "Planet") adopted the Earth, the progeny of the Moon, "_who overgrew ts parent and gave much trouble_"--a reference to the Occult connection etween the two. The Regent (of the Planet) Shukra(55) loved his adopted hild so well that he incarnated as Ushanas and gave it perfect laws, hich were disregarded and rejected in later ages. Another allegory, in he _Harivansha_, is that Shukra went to Shiva and asked him to protect is pupils, the Daityas and Asuras, from the fighting Gods; and that to urther his object he performed a Yoga rite "imbibing the _smoke_ of chaff ith his _head downwards_ for 1,000 years." This refers to the great nclination of the axis of Venus--amounting to fifty degrees--and to its eing enveloped in eternal clouds. But it relates only to the physical onstitution of the Planet. It is with its Regent, the informing Dhyân
Chohan, that Occult Mysticism has to deal. The allegory which states that
Vishnu was cursed by Shukra to be _reborn seven times_ on the Earth as a unishment for killing his (Shukra's) mother, is full of Occult hilosophical meaning. It does not refer to Vishnu's Avatâras, since these umber nine--the tenth being still to come--but to the Races on Earth.
Venus, or Lucifer--also Shukra and Ushanas--the Planet, is the light-bearer f our Earth, in both the physical and mystic sense. The Christians knew t well in early times, since one of the earliest popes of Rome is known y his pontiff-name as Lucifer.
_Every world has its parent Star and sister Planet. Thus Earth is the dopted, child and younger brother of Venus, but its inhabitants are of heir own kind.... All sentient complete beings [full septenary men or igher beings] are furnished, in their beginnings, with forms and rganisms in full harmony with the nature and state of the Sphere they nhabit._(56)
_The Spheres of Being, or Centres of Life, which are isolated nuclei reeding their men and their animals, are numberless; not one has any esemblance to its sister-companion or to any other in its own special rogeny._(57)
_All have a double physical and spiritual nature._
_The nucleoles are eternal and everlasting; the nuclei periodical and inite. The nucleoles form part of the Absolute. They are the embrasures f that black impenetrable fortress, which is for ever concealed from uman or even Dhyânic sight. The nuclei are the light of eternity escaping herefrom._
_It is that __LIGHT__ which condenses into the Forms of the __"__Lords of
Being__"__--the first and the highest of which are, collectively,
__JÎVÂTMÂ__, or Pratyagâtmâ [which is said figuratively to issue from
Paramâtmâ. It is the Logos of the Greek philosophers--appearing at the eginning of every new Manvantara]. From these downwards--formed from the ver-consolidating waves of that Light, which becomes on the objective lane gross Matter--proceed the numerous Hierarchies of the Creative
Forces; some formless, others having their own distinctive form, others, gain, the lowest [Elementals], having no form of their own, but assuming very form according to the surrounding conditions._
_Thus there is but one Absolute Upâdhi [Basis] in the spiritual sense, rom, on, and in which, are built for manvantaric purposes the countless asic centres on which proceed the universal, cyclic, and individual
Evolutions during the active period._
_The informing Intelligences, which animate these various Centres of
Being, are referred to indiscriminately by men beyond the Great
Range_(_58_)_ as the Manus, the Rishis, the Pitris,_(_59_)_ the Prajâpati, nd so on; and as Dhyâni-Buddhas, the Chohans, Melhas [Fire-Gods],
Bodhisattvas,_(_60_)_ and others, on this side. The truly ignorant call hem Gods; the learned profane, the One God; and the wise, the Initiates, onour in them only the manvantaric manifestations of __THAT__ which either our Creators [the Dhyân Chohans] nor their creatures can ever iscuss or know anything about. The __ABSOLUTE__ is not to be defined, and o mortal or immortal has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods f Existence. The mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can that which ives perceive Absolute Life._
"Therefore, man cannot know higher Beings than his own Progenitors." "_Nor hall he worship them_," but he ought to learn _how_ he came into the orld.
Number Seven, the fundamental figure among all other figures in every ational religious system, from Cosmogony down to man, must have its
_raison d'ętre_. It is found among the ancient Americans, as prominently s among the archaic Âryans and Egyptians. The question will be fully ealt with in the second Part of this Volume; meanwhile a few facts may be iven here. Says the author of the _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and he Quiches, 11,500 years ago_:(61)
Seven seems to have been the sacred number _par excellence_ among
all civilized nations of antiquity. Why? This query has never been
satisfactorily answered. Each separate people has given a
different explanation, according to the peculiar tenets of their
[exoteric] religion. That it was the number of numbers for those
initiated to the sacred mysteries there can be no doubt.
Pythagoras ... calls it the "Vehicle of life," containing body and
soul, since it is formed of a quaternary, that is: _Wisdom and
Intellect_; and a Trinity, or _action_ and _matter_. The Emperor
Julian, in _Matrem_ and in _Oratio_,(62) expresses himself thus:
"Were I to touch upon the initiation into our secret mysteries,
which the Chaldees bacchized respecting the _seven-rayed_ god,
lighting up the soul through him, I should say things unknown to
the rabble, very unknown, but well known to the blessed
Theurgists."(63)
And who that is acquainted with the _Purânas_, the _Book of the Dead_, the
_Zendavesta_, the Assyrian Tiles, and finally the _Bible_, and has bserved the constant occurrence of the number seven in these records of eople from the remotest times upwards unconnected and so far apart, can egard as a coincidence the following fact, given by the same explorer of ncient Mysteries? Speaking of the prevalence of seven as a mystic number, mong the inhabitants of the "Western Continent" of America, he adds that t is not less remarkable. For:
It frequently occurs in the _Popul-Vuh_. We find it besides in the
_seven families_ said by Sahagun and Clavigero to have accompanied
the mystical personage named _Votan_, the reputed founder of the
great city of Nachan, identified by some with Palenque. In the
_seven caves_(64) from which the ancestors of the Nahualts are
reported to have emerged. In the _seven cities_ of Cibola,
described by Coronado and Niza.... In the _seven Antilles_; in the
_seven heroes_ who, we are told, escaped the Deluge.
Heroes, moreover, whose number is found the same in every Deluge tory--from the seven Rishis who were saved with Vaivasvata Manu, down to
Noah's ark, into which beasts, fowls, and living creatures were taken by
"sevens." Thus we see the figures 1, 3, 5, 7, as perfect, because horoughly mystic, numbers playing a prominent part in every Cosmogony and volution of living Beings. In China, 1, 3, 5, 7, are called "celestial umbers" in the canonical "Book of Changes"--_Yi King_, or
_transformation_, as in "evolution."
The explanation of it becomes evident when one examines the ancient
Symbols: all these are based upon and start from the figures given from he Archaic Manuscript in the Proem of Volume I. [Symbol: circle with orizontal line through it, and another from center to bottom], the symbol f evolution and fall into generation or Matter, is reflected in the old
Mexican sculptures or paintings, as it is in the Kabalistic Sephiroth, and he Egyptian Tau. Examine the Mexican MS. (_Add. MSS._ Brit. Mus.
9789)(65); you will find it in a tree whose trunk is covered with _ten_ ruits ready to be plucked by a male and female, one on each side of it, hile from the top of the trunk two branches shoot horizontally to the ight and left, thus forming a perfect {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~} (Tau), the ends of the two ranches, moreover, each bearing a triple bunch, with a bird--the bird of mmortality, Âtmâ or the Divine Spirit--sitting between the two, and thus aking the _seventh_. This represents the same idea as the Sephirothal
Tree, _ten_ in all, yet, when separated from its upper triad, leaving
_seven_. These are the celestial fruits, the ten, or [Symbol: circle with
"i" inside], 10, born out of the two invisible male and female seeds, aking up the 12, or the Dodecahedron of the Universe. The mystic system ontains the ·, the central point; the 3, or [symbol: triangle]; the 5,
[symbol: 5-point star]; and the 7, or [symbol: triangle in square]; or gain [symbol: 6-point star]; the triangle in the square and the ynthesizing point in the interlaced double triangles. This for the world f the archetypes. The phenomenal world receives its culmination and the eflex of all in MAN. Therefore he is the mystic square--in his etaphysical aspect--the Tetraktys; and becomes the Cube on the creative lane. His symbol is the cube unfolded(66) and 6 becoming 7, or the
[Symbol: cross], 3 crossways (the female) and 4 vertically; and this is an, the culmination of the deity on earth, whose body is the cross of lesh, _on_, _through_, and _in_ which he is ever crucifying and putting o death the divine Logos, or his HIGHER SELF. Says every Philosophy and
Cosmogony:
The universe hath a Ruler [Rulers collectively] set over it, which
is called the WORD (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its Queen:
which two are the First Power after the ONE.
These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our Illusory Universe. The wo inseparables remain in the _Universe of Ideas_ so long as it lasts, nd then merge back into Parabrahman, the One ever changeless. "The
Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self-existent," emanates a pure thereal Light--a dual light not perceptible to the elementary enses--according to the _Purânas_, the _Bible_, the _Sepher Yetzirah_, the
Greek and Latin Hymns, the _Book of Hermes_, the Chaldćan _Book of
Numbers_, the Esotericism of Lao-tse, and everywhere else. In the Kabalah, hich explains the secret meaning of _Genesis_, this Light is the Dual-
Man, or the Androgyne (rather Sexless) Angels, whose generic name is Adam
Kadmon. It is they who complete man, whose ethereal form is emanated by ther divine, but far lower Beings, who solidify the body with clay, or he "dust of the ground"--an allegory indeed, but as scientific as any
Darwinian evolution and more _true_.
The author of the _Source of Measures_ says that the foundation of the
Kabalah and of all its mystic books is made to rest upon the _ten_
Sephiroth; which is a fundamental truth. He shows these Ten Sephiroth or he 10 Numbers as follows:
[Illustration: Circle with numbers 2 through 9, and vertical line through
it]
The circle is the _naught_; its vertical diameter line is the first or rimal _One_ [the Word or Logos], from which spring the 2, the 3, and so n to 9, the limit of the digits. The 10 is the first Divine
Manifestation,(67) which contains every possible power of exact expression f proportion--the sacred _Jod_. By this Cabbalah we are taught that these
Sephiroth were the _numbers_ or emanations of the heavenly Light (20612 to
6561), they were the 10 Words, DBRIM, 41224, the light of which they were he flux was the Heavenly man, the Adam-KDM (the 144-144); and the Light, y the New Testament or Covenant (41224) created God; just as by the Old
Testament God (Alhim, 31415) creates Light (20612 to 6561).(68)
Now there are three kinds of Light in Occultism, as in the Kabalah. (1)
The Abstract and Absolute Light, which is Darkness; (2) The Light of the
Manifested-Unmanifested, called by some the Logos: and (3) The latter
Light reflected in the Dhyân Chohans, the minor Logoi--the Elohim, ollectively--who, in their turn, shed it on the objective Universe. But in he Kabalah--reëdited and carefully adjusted to fit the Christian tenets by he Kabalists of the thirteenth century--the three Lights are described as:
(1) The clear and penetrating, that of Jehovah; (2) reflected light; and
(3) light _in the abstract_.
This Light, abstractly taken, (in a metaphysical or symbolical
sense) is Alhim (Elohim, God), while the clear penetrating Light
is Jehovah. The light of Alhim belongs to the world in general, in
its allness and general fulness, but the light of Jehovah is that
pertaining to the chiefest production, man, whom this light
penetrated to and made.(69)
The author of the _Source of Measures_ pertinently refers the reader to
Inman's _Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names_, ii. 648. There, an ngraving of
The _vesica piscis_, Mary, and the female emblem, copied from a
Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, which was printed at Venice,
1542,
nd therefore, as Inman remarks, "with a licence from the Inquisition, and onsequently orthodox," will show the reader what the Latin Church nderstood by this "penetrating power of light and its effects." How sadly isfigured--applied as they were to the grossest anthropomorphic onceptions--have, under Christian interpretation, become the noblest and randest, as the most exalted, ideas of Deity of the Eastern Philosophy!
The Occultists in the East call this Light Daiviprakriti, and in the West he Light of Christos. It is the Light of the Logos, the direct reflection f the ever Unknowable on the plane of Universal Manifestation. But here s the interpretation thereof given by the modern Christians from the
Kabalah. As declared by the author just cited;
To the fulness of the world in general with its chiefest content,
man, the term Elohim-Jehovah applies. In extracts from Sohar, the
Rev. Dr. Cassell [a Kabalist], to prove that the Cabbalah sets
forth the doctrine of the Trinity, among other things says:
"Jehovah is Elohim (Alhim)" ... By _three_ steps God, (Alhim) and
Jehovah become the same, and though separated, each and together
they are of the same One.(70)
Similarly, Vishnu becomes the Sun, the visible symbol of the Impersonal
Deity. Vishnu is described as "striding through the seven regions of the
Universe in _three steps_." But with the Hindűs this is an _exoteric_ ccount, a surface tenet and an allegory, while the Kabalists give it out s the Esoteric and final meaning. But to proceed:
Now Light, as shown, is 20612 to 6561, as the proper enunciation
of the integral and numerical relation of diameter to
circumference of a circle. God (Alhim, that is, 31415 to One, a
modified form of the above) is the reduction of this, so as to
obtain a standard unit _One_, as the basis, in general, of all
calculation and all mensuration. But for the production of animal
life, and for especial _time measure_, or the lunar year, that
influence which causes conception and embryotic development, the
numbers of the Jehovah measure (the "_man even Jehovah_" measure),
viz., 113 to 355, have to be specialized.(71) But this last ratio
is but a modified form of Light, or 20612 to 6561, as a _pi
value_, being only a variation of the same (that is 20612 to 6561
is 31415 to one, and 355 to 113 is 31415 or Alhim or God), and in
such a manner that one can be made to flow into and be derived
from the other:--and these are the three steps by which the _Unity_
and sameness can be shown of the Divine names. That is, the two
are but variations of the same ratio, viz., that of _pi_. The
object of this comment is to show the same symbolic measuring use
for the Cabbalah, as taught, with that of the Three Covenants of
the _Bible_, and with that of Masonry as just noticed.
First, then, the Sephiroth are described as _Light_, that is, they
themselves are a function of, indeed, the same as, the
manifestation of the Ain Soph; and they are so from the fact that
"_Light_" represents the ratio 20612 to 6561, as part of the
"Words," DBRIM, 41224, or, as to the Word, Dabar, 206 (= 10
cubits). "_Light_" is so much the burden of the Cabbalah as to
explaining the Sephiroth, that the most famous book on the
Cabbalah is called _Sohar_, or "_Light_." In this we find
expressions of this kind: "The infinite was entirely unknown and
diffused no light before the luminous point violently broke
through into vision." "When He first assumed the form (of the
crown, or the first Sephira), He caused 9 splendid lights to
emanate from it, which, shining through it, diffused a bright
light in all directions:"--that is, these 9 with his one (which was
the origin, as above, of the 9), together, made the 10, that is
[Symbol: circle with vertical line through it], or [Symbol: circle
with "x" inside], or the sacred Ten (numbers or Sephiroth), or
_Jod_--and these numbers were "_the Light_." Just as in the Gospel
of St. John, God (Alhim, 31415 to one) was that Light (20612 to
6561) by which (Light) all things were made.(72)
In the _Sepher Yetzirah_, or "Number of Creation," the whole process of volution is given out in numbers. In its "thirty-two Paths of Wisdom" the umber 3 is repeated four times, and the number 4 five times. Therefore, he Wisdom of God is contained in numbers (Sephrim or Sephiroth), for
Sepher (or S-ph-r when unvowelled) means "to cipher." And therefore, also, e find Plato stating that the Deity "geometrizes" in fabricating the
Universe.
The Kabalistic book, the _Sepher Yetzirah_, opens with a statement of the idden wisdom of Alhim in Sephrim, _i.e._, the Elohim in the Sephiroth.
In thirty and two paths, hidden wisdom, established Jah, IHVH,
Tzabaoth, Elohi of Israel, Alhim of Life, El of Grace and
Mercy--exalted uplifted Dweller on high, and King of Everlasting,
and His name--Holy! in Three Sephrim, viz.:
B--S'ph-r, V--S'ph-r, V--Siph-o-r.
Mr. Ralston Skinner goes on to say:
This comment sets forth the "_hidden wisdom_" of the original text
by hidden wisdom, that is, by the use of words carrying a special
set of numbers and a special phraseology, which will set forth the
very explanatory system which we find to fit so accurately in the
Hebrew Bible.... In setting forth his scheme, to enforce it, and
to finish out his detailed exposition in a general
postulate,--viz., the one word "_Sephrim_" (_Sephiroth_), of the
Number Jezirah, the author explains the separation of this word in
the three subordinate ones, a play upon a common word, _s-ph-r_,
or number.
The prince Al-Chazari(73) says to the Rabbi: "I wish now that thou
wouldest impart to me some of the chiefest or leading principles
of _Natural Philosophy_, which, as thou sayest, were in former
times worked out by them (the ancient wise ones);"--to which the
Rabbi makes answer: "To such principles appertains the Number of
Creation of our race-father Abraham" that is Abram and Abraham, or
numbers 41224 and 41252. He then says that this book of number
treats of teaching the "_Alhim_-ness and _One_-ness through
(DBRIM)" viz., the numbers of the word "_Words_." That is, it
teaches the use of the ratio 31415 to One, through 41224, which
last, in the description of the Ark of the Covenant, was divided
into two parts by the _two_ tables of stone, on which these DBRIM,
or 41224, were written or engraved--or 20612 × 2. He then comments
on these three subordinately used words, and takes care as to one
of them to make the comment, "and _Alhim_ (31415 to One) said let
there be Light (20612 to 6561)."
The words as given in the text are:
{~HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} {~HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} {~HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}
and the Rabbi, in commenting upon them, says: "It teaches the
_Alhim_-ness (31415) and _One_-ness (the diameter to Alhim),
through Words (DBRIM = 41224), by which on the one side there is
infinite expression in heterogeneous creations, and on the other a
final harmonic tendency to _One_-ness" (which, as everyone knows,
is the mathematical function of _pi_ of the schools, which
measures, weighs, and numbers the stars of heaven, and yet
resolves them back into the final oneness of the Uni-verse)
"through Words. Their final accord perfects itself in that
_One_-ness that ordains them, and which consists in
{~HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} {~HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} {~HEBREW LETTER SAMEKH~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} "
that is, the Rabbi, in his first comment, leaves the _jod_, or
_i_, out of one of the words, whereas afterwards he restores it
again. If we take the values of those subordinate words, we find
them to be 340, 340 and 346;--together these are 1026, and the
division of the general word into these has been to produce these
numbers--which by T'mura may be changed in various ways, for
various purposes.(74)
The reader is asked to turn to Stanza IV of Volume I, Shloka 3 and
Commentary,(75) to find that the 3, 4, (7), and the thrice seven, or 1065, he number of Jehovah, is the number of the 21 Prajâpati mentioned in the
_Mahâbhârata_, or the three Sephrim (words in ciphers or figures). And his comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic Philosophy and the nthropomorphic Creator of _exoteric_ Judaism (since the _Esotericism_ of he Jews shows its identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the tudent to perceive and discover that, in truth, Jehovah is but a "lunar" nd "generation" God. It is a fact well known to every conscientious tudent of the Kabalah, that the deeper he dives into it, the more he eels convinced that unless the Kabalah--or what is left of it--is read by he light of the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, its study leads only to the iscovery that, on the lines traced by exoteric Judaism and Christianity, he monotheism of both is nothing more exalted than ancient Astrolatry, ow vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never cease to repeat hat Primal Intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be omprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless nd negative. Hence the Ain Suph--the "Unknowable" and "UNNAMEABLE"--as It ould not be made manifest, was imagined as emanating Manifesting Powers.
It is then with its Emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can, eal. Christian theology, having rejected the doctrine of Emanations and eplaced them with direct, conscious Creations of Angels and the rest out f _nothing_, now finds itself hopelessly stranded between
Supernaturalism, or Miracle, and Materialism. An _extra_-cosmic God is atal to Philosophy: an _intra_-cosmic Deity--_i.e._, Spirit and Matter nseparable from each other--is a philosophical necessity. Separate them nd that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of motionalism. But why "geometrize," as Plato has it, why represent these
Emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The question s well answered by the author just cited, who says:
Mental perception, to become physical perception, must have the
cosmic principle of _Light_:--and, by this, our mental circle must
become visible through light; or, for its complete manifestation,
the circle must be that of physical visibility, or Light itself.
Such conceptions, thus formulated, became the ground-work of the
philosophy of the Divine manifesting in the universe.(76)
This is Philosophy. It is otherwise when we find the Rabbi in _Al-Chazari_ aying that:
Under s'ph-r is to be understood--_calculation_ and _weighing_ of
the created bodies. For the _calculation_, by means of which a
body must be constructed in harmony or symmetry, by which it must
be in construction rightly arranged and made to correspond to the
object in design, consists at last in _number_, _extension_,
_mass_, _weight_;--co-ordinate relation of movements, then harmony
of music, must consist altogether _by number_, that is s'ph-r....
By Sippor (s'phor) is to be understood the words of Alhim (206--1
of 31415 to one), whereunto joins or adapts itself the design to
the frame or form of construction; for example--it was said "Let
Light be." The work became as the _words_ were spoken, that is, as
the numbers of the work came forth.(77)
This is _materializing_ the _spiritual_ without scruple. But the Kabalah as not always so well adapted to anthropo-monotheistic conceptions.
Compare this with any of the six schools of India. For instance in
Kapila's Sânkhya Philosophy, unless, allegorically speaking, Purusha ounts on the shoulders of Prakriti, the latter remains irrational, while he former remains inactive without her. Therefore Nature (in man) must ecome a compound of Spirit and Matter before he becomes what he is; and he Spirit latent in Matter must be awakened to life and consciousness radually. The Monad has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal orms, before the Light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man.
Therefore, till then, the latter cannot be referred to as "man," but has o be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever-changing forms. _Evolution_, ot _Creation_, by means of _Words_ is recognized in the Philosophies of he East, even in their exoteric records. _Ex oriente lux._ Even the name f the first man in the Mosaic _Bible_ had its origin in India, Professor
Max Müller's negation notwithstanding. The Jews got their Adam from
Chaldća; and Adam-Adami is a compound word and therefore a manifold ymbol, and proves the Occult dogmas.
This is no place for philological disquisitions. But the reader may be eminded that the words _Ad_ and _Adi_ mean in Sanskrit the "first"; in
Aramćan, "one" (_Ad-ad_, the "only one"); in Assyrian, "Father," whence
_Ak-ad_ or "father-creator."(78) And once the statement is found correct, t becomes rather difficult to confine Adam to the Mosaic _Bible_ alone, nd to see therein simply a Jewish name.
There is frequent confusion in the attributes and genealogies of the Gods n their Theogonies, the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that ymbolical science, as given to the world by the half-initiated writers,
Brâhmanical and Biblical. Yet there could be no such confusion made by the arliest nations, the descendants and pupils of the Divine Instructors; or both the attributes and the genealogies were inseparably linked with osmogonical symbols, the "Gods" being the life and animating "soul- rinciple" of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere and by no eople was speculation allowed to range _beyond_ those _manifested_ Gods.
The boundless and infinite Unity remained with every nation a virgin orbidden soil, untrodden by man's thought, untouched by fruitless peculation. The only reference made to it was the brief conception of its iastolic and systolic property, of its periodical expansion, or ilatation, and contraction. In the Universe, with all its incalculable yriads of Systems and Worlds disappearing and reäppearing in eternity, he anthropomorphized Powers, or Gods, their Souls, had to disappear from iew with their Bodies. As our _Catechism_ says:
"_The Breath returning to the Eternal Bosom which exhales and inhales hem_."
Ideal Nature, the Abstract Space in which everything in the Universe is ysteriously and invisibly generated, is the same female side of the rocreative power in Nature in the Vedic as in every other Cosmogony.
Aditi is Sephira, and the Sophia of the Gnostics, and Isis, the Virgin
Mother of Horus. In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the "Creative"
Deity, there is a Superior Deity, a Planner, an Architect, of whom the
Creator is but the executive agent. And still higher, _over_ and _around_,
_within_ and _without_, there is the Unknowable and the _Unknown_, the
Source and Cause of all these Emanations.
It thus becomes easy to account for the reason why Adam-Adami is found in he Chaldćan scripture, certainly earlier than the Mosaic Books. In
Assyrian _Ad_ is the "father," and in Aramćan _Ad_ is "one," and _Ad-ad_ he "only one," while _Ak_ is in Assyrian "creator." Thus _Ad-am-ak-ad- on_ became Adam-Kadmon in the Kabalah (_Zohar_), meaning as it did, the
"One (Son) of the divine Father, or the Creator," for the words _am_ and
_om_ meant at one time in nearly every language the _divine_, or the
_deity_. Thus Adam-Kadmon and Adam-Adami came to mean "The first Emanation f the Father-Mother or Divine Nature," and literally the "first Divine
One." And it is easy to see that _Ad_-Argat (or Aster't, the Syrian
Goddess, the consort of _Ad-on_, the Lord God of Syria or the Jewish
Adonai), and Venus, Isis, Ister, Mylitta, Eve, etc., are identical with he Aditi and Vâch of the Hindűs. They are all the "Mothers of all living" nd "of the Gods." On the other hand--cosmically and astronomically--all the ale Gods became at first "Sun-Gods," then, theologically, the "Suns of
Righteousness," and the Logoi, all symbolized by the Sun.(79) They are all
Protogonoi--First-born--and Mikroprosopoi. With the Jews Adam-Kadmon was the ame as Athamaz, Tamaz, or the Adonis of the Greeks--"the One _with_, and
_of_ his Father"--the "Father" becoming during the later Races Helios, the
Sun, as Apollo Karneios,(80) for instance, who was the "Sun-born"; Osiris,
Ormazd, and so on, were all followed by, and found themselves transformed ater on into, still more earthly types: such as Prometheus, the crucified f Mount Kajbee, Hercules, and so many others, Sun-Gods and Heroes, until ll of them came to have no better significance than phallic symbols.
In the _Zohar_ it is said:
Man was created by the Sephiroth (Elohim-Javeh, also) and they
engendered by common power the _earthly_ Adam.
Therefore in _Genesis_ the Elohim say: "Behold Man is become _as one of s_." But in Hindű Cosmogony or "Creation," Brahmâ-Prajâpati _creates_
Virâj and the Rishis, spiritually; therefore the latter are distinctly alled the "Mind-born Sons of Brahmâ"; and this specified mode of
_engendering_ precluded every idea of Phallicism, at any rate in the arlier human nations. This instance well illustrates the respective
_spirituality_ of the two nations.
3. SAID THE LORD OF THE SHINING FACE: "I SHALL SEND THEE A FIRE WHEN THY
WORK IS COMMENCED. RAISE THY VOICE TO OTHER LOKAS; APPLY TO THY FATHER,
THE LORD OF THE LOTUS(81) (_A_), FOR HIS SONS.... THY PEOPLE SHALL BE
UNDER THE RULE OF THE FATHERS.(82) THY MEN SHALL BE MORTALS. THE MEN OF
THE LORD OF WISDOM,(83) NOT THE SONS OF SOMA,(84) ARE IMMORTAL. CEASE THY
COMPLAINTS (_B_). THY SEVEN SKINS ARE YET ON THEE.... THOU ART NOT READY.
THY MEN ARE NOT READY" (_C_).
(_a_) Kumuda-Pati is the Moon, the Earth's parent, in his region of Soma- oka. Though the Pitris, or Fathers, are Sons of the Gods, elsewhere Sons f Brahmâ and even Rishis, they are generally known as the Lunar
Ancestors.
(_b_) Pitri-Pati is the Lord or King of the Pitris, Yama, the God of Death nd the Judge of mortals. The men of Budha, Mercury, are metaphorically
"immortal" through their Wisdom. Such is the common belief of those who redit every Star or Planet with being inhabited--and there are men of
Science, M. Flammarion among others, who believe in this fervently, on ogical as well as on astronomical data. The Moon being an inferior ody--even to the Earth, to say nothing of other Planets, the terrestrial en produced by her Sons--the Lunar Men or Ancestors--from her shell or ody, cannot be immortal. They cannot hope to become real, self-conscious nd intelligent men, unless they are "finished," so to say, by other reators. Thus in the Purânic legend, the son of the Moon (Soma) is Budha
(Mercury), the intelligent and the wise, because he is the offspring of
Soma, the Regent of the visible Moon, not of Indu, the physical Moon. Thus
Mercury is the elder brother of the Earth, metaphorically--his step- rother, so to say, the offspring of Spirit--while she (the Earth) is the rogeny of the Body. These allegories have a deeper and more scientific eaning--astronomically and geologically--than our modern Physicists are illing to admit. The whole cycle of the first "War in Heaven," the
Târakâ-maya, is as full of philosophical as of cosmogonical and stronomical truths. One can trace therein the biographies of all the
Planets by the history of their Gods and Rulers. Ushanas (Shukra, or
Venus), the bosom-friend of Soma and the foe of Brihaspati (Jupiter), the
"Instructor of the Gods," whose wife Târâ, or Tarakâ, had been carried way by the Moon, Soma--"of whom he begat Budha"--took also an active part n this war against the "Gods" and forthwith was degraded into a Demon
(Asura) Deity, and so he remains to this day.(85)
Here the word "men" refers to the Celestial men, or what are called in
India the Pitaras or Pitris, the Fathers, the Progenitors of men. This oes not remove the seeming difficulty, in view of modern hypotheses, of he teaching, which shows these Progenitors or Ancestors creating the irst human Adams out of their sides, as astral shadows. And though it is n improvement on Adam's rib, still geological and climatic difficulties ill be brought forward. Such, however, is the teaching of Occultism.
(_c_) Man's organism was adapted in every Race to its surroundings. The irst Root-Race was as ethereal as ours is material. The progeny of the
Seven Creators, who evolved the Seven Primordial Adams,(86) surely equired no purified gases to breathe and live upon. Therefore, however trongly the impossibility of this teaching may be urged by the devotees f Modern Science, the Occultist maintains that the case was as stated
_ćons of years_ before even the evolution of the Lemurian, the first hysical man, which took place 18,000,000 years ago. Archaic Scripture eaches that at the commencement of every local Kalpa, or Round, the Earth s reborn, and preliminary evolution is described in one of the _Books of
Dzyan_ and the Commentaries thereon in this wise:
"_As the human Jîva [Monad], when passing into a new womb, gets recovered ith a new body, so does the Jîva of the Earth; it gets a more perfect and olid covering with each Round after reëmerging once more from the matrix f space into objectivity._"
This process is attended, of course, by the throes of the new birth, or eological convulsions.
The only reference to it is contained in one verse of the volume of the
_Book of Dzyan_ before us, where it says:
4. AFTER GREAT THROES SHE(87) CAST OFF HER OLD THREE AND PUT ON HER NEW
SEVEN SKINS, AND STOOD IN HER FIRST ONE.
This refers to the growth of the Earth, whereas in the Stanza treating of he First Round it is said in the Commentary:
"_After the changeless [Avikâra] immutable Nature [Essence, Sadaikarűpa] ad awakened and changed [differentiated] into [a state of] causality
[Avyakta], and from cause [Kârana] had become its own discrete effect
[Vyakta], from invisible it became visible. The smallest of the small [the ost atomic of atoms, or anîyânsam anîyasâm] became one and the many
[Ekânekarűpa]; and producing the Universe produced also the fourth Loka
[our Earth] in the garland of the seven lotuses. The Achyuta then became he Chyuta._"(88)
The Earth is said to cast off "her old _three_" Skins, because this refers o the three preceding Rounds she has already passed through; the present eing the Fourth Round out of the seven. At the beginning of every new
Round, after a period of Obscuration, the Earth--as do also the other six
"Earths"--casts off, or is supposed to cast off, her old Skins as the
Serpent does; therefore she is called in the _Aitareya-Brâhmana_ the
Sarpa-Râjnî, the "Queen of the Serpents," and "the mother of all that oves." The "Seven Skins," in the first of which she now stands, refer to he seven geological changes which accompany and correspond to the volution of the Seven Root-Races of Humanity.
Stanza II, which speaks of this Round, begins with a few words of nformation concerning the age of our Earth. The chronology will be given n its place. In the Commentary appended to the Stanza, two personages are entioned, Nârada and Asuramaya, especially the latter. All the alculations are attributed to this archaic celebrity; and what follows ill make the reader superficially acquainted with some of these figures.
Two Antediluvian Astronomers.
To the mind of the Eastern student of Occultism, two figures are ndissolubly connected with mystic Astronomy, Chronology, and their ycles. Two grand and mysterious figures, towering like two giants in the
Archaic Past, emerge before him, whenever he has to refer to Yugas and
Kalpas. When, at what period of pre-history they lived, none save a few en in the world know, or ever can know, with that certainty which is equired by exact chronology. It may have been 100,000 years ago, it may ave been 1,000,000, for all that the outside world will ever know. The ystic West and Freemasonry talk loudly of Enoch and Hermes. The mystic
East speaks of Nârada, the old Vedic Rishi, and of Asuramaya, the
Atlantean.
It has already been hinted that of all the incomprehensible characters in he _Mahâbhârata_ and the _Purânas_, Nârada, the son of Brahmâ in the
_Matsya Purâna_, the progeny of Kashyapa and the daughter of Daksha, in he _Vishnu Purâna_, is the most mysterious. He is referred to by the onourable title of Deva-Rishi (Divine Rishi, rather than Demi-God) by
Parâshara, and yet he is cursed by Daksha and even by Brahmâ. He informs
Kansha that Bhagavân, or Vishnu in exotericism, would incarnate in the ighth child of Devakî, and thus brings the wrath of the Indian Herod upon
Krishna's mother; and then, from the cloud on which he is seated--invisible s a true Mânasaputra--he lauds Krishna, in delight at the Avatâr's feat of illing the monster Keshin. Nârada is here, there, and everywhere; and et, none of the _Purânas_ gives the true characteristics of this great nemy of physical procreation. Whatever those characteristics may be in
Hindű Esotericism, Nârada--who is called in Cis-Himâlayan Occultism Pesh-
Hun, the "Messenger," or the Greek Angelos--is the sole confidant and the xecutor of the universal decrees of Karma and Adi-Budha: a kind of active nd ever-incarnating Logos, who leads and guides human affairs from the eginning to the end of the Kalpa.
Pesh-Hun is a general not a special Hindű possession. He is the mysterious uiding intelligent power, which gives the impulse to, and regulates the mpetus of Cycles, Kalpas and universal events.(89) He is Karma's visible djuster on a general scale; the inspirer and the leader of the greatest eroes of this Manvantara. In the exoteric works he is referred to by some ery uncomplimentary names; such as Kali-kâraka, Strife-maker, Kapi- aktra, Monkey-faced, and even Pishuna, the Spy, though elsewhere he is alled Deva-Brahmâ. Even Sir William Jones was strongly impressed with his mysterious character from what he gathered in his Sanskrit studies.
He compares him to Hermes and Mercury, and calls him "the eloquent essenger of the gods."(90) All this, besides the fact that the Hindűs elieve him to be a great Rishi, "who is for ever wandering about the arth, giving good counsel," led the late Dr. Kenealy(91) to see in him ne of his twelve Messiahs. He was, perhaps, not so far off the real track s some imagine.
What Nârada _really_ is, cannot be explained in print; nor would the odern generations of the profane gather much from the information. But it ay be remarked, that if there be in the Hindű Pantheon a Deity which esembles Jehovah, in tempting by "suggestion" of thoughts, and
"hardening" of the hearts of those whom he would make his tools and ictims, it is Nârada. Only with the latter it is no desire to obtain a retext for "plaguing," and thus showing that "_I am_ the Lord God." Nor s it through any ambitious or selfish motive; but, verily, to serve and uide universal progress and evolution.
Nârada is one of the few prominent characters, if we except some Gods, in he _Purânas_, who visit the so-called nether or infernal regions, Pâtâla.
Whether or not it was from his intercourse with the thousand-headed
Shesha, the Serpent who bears the Seven Pâtâlas and the entire world like diadem upon his heads, and who is the great teacher of Astronomy,(92) hat Nârada learned all that he knew, certain it is that he surpasses
Garga's Guru in his knowledge of cyclic intricacies. It is he who has harge of our progress and national weal or woe. It is he who brings on ars and puts an end to them. In the old Stanzas, Pesh-Hun is credited ith having calculated and recorded all the astronomical and cosmic Cycles o come, and with having taught the Science to the first gazers at the tarry vault. And it is Asuramaya, who is said to have based all his stronomical works upon those records, to have determined the duration of ll the past geological and cosmical periods, and the length of all the
Cycles to come, till the end of this Life-Cycle, or the end of the Seventh
Race.
There is a work among the Secret Books, called the _Mirror of Futurity_, herein all the Kalpas within Kalpas, and Cycles within the bosom of
Shesha, or infinite Time, are recorded. This work is ascribed to Pesh-Hun-
Nârada. There is another old work which is attributed to various
Atlanteans. It is these two records which furnish us with the figures of ur Cycles, and the possibility of calculating the date of Cycles to come.
The chronological calculations which will presently be given are, however, hose of the Brâhmans, as explained further on: but most of them are also hose of the Secret Doctrine.
The chronology and computations of the Brâhman Initiates are based upon he zodiacal records of India, and the works of the above-mentioned
Astronomer and Magician--Asuramaya. The Atlantean zodiacal records cannot rr, as they were compiled under the guidance of those who first taught
Astronomy, among other things, to mankind.
But here again we are deliberately and recklessly facing a new difficulty.
We shall be told that our statement is contradicted by Science, in the erson of a man regarded as a great authority (in the West) upon all ubjects of Sanskrit literature--Professor Albrecht Weber, of Berlin. This, o our great regret, cannot be helped; and we are ready to maintain what s now stated. Asuramaya, to whom the epic tradition points as the arliest Astronomer in Âryâvarta, one to whom "the Sun-God imparted the nowledge of the stars," _in propriâ personâ_, as Dr. Weber himself tates, is identified by him, in some very mysterious way, with the
"Ptolemaios" of the Greeks. No more valid reason is given for this dentification than that:
This latter name (Ptolemaios), as we see from the inscription of
Piyadasi, became the Indian "Turamaya," out of which the name
"Asura Maya" might very easily grow.
No doubt it "might," but the vital question is: Are there any good proofs hat it _has_ thus grown? The only evidence that is given for this is, hat it _must_ be so:
Since ... this Maya is distinctly assigned to Romaka-pura in the
West.(93)
The Mâyâ is evident, since no Sanskritist among Europeans can tell where hat locality of Romaka-pura was, except, indeed, that it was somewhere
"in the West." In any case, as no member of the Asiatic Society, or
Western Orientalist, will ever listen to a Brâhmanical teaching, it is seless to take the objections of European Orientalists into onsideration. Romaka-pura was "in the West," certainly, since it was part nd parcel of the lost continent of Atlantis. And it is equally certain hat it is Atlantis, to which is assigned in the Hindű _Purânas_ the irth-place of Asuramaya, "as great a Magician as he was an Astrologer and n Astronomer." Moreover, Prof. Weber refuses to assign any great ntiquity to the Indian Zodiac, and feels inclined to think that the
Hindűs never knew of a Zodiac at all till
They had borrowed one from the Greeks.(94)
This statement clashes with the most ancient traditions of India, and must herefore be ignored. We are the more justified in ignoring it, as the earned German Professor himself tells us in the introduction to his work, hat:
In addition to the natural obstacles which impede investigation
[in India], there still prevails a dense mist of prejudice and
preconceived opinions hovering over the land, and enfolding it as
with a veil.(95)
Caught in that veil, it is no wonder that Dr. Weber should himself have een led into involuntary errors. Let us hope that he knows better now.
Now whether Asuramaya is to be considered a modern myth, a personage who lourished in the day of the Macedonian Greeks, or that which he is laimed to be by the Occultists, in any case his calculations agree ntirely with those of the Secret Records.
From fragments of immensely old works attributed to the Atlantean
Astronomer, and found in Southern India, the calendar elsewhere mentioned as compiled by two very learned Brâhmans(96) in 1884 and 1885. The work s proclaimed by the best Pandits as faultless--from the Brâhmanical tandpoint--and thus far relates to the chronology of the orthodox eachings. If we compare its statements with those made several years arlier in _Isis Unveiled_, with the fragmentary teachings published by ome Theosophists, and with the present data derived from the Secret Books f Occultism, the whole will be found to agree perfectly, save in some etails which may not be explained; for secrets of higher Initiation--as nknown to the writer as they are to the reader--would have to be revealed, nd that _cannot be done_.
Stanza II. Nature Unaided Fails.
5. After enormous periods the Earth creates monsters. 6. The
"Creators" are displeased. 7. They dry the Earth. 8. The forms are
destroyed by them. 9. The first great tides. 10. The beginning of
incrustation.
5. THE WHEEL WHIRLED FOR THIRTY CRORES MORE.(97) IT CONSTRUCTED RŰPAS;(98)
SOFT STONES THAT HARDENED,(99) HARD PLANTS THAT SOFTENED.(100) VISIBLE
FROM INVISIBLE, INSECTS AND SMALL LIVES.(101) SHE(102) SHOOK THEM OFF HER
BACK WHENEVER THEY OVERRAN THE MOTHER (_A_).... AFTER THIRTY CRORES, SHE
TURNED ROUND. SHE LAY ON HER BACK; ON HER SIDE.... SHE WOULD CALL NO SONS
OF HEAVEN, SHE WOULD ASK NO SONS OF WISDOM. SHE CREATED FROM HER OWN
BOSOM. SHE EVOLVED WATER-MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD (_B_).
(_a_) This relates to an inclination of the axis--of which there were everal--to a consequent deluge and chaos on Earth (having, however, no eference to Primeval Chaos), in which monsters, half-human, half-animal, ere generated. We find it mentioned in the _Book of the Dead_, and also n the Chaldćan account of creation, on the Cutha Tablets, however utilated.
It is not even allegory. Here we have _facts_, that are found repeated in he account of the _Pymander_, as well as in the Chaldćan tablets of reation. The verses may almost be checked by the Cosmogony, as given by
Berosus, which has been disfigured out of recognition by Eusebius, but ome of the features of which may yet be found in fragments left by ncient Greek authors--Apollodorus, Alexander Polyhistor, etc. "The water- en terrible and bad"--who were the production of Physical Nature alone, a esult of the "evolutionary impulse" and the first attempt to create
"man," the crown, and the aim and goal of all animal life on Earth--are hown to be failures in our Stanzas. Do we not find the same in the
Berosian Cosmogony, denounced with such vehemence as the culmination of eathen absurdity? And yet who of the Evolutionists can say that things in he beginning have not come to pass as they are described? That, as aintained in the _Purânas_, the Egyptian and Chaldćan fragments, and even n _Genesis_, there have not been two, and even more, "creations," before he last formation of the Globe; which, changing its geological and tmospheric conditions, changed also its flora, its fauna, and its men?
This claim agrees not only with every ancient Cosmogony, but also with
Modern Science, and even, to a certain degree, with the theory of volution, as may be demonstrated in a few words.
There is no "Dark Creation," no "Evil Dragon" conquered by a Sun-God, in he earliest World-Cosmogonies. Even with the Akkads, the Great Deep--the
Watery Abyss, or Space--was the birthplace and abode of Ea, Wisdom, the ncognizable infinite Deity. But with the Semites and the later Chaldćans, he fathomless Deep of Wisdom becomes gross Matter, sinful substance, and
Ea is changed into Tiamat, the Dragon slain by Merodach, or Satan, in the stral waves.
In the Hindű _Purânas_, Brahmâ, the Creator, is seen recommencing _de ovo_ several "Creations" after as many failures; and two great Creations re mentioned,(103) the Pâdma and the Vârâha, the present, when the Earth as lifted out of the water by Brahmâ, in the shape of a Boar, the Varâha
Avatâra. Creation is shown as a sport, an amusement (Lîlâ) of the Creative
God. The _Zohar_ speaks of primordial worlds, which perished as soon as hey came into existence. And the same is said in the _Midraish_, Rabbi
Abahu explaining distinctly(104) that "the Holy One" had successively reated and destroyed sundry Worlds, before he succeeded in the present ne. This does not relate only to other Worlds in Space, but to a mystery f our own Globe contained in the allegory about the "Kings of Edom." For he words, "This one pleases me," are repeated in _Genesis_,(105) though n disfigured terms, as usual. The Chaldćan fragments of Cosmogony in the uneiform inscriptions, and elsewhere, show two distinct creations of nimals and men, the first being destroyed, as it was a failure. The
Cosmogonical tablets prove that this our actual creation was preceded by thers;(106) and as shown by the author of _The Qabbalah_, in the _Zohar_,
_Siphra Dtzenioutha_, in _Jovah Rabba_, 128a, etc., the Kabalah states the ame.
(_b_) Oannes, or Dagon, the Chaldćan "Man-fish," divides his Cosmogony and
Genesis into two portions. First the abyss of waters and darkness, wherein esided most hideous beings--men with wings, four and two-winged men, human eings with two heads, with the legs and horns of a goat--our "goat- en"(107)--hippocentaurs, bulls with the heads of men, and dogs with tails f fishes. In short, combinations of various animals and men, of fishes, eptiles and other monstrous animals, assuming each other's shapes and ountenances. The feminine element they resided in is personified by
Thalatth--the Sea, or "Water"--which was finally conquered by Belus, the ale principle. And Polyhistor says:
Belus came, and cut the woman asunder; and of one half of her he
formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens; and at the
same time destroyed the animals within her.(108)
As pertinently remarked by Isaac Myer:
With the Akkadians each object and power of Nature had its _Zi_ or
Spirit. The Akkadians formed their deities into triads, usually of
males [sexless, rather?], the Semites also had triadic deities,
but introduced sex(109)
--or phallicism. With the Âryan and the earliest Akkadians all things are manations _through_, not _by_, a Creator or Logos. With the Semites verything is _begotten_.
6. THE WATER-MEN, TERRIBLE AND BAD, SHE HERSELF CREATED FROM THE REMAINS
OF OTHERS.(110) FROM THE DROSS AND SLIME OF HER FIRST, SECOND, AND
THIRD,(111) SHE FORMED THEM. THE DHYÂNI CAME AND LOOKED.... THE DHYÂNI
FROM THE BRIGHT FATHER-MOTHER, FROM THE WHITE(112) REGIONS THEY(113) CAME,
FROM THE ABODES OF THE IMMORTAL MORTALS (_A_).
(_a_) The explanations given in our Stanzas are far more clear than that hich the legend of creation from the Cutha tablet would give, even were t complete. What is preserved on it, however, corroborates them. For, in he tablet, the "Lord of Angels" destroys the men in the abyss, when
"there were not left the carcases and waste" after they were slaughtered.
After which they, the Great Gods, create men with the bodies of birds of he desert, human beings, "seven kings, brothers of the same family," tc., which is a reference to the locomotive qualities of the primary thereal bodies of men, which could fly as well as they could walk,(114) ut who "were destroyed" because they were not "perfect," _i.e._, they
"were sexless, like the Kings of Edom."
Weeded of metaphors and allegories, what will Science say to this idea of primordial creation of species? It will object to the "Angels" and
"Spirits" having anything to do therewith; but if it be Nature and the hysical law of evolution that are the creators of all there is now on
Earth, why could there be "no such abyss," when the Globe was covered with aters, in which numbers of monstrous beings were generated? Is it the
"human beings" and animals with human heads and double faces, which are a oint of the objection? But if man is only a higher animal and has evolved rom the brute species by an infinite series of transformations, why could ot the "missing links" have had human heads attached to the bodies of nimals, or, being two-headed, have heads of beasts and _vice versâ_, in
Nature's early efforts? Are we not shown, during the geological periods, n the ages of the reptiles and the mammalia, lizards with birds' wings, nd serpents' heads on animal bodies?(115) And, arguing from the tandpoint of Science, does not even our modern human race occasionally urnish us with monster-specimens: two-headed children, animal bodies with uman heads, dog-headed babies, etc.? And this proves that, if Nature will till play such freaks now that she has been settled for ages in the order f her evolutionary work, monsters, like those described by Berosus, were possibility in her opening programme; a possibility which may even have xisted once upon a time as a law, before she sorted out her species and egan regular work upon them. And this indeed now admits of definite proof y the bare fact of "Reversion," as Science puts it.
This is what the Doctrine teaches, and demonstrates by numerous proofs.
But we shall not wait for the approval of either dogmatic Theology or
Materialistic Science, but proceed with the Stanzas. Let these speak for hemselves, with the help of the light thrown on them by the Commentaries nd their explanations; the scientific aspect of these questions will be onsidered later on.
Thus Physical Nature, when left to herself in the creation of animal and an, is shown to have failed. She can produce the first two kingdoms, as ell as that of the lower animals, but when it comes to the turn of man, piritual, independent and intelligent powers are required for his reation, besides the "coats of skin" and the "breath of animal life." The uman Monads of preceding Rounds need something higher than purely hysical materials with which to build their personalities, under the enalty of remaining even below any "Frankenstein" animal.(116)
7. DISPLEASED THEY WERE. "OUR FLESH IS NOT THERE.(117) NO FIT RŰPAS FOR
OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH. NO DWELLINGS FOR THE LIVES.(118) PURE WATERS,
NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK (_A_). LET US DRY THEM."(119)
(_a_) Says the _Catechism_ on the Commentaries:
_It is from the material Worlds that descend they, who fashion physical an at the new Manvantaras. They are inferior Lha [Spirits], possessed of dual body [an Astral within an Ethereal Form]. They are the fashioners nd creators of our body of illusion_....
_Into the forms projected by the Lha [Pitris] the Two Letters_(_120_)_
[the Monad, called also the __"__Double Dragon__"__] descend from the
Spheres of Expectation._(_121_)_ But they are like a roof with no walls, or pillars to rest upon_....
_Man needs four Flames and three Fires to become one on Earth, and he equires the essence of the forty-nine Fires_(_122_)_ to be perfect. It is hose who have deserted the Superior Spheres, the Gods of Will,_(_123_)_ ho complete the Manu of illusion. For the __"__Double Dragon__"__ has no old upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where there is no tree or ranch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect the form where there is o agent of transmission [Manas, __"__Mind__"__] and the form knows it ot._
_In the highest worlds, the three are one,_(_124_)_ on Earth [at first] he one becomes two. They are like the two [side] lines of a triangle that as lost its bottom line--which is the third Fire._(125)
Now this requires some explanation before proceeding any further. To do so specially for the benefit of our Âryan Hindű brethren--whose Esoteric nterpretations may differ from our own--we shall have to explain to them he foregoing by certain passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the
_Purânas_. In the allegories of the latter, Brahmâ, who is collectively he Creative Force of the Universe, is thus described:
At the beginning of the Yugas [Cycles] ... possessed of the desire
and of the power to create, and impelled by the potencies of what
is to be created, again and again does he, at the outset of a
Kalpa, put forth a similar creation.(126)
It is now proposed to examine the exoteric account in the _Vishnu Purâna_, nd see how much it may agree or disagree with our Occult version.
Creation of Divine Beings in the Exoteric Accounts.
In the _Vishnu Purâna_, which is certainly the earliest of all the criptures of that name, we find, as in all the others, Brahmâ, as the ale God, assuming, for purposes of creation, "_four_ Bodies invested by
_three_ qualities."(127) It is said:
In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsnâ (dawn), Râtri (night), Ahan
(day), and Sandhyâ (evening [twilight]) are the four bodies of
Brahmâ.(128)
As Parâshara explains it, when Brahmâ wishes to create the world anew and onstruct progeny _through his will_, in the fourfold condition, or the our Orders of Beings, termed Gods (Dhyân Chohans), Demons(129) (_i.e._, ore material Devas), Progenitors (Pitris) and Men, "he collects [Yoga- ike] his mind into itself" (Yűyuge).
Strange to say, he begins by creating Demons, who thus take precedence ver the Angels or Gods. This is no incongruity, nor is it due to nconsistency, but has, like all the rest, a profound Esoteric meaning, uite clear to one free from Christian theological prejudice. He who bears n mind that the principle Mahat, or Intellect, the "Universal Mind"
(literally the "Great"), which Esoteric Philosophy explains as the
"Manifested Omniscience"--the "first product" of Pradhâna, Primordial
Matter, as the _Vishnu Purâna_ says, but the first Cosmic Aspect of
Parabrahman or the Esoteric Sat, the Universal Soul,(130) as Occultism eaches--is at the root of SELF-Consciousness, will understand the reason hy. The so-called Demons--who are Esoterically the Self-asserting and ntellectually active Principle--are the _positive pole of creation_, so to ay; hence, the first produced. This is in brief the process as narrated llegorically in the _Purânas_.
Having concentrated his mind into itself and the Quality of
Darkness pervading Brahmâ's assumed body, the Asuras, issuing from
his Thigh, were first produced; after which, abandoning this body,
it was transformed into Night.
Two important points are involved herein: (_a_) Primarily in the _Rig
Veda_, the Asuras are shown as _spiritual divine Beings_; their etymology s derived from Asu, breath, the "Breath of God," and they mean the same s the Supreme Spirit or the Zoroastrian Ahura. It is later on, for urposes of theology and dogma, that they are shown issuing from Brahmâ's
Thigh, and that their name began to be derived from _a_, privative, and
_Sura_, a God, or "not-a-God," and that they became the enemies of the
Gods. (_b_) Every ancient Theogony without exception--from the Aryan and he Egyptian down to that of Hesiod--in the order of Cosmogonical volution, places Night before Day; even _Genesis_, where "darkness is pon the face of the deep" before the "first day." The reason for this is hat every Cosmogony--except in the Secret Doctrine--begins by the
"Secondary Creation" so-called; to wit, the _Manifested_ Universe, the
Genesis of which has to begin by a marked differentiation between the ternal Light of "Primary Creation," whose mystery must remain for ever
"Darkness" to the prying finite conception and intellect of the profane, nd the Secondary Evolution of manifested visible Nature. The _Veda_ ontains the whole philosophy of that division, without having ever been orrectly explained by our Orientalists, since it has _never been nderstood_ by them.
Continuing to create, Brahmâ assumes another form, that of the Day, and reates from his Breath the Gods, who are endowed with the Quality of
Goodness (Passivity).(131) In his next body the Quality of great Passivity revailed, which is also (negative) goodness, and from the side of that ersonage issued the Pitris, the Progenitors of men, because, as the text xplains, Brahmâ "thought of himself [during the process] as the father of he world."(132) This is Kriyâ-shakti--the mysterious Yoga-power explained lsewhere. This body of Brahmâ when cast off became the Sandhyâ, Evening
Twilight, the interval between Day and Night.
Finally Brahmâ assumed his last form pervaded by the Quality of Foulness.
And from this, Men, in whom foulness (or passion) predominates,
were produced.
This body when cast off became the Dawn, or Morning Twilight--the Twilight f Humanity. Here Brahmâ stands Esoterically for the Pitris. He is ollectively the Pitâ, "Father."
The true Esoteric meaning of this allegory must now be explained. Brahmâ ere symbolizes personally the Collective Creators of the World and
Men--the Universe with all its numberless productions of things movable and
(seemingly) immovable.(133) He is collectively the Prajâpatis, the Lords f Being; and the four bodies typify the four Classes of Creative Powers r Dhyân Chohans, described in the Commentary on Shloka I, Stanza VII, in
Volume I. The whole philosophy of the so-called "Creation" of the good and vil in this World, and of the whole Cycle of Manvantaric results herefrom, hangs on the correct comprehension of these Four Bodies of
Brahmâ.
The reader will now be prepared to understand the real, the Esoteric ignificance of what follows. Moreover there is an important point to be leared up. Christian Theology having arbitrarily settled and agreed that
Satan with his Fallen Angels belonged to the earliest creation, Satan eing the first-created, the wisest and most beautiful of God's
Archangels, the word was given, the key-note struck. Henceforth all the
Pagan Scriptures were made to yield the same meaning, and all were shown o be demoniacal, and it _was_ and _is_ claimed that _truth and fact_ elong to, and commence only with, Christianity. Even the Orientalists and
Mythologists, some of them no Christians at all but "infidels," or men of
Science, entered, unconsciously to themselves and by the mere force of ssociation of ideas and habit, into the theological groove.
Purely Brâhmanical considerations, based on greed of power and ambition, llowed the masses to remain in ignorance of great truths; and the same auses led the Initiates among the early Christians to remain silent, hile those who had never known the truth disfigured the order of things, udging of the Hierarchy of "Angels" by their exoteric form. Thus, as the
Asuras had become the rebellious inferior Gods fighting the higher ones in opular creeds, so the highest Archangel, in truth the Agathodćmon, the ldest benevolent Logos, became in theology the "Adversary" or Satan. But s this warranted by the correct interpretation of any old Scripture? The nswer is: most certainly not. As the Mazdean Scriptures of the _Zend
Avesta_, the _Vendidâd_ and others correct and expose the later cunning huffling of the Gods in the Hindű Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the
Asuras to their legitimate place in Theogony, so the recent discoveries of he Chaldćan tablets vindicate the good name of the first divine
Emanations. This is easily proved. Christian Angelology is directly and olely derived from that of the Pharisees, who brought their tenets from
Babylonia. The Sadducees, the real guardians of the Laws of Moses, knew ot of any Angels, opposing even the immortality of the human Soul (not he impersonal Spirit). In the _Bible_ the only Angels spoken of are the
"Sons of God" mentioned in _Genesis_ vi--who are now regarded as the
Nephilim, the Fallen Angels--and several Angels in human form, the
"Messengers" of the Jewish God, whose own rank needs a closer analysis han heretofore given. As shown above, the early Akkadians called Ea
Wisdom, which was disfigured by the later Chaldees and Semites into
Tiamat, Tisalat and the Thalatth of Berosus, the female Sea Dragon, now
Satan. Truly--"How art thou fallen [by the hand of man], O bright Star and
Son of the Morning"!
Now what do the Babylonian accounts of "Creation," as found on the
Assyrian fragments of tiles, tell us; those very accounts upon which the
Pharisees built their Angelology? Compare Mr. George Smith's _Assyrian
Discoveries_,(134) and his _Chaldean Account of Genesis_.(135) The Tablet ith the story of the Seven Wicked Gods or Spirits, has the following ccount; we print the important passages in italics:
1. In the _first days_ the evil Gods,
2. the _angels who were in rebellion_, who _in the lower part of
heaven_
3. _had been created_,
4. they caused their evil work
5. devising with wicked heads ... etc.
Thus we are shown, as plainly as can be, on a fragment which remained nbroken, so that there can be no dubious reading, that the "Rebellious
Angels" had been created in the "lower part of heaven," _i.e._, that they elonged and do belong to a _material plane of evolution_, although as it s not the plane of which we are made cognizant through our senses, it emains generally invisible to us, and is thus regarded as subjective.
Were the Gnostics so wrong, after this, in affirming that this our Visible
World, and especially the Earth, had been created by _Lower_ Angels, the nferior Elohim, of which, as they taught, the God of Israel was one?
These Gnostics were nearer in time to the records of the Archaic Secret
Doctrine, and therefore ought to be allowed to have known what it ontained better than non-initiated Christians, who took upon themselves, undreds of years later, to remodel and _correct_ what was said. But let s see what the same Tablet says further on:
7. There were seven of them [the wicked gods].
Then follows the description of these, the fourth being a "serpent," the hallic symbol of the Fourth Race in human Evolution.
15. The seven of them, messengers of the God Anu their king.
Now Anu belongs to the Chaldćan Trinity, and is identical with Sin, the
"Moon," in one aspect. And the Moon in the Hebrew Kabalah is the Argha of he seed of all material life, and is still more closely connected, abalistically, with Jehovah, who is double-sexed, as Anu is. They are oth represented in Esotericism, and viewed, from a dual aspect: male or piritual, female or material, or Spirit and Matter, the two antagonistic rinciples. Hence the "Messengers of Anu," who is Sin, the "Moon," are hown, in lines 28 to 41, as being finally overpowered by the same Sin ith the help of Bel, the Sun, and Ishtar, Venus. This is regarded as a ontradiction by the Assyriologists, but it is simply _metaphysics_ in the
Esoteric teaching.
There is more than one interpretation, for there are seven keys to the ystery of the "Fall." Moreover there are two "Falls" in Theology: the ebellion of the Archangels and their "Fall," and the "Fall" of Adam and
Eve. Thus the lower as well as the higher Hierarchies are charged with a upposed crime. The word "supposed" is the true and correct term, for in oth cases it is founded on misconception. Both are considered in
Occultism as Karmic effects, and both belong to the law of
Evolution--intellectual and spiritual on the one hand, physical and psychic n the other. The "Fall" is a universal allegory. It sets forth at one end f the ladder of Evolution the "rebellion," _i.e._, the action of ifferentiating intellection, or consciousness, on its various planes, eeking union with Matter; and at the other, the lower end, the rebellion f Matter against Spirit, or of action against spiritual inertia. And here ies the germ of an error which has had such disastrous effects on the ntelligence of civilized societies for over 1,800 years. In the original llegory it is Matter--hence the more material Angels--which was regarded as he conqueror of Spirit, or the Archangels who "fell" on this plane.
They of the _flaming sword_ [or animal passions] had put to flight
the Spirits of Darkness.
Yet it is the latter who fought for the supremacy of the conscious and ivine spirituality on Earth and failed, succumbing to the power of
Matter. But in theological dogma we see the reverse. It is Michael, "who s like unto God," the representative of Jehovah, who is the Leader of the
Celestial Hosts--as Lucifer, in Milton's fancy, is of the Infernal
Hosts--who has the best of Satan. It is true that the nature of Michael epends upon that of his Creator and Master. Who the latter is, one may ind out by carefully studying the allegory of the "War in Heaven" with he astronomical key. As shown by Bentley, the "War of the Titans against he Gods" in Hesiod, and also the War of the Asuras, or the Târakâmaya, gainst the Devas in Purânic legend, are identical in all save the names.
The aspects of the stars show--Bentley taking the year 945 B.C. as the earest date for such conjunction--that:
All the planets, except Saturn, were on the same side of the
heavens as the Sun and Moon.
And hence were his opponents. And yet it is Saturn, or the Jewish "Moon-
God," who is shown as prevailing, both by Hesiod and Moses, neither of hom was understood. Thus it was that the real meaning became distorted.
Stanza II.--_Continued._
8. THE FLAMES CAME. THE FIRES WITH THE SPARKS; THE NIGHT-FIRES AND THE
DAY-FIRES (_A_). THEY DRIED OUT THE TURBID DARK WATERS. WITH THEIR HEAT
THEY QUENCHED THEM. THE LHAS(136) OF THE HIGH; THE LHAMAYIN(137) OF BELOW,
CAME (_B_). THEY SLEW THE FORMS, WHICH WERE TWO- AND FOUR-FACED. THEY
FOUGHT THE GOAT-MEN, AND THE DOG-HEADED MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES'
BODIES.
(_a_) The "Flames" are a Hierarchy of Spirits parallel to, if not dentical with, the "burning" fiery Saraph (Seraphim), mentioned by
Isaiah(138) those who, according to Hebrew Theogony, attend the "Throne of he Almighty." Melha is the Lord of the "Flames." When he appears on
Earth, he assumes the personality of a Buddha, says a popular legend. He s one of the most ancient and revered Lhas, a Buddhist St. Michael.
(_b_) The word "Below" must not be taken to mean Infernal Regions, but imply a spiritual, or rather ethereal, Being of a lower grade, because earer to the Earth, or one step higher than our Terrestrial Sphere; while he Lhas are Spirits of the highest Spheres--whence the name of the capital f Tibet, Lha-ssa.
Besides a statement of a purely physical nature and belonging to the volution of life on Earth, there may be another allegorical meaning ttached to this shloka, or indeed, as is taught, several. The "Flames," r "Fires," represent Spirit, or the male element, and "Water," Matter, or he opposite element. And here again we find, in the action of the Spirit laying the purely material form, a reference to the eternal struggle, on he physical and psychic planes, between Spirit and Matter, besides a cientific cosmic fact. For, as said in the next verse:
9. MOTHER-WATER, THE GREAT SEA, WEPT. SHE AROSE, SHE DISAPPEARED IN THE
MOON, WHICH HAD LIFTED HER, WHICH HAD GIVEN HER BIRTH.
Now what can this mean? Is it not an evident reference to tidal action in he early stage of the history of our Planet in its Fourth Round? Modern esearch has been busy of late in its speculations on the Palćozoic high- ides. Mr. G. H. Darwin's theory was that not less than 52,000,000 years go--and probably much more--the Moon originated from the Earth's plastic ass. Starting from the point where research was left by Helmholtz,
Ferrel, Sir William Thomson and others, he retraced the course of tidal etardation of the Earth's rotary motions far back into the very night of ime, and placed the Moon during the infancy of our Planet at only "a raction of its present distance." In short, his theory was that it was he Moon which separated from the Earth. The tidal elevation concurring ith the swing of the globular mass--centrifugal tendency being then nearly qual to gravity--the latter was overcome, and the tidally elevated mass ould thus separate completely from the Earth.(139)
The Occult teaching is the reverse of this. The Moon is far older than the
Earth; and, as explained in Volume I, it is the latter which owes its eing to the former, however Astronomy and Geology may explain the fact.
Hence, the tides and the attraction to the Moon, as shown by the liquid ortion of the Globe ever striving to raise itself towards its parent.
This is the meaning of the sentence that the Mother-Water "arose, she isappeared in the Moon, which had lifted her, which had given her birth."
10. WHEN(140) THEY WERE DESTROYED, MOTHER EARTH REMAINED BARE.(141) SHE
ASKED TO BE DRIED.(142)
The time for the Earth's incrustation had arrived. The waters had eparated and the process was started. It was the beginning of a new life.
This is what one key divulges to us. Another key teaches the origin of
Water, its admixture with Fire--"Liquid Fire" it calls it--and enters upon n Alchemical description of the progeny of the two--solid matters such as inerals and earths. From the "Waters of Space," the progeny of the male
Spirit-Fire and the female (gaseous) Water has become the Oceanic expanse n Earth. Varuna is dragged down from the infinite Space, to reign as
Neptune over the finite Seas. As always, the popular fancy is found to be ased on a strictly scientific foundation.
Water is the symbol of the Female Element everywhere; Mater, from which omes the letter M, is derived pictorially from [Symbol like three ountains, rather like the letter "M"], a water hieroglyph. It is the
Universal Matrix or the "Great Deep." Venus, the great Mother-Virgin, ssues forth from the sea-wave, and Cupid or Erôs is her son. But Venus is he later mythological variant of Gća, Gaia, the Earth, which, in its igher aspect is Prakriti, Nature, and metaphysically Aditi, and even
Műlaprakriti, the Root of Prakriti, or its noumenon.
Hence Cupid or Love in his primitive sense is Erôs, the Divine Will, or
Desire of manifesting itself through visible creation. Thence Fohat, the rototype of Erôs, becomes on Earth the Great Power "Life-Electricity," or he Spirit of "Life-giving." Let us remember the Greek Theogony and enter nto the spirit of its Philosophy. We are taught by the Greeks that all hings, Gods included, owe their being to the Ocean and his wife Tethys, he latter being Gća, the Earth or Nature. But who is Ocean? Ocean is the mmeasurable Space--Spirit in Chaos--which, is the Deity; and Tethys is not he Earth, but Primordial Matter in the process of formation. In our case t is no longer Aditi-Gća who begets Ouranos or Varuna, the chief Âditya mong the seven Planetary Gods, but Prakriti, materialized and localized.
The Moon, masculine in its theogonic character, is, in its cosmic aspect nly, the female generative principle, as the Sun is the male emblem hereof. Water is the progeny of the Moon, an androgyne deity with every ation.
Evolution proceeds on the laws of analogy in Kosmos as in the formation of he smallest Globe. Thus the above, applying to the _modus operandi_ at he time when the Universe was appearing, applies also in the case of our
Earth's formation.
The Stanza now being commented upon opens by speaking of thirty crores,
300,000,000 of years. We may be asked: What could the ancients know of the uration of geological periods, when no modern Scientist or Mathematician s able to calculate their duration with anything like approximate ccuracy? Whether they had or had not better means--and it is maintained hat they had them as is evidenced by their Zodiacs--still the chronology f the ancient Brâhmans shall now be given as faithfully as possible.
The Chronology of the Brâhmans.
No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly nsoluble, than the question: How old--even approximately--are the Sun and
Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know of the duration of he Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?
Nothing; absolutely nothing.
If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by hose who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, he eminent Geologist, "We do not know."(143) One will learn that, so far, o trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could e made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a tudent of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of
Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when educed to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed o arrive even at an approximate agreement?
It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the
Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a abyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit nto the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting peculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern radition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide hem, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender hread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at erfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to hich documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology s but "the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre-historic eriod"--in the words of the writer of the article in the _Encyclopćdia
Britannica_.
At the same time it is confessed that "beyond that period stretches back a ast indefinite series of pre-historic ages."
It is with those specified "ages" that we shall begin. They are "pre- istoric" to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of he Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne's thread stretches beyond hat "historic period" without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into he very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop t, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as anciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted y Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying efusal only from the official and collective body of _orthodox_ Science.
And since the latter refuses to give us even an approximate idea of the uration of the geological Ages--save in a few conflicting and ontradictory hypotheses--let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.
Such computations as are given in _Manu_ and the _Purânas_--save trifling nd most evidently _intentional_ exaggerations--are, as already stated, lmost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be een by comparing the two in any Hindű calendar of recognized orthodoxy.
The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched or by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned
Tamil calendar called the _Tirukkanda Panchanga_, compiled, as we are old, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya's ata. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is hispered to have also been the most powerful "Sorcerer" of the "White
Island, which had become Black with sin," _i.e._, of the islands of
Atlantis.
The "White Island" is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived, s in the tradition of the _Jńâna-bhâskara_, in Romaka-pura, in the West; ecause the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the "Sweat-born" f the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before
Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant f the Wise Race, _the Race that never dies_. Many are the legends oncerning this hero, the pupil of Sűrya, the Sun-God, himself, as the
Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or nother island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr.
Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka-pura, in the West, eing named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the ore interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching bout the Sweat-born Races, the men born from the "pores of their arents." "_Roma-kűpas_" mean "hair-pores" in Sanskrit. In the
_Mahâbhârata_,(144) a people named Raumas are said to have been created rom the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha's acrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this ay. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third
Root-Races.
The following figures are from the calendar just referred to; a foot-note arks the points of disagreement with the figures of the Ârya Samâj chool:
I. From the beginning of Cosmic Evolution,(145) up to the Hindű year
Tarana (or 1887), 1,955,884,687 years.
II. The (astral), mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to Man, have aken to evolve, 300,000,000 years.(146)
III. Time, from the first appearance of "Humanity" (on our Planetary
Chain), 1,664,500,987 years.(147)
IV. The number that elapsed since the Vaivasvata, Manvantara(148)--or the
_Human_ Period--up to the year 1887, is just 18,618,728 years.
V. The full period of one Manvantara is 308,448,000 years.
VI. Fourteen Manvantaras, _plus_ the period of one Satya Yuga make one Day f Brahmâ, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.
Therefore a Mahâ Yuga consists of 4,320,000 years.(149)
The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Yuga, 4,989 years.
To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations by
Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row, are given from the _Theosophist_ of
November, 1885.
360 days of mortals make a year
Krita Yuga contains 1,728,000
Tretâ Yuga contains 1,296,000
Dvâpara Yuga contains 864,000
Kali Yuga contains 432,000
The total of the said four Yugas constitute a Mahâ Yuga, 4,320,000
Seventy-one of such Mahâ Yugas form the period of the reign of one
Manu, 306,720,000
The reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration of 994 Mahâ
Yugas, which is equal to 4,294,080,000
Add Sandhis, _i.e._, intervals between the reign of each Manu,
which amount to six Mahâ Yugas, equal to 25,920,000
The total of these reigns and interregnums of fourteen Manus, is
1,000 Mahâ Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa, _i.e._, one Day of
Brahmâ, 4,320,000,000
As Brahmâ's Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of
Brahmâ would contain 8,640,000,000
360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmâ equal to
3,110,400,000,000
100 such Years constitute the whole period of Brahmâ's Age,
_i.e._, Mahâ Kalpa, 311,040,000,000,000
These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they ovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter, oreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles, ever mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings--one of which, the division f the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The est, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, evertheless, known to every "Twice-born" (Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman, nd the _Purânas_ contain references to some of them in veiled terms, hich no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor ould he if he would.
These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of hem pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The atter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian
Giants--the Gibborim of the Bible--were not all bad or Sorcerers, as
Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a servant of the Evil
One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of "the faithful sons of he Church." A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more arm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean
Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, r yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There ere _good_ "giants" in days of old just as there are _bad_ "pigmies" now; nd the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern ynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern ars. Nor are they myths.
He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from
going to, or even talking of, Carnac or Stonehenge.
emarks somewhere a modern writer.
As the Brâhmanical figures given above are approximately the basic alculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully eep them in mind.
In the _Encyclopćdia Britannica_ we find, as the last word of Science, hat the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch _only over_ "tens of housands of years." It becomes evident that as these figures may be made o fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little f anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the uestion. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man n the "pre- or post- glacial drift," if we are told at the same time that he so-called "Ice Age" is simply a long succession of ages which
Shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the
human or recent period ... the overlapping of geological periods
having been the rule from the beginning of time.(150)
The latter "rule" only results in the still more puzzling, even if trictly scientific and correct, information, that:
Even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine
valleys and in the Finmark.(151)
Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and ven by exoteric Hindűism and its traditions, we should to this day be eft to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite "Ages" of ne school of Science, the "tens of thousands" of years of the other, and he 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one of the several easons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of earning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such uestions of pre-historic antiquity.
Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views.
But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it as against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing's ssurances that:
In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and
later formations, there is no _theory_, they are based on positive
facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error
either way.(152)
Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is very uch in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In this very assage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preëminence for correctness ver Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contradiction to the dmissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:
In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the
Silurian period(153) when the present order of things was fairly
inaugurated, are approximate [truly so] _facts_ and not
_theories_, while the astronomical conclusions are _theories_
based on _data_ so uncertain, that while in some cases they give
results incredibly short, ... in others they give results almost
incredibly long.(154)
After which, the reader is advised that the "safest course"
Seems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of
the present order of things to have been somewhere over 100
millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though
unknown time beyond in the past, and to come in the future, for
the birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death of the solar
system, of which our earth is a small planet now passing through
the habitable phase.(155)
Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt hat, once called upon to answer "the absurd unscientific and preposterous laims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Âryan chronology," the Scientist of the
"results incredibly short," _i.e._, only 15,000,000 years, and the
Scientist, who "would require 600,000,000 years," together with those who ccept Mr. Huxley's figures of 1,000,000,000(156) "since sedimentation egan in Europe," would all be as dogmatic the one as the other. Nor would hey fail to remind the Occultist and the Brâhman, that it is the modern en of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to ight "inaccuracy" and "superstition."
The Earth is passing through the "habitable phase" only for the _present rder_ of things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned with its ctual "coats of skin" and phosphorus for bones and brain.
We are ready to concede the 100 millions of years offered by Geology, ince we are taught that our present physical mankind--or the Vaivasvata
Humanity--began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geology has no acts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown, o more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W.
Pengelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:
It is at present, and perhaps always will be, _impossible_ to
reduce, even approximately, geological time into years or even
into millenniums.
And having never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than the
_present form_--what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or trata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian.
When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial rotoplasmic form, then we will admit that it may know something of rimordial man. If it is not very material to "the bearings of modern cientific discovery on modern thought," whether
Man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for
the last 50,000 years of a period of 15 millions, or for the last
500,000 years of a period of 150 millions,(157)
s Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of he Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is a _possibility_, if not perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, the
_Secret Doctrine_ might as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must, herefore, be made in this direction, and it is our modern Geologists and en of Science generally who will be brought to testify to this fact in he Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact hat Hindű Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a iction based on no "actual" computation,(158) but simply a "childish oasting," it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognition to make it ield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures have ever been ore meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2, followed by yphers, of the Yugas and Mahâ Yugas.
As the whole Cycle of pre-historic events, such as the evolution and ransformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the aid Chronology, it becomes extremely important to check it by other xisting calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at east have the consolation of proving that no other--whether in the figures f Science or of the Churches--is one whit more reliable. As Professor Max
Müller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove what a thing is not as o show what it may be. And once we succeed in pointing out the fallacies f both Christian and Scientific computations--by allowing them a fair hance of comparison with our Chronology--neither of these will have a easonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less eliable than its own.
We may here refer the reader to our earlier work, _Isis Unveiled_,(159) or some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.
To-day a few more facts may be added to the information there given, which s already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of
4,320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which ompose it, taken separately or joined in various combinations, are each nd all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Nature. Indeed, whether ne takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, or the two together making
7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2, added together and yielding 9, all these umbers have their application in the most sacred and Occult matters, and ecord the workings of Nature in her eternally periodical phenomena. They re never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who tudies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan n Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, nvisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and eäction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and rowth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and epend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic gencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives nd breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara.
Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and "endexoteric," so to say.
In _Isis Unveiled_ we wrote that which we now repeat: _We are at the ottom of a cycle and evidently in a transitory state_. Plato divides the ntellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile and arren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres of the various lements remain eternally in perfect harmony with the Divine Nature, he ays; "but their parts," owing to a too close proximity to earth, and heir commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the ealm of evil), "are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to
(Divine) Nature." When those circulations--which Éliphas Lévi calls
"currents of the Astral Light"--in the universal Ether which contains in tself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our
Earth and everything pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult owers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympathize with the
"superior natures," and the Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence ith these "inferior" ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose heir magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight of the majority of mankind s so blinded as to lose every notion of the superior powers of its own
Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period; the eighteenth century, during hich the malignant fever of scepticism broke out so irrepressibly, has ntailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine ntellect is veiled in man; his animal brain alone "philosophizes." And hilosophizing alone, how can it understand the "Soul Doctrine"?
In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give some triking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with ur explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.
Stanza III. Attempts To Create Man.
11. The Descent of the Demiurge. 12. The Lunar Gods ordered to
create. 13. The Higher Gods refuse.
11. THE LORD OF THE LORDS CAME. FROM HER BODY HE SEPARATED THE WATERS, AND
THAT WAS HEAVEN ABOVE, THE FIRST HEAVEN.(160)
Here tradition falls again into the Universal. As in the earliest version, epeated in the _Purânas_, so in the latest, the Mosaic account. In the irst it is said:
He the Lord [the God who has the form of Brahmâ], when the world
had become one ocean, concluding that within the waters lay the
earth, and desirous to raise it up [to separate it], created
himself in another form. As in the preceding Kalpa [Manvantara] he
had assumed the shape of a tortoise, so in this one he took the
shape of a boar, etc.(161)
In the Elohistic "creation,"(162) "God" creates "a firmament in the midst f the waters," and says "let _dry land_ appear." And now comes the raditional peg whereunto is hung the Esoteric portion of the Kabalistic nterpretation.
12. THE GREAT CHOHANS(163) CALLED THE LORDS OF THE MOON, OF THE AIRY
BODIES: "BRING FORTH MEN,(164) MEN OF YOUR NATURE. GIVE THEM(165) THEIR
FORMS WITHIN. SHE(166) WILL BUILD COVERINGS WITHOUT.(167) MALES-FEMALES
WILL THEY BE. LORDS OF THE FLAME ALSO...."
Who are the "Lords of the Moon"? In India they are called Pitris or "Lunar
Ancestors," but in the Hebrew scrolls it is Jehovah himself who is the
"Lord of the Moon," collectively as the Host, and also as one of the
Elohim. The Astronomy of the Hebrews and their "observance of _times_" was egulated by the Moon. A Kabalist, having shown that "Daniel ... told off
God's providence by set _times_" and that the _Revelation_ of John "speaks f a carefully measured _cubical_ city descending out of the heavens," tc., adds:
But the vitalizing power of heaven lay chiefly with _the moon_....
It was the Hebrew {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} [Jehovah],--and St. Paul enjoins:--"Let no
man judge you for your observance of the 7th day, and the day of
_new moon,--which are a shadow of things to come_; but the body (or
substance) is of Christ," _i.e._, Jehovah,--that function of this
power that "made the barren woman the joyful mother of
children,"--"for they are the gift of Jehovah," ... which is a key
to the objection which her husband made to the Shunamite, as to
her going to the man of God:--"for it is neither the 7th day nor
the day of _new moon_." The living spiritual powers of the
constellations had mighty wars marked by the movements and
positions of the stars and planets, and especially as the result
of the conjunction of the moon, earth and sun. Bentley comments on
the Hindű "war between the gods and the giants," as marked by the
eclipse of the sun at the ascending node of the moon, 945 B.C.
[!], at which time was born,(168) or produced from the sea, SRI
(Sarai), S-r-i, the wife of the Hebrew Abram(169), who was the
Venus-Aphroditus [_sic_] of the Westerns, emblem "of the luni-
solar year, or the moon, [as Sri is the wife of the Moon; see
foot-note], the goddess of increase."(170) ... [Therefore] the
grand monument and land-mark of the exact period of the lunar year
and month, by which this cycle [of 19 tropical years of the sun
and 235 revolutions of the moon] could be calculated, was Mount
Sinai,--the Lord Jehovah coming down thereon.... Paul speaks [then]
as a mystagogue, when he says concerning the freed woman and bond
woman of Abraham:--"For this Hagar (the bond woman of Abraham) is
Mount Sinai in Arabia." How could a woman be a mountain? and such
a mountain! Yet, in one sense, ... she was, and in a very
marvellously true one. Her name was Hagar, {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER GIMEL~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} whose numbers read
235, or in exact measure, the very number of lunar months to equal
19 tropical years to complete this cycle and make the likeness and
similitude good; Mount Sinai being, in the esoteric language of
this wisdom, the monument of the exact time of the lunar year and
month, by which this spiritual vitalizing cycle could be computed,
and which mountain, indeed, was called (Fuerst) "the Mountain of
the Moon (Sin)." So also Sarai (SRI), the wife of Abram, could
have no child until her name was changed to Sarah, {~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, giving to
her the property of this lunar influence.(171)
This may be regarded as a digression from the main subject; but it is a ery necessary one with a view to Christian readers. For who, after tudying dispassionately the respective legends of Abram or Abraham, Sarai r Sarah, who was "fair to look upon," and those of Brahmâ and Sarasvatî, r Shrî, Lakshmî-Venus, with the relations of all these to the Moon and
Water;--and especially one who understands the real Kabalistic meaning of he name Jehovah and its relation to, and connection with, the Moon--who an doubt that the story of Abram is based upon that of Brahmâ, or that
_Genesis_ was written upon the old lines used by every ancient nation? All n the ancient Scriptures is allegorical--all based upon and inseparably onnected with Astronomy and Cosmolatry.
13. THEY(172) WENT EACH ON HIS ALLOTTED LAND: SEVEN OF THEM, EACH ON HIS
LOT. THE LORDS OF THE FLAME REMAIN BEHIND. THEY WOULD NOT GO, THEY WOULD
NOT CREATE.
The Secret Teachings show the divine Progenitors creating men on seven ortions of the Globe "each on his lot"--_i.e._, each a different Race of en externally and internally, and on different Zones. This polygenistic laim is considered elsewhere, in Stanza VII. But who are "They" who reate, and the "Lords of the Flame," "who would not"? Occultism divides he "Creators" into Twelve Classes; of which four have reached
"Liberation" to the end of the "Great Age," the fifth is ready to reach t, but still remains active on the intellectual planes, while seven are till under direct Karmic Law. These last act on the man-bearing Globes of ur Chain.
Exoteric Hindű books mention Seven Classes of Pitris, and among them two istinct kinds of Progenitors or Ancestors: the Barhishad and the
Agnishvâtta; or those possessed of the "sacred fire" and those devoid of t. Hindű ritualism seems to connect them with sacrificial fires, and with
Grihastha Brâhmans in earlier incarnations; those who have, and those who ave _not_ attended as they should to their household sacred fires in heir previous births. The distinction, as said, is derived from the
_Vedas_. The first and highest class (Esoterically), the Agnishvâtta, are epresented in the exoteric allegory as Grihastha or Brâhman-householders, ho, having failed to maintain their domestic fires and to offer burnt acrifices, in their past births in other Manvantaras, have lost every ight to have oblations with fire presented to them. Whereas the
Barhishad, being Brâhmans who have kept up their household sacred fires, re thus honoured to this day. Thence the Agnishvâtta are represented as evoid of, and the Barhishad as possessed of, fires.
But Esoteric Philosophy explains the original qualifications as being due o the difference between the natures of the two Classes: the Agnishvâtta
Pitris are devoid of "fire" _i.e._, of creative passion, because they are oo divine and pure; whereas the Barhishad, being the Lunar Spirits more losely connected with Earth, became the creative Elohim of form, or the
Adam of dust.
The allegory says that Sanandana and other Vedhas, the Sons of Brahmâ, his irst progeny:
Were without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom,
estranged from the universe and _undesirous of progeny_.(173)
This also is what is meant in the shloka by the words, "They would not reate," and is explained as follows:
"_The Primordial Emanations from the Creative Power are too near the
Absolute Cause. They are transitional and latent forces, which will evelop only in the next and subsequent removes._"
This makes it plain. Hence Brahmâ is said to have felt wrathful when he aw that those
Embodied spirits, produced from his limbs [_gâtra_], would not
multiply themselves.
After which, in the allegory, he creates other seven Mind-born Sons(174) amely, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu and Vasishtha, the atter being often replaced by Daksha, the most prolific of the Creators.
In most of the texts these Seven Sons of Vasishtha-Daksha are called the
Seven Rishis of the _Third_ Manvantara; the latter referring both to the
Third Round and also to the Third Root-Race and its Branch-Races in the
Fourth Round. These are all the Creators of the various Beings on this
Earth, the Prajâpati, and at the same time they appear as divers eďncarnations in the early Manvantaras or Races.
It thus becomes clear why the Agnishvâtta, devoid of the grosser "creative ire," hence unable to create physical man, having no Double, or Astral
Body, to project, since they were without any "form," are shown in xoteric allegories as Yogîs, Kumâras (chaste youths), who became
"rebels," Asuras, fighting and opposing Gods,(175) etc. Yet it is they lone who could complete man, _i.e._, make of him a self-conscious, almost divine Being--a God on Earth. The Barhishad, though possessed of
"creative fire," were devoid of the higher Mahat-ic element. Being on a evel with the lower "Principles"--those which precede gross objective atter--they could only give birth to the outer man, or rather to the model f the physical, the astral man. Thus, though we see them intrusted with he task by Brahmâ--the collective Mahat or Universal Divine Mind--the
"Mystery of Creation" is repeated on Earth, only in an inverted sense, as n a _mirror_.
It is those who are unable to create the spiritual immortal man, who roject the senseless model (the Astral) of the physical Being; and, as ill be seen, it was those who would not multiply, who sacrificed hemselves to the good and salvation of Spiritual Humanity. For, to omplete the _septenary man_, to add to his three lower Principles and ement them with the Spiritual Monad--which could never dwell in such a orm otherwise than in an _absolutely latent state_--two connecting
"Principles" are needed: Manas and Kâma. This requires a living Spiritual
Fire of the middle Principle from the Fifth and Third States of Plerôma.
But this Fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of the (perfect)
Cubes, which symbolize the Angelic Beings;(176) the former having from the
First Creation possessed themselves of it and being said to have ppropriated it for themselves, as in the allegory of Prometheus. These re the active, and therefore--in Heaven--no longer "pure" Beings. They have ecome the independent and free Intelligences, shown in every Theogony as ighting for that independence and freedom, and hence--in the ordinary ense--"rebellious to the divine passive law." These are then those
"Flames"--the Agnishvâtta--who, as shown in the shloka, "remain behind," nstead of going along with the others to create men on Earth. But the rue Esoteric meaning is that most of them were destined to incarnate as he Egos of the forthcoming crop of Mankind.
The human Ego is neither Âtman nor Buddhi, but the Higher Manas; the ntellectual fruitage and the efflorescence of the intellectual self- onscious Egotism--in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer o it as Kârana Sharîra on the plane of Sűtrâtmâ, which is the "golden hread" on which, like beads, the various Personalities of this Higher Ego re strung. If the reader were told, as in the _semi-Esoteric_ allegories, hat these Beings were returning Nirvânîs from preceding
Mahâ-Manvantaras--Ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in he Eternity, a still more incalculable time ago--he would hardly nderstand the text correctly; while some Vedântins might say: "This is ot so; the Nirvânî can never return"; which is true during the Manvantara e belongs to, and erroneous where Eternity is concerned. For it is said n the Sacred Shlokas:
"_The Thread of Radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in __
Nirvâna, reëmerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law alls all things back into action._"
Hence, as the higher Pitris or Dhyânîs had no hand in his physical reation, we find Primeval Man--issued from the bodies of his _spiritually_
"fireless" Progenitors--described as aëriform, devoid of compactness, and
"mindless." He had no middle Principle to serve him as a medium between he Highest and the Lowest--the Spiritual Man and the physical brain--for he acked Manas. The Monads which incarnated in those _empty_ Shells, emained as unconscious as when separated from their previous incomplete orms and vehicles. There is no potentiality for Creation, or Self-
Consciousness, in a _pure_ Spirit on this our plane, unless its too omogeneous, perfect--because divine--nature is, so to say, mixed with, and trengthened by, an essence already differentiated. It is only the lower ine of the Triangle--representing the first Triad that emanates from the
Universal Monad--that can furnish this needed consciousness on the plane of ifferentiated Nature. But how could these pure Emanations, which, on this rinciple, must have originally been themselves "unconscious" (in our ense), be of any use in supplying the required Principle, as they could ardly have possessed it themselves?
The answer is difficult to comprehend, unless one is well acquainted with he philosophical metaphysics of a beginningless and endless series of
Cosmic Re-births, and becomes well impressed and familiarized with that mmutable law of Nature which is ETERNAL MOTION, cyclic and piral--therefore progressive even in its seeming retrogression. The one
Divine Principle, the nameless THAT of the _Vedas_, is the Universal
Total, which, neither in its spiritual aspects and emanations, nor in its hysical Atoms, can ever be at "Absolute Rest" except during the Nights of
Brahmâ. Hence, also, the "First-born" are those who are first set in otion at the beginning of a Manvantara, and thus the first to fall into he lower spheres of materiality. They who are called in Theology the
"Thrones," and are the "Seat of God," must be the first incarnated men on
Earth; and it becomes comprehensible, if we think of the endless series of ast Manvantaras, to find that the last had to come first, and the first ast. We find, in short, that the higher Angels had broken, countless ćons efore, through the "Seven Circles," and thus "robbed" them of the Sacred
Fire; this means in plain words, that they had assimilated during their ast incarnations, in lower as well as in higher Worlds, all the wisdom herefrom--the reflection of Mahat in its various degrees of intensity. No
Entity, whether angelic or human, can reach the state of Nirvâna, or of bsolute purity, except through ćons of suffering and the _knowledge_ of vil as well as of good, as otherwise the latter would remain ncomprehensible.
Between man and the animal--whose Monads, or Jîvas, are fundamentally dentical--there is the impassable abyss of Mentality and Self- onsciousness. What is human mind in its higher aspect, whence comes it, f it be not a portion of the essence--and, in some rare cases of ncarnation, the _very essence_--of a higher Being; one from a higher and ivine plane? Can man--a God in the animal form--be the product of Material
Nature by evolution alone, even as is the animal which differs from man in xternal shape, but by no means in the materials of its physical fabric, nd is informed by the same, though undeveloped, Monad--seeing that the ntellectual potentialities of the two differ as the sun does from the low-worm? And what is it that creates such difference, unless man is an nimal _plus a living God_ within his physical shell? Let us pause and ask urselves seriously the question, regardless of the vagaries and sophisms f both the materialistic and the psychological modern Sciences.
To some extent, it is admitted that even the Esoteric Teaching is llegorical. To make the latter comprehensible to the average ntelligence, the use of symbols cast in an intelligible form is needed.
Hence the allegorical and semi-mythical narratives in the exoteric, and he only _semi_-metaphysical and objective representations in the Esoteric
Teachings. For the purely and transcendentally spiritual conceptions are dapted only to the perceptions of those who "_see without eyes, hear ithout ears, and sense without organs_," according to the graphic xpression of the Commentary. The too puritan Idealist is at liberty to piritualize the tenet, whereas the modern Psychologist would simply try o spirit away our "fallen," yet still divine, human Soul--divine in its onnection with Buddhi.
The mystery attached to the highly spiritual Ancestors of the _Divine_ Man ithin the earthly man is very great. His dual creation is hinted at in he _Purânas_, though its Esoteric meaning can be approached only by ollating together the many varying accounts, and reading them in their ymbolical and allegorical character. So it is in the _Bible_, both in
_Genesis_ and even in the _Epistles_ of Paul. For that "Creator," who is alled in the second chapter of _Genesis_ the "Lord God," is in the riginal the Elohim, or Gods (the Lords), in the plural; and while one of hem makes the earthly Adam of Dust, the other breathes into him the
Breath of Life, and the third makes of him a Living Soul, all of which eadings are implied in the plural number of the word Elohim.(177) Or gain, as Paul says:
The first man is of the earth, the second [the last, or rather
highest] is the Lord from heaven.(178)
In the Âryan allegory the rebellious Sons of Brahmâ are all represented as oly Ascetics and Yogîs. Re-born in every Kalpa, they generally try to mpede the work of human procreation. When Daksha, the chief of the
Prajâpatis or Creators, brings forth 10,000 sons for the purpose of eopling the world, Nârada--a son of Brahmâ, the great Rishi, and
_virtually_ a Kumâra, if not so in name--interferes with, and twice rustrates Daksha's aim, by persuading those Sons to remain holy Ascetics nd eschew marriage. For this, Daksha curses Nârada to be "re-born as a an," as Brahmâ had cursed him before for refusing to marry, and obtain rogeny, saying: "Perish in thy (present [Deva or Angelic] form); and take p thy abode in the womb"--_i.e._, become a man.(179)
Notwithstanding several conflicting versions of the same story, it is easy o see that Nârada belongs to that Class of Brahmâ's "First-born," who ave all proven rebellious to the law of animal procreation, for which hey had to incarnate as _men_. Of all the Vedic Rishis, Nârada, as lready shown, is the most incomprehensible, because the most closely onnected with the Occult Doctrines--especially with the Secret Cycles and
Kalpas.
Certain contradictory statements about this Sage have much distracted the
Orientalists. Thus he is shown as refusing positively to "create" or have rogeny, and even as calling his father Brahmâ a "false teacher" for dvising him to get married, as related in the _Nârada-Pancha-Râtra_; evertheless, he is referred to as one of the Prajâpatis or Progenitors!
In the _Nâradîya Purâna_, he describes the laws and the duties of the elibate Adepts; and as these Occult duties do not happen to be found in he fragment of about 3,000 Stanzas in the possession of European museums, he Brâhmans are proclaimed liars; the Orientalists forgetting that the
_Nâradîya_ is credited with containing 25,000 Stanzas, and that it is not ery likely that such MSS. should be found in the hands of the Hindű rofane, those who are ready to sell any precious Olla for a red pottage.
Suffice it to say, that Nârada is _the_ Deva-Rishi of Occultism _par xcellence_, and that the Occultist who does not ponder, analyze, and tudy Nârada from his seven Esoteric facets, will never be able to fathom ertain anthropological, chronological, and even cosmic Mysteries. He is ne of the Fires above-mentioned, and plays a part in the evolution of his Kalpa from its incipient down to its final stage. He is an actor who ppears in each of the successive acts, or Root-Races, of the present
Manvantaric drama, in the world-allegories which strike the key-note of
Esotericism, and are now becoming more familiar to the reader. But shall e turn to other ancient Scriptures and documents for the corroboration of he "Fires," "Sparks," and "Flames"? They are plentiful, if one only seeks or them in the right places.
In the Kabalistic _Book of the Concealed Mystery_ they are clearly nunciated, as also in the _Ha Idra Zuta Qadisha_, or "The Lesser Holy
Assembly." The language is very mystical and veiled, yet still omprehensible. In the latter, among the sparks of Prior Worlds,
"vibrating Flames and Sparks," from the divine flint, the "Workman" roceeds to create man, "male and female" (427). These "Flames and
Sparks"--Angels and their Worlds, Stars and Planets--are said, figuratively, o become extinct and die, that is to say, remain "unmanifested" until a ertain process of Nature is accomplished. To show how thickly veiled from ublic view are the most important facts of Anthropogenesis, two passages re now quoted from two Kabalistic books. The first is from the _Ha Idra
Zuta Qadisha_:
429. From a Light-Bearer [one of the Seven Sacred Planets] of
insupportable brightness proceeded a Radiating Flame, dashing off
like a vast and mighty hammer those sparks which were the Prior
Worlds.
430. And with most subtle ether were these intermingled and bound
mutually together, but _only when they were conjoined together_,
even the Great Father and Great Mother.
431. From _Hoa_, Himself, is AB, the Father; and from _Hoa_,
Himself, is Ruach, the Spirit; Who are hidden in the Ancient of
Days, and therein is that ether concealed.
432. And It was connected with a light-bearer [a Planet and its
Angel or Regent], which went forth from that Light-Bearer of
insupportable brightness, which is hidden in the bosom of Aima,
the Great Mother.(180)
Now the following extract from the _Zohar_,(181) under the heading, "The
Pre-Adamite Kings," also deals with the same mystery:
We have learned in the Siphrah D'Tznioothah: That the _At-tee' kah
D'At-tee' keen_, Ancient of Ancients, before He prepared His Form,
built kings and engraved kings, and sketched out kings [men, the
"kings" of the animals], and they could not exist: till He
overthrew them and _hid them until after a time_, therefore it is
written; "And these are the kings which reigned in the land of
Edom."... And they could not exist till _Resha'Hiv'rah_, the White
Head, the _At'-tee'-kah D'At-tee'-keen_, Ancient of the Ancients,
arranged Himself. When he arranged Himself He formed all forms
Above and Below.... Before He arranged Himself in His Form, had
not been formed all those whom He desired to form, and all worlds
have been destroyed.... They did not remain in their places,
because the form of the kings had not been formed as it ought to
be, and _the Holy City had not been prepared_.(182)
Now the plain meaning of these two allegorical and metaphysical isquisitions is simply this: Worlds and men were in turn formed and estroyed, _under the law of evolution_ and _from preëxisting material_, ntil both the Planets and their men, in our case our Earth and its animal nd human races, became what they are now in the present cycle--opposite olar forces, an equilibrized compound of Spirit and Matter, of the ositive and the negative, of the male and the female. Before man could ecome male and female _physically_, his prototype, the creating Elohim, ad to arrange his Form on this sexual plane _astrally_. That is to say, he Atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given ifferentiation, had to be marshalled in the order intended by Nature, so s to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the
Kabalah calls the "Balance," through which everything that exists does so s male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of ateriality. Chokmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephira, had to diffuse itself
_in_, and _through_, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding.
Therefore the First Root-Race of men, sexless and mindless, had to be verthrown and "hidden until after a time"; _i.e._, the First Race, nstead of dying, disappeared _in_ the Second Race, as certain lower lives nd plants do in their progeny. It was a wholesale transformation. The
First became the Second Root-Race, without either begetting it, rocreating it, or dying.
"They _passed by_ together," as it is written: "And he died" and
another "reigned in his stead."(183)
Why? Because the "_Holy City_ had not been prepared." And what is the
"Holy City"? The Ma-qom--the Secret Place or the Shrine--on Earth; in other ords, the human womb, the microcosmic copy and reflection of the Heavenly
Matrix, the female Space or primeval Chaos, in which the male Spirit ecundates the germ of the Son, or the visible Universe. So much so, that n the paragraph on "The Emanation of the Male and Female Principles" in he _Zohar_, it is said that, on this Earth, the Wisdom from the "Holy
Ancient" "does not shine except in male and female."
(_Hokhmah_ Wisdom, is the Father, and _Binah_ Understanding, is
the Mother.)... And when they connect one with the other, they
bring forth and diffuse and emanate Truth. In the sayings of Rabbi
Ye-yeva, Sabbah, _i.e._, the Old, we learned this; What is Binah
Understanding? But when they connect in one another, the {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} (Yod)
in the {~HEBREW LETTER HE~} (Heh), they become impregnated and produce a Son. And,
therefore, it is called _Binah_, Understanding. It means BeN YaH,
_i.e._, Son of YaH. This is the completeness of the Whole.(184)
This is also the "completeness" of phallicism by the Rabbis, its perfect potheosis, the divine being dragged into the animal, the sublime into the rossness of the terrestrial. Nothing so graphically gross exists in
Eastern Occultism, nor in the primitive Kabalah--the Chaldćan _Book of
Numbers_. We have said so already in _Isis Unveiled_:
We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour
out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: "In a
multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming,
like the Grecian _batylos_, the brutally indecent form of the
_lingham_ ... the Mahâ Deva." Before casting slurs on a symbol
whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern
champions of that religion of sensualism _par excellence_, Roman
Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their
oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own
temples. The Mahadeo of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhagulpore,
the minarets of Islam--either rounded or pointed--are the originals
of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of Rochester
Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these
steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the
reproductions of the primitive idea of the _lithos_, the upright
phallus.(185)
Nevertheless, and however it may be, the fact that all these Hebrew
Elohim, Sparks, and Cherubs are identical with the Devas, Rishis and the
Fires and Flames, the Rudras and the forty-nine Agnis of the ancient
Âryas, is sufficiently proven by and in the Kabalah.
Stanza IV. Creation Of The First Races.
14. Creation of men. 15. They are empty shadows. 16. The Creators
are perplexed how to create a _thinking_ man. 17. What is needed
for the formation of a perfect Man.
14. THE SEVEN HOSTS, THE WILL-BORN(186) LORDS, PROPELLED BY THE SPIRIT OF
LIFE-GIVING,(187) SEPARATE MEN FROM THEMSELVES, EACH ON HIS OWN ZONE.
They threw off their "Shadows" or Astral Bodies--if such an ethereal being s a "Lunar Spirit" may be supposed to rejoice in an Astral, besides a ardly tangible Body. In another Commentary it is said that the Ancestors
_breathed_ out the first man, as Brahmâ is explained to have breathed out he Suras, or Gods, when they became Asuras (from Asu, breath). In a third t is said that they, the newly-created Men, were the "shadows of the
Shadows."
With regard to this sentence--"They were the shadows of the Shadows"--a few ore words may be said and a fuller explanation attempted. This first rocess of the evolution of mankind is far easier to accept than the one hich follows it, though one and all such processes will be rejected and oubted even by some Kabalists, especially the Western, who study the resent effects, but have neglected to study their primary causes. Nor oes the writer feel competent to explain a mode of procreation so ifficult of appreciation save for an Eastern Occultist. Therefore it is seless to enter here into details concerning the process, though it is inutely described in the Secret Books, as it would only lead to speaking f facts hitherto unknown to the profane world, and hence to their being isunderstood. An Adam made of the dust of the ground will always be found referable, by a certain class of students, to one projected out of the thereal body of his creator; though the former process has never been eard of, while the latter is familiar, as all know, to many Spiritualists n Europe and America, who, of all men, ought to understand it. For who of hose who have witnessed the phenomenon of a materializing form oozing out f the pores of a medium or, at other times, out of his _left side_, can ail to credit the possibility, at least, of such a _birth_? If there are n the Universe such beings as Angels or Spirits, whose _incorporeal_ ssence may constitute an intelligent Entity, notwithstanding the absence f any (to us) solid organism; and if there are those who believe that a
God made the first man out of dust, and breathed into him a living
Soul--and there are millions upon millions who believe both--what does this octrine of ours contain that is so impossible? Very soon the day will awn, when the world will have to choose whether it will accept the iraculous creation of man (and Kosmos too) out of _nothing_, according to he dead letter of _Genesis_, or a first man born from a fantastic ink--absolutely "missing" so far--the common ancestor of man, and of the
"true ape."(188) Between these two fallacies, Occult Philosophy steps in.
It teaches that the first human stock was projected by higher and semi- ivine Beings out of their own essences. If the latter process is to be onsidered as abnormal or even inconceivable--because obsolete in Nature at his point of evolution--it is yet proven possible on the authority of ertain "spiritualistic" _facts_. Which, then, we ask of the three ypotheses or theories is the most reasonable and the least absurd?
Certainly no one--provided he be not a soul-blind Materialist--can ever bject to the Occult Teaching.
Now, as shown, we gather from the latter that man was not "created" the omplete being he is now, however imperfect he still remains. There was a piritual, a psychic, an intellectual, and an animal evolution, from the ighest to the lowest, as well as a physical development--from the simple nd homogeneous, up to the more complex and heterogeneous; though not uite on the lines traced for us by the modern Evolutionists. This double volution in two contrary directions, required various ages, of divers atures and degrees of spirituality and intellectuality, to fabricate the eing now known as man. Furthermore, the one absolute, ever acting and ever erring law, which proceeds on the same lines from one Eternity (or
Manvantara) to the other--ever furnishing an ascending scale for the anifested, or that which we call the great Illusion (Mahâ-Mâyâ), but lunging Spirit deeper and deeper into materiality on the one hand, and hen _redeeming it through flesh_ and liberating it--this law, we say, uses or these purposes the Beings from other and higher planes, men, or Minds
(Manus), in accordance with their Karmic exigencies.
At this juncture, the reader is again asked to turn to the Indian
Philosophy and Religion. The Esotericism of both is at one with our Secret
Doctrine, however much the form may differ and vary.
On The Identity And Differences Of The Incarnating Powers.
The Progenitors of Man, called in India Fathers, Pitaras, or Pitris, are he "Creators" of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves, as he _first personalities_, and _we are they_. Primeval man would be "the one of their bone and the flesh of their flesh," if they had bones and lesh. As stated, they were "Lunar Beings."
The endowers of man with his conscious, immortal Ego, are the "Solar
Angels"--whether so regarded metaphorically or literally. The mysteries of he Conscious Ego or Human Soul are great. The Esoteric name of these
Solar Angels is, literally, the "Lords" (Nâth) of "persevering ceaseless evotion" (Pranidhâna). Therefore they of the _Fifth_ Principle (Manas) eem to be connected with, or to have originated the system of the Yogîs ho make of Pranidhâna their _fifth_ observance.(189) It has already been xplained why the Trans-Himâlayan Occultists regard them as evidently dentical with those who in India are termed Kumâras, Agnishvâttas, and he Barhishads.
How precise and true is Plato's expression, how profound and philosophical is remark on the (Human) Soul or Ego, when he defined it as "a compound f the _same_ and the _other_." And yet how little this hint has been nderstood, since the world took it to mean that the Soul was the Breath f God, of Jehovah. It is "the _same_ and the _other_," as the great
Initiate-Philosopher said; for the Ego--the "Higher Self" when merged with nd in the Divine Monad--is Man, and yet the _same_ as the "_other_"; the
Angel in him incarnated is the same with the Universal Mahat. The great lassical writers and philosophers felt this truth, when saying that:
There must be something within us which produces our thoughts.
Something very subtle; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it
is quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intellection;
it is a number; it is harmony.(190)
All these are the Mânasas and Râjasas; the Kumâras, Asuras, and other
Rulers and Pitris, who incarnated in the Third Race, and in this and arious other ways endowed mankind with Mind.
There are Seven Classes of Pitris, as shown below, three Incorporeal and our Corporeal; and two kinds, the Agnishvâtta and the Barhishad. And we ay add that, as there are two kinds of Pitris, so there is a double and a riple set of Barhishad and Agnishvâtta. The former, having given birth to heir Astral Doubles, are reborn as Sons of Atri, and are the "Pitris of he Demons," or Corporeal Beings, on the authority of Manu;(191) while the
Agnishvâtta are reborn as Sons of Marîchi, a Son of Brahmâ, and are the
"Pitris of the Gods."(192)
The _Vâyu Purâna_ declares the Seven Orders of Pitris to have been
originally the _first Gods_, the Vairâjas, whom Brahmâ, with the
eye of Yoga, beheld in the eternal spheres, and who are the _gods
of the gods_.... The _Matsya_ ... adds, that the Gods worshipped
them.(193)
The _Harivamsha_ distinguishes the Vairâjas as one class of the Pitris nly,(194) a statement corroborated in the Secret Teachings, which, owever, identify the Vairâjas with the _elder_ Agnishvâttas(195) and the
Râjasas, or Âbhűtarajasas, who are Incorporeal without even an Astral
Phantom. Vishnu is said, in most of the MSS., to have incarnated in and hrough them.
In the Raivata Manvantara, again, Hari, best of gods, was born of
Sambhűti, as the divine Mânasa--originating with the deities called
Râjasas.(196)
Sambhűti was a daughter of Daksha, and wife of Marîchi, the father of the
Agnishvâtta, who, along with the Râjasas, are ever associated with
Mânasas. As remarked by a far more able Sanskritist than Wilson, Mr.
Fitzedward Hall:
Mânasa is no inappropriate name for a deity associated with the
Râjasas. We appear to have in it _mânasam_--the same as
_manas_--with the change of termination required to express male
personification.(197)
All the Sons of Virâja are Mânasa, says Nîlakantha. And Virâja is Brahmâ, nd, therefore, the Incorporeal Pitris are called Vairâjas from being the
Sons of Virâja, says _Vayu Purâna_.
We could multiply our proofs _ad infinitum_, but it is useless. The wise ill understand our meaning, the unwise are not required to. There are hirty-three crores, or three hundred and thirty millions, of Gods in
India. But, as remarked by the learned lecturer on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_:
They may be all devas, but are by no means all "gods," in the high
spiritual sense one attributes to the term.
This is an unfortunate blunder generally committed by Europeans.
Deva is a kind of spiritual being, and because the same word is
used in ordinary parlance to mean god, it by no means follows that
we have and worship thirty-three crores of gods. These beings, as
may be naturally inferred, have a _certain affinity_ with one of
the three component Upâdhis [basic principles] into which we have
divided man.(198)
The names of the deities of a certain mystic class change with every
Manvantara. Thus the twelve Great Gods, Jayas, created by Brahmâ to assist im in the work of creation in the very beginning of the Kalpa, and who, ost in Samâdhi, neglected to create--whereupon they were cursed to be epeatedly born in each Manvantara till the seventh--are respectively alled Ajitas, Tushitas, Satyas, Haris, Vaikunthas, Sâdhyas, and
Adityas:(199) they are Tushitas, in the second Kalpa, and Âdityas in this
Vaivasvata Period,(200) besides other names for each age. But they are dentical with the Mânasas or Râjasas, and these with our incarnating
Dhyân Chohans.
Yes; besides those Beings, who, like the Yakshas, Gandharvas, Kinnaras, tc., taken in their _individualities_, inhabit the Astral Plane, there re real Devas, and to these classes belong the Adityas, the Vairâjas, the
Kumâras, the Asuras, and all those high celestial Beings whom Occult eaching calls Manasvin, the Wise, foremost of all, and who would have ade all men the _self-conscious_ spiritually intellectual Beings they ill be, had they not been "cursed" to fall into generation, and to be eborn themselves as mortals for their neglect of duty.
Stanza IV.--_Continued._
15. SEVEN TIMES SEVEN SHADOWS(201) OF FUTURE MEN(202) (_A_) WERE(203)
BORN, EACH OF HIS OWN COLOUR(204) AND KIND (_B_). EACH(205) INFERIOR TO
HIS FATHER.(206) THE FATHERS, THE BONELESS, COULD GIVE NO LIFE TO BEINGS
WITH BONES. THEIR PROGENY WERE BHŰTA,(207) WITH NEITHER FORM NOR MIND.
THEREFORE THEY ARE CALLED THE CHHÂYÂ(208) RACE(_C_).
(_a_) Manu, as already remarked, comes from the root _man_, to think, ence a "thinker." It is from this Sanskrit word very likely that sprung he Latin _mens_, Mind, the Egyptian _Menes_, the "Master-Mind," the
Pythagorean _monas_, or conscious "thinking unit," mind also, and even our
_manas_ or mind, the fifth principle in man. Hence these Shadows are alled _Amânasa_, "Mindless."
With the Brâhmans, the Pitris are very sacred, because they are the
Progenitors,(209) or Ancestors of men--the first Manushyas on this
Earth--and offerings are made to them by the Brâhman when a son is born nto him. They are more honoured and their ritual is more important than he worship of the Gods.(210)
May we not now search for a philosophical meaning in this dual group of
Progenitors?
The Pitris being divided into _seven_ Classes, we have here the mystic umber again. Nearly all the _Purânas_ agree that three of these are
Arűpa, formless, while four are Corporeal; the former being intellectual nd spiritual, the latter material and devoid of intellect. Esoterically, t is the Asuras who form the first three Classes of Pitris--"born in the
Body of Night"--whereas the other four were produced from the "Body of
Twilight." Their Fathers, the Gods, were doomed to be born fools on Earth, ccording to the _Vâyu Purâna_. The legends are purposely mixed up and ade very hazy: the Pitris being in one the Sons of the Gods, and, in nother, those of Brahmâ; while a third makes them instructors of their wn Fathers. It is the Hosts of the four material Classes who create men imultaneously on the seven Zones.
Now, with regard to the seven Classes of Pitris, each of which is again ivided into seven, a word to students and a query to the profane. That
Class of the "Fire Dhyânîs," which we identify on undeniable grounds with he Agnishvâttas, is called in our school the "Heart" of the Dhyân-
Chohanic Body, and is said to have incarnated in the Third Race of men and ade them perfect. The Esoteric Mystagogy speaks of the mysterious elation existing between the hebdomadic essence or substance of this ngelic Heart and that of man, whose every physical organ, and psychic, nd spiritual function, is a reflection, so to say, a copy on the errestrial plane, of the model or prototype _above_. Why, it is asked, hould there be such a strange repetition of the number seven in the natomical structure of man? Why should the heart have _four lower_ avities and _three higher_ divisions, answering so strangely to the eptenary division of the human principles, separated into two groups, the igher and the lower; and why should the same division be found in the arious classes of Pitris, and especially our Fire Dhyânîs? For, as lready stated, these Beings fall into four Corporeal, or grosser, and hree Incorporeal, or subtler, "Principles," or call them by any other ame you please. Why do the seven nervous plexuses of the body radiate even rays? Why are there these seven plexuses, and why seven distinct ayers in the human skin?
Says the Commentary:
_Having projected their Shadows and made men of one Element [Ether], the
Progenitors reäscend to Mahâ-Loka, whence they descend periodically, when he World is renewed, to give birth to new Men._
_The Subtle Bodies remain without understanding [Manas] until the advent f the Suras [Gods] now called Asuras [Not-Gods]._
"Not-Gods," for the Brâhmans, perhaps, but the highest "Breaths," for the
Occultist; since those Progenitors (Pitaras), the formless and the ntellectual, refuse to build man, but endow him with Mind; the four orporeal Classes creating only his body.
This is very plainly shown in various texts of the _Rig Veda_--the highest uthority for a Hindű of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means
"spiritual, divine," and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, nd the term Asura, in the sense of a "God," is applied to Varuna and
Indra and preëminently to Agni--the three having been in days of old the hree _highest_ Gods, before Brâhmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true eaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is ow lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned.
In the _Zend Avesta_ the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, eligion, Asura is the Lord Asura Vishvavedas, the "all-knowing" or
"omniscient Lord"; and Asura Mazdhâ, becoming later Ahura Mazdhâ, is, as
Benfey shows, "the Lord who bestows _Intelligence_"--Asura Medhâ and Ahura
Mazdâo.(211) Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good uthority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded as _sevenfold_.
This fact, combined with the name Mazdhâ, as above, which makes of the evenfold Asura the "Lord," or "Lords" collectively "who bestow
_Intelligence_," connects the Amshaspands with the Asuras and with our ncarnating Dhyân Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven nforming Gods of Egypt, Chaldća, and every other country.
Why these "Gods" refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric ccounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power f their essence with the Children of Earth, but for reasons already uggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and Theology as taken advantage thereof in every country, to make out its case against hese First-born, or the Logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds f the ignorant and credulous.(212)
The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded these Gods nto Demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brâhmanism have profited thereby to btain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldćan exotericism, Beings ho _refuse to create_, and are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgus, are lso denounced as Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their ntellectual independence, fight the Suras, who are devoid thereof and are hown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on lind faith--a hint now ignored by the _orthodox_ Brâhmans--and forthwith he former become _A_-Suras. The First- and Mind-born Sons of the Deity efuse to create progeny, and are _cursed_ by Brahmâ to be _born as men_.
They are hurled _down to Earth_, which, later on, is transformed, in heological dogma, into the _Infernal_ Regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull reated by Ormazd--which is the emblem of terrestrial _illusive_ life, the
"germ of sorrow"--and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, n order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal ife, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the pposing power, the Devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in rder to prevent him peopling the world and thus creating misery; and
Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of
Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the atter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self- acrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity hrough _self-conscious_ efforts; and it is these worshippers of _form_ ho have made Demons of the Angels of Light.
Esoteric Philosophy, however, teaches that _one-third_(213) of the
Dhyânîs--_i.e._, the three Classes of the Arűpa Pitris, endowed with ntelligence, "which is a formless breath, composed of _intellectual_ not lementary substances"(214)--was simply _doomed by the law of Karma and volution to be re-born_, or incarnated, on Earth.(215) Some of these were
Nirmânakâyas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the
_Purânas_, re-appearing on this Globe, in the Third Manvantara--read Third
Root-Race--as Kings, Rishis and Heroes. This tenet, being too philosophical nd metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, isfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over the ormer through superstitious fear.
The supposed "Rebels," then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic aw to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, _had to incarnate_ new, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues rojected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, ecause they had not in them the requisite materials--_i.e._, an astral ody--for they were Arűpa. The refusal of others had reference to their aving been Adepts and Yogîs of long past preceding Manvantaras; another ystery. But, later on, as Nirmânakâyas, they sacrificed themselves for he good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, nd which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in rresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a arable and an allegory _within an allegory_. Its solution is left to the ntuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his
_spiritual_ eye.
As to their Fashioners or Ancestors--those Angels who, in the exoteric egends, obeyed the law--they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, r the Pitri-Devatâs, _i.e._, those possessed of the _physical creative ire_. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with heir own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and ikeness. "Man must not be like one of us," say the _Creative_ Gods, ntrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal--but higher.(216) Their reating the semblance of men out of their own divine Essence means,
Esoterically, that it is they who became the First Race, and thus shared ts destiny and further evolution. They _would_ not, simply because they
_could_ not, give to man that sacred spark which burns and expands into he flower of human reason and self-consciousness, for they had it not to ive. This was left to that Class of Devas who became symbolized in Greece nder the name of Prometheus; to those who had nought to do with the hysical body, yet everything with the purely spiritual man.
Each Class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds is external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes he Human Higher Self owing to the _personal exertion of the individual_; ut they could not make men as they were themselves--perfect, because inless; sinless, because having only the first, pale shadowy outlines of ttributes, and these all perfect--from the human standpoint--white, pure nd cold as the virgin snow. Where there is no struggle, there is no erit. Humanity, "of the earth earthy," was not destined to be created by he Angels of the First Divine Breath. Therefore they are said to have
_refused_ to create, and man had to be formed by more material
Creators,(217) who, in their turn, could give only what they had in their wn natures, and no more. Subservient to eternal law, the pure Gods could nly project out of themselves _shadowy_ men, a little less ethereal and piritual, less _divine_ and _perfect_ than themselves--shadows still. The irst Humanity, therefore, was a pale copy of its Progenitors; too aterial, even in its ethereality, to be a hierarchy of Gods; too piritual and pure to be Men--endowed as it is with every _negative_
(nirguna) perfection. Perfection, to be fully such, must be born out of mperfection, the _incorruptible_ must grow out of the corruptible, having he latter as its vehicle and basis and contrast. Absolute Light is bsolute Darkness, and _vice versâ_. In fact, there is neither Light nor
Darkness in the realms of Truth. Good and Evil are twins, the progeny of
Space and Time, under the sway of Mâyâ. Separate them, by cutting off one rom the other, and they will both die. Neither exists _per se_, since ach has to be generated and created out of the other, in order to come nto being; both must be known and appreciated before becoming objects of erception, hence, in mortal mind, they must be divided.
Nevertheless, as the illusionary distinction exists, it requires a _lower_
Order of Creative Angels to "create" inhabited Globes--especially ours--or o deal with Matter on this earthly plane. The philosophical Gnostics were he first to think so, in the historical period, and to invent various ystems upon this theory. Therefore in their schemes of creation, one lways finds their "Creators" occupying a place at the very foot of the adder of Spiritual Being. With them, those who created our Earth and its ortals were placed on the very limit of mâyâvic Matter, and their ollowers were taught to think--to the great disgust of the Church
Fathers--that for the creation of those wretched races, in a spiritual and oral sense, which grace our Globe, no high Divinity could be made esponsible, but only Angels of a low Hierarchy,(218) to which Class they elegated the Jewish God, Jehovah.
Mankinds different from the present are mentioned in all the ancient
Cosmogonies. Plato speaks, in the _Phćdrus_, of a "winged" race of men.
Aristophanes, in Plato's _Banquet_, speaks of a race androgynous and with ound bodies. In _Pymander_, all the animal kingdom even is double-sexed.
Thus it is said:
The circuit having been accomplished, _the knot was loosened_ ...
and all the animals, which were equally androgynous, were _untied_
[separated] _together with man_ ... [for] ... the causes had to
produce effects on earth.(219)
Again, in the ancient Quiché Manuscript, the _Popol Vuh_--published by the ate Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg--the first men are described as a race
"whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all things at once"; thus showing he _divine knowledge of Gods_, not mortals. The Secret Doctrine, orrecting the unavoidable exaggerations of popular fancy, gives the facts s they are recorded in the archaic symbols.
(_b_) These "Shadows" were born "each of his own colour and kind," each lso "inferior to his Father," or Creator, because the latter was a omplete Being of his kind. The Commentaries refer the first sentence to he colour or complexion of each human race thus evolved. In _Pymander_, he Seven Primitive Men, created by Nature from the "Heavenly Man," all artake of the qualities of the Seven "Governors," or Rulers, who loved
Man--their own reflection and synthesis.
In the Norse Legends, one recognizes in Asgard, the habitat of the Gods, s also in the Ases themselves, the same mystical Loci and ersonifications woven into the popular "myths," as in our Secret
Doctrine; and we find them in the _Vedas_, the _Purânas_, the Mazdean
Scriptures and the _Kabalah_. The Ases of Scandinavia, the Rulers of the
World which preceded ours, whose name means literally the "Pillars of the
World," its "Supports," are thus identical with the Greek Cosmocratores, he seven "Workmen" or Rectors of _Pymander_, the seven Rishis and Pitris f India, the seven Chaldćan Gods and seven Evil Spirits, the seven
Kabalistic Sephiroth, synthesized by the upper Triad, and even the seven
Planetary Spirits of the Christian Mystics. The Ases create the earth, the eas, the sky and the clouds, the whole visible world, from the remains of he slain giant Ymir; but they do not create MAN, but only his form from he Ask or Ash tree. It is Odin who endows him with life and soul, after
Lodur had given him blood and bones, and finally it is Hönir who furnishes im with his intellect (Manas) and with his conscious senses.(220) The
Norse Ask, the Hesiodic Ash-tree, whence issued the men of the generation f bronze, the Third Root-Race, and the Tzité tree of the _Popol Vuh_, out f which the Mexican _third_ race of men was created, are all one. This ay be plainly seen by any reader. But the Occult reason why the Norse
Yggdrasil, the Hindű Ashvattha, the Gogard, the Hellenic tree of life, and he Tibetan Zampun, are one with the Kabalistic Sephirothic Tree, and even ith the Holy Tree made by Ahura Mazda, and the Tree of Eden--who among the
Western scholars can tell?(221) Nevertheless, the fruits of all those
"Trees," whether Pippala, or Haoma, or even the more prosaic Apple, are he "plants of life," in fact and verity. The prototypes of our races were ll enclosed in the Microcosmic Tree, which grew and developed _within and nder_ the great mundane Macrocosmic Tree;(222) and the mystery is half evealed in the _Dîrghotamas_, where it is said:
Pippala, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come _spirits who
love the science_, and where the gods produce all marvels.
As in the Gogard, among the luxuriant branches of all these Mundane Trees, he "Serpent" dwells. But while the Macrocosmic Tree is the Serpent of
Eternity and of absolute Wisdom itself, those who dwell in the Microcosmic
Tree are the Serpents of the Manifested Wisdom. One is the One and All; he others are its _reflected_ parts. The "Tree" is man himself, of ourse, and the Serpent dwelling in each, the conscious Manas, the onnecting link between Spirit and Matter, Heaven and Earth.
Everywhere, it is the same. The "Creating" Powers produce Man, but fail in heir final object. All these Logoi strive to endow man with _conscious_ mmortal Spirit, reflected in the Mind (Manas) alone; they fail, and they re all represented as being punished for the failure, if not for the ttempt. What is the nature of the punishment? A sentence of imprisonment n the lower or nether region, which is _our Earth, the lowest_ in its
Chain; an "Eternity"--meaning the duration of the Life-cycle--in the
_darkness_ of Matter, or _within animal Man_. It pleased the half ignorant nd half designing Church Fathers to disfigure the graphic symbol. They ook advantage of the metaphor and allegory in every old religion to turn hem to the benefit of the new one. Thus man was transformed into the arkness of a material Hell; his divine consciousness, obtained from his ndwelling Principle, the Mânasa, or the incarnated Deva, became the laring flames of the Infernal Region, and our Globe that Hell itself.
Pippala, Haoma, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, were denounced as the
_forbidden_ fruit, and the "Serpent of Wisdom," the voice of reason and onsciousness, remained identified for ages with the Fallen Angel, which s the old Dragon, the Devil!
The same for the other high symbols. The Svastika, the most sacred and ystic symbol in India, the "Jaina Cross" as it is now called by the
Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity, with the
Christian Cross, has become dishonoured in the same manner. It is the
"devil's sign," we are told by the Indian missionaries. Does it not shine n the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand-headed Shesha-
Ananta, in the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindű Naraka or Hell? It does: but hat is Ananta? As Shesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric Cycle of
Time, and becomes _Infinite_ Time itself, when called Ananta, the great
Seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the _Eternal Deity_, during
Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical ymbol? The Svastika is the most philosophically scientific of all ymbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines f the whole work of "creation," or evolution as one should rather say, rom Cosmotheogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown
Parabrahman to the humble Moneron of materialistic Science, whose _genesis s as unknown_ to that Science as is that of the All-Deity Itself. The
Svastika is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is he "Worker's Hammer" in the Chaldćan _Book of Numbers_, the "Hammer," bove referred to, in the _Book of Concealed Mystery_, "which striketh parks from the flint" (Space), those sparks becoming Worlds. It is Thor's
Hammer, the magic weapon forged by the Dwarfs against the Giants, or the
Pre-cosmic Titanic Forces of Nature, which rebel and, while alive in the egion of Matter, will not be subdued by the Gods--the agents of Universal
Harmony--but have first to be destroyed. This is why the World is formed ut of the relics of the murdered Ymir. The Svastika is the Miölnir, the
"Storm-hammer"; and therefore it is said that when the Ases, the holy
Gods, after having been purified by fire--the fire of the passions and uffering in their life-incarnations--become fit to dwell in Ida in eternal eace, then Miölnir will become useless. This will be when the bonds of
Hel--the Goddess-queen of the region of the Dead--will bind them no longer, or the kingdom of evil will have passed away.
Surtur's flames had not destroyed them, nor yet had the raging
waters [of the several deluges].... There were ... the sons of
Thor. They brought Miölnir with them, not as a weapon of war, but
as the hammer with which to consecrate the new heavens and the new
earth.(223)
Verily many are its meanings! In the macrocosmic work, the "Hammer of
Creation," with its four arms bent at right angles, refers to the ontinual _motion_ and revolution of the invisible Kosmos of Forces. In hat of the manifested Cosmos and our Earth, it points to the rotation in he Cycles of Time of the world's axes and their equatorial belts; the two ines forming the Svastika {~UNKNOWN~}, meaning Spirit and Matter, the four hooks uggesting the motion in the revolving cycles. Applied to the microcosm,
Man, it shows him to be a link between Heaven and Earth; the right hand eing raised at the end of a horizontal arm, the left pointing to the
Earth. In the _Smaragdine Tablet_ of Hermes, the uplifted right hand is nscribed with the word "Solve," the left with the word "Coagula." It is t one and the same time an Alchemical, Cosmogonical, Anthropological, and
Magical sign, with seven keys to its inner meaning. It is not too much to ay that the compound symbolism of this universal and most suggestive of igns contains the key to the seven great mysteries of Kosmos. Born in the ystical conceptions of the early Âryans, and by them placed at the very hreshold of eternity, on the head of the serpent Ananta, it found its piritual death in the scholastic interpretations of medićval
Anthropomorphists. It is the Alpha and the Omega of universal Creative
Force, evolving from pure Spirit and ending in gross Matter. It is also he key to the Cycle of Science, divine and human; and he who comprehends ts full meaning is for ever liberated from the toils of Mahâ-Mâyâ, the reat Illusion and Deceiver. The Light that shines from under the Divine
Hammer, now degraded into the mallet or gavel of the Grand Masters of
Masonic Lodges, is sufficient to dissipate the darkness of any human chemes or fictions.
How prophetic are the songs of the three Norse Goddesses, to whom the avens of Odin whisper of the past and the future, as they flutter round n their abode of crystal beneath the flowing river. The songs are all ritten down in the "Scrolls of Wisdom," of which many are lost but some till remain; and they repeat in poetical allegory the teachings of the
Archaic Ages. To summarize from Dr. Wagner's _Asgard and the Gods_, oncerning the "Renewal of the World," which is a prophecy about the
Seventh Race of our Round told in the past tense.
The Miölnir had done its duty in this Round, and:
On the field of Ida, the field of resurrection [for the Fifth
Round], the sons of the highest gods assembled, and _in them their
fathers rose again_ [the Egos of all their past incarnations].
They talked of the Past and the Present, and remembered the wisdom
and prophecies of their ancestors which had all been fulfilled.
Near them, but _unseen by them_, was the strong, the mighty One,
who rules all things, makes peace between those who are angry with
each other, and ordains the eternal laws that govern the world.
_They all knew he was there, they felt his presence and his power,
but were ignorant of his name. At his command the new earth rose
out of the waters_ [of Space]. To the south above the Field of
Ida, he made another heaven called Audlang, and further off, a
third, known as Widblain. Over Gimil's cave a wondrous palace was
erected, which was covered with gold and shining bright in the
sun. [These are the three gradually ascending Globes of our
Chain.] There the gods were enthroned, as _they used to be_, and
they rejoiced in the restoration and in the better time. From
Gimil's heights [the Seventh Globe, the highest and purest], they
looked down upon the happy descendants of Lif [and Lifthrasir, the
coming Adam and Eve of purified Humanity] and signed to them to
_climb up higher_, to _rise in knowledge and wisdom_, in piety and
in deeds of love, step by step, from one heaven to another, until
they were at last fit to be united to the divinities in the house
of All father.(224)
He who knows the doctrines of Esoteric Budhism, or Wisdom, though so mperfectly sketched hitherto, will see clearly the allegory contained in he above.
Its more philosophical meaning will be better understood if the reader hinks carefully over the myth of Prometheus. It is examined, further on, n the light of the Hindű Pramantha. Degraded into a purely physiological ymbol by some Orientalists, and taken in connection with terrestrial fire nly, their interpretation is an insult to every religion, including
Christianity, whose greatest mystery is thus dragged down to Matter. The
"friction" of divine Pramantha and Arani could suggest itself under this mage only to the brutal conceptions of the German Materialists--than whom here are none worse. It is true that the Divine Babe, Agni with the
Sanskrit-speaking Race, who became Ignis with the Latins, is born from the onjunction of Pramantha and Arani--the Svastika--during the sacrificial eremony. But what of that? Tvashtri (Vishvakarman) is the "divine artist nd _carpenter_,"(225) and is also the Father of the Gods and of "Creative
Fire" in the _Vedas_. So ancient is the symbol and so sacred, that there s hardly an excavation made on the sites of old cities without its being ound. A number of such terra-cotta discs, called _fusaďoles_, were found y Dr. Schliemann _under_ the ruins of ancient Troy. Both the forms,
[Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] and [Symbol: Cross with dot n the middle], were excavated in great abundance; their presence being ne more proof that the ancient Trojans and their ancestors were pure
Aryans.
(_c_) Chhâyâ, as already explained, is the Astral Image. It bears this eaning in Sanskrit works. Thus Sanjnâ, Spiritual Consciousness, the wife f Sűrya, the Sun, is shown retiring into the jungle to lead an ascetic ife, and leaving behind to her husband her Chhâyâ, Shadow or Image.
16. HOW ARE THE MANUSHYA(226) BORN? THE MANUS WITH MINDS, HOW ARE THEY
MADE? (_A_) THE FATHERS(227) CALLED TO THEIR HELP THEIR OWN FIRE,(228)
WHICH IS THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN EARTH. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH CALLED TO
HIS HELP THE SOLAR FIRE.(229) THESE THREE(230) PRODUCED IN THEIR JOINT
EFFORTS A GOOD RŰPA. IT(231) COULD STAND, WALK, RUN, RECLINE, OR FLY. YET
IT WAS STILL BUT A CHHÂYÂ, A SHADOW WITH NO SENSE. (_B_) ...
(_a_) Here an explanation again becomes necessary in the light and with he help of the exoteric added to the Esoteric Scriptures. The Manushyas
(Men) and the Manus are here equivalent to the Chaldćan Adam--this term not eaning at all the first man, as with the Jews, or one solitary ndividual, but Mankind collectively, as with the Chaldćans and Assyrians.
It is the four Orders or Classes of Dhyân Chohans out of the Seven, says he Commentary, "_who were the Progenitors of the Concealed Man_"--_i.e._, he subtle Inner Man. The Lha of the Moon, the Lunar Spirits, were, as lready stated, only the Ancestors of his Form, _i.e._, of the model ccording to which Nature began her external work upon him. Thus Primitive
Man was, when he appeared, only a senseless Bhűta(232) or "phantom." This
"creation" was a failure.
(_b_) This attempt again was a failure. It allegorizes the vanity of
_physical_ Nature's unaided attempts to construct even a perfect nimal--let alone man. For the Fathers, the Lower Angels, are all Nature-
Spirits, and the higher Elementals also possess an intelligence of their wn; but this is not enough to construct a _thinking_ man. "_Living_ Fire" as needed, that Fire which gives the human mind its self-perception and elf-consciousness, or Manas; and the progeny of Pârvaka and Shuchi are he Animal-Electric and Solar Fires, which create animals, and could thus urnish only a physical living constitution to that first astral model of an. The first Creators, then, were the Pygmalions of Primeval Man: they ailed to animate the statue--_intellectually_.
This Stanza we shall see is very suggestive. It explains the mystery of, nd fills the gap between, the Informing Principle in man--the Higher Self r Human Monad--and the Animal Monad, both one and the same, although the ormer is endowed with _divine_ intelligence, the latter with
_instinctual_ faculty alone. How is the difference to be explained, and he presence of that Higher Self in man accounted for?
Says the Commentary:
_The Sons of Mahat are the quickeners of the human Plant. They are the
Waters falling upon the arid soil of latent life, and the Spark that ivifies the human Animal. They are the Lords of Spiritual Life
Eternal.... In the beginning [in the Second Race] some [of the Lords] only reathed of their essence into Manushya [men], and some took in man their bode._
This shows that not all men became incarnations of the "Divine Rebels," ut only a few among them. The remainder had their fifth Principle simply uickened by the spark thrown into it, which accounts for the great ifference between the intellectual capacities of men and races. Had not he "Sons of Mahat," speaking allegorically, skipped the Intermediate
Worlds, in their impulse toward intellectual freedom, the animal man would ever have been able to reach upward from this Earth, and attain through elf-exertion his ultimate goal. The Cyclic Pilgrimage would have had to e performed through all the planes of existence half unconsciously, if ot entirely so, as in the case of the animals. It is owing to this ebellion of intellectual life against the morbid inactivity of pure pirit, that we are what we are--self-conscious, thinking men, with the apabilities and attributes of Gods in us, for good as much as for evil.
Hence the Rebels are our Saviours. Let the Philosopher ponder well over his, and more than one mystery will become clear to him. It is only by he attractive force of the contrasts that the two opposites--Spirit and
Matter--can be cemented together on Earth, and, smelted in the fire of elf-conscious experience and suffering, find themselves wedded in
Eternity. This will reveal the meaning of many hitherto incomprehensible llegories, foolishly called "fables."
It explains, to begin with, the statement made in _Pymander_, that the
"Heavenly Man," the "Son of the Father," who partook of the nature and ssence of the Seven Governors, or Creators and Rulers of the Material
World,
Peeped through the Harmony, and breaking through the strength of
the [Seven] Circles [of Fire], so showed and made manifest the
downward-borne nature.(233)
It explains every verse in the Hermetic narrative, as also the Greek llegory of Prometheus. Most important of all, it explains the many llegorical accounts about the "Wars in Heaven," including that of
_Revelation_ with respect to the Christian dogma of the "Fallen Angels."
It explains the "Rebellion" of the oldest and highest Angels, and the eaning of their being cast down from Heaven into the depths of Hell,
_i.e._, Matter. It even solves the recent perplexity of the
Assyriologists, who express their wonder through the late George Smith, as ollows:
My first idea of this part [of the rebellion] was that the war
with the powers of evil _preceded_ the Creation; I now think it
followed the account of the Fall.(234)
In the same work,(235) Mr. George Smith gives an engraving, from an early
Babylonian Cylinder, of the Sacred Tree, the Serpent, man and woman. The
Tree has seven branches; _three_ on the man's side, _four_ on that of the emale. These branches are typical of the seven Root-Races, in the _third_ f which, at its very close, occurred the separation of the sexes and the o-called Fall into generation. The three earliest Races were sexless, hen hermaphrodite; the other four, male and female, as distinct from each ther. As the writer tells us:
The dragon, which, in the Chaldean account of the Creation, leads
man to sin, is the creature of Tiamat, the living principle of the
sea and of chaos ... which was opposed to the deities at the
creation of the world.(236)
This is an error. The Dragon is the male principle, or Phallus, ersonified, or rather _animalized_; and Tiamat, "the embodiment of the pirit of chaos," of the Deep, or Abyss, is the female principle, the
Womb. The "spirit of chaos and disorder" refers to the mental perturbation hich it led to. It is the sensual, attractive, magnetic principle which ascinates and seduces, the ever-living active element which throws the hole world into disorder, chaos and sin. The Serpent seduces the woman, ut it is the latter who seduces man, and both are included in the Karmic urse, though only as a natural result of a cause produced. Says George
Smith:
It is clear that the dragon is included in the curse for the Fall,
and that the gods [the Elohim, jealous at seeing the man of clay
becoming a Creator in his turn, like all the animals] invoke on
the head of the human Race all the evils which afflict humanity.
Wisdom and knowledge shall injure him, he shall have family
quarrels, shall submit to tyranny, he will anger the gods ... he
shall be disappointed in his desires, he shall pour out _useless
prayer_, ... he shall commit future sin. No doubt subsequent lines
continue these topics, but again our narrative is broken, and it
only reopens where the gods are preparing for war with the powers
of evil, which are led by Tiamat (the woman).(237)
This account is omitted in _Genesis_, for monotheistic purposes. But it is mistaken policy--born no doubt of fear, and regard for dogmatic religion nd its superstitions--to seek to restore the Chaldćan fragments by
_Genesis_, whereas it is the latter, far younger than any of the ragments, which ought to be explained by the former.
17. THE BREATH(238) NEEDED A FORM; THE FATHERS GAVE IT. THE BREATH NEEDED
A GROSS BODY; THE EARTH MOULDED IT. THE BREATH NEEDED THE SPIRIT OF LIFE;
THE SOLAR LHAS BREATHED IT INTO ITS FORM. THE BREATH NEEDED A MIRROR OF
ITS BODY;(239) "WE GAVE IT OUR OWN!"--SAID THE DHYÂNÎS. THE BREATH NEEDED A
VEHICLE OF DESIRES;(240) "IT HAS IT!"--SAID THE DRAINER OF WATERS.(241) BUT
BREATH NEEDS A MIND TO EMBRACE THE UNIVERSE; "WE CANNOT GIVE THAT!"--SAID
THE FATHERS. "I NEVER HAD IT!"--SAID THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. "THE FORM
WOULD BE CONSUMED WERE I TO GIVE IT MINE!"--SAID THE GREAT FIRE.(242)...
MAN(243) REMAINED AN EMPTY SENSELESS BHŰTA.... THUS HAVE THE BONELESS
GIVEN LIFE TO THOSE WHO(244) BECAME MEN WITH BONES IN THE THIRD.(245)
As a full explanation is found in the commentary on Stanza V, a few emarks will now suffice. The "Father" of primitive physical man, or of is body, is the Vital Electric Principle residing in the Sun. The Moon is ts "Mother," because of that mysterious power in the Moon, which has as ecided an influence upon human gestation and generation, which it egulates, as it has on the growth of plants and animals. The "Wind" or
Ether, standing in this case for the agent of transmission by which those nfluences are carried down from the two luminaries and diffused upon arth, is referred to as the "Nurse";(246) while "Spiritual Fire" alone akes of man a divine and perfect entity.
Now what is that "Spiritual Fire"? In Alchemy it is Hydrogen, in general; hile in Esoteric actuality it is the emanation, or the Ray which proceeds rom its Noumenon, the "Dhyân of the First Element." Hydrogen is _gas_ nly on our terrestrial plane. But even in Chemistry, Hydrogen "would be he only existing form of matter, in our sense of the term,"(247) and is ery nearly allied to Protyle, which is our Layam. It is the father and enerator, so to say, or rather the Upâdhi (basis), of both Air and Water, nd is "fire, air and water," in fact: _one_ under three aspects; hence he chemical and alchemical trinity. In the world of manifestation, or
Matter, it is the objective symbol and the material emanation from the ubjective and purely spiritual entitative Being in the region of Noumena.
Well might Godfrey Higgins have compared Hydrogen to, and even identified t with, the To On, the "One" of the Greeks. For, as he remarks, Hydrogen s _not_ water, though it generates it; Hydrogen is not fire, though it anifests or creates it; nor is it air, though air may be regarded as a roduct of the union of water and fire--since Hydrogen is found in the queous element of the atmosphere. It is three in one.
If one studies comparative Theogony, it is easy to find that the secret of hese "Fires" was taught in the Mysteries of every ancient people, reëminently in Samothrace. There is not the smallest doubt that the
Kabiri, the most arcane of all the ancient Deities, Gods and Men, great
Deities and Titans, are identical with the Kumâras and Rudras headed by
Kârttikeya--a Kumâra also. This is quite evident even exoterically; and hese Hindű Deities were, like the Kabiri, the _personified sacred Fires f the most Occult Powers of Nature_. The several branches of the Âryan
Race, the Asiatic and the European, the Hindű and the Greek, did their est to conceal their true nature, if not their importance. As in the case f the Kumâras, the number of the Kabiri is uncertain. Some say that there ere three or four only; others say seven. Axierus, Axiocersa, Axiocersus, nd Casmilus may very well stand for the _alter egos_ of the four
Kumâras--Sanat-Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana. The former deities, hose reputed father was Vulcan, were often confounded with the Dioscori,
Corybantes, Anactes, etc.; just as the Kumâras, whose reputed father is
Brahmâ--or rather, the "Flame of his Wrath," which prompted him to perform he ninth or Kaumâra Creation, resulting in Rudra or Nîlalohita (Shiva) nd the Kumâras--were confounded with the Asuras, the Rudras, and the
Pitris, for the simple reason that they are all one--_i.e._, correlative
Forces and Fires. There is no space to describe these "Fires" and their eal meaning here, though we may attempt to do so if the rest of this work s ever published. Meanwhile a few more explanations may be added.
The foregoing are all mysteries which must be left to the personal ntuition of the student for solution, rather than described. If he would earn something of the secret of the Fires, let him turn to certain works f the Alchemists, who very correctly connect Fire with every Element, as o the Occultists. The reader must remember that the Ancients considered
Religion and the Natural Sciences along with Philosophy, as closely and nseparably linked together. Ćsculapius was the Son of Apollo--the Sun or
Fire of Life; at once Helius, Pythius, and the God of oracular Wisdom. In xoteric religions, as much as in Esoteric Philosophy, the
Elements--especially Fire, Water, and Air--are made the Progenitors of our
_five physical senses_, and hence are directly connected, in an Occult ay, with them. These physical senses pertain even to a lower Creation han the one called in the _Purânas_ Pratisarga, or "Secondary Creation."
"_Liquid Fire proceeds from Indiscrete Fire_," says an Occult axiom.
_The Circle is the Thought; the Diameter [or the line] is the Word; and heir union is Life._
In the Kabalah, Bath-Kol is the Daughter of the Divine Voice, or
Primordial Light, Shekinah. In the _Purânas_ and Hindű exotericism, Vâch, he Voice, is the female Logos of Brahmâ--a permutation of Aditi,
Primordial Light. And if Bath-Kol, in Jewish Mysticism, is an articulate rćter-natural voice from heaven, revealing to the "chosen people" the acred traditions and laws, it is only because Vâch was called, before
Judaism, the "Mother of the _Vedas_," who entered into the Rishis and nspired them by her revelations; just as Bath-Kol is said to have nspired the prophets of Israël and the Jewish High-Priests. And both xist to this day, in their respective sacred symbologies, because the
Ancients associated Sound or Speech with the Ether of Space, of which
Sound is the characteristic. Hence Fire, Water and Air are the primordial
Cosmic Trinity.
I am thy Thought, thy God, more ancient than the Moist Principle,
the _Light that radiates within Darkness_ [Chaos], and the shining
Word of God [Sound] is the Son of the Deity.(248)
Thus we have to study well the "Primary Creation" before we can understand he Secondary. The first Race had three _rudimentary_ Elements in it; and
_no Fire_ as yet; because, with the Ancients, the evolution of man, and he growth and development of his spiritual and physical senses, were ubordinate to the evolution of the Elements on the Cosmic plane of this
Earth. All proceeds from Prabhavâpyaya, the evolution of the creative and entient principles in the Gods, and even of the so-called Creative Deity imself. This is found in the names and appellations given to Vishnu in xoteric Scriptures. As the Orphic Protologos, he is called Pűrvaja,
"pregenetic," and the other names connect him in their descending order ore and more with Matter.
The following order on parallel lines may be found in the evolution of the
Elements and the Senses; or in Cosmic Terrestrial "Man" or "Spirit," and ortal physical man:
1. Ether ... Hearing ... Sound.
2. Air ... Touch ... Sound and Touch.
3. Fire, or Light ... Sight ... Sound, Touch and Colour.
4. Water ... Taste ... Sound, Touch, Colour and Taste.
5. Earth ... Smell ... Sound, Touch, Colour, Taste and Smell.
As seen, each Element adds to its own characteristics, those of its redecessor; as each Root-Race adds the characterizing sense of the receding Race. The same is true in the septenary "creation" of man, who volves gradually in seven stages, and on the same principles, as will be hown further on.
Thus, while Gods, or Dhyân Chohans (Devas), proceed from the First
Cause--which is not Parabrahman, for the latter is the ALL CAUSE, and annot be referred to as the "_First_ Cause,"--which First Cause is called n the Brâhmanical Books Jagad-Yoni, the "Womb of the World," mankind manates from these active agents in Kosmos. But men, during the First and
Second Races, were not physical beings, but merely _rudiments_ of the uture men; Bhűtas, which proceeded from Bhűtâdi, "origin," or the
"original place whence sprang the Elements." Hence they proceeded with all he rest from Prabhavâpyaya, "the place whence is the origination, and nto which is the resolution of all things," as explained by the
Commentator on the _Vishnu Purâna_. Whence also our physical senses.
Whence even the highest "created" Deity itself, in our Philosophy. As one ith the Universe, whether we call him Brahmâ, Îshvara, or Purusha, he is Manifested Deity--hence "created," or limited and conditioned. This is asily proven, even from the exoteric teachings.
After being called the _incognizable_, eternal Brahma (neuter or bstract), the Pundarîkâksha, "supreme and imperishable glory," once that nstead of Sadaika-Rűpa, "changeless" or "immutable" Nature, he is ddressed as Ekâneka-Rűpa, "both single and manifold," he, the Cause, ecomes merged with his own effects; and his names, if placed in Esoteric rder, show the following descending scale:
Mahâpurusha or Paramâtman: Supreme Spirit.
Âtman or Pűrvaja (Protologos): The Living Spirit of Nature.
Indriyâtman, or Hrishîkesha: Spiritual or Intellectual Soul (one with the
senses).
Bhűtâtman: The Living, or Life Soul.
Kshetrajńa: Embodied Soul, or the Universe of Spirit and Matter.
Bhrântidarshanatah: False Perception--Material Universe.
The last name means something perceived or conceived of, owing to false nd erroneous apprehension, as a material form, but is, in fact, only
Mâyâ, Illusion, as all is in our physical universe.
It is in strict analogy with the attributes of this Brahma in both the piritual and material worlds, that the evolution of the Dhyân-Chohanic
Essences takes place; the characteristics of the latter being reflected, n their turn, in Man, collectively, and in each of his principles; _every ne of which contains in itself, in the same progressive order, a portion f their various __"__Fires__"__ and Elements_.
Stanza V. The Evolution of the Second Race.
18. The Sons of Yoga. 19. The Sexless Second Race. 20. The Sons of
the "Sons of Twilight." 21. The "Shadow," or the Astral Man,
retires within, and man develops a Physical Body.
18. THE FIRST(249) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE
YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.
In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated:
_The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of Ether [or the
__"__Wind__"__] (a)_....
_They were the shadows of the Shadows of the Lords (b). They [the shadows] xpanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the Solar Lhas warmed hem [__i.e.__, preserved the Vital Fire in the nascent physical Forms].
The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no Fire or Water f their own (c)._
(_a_) Remember in this connection the _Tabula Smaragdina_ of Hermes, the
Esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro-chemical is well nown to students, the Anthropological may now be given. The "One Thing" entioned in it is Man. It is said:
The Father of that One Only Thing is the Sun; its Mother the Moon;
the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its Nurse is the Spirituous
Earth.
In the Occult rendering of the same it is added: "and _Spiritual_ Fire is ts instructor [Guru]."
This Fire is the Higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is ternally reďncarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, hanging with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a trange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature hould be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge n the Âtman, the ALL-SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence hereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be horoughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the ystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines--Spiritual, Psychic nd Physical.
That which propels towards, and forces evolution, _i.e._, compels the rowth and development of Man towards perfection, is (_a_) the Monad, or hat which acts in it unconsciously through a Force inherent in itself; nd (_b_) the lower Astral Body or the _Personal_ Self. The former, hether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is ndeed itself, that Force. Owing to its identity with the ALL-FORCE, hich, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all-potent on the Arűpa, r formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains ll-potential, but individually becomes inactive. For instance, the rays f the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select his or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a iece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not ollow it. So with the Âtman: unless the Higher Self or Ego gravitates owards its Sun--the Monad--the Lower Ego, or _Personal_ Self, will have the pper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce selfishness nd animal desire to live a senseless life (Tanha), which is the "maker of he tabernacle," as Buddha calls it in the _Dhammapada_.(250) Hence the xpression, the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded hem. To these "Spirits" belong temporarily the human Astral Selves; and t is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the
Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the "Solar"
Lhas, or Spirits, warm the Shadows. This is physically and literally true; etaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true hat the Âtman alone _warms_ the Inner Man; _i.e._, it enlightens it with he Ray of Divine Life and alone is able to impart to the Inner Man, or he Reďncarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, we shall find, for the first hree and a half Root-Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the
Astral Shadows of the "Progenitors," the Lunar Pitris, which are the ormative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the volution of the physical form towards perfection--this, at the cost of a roportionate loss of Spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is he Higher Ego, or Incarnating Principle, the Nous or Mind, which reigns ver the Animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the atter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or hysical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its volution, only when the selfishness of the Personality has so strongly nfected the real Inner Man with its lethal _virus_, that the upward ttraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober ruth, vice and wickedness are an _abnormal, unnatural_ manifestation, at his period of our human evolution--at least they ought to be so. The fact hat mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now--civilized ations having succeeded in making of the former an ethical haracteristic, of the latter an art--is an additional proof of the xceptional nature of the phenomenon.
The entire scheme is in the _Chaldćan Book of Numbers_, and even in the
_Zohar_, if one only understands the meaning of the apocalyptic hints.
First comes Ain Suph, the "Concealed of the Concealed," then the _Point_,
Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a _World of
Emanations_ that gives birth to three other Worlds--the first the Briatic
World called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the _World f Formation_, or Jetziratic, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the
Third, or _World of Action_, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or
_our_ World; and yet it is said of this World--also called Kliphoth, ontaining the (six other) Spheres, {~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER GIMEL~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL MEM~}, and Matter--that it is the esidence of the "Prince of Darkness." This is as clearly stated as can e; for Metatron, the Angel of the second Briatic World, the first abitable World, means Messenger, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, Angel, called the great
Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, or Jetziratic, hose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,(251) of whom it is said hat:
They inhabit or vivify this world as essential [_entities_ and]
_intelligences_, and their _correlates_ and logical _contraries_
inhabit the third habitable world, called the Asiatic.
These "contraries" are called the "Shells," {~HEBREW LETTER QOF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}, or Demons,(252) who nhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the even Zones of our Globe.(253) Their prince is called in the Kabalah
Samaël, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing Serpent Satan; but his Satan is also Lucifer, the bright Angel of Light, the Light- and
Life-bringer, the "Soul" alienated from the Holy Ones, the other Angels, nd for a period, _anticipating the time_ when they would descend on Earth o incarnate in their turn.
The _Book of Wisdom_ teaches that:
All Souls [Monads] are preëxistent in the Worlds of
Emanations.(254)
And the _Zohar_ teaches that in the "Soul" is the _real man_, _i.e._, the
Ego and the conscious _I am_, the Manas.
Says Josephus, repeating the belief of the Essenes,
[Souls] descend from the pure air to be _chained to bodies_.(255)
And Philo states that:
The air was full of [Souls], and that those which were nearest the
earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, return back to
bodies, being desirous to live in them.(256)
Because through, and in, the human form they will become _progressive_
Beings, whereas the nature of the Angel is purely _intransitive_; herefore Man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the
Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brâhman, the
Twice-born, who rules the Gods or Devas; and Paul repeated it in his
_Epistle to the Corinthians_:
Know ye not that we [the Initiates] shall judge angels?(257)
Finally, it is shown in every ancient Scripture and Cosmogony that man volved primarily as a _luminous incorporeal form_, over which, like olten brass poured into the model of the sculptor, the physical frame of is body was built by, through and from, the lower forms and types of nimal terrestrial life. Says the _Zohar_:
The Soul and the _Form_ when descending on Earth put on an earthly
garment.
His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal rames are fashioned.
When Adam dwelled in the garden of Eden, he was dressed in the
celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light ...
_light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden_.(258)
Man [the Heavenly Adam] was _created_ by the ten Sephiroth of the
Jetziratic World, and by their _common power_ the seven Angels of
a still lower World engendered the Earthly Adam. First Samaël
fell, and then _deceiving_ (?) man, caused his fall also.
(_b_) The sentence, "they were the shadows of the Shadows of the
Lords"--_i.e._, the Progenitors created man out of their own Astral
Bodies--explains a universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East ith having no "shadows" of their own. "The Devas cast no shadows," and his is the sure sign of a _good holy Spirit_.
(_c_) Why had they "no Fire or Water of their own"?(259) Because that hich Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its
Noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its rinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from he three higher principles in man, namely, Spirit, Soul, and Mind, or
Âtmâ, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human asis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the "Air" or the "Wind," ecomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of "Spiritual
Fire," the Noumenon of the "Three in One" within his Self, he acquires rom his Inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self-Consciousness, hich he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again Divine Spirit s symbolized by the Sun or Fire; Divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both tanding for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, the Human Soul, or Mind, ymbolized by the Wind or Air, for Pneuma, means "Breath."
Hence in the _Smaragdine Tablet_, disfigured by Christian hands:
The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the
Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful work--[which is Man].
For the Secret Work of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabalah, "one in ssence, but three in aspect," is the Universal Agent or Lapis
Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect
Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three Elements is the Occult
Solvent in the "Soul of the World," the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at he other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its relation to he other gases. The TO ON, truly; the ONE "whom no person has seen except he Son"; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical
Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter nderstand the TO ON, the "One Father," if his Manas, the "Son," does not ecome (_as_) "One with the Father," and through this absorption receive nlightenment from the divine "Instructor," or Guru--Âtmâ-Buddhi?
As says the Commentary:
_If thou would'st understand the_ SECONDARY ["Creation," so-called], _O
Lanoo, thou should'st first study its relation to the_ PRIMARY.(260)
The First Race had three Elements, but no _Living_ Fire. Why? Because:
"We say _four_ Elements, my Son, but ought to say three," says Hermes
Trismegistus. "In the Primary Circle," or Creation that which is marked
[Symbol: Like a large letter H, with dots above and below, and tildes bove and below] reads "Root," as in the Secondary likewise.
Thus in Alchemy or Western Hermeticism--a variant on Eastern Esotericism--we ind:
Sulphur ... Flamma ... Spiritus
Mercury ... Natura ... Aqua
Salt ... Mater ... Sanguis
And these three are all quaternaries completed by their Root, Fire. The
Spirit, beyond Manifested Nature, is the Fiery BREATH in its absolute
Unity. In the Manifested Universe, it is the Central Spiritual Sun, the lectric Fire of all Life. In our System it is the visible Sun, the Spirit f Nature, the terrestrial God. And in, on, and around the Earth, the iery spirit thereof--Air, fluidic Fire; Water, liquid Fire; Earth, solid
Fire. All is Fire--Ignis, in its ultimate constitution, or I, the root of hich is 0 (nought) in our conceptions, the All in Nature and its Mind.
"Pro-Metor" is divine Fire. It is the Creator, the Destroyer, the
Preserver. The primitive names of the Gods are all connected with fire, rom Agni, the Âryan, to the Jewish God who is a "consuming fire." In
India, God is called in various dialects, Eashoor, Esur, Iswur, and
Îshvara, in Sanskrit, the Lord, from Isha, but this is primarily the name f Shiva, the Destroyer; and the three chief Vedic Gods are Agni (Ignis),
Vâyu, and Sűrya--Fire, Air, and the Sun, three Occult degrees of Fire. In he Hebrew, {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER ZAYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} (Aza) means to "illuminate," and {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} (Asha) is "Fire." In
Occultism, to "kindle a fire" is synonymous to evoking one of the three reat Fire-powers, or to "call on God." In Sanskrit the root Ush is fire r heat; and the Egyptian word Osiris is compounded, as shown by
Schelling, of the two primitives Aish and Asr, or a "fire-enchanter."
Aesar in the old Etruscan meant a God, being perhaps derived from Asura of he _Vedas_. Îshvara is an analogous term, as Dr. Kenealy thought, who uotes the _Bhagavad Gitâ_ to the effect that:
Îshvara resides in every mortal being and puts in motion, by his
supernatural powers, all things which mount on the wheel of time.
It is the Creator and the Destroyer, truly.
The primitive Fire was supposed to have an insatiable appetite for
devouring. Maximus of Tyre relates that the ancient Persians threw
into the fire combustible matter crying, _Devour, O Lord!_ In the
Irish language _easam_, or _asam_, means to _make_ or _create_.
[And] _Aesar_ was the name also of one of the ancient Irish gods;
the literal meaning of the word is "to kindle a fire."(261)
The Christian Kabalists and Symbologists who disfigured
_Pymander_--prominent among them the Bishop of Ayre, François de Tours, in he 16th century--divide the Elements in the following way:
_The four Elements formed from divine Substances and the Spirits of the
Salts of Nature represented by_:
[Symbol: Root symbol] ... St. Matthew ... Angel-Man ... Water (Jesus-
Christ, Angel-Man, Mikael)
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}-{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~} ... St. Mark ... The Lion ... Fire
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}-{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~} ... St. Luke ... The Bull ... Earth
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}-{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~} ... St. John ... The Eagle ... Air(262)
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA~} ... _The Quintessence_, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER XI~}, _Flamma-Virgo_ [Virgin Oil], _Flamma
Durissima_, _Virgo_, _Lucis Ćterna Mater_.
The First Race of men were, then, simply the Images, the Astral Doubles, f their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities rom a preceding though _lower_ Sphere, the shell of which is now our
Moon. But even this shell is all-potential, for, the Moon having generated he Earth, its _phantom_, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form ts first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters. To assure himself of this, he student has again to turn to the Chaldćan Fragments, and read what
Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the ale-female Deity of Wisdom. While the Gods were generated in the ndrogynous bosom of this Wisdom (Svabhâvat, Mother-Space), its eflections became on Earth the woman Omorôka, who is the Chaldćan
Thavatth (or Thalatth), the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which
Esoterically and even exoterically is the _Moon_. It was the Moon
(Omorôka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings hich were slain by the Dhyânîs.(263)
Evolutionary law compelled the Lunar Fathers to pass, in their monadic ondition, through all the forms of life and being on this Globe; but at he end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine ature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms estined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose urn it was to incarnate. These "Forms" are called "Sons of Yoga," because
Yoga--union with Brahmâ, exoterically--is the supreme condition of the assive infinite Deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is he essence of Brahmâ, who is said, as Brahmâ, to create everything hrough Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva are the most powerful nergies of God, Brahma (Neuter), says a Paurânic text. Yoga here is the ame as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan ext, where the "Sons of Yoga" are called "Sons of Dhyâna," or of that bstract meditation through which the Dhyâni-Buddhas create their elestial sons, the Dhyâni-Bodhisattvas.
All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. This
superior, whose inner pleasure it is _to emanate into them_,
cannot impart efflux until they have adored [_i.e._, meditated as
during Yoga].(264)
19. THE SECOND RACE (WAS) THE PRODUCT BY BUDDING AND EXPANSION, THE A-
SEXUAL(265) FROM THE SEXLESS.(266) THUS WAS, O LANOO, THE SECOND RACE
PRODUCED.
What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this A-sexual
Race, the Second, the Fathers of the "Sweat-born" so-called, and perhaps till more the Third Race, the "Egg-born" Androgynes. These two modes of rocreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the
Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those ho are not students of Occult Metaphysics. European language has no words o express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, hings which therefore can have no meaning for the Materialist. But there re analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical volution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous eneration, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms.
Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any articular mode of reproducing life. For it shows that:
The same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the
course of its life-cycle, during some of which it may be _sexual_,
and in others _a-sexual_, _i.e._, it may reproduce itself
alternately by the coöperation of two beings of opposite sex, and
also by fissure or _budding_ from one being only, which is of no
sex.(267)
"Budding" is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhâyâs eproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since hey were ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of esire, or Kâma Rűpa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved he Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the
Amoeba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, he cell-theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to
Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the icroscopic cells are looked upon by Physical Science as independent iving beings--just as Occultism regards the "Fiery Lives"--there is no ifficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.
Consider the first stages of the development of a germ-cell. Its nucleus rows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, [Symbol: Large X ith horizontal lines across tops and bottoms] _within_ the cell. This pindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is
_extruded_ in the form of what are called the "polar cells." These polar ells _now_ die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation f the remaining part of the nucleus which is _nourished_ by the substance f the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created n _this_ way--at the very beginning of _human and mammalian evolution_?
This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by hich the Second Race was formed from the First.
The Astral Form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its gg-shaped sphere of Aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the erm-cell or Ovum. The Astral Form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, nstinct with the Principle of Life.
When the season of reproduction arrives, the _Sub_-astral "extrudes" a iniature of itself from the egg of surrounding Aura. This germ grows and eeds on the Aura till it becomes fully developed, when it gradually eparates from its parent, carrying with it its own sphere of Aura; just s we see living cells reproducing their like by growth and subsequent ivision into two.
The analogy with the "polar cells" would seem to hold good, since their eath would _now_ correspond to the change introduced by the separation of he sexes, when gestation _in utero_, _i.e._, within the cell, became the ule.
As the Commentary tells us:
_The early Second [Root] Race were the Fathers of the __"__Sweat-
born__"__; the later Second [Root] Race were __"__Sweat-born__"__
themselves._
This passage from the Commentary refers to the work of evolution from the eginning of a Race to its close. The "Sons of Yoga," or the Primitive
Astral Race, had seven stages of evolution _racially_, or collectively; as very individual Being in it had, and has now. It is not Shakespeare only ho divided the ages of man into a series of seven, but Nature herself.
Thus the first Sub-races of the Second Race were born at first by the rocess described on the law of analogy; while the last began gradually,
_pari passu_ with the evolution of the human body, to be formed otherwise.
The process of reproduction had seven stages also in each Race, each overing ćons of time. What Physiologist or Biologist can tell whether the resent mode of generation, with all its phases of gestation, is older han half a million, or at most one million of years, since their cycle of bservation began hardly half a century ago?
Primeval human Hermaphrodites are a fact in Nature well known to the
Ancients, and form one of Darwin's greatest perplexities. Yet there is ertainly no impossibility, but, on the contrary, a great probability that ermaphroditism existed in the evolution of the early Races; while on the rounds of analogy, and on that of the existence of one universal law in hysical evolution, acting indifferently in the construction of plant, nimal, and man, it must be so. The mistaken theories of Monogenesis, and he descent of man from the mammal, instead of the mammals from man, are atal to the completeness of evolution as taught in modern schools on
Darwinian lines, and they will have to be abandoned in view of the nsuperable difficulties which they encounter. Occult tradition--if the erms Science and Knowledge are denied in this particular to Antiquity--can lone reconcile the inconsistencies and fill the gap. Says a Talmudic xiom:
If thou wilt know the invisible, open thine eyes wide on the
visible.
In the _Descent of Man_ occurs the following passage, which shows how near
Darwin came to the acceptance of this ancient teaching.
It has long been known that in the vertebrate kingdom one sex
bears rudiments of various accessory parts, appertaining to the
reproductive system, which properly belong to the opposite sex....
Some remote progenitor of the whole vertebrate kingdom appears to
have been hermaphrodite or androgynous.(268) But here we encounter
a singular difficulty. _In the mammalian class the males possess
rudiments of a uterus with the adjacent passages in the vesiculć
prostaticć; they bear also rudiments of mammć, and some male
marsupials have traces of a marsupial sac._ Other analogous facts
could be added. Are we, then, to suppose that some extremely
ancient mammal continued androgynous, after it had acquired the
chief distinctions of its class, and therefore after it had
diverged from the lower classes of the vertebrate kingdom? This
seems very improbable,(269) _for we have to look to fishes, the
lowest of all the classes, to find any still existent androgynous
forms_.(270)
Mr. Darwin is evidently strongly disinclined to adopt the hypothesis which he facts so forcibly suggest, viz., that of a primeval androgynous stem rom which the Mammalia sprang. His explanation runs:
That various accessory organs, proper to each sex, are found in a
rudimentary condition in the opposite sex, may be explained by
such organs having been gradually acquired by the one sex, and
then transmitted in a more or less imperfect state to the
other.(271)
He instances the case of "spurs, plumes, and brilliant colours, acquired or battle or ornament by male birds" and only _partially_ inherited by heir female descendants. In the problem to be dealt with, however, the eed of a more satisfactory explanation is evident, the facts being of so uch more prominent and important a character than the mere superficial etails with which they are compared by Darwin. Why not candidly admit the rgument in favour of the hermaphroditism which characterizes the old auna? Occultism proposes a solution which embraces the facts in a most omprehensive and simple manner. These relics of a prior androgyne stock ust be placed in the same category as the pineal gland, and other organs qually mysterious, which afford us silent testimony as to the reality of unctions which have long since become atrophied in the course of animal nd human progress, but which once played a signal part in the general conomy of primeval life.
The Occult doctrine, in any case, can be advantageously compared with that f the most liberal men of Science, who have theorized upon the origin of he first man.
Long before Darwin, Naudin, who gave the name of Blastema to that which he Darwinists call Protoplasm, put forward a theory half Occult and half cientifico-materialistic. He made Adam, the A-sexual, spring suddenly rom the _clay_, as it is called in the _Bible_, the Blastema of Science.
As Naudin explains:
It is from this larval form of mankind, that the evolutive force
effected the completion of species. For the accomplishment of this
great phenomenon, Adam had to pass through a phase of immobility
and unconsciousness, very analogous to the nymphal state of
animals undergoing metamorphosis.(272)
For the eminent Botanist, Adam was not one man, however, but _mankind_, hich remained
Concealed within a temporary organism, already distinct from all
others, and incapable of contracting an alliance with any of them.
He shows the differentiation of sexes accomplished by
A process of germination similar to that of medusć and ascidians.
Mankind, thus constituted physiologically,
Would retain a sufficient evolutive force for the rapid production
of the various great human races.
De Quatrefages criticizes this position in _The Human Species_. It is
_unscientific_, he says, or, properly speaking, Naudin's ideas "do not orm a scientific theory," inasmuch as Primordial Blastema is connected in is theory with the "_first cause_," which is credited with having made otentially in the Blastema all past, present, and future beings, and thus f having in reality _created_ these beings _en masse_; moreover, Naudin oes not even consider the "_second causes_," or their action in this volution of the organic world. Science, which is only occupied with
"second causes," has thus
Nothing to say to the theory of M. Naudin.(273)
Nor will it have any more to say to the Occult teachings, which are to ome extent approached by Naudin. For if we but see in his "Primordial
Blastema" the Dhyân-Chohanic Essence, the Chhâyâ or Double of the Pitris, hich contains within itself the potentiality of all forms, we are quite n accord. But there are two real and vital differences between our eachings. M. Naudin declares that evolution has progressed by sudden eaps and bounds, instead of extending slowly over millions of years; and is Primordial Blastema is endowed only with blind instincts--a kind of
_unconscious_ First Cause in the Manifested Kosmos--which is an absurdity.
Whereas it is our Dhyân-Chohanic Essence--the _Causality_ of the Primal
Cause which creates _physical_ man--which is the living, active and otential Matter (pregnant _per se_ with that animal consciousness of a uperior kind, such as is found in the ant and the beaver) which produces he long series of physiological differentiations. Apart from this, his
"ancient and general process of _creation_" from Proto-organisms is as
Occult as any theory of Paracelsus or Khunrath could be.
Moreover, the Kabalistic works are full of the proof of this. The _Zohar_, or instance, says that every type in the visible has its prototype in the nvisible Universe.
All that which is in the Lower (our) World is found in the Upper.
The Lower and the Upper act and reäct upon each other.(274)
20. THEIR FATHERS WERE THE SELF-BORN. THE SELF-BORN, THE CHHÂYÂ FROM THE
BRILLIANT BODIES OF THE LORDS, THE FATHERS, THE SONS OF TWILIGHT.
The "Shadows," or Chhâyâs, are called the Sons of the "Self-born," as the atter name is applied to all the Gods and Beings, born through the Will, hether of Deity or Adept. The Homunculi of Paracelsus would, perhaps, be lso given this name, though the latter process is on a far more material lane. The name "Sons of Twilight" shows that the "Self-born" Progenitors f our Doctrine are identical with the Pitris of the Brâhmanical System, s the title is a reference to their mode of birth; these Pitris being tated to have issued from Brahmâ's "Body of Twilight," as stated in the
_Purânas_.
21. WHEN THE RACE BECAME OLD, THE OLD WATERS MIXED WITH THE FRESHER WATERS
(_A_). WHEN ITS DROPS BECAME TURBID, THEY VANISHED AND DISAPPEARED IN THE
NEW STREAM, IN THE HOT STREAM OF LIFE. THE OUTER OF THE FIRST BECAME THE
INNER OF THE SECOND (_B_). THE OLD WING BECAME THE NEW SHADOW, AND THE
SHADOW OF THE WING (_C_).
(_a_) The old or Primitive Race merged in the Second Race, and became one ith it.
(_b_) This is the mysterious process of the transformation and evolution f mankind. The material of the first Forms--shadowy, ethereal, and egative--was drawn or absorbed into, and thus became the complement of the
Forms of the Second Race. The Commentary explains this by saying that, as he First Race was simply composed of the Astral Shadows of the Creative
Progenitors, having of course neither astral nor physical bodies of its wn--the Race _never died_. Its "Men" melted gradually away, becoming bsorbed in the bodies of their own "Sweat-born" progeny, more solid than heir own. The old Form vanished and was absorbed by, disappeared in, the ew Form, more human and physical. There was no death in those days of a eriod more blissful than the Golden Age; but the first, or parent, aterial was used for the formation of the new being, to form the Body and ven the inner or _lower_ Principles or Bodies of the progeny.
(_c_) When the "Shadow" retires, _i.e._, when the Astral Body becomes overed with more solid flesh, man develops a Physical Body. The "Wing," r the ethereal Form that produced its Shadow and Image, became the Shadow f the Astral Body and its own progeny. The expression is queer and riginal.
As there may be no occasion to refer to this mystery later, it is as well o point out at once the dual meaning contained in the Greek myth bearing pon this particular phase of evolution. It is found in the several ariants of the allegory of Leda and her two sons Castor and Pollux, each f which variants has a special meaning. Thus in Book XI of the _Odyssey_,
Leda is spoken of as the spouse of Tyndarus, who gave birth by her husband
"to two sons of valiant heart"--Castor and Pollux. Jupiter endows them with marvellous gift and privilege. They are semi-immortal; they live and ie, each in turn, and every alternate day ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}(275)). As the
Tyndaridć, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day nd Night; their two wives, Phoebe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Apollo or he Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.(276) Again, in the llegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes--born from the
Egg to which Leda gives birth--the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates o that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born rom an Egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan, when niting herself to the Divine Swan or Brahma-Kalahamsa. Leda is the ythical Bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the
Âryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all ay golden Eggs.(277) In the _Kalevala_, the Epic Poem of Finland, the eauteous daughter of the Ether, the "Water-Mother," creates the World in onjunction with a "Duck"--another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahamsa--who ays six golden eggs, and the seventh, an "egg of iron," in her lap. But he variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic an is found in Pindar(278) only, with a slighter reference to it in the
Homeric Hymns.(279) Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri of
Apollodorus(280); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual an, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen, hey are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from he Animal-man into a God-man with only an animal body.
Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and lso to the Father of the Gods--Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal,
Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the ccasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the
Apharides,(281) Pollux kills Lynceus--"of all mortals he whose sight is the ost penetrating"--but Castor is wounded by Idas, "he who sees and knows."
Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the ast two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.(282) In his despair e calls upon Zeus to slay him also. "Thou canst not die altogether," nswers the master of the Gods; "thou art of a divine race." But he gives im the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in
Olympus; or, if he would share his brother's fate in all things, he must ass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden eavenly abodes. This semi-immortality, which is also to be shared by
Castor, is accepted by Pollux.(283) _And thus the twin brothers live lternately, one during the day, and the other during the night._(284)
Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those "solar myth" nterpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to oar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the "Egg-born"
Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, _i.e._, unconscious in its
Personality, and having nothing within itself to survive;(285) and the atter half of which becomes immortal in its Individuality, by reason of ts Fifth Principle being called to life by the _Informing Gods_, and thus onnecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor epresents the _personal_, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior ind, when unlinked from the divine _Individuality_. "Twins" truly; yet ivorced by death for ever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship, estows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine ature, thus associating him with his own immortality.
Such is the Occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The idely spread modern interpretation of it--so celebrated in antiquity,
Plutarch tells us,(286) as symbolical of brotherly devotion--namely, that t was an image of the Sun and Moon borrowed from the spectacle of Nature, s weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact hat the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and ould therefore hardly be regarded as Castor, and at the same time be dentified with Diana, ancient Symbologists who held the Sun, the king of ll sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest Deity, would not ave personified it by Pollux, a demi-god only.(287)
If from Greek mythology we pass to the Mosaic allegories and symbolism, we hall find a still more striking corroboration of the same tenet under nother form. Unable to trace in them the "Egg-born," we shall still nmistakably find in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ the Androgynes nd the first Three Races of the Secret Doctrine, hidden under most ngenious symbology.
The Divine Hermaphrodite.
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the Occult and Religious
Mysteries, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean Race, ome 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so esecrated. Of these Sciences several have now become exoteric--such as
Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspects.
But their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolized and left to the sole uardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and hence the eaning has become perverted. Nevertheless, one finds the Hermaphrodite in he scriptures and traditions of almost every nation; and why such nanimous agreement if the statement is only a fiction?
Under cover of this secrecy the Fifth Race were led to the establishment, r rather the reëstablishment of the Religious Mysteries, in which ancient ruths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of llegory and symbolism. Behold the imperishable witness to the evolution f the Human Races from the Divine, and especially from the Androgynous
Race--the Egyptian Sphinx, that riddle of the Ages! Divine Wisdom ncarnating on Earth, and forced to taste of the bitter fruit of personal xperience of pain and suffering, generated on Earth only under the shade f the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil--a secret first known only to he Elohim, the Self-Initiated, "Higher Gods."(288)
In the _Book of Enoch_ we have Adam,(289) the first Divine Androgyne, eparating into man and woman, and becoming Jah-Heva in one form, or Race, nd Cain and Abel(290)--male and female--in its other form or Race--the ouble-sexed Jehovah,(291) an echo of its Âryan prototype, Brahmâ-Vâch.
After which come the Third and Fourth Root-Races of mankind(292)--that is o say, Races of men and women, or individuals of opposite sexes, no onger sexless Semi-spirits and Androgynes, as were the two Races which recede them. This fact is hinted at in every Anthropogony. It is found in able and allegory, in myth and revealed Scriptures, in legend and radition. For, of all the great Mysteries, inherited by Initiates from oary antiquity, this is _one of the greatest_. It accounts for the bi- exual element found in every Creative Deity, in Brahmâ-Virâj-Vâch, as in
Adam-Jehovah-Eve, also in Cain-Jehovah-Abel. For "The Book of the
Generations of Adam" does not even mention Cain and Abel, but says only:
Male and female created he them; ... and called their name
Adam.(293)
Then it proceeds to say:
And Adam ... begat a son in _his own likeness_, after his image;
and called his name Seth.(294)
After which he begets other sons and daughters, thus proving that Cain and
Abel are his own allegorical permutations. Adam stands for the primitive
_Human_ Race, especially in its cosmo-sidereal sense. Not so, however, in ts theo-anthropological meaning. The compound name of Jehovah, or Jah-
Hovah, meaning _male life_ and _female life_--first androgynous, then eparated into sexes--is used in this sense in _Genesis_ from Chapter V nwards. As the author of the _Source of Measures_ says:
The two words of which _Jehovah_ is composed make up the original
idea of male-female, as the birth originator.(295)
For the Hebrew letter _Jod_ was the _membrum virile_ and _Hovah_ was Eve, he mother of all living, or the procreatrix, Earth and Nature. The author elieves, therefore, that:
It is seen that the _perfect one_ [the perfect female circle or
Yoni, 20612, numerically], as _originator of measures_, takes also
the form of _birth_ origin, as _hermaphrodite one_; hence the
phallic form and use.
Precisely; only "the phallic form and use" came long ages later; and the irst and original meaning of Enos, the son of Seth, was the first Race orn in the present usual way from man and woman--for Seth is no man, but a
_race_. Before him humanity was hermaphrodite. While Seth is the first esult (physiologically) after the "Fall," he is also the first _man_; ence his son Enos is referred to as the "Son of _Man_." Seth represents he _later_ Third Race.
To screen the real mystery name of Ain Suph--the Boundless and Endless No-
Thing--the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute- ppellation of one of the personal Creative Elohim, whose name was Yah or
Jah--the letters _i_ or _j_ or _y_ being interchangeable--or Jah-Hovah,
_i.e._, _male_ and _female_;(296) Jah-Eve a hermaphrodite, or the _first orm of humanity_, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam Kadmon, whose
"Mind-born Son" is the earthly Jah-Hovah, mystically. And knowing this, he crafty Rabbin-Kabalist has made of it a name so _secret_, that he ould not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus e was obliged to make it _sacred_.
How close is the identity between Brahmâ-Prajâpati and Jehovah-Sephiroth, etween Brahmâ-Virâj and Jehovah-Adam, the _Bible_ and the _Purânas_ ompared alone can show. Analyzed, and read in the same light, they afford ogent evidence that they are two copies of the same original--made at two eriods far distant from each other. Compare once more in relation to this ubject _Genesis_ iv. 1 and 26 and _Manu_ i. 32 and they will both yield heir meaning. In Manu, Brahmâ, who, like Jehovah or Adam in _Genesis_, is oth man and God, and divides his body into male and female, stands, in is Esoteric meaning, for the symbolical personification of creative and
_generative_ power, both divine and human. The _Zohar_ affords still more onvincing proof of identity, while some Rabbins repeat word for word ertain original Paurânic expressions; _e.g._, the "creation" of the world s generally considered in the Brâhmanical books to be the Lîlâ, the elight or sport, the amusement of the Supreme Creator.
Vishnu, being thus discrete and indiscrete substance, spirit, and
time, sports like a playful boy, as you shall learn by listening
to his frolics.(297)
Now compare this with what is said in the Book, _Nobeleth 'Hokhmah_:
The Qabbalists say, that the entering into existence of the worlds
happened through delight, in that Ain Suph [? !] rejoiced in
Itself, and flashed and beamed from Itself to Itself ... which are
all called delight.(298)
Thus it is not a "curious idea of the Qabbalists," as the author just uoted remarks, but a purely Paurânic, Âryan idea. Only, why make of Ain
Suph a Creator?
The "Divine Hermaphrodite" is, then, Brahmâ-Vâch-Virâj; and that of the
Semites, or rather of the Jews, is Jehovah-Cain-Abel. Only the "Heathen" ere, and are, more sincere and frank than were the later Israëlites and
Rabbis, who undeniably knew the real meaning of their exoteric deity. The
Jews regard the name given to them--the Yah-oudi--as an insult. Yet they ave, or would have if they only wished it, as undeniable a right to call hemselves the ancient Yah-oudi, "Jah-hovians," as the Brâhmans have to all themselves Brâhmans _after their national deity_. For Jah-hovah is he generic name of that Group or Hierarchy of Creative Planetary Angels, nder whose Star their nation has evolved. He is one of the Planetary
Elohim of the Regent Group of Saturn. Verse 26 of Chapter iv of _Genesis_, hen read correctly, would alone give them such a right, for it calls the ew Race of men--sprung from Seth and Enos--_Jehovah_, something quite ifferent from the translation adopted in the _Bible_, which ought to ead:
To him also, was born a son, Enos; then began men to call
themselves Jah, or Yah-hovah,
o wit, _men and women_, the "Lords of Creation." One has but to read the bove-mentioned verse in the original Hebrew text and by the light of the
Kabalah, to find that, instead of the words as they now stand translated, he correct translation should be:
Then began men to _call themselves_ Jehovah;
nd not:
Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord
he latter being a mistranslation, whether deliberate or not. Again the ell-known passage:
I have gotten a man from the Lord,
hould read:
I have gotten a man, even Jehovah.(299)
Luther translated the passage one way, the Roman Catholics quite ifferently. Bishop Wordsworth renders it:
Cain--_I have gotten--Kain_, from _Kâ'nithi, I have gotten_.
Luther:
I have gotten a man--even the Lord [Jehovah].
And the author of _The Source of Measures_:
I have _measured a man_, even _Jehovah_.
The last is the correct rendering for--(_a_) a famous Rabbin, a Kabalist, xplained the passage to the writer in precisely this way, and (_b_) this endering is identical with that in the Secret Doctrine of the East with egard to Brahmâ.
In _Isis Unveiled_,(300) it was explained by the writer that:
Cain ... is the son of the "Lord" not of Adam.
The "Lord" is Adam Kadmon, the "Father" of Yod-Heva, "Adam-Eve," or
Jehovah, the son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood.
Seth, on the other hand, is the _leader and the progenitor of the Races of he Earth_; for he is the son of Adam, exoterically, but Esoterically he s the progeny of Cain and Abel, since Abel or Hebel is a female, the ounterpart and female half of the male Cain, and Adam is the collective ame for man and woman:
Male and female (_zachar va nakobeh_) created he them ... and
called _their_ name Adam.
The verses in _Genesis_ from Chapters i to v, are purposely mixed up for
Kabalistic reasons. After the "Man" of _Genesis_ i. 26, and Enos, the Son f Man, of iv. 26; after Adam, the first Androgyne; after Adam Kadmon--the exless (the first) Logos--Adam and Eve once separated, come finally
Jehovah-Eve and Cain-Jehovah. These represent distinct Root-Races, for illions of years elapsed between them.
Hence the Âryan and the Semitic Theo-anthropographies are two leaves on he same stem; their respective personifications and symbolic personages tanding in relation to each other in the following way:
I. The "Unknowable" referred to in various ways in Rig Vedic verse, such s "_Nought_ was," called, later on, Parabrahman--the {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL NUN~}, Ain, No-thing, r Ain Suph of the Kabalists--and again, the "Spirit" (of God) that moves pon the face of the Waters, in _Genesis_. All these are _identical_.
Moreover, in _Genesis_ i, verse 2 is placed as verse 1 in the _secret_
Kabalistic texts, where it is followed by the Elohim "creating the Heaven nd the Earth." This deliberate shifting of the order of the verses was ecessary for _monotheistic_ and Kabalistic purposes. Jeremiah's curse gainst those Elohim (Gods) who _have not created_ the Heavens and the
Earth,(301) shows that there were other Elohim who had.
II. The Heavenly Manu-Svâyambhuva, who sprang from Svayambhű-Nârâyana, the
"Self-existent," the Adam Kadmon of the Kabalists, and the Androgyne
"Man," of _Genesis_ i, are also identical.
III. Manu-Svâyambhuva is Brahmâ, or the Logos; and he is Adam Kadmon, who n _Genesis_, iv. 5, separates himself into two halves, male and female, hus becoming Jah-Hovah or Jehovah-Eve; as Manu-Svâyambhuva, or Brahmâ, eparates himself to become "Brahmâ-Virâj and Vâch-Virâj," male and emale. All the rest of the texts and versions are "blinds."
IV. Vâch is the daughter of Brahmâ and is named Shata-Rűpâ, "the hundred- ormed," and Sâvitrî, Generatrix, the Mother of the Gods and of all iving. She is identical with Eve, "the Mother [of all the Lords or Gods r] of all living." Besides this there are many other Occult meanings.
What is written on the subject in _Isis Unveiled_, although scattered bout and very cautiously expressed at the time, is correct.
Explaining Esoterically Ezekiel's Wheel, it is said of Jodhevah or
Jehovah:
When the Ternary is taken in the beginning of the Tetragram, it
expresses the Divine Creation _spiritually_, _i.e._, without any
carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter; it
is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of
the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or
Yod; therefore it must not be read Jehovah but Ieva, or Eve. The
Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure
androgyne, Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the
second Adam (of dust), the pure Virgo is separated, and falling
into "generation," or the downward cycle, becomes Scorpio, emblem
of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points to the purely
Spiritual Races, or the ten Prediluvian Patriarchs, the Prajâpatis
and Sephiroth, led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam
Kadmon or Yodcheva, [spiritually,] the lower one [Jehovah] is that
of the Terrestrial Races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the seventh;
who, because he is half-divine, half-terrestrial, is said to have
been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or Libra, are one.(302)
This is only one of the several meanings. No need to remind the scholar hat Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction. Like he Indian Rishis, the Patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers, as ell as interchangeable. According to the subject to which they relate hey become ten, twelve, seven or five, and even _fourteen_, and they have he same Esoteric meaning as the Manus or Rishis.
Moreover, Jehovah, as may be shown, has a variety of etymologies, but only hose are _true_ which are found in the Kabalah. {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} (Ieve) is the _Old
Testament_ term, and was pronounced Ya-va. Inman suggests that it is ontracted from the two words {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~} {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, Yaho-Iah, Jaho-Jah, or Jaho is Jah.
Punctuated it is {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW POINT SHEVA~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW POINT HOLAM~}{~HEBREW POINT SEGOL~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, which is, however, a Rabbinical caprice to ssociate it with the name Adoni, or {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW POINT HATAF PATAH~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW POINT QAMATS~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}, which has the same points. It s curious, and indeed hardly conceivable, that the Jews anciently read he name {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} Adoni, when they had so many names of which Jeho, and Jah, nd Iah, constituted a part. But so it was; and Philo Byblus, who gives us he so-called fragment of Sanchuniathon, spelt it in Greek letters {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~},
Javo or Jevo. Theodoret says that the Samaritans pronounced it Yahva, and he Jews Yaho. Prof. Gibbs, however, suggests its punctuation thus:
{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW POINT TSERE~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW POINT HIRIQ~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW POINT SEGOL~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} (Ye-hou-vih); and he cut the Gordian knot of its true Occult eaning. For in this last form, as a Hebrew verb, it means "he ill--be."(303) It was also derived from the Chaldaic verb {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW POINT HATAF PATAH~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW POINT QAMATS~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}, or {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW POINT HIRIQ~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW POINT QAMATS~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, ue (eve), or eua (eva), "to be." And so it was, since from Enosh, the
"Son of Man," only, were the truly human Races to begin and "to be," as ales and females. This statement receives further corroboration, inasmuch s Parkhurst makes the verb {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} to mean, (1) "to fall down" (_i.e._ into eneration or Matter); and (2) "to be, to continue"--as a _race_. The spirate of the word eua (Eva), "to be," being {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, Heve (Eve), which is he feminine of {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, and the same as Hebe, the Grecian Goddess of youth nd the Olympian bride of Heracles, makes the name Jehovah appear still ore clearly in its primitive double-sexed form.
Finding in Sanskrit such syllables as Jah and Yah, _e.g._, Jâh-navî,
"Ganges," and Jagan-nâtha, "Lord of the World," it becomes clear why Mr.
Rawlinson is so very confident in his works of an Âryan or Vedic influence n the early mythology of Babylon. Nor is it to be much wondered at that he alleged ten tribes of Israel disappeared during the captivity period, ithout leaving a trace behind them, when we are informed that the Jews ad _de facto_ but two tribes--those of Judah and of Levi. The Levites, oreover, were not a tribe at all, but a priestly caste. The descendants ave only followed their progenitors, the various patriarchs, into thin, idereal air. There were _Brahms_ and _A-brahms_, in days of old, truly, nd before the first Jew had been born. Every nation held its first God nd Gods to be androgynous; nor could it be otherwise, since they regarded heir distant primeval progenitors, their dual-sexed ancestors, as divine
Beings and Gods, just as do the Chinese to this day. And they were divine n one sense, as also was their first human progeny, the "mind-born" rimitive humanity, which was most assuredly bi-sexual, as all the more ncient symbols and traditions show.
Under the emblematical devices and peculiar phraseology of the
priesthood of old, lie latent hints of sciences as yet
undiscovered during the present cycle. Well acquainted as may be a
scholar with the hieratic writing and hieroglyphical system of the
Egyptians, he must first of all learn to sift their records. He
has to assure himself, compasses and rule in hand, that the
picture-writing he is examining fits, to a line, _certain fixed
geometrical figures_ which are the hidden keys to such records,
before he ventures on an interpretation.
But there are myths which speak for themselves. In this class we
may include the double-sexed first creators of every Cosmogony.
The Greek Zeus-Zęn (Ćther), and Chthonia (the Chaotic Earth) and
Metis (Water), his wives; Osiris and Isis-Latona--the former God
also representing Ćther, the first emanation of the Supreme Deity,
Amun, the primeval source of Light; the Goddess Earth and Water
again; Mithras, the rock-born God, the symbol of the male Mundane
Fire, or the personified Primordial Light, and Mithra, the Fire-
Goddess, at once his mother and his wife; the pure element of Fire
(the active, or male principle) regarded as light and heat, in
conjunction with Earth and Water, or Matter (the female or passive
element of cosmical generation).(304)
All these are records of the primeval divine Hermaphrodite.
Stanza VI. The Evolution Of The "Sweat-Born."
22. The evolution of the three Races continued. 23. The Second
Race creates the Third and perishes.
22. THEN THE SECOND EVOLVED THE EGG-BORN, THE THIRD.(305) THE SWEAT GREW,
ITS DROPS GREW, AND THE DROPS BECAME HARD AND ROUND. THE SUN WARMED IT;
THE MOON COOLED AND SHAPED IT; THE WIND FED IT UNTIL ITS RIPENESS. THE
WHITE SWAN FROM THE STARRY VAULT(306) OVERSHADOWED THE BIG DROP. THE EGG
OF THE FUTURE RACE, THE MAN-SWAN(307) OF THE LATER THIRD (_A_). FIRST
MALE-FEMALE, THEN MAN AND WOMAN (_B_).
(_a_) The text of the Stanza clearly implies that the human embryo was ourished _ab extra_ by Cosmic Forces, and that the "Father-Mother" urnished apparently the germ that ripened; in all probability a "sweat- orn egg," to be hatched out, in some mysterious way, disconnected from he "double" parent. It is comparatively easy to conceive of an oviparous umanity, since even now man is, in one sense, "egg-born." Magendie, oreover, in his _Precis Élémentaire de Physiologie_, citing
A case where the umbilical cord was ruptured and perfectly
cicatrized,
et the infant was born alive, pertinently asks:
How was the circulation carried on in this organ?
On the next page he says:
Nothing is at present known respecting the use of digestion in the
foetus.
And respecting its nutrition, he propounds this query:
What, then, can we say of the nutrition of the foetus?
Physiological works contain only _vague conjectures_ on this
point.
"Ah, but," the sceptic may urge, "Magendie's book belongs to the last eneration, and Science has since made such strides that his stigma of gnorance can no longer be fixed upon the profession." Indeed; then let us urn to a very great authority upon Physiology, viz., Sir Michael Foster, nd, to the disadvantage of Modern Science, we shall find him saying:
Concerning the rise and development of the functional activities
of the embryo, our knowledge is almost a blank. We know scarcely
anything about the various steps by which the primary fundamental
qualities of the protoplasm of the ovum are differentiated into
the complex phenomena which we have attempted in this book to
explain.(308)
The students of Trin. Coll. Cantab, will now kindly draw a veil before the tatue of Hygieia and bandage the eyes of the busts of Galen and
Hippocrates, lest they look reproachfully at their degenerate descendants.
One further fact we must note. Sir Michael Foster is discreetly silent bout the case of the ruptured umbilical cord cited by his great French
_confrčre_.
(_b_) This is a very curious statement as explained in the Commentaries.
To make it clear: The First Race having created the Second by "budding," s explained above, the Second Race gives birth to the Third--which itself s separated into three distinct divisions, consisting of men differently rocreated. The first two of these are produced by an oviparous method, resumably unknown to modern Natural History. While the early sub-races of he Third Humanity procreated their species by a kind of exudation of oisture or vital fluid, the drops of which coalescing formed an oviform all--or shall we say egg--that served as an extraneous vehicle for the eneration therein of a foetus and child, the mode of procreation by the ater sub-races changed, in its results at all events. The little ones of he earlier sub-races were entirely sexless--shapeless even for all one nows;(309) but those of the later sub-races were born androgynous. It is n the Third Race that the separation of sexes occurred. From being reviously a-sexual, Humanity became distinctly hermaphrodite or bi- exual; and finally the man-bearing Eggs began to give birth, gradually nd almost imperceptibly in their evolutionary development, first, to eings in which one sex predominated over the other, and, finally, to istinct men and women. And now let us search for corroboration of these tatements in the religious legends of East and West. Let us take the
"Egg-born Race" first. Think of Kashyapa, the Vedic sage, and the most rolific of creators. He was the son of Marichi, Brahmâ's Mind-born Son; nd he is made to become the father of the Nâgas, or Serpents, among other eings. Exoterically, the Nâgas are semi-divine beings which have a human ace and the tail of a serpent. Yet there was a race of Nâgas, said to be thousand in number only, born or rather sprung from Kadrű, Kashyapa's ife, for _the purpose of peopling Pâtâla_, which is undeniably America, s will be shown; and there was a Nâga-Dvîpa, one of the seven divisions f Bhâratavarsha, India, inhabited by a people bearing the same name, who re allowed, even by some Orientalists, to be _historical_, and to have eft many a trace behind them to this day.
Now the point most insisted upon at present is that, whatever origin be laimed for man, his evolution took place in this order: (1) sexless, as ll the earlier forms are; (2) then, by a natural transition, he became a
"solitary hermaphrodite," a bi-sexual being; and (3) finally separated and ecame what he is now. Science teaches us that all the primitive forms, hough sexless, "still retained the power of undergoing the processes of -sexual multiplication"; why, then, should man be excluded from that law f Nature? Bi-sexual reproduction is an evolution, a specialized and erfected form on the scale of Matter of the fissiparous act of eproduction. Occult teachings are preëminently panspermic, and the early istory of humanity is hidden only "from ordinary mortals"; nor is the istory of the primitive Races buried for the Initiates in the tomb of ime, as it is for profane Science. Therefore, supported on the one hand y that Science which shows us progressive development and an internal ause for every external modification, as a law in Nature; and, on the ther hand, by an implicit faith in the Wisdom--we may say Pansophia ven--of the universal traditions gathered and preserved by the Initiates, ho have perfected them into an almost faultless system--thus supported, we enture to state the doctrine clearly.
In an able article, written some fifteen years ago, our learned and espected friend Prof. Alexander Wilder, of New York, shows the absolute ogic and necessity of believing "The Primeval Race Double-Sexed," and ives a number of scientific reasons for it.(310) He argues firstly, that large part of the vegetable creation exhibits the phenomenon of bi- exuality, the Linnćan classification enumerating thus almost all plants.
This is the case in the superior families of the vegetable kingdoms as uch as in the lower forms, from the hemp to the Lombardy poplar and ilanthus. In the animal kingdom also it is the same. In insect life, the oth generates a worm, and the worm becomes a moth, as in the Mysteries he great secret was expressed--_Taurus __ Taurus Draconem genuit, et
Taurum Draco_. The coral-producing family, which, according to Agassiz, as spent many hundreds of thousands of years, during the present eological period, in building out the peninsula of Florida, produce their ffspring from themselves like the buds and ramifications in a tree. Bees re somewhat in the same line. The aphides, or plant lice, keep house like
Amazons, and _virgin parents_ perpetuate the race for ten successive enerations.
What say the old Sages, the Philosopher-teachers of antiquity?
Aristophanes speaks thus on the subject in Plato's _Banquet_:
Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was
_androgynous_; the form and name partaking of, and being common to
both the male and female.... Their bodies ... were round, and the
manner of their running circular.(311) They were terrible in force
and strength and had prodigious ambition. Hence Zeus divided each
of them into two, making them weaker; Apollo, under his direction,
closed up the skin.
Meshia and Meshiane were but a single individual with the old Persians.
They also taught that man was the product of the Tree of Life,
growing in androgynous pairs, till they were separated at a
subsequent modification of the human form.
In the Book of the Generations (_Toleduth_) of Adam, the verse:
God created (_bara_, brought forth) man in his image, in the image
of God created he him, male and female created he them,
--if read Esoterically will yield the true sense, viz.:
The Elohim [Gods] brought forth from themselves [by modification]
man in their image ... created they _him_ [collective Humanity, or
Adam], male and female created _he_ [collective Deity] them.(312)
This will show the Esoteric point. The _Sexless_ Race was their first roduction, a modification _of_ and _from_ themselves, the pure Spiritual
Existences; and this was Adam _solus_. Thence came the _Second_ Race:
Adam-Eve, or Jod-Heva, inactive Androgynes; and finally the _Third_, or he "_Separating_ Hermaphrodite," Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth,
Seth-Enos, etc. It is this Third, the last semi-spiritual Race, which was lso the last vehicle of the divine and innate Wisdom, ingenerate in the
Enochs, the Seers of that Mankind. The _Fourth_, which had tasted of the ruit of the Tree of Good and Evil--Wisdom already united to earthy, and herefore _impure_, intelligence(313)--had consequently to acquire that
Wisdom by initiation and great struggle. And the union of Wisdom and
Intelligence, the former _ruling_ the latter, is called in the Hermetic ooks "the God possessing the double fecundity of the two sexes."
Mystically Jesus was held to be man-woman. So also in the Orphic Hymns, ung during the Mysteries, we find: "Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal aid." The Egyptian Ammon was the Goddess Neďth, in his other half.
Jupiter has female breasts, Venus is bearded in some of her statues, and
Ilâ, the Goddess, is also Su-dyumna, the God, as Vaivasvata's progeny.
Says Professor Wilder:
The name _Adam_, or man, itself implies this double form of
existence. It is identical with _Athamas_, or _Thomas_ (Tamil,
_Tam_), which is rendered by the Greek _Didumos_, a twin; if,
therefore, the first woman was formed subsequently to the first
man, she must, as a logical necessity, be "taken out of man."
Accordingly we read: "And the _side_ which the Lord God [Elohim]
had taken from man, made he a woman." The Hebrew word here used is
_Tzala_, which bears the translation we have given. It is easy to
trace the legend in Berosus, who says that _Thalatth_ (the
_Omorôka_, or Lady of Urka) was the beginning of creation. She was
also Telita [? Melita], the queen of the Moon....
The two memorable twin-births of _Genesis_, that of Cain and Abel,
and of Esau and Jacob, shadow the same idea. The name _Hebel_ is
the same as Eve, and its characteristic seems to be feminine.
"Unto thee shall be his desire," said the Lord God to Cain; "and
thou shalt rule over him." The same language had been uttered to
Eve: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
thee."
Thus the pristine bi-sexual unity of the human Third Root-Race is an axiom n the Secret Doctrine. Its virgin individuals were raised to "Gods," ecause that Race represented their "Divine Dynasty." The moderns are atisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth Race, who created
Gods after their own sexual image, whereas the Gods of primeval mankind ere "male _and_ female."
As stated in Volume I, the Humanities developed coördinately, and on arallel lines with the four Elements, every new Race being hysiologically adapted to meet the additional Element. Our Fifth Race is apidly approaching the Fifth Element--call it interstellar ether, if you ill--which has more to do, however, with psychology than with physics. We en have learned to live in every climate, whether frigid or tropical, but he first two Races had nought to do with climate, nor were they ubservient to any temperature or change therein. And thus, we are taught, en lived down to the close of the Third Root-Race, when eternal spring eigned over the whole Globe, such as is now enjoyed by the inhabitants of
Jupiter; a world, which, as M. Camille Flammarion says:
Is not subject like our own to the vicissitudes of seasons nor to
abrupt alternations of temperature, but is enriched with all the
treasures of eternal spring.(314)
Those Astronomers who maintain that Jupiter is in a molten condition, in ur sense of the term, are invited to settle their dispute with this earned French Astronomer.(315) It must, however, be always borne in mind hat the "eternal spring" referred to is only a condition _cognized as uch by the Jovians_. It is not "spring," _as we know it_. In this eservation is to be found the reconciliation between the two theories ere cited. Both embrace _partial_ truths.
It is thus a universal tradition that mankind has evolved gradually into ts present shape from an almost transparent condition of texture, and either by miracle nor by sexual intercourse. Moreover, this is in full ccord with the ancient Philosophies; from those of Egypt and India, with heir Divine Dynasties, down to that of Plato. And all these universal eliefs must be classed with the "presentiments" and "obstinate onceptions," some of them ineradicable, in popular faiths. Such beliefs, s remarked by Louis Figuier, are:
Frequently the outcome of the wisdom and observation of an
infinite number of generations of men.... [For], a tradition which
has a uniform and universal existence, has all the weight of
scientific testimony.(316)
And there is more than one such tradition in the Paurânic allegories, as as been shown. Moreover, the doctrine that the First Race of mankind was ormed out of the Chhâyâs, or Astral Images, of the Pitris, is fully orroborated in the _Zohar_:
In the _Tzelem_, shadow image of Elohim [the Pitris], He made Adam
(man).(317)
It has been repeatedly urged as an objection that, however high the degree f metaphysical thought in ancient India, yet the old Egyptians had othing but crass idolatry and zoolatry to boast of; Hermes, as alleged, eing the work of Greek Mystics who lived in Egypt. To this, an answer can e given: a direct proof that the Egyptians believed in the Secret
Doctrine is, that it was taught to them at Initiation. Let the objectors pen the _Eclogć Physicoe et Ethicć_ of Stobćus, the Greek compiler of ncient fragments, who lived in the fifth century, A.D. The following is a ranscription by him of an old Hermetic fragment, showing the Egyptian heory of the Soul. Translated word for word, it says:
From one Soul, that of All, spring all the souls, which spread
themselves as if purposely distributed through the world. These
souls undergo many transformations; those which are already
creeping creatures turn into aquatic animals; from these aquatic
animals are derived land animals; and from the latter the birds.
From the beings who live aloft in the air (heaven) men are born.
On reaching that status of men, the souls receive the principle of
(conscious) immortality, become spirits, then pass into the choir
of Gods.
23. THE SELF-BORN WERE THE CHHÂYÂS, THE SHADOWS FROM THE BODIES OF THE
SONS OF TWILIGHT. NEITHER WATER NOR FIRE COULD DESTROY THEM. THEIR SONS
WERE.(318)
This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It eans that the First Root-Race, the "Shadows" of the Progenitors, could ot be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little uman in constitution, they could not be affected by any element--flood or ire. But their "Sons," the Second Root-Race, could be and were so estroyed. As the Progenitors merged wholly in their own Astral Bodies, hich were their progeny, so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, he "Sweat-born." These were the Second Humanity--composed of the most eterogeneous gigantic semi-human monsters--the first attempts of material ature at building human bodies. The ever-blooming lands (Greenland, among thers) of the Second Continent were transformed, successively, from Edens ith their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was ue to the displacement of the great waters of the Globe, to oceans hanging their beds; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this irst great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the Globe during he human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been our.(319) And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.
A Few Words About "Deluges" And "Noahs."
The accounts in the various _Purânas_ about our Progenitors are as ontradictory, _in their details_, as everything else. Thus while, in the
_Rig Veda_, Idâ, or Ilâ, is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu,
Sâyana makes of her a Goddess presiding over the Earth, and the
_Shatapatha Brâhmana_ shows her to be the Manu's daughter, an offspring of
_his sacrifice_, and later on, his (Vaivasvata's) _wife, by whom he begat he race of Manus_. In the _Purânas_ she is, again, Vaivasvata's daughter, et the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) nd the planet Jupiter's (Brihaspati's) wife, Târâ. All this, which seems jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the
Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning s perceivable; all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that he experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the vents in their proper order.
The story as told in the _Mahâbhârata_ strikes the key-note, and yet it eeds to be explained by the secret sense contained in the _Bhagavad
Gîtâ_. It is the _prologue_ to the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While
Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his rotection from a bigger fish. He saves it and places it in a jar; where, rowing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the orthcoming Deluge. This Fish is the well-known Matsya Avatâra, the first
Avatâra of Vishnu, the Dagon(320) of the Chaldćan Xisuthrus, and many ther things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition.
Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is saved along with the even Rishis, according to the _Mahâbhârata_; this, however, being absent rom other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the even Principles, and various other things; for there is again a double ystery involved in this manifold allegory.
We have said elsewhere that the Great Flood had several meanings, and that t referred, as also does the "Fall," to both spiritual and physical, both osmic and terrestrial, events: as above, so it is below. The Ship or
Ark--Navis--in short, being the symbol of the female generative Principle, s typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb; both eing the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the
Sun, or Vishnu, the male Principle, vivifies and fructifies. The First
Cosmic Flood refers to Primordial Creation, or the formation of Heaven and he Earths; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the "Flood," nd the Moon for the "Mother," from whom proceed all the life-germs.(321)
But the Terrestrial Deluge and its story has also its dual application. In ne case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from tter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the uman seed at the end of the Third Race,(322) and in the other to the real nd historical Atlantean Submersion. In both cases the "Host"--or the Manu hich saved the "seed"--is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity etween the Paurânic and other versions; while in the _Shatapatha
Brâhmana_, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of
Manu--a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by
Will (Kriyâshakti), before they were naturally born from the
Hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and were, therefore, regarded as heir creator's "daughters." The Paurânic accounts make Idâ, or Ilâ, the ife of Budha (Wisdom). This version refers to the events of the Atlantean
Flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root-Race rom being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.
This is shown very clearly in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, where Krishna is made o say:
The seven Great Rishis, the _four preceding_ Manus, partaking of
my essence, were born from my mind: from them sprang (was born)
the human race and the world.(323)
Here the four preceding Manus, out of the seven, are the four Races(324) hich have already lived, for Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death aving inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata Manu, the son of Sűrya, he Sun, and the Saviour of our Race, is connected with the "Seed of
Life," both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of ll, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.
The "Deluge" is undeniably a "universal tradition." "Glacial Periods" were umerous, and so were the "Deluges," for various reasons. Stockwell and
Croll enumerate some half-dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges--the arliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000 ears ago.(325) But which was _our_ Deluge? Assuredly the former, the one hich to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples rom the remotest antiquity; the one that finally swept away the last eninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the omparatively small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the greement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its igantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen ound in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C., had othing to do with either the _semi_-universal Deluge, or Noah's Flood--the atter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions--nor even with he submersion of the last Atlantean island; or, at least, having with hem only a moral connection.
Our Fifth Race--the non-initiated portions of it--hearing of many Deluges, ave confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole spect of the Globe in its interchange, and shifting, of land and sea.
We may compare the tradition of the Peruvians that:
The Incas, _seven_ in number, have repeopled the earth after the
deluge.(326)
Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses omewhat the details of the still-preserved legend concerning the American
Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentions _twice seven_ ompanions and the "divine bird" which preceded the boat of the Aztecs, nd thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This as written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is aid to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their randsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldćan Noah, is saved and ranslated "alive" to heaven--like Enoch--with the seven Gods, the Kabirim, r the seven divine Titans. Again the Chinese Yao has _seven_ figures hich sail with him and which he will "animate" when he lands, and use for
"human seed." Osiris, when he enters the Ark, or Solar Boat, takes _seven_
Rays with him, etc.
Sanchuniathon makes the Aletć or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary with
Agruerus, the great Phoenician God--whom Faber sought to identify with
Noah;(327) further, it is suspected that the name "Titan" is derived from
Tit-Ain,--the "fountains of the chaotic abyss"(328) (Tit-Theus, or Tityus s the "divine deluge"); and thus the Titans, who are _seven_, are shown o be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata
Manu.(329)
These Titans are the sons of Kronos, Time, and Rhea, the Earth; and as
Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the even Kabiri are also said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos-Saturn, the
Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his onclusions when he wrote:
I have no doubt of the seven Titans or Cabiri being the same also
as the seven Rishis of the Hindoo mythology (?), who are said to
have escaped in a boat along with Menu the head (?) of the
family.(330)
But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds:
The Hindoos, in their wild _legends_ have variously perverted the
_history_ of the Noachidć (? !), yet it is remarkable that they
seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven:(331) hence
Capt. Wilford very judiciously observes, that, "perhaps, the seven
Menus, the seven Brahmâdicas, with the seven Rishis, are the same,
and make only seven individual persons.(332) The seven Brahmâdicas
were _prajâpatis_, or lords of the _prajas_, or creatures. From
them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the
seven Menus.... These seven grand ancestors of the human race were
... created for the purpose of replenishing the earth with
inhabitants."(333) The mutual resemblance of the Cabiri, the
Titans, the Rishis, and the Noëtic family, is too striking to be
the effect of mere accident.(334)
Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory oncerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural Japhet s on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic Hymns.
According to Orpheus the names of the seven Arkite Titans--whom Faber efuses to identify with the _impious_ Titans, their descendants--were
Koeus, Kroeus, Phorcys, Cronus, Oceanus, Hyperion, and _Iapetus_.
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~},
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK KORONIS~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK KORONIS~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}.(335)
But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetus for ne of Noah's sons? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes nd their mother Mania, according to Arnobius.(336) The Hindűs can herefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and hat Mania is the _female_ Manu of the _Râmâyana_. Mania is Ilâ, or Idâ, he wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom "he begat the race of
Manus." Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth--Sâyana aking her the Goddess of the Earth--and she is but the second edition and epetition of Vâch. Both Idâ and Vâch are turned into males and females;
Idâ becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, the "female Virâj," turning into a woman n order to punish the Gandharvas; one version referring to cosmic and ivine Theogony, the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of
Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins nd disfigured by them.
Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine, common to ll, of which the Israëlites, through Ezra, the author of the modernized
Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with ther people's property, that the Pseudo-Berosus,(337) shows that Titća--of hom Diodorus Siculus(338) makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians--was he _wife of Noah_. Faber calls him the "Pseudo-Berosus," yet accepts the nformation in order to register one proof more that the Pagans have orrowed all their Gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal aterial. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs ossible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, hat it is the Biblical pseudo-personages which are all borrowed from
Pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus as well aware of the source of _Genesis_, and that it bore the same osmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis-Osiris, and the
Ark, and other older "Arkite" symbols. For, Berosus says that "Titća
Magna" was afterwards called Aretia,(339) and worshipped with the Earth; nd this identifies Titća, Noah's consort, with Rhea, the Mother of the
Titans, and with Idâ; both being Goddesses who preside over the Earth, and he Mothers of the Manus and Manes, or Titan-Kabiri. And Titća-Aretia was orshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of
Vesta, Goddess of the Earth.
Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ
Horchiam.(340)
Scarcely an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days fails to mention he sinking of the two continents--often called isles--in one form or nother. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyan Island.
Pausanius and Nonnus both tell how:
From its deep-rooted base the Phlegyan isle
Stern Neptune shook, and plunged beneath the waves
Its impious inhabitants.(341)
Faber felt convinced that the Phlegyan Island was Atlantis. But all such llegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindű tradition about hat great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though igantic, Race, the one which preceded the Âryan. Yet, as just said, like ll other legends, the legend of the Deluge has more than one meaning. It efers, in Theogony, to _pre-cosmic transformations_, to _spiritual orrelations_--however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear--and lso to subsequent Cosmogony; to the great Flood of Waters (Matter) in
Chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit-Rays which were swamped by, nd _perished_ in, the mysterious differentiation--a pre-cosmic mystery, he Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam
Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva preceded
Vaivasvata and the rest.(342)
All this goes to show that the _semi_-universal deluge known to
Geology--the first Glacial Period--must have occurred just at the time llotted to it by the Secret Doctrine: namely, 200,000 years, in round umbers, after the commencement of our Fifth Race, or about the time ssigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first Glacial Period:
_i.e._, about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is ttributed by Geologists and Astronomers to "an extreme eccentricity of he earth's orbit," and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same ource, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the
Earth's axis--a proof of which may be found in the _Book of Enoch_,(343) if he veiled language of the _Purânas_ be not understood--all this should end to show that the Ancients knew something of the "modern discoveries" f Science. Enoch, when speaking of "the great inclination of the Earth," hich "is in travail," is quite significant and clear.
Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, _floating on the waters_ in his
ark; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the
feminine Principle; Noah is the "Spirit" falling into Matter. We
find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a
vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk thereon, _i.e._,
the pure Spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally
imprisoned in Matter. The seventh chapter of _Genesis_ is only
another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads: "And
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters"; in the former it is said: "And
the waters prevailed; ... and the ark went [with Noah, the Spirit]
upon the face of the waters." Thus Noah, if identical with the
Chaldćan Nuah, is the Spirit vivifying Matter, which latter is
Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the
Babylonian legend (the pre-cosmical blended with the terrestrial
event) it is Istar (Ashteroth, or Venus, the Lunar Goddess) who is
shut up in the ark and sends out a _dove_ in search of dry
land.(344)
George Smith notes in the "Tablets," first the creation of the
Moon, and then that of the Sun: "Its beauty and perfection are
extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being
considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world." If
this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm-even were
this latter universal-why should the goddess Istar or Ashteroth,
the Moon, speak of the _creation of the sun_ after the deluge? The
waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir of the
Chaldćan version, or Jebel Djudi, the deluge mountains of the
Arabian legend, or yet Ararat of the Biblical narrative, and even
the Himalaya of the Hindű tradition, and yet not have reached the
Sun; the _Bible_ itself stopped short of such a miracle! It is
evident that the deluge to the people who first recorded it had
another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical
than that of a _universal_ deluge, of which there are no
geological traces whatever.(345)
As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata igures as a _generic_ character, under various circumstances and events, here seems to be no serious objection to the supposition that the first
"great flood" had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it appened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the "Age of Truth," when the Second
Root-Race, "the Manu with bones," made its primeval appearance as the
"Sweat-born."
The Second Flood--the so-called "universal"--which affected the Fourth Root-
Race--now conveniently regarded by Theology as "the accursed race of iants," the Cainites, and the "sons of Ham"--is the flood which was first erceived by Geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the arious legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, t will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given n the Brâhmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first ccount, "there is no God or mortal yet on Earth," when Manu Vaivasvata ands on Himavân, in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him ompany; thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the Sidereal and
Cosmic Flood before the so-called "Creation," the others treat, one of the
Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In he _Shatapatha Brâhmana_, Manu finds that the Flood had swept away all iving creatures, and he alone was left--_i.e._, _the seed of life_ alone emained from the previous Dissolution of the Universe, or Mahâpralaya, fter a "Day of Brahmâ"; and the _Mahâbhârata_ refers simply to the eological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make oom for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three istinct attributes in our Esoteric Cosmogony:(346) as the "Root-Manu," on
Globe A, in the First Round; (_b_) as the "_Seed_ of Life," on Globe D, in he Fourth Round; and (_c_) as the "Seed of Man," at the beginning of very Root-Race--in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencement of the atter witnesses, during the Dvâpara Yuga,(347) the destruction of the ccursed sorcerers;
Of that island [Plato speaks only of its last island] beyond the
Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was
an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of
another _large continent_ [America].
It is this Atlantic Land which was connected with the "White Island," and his White Island was Ruta; but it was not the Atala and the "White Devil" f Colonel Wilford,(348) as already shown. It may well be remarked here hat the Dvâpara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit exts; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that t is just 869,000 years since that destruction took place. Again, these igures are not very widely different from those given by the Geologists, ho place their Glacial Period at 850,000 years ago.
The _Shatapatha_ then tells us that a woman was produced who came to Manu nd declared _herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the ffspring of Manu_. This refers to the physiological transformation of exes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently lear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the eparation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body nto two halves--as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and
Eve--and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he ill be her son, "the flesh of his [and her] flesh and the bone of his
[and her] bone." Let it be also well remembered that not one of our
Orientalists has yet learned to discern in those "contradictions and mazing nonsense," as some call the _Purânas_, that a reference to a Yuga ay mean a Round, a Root-Race, and often a sub-race, as well as form a age torn out of pre-cosmic Theogony. This double and triple meaning is roved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, nder an identical name, while in reality the references are to events ivided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ilâ. She is first epresented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it s said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a acrifice to Mitra and Varuna; but, through a mistake of the officiating
Brâhman, a daughter only was obtained--Ilâ or Idâ. Then, "through the avour of the two deities," her _sex is changed_ and she becomes a man,
Sudyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on; the fable dding that Shiva and his consort were pleased that "she should be a male ne month and a female another." This has a direct reference to the Third
Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned
Orientalists(349) think and have declared that:
Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence
a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.
The "profane" are not told, however, the reason why "a libation of milk," r "a stream of praise," should be _male_ and _female_ by turn: unless, ndeed, there is some "internal evidence" which the Occultists fail to erceive.
In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch-
Shata-Rűpâ, his own daughter--this being the first "euhemerization" of the ual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a hird form--stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root-Life, the Germ from hich spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For, s says Vishnu:
From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:
By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.
But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and
Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our eaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may ot raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri
Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, nd we will invite them to read their own _Purânas_ a little more arefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat gain, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent llegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works.
One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of he Second Race, which is called the "Sweat-born." This allegory is egarded as a fairy-tale, and yet it conceals a psycho-physiological henomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.
But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to sk:
COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?
To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all cientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata-
Manu Man, _i.e._, the male and female entity already separated into istinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have ived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the eological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not xist for the _primeval, ethereal_ Man of the Occult Teachings. _The whole ssue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends pon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body ithin the Physical_, the former independent of the latter. Paul d'Assier, he Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,(350) not to peak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the modern
"Spiritualists" and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this act in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.
The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms nd disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which--owing to its eing the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth
Round is the middle-point of the Life Cycle allotted to it--were far more errible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds--the
Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal onditions--Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 ears.(351) This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral nd vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the heory of a "boneless," purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which nows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic
Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable rounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always xisted on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a issue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought orward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind
(read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human eings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are onsequently, the best of their kind.(352)
The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother-
Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They aintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must ave been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with successive loods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters nd seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human ife and organization, such _as is assigned by them_ to early mankind.
Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, or the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and
Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, r the Silurian Age itself.
Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new ransformation. They had passed their phases of "immetalization," of plant nd animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for heir human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers o but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by he biblical dead-letter, form, "Lord-God"-like, or as Pygmalion in the
Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a "Living
Soul" into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its
Monad, and needed but a "coating." Pygmalion, who fails to _animate his tatue_, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazarćan Gnostics, who fails to construct
"a human soul in the creature," are, as conceptions, far more hilosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead-letter sense, or he biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches pontaneous generation--after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the eed of life on the Earth--shows the Lower Angels able to construct
_physical_ man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved he Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to volve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, rotoplasmic, model.
This will again be objected to; "spontaneous generation" is an exploded heory, we shall be told. Pasteur's experiments disposed of it twenty ears ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ught to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven mpossible in our present world-period and actual conditions--which the
Occultists deny--still it would be no demonstration that it could not have aken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the
Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be nteresting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of pecies and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both he biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur's observations, owever, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud eject their importance, and, in fact, show that they have none. The uestion is so far left _sub judice_, as well as the other as to when, at hat period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hćckel's
Moneron--a pinch of salt!--has solved the problem of the origin of life; it s simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh-pooh the heory of the "Self-existent," the "Self-born Heavenly Man," represented s an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, n his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most earnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither nimal nor plant, but both, and that it has _no ancestors_ among either of hese, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for ll organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are _their wn ancestors_. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical lso; too much so, even for the Occultist.
If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now--owing, perhaps, to ccumulated material on hand--so as to almost escape detection, it was, evertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the imple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature roceeds. The scale-bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the
Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are he transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom ound in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the bove enumerated "antediluvian" monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria ithout shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and eproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the rchitects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings f Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the ame law in his growth, _i.e._, gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced erson would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an
Ethereal--or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly-like Form, evolved y Gods or natural "Forces," which grew, condensed throughout millions of ges, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it ettled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man--rather than elieve him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some nknown anthropoid ancestor.
Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first ppearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to _Knowledge_
(Dec. 23, 1881):
Evolution--rather nature, in the light of evolution--has only been
studied for some _twenty-five years or so_. That is, of course, a
mere fractional space in the history of human thought.
And just because of this we do not lose all hope that Materialistic
Science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept the Esoteric
Teachings--if even at first divorced from their (to Science) too etaphysical elements.
Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? As
Processor Huxley says:
Each such answer to the great question [man's real place in
nature], invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder,
if not by himself, to be _complete and final_, remains in high
authority and esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for
twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a
_mere approximation to the truth--tolerable chiefly on account of
the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly
intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their
successors_.(353)
Will this eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his "Pithecoid
Ancestry" being assignable to the list of "wholly intolerable beliefs," in he "larger knowledge" of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere "rising o the civilized state" does not account for the evolution of form.
In the same letter, "The Evolution of Man," Dr. Wilson makes other strange onfessions. Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to
_Knowledge_, by "G. M.":
"Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If
not, why not?"... If we refuse to admit [as science does] that man
was created a perfect being, and then became degraded, there
exists only another supposition--that of evolution. If man has
arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is
evolution. _We do not yet know because such knowledge is difficult
to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same influences
as those of lower animals._ But there is little doubt that
elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies
"evolution," and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man's
evolution cannot be doubted; the ever-widening sphere of thought
has sprung from small and rude beginnings, like language itself.
But man's ways of life, his power of adaptation to his
surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the
facts and course of his "evolution" very difficult to trace.
This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in heir affirmations. But why is evolution impossible, if "man was created a erfect being, and then became degraded"? At best it can only apply to the
_outward, physical man_. As remarked in _Isis Unveiled_, Darwin's volution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as or everything else, from universals. The Aristotle-Baconian method may ave its advantages, but it has, undeniably, already demonstrated its efects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from universals downwards, re now shown more learned, in the light of Modern Science, than was
Aristotle. For the latter opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution f the Earth and even of its rotundity, when writing:
Almost all those who affirm that they have studied heaven in its
uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but the
philosophers of the Italian School, otherwise called the
Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary.
This, because the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and followed the deductive ethod. Whereas Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained f those who taught that:
The centre of our system was occupied by the sun, and the earth
was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around the same
centre, produces night and day.(354)
The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and ow expounded, is the only one, which--without falling into the absurdity f a "miraculous" man created out of the dust of the earth, or the still reater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime-salt, the ex- rotoplasmic Moneron--can account for his appearance on Earth.
_Analogy_ is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne's thread hat can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her rimal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, nd no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having xhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon hich she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of "fire-mist"--as it olls through ćons of time in the interstellar spaces--becoming gradually a
Planet, a self-luminous Globe, to settle into a _man-bearing_ World or
Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock-bound
Globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non-nucleated elly-speck that becomes the Sarcode(355) of the Moneron, then passes from ts protistic state(356) into the form of an animal, to grow into a igantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times; then dwindling again nto the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to ropical regions, and the universally common lizard(357)--if we can onceive all this, then how can man alone escape the general law? "There ere giants on earth in those days" says _Genesis_, repeating the tatement of all the other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded n an anthropological and physiological fact.
And, as the hard-shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly-speck, a
"thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive ondition," so was the outward covering of primitive man, his early "coat f skin," _plus_ an immortal spiritual Monad, and a psychic temporary form nd body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man, almost mpervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just hat the Hćckelian Moneron is, strictly an "organism without organs," an ntirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within, nd a human form only outwardly.
No man of Science has the right, in this century, to find the figures of he Brâhmans in the question of chronology preposterous; for their own alculations often exceed by far the claims made by Esoteric Science. This ay easily be shown.
Helmholtz calculated that the cooling of our Earth from a temperature of
2,000° to 200° Cent. must have occupied a period of no less than
350,000,000 years. Western Science (including Geology) seems generally to llow our Globe an age of about 500,000,000 years altogether. Sir William
Thomson, however, limits the appearance of the earliest vegetable life to
100,000,000 years ago--a statement respectfully contradicted by the Archaic
Records. Speculations, furthermore, vary daily in the domains of Science.
Meanwhile, some Geologists are very much opposed to such limitation.
Volger calculates:
That the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us
must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years.
Both time and space are infinite and eternal.
The earth, as a material existence, is indeed infinite; the
changes only which it has undergone can be determined by finite
periods of time....
We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in
space, which no astronomer doubts, but also in time, without
beginning or end; that it never was created, and is
imperishable.(358)
Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Âryan Occultists, e may be told, knew nothing of these later speculations. As Coleman says:
They were even ignorant of the globular form of our earth.
To this the _Vishnu Purâna_ contains a reply, which has forced certain
Orientalists to open their eyes very wide.
The sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and
over against mid-night, in all the Dvîpas [Continents], Maitreya.
But the rising and the setting _of the sun_ being perpetually
opposite _to each other_,--and, in the same way, all the cardinal
points, and so the cross-points, Maitreya, people speak of the
rising of the sun where they see it; and where the sun disappears,
there, _to them_, is his setting. Of the sun, which is always _in
one and the same place_, there is neither setting nor rising; for
what is called rising and setting are _only_ the seeing and the
not seeing the sun.(359)
To this Fitzedward Hall remarks:
The heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is
contradicted, however, a little further on.(360)
Contradicted _purposely_, because it was a secret temple-teaching. Martin
Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to alumniate the Âryans any longer.
To return to the chronology of the Geologists and Anthropologists. We are fraid Science has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the iews of the Occultists in this direction. Except that "of man, the ighest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary trata; only in the uppermost, the so-called alluvial layer," is all that an be urged, so far. That man was _not the last member in the mammalian amily_, but the _first_ in _this_ Round, is something that Science will e forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been ooted in France on very high authority.
That man can be shown to have lived in the Mid-Tertiary Period, and in a eological age _when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the ow known species of mammals_, is a statement that Science _cannot_ deny nd which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.(361) But even supposing is existence in the Eocene Period is not yet demonstrated, what period of ime has elapsed since the Cretaceous Period? We are aware of the fact hat only the boldest Geologists dare place man further back than the
Miocene Age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and eriods since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation nd wrangling, Science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the ubject being compelled to answer to the question: "We do not know." This ught to show that the men of Science are no greater authorities in this atter than are the profane. If, according to Professor Huxley, "the time epresented by the Coal formation alone would be six millions of ears,"(362) how many more millions would be required to cover the time rom the Jurassic Period, or the middle of the so-called Reptilian
Age--when the Third Race appeared--up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the
Fourth Race was submerged?(363)
The writer is aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages f the Globe and Man are the most liberal, have always had the shyer ajority against them. But this proves very little, since the majority arely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. Harvey stood alone or many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers were n danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to his day--in the Encyclopćdias--along with Cagliostro and St. Germain, as a harlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have indicated Mesmer's claims, and that Mesmerism under its new name of
"Hypnotism"--a false nose on a very old face--is accepted by Science, it oes not strengthen our respect for that majority, when we see the ease nd unconcern with which its members treat of "Hypnotism," of "telepathic mpacts," and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they ad believed therein since the days of Solomon, and had not, only a few ears ago, called its votaries lunatics and impostors!(364)
The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years hich Esoteric Philosophy claims as the age of sexual and physiological ankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says: "_The Mind-born, the oneless, gave being to the Will-born with bones_;"--adding that this took lace in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago--has yet a hance of being accepted by future Scientists.
As far as nineteenth century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even y some personal friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the hifting conclusions of Science, that such a statement is absurd. How much ore improbable will appear our further assertion, viz., that the ntiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years beyond this gain. For, although the exact figures are withheld--and it is out of the uestion to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine Races ith _certainty_ to either the early Secondary, or the Primary Ages of
Geology--one thing is clear, that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which mbrace the duration of _sexual, physical_, man, have to be enormously ncreased if the whole process of spiritual, astral and physical evelopment is taken into account. Many Geologists, indeed, consider that he duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of uch an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions hatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene man, if evidence for his eality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date arries us far back into the Secondary or "Reptilian" Age, may refer to M. e Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote ntiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root-Races the case is very ifferent. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic cid, that escaped from the soil, or was held in suspension in the tmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal bstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be sked, could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in eality, out of court. Such terrestrial conditions as were then operative ad no touch with the plane on which the evolution of the _ethereal stral_ Races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological periods, has he spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of hysical evolution--the plane of gross material causation. In those early ges, _astral_ evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the stral and the physical,(365) though developing on parallel lines, had no irect point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow-like
_ethereal_ man is related by virtue of his organization--if such it can be alled--only to that plane from which the substance of his Upâdhi is erived.
There are things, perhaps, that may have escaped the far-seeing--but not
_all-seeing_--eyes of our modern Naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who ndertakes to furnish the missing links. Agnostic speculative thinkers ave to choose between the version given by the Secret Doctrine of the
East, and the hopelessly materialistic Darwinian and Biblical accounts of he origin of man; between no soul and no spiritual evolution, and the
Occult doctrine which repudiates "special creation" and the "Evolutionist" nthropogenesis equally.
Again, to take up the question of "spontaneous generation"; life--as
Science shows--has not always reigned on this terrestrial plane. There was time when even the Hćckelian Moneron--that simple globule of
Protoplasm--had not yet appeared at the bottom of the seas. Whence came the
_Impulse_ which caused the molecules of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc., to roup themselves into the Urschleim of Oken, that organic "Slime," now hristened Protoplasm? What were the prototypes of the Monera? They, at east, could not have fallen in meteorites from other Globes already ormed, Sir William Thomson's wild theory to this effect notwithstanding.
And even if they had so fallen; if our Earth got its supply of life-germs rom other Planets; who, or _what_, had carried them on to these Planets?
Here, again, unless the Occult Teaching is accepted, we are compelled once ore to face a _miracle_--to accept the theory of a personal, nthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as ormulated by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as hey degrade the ideal of an infinite Universal Deity, before whose ncomprehensible awful grandeur the highest human intellect feels dwarfed.
Let not the modern Philosopher, while arbitrarily placing himself on the ighest pinnacle of human intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself piritually and intuitionally so far below the conceptions of even the ncient Greeks, themselves on a far lower level, in these respects, than he Philosophers of Eastern Âryan antiquity. Hylozoism, when hilosophically understood, is the highest aspect of Pantheism. It is the nly possible escape from idiotic Atheism based on lethal materiality, and he still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the Monotheists; etween which it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. Hylozoism
_demands_ absolute Divine Thought, which would _pervade_ the numberless ctive, creating Forces, or "Creators," which _Entities_ are moved by, and ave their being in, from, and through, that Divine Thought; the latter, evertheless, having no more personal concern in them or _their_ reations, than the Sun has in the sun-flower and its seeds, or in egetation in general. Such active "Creators" are known to exist and are elieved in, because perceived and sensed by the _Inner_ Man in the
Occultist. Thus the latter says that an Absolute Deity, having to be nconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as an ctive, creating, one living God, without immediate degradation of the deal.(366) A Deity that manifests in Space and Time--these two being imply the forms of THAT which is the Absolute ALL--can be but a fractional art of the whole. And since that "All" cannot be divided in its bsoluteness, therefore that _sensed_ Creator (we say Creators) can be at est but the mere _aspect_ thereof. To use the same metaphor--inadequate to xpress the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand--these Creators re like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of, nd unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become he instrumental media every spring--the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth--in ructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its ifferentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that even he moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct reation would be quite unbecoming to God--{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI AND YPOGEGRAMMENI~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI AND YPOGEGRAMMENI~}. Plato and other hilosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to reation--{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH DASIA AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}. This Cudworth calls "Hylozoism." As old Zeno s credited by Laërtius with having said:
Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal
principles; perfecting and containing those several things which
in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to
that from which it was secreted.(367)
Let us return to our subject, pausing to think over it. Indeed, if there as vegetable life during those periods that could feed on the then eleterious elements; and if there was even animal life whose aquatic rganization could be developed, notwithstanding the supposed scarcity of
Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its incipient physical orm, _i.e._, in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and ts surroundings? Besides, Science confesses that it knows nothing of the eal length of geological periods.
But the chief question before us is, whether it is quite certain that, rom the time of that which is called the Azoic Age, there ever was such n atmosphere as that hypothesized by the Naturalists. Not all the
Physicists agree with this idea. Were the writer anxious to corroborate he teachings of the Secret Doctrine by exact Science, it would be easy to how, on the admission of more than one Physicist, that the atmosphere has hanged little, if at all, since the first condensation of the ceans--_i.e._, since the Laurentian Period, the Pyrolithic Age. Such, at ny rate, is the opinion of Blanchard, S. Meunier, and even of Bischof--as he experiments of the last Scientist with basalts have shown. For were we o take the word of the majority of Scientists as to the quantity of eadly gases, and of elements entirely saturated with Carbon and Nitrogen, n which the vegetable and animal kingdoms are shown to have lived, hriven, and developed, then one would have to come to the curious onclusion that there were, in those days, oceans of _liquid carbonic cid_, instead of water. With such an element, it becomes doubtful whether he Ganoids, or even the Primitive Trilobites themselves could live in the ceans of the Primary Age--let alone in those of the Silurian, as shown by
Blanchard.
The conditions that were necessary for the earliest Race of mankind, owever, require no elements, whether simple or compound. That which was tated at the beginning is maintained. The spiritual ethereal Entity which ived in Spaces unknown to Earth, before the first sidereal "jelly-speck" volved in the Ocean of crude Cosmic Matter--billions and trillions of ears before our globular speck in infinity, called Earth, came into being nd generated the Monera in its drops, called oceans--needed no "elements."
The "Manu with soft bones," could well dispense with Calcium Phosphate, as e had no bones, save in a figurative sense. And while even the Monera, owever homogeneous their organism, still required physical conditions of ife that would help them toward further evolution, the Being which became
Primitive Man and the "Father of Man," after evolving on planes of xistence undreamed of by Science, could well remain impervious to any tate of atmospheric conditions around him. The primitive ancestor, in
Brasseur de Bourbourg's _Popol Vuh_, who--in the Mexican legends--could act nd live with equal ease under ground and water as upon the earth, answers nly to the Second and early Third Races in our texts. And if the three ingdoms of Nature were so different in pre-diluvian ages, why should not an have been composed of materials and combinations of atoms now entirely nknown to Physical Science? The plants and animals now known, in almost umberless varieties and species, have all developed, according to cientific hypotheses, from primitive and far fewer organic forms. Why hould not the same have occurred in the case of man, the elements, and he rest? As the Commentary says:
_Universal Genesis starts from the One, breaks into Three, then Five, and inally culminates in Seven, to return into Four, Three, and One._
Stanza VII. From The Semi-Divine Down To The First Human Races.
24. The higher Creators reject in their pride the Forms evolved by
the "Sons of Yoga." 25. They will not incarnate in the early Egg-
born. 26. They select the later Androgynes. 27. The first man
endowed with mind.
24. THE SONS OF WISDOM, THE SONS OF NIGHT,(368) READY FOR REBIRTH, CAME
DOWN. THEY SAW THE VILE(369) FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD(370) (_A_). "WE CAN
CHOOSE," SAID THE LORDS, "WE HAVE WISDOM." SOME ENTERED THE CHHÂYÂS. SOME
PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE FOURTH.(371) FROM THEIR OWN RŰPA
THEY FILLED(372) THE KÂMA.(373) THOSE WHO ENTERED BECAME ARHATS. THOSE WHO
RECEIVED BUT A SPARK, REMAINED DESTITUTE OF KNOWLEDGE;(374) THE SPARK
BURNED LOW (_B_). THE THIRD REMAINED MIND-LESS. THEIR JÎVAS(375) WERE NOT
READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN.(376) THEY BECAME NARROW-
HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. "IN THESE SHALL WE DWELL," SAID THE LORDS OF
THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK WISDOM (_C_).
This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil, he so-called Fall of the Angels, and the many problems that have puzzled he brains of the Philosophers from the time that the memory of man began.
It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities or intellectual apacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to he incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the ćons which followed. The est explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the ubject, will now be attempted.
(_a_) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race n this Round, _Man_--if the ever-changing forms that clothed the Monads uring the first three Rounds and the first two and a half Races of the resent Round can be given that misleading name--is, so far, only an animal ntellectually. It is only in the present _midway_ Round that he entirely evelops in himself the Fourth Principle as a fit vehicle for the Fifth.
But Manas will be relatively _fully_ developed only in the following
Round, when it will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until he end of the Rounds. As Christian Schoettgen says in _Horć Hebraicć_, tc., the first terrestrial Adam "had only the breath of life,"--Nephesh,
_but not the living Soul_.
(_b_) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues eft--as the Australians, now fast dying out, and some African and Oceanic ribes--are meant. "They were not ready" signifies that the Karmic evelopment of these Monads had not yet fitted them to occupy the forms of en destined for incarnation in higher intellectual Races. But this is xplained later on.
(_c_) The _Zohar_ speaks of "Black Fire," which is Absolute Light--Wisdom.
To those who, prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: But the
Asuras are the rebel Devas, the opponents of the Gods--hence Devils, and he Spirits of Evil--it is answered: Esoteric Philosophy admits neither ood nor evil _per se_, as existing independently in Nature. The cause for oth is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or ontrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and assions. There are no Devils or the utterly depraved, as there are no
Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be Spirits of Light and of
Darkness; thus Lucifer--the Spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and
Freedom of Thought--is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man o find his way through the rocks and sand-banks of Life, for Lucifer is he Logos in his highest, and the "Adversary" in his lowest aspect--both of hich are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of
Christ, makes the Logos, the Word, "the _first-born brother of Satan_, and
_the first of all creatures_."(377)
The _Vishnu Purâna_ describes these primeval creatures (Tiryaksrotas) with
_crooked_ digestive canals:
[They were] endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in
ignorance _about their kind and nature_.(378)
The twenty-eight kinds of Badhas, or "imperfections," do not apply, as
Wilson thought, to the animals now known, which are specified by him, for hey did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain from he said work, in which the first created are the "five-fold (immovable) orld," minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals,
Tiryaksrotas--the monsters of the Abyss, slain by the "Lords," of Stanzas
II and III; then the Űrdhvasrotas, the happy celestial beings, which feed n ambrosia; and lastly, the Arvâksrotas, human beings--Brahmâ's seventh
"creation" so-called. But these "creations," including the latter, did not ccur on this Globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not
Brahmâ who creates things and men on this Earth, but the Chief and Lord of he Prajâpatis, the Lords of Being and terrestrial Creation. "Obeying the ommand of Brahmâ," Daksha--the synthesis, or the aggregate, of the
Terrestrial Creators and Progenitors, the Pitris included--made superior nd inferior (vara and avara) things, "referring to putra" progeny, and
"_bipeds_ and _quadrupeds_, and subsequently, by his will [referring to he Sons of Will and Yoga], gave birth to females"(379)--_i.e._, separated he androgynes. Here, again, we have "bipeds" or men, created before the
"quadrupeds" as in the Esoteric Teachings.
Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first Beings created rom the "Body of Night," while the Pitris issue from that of "Twilight"; he "Gods" being placed by Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, between the wo, and shown to evolve from the "Body of the Day," it is easy to iscover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the
Arvâksrota coming from the "Body of the Dawn"; and elsewhere, man is again eferred to, when the Creator of the World, Brahmâ, is shown "creating ierce beings, who were denominated Bhűtas, and eaters of flesh," or as he text has it, "fiends, frightful from being monkey-coloured and arnivorous."(380) Whereas the Râkshasas are generally translated by "evil
Spirits" and "enemies of the Gods," which identifies them with the Asuras.
In the _Râmâyana_, when Hanumân is reconnoitering the enemy in Lankâ, he inds there Râkshasas, some hideous, "while some were beautiful to look pon," and, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, there is a direct reference to their ecoming the Saviours of "Humanity," or of Brahmâ.
The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are two-edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good.
When combined with selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a ootstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the ttainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian urposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. At all vents, the absence of self-consciousness and intellect will make of man n idiot, a brute in human form. Brahmâ is Mahat, the Universal Mind; ence the too selfish among the Râkshasas showing the desire to become ossessed of it all--to "devour" Mahat. The allegory is transparent.
At any rate, Esoteric Philosophy identifies the pre-Brâhmanical Asuras,
Rudras,(381) Râkshasas and all the "Adversaries" of the Gods in the llegories, with the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man f the Third Race, made him _consciously_ immortal. They are, then, during he cycle of Incarnations, the true _dual_ Logos--the conflicting and two- aced Divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that follows, and the next
Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, but he writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession f Races, however, the Commentary says:
_First come the __SELF-EXISTENT__ on this Earth. They are the
__"__Spiritual Lives__"__ projected by the absolute __WILL__ and __LAW__, t the Dawn of every Rebirth of the Worlds. These Lives are the divine
__"__Shishta__"__ [the Seed-Manus, or the Prajâpatis and the Pitris]._
From these proceed:
1. _The First Race, the __"__Self-born,__"__ which are the [Astral]
Shadows of their Progenitors. The Body was devoid of all understanding
[mind, intelligence, and will]. The Inner Being [the Higher Self, or
Monad], though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The ink, the Manas, was not there as yet._
2. _From the First [Race] emanated the Second, called the __"__Sweat- orn__"_(_382_)_ and the __"__Boneless.__"__ This is the Second Root-Race, ndowed by the Preservers [Râkshasas]_(_383_)_ and the Incarnating Gods
[the Asuras and Kumâras] with the first primitive and weak Spark [the germ f intelligence]...._
And from these in turn proceeds:
3. _The Third Root-Race, the __"__Two-fold__"__ [Androgynes]. The first
Races thereof are Shells, till the last is __"__inhabited__"__ [i.e., nformed] by the Dhyânîs._
The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of tself, at its beginning, the Third, Androgyne Race by an analogous, but lready more complicated process. As described in the Commentary, the very arliest of that Race were:
_The __"__Sons of Passive Yoga.__"_(_384_)_ They issued from the Second
Manushyas [Human Race], and became oviparous. The emanations that came out f their bodies during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small pheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft, egg-like vehicle, radually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke and the oung human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our Race._
This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is trictly on the lines of evolutionary analogy, which Science perceives in he development of the living animal species. First the moneron-like rocreation by "self-division"; then, after a few stages, the oviparous, s in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; then, inally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their oung ones.
If the term "ovoviviparous" is applied to some fish and reptiles, which atch their eggs within their bodies, why should it not be applied to emale mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in which, after mpregnation, the development of the foetus takes place, is an egg.
At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with suddenly created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the "apple," hen even the marsupial, the earliest of mammals, is not placental yet.
Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as nveiled by Science, is a brilliant confirmation of Esoteric Ethnology, It s only necessary to tabulate the data in order to prove our ssertion.(385)
I. Fission.
(_a_) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of Protoplasm, nown as Moneron or Amoeba, into two.
(_b_) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell- ucleus splits into two sub-nuclei, which either develop within the riginal cell-wall or burst it, and multiply outside as independent ntities. (_Cf._ the First Root-Race.)
II. Budding.
A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and inally parts company, growing to the size of the original organism;
_e.g._, many vegetables, the sea-anemone, etc. (_Cf._ the Second Root-
Race.)(386)
III. Spores.
A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a ulticellular organism reproducing the features of the latter, _e.g._,
Bacteria and mosses.
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism.
Male and female organs inhering in the same individual; _e.g._, the ajority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (_Cf._
Second and early Third Root-Races.)
V. True Sexual Union.
(_Cf._ later Third Root-Race.)
We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of he human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the _Spiritual_, Dhyânîs had become
"intellectual" through their contact with Matter, because they had already eached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect hich enabled them to become independent and self-conscious entities, _on his plane_ of Matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic effects.
They _entered_ those who were "ready," and became the Arhats, or Sages, lluded to above. This needs explanation.
It does not mean that Monads entered Forms in which other Monads already ere. They were "Essences," "Intelligences," and Conscious Spirits;
Entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more eveloped Matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the
Universal Essence; but their "Egos," or Manas (since they are called
Mânasaputra, born of Mahat, or Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human xperiences to become _all-wise_, and be able to start on the returning scending cycle. The Monads are not _discrete_ principles, limited or onditioned, but rays from that one universal _absolute_ Principle. The ntrance of one ray of sunlight following another through the same perture into a dark room will not constitute _two_ rays, but one ray ntensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become _perfect_ Septenary Being before the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round.
Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it art of the evolutionary law that the Fifth Principle (Manas), should eceive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such rematurely developed intellects (on the _spiritual_ plane) in our Race re _abnormal_; they are those whom we have called the "Fifth-Rounders."
Even in the coming Seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while ur four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be nly proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the piritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was eached during the Fourth Root-Race. Thus, those who were "half ready," ho received "but a spark," constitute the average humanity which have to cquire their intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution, fter which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the
"Sons of Wisdom." While those which "were not ready" at all, the latest
Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower nimal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the "narrow- rained" of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees f intellectuality among the various races of men--the savage Bushman and he European--even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are ery little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly isinherited, or the "unfavoured," as some may think--nothing of the kind.
They are simply those _latest arrivals_ among the human Monads, which
"were not ready"; which have to evolve during the present Round, as also n the three remaining Globes--hence on four different planes of being--so s to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth
Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in his connection. The Monads of the lowest specimens of humanity--the
"narrow-brained"(387) savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the
Australian--_had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more avoured brethren in intelligence had_. The former are spinning out Karma nly now; the latter are burdened with past, present and future Karma. In his respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of
_civilized countries_.
Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and ind out how far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the ossibility of, or even distinctly corroborate, such wild notions as are ound in our Anthropogenesis.
Recapitulating that which has been said, we find that the Secret Doctrine laims for man: (1) a polygenetic origin; (2) a variety of modes of rocreation before humanity fell into the ordinary method of generation;
(3) that the evolution of animals--of the mammalians at any rate--follows hat of man instead of preceding it. And this is diametrically opposed to he now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent of man rom an animal ancestor.
Let us, giving to Cćsar what is Cćsar's, examine, first of all, the hances for the polygenetic theory among the men of Science.
Now the majority of the Darwinian Evolutionists incline to a polygenetic xplanation of the origin of races. On this particular question, however, s in many other cases, Scientists are at sixes and sevens; they agree to isagree.
Does man descend from one _single couple_ or from _several
groups_--monogenism or polygenism? As far as one can venture to
pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses [?] will never be
known [?], the second hypothesis is far the most probable.(388)
Abel Hovelacque, in his _Science of Language_, comes to a similar onclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.
In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H.
Flower remarked on this question:
The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of
the characters and distribution of the races of man ... is a
modification of the monogenistic hypothesis[!]. Without entering
into the difficult question of the method of man's first
appearance upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity,
at all events as measured by any historical standard. _If we had
any approach to a complete palćontological record, the history of
man could be re-constructed, but nothing of the kind is
forthcoming._
Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the
Physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to Occult peculations. The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and still emain, polygenists. Such "intellectual giants" as John Crawford and James
Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their day here was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It as only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of nity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphći.
As regards the other question, of the priority of man to the animals in he order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really he Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very mpossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for he three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint, ll the lower kingdoms, save the mineral--which is light itself, rystallized and immetallized--from plants to the creatures which preceded he first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical tructures by means of the "cast-off dust" of those minerals, and _the efuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which hey fed and which gave them their outer bodies_. In his turn also, man rew more physical, by reäbsorbing into his system that which he had given ut, and which became transformed in the living animal crucibles through hich it had passed, owing to Nature's alchemical transmutations. There ere animals in those days of which our Modern Naturalists have never reamed; and the stronger became physical material man--the giants of those imes--the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne Humanity eparated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child-bearing engines, it eased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of he body. But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on he human plane--before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say--all this ital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the roduction of the first mammal-animal forms. Evolution is _an eternal ycle of becoming_, we are taught; and Nature never leaves an atom unused.
Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become
Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are irected towards one point--_Man_. The progress in the succession of eings, says Agassiz:
Consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and
among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing resemblance
to man. Man is the end towards which all _animal_ creation has
tended from the first appearance of the first palćozoic
fishes.(389)
Just so; but the "palćozoic fishes" are at the lower curve of the arc of he evolution of _forms_, and this Round began with Astral Man, the
_reflection_ of the Dhyân Chohans, called the "Builders." Man is the
_alpha and the omega_ of objective creation. As said in _Isis Unveiled_:
All things had their origin in Spirit--evolution having originally
begun from above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse,
as taught in the Darwinian theory.(390)
Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent Naturalist above quoted s one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of volution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern heory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.
But in citing the passage from Agassiz' work with approval, it must not be nderstood that the Occultists are making any _concession_ to the theory hich derives man from the animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he receded the mammalia is obviously not impugned by the consideration that he latter follow in the wake of man.
25. HOW DID THE MÂNASA, THE SONS OF WISDOM, ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF-
BORN.(391) THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE SWEAT-BORN.(392) THEY ARE
NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE FIRST EGG-BORN.(393)
To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological dea: that of the Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret
Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to incarnate in _half- eady_ physical bodies seem to be more connected with physiological than etaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. The
Incarnating Powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.
By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the continent n which the first Androgynes, the Third Root-Race, separated, the writer hose, on geographical considerations, that of "Lemuria," invented by Mr.
P. L. Sclater. It was only later that, on reading Hćckel's _Pedigree of
Man_, it was found that the German "Animalist" had chosen the name for his ate continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution o Lemuria, but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that
"cradle of mankind," he pictures the gradual transformation of the nthropoid mammal into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in
America man sprang from a branch of the platyrrhine apes, _independently_ f the origination of the African and Asian root-stocks from the old world atarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this uestion, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of
Esoteric Philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments f attention to the various consecutive modes of procreation according to he laws of Evolution.
Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub-races of the
Third Human Race, by those who found themselves endowed with the "Sacred
Fire" from the Spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the sychic and spiritual Parents of Man, as the lower Pitri Devatâs (the
Pitris) were the Progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy
Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as "towering iants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the ysteries of Heaven and Earth." Have they likewise _fallen_, if, then, ncarnation was the "Fall"?
Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the hief Gods and Heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later ntiquity, are the _deified images of these Men of the Third_. The days of heir physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have qually survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, he dual nature shown in these Gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to heir highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were he Pre-Adamite and the Divine Races, with which even Theology, in whose ight they are all the "accursed Cainite races," now begins to busy tself.
But the action of the "Spiritual Progenitors" of that Race has first to be isposed of. A very difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with egard to Shlokas 26 and 27.
26. WHEN THE SWEAT-BORN PRODUCED THE EGG-BORN, THE TWO-FOLD,(394) THE
MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: "NOW SHALL WE
CREATE."
Why "now"--and not earlier? This the following Shloka explains.
27. THE THIRD RACE BECAME THE VÂHAN(395) OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT
CREATED SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, BY KRIYÂSHAKTI IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY
FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS....
How did they "create," since the "Lords of Wisdom" are identical with the
Hindű Devas, who refuse to "create"? Clearly they are the Kumâras of the
Hindű Pantheon and _Purânas_, those Elder Sons of Brahmâ:
Sanandana and the other sous of Vedhas [who], previously created
by him ... without desire or passion, [remained chaste] inspired
with holy wisdom ... and undesirous of progeny.(396)
The power, by which they first created, is that which has since caused hem to be degraded from their high status to the position of Evil
Spirits, of Satan and his Host--created in their turn by the unclean fancy f exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyâshakti, that mysterious and divine ower, latent in the _will_ of every man, which, if not called to life, uickened and developed by Yoga-training, remains dormant in 999,999 men ut of a million, and so gets atrophied. This power is explained in the
"Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,"(397) as follows:
_Kriyâshakti_:--The mysterious _power of thought_ which enables it
to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own
inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest
itself _externally_, if one's attention [and _will_] is deeply
concentrated upon it. Similarly, an intense volition will be
followed by the desired result.
A Yogî generally performs his wonders by means of Ichchhâshakti
(Will-power) and Kriyâshakti.
The Third Race had thus created the so-called "Sons of Will and Yoga," or he "Ancestors"--the _Spiritual_ Forefathers--of all the subsequent and resent Arhats, or Mahâtmâs, in a truly _immaculate_ way. They were indeed
_created_, not _begotten_, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who ere generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the "Fall of Man."
For Creation is but the result of Will acting on phenomenal Matter, the alling forth out of it the Primordial Divine Light and Eternal Life. They ere the "Holy Seed Grain" of the future Saviours of Humanity.
Here we have to again make a break, in order to explain certain difficult oints, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such nterruptions.(398)
The order of the evolution of the Human Races stands as follows in the
Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and has already been given:
_The first men were Chhâyâs (1); the Second, the __"__Sweat-born__"__ (2); he Third, __"__Egg-born,__"__ and the holy Fathers born by the power of
Kriyâshakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapâni [Chenresi]
(4)._
Of course such primeval modes of procreation--by the evolution of one's mage; through drops of perspiration; after that by Yoga; and then by what eople will regard as magic (Kriyâshakti)--are doomed beforehand to be egarded as fairy-tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending ith the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything hich may not be shown to be natural. This must be proven.
1. Chhâyâ-birth, or that primeval mode of _sexless_ procreation--the First
Race having _oozed out_, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris--is inted at in a cosmic allegory in the _Purânas_.(399) It is the beautiful llegory and story of Sanjńâ, the daughter of Vishvakarman--married to the
Sun, who, "unable to endure the fervours of her Lord," gave him her Chhâyâ
(shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle o perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the Chhâyâ to e his wife, begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith--an _ethereal hadow_ also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster illions of years ago.
But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of he Paurânic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialized orms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain ediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid--the
"creation" of the First Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind f procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the ystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any reater--while it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true etaphysical thinker--than the mystery of the conception of the foetus, its estation and birth as a child, as we now know it.
Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the _Purânas_ bout the "Sweat-born."
2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogî, eminent in holy wisdom and pious usterities, which, finally, awaken the jealousy of the Gods, who are epresented in the Hindű Scriptures as being in never-ending strife with he Ascetics. Indra, the "King of the Gods,"(400) finally sends one of his emale Apsarases to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending
Sarah, Abraham's wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is these Gods
(and God), who are ever trying to disturb Ascetics and thus make them lose he fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as "tempting emons," instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumâras, and Asuras, hose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don
Juanic Gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the
Paurânic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.
The King of the Gods, or Indra, sends a beautiful Apsaras (nymph) named
Pramlochâ to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her nholy purpose and "nine hundred and seven years six months and three ays"(401) spent in her company seem to the Sage as one day. When this sychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni bitterly curses the reature who has seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. "Depart, egone!" he cries, "vile bundle of delusions!" And Pramlochâ, terrified, lies away, _wiping the perspiration __ from her body_ with the leaves of he trees as she passes through the air.
The nymph went from tree to tree, and, as, with the dusky shoots
that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child she had
conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in
drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the
winds collected them into one mass. "This," said Soma [the Moon],
"I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in size, till
the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely
girl named Mârishâ."(402)
Now Kandu stands for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one
"devoid of mind," a fact hinted at by his being unable to discern a period f nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so asily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in
_Genesis_, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the "Lord God" reathes the "breath of life" but not of intellect and discrimination, hich are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of
Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the arth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the
Divine Soul. Pramlochâ is the Hindű Lilith of the Âryan Adam; and Mârishâ, he daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the "Sweat-born," nd stands as a symbol for the Second Race of mankind.
It is not Indra, who in this case figures in the _Purânas_, but Kâmadeva, he God of love and desire, who sends Pramlochâ on Earth. Logic, as well s the Esoteric Doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kâma is the king nd lord of the Apsarases, of whom Pramlochâ is one; and, therefore, when
Kandu, cursing her, exclaims: "Thou hast performed the office assigned by he monarch of the gods, go!"--he must mean by that monarch Kâma, and not
Indra, to whom the Apsarases are not subservient. For Kâma, again, is in he _Rig Veda_(403) the personification of that feeling which leads and ropels to creation. He was the _First Movement_ that stirred the ONE, fter its manifestation from the purely Abstract Principle, to create.
Desire first arose in IT, which was the Primal Germ of Mind; and
which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be
the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity.
A Hymn in the _Atharva Veda_ exalts Kâma into a supreme God and Creator, nd says:
Kâma was born the first. Him, neither Gods nor Fathers [Pitris]
nor Men have equalled.
The _Atharva Veda_ identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to hat God. The _Taittirîya Brâhmana_ makes him allegorically the son of
Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Shraddhâ (faith).
Elsewhere Kâma is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Âtmabhű
"Self-Existent," and Aja, the "Unborn." His sending Pramlochâ has a deep hilosophical meaning; sent by Indra--the narrative has none. As Erôs was onnected in early Greek mythology with the world's creation, and only fterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kâma in his original Vedic haracter; the _Harivamsha_ making him a son of Lakshmî, who is Venus. The llegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological, efore the birth of Daksha--_the progenitor of real physical men_--who is ade to be born from Mârishâ and before whose time living beings and men ere procreated "by the will, by sight, by touch, and by yoga," as will be hown.
This, then, is the allegory on the mode of procreation of the Second or he "Sweat-born." The same for the Third Race in its final development.
Mârishâ, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the
Prachetases, the production of the "Mind-born" sons of Brahmâ also,(404) rom whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha--a son of Brahmâ also in a former
Kalpa or life, explain and add the _Purânas_, in order to mislead, yet peaking the truth.
3. The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of "Sweat," which, fter many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more ifficult to imagine or realize than the growth of the foetus from an mperceptible germ, and its subsequent development into a child, and then nto a strong, heavy man. But the Third Race changes yet again its mode of rocreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a
_vis formativa_, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater rops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies--huge eggs. In these he human foetus gestated for several years. In the _Purânas_, Mârishâ, the aughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetases, and the other of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first _human-like_
Progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The volution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the universe, the acrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the nimal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.
Then the Third Race becomes:
4. The Androgyne, or Hermaphrodite. This process of men-bearing explains, erhaps, why Aristophanes, in Plato's _Banquet_, describes the nature of he old race as "androgynous," the form of every individual being rounded,
"having the back and sides as _in a circle_," whose "manner of running was ircular ... terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition."
Therefore, to make them weaker, "Zeus divided them [in the Third Root-
Race] into two, and Apollo [the Sun], under his direction, closed up the kin."
The Madagascans--the island belonged to Lemuria--have a tradition about the irst man. He lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food, swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a emale, who became the mother of their race. Truly, "we have our sciences f Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet pen.... The polyps ... produce their offspring from themselves, like the uds and ramifications of a tree...." Why not the primitive _human_ polyp?
The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation nto the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows erely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately evelop into a sea-nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to ts parent-organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself ifferently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once ore put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to nderstand that a form may be evolved--as in the _sexual_ Lemurians from
_hermaphrodite_ parentage--quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is, oreover, unquestionable that in the case of _human_ incarnations the law f Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of
Heredity, its servant.
The meaning of the last sentence in the above-quoted Commentary on Shloka
27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapâni, may find ts explanation in a certain letter from the Inspirer of _Esoteric
Buddhism_:
_The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the Fourth
Root-Race--the above-mentioned Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets
(Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux re all remnants of this last offshoot)._
Padmapâni or Avalokiteshvara, in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now,
Avalokiteshvara is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine egions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the Progenitor
(in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapâni-Avalokiteshvara is called
_esoterically_ Bodhisattva (or Dhyân Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, "the owerful and all-seeing." He is considered now as the greatest protector f Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the
Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great Arhats in the orld, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself from age o age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith begins o die out in the world, Padmapâni Chenresi, the "Lotus-bearer," emits a rilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two reat Lamas--the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he ill incarnate as the "most perfect Buddha" in Tibet, instead of in India, here his predecessors, the great Rishis and Manus had appeared in the eginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. Even the exoteric ppearance of Dhyâni Chenresi is suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching. He s evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and he progenitor of all the _human_ Races after the Third--the first complete ne--and thus is represented as the _culmination_ of the _four_ Primeval
Races in his _eleven-faced_ form. This is a column built in four rows, ach series having three faces or heads of different complexions; the hree faces for each Race being typical of its three fundamental hysiological transformations. The first is white (moon-coloured); the econd is yellow; the third, red-brown; the fourth, in which are only two aces--the third face being left a blank; a reference to the untimely end f the Atlanteans--is brown-black. Padmapâni (Daksha) is seated on the olumn, and forms the apex. In this reference compare Shloka 39. The Dhyân
Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four Races.
For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus--Padmapâni, the
"Lotus-bearer"; the flower symbolizing generation--and the fourth holds a erpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and n his head the sign of water [Symbol: two horizontal rows of wave-like ymbols]--matter, deluge--while on his brow rests the third eye, Shiva's ye, that of spiritual insight. His name is "Protector" (of Tibet),
"Saviour of Humanity." On other occasions when he has only two arms, he is
Chenresi the Dhyânî, and Bodhisattva, Chakna Padma Karpo, "he who holds a hite lotus." His other name is Chantong, "he of the thousand eyes," when e is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of which s represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a orest of rays. Another of his names in Sanskrit is Lokapati or Lokanâtha,
"Lord of the World"; and in Tibetan Jigten Gonpo, "Protector and Saviour" gainst evil of any kind.(405)
Padmapâni, however, is the "Lotus-bearer" symbolically only for the rofane; esoterically, it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of hich is called Pâdma, and represents one half of the life of Brahmâ.
Though really a minor Kalpa, it is called Mahâ, "great," because it omprises the age in which Brahmâ sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the
Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and subdivided in
Space and Time, each division--down to the smallest--having its own Dhyânî s patron or regent. Padmapâni (Avalokiteshvara) becomes, in China, in his emale aspect, Kwan-yin, "who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to ave mankind." The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the onstellations on the respective "birthdays" of these Dhyânîs--Amitabha
(the A-mi-to Fo, of China), included: _e.g._, on the 19th day of the econd month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of he third month,(406) etc.--gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for erforming what are called "magic" feats. The future of an individual is een, with all its coming events marshalled in order, in a _magic_ mirror laced under the ray of certain constellations. But--beware of the reverse f the medal, SORCERY.
Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall.
28. How the first mammals were produced. 29. A quasi-Darwinian
evolution. 30. The animals get solid bodies. 31. Their separation
into sexes. 32. The first sin of the mindless men.
28. FROM THE DROPS OF SWEAT, FROM THE RESIDUE OF THE SUBSTANCE, MATTER
FROM DEAD BODIES OF MEN AND ANIMALS OF THE WHEEL BEFORE,(407) AND FROM
CAST-OFF DUST, THE FIRST ANIMALS(408) WERE PRODUCED.
The Occult Doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a ater work of evolution than man. Evolution proceeds in Cycles. The great
Manvantaric Cycle of Seven Rounds, beginning in the First Round with the ineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its evolutionary work on the escending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth Race, at the lose of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our Earth, then--the
Fourth Sphere and the lowest--and in the present Round, that this middle oint has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its first
"immetallization" on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal orlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last egree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the "mid- oint of evolution," it is but logical and natural that at the beginning f the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and lso that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is ompatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins ts cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the escending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the reäscending urved line of the Sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the piritual which gradually transforms into the material. On the middle line f the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On the ascending rc, Spirit is slowly reässerting itself at the expense of the physical, r Matter, so that, at the close of the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round, he Monad will find itself as free from Matter and all its qualities as it as in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom, he fruitage of all its personal lives, without their evil and emptations.
This order of evolution is found also in the first and second chapters of
_Genesis_, if one reads it in its true esoteric sense; for Chapter i ontains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the irst Three Races of the Fourth, up to the moment when Man is called to onscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In Chapter i, animals, whales and owls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam.(409) In Chapter i, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him.
Even the state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two
Races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the econd chapter of _Genesis_, by the _deep sleep of Adam_. It is the reamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind, hich is meant by that "sleep," and not at all the physiological process f differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist, M. Naudin, magined.
The _Purânas_, the Chaldćan and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese raditions, all show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the rocess and order of evolution. We find in them the corroboration of lmost all our teaching: for instance, the statement concerning the viparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less nnocent mode of procreation of the first mammal forms. "_Gigantic, ransparent, dumb and monstrous they were_," says the Commentary. Study in his connection the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious rogeny. Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nâgas--an oviparous rood; Kashyapa is grandsire, through his wife Tâmrâ, of the birds and of
Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the arent of cows and buffaloes, etc.
In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nâgas--Beings wiser than Serpents--are the
"Sons of Will and Yoga," born before the complete separation of the sexes,
"matured in the man-bearing eggs(410) produced by the power (Kriyâshakti) f the holy Sages" of the early Third Race.(411)
"In these were incarnated the Lords of the three [upper] worlds--the arious classes of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who re Âdityas;" for, as explained by Parâshara: "There are a hundred ppellations of the immeasurably mighty Rudras."
Some of the descendants of the primitive Nâgas, the Serpents of Wisdom, eopled America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the reat Atlantis; America being the Pâtâla or Antipodes of Jambu-dvîpa, not f Bhârata-varsha. Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends--the latter
_always more true than history_, as says Augustin Thierry--and even the dentity in the names of certain "medicine men" and priests, who exist to his day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals and the
Nagals, and also of Nagalism, called "devil-worship" by the missionaries.
In almost all the _Purânas_, the story of the "Sacrifice of Daksha" is iven, the oldest account of which is to be found in the _Vâyu Purâna_.
Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in t to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo-scientific vagaries, which are egarded as learned theories and hypotheses.
Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out s the creator of _physical man_, in the "fable" which makes him lose his ead from his body in the general strife between the Gods and the Raumas.
This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the _head of a ram_, ccording to the Kâshi Khanda of the _Skanda Purâna_. Now the ram's head nd horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive orce, and are phallic. As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the ra of men engendered by sexual intercourse. This mode of procreation did ot occur suddenly, however, as one might think, but required long ages efore it became the one "natural" way. Therefore, Daksha's sacrifice to he Gods is shown to have been interfered with by Shiva--the _Destroying_
Deity, _Evolution and Progress personified_, who is the _Regenerator_ at he same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to ife under another more perfect type. Shiva-Rudra creates the terrible
Vîrabhadra, born of his breath, the "thousand-headed, thousand-armed" onster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha.
Then Vîrabhadra, "abiding in the region of ghosts (ethereal men) ... reated from _the pores of his skin_ (Roma-kűpas) powerful Raumas."(412)
Now, however mythical the allegory, the _Mahâbhârata_(413)--which is as uch history as is the _Iliad_--shows the Raumas and other races springing n the same manner from the Roma-kűpas, hair or skin pores. This llegorical description of Daksha's "sacrifice" is full of significance to he students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the "Sweat-born."
In the _Vâyu Purâna's_ account of the sacrifice, moreover, it is said to ave taken place in the presence of creatures _born from the egg_, from he vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the omb.(414)
Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, as yet devoid of an
Individual Ego, and possessing passive capacities only. Brahmâ, therefore, ommands him to create (in the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command, e made "inferior and superior" (Avara and Vara) progeny (Putra), _bipeds_ nd _quadrupeds_; and by his _will_, gave birth to females, to the Gods, he Daityas (Giants of the Fourth Race), the snake-gods, animals, cattle nd the Dânavas (Titans and Demon Magicians) and other beings.
From that period forward, _living creatures were engendered by
sexual intercourse. Before the time of Daksha, they were variously
propagated_--by the _will_, by sight, by touch, and by the
influence of religious austerities practised by devout sages and
holy saints.(415)
And now comes the simply zoölogical teaching.
29. ANIMALS WITH BONES, DRAGONS OF THE DEEP, AND FLYING SARPAS(416) WERE
ADDED TO THE CREEPING THINGS. THEY THAT CREEP ON THE GROUND GOT WINGS.
THEY OF THE LONG NECKS IN THE WATER BECAME THE PROGENITORS OF THE FOWLS OF
THE AIR.
This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation re in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition rocess between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, specially in the Ornithoscelidć, Hesperornis, and the Archćopteryx of
Vogt.
30. DURING THE THIRD,(417) THE BONELESS ANIMALS GREW AND CHANGED; THEY
BECAME ANIMALS WITH BONES, THEIR CHHÂYÂS BECAME SOLID.(418)
Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also thereal proto-organisms, just as man was.
31. THE ANIMALS SEPARATED THE FIRST.(419) THEY BEGAN TO BREED. THE TWO-
FOLD MAN(420) SEPARATED ALSO. HE(421) SAID: "LET US AS THEY; LET US UNITE
AND MAKE CREATURES." THEY DID....
32. AND THOSE WHICH HAD NO SPARK(422) TOOK HUGE SHE-ANIMALS UNTO THEM.
THEY BEGAT UPON THEM DUMB RACES. DUMB THEY(423) WERE THEMSELVES. BUT THEIR
TONGUES UNTIED.(424) THE TONGUES OF THEIR PROGENY REMAINED STILL. MONSTERS
THEY BRED. A RACE OF CROOKED RED-HAIR-COVERED MONSTERS GOING ON ALL
FOURS.(425) A DUMB RACE, TO KEEP THE SHAME UNTOLD.(426)
The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of exes is now indisputable, even from the standpoint of Biology. As Prof.
Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist, shows:
Use and disuse, combined with selection, elucidate [?] _the
separation of the sexes_, and the existence, otherwise totally
incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata
especially, _each sex possesses such distinct traces of the
reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other_, that even
antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primćval condition
of mankind.... The tenacity with which these rudiments of sexual
organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals,
actual hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole
period of their development they drag along with them these
residues, borne by _their unknown ancestry_, no one can say how
long.(427)
"The animals separated the first," says Shloka 31. Bear in mind that at hat period men were different, even physiologically, to what they are ow; the middle point of the Fifth Race being already passed. We are not old what the "huge she-animals" were; but they certainly were as ifferent from any we now know, as were the "men" from the men of to-day.
This was the first physical "fall into matter" of some of the then xisting and lower races. Bear in mind Shloka 24. The "Sons of Wisdom" had purned the _early_ Third Race, _i.e._, the non-developed, and are shown ncarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the _later_ Third
Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or "mindless" Races, who had no
"spark" and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them heir Karmic duty.
What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.
Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or ven from an ancestor common to both; but, on the contrary, traces some of he most anthropoid species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean
Period. As this proposition will be maintained and defended elsewhere, a ew words more are all that are needed at present. For greater clearness, owever, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously in Volume I,
Stanza VI.
Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that Nature had, t one time, built round the human astral form an _ape-like external_ hape, it is also as correct that this shape was no more that of the
"missing link," than were the multitudinous other coverings of that astral orm, during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms f Nature. Nor was it, as has been shown, on this Fourth Round Planet that uch evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third
Rounds, when Man was, in turn, "a stone, a plant, and an animal" until he ecame what he was in the First Root-Race of present Humanity. The real ine of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are rreconcilable, unless the latter is divorced from the dogmas of "natural election" and the like. Indeed, between the Moneron of Hćckel and the
Sarîsripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape of the
Jîva; for the "human" Monad, whether "immetallized" in the stone-atom, or
"in-vegetalized" in the plant, or "inanimalized" in the animal, is still ver a divine, hence also a _human_ Monad. It ceases to be human only when t becomes _absolutely divine_. The terms "mineral," "vegetable" and
"animal" Monad are intended to create a superficial distinction: there is o such thing as a Monad (Jîva) other than divine, and consequently having nce been, or having in the future to become, human. The latter term has o remain meaningless unless this difference is well understood. The Monad s a drop out of the Shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, _within_, he plane of primćval differentiation. It is _divine_ in its higher and
_human_ in its lower condition--the adjectives "higher" and "lower" being sed for lack of better words--but a Monad it remains at all times, save in he Nirvânic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms.
As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the Manifested
Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it epeating an Eastern teaching, so the Monad has, during the cycle of its ncarnations, to reflect in itself every _root-form_ of each kingdom.
Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that "Man becomes a stone, a plant, n animal, a man, a spirit, and finally God," thus accomplishing his cycle r circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the
_Heavenly Man_. But by "Man" the Divine Monad is meant, and not the
Thinking Entity, much less his Physical Body. The men of Science now try o trace the immortal Soul, while rejecting its existence, through a eries of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in truth, ll the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of hich the Stanzas speak. The animals--the creeping beasts and those in the aters that preceded Man in this Fourth Round, as well as those ontemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are osterior to the Third and Fourth Races--all are either directly or ndirectly the mutual and correlative product, _physically_, of Man. It is orrect to say that the man of this Manvantara, _i.e._, of the three receding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of Nature. That he as "a stone, a plant, an animal." But (_a_) these stones, plants, and nimals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth
Round; and (_b_) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the stral shadows, as the Occultists express it, of the present stones, lants and animals. And finally, neither the forms nor genera of either an, animal, or plant were what they became later. Thus the astral rototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, hich _preceded_ the Chhâyâs of Men, were the consolidated, though still ery ethereal _sheaths_ of the still more ethereal forms, or models, roduced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D, as set forth in
_Esoteric Buddhism_; produced "from the residue of the substance; matter rom dead bodies of men and [other _extinct_] animals of the Wheel efore," or the previous _Third_ Round--as Shloka 28 tells us. Hence, while he nondescript "animals" that preceded the Astral Man at the beginning of his Life-cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the
Man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence, n a great measure, to Man again. Moreover, the "ancestor" of the present nthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless
Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the evel of an animal.
The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought orward by the Anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man rom the animals.
The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, "The history of he embryo is an epitome of that of the race." That:
Every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a
series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors
have passed in the long course of earth's history.(428) The
history of the embryo ... is a picture in little, and outline of
that of the race. _This conception forms the gist of our
fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the
head of the study of the fundamental law of organic
development._(429)
This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically xpressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest ages. A passage rom _Isis Unveiled_ may here be cited to furnish a few points of omparison. It was asked why, with all their great learning, Physiologists ere unable to explain teratological phenomena?
Any Anatomist who has made the development and growth of the
embryo ... "a subject of special study," can tell, without much
brain-work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes
show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a
facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the
spawn--a tadpole. But no Physiologist or Anatomist seems to have
had the idea of applying to the development of the human
being--from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ
to its ultimate formation and birth--the Pythagorean esoteric
doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics.
The meaning of the Kabalistic axiom: "A stone becomes a plant; a
plant, a beast; a beast, a man," etc., was mentioned in another
place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men
on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter
clearer.
What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a
corpuscle, say some Physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the
ovum, say others. If it could be analyzed--by the microscope or
otherwise--of what ought we to expect to find it composed?
Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter,
deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and
united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this
infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same
elements as a stone--of the same elements as the Earth, which the
man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as
authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make
a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as
a stone.
At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant-
like appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the
other tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be
composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminć or coats,
enclosing a liquid. The laminć approach each other at the lower
end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost
like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become changed,
by "metempsychosis," into a plant. Then the embryonic creature
begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and
develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black dots; the
ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a
pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into
an animal-like foetus--the shape of a tadpole--and, like an
amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its monad
has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists
tell us that this only occurs at the "fourth hour." One by one the
foetus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first
flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being: it moves;
... and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it
will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes
a spirit.
This mysterious process of a nine-months' formation, the Kabalists
call the completion of the "individual cycle of evolution." As the
foetus develops amidst the _liquor amnii_ in the womb, so the
Earths germinate in the Universal Ether, or Astral Fluid, in the
Womb of the Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy
inhabitants, are first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature;
and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable,
animal, and human forms. From centre to circumference, from the
imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the
cosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle
merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series.
The embryo evolving in its pre-natal sphere, the individual in his
family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the earth
in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe
in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the ONE CAUSE--the Boundless and
Endless.(430)
Thus runs _their_ philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that f Hćckel.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the Soul.
These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But ow is the chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this ase? How, if the anthropoid and homo primigenius had, _argumenti gratiâ_, common ancestor--in the way modern speculation puts it--how did the two roups diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity?
True, the Occultist may be told that in every case Occultism does what
Science repeats; it gives a _common_ ancestor to ape and man, since it akes the former issue from Primćval Man. Aye, but that "Primćval Man" was
_man_ only in external form. He was _mindless_ and _soulless_ at the time e begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of pes. This speculation--if speculation it be--is at least logical, and fills he chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and xplains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact--of which
Science is almost certain--that, in the present stage of evolution, no ssue can follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and xplained elsewhere.
Now what is the fundamental difference between the accepted (or nearly so) onclusions--as enunciated in _The Pedigree of Man_--that man and ape have a ommon ancestor, and the teachings of Occultism, which deny this onclusion and accept the fact that all things and all living beings have riginated from one common source? Materialistic Science makes man evolve radually to what _he is now_. Starting from the first protoplasmic speck alled Moneron--which we are told has, like the rest, "originated in the ourse of immeasurable ages from a few, or from one simple, _spontaneously rising_ original form, that has obeyed one law of evolution"--he is made o pass through "unknown and unknowable" types up to the ape, and thence o the human being. Where the transitional shapes are discoverable we are ot told; for the simple reason that no "missing-links" between man and he apes have ever yet been found, though this fact in no way prevents men ike Hćckel from inventing them _ad libitum_.
Nor will they ever be met with; simply, again, because that link which nites man with his real ancestry is searched for on the objective plane nd in the material world of forms, whereas it is safely hidden from the icroscope and dissecting knife _within_ the animal tabernacle of man imself. We repeat what we have said in _Isis Unveiled_:
All things had their origin in Spirit--evolution having originally
begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse,
as taught in the Darwinian theory. In other words, there has been
a gradual materialization of forms until a fixed ultimate of
debasement is reached. This point is that at which the doctrine of
modern evolution enters into the arena of speculative hypothesis.
Arrived at this period we shall find it easier to understand
Hćckel's _Anthropogeny_, which traces the pedigree of man "from
its protoplasmic root, sodden in the mud of seas which existed
before the oldest of the fossiliferous rocks were deposited,"
according to Mr. Huxley's exposition. We may more easily still
believe man (of the Third Round) evolved "by gradual modification
of an [astral] mammal of ape-like organization," when we remember
that the same theory, in a more condensed and less elegant, but
equally comprehensible, phraseology, was said by Berosus to have
been taught many thousands of years before his time by the man-
fish Oannes or Dagon, the semi-demon of Babylonia(431) (though on
somewhat modified lines).
But what lies back of the Darwinian line of descent? So far as
Darwin is concerned nothing but "unverifiable hypotheses." For, as
he puts it, he views all beings "as the lineal descendants of some
few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian
system was deposited."(432) He does not attempt to show us what
these "few beings" were. But it answers our purpose quite as well,
for, in the bare admission of their existence, recourse to the
ancients for corroboration and elaboration of the idea receives
the stamp of scientific approbation.(433)
Truly, as we said in our first work, if we accept Darwin's theory of the evelopment of species, we find that his starting-point lies in front of n open door. We are at liberty either to remain within with him, or cross he threshold, beyond which lies the limitless and the incomprehensible, r rather the Unutterable. If our mortal language is inadequate to express hat our spirit--while on this earth--dimly foresees in the great "Beyond," t _must_ realize it at some point in the timeless Eternity. But what lies
"beyond" Hćckel's theory? Why Bathybius Hćckelii, and no more!
Stanza IX. The Final Evolution Of Man.
33. The creators repent. 34. They atone for their neglect. 35. Men
become endowed with minds. 36. The Fourth Race develops perfect
speech. 37. Every androgynous unit is separated and becomes
bisexual.
33. SEEING WHICH,(434) THE LHAS(435) WHO HAD NOT BUILT MEN,(436) WEPT,
SAYING:
34. "THE AMÂNASA(437) HAVE DEFILED OUR FUTURE ABODES. THIS IS KARMA. LET
US DWELL IN THE OTHERS. LET US TEACH THEM BETTER, LEST WORSE SHOULD
HAPPEN." THEY DID....
35. THEN ALL MEN BECAME ENDOWED WITH MANAS.(438) THEY SAW THE SIN OF THE
MINDLESS.
But they had already _separated_, before the ray of divine reason had nlightened the dark region of their hitherto slumbering minds, and had
_sinned_. That is to say, they had committed evil unconsciously, by roducing an effect which was unnatural. Yet, like the other six primitive rother or fellow races, even so this seventh, henceforth degenerated ace, which will have to bide its time for its final development on ccount of the _sin_ committed--even this race will find itself _on the ast day_ on one of the Seven Paths. For:
The Wise(439) guard the home of nature's order, they assume
excellent forms in secret.(440)
But we must see whether the "animals" tampered with, were of the same kind s those known to Zoölogy.
The "Fall" occurred, according to the testimony of ancient Wisdom and the ld records, as soon as Daksha--the reďncarnated Creator of men and things n the early Third Race--disappeared to make room for that portion of ankind which had "separated." This is how one Commentary explains the etails that preceded the "Fall":
_In the initial period of man's Fourth Evolution, the human kingdom ranched off in several and various directions. The outward shape of its irst specimens was not uniform, for the vehicles [the egg-like, external hells, in which the future fully physical man gestated] were often ampered with, before they hardened, by huge animals, of species now nknown, and belonging to the tentative efforts of Nature. The result was hat intermediate races of monsters, half animals, half men, were roduced. But as they were failures, they were not allowed to breathe long nd live, although, the intrinsically paramount power of psychic over hysical nature being yet very weak, and hardly established, the __"__Egg- orn__"__ Sons had taken several of their females unto themselves as ates, and bred other human monsters. Later, animal species and human aces becoming gradually equilibrized, they separated, and mated no onger. Man created no more--he begot. But he also begot animals as well as en, in days of old. Therefore the Sages [or wise men], who speak of males ho had no more will-begotten offspring, but begat various animals along ith Dânavas [Giants] on females of other species--animals being as [or in he manner of] sons putative to them; and they [the human males] refusing n time to be regarded as [putative] fathers of dumb creatures--spoke ruthfully and wisely. Upon seeing this [state of things], the Kings and
Lords of the last Races [of the Third and the Fourth] placed the seal of rohibition upon the sinful intercourse. It interfered with Karma, it eveloped new [Karma]_(_441_)_. They [the Divine Kings] struck the ulprits with sterility. They destroyed the Red and Blue Races._(442)
In another we find:
_There were blue and red-faced animal-men even in later times; not from ctual intercourse [between the human and animal species], but by escent._
And still another passage mentions:
_Red-haired, swarthy men going on all-fours, who bend and unbend [stand rect and fall on their hands again], who speak as their forefathers, and un on their hands as their giant fore-mothers._
Perchance in these specimens Hćckelians might recognize, not the "Homo
Primigenius," but some of the lower tribes, such as some tribes of the
Australian savages. Nevertheless, even these are not descended from the nthropoid apes, but from human fathers and semi-human mothers, or, to peak more correctly, from human monsters--those "failures" mentioned in he first Commentary. The real anthropoids, Hćckel's Catarrhini and
Platyrrhini, came far later, in the closing times of Atlantis. The Orang-
Outang, the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee and Cynocephalus are the latest and urely physical evolutions from lower anthropoid mammalians. They have a park of the purely human essence in them; man on the other hand, has not ne drop of pithecoid(443) blood in his veins. Thus saith old Wisdom and niversal tradition.
How was the separation of sexes effected? it is asked. Are we to believe n the old Jewish fable of the rib of Adam yielding Eve? Even such belief s more logical and reasonable than the descent of man from the Quadrumana ithout any reservation; as the former hides an Esoteric truth under a abulous version, while the latter conceals no deeper fact than a desire o force upon mankind a materialistic fiction. The rib is bone, and when e read in _Genesis_ that Eve was made out of the rib, it only means that he Race "with bones" was produced out of a previous Race and Races, which ere "boneless." This is an Esoteric tenet spread far and wide. It is lmost universal under its various forms. A Tahitian tradition states that an was created out of Arća, "red earth." Taaroa, the Creative Power, the hief God, "put man to sleep for long years, for several lives." This eans racial periods, and is a reference to his _mental sleep_, as shown lsewhere. During that time the deity pulled an Ivi (bone) out of man and he became a woman.(444)
Nevertheless, whatever the allegory may signify, even its exoteric meaning ecessitates a _divine_ Builder of man--a "Progenitor." Do we then believe n such "supernatural" Beings? We say: No. Occultism has never believed in nything, whether animate or inanimate, _outside_ Nature. Nor are we
Cosmolaters or Polytheists for believing in "Heavenly Man" and Divine Men, or we have the accumulated testimony of the ages, with its unvarying vidence on every essential point, to support us in this; the Wisdom of he Ancients and _universal_ tradition. We reject, however, such roundless and baseless traditions as have outgrown strict allegory and ymbolism, although they may have found acceptance in exoteric creeds. But hat which is preserved in _unanimous_ tradition, only the wilfully blind ould reject. Hence we believe in races of Beings other than our own in ar remote geological periods; in races of ethereal, following
_incorporeal_ (Arűpa) Men, with form but no solid substance, giants who receded us pigmies; in Dynasties of Divine Beings, those Kings and
Instructors of the Third Race in arts and sciences, compared with which ur little Modern Science stands less chance than elementary arithmetic ith geometry.
No, certainly not. We do not believe in _supernatural_ but only in
_superhuman_, or rather _interhuman_, intelligences. One can easily ppreciate the feeling of reluctance that an educated person would have to eing classed with the superstitious and ignorant; and even realize the reat truth uttered by Renan when he says that:
The supernatural has become like the original sin, a blemish that
everyone seems ashamed of--even those most religious persons who
refuse in our day to accept be it a minimum of Bible miracles in
all their crudeness, and who, seeking to reduce them to the
minimum, hide and conceal it in the furthermost corners of the
past.(445)
But the "supernatural" of Renan belongs to dogma and its dead letter. It as nought to do with its spirit nor with the reality of facts in Nature.
If Theology asks us to believe that it was only four or five thousand ears ago that men lived 900 years and more, that a portion of mankind, he enemies of the people of Israel exclusively, was composed of giants nd monsters, we decline to believe that such a thing existed in Nature nly five _thousand_ years back. For Nature never proceeds by jumps and tarts, and logic and common sense, besides Geology, Anthropology and
Ethnology, have justly rebelled against such assertions. But if this same
Theology, giving up her fantastic chronology, had claimed that men lived
969 years--the age of Methuselah--five _million_ years ago, we should have othing to say against the claim. For in those days the physical frame of en was, compared to the present human body, as that of a Megalosaurus to common lizard.
A Naturalist suggests another difficulty. The human is the only species hich, however unequal in its races, can breed together. "There is no uestion of selection between _human races_," say the anti-Darwinists, and o Evolutionist can deny the argument--one which very triumphantly proves
_specific unity_. How then can Occultism insist that a portion of the
Fourth Race humanity begot young ones from females of another, only semi- uman, if not quite an animal, race; the hybrids resulting from which nion not only bred freely but produced the ancestors of the modern nthropoid apes? Esoteric Science replies to this that it was in the very eginnings of physical man. Since then, Nature has changed her ways, and terility is the only result of the crime of man's bestiality. But we have ven to-day proofs of this. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the _specific nity of mankind_ is not without exceptions even now. For there are, or ather still were a few years ago, descendants of these half-animal tribes r races, both of remote Lemurian and Lemuro-Atlantean origin. The world nows them as Tasmanians (now extinct), Australians, Andaman Islanders, tc. The descent of the Tasmanians can be almost proved by a fact, which truck Darwin a good deal, without his being able to make anything of it.
This fact deserves notice.
De Quatrefages and other Naturalists, who seek to prove Monogenesis by the ery fact of every race of mankind being capable of crossing with every ther, have left out of their calculations _exceptions_, which do not in his case confirm the rule. Human crossing may have been a general rule rom the time of the separation of sexes, but this does not prevent nother law asserting itself, viz., sterility between two human races, ust as between two animal species of different kinds, in those rare cases hen a European, condescending to see in a female of a savage tribe a ate, happens to choose a member of such mixed tribes.(446) Darwin notes uch a case in a Tasmanian tribe, whose women were suddenly struck with terility, _en masse_, some time after the arrival among them of European olonists. The great Naturalist tried to explain this fact by change of iet, food conditions, etc., but finally gave up the solution of the ystery. For the Occultist it is very evident. "Crossing," as it is alled, of Europeans with Tasmanian women--_i.e._, the representatives of a ace, whose progenitors were a "soulless"(447) and mindless monster, with real human, though still as mindless a man--brought on sterility; and his, not only as a consequence of a physiological law, but also as a ecree of Karmic evolution in the question of further survival of the bnormal race. In no one point of the above is Science prepared to believe
_as yet_--but it will have to in the long run. Esoteric Philosophy, let us emember, only fills the gaps left by Science and corrects her false remisses.
Yet, in this particular, Geology and even Botany and Zoology support the
Esoteric Teachings. It has been suggested by many Geologists that the
Australian native--coëxisting as he does with an _archaic fauna and lora_--must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole environment of his mysterious race, about whose origin Ethnology is silent, is a estimony to the truth of the Esoteric position. As Jukes says:
It is a very curious fact that not only these marsupial animals
[the mammals found in the Oxfordshire Stone-field Slates], but
several of the shells--as for instance, the Trigonias and even some
of the plants found fossil in the Oolitic rocks--much more nearly
resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of
any other part of the globe. This might be explained on the
supposition that, since the Oolitic [Jurassic] period _less change
has taken place in Australia than elsewhere_, and that the
Australian flora and fauna consequently retain something of the
Oolitic type, _while it had been altogether supplanted and
replaced on the rest of the globe_ [! !].(448)
Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is he _raison d'ętre_ for such a "curse of retardation"? It is simply ecause the nature of the environment develops _pari passu_ with the race oncerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The survivors of those ater Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the ain Continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the resent native tribes. Being a very low sub-race, begotten originally of nimals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles under the ea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly ubjected to the _law of retardation_. Australia is one of the oldest ands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its
"_virgin_ soil" notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless elped by new and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.
To return once more, however, to the history of the Third Race, the
"Sweat-born," the "Egg-bearing," and the "Androgyne." Almost sexless, in ts early beginnings, it became bisexual or androgynous; very gradually of ourse. The passage from the first to the last transformation required umberless generations, during which the simple cell that issued from the arliest parent (the two in one), first developed into a bisexual being; nd then the cell, becoming a regular egg, gave forth a unisexual reature. The Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the five itherto developed Races. The mystery of the "How" of the generation of he distinct sexes must, of course, be very obscure here, as it is the usiness of an embryologist and a specialist; the present work giving only aint outlines of the process. But it is evident that the units of the
Third Race humanity began to separate in their pre-natal shells, or ggs,(449) and to issue out of them as distinct male and female babes, ges after the appearance of its early progenitors. And, as time rolled on ts geological periods, the newly born sub-races began to lose their natal apacities. Toward the end of the fourth sub-race of the Third Race, the abe lost its faculty of walking as soon as liberated from its shell, and y the end of the fifth, mankind was born under the same conditions and by dentically the same process as our historical generations. This required, f course, millions of years. The reader has been made acquainted with the pproximate figures, at least of the exoteric calculations.(450)
We are approaching the turning-point of the evolution of the Races. Let us ee what Occult Philosophy says on the origin of language.
36. THE FOURTH RACE DEVELOPED SPEECH.
The Commentaries explain that the First Race--the ethereal or astral Sons f Yoga, also called "Self-born"--was, in our sense, speechless, for it was evoid of mind on our plane. The Second Race had a "sound-language," to it, chant-like sounds composed of vowels alone. The Third Race developed n the beginning a kind of language which was only a slight improvement on he various sounds in Nature, on the cry of gigantic insects and of the irst animals, which, however, were hardly nascent in the day of the
"Sweat-born" or the _early_ Third Race. In its second half, when the
"Sweat-born" gave birth to the "Egg-born," the _middle_ Third Race; and hen these, instead of "hatching out"--may the reader pardon the rather idiculous expression when applied to human beings in our age--as ndrogynous beings, began to evolve into separate males and females; and hen the same law of evolution led them to reproduce their kind exually--an act which forced the Creative Gods, compelled by Karmic law, o incarnate in _mindless_ men; then only was speech developed. But even hen it was still no better than a tentative effort. The whole human race as at that time of "one language and of one lip." This did not prevent he last two sub-races of the Third Race(451) from building cities, and owing far and wide the first seeds of civilization under the guidance of heir Divine Instructors,(452) and their own already awakened minds. Let he reader also bear in mind that, as each of the seven Races is divided nto four Ages--the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age--so is every mallest division of such Races. Speech then developed, according to
Occult Teaching, in the following order:
I. _Monosyllabic speech_: that of the first approximately fully developed uman beings at the close of the Third Root-Race, the "golden-coloured," ellow-complexioned men, after their separation into sexes, and the full wakening of their minds. Before that, they communicated through what ould now be called "thought-transference," though, with the exception of he Race called the "Sons of Will and Yoga"--the first in whom the "Sons of
Wisdom" had incarnated--thought was but very little developed in nascent hysical man, and never soared above a low terrestrial level. Their hysical bodies belonging to the Earth, their Monads remained on a higher lane altogether. Language could not be well developed before the full cquisition and development of their reasoning faculties. This onosyllabic speech was the vowel-parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic anguages mixed with hard consonants, still in use amongst the yellow aces which are known to the Anthropologist.(453)
II. _Agglutinative speech_: these linguistic characteristics developed nto the agglutinative languages. The latter were spoken by some Atlantean aces, while other parent stocks of the Fourth Race preserved the mother- anguage. And as languages have their cyclic evolution, their childhood, urity, growth, _fall into matter_, admixture with other languages, aturity, decay and finally death,(454) so the primitive speech of the ost civilized Atlantean races--that language, which is referred to as
Râkshasî Bhâshâ, in old Sanskrit works--decayed and almost died out. While he "cream" of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex of hysical and intellectual evolution, thus leaving as an heirloom to the ascent Fifth (the Âryan) Race the inflectional, highly developed anguages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil diom, now scattered, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of
America.
III. _Inflectional speech_: the root of the Sanskrit, very erroneously alled the "elder sister" of the Greek, instead of its mother--was the irst language, now the mystery tongue of the Initiates, of the Fifth
Race. The "Semitic" languages are the bastard descendants of the first honetic corruptions of the eldest children of the early Sanskrit. The
Occult Doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Âryan and the Semite, nd accepts even the Turanian with ample reservations. The Semites, specially the Arabs, are later Âryans--degenerate in spirituality and erfected in materiality. To these belong all the Jews and the Arabs. The ormer are a tribe descended from the Chandâlas of India, the outcasts, any of them ex-Brâhmans, who sought refuge in Chaldća, in Scinde, and
Aria (Iran), and were truly born from their father A-Bram (No-Brâhman) ome 8,000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs, are the descendants of those
Âryans who would not go into India at the time of the dispersion of ations, some of whom remained on the borderlands thereof, in Afghanistan nd Kabul(455) and along the Oxus, while others penetrated into and nvaded Arabia. But this was when Africa had already been raised as a ontinent.
We have meanwhile to follow, as closely as limited space will permit, the radual evolution of the now truly human species. It is in the suddenly rrested evolution of certain sub-races, and their forced and violent iversion into the purely animal line by artificial cross-breeding, truly nalogous to the hybridization which we have now learned to utilize in the egetable and animal kingdoms, that we have to look for the origin of the nthropoids.
In these red-haired and hair-covered monsters, the fruit of the unnatural onnection between men and animals, the "Lords of Wisdom" did not ncarnate, as we see. Thus through a long series of transformations due to nnatural cross-breeding--unnatural "sexual selection"--originated in due ourse of time the lowest specimens of humanity; while further bestiality nd the fruit of their first animal efforts of reproduction begat a pecies which developed into mammalian apes ages later.(456)
As to the separation of sexes, it did not occur suddenly, as one may hink. Nature proceeds slowly in whatever she does.
37. THE ONE(457) BECAME TWO; ALSO ALL THE LIVING AND CREEPING THINGS THAT
WERE STILL ONE, GIANT FISH, BIRDS AND SERPENTS WITH SHELL-HEADS.
This relates evidently to the so-called age of amphibious reptiles, during hich Science denies that man existed! But what could the Ancients know of ntediluvian prehistoric animals and monsters? Nevertheless, in Book VI of he Commentaries is found a passage which, freely translated, says:
_When the Third separated and fell into sin by breeding men-animals, these
[the animals] became ferocious, and men and they mutually destructive.
Till then, there was no sin, no life taken. After [the separation] the
Satya [Yuga] was at an end. The eternal spring became constant change and easons succeeded. Cold forced men to build shelters and devise clothing.
Then man appealed to the superior Fathers [the higher Gods or Angels]. The
Nirmânakâyas, of the Nâgas, the wise Serpents and Dragons of Light, came, nd the precursors of the Enlightened [the Buddhas]. Divine Kings escended and taught men sciences and arts, for man could live no longer n the first land [Âdi-Varsha, the Eden of the first Races], which had urned into a white frozen corpse._
The above is suggestive. We will see what can be inferred from this brief tatement. Some may incline to think that there is more in it than is pparent at first sight.
Edens, Serpents, And Dragons.
Whence the idea, and the true meaning of the term "Eden"? Christians will aintain that the Garden of Eden is the holy Paradise, the place
_desecrated by the sin_ of Adam and Eve; the Occultist will deny this ead-letter interpretation, and show the reverse. One need not believe in he _Bible_ and see in it divine revelation, to say that this ancient ook, if read esoterically, is based upon the same universal traditions as he other ancient scriptures. What Eden was is partially shown in _Isis
Unveiled_, where it is said that:
The Garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to
those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the
student that the _Bible_ is not all mere allegory. "Eden, or the
Hebrew {~HEBREW LETTER GIMEL~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL NUN~} {~HEBREW LETTER AYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL NUN~}, Gan-Eden, meaning the Park or the Garden of Eden,
is an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its
many branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian sea."(458)
In the Chaldćan _Book of Numbers_, its location is designated in
numerals, and in the cypher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by Count
St. Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian _Tablets_ it
is rendered Gan-duniyas. "Behold," say the {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW POINT HIRIQ~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL MEM~}, Elohim, of
_Genesis_, "the man is become as one of us." The Elohim may be
accepted in one sense for _gods_ or powers, and in another for
Aleim, or priests--the hierophants initiated into the good and evil
of this world; for there was a college of priests called the
Aleim, while the head of their caste, or the chief of the
hierophants, was known as Java-Aleim. Instead of becoming a
neophyte, and gradually obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a
regular initiation, an Adam, or Man, uses his intuitional
faculties and, prompted by the serpent--_Woman_ and Matter--tastes
of the Tree of Knowledge, the Esoteric or Secret Doctrine,
unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel-karth, the "Lord" of
the Eden, all wore "coats of skin." The text says: "And Java-Aleim
made for Adam and his wife, {~HEBREW LETTER KAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER AYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}. Chitonuth-our." The first
Hebrew word, Chiton, is the Greek {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} (Chitôn). It became a
Slavonic word by adoption from the _Bible_, and means a _coat_, an
upper garment.
Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as does
every early Cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the
marks of a double origin. Its _Genesis_ is purely a reminiscence
of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even
objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldćans and
the Akkadians, the progenitors and Âryan instructors of the
former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldća,
Babylonia and Assyria were in any way cognate with the Brâhmans of
Hindűstan; but there are more proofs in favour of this opinion
than otherwise. The Shemite or Assyrian ought, perchance, to have
been called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated
Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever existed, otherwise than in the
imagination of some Philologists and Ethnologists, they certainly
would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some Assyriologists
have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on
their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and
their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a
barbarian people. Halévy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania
in regard to Akkadian people, and other scientists have proved
that the Babylonian civilization was neither born nor developed in
that country. It was imported from India, and the importers were
Brâhmanical Hindűs.(459)
And now, ten years after this was written, we find ourselves corroborated y Professor Sayce, who says in his first Hibbert Lecture that the culture f the Babylonian city Eridu was of "foreign importation." It came from
India.
Much of the theology was borrowed by the Semites from the non-
Semitic Akkadians or Proto-Chaldćans, whom they supplanted, and
whose local cults they had neither the will nor the power to
uproot. Indeed, throughout a long course of ages the two races,
Semites and Akkadians, lived side by side, their notions and
worship of the gods blending insensibly together.
Here, the Akkadians are called "non-Semitic," as we had insisted they were n _Isis Unveiled_, which is another corroboration. Nor are we less right n always maintaining that the Jewish biblical history was a compilation f _historical_ facts, arranged from other people's history in Jewish arb--_Genesis_ excluded, which is Esotericism pure and simple. But it is eally from the Euxine to Kashmir, and beyond, that Science has to search or the cradle--or rather one of the chief cradles--of mankind and the sons f Ad-ah; especially in after times, when the Garden of Ed-en on the
Euphrates became the College of the Astrologers and Magi, the Aleim.
But this College and this Eden belong to the Fifth Race, and are simply a aint reminiscence of the Âdi-Varsha, of the primeval Third Race. What is he etymological meaning of the word Eden? In Greek it is {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}, ignifying "voluptuousness." In this aspect it is no better than the
Olympus of the Greeks, Indra's Heaven, Svarga, on Mount Meru, and even the
Paradise full of Houris, promised by Mahomet to the faithful. The Garden f Eden was never the property of the Jews, for China, which can hardly be uspected of having known anything of the Jews 2,000 B.C., had such a rimitive Garden in Central Asia inhabited by the "Dragons of Wisdom," the
Initiates. And according to Klaproth, the hieroglyphical chart copied from Japanese Cyclopćdia in the book of _Foe-koue-ki_(460) places its "Garden f Wisdom" on the Plateau of Pamir between the highest peaks of the
Himâlayan ranges; and, describing it as the culminating point of Central
Asia, shows the four rivers--Oxus, Indus, Ganges, and Silo--flowing from a ommon source, the "Lake of the Dragons."
But this is not the Genetic Eden; nor is it the Kabalistical Garden of
Eden. For the former--Eden Illa-ah--means in one sense Wisdom, a state like hat of Nirvâna, a Paradise of Bliss; while in another sense it refers to
Intellectual Man himself, the container of the Eden in which grows the
Tree of Knowledge of good and evil; man being the Knower thereof.
Renan and Barthélemy St. Hilaire, basing themselves "on the most solid nductions," think it impossible to doubt any longer, and both place the radle of humanity "in the region of the Timaus." Finally, the _Journal
Asiatique_(461) concludes that:
All the traditions of the human race gathering its primitive
families at the region of their birth-place, show them to us
grouped around the countries where Jewish tradition places the
Garden of Eden; where the Âryans [Zoroastrians] established their
Airyana Vaęjô or the Meru [?]. They are hemmed in to the North by
the countries which join Lake Aral, and to the South by Baltistan,
or Little Tibet. Everything concurs in proving that there was the
abode of that primitive humanity to which we have to be traced.
That "primitive humanity" was in its Fifth Race, when the "Four-mouthed
Dragon," the lake, of which very few traces are now left, was the abode of he "Sons of Wisdom," the first Mind-born Sons of the Third Race. Yet it as neither the only nor the primitive cradle of humanity, though it was he copy of the cradle, verily, of the first thinking _divine_ Man. It was he Paradesha, the highland of the first Sanskrit-speaking people, the
Hedone, the country of delight of the Greeks, but it was not the "Bower of
Voluptuousness" of the Chaldćans, for the latter was but the reminiscence f it; nor again was it there that the "Fall of Man" occurred after the
"separation." The Eden of the Jews was _copied_ from the Chaldćan _copy_.
That the Fall of Man into generation occurred during the earliest portion f what Science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is videnced by the bible phraseology concerning the serpent, the nature of hich is explained in the _Zohar_. The question is not whether Eve's ncident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one an doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the ymbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not a Jewish but a niversal idea.
Now we find in the _Zohar_ a very strange assertion, one that is alculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous bsurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamaël, the upposed Satan, to seduce Eve, was a kind of "flying amel"--{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}.(462)
A "flying camel" is indeed too much for the most liberal-minded F.R.S.
Nevertheless, the _Zohar_, which can hardly be expected to use the anguage of a Cuvier, was right in its description; for we find it called n the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the _Avesta_ is represented s having after the Fall lost its _nature_ and its _name_, and is escribed as a huge serpent with a camel's neck.
Salverte asserts that:
There are no winged serpents nor veritable dragons....
Grasshoppers are still called by the Greeks _winged serpents_, and
this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence
of winged serpents.(463)
There are none _now_; but there is no reason why they should not have xisted during the Mesozoic Age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their keletons, is a witness to "flying camels." Already, after finding simple ossils of certain saurians, the great Naturalist has written, that:
If anything can justify the hydras and other monsters, whose
figures were so often repeated by medićval historians, it is
incontestably the Plesiosaurus.(464)
We are unaware if Cuvier has added anything in the way of a further _mea ulpa_, but we may well imagine his confusion for all his slanders against rchaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a _flying_ aurian, the Pterodactyl, found in Germany, seventy-eight feet long, and arrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body. This fossil is escribed as a reptile, the _little fingers of whose hands_ are so longated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the "flying amel" of the _Zohar_ is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of he Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still etter the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability on which to uild a "flying camel," or a long-necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of
Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a inged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebrć, which ndicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.
And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never laimed Palćontography and Palćontology among its arts and sciences; and t never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old
Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in he Imperial Library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognized erfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform
Chinese dragons.(465) Moreover, the prophets speak in the _Bible_ of the lying fiery serpents,(466) and Job mentions the Leviathan.(467) Now the ollowing questions are put very directly:
I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of he Carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them rally and pictorially, unless they had either _seen those monsters hemselves_ or _possessed descriptions of them in their traditions_; which escriptions necessitate _living and intelligent eye-witnesses_?
II. And if such eye-witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective lairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palćolithic men e no earlier than about the middle of the Tertiary period? We must bear n mind that most of the men of Science do not allow man to have appeared efore the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the
Cainozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which isappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described y, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly ave begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the
Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must e made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.
It does not follow that, because the Occultists believe in and defend
Ancient Wisdom and Science, even though winged saurians are called "flying amels" in the translations of the _Zohar_, we therefore as readily elieve in all the stories which the Middle Ages give us of such dragons.
Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third
Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to redit Christopher Scherer's and Father Kircher's cock-and-bull stories of heir having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, espectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their ssertions as either dreams or fibs.(468) Nor shall we regard otherwise han as a "poetical license" the story told of Petrarch, who, while ollowing one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is redited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his agger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of is heart.(469) We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in he days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have xisted. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea-serpent is ne thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority ecause it lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and ises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping nvisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing s a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped etection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and xists no more.
The reader may enquire why we speak of dragons at all? We answer: firstly, ecause the knowledge of such animals is a proof of the enormous antiquity f the human race; and, secondly, to show the difference between the real oological meaning of the words "Dragon," "Nâga," and "Serpent," and the etaphorical meaning, when used symbolically. The profane reader, who nows nothing of the mystery language, is likely, whenever he finds one of hese words mentioned, to accept it literally. Hence, the _quidproquos_ nd unjust accusations. A couple of instances will suffice.
"Sed et Serpens?" Aye: but what was the nature of the serpent? Mystics ntuitionally see in the serpent of _Genesis_ an animal emblem and a high piritual essence: a cosmic force, superintelligent, a "great fallen ight," a spirit, sidereal, aërial and tellurian at the same time, "whose nfluence circumambulates the globe" (_qui circumambulat terram_), as De
Mirville,(470) a Christian fanatic of the dead-letter, has it, and which nly "manifested itself under the physical emblem which agreed the better ith its moral and intellectual _coils_"--_i.e._, under the ophidian form.
But what will Christians make of the Brazen Serpent, the "Divine Healer," f the serpent is to be regarded as the emblem of cunning and evil; the
"Evil One" itself? How can the line of demarcation ever be settled, when t is traced arbitrarily in a sectarian theological spirit? For, if the ollowers of the Roman Church are taught that Mercury and Ćsculapius, or
Asclepios, who are, in truth, one, are "devils and sons of devils," and he wand and serpent of the latter, the "Devil's wand"; how about the
Brazen Serpent of Moses? Every scholar knows that both the Heathen "wand" nd the Jewish "serpent" are one and the same, namely, the Caduceus of
Mercury, son of Apollo-Python. It is easy to comprehend why the Jews dopted the ophidian shape for their "seducer." With them it was purely
_physiological_ and _phallic_; and no amount of casuistical reasoning on he part of the Roman Catholic Church can give it another meaning, once hat the mystery language is well studied, and that the Hebrew scrolls are ead numerically. The Occultists know that the Serpent, the Nâga, and the
Dragon have each a septenary meaning; that the Sun, for instance, was the stronomical and cosmic emblem of the two contrasted Lights and the two
Serpents of the Gnostics, the good and the evil. They also know that, when
_generalized_, the conclusions of both Science and Theology present two ost ridiculous extremes. For, when the former tells us that it is ufficient to trace the legends of the serpents to their primal source, he astronomical legend, and to meditate seriously on the Sun, the onqueror of Python, and the celestial Virgin in the Zodiac forcing back he devouring Dragon, if we would have the key of all the subsequent eligious dogmas--it is easy to perceive that, instead of generalizing, the uthor simply has his eye on Christian religion and _Revelation_. We call his the one extreme. We see the other when Theology, repeating the famous ecision of the Council of Trent, seeks to convince the masses that:
From the fall of man until the hour of his baptism the Devil has
full power over him, and possesses him _by right_--_diabolum
dominium et potestatem super homines habere et jure eos
possidere_.(471)
To this Occult Philosophy answers: Prove first the existence of the Devil
_as an entity_, and then we may believe in such congenital possession. A ery small amount of observation and knowledge of human nature may be ufficient to prove the fallacy of this theological dogma. Had Satan any eality, in the objective or even subjective world (in the ecclesiastical ense), it is the poor Devil who would find himself chronically obsessed nd even possessed by the wicked--hence by the bulk of mankind. It is umanity itself, and especially the clergy, headed by the haughty, nscrupulous and intolerant Roman Church, which has begotten, given birth o, and reared in love the Evil One. But this is a digression.
The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having
adored the serpent.
The whole of humanity burnt incense to it or stoned it. The
_Zends_ speak of it as do the _Kings_ and _Vedas_, as the _Edda_
... and the _Bible_.... Everywhere the sacred serpent [the Nâga]
has its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who ...
prepares its meal with the same care that she bestows on the
sacred fire. In Greece, Ćsculapius cannot cure without its
assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Every one has heard of
the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine
and its return with the not less famous serpent, which proceeded
of its own will and by itself toward its master's temple on one of
the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it
[the serpent] in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it with
care, not a Necromancer whose tombs are free from its presence!
The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing,
as Schelling did, that the serpent is "evil in substance and in
person."(472)
Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the restige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, he ought to study the atter in India and learn all that is believed about, and still attributed o, the Nâgas (cobras) in that country; one should also visit the Africans f Whydah, the Voodoos of Port-au-Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of
Mexico, and the Pâ, or Men-serpents of China, etc. But why wonder that the erpent is "adored" and at the same time cursed, since we know that from he beginning it was a symbol? In every ancient language the word _dragon_ ignified what it now does in Chinese, _long_ or "the being who excels in ntelligence," and in Greek, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, or "he who sees and watches."(473) Is t to the animal of this name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it ot evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning ay have led savages now, that the above qualifications were intended to pply to the human originals, who were symbolized by Serpents and Dragons?
These originals--called to this day in China the "Dragons of Wisdom"--were he first disciples of the Dhyânîs, who were their Instructors; in short, he Primitive Adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth
Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era ould ever have confounded the man and the symbol.
The symbol of Chnouphis, or the Soul of the World, writes Champollion:
Is among others that of an enormous serpent standing on human
legs; this reptile, the emblem of the Good Genius, is a veritable
Agathodćmon. It is often represented bearded.... This sacred
animal, identical with the serpent of the Ophites, is found
engraved on numerous Gnostic or Basilidean stones.... The serpent
has various heads, but is constantly inscribed with the letters
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}.(474)
Agathodćmon was endowed "with the knowledge of good and evil," _i.e._, ith Divine Wisdom, for without the latter the former is impossible.(475)
Repeating Jamblichus, Champollion shows him to be:
The deity called {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} [or the Fire of the Celestial Gods--the
Great Thot-Hermes],(476) to whom Hermes Trismegistus attributes
the invention of magic.(477)
The "invention of magic"! A strange term to use, as though the unveiling f the eternal and actual mysteries of Nature could be _invented_! As well ttribute, millenniums hence, the _invention_ instead of the discovery of adiant matter to Mr. Crookes. Hermes was not the inventor, or even the iscoverer, for, as said in the last footnote but one, Thot-Hermes is a eneric name, as is Enoch--Enoďchion, the "inner, spiritual eye"--Nebo, the rophet and seer, etc. It is not the proper name of any one living man, ut a generic title of many Adepts. Their connection with the serpent in ymbolic allegories is due to their enlightenment by the Solar and
Planetary Gods during the earliest intellectual Race, the Third. They are ll the representative patrons of the Secret Wisdom. Asclepios is the son f the Sun-God Apollo, and he is Mercury; Nebo is the son of Bel-Merodach;
Vaivasvata Manu, the great Rishi, is the son of Vivasvat--the Sun or Sűrya, tc. And while, astronomically, the Nâgas along with the Rishis, the
Gandharvas, Apsarases, Grâmanîs (or Yakshas, minor Gods), Yâtudhânas and
Devas, are the Sun's attendants throughout the twelve solar months; in heogony, and also in anthropological evolution, they are Gods and
Men--when incarnated in the _Nether_ World. Let the reader be reminded, in his connection, of the fact that Apollonius met in Kashmir Buddhist
Nâgas. These are neither serpents zoologically, nor yet the Nâgas thnologically, but "wise men."
The _Bible_, from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_, is but a series of historical ecords of the great struggle between White and Black Magic, between the
Adepts of the Right Path, the Prophets, and those of the Left, the
Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. Even the students of Occultism, hough some of them have more archaic MSS. and direct teaching to rely pon, find it difficult to draw a line of demarcation between the Sodales f the Right Path and those of the Left. The great schism that arose etween the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and
Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of the "Sons of
God," is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two Schools of
Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is hown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob. And here it may be well o quote a few sentences from _Isis Unveiled_.(478)
The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: "Dan," he says, "shall be
a _serpent_ by the way, an _adder_ in the path, that biteth the
horse-heels, so that his rider shall fall backwards [_i.e._, he
will teach candidates _Black_ Magic]. I have waited for thy
salvation, O Lord!" Of Simeon and Levi the patriarch remarks that
they "are brethren; instruments of _cruelty_ are in their
habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their _secret_; unto
their _assembly_."(479) Now in the original, the words "their
secret" read--"their Sod."(480) And Sod was the name for the great
Mysteries of Baal, Adonis and Bacchus, who were all Sun-Gods and
had serpents for symbols. The Kabalists explain the allegory of
the fiery serpents by saying that this was the name given to the
tribe of Levi, to all the Levites, in short, and that Moses was
the chief of the Sodales.(481)
It is to the Mysteries that the original meaning of the "Dragon-Slayers" as to be traced, and the question is fully treated of hereafter.
Meanwhile it follows that, if Moses was the Chief of the Mysteries, he was he Hierophant thereof; and further, if, at the same time, we find the
Prophets thundering against the "abominations" of the people of Israël, hat there were two Schools. "Fiery serpents" was, then, simply the pithet given to the Levites of the priestly caste, after they had eparted from the Good Law, the traditional teachings of Moses, and to all hose who followed Black Magic. Isaiah, when referring to the "rebellious hildren" who will have to carry their riches into the lands whence come
"the viper and _fiery_ flying _serpent_,"(482) or Chaldća and Egypt, whose
Initiates had already greatly degenerated in his day (700 B.C.), meant the orcerers of those lands.(483) But these must be carefully distinguished rom the "Fiery Dragons of Wisdom" and the "Sons of the Fire-Mist."
In the _Great Book of the Mysteries_ we are told that:
_Seven Lords created seven Men; three Lords [Dhyân Chohans or Pitris] were oly and good, four less heavenly and full of passion.... The Chhâyâs
[phantoms] of the Fathers were as they._
This accounts for the differences in human nature, which is divided into even gradations of good and evil. There were seven tabernacles ready to e inhabited by Monads under seven different Karmic conditions. The
Commentaries explain on this basis the easy spread of evil, as soon as the uman Forms had become real men. Some ancient philosophers, however, in heir genetical accounts, ignored the seven and gave only four. Thus the
Mexican local _Genesis_ has "four _good_ men," described as the four real ncestors of the human race, "who were neither begotten by the Gods nor orn of woman"; but whose creation was a wonder wrought by the Creative
Powers, and who were made only after "_three attempts at manufacturing men ad failed_." The Egyptians in their theology had only "four Sons of
God"--whereas in _Pymander_ _seven_ are given--thus avoiding any mention of he evil nature of man. When, however, Set from a God sank into Set-
Typhon, he began to be called the "seventh son"; whence probably arose the elief that "the seventh son of the seventh son" is always a natural-born agician--though at first only a _sorcerer_ was meant. Apap, the serpent ymbolizing evil, is slain by Aker, Set's serpent;(484) therefore Set-
Typhon could not be that evil. In the _Book of the Dead_, it is commanded hat Chapter clxiii should be read "in the presence of a serpent on two egs," which means a high Initiate, a Hierophant, for the discus and ram's orns(485) that adorn his "serpent's" head in the hieroglyphics of the itle of the said chapter, denote this. Over the "serpent" are represented he two mystic eyes of Ammon,(486) the hidden "Mystery God." The above assages corroborate our assertion, and show what the word "serpent" eally meant in antiquity.
But as to the Nagals and Nargals; whence came the similarity or names etween the Indian Nâgas and the American Nagals?
The Nargal was the Chaldćan and Assyrian chief of the Magi [Rab-
Mag], and the Nagal was the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians.
Both derive their names from Nergal-Serezer, the Assyrian god, and
the Hindű Nâgas. Both have the same faculties and the power to
have an attendant Dćmon, with whom they identify themselves
completely. The Chaldćan and Assyrian Nargal kept his Dćmon, in
the shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the
Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can--in the neighbouring lake,
or wood, or in the house, in the shape of some household
animal.(487)
Such similarity cannot be attributed to _coincidence_. A new world is iscovered, and we find that, for our forefathers of the Fourth Race, it as already an old one; that Arjuna, Krishna's companion and Chelâ, is aid to have descended into Pâtâla, the "antipodes" and therein married
Ulűpî,(488) a Nâga, or Nâgî rather, the daughter of the king of the Nâgas,
Kauravya.(489)
And now it may be hoped the full meaning of the serpent emblem is proven.
It is neither that of evil, nor, least of all, that of the devil; but is, ndeed, the {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER XI~}, the "Eternal Sun Abrasax," the Central
Spiritual Sun of all the Kabalists, represented in some diagrams by the ircle of Tiphereth.
And here, again, we may quote from our earlier volumes and enter into urther explanations.
From this region of unfathomable Depth (Bythos, Aditi, Shekinah,
the Veil of the Unknown) issues forth a Circle formed of spirals.
This is Tiphereth; which, in the language of symbolism, means a
grand Cycle, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to
follow the spirals, lies the Serpent--emblem of Wisdom and
Eternity--the Dual Androgyne; the cycle representing Ennoia, or the
Divine Mind (a Power which does not create but which must
assimilate), and the Serpent, the Agathodćmon, the Ophis, the
_Shadow_ of the Light (non-eternal, yet the greatest Divine Light
on our plane). Both were the Logoi of the Ophites; or the Unity as
Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of Good and
Evil.(490)
Were it Light alone, inactive and absolute, the human mind could not ppreciate nor even realize it. Shadow is that which enables Light to anifest itself, and gives it objective reality. Therefore, Shadow is not vil, but is the necessary and indispensable corollary which completes
Light or Good; it is its _creator_ on Earth.
According to the views of the Gnostics, these two principles are immutable
Light and Shadow; Good and Evil being virtually one and having existed hrough all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist so long as there re manifested worlds.
This symbol accounts for the adoration by this sect of the
Serpent, as the Saviour, coiled either round the sacramental loaf,
or a Tau (the phallic emblem). As a unity, Ennoia and Ophis are
the Logos. When separated, one is the Tree of Spiritual Life, the
other, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we find
Ophis urging the first human couple--the material production of
Ilda-baoth, but owing its spiritual principle to Sophia-
Achamoth--to eat of the forbidden fruit, although Ophis represents
divine Wisdom.
The Serpent, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree
of Life, are all symbols transplanted from the soil of India. The
Arasa-maram [?], the banyan tree, so sacred with the Hindűs--since
Vishnu during one of his incarnations, reposed under its mighty
shade and there taught human philosophy and sciences--is called the
Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Under the protecting
foliage of this king of the forests, the Gurus teach their pupils
their first lessons on immortality and initiate them into the
mysteries of life and death. The Java-Aleim of the Sacerdotal
College are said, in the Chaldćan tradition, to have taught the
sons of men to become like one of them. To the present day Foh-
tchou(491) who lives in his Foh-Maëyu, or the temple of Buddha, on
the top of the Kouin-Long-Sang,(492) the great mountain, produces
his greatest religious miracles under a tree called in Chinese
Sung-Ming-Shu, or the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, for
ignorance is death, and knowledge alone gives immortality. This
marvellous display takes place every three years, when an immense
concourse of Chinese Buddhists assembles in pilgrimage at the holy
place.(493)
Now it may become comprehensible why the earliest Initiates and Adepts, or he "Wise Men," who are claimed to have been initiated into the Mysteries f Nature by the Universal Mind, represented by the highest Angels, were amed the "Serpents of Wisdom" and "Dragons"; and also how the first hysiologically complete couples--after being initiated into the Mystery of
Human Creation through Ophis, the Manifested Logos and the Androgyne, by ating of the fruit of knowledge--gradually began to be accused by the aterial spirit of posterity of having _committed sin_, of having isobeyed the "Lord God," and of having been tempted by the Serpent.
So little have the first Christians--who despoiled the Jews of their
_Bible_--understood the first four chapters of _Genesis_ in their esoteric eaning, that they have never perceived that not only was no sin intended n this disobedience, but that the "Serpent" was actually the "Lord God" imself, who, as the Ophis, the Logos, or the bearer of divine creative isdom, taught mankind to become creators in their turn.(494) They never ealized that the Cross was an evolution from the Tree and the Serpent, nd thus became the _salvation of mankind_. By this it would become the ery first fundamental symbol of Creative Cause, applying to geometry, to umbers, to astronomy, to measure and to animal reproduction. According to he _Kabalah_, _the curse on man came with the formation of woman_.(495)
The circle was separated from its diameter line.
From the possession of the double principle in one, that is, the
Androgyne condition, the separation of the dual principle was
made, presenting two opposites, whose destiny it was, for ever
after, to seek reünion into the original _one_ condition. The
curse was this, viz., that Nature, impelling the search, evaded
the desired result by the production of a new being, distinct from
that reünion or oneness desired, by which the natural longing to
recover a lost state was and is for ever being cheated. It is by
this tantalizing process of a continued curse that Nature
lives.(496)
The allegory of Adam being driven away from the Tree of Life means,
Esoterically, that the newly separated Race abused and dragged down the ystery of Life into the region of animalism and bestiality. For, as the
_Zohar_ shows, Matronethah--Shekinah, the wife of Metatron symbolically--"is he way to the great Tree of Life, the Mighty Tree," and Shekinah is
Divine Grace. As explained, this Tree reaches the heavenly vale and is idden between three mountains (the upper Triad of Principles, in man).
From these three mountains, the Tree ascends above (the Adept's knowledge spires heavenward), and then redescends below (into the Adept's Ego on arth). This Tree is revealed in the day time and is hidden during the ight, _i.e._, revealed to an enlightened mind and hidden to ignorance, hich is night.(497) As says the Commentary:
_The Tree of the Knowledge of the Good and the Evil grows from the roots f the Tree of Life._
But then also, as the author of _The Source of Measures_ writes:
In the Kabalah it is plainly to be found that the "Tree of Life"
was the ansated cross in its sexual aspect, and that the "Tree of
Knowledge" was the separation and the coming together again to
fulfil the fatal condition. To display this in numbers the values
of the letters composing the word Otz ({~HEBREW LETTER AYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL TSADI~}), tree, are 7 and 9, the
seven being the holy feminine number and the nine the number of
the phallic or male energy. This ansated cross is the symbol of
the Egyptian _female-male_, Isis-Osiris, the germinal principle in
all forms, based on the primal manifestation applicable in all
directions and in all senses.
This is the Kabalistic view of the Western Occultists, and it differs from he more philosophical Eastern or Âryan views upon the subject.(498) The eparation of the sexes was in the programme of Nature and of natural volution; and the creative faculty in male and female was a gift of
Divine Wisdom. In the truth of such traditions the whole of Antiquity, rom the patrician philosopher to the humblest spiritually inclined lebeian, has believed. And as we proceed, we may successfully show that he _relative_ truth of such legends, if not their absolute xactness--vouched for by such giants of intellect as were Solon,
Pythagoras, Plato, and others--begins to dawn upon more than one modern
Scientist. He is perplexed; he stands startled and confused before proofs hat are being daily accumulated before him; he feels that there is no way f solving the many historical problems that stare him in the face, unless e begins by accepting ancient traditions. Therefore, in saying that we elieve absolutely in ancient records and _universal_ legends, we need ardly plead guilty before the impartial observer, for other and far more earned writers, and that too among those who belong to the modern
Scientific School, evidently believe in much that the Occultists do--in
"dragons," for instance, and not only symbolically, but also in their ctual existence at one time.
It would have indeed been a bold step for anyone, some thirty
years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection
of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them
the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated
tales, time-honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of
the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less
distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Nowadays it is a
less hazardous proceeding.(499)
Thus opens the Introduction to a recent (1886) and most interesting work y Mr. Charles Gould, called _Mythical Monsters_. He boldly states his elief in most of these monsters. He submits that:
Many of the so-called mythical animals, which throughout long ages
and in all nations have been the fertile subjects of fiction and
fable, come legitimately within the scope of plain matter-of-fact
Natural History, and that they may be considered, not as the
outcome of exuberant fancy, but as creatures which really once
existed, and of which, unfortunately, only imperfect and
inaccurate descriptions have filtered down to us, probably very
much refracted, through the mists of time; ... traditions of
creatures _once coëxisting with man, some of which are so weird
and terrible as to appear at first sight to be impossible_....
For me the major part of those creatures are not chimeras but
objects of rational study. The dragon, in place of being a
creature evolved out of the imagination of Âryan man by the
contemplation of lightning flashing through the caverns which he
tenanted, as is held by some mythologists, is an animal which once
lived and dragged its ponderous coils and perhaps flew....
To me the specific existence of the unicorn seems not incredible,
and, in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its
origin to a lunar myth.(500)...
For my part I doubt the general derivation of myths from "the
contemplation of the visible workings of external nature." It
seems to me easier to suppose that the palsy of time has enfeebled
the utterance of these oft-told tales until their original
appearance is almost unrecognizable, than that _uncultured savages
should possess powers of imagination and poetical invention far
beyond those enjoyed by the most instructed nations of the present
day_; less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods
and demigods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
descriptions are _transformations_ than to believe them to be
_inventions_.(501)
It is shown by the same Geologist that:
Palćontologists have successively traced back the existence of man
to periods variously estimated at from _thirty thousand to one
million_ years--to periods when he coëxisted with animals which
have long since become extinct.(502)
These animals, "weird and terrible," were, to give a few instances: (1)
The genus Cidastes, whose huge bones and vertebrć show them to have ttained a length of nearly two hundred feet. The remains of such onsters, no less than ten in number, were seen by Professor Marsh in the
Mauvaises Terres of Colorado, strewn upon the plains. (2) The Titanosaurus
Montanus, reaching fifty or sixty feet in length. (3) The Dinosaurians, in he Jurassic beds of the Rocky Mountains, of still more gigantic roportions. (4) The Atlantosaurus Immanis, a femur of which alone is over ix feet in length, and which would be thus over one hundred feet in ength. But even yet the line has not been reached, and we hear of the iscovery of remains of such titanic proportions as to possess a thigh- one over twelve feet in length!(503) Then we read of the monstrous
Sivatherium in the Himâlayas, the four-horned stag, as large as an lephant, and exceeding the latter in height; of the gigantic Megatherium; f colossal flying lizards, Pterodactyli, with crocodile jaws on a duck's ead, etc. _All these were coëxistent with man, most probably attacked an, as man attacked them._ And we are asked to believe that the said man as no larger then than he is now! Is it possible to conceive that, urrounded in Nature with such monstrous creatures, man, unless himself a olossal giant, could have survived, while all his foes have perished? Is t with his stone hatchet that he had the best of a Sivatherium or a igantic flying saurian? Let us always bear in mind that at least one reat man of Science, de Quatrefages, sees no good scientific reasons why an should not have been "contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia and o back _as far as the Secondary Period_."(504)
The very conservative Professor Jukes writes:
It appears that the flying dragons of romance had something like a
real existence in former ages of the world.(505)
And the author goes on to ask.
Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? Or have we
in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldća and China,
shadowy mementoes of prehistoric man, handed down by tradition,
and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands, from
others which, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, may have been
submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which destroyed
them with all their civilization?(506)
The few remaining giant animals, such as elephants--themselves smaller than heir ancestors the Mastodons--and hippopotami, are the only surviving elics, and tend to disappear more entirely every day. But even they have lready had a few pioneers of their future genus, and have decreased in ize in the same proportion as men have done. For the remains of a pigmy lephant, E. Falconeri, were found in the cave deposits of Malta; and the ame author asserts that they were associated with the remains of pigmy ippopotami, the former being only two feet six inches high. There is also he still existing Hippopotamus (Choeropsis) Liberiensis, "which M. Milne-
Edwards figures as little more than two feet in height."(507)
Sceptics may smile and denounce our work as full of nonsense or fairy- ales. But by so doing they only justify the wisdom of the Chinese hilosopher Chuang, who said that:
The things that men do know can in no way be compared, numerically
speaking, to the things that are unknown.(508)
Thus they laugh only at their own ignorance.
The "Sons Of God" And The "Sacred Island."
The "legend" given in _Isis Unveiled_(509) in relation to a portion of the lobe which Science now concedes to have been the cradle of umanity--though it was but one of the _seven_ cradles, in truth--runs as ollows:
Tradition says, and the records of the _Great Book_ (the _Book of
Dzyan_) explain, that long before the days of Ad-am, and his
inquisitive wife, He-va, where now are found but salt lakes and
desolate barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which
extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud Himâlayan range, and
its western prolongation. In it an island, which, for its
unparalleled beauty, had no rival in the world, was inhabited by
the last remnant of the Race which preceded ours.
"The last remnant" means the "Sons of Will and Yoga," who, with a few ribes, survived the great cataclysm. For it was the Third Race, nhabiting the great Lemurian Continent, which preceded the veritable and omplete human Races--the Fourth and the Fifth. Therefore was it said in
_Isis Unveiled_ that:
This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for
it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the
"Sons of God"; not those who saw the daughters of men, but the
real Elohim, though in the oriental _Kabalah_ they have another
name. It was they who imparted Nature's most weird secrets to men,
and revealed to them the ineffable, and now _lost_ "word."
The "Island," according to belief, exists to the present hour, as an oasis urrounded by the dreadful wildernesses of the great Gobi Desert--whose ands "no foot hath crossed in the memory of man."
This word, which is no word, has travelled once round the globe,
and still lingers as a far-off dying echo in the hearts of some
privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges
were aware of the existence of this island; but the "word" was
known only to the Java Aleim (Mahâ Chohan in another tongue), or
chief Lord of every College, and was passed to his successor only
at the moment of death. There were many such Colleges, and the old
classical authors speak of them.
There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but
subterranean passages, known only to the chiefs, communicated with
it in all directions.(510)
Tradition asserts, and Archćology accepts the truth of the legend, that here is more than one city now flourishing in India, which is built on everal other cities, making thus a subterranean city of six or seven tories high. Delhi is one of them, Allahabad another; examples being ound even in Europe, _e.g._, in Florence, which is built on several efunct Etruscan and other cities. Why, then, could not Ellora, Elephanta,
Karli, and Ajunta have been built over subterranean labyrinths and assages, as it is claimed? Of course we do not allude to the caves which re known to every European, whether _de visu_ or by hearsay, otwithstanding their enormous antiquity, though that even is disputed by odern Archćology; but to a fact, known to the initiated Brâhmans of India nd especially to Yogîs, viz., that there is not a cave-temple in the ountry but has its subterranean passages running in every direction, and hat these underground caves and endless corridors have in their turn
_their_ caves and corridors.
Who can tell whether the lost Atlantis--which is also mentioned in
the _Secret Book_, but, again, under another name, peculiar to the
sacred language--did not still exist in those days?--
e went on to ask. It _did_ exist most assuredly, for it was approaching ts greatest days of glory and civilization when the last of the Lemurian ontinents went down.
The great lost Continent might have, perhaps, been situated south
of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania.(511) If the
hypothesis--now so much doubted, and positively denied by some
learned authors, who regard it as a joke of Plato--is ever
verified, then, perhaps, will the Scientists believe that the
description of the God-inhabited continent was not altogether a
fable.(512) And they may then perceive that Plato's guarded hints
and his attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian
priests, were but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the
world, and at the same time, by cleverly combining truth and
fiction, of disconnecting himself from a story which the
obligations imposed at Initiation forbade him to divulge.
To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of
hierophants was divided into two distinct categories;(513) those
who were instructed by the "Sons of God" of the island, and who
were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation; and
others who inhabited the lost Atlantis--if such must be its
name--and who, being of another race (produced _sexually_ but of
_divine_ parents), were born with a sight which embraced all
hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material
obstacle. In short, they were the Fourth Race of men mentioned in
the _Popol Vuh_, whose sight was unlimited, and who knew all
things at once.
In other words, they were the Lemuro-Atlanteans, the first who had a
Dynasty of Spirit-Kings; not of Manes, or "Ghosts," as some believe,(514) ut of actual living Devas, or Demi-gods or Angels, again, who had assumed odies to rule over this Race, and who, in their turn, instructed them in rts and sciences. Only, as these Dhyânîs were Rűpa or material Spirits, hey were not always good. Their King Thevetat was one of the latter, and t is under the evil influence of this King-Demon that the Atlantis-Race ecame a nation of wicked "magicians."
In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would
be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the
disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of
Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the
submersion of Atlantis, which finds its imitation in the stories
of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood. The giants and magicians "and
all flesh died ... and every man." All except Xisuthrus and Noah,
who are substantially identical with the great Father of the
Thlinkithians,(515) who, they say, also escaped in a large boat
like the Hindű Noah Vaivasvata.
If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further
story that, from the intermarrying of the progeny of the
hierophants of the island and the descendants of the Atlantean
Noah, a mixed race of righteous and wicked sprang up. On the one
side the world had its Enochs, Moseses, various Buddhas, its
numerous "Saviours," and great hierophants; on the other hand, its
"_natural_ magicians" who, through lack of the restraining power
of proper spiritual enlightenment, ... perverted their gifts to
evil purposes.
We may supplement this by the testimony of some records and traditions. In
_L'Histoire des Vierges: les Peuples et les Continents Disparus_, Louis
Jacolliot says:
One of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples
by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred
thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean an immense
continent, which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the
fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia.
The high plateaux of Hindűstan and Asia, according to this
hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant
epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent....
According to the Brâhmans, this country had attained a high
civilization, and the peninsula of Hindűstan, enlarged by the
displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm,
has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in
this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples
which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their
speech _was derived the Sanskrit_. The Indo-Hellenic tradition,
preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from
the plains of India, also relates the existence of a continent and
a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides,
and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of
the Tropics.
Apart from this fact, the supposition of an ancient continent in
those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the
volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the
Canaries and Cape de Verd Islands, is not devoid of geographical
probability. The Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond
the Pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the
mysterious Ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories
preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian
legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the
sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan
Archipelago to Polynesia, from the Straits of Sunda to Easter
Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents
preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most
important of all.
A religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to
say, to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms
"that all these islands once formed two immense countries,
inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the
gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify
them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and, since then,
it has been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone,
the mountain-peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the
power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had
committed."
Whatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have
been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of
Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is
certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly
important to Science to recover its traces, however feeble and
fugitive they may be.(516)
This Oceanic tradition corroborates the legend given from the "Records of he Secret Doctrine." The war mentioned between the yellow and the black en, relates to a struggle between the "Sons of Gods" and the "Sons of
Giants," or the inhabitants and magicians of Atlantis.
The final conclusion of the author, who personally visited all the islands f Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, nd traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows:
As to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of
the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such
proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer.
The three summits of this continent, the Sandwich Islands, New
Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen
to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate
islands, Viti (Fiji), Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna (? Foutouha), Ouvea
(? Oueeha), the Marquesas, Tahiti, Poumoutou (? Pomatou), the
Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from
seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues.
All navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central
groups could never have communicated in view of their actual
geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at
hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a
pirogue ... without a compass, and travel months without
provisions.
On the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of
Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti,
etc., _had never known each other, had never heard of each other_,
before the arrival of the Europeans. _And yet each of these people
maintained that their island had at one time formed part of an
immense stretch of land which extended towards the West on the
side of Asia._ And all, brought together, were found to speak the
same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same
religious belief. And all to the question, "Where is the cradle of
your race?" for sole response, _extended their hand toward the
setting sun_.(517)
Geographically, this description clashes slightly with the facts in the
Secret Records; but it shows the existence of such traditions, and this is ll one cares for. For, as there is no smoke without fire, so a tradition ust be based on some approximate truth.
In its proper place we will show Modern Science fully corroborating the bove and other traditions of the Secret Doctrine with regard to the two ost Continents. The Easter Island relics, for instance, are the most stounding and eloquent memorials of the primeval giants. They are as rand as they are mysterious; and one has but to examine the heads of the olossal statues, that have remained unbroken, to recognize at a glance he features of the type and character attributed to the Fourth Race iants. They seem of one cast though different in features--of a distinctly ensual type, such as the Atlanteans (the Daityas and "Atalantians") are aid to have had in the Esoteric Hindű books. Compare these with the faces f some other colossal statues in Central Asia--those near Bamian, for nstance--the portrait-statues, tradition tells us, of Buddhas belonging to
_previous_ Manvantaras; of those Buddhas and heroes who are mentioned in he Buddhist and Hindű works, as men of fabulous size,(518) the good and oly brothers of their wicked coüterine brothers generally, just as
Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, was the brother of Kumbhakarna; all escendants of the Gods through the Rishis, and thus, like "Titan and his normous brood," all "Heaven's first-born." These "Buddhas," though often poilt by the symbolical representation of great pendent ears, show a uggestive difference, perceived at a glance, in the expression of their aces from that of the Easter Island statues. They may be of one race--but he former are "Sons of Gods"; the latter the brood of mighty sorcerers.
All these are reďncarnations however, and, apart from unavoidable xaggerations in popular fancy and tradition, they are _historical haracters_.(519) When did they live? How long ago lived the two Races, he Third and Fourth; and how long after did the various tribes of the
Fifth begin their strife, the wars between Good and Evil? We are assured y the Orientalists that chronology is both hopelessly mixed and absurdly xaggerated in the _Purânas_ and other Hindű Scriptures. We feel quite repared to agree with the accusation. But, if Âryan writers have ccasionally allowed their chronological pendulum to swing too far one ay, beyond the legitimate limit of fact; nevertheless, when the distance f that deviation is compared with the distance of the Orientalists' eviation in the opposite direction, moderation will be found on the
Brâhmanical side. It is the Pandit who will, in the long run, be found ore truthful and nearer to fact than the Sanskritist. The Sanskritist's urtailing--even when proved to have been resorted to in order to fit a ersonal hobby--is regarded by Western public opinion as "a _cautious_ cceptance of facts," whereas the Pandit is brutally treated in print as a
"_liar_." But, surely, this is no reason why everyone should be compelled o see this in the same light! An impartial observer may judge it therwise. He may either proclaim both unscrupulous historians, or justify oth, each on his respective ground, and say: Hindű Âryans wrote for their
Initiates, who read truth between the lines; not for the masses. If they id mix up events and confuse Ages _intentionally_, it was not with the iew of deceiving any one, but in order to preserve their knowledge from he prying eye of the foreigner. But, to him who can count the
_generations_ from the Manus, and the _series of incarnations_ specified n the cases of some heroes,(520) in the _Purânas_, the meaning and hronological order are very clear. As for the Western Orientalist, he ust be excused, on account of his undeniable ignorance of the methods sed by archaic Esotericism.
But such existing prejudices will have to give way and disappear very soon efore the light of new discoveries. Already Dr. Weber's and Prof. Max
Müller's favourite theories--namely, that writing was not known in India, ven in the days of Pânini (!); that the Hindűs had all their arts and ciences--even to the Zodiac and their architecture (Fergusson)--from the
Macedonian Greeks; these and other such cock-and-bull hypotheses, are hreatened with ruin. It is the ghost of old Chaldća that comes to the escue of truth. In his third Hibbert Lecture (1887) Professor Sayce of
Oxford, speaking of newly-discovered Assyrian and Babylonian cylinders, efers at length to Ea, the God of Wisdom, now identified with the Oannes f Berosus, the half-man, half-fish, who taught the Babylonians culture nd the _art of writing_. This Ea, to whom, thanks only to the Biblical
Deluge, an antiquity of hardly 1,500 B.C. had been hitherto allowed, is ow spoken of in the following terms, to summarize from the Professor:
The city of Ea was Eridu, which stood 6,000 years ago on the
shores of the Persian Gulf. The name means "the good city," a
particularly holy spot, since it was the centre from which the
earliest Chaldćan civilization made its way to the north. As the
culture-god was represented as coming from the sea, it was
possible that the culture of which Eridu was the seat was of
foreign importation. We now know that there was intercourse at a
very early period between Chaldća and the Sinaitic peninsula, as
well as with India. The statues discovered by the French at Tel-
loh (dating from at latest B.C. 4,000) were made of the extremely
hard stone known as diorite, and the inscriptions on them stated
the diorite to have been brought from Magan--_i.e._, the Sinaitic
peninsula, which was then ruled by the Pharaohs. The statues are
known to resemble in general style the diorite statue, Kephren,
the builder of the second Pyramid, while, according to Mr. Petrie,
the unit of measurement marked on the plan of the city, which one
of the Tel-loh figures holds on his lap, is the same as that
employed by the Pyramid builders. Teak wood has been found at
Mugheir, or Ur of the Chaldees, although that wood is an Indian
special product; add to this that an ancient Babylonian list of
clothing mentions _sindhu_ or "muslin," explained as "vegetable
cloth."(521)
Muslin, best known now as Dacca muslin, known in Chaldća as Hindu
(Sindhu), and teak wood used 4,000 years B.C., and yet the Hindűs, to whom
Chaldća owes its civilization, as has been well proven by Colonel Vans
Kennedy, were _ignorant of the art of writing_ before the Greeks taught hem their alphabet--if, at least, we have to believe Orientalists!
Stanza X. The History Of The Fourth Race.
38. The birth of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race. 39. The sub-races of
the Fourth Humanity begin to divide and interblend; they form the
first mixed races of various colours. 40. The superiority of the
Atlantean over other Races. 41. They fall into sin and beget
children and monsters. 42. The first germs of anthropomorphism and
sexual religion. They lose their "third eye."
38. THUS, TWO BY TWO, ON THE SEVEN ZONES, THE THIRD RACE GAVE BIRTH TO THE
FOURTH; THE SURA BECAME A-SURA.(522)
39. THE FIRST,(523) ON EVERY ZONE, WAS MOON-COLOURED;(524) THE SECOND
YELLOW LIKE GOLD; THE THIRD RED; THE FOURTH BROWN, WHICH BECAME BLACK WITH
SIN.(525) THE FIRST SEVEN HUMAN SHOOTS WERE ALL OF ONE COMPLEXION.(526)
THE NEXT SEVEN,(527) BEGAN MIXING.(528)
To understand Shloka 38, it must be read together with the Shlokas of
Stanza IX. Up to this point of evolution man belongs more to metaphysical han physical Nature. It is only after the so-called "Fall," that the
Races began to develop rapidly into a purely human shape. In order that he student may correctly comprehend the full meaning of the Fall--so ystic and transcendental in its real significance--he must at once be told he details which preceded it, seeing that modern Theology has made of the vent a pivot on which its most pernicious and absurd dogmas and beliefs re made to turn.
The Archaic Commentaries, as the reader may remember, explain that, of the
Host of Dhyânîs, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the mmortal, but, _on this plane_, senseless Monads--some "obeyed" (the Law of
Evolution) immediately the men of the Third Race became physiologically nd physically ready, _i.e._, when they had separated into sexes. These ere those early conscious Beings who, now adding conscious knowledge and ill to their inherent divine purity, "created" by Kriyâshakti the semi- ivine man, who became the Seed on Earth for future Adepts. Those, on the ther hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom--unfettered as it hen was by the bonds of Matter--said: "We can choose, ... we have isdom,"(529) and so incarnated far later--these had their first Karmic unishment prepared for them. They got bodies inferior (physiologically) o their Astral Models, because their Chhâyâs had belonged to Progenitors f an inferior degree in the seven Classes. As to those "Sons of Wisdom" ho "deferred" their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already ainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, these produced a terrible ause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day. It was roduced in themselves, and they became the carriers of that seed of niquity for ćons to come, because the bodies they had to inform had ecome defiled through their own procrastination.(530)
This was the "Fall of the Angels," owing to their rebellion against Karmic
Law. The "fall of _man_" was no fall, _for he was irresponsible_. But
"creation" having been invented on the dualistic system as the
"prerogative of God alone"--the legitimate _attribute_ patented by Theology n the name of an _infinite_ Deity of their own making--the power of
Kriyâshakti had to be regarded as "Satanic," and as a usurpation of divine ights. Thus, in the light of such narrow views, the foregoing must aturally be considered as a terrible slander on man, "created in the mage of God," and a still more dreadful blasphemy in the face of the ead-letter dogma. "Your doctrine," the Occultists have already been told,
"makes of man, created out of dust in the likeness of his God, a vehicle f the Devil, from the first." "Why do you make of your God a Devil--both, oreover, created in _your own_ image?"--is our reply. The Esoteric nterpretation of the _Bible_, however, sufficiently refutes this landerous invention of Theology; the Secret Doctrine must some day become he just Karma of the Churches--more anti-Christian than the representative ssemblies of the most confirmed Materialists and Atheists.
The true meaning of the old doctrine of the "Fallen Angels," in its nthropological and evolutionary sense, is contained in the _Kabalah_, and xplains the _Bible_. It is found preëminently in _Genesis_ when the atter is read in a spirit of research for truth, with no eye to dogma, nd in no mood of preconception. This is easily proven. In _Genesis_ (vi), he "Sons of God"--B'ne Aleim--become enamoured of the daughters of men, arry, and reveal to their wives the mysteries unlawfully learnt by them n Heaven, according to Enoch; and this is the "Fall of the Angels."(531)
But what, in reality, is the _Book of Enoch_ itself, from which the author f _Revelation_ and even the St. John of the Fourth Gospel(532) have so rofusely quoted? Simply a _Book of Initiation_, giving out in allegory nd cautious phraseology the programme of certain Archaic Mysteries erformed in the _inner_ Temples. The author of the _Sacred Mysteries mong the Mayas and Quichés_ very justly suggests that the so-called
"Visions" of Enoch relate to his (Enoch's) experience at Initiation, and hat he learned in the Mysteries; while he very erroneously states his pinion that Enoch had learned them before being converted to Christianity
(! !); furthermore, he believes that this book was written "at the eginning of the Christian era, when ... the customs and religion of the
Egyptians fell into decadency"! This is hardly possible, since Jude, in is Epistle,(533) quotes from the _Book of Enoch_; and, therefore, as
Archbishop Laurence, the translator of the _Book of Enoch_ from the
Ethiopic version, remarks, it "could not have been the production of a riter who lived after ... or was even coëval with" the writers of the
_New Testament_, unless, indeed, Jude and the Gospels, and all that ollows, were also a production of the already established Church--which, ome critics say, is not impossible. But we are now concerned with the
"Fallen Angels" of Enoch, rather than with Enoch himself.
In Indian exotericism, these Angels (Asuras) are also denounced as the
"enemies of the Gods"; those who oppose sacrificial worship offered to the
Devas. In Christian Theology they are broadly referred to as the "Fallen
Spirits," the heroes of various conflicting and contradictory legends, athered from Pagan sources. The _coluber tortuosus_, the "tortuous nake"--a qualification said to have originated with the Jews--had quite nother meaning before the Roman Church distorted it; among others, _a urely astronomical_ signification.
The "Serpent" fallen from on high (_deorsum fluens_) was credited with the ossession of the Keys of the Empire of the Dead ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}) to the ay when Jesus saw it fall "as lightning ... from heaven,"(534) otwithstanding the Roman Catholic interpretation of "_cadebat ut ulgur_." It means indeed that even "the devils are subject" to the
Logos--who is Wisdom, but at the same time, as the opponent of ignorance,
Satan or Lucifer. This remark refers to divine Wisdom falling like ightning on, and so quickening, the intellects of those who fight the evils of ignorance and superstition. Up to the time when Wisdom, in the hape of the incarnating Spirits of Mahat, descended from on high to nimate and call the Third Race to real conscious life--Humanity, if it can e so called in its animal, senseless state, was of course doomed to
_moral_ as well as to physical death. The Angels _fallen into generation_ re referred to metaphorically as Serpents and Dragons of Wisdom. On the ther hand, regarded in the light of the Logos, the Christian Saviour, ike Krishna, whether as man or Logos, may be said to have saved those who elieved in the Secret Teachings, from "eternal death," and to have onquered the Kingdom of Darkness, or Hell, as every Initiate does. This s the human, terrestrial form of the Initiates, and also--because the
Logos is Christos--that "principle" of our inner nature which develops in s into the Spiritual Ego--the Higher Self--formed of the indissoluble union f Buddhi, the sixth, and the spiritual efflorescence of Manas, the fifth
"principle."(535) "The Logos is passive Wisdom in Heaven and conscious, elf-active Wisdom on Earth," we are taught. It is the Marriage of the
"Heavenly Man" with the "Virgin of the World," or Nature, as described in
_Pymander_; the result of which is their progeny--immortal man. It is this hich is called in St. John's _Revelation_(536) the marriage of the Lamb ith his Bride. This "wife" is now identified with the Church of Rome wing to the arbitrary interpretations of her votaries. But they seem to orget that her "linen" may be "clean and white" _outwardly_, like the
"whited sepulchre," but that the rottenness she is inwardly filled with, s not the "righteousness of saints,"(537) but rather the blood of the aints she has "slain upon the earth."(538) Thus the remark made by the reat Initiate, in _Luke_--referring allegorically to the ray of nlightenment and reason, _falling like lightning_ from on high into the earts and minds of the converts to the old Wisdom-Religion, then resented in a new form by the wise Galilean Adept(539)--was distorted out f all recognition, as was also his own personality, and made to fit in ith one of the most cruel and the most pernicious of all theological ogmas.
But if Western Theology alone holds the patent and copyright of Satan--in ll the dogmatic horror of that fiction--other nationalities and religions ave committed equal errors in their misinterpretation of a tenet, which s one of the most profoundly philosophical and ideal conceptions of ncient thought. They have both disfigured, and hinted at, the correct eaning of it in their numerous allegories on the subject. Nor have the emi-esoteric dogmas of Paurânic Hindűism failed to evolve very suggestive ymbols and allegories concerning the rebellious and fallen Gods. The
_Purânas_ teem with them; and we find a direct hint at the truth in the requent allusions of Parâshara, in the _Vishnu Purâna_, to all those
Rudras, Rishis, Asuras, Kumâras and Munis, who have _to be born in every ge_--to reďncarnate in every Manvantara. This, Esoterically, is equivalent o saying that the "Flames" born of the Universal Mind, or Mahat, owing to he mysterious workings of Karmic Will and the impulse of Evolutionary
Law, had--without any gradual transition--landed on this Earth, after aving, as in _Pymander_, broken through the "Seven Circles of Fire," or, n short, the seven intermediate Worlds.
There is an Eternal Cyclic Law of Re-births, and the series is headed at very new Manvantaric Dawn by those who have enjoyed their rest from eďncarnations in previous Kalpas for incalculable Ćons--by the highest and he earliest Nirvânîs. It was the turn of these "Gods" to incarnate in the resent Manvantara; hence their presence on Earth, and the ensuing llegories; hence, also, the perversion of the original meaning.(540) The
Gods who had "_fallen_ into generation," whose mission it was to complete
_Divine_ Man, are found represented later on as Demons, Evil Spirits, and
Fiends, at feud and war with Gods, or the irresponsible agents of the one
Eternal Law. But no conception of such creatures as the Devils and the
Satan of the Christian, Jewish, and Mahommedan religions was ever intended y these thousand and one Âryan allegories.(541)
The true Esoteric view about "Satan," the opinion held on this subject by he whole of philosophic antiquity, is admirably brought out in an
Appendix, entitled "The Secret of Satan," to the second edition of Dr. A.
Kingsford's _Perfect Way_.(542) No better and clearer indication of the ruth could be offered to the intelligent reader, and it is therefore uoted here at some length:
1. And on the seventh day [seventh creation of the Hindűs],(543)
there went forth from the presence of God a _mighty Angel_, full
of wrath and consuming, and God gave him the dominion of the
outermost sphere.(544)
2. Eternity brought forth Time; the Boundless gave birth to Limit;
Being descended into generation.(545)
4. _Among the Gods is none like unto him_, into whose hands are
committed the kingdoms, the power and the glory of the worlds:
5. Thrones and empires, the dynasties of kings,(546) the fall of
nations, the birth of churches, the triumphs of Time.
For, as is said in Hermes:
20. Satan is the door-keeper of the _Temple of the King_; he
standeth in Solomon's porch; he holdeth _the Keys of the
Sanctuary_;
21. That no man may enter therein save the anointed, having the
arcanum of Hermes.
These suggestive and majestic verses had reference, with the ancient
Egyptians and other civilized peoples of antiquity, to the _creative and
__ generative Light of the Logos_--Horus, Brahmâ, Ahura Mazda, etc., as rimeval manifestations of the Ever-unmanifested Principle, whether called
Ain Suph, Parabrahman, or Zeruâna Akerne, or Boundless Time, Kâla--but the eaning is now degraded in the _Kabalah_. The "Anointed"--who has the ecrets and mysteries of Hermes, or Budha, Wisdom, and who alone is ntrusted with the "Keys of the Sanctuary," the Womb of Nature, in order o fructify it and call to active life and being the whole Kosmos--has ecome, with the Jews, Jehovah, the "God of Generation" on the Lunar
Mountain--Sinai, the Mountain of the Moon (Sin). The "Sanctuary" has become he "Holy of Holies," and the arcanum has been anthropomorphized, and
"phallicized," and dragged down into Matter, indeed. Hence arose the ecessity of making of the "Dragon of Wisdom," the "Serpent" of _Genesis_; f the conscious God who needed a body to clothe his too subjective ivinity, Satan. But the "innumerable incarnations of Spirit," and "the easeless pulse and current of Desire,"(547) refer, the first, to our octrine of Karmic and Cyclic Rebirths, the second--to Erôs, not the later
God of material, physiological love, but to the Divine Desire in the Gods, s well as in all Nature, to create and give life to Beings. This, the
Rays of the one "Dark," because invisible and incomprehensible, "Flame" ould achieve only by themselves descending into Matter. Therefore, as ontinued in the Appendix:
12. Many names hath God given him [Satan], names of mystery,
secret and terrible.
13. ... The Adversary, because Matter opposeth Spirit, and Time
accuseth even the saints of the Lord.
28. Stand in awe of him, and sin not: speak his name with
trembling....
29. For Satan is the magistrate of the Justice of God [Karma]; he
beareth the balance and the sword.
31. For to him are committed _Weight and Measure and Number_.
Compare the last sentence with what the Rabbi, who explains the Kabalah to he Prince in the Book of _Al Chazari_, says, and it will be found that
Weight and Measure and Number are, in the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the ttributes of the Sephiroth (the three Sephrim, or figures, ciphers), overing the whole collective number of 10; and that the Sephiroth are the ollective Adam Kadmon, the "Heavenly Man" or the Logos. Thus Satan and he Anointed were identified in ancient thought. Therefore:
33. Satan is the minister of God, Lord of the seven mansions of
Hades, the Angel of the manifest Worlds.
The seven Lokas, or Saptaloka, of the Earth with the Hindűs; for Hades, or he Limbo of Illusion, of which Theology makes a region bordering on Hell,
_is simply our Globe_, the Earth, and thus Satan is called the "Angel of he _manifest_ Worlds."
It is "Satan who is the God of our planet and _the only_ God," and this ithout any metaphorical allusion to its wickedness and depravity. For he s one with the Logos.
The first and "eldest of the gods," in the order of microcosmic
[divine] evolution, Saturn (Satan) [astronomically] is the
_seventh and last_ in the order of macrocosmic emanation, being
the circumference of the Kingdom of which Phoebus [the Light of
Wisdom, also the Sun] is the centre.
The Gnostics were right, then, in calling the Jewish God an "Angel of
Matter," or he who breathed (conscious) life into Adam, and whose Planet as Saturn.
34. And God hath put a girdle about his loins [the rings of
Saturn], and the name of the girdle is Death.
In Anthropogony this "girdle" is the human body with its two lower rinciples. These three die, while the innermost Man is immortal. And now e approach the _secret_ of Satan.
37. ... Upon Satan only _is the shame of generation_.
38. He hath lost his virginal estate [so hath the Kumâra, by
incarnating]: _uncovering heavenly secrets_, he hath entered into
bondage.
39. He encompasseth with bonds and limits all things....
42. Twain are the armies of God: in heaven the hosts of Michael;
in the abyss [the manifested world] the legions of Satan.
43. These are the Unmanifest and the Manifest; the free and the
bound [in Matter]; the virginal and the fallen.
44. And both are the ministers of the Father, fulfilling the Word
divine.
Therefore:
55. Holy and venerable is the Sabbath of God: _blessed and
sanctified is the name of the Angel of Hades_ [Satan].
For:
41. The glory of Satan is the shadow of the Lord [God in the
manifested World]: the throne of Satan is the footstool of Adonai
[the whole Kosmos].
When the Church, therefore, curses Satan, it curses the Kosmic reflection f God; it anathematizes God made manifest in Matter or in the objective; t maledicts God, or the ever-incomprehensible Wisdom, revealing itself as
Light and Shadow, Good and Evil in Nature, in the only manner omprehensible to the limited intellect of Man.
This is the true philosophical and metaphysical interpretation of Samael, r Satan, the Adversary in the _Kabalah_; the same tenets and spirit being ound in the allegorical interpretations of every other ancient religion.
This philosophical view does not interfere, however, with the historical ecords connected with it. We say "historical," because allegory and ythical ornamentation round the kernel of tradition, in nowise prevent hat kernel being a record of real events. Thus, the _Kabalah_, repeating he time-honoured revelations of the once universal history of our Globe nd the evolution of its Races, has presented it under the legendary form f the various records which have formed the _Bible_. Its historical oundation, in however imperfect a form, is now offered in these pages rom the Secret Doctrine of the East; and thus the allegorical and ymbolical meaning of the Serpent of _Genesis_ is found explained by the
"Sons of Wisdom"--or Angels from higher Spheres, though all and each ertain to the Kingdom of Satan, or Matter--revealing to men the mysteries f Heaven. Hence, also, all the so-called myths of the Hindű, Grecian,
Chaldćan, and Jewish Pantheons are found to be built on fact and truth.
The Giants of _Genesis_ are the historical Atlanteans of Lankâ, and the
Greek Titans.
Who can forget that Troy was once upon a time proclaimed a myth, and Homer non-existent personage, while the existence of such cities as
Herculaneum and Pompeii was denied, and attributed to mere fairy legends?
Yet Schliemann has proved that Troy did really exist, and the two latter ities, though buried for long ages under the Vesuvian lava, have had heir resurrection day, and live again on the surface of the Earth. How any more cities and localities called "fabulous" are on the list of uture discoveries, how many more personages regarded as mythical(548) ill one day become historical, those alone can tell who read the decrees f Fate in the Astral Light.
As the tenets of the Eastern Doctrine, however, have always been kept ecret, and as the reader can hardly hope to be shown the original texts nless he becomes an accepted disciple, let the Greek and Latin scholar urn to the original texts of Hermetic literature. Let him, for instance, ead carefully the opening pages of the _Pymander_ of Hermes Trismegistus, nd he will see our doctrines corroborated therein, however veiled its ext. There also he will find the evolution of the Universe, of our Earth, alled "Nature" in _Pymander_, as of everything else, from the "Moyst
Principle," or the great Deep, Father-Mother--the first differentiation in he manifested Kosmos. First the "Universal Mind," which the hand of the
Christian translator has metamorphosed in the earliest renderings into
God, the Father; then the "Heavenly Man,"(549) the great Total of that
Host of Angels, which was too pure for the creation of the inferior Worlds r of the Men of our Globe, but which nevertheless _fell_ into Matter by irtue of that same evolution, as the Second Logos of the "Father."(550)
Synthetically, every Creative Logos, or "the Son who is one with the
Father," is the Host of the Rectores Mundi in itself. Even Christian
Theology makes of the seven "Angels of the Presence" the Virtues, or the ersonified attributes, of God, which, being created by him, as the Manus ere by Brahmâ, became Archangels. The Roman Catholic Theodice itself, ecognizing in its creative Verbum Princeps the Head of these Angels
(_caput angelorum_) and the Angel of the great Counsel (_magni consilii ngelus_), thus recognizes the identity of Christ with them.
"The Sura became A-Sura"--the Gods became No-Gods--says the text; _i.e._,
Gods became Fiends--Satan, when read literally. But Satan will now be hown, in the teaching of the Secret Doctrine, to be allegorized as Good nd Sacrifice, a God of Wisdom, under different names.
The _Kabalah_ teaches that Pride and Presumption--the two chief prompters f Selfishness and Egotism--are the causes that emptied Heaven of _one- hird_ of its divine denizens, mystically, and of _one-third_ of the tars, astronomically; in other words, the first statement is an allegory, nd the second a fact. The former, nevertheless, is, as shown, intimately onnected with humanity.
In their turn the Rosicrucians, who were well acquainted with the secret eaning of the tradition, kept it to themselves, teaching merely that the hole of "creation" was due to, and the result of, that legendary "War in
Heaven," brought on by the rebellion of the Angels(551) against Creative
Law, or the Demiurge. The statement is correct, but the _inner_ meaning is o this day a mystery. To elude further explanation of the difficulty, by ppealing to divine mystery, or to the sin of prying into its policy--is to ay nothing at all. It may prove sufficient for believers in the Pope's nfallibility, but will hardly satisfy the philosophical mind. Yet the ruth, although known to most of the higher Kabalists, has never been told y any of their number. One and all, Kabalists and Symbologists, have hown an extraordinary reluctance to confess the primitive meaning of the
Fall of the Angels. In a Christian such silence is only natural. Neither
Alchemist nor Philosopher during the Medićval Ages could have uttered hat(552) which in the sight of Orthodox Theology was terrible blasphemy, or it would have led them directly through the "Holy" Office of the
Inquisition, to rack and stake. But for our modern Kabalists and
Freethinkers the case is different. With the latter, we fear, it is merely uman pride, vanity based on a loudly rejected but ineradicable uperstition. Since the Church, in her struggle with Manicheeďsm, invented he Devil, and by placing a theological extinguisher on the radiant Star-
God Lucifer, the "Son of the Morning," thus created the most gigantic of ll her paradoxes, _a black and tenebrous_ Light--the myth has struck its oots too deeply into the soil of blind faith to permit, in our age, even hose, who do not acquiesce in her dogmas, and laugh at her horned and loven-footed Satan, to come out bravely and confess the antiquity of the ldest of all traditions. In a few brief words it is this. Semi- xoterically, the "First-born" of the Almighty--Fiat Lux--or the Angels of
Primordial Light, were commanded to "create"; one-third of them rebelled nd "refused"; while those who "obeyed" as Fetahil did--_failed_ most ignally.
To realize the refusal and failure in their correct physical meaning, one ust study and understand Eastern Philosophy; one has to be acquainted ith the fundamental mystical tenets of the Vedântins, as to the utter allacy of attributing functional activity to the Infinite and Absolute
Deity. Esoteric Philosophy maintains that during the Sandhyâs, the
"Central Sun" emits _Creative Light_--passively, so to say. Causality is atent. It is only during the active periods of Being that it gives rise o a stream of ceaseless Energy, whose vibrating currents acquire more ctivity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic ladder of Being hich they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how the process of
"creating," or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe, with all its nits of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent Beings--who became ollectively a Being or Creative God, differentiated already from the One
Absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to conditioned "creation."(553)
Now the Vatican MS. of the _Kabalah_--the only copy of which (in Europe) is aid to have been in the possession of Count St. Germain--contains the most omplete exposition of the doctrine, including the peculiar version ccepted by the Luciferians(554) and other Gnostics; and in that parchment he "Seven Suns of Life" are given in the order in which they are found in he Saptasűrya. Only four of these, however, are mentioned in the editions f the _Kabalah_ which are procurable in public libraries, and that even n a more or less veiled phraseology. Nevertheless even this reduced umber is amply sufficient to show an identical origin, as it refers to he quaternary group of the Dhyân Chohans, and proves the speculation to ave had its origin in the Secret Doctrines of the Âryans. As is well nown, the _Kabalah_ did not originate with the Jews, for the latter got heir ideas from the Chaldćans and the Egyptians.
Thus even the _exoteric_ Kabalistic teachings speak of a "Central Sun," nd of three secondary Suns in each Solar System--our own included. As hown in that able though too materialistic work, _New Aspects of Life and
Religion_, which is a synopsis of the views of the Kabalists in an aspect eeply thought out and assimilated:
The central sun ... was to them [as much as to the Âryans] the
_centre of rest_; the centre to which all motion was to be
ultimately referred. Round this central sun ... "the first of
three systemic suns ... revolved on a polar plane ... the second,
on an equatorial plane" ... and the third only was our visible
sun. These four solar bodies were "_the organs on whose action
what man calls the creation, the evolution of life on the planet
earth, depends_." The channels through which the influence of
these bodies was conveyed to the earth they [the Kabalists] held
to be electrical.... The radiant energy flowing from the central
sun(555) called the earth into being as a watery globe, ... [whose
tendency], as the nucleus of a planetary body, was to rush to the
(central) sun ... within the sphere of whose attraction it had
been created.... But the radiant energy, similarly electrifying
both, withheld the one from the other, and so changed motion
towards into motion round the centre of attraction, which the
revolving planet [earth] thus sought to reach.
In the organic cell the _visible sun_ found its own proper matrix,
and produced through this the animal [while maturing the
vegetable] kingdom, finally placing man at its head, in whom,
through the animating action of that kingdom, it originated the
psychic cell. But the man so placed at the head of the animal
kingdom, at the head of the creation, was the animal, the _soul-
less, the perishable man_.... Hence man, although apparently its
crown, would, by his advent have marked the close of creation;
since creation, culminating in him, would at his death have
entered on its decline.(556)
This Kabalistic view is here quoted, to show its perfect identity in pirit with the Eastern Doctrine. Explain, or complete the teaching of the
Seven Suns with the seven systems of Planes of Being, of which the "Suns" re the central bodies, and you have the seven Angelic Planes, whose
"Host" collectively are the Gods thereof.(557) They are the Head Group ivided into four Classes, from the Incorporeal down to the Semi- orporeal. These Classes are directly connected--though in very different ays as regards voluntary connection and functions--with our mankind. They re three, synthesized by the fourth, the first and highest, which is alled the "Central Sun" in the Kabalistic doctrine just quoted. This is he great difference between the Semitic and the Âryan Cosmogony--one aterializing, humanizes the mysteries of Nature; the other spiritualizes
Matter, and its physiology is always made subservient to metaphysics.
Thus, though the seventh "principle" reaches man through all the phases of
Being, pure as an indiscrete element and an impersonal unity, it passes hrough--the _Kabalah_ teaches _from_--the Central Spiritual Sun and Group he Second, the Polar Sun, which two radiate on man his Âtmâ. Group Three, he Equatorial Sun, cements the Buddhi to Âtman and the higher attributes f Manas; while Group Four, the Spirit of our visible Sun, endows him with is Manas and its vehicle, the Kâma Rűpa, or body of passions and esires--the two elements of Ahamkâra which evolve _individualized onsciousness_, the personal Ego. Finally, it is the Spirit of the Earth, n its triple unity, that builds the Physical Body, attracting to it the
Spirits of Life and forming his Linga Sharîra.
But everything proceeds cyclically, the evolution of man like everything lse, and the order in which he is generated is described fully in the
Eastern Teachings, whereas it is only hinted at in the _Kabalah_. Says the
_Book of Dzyan_ with regard to Primeval Man when first projected by the
"Boneless," the Incorporeal Creator:
_First, the Breath, then Buddhi, and the Shadow-Son [the Body] were
__"__created.__"__ But where was the Pivot [the Middle Principle, Manas]?
Man is doomed. When alone, the Indiscrete [Undifferentiated Element] and he Vâhan [Buddhi]--the Cause of the Causeless--break asunder from anifested life._
"_Unless_," explains the Commentary:
_Unless cemented and held together by the Middle Principle, the Vehicle of he personal consciousness of Jîva._
In other words, the two higher "principles" _can have no individuality on
Earth_, cannot be _man_, unless there is (_a_) the Mind, the Manas-Ego, to ognize itself, and (_b_) the terrestrial false Personality, or the Body f egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round Pivot--which it is, truly--to the physical form of man. It is the _fifth_ nd the _fourth_ "principles"(558)--Manas and Kâma Rűpa--that contain the ual Personality; the real immortal Ego, if it assimilates itself to the wo higher, and the false and transitory Personality, the Mâyâvi or Astral
Body, so-called, or the Animal-human Soul--the two having to be closely lended for purposes of a _full_ terrestrial existence. Incarnate the
Spiritual Monad of a Newton, grafted on that of the greatest saint on
Earth, in a physical body the most perfect you can think of--_i.e._, in a wo or even a three-principled Body composed of its Sthűla Sharîra, Prâna
(Life-principle) and Linga Sharîra--and, if it lacks its middle and fifth
"principles," you will have created _an idiot_--at best a beautiful, soul- ess, empty and unconscious appearance. "_Cogito--ergo sum_" can find no oom in the brain of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate.
There are students, however, who have long ago understood the hilosophical meaning underlying the allegory--so tortured and disfigured y the Roman Church--of the "Fallen Angels."
The kingdom of spirits and spiritual action, which flows from and
is the product of spirit volition, is outside and contrasted with
and in contradiction to the kingdom of [divine] souls and divine
action.(559)
As said in the text of Commentary xiv:
_Like produces like and no more at the genesis of Being, and evolution ith its limited conditioned laws comes later. The Self Existent_(_560_)_ re called __"__Creations,__"__ for they appear in the Spirit-Ray, anifested through the potency inherent in its Unborn Nature, which is eyond Time and [limited or conditioned] Space. Terrene products, animate nd inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and reatures; they are the development [evolution] of the Discrete Elements._
Again:
_The Heavenly Rűpa [Dhyân Chohan] creates [man] in his own form; it is a piritual ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening f the universal [manifested] Substance; that form is the ideal Shadow of
Itself: and this is the Man of the First Race._
To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this
Earth only, it was the duty of the first "differentiated" Egos--the Church alls them Archangels--to imbue Primordial Matter with the evolutionary mpulse and guide its formative powers in the fashioning of its roductions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the
Eastern and Western tradition--"the Angels were _commanded to create_."
After the Earth had been made ready by the _lower_ and more material
Powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be "fruitful nd multiply," the higher Powers, the Archangels or Dhyânîs, were ompelled by the Evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to onstruct the crown of its evolution--Man. Thus the "Self-created" and the
"Self-existent" projected their pale Shadows; but Group the Third, the
Fire-Angels, _rebelled and refused_ to join their fellow Devas.
Hindű exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them o refuse to "create," as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras,
"Virgin Youths," in order, if possible, to anticipate their fellows in rogress towards Nirvâna-the final liberation. But, agreeably to Esoteric nterpretation, it was a self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The
"Rebels" would not create will-less irresponsible men, as the "obedient"
Angels did; nor could they endow human beings with even the temporary eflections of their own attributes; for the latter, belonging to another nd a so much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still rresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of higher progress. No piritual and psychic evolution is possible on Earth--the lowest and most aterial plane--for one who, on that plane at all events, is inherently
_perfect_ and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Had Man remained he pale Shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless Perfection, the ne negative and passive attribute of the real _I am that I am_, he would ave been doomed to pass through life on Earth as in a heavy dreamless leep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being, ollectively called Elohim, who first pronounced (if, indeed, they ever ere pronounced) the cruel words, "Behold, the man is become _as one of s_, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take lso of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ..."--must have been ndeed the Ilda-baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and nvy against his own creature, the reflection of which created
Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural--even from the dead-letter tandpoint--to view Satan, the Serpent of _Genesis_, as the real creator nd benefactor, the Father of Spiritual Mankind. For it is he who was the
"Harbinger of Light," bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the utomaton "created" by Jehovah, as alleged. And he who was the first to hisper, "in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good nd evil," can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An "Adversary" o Jehovah, the "_personating_ spirit," he still remains in Esoteric Truth he ever-loving "Messenger," the Angel, the Seraphim and Cherubim who both
"knew" well, and "loved" still more, and who conferred on us Spiritual, nstead of Physical Immortality--the latter a kind of _static_ immortality hat would have transformed man into an undying "Wandering Jew."
As narrated in King's _Gnostics and their Remains_ concerning Ildabaoth, hom several sects regarded as the God of Moses:
Ildabaoth was far from being a pure spirit; ambition and pride
dominated in his composition. He therefore resolved to break off
all connection with his mother, Achamoth, and to create a world
entirely for himself. Aided by his own Six Spirits, he created
Man, intending him for the image of his power; but he failed
utterly in his work, his Man proving a vast, soulless monster,
crawling upon the earth. The Six Spirits were obliged to bring
their work again before their father, to be animated: he did so by
communicating the ray of Divine Light which he himself had
inherited from Achamoth, who by this loss punished him for his
pride and self-sufficiency.
Man, thus favoured by Achamoth at the expense of her own son,
followed the impulse of the Divine Light that she had transferred
to him, collected a further supply out of the creation with which
it was intermingled, and began to present not the image of his
creator Ildabaoth, but rather that of the Supreme Being, the
"Primal Man." At this spectacle the Demiurgus was filled with rage
and envy at having produced a being so superior to himself. His
looks, inspired by his passions, were reflected in the Abyss, as
in a mirror, the image became instinct with life, and forth arose
"Satan Serpent-formed," _Ophiomorphos_, the embodiment of envy and
cunning.(561)
This is the exoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a ectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the atural deduction from the dead-letter text of Chapter iii of _Genesis_.
Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the Divine Fire so as to llow men to proceed consciously on the path of Spiritual Evolution, thus ransforming the most perfect of _animals_ on Earth into a potential God, nd making him free to "take the kingdom of heaven by violence." Hence, lso, the _curse_ pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and by Jehovah-
Ilda-baoth against his "rebellious son," Satan. The cold, pure snows of he Caucasian mountain and the never-dying, singeing fire and flames of an nextinguishable Hell, two poles, yet the same idea, the dual aspect of a efined torture; a "Fire-producer"--the personified emblem of {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
(_Phósphoros_), of the Astral Fire and Light in the Anima Mundi (that
Element of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: "ohne
_Phosphor_ kein Gedanke," or "without phosphorus no thought")--burning in he fierce Flames of his terrestrial Passions; the conflagration fired by is Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to he passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full onsciousness gnawing at its heart--a Prometheus indeed, because a
_conscious_, and hence a _responsible_ entity.(562) The curse of life is reat, yet, with the exception of some Hindű and Sufi mystics, how few are hose who would exchange all the tortures of conscious life, all the evils f a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of a passive
(objectively) _incorporeal_ Being, or even the universal static Inertia ersonified in Brahmâ during his "Night's" Rest. For, to quote from an ble article by one(563) who, confusing the planes of existence and onsciousness, fell a victim thereto:
Satan [or Lucifer] represents the _Active_, or, as [M. Jules]
Baissac calls it, the "Centrifugal" Energy of the Universe [in a
cosmic sense]. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought,
Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At
the same time he is _Pain_, which is the Reaction of the
_Pleasure_ of Action, and _Death_--which is the Revolution of
_Life_--Satan, burning in his own Hell, produced by the fury of his
own momentum--the expansive disintegration of the Nebula which is
to concentrate into New Worlds. And fitly is he again and again
baffled by the Eternal Inertia of the _Passive_ Energy of the
Kosmos--the inexorable "_I am_"--the Flint from which the sparks are
beaten out. And fitly ... are he and his adherents ... consigned
to the "Sea of Fire"--because _it is_ the Sun [in one sense only in
the cosmic allegory], the Fount of Life in _our_ system, where
they are purified (meaning thereby disintegrated) and churned up
to reärrange them for another life (the Resurrection)--that _Sun_
which, as the Origin of the Active Principle of our Earth, is at
once the _Home_ and the _Source_ of the Mundane Satan....
Furthermore, as if to demonstrate the accuracy of Baissac's
general theory [in _Le Diable et Satan_] cold is known to have a
"Centripetal" effect. Under the influence of Cold everything
contracts.... Under it Life _hybernates_, or dies out, Thought
congeals, and Fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in his own
Fire-Sea--it is only in the "Nifl-Heim" [the cold Hell of the
Scandinavian _Eddas_] of the "_I am_" that he cannot exist. But
for all that there is a kind of _Immortal_ Existence in Nifl-Heim,
and that Existence must be _Painless_ and _Peaceful_, because it
is _Unconscious_ and _Inactive_. In the Kingdom of _Jehovah_ [if
this God were all that the Jews and Christians claim for him]
there is no misery, no war, no marrying and giving in marriage, no
change, no _Individual Consciousness_.(564) All is absorbed in the
spirit of the Most Powerful. _It is emphatically a Kingdom of
Peace and loyal Submission, as that of the __"__Arch-Rebel__"__ is
one of War and Revolution...._ It [the former] is in fact what
Theosophy calls Nirvâna. But then Theosophy teaches that
Separation from the Primal Source _having once occurred_, Reünion
can only be achieved by _Will-Effort_--which is distinctly Satanic
in the sense of this essay.(565)
It _is_ "Satanic" from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is wing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil--to he Radiant Archangels, Dhyân Chohans, who refused to create, because they anted Man _to become his own creator_ and an immortal God--that men can each Nirvâna and the Haven of heavenly Divine Peace.
To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the
Fire-Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumâras, the "Virgin-Angels," (to whom the
Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, both belong,) the Divine "Rebels"--called y the all-materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or
"Deprived"--preferred the _curse_ of _incarnation_ and the long cycles of errestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery, even if
_unconscious_, of the beings who were evolved as Shadows out of their
Brethren, through the semi-passive energy of their _too spiritual_
Creators. If "man's uses of life should be such as neither to animalize or to spiritualize, but to _humanize_ Self,"(566) to do so, he must be orn _human_ not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogîs ffering themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity, hich was created god-like and perfect at first, and endow him with human ffections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their natural tatus, descend on our Globe, and take up their abode on it for the whole ycle of the Mahâyuga, thus exchanging their impersonal Individualities or individual Personalities--the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse f terrestrial life. This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose ature was _Knowledge_ and _Love_, has been construed by the exoteric heologies into a statement that shows "the Rebel Angels hurled down from
Heaven into the darkness of Hell"--our Earth. Hindű Philosophy hints at the ruth by teaching that the Asuras, hurled down by Shiva, are only in an
_intermediate state_, in which they prepare for higher degrees of urification and redemption from their wretched condition; but Christian
Theology--claiming to be based on the rock of the divine love, charity, and ustice of him it appeals to as its Saviour--to paradoxically enforce that laim, has invented the dreary dogma of Hell, that Archimedean lever of
Roman Catholic philosophy.
Whereas Rabbinical wisdom--than which there is none more positive, aterialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to hysiological mysteries--calls these Beings, the "Evil One"; and the
Kabalists--Nahash, "Deprived," as just said, and the Souls that have,
_after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy One_, thrown hemselves into an Abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have nticipated the time when they are to descend on Earth.(567)
And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the _Zohar_ or any ther book of the _Kabalah_ in its right interpretation--for the latter is he same as our own--but only with the gross, _pseudo_-esoteric xplanations of the later, and especially of the Christian Kabalists.
Says the Commentary:
_Our earth and man [are] the products of the three Fires._
The names of these three answer, in Sanskrit, to the "Electric Fire," the
"Solar Fire," and the "Fire produced by Friction." Explained on the cosmic nd human planes, these three Fires are Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three reat Root Groups, with their four additional divisions. These vary with he Schools, and--according to their applications--become the Upâdhis and he Vehicles, or the Noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are ersonified by the "three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour" of
Agni Abhimânin, the eldest son of Brahmâ, the Cosmic Logos, by Svâhâ, one f Daksha's(568) daughters. In the metaphysical sense, the "Fire by
Friction" means the union between Buddhi, the sixth, and Manas, the fifth
"principle," which thus are united or cemented together, the fifth merging artially into and becoming part of the Monad; in the physical, it relates o the "creative spark," or germ, which fructifies and generates the human eing. The three Fires, whose names are Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Shuchi, were ondemned, it is said, by a curse of Vasishtha, the great Sage, "to be orn over and over again."(569) This is clear enough.
Therefore, the Flames, whose functions are confused in the exoteric books, nd who are called indifferently Prajâpatis, Pitris, Manus, Asuras,
Rishis, Kumâras,(570) etc., are said to incarnate personally in the Third
Root-Race and thus find themselves "reborn over and over again." In the
Esoteric Doctrine they are generally named Asuras, or the Asura Devatâ or
Pitar Devatâ (Gods), for, as said, they were first Gods--and the ighest--before they became "_No_-Gods," and had from Spirits of Heaven allen into Spirits of Earth(571)--_exoterically_, note well, in orthodox ogma.
No Theologian or Orientalist can ever understand the genealogies of the
Prajâpatis, the Manus, and the Rishis, or the direct connection of hese--their correlation rather--with the Gods, unless he has the key to the ld primitive Cosmogony and Theogony, which all nations originally had in ommon. All these Gods and Demi-gods are found reborn on Earth, in various
Kalpas and in as various characters; each, moreover, _having his Karma istinctly traced, and every effect assigned to its cause_.
Before other Stanzas could be explained, it was, as may be seen, bsolutely necessary to show that the Sons of "Dark Wisdom," though dentical with the Archangels which Theology has chosen to call the
"Fallen," are as divine and as pure, if not more pure, than all the
Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the Churches. The "Old Book" also oes into various details of Astral Life, which at this juncture would be uite incomprehensible to the reader. It must, therefore, be left for ater explanation, and the First and Second Races will now receive only are notice. Not so the Third Race--the Root-Race which separated into exes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason; men evolving
_pari passu_ with the Globe, and the latter having "incrustated" more than hundred millions of years before the first human sub-race had yet begun o materialize or solidify, so to say. But, as the Stanza has it:
_The Inner Man [the Conscious Entity] was not._
This "Conscious Entity" Occultism says, comes from, nay, in many cases
_is_, the very essence and _esse_ of the high Intelligences, condemned, by he undeviating law of Karmic evolution, to reďncarnate in this
Manvantara.
(_b_) Shloka 39 relates exclusively to the racial divisions. Strictly peaking, Esoteric Philosophy teaches a modified polygenesis. For, while t assigns to humanity a oneness of origin, in so far that its Forefathers r "Creators" were all Divine Beings--though of different classes or egrees of perfection in their Hierarchy--it teaches that men were evertheless born at seven different centres of the Continent of that eriod. Though all were of one common origin, yet, for reasons given, heir potentialities and mental capabilities, outward or physical forms, nd future characteristics, were very different.(572) As to their omplexions, there is a suggestive allegory told in _Linga Purâna_. The
Kumâras--the Rudra Gods, so called--are described as incarnations of Shiva, he Destroyer (of _outward forms_), called also Vâmadeva. The latter, as a
Kumâra, the "Eternal Celibate," the chaste Virgin Youth, springs from
Brahmâ in each great Manvantara, and "again becomes four"; a reference to he four great divisions of the human Races, as regards complexion and ype--and the three chief variations of these. Thus in the twenty-ninth
Kalpa--in this case a reference to the transformation and evolution of the uman form, which Shiva ever destroys and remodels periodically down to he great Manvantaric turning point, about the middle of the Fourth
(Atlantean) Race--in the twenty-ninth Kalpa, Shiva, as Shvetalohita, the
Root-Kumâra, from moon-coloured becomes _white_; in his next ransformation, he is _red_ (and in this the exoteric version differs from he Esoteric Teaching); in the third, _yellow_; in the fourth, _black_.
Esotericism now classes these seven variations, with their four great ivisions, into only three distinct primeval Races--as it does not take nto consideration the First Race, which had neither type nor colour, and hardly objective, though colossal, form. The evolution of these Races, heir formation and development, proceeded on parallel lines with the volution, formation, and development of three geological strata, from hich the human complexion was as much derived as it was determined by the limates of these zones. The Esoteric Teaching names three great ivisions, namely, the _red-yellow_, the _black_, and the _brown- hite_.(573) The Âryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, lmost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are evertheless all of one and the same stock, the Fifth Root-Race, and pring from one single Progenitor, called in Hindű _exotericism_ by the eneric name of Vaivasvata Manu; the latter, remember, being that Generic
Personage, the Sage, who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, nd also 850,000 years ago--at the time of the sinking of the last remnants f the Great Continent of Atlantis,(574) and who is said to live even now n his mankind.(575) The light yellow is the colour of the first _solid_ uman race, which appeared after the middle of the Third Root-Race--after ts fall into generation, as just explained--bringing on the final changes.
For, it is only at that period that the last transformation took place, hich brought forth man as he is now, only on a magnified scale. This Race ave birth to the Fourth Race; "Shiva" gradually transforming that portion f Humanity which became "black with sin" into red-yellow, of which the ed Indians and the Mongolians are the descendants, and finally into rown-white races--which now, together with the yellow races, form the reat bulk of Humanity. The allegory in _Linga Purâna_ is curious, as howing the great ethnological knowledge of the ancients.
When reading of the "last transformation," which is said to have taken lace 18,000,000 years ago, let the reader at this juncture, consider how any millions more it must have required to reach that final stage. And if
Man, in his gradual consolidation, developed _pari passu_ with the Earth, ow many millions of years must have elapsed during the First, Second, and he first half of the Third Race. For the Earth was in a comparatively thereal condition before it reached its last consolidated state. The
Archaic Teachings, moreover, tell us that, during the middle period of the
Lemuro-Atlantean Race, three and a half Races after the Genesis of Man, he Earth, Man, and everything on the Globe, were of a still grosser and ore material nature, while such things as corals and some shells were till in a semi-gelatinous, astral state. The cycles that have intervened ince then, have already carried us onward, on the opposite ascending arc, ome steps toward our "dematerialization," as the Spiritualists would say.
The Earth, ourselves, and all things have softened since then--aye, even ur brains. But it has been objected by some Theosophists that an ethereal
Earth even some 15 or 20,000,000 years ago, "does not square with
Geology," which teaches us that winds blew, rains fell, waves broke on the hore, sands shifted and accumulated, etc.; that, in short, all natural auses now in operation were then in force, "in the very earliest ages of eological time, aye, that of the oldest palćozoic rocks." To this the ollowing answers are given. Firstly, what is the date assigned by Geology o these "oldest palćozoic rocks"? And secondly, why could not the winds low, rain fall, and waves--of "carbonic acid" apparently, as Science seems o imply--break on the shore, on an Earth semi-astral, _i.e._, viscid? The ord "astral" does not necessarily, in Occult phraseology, mean as thin as moke, but rather "starry," shining or pellucid, in various and numerous egrees, from a quite filmy to a viscid state, as just observed. But it is urther objected: "How could an astral Earth have affected the other
Planets in this System? Would not the whole process get out of gear now if he attraction of one Planet were suddenly removed?" The objection is vidently invalid, since our System is composed of older and younger
Planets, some dead--like the Moon--others in process of formation, for all hat Astronomy knows to the contrary. Nor has the latter ever affirmed, so ar as we know, that all the bodies of our System have sprung into xistence and developed simultaneously. The Cis-Himâlayan Secret Teachings iffer from those of India in this respect. Hindű Occultism teaches that he Vaivasvata Manu Humanity is 18,000,000 and odd years old. We say, yes; ut only so far as _physical_ or approximately physical, Man is concerned, ho dates from the close of the Third Root-Race. Beyond that period _Man_, r his filmy image, may have existed for 300,000,000 years, for all we now; _since we are not taught figures_ which are and will remain secret ith the Masters of Occult Science, as justly stated in _Esoteric
Buddhism_. Moreover, whereas the Hindű _Purânas_ speak of one Vaivasvata
Manu, we affirm that there were several, the name being a generic one.
We must now say a few more words on the physical evolution of man.
Archaic Teachings In The "Purânas" And "Genesis." Physical Evolution.
The writer cannot give too much proof that the system of Cosmogony and
Anthropogony above described actually existed, that its records _are_ reserved, and that it is found mirrored even in the modern versions of ncient Scriptures.
The _Purânas_ on the one hand, and the Jewish Scriptures on the other, are ased on the same scheme of evolution, which, if read Esoterically and xpressed in modern language, would be found to be quite as scientific as uch of what now passes current as the final word of recent discovery. The nly difference between the two schemes is, that the _Purânas_, giving as uch, and perhaps more, attention to causes than to effects, allude to the re-cosmic and pre-genetic periods rather than to those of so-called
"creation," whereas the _Bible_, after saying only a few words on the ormer period, plunges forthwith into material genesis, and, while almost kipping the Pre-Adamic races, proceeds with its allegories concerning the
Fifth Race.
Now, whatever the onslaught made on the "order of creation" in
_Genesis_--and its dead-letter account certainly lends itself admirably to riticism(576)--the Hindű _Purânas_, notwithstanding their allegorical xaggerations will be found quite in accordance with Physical Science.
Even what, on the face of it, appears to be the perfectly nonsensical llegory of Brahmâ assuming the form of a Boar to rescue the Earth from nder the waters, finds a perfectly scientific explanation in the Secret
Commentaries, relating as it does to the many risings and sinkings, the onstant alternation of water and land from the earliest to the latest eological periods of our Globe; for Science teaches us now that nine- enths of the stratified formations of the Earth's crust have been radually constructed beneath the water at the bottom of the seas. The ncient Âryans are credited with having known nothing whatever of Natural
History, Geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand, roclaimed even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the
_Bible_, to have the merit of having conceived the idea of monotheism
"earlier, and retained it more firmly, than any of the _less philosophical nd more immoral religions_ (!!) of the ancient world."(577) Only, while n biblical Esotericism, we find physiological sexual mysteries ymbolized, and very little more, something for which _very little real
Philosophy_ is requisite--in the _Purânas_ one can find the most scientific nd philosophical "dawn of creation," which, if impartially analyzed and endered into plain language from its fairy-tale-like allegories, would how that modern Zoology, Geology, Astronomy, and nearly all the branches f modern knowledge, have been anticipated in ancient Science, and were nown to ancient Philosophers in their general features, if not in such etail as at present.
Paurânic Astronomy, with all its deliberate concealment and confusion for he purpose of leading the profane off the real track, has been shown even y Bentley to be a real science; and those who are versed in the mysteries f Hindű astronomical treatises, will prove that the modern theories of he progressive condensation of nebulć, nebulous stars and suns, with the ost minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms for hronological and other purposes--far more correct than Europeans have even ow--were known in India to perfection.
If we turn to Geology and Zoology we find the same. What are all the myths nd endless genealogies of the seven Prajâpatis, of their sons, the seven
Rishis or Manus, and of their wives, sons and progeny, but a vast detailed ccount of the progressive development and evolution of animal creation, ne species after the other? Were the highly philosophical and etaphysical Âryans--the authors of the most perfect philosophical system f transcendental Psychology, of codes of Ethics, of such a grammar as
Pânini's, of the Sânkhya and Vedânta systems, of a moral code (Buddhism), roclaimed by Max Müller the most perfect on earth--were the Âryans such ools, or children, as to lose their time in writing "fairy tales," such s the _Purânas_ now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the emotest idea of their secret meaning? What is the "fable," the genealogy nd origin of Kashyapa, with his twelve wives by whom he had a numerous nd diversified progeny of serpents (Nâgas), reptiles, birds, and all inds of living things, who was thus the "father" of all kinds of animals, ut a _veiled_ record of the order of evolution in _this_ Round? So far, e do not see that any Orientalist has ever had the remotest conception of he truths concealed under the allegories and personifications. The
_Shatapatha Brâhmana_, says one, gives "_a not very intelligible_ account" f Kashyapa's origin.
According to the _Mahâbhârata_, the _Râmâyana_, and the _Purânas_,
he was the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ, the father of
Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the progenitor of mankind.
According to the _Shatapatha Brahmâna_: Having assumed the form of
a tortoise, Prajâpati created offspring. That which he created he
made (_akarot_); hence the word _kűrma_ (tortoise). Kashyapa means
tortoise; hence men say, "All creatures are descendants of
Kashyapa."(578)
He was all this; he was also the father of the bird Garuda, the "king of he feathered tribe," who _descends from_, and is of one stock with _the eptiles_, the Nâgas, and who becomes their mortal enemy _subsequently_--as e is also a _cycle_, a period of time, when, in the course of evolution, he birds which developed from reptiles in their "struggle for life" and
"survival of the fittest," etc., turned in preference on those from whom hey issued to devour them, perhaps prompted by natural law, in order to ake room for other and more perfect species.
In that admirable epitome, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, a lesson n Natural History is offered to Mr. Gladstone, showing the utter variance f the _Bible_ with it. The author remarks that Geology traces the "dawn f creation" through a line of scientific research:
Commencing with the earliest known fossil, the Eozoon Canadense of
the Laurentian, and continued in a chain, every link of which is
firmly welded, through the Silurian, with its abundance of
molluscous, crustacean, and vermiform life, and first indication
of fishes; the Devonian, with its predominance of fish and first
appearance of reptiles; the Mesozoic with its batrachians; the
Secondary formations, in which reptiles of the sea, land and air
preponderated, and the first humble forms of vertebrate land
animals began to appear; and finally the Tertiary, in which
mammalian life has become abundant, and type succeeding to type
and species to species, are gradually differentiated and
specialized, through the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods,
until we arrive at the Glacial and Prehistoric periods, and at
positive proof of the existence of man.(579)
The same order, _plus_ the description of animals unknown to Modern
Science, is found in the Commentaries on the _Purânas_ in general, and in he _Book of Dzyan_ especially. The only difference--a grave one, no doubt, s implying a spiritual and divine nature of man independent of his hysical body in this illusionary world, in which the _false personality_ nd its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox Psychology--is as ollows. Having been in all the so-called seven "creations," which stand llegorically for the seven evolutionary changes, or sub-races, as we may all them, of the First Root-Race of Mankind--Man has been on Earth in this
Round from the beginning. Having passed through all the Kingdoms of Nature n the previous _three_ Rounds,(580) his _physical_ frame--one adapted to he thermal conditions of those early periods--was ready to receive the
Divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of human life, _i.e._, 18,000,000 years go. It is only at the mid-point of the Third Root-Race that man was ndowed with Manas. Once united, the Two and then the Three made One; for hough the lower animals, from the amoeba to man, received _their_ Monads, n which all the higher qualities are potential, these qualities have to emain dormant till the animal reaches its human form, before which stage
Manas (mind) has no development in them. In the animals every principle is aralyzed, and in a foetus-like state, save the second, the Vital, and the hird, the Astral, and the rudiments of the fourth, Kâma, which is desire, nstinct--whose intensity and development varies and changes with the pecies. To the materialist wedded to the Darwinian theory, this will read ike a fairy-tale, a mystification; to the believer in the inner, piritual man, the statement will have nothing unnatural in it.
As Commentary ix says:
_Men are made complete only during their Third, toward the Fourth Cycle
[Race]. They are made __"__Gods__"__ for good and evil, and responsible, nly when the two arcs meet [after three and a half Rounds towards the
Fifth Race]. They are made so by the Nirmânakâya [Spiritual or Astral emains] of the Rudra-Kumâras, __"__cursed to be reborn on Earth gain__"__ [meaning--doomed in their natural turn to reďncarnation in the igher ascending arc of the terrestrial Cycle]._
Now the writer is certain to be met with what will be termed insuperable bjections. We shall be told that the line of embryology, the gradual evelopment of every individual life, and the progress of what is known to ake place in the order of progressive stages of specialization--that all his is opposed to the idea of man preceding mammals. Man begins as the umblest and most primitive vermiform creature:
From the primitive speck of protoplasm, and the nucleated cell in
which all life originates ... and "is developed through stages
undistinguishable from those of fish, reptile and mammal, until
the cell finally attains the highly specialized development of the
quadrumanous, and, last of all, of the human type."(581)
This is perfectly scientific, and we have nothing against _that_; for it ll relates to the _shell_ of man--his body, which, in its growth, is ubject, of course, like every other once so-called morphological unit, to uch metamorphoses. It is not those who teach the transformation of the ineral atom through crystallization--which is the same function, and bears he same relation to its so-called _inorganic_ Upâdhi, or basis, as the ormation of _cells_ to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and nimal into man--it is not they who will reject this theory, as it will inally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in Nature, ever- resent, and as ever invisible and unknowable, and of intra-cosmic Gods, ho were all once men.(582)
But we would ask, what does Science and its exact discoveries and now xiomatic theories prove against _our_ Occult theory? Those who believe in he law of evolution and gradual progressive development from a cell--which rom a vital became a morphological cell, until it finally awoke as rotoplasm pure and simple--can surely never limit their belief to one line f evolution! The types of life are innumerable; and the progress of volution, moreover, does not go at the same rate in every kind of pecies. The constitution of primordial matter in the Silurian age--we mean he "primordial" _matter_ of Science--was the same in every essential articular, save its degree of present grossness, as the primordial
_living_ matter of to-day. Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if he now orthodox theory of evolution were _quite_ correct, namely, a onstant, ever-flowing progress in every species of being. Instead of his, what does one see? While the intermediate groups of animal beings ll tend toward a higher type, and while specializations, now of one type nd now of another, develop through the geological ages, change forms, ssume new shapes, appear and disappear with a kaleidoscopic rapidity, in he description of Palćontologists from one period to another, the two olitary exceptions to the general rule are those at the two opposite oles of life and type, namely--_man_ and the _lower genera_ of being!
Certain well-marked forms of living beings have existed through
enormous epochs, surviving not only the changes of physical
conditions, _but persisting comparatively unaltered_, while other
forms of life have appeared and disappeared. Such forms may be
termed "persistent types" of life; and examples of them are
abundant enough in both the animal and the vegetable worlds.(583)
Nevertheless, we are not given any good reason why Darwin links together eptiles, birds, amphibians, fishes, mollusca, etc., as off-shoots of a oneric ancestry. Nor are we told whether reptiles, for instance, are irect descendants of the amphibia, the latter of fishes, and fishes of ower forms--which they certainly are. For the Monads have passed through ll these forms of being up to Man, on every Globe, in the _three receding_ Rounds; every Round, as well as every subsequent Globe, from A o G, having been, and still having to be, the arena of the same volution, only repeated each time on a more solid material basis.
Therefore the question, "What relation is there between the Third Round stral prototypes and ordinary physical development in the course of the rigination of pre-mammalian organic species?"--is easily answered. One is he shadowy prototype of the other, the preliminary, hardly defined, and vanescent sketch on the canvas, of objects which are destined to receive heir final and vivid form under the brush of the painter. The fish volved into an amphibian--a frog--in the _shadows_ of ponds, and man passed hrough all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the Third Round as he did n this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the ormation of the types in the present Round. On strict analogy, the cycle f seven Rounds in their work of the gradual formation of man through very Kingdom of Nature, is repeated on a microscopical scale in the first even months of gestation of a future human being. Let the student think ver and work out this analogy. As the seven months' old unborn baby, hough quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength nd consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during seven
Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of Mother-Nature before he is orn, or rather reborn a Dhyâni, still more perfect than he was before he aunched forth as a Monad on the newly built Chain of Worlds. Let the tudent ponder over this mystery, and then he will easily convince himself hat, as there are also physical links between many classes, so there are recise domains wherein the Astral merges into Physical Evolution. Of this
Science breathes not one word. Man has evolved with and from the monkey, t says. But now see the contradiction.
Huxley proceeds to point out plants, ferns, club-mosses, some of them enerically identical with those now living, which are met with in the
Carboniferous epoch, for:
The cone of the oolitic Araucaria is hardly distinguishable from
that of existing species.... Sub-kingdoms of animals yield the
same instances. The Globigerina of the Atlantic soundings is
identical with the cretaceous species of the same genus ... the
tabulate corals of the Silurian epoch are wonderfully like the
millepores of our own seas.... The Arachnida, the highest group of
which, the scorpions, is represented in the coal by a genus
differing from its living congeners only in ... the eyes. [etc.]
All of which may be closed with Dr. Carpenter's authoritative statement bout the Foraminifera:
There is no evidence of any fundamental modification or advance in
the foraminiferous type from the palćozoic period to the present
time.... The foraminiferous fauna of our own series probably
present a greater range of variety than existed at any previous
period; but _there is no indication of any tendency to elevation
towards a higher type_.(584)
Now, as in the Foraminifera, Protozoa of the lowest type of life, outhless and eyeless, there is no indication of change except their now reater variety--so man, who is on the uppermost rung of the ladder of eing, indicates still less change, as we have seen; the skeleton of his alćolithic ancestor being even found superior in some respects to his resent frame. Where is, then, the uniformity of law which is claimed--the
_absolute rule_ for one species shading off into another and thus, by nsensible gradations, into higher types? We see Sir William Thomson dmitting as much as 400,000,000 years for the time since the surface of he Globe became sufficiently cool to permit of the presence of living hings;(585) and during that enormous lapse of time in the Oolitic period lone, the so-called "Age of Reptiles," we find a most extraordinary ariety and abundance of Saurian forms, the Amphibian type reaching _its ighest development_. We learn of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the akes and rivers, and of winged crocodiles or lizards flying in the air.
After which, in the Tertiary period:
We find the Mammalian type exhibiting remarkable divergences from
previously existing forms ... Mastodons, Megatheriums, and other
unwieldy denizens of the ancient forests and plains.
And, subsequently, we are notified of:
The gradual modification of one of the ramifications of the
Quadrumanous order, into those beings from whom primeval Man
himself may claim to have been evolved.(586)
He _may_; but no one, except a Materialist, can see why he should; as here is not the slightest necessity for it, nor is such an evolution arranted by facts, for those most interested in the proofs thereof onfess their utter failure to find one single fact to support their heory. There is no need for the numberless types of life to represent the embers of one progressive series. They are "the products of various and ifferent evolutional divergences, taking place now in one direction and ow in another." Therefore it is far more justifiable to say that the onkey evolved into the quadrumanous order, than that primeval man--who has
_remained stationary_ in his human specialization since the first fossil keleton found in the oldest strata, and of whom no variety is found save n colour and facial type--has developed from a common ancestor together ith the ape.
That man originates like other animals in a cell and develops "through tages indistinguishable from those of fish, reptile, and mammal until the ell attains the highly specialized development of the quadrumanous and
_at last the human type_," is an Occult axiom thousands of years old. The
Kabalistic axiom: "A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a an; a man a God," holds good throughout the ages. Hćckel, in his
_Schöpfungsgeschichte_, shows a double drawing representing two mbryos--that of a dog six weeks old, and that of a man, eight weeks. The wo, with the exception of a slight difference in the head, which is arger and wider about the brain in the man, are indistinguishable.
In fact, we may say that every human being passes through the
stage of fish and reptile before arriving at that of mammal, and
finally of man.
If we take him up at the more advanced stage, where the embryo has
already passed the reptilian form, we find that for a considerable
time, the line of development remains the same as that of other
mammalia. The rudimentary limbs are exactly similar, the five
fingers and toes develop in the same way, and the resemblance
after the first four weeks' growth _between the embryo of a man
and a dog is such that it is scarcely possible to distinguish
them_. Even at the age of eight weeks the embryo man is an animal
with a tail, hardly to be distinguished from an embryo puppy.(587)
Why, then, not make man and dog evolve from a common ancestor, or from a eptile--a Nâga, instead of coupling man with the Quadrumana? This would be ust as logical as the latter, if not more so. The shape and the stages of he human embryo have not changed since historical times, and these etamorphoses were known to Ćsculapius and Hippocrates as well as to Mr.
Huxley. Therefore, since the Kabalists had remarked it from prehistoric imes, it is no new discovery.(588)
As the embryo of man has no more of the ape in it than of any other ammal, but contains in itself _the totality of the kingdoms of nature_, nd since it seems to be a "persistent type" of life, far more so than ven the Foraminifera, it seems as illogical to make him evolve from the pe as it would be to trace his origin to the frog or the dog. Both Occult nd Eastern Philosophies believe in Evolution, which Manu and Kapila(589) ive with far more clearness than any Scientist does at present. No need o repeat what has been fully debated in _Isis Unveiled_, as the reader ay find all these arguments and the description of the basis on which all he Eastern doctrines of Evolution rest, in our earlier volumes.(590) But o Occultist can accept the unreasonable proposition that all the now xisting forms, "from the structureless Amoeba to man," are the direct ineal descendants of organisms which lived millions and millions of years efore the birth of man, in the pre-Silurian epochs, in the sea or land- ud. The Occultists believe in an _Inherent Law of Progressive
Development_.(591) Mr. Darwin never did, and says so himself; for we find im stating that, since _there can be no advantage_ "to the infusorian nimalcule or an intestinal worm ... to become highly organized," herefore, "natural selection," _not necessarily including progressive evelopment_--leaves the animalcule and the worm, the "persistent types," uiet.(592)
There does not appear much _uniform_ law in such behaviour of Nature; and t looks more like the discriminative action of some _super_-physical election; perhaps, that aspect of Karma, which Eastern Occultists would all the "Law of Retardation," may have something to do with it.
But there is every reason to doubt whether Mr. Darwin himself ever gave uch an importance to his law as is now given to it by his atheistic ollowers. The knowledge of the various living forms in the geological eriods that have gone by is very meagre. The reasons given for this by
Dr. Bastian are very suggestive:
First, on account of the imperfect manner in which the several
forms may be represented in the strata pertaining to the period;
secondly, on account of the extremely limited nature of the
explorations which have been made in these imperfectly
representative strata; and, thirdly, because so many parts of the
record are absolutely inaccessible to use--nearly all beneath the
Silurian system having been blotted out by time, whilst those two-
thirds of the earth's surface in which the remaining strata are to
be found are now covered over by seas. Hence Mr. Darwin says: "For
my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the geological
record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in
a changing dialect; _of this history we possess the last volume
alone_, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume,
_only here and there a short chapter has been preserved_; and of
each page _only here and there a few lines_."(593)
It is not on such meagre data, certainly, that the last word of Science an be said. Nor is it on any ground of human pride, or unreasonable elief in man's representing even here on Earth--in _our_ period, erhaps--the highest type of life, that Occultism denies that all the receding forms of human life belonged to types lower than our own; for it s not so. But simply because the "missing link," which will prove the xisting theory undeniably, will never be found by Palćontologists.
Believing as we do that man has, during the preceding Rounds, evolved rom, and passed through, the lowest forms of every life, vegetable and nimal, on Earth, there is nothing very degrading in the idea of having he Orang Outang as an ancestor of our physical form. Quite the reverse; s it would most irresistibly forward the Occult Doctrine with regard to he final evolution of everything in terrestrial nature into man. One may ven enquire how it is that Biologists and Anthropologists, having once irmly accepted the theory of the descent of man from the ape--how it is hat they have hitherto left untouched the future evolution of the xisting apes into man? This is only a logical sequence of the first heory--unless Science would make of man a privileged being, and his volution a _non_-precedent in Nature, quite a _special_ and unique case.
And that is what all this leads Physical Science to. The reason, however, hy the Occultists reject the Darwinian, and especially the Hćckelian, ypothesis is because it is the ape, not man, which is, in sober truth, a pecial and unique instance. The Pithecoid is _an accidental creation_, a orced growth, the result of an unnatural process.
The Occult Doctrine is, we think, more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never arying Law in Nature, the latter having no personal "special design," but cting on a uniform plan that prevails through the whole Manvantaric eriod and deals with the land-worm as it deals with man. Neither the one or the other have sought to come into being, hence both are under the ame Evolutionary Law, and both have to progress according to Karmic Law.
Both have started from the same Neutral Centre of Life and both have to e-merge into it at the consummation of the Cycle.
It is not denied that in the preceding Round man _was_ a gigantic ape-like reature; and when we say "man" we ought perhaps to say, the rough mould hat was developing for the use of man in this Round only--the middle, or he transition, point of which we have hardly reached. Nor was man during he first two and a half Root-Races what he is now. That point he reached, s said before, only 18,000,000 years ago, during the Secondary period, as e claim.
Till then he was, according to tradition and Occult Teaching, "a God on
Earth who had fallen into Matter," or generation. This may or may not be ccepted, since the Secret Doctrine does not impose itself as an nfallible dogma, and since, whether its prehistoric records are accepted r rejected, it has nothing to do with the question of the _actual_ Man nd his Inner Nature; the Fall mentioned above having left no "original in" on Humanity. But all this has been sufficiently dealt with.
Furthermore, we are taught that the transformations through which man assed on the descending arc--which is centrifugal for Spirit and entripetal for Matter--and those he is preparing to go through, enceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the direction of he two forces--viz., Matter will become centrifugal and Spirit entripetal--that all such transformations _are next in store for the nthropoid apes also_; all those, at any rate, who have reached the remove ext to man in this Round--for these will all be men in the Fifth Round, ust as the present men inhabited ape-like forms in the Third, the receding Round.
Behold, then, in the modern denizens of the great forests of Sumatra the egraded and dwarfed examples--"blurred copies," as Mr. Huxley has it--of urselves, as we (the majority of mankind) were in the earliest sub-races f the Fourth Root-Race during the period of what is called the "fall into eneration." The ape we know is not the product of natural evolution but n _accident_, a cross-breed between an animal being, or form, and man. As as been shown in the present volume, it is the speechless animal that irst began sexual connection, for it was the first to separate into male nd female. Nor was it intended by Nature that man should follow this estial example--as is now shown by the comparatively painless procreation f their species by animals, and the terrible suffering and danger of the ame in woman. The ape is, indeed, as remarked in _Isis Unveiled_:
A transformation of species most directly connected with that of
the human family-_a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock
before the final perfection of the latter_.(594)
The apes are millions of years later than the speaking human being, and re the latest contemporaries of our Fifth Race. Thus, it is most mportant to remember that the "Egos" of the apes are entities compelled y their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the estiality of the _latest_ Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They re entities who had already reached the "human stage" before this Round.
Consequently, they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless raditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of nimal men. The animal "Eves" were their foremothers, and the human
"Adams" their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or
Lilatu, Adam's _first_ wife, whom the Talmud describes as a "charming" oman, "with long wavy hair," _i.e._--a female hairy animal of a character ow unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic llegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael-Lilith, or an-animal united, a being called, in the _Zohar_, Hayo Bischat, the Beast r Evil Beast. It is from this unnatural union that the present apes escended. The latter are truly "speechless men," and will become speaking nimals, or men of a lower order, in the Fifth Round, while the Adepts of certain School hope that some of the "Egos" of the apes of a higher ntelligence will reäppear at the close of the Sixth Root-Race. What their orm will be is of secondary consideration. The form means nothing. Genera nd species of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal, its crown--man, hange and vary according to the environments and climatic variations, not nly with every Round, but every Root-Race likewise, as well as after very geological cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning oint in, the latter. In the Sixth Root-Race, the fossils of the Orang, he Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous ammals; and new forms--though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on nd the close of the Manvantara approaches--will develop from the "cast ff" types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of he mire of physical, life. There were no apes before man, and they will e extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the Monads f the unprogressed men of our Race and lodge them in the newly evolved uman frames of the thus physiologically regenerated Baboon.
This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the picture f this cyclic precession of all that lives and breathes now on Earth, of ach species in its turn, is a true one, and needs no "special creation" r miraculous formation of man, beast, and plant _ex nihilo_.
This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape nd man, and shows the former evolving from the latter.
A Panoramic View Of The Early Races.
There is a period of a few millions of years to cover between the first
"mindless" race and the highly intelligent and intellectual later
Lemurians; there is another between the earliest civilization of the
Atlanteans and the historic period.
As witnesses to the Lemurians but a few silent records in the shape of alf a dozen broken colossi and old cyclopean ruins are left. These are ot allowed a hearing, as they are "productions of blind natural forces," e are assured by some; "quite modern" we are told by others. Tradition is eft contemptuously unnoticed by Sceptic and Materialist, and made ubservient to the _Bible_ in every case by the too zealous Churchman.
Whenever a legend, however, refuses to fit in with the Noachian Deluge heory, it is declared by the Christian clergy to be "the insanely elirious voice of old superstition." Atlantis is denied, when not onfused with Lemuria and other departed Continents, because, perhaps,
Lemuria is half the creation of Modern Science, and has, therefore, to be elieved in; while Plato's Atlantis is regarded by most of the Scientists s a dream.
Atlantis is often described by believers in Plato as a prolongation of
Africa. An old continent is also suspected to have existed on the Eastern oast. But Africa, as a continent, was never part and parcel of either
Lemuria or Atlantis, as we have agreed to call the Third and Fourth
Continents. Their archaic appellations are never mentioned in the
_Purânas_, nor anywhere else. But with only one of the Esoteric keys in and, it becomes an easy task to identify these departed lands in the umberless "Lands of the Gods," Devas and Munis described in the
_Purânas_, in their Varshas, Dvîpas, and Zones. Their Shveta-dvîpa, during he early days of Lemuria, stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of he sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the aters till about the early period of Atlantis, after the disappearance of
Lemuria, when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was alf-sunk.
It is of course impossible to attempt, within the compass of even several olumes, a consecutive and detailed account of the evolution and progress f the first three Races-except so far as to give a general view of it, as ill be done presently. Race the First had no history of its own. Of Race he Second the same may be said. We shall have, therefore, to pay careful ttention to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans only, before the history of ur own Race, the Fifth, can be attempted.
What is known of other Continents, besides our own, and what does history now or accept of the early Races? Everything outside the repulsive peculations of Materialistic Science is daubed with the contemptuous term
"superstition." The wise men of to-day will believe nothing. Plato's
"winged" and "hermaphrodite" races, and his Golden Age, under the reign of
Saturn and the Gods, are quietly brought back by Hćckel to their _new_ lace in Nature; our Divine Races are shown to be the descendants of
Catarrhine apes, and our ancestor, a piece of "sea slime"!
Nevertheless, as expressed by Faber:
The _fictions_ of ancient poetry ... will be found to comprehend
some portion of historical truth.
However one-sided the efforts of the learned author of _A Dissertation on he Mysteries of the Cabiri_--efforts directed throughout his two volumes o constrain the classical myths and symbols of old Paganism, "to bear estimony to the truth of Scripture"--time and further research have venged, partially at least, that "truth" by showing it unveiled. Thus it s the clever adaptations of Scripture, on the contrary, which are made to ear evidence to the great wisdom of Archaic Paganism. This, otwithstanding the inextricable confusion into which the truth about the
Kabiri--the most mysterious Gods of antiquity--has been thrown by the wild nd contradictory speculations of Bishop Cumberland, Dr. Shuckford,
Cudworth, Vallancey, etc., and finally by Faber. Nevertheless, all of hese scholars, from first to last, had to come to a certain conclusion ramed by the latter, as follows:
We have no reason to think that the idolatry of the Gentile world
was of a merely arbitrary contrivance; on the contrary, it seems
to have been built, almost universally, upon _a traditional
remembrance of certain real events. These events I apprehend to be
the destruction of the first_ [the Fourth in Esoteric Teaching]
_race of mankind by the waters of the Deluge_.(595)
To this, Faber adds:
I am persuaded that the tradition of the sinking of the Phlegyan
isle is the very same as that of the sinking of the island
Atlantis. They both appear to me to allude to one great event, the
sinking of the whole world beneath the waters of the deluge, or,
if we suppose the arch of the earth to have remained in its
original position, the rising of the central water above it. M.
Bailly indeed in his work upon the Atlantis of Plato, the object
of which is evidently to depreciate the authority of the
scriptural chronology, labours to prove that the Atlantians were a
very ancient northern nation, long prior to the Hindoos, the
Phenicians, and the Egyptians.(596)
In this Faber is in agreement with Bailly, who shows himself more learned nd intuitional than those who accept biblical chronology. Nor is the atter wrong when saying that the Atlanteans were the same as the Titans nd the Giants.(597) Faber adopts the more willingly the opinion of his
French _confrčre_, as Bailly mentions Cosmas Indicopleustes, who preserved n ancient tradition about Noah--that he "formerly inhabited the _island_
Atlantis." This island, whether it was the "Poseidonis" mentioned in
_Esoteric Buddhism_, or the Continent of Atlantis, does not much matter.
The tradition is there, recorded by a Christian.
No Occultist would ever think of dispossessing Noah of his prerogatives if e is claimed to be an Atlantean; for this would simply show that the
Israelites repeated the story of Vaivasvata Manu, Xisuthrus, and so many thers, and that they only changed the name, which they had the same right o do as any other nation or tribe. What we object to is the literal cceptation of biblical chronology, as it is absurd, and in accord with either geological data nor reason. Moreover, if Noah was an Atlantean, hen he was a Titan, a Giant, as Faber shows; and if a Giant, then why is e not shown as such in _Genesis_?(598)
Bailly's mistake was to reject the submersion of Atlantis, and to call the
Atlanteans simply a Northern and _post-diluvian_ nation, which, however, s he says, certainly flourished before the foundation of the Hindű,
Egyptian, and Phoenician empires. In this, had he only known of the xistence of what we have agreed to call Lemuria, he would have again been ight. For the Atlanteans were post-diluvian to the Lemurians, and Lemuria as not submerged as Atlantis was, but was _sunk_ under the waves, owing o earthquakes and subterranean fires, as Great Britain and Europe will be ne day. It is the ignorance of our men of Science, who will accept either the tradition that several Continents have already sunk, nor the eriodical law which acts throughout the Manvantaric Cycle--it is this gnorance that is the chief cause of all the confusion. Nor is Bailly rong again in assuring us that the Hindűs, Egyptians, and Phoenicians came fter the Atlanteans, for the latter belonged to the Fourth, while the
Âryans and their Semitic Branch are of the Fifth Race. Plato, while epeating the story as narrated to Solon by the priests of Egypt, ntentionally confuses--as every Initiate would--the two Continents, and ssigns to the small island which last sunk, all the events pertaining to he two enormous Continents, the prehistoric and traditional. Therefore, e describes the _first couple_, from whom the whole island was peopled, s being formed of the Earth. In so saying, he means neither Adam and Eve, or yet his own Hellenic forefathers. His language is simply allegorical, nd by alluding to "Earth," he means Matter, as the Atlanteans were really he first purely _human_ and _terrestrial_ Race--those that preceded it eing more divine and ethereal than human and solid.
Yet Plato must have known, as would any other initiated Adept, about the istory of the Third Race after its "Fall," though as one pledged to ilence and secrecy he never showed his knowledge in so many words.
Nevertheless, it may become easier now, after acquainting oneself with ven the approximate chronology of the Eastern nations--all of which was ased upon, and followed the early Âryan calculations--to realize the mmense periods of time that must have elapsed since the separation of the exes, without mentioning the First or even the Second Root-Races. As hese must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in Western hought, it is found useless to speak in detail of the First and Second, nd even of the Third Race in its earliest stage.(599) It is only when the atter has reached its full human period that a beginning can be made, ithout the uninitiated reader finding himself hopelessly bewildered.
The Third Race _fell_--and created no longer; it _begat_ its progeny. Being till mindless at the period of separation, it begat, moreover, anomalous ffspring, until its physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in he right direction. Like the "Lords Gods" of the _Bible_, the "Sons of
Wisdom," the Dhyân Chohans, had warned it to leave alone the fruit orbidden by Nature; but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the nfitness--we must not say sin--of what they had done, only when too late; fter the Angelic Monads from higher Spheres had incarnated in, and ndowed them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply hysical, like the animals generated from them. For what is the istinction? The Doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate nd inanimate objects on Earth, between an animal and a human frame, is hat in some the various "Fires" are latent, and in others they are ctive. The _Vital_ Fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of hem. But no animal has the three higher "principles" awakened in him; hey are simply potential, latent, and thus _non-existing_. And so would he animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they came ut from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose Shadows they were, to row, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in Matter. But as aid in _Pymander_:
This is a Mystery that to this day was sealed and hidden.
Nature(600) being mingled with Man(601) brought forth a wondrous
miracle; the harmonious commingling of the _essence of the Seven_
[Pitris, or Governors] and her own; the _Fire_ and the _Spirit_
and _Nature_ [the Noumenon of Matter]; which [commingling]
forthwith brought forth seven men of opposite sexes [negative and
positive] according to the essences of the Seven Governors.(602)
Thus saith Hermes, the thrice great Initiate,(603) the "Power of the
Thought Divine." St. Paul, another Initiate, called our World, "the nigmatical mirror of pure truth," and St. Gregory of Nazianzen orroborated Hermes by stating that:
Things visible are but the shadow and delineation of things that
we cannot see.
It is an eternal combination, and images are repeated from the higher rung f the Ladder of Being down to the lower. The "Fall of the Angels," and he "War in Heaven" are repeated on every plane, the lower "mirror" isfiguring the image of the superior "mirror," and each repeating it in ts own way. Thus the Christian dogmas are but the reminiscences of the aradigms of Plato, who spoke of these things cautiously, as every
Initiate would. But it is all as expressed in these few sentences of the
_Desatir_:
All that is on earth, saith the Lord [Ormazd], is the _shadow of
something that is in the superior spheres_. This luminious object
[light, fire, etc.] is the shadow of that which is still more
luminous than itself, and so on till it reaches me, who am the
light of lights.
In the Kabalistic books, in the _Zohar_ prëeminently, the idea that every bjective thing on Earth or in this Universe is the "Shadow" (Dyooknah) of he eternal Light or Deity, is very strong.
The Third Race was prëeminently the bright "Shadow," at first, of the
Gods, whom tradition exiles on to the Earth after the allegorical War in
Heaven. This became still more allegorical on Earth, for it was the War etween Spirit and Matter. This War will last till the Inner and Divine
Man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till hen the dark and fierce passions of that self will be at eternal feud ith his Master, the Divine Man. But the animal will be tamed one day, ecause its nature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more etween the two as before the "Fall," when even mortal man was "created" y the Elements and was not born.
The above is made clear in all the great Theogonies, principally in the
Grecian, as in that of Hesiod. The _mutilation_ of Uranus by his son
Cronus, who thus condemns him to impotency, has never been understood by he modern Mythographers. Yet, it is very plain; and as it was niversal(604) it must have contained a great abstract and philosophical dea, now lost to our modern sages. This punishment in the allegory marks, ndeed, "a new period, a second phase in the development of creation," as ustly remarked by Decharme,(605) who, however, does not attempt to xplain it. Uranus tried to oppose an impediment to that development, or atural evolution, by _destroying all his children as soon as born_.
Uranus, who personifies all the creative powers of, and in, Chaos--Space, r the Unmanifested Deity--is thus made to pay the penalty; for it is these owers which cause the Pitris to evolve primordial "men" from hemselves--as, later on, these men, in their turn, evolve _their_ rogeny--without any sense or desire for procreation. The work of eneration, suspended for a moment, passes into the hands of Cronus
(_Chronos_) Time,(606) who unites himself with Rhea (the Earth---in
Esotericism, Matter in general), and thus produces celestial and errestrial Titans. The whole of this symbolism relates to the mysteries f evolution.
This allegory is the exoteric version of the Esoteric Doctrine given in his part of our work. For in Cronus we see the same story repeated again.
As Uranus destroyed his children by Gća (one in the world of manifestation ith Aditi, or the Great Cosmic Deep), by confining them in the bosom of he Earth, Titća, so Cronus, at this second stage of creation, destroyed is children by Rhea--by devouring them. This is an allusion to the ruitless efforts of Earth, or Nature, alone to create real _human_
"men."(607) Time swallows its own fruitless work. Then comes Zeus,
Jupiter, who dethrones his father in his turn.(608) Jupiter the Titan, is
Prometheus, in one sense,(609) and varies from Zeus, the great "Father of he Gods." He is the "disrespectful son" in Hesiod. Hermes calls him the
"Heavenly Man" in _Pymander_; and even in the _Bible_ he is found again nder the name of Adam, and, later on--by transmutation--under that of Ham.
Yet these are all personifications of the "Sons of Wisdom." The necessary orroboration that Jupiter belongs to the purely _human_ Atlantean
Cycle--if Uranus and Cronus who precede him are found insufficient--may be ead in Hesiod, who tells us that:
The Immortals made the race of the Golden and Silver Age [First
and Second Races]; Jupiter made the generation of Bronze [an
admixture of _two_ elements], that of the Heroes, and of the Iron
Age.(610)
After this he sends his fatal present, Pandora, to Epimetheus.(611) Hesiod alls this present of the _first woman_ "a fatal gift." It was a unishment, he explains, sent to man "for the theft of [divine creative] ire." Her apparition on Earth is the signal for every kind of evil.
Before her appearance, the human races lived happy, exempt from sickness nd suffering--as the same races are made to live under Yima's rule, in the
Mazdean _Vendidâd_.
Two Deluges may also be traced, in universal tradition, by carefully omparing Hesiod, the _Rig Veda_, the _Zend Avesta_, etc., but no _first_ an is ever mentioned in any of the Theogonies save in the _Bible_.(612)
Everywhere the man of _our_ Race appears after a cataclysm of water. After his, tradition mentions only the several designations of continents and slands which sink under the ocean waves in due time.(613) Gods and ortals have one common origin according to Hesiod;(614) and Pindar echoes he statement.(615) Deucalion and Pyrrha, who escape the Deluge by onstructing an Ark like Noah's,(616) ask Jupiter to reänimate the human ace whom he had made to perish under the waters of the Flood. In the
Slavonian mythology all men are drowned, and two old people, a man and his ife, alone remain. Then Pram'zimas, the "master of all," advises them to ump seven times on the rocks of the Earth, and seven new races (couples) re born, from which come the nine Lithuanian tribes.(617) As well nderstood by the author of _Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_--the Four Ages ignify periods of time, and are also an allegorical allusion to the
Races. As he says:
The successive races, destroyed and replaced by others, without
any period of transition, are characterized in Greece by the name
of metals, to express their ever-decreasing value. Gold, the most
brilliant and precious of all, symbol of brightness ... qualifies
the first race.... The men of the second race, those of the Age of
Silver, are already far inferior to the first. Inert and weak
creatures, all their life is no better than a long and stupid
infancy.... They disappear.... The men of the Age of Bronze are
robust and violent [the Third Race]; ... their strength is
extreme. "They had arms made of bronze, habitations of bronze;
used nought but bronze. Iron, the black metal, was yet
unknown."(618) The fourth race is, with Hesiod, that of the heroes
who fell before Thebes,(619) or under the walls of Troy.(620)
Thus, as the four Races are found mentioned by the oldest Greek poets, hough very much confused and anachronistically, our doctrines are once ore corroborated in the classics. But this is all "mythology" and poetry.
What can Modern Science have to say to such a euhemerization of old ictions? The verdict is not difficult to foresee. Therefore, an attempt ust be made to answer by anticipation, and to prove that so much of the omain of this same Science is taken up by fictions and empirical peculations that none of the men of learning have the slightest right, ith such a heavy beam in their own eye, to point to the speck in the eye f the Occultist, even supposing that speck were not a figment of their wn imagination.
40. THEN THE THIRD AND FOURTH(621) BECAME TALL WITH PRIDE. "WE ARE THE
KINGS;(622) WE ARE THE GODS" (_A_).
41. THEY TOOK WIVES FAIR TO LOOK UPON. WIVES FROM THE MINDLESS, THE
NARROW-HEADED. THEY BRED MONSTERS, WICKED DEMONS, MALE AND FEMALE, ALSO
KHADO,(623) WITH LITTLE MINDS (_B_).
42. THEY BUILT TEMPLES FOR THE HUMAN BODY. MALE AND FEMALE THEY WORSHIPPED
(_C_). THEN THE THIRD EYE ACTED NO LONGER (_D_).
(_a_) Such were the first truly physical men, whose first characteristic as--pride! It is the memory of this Third Race and the gigantic
Atlanteans, which has lingered from one generation and race to another eneration and race down to the days of Moses, and has found an objective orm in those antediluvian giants, those terrible sorcerers and magicians, f whom the Roman Church has preserved such vivid, and at the same time istorted, legends. Anyone who has read and studied the Commentaries on he Archaic Doctrine, will easily recognize in some of these Atlanteans he prototypes of the Nimrods, the Builders of the Tower of Babel, the
Hamites, and all those _tutti quanti_ of "accursed memory," as theological iterature expresses it; of those, in short, who have furnished posterity ith the orthodox types of Satan. And this naturally leads us to enquire nto the religious ethics of these early Races, mythical as they may be.
What was the religion of the Third and Fourth Races? In the common cceptation of the term, neither the Lemurians, nor yet their progeny, the
Lemuro-Atlanteans, had any; for they knew no dogma, nor had they to elieve _on faith_. No sooner had the mental eye of man been opened to nderstanding, than the Third Race felt itself one with the ever-present, s also the ever to be unknown and invisible, All, the One Universal
Deity. Endowed with divine powers, and feeling in himself his _inner_ God, ach felt he was a Man-God in his nature, though an animal in his physical elf. The struggle between the two began from the very day they tasted of he fruit of the Tree of Wisdom; a struggle for life between the spiritual nd the psychic, the psychic and the physical. Those who conquered the ower "principles" by obtaining mastery over the body, joined the "Sons of
Light." Those who fell victims to their lower natures, became the slaves f Matter. From "Sons of Light and Wisdom" they ended by becoming the
"Sons of Darkness." They fell in the battle of mortal life with Life
Immortal, and all those so fallen became the seed of the future enerations of Atlanteans.(624)
At the dawn of his consciousness, the man of the Third Root-Race had thus o beliefs that could be called _religion_. That is to say, he was not nly ignorant of "gay religions, full of pomp and gold" but even of any ystem of faith or outward worship. But if the term is to be defined as he binding together of the masses in one form of reverence paid to those e feel higher than ourselves, of piety--as a feeling expressed by a child oward a loved parent--then even the earliest Lemurians from the very eginning of their intellectual life, had a religion, and a most beautiful ne. Had they not their bright Gods of the Elements around them, and even ithin themselves?(625) Was not their childhood passed with, nursed and ended by, those who had given them being and called them forth to ntelligent, conscious life? We are assured it was so, and we believe it.
For the evolution of Spirit into Matter could never have been achieved, or would it have received its first impulse, had not the bright Spirits acrificed their own respective super-ethereal essences to animate the man f clay, by endowing each of his inner "principles" with a portion, or ather, a reflection, of that essence. The Dhyânîs of the Seven
Heavens--the seven planes of Being--are the Noumena of the actual and the uture Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of Nature--the rosser effects of which we perceive in what Science is pleased to call
"modes of motion," the imponderable forces and what not--are the still igher Noumena of still higher Hierarchies.
It was the "Golden Age" in those days of old, the Age when the "Gods alked the earth, and mixed freely with the mortals." When it ceased, the
Gods departed--_i.e._, became invisible--and later generations ended by orshipping their kingdoms--the Elements.
It was the Atlanteans, the first progeny of semi-divine man after his eparation into sexes--hence the first-begotten and humanly-born ortals--who became the first "sacrificers" to the _God of Matter_. They tand, in the dim far-away past, in ages more than prehistoric, as the rototype on which the great symbol of Cain was built,(626) as the first
Anthropomorphists who worshipped Form and Matter--a worship which very soon egenerated into _self-worship_, and thence led to phallicism, which eigns supreme to this day in the symbolism of every exoteric religion of itual, dogma, and form. Adam and Eve _became matter_, or furnished the oil, Cain and Abel--the latter the life-bearing soil, the former "the iller of that ground or field."
Thus the first Atlantean races, born on the Lemurian Continent, separated rom their earliest tribes into the righteous and the unrighteous; into hose who worshipped the one unseen Spirit of Nature, the Ray of which man eels within himself--or the Pantheists, and those who offered fanatical orship to the Spirits of the Earth, the dark, cosmic, anthropomorphic
Powers, with whom they made alliance. These were the earliest Gibborim, he "mighty men ... of renown" in those days,(627) who become with the
Fifth Race the Kabirim, Kabiri with the Egyptians and the Phoenicians,
Titans with the Greeks, and Râkshasas and Daityas with the Indian races.
Such was the secret and mysterious origin of all the subsequent and modern eligions, especially of the worship of the later Hebrews for their tribal
God. At the same time this sexual religion was closely allied to, based pon, and, so to say, blended with, astronomical phenomena. The Lemurians ravitated toward the North Pole, or the Heaven of their Progenitors--the
Hyperborean Continent; the Atlanteans, toward the South Pole, the "_Pit_," osmically and terrestrially--whence breathe the hot passions blown into urricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is. The two Poles were enominated, by the Ancients, Dragons and Serpents--hence good and bad
Dragons and Serpents, and also the names given to the "Sons of God"--Sons f Spirit and Matter--the good and bad Magicians. This is the origin of the ual and triple nature in man. The legend of the "Fallen Angels" in its
Esoteric signification, contains the key to the manifold contradictions of uman character; it points to the secret of man's self-consciousness; it s the support on which hinges his entire Life-Cycle--the history of his volution and growth.
On a firm grasp of this doctrine depends the correct understanding of
Esoteric Anthropogenesis. It gives a clue to the vexed question of the
Origin of Evil; and shows how man himself is the separator of the One into arious contrasted aspects.
The reader, therefore, will not be surprised if so much space is devoted o an attempt to elucidate this difficult and obscure subject every time t presents itself. A good deal must necessarily be said on its ymbological aspect; because, by so doing, hints are given to the houghtful student for his own investigations, and more light can thus be uggested than it is possible to convey in the technical phrases of a more ormal, philosophical exposition. The "Fallen Angels," so-called, are
_Humanity_ itself. The Demon of Pride, Lust, Rebellion, and Hatred, had no eing _before_ the appearance of physical conscious man. It is man who has egotten and nurtured the fiend, and allowed it to develop in his heart; t is he, again, who has contaminated the Indwelling God in himself, by inking the pure Spirit with the impure Demon of Matter. And, if the
Kabalistic saying, "_Demon est Deus inversus_," finds its metaphysical and heoretical corroboration in dual manifested Nature, nevertheless, its ractical application is found in Mankind alone.
Thus it has now become self-evident that, postulating as we do, (_a_) the ppearance of Man before that of other Mammalia, and even before the Ages f the huge Reptiles; (_b_) Periodical Deluges and Glacial Periods owing o the Karmic disturbance of the axis; and chiefly (_c_) the birth of man rom a Superior Being, or what Materialism would call a "supernatural"
Being, though it is only super-_human_--our teachings have very few chances f an impartial hearing. Add to it the claim that a portion of Mankind in he Third Race--all those Monads of men who had reached the highest point f Merit and Karma in the preceding Manvantara--owed their psychic and ational natures to divine Beings "hypostasizing" into their Fifth
Principles, and the Secret Doctrine must lose caste in the eyes of not nly Materialism but even of dogmatic Christianity. For, no sooner will he latter have learned that these Angels are identical with their
"Fallen" Spirits, than the Esoteric tenet will be proclaimed most terribly eretical and pernicious.(628) The _Divine_ Man dwelt in the animal, and herefore, when the physiological separation took place in the natural ourse of evolution--when also "all the animal creation was _untied_," and ales were attracted to females--_that race fell_; not because they had aten of the Fruit of Knowledge and knew Good from Evil, but because they new no better. Propelled by the sexless creative instinct, the early sub- aces had evolved an intermediate race in which, as hinted in the Stanzas, he higher Dhyân Chohans had incarnated.(629) "When we have ascertained he extent of the universe (and learnt to know all that there is in it) we ill multiply our race," answer the Sons of Will and Yoga to their rethren of the same race, who invite them to do as they do. This means hat the great Adepts and Initiated Ascetics will "multiply," _i.e._, once ore produce "mind-born" immaculate sons--in the Seventh Root-Race.
It is so stated in the _Vishnu_ and _Brahmâ Purânas_, in the
_Mahâbhârata_(630) and in the _Harivamsha_. In one portion of the
_Pushkara Mâhâtmya_, moreover, the separation of the sexes is allegorized y Daksha, who, seeing that his will-born progeny, the "Sons of passive
Yoga," will not create men, "_converts half himself into a female_ by whom e begets daughters," the future females of the Third Race which begat the
Giants of Atlantis, the Fourth Race, so called. In the _Vishnu Purâna_ it s simply said that Daksha, the father of mankind, established sexual ntercourse as the means of peopling the world.(631)
Happily for the Human Race the "Elect Race" had already become the vehicle f incarnation of the highest Dhyânîs (intellectually and spiritually) efore Humanity had become quite material. When the last sub-races--save ome of the lowest--of the Third Race had perished with the great Lemurian
Continent, the "Seeds of the _Trinity of Wisdom_" had already acquired the ecret of immortality on Earth, that gift which allows the same Great
Personality to step _ad libitum_ from one worn-out body into another.
(_b_) The first War that Earth knew, the first shedding of human gore, was he result of man's eyes and senses being opened, which made him see that he daughters of his brethren were fairer than his own--and their wives lso. There were rapes committed before that of the Sabines, and
Menelauses robbed of their Helens before the Fifth Race was born. The
Titans or Giants were the stronger; their adversaries, the wiser. This ook place during the Fourth Race--that of the Giants.
For "there _were_ Giants" in the days of old, indeed.(632) The volutionary series of the animal world is a warrant that the same thing ook place within the human races. Lower still in the order of creation we ind witnesses for the same proportionate size in the flora going _pari assu_ with the fauna. The pretty ferns we collect and dry among the eaves of our favourite volumes are the descendants of the gigantic ferns hich grew during the Carboniferous period.
Scriptures, and fragments of philosophical and scientific works--in short, lmost every record that has come down to us from antiquity--contain eferences to Giants. No one can fail to recognize the Atlanteans of the
Secret Doctrine in the Râkshasas of Lankâ--the opponents conquered by Râma.
Are these accounts no better than the production of empty fancy? Let us ive the subject a few moments' attention.
Are Giants A Fiction?
Here, again, we come into collision with Science, which so far denies that an has ever been much larger than the average of tall and powerful men ow met with occasionally. Dr. Henry Gregor denounces the traditions of
Giants as resting upon ill-digested facts, and instances of mistaken udgments are brought forward as disproof of such traditions. Thus, in
1613, in a locality, called from time immemorial the "Field of Giants," in
Lower Dauphiné, France, four miles from St. Romans, enormous bones were ound deeply buried in the sandy soil. They were attributed to human emains, and even to Teutobodus, the Teuton chief slain by Marius. But
Cuvier's later research proved them to be the fossil remains of the
Dinotherium Giganteum, 18 feet long. Ancient buildings are pointed to as n evidence that our earliest ancestors were not much larger than we are, he entrance doors being of no larger size then than now. The tallest man f antiquity known to us, we are told, was the Roman Emperor Maximus, hose height was only seven and a half feet. Nevertheless, in our modern ay, every year we see men taller than this. The Hungarian who exhibited imself in the London Pavilion was nearly 9 feet high. In America a giant as shown 9 feet 6 inches tall; the Montenegrin Danilo was 8 feet 7 nches. In Russia and Germany one often sees men in the lower classes bove 7 feet. Now, as the ape-theorists are told by Mr. Darwin that the pecies of animals which result from cross breeding always betray "_a endency to revert to the original type_," they ought to apply the same aw to men. Had there been no giants as a type in ancient days, there ould be none now.
All this applies only to the historic period. And if the skeletons of the rehistoric ages have failed so far to prove undeniably in the opinion of
Science the claim here advanced, it is but a question of time. We, owever, positively deny the reality of the failure. Moreover, as already tated, human stature is little changed since the last Racial Cycle. The iants of old are all buried under the oceans, and hundreds of thousands f years of constant friction by water would reduce to dust a brazen, much ore a human skeleton. And whence the testimony of well-known classical riters, of philosophers and men who, otherwise, never had the reputation or lying? Let us bear in mind, furthermore, that before the year 1847, hen Boucher de Perthes forced it upon the attention of Science, hardly nything was known of fossil man, for Archćology complacently ignored his xistence. Of giants who were "in the earth in those days" of old, the
_Bible_ alone had spoken to the wise men of the West; the Zodiac being the olitary witness called upon to corroborate the statement in the persons f Orion or Atlas, whose mighty shoulders were said to support the world.
Nevertheless, even the giants have not been left without their witnesses, nd one may as well examine both sides of the question. The three
Sciences--geological, sidereal and scriptural, the latter in its universal haracter--may furnish us with the needed proofs. To begin with Geology: it as already confessed that the older the excavated skeletons, the larger, aller and the more powerful their structure. This is already a certain roof in hand. Frédéric de Rougemont, who, though believing too piously in he _Bible_ and Noah's Ark, is none the less a scientific witness, writes:
All those bones, found in the Departments of the Gard, in Austria,
Ličge, etc., those skulls which all remind one of the negro type
... and which by reason of their type might be mistaken for
animals, have all belonged to men of _high stature_.(633)
The same is repeated by Lartet, an authority, who attributes a "tall tature" to those who were submerged in the Deluge--not necessarily
"Noah's"--and a smaller stature to the races which lived subsequently.
As for the evidence furnished by ancient writers, we need not trouble urselves with that of Tertullian, who assures us that in his day a number f giants were found at Carthage--for, before his testimony can be ccepted, his own identity,(634) if not actual existence, would have to be roven. We may, however, turn to the papers of 1858, which speak of a
"sarcophagus of giants" found that year on the site of this same city. As o the ancient Pagan writers, we have the evidence of Philostratus, who peaks of a giant skeleton twenty-two cubits long, as well as of another f twelve cubits, seen by himself on the promontory of Sigćum. This keleton may perhaps not have belonged, as believed by Protesilas, to the iant killed by Apollo at the siege of Troy; nevertheless, it was that of giant, as was that of the other discovered by Messecrates of Stira, in
Lemnos--"horrible to behold," according to Philostratus.(635) Is it ossible that prejudice would carry Science so far as to class _all_ these en as either fools or liars?
Pliny speaks of a giant in whom he thought he recognized Orion, or Otus, he brother of Ephialtes.(636) Plutarch declares that Sertorius saw the omb of Antćus, the Giant; and Pausanias vouches for the actual existence f the tombs of Asterius and of Geryon, or of Hillus, son of Hercules--all
Giants, Titans and mighty men. Finally the Abbé Pegues, affirms in his urious work, _Les Volcans de la Grčce_, that:
In the neighbourhood of the volcanoes of the isle of Thera, giants
with enormous skulls were found laid out under colossal stones,
the erection of which in every place must have necessitated the
use of titanic powers, and which tradition associates in all
countries with the ideas about giants, volcanoes and magic.(637)
In the same work above cited, the author wonders why in the _Bible_ and radition the Gibborim, the giants or the "mighty ones," the Rephaim, the pectres or the "phantoms," the Nephilim, or the "fallen ones"
(_irruentes_), are shown as if identical, though they are "all _men_," ince the _Bible_ calls them the primitive and the mighty ones--_e.g._,
Nimrod. The Secret Doctrine explains the secret. These names, which belong y right only to the four preceding Races and the earliest beginning of he Fifth, allude very clearly to the first two _Phantom_ (Astral) Races, o the "Fallen" Race--the Third, and to the Race of the Atlantean
Giants--the Fourth, after which "men began to decrease in stature."
Bossuet sees the cause of subsequent universal idolatry in the "original in." "Ye shall be as Gods," says the Serpent of _Genesis_ to Eve, thus aying the first germ of the worship of _false divinities_.(638) Hence, he hinks, came idolatry, or the cult and adoration of _images_, of nthropomorphized or human figures. But, if it is this that idolatry is ade to rest upon, then the two Churches--the Greek, and the Latin specially--are as idolatrous and pagan as any other religion.(639) It was nly in the Fourth Race that men, who had lost all right to be considered ivine, resorted to body worship, in other words to phallicism. Till then, hey had been truly Gods, as pure and as divine as their Progenitors, and he expression of the allegorical "Serpent," as has been sufficiently hown in the preceding pages, does not refer at all to the physiological
"Fall" of men, but to their acquiring the Knowledge of Good and Evil; and his knowledge came to them _prior_ to their fall. It must not be orgotten that it is only after his forced expulsion from Eden that "Adam new Eve his wife." We shall not, however, check the tenets of the Secret
Doctrine by the dead-letter of the Hebrew _Bible_, but rather point out he great similarities between the two in their Esoteric meaning.
It was only after his defection from the Neo-Platonists, that Clement of
Alexandria began to translate _gigantes_ by _serpentes_, explaining that
"serpents and giants signify _demons_."(640)
We may be told that, before we draw parallels between our tenets and those f the _Bible_, we have to show better evidence of the existence of the
Giants of the Fourth Race than the reference to them found in _Genesis_.
We answer, that the proofs we give are more satisfactory, at any rate are upported by more literary and scientific evidence, than those of Noah's
Deluge will ever be. Even the historical works of China are full of such eminiscences about the Fourth Race. In the French translation of the
_Shoo-King_,(641) we read:
When the Miao-tse (that antediluvian and perverted race [explains
the annotator] which retired in the days of old to the rocky
caves, and the descendants of whom are said to be still found in
the neighbourhood of Canton),(642) _according to our ancient
documents_, had, owing to the beguilements of Tchy-Yeoo, troubled
all the earth, it became full of brigands.... The Lord (Chang-ty
[a King of the _Divine_ Dynasty]) cast his eyes over the people,
and saw no longer among them any trace of virtue. Then he
commanded Tchong and Ly [two lower Dhyân Chohans] to cut away
every communication between heaven and earth. Since then, there
has been no more _going up and down_!(643)
"Going up and down" means an untrammelled communication and intercourse etween the two Worlds.
As we are not in a position to give out a full and detailed history of the
Third and Fourth Races, as many isolated facts concerning them as are ermitted must be now collated together, especially those corroborated by irect as well as by inferential evidence found in ancient literature and istory. As the "coats of skin" of men thickened, and they fell more and ore into physical sin, the intercourse between Physical and Ethereal
_Divine_ Man was stopped. The Veil of Matter between the two planes became oo dense for even the Inner Man to penetrate. The Mysteries of Heaven and
Earth, revealed to the Third Race by their Celestial Teachers in the days f their purity, became a great focus of light, the rays from which became ecessarily weakened as they were diffused and shed upon an uncongenial, ecause too material, soil. With the masses they degenerated into Sorcery, aking later on the shape of exoteric religions, of idolatry full of uperstitions, and man-, or hero-worship. Alone a handful of primitive en--in whom the spark of Divine Wisdom burnt bright, and became only trengthened in its intensity as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age n those who turned it to evil purposes--remained the elect custodians of he Mysteries revealed to mankind by the Divine Teachers. There were those mong them, who remained in their Kaumâric condition from the beginning; nd tradition whispers, what the Secret Teachings affirm, namely, that hese Elect were the germ of a Hierarchy _which has never died since that eriod_. As the _Catechism_ of the Inner Schools says:
_The Inner Man of the First ... only changes his body from time to time; e is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvâna, spurning Devachan nd remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind.... Out of he seven Virgin-men [Kumâra]_(_644_)_ four sacrificed themselves for the ins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain till the nd of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever present. When eople say of one of them, __"__He is dead__"__; behold, he is alive __ nd under another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the Soul, and the
Seed of undying Knowledge [Jńâna]. Thou shall never speak, O Lanoo, of hese great ones [Mahâ ...] before a multitude, mentioning them by their ames. The wise alone will understand._(645)
It is these sacred "Four" who have been allegorized and symbolized in the
_Linga Purâna_, which states that Vâmadeva (Shiva) as a Kumâra is reborn n each Kalpa (Race, in this instance), as four youths--four, white; four, ed; four, yellow; and four, dark or brown. Let us remember that Shiva is reëminently and chiefly an ascetic, the patron of all Yogîs and Adepts, nd the allegory will become quite comprehensible. It is the spirit of
Divine Wisdom and chaste Asceticism itself which incarnates in these
Elect. It is only after _getting married_ and being dragged by the Gods rom his terrible ascetic life, that Rudra becomes Shiva, a God--and not ne of a very virtuous or merciful type--in the Hindű Pantheon. Higher than he "Four" is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens--that still more mysterious nd solitary Being described in Volume I.
We have now to examine the nature of the "Sons of the Flame" and of "Dark
Wisdom," as well as the _pros_ and _cons_ of the Satanic assumption.
Such broken sentences as could be made out from the fragments of the tile, hich George Smith calls "The Curse after the Fall,"(646) are of course llegorical; yet they corroborate that which is taught of the true nature f the Fall of the Angels in our Books. Thus, it is said that the "Lord of he Earth his name called out, the Father Elu [Elohim]," and pronounced is "curse," which "the God Hea heard, and his liver was angry, because
_his_ man [Angelic Man] had corrupted his purity," for which Hea expresses he desire that "_wisdom and knowledge_ hostilely may they injure him
[man]."(647)
The latter sentence points to the direct connection of the Chaldćan with he Genetic account. While Hea tries to bring to nought the wisdom and nowledge gained by man, through his newly-acquired intellectual and onscious capacity of creating in his turn--thus taking the monopoly of reation out of the hands of God (the Gods)--the Elohim do the same in the hird chapter of _Genesis_. Therefore the Elohim sent him out of Eden.
But this was of no avail. For the Spirit of Divine Wisdom being upon and
_in_ man--verily the Serpent of Eternity and all Knowledge, that Mânasic
Spirit, which made him learn the secret of "creation" on the Kriyâshaktic, nd of procreation on the Earthly planes--led him as naturally to discover is way to immortality, notwithstanding the jealousy of all the Gods.
The early Atlanto-Lemurians are charged with taking unto themselves (the ivine incarnations) wives of a lower race, namely, the race of the itherto mindless men. Every ancient Scripture has the same, more or less isfigured, legend. Primarily, the Angelic "Fall," which has transformed he "First-born" of God into the Asuras, or into the Ahriman or Typhon of he "Pagans"--_i.e._, if the accounts given in the _Book of Enoch_,(648) nd in _Hermes_, in _Purânas_ and _Bible_ are taken literally--has, when ead Esoterically, the following simple signification:
Sentences such as, "In his [Satan's] ambition he raises his hand against he Sanctuary of the God of Heaven," etc., ought to read: Prompted by the
Law of Eternal Evolution and Karma, the Angel incarnated on Earth in Man; nd as his Wisdom and Knowledge are still divine, although his Body is arthly, he is (allegorically) accused of divulging the Mysteries of
Heaven. He combines and uses the two for purposes of human, instead of uper-human, procreation. Henceforth, "man will _beget_, not
_create_."(649) But as, by so doing, he has to use his weak Body as the eans of procreation, that Body will pay the penalty for this Wisdom, arried from Heaven down to the Earth; hence the corruption of physical urity will become a temporary curse.
The Medićval Kabalists knew this well, since one of them did not fear to rite:
The Kabalah was first taught by God himself to a select Company of
Angels who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall
the Angels most _graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to
the disobedient child of Earth_, to furnish the protoplasts with
the means of returning to their pristine nobility and
felicity.(650)
This shows how the incident of the Sons of God, marrying and imparting the
Divine Secrets of Heaven to the Daughters of Men--as allegorically told by
Enoch and in the sixth chapter of _Genesis_--was interpreted by the
Christian Kabalists. The whole of this period may be regarded as the
_pre_-human period, that of Divine Man, or as plastic Protestant Theology ow has it--the _Pre_-Adamite period. But even _Genesis_ begins its _real_ istory (Chap. vi) by the giants of "those days" and the "sons of God" arrying and teaching their wives--the "daughters of men."
This period is the one described in the _Purânas_; and relating as it does o days lost in archaic ages, hence pre-historic, how can any
Anthropologist feel certain whether the mankind of that period was or was ot as he knows it now? The whole _personnel_ of the _Brâhmanas_ and
_Purânas_--the Rishis, Prajâpatis, Manus, their wives and progeny--belong to hat pre-human period. All these are the _Seed_ of Humanity, so to speak.
It is around these "Sons of God," the "mind-born" astral Children of
Brahmâ, that our physical frames have grown and developed to what they are ow. For, the Paurânic histories of all those men are those of our Monads, n their various and numberless incarnations on this and other Spheres, vents perceived by the "Shiva Eye" of the ancient Seers--the "Third Eye" f our Stanzas--and described allegorically. Later on, they were disfigured or sectarian purposes; mutilated, but still left with a considerable round-work of truth in them. Nor is the philosophy less profound in such llegories for being so thickly veiled by the overgrowth of fancy.
But with the Fourth Race we reach the purely human period. Those who were itherto semi-divine Beings, self-imprisoned in bodies which were human nly in appearance, became physiologically changed and took unto hemselves wives who were entirely human and fair to look upon, but in hom _lower, more material_, though sidereal, Beings had incarnated. These
Beings in female forms--Lilith is the prototype of them in the Jewish raditions--are called in the Esoteric accounts Khado (Dâkinî, in
Sanskrit). Allegorical legends call the Chief of these Liliths Sangye
Khado (Buddha Dâkinî, in Sanskrit); all are credited with the art of
"walking in the air," and the "greatest _kindness to mortals_;" but with o _mind_--only animal instinct.(651)
(_c_) This is the beginning of a worship which, ages later, was doomed to egenerate into phallicism and sexual worship. It began by the worship of he human body--that "miracle of miracles," as an English author calls t--and ended by that of its respective sexes. The worshippers were giants n stature; but they were not giants in knowledge and learning, though it ame to them more easily than it does to the men of our modern times.
Their science was innate in them. The Lemuro-Atlantean had no need of iscovering and fixing in his memory that which his informing principle
_knew_ at the moment of its incarnation. Time alone, and the ever-growing btuseness of the Matter in which the "principles" had clothed themselves, ould, the one, weaken the memory of their pre-natal knowledge, the other, lunt and even extinguish every spark of the spiritual and divine in them.
Therefore had they, from the first, fallen victims to their animal natures nd bred "monsters"--_i.e._, men of distinct varieties from themselves.
Speaking of the Giants, Creuzer well describes them in saying that:
Those children of Heaven and Earth were endowed at their birth by
the _Sovereign Powers_, the authors of their being, with
extraordinary faculties both moral and physical. They _commanded
the Elements, knew the secrets of Heaven and the Earth, of the sea
and the whole world, and read futurity in_ the stars.... It seems,
indeed, as though, when reading of them, one has to deal _not with
men as we are_ but with Spirits of the Elements sprung from the
bosom of Nature and having full sway over her.... All these beings
are marked with a character of _magic_ and _sorcery_....
And so they were, those now legendary heroes of the pre-historic, still nce really existing, races. Creuzer was wise in his generation, for he id not charge with deliberate deceit, or dulness and superstition, an ndless series of recognized Philosophers, who mention these races and ssert that, even in their own time, they had seen their fossils. There ere sceptics in days of old--as many and great as they are now. But even a
Lucian, a Democritus and an Epicurus, yielded to the evidence of _facts_ nd showed the discriminative capacity of really great intellects, which an distinguish fiction from fact, and truth from exaggeration and fraud.
Ancient writers were no more fools than are our modern wise men; for, as ell remarked by the author of "Notes on Aristotle's Psychology in
Relation to Modern Thought," in _Mind_:
The common division of history into ancient and modern is ...
misleading. The Greeks in the fourth century, B.C., were in many
respects moderns; especially, we may add, in their scepticism.
They were not very likely to accept _fables_ so easily.
Yet the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, those "children of Heaven and
Earth," were indeed marked with a character of _sorcery_; for the Esoteric
Doctrine charges them precisely with what, if believed, would put an end o the difficulties of Science with regard to the origin of man, or ather, his anatomical similarities to the anthropoid ape. It accuses them f having committed the (to us) abominable crime of breeding with so- alled "animals," and thus producing a truly pithecoid species, now xtinct. Of course, as also in the question of spontaneous generation--in hich Esoteric Science believes, and which it teaches--the possibility of uch a cross-breed between man and an animal of any kind will be denied.
But apart from the consideration that in those early days, as already emarked, neither the human Atlantean Giants, nor yet the "animals," were he physiologically perfect men and mammalians that are now known to us, he modern notions upon this subject--those of the Physiologists ncluded--are too uncertain and fluctuating to permit them an absolute _ŕ riori_ denial of such a fact.
A careful perusal of the Commentaries would make one think that the Being ith which the new "Incarnate" bred, was called an "animal," not because e was no human being, but rather because he was so dissimilar physically nd mentally to the more perfect races, which had developed hysiologically at an earlier period. Remember Stanza VII and what is said n Shloka 24, viz., that when the "Sons of Wisdom" came to incarnate the irst time, some of them incarnated fully, others projected into the forms nly a Spark, while some of the Shadows were left over from the _filling_ nd perfecting, till the Fourth Race. Those races, then, which "remained estitute of knowledge," or those again which were left "mindless," emained as they were, even after the natural separation of the sexes. It s these who committed the first cross-breeding, so to speak, and bred onsters; and it is from the descendants of these that the Atlanteans hose their wives. Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, were supposed to be he only _human_ family on Earth. Yet we see Cain going to the land of Nod nd taking there a wife. Evidently one race only was supposed perfect nough to be called human; and, even in our own day, while the Sinhalese egard the Veddhas of their jungles as _speaking animals_ and no more, ome British people, in their arrogance, firmly believe that every other uman family--especially the dark Indians--is an _inferior_ race. Moreover here are Naturalists who have seriously considered the problem whether ome savage tribes--like the Bushmen, for instance--can be regarded as _men_ t all. The Commentary says, in describing that species (or race) of nimals "fair to look upon," as a biped:
_Having human shape, but having the lower extremities, from the waist own, covered with hair._
Hence the race of the satyrs, perhaps.
If men existed two million years ago, they must have been--just as were the nimals--quite different physically and anatomically from what they have ow become, and nearer then to the type of pure mammalian animal than they re now. Anyhow, we learn that the animal world has bred strictly _inter e_--_i.e._, in accordance with genus and species--only since the appearance
_on this Earth_ of the Atlantean Race. As demonstrated by the author of hat able work, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, this idea of the efusal to breed with another species, or that sterility is the only esult of such breeding, "appears to be a _primâ facie_ deduction rather han an absolute law" even now. He shows that:
Different species do, in fact, often breed together, as is seen in
the familiar instance of the horse and ass. It is true that in
this case the mule is sterile.... But this rule is not universal,
and quite recently one new hybrid race, that of the leporine, or
hare-rabbit, has been created which is perfectly fertile.
The progeny of wolf and dog is also instanced, as also that of several ther domestic animals; foxes and dogs again, and the modern Swiss cattle hown by Rütimeyer as descended from "three distinct species of fossil- xen, the _Bos primigenius_, _Bos longifrons_ and _Bos frontosus_."(652)
Yet some of those species, _as the ape family_, which so clearly resembles an in physical structure, contain, we are told,
Numerous branches, which graduate into one another, but the
extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the
highest of the ape series.
The gorilla and chimpanzee, for instance.
Thus Mr. Darwin's remark--or shall we say the remark of Linnćus?--_natura on facit saltum_, is not only corroborated by Esoteric Science but ould--were there any chance of the real doctrine being accepted by any thers than its direct votaries--reconcile the modern evolution theory, in ore than one way, if not entirely, with facts, as also with the absolute ailure of the Anthropologists to meet with the "missing link" in our
Fourth Round geological formations.
We will show elsewhere that Modern Science, however unconsciously to tself, pleads our case by its own admissions, and that de Quatrefages is erfectly right, when he suggests in his last work, that it is far more ikely that the anthropoid ape should be discovered to be _the descendant f man_, than that these two types should have a common, fantastic and owhere-to-be-found ancestor. Thus the wisdom of the compilers of the old
Stanzas is vindicated by at least one eminent man of Science, and the
Occultist prefers to believe, as he has ever done, that, as the Commentary ays:
_Man was the first and highest [mammalian] animal that appeared in this
[Fourth Round] creation. Then came still huger animals; and last of all he dumb man who walks on all fours. [For] the Râkshasas [Giant-Demons] nd Daityas [Titans] of the White Dvipa [Continent] spoiled his [the dumb an's] sires._
Furthermore, as we see, there are Anthropologists who have traced man back o an epoch which goes far to break down the apparent barrier that exists etween the chronologies of Modern Science and the Archaic Doctrine. It is rue that English Scientists generally have declined to commit themselves o the sanction of the hypothesis of even a Tertiary man. They, each and ll, measure the antiquity of Homo Primigenius by their own lights and rejudices. Huxley, indeed, ventures to speculate on a possible Pliocene r Miocene man. Prof. Seeman and Mr. Grant Allen have relegated his advent o the Eocene, but, speaking generally, English Scientists consider that e cannot safely go beyond the Quaternary. Unfortunately, the facts do not ccommodate the too cautious reserve of these latter. The French school of
Anthropology, basing their views on the discoveries of l'Abbé Bourgeois,
Capellini, and others, has accepted, almost without exception, the octrine that the traces of our ancestors are certainly to be found in the
Miocene, while M. de Quatrefages now inclines to postulate a Secondary-Age an. Further on we shall compare such estimates with the figures given in he Brâhmanical exoteric books which approximate to the Esoteric Teaching.
(_d_) "Then the Third Eye acted no longer," says the Shloka, because Man ad sunk too deep into the mire of Matter.
What is the meaning of this strange and weird statement in Shloka 42, oncerning the Third Eye of the Third Race which had died and acted no onger?
A few more Occult Teachings must now be given with reference to this point s well as some others. The history of the Third and Fourth Races must be mplified, in order that it may throw some more light on the development f our present humanity; and show how the faculties, called into activity y Occult training, restore man to the position he previously occupied in eference to spiritual perception and consciousness. But the phenomenon of he Third Eye has to be first explained.
The Races With The "Third Eye."
The subject is so unusual, the paths pursued so intricate, so full of angerous pitfalls prepared by adverse theories and criticism, that good easons have to be given for every step taken. While turning the light of he bull's-eye, called Esotericism, on almost every inch of the Occult round travelled over, we have also to use its lens to throw into stronger bjectivity the regions explored by exact Science; this, not only in order o contrast the two, but to defend our position.(653)
It may be complained by some that too little is said of the physical,
_human_ side of the extinct races, in the history of their growth and volution. Much more might be said, assuredly, if simple prudence did not ake us hesitate at the threshold of every new revelation. All that finds ossibility and landmarks in the discoveries of Modern Science, is given; ll that of which exact knowledge knows nothing and upon which it is nable to speculate--and therefore denies as fact in nature--is withheld.
But even such statements as, for instance, that, of all the mammalians, an was the earliest, that it is man who is the indirect ancestor of the pe, and that he was a kind of Cyclops in days of old--all will be ontested; yet Scientists will never be able to prove, except to their own atisfaction, that _it was not so_. Nor can they admit that the first two
Races of men were too ethereal and phantom-like in their constitution, rganism, and _shape_ even, to be called physical men. For, if they do, it ill be found that this is one of the reasons why their relics can never e expected to be exhumed among other fossils. Nevertheless all this is aintained. Man was the Store-house, so to speak, of _all the seeds of ife_ for this Round, vegetable and animal alike.(654) As Ain Suph is
"One, _notwithstanding the innumerable forms which are in him_,"(655) so s man, on Earth the microcosm of the macrocosm.
As soon as man appeared, everything was complete ... for
everything is comprised in man. He _unites in himself all
forms_.(656)
The mystery of the _earthly_ man is after the mystery of the
Heavenly Man.(657)
The human form--so called because it is the vehicle (under whatever shape) f the _Divine_ Man--is, as so intuitionally remarked by the author of
"Esoteric Studies," the _new type_, at the beginning of every Round.
As man never can be, so he never has been, manifested in a shape
belonging to the animal kingdom _in esse_, _i.e._, he never formed
part of that kingdom. Derived, only derived, from the most
finished class of the latter, a new human form must always have
been _the_ new type of the cycle. The human shape in one ring [?],
as I imagine, becomes cast-off clothes in the next; it is then
appropriated by the highest order in the servant-kingdom
below.(658)
If the idea is what we understand it to mean--for the "rings" spoken of omewhat confuse the matter--then it is the correct Esoteric Teaching.
Having appeared at the very beginning, and at the head of sentient and onscious life, Man--the Astral, or the "Soul," for the _Zohar_, repeating he Archaic Teaching, distinctly says that "the _real_ man is the soul, nd his material frame no part of him"--Man became the living and animal
_Unit_, from which the "cast-off clothes" determined the shape of every ife and animal in this Round.(659)
Thus, he "created," for ages, the insects, reptiles, birds, and animals, nconsciously to himself, from his remains and relics from the Third and he Fourth Rounds. The same idea and teaching are as distinctly given in he _Vendîdâd_ of the Mazdeans, as they are in the Chaldćan and Mosaic llegory of the Ark, all of which are the many national versions of the riginal legend given in the Hindű Scriptures. It is found in the allegory f Vaivasvata Manu and _his_ Ark with the Seven Rishis, each of whom is hown the Father and Progenitor of specified animals, reptiles, and even onsters, as in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_. Open the Mazdean
_Vendîdâd_, and read the command of Ahura Mazda to Yima, a Spirit of the
Earth, who symbolizes the three Races, after telling him to build a
Vara--"an enclosure," an Argha or Vehicle.
Thither [into the Vara] thou shalt bring _the seeds of men and
women_, of the greatest, best, and finest kinds on this earth;
thither thou shalt bring the seeds of every kind of cattle,
etc.... All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind _to be
kept inexhaustible there_, so long _as those men shall stay in the
Vara_.(660)
Those "men" in the "Vara" are the "Progenitors," the Heavenly Men or
Dhyânîs, the future Egos who are commissioned to inform mankind. For the
Vara, or Ark, or again the Vehicle, simply means _Man_.(661)
Thou shalt seal up the Vara [after filling it up with the seeds],
and thou shalt make a door, and a window _self-shining within_
[which is the Soul].(662)
And when Yima enquires of Ahura Mazda how he shall manage to make that
Vara, he is answered:
Crush the earth ... and knead it with thy hands, as the potter
does when kneading the potter's clay.(663)
The Egyptian ram-headed God makes man of clay on a potter's wheel, and so n _Genesis_ do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material.
When the "Maker of the material world," Ahura Mazda, is asked, urthermore, what is to give light "to the Vara which Yima made," he nswers that:
There are _uncreated_ lights and _created_ lights. There [in
Airyana Vaęjô, where Vara is built], the stars, the moon, and the
sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems
only as a day [and night].(664)
This is a clear reference to the "Land of the Gods" or the (now) Polar
Regions. Moreover another hint is contained in this verse, a distinct llusion to the "uncreated lights" which enlighten man within--his
"principles." Otherwise, no sense or reason could be found in Ahura
Mazda's answer which is forthwith followed by the words:
Every fortieth year, to every couple [hermaphrodite] _two are
born, a male and female_.(665)
The latter is a distinct echo of the Secret Doctrine, of a Stanza which ays:
_At the expiration of every forty [annual] Suns, at the end of every ortieth Day, the double one becomes four; male and female in one, in the irst and second and the third...._
This is clear, since every "Sun" meant a whole year, the latter being omposed of one Day then, as in the Arctic Circle it is now composed of ix months. According to the old teaching, the axis of the Earth gradually hanges its inclination to the ecliptic, and at the period referred to, his inclination was such that a polar Day lasted during the whole period f the Earth's revolution about the Sun, when a kind of twilight of very hort duration intervened; after which the polar land resumed its position irectly under the solar rays. This may be contrary to Astronomy as now aught and understood; but who can say that changes in the motion of the
Earth, which do not take place now, did not occur millions of years back?
Returning once more to the statement that Vara meant the Man of the Fourth
Round, as much as the Earth of those days, the Moon, and even Noah's Ark, f one will so have it--this is again shown in the dialogue between Ahura
Mazda and Zarathushtra. Thus when the latter asks:
O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! Who is he who
brought the law of Mazda into the Vara which Yima made?
Ahura Mazda answered: "It was the bird Karshipta, O holy
Zarathushtra!"(666)
And the note explains:
The bird Karshipta dwells in the heavens: were he living on the
earth, he would be king of birds. He brought the law into the Var
of Yima, and recites the Avesta _in the language of birds_.(667)
This again is an allegory and a symbol misunderstood by the Orientalists nly, who see in this bird "an incarnation of lightning," and say its song as "often thought to be the utterance of a god and a revelation," and hat not. Karshipta is the human Mind-Soul, and the deity thereof, ymbolized in ancient Magianism by a bird, as the Greeks symbolized it by butterfly. No sooner had Karshipta entered the Vara or Man, than he nderstood the law of Mazda, or Divine Wisdom. In the "Book of Concealed
Mystery" it is said of the Tree, which is the Tree of knowledge of good nd evil:
In its branches the birds lodge and build their nests (the _souls_
and the angels have their place).(668)
Therefore, with the Kabalists it was a like symbol. "Bird" was a Chaldćan, nd has become a Hebrew, synonym and symbol for Angel, a Soul, a Spirit, r Deva; and the "Bird's Nest" was, with both, Heaven, and is God's Bosom, n the _Zohar_. The perfect Messiah enters Eden "into that place which is alled the Bird's Nest."(669)
"Like a bird that is flying from its nest," and that is the Soul
from which the She'kheen-ah [divine wisdom or grace] does not move
away.(670)
_The Nest of the Eternal Bird, the flutter of whose wings produces Life, s boundless Space_,
--says the Commentary, meaning Hamsa, the Bird of Wisdom.
It is Adam Kadmon who is the tree of the Sephiroth, and it is he who ecomes the "tree of knowledge of good and evil," Esoterically. And that
"tree hath around it seven columns [seven pillars] of the world, or
Rectores [the same Progenitors or Sephiroth again], operating through the espective orders of Angels in the spheres of the seven planets," etc., ne of which orders begets Giants (Nephilim) on Earth.
It was the belief of all antiquity, Pagan and Christian, that the earliest ankind was a race of giants. Certain excavations in America in mounds and n caves, have already, in isolated cases, yielded groups of skeletons of ine and twelve feet high.(671) These belong to tribes of the early Fifth
Race, now degenerated to an average size of between five and six feet. But e can easily believe that the Titans and Cyclopes of old really belonged o the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and that all the subsequent legends and llegories found in the Hindű _Purânas_ and the Greek poems of Hesiod and
Homer, were based on the hazy reminiscences of real Titans--men of a remendous super-human physical power, which enabled them to defend hemselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and arly Cenozoic times--and of actual Cyclopes, "three-eyed" mortals.
It has been often remarked by observant writers, that the "origin of early every popular myth and legend could be traced invariably to a fact n Nature."
In these fantastic creations of an exuberant subjectivism, there is always n element of the objective and real. The imagination of the masses, isorderly and ill-regulated as it may be, could never have conceived and abricated _ex nihilo_ so many monstrous figures, such a wealth of xtraordinary tales, had it not had, to serve it as a central nucleus, hose floating reminiscences, obscure and vague, which unite the broken inks of the chain of time to form with them the mysterious, dream oundation of our collective consciousness.(672)
The evidence for the Cyclopes--a race of Giants--will, in forthcoming
Sections, be pointed out in the Cyclopean remnants, which are so called to his day. An indication that the early Fourth Race--during its evolution nd before the final adjustment of the human organism, which became erfect and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race--may have been three-eyed, ithout having necessarily a third eye in the middle of the brow, like the egendary Cyclops, is also furnished by Science.
To Occultists who believe that spiritual and psychic _involution_ proceeds n parallel lines with physical _evolution_--that the _inner_ senses, nnate in the first human races, atrophied during racial growth and the aterial development of the outer senses--to the students of Esoteric ymbology the above statement is no conjecture or possibility, but simply
_a phase of the law of growth_, a proven fact, in short. They understand he meaning of the passage in the Commentaries which says:
_There were four-armed human creatures in those early days of the male- emales [hermaphrodites]; with one head, yet three eyes. They could see efore them and behind them._(_673_)_ A Kalpa later [after the separation f the sexes] men having fallen into matter, their spiritual vision became im; and coördinately the Third Eye commenced to lose its power.... When he Fourth [Race] arrived at its middle age, the Inner Vision had to be wakened, and acquired by artificial stimuli, the process of which was nown to the old Sages._(_674_)_... The Third Eye, likewise, getting radually petrified,_(_675_)_ soon disappeared. The double-faced became he one-faced, and the eye was drawn deep into the head and is now buried nder the hair. During the activity of the Inner Man [during trances and piritual visions] the eye swells and expands. The Arhat sees and feels t, and regulates his action accordingly.... The undefiled Lanoo
[Disciple, Chelâ] need fear no danger; he who keeps himself not in purity
[who is not chaste] will receive no help from the __"__Deva Eye.__"_
Unfortunately not. The "Deva Eye" exists no more for the majority of ankind. The Third Eye _is dead_, and acts no longer; but it has left ehind a witness to its existence. This witness is now the Pineal Gland.
As for the "four-armed" men, it is they who became the prototypes of the our-armed Hindű Gods, as shown in a preceding footnote.
Such is the mystery of the _human eye_ that some Scientists have been orced to resort to Occult explanations in their vain endeavours to xplain and account for all the difficulties surrounding its action. The evelopment of the human eye gives more support to Occult Anthropology han to that of the Materialistic Physiologists. "The eyes in the human mbryo grow _from within without_"--out of the brain, instead of being part f the skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor
Lankester--thinking the brain a queer place for the eye, and attempting to xplain the phenomenon on Darwinian lines--suggests the curious view that
"our" earliest vertebrate ancestor was a "_transparent_" creature and ence did not mind where the eye was! And so was man a "transparent reature" once upon a time, we are taught; and hence our theory holds ood. But how does the Lankester hypothesis square with the Hćckelian view hat the vertebrate eye originated by changes _in the epidermis_? If it tarted _inside_, the latter theory goes into the waste basket. This seems o be proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester's extraordinary uggestion--or shall we say admission?--is perhaps rendered necessary by volutionist necessities. Occultism, with its teaching as to the gradual evelopment of senses "_from within without_," from astral prototypes, is ar more satisfactory. The Third Eye _retreated inwards_ when its course as run--another point in favour of Occultism.
The allegorical expression of the Hindű mystics who speak of the "Eye of
Shiva," the Tri-lochana, or "three-eyed," thus receives its justification nd _raison d'ętre_: the transference of the Pineal Gland (once that Third
Eye) to the forehead, being an exoteric licence. This throws also a light n the mystery--incomprehensible to some--of the connection between
_abnormal_, or spiritual Seership, and the physiological purity of the
Seer. The question is often asked: Why should celibacy and chastity be a
_sine quâ non_ condition of regular Chelâship, or the development of sychic and occult powers? The answer is contained in the Commentary. When e learn that the Third Eye was once a physiological organ, and that later n, owing to the gradual disappearance of spirituality and increase of ateriality, the spiritual nature being extinguished by the physical, it ecame an atrophied organ, as little understood now by Physiologists as is he spleen--when we learn this, the connection becomes clear. During human ife the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and specially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our hysiological senses. Sexual action also being closely connected, by nteraction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is seless to give any longer explanation. Of course, the normal and abnormal tate of the brain, and the degree of active work in the Medulla
Oblongata, reacts powerfully on the Pineal Gland, for, owing to the number f "centres" in that region, which controls by far the greatest number of he physiological actions of the animal economy, and also owing to the lose and intimate neighbourhood of the two, a very powerful "inductive" ction must be exerted by the Medulla on the Pineal Gland.
All this is quite plain to the Occultist, but is very vague in the sight f the general reader. The latter must then be shown the possibility of a hree-eyed man in Nature, in those periods when his formation was yet in a omparatively chaotic state. Such a possibility may be inferred from natomical and zoological knowledge, first of all, and then it may rest on he assumptions of Materialistic Science itself.
It is asserted upon the authority of Science, and upon evidence, which is his time not merely a fiction of theoretical speculation, that many of he animals--especially among the lower orders of the vertebrata--have a
_third_ eye, now atrophied, but which was necessarily active in its rigin.(676) The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia, ecently discovered in New Zealand--_a part of ancient Lemuria so called, ark well_--presents this peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner; and ot only the Hatteria Punctata, but the Chameleon, and certain reptiles, nd even fishes. It was thought, at first, that this was no more than the rolongation of the brain which ended with a small protuberance, called
Epiphysis, a little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and ound in every animal. But it was soon found to be more than this. As its evelopment and anatomical structure showed, it offered such an analogy ith that of the eye, that it was found impossible to see in it anything lse. There are Palćontologists who to this day feel convinced that this
Third Eye originally functioned, and they are certainly right. For this is hat is said of the Pineal Gland in Quain's _Anatomy_:
It is from this part, constituting at first the whole and
subsequently the hinder part of the anterior primary encephalic
vesicle, that the optic vesicles are developed in the earliest
period, and the fore part is that in connection with which the
cerebral hemispheres and accompanying parts are formed. The
thalamus opticus of each side is formed by a lateral thickening of
the medullary wall, while the interval between, descending towards
the base, constitutes the cavity of the third ventricle with its
prolongation in the infundibulum. The grey commissure afterwards
stretches across the ventricular cavity.... The hinder part of the
roof is developed by a peculiar process to be noticed later into
the pineal gland, which remains united on each side by its
pedicles to the thalamus, and behind these a transverse band is
formed as posterior commissure.
The lamina terminalis (lamina cinerea) continues to close the
third ventricle in front, below it the optic commissure forms the
floor of the ventricle, and further back the infundibulum descends
to be united in the sella turcica with the tissue adjoining the
posterior lobe of the pituitary body.
The two _optic thalami_, formed from the posterior and outer part
of the anterior vesicle, consist at first of a single hollow sac
of nervous matter, the cavity of which communicates on each side
in front with that of the commencing cerebral hemispheres, and
behind with that of the middle cephalic vesicle (corpora
quadrigemina). Soon, however, by increased deposit taking place in
their interior behind, below, and at the sides, the thalami become
solid, and at the same time a cleft or fissure appears between
them above, and penetrates down to the internal cavity, which
continues open at the back part opposite the entrance of the
Sylvian aqueduct. This cleft or fissure is the _third ventricle_.
Behind, the two thalami continue united by the _posterior
commissure_, which is distinguishable about the end of the third
month, and also by the _peduncles of the pineal gland_....
At an early period the _optic tracts_ may be recognized as hollow
prolongations from the outer part of the wall of the thalami while
they are still vesicular. At the fourth month these tracts are
distinctly formed. They subsequently are prolonged backwards into
connection with the corpora quadrigemina.
The formation of the pineal gland and pituitary body presents some
of the most interesting phenomena which are connected with the
development of the thalamencephalon.(677)
The above is specially interesting when it is remembered that, were it not or the development of the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres, the
Pineal Gland would be perfectly visible on the removal of the parietal ones. It is very interesting also to note the obvious connection which an be traced between the originally hollow Optic Tract and the Eyes nteriorly, and the Pineal Gland and its Peduncles posteriorly, and etween all of these and the Optic Thalami. So that the recent discoveries n connection with the third eye of Hatteria Punctata have a very mportant bearing on the history of the development of the human senses, nd on the Occult assertions in the text.
It is well known that Descartes saw in the Pineal Gland the _Seat of the
Soul_, though this is now regarded as a fiction by those who have ceased o believe in the existence of an immortal principle in man. Although the
Soul is joined to every part of the body, he said, there is one special ortion of the latter in which the Soul exercises its functions more pecially than in any other. And, as neither the heart, nor yet the brain ould be that "special" locality, he concluded that it was that little land which was tied to the brain, and yet had an action independent of t, as it could easily be put into a kind of swinging motion "by the
_animal spirits_(678) which cross the cavities of the skull in every ense."
Unscientific as this may appear in our day of exact learning, Descartes as yet far nearer the Occult truth than is any Hćckel. For the Pineal
Gland is, as shown, far more closely connected with Soul and Spirit than ith the physiological senses of man. Had the leading Scientists a glimmer f the _real_ processes employed by the Evolutionary Impulse, and the inding _cyclic_ course of this great Law, they would _know_ instead of onjecturing, and would feel certain of the future physical ransformations which await the human kind by the knowledge of its past orms. Then would they see the fallacy and the absurdity of their modern
"blind-force" and "mechanical" processes of Nature; and, in consequence of uch knowledge, would realize that the said Pineal Gland, for instance, ould not but be disabled for _physical_ use at this stage of our Cycle.
If the odd "eye" is now atrophied in man, it is a proof that, as in the ower animal, it has once been active; for Nature never creates the mallest, the most insignificant, form without some definite purpose and or some use. It was an active organ, we say, at that stage of evolution hen the spiritual element in man reigned supreme over the hardly nascent ntellectual and psychic elements. And, as the Cycle ran down towards that oint where the physiological senses were developed by, and went _pari assu_ with, the growth and consolidation of physical man--the interminable nd complex vicissitudes and tribulations of zoological development--this edian "eye" at last atrophied together with the early spiritual and urely psychic characteristics in man. The eye is the mirror and also the indow of the Soul, says popular wisdom,(679) and _Vox populi, vox Dei_.
In the beginning, every class and family of the living species was ermaphrodite and objectively one-eyed. In the animal--whose form was as thereal (astrally) as that of man, before the bodies of both began to volve their "coats of skin," viz., to evolve, from _within without_, the hick coating of physical substance or matter with its internal hysiological mechanism--the Third Eye was primarily, as in man, the only eeing organ. The two physical front eyes only developed(680) later on in oth brute and man, whose organ of physical sight was, at the commencement f the Third Race, in the same position as that of some of the blind ertebrates, in our day, _i.e._, beneath an opaque skin.(681) Only, the tages of the odd, or primeval, eye, in man and brute, are now inverted, s the former has already passed that animal non-rational stage in the
Third Round, and is ahead of mere brute creation by a whole plane of onsciousness. Therefore, while the Cyclopean eye was, and still _is_, in an the organ of _spiritual_ sight, in the animal it was that of objective ision. And this eye, having performed its function, was replaced, in the ourse of physical evolution from the simple to the complex, by two eyes, nd thus was stored and laid aside by Nature for further use in ćons to ome.
This explains why the Pineal Gland reached its highest development roportionately with the lowest physical development. It is in the
Vertebrata that it is the most prominent and objective, whereas in man it s most carefully hidden and inaccessible, except to the Anatomist. No ess light, however, is thereby thrown on the future physical, spiritual, nd intellectual state of mankind, in periods corresponding on parallel ines with other past periods, and always on the lines of ascending and escending cyclic evolution and development. Thus, a few centuries before he Kali Yuga--the Age which began nearly 5,000 years ago--it was said in
Commentary Twenty, if it is paraphrased into comprehensible sentences:
_We [the Fifth Root-Race] in our first half [of duration] onward [on the ow ascending arc of the Cycle] are on the mid point of [or between] the
First and Second Races--falling downward [i.e., the Races were then on the escending arc of the Cycle].... Calculate for thyself, Lanoo, and see._
Calculating as advised, we find that during that transitional eriod--namely, in the second half of the First spiritual ethereo-astral
Race--nascent mankind was devoid of the intellectual brain element, as it as on its _descending_ line. And as we are parallel to it, on the
_ascending_, we are, therefore, devoid of the spiritual element, which is ow replaced by the intellectual. For, remember well, as we are in the
Mânasa period of our Cycle of Races, or in the Fifth, we have, therefore, rossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and
Matter--or the equilibrium between brain intellect and spiritual erception. One important point, has, however, to be borne in mind.
[Illustration: Evolution of Root-Races in the Fourth Round]
[Transcriber's Note: The graph shows, to the left, "Downward Cycle.
Evolution of Physical and Intellectual Nature and the Gradual Regression f Spirituality." To the right is "Ascending Cycle. Reëvolution or
Reversion of Spirituality and the Gradual Decrease of Materiality and mere
Brain-intellectuality." Below is "Meridian of Races."]
We are only in the Fourth Round, and it is in the Fifth that the full evelopment of Manas, as a direct ray from the Universal Mahat--a ray nimpeded by Matter--will be finally reached. Nevertheless, as every sub- ace and nation have their cycles and stages of evolutionary development epeated on a smaller scale, much more must it be so in the case of a
Root-Race. Our Race then has, as a Root-Race, crossed the equatorial line nd is cycling onward on the spiritual side; but some of our sub-races till find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their respective ational cycles; while others again--the oldest--having crossed the crucial oint, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe, will live r perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub-races.
It now becomes comprehensible why the Third Eye was gradually transformed nto a simple gland, after the physical Fall of those we have agreed to all the Lemurians.
It is a curious fact that in human beings the cerebral hemispheres and the ateral ventricles have been especially developed, whereas it is the Optic
Thalami, Corpora Quadrigemina, and Corpora Striata which are the principal arts developed in other mammalian brains. Moreover, it is asserted that he intellect of a man may, to some extent, be gauged by the development f the central convolutions and the fore part of the cerebral hemispheres.
It would seem a natural corollary to this that if the development of the
Pineal Gland may be considered to be an index of the astral capacities and piritual proclivities of any man, there will be a corresponding evelopment of that part of the cranium, or an increase in the size of the
Pineal Gland at the expense of the posterior part of the cerebral emispheres. This is a curious speculation and would receive confirmation n the present case. We should see, below and behind, the cerebellum which as been held to be the seat of all the animal proclivities of the human eing, and which is allowed by Science to be the great centre for all the hysiologically coördinated movements of the body, such as walking, ating, etc.; in front, the fore-part of the brain, the cerebral emispheres, the part especially connected with the development of the ntellectual powers in man; and in the middle, dominating them both, and specially the animal functions, the developed Pineal Gland, in connection ith the more highly evolved, or spiritual man.
It must be remembered that these are only physical correspondences; just s the ordinary human brain is the registering organ of memory, but not emory itself.
This is, then, the organ which has given rise to so many legends and raditions, among others to that of men with one head but two faces. These egends may be found in several Chinese works, besides being referred to n the Chaldćan fragments. Apart from the work already cited, the _Shan
Hai King_, compiled by Kung Chia from engravings on nine urns made by the
Emperor Yü, 2,255 B.C., they may be found in another work, called the
_Bamboo Books_, and in a third, the _'Rh Ya_, whose author was "initiated ccording to tradition by Chow Kung, uncle of Wu Wang, the first Emperor f the Chow Dynasty, 1,122 B.C." The _Bamboo Books_ contain the ancient nnals of China, found A.D. 279 on opening the grave of King Seang of Wei, ho died 295 B.C.(682) Both these works mention men with two faces on one ead--one in front and one behind.
Now what students of Occultism ought to know is that the Third Eye _is ndissolubly connected with Karma_. The tenet is so mysterious that very ew have heard of it.
The "Eye of Shiva" did not become entirety atrophied before the close of he Fourth Race. When spirituality and all the divine powers and ttributes of the Deva-Man of the Third Race had been made the hand- aidens of the newly-awakened physiological and psychic passions of the hysical man, instead of the reverse, the Eye lost its powers. But such as the law of evolution, and it was, in strict accuracy, no _Fall_. The in was not in using those newly-developed powers, but in _misusing_ them; n making of the tabernacle, designed to contain a God, the fane of every
_spiritual_ iniquity. And if we say "sin" it is merely that everyone hould understand our meaning, for Karma(683) would be the more correct erm to use in this case; moreover the reader who should feel perplexed at he use of the term "spiritual" instead of "physical" iniquity, is eminded of the fact that there can be no physical iniquity. The body is imply the irresponsible organ, the tool of the Psychic, if not of the
Spiritual, Man. And in the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the
Spiritual Being which sinned, the Spirit Element being still the "Master"
Principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the eaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads.
As this sentence may again be found puzzling, it is better that it should e explained for the benefit of those who are ignorant of Theosophical
Teachings.
Questions with regard to Karma and Re-births are constantly being put orward, and great confusion seems to exist upon the subject. Those who re born and bred in the Christian faith, and have been trained in the dea that a new Soul is created by God for every newly-born infant, are mong the most perplexed. They ask whether the number of Monads ncarnating on Earth is limited; to which they are answered in the ffirmative. For, however countless, in our conception, the number of the ncarnating Monads, still, there must be a limit. This is so even if we ake into account the fact that ever since the Second Race, when their espective seven Groups were furnished with bodies, several births and eaths may be allowed for every second of time in the ćons already passed.
It has been stated that Karma-Nemesis, whose bond-maid is Nature, adjusted verything in the most harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the fresh ouring-in, or arrival of new Monads, ceased as soon as Humanity had eached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated ince the middle-point of the Atlanteans. Let us remember that, save in he case of young children, and of individuals whose lives have been iolently cut off by some accident, no Spiritual Entity can reďncarnate efore a period of many centuries has elapsed, and such gaps alone must how that the number of Monads is necessarily finite and limited.
Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other animals for their volutionary progress.
Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the vil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of Karma is nextricably interwoven with that of Reďncarnation.
It is only the knowledge of the constant re-births of one and the same
Individuality throughout the Life-Cycle; the assurance that the same
Monads--among whom are many Dhyân Chohans, or the "Gods" themselves--have to ass through the "Circle of Necessity," rewarded or punished by such ebirth for the suffering endured or crimes committed in the former life; hat those very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless Shells, or
Astral Figures of the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who re now amongst us--nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we ay, that can explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and econcile man to the terrible _apparent_ injustice of life. Nothing but uch certainty can quiet our revolted sense of justice. For, when one nacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes the nequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one ees honour paid to fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her avours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbour, with all is intellect and noble virtues--far more deserving in every way--perishing f want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn way, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and eart aching with the cries of pain around him--that blessed knowledge of
Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their upposed Creator.(684)
Of all the terrible blasphemies and what are virtually accusations thrown t their God by the Monotheists, none is greater or more unpardonable than hat (almost always) false humility which makes the presumably "pious"
Christian assert, in the face of every evil and undeserved blow, that
"such _is the will_ of God."
Dolts and hypocrites! Blasphemers and impious Pharisees who speak in the ame breath of the endless merciful love and care of their God and Creator or helpless man, and of that God _scourging the good, the very best of is creatures, bleeding them to death like an insatiable Moloch_! Shall we e answered to this, in Congreve's words:
But who shall dare to tax Eternal Justice?
Logic and simple common sense, we answer. If we are asked to believe in
"original sin," in _one_ life _only_ on this Earth for every Soul, and in n anthropomorphic Deity, who seems to have created some men only for the leasure of condemning them to eternal hell-fire--and this whether they be ood or bad, says the Predestinarian(685)--why should not everyone of us ho is endowed with reasoning powers, condemn in his turn such a illainous Deity? Life would become unbearable, if one had to believe in he God created by man's unclean fancy. Luckily he exists only in human ogmas, and in the unhealthy imagination of some poets, who believe they ave solved the problem by addressing him as:
Thou great Mysterious Power, who hast _involved_
The pride of human wisdom, _to confound_
The _daring scrutiny_ and prove _the faith_
Of thy _presuming_ creatures!
Truly a robust "faith" is required to believe that it is "presumption" to uestion the justice of one, who creates helpless little man but to
"perplex" him, and to test a "faith" with which that "Power," moreover, ay have forgotten, if not neglected, to endow him, as happens sometimes.
Compare this blind faith with the philosophical belief, based on every easonable evidence and on life-experience, in Karma-Nemesis, or the Law f Retribution. This Law--whether Conscious or Unconscious--predestines othing and no one. It exists from and in Eternity, truly, for it is
Eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coëqual with Eternity, t cannot be said to act, for it is Action itself. It is not the _wave_ hich drowns a man, but the _personal_ action of the wretch who goes eliberately and places himself under the _impersonal_ action of the laws hat govern the _ocean's_ motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it esign. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic Law adjusts the ffects, which adjustment is not an act, but universal harmony, tending ver to resume its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too orcibly, rebounds with corresponding vigour. If it happen to dislocate he arm that tried to bend it out of its natural position, shall we say hat it is the bough which broke our arm, or that our own folly has rought us to grief? Karma has never sought to destroy intellectual and ndividual liberty, like the God invented by the Monotheists. It has not nvolved its decrees in darkness purposely to perplex man; nor shall it unish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries. On the contrary, he who hrough study and meditation unveils its intricate paths, and throws light n those dark ways, in the windings of which so many men perish owing to heir ignorance of the labyrinth of life--is working for the good of his ellow-men. Karma is an Absolute and Eternal Law in the World of
Manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as One eternal ever- resent Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as Atheists or
Materialists--still less as Fatalists,(686) for Karma is one with the
Unknowable, of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal orld.
Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the Law f Re-birth, or of the reďncarnation of the same spiritual Individuality n a long, almost interminable, series of Personalities. The latter are ike the various characters played by the same actor, with each of which hat actor identifies himself and is identified by the public, for the pace of a few hours. The _inner_, or real Man, who personates those haracters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet only for the brief pace of a few acts, which, however, on the plane of human illusion, epresent the whole life of Hamlet. He knows also that he was, the night efore, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a till earlier preceding night. And though the outer, visible character is upposed to be ignorant of the fact, and in actual life that ignorance is, nfortunately, but too real, nevertheless, the _permanent_ Individuality s fully aware of it, and it is through the atrophy of the "spiritual" Eye n the physical body, that that knowledge is unable to impress itself on he consciousness of the false Personality.
The possession of a physical Third Eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the en of the Third Root-Race down to nearly the middle period of the third ub-race of the Fourth Root-Race, when the consolidation and perfection of he human frame caused it to disappear from the outward anatomy of man.
Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual perception asted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing o the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether.
This was prior to the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean Continent.
And now we may return to the Deluges and their many "Noahs."
The student has to bear in mind that there were many such Deluges as that entioned in _Genesis_, and three far more important ones, which will be entioned and described in the Section of Part III devoted to the subject f pre-historic "Submerged Continents." To avoid erroneous conjectures, owever, with regard to the claim that the Esoteric Doctrine has much in ommon with the legends contained in the Hindű Scriptures; that, again, he chronology of the latter is almost that of the former--only explained nd made clear; and that finally the belief that Vaivasvata Manu--a generic erm indeed!--was the Noah of the Âryans and the prototype of the biblical atriarch, all this--as pertaining also to the belief of the
Occultists--necessitates a new explanation at this juncture.
The Primeval Manus Of Humanity.
Those who are aware that the "Great Flood," which was connected with the inking of an entire Continent (save only a few islands) could not have appened so far back as 18,000,000 years ago, and that Vaivasvata Manu is he Indian Noah connected with the Matsya, or the Fish, Avatâra of Vishnu, ay feel perplexed at the apparent discrepancy between the facts stated nd the chronology previously given. But there is no discrepancy in truth.
The reader is asked to turn to _The Theosophist_ of July, 1883, for by tudying the article therein, on "The Septenary Principle in Esotericism," he whole question can be explained to him. It is in the explanation there iven, I believe, that the Occultists differ from the Brâhmans.
For the benefit of those, however, who may not have _The Theosophist_ of hat date to hand, a passage or two may now be quoted from it:
Who was Manu, the son of Svâyambhuva? The Secret Doctrine tells us
that _this_ Manu was no man, but the representation of the first
human races, evolved with the help of the Dhyân Chohans (Devas),
at the beginning of the First Round. But we are told in his _Laws_
(i. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa, or
"interval from creation to creation"--read rather interval from one
_minor_ Pralaya to another(687)--and that "in the present divine
age, there have been as yet _seven_ Manus." Those who know that
there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now
in the Fourth; and who are taught that there are seven Dawns and
seven Twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of
every Round and at the end, and on, and between, the planets
[Globes] there is an "awakening to _illusive_ life," and an
"awakening to _real_ life"; and that, moreover, there are Root-
Manus, and what we have to clumsily translate as Seed-Manus--_the
seeds for the human races of the forthcoming_ Round (or the
Shishtas--the surviving fittest(688); a mystery divulged only to
those who have passed their third degree in Initiation)--those who
have learned all this will be better prepared to understand the
meaning of the following. We are told in the Hindű Sacred
Scriptures that, "The first Manu produced _six_ other Manus
[_seven_ primary Manus in all], and these produced in their turn
each seven other Manus"(689) (_Bhrigu_, i. 61-63)--the production
of the latter standing in the Occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it
becomes clear that Manu--the last one, the Progenitor of our
Fourth-Round Humanity--must be the _seventh_, since we are on our
Fourth Round,(690) and there is a _Root_-Manu at Globe A, and a
_Seed_-Manu at Globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences
with the appearance of a Root-Manu (Dhyân Chohan) and closes with
a Seed-Manu, so a Root- and a Seed-Manu appear respectively at the
beginning and the termination of the human period on any
particular planet [Globe].(691) It will be easily seen from the
foregoing statement that a Manvantaric period (Manu-antara) means,
as the term implies, the time _between_ the appearance of two
Manus or Dhyân Chohans; and hence a Minor Manvantara is the
duration of the _seven_ Races on any particular planet [Globe],
and a Major Manvantara is the period of one human Round along the
Planetary Chain. Moreover, as it is said that each of the seven
Manus _creates_ 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 Root-Races on
the seven planets [Globes] during each Round, then every Root-Race
has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called "Vaivasvata" and
stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who in India represents
the Babylonian Xisuthrus and the Jewish Noah.
But in the Esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the
progenitor of our _Fifth_ Race--who saved it from the flood that
nearly exterminated the Fourth or Atlantean--is not the seventh
Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root or Primitive
Manus, but one of the 49 Manus emanated from this Root-Manu.
For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus
in their respective order and in their relation to each Round:
1st Round, 1st (Root) Manu on Planet A--Svâyambhuva.
1st Round, 1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G--Svârochi, or Svârochisha.
2nd Round, 2nd (Root) Manu on Planet A--Auttami.
2nd Round, 2nd (Seed) Manu on Planet G--Tâmasa.
3rd Round, 3rd (Root) Manu on Planet A--Raivata.
3rd Round, 3rd (Seed) Manu on Planet G--Châkshusha.
4th Round, 4th (Root) Manu on Planet A--Vaivasvata (our
Progenitor).
4th Round, 4th (Seed) Manu on Planet G--Sâvarna.
5th Round, 5th (Root) Manu on Planet A--Daksha-sâvarna.
5th Round, 5th (Seed) Manu on Planet G--Brahma-sâvarna.
6th Round, 6th (Root) Manu on Planet A--Dharma-sâvarna.
6th Round, 6th (Seed) Manu on Planet G--Rudra-sâvarna.
7th Round, 7th (Root) Manu on Planet A--Rauchya.
7th Round, 7th (Seed) Manu on Planet G--Bhautya.
Vaivasvata, thus, though seventh in the order given, is the
primitive Root-Manu of our Fourth Human Wave (the reader must
always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity),
while _our_ Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus, who
are made to preside over the seven Races of this our planet
[Globe]. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the
periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water) that
close the cycle of every Root-Race. And it is this Vaivasvata--the
Hindű ideal embodiment, called respectively Xisuthrus, Deucalion,
Noah and other names--who is the allegorical "Man" who rescued our
Race, when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished
by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its
temporary obscuration.(692)
Thus it is shown that there is no real discrepancy in speaking of the
Vaivasvata Manvantara (Manu-antara, lit., "between two Manus") as
18,000,000 odd years ago, when physical, or the truly human, Man first ppeared in his Fourth Round on this Earth; and of the other Vaivasvatas,
_e.g._, the Manu of the Great Cosmic or Sidereal Flood--a mystery--or again he Manu Vaivasvata of the submerged Atlantis, when the _Racial_
Vaivasvata saved the elect of Humanity, the Fifth Race, from utter estruction. As these several and quite distinct events are purposely lended in the _Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_ in one narrative, there may et be a great deal of perplexity left in the profane reader's mind.
Therefore, as constant elucidation is needed, we must be forgiven navoidable repetitions. The "blinds" which conceal the real mysteries of
Esoteric Philosophy are great and puzzling, and even now the last word annot be given. The veil, however, may be a little more removed, and some xplanations, hitherto denied, may now be offered to the earnest student.
As Colonel Vans Kennedy, if we do not mistake, remarked: "the first rinciple in Hindű religious philosophy is _unity in diversity_." If all hose Manus and Rishis are called by one generic name, it is due to the act that they are one and all the manifested Energies of one and the same
Logos, the celestial as well as the terrestrial Messengers and
Permutations of that Principle which is ever in a state of ctivity--conscious during the period of Cosmic Evolution, unconscious
(from our point of view) during Cosmic Rest--for the Logos sleepeth in the osom of THAT which "sleepeth not," nor is it ever awake, for it is Sat or
"Be-ness," not a Being. It is from IT that issues the great _Unseen_
Logos, who evolves all the other Logoi; the Primeval Manu who gives being o the other Manus, who emanate the universe and all in it collectively, nd who represent in their aggregate the _Manifested_ Logos.(693) Hence we earn in the Commentaries that while no Dhyân Chohan, not even the ighest, can realize completely
_The condition of the preceding Cosmic Evolution, ... the Manus retain a nowledge of their experiences in all the Cosmic Evolutions throughout
Eternity._
This is very plain: the first Manu is called Svâyambhuva, the "Self- anifested," the Son of the _Unmanifested_ Father. The Manus are the
Creators of the Creators of our First Race--the Spirit of Mankind--which oes not prevent the _seven_ Manus from having been the first "Pre-Adamic"
Men on Earth.
Manu declares himself created by Virâj,(694) or Vaishvânara, the Spirit of
Humanity,(695) which means that his Monad emanates from the never resting
Principle in the beginning of every new Cosmic Activity--that Logos or
Universal Monad (collective Elohim) which radiates _from within himself_ ll those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of activity--Progenitors of he numberless Solar Systems as well as of the yet undifferentiated
_human_ Monads of Planetary Chains as well as of every being thereon.
Svâyambhuva, or Self-born, is the name of every Cosmic Monad _which ecomes the Centre of Force, from within which emerges a Planetary Chain_
(of which Chains there are seven in our System). And the radiations of his Centre become again so many Manus Svâyambhuva (a mysterious generic ame, meaning far more than appears), each of them becoming, as a Host, he Creator of his own Humanity.
As to the question of the four distinct Races of mankind that preceded our
Fifth Race, there is nothing mystical in the subject, except the ethereal odies of the first Races; and this is a matter of legendary, nevertheless ery correct, history. The legend is universal. And if the Western
_savant_ pleases to see in it only a myth, it does not make the slightest ifference. The Mexicans had, and still have, the tradition of the ourfold destruction of the world by fire and water, just as the Egyptians ad, and the Hindűs have, to this day.
Trying to account for the community of legends held by Chinese, Chaldćans,
Egyptians, Indians and Greeks, in remote antiquity, and for the absence of ny certain vestige of civilization more ancient than 5,000 years, the uthor of _Mythical Monsters_ remarks that:
We must ... not be surprised if we do not immediately discover the
vestiges of the people of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand years
ago. With an ephemeral architecture ... [as in China], the sites
of vast cities may have become entirely lost to recollection in a
few thousands of years from natural decay, and how much more ...
if ... minor cataclysms have intervened, such as local
inundations, earthquakes, deposition of volcanic ashes, ... the
spread of sandy deserts, destruction of life by deadly pestilence,
by miasma, or by the outpour of sulphurous fumes.(696)
How many of such cataclysms have changed the whole surface of the earth ay be inferred from the following Stanza of Commentary Twenty-two:
_During the first seven crores [70,000,000 years] of the Kalpa the Earth nd its two Kingdoms [mineral and vegetable], one already having achieved ts seventh circle, the other, hardly nascent, are luminous and semi- thereal, cold, lifeless, and translucid. In the eleventh crore_(_697_)_ he Mother [Earth] grows opaque, and in the fourteenth_(_698_)_ the throes f adolescence take place. These convulsions of Nature [geological hanges] last till her twentieth crore of years, uninterruptedly, after hich they become periodical, and at long intervals._
_The last change took place nearly twelve crores [120,000,000] of years go. But the Earth with everything on her face had become cool, hard and ettled ages earlier._
Thus, if we are to believe Esoteric Teaching, _universal_ geological isturbances and changes have not occurred for the last 120 million years, ut the Earth, even before that time, was ready to receive her human tock. The appearance of the latter, however, in its full physical evelopment, as already stated, took place only about 18,000,000 years go, after the first great failure of Nature to create beings lone--_i.e._, without the help of the divine "Fashioners"--had been ollowed by the successive evolution of the first three Races.(699) The ctual duration of the first two and a half Races is withheld from all but he higher Initiates. The history of the Races begins at the separation of he sexes, when the preceding egg-bearing androgynous Race perished apidly, and the subsequent sub-races of the Third Root-Race appeared as n entirely new race _physiologically_. It is this "Destruction" which is llegorically called the great "Vaivasvata Manu Deluge," when the account hows Vaivasvata Manu, or Humanity, remaining alone on Earth in the Ark of
Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a monstrous fish, and the Seven
Rishis "with him." The allegory is very plain.
In the symbolism of every nation, the "Deluge" stands for chaotic nsettled Matter--Chaos itself; and Water for the Feminine Principle--the
"Great Deep." As the Greek Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it:
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~} answers to the Hebrew _rasit_, or Wisdom ... and [at the same
time] to the emblem of the female generative power, the _arg_ or
_arca_, in which the germ of nature [and of mankind] floats or
broods on the great abyss of the waters, during the interval which
takes place after every mundane [or racial] cycle.
Archę ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}) or Ark is also the mystic name of the Divine Spirit of Life hich broods over Chaos. Now Vishnu _is_ the Divine Spirit, as an abstract rinciple, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or Giver of Life--the hird Person of the Triműrti--composed of Brahmâ, the Creator, Shiva, the
Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver. Vishnu is shown, in the allegory, nder the form of a _Fish_, guiding the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu across the
Waters of the Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the esoteric eaning of the word _Fish_ (as Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey, and thers have done). Its theological meaning is phallic, but the etaphysical, divine. Jesus was called the Fish, as were Vishnu and
Bacchus; {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}, the "Saviour" of Mankind, being but the monogram of the God
Bacchus, who was also called {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}, the Fish.(700) Moreover, the Seven
Rishis in the Ark symbolized the seven "principles," which became complete n man only after he had separated, and become a _human_, and thus ceased o be a divine creature.
But to return to the Races; details as to the submersion of the Continent nhabited by the Second Root-Race are not numerous. The history of the
Third, or Lemuria, is given, as is also that of Atlantis, but the others re only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years efore the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary Age (the
Eocene).(701) During this Deluge--an actual geological deluge this ime--Vaivasvata Manu is also shown saving mankind, allegorically--in eality, a portion of it, the Fourth Race--just as he saved the Fifth Race uring the destruction of the last Atlanteans, the remnants that perished
850,000 years ago,(702) after which there was no great submersion until he day of Plato's Atlantis, or Poseidonis, which was known to the
Egyptians only because it happened in such relatively recent times.
It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting.
This is the Cataclysm of which the old records, as in the _Book of Enoch_, ay, "the ends of the Earth got loose"; and upon which have been built the egends and allegories of Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Noah, Deucalion and all he _tutti quanti_ of the Elect Saved. Tradition, not taking into account he difference between sidereal and geological phenomena, calls both
"Deluges" indifferently. Yet there is a great difference. The Cataclysm hich destroyed the huge Continent of which Australia is the largest elic, was due to a series of subterranean convulsions and the breaking sunder of the ocean floors. That which put an end to its successor--the
Fourth Continent--was brought on by successive disturbances in the axial otation. It began during the earliest Tertiary periods, and, continuing or long ages, carried away successively the last vestige of Atlantis, ith the exception, perhaps, of Ceylon and a small portion of what is now
Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and no memory of its flourishing ontinents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, have remained in he annals of history, save in the Sacred Records of the East.
Hence, Modern Science denies the existence of Atlantis. It even denies any iolent shiftings of the Earth's axis, and would attribute the change of limate to other causes. But this question is still an open one. If Dr.
Croll will have it that all such alterations can be accounted for by the ffects of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, there are others, uch as Sir Henry James and Sir John Lubbock,(703) who feel more inclined o accept the idea that they are due to a change in the position of the xis of rotation. Against this the majority of the Astronomers are again rrayed. But then, what have they not denied before now, and what have hey not denounced--only to accept it later on, whenever the hypothesis ecame undeniable fact?
How far our figures agree, or rather disagree, with Modern Science will be een further in the Addenda to this Volume, where the Geology and
Anthropology of our modern day are carefully compared with the teachings f Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned by the Secret
Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree very much ith the calculations of Modern Science, which, however, calls Atlantis
"Lemuria" whenever it accepts such a submerged Continent. With regard to he pre-human period, all that can be said, at present, is, that even rior to the appearance of the "mindless" First Race, the Earth was not ithout its inhabitants. We might, however, add that what Science, which ecognizes _physical man only_, has a right to regard as the _pre-human_ eriod, may be conceded to have extended from the First Race down to the irst half of the Atlantean Race, since it is only then that man became he "complete _organic_ being he is now." And this would make Adamic Man o older than a few millions of years.(704)
The author of the _Qabbalah_ truly remarks that: "Man to-day, as an ndividual, is only a concatenation of the being-hood of precedent human ife," or _lives_, rather.
According to the Qabbalah, the soul sparks contained in Adam, went
into three principal classes corresponding to his three sons,
viz.: _Hesed_, Habel, _Ge'boor-ah_, Qai-yin and _Ra'h-min_ Seth.
These three were divided into ... 70 species, called; the
principal roots of the human race.(705)
Said Rabbi Yehudah: "How many garments [of the incorporeal man]
are these which are crowned (from the day man was created)?" Said
R. El'azar: "The mountains of the world (the great men of the
generation) are in discussion upon it, but there are three: one to
clothe in that garment the _Rua'h_ spirit, which is in the garden
(of Eden) on earth: one which is more precious than all, in which
the _Neshamah_ is clothed in that Bundle of Life, between the
angels of the Kings ...: and one outside garment, which exists and
does not exist, is seen and not seen. In that garment, the
_Nephesh_ is clothed, and she goes and flies in it, to and fro in
the world."(706)
This relates to the Races, their "garments," or degree of materiality, and o the three "principles" of man in their three vehicles.
Stanza XI. The Civilization And Destruction Of The Fourth And Fifth Races.
43. The Lemuro-Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization.
The incipient stage of anthropomorphism. 44. Statues, witnesses to
the size of the Lemuro-Atlanteans. 45. Lemuria destroyed by fire,
Atlantis by water. The Flood. 46. The destruction of the Fourth
Race and of the last antediluvian monster-animals.
43. THEY(707) BUILT HUGE CITIES. OF RARE EARTHS AND METALS THEY BUILT. OUT
OF THE FIRES(708) VOMITED, OUT OF THE WHITE STONE(709) OF THE MOUNTAINS
AND OF THE BLACK STONE,(710) THEY CUT THEIR OWN IMAGES, IN THEIR SIZE AND
LIKENESS, AND WORSHIPPED THEM.
At this point, as the history of the first two _human_ races--the last of he Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans--proceeds, we have to lend the two, and speak of them for a time collectively.
Here reference is also made to the _divine_ Dynasties, which were claimed y the Egyptians, Chaldćans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their _human_
Kings. These are still believed in by the modern Hindűs, and are numerated in their sacred books. Of these, however, we shall treat in heir proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern
Geologists are now being driven into admitting the demonstrable existence f submerged continents. But to confess the existence of the continents is uite a different thing from admitting that there were men on them during he early geological periods(711)--ay, men and civilized nations, not
Palćolithic savages only; who, under the guidance of their _divine_
Rulers, built large cities, cultivated Arts and Sciences, and knew
Astronomy, Architecture and Mathematics to perfection. The primeval ivilization of the Lemurians did not, as one may think, immediately ollow their physiological transformation. Between the final physiological volution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had assed. Nevertheless, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race uilding their first rock-cities out of stone and lava.(712) One of these reat cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some hirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow strip f sterile ground, and was totally destroyed by a series of volcanic ruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the andiwork of the last sub-races of the Lemurians; and an Occultist, herefore, shows no surprise on learning that the stone relics which were ound on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are
Very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins
of Tia-Huanaco in Peru,(713)
nd also that they are in the _Cyclopean style_. The first large cities, owever, were built in that region of the Continent which is now known as he island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in those ays as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection on the ormer, and Karma--its work of destruction on the latter. The Australians nd their like are the descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the
Spark projected into them by the "Flames," extinguished it by long enerations of bestiality.(714) Whereas the Âryan nations could trace heir descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the
Lemurians, in whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had personally incarnated.(715)
It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations ere started. And while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of ankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal life, and in others avage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to protect himself gainst the Elements--his brothers, more favoured than he by their Karma, nd helped by the divine intelligence which informed them, built cities, nd cultivated Arts and Sciences. Nevertheless, notwithstanding ivilization, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as heir birthright, the "builders" could now obtain their powers only radually; even those they did obtain being generally used for conquest ver physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has ver developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the sychic and spiritual. The command over and the guidance of one's own sychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural, ere with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as aturally as walking and thinking.
"There is no such thing as magic" philosophizes "She"--the author orgetting that "magic" in early days still meant the great Science of
Wisdom, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the modern erversion of thought--"though," she adds, "there is such a thing as nowledge of the Secrets of Nature."(716) But they have become "Secrets" nly in our Race, and were public property with the Third.
Gradually, mankind decreased in stature, for, even before the real advent f the Fourth or Atlantean Race, the majority of mankind had fallen into niquity and sin, save only the Hierarchy of the "Elect," the followers nd disciples of the "Sons of Will and Yoga"--called later the "Sons of the
Fire-Mist."
Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength eached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the iddle period of their fourth sub-race. But, as said in the Commentary:
_The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island [the primitive
Shveta-dvîpa] had perished ages before. Their [Lemuria's] Elect, had taken helter on the Sacred Island [now the __"__fabled__"__ Shamballah, in the
Gobi Desert], while some of their accursed races, separating from the main tock, now lived in the jungles and underground [__"__cave-men__"__], when he golden yellow Race [the Fourth] became in its turn __"__black with in.__"__ From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third ime, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Shveta-dvîpa, the lessed, and Adbhitanya [?], east and west, the first, the one and the ure, had become corrupted.... The Demi-Gods of the Third had made room or the Semi-Demons of the Fourth Race. Shveta-dvîpa,_(_717_)_ the White
Island, had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black Land, herein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dvîpa (Pushkara) and Râkshasas rom the seventh climate replaced the Sâdhus and the Ascetics of the Third
Age, who had descended to them from other and higher regions...._
In their dead letter, the _Purânas_, in general, read like an absurd issue of fairy tales and no better. And if one were to read the first hree chapters of Book II of _Vishnu Purâna_ and accept _verbatim_ the eography, geodesy, and ethnology in the account of Priyavrata's seven ons among whom their father divides the seven Dvîpas (Islands or
Continents); and then proceed to study how his eldest son, Agnîdhra, the
King of Jambu-dvîpa, apportioned Jambu-dvîpa among his nine sons; and then ow Nâbhi, _his_ son, had a hundred sons and apportioned lands to all hese in his turn--he would most likely throw the book away and pronounce t a farrago of nonsense. But the student of Esotericism will understand hat, when the _Purânas_ were written, their true meaning was intended to e clear only to the Initiated Brâhmans, and so the compilers wrote these orks allegorically and would not give the _whole_ truth to the masses.
And he will, further, explain to the Orientalists--who, beginning with
Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, have made and still are aking such a mess of it--that the first three chapters purposely confuse he following subjects and events:
I. The series of Kalpas, or Ages, and also of Races, are never taken into ccount; and events which have happened in one are allowed to stand along ith those which took place in another. The chronological order is ntirely ignored. This is shown by several of the Sanskrit commentators, ho explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in saying:
Whenever any contradictions in different Purânas are observed,
they are ascribed ... to differences of Kalpas and the like.
II. The several meanings of the words "Manvantara" and "Kalpa" or Age, are ithheld, the general signification only being given.
III. In the genealogy of the Kings and the geography of their dominions, he Varshas (countries) and Dvîpas are all regarded as terrestrial egions.
Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is ermissible and easy to show that:
(_a_) The Seven Dvîpas apportioned to Priyavrata's septenary progeny refer o several localities--first of all to our Planetary Chain. In this Jambu- vîpa alone represents our Globe, while the six others are the (to us) nvisible companion Globes of the Chain. This is shown by the very nature f the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu-dvîpa "is _in the entre of all_ these"--the so-called "Insular Continents"--and is surrounded y a _sea of salt water_ (Lavana), whereas Plaksha, Shâlmalia, Kusha,
Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara, are surrounded severally "by great seas ... f sugar-cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk," tc., and such like metaphorical names.(718)
(_b_) Bhâskara Âchârya, who uses expressions from the books of the Secret
Doctrine, in his description of the sidereal position of all these Dvîpas, peaks of: "the sea of milk and the sea of curds," etc., as meaning the
Milky Way, and the various congeries of Nebulć; the more so, since he alls "the country to the south of the equator" Bhűr Loka, that to the orth Bhuva, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya Lokas; and adds: "These okas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits," _i.e._, they re various "Paradises."(719)
(_c_) That this geographical distribution of seven allegorical continents, slands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to _our_
Round, or even to _our_ Races--the name of Bhârata-varsha (India) otwithstanding--is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of
_Vishnu Purâna_, who tells us that:
Bharata [the son of Nâbhi, who gave his name to Bhârata-varsha or
India] ... consigned the kingdom to his son Sumati ... and
abandoned his life at ... Shâlagrâma. He was afterwards born
again, as a Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics....
Under these princes [Bharata's descendants] Bhârata-varsha was
divided into nine portions; and their descendants successively
held possession of the country for seventy-one periods of the
aggregate of the four ages (or for the reign of a Manu)
[representing a Mahâyuga of 4,320,000 years].(720)
But having said so much, Parâshara suddenly explains that:
This was the creation of Svâyambhuva (Manu), by which the earth
was peopled when he presided over the _first_ Manvantara, in the
Kalpa of Varâha [_i.e._, the _Boar_ incarnation, or Avatâra].
Now every Brâhman knows that _our_ Humanity began on this Earth (or Round)
_only with Vaivasvata Manu_. And if the Western reader turns to the sub- ection on "The Primeval Manus of Humanity,"(721) he will see that
Vaivasvata is the _seventh_ of the fourteen Manus who preside over our
Planetary Chain during its Life Cycle; but as every Round has two Manus (a
Root- and a Seed-Manu), he is the Root-Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the eventh. Wilson finds in this only incongruity, and speculates that:
The patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological
system of Manvantaras and Kalpas, and [thus] have been rather
clumsily distributed amongst the different periods.
It is nothing of the kind; but as Orientalists know nothing of the Secret
Teaching, they persist in taking everything _literally_, and then turn ound and abuse the writers for that which they do not comprehend!
These Genealogies embrace a period of _three and a half_ Rounds; they peak of _pre-human_ periods, and explain the descent into generation of very Manu--the first manifested sparks of the One Unity--and, furthermore, how each of these human Sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first, he Pitaras, the human Ancestors, then by the human Races. No Being can ecome God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human Cycles. Therefore he Shloka says:
Happy are those who are born, even from the [latent] condition of
gods, _as men_, in Bhârata-varsha; as that is the way to ... final
liberation.(722)
In Jambu-dvîpa Bhârata is considered _the best of its divisions_, because t is _the land of works_. In it alone it is that:
The succession of four Yugas, or ages, the Krita, the Tretâ, the
Dvâpara, and Kali take place.
When, therefore, Parâshara, on being asked by Maitreya "to give him the escriptions of the Earth," returns again to the enumeration of the same
Dvîpas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the
Svâyambhuva Manvantara--it is simply a "blind"; yet, to him who reads etween the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with heir sub-divisions, islands and continents, some of which were called by he names of celestial Lokas, and by those of other Globes. Hence the onfusion.
All these islands and lands are called by the Orientalists "mythical" and
"fabulous."(723) Very true, some are _not of this Earth_, but they still xist. The White Island and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since
Atala was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the
Fifth Race to the Land of Sin--Atlantis, in general, not to Plato's island lone; and since the White Island was (_a_) the Shveta-dvîpa of Theogony, nd (_b_) Shâka-dvîpa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions rather) in its eginnings. This was when it yet had its "seven holy rivers that washed way all sin," and its "seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction f virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue," as it was then nhabited by the caste of the Magas--that caste which even the Brâhmans cknowledged as not inferior to their own, and which was the nursery of he first Zarathushtra. The Brâhmans are shown consulting with Gauramukha, n Nârada's advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the
Sun to the temple built by Sâmba the _reputed_ son of Krishna, for in eality the latter had none. In this the _Purânas_ are _historical_, llegory notwithstanding, and Occultism is stating facts.
The whole story is told in _Bhavishya Purâna_. It is stated that Sâmba aving been cured of leprosy by Sűrya (the Sun), built a temple and edicated it to the Deity. But when he was looking for pious Brâhmans to erform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God,
Nârada--the virgin Ascetic who is found in every age in the
_Purânas_--advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brâhmans to eceive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore eferred Sâmba to Gauramukha (White-face), the Purohita, or family priest, f Ugrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best mploy. The priest directed Sâmba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of
Sűrya, to discharge the duty. But as he was ignorant of the place where hey lived, Sűrya, the Sun himself, directs Sâmba to Shâka-dvîpa _beyond he salt water_. Then Sâmba performs the journey, using Garuda, the Great
Bird, the vehicle of Vishnu and Krishna, who transports him to the Magas, tc.(724)
Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Nârada, who is found reborn in very Cycle (or Race), in addition to Garuda--the symbol Esoterically of he Great Cycle--give the key to the allegory; nevertheless the Magas are he Magi of Chaldća, and their caste and worship were born on the earlier
Atlantis, in Shâka-dvîpa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed hat the Magas of Shâka-dvîpa are the forefathers of the fire-worshipping
Parsîs. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing periods f hundreds of thousands of years this time into only a few centuries; in pite of Nârada and Sâmba, they carry the event only to the days of the light of the Parsîs to Gujerat. This is simply absurd, as this took place nly in the eighth century of our era. True, the Magas are credited in the
_Bhavishya Purâna_ with still living in Shâka-dvîpa in the day of
Krishna's "son," nevertheless the last portion of that Continent--Plato's
"Atlantis"--had perished 6,000 years before. They were Magas "late of"
Shâkadvîpa, and in those days lived in Chaldća. This, again, is an ntentional confusion.
The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet were hey the human Asuras and the Râkshasas which they became later. In those ays large portions of the future Continent of Atlantis were yet part and arcel of the ocean floors. Lemuria, as we have called the Continent of he Third Race, was then a gigantic land.(725) It covered the whole area rom the foot of the Himâlayas, which separated it from the inland sea olling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the Great Desert f Shamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to
Assam [? Annam]. From thence, it stretched south across what is known to s as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as e go south, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on ts left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; and rom Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it xtended far into the Pacific Ocean, beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter
Island) which now lies in latitude 26°S., and longitude 110°W.(726) This tatement seems to be corroborated by Science--even if only partially. When iscussing continental trends, and showing the infra-Arctic masses rending generally with the meridian, several ancient continents are entioned, though inferentially. Among such are mentioned the "Mascarene ontinent," which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, and nother ancient continent which "stretched from Spitzbergen to the Straits f Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom."(727)
This corroborates the Occult teaching which says that what are now the olar regions were formerly the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity, nd the tomb of the bulk of the Mankind of that region during the Third
Race, when the gigantic Continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller ontinents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary, o a decrease of velocity in the Earth's rotation:
_When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities [the poles] agree ith its middle Circle [the equator], when it runs slower and tilts in very direction, there is a great disturbance on the face of the Earth.
The waters flow toward the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle
Belt [equatorial lands], while those at the ends are subject to Pralayas y submersion._
And again:
_Thus the Wheel [the Earth] is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of he Moon, for the breath of its waters [tides]. Toward the close of the ge [Kalpa] of a great [Root-] Race, the Regents of the Moon [the Fathers, r Pitris] begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the Wheel about its
Belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the welling running toward the extremities [poles], new lands will arise and ld ones be sucked in._
We have only to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning f the above very clearly. Scientists--_modern_ Specialists--have scertained the influence of the tides on the geological distribution of and and water on the planet, and have noted the shifting of the oceans ith a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands.
Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically.(728)
Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward o the periods of the Earth's first incrustation.(729) Therefore it seems asy for Science to verify the Esoteric statement. We propose to treat of his at greater length in the Addenda.
Some Theosophists who have understood from a few words in _Esoteric
Buddhism_ that "old continents" which have been submerged will reäppear, ave asked the question: "What will Atlantis be like when raised?" Here, gain, there is a slight misconception. Were identically the _same_ lands f Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would, ndeed, be _barren for ages_. But because the Atlantic sea-bottom is overed with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and more is forming--a ew "cretaceous formation" of strata, in fact--that is no reason why, when he time for a new Continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion nd upraising of the sea-bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of halk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the urface. The Racial Cataclysms are not a Noah's Deluge of forty days--a ind of Bombay monsoon.
That the periodical sinking and reäppearance of the mighty Continents, now alled Atlantis and Lemuria by modern writers, is no fiction, will be emonstrated in the Section in which all the evidence has been collated ogether. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references o both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dvîpas) are mentioned in the
_Sűrya Siddhânta_, the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in he works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean Astronomer whom Professor Weber has ade out to be "reďncarnated" in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call hese "Sacred Islands" Atlantean--as is done by us; for, like everything lse in the Hindű Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things.
The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Svâyambhuva Manu, to his seven ons--was not Atlantis, even though one or two of these Islands survived he subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to
Atlanteans, whose Continent had been submerged in its turn. When first entioned by Parâshara in the _Vishnu Purâna_, the seven refer to an
Esoteric Doctrine which is explained further on. In this connection, of ll the seven Islands, Jambu-dvîpa (our Globe) is the only one that is errestrial. In the _Purânas_ every reference to the North of Meru is onnected with that Primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region, which, hen the magnolia blossomed where now we see an unexplored endless desert f ice, was then a Continent. Science speaks of an "ancient continent" hich stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret
Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions ormed a horse-shoe-like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more orthward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained
Behring's Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in ts natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have een right under the lower curve of the semi-circle. This Continent was aised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of
Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains reäppeared again on the ace of the oceans. Therefore, though it can be said, without departing rom truth, that Atlantis is included in the seven great Insular
Continents since the Fourth Race Atlanteans came into possession of some f the Lemurian relics, and settling on the islands, included them among
_their_ lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an xplanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is ttempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession f in this manner by some Atlanteans; who, having escaped from the
Cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on this remnant of Lemuria, ut only to perish thereon, when it was destroyed in one day by volcanic ires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain Geographers and
Geologists; to the Occultists, however, it is _history_. What does Science now to the contrary?
Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein
the name of America appears for the first time, _the latter was
believed to be part of India_.... Science also refuses to sanction
the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian
peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other,
connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the
pre-historic ages ... was doubly connected with the two Americas.
The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus
calls the "Brâhmans of Upper India," stretched from Kashmir far
into the (now) deserts of Shamo. A pedestrian from the north might
then have reached--hardly wetting his feet--the Alaskan Peninsula,
through Manchooria, across the _future_ Gulf of Tartary, the
Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller, furnished
with a canoe, and starting from the south, could have walked over
from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any
part of the continent of South America.(730)
This was written from the words of a Master--a rather doubtful authority or the Materialists and Sceptics. But here we have one of their own lock, and a bird of the same feather, Ernst Hćckel, who, in _his_ istribution of races, corroborates the statement almost _verbatim_:
It would seem that the region on the earth's surface where the
evolution of these primitive men from the _closely related
catarrhine apes_ [!!] took place, must be sought either in
Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even
in existence when the Third Race flourished], or in Lemuria.
Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the
Indian Ocean which, lying to the South of the Asia of to-day,
stretched on the one hand eastwards to Upper India and Sunda
Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and
Africa.(731)
In the epoch of which we are treating, the Continent of Lemuria had lready broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents.
Nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe, existed n those days; all of them slumbering as yet on the ocean-floors. Nor was here much of present Asia; for the Cis-Himâlayan regions were covered ith seas, and beyond them stretched the "lotus leaves" of Shveta-dvîpa, he countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc. The mmense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian,
Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were radually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion ngulfed the last remains of it. Easter Island, for instance, belongs to he earliest civilization of the Third Race. It was a volcanic and sudden plifting of the ocean-floor, which raised this small relic of the Archaic
Ages--after it had been submerged with the rest--untouched, with its volcano nd statues, during the Champlain epoch of north polar submersion, as a tanding witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the
Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the
Third Race.
In this we are again corroborated to a degree by Materialistic Science.
Hćckel, when speaking of Blumenbach's brown or Malay race, and the
Australians and Papuans, remarks:
There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of
Polynesia, that Australian island-world, that _seems to have been
once on a time a gigantic and continuous continent_.(732)
It certainly was "a gigantic and continuous continent," for, during the
Third Race, it stretched east and west, as far as where the two Americas ow lie. The present Australia was but a portion of it, and in addition to his there are a few surviving islands strewn hither and thither on the ace of the Pacific, and a large strip of California, which belonged to t. Funnily enough, Hćckel, in his fantastic _Pedigree of Man_, considers:
The Australians of to-day as the lineal descendants, almost
unchanged [?!], of that _second_ branch of the primitive human
race ... that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from
the home of man's infancy, and seems to have been the parent of
all the other straight-haired races of men.... The one, woolly-
haired, migrated in part westwards [_i.e._, to Africa and
eastwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no
existence as yet].... The other, straight-haired, was evolved
farther to the North, in Asia, and ... peopled Australia.(733)
As writes a Master:
Behold the relics of that once great nation [Lemuria of the Third
Race] in _some_ of the flat-headed aborigines of your
Australia.(734)
But they belong to the last remnants of the seventh sub-race of the Third.
Professor Hćckel must also have _dreamt_ a dream and seen for once a
_true_ vision!
It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the ncestors of those, whom we term the most ancient peoples of the world--now alled respectively the Âryan Hindűs, the Egyptians, and the oldest
Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phoenicians on the other.
These were governed by the Divine Dynasties, _i.e._, Kings and Rulers who ad of mortal man only his physical appearance _as it was then_, but who ere Beings from Spheres higher and more celestial than our own Sphere ill be, long Manvantaras hence. It is, of course, useless to attempt to orce the existence of such Beings on sceptics. _Their_ greatest pride onsists in proving their patronymic denomination as Catarrhinides--a fact hich they try to demonstrate on the alleged authority of the Coccyx ppended to their Os Sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if it were only ong enough, they would wag with joy and for ever, in honour of its minent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their Ape-ancestors s Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets
Theosophists and students of the Occult Sciences right on this point.
If we regard the second portion of the Third Race as the first epresentatives of the _really human race_ with solid bones, then Hćckel's urmise that "the evolution of the primitive men took place ...in _either_
Southern Asia or ... Lemuria"--Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out f the question--is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, owever, just as the evolution of the First Race, from the bodies of the
Pitris, took place on seven distinctly separated regions, at the Arctic
Pole of the (then) only Earth--so did the ultimate transformation of the
Third occur. It began in those northern regions, which have just been escribed as including Behring's Straits, and what there then was of dry and in Central Asia, when the climate was semi-tropical even in the
Arctic regions and excellently adapted to the primitive wants of nascent hysical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and ropical in turn since the appearance of man. The Commentary tells us that he Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when:
_The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over __ he heads of that portion of the Sweat-born; people knew snow, ice, and rost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those hat did not perish remained as half-grown babes_(_735_)_ in size and ntellect. This was the third Pralaya of the Races._(736)
This means again, that our Globe is subject to seven periodical and
_entire_ changes which go _pari passu_ with the Races. For the Secret
Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial
Pralayas, occasioned by the change in the inclination of the Earth's axis.
It is a Law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as
Science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic Law.
In Occultism this Inexorable Law is referred to as the "Great Adjuster."
Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic icissitudes and also the changes in the axial direction, which are always ollowed by these vicissitudes. In fact, it does not seem at all sure of he axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared to eny the axial phenomena altogether, rather than admit the intelligent and of the Karmic Law which alone can reasonably explain these sudden hanges and their accompanying results. It has tried to account for them y various and more or less fantastic speculations; one of which, as de
Boucheporn imagined, would be the sudden collision of our Earth with a
Comet, thus causing all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding o our Esoteric explanation, since Fohat is as good as any Comet, and, in ddition, has universal Intelligence to guide him.
Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu's Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have lready been four such axial disturbances. The old Continents--save the irst--were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge ountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the
Globe was completely changed each time; the "survival of the fittest" ations and races was secured through timely help; and the unfit ones--the ailures--were disposed of by being swept off the Earth. Such sorting and hifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but equires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order.
The sub-races are also subject to the same cleansing process, and the ide-branchlets or family-races as well. Let any one, well acquainted with stronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight nd shadows of the Past. Let him observe and take notes of what he knows f the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises nd falls with what is known of astronomical cycles--especially with the
Sidereal Year, which is equal to 25,868 of our solar years.(737) Then, if he observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, he will find how the eal and woe of nations are intimately connected with the beginning and lose of this Sidereal Cycle. True, the non-occultist has the disadvantage hat he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing, hrough exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he ay find consolation in the knowledge of, or--if he so prefers--speculation bout, the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of--some 16,000 ears hence. Our meaning is very clear. Every Sidereal Year the tropics ecede from the pole _four degrees_ in each revolution from the quinoctial points, as the equator turns through the Zodiacal onstellations. Now, as every Astronomer knows, at present the tropic is nly twenty-three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the quator. Hence it has still two and a half degrees to run before the end f the Sidereal Year. This gives humanity in general, and our civilized aces in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years.
After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) as Commentary
Thirty-three tells us:
_Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives as diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal aces, and intermarried among giants and pigmies [the dwarfed races of the
Poles].... Many acquired divine, nay more--unlawful knowledge, and followed illingly the Left Path._
Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many eological periods it took to accomplish this _fourth_ destruction who can ell! But we are told that:
44. THEY(738) BUILT GREAT IMAGES NINE YATIS HIGH,(739) THE SIZE OF THEIR
BODIES (_a_). INNER FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS.(740)
WATER THREATENED THE FOURTH(741) (_b_).
(_a_) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues iscovered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged ontinent, as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which ad been submerged for untold ages, are all between twenty and thirty feet igh. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all wenty-seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders.(742) The riter is well aware that the modern Archćologists have decided that
"these statues are not very old," as declared by one of the high officials f the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of hose arbitrary decisions of Modern Science which does not carry much eight.
We are told that after the destruction of Lemuria by subterranean fires en went on steadily decreasing in stature--a process already commenced fter their _physical_ Fall--and that finally, some millions of years ater, they decreased to between six and seven feet, and are now, as in he older Asiatic races, dwindling down to nearer five than six feet. As
Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub-race of the Fourth
Root-Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian amily, such as the Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders, are of a
_higher stature than the rest of mankind_; but the Indian tribes and the nhabitants of the Indo-Chinese countries are decidedly below the general verage. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very arliest of the surviving sub-races, the others to the very latest and ost transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and he Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon ollow.
(_b_) How could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even he knowledge of the Zodiac by the Hindűs is denied by our kind and earned Orientalists, who conclude that the Âryan Hindűs knew nothing of t, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled-for lander has been so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more, by he clear _evidence of facts_, as not to need very much additional efutation. While the Egyptian Zodiacs(743) preserve irrefutable proofs of ecords embracing more than three-and-a-half Sidereal Years--or about
87,000 years--the Hindű calculations cover nearly thirty-three such years, r 850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of he Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as emarked by the author of the _Sphinxiad_:
These _poor benighted_ Hindoos have registered a knowledge of
Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the [last local] Flood
[in Asia], or Age of Horror.
And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great
Flood within the Âryan _historical_ memory--the Flood which submerged the ast portions of Atlantis 850,000 years ago. The Floods which preceded re, of course, more traditional than historical.
The sinking and transformation of Lemuria began nearly at the Arctic
Circle (Norway), and the Third Race ended its career in Lankâ, or rather n that which became Lankâ with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now nown as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lankâ, while the normous Island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic
Continent already described. As a Master says:
_Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents xplored and fathomed by them ... there may be hidden, deep in the athomless, or rather unfathomed ocean beds, other and far older ontinents whose strata have never been geologically explored; and that hey may some day upset entirely their present theories? Why not admit hat our present continents have, like Lemuria and Atlantis, been several imes already submerged, and had the time to reäppear again, and bear heir new groups of mankind and civilizations; and that at the first great eological upheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series of periodical ataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, our lready autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and
Atlantises come up again?_(744)
Not identically the _same_ Continents, of course. But here an explanation s needed. No confusion need arise as regards the postulation of a
Northern Lemuria. The prolongation of that great Continent into the North
Atlantic Ocean is in no way subversive of the opinions so widely held as o the site of the lost Atlantis, and one corroborates the other. It must e noted that the Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root-
Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but xtended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round "South
Africa" (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the
Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh-water deposit called the
Wealden--which every Geologist regards as the mouth of a former great iver--is the bed of _the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the
Secondary age_. The former actual existence of this river is a fact of
Science--its votaries acknowledge the necessity of accepting the Secondary- ge Northern Lemuria, demanded by their data? Professor Berthold Seemann ot only accepted the reality of such a mighty continent, but regarded
Australia and Europe _as formerly portions of one continent_--thus orroborating the whole "horse-shoe" doctrine already enunciated. No more triking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that he _elevated ridge_ in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which uns for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the
British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then _shifts almost t right angles_ to proceed in a _south-easterly_ line _toward the African oast_, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d'Acunha. This ridge is a emnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would stablish the reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction with a former ontinent in the Indian Ocean.(745)
The _Atlantic portion of Lemuria_ was the geological basis of what is enerally known as Atlantis, but which must be regarded rather as a evelopment of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria than as an entirely ew mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth
Root-Race. Just as in the case of Race evolution, so in that of the hifting and re-shifting of Continental masses, no hard and fast line can e drawn as to where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in atural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth-Race Atlanteans were eveloped from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third-Race Men, centred, oughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic
Ocean. Their Continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and eninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and ltimately became the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans.
After this consummation was once attained it follows, as stated on the ighest Occult authority, that:
_Lemuria should no more be confounded with the Atlantis Continent, than
Europe with America._(746)
The above, coming from quarters so discredited by orthodox Science, will, f course, be regarded as a more or less happy fiction. Even the clever ork of Donnelly, already mentioned, is put aside, notwithstanding that ts statements are all confined within a frame of strictly scientific roofs. But we write for the future. New discoveries in this direction ill vindicate the claim of the Asiatic Philosophers, that ciences--Geology, Ethnology, and History included--were pursued by the
Antediluvian nations who lived untold ages ago. Future "finds" will ustify the correctness of the present observations of such acute minds as
H. A. Taine and Renan. The former shows that the civilizations of such rchaic nations as the Egyptians, Âryans of India, Chaldćans, Chinese, and
Assyrians are the result of preceding civilizations lasting "_myriads_ of enturies";(747) and the latter points to the fact that:
Egypt at the beginning appears mature, old, and entirely without
mythical and heroic ages, as if the country had never known youth.
Its civilization has no infancy, and its art no archaic period.
The civilization of the Old Monarchy did not begin with infancy.
It was already mature.(748)
To this Professor R. Owen adds that:
Egypt is recorded to have been a civilized and governed community
_before_ the time of Menes.
And Winchell states that:
At the epoch of Menes the Egyptians were already a civilized and
numerous people. Manetho tells us that Athotis, the son of this
first king Menes, built the palace of Memphis; that he was a
physician, and left _anatomical books_.
This is quite natural if we are to believe the statement of Herodotus, who ecords in Euterpe (cxlii), that the written history of the Egyptian riests dated from about 12,000 years before his time. But what are 12,000 r even 120,000 years compared with the millions of years which have lapsed since the Lemurian period? The latter, however, has not been left ithout witnesses, notwithstanding its tremendous antiquity. The complete ecords of the growth, development, social and even political life of the
Lemurians, have been preserved in the Secret Annals. Unfortunately, few re those who can read them; and those who could would still be unable to nderstand the language, unless acquainted with all the seven keys of its ymbolism. For the comprehension of the Occult Doctrine is based on that f the Seven Sciences; and these Sciences find their expression in the even different applications of the Secret Records to the exoteric texts.
Thus we have to deal with modes of thought on seven entirely different lanes of Ideality. Every text relates to, and has to be rendered from, ne of the following standpoints:
1. The Realistic Plane of Thought.
2. The Idealistic.
3. The purely Divine or Spiritual.
The other planes too far transcend the average consciousness, especially f the materialistic mind, to admit of their being even symbolized in erms of ordinary phraseology. There is no purely _mythical_ element in ny of the ancient religious texts; but the mode of thought in which they ere originally written has to be found out and closely adhered to during he process of interpretation. For it is symbolical, the archaic mode of hought; emblematical, a later though very ancient mode of thought; arabolical or allegorical; hieroglyphical; or again logogrammical, the ost difficult method of all; every letter, as in the Chinese language, epresenting a whole word. Thus, almost every proper name, whether in the
_Vedas_, the _Book of the Dead_, or, to a certain degree, in the _Bible_, s composed of such logograms. No one not initiated into the mystery of he Occult religious logography can presume to know what a name in any ncient fragment means, before he has mastered the meaning of every letter hat composes it. How is it to be expected that the merely profane hinker, however great may be his erudition in orthodox symbolism, so to ay--_i.e._, in that symbolism which can never get out of the old grooves f solar myth and sexual worship--how is it to be expected that the profane cholar should penetrate into the arcana behind the veil? One who deals ith the husk or shell of the dead-letter, and devotes himself to the aleidoscopic transformation of barren word-symbols, can never expect to et beyond the vagaries of modern Mythologists.
Thus, Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Deucalion, Noah, etc.,--all the head-figures f the World-Deluges, universal and partial, astronomical or eological--all furnish in their very names the records of the causes and ffects which led to the event, if one can but read them fully. All such
Deluges are based on events that took place in Nature, and stand as
_historical_ records, therefore--whether they were sidereal, geological, or ven simply allegorical--of a moral event on other and higher planes of eing. This we believe has now been sufficiently demonstrated during the ong explanation necessitated by the allegorical Stanzas.
To speak of a race nine "yatis," or twenty-seven feet, high, in a work laiming a more scientific character than, let us say, the story of "Jack he Giant-Killer," is a somewhat unusual proceeding. Where are your roofs?--the writer will be asked. In history and tradition, is the answer.
Traditions about a race of giants in days of old are universal; they exist n oral and written lore. India had her Dânavas and Daityas; Ceylon had er Râkshasas; Greece, her Titans; Egypt, her colossal Heroes; Chaldća, er Izdubars (Nimrod); and the Jews their Emims of the land of Moab, with he famous giants, Anakim.(749) Moses speaks of Og, a king whose
"bedstead" was nine cubits long (15ft. 4in.) and four wide,(750) and
Goliath was "six cubits and a span in height" (or 10ft. 7in.). The only ifference found between "revealed scripture" and the evidence furnished o us by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch,
Philostratus, etc., is this: While the Pagans mention only the _skeletons f giants_, dead untold ages before, relics that some of them _had ersonally seen_, the _Bible_ interpreters unblushingly demand that
Geology and Archćology should believe, that several countries were nhabited by such giants in the day of Moses; giants before whom the Jews ere as grasshoppers, and who still existed in the days of Joshua and
David. Unfortunately their own chronology is in the way. Either the latter r the giants has to be given up.
Of yet standing witnesses to the submerged Continents, and the colossal en that inhabited them, there are still a few. Archćology claims several uch on this Earth, though beyond wondering "what these may be"--it has ever made any serious attempt to solve the mystery. Not to speak of the
Easter Island statues already mentioned, to what epoch belong the colossal tatues, still erect and intact near Bamian? Archćology, as usual, assigns hem to the first centuries of Christianity, and errs in this as it does n many other speculations. A few words of description will show the eaders what are the statues of both Easter Isle and Bamian. We will first xamine what is known of them to orthodox Science.
Teapi, Rapa-nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated spot almost
2,000 miles from the South American coast.... In length it is
about twelve miles, in breadth four ... and there is an extinct
crater 1,050 feet high in its centre. The island abounds in
craters, which have been extinct for so long that no tradition of
their activity remains.(751)
But who made the great stone images(752) which are now the chief ttraction of the island to visitors? "_No one knows_," says a reviewer.
It is more than likely that they were here when the present
inhabitants [a handful of Polynesian savages] arrived.... Their
workmanship _is of a high order_, ... and it is believed that the
race who formed them were the frequenters of the natives of Peru
and other portions of South America.... Even at the date of Cook's
visit, some of the statues, measuring twenty-seven feet in height
and eight across the shoulders, were lying overthrown, while
others still standing appeared much larger. One of the latter was
so lofty that the shade was sufficient to shelter a party of
thirty persons from the heat of the sun. The platforms on which
these colossal images stood averaged from thirty to forty feet in
length, twelve to sixteen broad ... all built of hewn stone in the
Cyclopean style, very much like the walls of the Temple of
Pachacamac, _or the ruins of Tia-Huanaco in Peru_.(753)
"_There is no reason to believe that any of the statues have been built p, bit by bit, by scaffolding erected around them_," adds the reviewer ery suggestively--without explaining _how_ they could be built otherwise, nless made by giants of the same size as the statues themselves. Two of he best of these colossal images are now in the British Museum. The mages at Ronororaka are four in number, three deeply sunk in the soil, nd one resting on the back of its head like a man asleep. Their types, hough all are long-headed, are different; and they are evidently meant or portraits, as the noses, the mouths, and chins differ greatly in form; heir head-dress, moreover--a kind of flat cap with a piece attached to it o cover the back portion of the head--shows that the originals were no avages of the stone period. Verily the question may be asked, Who made hem?--but it is not Archćology nor yet Geology that is likely to answer, ven though the latter recognizes in the island a portion of a submerged ontinent.
But who cut the Bamian, still more colossal, statues, the tallest and the ost gigantic in the whole world?--for Bartholdi's "Statue of Liberty," now t New York, _is a dwarf_ when compared with the largest of the five mages. Burnes, and several learned Jesuits who have visited the place, peak of a mountain "all honeycombed with gigantic cells," with two mmense giants cut in the same rock. They are referred to as the modern
Miaotse (_vide supra_, quotation from _Shoo-King_), the last surviving itnesses of the Miaotse who had "troubled the earth"; the Jesuits are ight, and the Archćologists, who see Buddhas in the largest of these tatues, are mistaken. For all those numberless gigantic ruins which are iscovered one after the other in our day, all those immense avenues of olossal ruins that cross North America along and beyond the Rocky
Mountains, are the work of the Cyclopes, the true and actual Giants of ld. "Masses of enormous human bones" were found "in America, near Munte
[?]" a celebrated modern traveller tells us, precisely on the spot which ocal tradition points out as the landing spot of those giants who overran
America when it had hardly arisen from the waters.(754)
Central Asian traditions say the same of the Bamian statues. What are hey, and what is the place where they have stood for countless ages, efying the cataclysms around them, and even the hand of man, as in the nstance of the hordes of Timoor and the Vandal-warriors of Nadir Shah?
Bamian is a small, miserable, half-ruined town in Central Asia, half-way etween Cabul and Balkh, at the foot of Koh-i-baba, a huge mountain of the
Paropamisian, or Hindu-Kush, Chain, some 8,500 feet above the level of the ea. In days of old, Bamian was a portion of the ancient city of
Djooljool, ruined and destroyed to the last stone by Tchengis-Khan in the hirteenth century. The whole valley is hemmed in by colossal rocks, which re full of partially natural and partially artificial caves and grottoes, nce the dwellings of Buddhist monks who had established in them their
Vihâras. Such Vihâras are to be met with in profusion, to this day, in the ock-cut temples of India and the valleys of Jellalabad. In front of some f these caves five enormous statues--of what is regarded as Buddha--have een discovered or rather _rediscovered_ in our century, for the famous
Chinese traveller Hiouen Thsang speaks of having seen them, when he isited Bamian in the seventh century.
The contention that no larger statues exist on the whole globe, is easily roven on the evidence of all the travellers who have examined them and aken their measurements. Thus, the largest is 173 feet high, or _seventy_ eet higher than the "Statue of Liberty" now at New York, as the latter is nly 105 feet or 34 mčtres high. The famous Colossus of Rhodes itself, etween whose legs the largest vessels of those days passed with ease, easured only 120 to 130 feet in height. The second largest statue, which s also cut out in the rock like the first, is only 120 feet or fifteen eet taller than the said "Liberty."(755) The third statue is only 60 feet igh, the two others still smaller, the last being only a little larger han the average tall man of our present Race. The first and largest of he colossi represents a man draped in a kind of "toga"; M. de Nadeylac hinks that the general appearance of the figure, the lines of the head, he drapery, and especially the large hanging ears, are undeniable ndications that Buddha was meant to be represented. But they really prove othing. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the now existing figures of
Buddha, represented in the posture of Samâdhi, have large drooping ears, his is a later innovation and an afterthought. The primitive idea was due o Esoteric allegory. The unnaturally large ears symbolize the omniscience f wisdom, and were meant as a reminder of the power of Him who _knows and ears all_, and whose benevolent love and attention for all creatures othing can escape. As a Shloka says:
_The merciful Lord, our Master, hears the cry of agony of the smallest of he small, beyond vale and mountain, and hastens to its deliverance._
Gautama Buddha was an Âryan Hindű, and an approach to such ears is found nly among the Mongolian Burmese and Siamese, who, as in Cochin, distort heir ears artificially. The Buddhist monks, who turned the grottoes of he Miao-tse into Vihâras and cells, came into Central Asia about or in he first century of the Christian era. Therefore, Hiouen Thsang, speaking f the colossal statue, says that "the shining of the gold ornamentation hat overlaid the statue" in his day "dazzled one's eyes," but of such ilding there remains not a vestige in modern times. The drapery, in ontrast to the figure itself, which is cut out of the standing rock, is ade of plaster and modelled over the stone image. Talbot, who has made he most careful examination, found that this drapery belonged to a far ater epoch. The statue itself has therefore to be assigned to a far arlier period than Buddhism. In such case, it may be asked, Whom does it epresent?
Once more tradition, corroborated by written records, answers the query, nd explains the mystery. The Buddhist Arhats and Ascetics found the five tatues, and many more, now crumbled down to dust. Three of them standing n colossal niches at the entrance of their future abode, they covered ith plaster, and, over the old, modelled new statues made to represent
Lord Tathâgata. The interior walls of the niches are covered to this day ith bright paintings of human figures, and the sacred image of Buddha is epeated in every group. These frescoes and ornaments--which remind one of he Byzantine style of painting--are all due to the piety of the monk- scetics, as also are some other minor figures and rock-cut rnamentations. But the five statues belong to the handiwork of the
Initiates of the Fourth Race, who, after the submersion of their
Continent, sought refuge in the fastnesses and on the summits of the
Central Asian mountain chains. Thus, the five statues are an imperishable ecord of the Esoteric Teaching as to the gradual evolution of the Races.
The largest is made to represent the First Race of mankind, its ethereal ody being commemorated in hard, everlasting stone, for the instruction of uture generations, as its remembrance would otherwise never have survived he Atlantean Deluge. The second--120 feet high--represents the Sweat-born; nd the third--measuring 60 feet--immortalizes the Race that fell, and hereby inaugurated the first _physical_ Race, born of father and mother, he last descendants of which are represented in the statues found on
Easter Isle. These were only from 20 to 25 feet in stature at the epoch hen Lemuria was submerged, after it had been nearly destroyed by volcanic ires. The Fourth Race was still smaller, though gigantic in comparison ith our present Fifth Race, and the series culminated finally in the atter.
These are, then, the "Giants" of antiquity, the ante- and post-diluvian
Gibborim of the _Bible_. They lived and flourished one million years ago ather than between three and four thousand only. The Anakim of Joshua, hose hosts were as "grasshoppers" in comparison with the Jews, are thus a iece of Israelite fancy, unless indeed the people of Israel claim for
Joshua an antiquity and origin in the Eocene, or at any rate in the
Miocene age, and change the millenniums of their chronology into millions f years.
In everything that pertains to prehistoric times the reader ought to bear n mind the wise words of Montaigne. Saith the great French Philosopher:
It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for
false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or
truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who perswade
themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort....
But reason hath taught me, that so resolutely to condemne a thing
for false and impossible, is to assume unto himself the advantage
to have the bounds and limits of God's will, and the power of our
common mother Nature tied to his sleeve, and that there is no
greater folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of
our capacitie and bounds of our sufficiencie....
If we term those things monsters or miracles to which our reason
cannot attain, how many such doe daily present themselves unto our
sight? Let us consider through what cloudes, and how blinde-folde,
we are led to the knowledge of most things that passe our hands;
verily we shall finde it is rather custome than science that
receiveth the strangenesse of them from us: and that those things,
were they newly presented unto us, wee should doubtless deeme them
as much or more unlikely and incredible than any other.(756)
A fair-minded scholar, before denying the possibility of _our_ history and ecords, should search modern history, as well as the universal traditions cattered throughout ancient and modern literature, for traces left by hese marvellous early races. Few among the unbelievers suspect the wealth f corroborative evidence which is to be found scattered about and buried, ven in the British Museum alone. The reader is asked to throw one more lance at the subject-matter treated of in the Section which follows.
Cyclopean Ruins And Colossal Stones As Witnesses To Giants.
De Mirville, in his enormous works, "Mémoires Adressées aux Académies," arrying out the task of proving the reality of the Devil and showing his bode in every ancient and modern idol, has collected several hundred ages of "historical evidence" that, in the days of "miracle," both pagan nd biblical, stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even sang. That inally, the "Christ-stone," or Christ-rock, "the spiritual Rock" that ollowed Israel,(757) "became a Jupiter-lapis," swallowed by his father
Saturn, "under the shape of a stone."(758) We will not stop to discuss the vident misuse and materialization of biblical metaphors simply for the ake of proving the "Satanism" of idols, though a good deal might be aid(759) on this subject. But without claiming any such peripateticism nd innate psychic faculties for our stones, we may collect, in our turn, very available evidence to hand, to show that: (_a_) had there been no iants to move such colossal rocks, there could never have been a
Stonehenge, a Carnac (Brittany), or other such Cyclopean structures; and
(_b_) were there no such thing as Magic, there could never have been so any witnesses to "oracular" and "speaking" stones.
In the _Achaica_ we find Pausanias confessing that, in beginning his work, e had regarded the Greeks as mighty _stupid_ "for worshipping stones."
But, having reached Arcadia, he adds: "I have changed my way of hinking."(760) Therefore, without worshipping stones or stone idols and tatues, which is the same thing--a crime with which Roman Catholics are nwise to reproach Pagans, as they do--one may be allowed to believe in hat so many great Philosophers and holy men have believed in, without eserving to be called an "idiot" by modern Pausaniuses.
The reader is referred to the _Académie des Inscriptions_, if he would tudy the various properties of flints and pebbles from the standpoint of agic and psychic powers. In a poem on "Stones" attributed to Orpheus, hese stones are divided into Ophites and Sideritęs, the "Serpent-stone" nd "Star-stone."
The Ophitęs is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has _the gift of
speech_; when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound
_similar to the cry of a child_. It is by means of this stone that
Helenus foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland.(761)
Sanchuniathon and Philo Byblus, in referring to these "bétyles," call them
"_animated_ stones." Photius repeats what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus nd the physician Eusebius had asserted before him. Eusebius especially ever parted with his Ophitęs, which he carried in his bosom, and received racles from it, delivered _in a small voice resembling a low histling_.(762) Arnobius, a holy man, who "from a Pagan had become one of he _lights of the Church_," as Christians tell their readers, confesses e could never meet with one of such stones without putting it a question,
"which it answered occasionally in a _clear and sharp small voice_."
Where, then, is the difference between the Christian and the Pagan
Ophitęs, we ask?
The famous stone at Westminster was called _liafail_, "the speaking tone," and raised its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen.
Cambry, in his _Monuments Celtiques_, says he saw it when it still bore he inscription:(763)
_Ni fallat fatum, Scoti quocumque locatum_
_Invenient lapidem, regnasse tenentur ibidem_.
Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Herćscus, who could distinguish at a lance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed with motion; and
Pliny mentions stones which "ran away when a hand approached them."(764)
De Mirville--who seeks to justify the _Bible_--enquires very pertinently, hy the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called in days of old _chior- aur_ or the "dance of giants" (from _côr_, "dance," whence _chorea_, and
_gaur_, "giant")? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from he Bishop St. Gildas. But the authors of such works as _Voyage dans le
Comté de Cornouailles, sur les Traces des Géants_, and of various learned orks on the ruins of Stonehenge,(765) Carnac, and West Hoadley, give far uller and more reliable information upon this particular subject. In hose regions--true forests of rocks--immense monoliths are found, "some eighing over 500,000 kilograms." These "hanging stones" of Salisbury
Plain are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the Druids ere historical men and not Cyclopes, or giants. Who then, _if not iants_, could ever raise such masses--especially those at Carnac and West
Hoadley--range them in such symmetrical order that they should represent he planisphere, and place them in such wonderful equipoise that they seem o hardly touch the ground, and though set in motion at the slightest ouch of the finger, would nevertheless resist the efforts of twenty men hould they attempt to displace them.
Now if we say that most of these stones are relics of the last Atlanteans, e shall be answered that all the Geologists claim them to be of a natural rigin; that, a rock when "weathering"--_i.e._, losing flake after flake of ts substance under the influence of the weather--assumes this form; that, he "tors" in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced by this ause. And thus since all Scientists consider the "rocking stones to be of urely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration of rocks n layers"--our statement will be justly denied, especially as "we see this rocess of rock-modification in progress around us to-day." Let us then xamine the case.
First read what Geology has to say, and you will then learn that often hese gigantic masses are entire strangers in the countries wherein they re now fixed; that their geological congeners often pertain to strata nknown in those countries and which are only to be found far beyond the eas. Mr. William Tooke, in speculating upon the enormous blocks of ranite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia, tells the eader that where they now rest, there are neither rocks nor mountains; nd that they must have been brought over "from immense distances and with rodigious efforts."(766) Charton speaks of a specimen of such rock from
Ireland, which had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English
Geologist, who assigned to it a foreign origin "_perhaps even
African_."(767)
This is a strange _coincidence_, for Irish tradition attributes the origin f her circular stones to a _Sorcerer who brought them from Africa_. De
Mirville sees in this Sorcerer "an accursed Hamite."(768) We see in him a ark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had survived ill the birth of the British Islands--a giant in any and every case.(769)
Says Cambry, naively:
Men have nothing to do with it ... for never could _human_ power
and industry undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has
accomplished it all [!!] and Science will demonstrate it some day
[!!].(770)
Nevertheless, it was _human_, though gigantic power, which accomplished t, and no more "Nature" alone than God or Devil.
"Science," having undertaken to demonstrate that even the Mind and Spirit f man are simply the production of "blind forces," is quite capable of ccepting the task, and it may be that she will come out some fine orning, and seek to prove that Nature alone has marshalled the gigantic ocks of Stonehenge, traced their position with mathematical precision, iven them the form of the Dendera planisphere and of the signs of the
Zodiac, and brought stones weighing over one million of pounds from Africa nd Asia to England and Ireland!
It is true that Cambry recanted later on, when saying:
I believed for a long time in _Nature_, but I _recant_, ... for
chance _is unable to create_ such marvellous combinations, ... and
those who placed the said rocks in equipoise, are the same who
have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat, near
Concarneau.
Dr. John Watson, quoted by the same author, when speaking of the _moving_ ocks, or "rocking stones" situated on the slope of Golcar (the
"Enchanter") says:
The astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium
made the Celts compare them to Gods.(771)
In _Stonehenge_, by Flinders Petrie, it is said that:
Stonehenge is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone,
or "sarsen" stone, locally called "grey wethers." But some of the
stones, especially those which are said to have been devoted to
astronomical purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably
the North of Ireland.
To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon the ubject published in 1850 in the _Revue Archéologique_, are worthy of eing quoted:
Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful
machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe,
masses, before which the word _materials_ seems to remain
inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded, and
that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the things
themselves. Besides which, these _immense rocking_ stones, called
sometimes _routers_, placed upright on one of their sides as on a
point, their equipoise being so perfect that the slightest touch
is sufficient to set them in motion ... betray a most positive
knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter-motion, surfaces, plane,
convex and concave, in turn ... all this allies them to Cyclopean
monuments, of which it can be said with good reason, repeating De
la Vega, that "the demons seem to have worked on them more than
men."(772)
For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics, and ask hether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, with masses weighing illions of pounds, can be the work of Palćolithic _savages_, of cave-men, aller than the average man in our century, yet ordinary mortals as we re? It is not our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached to he rocking stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the English reader f Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of such a stone on the Isle of Mona, hich returned to its place, notwithstanding every effort to keep it lsewhere. At the time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II, a Count
Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality of the fact, ied the Mona stone to a far larger one and had them thrown into the sea.
On the following morning it was found in its accustomed place. The learned
William of Salisbury warrants the fact by testifying to its presence in he wall of a church where he had seen it in 1554. And this reminds one of hat Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which the
Cyzicans had placed in the Prytaneum, "whence it _ran away several times_, nd so they were forced to weight it with lead."(773) Here we have immense tones stated by all antiquity to be "living, moving, speaking, and self- erambulating." They were also capable, it seems, of making people run way, since they were called _routers_, from the word to "rout," or "put o flight"; and Des Mousseaux shows them all to be prophetic stones, and ometimes called "_mad_ stones."(774)
The rocking stone is accepted by Science. But why did it rock? One must be lind not to see that this motion was one more means of divination, and hat they were called for this very reason the "stones of truth."(775)
_This is history_, the past of prehistoric times warranting the same in ater ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the Moon and the Serpent, were the ore ancient "rocks of destiny" of older nations; and their motion, or
_rocking_, was a code perfectly clear to the initiated priests, who alone ad the key to this ancient _reading_. Vormius and Olaus Magnus show that t was according to the orders of the oracle, whose voice spoke through
"these immense rocks raised by the colossal powers of [ancient] giants," hat the kings of Scandinavia were elected. Says Pliny:
In India and Persia it is she (the Persian Otizoë) whom the Magi
had to consult for the election of their sovereigns;(776)
nd he further describes a rock overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed n such a manner that "a single finger can move it, while the weight of he whole body makes it resist."(777) Why then should not the rocking tones of Ireland, or those of Brimham, in Yorkshire, have served for the ame mode of _divination_ or oracular communications? The hugest of them re evidently the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller, such as Brimham
Rocks, with revolving stones on their summit, are copies from the more ncient lithoi. Had not the Bishops of the Middle Ages destroyed all the lans of the Dracontia they could lay their hands on, Science would know ore of these.(778) As it is, we know that they were universally used uring long prehistoric ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy nd _magic_. É. Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in he _Antiquités de France_ (vol. ix), an article showing the Chatampéramba
(the "Field of Death," or ancient burial ground in Malabar), to be dentical in situation with the old tombs at Carnac; that is to say, "a rominence and a central tomb." Bones are found in the tombs, and Mr.
Halliwell tells us that some of these are enormous, the natives calling he tombs the "dwellings of the Râkshasas" or giants. Several stone ircles, "considered the work of the Panch Pândava (five Pândus), as all uch monuments are in India, where they are to be found in such great umbers," when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi, "were found to ontain _human bones of a very large size_."(779)
Again, De Mirville is right in his _generalization_, if not in his onclusions. As the long cherished theory that the Dracontia are mostly itnesses to "great natural geological commotions" (Charton), and "the ork of Nature" (Cambry), is now exploded, his remarks are very just:
We advise Science to reflect .... and, above all, no longer to
class Titans and Giants among primitive legends; for their works
are there, under our eyes, and those rocking masses will oscillate
on their basis to the end of the world to help them to realize
once for all, that one is not altogether a candidate for Charenton
for believing in wonders certified to by the whole of
Antiquity.(780)
This is just what we can never repeat too often, though it may be that the oices of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert.
Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent, to ay the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and medićval
Theology in _its_ interpretations of the so-called _Revelation_. Science ould have men descend from the pithecoid ape--a transformation requiring illions of years--and yet fears to make Mankind older than 100,000 years!
Science teaches the gradual transformation of species, natural selection nd evolution from the lowest form to the highest, from mollusc to fish, rom reptile to bird and mammalian--yet it refuses to man, who is hysiologically only a higher mammal and animal, such a transformation of is external form. But if the monstrous Iguanodon of the Wealden may have een the ancestor of the diminutive Iguana of to-day, why could not the onstrous man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man--the link etween Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific in this
"theory" than in that of refusing to man a spiritual immortal Ego, making f him an automaton, and ranking him, at the same time, _as a distinct enus_ in the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific han the present Exact Sciences, they are nevertheless more logical and onsistent in their teachings. Physical forces, and the natural affinities f atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an animal; ut it requires more than the mere interplay between certain material ggregates and their environment, to call to life a _fully conscious man_, ven though he were no more indeed than a ramification between two "poor ousins" of the quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Hćckel that
(objective) Life on our Globe "is a logical postulate of scientific atural history," but add that the rejection of a like _spiritual_ nvolution, from _within without_, of invisible subjective Spirit-
Life--Eternal and a Principle in Nature--is more illogical, if possible, han to say that the Universe and all in it has been gradually built by
"blind forces" inherent in Matter, without any _external_ help.
Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a athedral had come originally into being as follows: first, there was a rogressive and gradual elaboration in space of an organizable material, hich resulted in the production of a state of matter named _organic rotein_; then, under the influence of incident forces, these states aving been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and ajestically evolved into new combinations of carved and polished wood, of rass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind-pipes and bellows; fter which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and ymmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart's "Requiem"; his was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., _ad infinitum_, its keys laying of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own nherent force and fancy. What would Science say to such a theory? Yet, it s precisely in such wise that the materialistic _savants_ tell us that he Universe was formed, with its millions of beings, and man, its piritual crown.
Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer, when riting on the subject of the gradual transformation of species, his words pply to our doctrine.
Construed in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived
as a product of modifications wrought by insensible gradations _on
a preëxisting kind of being_.(781)
Then why, in this case, should not historical man be the product of a odification on a preëxistent and prehistorical kind of man, even upposing for argument's sake that there is _nothing_ within him to last onger than, or live independently of, his physical structure? But this is ot so! For, when we are told that "organic matters are produced in the aboratory by what we may literally call _artificial evolution_"(782)--we nswer the distinguished English philosopher, that Alchemists and great
Adepts did as much, and, indeed, far more, before the Chemists ever ttempted to "build out of dissociated elements complex combinations." The
Homunculi of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one in
Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein's monster will ave to be regarded as a prophecy. But no Chemist, or Alchemist either, ill ever endow such a monster with more than animal instinct, unless ndeed he does that with which the "Progenitors" are credited, namely, eave his own Physical Body, and incarnate in the "Empty Form." But even his would be an _artificial_, not a natural man, for our "Progenitors" ad, in the course of eternal evolution, to become _Gods_ before they ecame Men.
The above digression--if indeed it is one--is an attempt at justification efore the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this.
It also gives the reason why the best and most spiritual men of our resent day can no longer be satisfied with either Science or Theology, nd why they prefer any "psychic craze" to the dogmatic assertions of the air, since neither of them, in its infallibility, has anything better to ffer than _blind_ faith. _Universal_ tradition is by far the safer guide n life. And universal tradition shows Primitive Man living for ages ogether with his Creators and first Instructors--the Elohim--in the World's
"Garden of Eden," or "Delight."(783)
45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS
(_A_).
46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH THEM MOST OF THE HUGE
ANIMALS, PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH (_B_).
(_a_) As this subject--the fourth great Deluge on our Globe in this
Round--is fully treated in the Sections that follow the last Stanza, to say nything more at present would be a mere anticipation. The seven Great
Islands (Dvîpas) belonged to the Continent of Atlantis. The Secret
Teachings show that the Deluge overtook the Fourth, Giant Race, not on ccount of its depravity, or because it had become "black with sin," but imply because such is the fate of every Continent, which--like everything lse under our Sun--is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies. This was hen the Fifth Race was in its infancy.
(_b_) Thus the Giants perished--the Magicians and the Sorcerers, adds the ancy of popular tradition. But "all holy saved," and alone the "unholy" ere "destroyed." This was due, however, as much to the _prevision_ of the
"holy" ones, who had not lost the use of their Third Eye, as to Karma and
Natural Law. Speaking of the subsequent Race, our Fifth Humanity, the
Commentary says:
_Alone the handful of those Elect, whose Divine Instructors had gone to __ nhabit that Sacred Island--__"__from whence the last Saviour will ome__"__--now kept mankind from becoming one-half the exterminator of the ther [as mankind is now_--H. P. B.]. _It [mankind] became divided. Two- hirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material Spirits of the
Earth, who took possession of the easily accessible bodies; one-third emained faithful, and joined with the nascent Fifth Race--the Divine
Incarnates. When the Poles moved [for the fourth time] this did not affect hose who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race. Like he Lemurians--alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and __"__were seen no ore__"__...!_
Stanza XII. The Fifth Race And Its Divine Instructors.
47. The remnants of the first two Races disappear for ever. Groups
of the various Atlantean races saved from the Deluge along with
the Forefathers of the Fifth. 48. The origins of our present Race,
the Fifth. The first Divine Dynasties. 49. The earliest
glimmerings in history, now pinned to the allegorical chronology
of the _Bible_, and "universal" history slavishly following it.
The nature of the first Instructors and Civilizers of mankind.
47. FEW(784) REMAINED. SOME YELLOW, SOME BROWN AND BLACK, AND SOME RED
REMAINED. THE MOON-COLOURED(785) WERE GONE FOR EVER (_A_).
48. THE FIFTH(786) PRODUCED FROM THE HOLY STOCK REMAINED; IT WAS RULED
OVER BY THE FIRST DIVINE KINGS.
49. ... THE SERPENTS WHO RE-DESCENDED, WHO MADE PEACE WITH THE FIFTH,(787)
WHO TAUGHT AND INSTRUCTED IT (_b_)....
(_a_) This Shloka relates to the Fifth Race. History does not begin with t, but living and ever-recurring tradition does. History--or what is alled history--does not go back further than the fantastic origins of our ifth sub-race, a "few thousands" of years. It is the sub-divisions of the irst sub-race of the Fifth Root-Race which are referred to in the entence, "Some yellow, some brown and black, and some red remained." The
"moon-coloured"--_i.e._, the First and the Second Races--were gone for ever; y, without leaving any traces whatever--and that, so far back as the third
"Deluge" of the Third Lemurian Race, that "Great Dragon," whose tail weeps whole nations out of existence in the twinkling of an eye. And this s the true meaning of the verse in the Commentary which says:
_The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom, the Serpents hose holes are now under the Triangular Stones._
Or in other words, "the pyramids, at the four corners of the world."
(_b_) This puts clearly what is mentioned more than once elsewhere in the
Commentaries; namely, that the Adepts or "Wise" men of the Third, Fourth nd Fifth Races dwelt in subterranean habitats, generally under some kind f pyramidal structure, if not actually under a pyramid. For such
"pyramids" existed in the "four corners of the world" and were never the onopoly of the land of the Pharaohs, though indeed until they were found cattered all over the two Americas, under and above ground, beneath and midst virgin forests, and also in plain and vale, they were generally upposed to be the exclusive property of Egypt. If true geometrically orrect pyramids are no longer found in European regions, nevertheless any of the supposed early neolithic caves, of the colossal triangular yramidal and conical "menhirs" in Morbihan, and Brittany generally, many f the Danish "tumuli" and even of the "giant tombs" of Sardinia with heir inseparable companions, the "nuraghi," are so many more or less lumsy copies of the pyramids. Most of these are the works of the first ettlers on the newly-born continent and isles of Europe, the "some ellow, some brown and black, and some red" races that remained after the ubmersion of the last Atlantean continents and islands, 850,000 years go--Plato's Island excepted--and before the arrival of the great Âryan aces; while others were built by the earliest immigrants from the East.
Those who can hardly accept the placing of the antiquity of the human race o far back as the 57,000 years, the age assigned by Dr. Dowler to the keleton found by him at New Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi, ill, of course, reject these facts. But they may find themselves mistaken ome day. We may disparage the foolish self-glorification of the Arcadians ho styled themselves "older than the Moon" ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}), and of the eople of Attica, who claimed that they had existed before the Sun ppeared in Heaven--but not their undeniable antiquity. Nor can we laugh at he universal belief that we had giant ancestors. The fact that the bones f the Mammoth and Mastodon, and, in one case, those of a gigantic
Salamander, have been mistaken for human bones, does not make away with he difficulty that, of all the Mammalians, man is the only one whom
Science will not allow to have dwarfed down, like all other animal frames, rom the giant Homo Diluvii to the creature between five and six feet that e is now.
But the "Serpents of Wisdom" have preserved their records well, and the istory of human evolution _is_ traced in Heaven as it is traced on nderground walls. Humanity and the _Stars_ are bound together ndissolubly, because of the _Intelligences_ that rule the latter.
Modern Symbologists may scoff at this and call it "fancy," but as Mr.
Staniland Wake writes:
It is unquestionable that the Deluge has [ever] been associated in
the legends of some Eastern peoples not only with the Pyramids,
but also with the constellations.(788)
The "Old Dragon" is identical with the "Great Flood," says Mr. Proctor:
We know that in the past the constellation of the Dragon was at
the pole, or boss, of the celestial sphere. In stellar temples,
... the Dragon would be the uppermost or ruling constellation....
It is singular how closely these constellations ... correspond in
sequence and in range of right ascension with the events recorded
respecting the [Biblical] Flood.(789)
The reasons for this _singularity_, however, have been made abundantly lear in this work. It only shows that there were _several_ Deluges onfused in the memories and traditions of the sub-races of the Fifth
Race. The first great Flood was astronomical and cosmical, while several thers were terrestrial. And yet our very learned friend Mr. Gerald
Massey--an initiate truly in the mysteries of the British Museum, still nly a self-initiate--declared and insisted that the Atlantean Submersion nd Deluge were only the anthropomorphized fancies of ignorant people, and hat Atlantis was no better than an "astronomical allegory." But the great odiacal allegory is based upon historical events, and allegory can hardly nterfere with history; moreover, every student of Occultism knows what hat astronomical and zodiacal allegory means. Dr. Smith shows in the
Nimrod Epic of the Assyrian tablets the real meaning of the allegory.
[Its twelve cantos] refer to the annual course of the Sun through
the twelve months of the year. Each tablet answers to a special
month, and contains a distinct reference to the animal forms in
the signs of the Zodiac; ... [the eleventh canto being]
consecrated to Rimmon, the God of storms and rain, and harmonizes
with the eleventh sign of the Zodiac--Aquarius, or the
Waterman.(790)
But even this is preceded in the old Records by the _pre_-astronomical
Cosmic Flood, which became allegorized and symbolized in the above
Zodiacal or Noah's Flood. But this has nothing to do with Atlantis. The
Pyramids are closely connected with the ideas of both the constellation of he Great Dragon, the "Dragons of Wisdom," or the great Initiates of the
Third and Fourth Races, and the floods of the Nile, regarded as a divine eminder of the great Atlantic Flood. The astronomical records of
Universal History, however, are said to have had their beginnings with the hird sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race or the Atlanteans. When was it?
Occult data show that even since the time of the regular establishment of he zodiacal calculations in Egypt, _the poles have been thrice inverted_.
We will presently return again to this statement. Such symbols as are epresented by the Signs of the Zodiac--a fact which offers a handle to
Materialists upon which to hang their one-sided theories and opinions--have oo profound a signification, and their bearing upon our Humanity is too mportant, to suffer dismissal in a few words. Meanwhile, we have to onsider the meaning of the statement, in Shloka 48, concerning the "first
Divine Kings," who are said to have "redescended," guided and _instructed_ ur Fifth Race after the last Deluge! We shall consider this last claim istorically in the Sections that follow, but must end with a few more etails on the subject of "Serpents."
The rough commentaries on the Archaic Stanzas have to end here. Further lucidation requires proofs obtained from ancient, medićval, and modern orks which have treated of these subjects. All such evidence has now to e gathered in, collated and brought together in better order, so as to ompel the attention of the reader to this wealth of historical proofs.
And as the manifold meaning of the weird and suggestive symbol (so often eferred to) of the "tempter of man"--in the orthodox light of the
Church--can never be too strongly insisted upon, it seems more advisable to xhaust the subject by every available proof, at this juncture, even at he risk of repetition. The Titans and Kabirs have been invariably made ut by our Theologians and some pious Symbologists to be indissolubly onnected with the grotesque personage called the "Devil," and every proof hich goes against their theory has been hitherto as invariably rejected nd ignored. The Occultist must, therefore, neglect nothing which may tend o defeat this conspiracy of slander. And so we propose to divide the ubjects involved in these last three Verses into several groups, and to xamine them as carefully and as fully as space permits. A few more etails may thus be added to the general evidences of antiquity, on the ost disputed tenets of Occultism and the Esoteric Doctrine--the bulk of hich, however, will be found in Part II, on Symbology.
Serpents And Dragons Under Different Symbolisms.
The name of the Dragon in Chaldća was not written phonetically, but was epresented by two monograms, meaning _probably_, according to the
Orientalists, the "scaly one." "This description," very pertinently emarks G. Smith, "of course might apply either to a fabulous dragon, a erpent, or a fish." To this we may add that, in one aspect, it applies to
Makara, the tenth Zodiacal Sign, the Sanskrit term for a nondescript mphibious animal, generally called Crocodile, but really signifying omething else. This, then, is a virtual admission that the
Assyriologists, at all events, know nothing certain as to the status of he Dragon in ancient Chaldća. It was from Chaldća that the Hebrews got
_their_ symbolism, only to be afterwards robbed of it by the Christians, ho made of the "scaly one" a living entity and a maleficent power.
A specimen of Dragons, "winged and scaled," may be seen in the British
Museum. In this representation of the events of the Fall, according to the ame authority, there are also two figures sitting on each side of a
"tree," and holding out their hands to the "apple," while at the back of he "tree" is the Dragon-Serpent. Esoterically, the two figures are two
"Chaldees" ready for Initiation, the Serpent symbolizing the Initiator; hile the jealous Gods, who curse the three, are the exoteric profane lergy. Not much of the literal "biblical event" there, as any Occultist an see!
"The Great Dragon has respect but for the Serpents of Wisdom," says the
Stanza; thus proving the correctness of our explanation of the two figures nd the "Serpent."
"The Serpents who redescended, .... who taught and instructed" the Fifth
Race. What sane man, in our day, is capable of believing that _real_ erpents are hereby meant? Hence the rough guess--now become almost an xiom with men of Science--that those who in antiquity wrote upon various acred Dragons and Serpents were either superstitious and credulous eople, or were bent upon deceiving those more ignorant than themselves.
Yet, from Homer downwards, the term implied something hidden from the
Profane.
"Terrible are the Gods when they manifest themselves"--those _Gods_ whom en call _Dragons_. And Ćlianus, treating in his _De Naturâ Animalium_ of hese ophidian symbols, makes certain remarks which show that he well nderstood the nature of these most ancient of symbols. Thus with eference to the above Homeric verse he most pertinently explains:
For the Dragon, while sacred and to be worshipped, _has within
himself something still more of the divine nature_ of which it is
better [for others?] to remain in ignorance.(791)
The "Dragon" symbol has a septenary meaning, and of these seven meanings, he highest and the lowest may be given. The highest is identical with the
"Self-born," the Logos, the Hindű Aja. With the Christian Gnostics called he Naasenians, or Serpent-worshippers, he was the Second Person of the
Trinity, the Son. His symbol was the constellation of the Dragon.(792) Its even "Stars" are the seven stars held in the hand of the "Alpha and
Omega" in _Revelation_. In its most terrestrial meaning, the term "Dragon" as applied to the "Wise" men.
This portion of the religious symbolism of antiquity is very abstruse and ysterious, and may remain incomprehensible to the profane. In our modern ay it so jars on the Christian ear that, in spite of our boasted ivilization, it can hardly escape being regarded as a direct denunciation f the most cherished of Christian dogmas. Such a subject required, to do t justice, the pen and genius of Milton, whose poetical fiction has now aken root in the Church as a revealed dogma.
Did the allegory of the Dragon and his supposed conqueror in Heaven riginate with St. John, in his _Revelation_? Emphatically we answer--No.
St. John's "Dragon" is Neptune, the symbol of Atlantean Magic.
In order that we may demonstrate this negation, the reader is asked to xamine the symbolism of the Serpent or the Dragon under its several spects.
The Sidereal And Cosmic Glyphs.
Every Astronomer--not to speak of Occultists and Astrologers--knows that, iguratively speaking, the Astral Light, the Milky Way, and also the Path f the Sun to the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, as well as the Circles f the Sidereal or Tropical Year, were always called "Serpents" in the llegorical and mystic phraseology of the Adepts.
This, cosmically, as well as metaphorically. Poseidon is a "Dragon"--the
Dragon "Chozzar, called by the profane Neptune" according to the Peratć
Gnostics, the "Good and Perfect Serpent," the Messiah of the Naaseni, hose symbol in Heaven is Draco.
But we ought to discriminate between the various characters of this ymbol. Now Zoroastrian Esotericism is identical with that of the Secret
Doctrine, and when an Occultist reads in the _Vendîdâd_ complaints uttered gainst the "Serpent," whose bites have transformed the beautiful, eternal pring of Airyana Vaęjô, changing it into winter, generating disease and eath, and at the same time mental and psychic consumption--he knows that he Serpent alluded to is the North Pole, and also the Pole of the
Heavens.(793) These two axes produce the seasons according to their angle f inclination to each other. The two axes were _no more parallel_; hence he eternal spring of Airyana Vaęjô "by the good river Dâitya" had isappeared, and "the Âryan Magi had to emigrate to Sogdiana"--say the xoteric accounts. But the Esoteric Teaching states that the pole had assed from the equator, and that the "Land of Bliss" of the Fourth Race, ts inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation nd woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great ntiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures. The Neo-Âryans of the post- iluvian age could, of course, hardly recognize the mountains, on the ummits of which their forefathers had met _before_ the Flood, and onversed with the pure "Yazatas" or celestial Spirits of the Elements, hose life and _food_ they had once shared. As shown by Eckstein:
The _Vendîdâd_ seems to point out a great change in the atmosphere
of central Asia; strong volcanic eruptions and the collapse of a
whole range of mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kara-Korum
chain.(794)
The Egyptians, according to Eusebius, who, for a wonder, once wrote the ruth, symbolized Kosmos by a large fiery circle, with a serpent with a awk's head lying across its diameter.
Here we see the pole of the earth within the plane of the
ecliptic, attended with all the fiery consequences that must arise
from such a state of the heavens: when the whole Zodiac, in 25,000
[odd] years, must have "redden'd with the solar blaze"; and _each
sign must have been vertical_ to the polar region.(795)
Meru, the Abode of the Gods, as explained before, was placed in the North
Pole, while Pâtâla, the Nether Region, was supposed to lie towards the
South. As each symbol in Esoteric Philosophy has _seven_ keys, Meru and
Pâtâla have, geographically, one significance and represent localities, hile, astronomically, they have another, and mean the "two poles"; the atter meaning led to their being often rendered in _exoteric_ ectarianism as the "Mountain" and the "Pit," or Heaven and Hell. If we or the present hold only to the astronomical and geographical ignificance, it may be found that the Ancients knew the topography and ature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions better than any of our modern
Astronomers. They had reasons, and good ones, for naming one the
"Mountain" and the other the "Pit." As the author just quoted half xplains, Helion and Acheron meant nearly the same. "Heli-on is the Sun in is highest," Heli-os or Eli-os meaning the "most high," and Acheron is 32 egrees above the pole, and 32 below it, the allegorical river being thus upposed to touch the northern horizon in the latitude of 32 degrees. The ast concave, that is for ever hidden from our sight and which surrounded he southern pole, the first astronomers called the Pit, while observing, oward the northern pole, that a certain circuit in the heavens always ppeared above the horizon--they called it the Mountain. As Meru is the igh abode of the Gods, these were said to _ascend_ and _descend_ eriodically; by which (astronomically) the _Zodiacal_ Gods were meant, he passing of the original north pole of the Earth to the south pole of he Heaven.
In that age at noon, the ecliptic would be parallel with the
meridian, and part of the Zodiac would descend from the north pole
to the north horizon; crossing the _eight coils of the serpent_
[eight sidereal years, or over 200,000 solar years], which would
seem like an imaginary _ladder_ with _eight staves_ reaching from
the earth up to the pole, _i.e._, the throne of Jove. Up this
ladder, then, the Gods, _i.e._, the Signs of the Zodiac, ascended
and descended. [Jacob's ladder and the Angels] .... It is more
than 400,000 years since the Zodiac formed the sides of this
ladder.(796)
This is an ingenious explanation, even if it is not altogether free from
Occult heresy. Yet it is nearer the truth than many of a more scientific nd especially theological character. As said, the Christian Trinity was urely astronomical from its beginning. This it was which made Rutilius ay of those who euhemerized it: "_Judća gens, radix stultorum_."
But the profane, and especially Christian fanatics who are ever in search f scientific corroboration for their dead-letter texts, persist in seeing n the Celestial Pole the true Serpent of _Genesis_, Satan, the enemy of ankind; whereas it is really--a cosmic metaphor. When the Gods are said to orsake the Earth, it means not only the Gods, the Protectors and
Instructors, but also the _minor_ Gods--the Regents of the Zodiacal Signs.
The former, as actual and existing Entities which gave birth to, nursed, nd instructed Mankind in its early youth, appear in every Scripture, in hat of the Zoroastrians as well as in the Hindű Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura
Mazda, the "Lord of Wisdom," is the synthesis of the Amshaspands, or
Amesha Spentas, the "Immortal Benefactors,"(797) the "Word," or the Logos, nd its six highest aspects in Mazdeanism. These "Immortal Benefactors" re described in _Zamyad Yasht_ as:
The Amesha Spentas, the shining, having efficacious eyes, great,
helpful ... imperishable and pure ... which are all seven of like
mind, like speech, all seven doing alike ... which are _the
creators and destroyers of the creatures_ of Ahura Mazda, their
creators and overseers, their protectors and rulers.
These few lines are sufficient to indicate the dual and even the triple haracter of the Amshaspands, our Dhyân Chohans or the "Serpents of
Wisdom." They are identical with, and yet separate from Ormazd (Ahura
Mazda). They are also the Angels of the Stars of the Christians--the Star-
Yazatas of the Zoroastrians--or again the seven Planets (including the Sun) f every religion.(798) The epithet, "the shining, having efficacious yes," proves it. This on the physical and sidereal planes. On the piritual, they are the Divine Powers of Ahura Mazda; but on the astral or sychic plane again, they are the "Builders," the "Watchers," the Pitris, r Fathers, and the first Preceptors of Mankind.
When mortals have become sufficiently spiritualized, there will be no more eed of _forcing_ them into a correct comprehension of ancient Wisdom. Men ill _know_ then, that there never yet was a great World-reformer whose ame has passed into our generation, who (_a_) was not a direct emanation f the Logos (under whatever name known to us) _i.e._, an _essential_ ncarnation of one of the "Seven," of the "Divine Spirit who is evenfold"; and (_b_) who had not appeared before, in past Cycles. They ill recognize, then, the cause which produces certain riddles of the ges, in both history and chronology; the reason, for instance, why it is mpossible _for them_ to assign any reliable date to Zoroaster, who is ound multiplied by twelve and fourteen in the _Dabistan_; why the numbers nd individualities of the Rishis and Manus are so mixed up; why Krishna nd Buddha speak of themselves as reďncarnations, Krishna identifying imself with the Rishi Nârâyana, and Gautama giving a series of his revious births; and why the former, especially, being "the _very supreme_
Brahmâ," is yet called Anshânshâvatâra--"a part of a part" only of the
Supreme on Earth; finally, why Osiris is a Great God, and at the same time "Prince on Earth," who reäppears in Thoth Hermes; and why Jesus (in
Hebrew, Joshua) of Nazareth is recognized, kabalistically, in Joshua, the on of Nun, as well as in other personages. The Esoteric Doctrine explains ll this by saying that each of these, as also many others, had first ppeared on Earth as one of the Seven Powers of the Logos, individualized s a God or Angel (Messenger); then, mixed with Matter, they had eäppeared in turn as great Sages and Instructors who "taught" the Fifth
Race, after having instructed the two preceding Races, had ruled during he Divine Dynasties, and had finally sacrificed themselves, to be reborn nder various circumstances for the good of Mankind, and for its salvation t certain critical periods; until in their last incarnations they had ecome truly only the "parts of a part" on Earth, though _de facto_ the
One Supreme in Nature.
This is the metaphysics of Theogony. Now every "Power" among the Seven, nce he is individualized, has in his charge one of the elements of reation, and rules over it;(799) hence the many meanings in every symbol.
These, unless interpreted according to the Esoteric methods, generally ead to inextricable confusion.
Does the Western Kabalist, who is generally an opponent of the Eastern
Occultist, require a proof? Let him open Éliphas Lévi's _Histoire de la
Magie_,(800) and carefully examine his "Grand Symbole Kabbalistique" from he _Zohar_. He will find there, in the engraving, a development of the
"interlaced triangles," a _white_ man above and a _black_ woman below eversed, the legs passing under the extended arms of the male figure, and rotruding behind the shoulders, while their hands join at an angle on ach side. Éliphas Lévi makes of this symbol, God and Nature; or God,
"Light," mirrored inversely in Nature and Matter, "Darkness."
Kabalistically and symbolically he is right; but only so far as mblematical cosmogony goes. Neither has he invented the symbol, nor have he Kabalists. The two figures in white and black stone have existed in he temples of Egypt from time immemorial, agreeably to tradition, and istorically-ever since the day of King Cambyses, who personally saw them.
Therefore the symbol must have been in existence for nearly 2,500 years.
This, at the very least, for Cambyses, who was a son of Cyrus the Great, ucceeded his father in the year 529 B.C. These figures were the two
Kabiri personifying the _opposite poles_. Herodotus(801) tells posterity hat when Cambyses entered the temple of the Kabirim, he burst into an nextinguishable fit of laughter, on perceiving what he thought to be a an erect and a woman standing on the top of her head before him. These ere the poles, however, whose symbol was intended to commemorate "the assing of the original north pole of the earth to the south pole of the eaven," as perceived by Mackey.(802) But they also represented the poles
_inverted_, in consequence of the great inclination of the axis, which ach time resulted in the displacement of the oceans, the submersion of he polar lands, and the consequent upheaval of new continents in the quatorial regions, and _vice versâ_. These Kabirim were the "Deluge"
Gods.
This may help us to get at the key of the seemingly hopeless confusion mong the numbers of names and titles given to one and the same Gods, and lasses of Gods. Faber, at the beginning of this century, showed the dentity of the Corybantes, Curetes, Dioscuri, Anactes, Dii Magni, Idei,
Dactyli, Lares, Penates, Manes,(803) Titans, and Aletć with the Kabiri.
And we have shown that the latter were the same as the Manus, the Rishis, nd our Dhyân Chohans who incarnated in the Elect of the Third and Fourth
Races. Thus, while in Theogony the Kabiri-Titans were seven Great Gods, osmically and astronomically the Titans were called Atlantes, because, erhaps, as Faber says, they were connected with _at-al-as_, the "divine un," and with _tit_, the "deluge." But this, if true, is only the xoteric version. Esoterically, the meaning of their symbols depends on he appellation, or title, used. The seven mysterious, awe-inspiring Great
Gods--the Dioscuri,(804) the deities surrounded with the darkness of Occult
Nature--become the Idei Dactyli, or Ideic "Fingers," with the Adept-healers y metals. The true etymology of the name Lares, now signifying "Ghosts," ust be sought in the Etruscan word _lars_, "conductor," "leader."
Sanchuniathon translates the word Aletć as "fire worshippers," and Faber elieves it to be derived from _al-orit_, the "God of fire." Both are ight, for in both cases it is a reference to the Sun, the "highest" God, oward whom the Planetary Gods "gravitate" (astronomically and llegorically), and whom they worship. As Lares, they are truly the Solar
Deities, though Faber's etymology, that "Lar is a contraction of El-Ar, he solar deity,"(805) is not very correct. They are the Lares, the
Conductors and Leaders of men. As Aletć, they were the seven
Planets--astronomically; and as Lares, the Regents of these Planets, our
Protectors and Rulers--mystically. For purposes of exoteric or phallic orship, and also cosmically, they were the Kabiri, whose attributes and ual capacities were denoted by the names of the temples to which they espectively belonged, and also by those of their priests. They all elonged, however, to the septenary creative and informing groups of Dhyân
Chohans. The Sabćans, who worshipped the "Regents of the Seven Planets" ust as the Hindűs worship their Rishis, held Seth and his son Hermes
(Enoch or Enos) as the highest among the Planetary Gods. Seth and Enos ere borrowed from the Sabćans and then disfigured by the Jews
(exoterically); but the truth about them can still be discovered even in
_Genesis_.(806) Seth is the "Progenitor" of those early men of the Third
Race in whom the Planetary Angels had incarnated; he was himself a Dhyân
Chohan and belonged to the _informing_ Gods, and Enos (Hanoch or Enoch), r Hermes, was said to be his _son_--Enos being a generic name for all the arly "Seers" (Enoďchion). Thence the worship. The Arabic writer Soyuti ays that the earliest records mention Seth, or Set, as the founder of
Sabaism, and that the pyramids which embody the planetary system were egarded as the place of sepulchre of both Seth and Idrus (Hermes or
Enoch);(807) that thither Sabćans proceeded on pilgrimage, and chanted rayers _seven times_ a day, _turning to the North_ (Mount Meru, Kaph,
Olympus, etc.).(808) Abd Allatif also tells us some curious things about he Sabćans and their books. So also does Eddin Ahmed Ben Yahya, who wrote
200 years later. While the latter maintains "that each pyramid was onsecrated to a _star_" (a Star _Regent_ rather), Abd Allatif assures us hat he had read in ancient Sabćan books that "one pyramid was the tomb of
Agathodćmon and the other of Hermes":(809)
Agathodćmon was none other than Seth, and, according to some
writers, Hermes was his son,
dds Mr. Staniland Wake in _The Great Pyramid_.(810)
Thus, while in Samothrace and the oldest Egyptian temples the Kabiri were he Great Cosmic Gods--the Seven and the _Forty-nine_ Sacred Fires--in the
Grecian fanes their rites became mostly phallic, and therefore, to the rofane, obscene. In the latter case they were three and four, or even--the male and female principles--the _crux ansata_. This division hows why some classical writers held that they were only three, while thers named four. And these were Axieros (in his female aspect Demeter);
Axiokersa (Persephone);(811) Axiokersos (Pluto or Hades); and Kadmos or
Kasmilos (Hermes--not the ithyphallic Hermes mentioned by Herodotus,(812) ut "he of the sacred legend," which was explained only during the
Samothracian Mysteries). This identification, which is due, according to he Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius,(813) to an indiscretion of Mnaseas, s really no identification at all, as names alone do not reveal uch.(814) Others again have maintained, being equally right in their way, hat there were only two Kabiri. These were, esoterically, the two
Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, and exoterically, Jupiter and Bacchus. These wo personified the terrestrial poles, geodesically; the terrestrial pole, nd the pole of the heavens, astronomically; and also the physical and the piritual man. The story of Semele and Jupiter and the birth of Bacchus,
Bimater, with all the circumstances attending it, needs only to be read soterically for the understanding of the allegory. The parts played in he event by the Fire, Water, Earth, etc., in the many versions, will show ow the "Father of the Gods" and the "merry God of Wine" were also made to ersonify the two terrestrial poles. The telluric, metalline, magnetic, lectric and the fiery elements are all so many allusions and references o the cosmic and astronomic character of the diluvian tragedy. In
Astronomy, the poles are indeed the "heavenly measure"; and so are the
Kabiri-Dioscuri, as will be shown, and the Kabiri-Titans, to whom Diodorus scribes the "invention of Fire"(815) and the art of manufacturing iron.
Moreover, Pausanias(816) shows that the original Kabiric deity was
Prometheus.
But the fact that, astronomically, the Titan-Kabirim were also the
Generators and Regulators of the Seasons, and, cosmically, the great
Volcanic Energies--the Gods presiding over all the metals and terrestrial orks--does not prevent them from being, in their original divine haracters, the beneficent Entities who, symbolized in Prometheus, brought ight to the world, and endowed Humanity with intellect and reason. They re preëminently in every Theogony--especially in the Hindű--the Sacred
Divine Fires, Three, Seven, or Forty-nine, according as the allegory emands it. Their very names prove it, for they are the Agni-putra, or
Sons of the Fire, in India, and the Genii of the Fire under numerous names n Greece and elsewhere. Welcker, Maury, and now Decharme, show the name
_kabeiros_ meaning "the powerful through fire," from the Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~} "to urn." The Semitic word _kabirim_ contains the idea of "the powerful, the ighty, and the great," answering to the Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}, but these re later epithets. These Gods were universally worshipped, and their rigin is lost in the night of time. Yet whether propitiated in Phrygia,
Phoenicia, the Troad, Thrace, Egypt, Lemnos or Sicily, their cult was lways connected with Fire, their temples ever built in the most volcanic ocalities, and in exoteric worship they belonged to the Chthonian
Divinities, and therefore has Christianity made of them _Infernal_ Gods.
They are truly "the great, beneficent and powerful Gods," as Cassius
Hermone calls them.(817) At Thebes, Core and Demeter, the Kabirim, had a anctuary,(818) and at Memphis, the Kabiri had a temple so sacred, that one, excepting the priests, were suffered to enter its holy recincts.(819) But we must not, at the same time, lose sight of the fact hat the title of Kabiri was generic; that the Kabiri, the mighty Gods as ell as mortals, were of both sexes, and also terrestrial, celestial and osmic; that while, in their later capacity of rulers of sidereal and errestrial powers, a purely geological phenomenon--as it is now egarded--was symbolized in the persons of those rulers, they were also, in he beginning of times, the Rulers of Mankind, when, incarnated as Kings f the "Divine Dynasties," they gave the first impulse to civilization, nd directed the mind with which they had endued men, to the invention and erfection of all the arts and sciences. Thus the Kabiri are said to have ppeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the emory of nations. To these Kabiri or Titans is ascribed the invention of etters (the Deva-nâgari, or alphabet and language of the Gods), of laws nd legislature, of architecture, as also of the various modes of magic, o-called, and of the medical use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus,
Asclepius, all those Demi-gods and Heroes, to whom is ascribed the evelation of sciences to men, and in whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop
Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers--too zealous for plain ruth--would force posterity to see only Pagan copies of one sole rototype, named Noah--all are generic names.
It is the Kabiri who are credited with having revealed the great boon of griculture, by _producing_ corn or wheat. What Isis-Osiris, the once iving Kabiria, did in Egypt, that Ceres is said to have done in Sicily; hey all belong to one class.
That serpents were ever emblems of wisdom and prudence is again shown by he Caduceus of Mercury, one with Thot, the God of Wisdom, with Hermes, nd so on. The two serpents, entwined round the rod, are phallic symbols f Jupiter and other Gods who transformed themselves into snakes for urposes of seducing Goddesses--only in the unclean fancies of profane
Symbologists. The serpent has ever been the symbol of the Adept, and of is powers of immortality and divine knowledge. Mercury, in his sychopompic character, conducting and guiding the souls of the dead to
Hades with his Caduceus and even raising them to life with it, is a simple nd very transparent allegory. It shows the dual power of the Secret
Wisdom: black and white Magic. It shows this personified Wisdom guiding he Soul after death, and displaying the power of calling to life that hich is dead--a very deep metaphor if one but thinks over its meaning. All he peoples of antiquity, with one exception, reverenced this symbol; the xception being the Christians, who chose to forget the "brazen serpent" f Moses, and even the implied acknowledgment of the great wisdom and rudence of the "serpent" by Jesus himself, "Be ye _wise_ as serpents and armless as doves." The Chinese, one of the oldest nations of our Fifth
Race, made of it the emblem of their Emperors, who are thus the degenerate uccessors of the "Serpents" or Initiates, who ruled the early races of he Fifth Humanity. The Emperor's throne is the "Dragon's Seat," and his resses of State are embroidered with the likeness of the Dragon. The phorisms in the oldest books of China, moreover, say plainly that the
Dragon is a human, albeit _divine_, Being. Speaking of the "Yellow
Dragon," the chief of the others, the _Twan-ying-t'u_ says:
His wisdom and virtue are unfathomable ... he does not go in
company and does not live in herds [he is an ascetic].... He
wanders in the wilds beyond the heavens. He goes and comes,
fulfilling the decree [Karma]; at the proper seasons if there is
perfection he comes forth, if not he remains [invisible].
And Lü-lan asserts that Confucius said:
The Dragon feeds in the pure (water) [of Wisdom] and disports in
the clear (water) [of Life].(820)
Our Divine Instructors.
Now Atlantis and the Phlegyan Isle are not the only records left of the
Deluge. China has also her tradition and the story of an island or ontinent, which it calls Ma-li-ga-si-ma, and which Kćmpfer and Faber pell "Maurigasima," for some mysterious phonetic reasons of their own.
Kćmpfer, in his _Japan_,(821) gives the tradition: The island, owing to he iniquity of its giants, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and Peiruun, he king, the Chinese Noah, escapes alone with his family owing to a arning of the Gods through two idols. It is that pious prince and his escendants who have peopled China. The Chinese traditions speak of the
Divine Dynasties of Kings as frequently as do those of any other nation.
At the same time there is not an old fragment but shows belief in a ultiform and even multigeneric evolution of human beings--spiritual, sychic, intellectual, and physical--just as is described in the present ork. A few of these claims have now to be considered.
Our races--they all show--have sprung from Divine Races, by whatever name he latter may be called. Whether we deal with the Indian Rishis or
Pitris; with the Chinese Chim-nang and Tchan-gy--their "Divine Man" and
Demi-gods; with the Akkadian Dingir and Mul-lil--the Creative God and the
"Gods of the Ghost-world"; with the Egyptian Isis-Osiris and Thot; with he Hebrew Elohim; or again with Manco-Capac and his Peruvian progeny--the tory varies nowhere. Every nation has either the _seven_ and _ten_ Rishi-
Manus and Prajâpatis; the seven and ten Ki-y; or _ten_ and _seven_
Amshaspands(822) (six exoterically); ten and seven Chaldćan Annedoti; ten nd seven Sephiroth, etc. One and all have been derived from the primitive
Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine, or the "Builders" of the Stanzas f Volume I. From Manu, Thot-Hermes, Oannes-Dagon, and Edris-Enoch, down o Plato Panodorus, all tell us of seven Divine Dynasties, of seven
Lemurian, and seven Atlantean divisions of the Earth; of the seven rimitive and dual Gods who descend from their Celestial Abode(823) and eign on Earth, teaching mankind Astronomy, Architecture, and all the ther sciences that have come down to us. These Beings appear first as
Gods and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as
"Divine Kings and Rulers." But this fact has been gradually forgotten. As
Basnage shows, the Egyptians themselves confessed that Science had lourished in their country only since the time of Isis-Osiris, whom they ontinued to adore as Gods, "though they had become princes in human orm." And he adds of the Divine Androgyne:
It is said that this prince [Isis-Osiris] built cities in Egypt,
stopped the overflowing of the Nile; invented agriculture, the use
of the vine, music, astronomy, and geometry.
When Abul Feda, in his _Historia Anteďslamitica_,(824) says that the
"Sabćan language" was established by Seth and Edris (Enoch)--he means
Astronomy. In the _Melelwa Nahil_,(825) Hermes is called the disciple of
Agathodćmon. And in another account,(826) Agathodćmon is mentioned as a
"King of Egypt." The _Celepas Geraldinus_ gives us some curious traditions bout Henoch, who is called the "Divine Giant." In his _Book of the
Various Names of the Nile_, the historian Ahmed Ben Yusouf Eltiphas tells s of the belief among the Semitic Arabs that Seth, who became later the
Egyptian Typhon, Set, had been one of the Seven Angels, or Patriarchs, in he _Bible_; then he became a mortal and Adam's son, after which he ommunicated the gift of prophecy and astronomical science to Jared, who assed it to his son Henoch. But Henoch (Idris), "the author of thirty ooks," was "Sabćan by origin"--_i.e._, belonged to the Saba, "a Host":
Having established the rites and ceremonies of primitive worship,
he went to the East, where he constructed one hundred and forty
cities, of which Edessa was the least important, then returned to
Egypt where he became its King.(827)
Thus, he is identified with Hermes. But there were five Hermes--or rather ne, who appeared, as did some Manus and Rishis, in several different haracters. In the _Burham i Kati_, he is mentioned as Hormig, a name of he Planet Mercury or Budha; and Wednesday was sacred both to Hermes and
Thot.(828) The Hermes of Oriental tradition was worshipped by the
Phineatć, and is said to have fled after the death of Argus into Egypt, nd civilized it under the name of Thoth.(829) But under whichever of hese characters, he is always credited with having transferred all the ciences from _latent to active potency_, _i.e._, with having been the irst to teach Magic to Egypt and to Greece, before the days of Magna
Grćcia, and when the Greeks were not even Hellenes.
Not only does Herodotus, the "father of history," tell us of the arvellous Dynasties of Gods that preceded the reign of mortals, followed y the Dynasties of Demi-gods, Heroes, and finally men, but the whole eries of classical authors support him. Diodorus, Eratosthenes, Plato,
Manetho, etc., repeat the same story, and never vary in the order given.
As Creuzer shows:
It is, indeed, from the spheres of the stars wherein dwell the
gods of light, that wisdom descends to the inferior spheres.... In
the system of the ancient priests [Hierophants and Adepts] all
things without exception, Gods, Genii, Souls [Manes], the whole
world, are conjointly developed in space and duration. The pyramid
may be considered as the symbol of this magnificent hierarchy of
spirits.(830)
It is the modern historians--French Academicians, like Renan, chiefly--who ave made more efforts to suppress truth by ignoring the ancient annals of
Divine Kings, than is strictly consistent with honesty. But M. Renan could ever have been more unwilling than was Eratosthenes (260 B.C.) to accept he unpalatable fact; and yet the latter found himself obliged to ecognize its truth. For this, the great Astronomer is treated with much ontempt by his colleagues 2,000 years later. Manetho becomes with them "a uperstitious priest born and bred in the atmosphere of other lying riests of Heliopolis." As the Demonologist De Mirville justly remarks:
All those historians and priests, so _veracious_ when repeating
stories of _human_ kings and men, suddenly become _extremely
suspicious_ no sooner do they go back _to their gods_.
But there is the synchronistic table of Abydos, which, thanks to the enius of Champollion, has now vindicated the good faith of the priests of
Egypt (of Manetho above all), and of Ptolemy, in the Turin papyrus, the ost remarkable of all. In the words of the Egyptologist, De Rougé:
Champollion, struck with amazement, found that he had under his
own eyes the remains of a list of Dynasties embracing the furthest
mythic times, or the _Reigns of the Gods and Heroes_.... At the
very beginning of this curious papyrus we have to arrive at the
conviction that, so far back as even the period of Ramses, these
mythic and heroical traditions were just as Manetho had
transmitted them to us; we see figuring in them, as Kings of
Egypt, the Gods Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, Thoth-Hermes, and the
Goddess Ma, a long period of centuries being assigned to the reign
of each of these.(831)
These synchronistic tables, besides the fact that they were disfigured by
Eusebius for dishonest purposes, had never gone beyond Manetho. The hronology of the Divine Kings and Dynasties, like that of the age of umanity, has ever been in the hands of the priests, and kept secret from he profane multitudes.
Now though Africa, as a continent, it is said, appeared before that of
Europe, nevertheless it came up later than Lemuria and even the earliest
Atlantis. The whole region of what is now Egypt and the deserts was once pon a time covered with the sea. This was made known, firstly, by
Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, and, secondly, through Geology.
Abyssinia was once upon a time an island, and the Delta was the first ountry occupied by the pioneer emigrants who came with their Gods from he north-east.
When was it? History is silent upon the subject. Fortunately we have the
Dendera Zodiac, the planisphere on the ceiling of one of the oldest
Egyptian temples, to record the fact. This Zodiac, with its mysterious hree Virgos between Leo and Libra, has found its OEdipus to understand the iddle of its signs, and justify the truthfulness of those priests who old Herodotus, that their Initiates taught (_a_) that the poles of the
Earth and the Ecliptic had formerly coincided, and (_b_) that even since heir first Zodiacal records were commenced, the Poles have been three imes within the plane of the Ecliptic.
Bailly had not sufficient words at command to express his surprise at the
_sameness_ of all such traditions about the Divine Races, and exclaims:
What are finally all those reigns of Indian Devas and [Persian]
Peris; or, those reigns of the Chinese legends; those Tien-hoang
or the Kings of Heaven, quite distinct from the Ti-hoang, or Kings
on Earth, and the Gin-hoang, the King men, distinctions which are
in perfect accord with those of the Greeks and Egyptians, in
enumerating their Dynasties of Gods, of Demi-gods and
Mortals.(832)
As says Panodorus:
Now, it is during these thousand years [before the Deluge], that
the _Reign of the Seven Gods_ who rule the world took place. It
was during that period that those benefactors of humanity
_descended_ on Earth and taught men to calculate the course of the
sun and moon by the twelve signs of the Ecliptic.(833)
Nearly five hundred years before the present era, the priests of Egypt howed Herodotus the statues of their human Kings and Pontiffs-Piromis--the
Arch-prophets or Mahâ Chohans of the temples, _born one from the other_, ithout the intervention of woman--who had reigned before Menes, their irst _human_ King. These statues, he says, were enormous colossi in wood, hree hundred and forty-five in number, _each of which had its name, istory and annals_. They also assured Herodotus--unless the most truthful f historians, the "father of history," is now to be accused of fibbing,
_just in this instance_--that no historian could ever understand or write n account of these superhuman Kings, unless he had studied and learned he history of the _three_ Dynasties that preceded the human--namely, the
Dynasties of the Gods, of the Demi-gods, and of the Heroes, or
Giants.(834) These "three" Dynasties are the three Races.
Translated into the language of the Esoteric Doctrine, these three
Dynasties would also be those of the Devas, of the Kimpurushas, and of the
Dânavas and Daityas--otherwise Gods, Celestial Spirits, and Giants or
Titans. "Happy are those who are born, even from the condition of Gods, as en in Bhârata-varsha!"--exclaim the incarnated Gods themselves, during the
Third Root-Race. Bhârata is generally India, but in this case it ymbolizes the Chosen Land of those days, which was considered the best of he divisions of Jambu-dvîpa, as it was the land of active (spiritual) orks _par excellence_; the land of Initiation and of Divine
Knowledge.(835)
Can one fail to recognize in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, lthough he was almost unacquainted with the Âryan Hindű philosophies, hich were but little known in his day, we find him writing:
We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the
Spirits of the Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, _the natural
good sense and the upright judgment_ of the ancient peoples, quite
foreign to our _entirely material_ ideas of mechanics and physical
sciences ... could not see in the stars and planets nothing but
simple masses of light, or opaque bodies moving in circuits in
sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction or
repulsion; they saw in them _living_ bodies, _animated_ by spirits
as they saw the same in every kingdom of nature.... _This doctrine
of spirits, so consistent and conformable to nature_, from which
it was derived, formed a grand and unique conception, wherein the
physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all blended
together.(836)
It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct onclusion about his origin and the genesis of everything in the
Universe--of Heaven and Earth, between which he is a living link. Without uch a psychological link, and the feeling of its presence, no Science can ver progress, and the realm of knowledge must be limited to the analysis f physical matter only.
Occultists believe in "spirits," because they _feel_--and some ee--themselves surrounded by them on every side.(837) Materialists do not.
They live on this Earth, just as some creatures, in the world of insects nd even of fishes, live surrounded by myriads of their own genus, without eeing, or so much as sensing them.(838)
Plato is the first sage among classical writers who speaks at length of he Divine Dynasties. He locates them on a vast continent which he calls
Atlantis. Nor was Bailly the first or last to believe this. He had been receded and anticipated in this theory by Father Kircher, the learned
Jesuit, who in his _OEdipus Ćgyptiacus_, writes:
I confess, for a long time I had regarded all this [the Dynasties
and Atlantis] as pure fables (_meras nugas_) to the day when,
better instructed in Oriental languages, I judged that all those
legends must be, after all, only the development of a great
truth.(839)
As De Rougemont shows, Theopompus, in his _Meropis_, made the priests of
Phrygia and Asia Minor speak exactly as did the priests of Saďs when they evealed to Solon the history and fate of Atlantis. According to
Theopompus, it was a unique continent of an indefinite size, containing wo countries inhabited by two races--a fighting, warrior race, and a ious, meditative race(840)--which Theopompus symbolizes by two ities.(841) The pious "city" was _continually visited by the Gods_: the elligerent "city" was inhabited by various beings _invulnerable_ by iron, ho could be _mortally wounded_ only by stone and wood.(842) De Rougemont reats this as a pure _fiction_ of Theopompus and even sees a fraud
(_supercherie_) in the assertion of the Saďtic priests. This was denounced y the Demonologists as illogical. In the ironical words of De Mirville:
A _supercherie_ which was based on a belief, the product of the
faith of the whole of antiquity; a _supposition_ which yet gave
its name to a whole mountain chain (Atlas); which specified with
the greatest precision a topographical region (by placing this
land at a small distance from Cadiz and the Strait of Calpe),
which prophesied, 2,000 years before Columbus, _the great
transoceanic land_ situated beyond that Atlantis and which "is
reached," it said, "by the Islands not of the Blessed, but of the
Good Spirits," {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} (our Îles Fortunées)--such a supposition
can well be nothing else but a _universal chimera_!(843)
It is certain that, whether "chimera" or reality, the priests of the whole orld had it from one and the same source--the universal tradition about he third great Continent which perished some 850,000 years ago,(844) a
Continent inhabited by two distinct races, distinct physically and specially morally, both deeply versed in primeval wisdom and the secrets f nature, and mutually antagonistic in their struggle, during the course nd progress of their double evolution. For whence even the Chinese eachings upon the subject, if it is but a "fiction"? Have they not ecorded the existence once upon a time of a _Holy_ Island beyond the sun,
Tcheou, beyond which were situated the lands of _Immortal_ Men?(845) Do hey not still believe that the remnants of those Immortal Men--who urvived when the Holy Island became black with sin and perished--have ound refuge in the great Desert of Gobi, where they still reside, nvisible to all and defended from approach by hosts of Spirits?
As the very unbelieving Boulanger writes:
If one has to lend ear to traditions, the latter place before the
reign of Kings, that of the Heroes and Demi-gods; and still
earlier beyond they place the marvellous reign of the Gods and all
the fables of the Golden Age.... One feels surprised that annals
so interesting should have been rejected by almost all our
historians. And yet the ideas presented by them were once
universally admitted and revered by all nations; not a few revere
them still, making them the basis of their daily life. Such
considerations seem to necessitate a less hurried judgment.... The
ancients, from whom we hold these traditions, which _we accept no
longer because we no longer understand them_, must have had
motives for believing in them, furnished by their greater
proximity to the first ages, which the distance that separates us
from them refuses to us.... Plato in the fourth book of his
_Laws_, says that, long before the construction of the first
cities, Saturn had established on earth a _certain_ form of
government under which man was very happy. Now as it is the Golden
Age he refers to, or to that reign of Gods so celebrated in
ancient fables, ... let us see the ideas he had of that happy age,
and what was the occasion he had to introduce this _fable_ into a
treatise on politics. According to Plato, in order to obtain clear
and precise ideas on royalty, its origin and power, one has to
turn back to the first principles of history and tradition. Great
changes, he says, have occurred in days of old, _in heaven and on
earth_, and the present state of things is one of the results
[Karma]. Our traditions tell us of many marvels, of changes that
have taken place in the course of the sun, of Saturn's reign, and
of a thousand other matters that remain scattered in human memory;
but _one never hears anything of the evil which has produced these
revolutions, nor of the evil which directly followed them_. Yet
... that Evil is the principle one has to talk about, to be able
to treat of royalty and the origin of power.(846)
That Evil, Plato seems to see in the sameness or consubstantiality of the atures of the rulers and the ruled, for he says that long before man uilt his cities, in the Golden Age, there was naught but happiness on
Earth, for there were no needs. Why? Because Saturn, knowing that man ould not rule man, without injustice forthwith filling the universe hrough his whims and vanity, would not allow any mortal to obtain power ver his fellow creatures. To do this the God used the same means we urselves use with regard to our flocks. We do not place a bullock or a am over our bullocks and rams, but give them a leader, a shepherd,
_i.e._, _a being of a species quite different from their own and of a uperior nature_. This is just what Saturn did. He loved mankind and laced to rule over it no mortal king or prince but--"Spirits and Genii
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}) of a divine nature more excellent than that of man."
It was God (the Logos, the Synthesis of the Host), who thus presiding over he Genii became the first Shepherd and Leader of men.(847) When the world ad ceased to be so governed and the Gods retired, ferocious beasts evoured a portion of mankind. Left to their own resources and industry,
Inventors then appeared among them successively and discovered fire, heat, wine; and public gratitude deified them.(848)
And mankind was right, as fire by friction was the first mystery of ature, the first and chief property of matter that was revealed to man.
As say the Commentaries:
_Fruits and grain, unknown to Earth to that day, were brought by the
__"__Lords of Wisdom,__"__ for the benefit of those they ruled from other
Lokas [Spheres]._
Now:
The earliest inventions [?] of mankind are the most wonderful that
the race has ever made.... The _first use of fire_, and the
discovery of the methods by which it can be kindled; the
domestication of animals; and, above all, _the processes by which
the various cereals were first developed_ out of some wild grasses
[?]--these are all _discoveries with which, in ingenuity and in
importance, no subsequent discoveries may compare_. They are all
unknown to history--all lost in the light of an _effulgent
dawn_.(849)
This will be doubted and denied in our proud generation. But if it be sserted that there are no grains and fruits _unknown to earth_, then we ay remind the reader _that wheat has never been found in the wild state; t is not a product of the earth_. All the other cereals have been traced o their primogenital forms in various species of wild grasses, but wheat as hitherto defied the efforts of Botanists to trace it to its origin.
And let us bear in mind, in this connection, how sacred was this cereal ith the Egyptian priests; wheat was placed even in their mummies, and has een found thousands of years later in their coffins. Remember how the ervants of Horus glean the wheat in the field of Aanroo, wheat _seven ubits high_.(850)
Says the Egyptian Isis:
I am the Queen of these regions; I was the first to reveal to
mortals the mysteries of wheat and corn.... I am she who rises in
the constellation of the Dog.... Rejoice, O Egypt! thou who wert
my nurse.(851)
Sirius was called the Dog-star. It was the star of Mercury or Budha, alled the great Instructor of Mankind.
The Chinese _Y-King_ attributes the discovery of agriculture to "the nstruction given to men by celestial genii."
Woe, woe to the men who know nought, observe nought, nor will they
see. They are all blind,(852) since they remain ignorant how full
the world is of various and invisible creatures which crowd even
in the most sacred places.(853)
The "Sons of God" _have_ existed and _do_ exist. From the Hindű
Brahmaputras and Mânasaputras, Sons of Brahmâ and Mind-born Sons, down to he Bne Aleim of the Jewish _Bible_, the faith of the centuries and niversal tradition force reason to yield to such evidence. Of what value s "independent criticism" so-called, or "internal evidence"--based usually n the respective hobbies of the critics--in the face of the universal estimony, which has never varied throughout the historical cycles? For nstance, read Esoterically the sixth chapter of _Genesis_, which repeats he statements of the Secret Doctrine, though slightly changing its form, nd drawing a different conclusion which clashes even with the _Zohar_.
There were giants in the earth in those days; _and also after
that_, when the sons of God Bne Aleim came in unto the daughters
of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men
which were of old, men of renown [or giants].(854)
What does this sentence, "and also after that," signify unless it means:
There were Giants in the Earth _before_, _i.e._, before the Sinless Sons f the Third Race; _and also after that_ when other Sons of God, lower in ature, inaugurated sexual connection on Earth--as Daksha did, when he saw hat his Mânasaputras would not people the Earth? And then comes a long reak in the chapter between verses 4 and 5. For surely, it was not in or hrough the wickedness of the "mighty men ... men of renown," among whom s placed Nimrod the "mighty hunter before the Lord," that "God saw that he wickedness of man was great," nor in the builders of Babel, for this as _after_ the Deluge; but in the progeny of the Giants who produced
_monstra qućdam de genere giganteo_, monsters from whence sprang the lower aces of men, now represented on Earth by a few miserable dying-out tribes nd the huge anthropoid apes.
And if we are taken to task by Theologians, whether Protestant or Roman
Catholic, we have only to refer them to their own literal texts. The above uoted verse has ever been a dilemma, not alone for the men of Science and iblical scholars, but also for priests. For, as the Rev. Father Péronne uts it:
Either they (the Bne Aleim) were good Angels, and in such case how
could they fall? Or they were bad (Angels), and in that case could
not be called Bne Aleim, or sons of God.(855)
This biblical riddle--"the real sense of which no author has ever nderstood," as is candidly confessed by Fourmont(856)--can only be xplained by the Occult doctrine, through the _Zohar_ to the Western, and he _Book of Dzyan_ to the Eastern. What the latter says we have seen; hat the _Zohar_ tells us is that Bne Aleim was a name common to the
Malachim, the good Messengers, and to the Ischins, the lower Angels.(857)
We may add for the benefit of the Demonologists that their Satan, the
"Adversary," is included in _Job_ among the "sons" of God or Bne Aleim who isit their father.(858) But of this later on.
Now the _Zohar_ says that the Ischins, the beautiful Bne Aleim, were _not_ uilty, but mixed _themselves with mortal men because they were sent on arth to do so_.(859) Elsewhere the same volume shows these Bne Aleim elonging to the tenth sub-division of the "Thrones."(860) It also xplains that the Ischins--"Men-spirits," _viri spirituales_(861)--now that en can see them no longer, help Magicians to produce, by their Science,
Homunculi which are not "small men" but "men _smaller_ (in the sense of nferiority) than men." Both show themselves under the form that the
Ischins had then, _i.e._, gaseous and ethereal. Their chief is Azazel.
But Azazel, whom the Church dogma persists in associating with Satan, is othing of the kind. Azazel is a _mystery_, as explained elsewhere, and it s so expressed by Maimonides:
There is an impenetrable mystery in the narrative concerning
Azazel.(862)
And so there is, as Lanci, a librarian to the Vatican, whom we have quoted efore, and one who ought to know, says:
This venerable divine name (_nome divino e venerabile_) has become
through the pen of biblical scholars, a devil, a wilderness, a
mountain, and a he-goat.(863)
Therefore it seems foolish to derive the name, as Spencer does, from Azal
(separated) and El (God), hence "one separated from God"--the Devil. In the
_Zohar_, Azazel is rather the "sacrificial victim" than the "formal dversary of Jehovah," as Spencer would have it.(864)
The amount of malicious fancy and fiction bestowed on this "Host" by arious fanatical writers is quite extraordinary. Azazel and his "Host" re simply the Hebrew "Prometheus," and ought to be viewed from the same tandpoint. The _Zohar_ shows the Ischins chained to the mountain in the esert. This is allegorical, and simply alludes to these "Spirits" as eing chained to the Earth during the Cycle of Incarnation. Azazel, or
Azazyel, is one of the chiefs of the "transgressing" Angels in the _Book f Enoch_, who descending upon Ardis, the top of Mount Armon, bound hemselves by swearing loyalty to each other. It is said that Azazyel aught men to make swords, knives, shields, to fabricate mirrors (?), to ake _one see what is behind him_--viz., "magic mirrors." Amazarak taught ll the sorcerers and dividers of roots; Amers taught the solution of
Magic; Barkayal, Astrology; Akibeel, the meaning of portents and signs;
Tamiel, Astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the Moon.(865) "These even were the first instructors of the fourth man" (_i.e._, of the Fourth
Race). But why should allegory be always understood as meaning just what ts dead-letter expresses?
It is the symbolical representation of the great struggle between Divine
Wisdom, Nous, and its Earthly Reflection, Psyche, or between Spirit and
Soul, in Heaven and on Earth. In Heaven--because the Divine Monad had oluntarily exiled itself therefrom, to descend, for incarnating purposes, o a lower plane and thus transform the _animal_ of clay into an immortal
_God_. For, as Éliphas Lévi tells us:
The Angels aspire to become Men; for the perfect Man, the Man-God,
is above even Angels.
On Earth--because no sooner had Spirit descended than it was strangled in he coils of Matter.
Strange to say, the Occult Teaching reverses the characters; it is the nthropomorphous Archangel in the case of the Christians, and the man-like
God with the Hindűs, which represent Matter in this case; and the Dragon, r Serpent, Spirit. Occult symbolism furnishes the key to the mystery; heological symbolism conceals it still more. For the former explains many saying in the _Bible_ and even in the _New Testament_ which has hitherto emained incomprehensible; while the latter, owing to its dogma of Satan nd his rebellion, has belittled the character and nature of its would-be nfinite, absolutely perfect God, and created the greatest evil and curse n Earth--belief in a personal Devil. This mystery is now partially evealed. The key to its metaphysical interpretation has now been estored, while the key to its theological interpretation shows the Gods nd Archangels standing as symbols for the dead-letter or dogmatic eligions, as arrayed against the pure truths of Spirit, naked and nadorned with fancy.
Many were the hints thrown out in this direction in _Isis Unveiled_, and a till greater number of references to the mystery may be found scattered hroughout these volumes. To make the point clear once for all; that which he clergy of every dogmatic religion, preëminently the Christian, points ut as Satan, the enemy of God, is, in reality, the highest divine
Spirit--Occult Wisdom on Earth--which is naturally antagonistic to every orldly, evanescent illusion, dogmatic or ecclesiastical religions ncluded. Thus, the Latin Church, intolerant, bigoted and cruel to all who o not choose to be its slaves, the Church which calls itself the "bride" f Christ, and at the same time the trustee of Peter, to whom the rebuke f the Master "Get thee behind me, Satan" was justly addressed; and again he Protestant Church which, while calling itself Christian, paradoxically eplaces the New Dispensation by the old Law of Moses which Christ openly epudiated--both these Churches are fighting against divine Truth, when epudiating and slandering the Dragon of Esoteric Divine Wisdom. Whenever hey anathematize the Gnostic Solar Chnouphis, the Agathodćmon Christos, r the Theosophical Serpent of Eternity, or even the Serpent of
_Genesis_--they are moved by the same spirit of dark fanaticism that moved he Pharisees to curse Jesus with the words: "Say we not well thou hast a evil?"
Read the account of Indra (Vâyu) in the _Rig Veda_, the Occult volume _par xcellence_ of Âryanism, and then compare it with the same in the
_Purânas_--the exoteric version thereof, and the purposely garbled account f the true Wisdom Religion. In the _Rig Veda_, Indra is the highest and reatest of the Gods, and his Soma-drinking is allegorical of his highly piritual nature. In the _Purânas_, Indra becomes a profligate, and a egular drunkard on the Soma-juice, in the ordinary terrestrial way. He is he conqueror of all the "enemies of the Gods" the Daityas, Nâgas
(Serpents), Asuras, all the Serpent-gods, and of Vritra, the Cosmic
Serpent. Indra is the St. Michael of the Hindű Pantheon--the chief of the
_militant_ Host. Turning to the _Bible_, we find Satan, one of the "Sons f God,"(866) becoming in exoteric interpretation the Devil, and the
Dragon, in its infernal, evil sense. But in the _Kabalah_,(867) Samael, ho is Satan, is shown to be identical with St. Michael, the Slayer of the
Dragon. How is this, when it is said that Tselem (the Image) reflects like Michael and Samael, _who are one_? Both proceed, it is taught, from
Ruach (Spirit), Neshamah (Soul) and Nephesh (Life). In the Chaldćan _Book f Numbers_ Samael is the concealed (Occult) Wisdom, and Michael the igher _terrestrial_ Wisdom, both emanating from the same source, but iverging after their issue from the Mundane Soul, which on Earth is
Mahat, intellectual understanding, or Manas, the seat of intellect. They iverge, because the one (Michael) is _influenced_ by Neshamah, while the ther (Samael) remains _uninfluenced_. This tenet was perverted by the ogmatic spirit of the Church, which, loathing independent Spirit, ninfluenced by the external form, hence by dogma, forthwith made of
Samael-Satan--the most wise and spiritual spirit of all--the Adversary of ts anthropomorphic God and sensual physical man, the Devil!
The Origin Of The Satanic Myth.
Let us, then, fathom this creation of the Patristic fancy still deeper, nd find its prototype with the Pagans. The origin of the new Satanic myth s easy to trace. The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in very part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It ook rise in the whisperings about secret Initiations among the profane, nd was once universally established through the formerly universal eliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world ere covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the ult is now preserved mostly in China and Buddhist countries,
Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the
priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of
his God.(868)
Among the religions of the past, it is in Egypt we have to seek for its
Western origin. The Ophites adopted their rites from Hermes Trismegistus, nd heliolatrous worship with its Sun-gods crossed over into the land of he Pharaohs from India. In the Gods of Stonehenge we recognize the ivinities of Delphi and Babylon, and in those of the latter the Devas of he Vedic nations. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Krishna and
Kâliya, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names--the latest of hich are Michael and the Red Dragon, and St. George and his Dragon. As
Michael is "one as God," or his "Double" for terrestrial purposes, and is ne of the Elohim, the fighting Angel, he is thus simply a permutation of
Jehovah. Whatever the cosmic or astronomical event that first gave rise to he allegory of the "War in Heaven," its earthly origin has to be sought n the temples of Initiation and archaic crypts; and the proof is that we ind (_a_) the priests assuming the name of the Gods they served; (_b_) he "Dragons" held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality nd Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (_c_) the Hierophants f Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the "Sons of he Dragon" and "Serpents"; thus corroborating the teachings of the Secret
Doctrine.
There were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldća, some of them of a very ast extent. The most renowned of these were the subterranean crypts of
Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, xtended towards the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpent's
Catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the Sacred
Mysteries of the Kuklos Anagkęs, the "Unavoidable Cycle," more generally nown as the "Circle of Necessity"; the inexorable doom imposed upon every
Soul after bodily death, when it has been judged in the Amentian region.
In De Bourbourg's book, Votan, the Mexican Demi-god, in narrating his xpedition, describes a subterranean passage which ran on underground, and erminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a
Snake's hole, "_un agujero de colubra_"; and that he was admitted to it ecause he was himself a "Son of the Snakes," or a Serpent.(869)
This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the "Snake's ole" is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The
Hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, and also of Babylon, generally styled hemselves during the Mysteries, the "Sons of the Serpent-god," or "Sons f the Dragon."
"The Assyrian priest always bore the name of his God," says Movers. The
Druids of the Celto-Britannic regions also called themselves Snakes. "I am Serpent, I am a Druid," they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin rother to the Carnac of Bretagne, the latter Carnac meaning the Serpent's
Mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these emples were sacred to the Dragon, only because it was the symbol of the
Sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the Highest God--the Phoenician
Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.(870) Besides the urname of Serpents, they had also the appellation of "Builders" or
"Architects," for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was uch that even now the pulverized remains of them "frighten the athematical calculations of our modern engineers," as Taliesin says.(871)
De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo-
Cohuatl, or Serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and
Canaan. "I am Hivim," they say. "Being a Hivim, I am of the great race of he Dragon (Snake). I am a Snake myself, for I am a Hivim."(872)
Furthermore, the "War in Heaven" is shown, in one of its significations, o have referred to those terrible struggles in store for the Candidate or Adeptship--struggles between himself and his (by Magic) personified uman passions, when the enlightened _Inner Man_ had to either slay them r fail. In the former case he became the "Dragon-Slayer," as having appily overcome all the temptations, and a "Son of the Serpent" and a
Serpent himself, having cast off his old skin and being born in a _new_ ody, becoming a Son of Wisdom and Immortality in Eternity.
Seth, the reputed forefather of Israel, is only a Jewish travesty of
Hermes, the God of Wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Satan.
He is also Typhon, the same as Apophis, the Dragon slain by Horus; for
Typhon was also called Set. He is simply the _dark side_ of Osiris, his rother, as Angra Mainyu is the black shadow of Ahura Mazda.
Terrestrially, all these allegories were connected with the trials of
Adeptship and Initiation. Astronomically, they referred to the Solar and
Lunar eclipses, the mythical explanations of which we find to this day in
India and Ceylon, where anyone can study the allegorical narratives and raditions which have remained unchanged for many thousands of years.
Râhu, mythologically, is a Daitya--a Giant, a Demi-god, the lower part of hose body ended in a Dragon's or Serpent's tail. During the Churning of he Ocean, when the Gods produced the Amrita, the Water of Immortality, he tole some of it, and, drinking, became immortal. The Sun and Moon, who ad detected him in his theft, denounced him to Vishnu, who placed him in he stellar spheres, the upper portion of his body representing the
Dragon's head and the lower (Ketu) the Dragon's tail; the two being the scending and descending nodes. Since then, Râhu wreaks his vengeance on he Sun and Moon by occasionally swallowing them. But this fable has nother mystic meaning, for Râhu, the Dragon's head, played a prominent art in the Mysteries of the Sun's (Vikartana's) Initiation, when the
Candidate and the Dragon had a supreme fight.
The caves of the Rishis, the abodes of Teiresias and the Greek seers, were odelled on those of the Nâgas--the Hindű King-Snakes, who dwelt in avities of the rocks under the ground. From Shesha, the thousand-headed
Serpent, on which Vishnu rests, down to Python, the Dragon-serpent oracle, ll point to the secret meaning of the myth. In India we find the fact entioned in the earliest _Purânas_. The children of Surasâ are the mighty
"Dragons." The _Vâyu Purâna_ replacing the "Dragons" of Surasâ of the
_Vishnu Purâna_ by the Dânavas, the descendants of Danu by the sage
Kashyapa, and these Dânavas being the Giants, or Titans, who warred gainst the Gods, they are thus shown identical with the "Dragons" and
"Serpents" of Wisdom.
We have only to compare the Sun-gods of every country, to find their llegories agreeing perfectly with each other; and the more the llegorical symbol is Occult the more its corresponding symbol in exoteric ystems agrees with it. Thus, if from three systems widely differing from ach other in appearance--the old Âryan, the ancient Greek, and the modern
Christian schemes--several Sun-gods and Dragons are selected at random, hey will be found to be copied from each other.
Let us take Agni the Fire-god, Indra the firmament, and Kârttikeya from he Hindűs; the Greek Apollo; and Michael, the "Angel of the Sun," the irst of the Ćons, called by the Gnostics the "Saviour"--and proceed in rder.
(1) Agni, the Fire-god, is called Vaishvânara in the _Rig Veda_. Now
Vaishvânara is a Dânava, a Giant-demon,(873) whose daughters Pulomâ and
Kâlakâ are the mothers of numberless Dânavas (30 millions), by
Kashyapa,(874) and live in Hiranyapura, "_the golden city, floating in the ir_."(875) Therefore, Indra is, in a fashion, the step-son of these two s a son of Kashyapa; and Kashyapa is, in this sense, identical with Agni, he Fire-god, or Sun (Kashyapa-Âditya). To this same group belongs Skanda r Kârttikeya, God of War, the _six-faced_ planet Mars astronomically, a
Kumâra, or Virgin-youth, born of Agni,(876) for the purpose of destroying
Târaka, the Dânava Demon, the grandson of Kashyapa by his son
Hiranyâksha.(877) Târaka's Yoga austerities were so extraordinary that hey became formidable to the Gods, who feared such a rival in power.(878)
While Indra, the bright God of the Firmament, kills Vritra, or Ahi, the
Serpent-Demon--for which feat he is called Vritra-han, the "Destroyer of
Vritra"--he also leads the hosts of Devas (Angels or Gods) against other
Gods who rebel against Brahmâ, for which he is surnamed Jishnu, "Leader of he Celestial Host." Kârttikeya is also found bearing the same titles. For illing Târaka, the Dânava, he is called Târaka-jit, "Vanquisher of
Târaka,"(879) Kumâra Guha, the "mysterious Virgin-youth," Siddha-sena,
"Leader of the Siddhas," and Shakti-dhara, "Spear-holder."
(2) Now take Apollo, the Grecian Sun-god, and by comparing the mythical ccounts given of him, see whether he does not answer both to Indra,
Kârttikeya, and even Kashyapa-Âditya, and at the same time to Michael (as he Angelic form of Jehovah) the "Angel of the Sun," who is "like," and
"one with, God." Later ingenious interpretations for monotheistic urposes, elevated though they be into not-to-be-questioned Church dogmas, rove nothing, except, perhaps, the abuse of human authority and power.
Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the "Light of Life and of the
World,"(880) who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he s the Sun-god _par excellence_. At the moment of his birth he asks for is bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before is birth,(881) and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy--like
Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, the _too holy nd wise_ Demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria--the
"golden star island," the "earth which floats in the air," which is the
Hindű golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}) Agnus Dei, the
Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt
"from all sensual love."(882) He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, nd as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, he "red Dragon," connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic
Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks
Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W.
E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and nderstanding of the spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling f the _esoteric_ meaning of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, he would have nderstood St. John's _Revelation_, and even the _Pentateuch_, better than e does. For the way to the _Bible_ lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, s the way to these is through the Hindű and Chaldćan religious symbols.
(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of
St. John's _Revelation_, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without he smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its rigin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late
George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the
Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:
Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam,
as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards
he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the
spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who _curses him_,
and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of
humanity.(883)
This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of
evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.
The gods have weapons forged for them,(884) and Merodach [the
Archangel Michael in _Revelation_] undertakes to lead the heavenly
host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit,
ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.(885)
This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last nd terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of he nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the
Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.
The symbols of the "Dragon" and "War in Heaven" have, as already stated, ore than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events eing included in the one common allegory. But they had also a osmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its orms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the _Vedas_ this Ahi-Vritra s referred to as the Demon of Drought, the terrible hot Wind. Indra is hown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder nd lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, nd then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the "Slayer f Vritra," as Michael is called the Conqueror and "Slayer of the Dragon."
Both these "Enemies" are then the "Old Dragon" precipitated into the epths of the Earth, in this one sense.
The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over hem, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the ccount in the _Vendîdâd_. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by
Ahura Mazda to "invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven
Karshvares(886) of the Earth";(887) which Karshvares in their seven pplications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to he seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense s applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In he same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host,
Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: "I invoke the seven bright
Sravah with their sons and their flocks."(888) The "Sravah"--a word which he Orientalists have given up as one "of unknown meaning"--means the same
Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the
Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those
_manifested_ Powers; and "their sons and their flocks" refer to the
Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations.
"Amshaspand" is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and ffairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the "maker f the _material_ world." Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta
Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as "the fair daughter of
Ahura Mazda,"(889) who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and
Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious
Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never ronounced outside the temple.
Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of _Genesis_, and one of the primeval
Angels who rebelled, is the name of the "Red Dragon." He is the Angel of
Death, for the _Talmud_ says that "the Angel of Death and Satan are the ame." He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who lso is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is dentical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the
Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra. "Simoon is called Atabutos" r--Diabolos, the Devil.
Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis--the Accuser in the _Book of the Dead_--is orsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon s the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that hrows everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the urderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archćology emonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,(890) whose effigy was iscovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like
Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, hat has the head and tail of a serpent.(891)
Cosmologically, then, all the Dragons and Serpents conquered by their
"Slayers" are, in their origin, the turbulent confused principles in
Chaos, brought to order by the Sun-gods or _Creative_ Powers. In the _Book f the Dead_ those principles are called the "Sons of Rebellion."(892)
In that night, the oppressor, the murderer of Osiris, otherwise
called the _deceiving Serpent_ ... calls the Sons of Rebellion in
_Air_, and when they arrive to the East of the Heavens, then there
is War in Heaven and in the entire World.(893)
In the Scandinavian _Eddas_ the "War" of the Ases with the Hrimthurses or
Frost giants, and of Asathor with the Jotuns, the Serpents and Dragons and he "Wolf" who comes out of "Darkness"--is the repetition of the same myth.
The "Evil Spirits,"(894) who began by being simply the emblems of Chaos, ave become euhemerized by the superstition of the rabble, until they have inally won the right of citizenship in what are claimed to be the most ivilized and learned races of this globe _since its creation_, and have ecome a dogma with Christians. As George Smith has it:
The evil principles [Spirits], emblems of Chaos [in Chaldća and
Assyria as in Egypt, we see], ... resist this change and make war
on the Moon, the eldest son of Bel, drawing over to their side the
Sun, Venus and the atmospheric god Vul.(895)
This is only another version of the Hindű "War in Heaven," between Soma, he Moon, and the Gods; Indra being the atmospheric Vul--which shows it lainly to be both a cosmogonical and an astronomical allegory, woven into nd drawn from the earliest Theogony as taught in the Mysteries.
It is in the religious doctrines of the Gnostics that we can best see the eal meaning of the Dragon, the Serpent, the Goat, and all those symbols f Powers now called Evil; for it is they who, in their teachings, ivulged the Esoteric nature of the Jewish substitute for Ain Suph, the rue meaning of which the Rabbins concealed, while the Christians, with a ew exceptions, knew nothing of it. Surely Jesus of Nazareth would have ardly advised his apostles to show themselves as _wise_ as the serpent, ad the latter been a symbol of the Evil One; nor would the Ophites, the earned Egyptian Gnostics of the "Brotherhood of the Serpent," have everenced a living snake in their ceremonies as the emblem of _Wisdom_, he divine Sophia, and a type of the All-good, not the All-bad, were that eptile so closely connected with Satan. The fact is, that even as a ommon ophidian it has ever been a dual symbol, and as a dragon it has ever been anything else than a symbol of the Manifested Deity in its reat Wisdom. The _draco volans_, the "flying dragon" of the early ainters, may be an exaggerated picture of the real extinct antediluvian nimal, and those who have faith in the Occult Teachings believe that in he days of old there were such creatures as flying dragons, a kind of
Pterodactyl, and that it is those gigantic winged lizards that served as rototypes for the Seraph of Moses and his great Brazen Serpent.(896) The
Jews formerly worshipped the latter _idol_ themselves, but, after the eligious reforms brought about by Hezekiah, they turned round, and called hat symbol of the Great or Higher God of every other nation a Devil, and heir own usurper--the "One God."(897)
The appellation Sa'tan, in Hebrew Sâtân, an "Adversary" (from the verb
_shatana_, "to be adverse," "to persecute") belongs by right to the first nd cruellest "Adversary" _of all the other Gods_--Jehovah; not to the
Serpent, which spoke only words of sympathy and wisdom, and is at the orst, even in the dogma, the "Adversary" _of men_. This dogma, based as t is on the third chapter of _Genesis_, is as illogical and unjust as it s paradoxical. For who was the first to _create_ that original and enceforward universal tempter of man--the woman? Not the Serpent surely, ut the "Lord God" himself, who, saying, "It is not good that the man hould be alone," made woman, and "brought her unto the man."(898) If the npleasant little incident that followed _was_ and is still to be regarded s the "original sin," then it exhibits the Creator's divine foresight in poor light indeed. It would have been far better for the first Adam of he first chapter to have been left either "male and female," or "alone."
It is the Lord God, evidently, who was the real cause of all the mischief, he "_agent provocateur_," and the Serpent--only a prototype of Azazel,
"the scapegoat for the sin of [the God of] Israel," the poor Tragos having o pay the penalty for his Master's and Creator's blunder. This, of ourse, is addressed only to those who accept the opening events of the rama of humanity in _Genesis_ in their dead-letter sense. Those who read hem Esoterically, are not reduced to fanciful speculations and ypotheses; they _know_ how to read the symbolism therein contained, and annot err.
There is at present no need to touch upon the mystic and manifold meaning f the name Jehovah in its abstract sense, one independent of the Deity alsely called by that name. It was a "blind" purposely created by the
Rabbins, a secret preserved by them with ten-fold care after the
Christians had despoiled them of this God-name which was their own roperty.(899) The following statement, however, is now made. The ersonage who is named in the first four chapters of _Genesis_ variously s "God," the "Lord God," and "Lord" simply, is not one and the same erson; certainly it is not Jehovah. There are three distinct classes or roups of the Elohim called Sephiroth in the _Kabalah_. Jehovah appears nly in chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the first verse of which he is named
Cain, and in the last transformed into _mankind_--male and female, Jah- eh.(900) The Serpent, moreover, is not Satan, but the bright Angel, one f the Elohim clothed in radiance and glory, who--promising the woman, if hey ate of the forbidden fruit, "ye shall not surely die"--kept his romise, and made man immortal in his _incorruptible nature_. He is the
Iao of the Mysteries, the chief of the Androgyne Creators of men. Chapter ii contains (Esoterically) the withdrawal of the veil of ignorance that losed the perceptions of the Angelic Man, made in the image of the
"boneless" Gods, and the opening of his consciousness to his real nature; hus showing the Bright Angel (Lucifer) in the light of a giver of
Immortality, and as the "Enlightener"; while the real Fall into generation nd matter is to be sought in chapter iv. There, Jehovah-Cain, the male art of Adam the _dual_ man, having separated himself from Eve, creates in er Abel, _the first natural woman_,(901) and sheds the _virgin blood_.
Now Cain, being shown identical with Jehovah, on the authority of the orrect reading of the first verse of chapter iv of _Genesis_, in the riginal Hebrew text, and the Rabbins teaching that "Kin (Cain) the Evil as the Son of Eve by Samael, the Devil, who occupied the place of
Adam,"(902) and the _Talmud_ adding that "the evil Spirit, Satan, and
Samael, the angel of Death, are the same"(903)--it becomes easy to see that
Jehovah (mankind, or Jah-hovah) and Satan (therefore the tempting Serpent) re one and the same in every particular. _There is no Devil, no Evil utside mankind to produce a Devil._ Evil is a necessity in, and one of he supporters of the Manifested Universe. It is a necessity for progress nd evolution, as night is necessary for the production of day, and death or that of life--_that man may live for ever_.
Satan represents metaphysically simply the _reverse_ or the _polar pposite_ of everything in Nature.(904) He is the "Adversary," llegorically, the "Murderer," and the great Enemy of _all_, because there s nothing in the whole Universe that has not two sides--the reverses of he same medal. But in that case, light, goodness, beauty, etc., may be alled Satan with as much propriety as the Devil, since they are the
Adversaries of darkness, badness, and ugliness. And now the philosophy and he _rationale_ of certain early Christian sects--called _heretical_ and iewed as the abomination of the times--will become more comprehensible. We ay understand how it was that the sect of Satanians came to be degraded, nd were anathematized without any hope of vindication in a future day, ince they kept their tenets secret. How, on the same principle, the
Cainites came to be degraded, and even the (Judas) Iscariotes; the true haracter of the _treacherous_ apostle having never been correctly resented before the tribunal of humanity.
As a direct consequence, the tenets of the Gnostic sects also become lear. Each of these sects was founded by an Initiate, while their tenets ere based on the correct knowledge of the symbolism of every nation. Thus t becomes comprehensible why Ilda-baoth was regarded by most of them as he God of Moses, and was held to be a proud, ambitious, and impure
Spirit, who had abused his power by usurping the place of the Highest God, hough he was no better, and in some respects far worse than his brother
Elohim; the latter representing the all-embracing, manifested Deity only n their collectivity, since they were the Fashioners of the first ifferentiations of the primary Cosmic Substance for the creation of the henomenal Universe. Therefore Jehovah was called by the Gnostics the
Creator of, and one with, Ophiomorphos, the Serpent, Satan, or Evil.(905)
They taught that Iurbo and Adonai were names of Iao-Jehovah, who is an manation of Ilda-baoth.(906) This, in their language, amounted to saying hat the Rabbins expressed in a more veiled way, by stating that "Cain had een generated by Samael or Satan."
The Fallen Angels, in every ancient system, are made the prototypes of
_fallen_ men--allegorically, and _those men themselves_--Esoterically. Thus he Elohim of the hour of creation became the Beni-Elohim, the Sons of
God, among whom is Satan, in the Semitic traditions. War in Heaven between
Thrćtaona and Azhi-dahaka, the destroying Serpent, ends on Earth, ccording to Burnouf, in the battle of pious men against the power of
Evil, "of the Iranians with the Âryan Brâhmans of India." And the conflict f the Gods with the Asuras is repeated in the Great War--the Mahâbhârata.
In the latest religion of all, Christianity, all the combatants, Gods and
Demons, Adversaries in both the camps, are now transformed into Dragons nd Satans, simply in order to connect Evil personified with the Serpent f _Genesis_, and thus prove the new dogma.
Noah Was A Kabir, Hence He Must Have Been A Demon.
It matters little whether it were Isis, or Ceres, the Kabiria, or again he Kabiri, who taught men agriculture; but it is very important to revent fanatics from monopolizing all the facts in history and legend, nd from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon ne man. Noah is either a _myth_ along with the others, or one whose egend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in
Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or
Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and esearch, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri r pious Titans, etc.--then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, nd along with it all the Patriarchs--the Antediluvian and Pre-Atlantean
Titans. As has now been discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the God of
_power and generation_, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed.(907) Tubal-
Cain is a Kabir, "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron"; r--if this will please better--he is one with Hephćstus or Vulcan. Jabal gain is taken from the Kabiri, instructors in agriculture, "such as have attle," and Jubal is "the father of all those who handle the harp," he, r _they_ who fabricated the harp for Cronus and the trident for
Poseidon.(908)
The history or "fables" about the mysterious Telchines--fables echoing each nd all the archaic events of our Esoteric Teachings--furnish us with a key o the origin of Cain's genealogy in the third chapter of _Genesis_; they ive the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies "the accursed lood" of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the
Deluge. Were not the Telchines--it is argued--the mysterious ironworkers of
Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the Gods, furnish them ith weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were estroyed by a Deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that f Jehovah?
The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They re the Atlanteans also. Says Decharme:
Like Lemnos and Samothrace, Rhodes, the birth-place of the
Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation.(909)
The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been reviously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like the Samothrace f the Kabiri, it is connected by the memory of men with the Flood egends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left or the present.
But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of early every Pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs ontain, in poetized form, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who re all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to isconnect the two genealogies of Seth and Cain,(910) and the further qually futile attempt to show them as _real_, _historical_ men, has only ed to more serious enquiries into the history of the past, and to iscoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed _revelation_. For nstance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the urther identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Cronus-Saturn is lso proved.
That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the
Christian writers. Bryant(911) concurs with all those who are of opinion hat Sydic, or Sadic, was the Patriarch Noah, and also Melchizedek; and hat the name by which he is called, Sadic, corresponds with the character iven him in _Genesis_.(912)
He was {~HEBREW LETTER TSADI~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER QOF~}, Sadic, a _just man_, and perfect in his generation.
All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and
through his sons transmitted to posterity.(913)
Now it is Sanchuniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the
Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchi-zedek). True enough, as this information as descended to us through the _Preparatio Evangelica_ of Eusebius, it ay be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than ikely that he dealt with Sanchuniathon's works as he has with Manetho's
Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic,
Cronus, or Saturn, with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the
Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's haracteristic as a _just man_, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious
Melchizedek, "king of Salem, and priest of the most high God," after "his wn order";(914) and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, stronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they ecame rabbinically and kabalistically.
In speaking of Adam, Cain, Mars, etc., as _personifications_, we find the uthor of the _Source of Measures_ enunciating our very Esoteric Teachings n his kabalistic researches. Thus he says:
Now, Mars was the Lord of _birth_, and of _death_, of _generation_
and of _destruction_, of _ploughing_, of _building_, of
_sculpture_ or stone-cutting, of _architecture_, ... in fine, of
all comprised under our English word ARTS. He was the _primal
principle_, disintegrating into the modification of _two opposites
for production_. Astronomically, too,(915) he held the birthplace
of the day and year, _the place of its increase of strength_,
Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the
house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as _birth_, was
_Good_; as _death_, was _Evil_. As _good_, he was _light_; as
_bad_, he was _night_. As _good_, he was _man_; as _bad_, he was
_woman_. He held the cardinal points, and as _Cain_, or
_Vulcan_,(916) or _Pater Sadic_, or _Melchizadek_, he was lord of
the _ecliptic_, or _balance_, or _line of adjustment_, and
therefore was _The Just One_. The ancients held to there being
seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater
Sadic, _The Just or Right One_, was Lord of the eighth, which was
_Mater Terra_.(917)
This makes their functions, after they had been degraded, plain enough, nd establishes the identity.
The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead-letter and within the period f biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the ious, but very arbitrary, supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to ollow that Deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather anciful to any impartial observer to be told that:
There were two distinct races of Cabiri, the first consisting of
Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionusus of
Mnaseas; the second, of the children of Shem, who are the Cabiri
of Sanchoniatho, while their father Sydyk is consequently the
scriptural Shem.(918)
The Kabirim, the "Mighty Ones," are identical with our primeval Dhyân
Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the
Rulers and Instructors of the primeval races, who are referred to as the
Gods and Kings of the Divine Dynasties.
The Oldest Persian Traditions About The Polar, And The Submerged
Continents.
Legendary lore could not distort facts so effectually as to reduce them to nrecognizable shape. Between the traditions of Egypt and Greece on the ne hand, and Persia on the other--a country ever at war with the ormer--there is too great a similarity of figures and numbers to admit of uch coincidence being due to simple chance. This has been well proven by
Bailly. Let us pause for a moment to examine these traditions from every vailable source, in order to the better compare those of the Magi with he so-called Grecian "fables."
Those legends have now passed into popular tales, the folklore of Persia, s many a real fiction has found its way into our universal history. The tories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are also fairy ales to all appearance; yet they are based on facts, and pertain to the istory of England. Why should not the folklore of Iran be part and parcel f the history and the pre-historic events of Atlantis? That folklore says s follows:
Before the creation of Adam, two races lived on Earth, the one succeeding he other; the Devs who reigned 7,000 years, and the Peris (the Izeds) who eigned but 2,000, and while the former were still in existence. The Devs ere giants, strong and wicked; the Peris were smaller in stature, but iser and kinder.
Here we recognize the Atlantean Giants and the Âryans, or the Râkshasas of he _Râmâyana_ and the children of Bharata-varsha, or India; the Ante- and he Post-diluvians of the _Bible_.
Gyan (or Gnan, Jnâna, True or Occult Wisdom and Knowledge), also called
Gian-ben-Gian (or Wisdom, son of Wisdom), was the king of the Peris.(919)
He had a shield as famous as that of Achilles, only instead of serving gainst an enemy in war, it served as a protection against black magic, he _sorcery_ of the Devs. Gian-ben-Gian had reigned 2,000 years when
Iblis, the Devil, was permitted by God to defeat the Peris and scatter hem to the other end of the world. Even the magic shield, which, by being roduced on the principles of Astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, nd bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate, r Karma.(920) They count ten kings in their last metropolis called
Khanoom, and make the tenth, Kaimurath, identical with the Hebrew Adam.
These kings answer to the ten antediluvian generations of kings as given y Berosus.
Distorted as these legends are now found to be, one can hardly fail to dentify them with the Chaldćan, Egyptian, Greek, and even Hebrew raditions, for the Jewish myth, though disdaining in its exclusiveness to peak of Pre-Adamite nations, nevertheless allows these to be clearly nferred, by sending out Cain--_one of the only two living men on arth_--into the land of Nod, where he gets married and builds a city.(921)
Now if we compare the 9,000 years mentioned by the Persian tales with the
9,000 years which Plato declared had passed since the submersion of the ast Atlantis, a very strange fact is made apparent. Bailly remarked on his, but distorted it by his interpretation. The Secret Doctrine may estore the figures to their true meaning. We read in the _Critias_:
First of all one must remember that 9,000 years have elapsed
_since the war of the nations_, which lived above and outside the
Pillars of Hercules, and those which peopled the lands on this
side.
In the _Timćus_ Plato says the same. The Secret Doctrine declaring that ost of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between
850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and that the Âryans were 200,000 years old hen the first great "Island," or Continent, was submerged, there seems ardly any reconciliation possible between the figures. But there is, in ruth. Plato, being an Initiate, had to use the veiled language of the
Sanctuary, and so had the Magi of Chaldća and Persia through whose xoteric revelations the Persian legends were preserved and passed to osterity. Thus, we find the Hebrews calling a week "seven days," and peaking of a "week of years" when each of its days represents 360 solar ears, and the whole "week" is 2,520 years, in fact. They had a Sabbatical eek, a Sabbatical year, etc., and their Sabbath lasted indifferently 24 ours or 24,000 years, in the secret calculations of their Sods. We of the resent times call an age a "century." They of Plato's day, the initiated riters, at any rate, by a millennium meant not 1,000 but 100,000 years; hile the Hindűs, more independent than any, have never concealed their hronology. Thus, for 9,000 years, the Initiates will read 900,000 years, uring which space of time--_i.e._, from the first appearance of the Âryan
Race, when the Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began radually sinking(922) and other continents to appear on the surface, down o the final disappearance of Plato's small island of Atlantis--the Âryan aces had never ceased to fight with the descendants of the first giant aces. This war lasted till nearly the close of the age which preceded the
Kali Yuga, and was the Mahâbhârata, or Great War, so famous in Indian istory. Such blending of events and epochs, and the bringing down of undreds of thousands into thousands of years, does not interfere with the umbers of years that have elapsed, according to the statement made by the
Egyptian priests to Solon, since the destruction of the last portion of
Atlantis. The 9,000 years were the correct figures. The latter event had ever been kept a secret, and had only faded out of the memory of the
Greeks. The Egyptians had their records complete, because of their solation; being surrounded by sea and desert, they had been left ntrammelled by other nations, till about a few millenniums before our ra.
History catches a glimpse of Egypt and its great Mysteries for the first ime through Herodotus, if we do not take into account the _Bible_, and ts queer chronology.(923) And how little Herodotus _could_ tell is onfessed by himself when, speaking of a mysterious tomb of an Initiate at
Saďs, in the sacred precinct of Minerva, he says:
Behind the chapel ... is the tomb of One, _whose name I consider
it impious to divulge_.... In the enclosure stand large obelisks
and there is a _lake_ near, surrounded with a stone wall formed
_in a circle_.... In this lake they perform by night, that
person's adventures, which the Egyptians call _Mysteries_: on
these matters, however, though I am accurately acquainted with the
particulars of them, _I must observe a discreet silence_.(924)
On the other hand, it is well to know that no secret was so well preserved nd so sacred with the Ancients, as that of their cycles and computations.
From the Egyptians down to the Jews it was held as the highest sin to ivulge anything pertaining to the correct measure of time. It was for ivulging the secrets of the Gods, that Tantalus was plunged into the nfernal regions; the keepers of the sacred Sibylline Books were hreatened with the death penalty for revealing a word from them.
Sigalions, or images of Harpocrates, were in every temple--especially in hose of Isis and Serapis--each pressing a finger to the lips. And the
Hebrews taught that to divulge the secrets of the Kabalah, after nitiation into the Rabbinical Mysteries, was like eating of the fruit of he Tree of Knowledge; it was punishable by death.
And yet we Europeans have accepted the exoteric chronology of the Jews!
What wonder that it has ever since influenced and coloured all our onceptions of Science and the duration of things!
The Persian traditions, then, are full of two nations or races, now ntirely extinct, as some think. But this is not so; they are only ransformed. These traditions are ever speaking of the Mountains of Kaf
(Kafaristan?), which contain a gallery built by the giant Argeak, wherein tatues of the ancient men under all their forms are preserved. They call hem Sulimans (Solomons) or the wise kings of the East, and count seventy- wo kings of that name.(925) Three among them reigned for 1,000 years ach.(926)
Siamek, the beloved son of Kaimurath (Adam), their first king, was urdered by his giant brother. His father had a perpetual fire preserved n the tomb which contained his cremated ashes; hence--the origin of fire- orship, as some Orientalists think!
Then came Huschenk, the prudent and the wise. It was his Dynasty which re- iscovered metals and precious stones, after they had been concealed by he Devs or Giants in the bowels of the Earth, and also how to make brass- ork, to cut canals, and improve agriculture. As usual, it is Huschenk, gain, who is credited with having written the work called _Eternal
Wisdom_, and even with having built the cities of Luz, Babylon and
Ispahan, though indeed they were built ages later. But as modern Delhi is uilt on six other older cities, so these cities may be built on mplacements of other cities of an immense antiquity. As to his date, it an only be inferred from another legend.
In the same tradition this wise prince is credited with having made war gainst the Giants on a twelve-legged Horse, whose birth is attributed to he _amours_ of a crocodile with a female hippopotamus. This "Dodecapod" as found on the "dry island" or new continent; much force and cunning had o be used to secure the wonderful animal, but no sooner had Huschenk ounted him, than he defeated every enemy. No Giants could withstand his remendous power. Finally, however, this king of kings was killed by an normous rock which the Giants threw at him from the great mountains of
Damavend.(927)
Tahmurath is the third king of Persia, the St. George of Iran, the knight ho always has the best of, and finally kills, the Dragon. He is the great nemy of the Devs who, in his day, dwelt in the Mountains of Kaf, and ccasionally made raids on the Peris. The old French chronicles of the
Persian folklore call him the Dev-bend, the conqueror of the Giants. He, oo, is credited with having founded Babylon, Nineveh, Diarbek, etc. Like is grand-sire Huschenk, Tahmurath (Taimuraz) also had his steed, only far ore rare and rapid--a bird called Simorgh-Anke. A marvellous bird, in ruth, intelligent, a polyglot, and even very religious.(928) What says hat Persian Phoenix? It complains of its old age, for it was born cycles nd cycles before the days of Adam (Kaimurath). It has witnessed the evolutions of long centuries. It has seen the birth and the close of welve cycles of 7,000 years each, which multiplied Esoterically will give s again 840,000 years.(929) Simorgh is born with the last Deluge of the
Pre-Adamites, says the "Romance of Simorgh and the good Khalif"!(930)
What says the _Book of Numbers_? Esoterically, Adam Rishoon is the Lunar
Spirit (Jehovah, in a sense, or the Pitris), and his three sons--Ka-yin,
Habel, and Seth--represent the three Races, as already explained. Noah-
Xisuthrus represents, in his turn (in the cosmo-geological key), the Third
Race separated, and his three sons, its last three races; Ham, moreover, ymbolizing that race which uncovered the "nakedness" of the Parent Race, nd of the "Mindless," _i.e._, committed sin.
Tahmurath visits on his winged steed the Mountains of Koh-Kaf or Kaph. He inds there the Peris ill-treated by the Giants, and slays Argen, and the iant Demrusch. Then he liberates the good Peri, Mergiana,(931) whom
Demrusch had kept as a prisoner, and takes her over to the "dry island,"
_i.e._, the new continent of Europe.(932) After him came Giamschid, who uilds Esikekar, or Persepolis. This king reigns 700 years, and, in his reat pride, believes himself immortal, and demands divine honours. Fate unishes him; he wanders for 100 years in the world under the name of
Dhulkarnayn, the "two-horned." But this epithet has no connection with the
"two-horned" gentleman of the cloven foot. The "two-horned" is the epithet iven in Asia--which is uncivilized enough to know nothing of the ttributes of the Devil--to those conquerors who have subdued the world rom the East to the West.
Then come the usurper Zohac, and Feridan, one of the Persian heroes, who anquishes the former, and shuts him up in the mountains of Damavend.
These are followed by many others down to Kaikobad, who founded a new
Dynasty.
Such is the legendary history of Persia, and we have to analyze it. To egin with, what are the Mountains of Kaf?
Whatever they may be in their geographical status, whether they are the
Caucasian or Central Asian mountains, legend places the Devs and Peris far eyond these mountains to the North, the Peris being the remote ancestors f the Parsîs or Farsîs. Oriental tradition is ever referring to an nknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, evertheless, are situated the "Fortunate Islands," wherein, from the eginning of life on earth, bubbles the "Fountain of Life."(933) The egend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first "dry island"
(continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, ince then, beyond the Mountains of Koh-Kaf, "the stony girdle that urrounds the world." A journey of seven months' duration will bring him ho is possessed of "Soliman's Ring" to that "Fountain," if he keep on ourneying North, straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying, herefore, from Persia _straight_ North, will bring one along the sixtieth egree of longitude, holding to the West, to Nova Zembla; and from the
Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic Circle would land one etween the sixtieth and forty-fifth degrees of longitude, or between Nova
Zembla and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapodian Horse f Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath, or Taimuraz, upon which to ross over the Arctic Ocean.(934)
Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will aintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow-capped summits of Kap, or
Caucasus, _there is a great continent now concealed from all_; that it is eached by those who can secure the services of the twelve-legged progeny f the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will welve _wings_,(935) or by those who have the patience to wait for the ood pleasure of Simorgh-Anke, who promised that before she dies she will eveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and ithin easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build etween that portion of the "dry island" and its severed parts.(936) This elates, of course, to the Seventh Race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric
Cycle.
It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth entury A.D., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt t first, in a country "beyond the Ocean," a proof of which had been given im in India, by a learned Chaldćan. He says:
The lands we live in are surrounded by the Ocean, but beyond that
Ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky;
and it is in this land that man was created and lived in Paradise.
During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his
posterity now inhabits.(937)
The twelve-legged Horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the
"dry island."
The "Christian Topography" of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are ell known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, which as now, moreover, been corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller uspects a continent or a "dry island" beyond the line of eternal ice.
Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the
Commentaries may become clearer.
_In the first beginnings of [human] life, the only dry land was on the ight end_(_938_)_ of the Sphere, where it [the Globe] is otionless._(_939_)_ The whole Earth was one vast watery desert, and the aters were tepid.... There, man was born on the seven zones of the mmortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara._(_940_)_ There was eternal pring in darkness. [But] that which is darkness to the man of to-day, was ight to the man of his dawn. There, the Gods rested, and Fohat_(_941_)_ eigns ever since.... Thus the wise Fathers say that man is born in the ead of his Mother [Earth], and that her feet at the left end generated
[begot] the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon ...
Between the First and Second [Races] the Eternal Central [Land] was ivided by the Water of Life._(_942_)
_It flows around and animates her [Mother Earth's] body. Its one end ssues from her head; it becomes foul at her feet [the Southern Pole]. It ets purified [on its return] to her heart--which beats under the foot of he sacred Shambalah, which then [in the beginnings] was not yet born. For t is in the belt of man's dwelling [the Earth] that lies concealed the ife and health of all that lives and breathes._(_943_)_ During the First nd Second [Races] the belt was covered with the great waters. [But] the reat __ Mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the irst one which our wise men call the head-gear [the cap]. She travailed arder for the Third [Race] and her waist and navel appeared above the ater. It was the belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches around the
World._(_944_)_ She broke toward the setting Sun from her neck_(_945_)_ ownward [to the South-West], into many lands and islands, but the Eternal
Land [the cap] broke not asunder. Dry lands covered the face of the silent aters to the four sides of the World. All these perished [in their turn].
Then appeared the abode of the wicked [the Atlantis]. The Eternal Land was ow hid, for the waters became solid [frozen] under the breath of her ostrils and the evil winds from the Dragon's mouth, etc._
This shows that Northern Asia is as old as the Second Race. One may even ay that Asia is contemporary with man, since from the very beginnings of uman life its Root-Continent, so to speak, already existed, and that part f the world now known as Asia was only cut off from it in a later age, nd divided by the glacial waters.
If, then, the teaching is understood correctly, the first Continent which ame into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken rust, and remains so to this day, beyond that inland sea which seemed ike an unreachable _mirage_ to the few arctic travellers who perceived t.
During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a ontinuation of the "head" from the "neck." Beginning on both hemispheres, n the line above the most noryhern part of Spitzbergen,(946) on
Mercator's Projection, on our side, it may have included, on the American ide, the localities that are now occupied by Baffin's Bay and the eighbouring islands and promontories. _There_ it hardly reached, outhward, the seventieth degree of latitude; _here_ it formed the orseshoe continent of which the Commentary speaks; of the two ends of hich, one included Greenland with a prolongation which crossed the iftieth degree a little South-West, and the other Kamschatka, the two nds being united by what is now the northern fringe of the coasts of
Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the arly part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in ts turn, Atlantis appeared.
Western Speculations, Founded On The Greek And Paurânic Traditions.
Thus it becomes natural to find that, on even such meagre data as have eached the profane historian, Rudbeck, a Swedish Scientist, about two enturies ago, tried to prove that Sweden was the Atlantis of Plato. He ven thought that he had found in the configuration of ancient Upsala, the ituation and measurements of the capital of "Atlantis" as given by the
Greek sage. As Bailly proved, Rudbeck was mistaken; but so was Bailly ikewise, and still more so, for Sweden and Norway had formed part and arcel of ancient Lemuria, and also of Atlantis on the European side, just s Eastern and Western Siberia and Kamschatka had belonged to it, on the
Asiatic. Only, once more, when was it? We can find it out approximately nly by studying the _Purânas_, that is to say if we will have nought to o with the Secret Teachings.
Three-quarters of a century have already elapsed since Wilford brought orward his fanciful theories about the British islands being the "White
Island," the Atala of the _Purânas_. This was sheer nonsense, as the Atala s one of the seven Dvîpas, or Islands, belonging to the nether Lokas, one f the seven regions of Pâtâla (the antipodes). Moreover, as Wilford(947) hows, the _Purânas_ place it "on the seventh zone or seventh limate"--rather, on the seventh measure of heat--which thus locates it etween the latitudes of 24° and 28° North. It is then to be sought on the ame degree as the Tropic of Cancer, whereas England is between the atitudes of 50° and 60°. Wilford speaks of it as Atala, Atlantis, the
White Island. Its enemy is called the "White Devil," the Demon of Terror, or he says:
In their [the Hindű and Persian] romances, we see Cai-caus going
to the mountain of _Az-burj_, or _As-burj_, _at the foot of which_
the sun sets, to fight the _Div-sefid_, or white devil, the _Târa-
daitya_ of the _Purânas_, and whose abode was on the _seventh
stage_ of the world, answering to the seventh zone of the
Bauddhists; ... or, in other words, to the White Island.(948)
Now here the Orientalists have been, and are still, facing the Sphinx's iddle, the erroneous solution of which will ever destroy their uthority--if not their persons--in the eyes of every Hindű scholar, whether r not an Initiate. For there is not a statement in the _Purânas_--on the onflicting details of which Wilford based his speculations--which has not everal meanings, and which does not apply to both the physical and the etaphysical worlds. If the old Hindűs divided the face of the Globe into even Zones, Climates, Dvîpas, geographically, and into seven Hells and even Heavens, allegorically, the measure of seven did not apply in both ases to the same localities. Now it is the North Pole, the country of
"Meru," which is the seventh division, as it answers to the seventh
Principle (or fourth metaphysically), of the Occult calculation. It epresents the region of Âtmâ, of pure Soul, and Spirituality. Hence
Pushkara is shown as the seventh Zone, or Dvîpa, which encompasses the
Kshîra Ocean, or Ocean of Milk (the ever-frozen white region) in the
_Vishnu_ and other _Purânas_.(949) And Pushkara, with its two Varshas, ies directly at the foot of Meru. For it is said that:
The two countries north and south of Meru are _shaped like a bow_,
... [and that] one half of the surface of the earth is on the
south of Meru and the other half on the north of Meru--_beyond
which is half of Pushkara_.
Geographically, then, Pushkara is America, Northern and Southern; and llegorically it is the prolongation of Jambu-dvîpa,(950) in the middle of hich stands Meru, for it is the country inhabited by beings who live ten housand years, who are free from sickness or failing; where there is either virtue nor vice, caste or laws, for these men are "of the same ature as the Gods."(951) Wilford is inclined to see Meru in Mount Atlas, nd locates there also the Lokâloka. Now Meru, we are told, which is the
Svar-loka, the abode of Brahmâ, of Vishnu, and the Olympus of Indian xoteric religions, is described geographically as "passing through the iddle of the earth-globe, and protruding on either side."(952) On its pper station are the Gods, at the nether, or South Pole, is the abode of
Demons (Hells). How then can Meru be Mount Atlas? Besides which,
Târadaitya, a Demon, cannot be placed on the seventh zone if the latter be dentified with the White Island, which is Shveta-dvîpa, for reasons given n the foot-note above.
Wilford accuses the modern Brâhmans "of having jumbled them [islands and ountries] all together"; but it is _he_ who has jumbled them still more.
He believes that as the _Brahmânda_ and _Vâyu Purânas_ divide the old
Continent into seven Dvîpas, said to be surrounded by a vast ocean, beyond hich lie the regions and mountains of Atala, hence:
Most probably the Greeks derived their notion of the celebrated
Atlantis, which, as it could not be found after having once been
discovered, they conceived to have been destroyed by some shock of
nature.(953)
As we find certain difficulties in believing that the Egyptian priests,
Plato, and even Homer, all built their notions of Atlantis on Atala--a ether region located at the Southern Pole--we prefer holding to the tatements given in the Secret Books. We believe in the seven Continents, our of which have already lived their day, the fifth still exists, and wo are to appear in the future. We believe that each of these is not trictly a continent in the modern sense of the word, but that each name, rom Jambu down to Pushkara,(954) refers to the geographical names given
(i) to the dry lands covering the face of the whole Earth during the eriod of a Root-Race, in general; (ii) to what remained of these after a eological Race Pralaya, as Jambu, for instance; and (iii) to those ocalities which will enter, after future cataclysms, into the formation f new universal Continents, Peninsulas, or Dvîpas(955)--each Continent eing, in one sense, a greater or smaller region of dry land surrounded ith water. Thus, that whatever "jumble" the nomenclature of these may epresent to the profane, there is none, in fact, to him who has the key.
Thus, we believe we know that, though two of the Paurânic Islands--the
Sixth and Seventh Continents--are yet to come, nevertheless there _were_, r there _are_, lands which will enter into the composition of the future ry lands, of new Earths whose geographical faces will be entirely hanged, as were those of the past. Therefore we find in the _Purânas_ hat Shâka-dvîpa is (or will be) a Continent, and that Shankha-dvîpa, as hown in the _Vâyu Purâna_, is only "a minor island," one of the nine ivisions (to which _Vâyu_ adds six more) of Bhârata-varsha. Because
Shankha-dvîpa was peopled by "Mlechchhas [unclean foreigners], who orshipped Hindű divinities," therefore they were connected with
India.(956) This accounts for Shankhâsura, a King of a portion of Shankha- vîpa, who was killed by Krishna; that King who resided in the palace
"which was an ocean shell, and whose subjects lived in shells also," says
Wilford.
On the banks of the Nîlâ(957) there were frequent contests between
the Devatâs [Divine Beings, Demi-gods] and the Daityas [Giants]:
but the latter tribe having prevailed, their king and leader,
Shankhâsura, who resided in the ocean, made frequent incursions
... in the night.(958)
It is not on the banks of the Nile, as Wilford supposes, but on the coasts f Western Africa, South of where now lies Morocco, that these battles ook place. There was a time when the whole of the Sahara Desert was a ea, then a continent as fertile as the Delta, and then, only after nother temporary submersion, it became a desert similar to that other ilderness, the Desert of Shamo or Gobi. This is shown in Paurânic radition, for on the same page as above cited, it is said:
The people were between two fires; for, while Shankhâsura was
ravaging one side of the continent, Cracacha [or Krauncha], king
of Crauncha-dwîp [Krauncha-dvîpa], used to desolate the other:
both armies ... thus _changed the most fertile of regions into a
barren desert_.
That not only the last island of Atlantis, spoken of by Plato, but a large
Continent, first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas nd islands (called Dvîpas), preceded Europe, is sure. It covered the hole of the North and South Atlantic regions, as well as portions of the
North and South Pacific, and had islands even in the Indian Ocean (relics f Lemuria). The claim is corroborated by Indian _Purânas_, Greek writers, nd Asiatic, Persian, and Mahommedan traditions. Wilford, who sorely onfuses the Hindű and the Mussulman legends, shows this, however, learly.(959) His facts and quotations from the _Purânas_ give direct and onclusive evidence that the Âryan Hindűs and other ancient nations were arlier navigators than the Phoenicians, who are now credited with having een the first seamen that appeared in the post-diluvian times. This is hat we read in the _Asiatick Researches_:
In this distress the few natives, who survived [in the war between
Devatâs and Daityas] raised their hands and hearts to Bhagavân,
and exclaimed, "Let him that can deliver us ... be our king";
using the word ÎT [a _magic_ term not understood by Wilford,
evidently] which reëchoed through the whole country.(960)
Then comes a violent storm, the waters of the Kâlî are strangely agitated,
"when there appeared from the waves ... a man, afterwards called ÎT, at he head of a numerous army, saying '_abhayan_,' or _there is no fear_"; nd scattered the enemy. "The King ÎT," explains Wilford, "is a ubordinate incarnation of Mrira"--Mrida, a form of Rudra, probably?--who
"reëstablished peace and prosperity throughout all Shankha-dvîpa, through
Barbaradęsa, Misra-st'hân and Arva-st'hân, or Arabia,"(961) etc.
Surely, if the Hindű _Purânas_ give a description of wars on continents nd islands situated beyond Western Africa in the Atlantic Ocean; if their riters speak of Barbaras and other people such as Arabs--they who were ever known to navigate, or cross the Kâla-pâni, the Black Waters of the
Ocean, in the days of Phoenician navigation--then these _Purânas_ must be lder than those Phoenicians who are placed at from 2,000 to 3,000 years
B.C. At any rate, their traditions must have been older,(962) for an Adept rites:
_In the above accounts, the Hindűs speak of this island as existing and in reat power; it must, therefore, have been more than eleven thousand years go._
But another proof may be adduced of the great antiquity of these Hindű
Âryans who described the last surviving island of Atlantis, or rather of hat remnant of the Eastern portion of that Continent which had perished oon after the upheaval of the two Americas(963)--the two Varshas of
Pushkara. And they described what they knew, for they had once dwelt on t. This may be demonstrated, moreover, on an astronomical calculation by n Adept who criticizes Wilford. Recalling what that Orientalist had rought forward concerning the Mount Ashburj "at the foot of which the sun ets," where was the war between the Devatâs and the Daityas,(964) he ays:
_We will consider, then, the latitude and longitude of the lost island, nd of the remaining Mount Ashburj. It was on the seventh stage of the orld_, _i.e._, _in the seventh climate (which is between the latitude of
24 degrees and latitude 28 degrees north).... This island, the daughter of he Ocean, is frequently described as lying in the West; and the Sun is epresented as setting at the foot of its mountain (Ashburj, Atlas,
Teneriffe or Nila, no matter the name), and fighting the White Devil of he __"__White Island.__"_
Now, if we consider this statement from its astronomical aspect, as
Krishna is the incarnated Sun (Vishnu), a solar God, and as he is said to ave killed Div-sefid, the White Devil--a _possible_ personification of the ncient inhabitants at the foot of the Atlas--he may perchance be only a epresentation of the vertical beams of the Sun. Again, these inhabitants, he Atlantides, as we have seen, are accused by Diodorus of daily
_cursing_ the Sun, and ever fighting his influence. This is, however, only n astronomical interpretation. It will now be proved that Shankhâsura, nd Shankha-dvîpa, and all their history, is also geographically and thnologically Plato's Atlantis in Hindű dress.
It has just been remarked that since, in the Paurânic accounts, the island s _still existing_, these accounts must be older than the 11,000 years hich have elapsed since Shankha-dvîpa, or the Poseidonis of Atlantis, isappeared. But is it not barely possible that Hindűs should have known he island still earlier? Let us turn again to astronomical emonstrations, which make this quite plain if with the said Adept one ssumes that:
_At the time when the summer tropical __"__colure__"__ passed through the
Pleiades, when Cor Leonis would be upon the equator, and when Leo_ was ertical _to Ceylon at sunset, then would Taurus be vertical to the island f Atlantis at noon_.
This explains, perhaps, why the Sinhalese, the heirs of the Râkshasas and
Giants of Lankâ, and the direct descendants of Sinha, or Leo, became onnected with Shankha-dvîpa or Poseidonis (Plato's Atlantis). Only, as hown by Mackey's _Sphinxiad_, this must have occurred about 23,000 years go, _astronomically_; at which time the obliquity of the ecliptic must ave been rather more than 27 degrees, and consequently Taurus must have assed over Atlantis or Shankha-dvîpa. And that it was so is clearly emonstrated. Say the Commentaries:
_The sacred bull Nandi was brought from Bhârata to Shankha to meet
Rishabha [Taurus] every Kalpa. But when those of the White Island [who escended originally from Shveta-dvîpa],_(_965_)_ who had mixed with the
Daityas [Giants] of the land of iniquity, had become black with sin, then
Nandi remained for ever in the White Island [or Shveta-dvîpa].... Those of he Fourth World [Race] lost AUM._
Asburj, or Azburj, whether the peak of Teneriffe or not, was a volcano, hen the sinking of the "Western Atala," or Hell, began, and those who ere saved told the tale to their children. Plato's Atlantis perished etween water below and fire above; the great mountain vomiting flames all he while.
_The __"__fire-vomiting Monster__"__ survived alone out of the ruins of he unfortunate island._
Do the Greeks, who are accused of borrowing a Hindű fiction (Atala), and nventing from it another (Atlantis), stand also accused of getting their eographical notions and the number seven from them?
"The famous Atlantis exists no longer, but we can hardly doubt
that it did once," says Proclus, "for Marcellus, who wrote a
history of Ethiopian affairs, says that such, and so great, an
island once existed, and this is evidenced by those who composed
histories relative to the external sea. For _they relate that in
this time there were seven islands_ in the Atlantic sea sacred to
Proserpine; and besides these, three of immense magnitude, sacred
to Pluto, ... Jupiter, ... and Neptune. And, besides this, the
inhabitants of the last island [Poseidonis] _preserved the memory
of the prodigious magnitude_ of the Atlantic island as related by
their ancestors, and of its governing for many periods all the
islands in the Atlantic sea. From this _isle_ one may pass to
other large islands beyond, which are not far from the firm land,
near which is the true sea."
These seven Dvîpas [inaccurately rendered islands] constitute,
according to Marcellus, the body of the famous Atlantis.... This
evidently shows that _Atlantis is the old continent_.... The
Atlantis was destroyed after a violent storm [?]: this is well
known to the Paurâunics, some of whom assert that in consequence
of this dreadful convulsion of nature, six of the Dvîpas
disappeared.(966)
Enough proofs have now been given to satisfy the greatest sceptic.
Nevertheless, direct proofs based on exact Science will also be added. And et even though volumes were written, it would be to no purpose for those ho will neither see nor hear, except through the eyes and ears of their espective authorities.
Hence the teaching of the Roman Catholic scholiasts, namely, that Hermon, he mount in the land of Mizpeth--meaning "anathema," "destruction"--is the ame as Mount Armon. As a proof of this, Josephus is often quoted, as ffirming that still in his own day enormous bones of giants were daily iscovered on it. But it was the land of Balaam the prophet, whom the
"Lord loved well." And so mixed up are facts and personages in the said choliasts' brains, that, when the _Zohar_ explains the "Birds" which nspired Balaam to mean "Serpents," to wit, the Wise Men and Adepts at hose School he had learnt the mysteries of prophecy--the opportunity is gain taken of showing Mount Hermon inhabited by the "winged dragons of
Evil, whose chief is Samael"--the Jewish Satan! As Spencer says:
It is to those unclean spirits chained on Mount Hermon of the
Desert, that the scape-goat of Israel, who assumed the name of one
of them [Azaz(y)el], was sent.
We say it is not so. The _Zohar_ has the following explanation on the ractice of magic which is called in Hebrew Nehhaschim, or the "Serpents'
Works." It says (part iii. col. 302):
It is called Nehhaschim, because the magicians [practical
Kabalists] work _surrounded by the light of the Primordial
Serpent_, which they perceive in heaven as a luminous zone
composed of myriads of small stars.
This means simply the Astral Eight, so called by the Martinists, by
Éliphas Lévi, and now by all the modern Occultists.
The "Curse" From A Philosophical Point Of View.
The foregoing teachings of the Secret Doctrine, supplemented by universal raditions, must now have demonstrated that the _Brâhmanas_ and _Purânas_, he _Vendîdâd_ and other Mazdean scriptures, down to the Egyptian, Greek, nd Roman, and finally to the Jewish sacred records, all have the same rigin. None are meaningless and baseless stories, invented to entrap the nwary profane; all are allegories intended to convey, under a more or ess fantastic veil, the great truths gathered in the same field of pre- istoric tradition. Space forbids us, in these volumes, from entering into urther and more minute details with respect to the four Races which receded our own. But before offering to the student the history of the sychic and spiritual evolution of the direct antediluvian fathers of our
Fifth (Âryan) Humanity, and before demonstrating its bearing upon all the ther side branches grown from the same trunk, we have to elucidate a few ore facts. It has been shown, on the evidence of the whole ancient iterary world, and the intuitional speculations of more than one
Philosopher and Scientist of the later ages, that the tenets of our
Esoteric Doctrine are, in almost every case, corroborated by inferential s well as by direct proof, that neither the "legendary" Giants, nor the ost Continents, nor yet the evolution of the preceding Races, are quite aseless tales. In the Addenda which close this volume, Science will find tself more than once unable to reply; these Addenda, will, it is hoped, inally dispose of every sceptical remark with regard to the sacred number n nature, and our figures in general.
Meanwhile, one task is left incomplete--the disposing of that most ernicious of all the theological dogmas, the Curse under which man-kind s alleged to have suffered ever since the supposed disobedience of Adam nd Eve in the bower of Eden.
Creative powers in man were the gift of Divine Wisdom, not the result of in. This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, ho first _curses_ Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed crime ommitted, and then _blesses_ his "chosen people" by saying, "Be fruitful, nd multiply, and replenish the earth."(967) The Curse was not brought on ankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the till more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the
Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and eological law. Nor was the Curse of Karma called down upon them for eeking _natural_ union, as all the mindless animal-world does in its roper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the ivine gift, and wasting the life-essence for no purpose except bestial ersonal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of _Genesis_ ill be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the ommencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for oman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that oman should bring forth her young ones "in sorrow." Since that period, owever, during the evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity etween its seed and the "Serpent's" seed, the seed or product of Karma nd Divine Wisdom. For the seed of woman, or lust, _bruised the head_ of he seed of _the fruit of wisdom and knowledge_, by turning the holy ystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the Law of Karma
"bruised the _heel_" of the Atlantean Race, by gradually changing hysiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of he Fourth Race of mankind,(968) until, from being the healthy king of nimal creation in the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our Race, a elpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the
Globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and ntelligently bestial of all animals!(969)
This is the real Curse from the physiological standpoint, almost the only ne touched upon in Kabalistic Esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the
Curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its rogress hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse nstead of a blessing--a gift quickened by the "Lords of Wisdom," who have oured on the human Manas the fresh dew of their own Spirit and Essence.
The Divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to egret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically epicted by Ćschylus in his "Prometheus Bound," when, at the close of the irst Titanic Age (the Age that followed that of Ethereal Man, of the ious Kandu and Pramlochâ), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and
(physiologically) senseless, is described as--
Seeing, they saw in vain;
Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams,
Through the long time all things at random mixed.
Our Saviours, the Agnishvâtta and other divine "Sons of the Flame of
Wisdom"--personified by the Greeks in Prometheus(970)--may well be left nrecognized and unthanked, in the injustice of the human heart. They may, n our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora's gift; ut to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, s the Evil Ones, is too heavy a Karma for "Him" who, when Zeus "ardently esired" to quench the entire human race, "dared alone" to save that
"mortal race" from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is make to say:
From sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom.
For this by these dire tortures I am bent,
Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold,
I who did mortals pity....
The chorus remarking very pertinently:
Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals!
Prometheus answers:
Yea, and besides 'twas I that gave them fire.
CHORUS: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire?
PROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn....
But, with the arts, the "fire" received has turned into the greatest urse; the animal element, and _consciousness_ of its possession, has hanged periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.(971) It s this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises he responsibility of free-will; the Titanic passions which represent umanity in its darkest aspect;
The restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires,
when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the
restraints of law.(972)
Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato's _Protagoras_, with hat "wisdom which ministers to physical well-being," but the lower aspect f Manas of the animal (Kâma) having remained unchanged, instead of "an ntainted mind, heaven's first gift," there was created the eternal ulture of ever unsatisfied desire, of regret and despair, coupled with
"the dreamlike feebleness that fetters the blind race of mortals" (556), nto the day when Prometheus is released by his heaven-appointed eliverer, Herakles.
Now Christians--Roman Catholics especially--have tried to prophetically onnect this drama with the coming of Christ. No greater mistake could be ade. The true Theosophist, the pursuer of Divine Wisdom and worshipper of
Absolute Perfection--the Unknown Deity which is neither Zeus nor
Jehovah--will demur to such an idea. Pointing to antiquity he will prove hat there never has been an _original_ sin, but only an abuse of physical ntelligence--the Psychic being guided by the Animal, and both putting out he light of the Spiritual. He will say: All you who can read between the ines, study Ancient Wisdom in the old dramas, the Indian and the Greek; ead carefully the "Prometheus Bound," enacted in the theatres of Athens
2,400 years ago! The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor Ćschylus; but, as
Bunsen says, it "is older than the Hellenes themselves," for it belongs, n truth, to the dawn of human consciousness. The _crucified_ Titan is the ersonified symbol of the collective Logos, the "Host," and of the "Lords f Wisdom" or the Heavenly Man, who incarnated in Humanity. Moreover, as is name (_Pro_-me-_theus_, "he who sees before him" or futurity) hows(973)--in the arts he devised and taught to humanity, psychological nsight was not the least. For as he complains to the daughters of
Oceanus:
Of prophecies the various modes I fixed, (492)
And among dreams did first discriminate
The truthful vision ... and mortals guided
To a mysterious art....
All arts to mortals from Prometheus came....
Leaving for a few pages the main subject, let us pause and see what may be he hidden meaning of this, the most ancient as it is the most suggestive f traditional allegories. As it relates directly to the early Races, this ill be no real digression.
The subject of Ćschylus' trilogy, of which two plays are lost, is known to ll cultured readers. The Demi-god robs the Gods (the Elohim) of their ecret--the mystery of the _Creative Fire_. For this sacrilegious attempt e is struck down by Cronus(974) and delivered unto Zeus, the Father and
Creator of a mankind which he would have wished to have blind ntellectually, and animal-like; a _Personal_ Deity, which will not see
Man "like one of us." Hence Prometheus, the "Fire and Light-giver," is hained on Mount Caucasus and condemned to suffer torture. But the triform
Fates (Karma), whose decrees, as the Titan says, even Zeus--
E'en he the fore-ordained cannot escape....
--ordain that those sufferings will last only to that day when a son of
Zeus--
Ay, a son bearing stronger than his sire (787)
One of thine [Io's] own descendants it must be (791)
--is born. This "Son" will deliver Prometheus (suffering Humanity) from his wn fatal gift. His name is, "He who has to come."
On the authority, then, of these few lines, which, like any other llegorical sentence, may be twisted into almost any meaning--on the uthority of the words pronounced by Prometheus and addressed to Io, the aughter of Inachus, persecuted by Zeus--a whole prophecy is constructed by ome Catholic writers. Says the crucified Titan:
And, portent past belief, the speaking oaks
By which full clearly, in no riddling phrase,
Wast hailed _as the illustrious spouse of Zeus_ ... (853)
... stroking thee
With _touch alone of unalarming hand_;
Then thou _dark Epaphos_ shalt bear, whose name
Records his sacred gendering ... (870).
This was construed by several fanatics--Des Mousseaux and De Mirville mongst others--into a clear prophecy. Io "is the mother of God," we are old, and "dark Epaphos"--Christ. But, the latter has not dethroned his
Father, except metaphorically, if one has to regard Jehovah as that
Father; nor has the Christian Saviour hurled _his_ Father down into Hades.
Prometheus says (in verse 930) that Zeus will be humbled yet:
... such marriage he prepares
Which from his throne of power to nothingness
Shall hurl him down; so shall be all fulfilled
His father Kronos' curse....
.... Then let him sit
Confiding in his lofty thunder-peals,
And wielding with both hands the fiery bolt;
For _these shall not avail, but fall he shall,_
_A fall disgraceful_, not to be endured.... (980).
"Dark Epaphos" was the Dionysus-Sabasius, the son of Zeus and of Demeter n the Sabasian Mysteries, during which the "Father of the Gods," assuming he shape of a _Serpent_, begot on Demeter Dionysus, or the Solar Bacchus.
Io is the Moon, and at the same time the Eve of a _new race_, and so is
Demeter--in the present case. The Promethean myth is a prophecy indeed; but t does not relate to any of the cyclic Saviours who have appeared eriodically in various countries and among various nations, in their ransitionary conditions of evolution. It points to the last of the ysteries of cyclic transformations, in the series of which mankind, aving passed from the ethereal to the solid physical state, from piritual to physiological procreation, is now carried onward on the pposite arc of the cycle, toward that second phase of its primitive tate, when _woman knew no man_, and human progeny _was created, not egotten_.
That state will return to it and to the world at large, when the latter hall discover and really appreciate the truths which underlie this vast roblem of sex. It will be like "the light that never shone on sea or and," and has to come to men through the Theosophical Society. That light ill lead on and up to _true spiritual intuition_. Then, as expressed once n a letter to a Theosophist,
_The world will have a race of Buddhas and Christs, for the world
will have discovered that individuals have it in their own powers
to procreate Buddha-like children--or Demons_.... When that
knowledge comes, all dogmatic religions, and with these the
Demons, will die out.
If we reflect upon the serial development of the allegory, and the haracter of the heroes, the mystery may be unriddled. Cronus is of course
"Time" in its cyclic course. He swallows his children--the _personal_ Gods f exoteric dogmas included. Instead of Zeus he has swallowed his stone dol; but the symbol has grown, and has only developed in human fancy as ankind has been cycling down toward only its physical and ntellectual--not spiritual--perfection. When it is as far advanced in its piritual evolution Cronus will be no longer deceived. Instead of the tone image he will have swallowed the anthropomorphic fiction itself.
Because, the Serpent of Wisdom, represented in the Sabasian Mysteries by he anthropomorphized Logos, the unity of spiritual and physical Powers, ill have begotten in Time (Cronus) a progeny--Dionysus-Bacchus, or the
"dark Epaphos," the "mighty one," the Race that will overthrow him. Where ill he be born? Prometheus traces him to his origin and birth-place in is prophecy to Io. Io is the Moon-goddess of generation--for she is Isis nd she is Eve, the Great Mother.(975) He traces the path of the (racial) anderings as plainly as words can express it. She has to quit Europe and o to Asia's continent, reaching there the highest of the mountains of
Caucasus (v. 737), the Titan telling her:
When thou hast crossed the flood, limit betwixt
Two continents, fronting the burning East.... (810)--
hat she must travel Eastward, after passing the "Kimmerian Bosphorus," nd cross what is evidently the Volga and now Astrakhân on the Caspian
Sea. After this she will encounter "fierce northern blasts" and cross hither to the land of the "Arimaspian host" (East of Herodotus' Scythia) o--
Pluto's gold-abounding flood.... (825).
This is rightly conjectured by Professor Newman to have meant the Ural, he Arimaspi of Herodotus being "the recognized inhabitants of this golden egion."
And here comes (between verses 825 and 835) a puzzle to all the European nterpreters. Says the Titan:
To these [Arimaspi and Grypes] approach not; a far border land
Thou next shalt reach, where dwells a swarthy race
Near the Sun's founts, whence is the Ćthiop river;
Along its banks proceed till thou attain
The mighty rapids, where from Bybline heights
Pure draughts of sacred water Neilos sends.
There Io was ordained to found a colony for herself and her sons. Now we ust see how the passage is interpreted. Io is told that she has to travel
Eastward till she comes to the river Ethiops, which she is to follow till t falls into the Nile--hence the perplexity. "According to the eographical theories of the earliest Greeks," we are informed by the uthor of the version of "Prometheus Bound":
This condition was fulfilled by the river Indus. Arrian (vi. 1)
mentions that Alexander the Great, when preparing to sail down the
Indus [having seen crocodiles in the river Indus, and in no other
river except the Nile ...], seemed to himself to have discovered
the sources of the Nile; as though the Nile, rising from some
place in India, and flowing through much desert land, and thereby
losing its name Indus, next ... flowed through inhabited land,
being now called Nile by the Ethiopians of those parts and
afterwards by the Egyptians. Virgil in the IVth Georgic echoes the
obsolete error.(976)
Both Alexander and Virgil may have erred considerably in their eographical notions; but the prophecy of Prometheus has not in the least o sinned--not, at any rate, in its Esoteric spirit. When a certain Race is ymbolized, and events pertaining to its history are rendered llegorically, no topographical accuracy ought to be expected in the tinerary traced for its personification. Yet it so happens, that the iver Ethiops is certainly the Indus, and it is also the Nîl or Nîlâ. It s the river born on the Kailâsa Heaven mountain, the Mansion of the
Gods--22,000 feet above the level of the sea. It was the Ethiops river, and as so called by the Greeks, long before the days of Alexander, because ts banks, from Attock down to Sind, were peopled by tribes generally eferred to as the Eastern Ethiopians. India and Egypt were two kindred ations, and the Eastern Ethiopians--the mighty builders--have come from
India, as is pretty well proved, it is hoped, in _Isis Unveiled_.(977)
Then why could not Alexander, and even the learned Virgil, have used the ord Nile or Neilos when speaking of the Indus, since it is one of its ames? To this day the Indus is called, in the regions around Kalabagh,
Nîl, "blue," and Nîlâ, the "blue river." The water there is of such a dark lue colour that this name was given to it from time immemorial; a small own on its banks being called by the same name, and existing to this day.
Evidently Arrian, who wrote far later than the days of Alexander, and who as ignorant of the old name of the Indus, has unconsciously slandered the
Greek conqueror. Nor are our modern historians much wiser, in judging as hey do, for they often make the most sweeping declarations on mere ppearances, as much as their ancient colleagues ever did in days of old, hen no Encyclopćdias were yet ready for them.
The race of Io, the "cow-horned maid," is then simply the first pioneer ace of the Ćthiopians brought by her from the Indus to the Nile, which eceived its name in memory of the mother river of the colonists from
India.(978) Therefore Prometheus says to Io(979) that the sacred
Neilos--the God, not the river--shall guide her "to the land, _three- ornered_," namely, to the Delta, where her sons are foreordained to found
"that far-off colony." (833 _et seqq._)
It is there that a new race (the Egyptians) will begin, and a "female ace" (873) which, "fifth in descent" from dark Epaphos--
Fifty in number shall return to Argos.
Then one of the fifty virgins will fail through love and shall--
... A kingly race in Argos bear....
But from this seed shall dauntless heroes spring,
Bow--famous, who shall free me from these ills.
When these heroes shall arise, the Titan does not reveal; for as he emarks:
This, to set forth at large needs lengthy speech.
But "Argos" is Arghyavarsha, the Land of Libations of the old Hierophants, hence the Deliverer of Humanity will appear, a name which became ages ater that of its neighbour, India--the Aryâvarta of old.
That the subject formed part of the Sabasian Mysteries is made known by everal ancient writers; among others by Cicero(980) and by Clemens
Alexandrinus.(981) The latter writers are the only ones who attribute the act of Ćschylus being charged by the Athenians with sacrilege and ondemned to be stoned to death to its true cause. They say that being imself uninitiated, Ćschylus had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them n his Trilogies on a public stage.(982) But he would have incurred the ame condemnation had he been initiated; which must have been the case, as therwise he must, like Socrates, have had a Daimon to reveal to him the ecret and sacred allegorical Drama of Initiation. At all events, it is ot the "father of the Greek tragedy" who invented the prophecy of
Prometheus; for he only repeated in dramatic form that which was revealed y the priests during the Mysteria of the Sabasia.(983) The latter was one f the oldest sacred festivals, whose origin is to this day unknown to istory. Mythologists connect it through Mithras, the Sun, called Sabasius n some old monuments, with Jupiter and Bacchus. It was never, however, he property of the Greeks, but dates from days immemorial.
The translator of the drama wonders how Ćschylus could become guilty of uch
Discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the
"Prometheus Bound" and that depicted in the remaining dramas.(984)
This is just because Ćschylus, like Shakespeare, was and will ever remain he intellectual "Sphinx" of the ages. Between Zeus, the Abstract Deity of
Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. The latter epresented in the Mysteries no higher a principle than the lower aspect f human physical intelligence--Manas wedded to Kâma; whereas
Prometheus--the divine aspect of Manas merging into and aspiring to
Buddhi--was the divine Soul. Zeus, whenever shown as yielding to his lower assions, is the Human Soul and nothing more--the _jealous_ God, revengeful nd cruel in its Egotism or "I-am-ness." Hence, Zeus is represented as a
Serpent--the intellectual tempter of man--which, nevertheless, begets in the ourse of cyclic evolution the "Man-Saviour," the Solar Bacchus or
Dionysus--_more than a man_.
Dionysus is one with Osiris, with Krishna, and with Buddha, the heavenly
Wise One, and with the coming (tenth) Avatâra, the glorified Spiritual
Christos, who will deliver the suffering Chrestos--mankind, or Prometheus, n its trial. This, say Brâhmanical and Buddhistic legends, echoed by the
Zoroastrian and now by the Christian teachings (the latter only ccasionally), will happen at the end of the Kali Yuga. It is only after he appearance of Kalki Avatâra, or Sosiosh, that man will be born from oman without sin. Then will Brahmâ, the Hindű deity, Ahura Mazda
(Ormazd), the Zoroastrian, Zeus, the Greco-Olympian Don Juan, Jehovah, the ealous, repenting, cruel, tribal God of the Israelites, and all their ikes in the universal Pantheon of human fancy--vanish and disappear in hin air. And along with these will vanish their shadows, the _dark spects_ of all these Deities, ever represented as their "twin brothers" nd creatures, in exoteric legend--their own _reflection_ on Earth, in
Esoteric Philosophy. The Ahrimans and Typhons, the Samaels and Satans, ust be all dethroned on that day, when every dark evil passion will be ubdued.
There is one Eternal Law in Nature, one that always tends to adjust ontraries, and to produce final harmony. It is owing to this Law of piritual development superseding the physical and purely intellectual, hat mankind will become freed from its false Gods, and find itself inally--Self-redeemed.
In its final revelation, the old myth of Prometheus, of whom the proto- nd anti-types are found in every ancient Theogony, stands in each of them t the very origin of physical evil, because at the threshold of human hysical life. Cronus is "Time," whose first law is that the order of the uccessive and harmonious phases, in the process of evolution during yclic development, should be strictly preserved--under the severe penalty f abnormal growth with all its ensuing results. It was not in the rogramme of natural development, that man--higher animal though he may e--should become at once, intellectually, spiritually, and psychically, he Demi-god he is on Earth, while his physical frame remains weaker, more elpless and ephemeral, than that of almost any huge mammal. The contrast s too grotesque and violent; the tabernacle much too unworthy of its ndwelling God. The gift of Prometheus thus became a Curse--though
_foreknown_ and _foreseen_ by the Host personified in that personage, as is name well shows.(985) It is in this that rests, at one and the same ime, its sin and its redemption. For the Host that incarnated in a ortion of humanity, though led to it by Karma or Nemesis, preferred free- ill to passive slavery, intellectual self-conscious pain and even orture, "while myriad time shall flow," to inane, imbecile, instinctual eatitude. Knowing such an incarnation was premature and not in the rogramme of Nature, the Heavenly Host, "Prometheus," still sacrificed tself to benefit thereby, at least, one portion of mankind.(986) But hile saving man from mental darkness, they inflicted upon him the ortures of the self-consciousness of his responsibility--the result of his ree will--besides every ill to which mortal man and flesh are heir. This orture Prometheus accepted for himself, since the Host became enceforward blended with the tabernacle prepared for them, which was till un-achieved at that period of formation.
Spiritual evolution being incapable of keeping pace with the physical, nce its homogeneity was broken by the admixture, the gift thus became the hief cause, if not the sole origin, of Evil.(987) Highly philosophical is he allegory which shows Cronus cursing Zeus for dethroning him, in the rimitive Golden Age of Saturn, when all men were Demi-gods, and for reating a physical race of men weak and helpless in comparison; and then s delivering to his (Zeus') revenge the culprit, who despoiled the Gods f their prerogative of creation and who thereby raised man to their evel, intellectually and spiritually. In the case of Prometheus, Zeus epresents the Host of the Primeval Progenitors, of the Pitaras, the
"Fathers" who created man senseless and without mind; while the Divine
Titan stands for the Spiritual Creators, the Devas who "fell" into eneration. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, han the "Prometheans"; therefore, the latter are shown conquered. "The ower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of
Zeus," was on this Earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas he superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the eshes of Matter. The inferior Host were masters of all the Cosmic and ower Titanic Forces; the higher Titan possessed only the Intellectual and
Spiritual Fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic yrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual ankind; the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of
Matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and epentance. In every such case one sees once more--
A god ... in fetters, anguish fraught;
The foe of Zeus, in hatred held of all--
God, bereft even of that supreme consolation of Prometheus, who suffered n self-sacrifice--
For that to men he [I] bore too fond a mind--
s the divine Titan is moved by altruism, but the mortal man by elfishness and egoďsm in every instance.
The modern Prometheus has now become Epi-metneus, "he who sees only after he event"; because the universal philanthropy of the former has long ago egenerated into selfishness and self-adoration. Man will become the
_free_ Titan of old, but not before cyclic evolution has reestablished the roken harmony between the two natures--the terrestrial and the divine; fter which he becomes impermeable to the lower Titanic Forces, nvulnerable in his Personality, and immortal in his Individuality--but his cannot happen before every animal element is eliminated from his ature. When man understands that "_Deus non __ fecit mortem_,"(988) but hat man has created it himself, he will re-become the Prometheus before is Fall.
For the full symbolism of Prometheus and the origin of this mythos in
Greece, the reader is referred to Part II of this Volume, Section XX,
"Prometheus, the Titan," etc. In the said Part--a kind of supplement to the resent portion--every additional information is given upon those tenets hat will be the most controverted and questioned. This work is so eterodox, when confronted with the acknowledged standards of Theology and
Modern Science, that no proof which tends to show that these standards ften usurp an illegal authority should be neglected.
Additional Fragments From A Commentary On The Verses Of Stanza XII.
The MS. from which these additional explanations are taken belongs to the roup called _Tongshaktchi Sangye Songa_, or the "Records of the Thirty- ive Buddhas of Confession," as they are _exoterically_ called. These ersonages, however, though called in the Northern Buddhist religion
Buddhas, may just as well be called Rishis, Avatâras, etc., as they are
"Buddhas who have preceded Shâkyamuni" only for the Northern followers of he ethics preached by Gautama. These great Mahâtmâs, or Buddhas, are a niversal and common property; they are _historical_ Sages--at any rate for ll the Occultists who believe in such a Hierarchy of Sages, and who have ad its existence proved to them by the learned ones of the Fraternity.
They are chosen from among some ninety-seven Buddhas in one group, and ifty-three in another,(989) mostly imaginary personages, who are really he personifications of the powers of the first-named.(990) These
"Baskets" of the oldest writings on "palm leaves" are kept very secret.
Each MS. has appended to it a short synopsis of the history of that sub- ace to which the particular Buddha-Lha belonged. The one special MS. from hich the fragments which follow have been extracted, and then rendered nto more comprehensible language, is said to have been copied from stone ablets which belonged to a Buddha of the earliest days of the Fifth Race, ho had witnessed the Deluge and the submersion of the chief continents of he Atlantean Race. The day when much, if not all, of that which is given ere from the Archaic Records, will be found correct, is not far distant.
Then the modern Symbologists will acquire the certitude that even Odin, or he God Woden, the highest God in the German and Scandinavian mythology, s one of these thirty-five Buddhas; one of the earliest, indeed, for the
Continent to which he and his Race belonged is also one of the earliest--so arly, in truth, that in those days tropical nature was to be found, where ow lie eternal unthawing snows, and one could cross almost by dry land rom Norway _viâ_ Iceland and Greenland, to the lands that at present urround Hudson's Bay.(991) In similar fashion, in the palmy days of the
Atlantean Giants, the sons of the "Giants from the East," a pilgrim could erform a journey from what in our days is termed the Sahara Desert, to he lands which now rest in dreamless sleep at the bottom of the waters of he Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Events which were never written utside the human memory, but which were religiously transmitted from one eneration to another, and from race to race, may have been preserved by onstant transmission "within the book volume of the brain," and through ountless ćons, with more truth and accuracy than inside any written ocument or record. "That which is part of our souls is eternal," says
Thackeray; and what can be nearer to our Souls than that which happens at he dawn of our lives? Those lives are countless, but the Soul or Spirit hat animates us throughout these myriads of existences is the same; and hough "the book volume" of the _physical brain_ may forget events within he scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections an never desert the Divine Soul within us. Its whispers may be too soft, he sound of its words too far off the plane perceived by our physical enses; yet the shadow of events _that were_, just as much as the shadow f the events _that are to come_, is within its perceptive powers, and is ver present before its mind's eye.
It is this Soul-voice, perhaps, which tells those who believe in tradition ore than in written history, that what is said below is all true, and elates to pre-historic facts.
This is what is written in one passage:
_The Kings of Light have departed in wrath. The sins of men have become so lack that Earth quivers in her great agony.... The Azure Seats remain mpty. Who of the Brown, who of the Red, or yet among the Black [Races], an sit in the Seats of the Blessed, the Seats of Knowledge and Mercy? Who an assume the Flower of Power, the Plant of the Golden Stem and the Azure
Blossom?_
The "Kings of Light" is the name given in all old records to the
Sovereigns of the Divine Dynasties. The "Azure Seats" are translated
"Celestial Thrones" in certain documents. The "Flower of Power" is now the
Lotus; what it may have been at that period, who can tell?
The writer proceeds, like the later Jeremiah, to bewail the fate of his eople. They had become bereft of their "Azure" (Celestial) Kings, and
"they of the deva-hue," the moon-like complexion, and "they of the efulgent (golden) face" have gone "to the Land of Bliss, the Land of Fire nd Metal"--or, agreeably with the rules of symbolism, to the lands lying
North and East, from whence "the Great Waters have been swept away, sucked n by the Earth and dissipated in the Air." The wise races had perceived
"the black Storm-dragons, called down by the Dragons of Wisdom"--and "had led, led on by the shining Protectors of the most Excellent Land"--the reat ancient Adepts, presumably; those the Hindűs refer to as their Manus nd Rishis. One of them was Vaivasvata Manu.
They "of the yellow hue" are the forefathers of those whom Ethnology now lasses as the Turanians, the Mongols, Chinese and other ancient nations; nd the land they fled to was no other than Central Asia. There, entirely ew races were born; there, they lived and died until the separation of he nations. But this "separation" did not take place either in the ocalities assigned for it by Modern Science, nor in the way the Âryans re shown to have divided and separated by Prof. Max Müller and other
Âryanists. Nearly two-thirds of one million years have elapsed since that eriod. The yellow-faced giants of the Post-Atlantean day had ample time, hrough this forced confinement to one part of the world, with the same acial blood and without any fresh infusion or admixture in it, during a eriod of nearly 700,000 years, to branch off into the most heterogeneous nd diversified types. The same is shown in Africa; nowhere does a more xtraordinary variability of types exist, from black to almost white, from igantic men to dwarfish races; and this only because of their forced solation. The Africans have not left their continent for several hundred housands of years. If to-morrow the continent of Europe were to disappear nd other lands to reëmerge instead, and if the African tribes were to eparate and scatter on the face of the Earth, it is they who, in about a undred thousand years hence, would form the bulk of the civilized ations. And it is the descendants of those of our highly cultured ations, who might have survived on some one island, without any means of rossing the new seas, that would fall back into a state of relative avagery. Thus the reason given for dividing humanity into _superior_ and
_inferior_ races falls to the ground and becomes a fallacy.
Such are the facts given in the Archaic Records. Collating and comparing hem with some modern theories of evolution, _minus_ Natural
Selection,(992) these statements appear quite reasonable and logical.
Thus, while the Âryans are the descendants of the _yellow_ Adam, the igantic and highly civilized Atlanto-Âryan race, the Semites--and the Jews long with them--are those of the _red_ Adam, and thus both De Quatrefages nd the writers of the Mosaic _Genesis_ are right. For, could chapter v of he First Book of Moses be compared with the genealogies found in our
Archaic Bible, the period from Adam unto Noah would be found noticed herein, though of course under different names, the respective years of he Patriarchs being turned into periods, and the whole being symbolical nd allegorical. In the MS. under consideration many and frequent are the eferences to the great knowledge and civilization of the Atlantean ations, showing the polity of several of them and the nature of their rts and sciences. If the Third Root-Race, the Lemuro-Atlanteans, are lready spoken of as having been drowned "with their high civilizations nd Gods,"(993) how much more may the same be said of the Atlanteans!
It is from the Fourth Race that the early Âryans got their knowledge of
"the bundle of wonderful things," the Sabhâ and Mâyâsabhâ, mentioned in he _Mahâbhârata_, the gift of Mâyâsura to the Pândavas. It is from them hat they learnt ćronautics, Vimâna Vidyâ, the "knowledge of flying in ir-vehicles," and, therefore, their great arts of Meteorography and
Meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Âryans inherited their most aluable Science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of
Chemistry, or rather Alchemy, of Mineralogy, Geology, Physics and
Astronomy.
Several times the writer has put to herself the question: Is the story of
_Exodus_--in its details at least--as narrated in the _Old Testament_, riginal? Or is it, like the story of Moses himself and many others, imply another version of the legends told of the Atlanteans? For who, pon hearing the story told of the latter, will fail to perceive the great imilarity of the fundamental features? Remember the anger of "God" at the bduracy of Pharaoh, his command to the "chosen" ones to spoil the
Egyptians, before departing, of their "jewels of silver and jewels of old,"(994) and finally the Egyptians and their Pharaoh drowned in the Red
Sea. Then read the following fragment of the earlier story from the
Commentary:
_And the __"__Great King of the Dazzling Face__"__ the chief of all the
Yellow-faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the Black-faced._
_He sent his air-vehicles [Vimânas] to all his brother-chiefs [chiefs of ther nations and tribes] with pious men within, saying:_
"_Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law, and cross the land while [yet] ry._
"_The Lords of the storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the and. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face [the
Sorcerers] live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to escend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires [the Gnomes and Fire
Elementals] are preparing their magic Agnyastra [fire-weapons worked by
Magic]. But the Lords of the Dark Eye [__'__Evil Eye__'__] are stronger han they [the Elementals] and they are the slaves of the mighty ones.
They are versed in Astra [Vidyâ, the highest magical knowledge]._(_995_)_
Come and use yours_ [i.e., _your magic powers, in order to counteract hose of the Sorcerers]. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face [an Adept of he White Magic] cause the Vimâna of every Lord of the Dark Face to come nto his hands [or possession], lest any [of the Sorcerers] should by its eans escape from the waters, avoid the Rod of the Four [Karmic Deities], nd save his wicked [followers, or people]._
"_May every Yellow Face send sleep from himself to [mesmerize?] every
Black Face. May even they [the Sorcerers] avoid pain and suffering. May __ very man true to the Solar Gods bind [paralyze] every man under the Lunar
Gods, lest he should suffer or escape his destiny._
"_And may every Yellow Face offer of his life-water [blood] to the peaking animal of a Black Face, lest he awaken his master._(996)
"_The hour has struck, the black night is ready._
"_Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the Great
Four._(_997_)_ May the Kings of Light return._"
_The great King fell upon his Dazzling Face and wept...._
_When the Kings assembled, the waters had already moved...._
_[But] the nations had now crossed the dry lands. They were beyond the ater-mark. Their Kings reached them in their Vimânas, and led them on to he lands of Fire and Metal [East and North]._
Still, in another passage, it is said:
_Stars [meteors] showered on the lands of the Black Faces; but they lept._
_The speaking beasts [the magic watchers] kept quiet._
_The nether Lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters lept._
_The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the Earth to he other. High lands remained, the bottom of the Earth [the lands of the ntipodes] remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped; the men of the
Yellow Faces and of the straight eye [the frank and sincere people]._
_When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their
Vimânas in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone._
Then a passage shows some of the more powerful Magicians of the "Dark
Faces," who awoke earlier than the others, pursuing those who had "spoilt hem" and who were in the rear-guard, for--"the nations that were led away ere as thick as the stars of the milky way," says a more modern
Commentary, written in Sanskrit only.
_Like as a dragon-snake uncoils slowly its body, so the Sons of Men, led n by the Sons of Wisdom, opened their folds, and spreading out, expanded ike a running stream of sweet waters ... many of the faint-hearted among hem perished on their way. But most were saved._
Yet the pursuers, "whose heads and chests soared high above the water," hased them "for three lunar terms" until finally reached by the rising aves, they perished to the last man, the soil sinking under their feet nd the Earth engulfing those who had desecrated her.
This sounds a good deal like the original material upon which the similar tory in _Exodus_ was built many hundred thousands of years later. The iography of Moses, the story of his birth, childhood and rescue from the
Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, is now shown to have been adapted from the
Chaldćan narrative about Sargon. And if so, the Assyrian tiles in the
British Museum being a good proof of it, why not that of the Jews robbing he Egyptians of their jewels, the death of Pharaoh and his army, and so n? The gigantic Magicians of Ruta and Daitya, the "Lords of the Dark
Face," may, in the later narrative, have become the Egyptian Magi, and the ellow-faced nations of the Fifth Race, the virtuous sons of Jacob, the
"chosen people"! One more statement has to be made. There have been everal Divine Dynasties--a series for every Root-Race beginning with the
Third, each series according and adapted to its Humanity. The last seven
Dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldćan records belonged to the
Fifth Race, which, though generally called Âryan, was not entirely so, as t was ever largely mixed up with races to which Ethnology gives other ames. It would be impossible, in view of the limited space at our isposal, to go any further into the description of the Atlanteans, in hom the whole East believes as much as we believe in the ancient
Egyptians, but whose existence the majority of the Western Scientists eny, as they have denied, before this, many a truth, from the existence f Homer down to that of the carrier pigeon. The civilization of the
Atlanteans was greater than even that of the Egyptians. It is their egenerate descendants, the nation of Plato's Atlantis, who built the irst Pyramids in the country, and that certainty before the advent of the
"Eastern Ćthiopians," as Herodotus calls the Egyptians. This may be well nferred from the statement made by Ammianus Marcellinus, who says of the
Pyramids that:
There are also subterranean passages and winding retreats, which,
it is said, men skilful in the ancient mysteries, by means of
which they divined the coming of a flood, constructed in different
places lest the memory of all their sacred ceremonies should be
lost.
These men who "divined the coming of floods" were not Egyptians, who never ad any, except the periodical rising of the Nile. Who were they? The last emnants of the Atlanteans, we maintain; those races which are dimly uspected by Science, and thinking of which Mr. Charles Gould, the well- nown Geologist, says:
Can we suppose that we have at all exhausted the great museum of
nature? Have we, in fact, penetrated yet beyond its antechambers?
Does the written history of man, comprising a few thousand years,
embrace the whole course of his intelligent existence? or have we
in the long mythical eras, extending over hundreds of thousands of
years, and recorded in the chronologies of Chaldća and of China,
shadowy mementoes of pre-historic man, handed down by tradition,
and perhaps transported by a few survivors to existing lands from
others, which, like the fabled (?) Atlantis of Plato, may have
been submerged, or the scene of some great catastrophe which
destroyed them with all their civilization.(998)
After this one can turn with more confidence to the words of a Master who rote, several years before these words were penned by Mr. Gould:
_The Fourth Race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and
Roman and even Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the ivilizations that began with the Third Race [--after its separation]._
But if this civilization and the mastery of arts and sciences are denied o the Third and Fourth Races, no one will deny that between the great ivilizations of antiquity, such as those of Egypt and India, there tretched the dark ages of crass ignorance and barbarism ever since the eginning of the Christian era up to our modern civilization, during which eriod all recollection of these traditions was lost. As said in _Isis
Unveiled_:
Why should we forget that, ages before the prows of the
adventurous Genoese clove the Western waters, the Phoenician
vessels had circumnavigated the Globe, and spread civilization in
regions now silent and deserted? What Archćologist will dare
assert that the same hand which planned the Pyramids of Egypt,
Karnak, and the thousand ruins now crumbling to oblivion on the
sandy banks of the Nile, did _not_ erect the monumental Nagkon-Wat
of Cambodia; or trace the hieroglyphics on the obelisks and doors
of the deserted Indian village, newly discovered in British
Columbia by Lord Dufferin; or those on the ruins of Palenque and
Uxmal, of Central America? Do not the relics we treasure in our
museums--last mementoes of the long "lost arts"--speak loudly in
favour of ancient civilization? And do they not prove, over and
over again, that nations and continents that have passed away have
buried along with them arts and sciences, which neither the first
crucible ever heated in a medićval cloister, nor the last cracked
by a modern chemist, have revived, nor will--at least, in the
present century.
And the same question may be put now that was put then; it may be once ore asked:
How does it happen that the most advanced standpoint that has been
reached in our times, only enables us to see in the dim distance
up the Alpine path of knowledge the monumental proofs that earlier
explorers have left to mark the plateaux they had reached and
occupied?
If modern masters are so much in advance of the old ones, why do
they not restore to us the lost arts of our postdiluvian
forefathers? Why do they not give us the unfading colours of
Luxor--the Tyrian purple, the bright vermilion, and dazzling blue
which decorate the walls of this place, and are as bright as on
the first day of their application; the indestructible cement of
the pyramids and of ancient aqueducts; the Damascus blade, which
can be turned like a corkscrew in its scabbard without breaking;
the gorgeous, unparalleled tints of the stained glass that is
found amid the dust of old ruins and beams in the windows of
ancient cathedrals; and the secret of the true malleable glass?
And if Chemistry is so little able to rival even the early
medićval ages in some arts, why boast of achievements which,
according to strong probability, were perfectly known thousands of
years ago. The more Archćology and Philology advance, the more
humiliating to our pride are the discoveries which are daily made,
the more glorious testimony do they bear in behalf of those who,
perhaps on account of the distance of their remote antiquity, have
been until now considered ignorant flounderers in the deepest mire
of superstition.
Among other Arts and Sciences, the Ancients--ay, as an heirloom from the
Atlanteans--had those of Astronomy and Symbolism, which included the nowledge of the Zodiac.
As already explained, the whole of Antiquity believed, with good reason, hat humanity and its races are all intimately connected with the Planets, nd these with the Zodiacal Signs. The whole world's history is recorded n the latter. In the ancient temples of Egypt there is an example in the
Dendera Zodiac; but except in an Arabic work, the property of a Sűfî, the riter has never met with a correct copy of these marvellous records of he past--and also of the _future_--history of our Globe. Yet the original ecords exist, most undeniably.
As Europeans are unacquainted with the real Zodiacs of India, and those hey do happen to know of they fail to understand, as witness Bentley, the eader is advised, in order to verify the statement, to turn to the work f Denon(999) in which the two famous Egyptian Zodiacs can be found and xamined. Having seen them personally, the writer has no longer need to rust to what other students--who have examined and studied both very arefully--have to say of them. The assertion of the Egyptian Priests to
Herodotus, that the terrestrial Pole and the Pole of the Ecliptic had ormerly coincided, has been corroborated by Mackey, who states that the
Poles are represented on the Zodiacs in both positions.
And in that which shows the Poles [polar axes] at right angles,
there are marks which show, that it was not the last time they
were in that position; _but the first_ [--after the Zodiacs had
been traced]. Capricorn, is, therein, represented at the North
Pole; and Cancer is divided, near its middle, at the South Pole;
which is a confirmation that, originally they had their winter
when the Sun was in Cancer. But the chief characteristics of its
being a monument commemorating the _first time_ that the Pole had
been in that position, are the Lion and the Virgin.(1000)
Broadly calculated, it is believed by Egyptologists that the Great Pyramid as built 3,350 B.C.;(1001) and that Menes and his Dynasty existed 750 ears before the appearance of the Fourth Dynasty--during which the
Pyramids are _supposed_ to have been built. Thus 4,100 years B.C. is the ge assigned to Menes. Now Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's declaration that all he facts lead to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already--
Made very great progress in the arts of civilization _before the
age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the valley
of the Nile_--(1002)
s very suggestive, as destroying this hypothesis of the comparatively odern civilizing of Egypt. It points to a great civilization in _pre- istoric_ times, and a still greater antiquity. The Schesoo-Hor, the
"servants of Horus," were the people who had settled in Egypt; and, as M.
Maspéro affirms, it is to this "pre-historic race" that--
Belongs the honour of having constituted Egypt, such as we know
it, from the commencement of the historic period.
And Staniland Wake adds:
They founded the principal cities of Egypt, and established the
most important sanctuaries.(1003)
This was _before_ the Great Pyramid epoch, and when Egypt had hardly risen from the waters. Yet:
They possessed the hieroglyphic form of writing special to the
Egyptians, and must have been already considerably advanced in
civilization.
As says Lenormant:
It was the country of the great pre-historic sanctuaries, seats of
the sacerdotal dominion, which played the most important part in
the origin of civilization.
What is the date assigned to this people? We hear of 4,000, at the utmost f 5,000, years B.C. (Maspéro). Now it is claimed that it is by means of he Cycle of 25,868 years (the Sidereal Year) that the approximate year of he erection of the Great Pyramid can be ascertained.
Assuming that the long narrow downward passage leading from the
entrance was directed towards the pole-star of the pyramid
builders, astronomers have shown that in the year 2,170 B.C. the
passage pointed to Alpha Draconis, the then pole-star.... Mr.
Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, after stating that the pole-
star was in the required position about 3,350 B.C., as well as in
2,170 B.C., says: "either of these would correspond with the
position of the descending passage in the Great Pyramid; but
Egyptologists tell us there can absolutely be no doubt that the
later epoch is far too late."(1004)
But we are also told that:
This relative position of Alpha Draconis and Alcyone being an
extraordinary one ... it could not occur again for a whole
Sidereal Year.(1005)
This demonstrates that, since the Dendera Zodiac shows the passage of hree Sidereal Years, the Great Pyramid must have been built 78,000 years go, or in any case that this possibility deserves to be accepted at least s readily as the later date of 3,350 B.C.
Now on the Zodiac of a certain temple in far Northern India, the same haracteristics of the signs as on the Dendera Zodiac are found. Those who now the Hindű symbols and constellations well, will be able to find out rom the description of the Egyptian, whether the indications of time are orrect or not. On the Dendera Zodiac, as preserved by the modern Egyptian
Coptic and Greek Adepts, and explained a little differently by Mackey, the
Dion stands upon the Hydra and his tail is almost straight, pointing ownwards at an angle of forty or fifty degrees, this position agreeing ith the _original_ conformation of these constellations. But adds Mackey:
In many places we see the Lion [Sinha], with his tail turned up
over his back, and ending with a Serpent's head; thereby, shewing
that the Lion had been _inverted_: which, indeed, must have been
the case with the whole Zodiac, and every other Constellation,
when the Pole had been inverted.
Speaking of the _circular_ Zodiac, which is also given by Denon, he says:
There ... the Lion is standing _on_ the Serpent, and his tail
forming a curve downward, from which we find that, _though six or
seven hundred thousand years_ must have passed between the two
positions, yet they had made but little or no difference in the
Constellations of Leo and the Hydra; while Virgo is represented
very differently in the two--in the circular Zodiac, the Virgin is
_nursing her child_: but it seems that they had not had that idea
when the Pole was first within the plane of the Ecliptic; for in
_this_ Zodiac, as given by Denon, we see three Virgins between the
Lion and the Scales, the last of which holds, in her hand, an ear
of wheat. It is much to be lamented that, there is in this Zodiac
a breach of the figures in the latter part of Leo and the
beginning of Virgo, which has taken away one _Decan_ out of each
sign.(1006)
Nevertheless, the meaning is plain, as the three Zodiacs belong to three ifferent epochs; namely, to the last three family races of the fourth ub-race of the Fifth Root-Race, each of which must have lived pproximately from 25,000 to 30,000 years. The first of these, the "Âryan-
Asiatics," witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the Giant
Atlanteans(1007) (the Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents) who perished some
850,000 years ago, toward the close of the Miocene Age.(1008) The fourth ub-race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the
Atlanteans--the Âryo-Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, ome 11,000 years ago. In order to understand this, the reader is asked to lance at the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root-
Race--generally, though hardly correctly, called the Âryan Race--and the xplanations appended to it.
Let the reader remember well that which is said of the divisions of Root-
Races and the evolution of Humanity in this work, and stated clearly and oncisely in Mr. Sinnett's _Esoteric Buddhism_.
1. There are seven Rounds in every Manvantara; this Round is the Fourth, nd we are in the Fifth Root-Race, at present.
2. Each Root-Race has seven sub-races.
3. Each sub-race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be alled "branch" or "family" races.
4. The little tribes, shoots, and offshoots of the last-named are ountless, and depend on Karmic action.
Examine the Genealogical Tree hereto appended, and you will understand.
The illustration is purely diagrammatic, and is only intended to assist he reader in obtaining a slight grasp of the subject, amidst the onfusion which exists between the terms which have been used at different imes for the divisions of Humanity. It is also here attempted to express n figures--but only within approximate limits, for the sake of omparison--the duration of time through which it is possible to definitely istinguish one division from another. It would only lead to hopeless onfusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few; for he Races, sub-races, etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap nd are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to eparate them.
[Illustration: Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Root-Race.]
The Human Race has been compared to a tree, and this serves admirably as n illustration.
The main stem of a tree may be compared to the Root-Race (A).
Its larger limbs to the various sub-races; seven in number (B1, B2, etc.).
On each of these limbs are seven "branches," or "family" races (C).
After this the cactus-plant is a better illustration, for its fleshy
"leaves" are covered with sharp spines, each of which may be compared to a ation or tribe of human beings.
Now our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence--as a Race _sui eneris_ and quite free from its parent stem--about 1,000,000 years; herefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding sub-races as lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each family race has an verage existence of about 30,000 years, and thus the European "family ace" has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or he innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding "season" of hree or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the omparative approximation of duration between the lives of a "family race" nd a Sidereal Year.
The knowledge of the foregoing, and the absolutely correct divisions of ime, formed part and parcel of the Mysteries, where these Sciences were aught to the Disciples, and where they were transmitted by one Hierophant o another. Everyone is aware that the European Astronomers ssign--arbitrarily enough--the date of the invention of the Egyptian Zodiac o the years 2,000 or 2,400 B.C. (Proctor); and insist that the date of his invention coincides with that of the erection of the Great Pyramid.
This, to an Occultist and Eastern Astronomer, must appear quite absurd.
The Cycle of the Kali Yuga is said to have begun between the 17th and 18th f February in the year 3,102 B.C. Now the Hindűs claim that in the year
20,400 before Kali Yugam, the origin of their Zodiac coincided with the
Spring Equinox--there being at the time a conjunction of the Sun and
Moon--and Bailly proved by a lengthy and careful computation of that date, hat, even if fictitious, the epoch from which they had started to stablish the beginning of their Kali Yuga was _very real_. That "epoch is he year 3,102 before our era," he writes.(1009) The lunar eclipse rriving just a fortnight after the beginning of the Black Age--it took lace in a point situated between the Wheat Ear of Virgo and the star {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA~} of he same constellation. One of their most esoteric Cycles is based upon ertain conjunctions and respective positions of Virgo and the Pleiades
(Krittika). Hence, as the Egyptians brought their Zodiac from Southern
India and Lankâ,(1010) the esoteric meaning was evidently identical. The
"three Virgins," or Virgo in three different positions, meant, with both, he record of the first three "Divine or Astronomical Dynasties," who aught the Third Root-Race; and after having abandoned the Atlanteans to heir doom, returned, or redescended rather, during the third sub-race of he Fifth, in order to reveal to saved humanity the mysteries of their irth-place--the Sidereal Heavens. The same symbolical record of the human
Races and the three Dynasties (Gods, Manes--Semi-divine Astrals of the
Third and Fourth--and the Heroes of the Fifth Race) which preceded the urely human kings, was found in the distribution of the tiers and assages of the Egyptian Labyrinth. As the three inversions of the Poles f course changed the face of the Zodiac, a new one had to be constructed ach time. In Mackey's _Sphinxiad_ the speculations of the bold author ust have horrified the orthodox portion of the population of Norwich, for e says, fantastically enough:
But, after all, the greatest length of time recorded by those
monuments [the Labyrinth, the Pyramids and the Zodiacs] _does not
exceed five millions of years_:(1011) which falls short of the
records given us both by the [esoteric] Chinese and Hindoos: which
latter nation has registered a knowledge of time for seven or
eight millions of years:(1012) which I have seen upon a talisman
of porcelain.(1013)
The Egyptian priests had the Zodiacs of the Atlantean Asura Maya, as the odern Hindűs still have. As stated in _Esoteric Buddhism_, the Egyptians, s well as the Greeks and "Romans" some thousand years ago, were "remnants f the Atlanto-Âryans"--the former, of the older, or the Ruta Atlanteans; he last-named, the descendants of the last race of that island, whose udden disappearance was narrated to Solon by the Egyptian Initiates. The
_human_ Dynasty of the older Egyptians, beginning with Menes, had all the
_knowledge_ of the Atlanteans, though there was no longer Atlantean blood n their veins. Nevertheless, they had preserved all their Archaic
Records. All this has been shown long ago.(1014) And it is just because he Egyptian Zodiac is between 75,000 and 80,000 years old that the Zodiac f the Greeks is far later. Volney has correctly pointed out that it is nly 16,984 years old, or up to the present date 17,082.(1015)
Conclusion.
Space forbids us to say anything more, and this part of _The Secret
Doctrine_ has to be closed. The forty-nine Stanzas and the few fragments rom the Commentaries which have been given are all that can be published n these Volumes. These, with some still older Records--to which none but he highest Initiates have access--and a whole library of comments, lossaries, and explanations, form the synopsis of Man's Genesis.
It is from these Commentaries that we have hitherto quoted and tried to xplain the hidden meaning of some of the allegories, thus showing the rue views of Esoteric Antiquity upon Geology, Anthropology, and even
Ethnology. In the Part which follows we will endeavour to establish a till closer metaphysical connection between the earliest Races and their
Creators, the _Divine_ Men from other Worlds; accompanying the statements roffered with the most important demonstrations of the same in Esoteric
Astronomy and Symbolism.
The duration of the "periods" that separate, in space and time, the Fourth rom the Fifth Race--in the historical(1016) or even the legendary eginnings of the latter--is too tremendous for us to offer, even to a
Theosophist, any more detailed accounts of them. During the course of the
Post-diluvian Ages, which were marked at certain periodical epochs by the ost terrible cataclysms, too many races and nations were born, and isappeared almost without leaving a trace, for anyone to offer any escription of the slightest value concerning them. Whether the Masters of
Wisdom have a full and consecutive history of our Race from its incipient tage down to the present times; whether they possess the uninterrupted ecord of man since he developed into a complete physical being, and ecame thereby the king of the animals and master on this Earth--is not for he writer to say. Most probably they have, and such is our own personal onviction. But if so, this knowledge is only for the highest Initiates, ho do not take their students into their confidence. The writer can, herefore, give but what she has herself been taught, and no more, and ven this will appear to the profane reader rather as a weird, fantastic ream, than as a possible reality.
This is only natural and as it should be, since for years such was the mpression made upon the humble writer of these pages herself. Born and red in European, matter-of-fact and presumably civilized, countries, she ssimilated the foregoing with the utmost difficulty. But there are proofs f a certain character which become irrefutable and are undeniable in the ong run, to every earnest and unprejudiced mind. For a series of years uch were offered to her, and now she has the full certitude that our resent Globe and its human Races must have been born, grown and developed n this, and in no other way.
But this is the personal view of the writer; and her orthodoxy cannot be xpected to have any more weight than any other "doxy," in the eyes of hose to whom every fresh theory is heterodox until otherwise proved.
Therefore are we Occultists fully prepared for such questions as these:
How do we know that the writer has not invented the whole scheme? And upposing _she_ has not, how can one tell that the whole of the foregoing, s given in the Stanzas, is not the product of the imagination of the ncients? How could they have preserved the records of such an immense, uch an incredible antiquity?
The answer that the history of this world since its formation and to its nd is "written in the stars," _i.e._, is recorded in the Zodiac and
Universal Symbolism, whose keys are in the keeping of the Initiates, will ardly satisfy the doubters. The antiquity of the Zodiac in Egypt is much oubted, and it is denied point-blank with regard to India. "Your onclusions are often excellent, but your premises are always doubtful," he writer was once told by a profane friend. To this, the answer came hat it was at least one point gained on scientific syllogisms, for, with he exception of a few problems from the domain of purely Physical
Science, both the premises and conclusions of men of Science are as ypothetical as they are almost invariably erroneous. And if they do not o appear to the profane, the reason is simply this: the said profane are ery little aware, taking as they do their scientific data on faith, that oth premises and conclusions are generally the product of the same rains, which, however learned, are not infallible--a truism demonstrated aily by the shifting and re-shifting of scientific theories and peculations.
However it may be, the records of the temples, zodiacal and traditional, s well as the ideographic records of the East, as read by the Adepts of he Sacred Science or Vidyâ, are not a whit more doubtful than the so- alled ancient history of the European nations, now edited, corrected, and mplified by half a century of archćological discoveries, and the very roblematical readings of the Assyrian tiles, cuneiform fragments, and
Egyptian hieroglyphics. Our data also are based upon the same
"readings"--in addition to an almost inexhaustible number of secret works f which Europe knows nothing--_plus_ the perfect knowledge by the
Initiates of the symbolism of every word so recorded. Some of these ecords belong to an immense antiquity. Every Archćologist and
Palćontologist is acquainted with the ideographic productions of certain emi-savage tribes, who from time immemorial have aimed at rendering their houghts symbolically. This is the earliest mode of recording events and deas. And how old this knowledge is in the human race may be inferred rom some signs, evidently ideographic, found on hatchets of the
Palćolithic period. The Red Indian tribes of America, only a few years go, comparatively speaking, petitioned the President of the United States o grant them possession of four small lakes, the petition being written n the tiny surface of a piece of fabric, which was covered with barely a ozen representations of animals and birds. The American savages have a umber of such different kinds of writing, but not one of our Scientists s yet familiar with, or even knows of, the early hieroglyphic cypher, till preserved in some Fraternities, and named in Occultism the Senzar.
Moreover, all those who have decided to regard such modes of riting--_e.g._, the ideographs of the Red Indians, and even the Chinese haracters--as "attempts of the early races of mankind to express their ntutored thoughts," will decidedly object to our statement, that writing as invented by the Atlanteans, and not at all by the Phoenicians. Indeed, uch a claim as that writing was known to mankind many hundreds of illenniums ago, in the face of the Philologists who have decreed that riting was unknown in the days of Pânini, in India, as also to the Greeks n the time of Homer, will be met by general disapprobation, if not with ilent scorn. All denial and ridicule notwithstanding, the Occultists will aintain the claim, and simply for this reason: from Bacon down to our odern Royal Society, we have too long a period full of the most ludicrous istakes made by Science, to warrant our believing in modern scientific ssumptions rather than in the statements of our Teachers. Writing, our
Scientists say, was unknown to Pânini; and this Sage nevertheless composed grammar which contains 3,996 rules, and is the most perfect of all the rammars that were ever made! Pânini is made out to have lived barely a ew centuries B.C., by the most liberal; and the rocks in Iran and Central
Asia--whence the Philologists and Historians show us the ancestors of the ame Pânini, the Brâhmans, coming into India--are _covered with writing_, wo and three thousand years old, at least, and twelve thousand, according o some fearless Palćontologists.
Writing was an _ars incognita_ in the days of Hesiod and Homer, agreeably o Grote, and was unknown to the Greeks so late as 770 B.C.; and the
Phoenicians who had _invented_ it, and knew writing as far back as 1,500
B.C. at the earliest,(1017) were living among the Greeks, and elbowing hem, all the time! All these scientific and contradictory conclusions isappeared, however, into thin air, when Schliemann discovered (_a_) the ite of ancient Troy, whose actual existence had been so long regarded as fable, and (_b_) excavated from that site earthenware vessels with nscriptions _in characters unknown_ to Palćontologists and the all- enying Sanskritists. Who will now deny Troy, or these archaic nscriptions? As Professor Virchow witnesses:
I was myself an eye-witness of two such discoveries, and helped to
gather the articles together. The slanderers have long since been
silenced, who were not ashamed to charge the discoverer with an
imposture.(1018)
Nor were truthful women spared any more than truthful men. Du Chaillu,
Gordon Cumming, Madame Merian,(1019) Bruce, and a host of others were harged with lying.
Says the author of _Mythical Monsters_, who gives this information in the
Introduction:(1020)
Madame Merian was accused of deliberate falsehood in reference to
her description of a bird-eating spider nearly two hundred years
ago. But now-a-days ... reliable observers have confirmed it in
regard to South America, India, and elsewhere.
Audubon was similarly accused by botanists of having invented the
yellow water-lily, which he figured in his _Birds of the South_
under the name of Nymphća lutea, and after having lain under the
imputation for years, was confirmed at last by the discovery of
the long-lost flower in Florida ... in ... 1876.(1021)
And, as Audubon was called a liar for this, and for his Halićtus
Washingtonii,(1022) so Victor Hugo was ridiculed for his marvellous word- ainting of the devil-fish, and his description of a man becoming its elpless victim.
The thing was derided as a monstrous impossibility; yet within a
few years were discovered, on the shores of Newfoundland, cuttle-
fishes with arms extending to thirty feet in length, and capable
of dragging a good-sized boat beneath the surface; and their
action has been reproduced _for centuries past_ ... by Japanese
artists.(1023)
And if Troy was denied, and regarded as a myth; the existence of
Herculaneum and Pompeii declared a fiction; the travels of Marco Polo aughed at and called as absurd a fable as one of Baron Münchausen's ales, why should the writer of _Isis Unveiled_ and of _The Secret
Doctrine_ be any better treated? Mr. Charles Gould, the author of the bove-cited volume quotes, in his excellent work, a few lines from
_Macmillan_ (1860), which are as true as life, and too much to the point ot to be reproduced:
When a naturalist, either by visiting such spots of earth as are
still out of the way, or by his good fortune, finds a very queer
plant or animal, he is forthwith accused of inventing his game....
As soon as the creature is found to sin against preconception, the
great (mis?) guiding spirit, _ŕ priori_ by name, who furnishes
philosophers with their omniscience _pro re natâ_, whispers that
no such thing _can_ be, and forthwith there is a charge of hoax.
The heavens themselves have been charged with hoaxes. When
Leverrier and Adams predicted a planet by calculation, it was
gravely asserted in some quarters that the planet which had been
calculated was not _the_ planet but another which had
clandestinely and improperly got into the neighbourhood of the
true body. _The disposition to suspect hoax is stronger than the
disposition to hoax._ Who was it that first announced that the
classical writings of Greece and Rome were one huge hoax
perpetrated by the monks in what the announcer would be as little
or less inclined than Dr. Maitland to call the dark ages?(1024)
Thus let it be. No disbeliever who takes _The Secret Doctrine_ for a
"hoax" is forced, or even asked, to credit our statements, which have lready been proclaimed to be such by certain very clever American ournalists even before the work went to press.(1025)
Nor, after all, is it necessary that any one should believe in the Occult
Sciences and the Old Teachings, before he knows anything of, or even elieves in his own Soul. No great truth has ever been accepted _ŕ __ riori_, and generally a century or two has passed before it has begun to limmer in the human consciousness as a possible verity, except in such ases as the positive discovery of the thing claimed as a fact. The truths f to-day are the falsehoods and errors of yesterday, and _vice versŕ_. It s only in the twentieth century that portions, if not the whole, of the resent work will be vindicated.
It is not destructive of our statements, therefore, even if Sir John Evans oes affirm that writing was unknown in the Stone Age. For it may have een unknown during that period in the Fifth Âryan Race, and yet have been erfectly known to the Atlanteans of the Fourth, in the palmy days of heir highest civilization. The cycles of the rise and fall of nations and aces are there to account for it.
If told that there have been cases before now of forged pseudographs being almed off on the credulous, and that our work may be classed with
Jacolliot's _Bible in India_--although, by the way, there are more truths ixed up with its errors than are found in the works of orthodox and ecognized Orientalists--the charge and comparison will dismay us very ittle. We bide our time. Even the famous _Ezour Veda_ of the last entury, considered by Voltaire "the most precious gift from the East to he West," and by Max Müller "about the silliest book that can be read," s not altogether without facts and truths in it. The cases when the _ŕ riori_ negations of specialists have become justified by subsequent orroborations, form but an insignificant percentage of those that have een fully vindicated by subsequent discoveries and confirmed, to the reat dismay of the learned objectors. _Ezour Veda_ was a very small bone f contention compared with the triumph of Sir William Jones, Anquetil du
Perron, and others in the matter of Sanskrit and its literature. Such acts are recorded by Professor Max Müller himself, who, speaking of the iscomfiture of Dugald Stewart and Co. in connection with this, states hat:
If the facts about Sanskrit were true, Dugald Stewart was too wise
not to see that the conclusions drawn from them were inevitable.
He therefore denied the reality of such a language as Sanskrit
altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that Sanskrit had
been put together after the model of Greek and Latin, by those
arch-forgers and liars, the Brâhmans, and that the whole of
Sanskrit literature was an imposition.(1026)
The writer is quite willing and feels proud to keep company with these
Brâhmans, and other _historical_ "liars," in the opinion of our modern
Dugald Stewarts. She has lived too long, and her experience has been too aried and personal, for her not to know at least something of human ature. "When you doubt, abstain," says the wise Zoroaster, whose prudent phorism is found corroborated in every case by daily life and experience.
Yet, like St. John the Baptist, this Sage of the past ages is found reaching in the desert, in company with a more modern Philosopher, namely
Bacon, who offers the same priceless bit of practical wisdom, when saying:
In contemplation [in any question of knowledge, we add], if a man
begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but _if he will be
content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties_.
With this piece of advice from the father of English Philosophy to the epresentatives of British Scepticism we ought to close the debate, but ur Theosophical readers are entitled to a final piece of Occult nformation.
Enough has been said to show that evolution in general, events, mankind, nd everything else in Nature proceed in cycles. We have spoken of seven
Races, five of which have nearly completed their earthly career, and have laimed that every Root-Race, with its sub-races and innumerable family ivisions and tribes, was entirely distinct from its preceding and ucceeding Race. This will be objected to, on the authority of uniform xperience, in the question of Anthropology and Ethnology. Man--save in olour and type, and perhaps a difference in facial peculiarities and ranial capacity--has been ever the same under every climate and in every art of the world, say the Naturalists; ay, even in stature--this, while aintaining that man descends from the same unknown ancestor as the ape; a laim that is logically impossible without an infinite variation of tature and form from his first evolution into a biped. The very logical ersons who maintain both propositions are welcome to their paradoxical iews. Once more we address only those who, doubting the general erivation of myths from "the contemplation of the visible workings of xternal nature," think it
Less hard to believe that these wonderful stories of gods and
demi-gods, of giants and dwarfs, of dragons and monsters of all
descriptions, are transformations, than to believe them to be
inventions.
It is only such "transformations" in physical nature, as much as in the emory and conceptions of our present mankind, that the Secret Doctrine eaches. It confronts the purely speculative hypotheses of Modern Science, ased upon the experience and exact observations of barely a few enturies, with the unbroken tradition and records of its Sanctuaries; and rushing away that tissue of cobweb-like theories, spun in the darkness hat covers a period of hardly a few millenniums, which Europeans call heir "history," the Old Science says to us: Listen, now, to my version of he memoirs of Humanity.
The Human Races are born one from the other, grow, develop, become old, nd die. Their sub-races and nations follow the same rule. If your all- enying Modern Science and so-called Philosophy do not contest that the uman family is composed of a variety of well-defined types and races, it s only because the fact is undeniable; no one would say that there was no xternal difference between an Englishman, an African negro, and a
Japanese or Chinaman. On the other hand, it is formally denied by most
Naturalists that _mixed_ human races, _i.e._, the seeds for entirely new aces, are any longer formed in our days, although indeed the latter is aintained on good grounds by De Quatrefages and some others.
Nevertheless our general proposition will not be accepted. It will be said hat whatever forms man has passed through in the long pre-historic past here are no more changes for him--save certain variations, as at resent--in the future. Hence that our Sixth and Seventh Root-Races are ictions.
To this it is again answered: How do you know? Your experience is limited o a few thousand years, to less than a day in the whole age of Humanity nd to the present types of the actual continents and isles of our Fifth
Race. How can you tell what will or will not be? Meanwhile, such is the rophecy of the Secret Books and their not uncertain statements.
Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed, et we find the last of the Atlanteans still mixed up with the Âryan lement, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one Race ver the Race which succeeds it, though in characters and external type he elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the ounger Race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races.
Now, Occult Philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new
Race and races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that he transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced.
Pure Anglo-Saxons hardly three hundred years ago, the Americans of the
United States have already become a nation apart, and, owing to a strong dmixture of various nationalities and inter-marriage, almost a race _sui eneris_, not only mentally, but also physically. To quote from De
Quatrefages:
Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play
the part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its
present state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest
part, by the successive crossing of a number of races _at present
undetermined_.(1027)
Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a "primary race," emporarily, before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all ther now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the _sixth_ ub-race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly he pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or ifth sub-race, in all its new characteristics. After this, in about
25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race; ntil, in consequence of cataclysms--the first series of those which must ne day destroy Europe, and still later the whole Âryan Race (and thus ffect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with he confines of our continent and isles--the Sixth Root-Race will have ppeared on the stage of our Round. When shall this be? Who knows save the reat Masters of Wisdom, perchance, and they are as silent upon the ubject as the snow-capped peaks that tower above them. All we know is, hat it will silently come into existence; so silently, indeed, that for ong millenniums will its pioneers--the peculiar children who will grow nto peculiar men and women--be regarded as anomalous _lusűs naturć_, bnormal oddities physically and mentally. Then, as they increase, and heir numbers become with every age greater, one day they will awake to ind themselves in a majority. Then the present men will begin to be egarded as exceptional mongrels, until they die out in their turn in ivilized lands, surviving only in small groups on islands--the mountain eaks of to-day--where they will vegetate, degenerate, and finally die out, erhaps millions of years hence, as the Aztecs have, as the Nyam-Nyam and he dwarfish Moola Koorumba of the Nilghiri Hills are dying. All these are he remnants of once mighty races, the recollection of whose existence has ntirely died out of the remembrance of modern generations, just as we hall vanish from the memory of the Sixth Race Humanity. The Fifth will verlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of millenniums, changing with it ore slowly than its new successor, still changing in stature, general hysique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Âryan Race, and he Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.
This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout he whole sixth and seventh sub-races.(1028) But the _last_ remnants of he Fifth Continent will not disappear until some time after the birth of he _new_ Race; when another and _new_ dwelling, the Sixth Continent, will ave appeared above the _new_ waters on the face of the Globe, so as to eceive the new stranger. To it also will emigrate and there will settle ll those who will be fortunate enough to escape the general disaster.
When this shall be--as just said--it is not for the writer to know. Only, as
Nature no more proceeds by sudden jumps and starts, than man changes uddenly from a child into a mature man, the final cataclysm will be receded by many smaller submersions and destructions both by wave and olcanic fires. The exultant pulse will beat high in the heart of the race ow in the American zone, but there will be no more Americans when the
Sixth Race commences; no more, in fact, than Europeans; for they will have ow become a _new Race, and many new nations_. Yet the Fifth will not die, ut will survive for a while; overlapping the new Race for many hundred housands of years to come, it will, as we have just said, become ransformed with it more slowly than its new successor--still getting ntirely altered in mentality, general physique, and stature. Mankind will ot grow again into giant bodies as in the case of the Lemurians and the
Atlanteans; because while the evolution of the Fourth Race led the latter own to the very bottom of materiality in its physical development, the resent Race is on its ascending arc; and the Sixth will be rapidly rowing out of its bonds of matter, and even of flesh.
Thus it is the mankind of the New World, the senior by far of our Old ne--a fact men had also forgotten--of Pâtâla (the Antipodes, or the Nether
World, as America is called in India), whose mission and Karma it is, to ow the seeds for a forthcoming, grander, and far more glorious Race than ny of those we know of at present. The Cycles of Matter will be succeeded y Cycles of Spirituality and a fully developed mind. On the law of arallel history and races, the majority of the future mankind will be omposed of glorious Adepts. Humanity is the child of Cyclic Destiny, and ot one of its Units can escape its unconscious mission, or get rid of the urden of its coöperative work with Nature. Thus will Mankind, race after ace, perform its appointed Cyclic Pilgrimage. Climates will, and have lready begun to, change, each Tropical Year after the other dropping one ub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; hile a series of other less favoured groups--the failures of Nature--will, ike some individual men, vanish from the human family without even eaving a trace behind.
Such is the course of Nature under the sway of Karmic Law; of Ever-present nd Ever-becoming Nature. For, in the words of a Sage, known only to a few
Occultists:
_The Present is the child of the Past; the Future, the begotten of the
Present. And yet, O present moment! knowest thou not that thou hast no arent, nor canst thou have a child; that thou art ever begetting but hyself? Before thou hast even begun to say __"__I am the progeny of the eparted moment, the child of the past,__"__ thou hast become that past tself. Before thou utterest the last syllable, behold! thou art no more he Present but verily that Future. Thus, are the Past, the Present, and he Future the Ever-living Trinity in One--the Mahámâyâ of the Absolute
__"__IS.__"_
PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS.
The narratives of the Doctrine are its cloak. The simple look only
at the garment--that is, upon the narrative of the Doctrine; more
they know not. The instructed, however, see not merely the cloak,
but what the cloak covers.--_Zohar_ (iii. 152; FRANCK, 119).
The Mysteries of the Faith (are) not to be divulged to all.... It
is requisite to hide in a mystery the wisdom spoken.--_Stromateis_
(12; CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS).
Section I. Esoteric Tenets Corroborated in Every Scripture.
In view of the strangeness of the teachings, and of many a doctrine which rom the modern scientific standpoint must seem absurd, some necessary and dditional explanations have to be made. The theories contained in the
Stanzas of Volume II are even more difficult to assimilate than those hich are embodied in Volume I, on Cosmogony. Theology, therefore, has to e questioned here, in Part II, as Science will be in Part III, for since ur doctrines differ so widely from the current ideas of both Materialism nd Theology, the Occultists must be ever prepared to repel the attacks of ither or of both.
The reader can never be too often reminded that, as the abundant uotations from various old Scriptures prove, these teachings are as old s the world; and that the present work is simply an attempt to render, in odern language and in a phraseology with which the scientific and ducated student is familiar, archaic Genesis and History as taught in ertain Asiatic centres of Esoteric Learning. These must be accepted or ejected on their own merits, fully or partially; but not before they have een carefully compared with the corresponding theological dogmas and the odern scientific theories and speculations.
One feels serious doubt whether, with all its intellectual acuteness, our ge is destined to discover in each Western nation even one solitary
_uninitiated_ Scholar or Philosopher capable of fully comprehending the pirit of Archaic Philosophy. Nor can either be expected to do so, before he real meaning of the Alpha and the Omega of Eastern Esotericism, the erms Sat and Asat--so freely used in the _Rig Veda_ and elsewhere--is horoughly assimilated. Without this key to Âryan Wisdom, the Cosmogony of he Rishis and the Arhats is in danger of remaining a dead letter to the verage Orientalist. Asat is not merely the negation of Sat, nor is it the
"not yet existing"; for Sat is in itself neither the "existent," nor
"being." Sat is the immutable, the ever-present, changeless, and eternal
Root, from and through which all proceeds. But it is far more than the otential force in the seed, which propels onward the process of evelopment, or what is now called evolution. It is the ever becoming, hough the never manifesting.(1029) Sat is born from Asat, and Asat is egotten by Sat--perpetual motion in a circle, truly; yet a circle that can e squared only at the Supreme Initiation, at the threshold of
Parinirvâna.
Barth started a reflection on the _Rig Veda_ which was meant for a stern riticism, an unusual, therefore, as was thought, an original, view of his archaic volume. It so happened, however, that, in his criticism, this cholar revealed a truth, without being himself aware of its full mportance. He premises by saying that "neither in the language nor in the hought of the _Rig Veda_" has he "been able to discover that quality _of rimitive natural simplicity_, which so many are fain to see in it." Barth ad Max Müller in his mind's eye when writing this. For the famous Oxford rofessor has throughout characterized the hymns of the _Rig Veda_, as the nsophisticated expression of the religious feeling of a pastoral innocent eople. "In the Vedic hymns the ideas and myths appear in their simplest nd freshest form"--the Sanskrit scholar thinks. Barth is of a different pinion, however.
So divided and personal are the opinions of Sanskritists as to the mportance and intrinsic value of the _Rig Veda_, that these opinions ecome entirely biassed whichever way they incline. Thus Prof. Max Müller eclares that:
Nowhere is the wide distance which separates the ancient poems of
India from the most ancient literature of Greece more clearly
felt, than when we compare the growing myths of the Veda with the
full grown and decayed myths on which the poetry of Homer is
founded. The Veda is the real Theogony of the _Aryan races_, while
that of Hesiod is a distorted caricature of the original image.
This is a sweeping assertion, and perhaps rather unjust in its general pplication. But why not try to account for it? Orientalists cannot do so, or they reject the chronology of the Secret Doctrine, and can hardly dmit the fact that between the Rig Vedic hymns and Hesiod's Theogony tens f thousands of years have elapsed. So they fail to see that the Greek yths are no longer the primitive symbolical language of the Initiates, he Disciples of the Gods-Hierophants, the divine ancient "Sacrificers," nd that disfigured by the distance, and encumbered by the exuberant rowth of human _profane_ fancy, they now stand like distorted images of tars in running waves. But if Hesiod's Cosmogony and Theogony are to be iewed as caricatures of the original images, how much more so the myths n the Hebrew _Genesis_, in the sight of those for whom they are no more ivine revelation or the word of God, than is Hesiod's Theogony for Mr.
Gladstone.
As Barth says:
The poetry it [the _Rig Veda_] contains appears to me, on the
contrary, to be of a singularly refined character and artificially
elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions [?]
to mysticism and theosophic insight; and the manner of its
expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the
phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated than
the poetic language of a large community.(1030)
We will not stop to enquire of the critic what he can know of the hraseology in use among the "initiated," or whether he belongs himself to uch a group; for, in the latter case, he would hardly have used such anguage. But the above shows the remarkable disagreement between scholars ven with regard to the _external_ character of the _Rig Veda_. What, hen, can any of the modern Sanskritists know about its _internal_ or
_esoteric_ meaning, beyond the correct inference of Barth, that this
Scripture _has been compiled by Initiates_?
The whole of the present work is an endeavour to prove this truth. The ncient Adepts have solved the great problems of Science, however nwilling modern Materialism may be to admit the fact. The mysteries of
Life and Death _were_ fathomed by the great master-minds of antiquity; and f they have preserved them in secresy and silence, it is because these roblems formed part of the Sacred Mysteries, which must have remained ncomprehensible to the vast majority of men then, as they do now. If such eachings are still regarded as chimeras by our opponents in Philosophy, t may be a consolation to Theosophists to learn, on good proof, that the peculations of modern Psychologists--whether serious Idealists, like Mr.
Herbert Spencer, or wool-gathering Pseudo-idealists--are far more himerical. Indeed, instead of resting on the firm foundation of facts in
Nature, they are the unhealthy will-o'-the-wisps of materialistic magination, of the brains that evolved them--and no more. While they deny, e affirm; and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the Sages of ntiquity. Believing in Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for ood reasons, we say, _Certus sum, scio quod credidi_; to which our ritics reply, _Credat Judćus Apella_. Neither is converted by the other, or does such result affect even our little planet. _E pur se muove!_
Nor is there any need of proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero:
Time destroys the speculations of man, but it confirms the
judgment of nature.
Let us bide our time. Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to itness in silence the destruction of one's Gods, whether they be true or alse. And as Theology and Materialism have combined together to destroy he old Gods of antiquity and seek to disfigure every old philosophical onception, it is but just that the lovers of the Old Wisdom should defend heir position, by proving that the whole arsenal of the two is, at best, ormed of new weapons made out of very old material.
Section II. Adam=Adami.
Names such as Adam-Adami, used by Dr. Chwolsohn in his _Nabathean
Agriculture_ and derided by M. Renan, may prove little to the profane. To he Occultist, however, once that the term is found in a work of such mmense antiquity as that above cited, it proves a good deal. It proves, or instance, that Adami was a manifold symbol, originating with the Âryan eople, as the root word shows, and having been taken from them by the
Semites and the Turanians--as many other things were.
Adam-Adami is a generic compound name as old as language is. The Secret
Doctrine teaches that Ad-i was the name given by the Âryans to the first
_speaking_ race of mankind, in this Round. Hence the terms Adonim and
Adonai (the ancient plural form of the word Adon), which the Jews applied o their Jehovah and Angels, who were simply the first spiritual and thereal sons of the Earth, and the God Adonis, who in his many variations tood for the "First Lord." Adam is the Sanskrit Âdi-Nâth, also meaning
First Lord, as Âd-Îshvara, or any Ad (the First) prefixed to an adjective r substantive. The reason for this is that such truths were a common nheritance. It was a revelation received by the _first_ mankind before hat time which, in biblical phraseology, is called "the period of one
_lip_ and word," or speech; knowledge expanded by man's own intuition ater on, still later hidden from profanation under an adequate symbology.
The author of the _Qabbalah_, according to the philosophical writings of
Ibn Gebirol, shows the Israelites using Ad-onaď (A Do Na Y), "Lord," nstead of Eh'yeh, "I am," and YHVH, and adds that, while Adonaď is endered "Lord" in the _Bible_,
The lowest designation, or the Deity in Nature, the more general
term Elohim, is translated God.(1031)
A curious work was translated in 1860 or thereabout, by the Orientalist
Chwolsohn, and presented to ever-incredulous and flippant Europe under the nnocent title of _Nabathean Agriculture_. In the opinion of the ranslator that archaic volume _is a complete initiation_ into the ysteries of the Pre-Adamite nations, on the authority of _undeniably uthentic documents_. It is an invaluable compendium, the full epitome of he doctrines, arts and sciences, not only of the Chaldćans, but also of he Assyrians and Canaanites of the pre-historic ages.(1032) These
Nabatheans--as some critics thought--were simply the Sabćans, or Chaldćan tar-worshippers. The work is a retranslation from the Arabic, into which anguage it was at first translated from the Chaldćan.
Masoudi, the Arabian historian, speaks of these Nabatheans, and explains heir origin in this wise:
After the Deluge [?] the nations established themselves in various
countries. Among these were the Nabatheans, who founded the city
of Babylon, and were those descendants of Ham who settled in the
same province under the leadership of Nimrod, the son of Cush, who
was the son of Ham and great-grandson of Noah. This took place at
the time when Nimrod received the governorship of Babylonia as the
delegate of Dzahhak named Biourasp.(1033)
The translator, Chwolsohn, finds that the assertions of this historian are n perfect accord with those of Moses in _Genesis_; while more irreverent ritics might express the opinion that for this very reason their truth hould be suspected. It is useless, however, to argue the point, which is f no value in the present question. The weather-beaten, long-since-buried roblem, and the difficulty of accounting, on any logical ground, for the henomenal derivation of millions of people of various races, of many ivilized nations and tribes, from _three_ couples--Noah's sons and their ives--in 346 years(1034) after the Deluge, may be left to the Karma of the uthor of _Genesis_, whether he is called Moses or Ezra. That which is nteresting in the work under notice, however, are its contents, the octrines enunciated in it, which are again, if read Esoterically, almost ll of them identical with the Secret Teachings.
Quatremčre suggested that this book might have been simply a copy made nder Nebuchadnezzar II from some Hamitic treatise, "infinitely more ncient," while the author maintains, on internal and external evidence, hat its Chaldćan original was written out from the oral discourses and eachings of a wealthy Babylonian landowner, named Qű-tâmy, who had used or those lectures still more ancient materials. The first Arabic ranslation is placed by Chwolsohn so far back as the thirteenth century
B.C. On the first page of this "revelation," the author, or amanuensis,
Qű-tâmy, declares that "the doctrines propounded therein, _were originally old by Saturn ... to the Moon, who communicated them to her idol,_" _and he idol revealed them to her devotee, the writer_--the Adept Scribe of hat work--Qű-tâmy.
The details given by the God for the benefit and instruction of mortals, how periods of incalculable duration and a series of numberless kingdoms nd Dynasties that preceded the appearance on Earth of Adami (the "red- arth"). These periods, as might have been expected, have roused the efenders of the chronology of the biblical dead-letter meaning almost to ury. De Rougemont was the first to make a _levée_-in-arms against the ranslator. He reproaches him with _sacrificing_ Moses to anonymous uthors.(1035) Berosus, he urges, however great were _his chronological rrors_, was at least in perfect accord with the prophet with regard to he first men, since he speaks of Alorus-Adam, of Xisuthrus-Noah, and of
Belus-Nimrod, etc. Therefore, he adds, the work must be an _apocryphon_ to e ranged with its contemporaries--the _Fourth Book of Esdras_, the _Book f Enoch_, the _Sibylline Oracles_, and the _Book of Hermes_--_every one of hese dating no further back than two or three centuries B.C._ Ewald came own still harder on Chwolsohn, and finally M. Renan, who in the _Revue
Germanique_(1036) asks him to show reason why his _Nabathean Agriculture_ hould not be the fraudulent work of some Jew of the third or fourth entury of our era? It can hardly be otherwise--argues the romancer of the
_Vie de Jésus_, since, in this _in-folio_ on Astrology and Sorcery:
We recognize in the personages introduced Qű-tâmy, all the
patriarchs of the biblical legends, such as Adam-Adami, Anouka-
Noah, and his Ibrahim-Abraham, etc.
But this is no reason, since Adam and others are generic names. Meanwhile t is humbly submitted that, all things considered, an _apocryphon_--if ven of the third century A.D., instead of the thirteenth century B.C., is ld enough to appear _genuine_ as a document, and so satisfy the demands f the most exacting archćologist and critic. For even admitting, for rgument's sake, that this literary relic has been compiled by "some Jew f the third century of our era"--what of that? Leaving the credibility of ts doctrines for a moment aside, why should it be less entitled to a earing, or less instructive as reflecting older opinions, than any other eligious work, also a "compilation from old texts" or oral tradition--of he same or even a later age? In such case we should have to reject and all "apocryphal" the _Kurân_--three centuries later, though we know it to ave sprung, Minerva-like, direct from the brain of the Arabian prophet; nd we should have to pooh-pooh all the information we can get from the
_Talmud_, which, in its present form, was also compiled from older aterials, and is not earlier than the ninth century of our era.
This curious "Bible" of the Chaldćan Adept and the various criticisms upon t (as in Chwolsohn's translation) are noticed, because it has an mportant bearing upon a great portion of the present work. With the xception of the contention of M. Renan, an iconoclast on principle--so ointedly called by Jules Lemaître "_le Paganini du néant_"--the worst ault found with the work is, it would seem, that the _apocryphon_ retends to have been communicated _as a revelation_ to an Adept by, and rom, the "idol of the Moon," who received it from "Saturn." Hence, very aturally, it is "a fairy tale all round." To this there is but one nswer: It is no more a fairy tale than the _Bible_, and if one falls, the ther must follow it. Even the mode of divination through "the idol of the
Moon" is the same as that practised by David, Saul and the High Priests of he Jewish Tabernacle by means of the Teraphim.
The _Nabathean Agriculture_ is a compilation indeed; it is no
_apocryphon_, but the repetition of the tenets of the Secret Doctrine nder the exoteric Chaldćan form of national symbols, for the purpose of
"cloaking" the tenets, just as the _Books of Hermes_ and the _Purânas_ are ike attempts by Egyptians and Hindűs. The work was as well known in ntiquity as it was during the Middle Ages. Maimonides speaks of it, and efers more than once to this Chaldćo-Arabic MS., calling the Nabatheans y the name of their co-religionists, the "star-worshippers," or Sabćans, ut yet failing to see in the disfigured word "Nabathean" the mystic name f the caste devoted to Nebo, the God of _Secret_ Wisdom, which shows on ts face that the Nabatheans were an Occult Brotherhood.(1037) The
Nabatheans who, according to the Persian Yezidi, originally came to Syria rom Busrah, were the degenerate members of that fraternity; still their eligion, even at that late day, was purely kabalistic.(1038) Nebo is the
Deity of the Planet Mercury, and Mercury is the God of Wisdom, or Hermes, r Budha, which the Jews called Kokab ({~HEBREW LETTER KAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER KAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}), "the Lord on high, the spiring," and the Greeks Nabo ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}), hence Nabatheans. Notwithstanding hat Maimonides calls their doctrines "heathenish foolishness" and their rchaic literature "_Sabćorum foetum_," he places their "agriculture," the
Bible of Qű-tâmy, in the first rank of archaic literature; and Abarbanel raises it in unmeasured terms. Spencer,(1039) quoting the latter, speaks f it as that "most excellent oriental work," adding that by Nabatheans, he Sabćans, the Chaldćans, and the Egyptians, in short all those nations
_against whom the laws of Moses were most severely enacted_, have to be nderstood.
Nebo, the oldest God of Wisdom of Babylonia and Mesopotamia, was identical ith the Hindű Budha and the Hermes-Mercury of the Greeks. A slight change n the sexes of the parents is the only alteration. As Budha was the Son f Soma (the Moon) in India, and of the wife of Brihaspati (Jupiter), so
Nebo was the son of Zarpanitu (the Moon) and of Merodach, who became
Jupiter, after having been a Sun-god. As Mercury the Planet, Nebo was the
"overseer" among the seven Gods of the Planets; and as the personification f the Secret Wisdom he was Nabin, a seer and a prophet. Moses is made to ie and disappear on the mount sacred to Nebo. This shows him to have been n Initiate, and a priest of that God under another name; for this God of
Wisdom was the great Creative Deity, and was worshipped as such. And this ot only at Borsippa in his gorgeous Temple, or Planet-tower; he was ikewise adored by the Moabites, the Canaanites, the Assyrians, and hroughout the whole of Palestine. Then why not by the Israelites? "The lanetary temple of Babylon" had its "Holy of Holies" within the shrine of
Nebo, the Prophet-God of Wisdom. We are told in the Hibbert Lectures:
The ancient Babylonians had an intercessor between men and the
gods ... and Nebo, was the "proclaimer" or "prophet," as he made
known the desire of his father Merodach.(1040)
Nebo is a Creator, like Budha, of the Fourth, and also of the Fifth, Race.
For the former starts a new race of Adepts, and the latter, the Solar-
Lunar Dynasty, or the men of these Races and Round. Both are the Adams of heir respective creatures. Adam-Adami is a personation of the _dual_
Adam: of the paradigmatic Adam-Kadmon, the Creator, and of the lower Adam, he terrestrial, who, as the Syrian Kabalists have it, had only Nephesh, he "breath of life," but _no Living Soul_, until after his Fall.
If, therefore, Renan persists in regarding the Chaldćan Scriptures--or what emains of them--as apocryphal, it is quite immaterial to truth and fact.
There are other Orientalists who may be of a different opinion; and even ere they not, it would still really matter very little. These doctrines ontain the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy, and this must suffice. To hose who understand nothing of symbology it may appear astrolatry, pure nd simple, or to him who would conceal the Esoteric Truth, even
"heathenish foolishness." Maimonides, however, while expressing scorn for he Esotericism in the religion of other nations, confessed Esotericism nd Symbology in his own, preached silence and secrecy upon the true eaning of Mosaic sayings, and thus came to grief. The Doctrines of
Qű-tâmy, the Chaldćan, are, in short, the allegorical rendering of the eligion of the earliest nations of the Fifth Race.
Why then should M. Renan treat the name "Adam-Adami" with such academical ontempt? The author of the _Origins of Christianity_ evidently knows othing of the origins of Pagan symbolism or of Esotericism either, therwise he would have known that the name Adam-Adami was a form of a niversal symbol, referring, _even with the Jews_, not to one man, but to our distinct humanities or mankinds. This is very easily proven.
The Kabalists teach the existence of four distinct Adams, or the ransformation of four consecutive Adams, the emanations from the
Dyooknah, or Divine Phantom, of the Heavenly Man, an ethereal combination f Neshamah, the highest Soul or Spirit; this Adam having, of course, either a gross human body, nor a _body of desire_. This Adam is the
Prototype (Tzure) of the second Adam. That they represent our Five Races, s certain, as everyone can see by their description in the _Kabalah_. The irst is the Perfect Holy Adam, "a shadow that disappeared" (the Kings of
Edom), produced from the divine Tzelem (Image); the second is called the
Protoplastic Androgyne Adam of the future terrestrial and separated Adam; he third Adam is the man made of "dust" (the first, Innocent Adam); and he fourth, is the supposed forefather of our own race--the Fallen Adam.
See, however, the admirably clear description of these in Isaac Myer's
_Qabbalah_. He gives only four Adams, because of the Kings of Edom, no oubt, and adds:
The fourth Adam ... was clothed with skin, flesh, nerves, etc.
This answers to the Lower _Nephesh_ and _Guff_, _i.e._, body,
united. He has the animal power of reproduction and continuance of
species.(1041)
This is the _human_ Root-Race.
It is just at this point that the modern Kabalists--led into error by the ong generations of Christian Mystics who have tampered with the abalistic records wherever they could--diverge from the Occultists in heir interpretations, and take the later thought for the earlier idea.
The original _Kabalah_ was entirely metaphysical, and had no concern with nimal, or terrestrial, sexes; the later _Kabalah_ has suffocated the ivine ideal under the heavy phallic element. The Kabalists say: "God made an male and female." Says the author of the _Qabbalah_:
Among the Qabbalists, the necessity to continued creation and
existence is called the Balance.(1042)
And being without this "Balance," connected with Maqom (the mysterious
"Place"),(1043) even the First Race is not, as we have seen, recognized by he Sons of the Fifth Adam. From the highest Heavenly Man, the Upper Adam ho is "male-female" or Androgyne, down to the Adam of dust, these ersonified symbols are all connected with sex and procreation. With the
Eastern Occultists it is entirely the reverse. The sexual relation they onsider as a "Karma" pertaining only to the mundane relation of man, who s dominated by Illusion, a thing to be put aside, the moment that the erson becomes "wise." They considered it a most fortunate circumstance if he Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure life of
Brahmâchârya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imagery of he sublime correlation of creative cosmic forces. And this ideal onception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however oarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of
India and other mother-lands of cults.
This will be demonstrated in the following Section.
Meanwhile, it may be added that, with the Gnostics, the second Adam also manates from the Primeval Man, the Ophite Adamas, in "whose image he is ade"; the third, from this second--an Androgyne. The latter is symbolized n the sixth and seventh pairs of the male-female Ćons, Amphain-Essumen
({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}), and Vananin-Lamertade ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~})--Father and
Mother(1044)--while the fourth Adam, or Race, is represented by a Priapean onster. The latter--a Post-Christian fancy--is the degraded copy of the
Ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the "Good One," or "He, _who created efore anything existed_," the Celestial Priapus--truly born from Venus and
Bacchus _when that God returned from his expedition into India_, for Venus nd Bacchus are the post-types of Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, ne, however, with Agathodćmon, the Gnostic Saviour, and even with
Abraxas, is no longer the glyph for _abstract creative_ Power, but ymbolizes the four Adams, or Races, the fifth being represented by the
_five_ branches cut off from the Tree of Life on which the old man stands n the Gnostic gems. The number of the Root-Races was recorded in the ncient Greek temples by the seven vowels, of which _five_ were framed in panel in the Initiation Halls of the Adyta. The Egyptian glyph for it as a hand with five fingers spread out, the fifth or little finger being nly half-grown, and also _five_ "N's"--hieroglyphs standing for that etter. The Romans used the five vowels A E I O V in their fanes; and this rchaic symbol was adopted during the Middle Ages as a motto by the House f the Hapsburgs. _Sic transit gloria!_
Section III. The "Holy of Holies." Its Degradation.
The Sanctum Sanctorum of the Ancients, also called the Adytum--the recess t the West end of the Temple which was enclosed on three sides by blank alls and had its only aperture or door hung over with a curtain--was ommon to all ancient nations.
A great difference is now found between the secret meaning of this ymbolical place as given in the Esotericism of the Pagans and in that of he later Jews, though its symbology was originally identical throughout he ancient races and nations. The _Gentiles_ placed in the Adytum a
_sarcophagus_, or a tomb (_taphos_), in which was the Solar God to whom he temple was consecrated, holding it, as Pantheists, in the greatest eneration. They regarded it, in its Esoteric meaning, as the symbol of
_resurrection_, cosmic, solar, or diurnal, and human. It embraced the wide ange of periodical, and (in time) punctual, Manvantaras, or the eäwakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and Man to new existences; the Sun being he most poetical and also the most grandiose symbol of such Cycles in
Heaven, and man--in his reďncarnations--on Earth. The _Jews_--whose realism, f judged by the dead-letter, was as practical and gross in the days of
Moses as it is now(1045)--in the course of their estrangement from the Gods f their Pagan neighbours, consummated a national and levitical polity, by he device of setting forth their Holy of Holies as the most solemn sign f their Monotheism--exoterically, while seeing in it but a universal hallic symbol--esoterically. While the Kabalists knew but Ain Suph and the
"Gods" of the Mysteries, the Levites had no tomb, no God in their Adytum ut the "Sacred" Ark of the Covenant--their "Holy of Holies."
When the esoteric meaning of this recess is made clear, however, the rofane will be better able to understand why David danced "uncovered" efore the _Ark_ of the Covenant, and was so anxious to appear _vile_ for he sake of his "Lord," and _base_ in his own sight.(1046)
The Ark is the navi-form Argha of the Mysteries. Parkhurst, who has a long issertation upon it in his Greek dictionary, and who never breathes a ord about it in his Hebrew lexicon, explains it thus:
Archę ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}) in this application answers to the Hebrew Rasit or
wisdom, ... a word which had the meaning of the emblem of the
female generative power, the Arg or Arca, in which the germ of all
nature was supposed to float or brood on the great abyss during
the interval which took place after every mundane cycle.
Quite so; and the Jewish Ark of the Covenant had _precisely the same ignificance_; with the supplementary addition that, instead of a eautiful and chaste sarcophagus (the symbol of the Matrix of Nature and
Resurrection), as in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Pagans, they had the Ark ade still more _realistic_ in its construction by the two Cherubs set up n the coffer or Ark of the Covenant, facing each other, with their wings pread in such a manner as to form a perfect Yoni (as now seen in India).
Besides which, this generative symbol had its significance enforced by the our mystic letters of Jehovah's name, namely, IHVH ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}); Jod ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}) eaning the _membrum virile_; Hé ({~HEBREW LETTER HE~}), the _womb_; Vau ({~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}), a crook or a ook, a nail, and Hé ({~HEBREW LETTER HE~}) again, meaning also "an opening"; the whole orming the perfect _bisexual_ emblem or symbol or I(e)H(o)V(a)H, the male nd female symbol.
Perhaps also, when people realize the true meaning of the office and title f the Kadesh Kadeshim, the "holy ones," or "the consecrated to the
_Temple of the Lord_"--the "Holy of Holies" of these "holy ones" may assume n aspect far from edifying.
Iacchus again is Iao or Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a hallic God.
"Who shall ascend into the hill [the high place] of the Lord?"
asks the holy king David, "Who shall stand in the place of his
Kadushu ({~HEBREW LETTER QOF~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~})?"(1047) Kadesh may mean in one sense to "devote,"
"hallow," "sanctify," and even to "initiate" or to "set apart";
but it also means the ministry of lascivious rites--the Venus-
worship--and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly
rendered in _Deuteronomy_, xxiii. 17; _Hosea_, iv. 14; and
_Genesis_, xxxviii. 15-22. The "holy" Kadeshim of the _Bible_ were
identical, as to the duties of their office, with the Nautch-girls
of the later Hindű pagodas. The Hebrew Kadeshim, or Galli, lived
"by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the
grove," or the bust of Venus-Astarte.(1048)
The dance performed by David round the Ark was the "circle-dance,"
said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries.
Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh,(1049) and the
leaping of the prophets of Baal.(1050) It was simply a
characteristic of the Sabćan worship, for it denoted the motion of
the Planets round the Sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is
apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of
Michal and the King's reply are very expressive.(1051)
The Ark, in which are preserved the germs of all living things
necessary to repeople the Earth, represents the survival of life,
and the supremacy of Spirit over Matter, through the conflict of
the opposing powers of Nature. In the Astro-theosophic chart of
the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is
placed at the sinister side, the side of the woman (the Moon), one
of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon's Temple--Boaz. The
umbilicus is connected (through the placenta) with the receptacle
in which are fructified the embryos of the race. The Ark is the
sacred Argha of the Hindűs, and thus the relation in which it
stands to Noah's Ark may be easily inferred when we learn that the
Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests as a
sacrificial chalice in the worship of Isis, Astarte, and Venus-
Aphrodite, all of whom were Goddesses of the generative powers of
Nature, or of Matter--hence representing symbolically the Ark
containing the germs of all living things.(1052)
Mistaken is he who accepts the kabalistic works of to-day, and the nterpretations of the _Zohar_ by the Rabbis, for the genuine kabalistic ore of old!(1053) For no more to-day than in the day of Frederick von
Schelling does the _Kabalah_ accessible to Europe and America contain much ore than
Ruins and fragments, much distorted, remnants still of that
_primitive system which is the key to all religious
systems_.(1054)
The oldest system and the Chaldćan _Kabalah_ were identical. The latest enderings of the _Zohar_ are those of the Synagogue in the early enturies--_i.e._, the Thorah (or Law), dogmatic and uncompromising.
The "King's Chamber" in Cheops' Pyramid is thus an Egyptian "Holy of
Holies." On the days of the Mysteries of Initiation, the Candidate, epresenting the Solar God, had to descend into the Sarcophagus, and epresent the energizing ray, entering into the fecund womb of Nature.
Emerging from it on the following morning, he typified the resurrection of
Life after the change called Death. In the Great Mysteries his figurative
"death" lasted two days, when with the Sun he arose on the third morning, fter a last night of the most cruel trials. While the Postulant epresented the Sun--the all-vivifying orb that "resurrects" every morning ut to impart life to all--the Sarcophagus was symbolic of the female rinciple. This, in Egypt; its form and shape changed with every country, rovided it remained a vessel, a symbolic "navis" or boat-shaped vehicle, nd a "container," symbolically, of germs or the germ of life. In India, t is the "Golden" Cow through which the Candidate for Brâhmanism has to ass if he desires to be a Brâhman, and to become _Dvi_-ja, "born a
_second_ time." The crescent-form Argha of the Greeks was the type of the
Queen of Heaven--Diana, or the Moon. She was the Great Mother of all
Existences, as the Sun was the Father. The Jews, previous to, as well as fter, their metamorphosis of Jehovah into a _male_ God, worshipped
Astoreth, which made Isaiah declare: "_Your new moons and ... feasts_ my oul hateth";(1055) in saying which, he was evidently unjust. Astoreth and he New Moon (the crescent Argha) Festivals, had no worse significance as form of public worship than had the hidden meaning of the Moon in eneral, which was kabalistically connected directly with, and sacred to,
Jehovah, as is well known; with the sole difference, however, that one was he female and the other the male aspect of the Moon, and of the star
Venus.
The Sun (the Father), the Moon (the Mother), and Mercury-Thoth (the Son), ere the earliest Trinity of the Egyptians, who personified them in
Osiris, Isis, and Thoth (Hermes). In the Gnostic Gospel _Pistis Sophia_, he seven Great Gods, divided into two Triads and the highest God (the
Sun), are the lower Triple Powers ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), whose powers reside espectively in Mars, Mercury and Venus; and the higher Triad--the three
"Unseen Gods," who dwell in the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn.(1056)
This requires no proof. Astoreth was in one sense an impersonal symbol of
Nature, the Ship of Life carrying throughout the boundless Sidereal Ocean he germs of all being. And when she was not identified with Venus, like very other "Queen of Heaven" to whom cakes and buns were offered in acrifice, Astoreth became the reflection of the Chaldćan "Nuah, the
Universal Mother" (the female Noah, considered as one with the Ark), and f the female Triad, Ana, Belita and Davkina; called, when blended into ne, "Sovereign Goddess, Lady of the Nether Abyss, Mother of Gods, Queen f the Earth, and Queen of Fecundity." Later, Belita or Tamtu(1057) (the ea), the Mother of the City of Erech (the great Chaldćan Necropolis), ecame Eve; and now she is Mary the Virgin, in the Latin Church, epresented as standing on the Crescent Moon, and, at times on the Globe, o vary the programme. The Navis, or ship-like form of the crescent, which lends in itself all those common symbols of the Ship of Life, such as
Noah's Ark, the Yoni of the Hindűs, and the Ark of the Covenant, is the emale symbol of the Universal "Mother of the Gods," and is now found nder its Christian symbol in every Church, as the "nave" (from
_navis_).(1058) The Navis, the Sidereal Vessel, is fructified by the
Spirit of Life--the male God; or, as the learned Kenealy, in his
_Apocalypse_, very appropriately calls it--the Holy Spirit. In Western eligious symbology the crescent was the male, the full Moon the female, spect of that universal Spirit. The mystic word ALM, which the prophet
Mahomet prefixed to many chapters of the _Korân_, alludes to _her_ as the
Alm, the Immaculate Virgin of the Heavens.(1059) And--the sublime ever alling into the ridiculous--it is from this root Alm that we have to erive the word Almeh--the Egyptian dancing-girls. The latter are "virgins" f the same type as the Nautchees in India, and the (female) Kadeshim, the
"holy ones" of the Jewish temples--consecrated to Jehovah, who represented oth sexes--whose _holy_ functions in the Israelite fanes were _identical_ ith those of the Nautchees.
Now Eustathius declares that IO ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}) means the Moon, in the dialect of the
Argians; it was also one of the names of the Moon in Egypt. Says
Jablonski:
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}, _Ioh, Ćgyptiis Lunam significat neque habent illi, in communi
sermonis usu, aliud nomen quo Lunam designent prćter IO_.
The Pillar and Circle (IO), which with Pythagoras was the perfect number ontained in the Tetraktys,(1060) became later a _preëminently phallic_ umber--amongst the Jews, foremost of all, with whom it is the male and emale Jehovah.
This is how a scholar explains it:
I find, on the Rosetta stone of Uhlemann, the word _mooth_ (also
in Seiffarth), the name of the _moon_, used as a cycle of time,
hence the lunar month, from the hieroglyph [Symbol: half circle],
with [Symbol: five-pointed star] and [Symbol: circle with middle
dot] as determinatives, given as the Coptic I O H, or I O H. The
Hebrew {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} may also be used as I O H, for the letter _vau_ ({~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}) was
used for _o_ and for _u_, and for _v_ or _w_. This, before the
Massora, of which the point (·) was used as {~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW POINT HOLAM~} = o, {~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW POINT DAGESH OR MAPIQ~} = u, and {~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}
= v or w. Now I had worked it out by original search that the
great distinctive function of the god-name Jehovah was designative
of the influence of the moon as the _causative_ of _generation_,
and as of its exact value as a lunar year in the natural _measure
of days_, as you will fully see,... And here comes this linguistic
same word from a source far more ancient; viz., the Coptic, or
rather from the old Egyptian in time of the Coptic.(1061)
This is the more remarkable when Egyptology compares this with the little hich it knows about the Theban Triad--composed of Ammon, Mooth (or Moot), nd their son Khonsoo. This Triad was, when united, contained in the Moon s their common symbol; and when separated, it was Khonsoo who was the God
Lunus, being thus confounded with Thoth and Phtah. His mother Moot--the ame signifying "Mother," by the bye, and not the Moon, which was only her ymbol--is called the "Queen of Heaven," the "Virgin," etc., as she is an spect of Isis, Hathor, and other Mother Goddesses. She was less the wife han the mother of Ammon, whose distinct title is the "husband of his other." In a statuette at Boulaq, Cairo, this Triad is represented as a ummy-god holding in his hand three different sceptres, and bearing the unar disk on his head, the characteristic tress of hair showing the esign of representing it as that of an _infant_ God, or the "Sun," in the
Triad. He was the God of Destinies in Thebes, and appears under two spects (1) as Khonsoo, the Lunar God, and Lord of Thebes, Nofir-hotpoo,
"he who is in absolute repose," and (2) as "Khonsoo p. iri-sokhroo," or
"Khonsoo, who executes Destiny"; the former preparing the events and onceiving them for those born under his generative influence, the latter utting them into action.(1062) Under theogonic permutations Ammon becomes
Horus, Hor-Ammon, and Moot(h)-Isis is seen suckling him in a statuette of he Saďtic period.(1063) In his turn, in this transformed Triad, Khonsoo ecomes Thoth-Lunus, "he who operates salvation." His brow is crowned with he head of an ibis decorated with the lunar disk and the diadem called
Io-tef (IO-tef).(1064)
Now all these symbols are certainly found reflected in (some believe them dentical with) the Yave, or Jehovah of the _Bible_. This will be made lain to anyone who reads _The Source of Measures_, or "The Hebrew-
Egyptian Mystery," and understands its undeniable, clear, and mathematical roofs that the _esoteric foundations_, or the system used in the building f the Great Pyramid, and the architectural measurements in the Temple of
Solomon (whether the latter be mythical or real), Noah's Ark, and the Ark f the Covenant, are the same. If anything in the world can settle the ispute that the old, as much as the later Post-Babylonian, Jews, and specially the former, built their Theogony and Religion on the very same oundation as did all the Pagans, it is the work in question.
And now it may be as well to remind the reader of what we said of IAO in
_Isis Unveiled_:
No other deity affords such a variety of etymologies as Iaho, nor
is there any name which can be so variously pronounced. It is only
by associating it with the Masoretic points that the later Rabbins
succeeded in making Jehovah read "Adonaď"--or Lord. Philo Byblus
spells it in Greek letters {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}--IEVO. Theodoret says that the
Samaritans pronounced it Iabé (Yahva), and the Jews Yaho; which
would make it as we have shown, I--Ah--O. Diodorus states that
"among the Jews they relate that Moses called the God IAO." It is
on the authority of the _Bible_ itself, that we maintain that,
before his initiation by Jethro, his father-in-law, Moses had
never known the word Iaho.(1065)
The above receives corroboration in a private letter from a very learned
Kabalist. In our first volume,(1066) it is stated that exoterically Brahma
(neuter), so flippantly and so often confused by the Orientalists with
Brahmâ (the male), is sometimes called Kâla-hansa, the "Swan in Eternity," nd the Esoteric meaning of Aham-sa, is given as "I [am] he," So-ham being qual to Sah "he," and Aham "I"--a mystic anagram and permutation. It is lso the "four-faced" Brahmâ, the Chatur-mukham (the Perfect Cube) forming tself _within_, and _from_, the Infinite Circle; and again the use of the
1, 3, 5, and 7/7 = 14, as the Esoteric Hierarchy of the Dhyân Chohans, is xplained. On this, the said correspondent comments in the following anner:
Of the 1, 3, 5, and twice 7, intending, and very especially,
13514, which on a circle may be read as 31415 (or {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~} value), I
think there cannot be a possibility of doubting; and especially
when considered with symbol marks on Sacr',(1067) "Chakra," or
Circle of Vishnu.
But let me carry your description a step further: You say, "The
One from the Egg, the _Six_, and the _Five_,(1068) give the
numbers 1065, the value of the First-born." If it be so, then in
1065 we have the famous Jehovah's name, the Jve or Jave, or
Jupiter, and by change of {~HEBREW LETTER HE~} to {~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}, or _h_ to _n_, then {~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} or the
Latin Jun or Juno, the base of the Chinese riddle, the key
measuring numbers of Sni (Sinai) and Jehovah coming down on that
Mount, which numbers (1065) are but the use of our ratio of 113 to
355, because 1065 = 355 × 3 which is circumference to a diameter
of 113 × 3 = 339. Thus the first born of Brahmâ-Prajâpati (or any
Demiurgus) indicates a measuring use of a circular relation taken
from the Chakra (or Vishnu) and, as stated above, the Divine
Manifestation takes the form of Life and the First-born.
[Illustration: Slope of entrance to King's Chamber]
It is a most singular thing: At the entrance passage to the King's
Chamber the measurement _from the surface_ of the Great Step(1069)
and the Grand Gallery to the top of the said Gallery is, by the
very careful measures of Piazzi Smyth, 339 inches. Take _a_ as a
centre and with this radius describe a circle; the diameter of
that circle will be 339 × 2 = 678, and these numbers are those of
the expression _and the raven_, in the "dove and raven" scenes or
pictures of the Flood of Noah; (the radius is taken to show
division into two parts, which are 1065 each) for 113 (_man_) × 6
= 678, and the diameter to a circumference of 1065 × 2--so we have
here an indication of cosmic _man_ on this high grade or step, at
the _entrance_ of the King's Chamber (the Holy of Holies)--_which
is the womb_. Now this passage is of such a height that a man to
enter it _must stoop_. But a man _upright_ is 113, and broken, or
stooping, he becomes 113/2 = 56·5 or 5·65 x 10 ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}), or Jehovah.
That is, he personifies(1070) him as entering the Holy of Holies.
But by Hebrew Esotericism the _chief function_ of Jehovah was
_child giving_, etc., and that because, by the numbers of his
name, he was the _measure of the lunar year_, which cycle of
time--because by its factor of 7 (seven) it ran so coördinately
with the periods of the quickening, viability, and gestation--was
taken as the _causative of the generative action_ and therefore
was worshipped and besought.
This discovery connects Jehovah still more with all the other Creative and
Generative Gods, Solar and Lunar, and especially with "King" Soma, the
Hindű Deus Lunus, the Moon, because of the Esoteric influence attributed o this Planet in Occultism. There are other corroborations of this, owever, in Hebrew tradition itself. Adam is spoken of in the _More
Nevochim_ (or "Guide of the Perplexed"--truly!) of Maimonides in two spects; as a man, like all others born of a man and a woman, and--as the
_Prophet of the Moon_; the reason of which is now made apparent, and has o be explained.
Adam, as the supposed great "Progenitor of the Human Race," is, as Adam
Kadmon, made in the _image_ of God--a priapic image, therefore. The Hebrew ords Sacr' and N'cabvah are, literally translated, Lingam (Phallus) and
Yoni (Cteďs), notwithstanding their translation in the _Bible_ "male and emale."(1071) As said there, "God creates '_man in his own image_,' in he image of God created he him; _male and female_ created he them"--the ndrogyne Adam Kadmon. Now this kabalistic name is not that of a living an, nor even of a human or divine Being, but of the two sexes or organs f procreation, called in Hebrew with that usual sincerity of language reëminently biblical, Sacr' and N'cabvah(1072); these two being, herefore, the _image_ under which the "Lord God" appeared usually to his hosen people. That this is so, is now undeniably proven by almost all the ymbologists and Hebrew scholars as well as by the _Kabalah_. Therefore
Adam is in one sense Jehovah. This makes plain another general tradition n the East mentioned in Gregorie's _Notes and Observations upon several
Passages in Scripture_,(1073) and quoted by Hargrave Jennings in his
_Phallicism_:
That Adam was commanded by God that his dead body should be kept
above ground till a fulness of time should come to commit it ...
to the _middle of the earth_ by a priest of the Most High God....
Therefore,
Noah daily prayed in the Ark before the "Body of Adam"--(1074)
r before the Phallus in the Ark, or Holy of Holies, again. He who is a
Kabalist and accustomed to the incessant permutation of biblical names, nce they are interpreted numerically and symbolically, will understand hat is meant.
The two words of which Jehovah is composed, make up the original
idea of male-female, as birth-originator, for the {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} was the
_membrum virile_ and _Hovah_ was _Eve_. So ... the _perfect one_,
as originator of measures, takes also the form of _birth_ origin,
as _hermaphrodite one_; hence, the phallic use of form.(1075)
Besides, the same author shows and demonstrates numerically and eometrically that (_a_) Arets, "earth," Adam, "man," and H-adam-h, are ognate with each other, and are _personified_ in the _Bible_ under one orm, as the Egyptian and Hebrew Mars, God of Generation;(1076) and (_b_) hat Jehovah, or Jah, is Noah, for _Jehovah is Noah_ in Hebrew would be
{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER HET~} or literally in English, _Inch_.
The above affords, then, a key to the said traditions. Noah, a divine ermutation, the supposed Saviour of Humanity, who carries in his Ark or
Argha (the Moon), the germs of all living things, worships before the
"Body of Adam," which body is the image of the Creator, and a Creator tself. Hence Adam is called the "Prophet of the Moon," the Argha or "Holy f Holies" of the Yod ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}). This also shows the origin of the Jewish opular belief that the face of Moses _is in the Moon_--_i.e._, the spots n the Moon. For Moses and Jehovah are kabalistically once more ermutations, as has been shown. Says the author of _The Source of
Measures_:
There is one fact in regard to Moses and his works too important
to be omitted. When he is instructed by the Lord as to his
mission, the _power_ name assumed by the Deity is, _I am that I
am_, the Hebrew words being
{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} ;
a various reading of {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}. Now, Moses is {~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, and equals
345.
Add the values of the _new form_ of the name Jehovah, 21 + 501 +
21 = 543, or, by a reverse reading, 345; thus showing Moses to be
a form of Jehovah in this combination. 21 ÷ 2 = 105, or, reversed,
501, so that the _asher_ or the _that_ in _I am-that-I am_ is
simply a guide to a use of 21 or 7 × 3.501^2 = 251 +, a very
valuable pyramid number, etc.(1077)
For a clearer explanation for the benefit of Non-Kabalists we put it thus:
"I am that I am" is in Hebrew:
Âhiyé is {~HEBREW LETTER HE~} {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} {~HEBREW LETTER HE~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}, or 5 10 5 1.
Asher is {~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} {~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}, or 200 300 1.
Âhiyé is {~HEBREW LETTER HE~} {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} {~HEBREW LETTER HE~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}, or 5 10 5 1.
Add the numbers of these separate words and you have:
{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} (21) {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} (501) {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} (21).
This relates to the process of descending in Fire on the Mount to make
Man, etc., and is explained to be but a _check_ and use of the numbers of he mountains; for on one side we have 10 + 5 + 6 = 21, down the middle
501, and on the other side 6 + 5 + 10 = 21.(1078)
The "Holy of Holies," both kabalistic and rabbinical, is thus shown as an nternational symbol, and common property. Neither had originated with the
Hebrews; but owing to the too realistic handling of the half-initiated
Levites, the symbol had acquired with them a significance which it carcely has with any other people to this day, and which it was riginally never meant to have by the true Kabalist. The Lingam and Yoni f the modern average Hindű is, on the face of it, of course, no better han the rabbinical "Holy of Holies"--but _it is no worse_; and this is a oint gained on the Christian traducers of the Asiatic religious
Philosophies. For, in such religious myths, in the hidden symbolism of a reed and philosophy, the _spirit_ of the tenets propounded ought to ecide their relative value. And who will say, that, examined either way, his so-called "Wisdom," applied solely to the uses and benefit of one ittle nation, has ever developed in it anything like national ethics. The
Prophets are there, to show the walk in life of the chosen but "stiff- ecked" people before, during, and after, the days of Moses. That they ave had at one time the Wisdom-Religion and the use of its universal anguage and symbols is proved by the same Esotericism existing to this ay in India with regard to the "Holy of Holies." This, as said above, was nd still is the passage through the "Golden" Cow in the same _stooping osition_ as was necessitated by the Gallery of the Pyramid, which dentified man with Jehovah in Hebrew Esotericism. The whole difference ies in the spirit of the interpretation. With the Hindűs as with the ncient Egyptians that spirit was and is entirely metaphysical and sychological; with the Hebrews it was _realistic_ and _physiological_. It ointed to the first sexual separation of the human race--Eve giving birth o Cain-Jehovah, as shown in _The Source of Measures_; to the consummation f terrestrial physiological union and conception--as in the allegory of
Cain shedding Abel's blood, Habel being the feminine principle; and to hild-bearing--a process shown to have begun in the Third Race, or with
Adam's Third Son, Seth, with whose Son Henoch, men began to call hemselves Jehovah or Jah-hovah, the male Jod and Havah or Eve, to wit, ale and female beings.(1079) Thus the difference lies in the religious nd ethical feeling, but the two symbols are identical. There is no doubt hat, with the fully initiated Judćan Tanaim, the inner sense of the ymbolism was as holy in its abstraction as with the ancient Âryan Dvijas.
The worship of the "God in the Ark" dates only from David; and for a housand years Israel knew of no phallic Jehovah. And now the old
_Kabalah_ edited and reëdited, has become tainted with it.
With the ancient Âryans the hidden meaning was grandiose, sublime and oetical, however much the external appearance of their symbol may now ilitate against the claim. The ceremony of passing through the Holy of
Holies--now symbolized by the Cow, but in the beginning through the temple
Hiranya-garbha, the Radiant Egg, in itself a symbol of Universal, Abstract
Nature--meant spiritual conception and birth, or rather the _re-birth_ of he individual and his regeneration; the _stooping_ man at the entrance of he Sanctum Sanctorum, ready to pass through the Matrix of Mother Nature, r the physical creature ready to re-become the original Spiritual Being,
_pre_-natal MAN. With the Semite, that _stooping_ man meant the _fall_ of
Spirit into Matter, and that _fall_ and _degradation_ were apotheosized by im with the result of dragging Deity down to the level of man. For the
Âryan, the symbol represented the divorce of Spirit from Matter, its erging into and return to its primal Source; for the Semite, the wedlock f Spiritual Man with Material Female Nature, the physiological taking reëminence over the psychological and the purely immaterial. The Âryan iews of the symbolism were those of the whole Pagan world; the Semite nterpretations emanated from, and were preëminently those of a small ribe, thus marking its national features and the idiosyncratic defects hat characterize many of the Jews to this day--gross realism, selfishness, nd sensuality. They had made a bargain, through their father Jacob, with heir tribal deity, self-exalted above all others, and a _covenant_ that is "seed shall be as the dust of the earth"; and that deity could have no etter image henceforth than that of the symbol of generation, and as epresentation a _number_ and numbers.
Carlyle has wise words for both these nations. With the Hindű Âryan--the ost metaphysical and spiritual people on earth--religion has ever been, in is words,
An everlasting lode-star, that beams the brighter in the heavens
the darker here on earth grows the night around him.
The religion of the Hindű detaches him from this Earth; therefore, even ow, the cow-symbol is one of the grandest and most philosophical among ll others in its inner meaning. To the "Masters" and "Lords" of European otencies, the Israelites, certain words of Carlyle apply still more dmirably; for them
Religion is a wise prudential feeling grounded on _mere
calculation_--
nd it was so from its beginnings. Having burdened themselves with it,
Christian nations feel bound to defend and _poetize_ it, at the expense of ll other religions.
But it was not so with the ancient nations. For them the passage-entrance nd the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber meant regeneration--not eneration. It was the most solemn symbol, a _Holy of Holies_, indeed, herein were created Immortal Hierophants and "Sons of God"--never mortal en and sons of lust and flesh, as now in the hidden sense of the Semite
Kabalist. The reason for the difference in the views of the two races is asy to account for. The Âryan Hindű belongs to the oldest races now on
Earth; the Semite Hebrew to the latest. The former is nearly one million ears old; the latter is a small sub-race some 8,000 years of age and no ore.(1080)
But phallic worship has developed only with the gradual loss of the keys o the inner meaning of religious symbols, and there was a day when the
Israelites had beliefs as pure as the Âryans have. But now Judaism, built
_solely_ on phallic worship, has become one of the latest creeds in Asia, nd theologically a religion of hate and malice toward everyone and verything outside itself. Philo Judćus shows what was the genuine Hebrew aith. The Sacred Writings, he says, prescribe what we ought to do,
_commanding us to hate the heathen and their laws and institutions_. True, hey did hate Baal or Bacchus worship publicly, but left its worst eatures to be followed secretly. It is with the Talmudic Jews that the rand symbols of Nature were the most profaned. With them, as now shown by he discovery of the key to the correct _Bible_ reading, Geometry, the
_fifth_ Divine Science--"fifth" in the series of the Seven Keys to the niversal Esoteric Language and Symbology--was desecrated, and by them pplied to conceal the most terrestrial and grossly sexual mysteries, herein both Deity and Religion were degraded.
We are told that it is just the same with our Brahmâ-Prajâpati, with
Osiris and all other _Creative_ Gods. Quite so, when their rites are udged exoterically and externally; the reverse when their _inner_ meaning s unveiled, as we see. The Hindű Lingam is identical with Jacob's
"Pillar"--most undeniably. But the difference, as said, seems to consist in he fact that the Esoteric significance of the Lingam was too truly sacred nd metaphysical to be revealed to the profane and the vulgar; hence its uperficial appearance was left to the speculations of the mob. Nor would he Âryan Hierophant and Brâhman, in their proud exclusiveness and the atisfaction of their knowledge, go to the trouble of concealing its rimeval _nakedness_ under cunningly devised fables; whereas the Rabbi, aving interpreted the symbol to suit his own tendencies, had to veil the rude significance; and this served a double purpose--that of keeping his ecret to himself and of exalting himself in his supposed monotheism over he Heathen, whom his Law commanded him to hate(1081)--a commandment now ladly accepted by the Christian too, in spite of another and later ommandment, "Love one another." Both India and Egypt had and have their acred lotuses, symbolic of the same "Holy of Holies"--the lotus growing in he water, a double feminine symbol--the _bearer_ of its own seed and root f all. Virâj and Horus are both male symbols, emanating from Androgyne
Nature, one from Brahmâ and his female counterpart Vâch, the other, from
Osiris and Isis--never from the One Infinite God. In the Judćo-Christian ystems it is different. Whereas the lotus, containing Brahmâ, the
Universe, is shown growing out of Vishnu's Navel, the Central Point in the
Waters of Infinite Space, and whereas Horus springs from the lotus of the
Celestial Nile--all these abstract pantheistic ideas are dwarfed and made errestrially concrete in the _Bible_. One is almost inclined to say that n the _esoteric_ they are _grosser and still more anthropomorphic_, than n their _exoteric_ rendering. Take as an example the same symbol, even in ts Christian application--the _lilies_ in the hand of the Archangel
Gabriel.(1082) In Hindűism--the "Holy of Holies" is a universal bstraction, whose _dramatis personć_ are Infinite Spirit and Nature; in
Christian Judaism, it is a _personal_ God, _outside_ of that Nature, and he human womb--Eve, Sarah, etc.; hence, an anthropomorphic phallic God, nd his image--man.
Thus it is maintained, that with regard to the contents of the _Bible_, ne of two hypotheses has to be admitted. Either behind the symbolic ubstitute Jehovah, there was the Unknown, Incognizable Deity, the abalistic Ain Suph; or, the Jews have been from the beginning no better han the dead-letter Lingam-worshippers(1083) of the India of to-day. We ay it was the former; and that, therefore, the secret or esoteric worship f the Jews was the same Pantheism that the Vedântin Philosophers are eproached with to-day; Jehovah was a _substitute_ for purposes of an xoteric national faith, and had no importance or reality in the eyes of he erudite Priests and Philosophers--the Sadducees, the most refined and he most learned of all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living proof f it, with their contemptuous rejection of every belief, save the Law.
For how could those who invented the stupendous scheme now known as the
_Bible_, or their successors who knew, as all Kabalists do, that it was so nvented for a popular "blind"--how could they, we ask, feel reverence for uch a phallic symbol and a _number_, as Jehovah is shown most undeniably o be in the kabalistic works? How could anyone worthy of the name of a
Philosopher, and knowing the real _secret_ meaning of their "Pillar of
Jacob," their Bethels, oil-anointed Phalli, and their "Brazen Serpent," orship such a gross symbol, and minister unto it, seeing in it their
"Covenant"--the Lord Himself! Let the reader turn to _Gemara Sanhedrim_ and udge. As various writers have shown, and as brutally stated in Hargrave
Jennings' _Phallicism_:
_We know from the Jewish records_ that the Ark contained a _table
of stone_; and if it can be demonstrated that that stone was
phallic, and yet identical with the sacred name Jehovah or
Yehovah, which, written in unpointed Hebrew with four letters, is
J-E-V-E or J-H-V-H (the H being merely an aspirate and the same as
E). This process leaves us the two letters I and V (or in another
of its forms U); then if we place the I _in_ the U we have the
"Holy of Holies"; we also have the Linga and Yoni and Argha of the
Hindűs, the Iswarra [Îshvara] or "supreme Lord"; and here we have
the whole secret of its mystic and arc-celestial import, confirmed
in itself by being identical with the Linyoni [?] of the Ark of
the Covenant.(1084)
The biblical Jews of to-day do not date from Moses but from David--even dmitting the identity of the old and genuine with the later and emodelled Mosaic scrolls. Before that time their nationality is lost in he mists of pre-historic darkness, the veil from which is now withdrawn s much as we have space to do. It is only to the days of the Babylonian aptivity that the _Old Testament_ may be referred by the most lenient riticism as the approximately correct views that were current about the ays of Moses. Even such fanatical Christians and worshippers of Jehovah s the Rev. Mr. Horne, have to admit the numerous changes and alterations ade by the later compilers of the "Book of God," since it was _found_ by
Hilkiah,(1085) and since
The Pentateuch arose out of the _primitive or older_ documents, by
means of a _supplementary_ one.
The Elohistic texts were re-written 500 years after the date of Moses; the
Jehovistic 800, on the authority of the biblical chronology itself. Hence, t is maintained that the deity, represented as the organ of generation in is pillar-form, and as a symbol of the double-sexed organ in the numeral alue of the letters of his name--the Yod, {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} or "phallus," and Hé, {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, the
"opening," or the "womb," according to kabalistic authority--is of a far ater date than the Elohim-symbols and is borrowed from the Pagan
_exoteric_ rites; and Jehovah is thus on a par with the Lingam and Yoni ound on every roadside in India.
Just as the Iao of the Mysteries was distinct from Jehovah, so was the ater Iao and Abraxas, or Abrasax, of some Gnostic sects identical with he God of the Hebrews, who was the same as the Egyptian Horus. This is ndeniably proven on "Heathen" as on the Gnostic "Christian" gems. In
Matter's collection of such gems there is a "Horus"--
Seated on the lotus, inscribed {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER XI~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~} (Abrasax Iao)--an
address exactly parallel to the so frequent {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~} (Eis
Zeus Sarapi) on the contemporary Heathen gems, and therefore only
to be translated by "Abraxas is the One Jehovah."(1086)
But who was Abraxas? As the same author shows:
The numerical or Kabbalistic value of the name Abraxas directly
refers to the Persian title of the god "Mithras," Ruler of the
year, worshipped from the earliest times under the appellation of
Iao.(1087)
Thus, he was the Sun, in one aspect, the Moon or the Lunar Genius, in nother, that Generative Deity whom the Gnostics saluted as "Thou that residest over the Mysteries of the Father and the Son, who shinest in the ight-time, holding _the second rank_, the first Lord of Death."
It is only in his capacity of the Genius of the Moon--the latter being redited in the old cosmogony with being the parent of our Earth--that
Jehovah could ever be regarded as the _Creator_ of our Globe and _its_
Heaven, namely, the Firmament.
The knowledge of all this will be no proof, however, to the average bigot.
Missionaries will go on with the most virulent attacks on the religions of
India, and Christians read with the same benighted smile of satisfaction s ever these preposterously unjust words of Coleridge:
It is highly worthy of observation that the inspired writings
received by Christians are distinguishable from all other books
_pretending to inspiration_, from the Scriptures of the Brahmins,
and even from the Koran, in their strong and frequent
_recommendation of truth_ [!!].
Section IV. On the Myth of the "Fallen Angels" in its Various Aspects.
A. The Evil Spirit: Who, And What?
Our present quarrel is exclusively with Theology. The Church enforces elief in a Personal God and a Personal Devil, while Occultism shows the allacy of such a belief. For the Pantheists and Occultists, as much as or the Pessimists, "Nature" is no better than "a comely mother, but stone old"; but this is true only so far as regards _external_ Physical Nature.
They both agree that, to the superficial observer, she is no better than n immense slaughter-house wherein butchers become victims, and victims xecutioners in their turn. It is quite natural that the pessimistically nclined profane, once convinced of Nature's numerous shortcomings and ailures, and especially of her autophagous propensities, should imagine his to be the best evidence that there is no Deity _in abscondito_ within
Nature, nor anything divine in her. Nor is it less natural that the
Materialist and the Physicist should imagine that everything is due to lind force and chance, and to the survival of the _strongest_, even more ften than of the _fittest_. But the Occultists, who regard Physical
Nature as a bundle of most varied illusions on the plane of deceptive erceptions; who recognize in every pain and suffering but the necessary angs of incessant procreation; a series of stages toward an ever-growing erfectibility, which is visible in the silent influence of never-erring
Karma, or _Abstract_ Nature--the Occultists, we say, view the Great Mother therwise. Woe to those who live without suffering. Stagnation and death s the future of all that vegetates without change. And how can there be ny change for the better without proportionate suffering during the receding stage? Is it not those only who have learnt the deceptive value f earthly hopes and the illusive allurements of external nature who are estined to solve the great problems of life, pain, and death?
If our modern Philosophers--preceded by the medićval scholars--have helped hemselves to more than one fundamental idea of antiquity, Theologians ave built their God and his Archangels, their Satan and his Angels, along ith the Logos and his staff, entirely out of the _dramatis personć_ of he old heathen Pantheons. They would have been welcome to these, had they ot cunningly distorted the original characters, perverted the hilosophical meaning, and, taking advantage of the ignorance of
Christendom--the result of long ages of mental sleep, during which humanity as permitted to think only by proxy--tossed every symbol into the most nextricable confusion. One of their most sinful achievements in this irection, was the transformation of the divine _Alter Ego_ into the rotesque Satan of their Theology.
As the whole philosophy of the problem of evil hangs upon the correct omprehension of the constitution of the _Inner_ Being of Nature and Man, f the divine within the animal, and hence also the correctness of the hole system as given in these pages, with regard to the crown piece of volution--Man--we cannot take sufficient precautions against theological ubterfuges. When the good St. Augustine and the fiery Tertullian call the
Devil the "monkey of God," we can attribute it to the ignorance of the age hey lived in. It is more difficult to excuse our modern writers on the ame ground. The translation of Mazdean literature has afforded Roman
Catholic writers the pretext for proving their point in the same direction nce more. They have taken advantage of the dual nature of Ahura Mazda and f his Amshaspands in the _Zend Avesta_ and the _Vendîdâd_, to emphasize till further their wild theories. Satan is the _plagiarist and the opyist by anticipation_ of the religion which came ages later. This was ne of the master strokes of the Latin Church, its best trump-card after he appearance of Spiritualism in Europe. Though only a _succčs d'estime_, n general, even among those who are not interested in either Theosophy or
Spiritualism, yet the weapon is often used by the Christian (Roman
Catholic) Kabalists against the Eastern Occultists.
Now even the Materialists are quite harmless, and may be regarded as the riends of Theosophy, when compared to some fanatical "Christian"--as they all themselves, "Sectarian" as we call them--Kabalists, on the Continent.
These read the _Zohar_, not to find in it ancient Wisdom, but, by mangling he texts and meaning, to discover in its verses Christian dogmas, where one could ever have been meant; and, having fished them out with the ollective help of Jesuitical casuistry and learning, the supposed
"Kabalists" proceed to write books and to mislead less far-sighted tudents of the Kabalah.(1088)
May we not then be permitted to drag the deep rivers of the Past, and thus ring to the surface the root idea that led to the transformation of the
Wisdom-God, who had first been regarded as the Creator of everything that xists, into an Angel of Evil--a ridiculous horned biped, half goat and alf monkey, with hoofs and a tail? We need not go out of the way to ompare the Pagan Demons of either Egypt, India, or Chaldća with the Devil f Christianity, for no such comparison is possible. But we may stop to lance at the biography of the Christian Devil, a piratical reprint from he Chaldćo-Judćan mythology.
The primitive origin of this personification rests upon the Akkadian onception of the Cosmic Powers--the Heavens and the Earth--in eternal feud nd struggle with Chaos. Their Silik-Muludag (? Murudug), "the God amongst ll the Gods," the "merciful guardian of men on Earth," was the son of Hea
(or Ea) the great God of Wisdom, called by the Babylonians Nebo. With both eoples, as also in the case of the Hindű Gods, their deities were both eneficent and maleficent. As evil and punishment are the agents of Karma, n an absolutely just retributive sense, so Evil was the servant of the
Good.(1089) The reading of the Chaldćo-Assyrian tiles has now demonstrated his beyond a shadow of doubt. We find the same idea in the _Zohar_. Satan as a Son and an Angel of God. With all the Semitic nations, the Spirit of he Earth was as much the Creator in his own realm as the Spirit of the
Heavens. They were twin brothers and interchangeable in their functions, hen not two in one. Nothing of that which we find in _Genesis_ is absent rom the Chaldćo-Assyrian religious beliefs, even in the little that has itherto been deciphered. The great "Face of the Deep" of _Genesis_ is raced in the Tohu Bohu ("Deep" or "Primeval Space"), or Chaos, of the
Babylonians. Wisdom, the Great Unseen God--called in _Genesis_ the "Spirit f God"--lived, for the older Babylonians as for the Akkadians, in the Sea f Space. Toward the days described by Berosus, this Sea became the
Visible Waters on the face of the Earth--the crystalline abode of the Great
Mother, the Mother of Ea and all the Gods, which became, still later, the reat Dragon Tiamat, the Sea Serpent. Its last stage of development was he great struggle of Bel with the Dragon--the Devil!
Whence the Christian idea that God cursed the Devil? The God of the Jews, hosoever he was, forbids cursing Satan. Philo Judćus and Josephus both tate that the Law (the _Pentateuch_ and the _Talmud_) undeviatingly orbid one to curse the Adversary, and also the Gods of the Gentiles.
"Thou shalt not revile the Gods," quoth the God of Moses,(1090) for it is
God who "hath divided [them] unto all nations";(1091) and those who speak vil of "Dignities" (Gods) are called "filthy dreamers" by Jude.
For even Michael the Archangel ... durst not bring against him
[the Devil] a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke
thee.(1092)
Finally the same is repeated in the _Talmud_:(1093)
Satan appeared one day to a man who used to curse him daily, and
said to him: "Why dost thou this?" Consider that _God himself_
would not curse me, but merely said: "The Lord rebuke thee,
Satan."(1094)
This piece of Talmudic information shows plainly (_a_) that St. Michael is alled "God" in the _Talmud_, and somebody else the "Lord," and (_b_) that
Satan is _a_ God, of whom even the "Lord" is in fear. All we read in the
_Zohar_ and other kabalistic works on Satan shows plainly that this
"personage" is simply the personification of the abstract Evil, which is he weapon of Karmic Law and Karma. It is our human nature and man imself, as it is said that "Satan is always near and inextricably nterwoven with man." It is only a question of that Power being latent or ctive in us.
It is a well-known fact--to learned Symbologists at all events--that in very great religion of antiquity, it is the Logos Demiurge--the Second
Logos, or the first emanation from the Mind, Mahat--who is made to strike, o to say, the key-note of that which may be called the correlation of
Individuality and Personality in the subsequent scheme of evolution. It is he Logos who is shown, in the mystic symbolism of Cosmogony, Theogony, nd Anthropogony, playing two parts in the drama of Creation and
Being--that of the purely human Personality and the divine Impersonality of he so-called Avatâras, or divine Incarnations, and of the Universal
Spirit, called Christos by the Gnostics, and the Fravarshi (or Ferouer) of
Ahura Mazda in the Mazdean Philosophy. On the lower rungs of Theogony the
Celestial Beings of lower Hierarchies had each a Fravarshi, or a Celestial
"Double." It is the same, only still more mystic, reässertion of the abalistic axiom, "_Deus est Demon inversus_"; the word "Demon," however, s in the case of Socrates, and in the spirit of the meaning given to it y the whole of antiquity, standing for the Guardian Spirit, an "Angel," ot a Devil of Satanic descent as Theology would have it. The Roman
Catholic Church shows its usual logic and consistency by accepting St.
Michael as the Ferouer of Christ. This Ferouer was his "Angel Guardian," s _proved_ by St. Thomas,(1095) who, however, calls the prototypes and ynonyms of Michael, such as Mercury for example, Devils!
The Church positively accepts the tenet that Christ has his Ferouer as any ther God or mortal has. Writes De Mirville:
Here we have the two heroes of the Old Testament, the _Verbum_ [?]
(or _second_ Jehovah), and his _Face_ ["Presence," as the
Protestants translate], both making but one, and yet being two, a
mystery which seemed to us unsolvable before we had studied the
doctrine of the Mazdean _Ferouers_, and learnt that the _Ferouer_
was the spiritual potency, at once _image_, _face_, and _guardian_
of the Soul which finally assimilates the _Ferouer_.(1096)
This is _almost_ correct.
Among other absurdities, the Kabalists maintain that the word Metatron, eing divided into _meta-thronon_ ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~}, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}), means "near the hrone."(1097) It means quite the reverse, as _meta_ means "beyond" and ot "near." This is of great importance in our argument. St. Michael, hen, the "_quis ut Deus_," is the translator, so to speak, of the nvisible world into the visible and the objective.
They maintain, furthermore, along with the Roman Catholic Church, that in he Biblical and Christian Theology there does not exist a "higher elestial personality, after the Trinity, than that of the Archangel, or he Seraphim, Michael." According to them, the conqueror of the Dragon is he Archisatrap of the Sacred Militia, the Guardian of the Planets, the
King of the Stars, the Slayer of Satan and the Powerful Rector. In the ystic Astronomy of these gentlemen, he is the Conqueror of Ahriman, who aving upset the Sidereal Throne of the usurper, bathes in his stead in he Solar Fires; and, Defender of the Christ-Sun, he approaches so near is Master, "that he seems to become one with him."(1098) Owing to this usion with the Word (Verbum) the Protestants, and among them Calvin, nded by losing sight entirely of the duality, and saw no Michael "but nly his Master," writes the Abbé Caron. The Roman Catholics, and specially their Kabalists, know better; and it is they who explain to the orld this duality, which affords them the means of glorifying the chosen nes of the Church, and of rejecting and anathematizing all those Gods who ay be in the way of their dogmas.
Thus the same titles and the same names are given in turn to God and the
Archangel. Both are called Metatron, "both have the name of Jehovah pplied to them when they speak _one in the other_" (_sic_), for, ccording to the _Zohar_, the term signifies equally the Master and the
Ambassador. Both are the Angel of the Face, because, as we are informed, f on the one hand the "Word" is called "the Face [or the Presence] and he Image of the Substance of God," on the other, "when speaking of the
_Saviour_ to the Israelites, Isaiah [?] tells them" that "the Angel of his
Presence saved them in their affliction"--"so he was their Saviour."(1099)
Elsewhere Michael is called very plainly the "Prince of the Faces of the
Lord," the "Glory of the Lord." Both Jehovah and Michael are the "Guides f Israel(1100) ... Chiefs of the Armies of the Lord, Supreme Judges of he Souls and even Seraphs."(1101)
The whole of the above is given on the authority of various works by Roman
Catholics, and must, therefore, be orthodox. Some expressions are ranslated to show what subtle Theologians and Casuists mean by the term
Ferouer,(1102) a word borrowed by some French writers from the _Zend
Avesta_, as said, and utilized in Roman Catholicism for a purpose
Zoroaster was very far from anticipating. In Fargard xix (verse 14), of he _Vendîdâd_ it is said:
Invoke, O Zarathushtra! my Fravarshi, who am Ahura Mazda, the
greatest, the best, the fairest of all beings, the most solid, the
most intelligent, ... and whose soul is the holy Word (Mâthra
Spenta).(1103)
The French Orientalists translate _Fravarshi_ by _Ferouer_.
Now what is a Ferouer, or Fravarshi? In some Mazdean works it is plainly mplied that Fravarshi is the _inner_, immortal Man, or the Ego which eďncarnates; that it existed before the physical body and survives all uch bodies it happens to be clothed in.
Not only man was endowed with a Fravarshi, _but gods too_, and the
sky, fire, waters, and plants.(1104)
This shows as plainly as can be shown that the Ferouer is the "spiritual ounterpart" of either God, animal, plant, or even element, _i.e._, the efined and the _purer_ part of the grosser creation, the soul of the ody, whatever the body may happen to be. Therefore does Ahura Mazda ecommend Zarathushtra to invoke his Fravarshi and not himself (Ahura
Mazda); that is to say, the impersonal and _true_ Essence of Deity, one ith Zoroaster's own Âtmâ (or Christos), not the _false_ and personal ppearance. This is quite clear.
Now it is on this divine and ethereal prototype that the Roman Catholics ave seized so as to build up the supposed difference between their God nd Angels and the Deity and its aspects, or the Gods of the old eligions. Thus, while calling Mercury, Venus, Jupiter (whether as Gods or
Planets) Devils, they at the same time make of the same Mercury the
Ferouer of their Christ. This fact is undeniable. Vossius(1105) proves hat Michael is the Mercury of the Pagans, and Maury and other French riters corroborate him, and add that according to great Theologians
_Mercury and the Sun are one_, (?) and no wonder, they think, since
Mercury being so near the Wisdom and the Verbum (the Sun), must be bsorbed by and confounded with him.(1106)
This "Pagan" view was accepted from the first century of our era, as shown n the original _Acts of the Apostles_ (the English translation being orthless). So much is Michael the Mercury of the Greeks and other ations, that when the inhabitants of Lystra mistook Paul and Barnabas for
Mercury and Jupiter, saying, "The Gods have come down to us in the ikeness of men"--the text adds: "And they called Barnabas Zeus, and Paul,
Hermes, because he was the _leader of the Word_ (Logos)," and not "the hief speaker," as erroneously translated in the Authorized, and repeated ven in the Revised, English _Bible_. Michael is the Angel of the vision n _Daniel_, the Son of God, "who was like unto a Son of Man." It is the
Hermes-Christos of the Gnostics, the Anubis-Syrius of the Egyptians, the
Counsellor of Osiris in Amenti, the Leontoid Michael-Ophiomorphos
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}) of the Ophites, who wears on certain Gnostic jewels a lion's
_head_, like his father Ildabaoth.(1107)
Now to all this the Roman Catholic Church tacitly consents, many of her riters even avowing it publicly. Unable to deny the flagrant "borrowing" f their Church, who "spoiled" her seniors of their symbols, as the Jews ad "spoiled" the Egyptians of their jewels of silver and gold, they xplain the fact quite coolly and seriously. Thus the writers who have itherto been _timid_ enough to see, in this repetition by Christian ogmas of old Pagan ideas, "a _legendary plagiarism_ perpetrated by man," re gravely assured that, far from such a simple solution of the almost erfect resemblance, it has to be attributed to quite another cause--"to a
_pre-historical_ plagiarism, of a _superhuman_ origin."
If the reader would know how, he must again kindly turn to the same volume f De Mirville's work.(1108) Please note that this author was the
_official and recognized defender_ of the Roman Church, and was helped by he learning of all the Jesuits. There we read:
We have pointed out several demi-gods, and also "very historical"
heroes of the Pagans, who were predestined from the moment of
their birth, _to ape_, while at the same time they dishonoured,
the nativity of the hero, _who was quite God_, before whom the
whole earth had to bow; we have traced them being born as _he_
was, from an immaculate mother; we have seen them strangling
serpents in their cradles, fighting against demons, performing
miracles, dying as martyrs, descending to the nether world and
rising again from the dead. And we have bitterly deplored that
timid and shy Christians should feel compelled to explain all such
identities on the ground of coincidence of myth and symbol. They
forget apparently these words of the Saviour, _all that came
before me are thieves and robbers_--a word which explains all
without any absurd negation and which I have commented on in these
words, "The Evangel is a sublime drama, _parodied and played
before its appointed time by ruffians_."
The "ruffians" (_les drôles_), are of course Demons whose manager is
Satan. Now this is the easiest and the most sublime and simple way of etting out of the difficulty! The Rev. Dr. Lundy, a Protestant De
Mirville, followed the happy suggestion in his _Monumental Christianity_, nd so did Dr. Sepp of Munich in his works written to prove the divinity f Jesus and the Satanic origin of all other Saviours. So much greater the ity that a systematic and collective plagiarism which went on for several enturies on the most gigantic scale, should be explained by another lagiarism, this time in the fourth Gospel. For the sentence quoted from t, "All that ever came before me," etc., is a _verbatim_ repetition of ords written in the _Book of Enoch_. In the Introduction to Archbishop
Laurence's translation from an Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian Library, the ditor, author of the _Evolution of Christianity_, remarks:
In revising the proof-sheets of the Book of Enoch, we have been
still further impressed by relationship with New Testament
Scripture. Thus, the parable of the sheep, rescued by the good
Shepherd from hireling guardians and ferocious wolves, is
_obviously borrowed_ by the fourth Evangelist from Enoch lxxxix,
in which the author depicts the shepherds as killing and
destroying the sheep before the advent of their Lord, and thus
discloses the true meaning of that hitherto mysterious passage in
the Johannine parable--"All that ever came before me are thieves
and robbers"--language in which we now detect an obvious reference
to the allegorical shepherds of Enoch.(1109)
It is too late in the day to claim that it is Enoch who borrowed from the
_New Testament_, instead of _vice versâ_. Jude (14, 15) quotes _verbatim_ rom Enoch a long passage about the coming of the Lord with his ten housand saints, and naming the prophet specifically _acknowledges_ the ource.
In ... perfecting the parallelism between prophet and apostle,
[we] have placed beyond controversy that, _in the eyes of the
author of an Epistle accepted as Divine revelation_, the Book of
Enoch _was the inspired production of an antediluvian
patriarch_....
The cumulative coincidence of language and ideas in Enoch and the
authors of New Testament Scripture, ... clearly indicates that the
work of the Semitic Milton was the inexhaustible source from which
Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who wrote in their names,
borrowed their conceptions of the resurrection, judgment,
immortality, perdition, and of the universal reign of
righteousness under the eternal dominion of the Son of Man. This
_evangelical plagiarism_ culminates in the Revelation of John,
which adapts the visions of Enoch to Christianity, with
modifications in which we miss the sublime simplicity of the great
master of apocalyptic prediction, who prophesied in the name of
the antediluvian Patriarch.(1110)
"Antediluvian," truly; but if the phraseology of the text dates hardly a ew centuries or even millenniums before the historical era, then it is no onger the original _prediction_ of the events to come, but is, in its urn, a copy of some scripture of a pre-historic religion.
In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the form of Kapila and other
(inspired teachers) ... imparts ... true wisdom [as Enoch did]. In
the Tretâ age he restrains the wicked, in the form of a universal
monarch [Chakravartin, the "Everlasting King" of Enoch(1111)] and
protects the three worlds [or Races]. In the Dvâpara age, in the
person of Veda-vyâsa, he divides the one Veda into four, and
distributes it into hundreds (Shata) of branches.(1112)
Truly so; the Veda of the earliest Âryans, before it was written, went orth into every nation of the Atlanto-Lemurians, and sowed the first eeds of all the now existing old religions. The off-shoots of the never ying Tree of Wisdom have scattered their dead leaves even on Judćo-
Christianity. And at the end of the Kali, our present Age, Vishnu, or the
"Everlasting King," will appear as Kalki, and reëstablish righteousness pon earth. The minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened, nd become as pellucid as crystal.
The men who are thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time [the
Sixth Race] _shall be as the seeds_ of other human beings, and
shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita
age of purity;
_i.e._, it shall be the Seventh Race, the Race of "Buddhas," the "Sons of
God," born of _immaculate_ parents.
B. The Gods Of Light Proceed From The Gods Of Darkness.
Thus it is pretty well established that Christ, the Logos, or the God in
Space and the Saviour on Earth, is but one of the echoes of this same ntediluvian and sorely misunderstood Wisdom. Its history begins by the escent on Earth of the "Gods" who incarnate in mankind, and this is the
"Fall." Whether Brahmâ hurled down on Earth by Bhagavân in the allegory, r Jupiter by Cronus, all are the symbols of the human races. Once having ouched this Planet of dense Matter, the snow-white wings of even the ighest Angel can no longer remain immaculate, or the Avatâra (or ncarnation) be perfect, as every such Avatâra is the fall of a God into eneration. Nowhere is the metaphysical truth more clear, when explained
Esoterically, or more hidden from the average comprehension of those who nstead of appreciating the sublimity of the idea can only degrade it--than n the _Upanishads_, the Esoteric glossaries of the _Vedas_. The _Rig
Veda_, as Guignault characterized it, "is the most sublime conception of he great highways of humanity." The _Vedas_ are, and will remain for ver, in the Esotericism of the _Vedânta_ and the _Upanishads_, "the irror of the Eternal Wisdom."
For upwards of sixteen centuries the new masks, forced over the faces of he old Gods, have screened them from public curiosity, but they have inally proved a misfit. Yet the metaphorical Fall, and the as etaphorical Atonement and Crucifixion, have led Western Humanity through oads knee-deep in blood. Worse than all, they have led it to believe in he dogma of the Evil Spirit distinct from the Spirit of all Good, whereas he former lives in all Matter and preëminently in man. Finally it has reated the God-slandering dogma of Hell and eternal perdition; it has pread a thick film between the higher intuitions of man and divine erities; and, most pernicious result of all, it has made people remain gnorant of the fact that there were no fiends, no dark demons in the
Universe before man's own appearance on this, and probably on other
Earths. Hence the people have been led to accept, as the problematical onsolation for this world's sorrows, the thought of original sin.
The philosophy of that Law in Nature, which implants in man as well as in very beast a passionate, inherent, and instinctive desire for freedom and elf-guidance, pertains to Psychology and cannot be touched on now, for to emonstrate this feeling in higher Intelligences, to analyze and give a atural reason for it, would necessitate an endless philosophical xplanation for which there here is no room. Perhaps the best synthesis of his feeling is found in three lines of Milton's _Paradise Lost_. Says the
"Fallen One":
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell!
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven!
Better be man, the crown of terrestrial production and king over its _opus peratum_, than be lost among the will-less Spiritual Hosts in Heaven.
We have said elsewhere that the dogma of the first Fall rested on a few erses in _Revelation_, which are now shown to be a plagiarism from Enoch y some scholars. These have given rise to endless theories and peculations, which have gradually acquired the importance of dogma and nspired tradition. Every one sought to explain the verse about the seven- eaded dragon with his ten horns and seven crowns, whose tail "drew the hird part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth," and hose place, with that of his Angels, "was found no more in heaven." What he seven heads of the Dragon (or Cycle) mean, and its _five_ wicked kings lso, may be learned in the Addenda which close Part III of this Volume.
From Newton to Bossuet speculations were incessantly evolved in Christian rains with regard to these obscure verses. Says Bossuet:
The star that falls is the heresiarch Theodosius.... The clouds of
smoke are the heresies of the Montanists.... The third part of the
stars are the martyrs, and especially the doctors of divinity.
Bossuet ought to have known, however, that the events described in
_Revelation_ were not original, and may, as shown, be found in other and
Pagan traditions. There were no scholastics nor Montanists during Vedic imes, nor yet far earlier in China. But Christian _Theology_ had to be
_protected and saved_.
This is only natural. But why should truth be sacrificed in order to rotect from destruction the lucubrations of Christian Theologians?
The "_princeps aeris hujus_," the "Prince of the Air," of St. Paul, is not he Devil, but the effects of the Astral Light, as Éliphas Lévi correctly xplains. The Devil is not the "God _of this period_," as he says, for it s the Deity of every age and period since Man appeared on Earth, and
Matter in its countless forms and states had to fight for its evanescent xistence against other disintegrating Forces.
The "Dragon" is simply the symbol of the Cycle and of the "Sons of
Manvantaric Eternity," who had descended on Earth during a certain epoch f its formative period. The "clouds of smoke" are geological phenomena.
The "third part of the stars of heaven," cast down to the Earth, refers to he Divine Monads--the Spirits of the Stars in Astrology--that ircumambulate our Globe; _i.e._, the _human_ Egos destined to perform the hole Cycle of Incarnations. The sentence, "_qui circumambulat terram_," owever, is again referred to the Devil in Theology, the mythical Father f Evil being said to "fall like lightning." Unfortunately for this nterpretation, the "Son of Man," or Christ, is expected, on the personal estimony of Jesus, to descend on Earth likewise, "as the lightning cometh ut of the East,"(1113) just in the same shape and under the same symbol s Satan, who is seen to fall "as lightning ... from heaven."(1114) All hese metaphors and figures of speech, preëminently Oriental in their haracter, must have their origin searched for in the East. In all the ncient Cosmogonies _Light_ comes from _Darkness_. In Egypt, as elsewhere,
_Darkness_ was "the principle of all things." Hence Pymander, the "Thought
Divine," issues as Light from Darkness. Behemoth(1115) is the principle of
Darkness, or Satan, in Roman Catholic Theology, and yet Job says of him hat Behemoth is "the chief [principle] of the ways of God"--"_Principium iarum Domini Behemoth!_"(1116)
Consistency does not seem to be a favourite virtue in any portion of
Divine Revelation, so-called--not as interpreted by Theologians, at any ate.
The Egyptians and the Chaldćans referred the birth of their Divine
Dynasties to that period when creative Earth was in her last final throes n giving birth to her pre-historic mountain ranges, which have since isappeared, her seas and her continents. Her face was covered with "deep
Darkness and in that [Secondary] Chaos was the principle of all things" hat developed on the Globe later on. Our Geologists have now ascertained hat there was such a terrestrial conflagration in the early geological eriods, several hundred millions of years ago.(1117) As to the tradition tself, every country and nation had it, each under its respective ational form.
It is not alone Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia or Mexico, that had its Typhon,
Python, Loki, and its "falling" Demon, but China also. The Celestials have whole literature upon the subject. It is said that in consequence of the ebellion against Ti of a proud Spirit, who said he was Ti himself, seven
Choirs of Celestial Spirits were exiled upon Earth, which "_brought a hange in all Nature_, Heaven itself _bending_ down and uniting with
Earth."
In the _Y-King_, one reads:
The flying Dragon, superb and rebellious, suffers now, and his
pride is punished; he thought he would reign in Heaven, he reigns
only on the Earth.
Again, the _Tchoon-Tsieoo_ says allegorically:
One night the stars ceased shining in darkness, and deserted it,
falling down like rain upon the Earth, _where they are now
hidden_.
These stars are the Monads.
Chinese Cosmogonies have their "Lord of the Flame" and their "Celestial
Virgin," with little "Spirits to help and minister to her; and big Spirits o fight those who are the enemies of other Gods." But all this does not rove that the said allegories are _presentments_ or _prophetic_ writings hich all refer to Christian Theology.
The best proof one can offer to Christian Theologians that the Esoteric tatements in the _Bible_--in both Testaments--are the assertion of the same dea as in our Archaic Teachings, to wit, that the "Fall of the Angels" eferred simply to the Incarnation of Angels "who had broken through the
Seven Circles"--is found in the _Zohar_. Now the _Kabalah_ of Simeon Ben
Iochaď is the soul and essence of the allegorical narrative, as the later
_Christian Kabalah_ is the "dark cloaked" Mosaic Pentateuch. And it says
(in the Agrippa MSS.):
The Wisdom of the Kabalah rests in the Science of the Equilibrium
and Harmony.
Forces that manifest without having been first equilibrized perish
in Space ["equilibrized" meaning differentiated].
Thus perished the first Kings [the Divine Dynasties] of the
Ancient World, the _self-produced_ Princes of Giants. They fell
like rootless trees, and were seen no more; for _they were the
Shadow of the Shadow_ [to wit, the Chhâyâ of the Shadowy
Pitris].(1118)
But those that came after them, who shooting down like falling
stars were enshrined in the Shadows--prevailed to this day
[Dhyânîs, who by incarnating in those "empty Shadows," inaugurated
the era of mankind].
Every sentence in the ancient Cosmogonies unfolds to him who can read etween the lines the identity of the ideas, though under different garbs.
The first lesson taught in Esoteric Philosophy is, that the Incognizable
Cause does not put forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, ut only exhibits periodically _different aspects_ of Itself to the erception of _finite_ minds. Now the Collective Mind--the
Universal--composed of various and numberless Hosts of Creative Powers, owever infinite in Manifested Time, is still finite when contrasted with he Unborn and Undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect. That hich is finite cannot be perfect. Therefore there are inferior Beings mong those Hosts, but there never have been any Devils or "disobedient
Angels," for the simple reason that they are all governed by Law. The
Asuras (call them by any other name you will) who incarnated, followed in his a law as implacable as any other. They had manifested prior to the
Pitris, and as Time (in Space) proceeds in Cycles, their turn had ome--hence the numerous allegories. The name "Asura" was first given by he Brâhmans indiscriminately to those who opposed their mummeries and acrifices, as did the great Asura called Asurendra. It is to those ages, robably, that the origin of the idea of the Demon, as opposer and dversary, has to be traced.
The Hebrew Elohim, called "God" in the translations, who create "Light," re identical with the Âryan Asuras. They are also referred to as the
"Sons of Darkness," as a philosophical and logical contrast to Light
Immutable and Eternal. The earliest Zoroastrians did not believe in Evil r Darkness being _coëternal_ with Good or Light, and they give the same nterpretation. Ahriman is the manifested _Shadow_ of Ahura Mazda (Asura
Mazda), himself issued from Zeruâna Âkerne, the "Boundless [Circle of]
Time," or the Unknown Cause. They say of the latter:
Its glory is too exalted, its light too resplendent for either
human intellect or mortal eye to grasp and see.
Its primal emanation _is Eternal Light, which, from having been previously oncealed in Darkness, was called to manifest itself and thus was formed
Ormazd, the __"__King of Life.__"_ He is the "First-born" in Boundless
Time, but, like his own antetype (preëxisting spiritual idea), _has lived ithin Darkness from all Eternity_. The six Amshaspands--seven with imself, the Chief of all--the primitive _Spiritual Angels and Men_, are
_collectively_ his Logos. The Zoroastrian Amshaspands create the World in ix Days or periods also, and rest on the seventh; but in the Esoteric
Philosophy, that _seventh_ is the _first_ period or "Day," the so-called
_Primary Creation_ in Âryan Cosmogony. It is that intermediate Ćon which s the _Prologue_ to Creation, and which stands on the borderland between he Uncreated Eternal Causation and the produced finite effects; a state f _nascent_ activity and energy as the first aspect of the Eternal
Immutable Quiescence. In _Genesis_, on which no metaphysical energy has een spent, but only an extraordinary acuteness and ingenuity to veil the
Esoteric Truth, Creation begins at the third stage of manifestation. "God" r the Elohim are the "Seven Regents" of _Pymander_. They are identical ith all the other Creators. But even in _Genesis_ that period is hinted t by the abruptness of the picture, and the "Darkness" that was on the ace of the Deep. The Elohim are shown to "create"--that is to say, to uild or to produce the two Heavens or "double" Heaven (_not_ Heaven and
Earth); which means, in so many words, that they separated the upper anifested (Angelic) Heaven, or plane of consciousness, from the lower or errestrial plane; the (to us) Eternal and Immutable Ćons from those
Periods that are in space, time and duration; Heaven from Earth, the
Unknown from the Known--to the profane. Such is the meaning of the sentence n _Pymander_, which says that:
Thought, the _divine_, which is Light and Life [Zeruâna Âkerne]
produced through its Word, or first aspect, the other, _operating_
Thought, which being the God of Spirit and Fire, constructed Seven
Regents enclosing within their Circle the World of Senses named
"Fatal Destiny."
The latter refers to Karma; the "Seven Circles" are the seven planets and lanes, as also the seven Invisible Spirits, in the Angelic Spheres, whose isible symbols are the seven planets,(1119) the seven Rishis of the Great
Bear and other glyphs. As said of the Âdityas by Roth:
They are neither sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor dawn, but the
eternal sustainers of this luminous life which exists as it were
behind all these phenomena.
It is they--the "Seven Hosts"--who, having "considered in their Father
[Divine Thought] the plan of the operator," as says _Pymander_, _desired_ o operate (or build the world with its creatures) likewise; for, having een born "_within_ the Sphere of Operation"--the manifesting Universe--such s the Manvantaric Law. And now comes the second portion of the passage, r rather of two passages merged into one to conceal the full meaning.
Those who were born within the Sphere of Operation were "the brothers who oved _him_ well." The latter--the "him"--were the Primordial Angels; the
Asuras, the Ahriman, the Elohim, or "Sons of God," of whom Satan was ne--all those Spiritual Beings who were called the "Angels of Darkness," ecause that Darkness is _absolute_ Light, a fact now neglected if not ntirely forgotten in Theology. Nevertheless, the spirituality of those uch abused "Sons of Light" which is Darkness, must be evidently as great, n comparison with that of the Angels next in order, as the ethereality of he latter would be when contrasted with the density of the human body.
The former are the "First-born," and therefore so near to the confines of
Pure Quiescent Spirit as to be merely the "privations"--in the Aristotelian ense--the Ferouers or the ideal types of those who followed. They could ot create material, _corporeal_ things; and, therefore, were said in rocess of time to have "refused" to create, as "commanded" by
"God"--otherwise, to have "_rebelled_."
Perchance, this is justified on the principle of the _scientific_ theory hich teaches us as to the effect of two sound waves of equal length eeting:
If the two sounds be of the same intensity, their coincidence
produces a sound four times the intensity of either, while their
interference produces _absolute silence_.
While explaining some of the "heresies" of his day, Justin Martyr shows he identity of all the world religions at their starting points. The irst _Beginning_ opens invariably with the _Unknown_ and _Passive_ Deity, rom which emanates a certain Active Power or Virtue, the Mystery that is ometimes called Wisdom, sometimes the Son, very often God, Angel, Lord, nd Logos.(1120) The latter is sometimes applied to the very first
Emanation, but in several systems it proceeds from the first Androgyne or
Double Ray produced at the beginning by the Unseen. Philo depicts this
Wisdom as male and female. But though its first manifestation had a eginning--for it proceeded from Oulom(1121) (Aiôn, Time), the highest of he Ćons when emitted from the Father--it had remained with the Father
_before all creations_, for it is part of him.(1122) Therefore Philo
Judćus calls Adam Kadmon by the name "Mind"--the Ennoia of Bythos in the
Gnostic System. "The Mind, let it be named Adam."(1123)
As the old Magian books explain it, the whole event becomes clear. A thing an only exist through its opposite--Hegel teaches us; and only a little hilosophy and spirituality are needed to comprehend the origin of the ater dogma, which is so truly satanic and infernal in its cold and cruel ickedness. The Magians accounted for the Origin of Evil in their exoteric eachings in this way. "Light can produce nothing but Light, and can never e the origin of Evil"; how then was Evil produced, since there was othing coëqual or like the Light in its production? Light, say they, roduced several Beings, all of them spiritual, luminous, and powerful.
But a Great One (the "Great Asura," Ahriman, Lucifer, etc.) had an _evil hought_, contrary to the Light. He doubted, and by that doubt he became ark.
This is a little nearer to the truth, but still wide of the mark. There as _no_ "_evil_ thought" that originated the opposing Power, but simply
Thought _per se_; something which, being cogitative, and containing design nd purpose, is therefore finite, and must thus find itself naturally in pposition to pure Quiescence, the as natural state of absolute
Spirituality and Perfection. It was simply the Law of Evolution that sserted itself; the progress of Mental Unfolding, differentiated from
Spirit, involved and entangled already with Matter, into which it is rresistibly drawn. Ideas, in their very nature and essence, as onceptions bearing relation to objects, whether true or imaginary, are pposed to Absolute Thought, that Unknowable All of whose mysterious perations Mr. Spencer predicates that nothing can be said, but that "it as no kinship of nature with Evolution"(1124)--which it certainly has ot.(1125)
The _Zohar_ gives it very suggestively. When the "Holy One" (the Logos) esired to create man, he called the _highest_ Host of Angels and spake nto them what he wanted, but they _doubted_ the wisdom of this desire and nswered: "Man will not continue one night in his glory"--for which they ere burnt (annihilated?), by the "Holy" Lord. Then he called another, ower Host, and said the same. And they contradicted the "Holy One": "What s the good of Man?"--they argued. Still Elohim created Man, and when Man
_sinned_ there came the Hosts of Uzza and Azael, and twitted God: "Here is he Son of Man that thou hast made"--they said. "Behold, he sinned!" Then he Holy One replied: "If you had been among them [Men] you would have een worse than they." And he threw them from their exalted position in
Heaven even down on to the Earth; and "they were changed [into Men] and inned after the women of the earth."(1126) This is quite plain. No ention is made in _Genesis_ (vi) of these "Sons of God" receiving
_punishment_. The only reference to it in the _Bible_ is in _Jude_:
And the angels which kept not their first estate but left their
own habitation, he hath reserved in _everlasting chains_ under
_darkness_ unto the _judgment of the great day_.(1127)
And this means simply that the "Angels," doomed to incarnation, are in the
_chains_ of flesh and matter, under the _darkness_ of ignorance, till the
"_Great Day_," which will come as always after the Seventh Round, after he expiration of the "Week," on the Seventh Sabbath, or in the Post-
Manvantaric Nirvâna.
How truly Esoteric and consonant with the Secret Doctrine is Pymander, the
Thought Divine, of Hermes, may be inferred from its original and primitive ranslations in Latin and Greek only. On the other hand how disfigured it as been later on by Christians in Europe, is seen from the remarks and nconscious _confessions_ made by De St. Marc, in his Preface and Letter o the Bishop of Ayre, in 1578. Therein, the whole cycle of ransformations from a Pantheistic and Egyptian into a Mystic Roman
Catholic treatise is given, and we see how _Pymander_ has become what it s now. Still, even in St. Marc's translation, traces are found of the eal Pymander--the "Universal Thought" or "Mind." This is the translation rom the old French translation, the original being given in the foot- ote(1128) in its quaint old French:
Seven men [principles] were generated in Man.... The nature of the
harmony of the Seven of the Father and of the Spirit. Nature ...
produced seven men in accordance with the natures of the Seven
Spirits ... having in them, potentially, the two sexes.
Metaphysically, the Father and the Son are the "Universal Mind" and the
"Periodical Universe"; the "Angel" and the "Man." It is the Son and the
Father at one and the same time; in Pymander, the _active_ Idea and the
_passive_ Thought that generates it; the radical keynote in Nature which ives birth to the seven notes--the septenary scale of the Creative Forces, nd to the seven prismatic _aspects_ of colour, all born from the one
White Ray, or Light--itself generated in Darkness.
C. The Many Meanings Of The "War In Heaven."
The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, ollectively and individually, is with all manifested Nature the vehicle
(_a_) of the Breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal ifferentiation; and (_b_) of the countless "breaths" proceeding from that
One Breath in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with ts many "mankinds" proceeds downwards toward the planes that are ever ncreasing in materiality. The Primary Breath informs the higher
Hierarchies; the secondary--the lower, on the constantly descending planes.
Now there are many passages in the _Bible_ which prove on their face,
_exoterically_, that this belief was at one time _universal_; and the two ost convincing are _Ezekiel_, xxviii and _Isaiah_, xiv. Christian
Theologians are welcome to interpret both as referring to the great War efore Creation, the Epos of Satan's Rebellion, etc., if they so choose, ut the absurdity of the idea is too apparent. Ezekiel addresses his amentations and reproofs to the King of Tyre; Isaiah--to King Ahaz, who ndulged in the worship of idols, as did the rest of the nation with the xception of a few Initiates (the Prophets, so-called), who tried to rrest it on its way to exotericism--or idolatry, which is the same thing.
Let the student judge.
In _Ezekiel_, it is said:
Son of Man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord God
[as we understand it, the "God" Karma]; Because thine heart is
lifted up, and thou hast said I am a God, ... yet thou art a
man.... Behold, therefore, I will bring strangers upon thee: ...
and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of thy wisdom,
... and they shall bring thee down to the pit [or Earth-
life].(1129)
The origin of the "prince of Tyrus" is to be traced to the "Divine
Dynasties" of the iniquitous Atlanteans, the Great Sorcerers. There is no etaphor in the words of Ezekiel, but actual _history_ this time. For the oice _in_ the prophet, the voice of the "Lord," his own Spirit, which pake unto him, says:
Because ... thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of
God(s) [Divine Dynasties], in the midst of the seas; yet thou art
a man.... Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret
that they can hide from thee: with thy wisdom ... thou hast
increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up because of thy
riches. Behold, therefore ... strangers ... shall draw their
swords against the beauty of thy wisdom ... They shall bring thee
down ... and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in
the midst of the seas.(1130)
All such imprecations are not _prophecy_, but simply _reminders_ of the ate of the Atlanteans, the "Giants on Earth."
What can be the meaning of this last sentence if it is not a narrative of he fate of the Atlanteans? Again, "Thine heart was lifted up because of hy beauty,"(1131) may refer to the "Heavenly Man" in _Pymander_, or to he Fallen Angels, who are accused of having fallen through pride on ccount of the great beauty and wisdom which became their lot. There is no etaphor here, except in the preconceived ideas of our Theologians, erhaps. These verses relate to the Past and belong more to the Knowledge cquired at the Mysteries of Initiation than to retrospective lairvoyance! Says the voice, again:
Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God [in the Satya Yuga];
every precious stone was thy covering: ... the workmanship of thy
tabrets and thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast
created. Thou art the anointed cherub; ... thou hast walked up and
down in the midst of the stones of fire.... Thou wast perfect in
thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was
found in thee. Therefore I will cast thee ... out of the mountain
of God, and ... destroy thee.(1132)
The "Mountain of God" means the "Mountain of the Gods" or Meru, whose epresentative in the Fourth Race was Mount Atlas, the _last form of one f the divine Titans_, so high in those days that the ancients believed hat the Heavens rested on its top. Did not Atlas assist the Giants in heir War against the Gods (Hyginus)? Another version shows the _fable_ as rising from the fondness of Atlas, son of Iapetus and Clymene, for
Astronomy, and from his dwelling for that reason on the highest mountain eaks. The truth is that Atlas, the "Mountain of the Gods," and also the ero of that name, are the Esoteric symbols of the Fourth Race, and his even daughters, the Atlantides, are the symbols of its seven sub-races.
Mount Atlas, according to all the legends, was three times as high as it s now; for it has sunk at two different times. It is of a volcanic rigin, and therefore the voice within Ezekiel says:
Therefore will I _bring forth a fire from the midst of thee_, it
shall devour thee.(1133)
Surely it does not mean, as seems to be the case from the translated exts, that this fire was to be brought from the midst of the Prince of
Tyrus, or his people, but from Mount Atlas, symbolizing the proud Race, earned in Magic and high in arts and civilization, whose last remnant was estroyed almost at the foot of the range of those once gigantic ountains.
Truly, "thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more";(1134) s the very name of the Race and its fate is now annihilated from man's emory. Bear in mind that almost every ancient king and priest was an
Initiate; that from toward the close of the Fourth Race there had been a eud between the Initiates of the Right and those of the Left Path; inally, that the Garden of Eden is referred to by other personages than he Jews of the Adamic Race, since even Pharaoh is compared to the fairest ree of Eden by this same Ezekiel, who shows:
All the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, ...
comforted in the nether parts of the earth. [For] they also went
down into hell with him [Pharaoh](1135)
--unto the nether parts, which are in fact the bottom of the ocean, whose loor gaped wide to devour the lands of the Atlanteans and themselves. If ne bears all this in mind and compares the various accounts, then one ill find out that chapters xxviii and xxxi of _Ezekiel_ do not relate to
Babylon, Assyria, nor yet to Egypt, since none of these have been so estroyed, having simply fallen into ruins on the _surface_, not _beneath_ he earth--but indeed to Atlantis and most of its nations. And he will see hat the "Garden of Eden" of the Initiates was no myth, but a locality now ubmerged. Light will dawn upon him, and he will appreciate such sentences s these at their true Esoteric value: "Thou hast been in Eden; ... thou ast upon the holy mountain of God"(1136)--for every nation had and many till have _holy_ mountains; some Himâlayan Peaks, others Parnassus and
Sinai. They were all places of Initiation and the abodes of the Chiefs of he communities of ancient and even modern Adepts. And again:
Behold, the Assyrian [why not Atlantean, Initiate?] was a cedar in
Lebanon; ... his height was exalted above all the trees.... The
cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: ... so that all
the trees of Eden ... envied him.(1137)
Throughout all Asia Minor, the Initiates were called the "Trees of
Righteousness," and the Cedars of Lebanon, as also were some kings of
Israel. So were the great Adepts in India, but only the Adepts of the Left
Hand. When _Vishnu Purâna_ narrates that "the world was over-run with rees," while the Prachetasas, who "passed 10,000 years of austerity in he vast ocean," were absorbed in their devotions, the allegory relates to he Atlanteans and the Adepts of the early Fifth Race--the Âryans. Other
"_trees_ [Adept Sorcerers] spread, and over-shadowed the unprotected arth; and the people perished ... unable to labour for ten thousand ears." Then the Sages, the Rishis of the Âryan Race, called Prachetasas, re shown "coming forth _from the deep_,"(1138) and destroying by the wind nd flame issuing from their mouths the iniquitous "Trees" and the whole egetable kingdom; until Soma (the Moon), the sovereign of the vegetable orld, pacifies them by making alliance with the Adepts of the Right Path, o whom he offers as bride Mârishâ, the "offspring of the trees."(1139)
This hints at the great struggle between the "Sons of God" and the Sons of he Dark Wisdom--our forefathers; or the Atlantean and the Âryan Adepts.
The whole history of that period is allegorized in the _Râmâyana_, which s the mystic narrative in epic form of the struggle between Râma--the irst king of the Divine Dynasty of the early Âryans--and Râvana, the ymbolical personation of the Atlantean (Lankâ) Race. The former were the ncarnations of the Solar Gods; the latter, of the Lunar Devas. This was he great battle between Good and Evil, between White and Black Magic, for he supremacy of the divine forces over the lower terrestrial, or cosmic owers.
If the student would understand better the last statement, let him turn to he Anugîtâ episode of the _Mahâbhârata_, where the Brâhmana tells his ife:
I have perceived by means of the Self the seat abiding in the
Self--(the seat) where dwells the Brahman free from the pairs of
opposites, and the moon, together with the fire [or the sun],
upholding (all) beings (as) the mover of the intellectual
principle.(1140)
The Moon _is_ the deity of the mind (Manas) but only on the lower plane.
Says a Commentary:
_Manas is dual--Lunar in the lower, Solar in its upper portion._
That is to say, it is attracted in its higher aspect towards Buddhi, and n its lower descends into, and listens to the voice of, its _animal_ Soul ull of selfish and sensual desires; and herein is contained the mystery f an Adept's and of a profane man's life, as also that of the _post ortem_ separation of the divine from the animal Man. The
_Mahâbhârata_--every line of which has to be read Esoterically--discloses in agnificent symbolism and allegory the tribulations of both Man and Soul.
Says the Brâhmana in the _Anugîtâ_:
In the interior (within the body), in the midst of all these
(life-winds) [? principles], which move about in the body and
swallow up one another,(1141) blazes the Vaishvânara fire(1142)
sevenfold.(1143)
But the chief "Soul" is Manas or mind; hence, Soma, the Moon, is shown as aking an alliance with the solar portion in it, personified as the
Prachetasas. But of the seven keys that open the seven aspects of the
_Râmâyana_, as of every other Scripture, this is only one--the etaphysical.
The symbol of the "Tree" standing for various Initiates was almost niversal. Jesus is called the "Tree of Life," as are also all the Adepts f the Good Law, while those of the Left Path are referred to as the
"withering trees." John the Baptist speaks of the "axe" which "is laid to he root of the trees";(1144) and the king of Assyria's armies are called
"trees."(1145)
The true meaning of the Garden of Eden has been sufficiently given in
_Isis Unveiled_. Now the writer has more than once heard surprise xpressed that _Isis Unveiled_ should contain so few of the doctrines now aught. This is quite erroneous. For the allusions to such teachings are lentiful, even if the teachings themselves were withheld. The time had ot arrived then, as the hour has not struck even now, _to say all_. "No
Atlanteans, or the Fourth Race which preceded our Fifth Race, are entioned in _Isis Unveiled_," wrote a critic on _Esoteric Buddhism_ one ay. I, who wrote _Isis Unveiled_, maintain that the Atlanteans _are_ entioned as our predecessors. For what can be plainer than the following tatement, when speaking of the Book of Job:
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_.(1146)
It is invited to do so now, now that this hint is explained quite openly; ut Evolutionists are as sure to decline nowadays as they did ten years go. Science and Theology are against us: therefore we question both, and ave to do so in self-defence. On the strength of hazy metaphors scattered hroughout the prophets, and in St. John's _Revelation_, a grand but eëdited version of the _Book of Enoch_, on these insecure grounds
Christian Theology has built its dogmatic Epos of the War in Heaven. It as done more: it has used the symbolical visions, intelligible only to he Initiates, as pillars upon which to support the whole bulky edifice of ts religion; and now the pillars have been found very weak reeds, and the unning structure is foundering. The entire Christian scheme rests upon his Jakin and Boaz--the two contrary forces of Good and Evil, Christ and
Satan, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. Take away from Christianity its ain prop of the Fallen Angels, and the Eden Bower vanishes, with its Adam nd Eve, into thin air; and Christ, in the exclusive character of the One
God and Saviour, and the Victim of Atonement for the sin of animal-man, ecomes forthwith a useless, meaningless myth.
In an old number of the _Revue Archéologique_, a French writer, M. Maury, emarks:
This universal strife between good and bad spirits seems to be
only the reproduction of _another more ancient and more terrible
strife_, which, according to an ancient myth, took place before
the creation of the universe, between the faithful and the
rebellious legions.(1147)
Once more, it is a simple question of priority. Had John's _Revelation_ een written during the Vedic period, and were not one sure now of its eing simply another version of the _Book of Enoch_ and the Dragon legends f Pagan antiquity--the grandeur and the beauty of the imagery might have iassed the critics' opinion in favour of the Christian interpretation of hat first War, whose battle-field was starry Heaven, and the first laughterers--the Angels. As the matter now stands, however, one has to race _Revelation_, event by event, to other and far older visions. For he better comprehension of the apocalyptic allegories and of the Esoteric pos we ask the reader to turn to _Revelation_, and to read chapter xii, rom verse 1 to verse 7.
This has several meanings, and much has been found out with regard to the stronomical and numerical keys of this universal myth. That which may be ow given, is a fragment, a few hints as to its secret meaning, as mbodying the record of a real war, the struggle between the Initiates of he two Schools. Many and various are the still existing allegories built n this same foundation stone. The true narrative--that which gives the ull Esoteric meaning--is in the Secret Books, but the writer has had no ccess to these.
In the exoteric works, however, the episode of the Târaka War, and some
Esoteric Commentaries, may offer a clue perhaps. In every _Purâna_ the vent is described with more or less variations which show its allegorical haracter.
In the Mythology of the earliest Vaidic Âryans as in the later Paurânic arratives, mention is made of Budha, the "Wise," one "learned in the
Secret Wisdom," who is the planet Mercury in his euhemerization. The
_Hindű Classical Dictionary_ credits Budha with being the author of a hymn n the _Rig Veda_. Therefore, he can by no means be "a later fiction of he Brâhmans," but is a very old personation indeed.
It is by enquiring into his genealogy, or theogony rather, that the ollowing facts are disclosed. As a myth, he is the son of Târâ, the wife f Brihaspati, the "gold coloured," and of Soma, the (male) Moon who,
Paris-like, carries this new Helen of the Hindű Sidereal Kingdom away from er husband. This causes a great strife and _war_ in Svarga (Heaven). The pisode brings on a battle between the Gods and the Asuras. King Soma inds allies in Ushanas (Venus), the leader of the Dânavas; and the Gods re led by Indra and Rudra, who side with Brihaspati. The latter is helped y Shankara (Shiva), who, having had for his Guru Brihaspati's father,
Angiras, befriends his son. Indra is here the Indian prototype of Michael, he Archistrategus and the slayer of the "Dragon's" Angels--since one of is names is Jishnu, "leader of the celestial host." Both fight, as some
Titans did against other Titans in defence of revengeful Gods, the one arty in defence of Jupiter Tonans (in India, Brihaspati is the planet
Jupiter, which is a curious coincidence); the other in support of the ver-thundering Rudra. During this war, Indra is deserted by his body- uard, the Storm-Gods (Maruts). The story is very suggestive in some of ts details.
Let us examine some of them, and seek to discover their meaning.
The presiding Genius, or "Regent" of the planet Jupiter is Brihaspati, the ronged husband. He is the Instructor or Spiritual Guru of the Gods, who re the representatives of the Procreative Powers. In the _Rig Veda_, he s called Brahmanaspati, the name "of a deity in whom _the action of the orshipped_ upon the gods is personified." Hence Brahmanaspati represents he materialization of the "Divine Grace," so to say, by means of ritual nd ceremonies, or the exoteric worship.
Târâ,(1148) his wife, is, on the other hand, the personification of the owers of one initiated into Gupta Vidyâ (Secret Knowledge), as will be hown.
Soma is the Moon astronomically; but in mystical phraseology it is also he name of the sacred beverage drunk by the Brâhmans and the Initiates uring their mysteries and sacrificial rites. The Soma plant is the
_asclepias acida_, which yields a juice from which that mystic beverage, he Soma drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the
Agnihotris, or Fire-priests, of the great Mysteries knew all its powers.
But the real property of the _true_ Soma was (and _is_) to make a "new an" of the Initiate, after he is "reborn," namely once that he begins to ive in his _Astral_ Body;(1149) for, his spiritual nature overcoming the hysical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized orm.(1150)
Soma was never given in days of old to the non-initiated Brâhman--the imple Grihasta, or priest of the exoteric ritual. Thus Brihaspati, "Guru f the Gods" though he was, still represented the dead-letter form of orship. It is Târâ, his _wife_, the symbol of one who, though wedded to ogmatic worship, longs for true Wisdom, who is shown as initiated into is mysteries by King Soma, the giver of that Wisdom. Soma is thus made
_to carry her away_ in the allegory. The result of this is the birth of
Budha, _Esoteric Wisdom_--Mercury, or Hermes, in Greece and Egypt. He is epresented as "so beautiful," that even the husband, though well aware hat Budha is not the progeny of his dead-letter worship--claims the "new- orn" as his Son, the fruit of his ritualistic and meaningless orms.(1151) Such is, in brief, _one_ of the meanings of the allegory.
The War in Heaven refers to several events of this kind on various and ifferent planes of being. The first is a purely astronomical and cosmical act pertaining to Cosmogony. Mr. John Bentley thought that with the
Hindűs the War in Heaven was only a figure referring to their calculations f time periods.(1152)
This served as a prototype, he thinks, for the Western nations to build heir War of the Titans upon. The author is not quite wrong, but neither s he quite right. If the sidereal prototype refers indeed to a pre- anvantaric period, and rests entirely on the knowledge which the Âryan
Initiates claim they have of the whole programme and progress of osmogony,(1153) the War of the Titans is but a legendary and deified copy f the real war that took place in the Himâlayan Kailâsa (Heaven) instead f in the depths of cosmic interplanetary Space. It is the record of the errible strife between the "Sons of God" and the "Sons of the Shadow" of he Fourth and the Fifth Races. It is on these two events, blended ogether by legends borrowed from the exoteric account of the War waged by he Asuras against the Gods, that every subsequent national tradition on he subject has been built.
Esoterically, the Asuras, transformed subsequently into evil Spirits and ower Gods, who are eternally at war with the _Great_ Deities--are the Gods f the Secret Wisdom. In the oldest portions of the _Rig Veda_, they are he Spiritual and the Divine, the term Asura being used for the Supreme
Spirit and being the same as the great Ahura of the Zoroastrians.(1154)
There was a time when the Gods Indra, Agni, and Varuna themselves belonged o the Asuras.
In the _Taittirîya Brâhmana_, the Breath (Asu) of Brahmâ-Prajâpati became live, and from that Breath he created the Asuras. Later on, after the
War, the Asuras are called the enemies of the Gods, hence--"_A_-suras," the nitial _a_ being a negative prefix--or "_No_-Gods"; the "Gods" being eferred to as Suras. This then connects the Asuras and their "Hosts," numerated further on, with the "Fallen Angels" of the Christian Churches, Hierarchy of Spiritual Beings to be found in every Pantheon of ancient nd even modern nations--from the Zoroastrian down to that of the Chinaman.
They are the Sons of the primeval Creative Breath at the beginning of very new Mahâ Kalpa, or Manvantara, in the same rank as the Angels who ad remained "faithful." These were the _allies_ of Soma (the parent of he Esoteric Wisdom) as against Brihaspati (representing ritualistic or eremonial worship). Evidently they have been degraded in Space and Time nto opposing Powers or Demons by the ceremonialists, on account of their ebellion against hypocrisy, sham-worship, and the dead-letter form.
Now what is the real character of all those who fought along with them?
They are:
(1) Ushanas, or the "Host" of the Planet Venus, become now in Roman
Catholicism Lucifer, the Genius of the "day star,"(1155) the Tsaba, or
Army of "Satan."
(2) The Daityas and Dânavas are the Titans, the Demons and Giants whom we ind in the _Bible_(1156)--the progeny of the "Sons of God" and the
"Daughters of Men." Their generic name shows their alleged character, and iscloses at the same time the secret _animus_ of the Brâhmans; for they re the Kratu-dvishas--the "enemies of the sacrifices" or exoteric _shams_.
These are the "Hosts" that fought against Brihaspati, the representative f _exoteric_ popular and national religions; and Indra--the God of the
_visible_ Heaven, the Firmament, who, in the early _Veda_, is the
_highest_ God of cosmic Heaven, the fit habitation for an _extra_-cosmic nd personal God, higher than whom no exoteric worship can ever soar.
(3) Then come the Nâgas,(1157) the Sarpas, Serpents or Seraphs. These, gain, show their character by the hidden meaning of their glyph. In ythology they are _semi-divine_ beings with a human face and the tail of dragon. They are therefore, undeniably, the Jewish Seraphim (compare
Serapis, Sarpa, Serpent); the singular being Saraph, "burning, fiery."
Christian and Jewish angelology distinguishes between the Seraphim and the
Cherubim or Cherubs, who come second in order: Esoterically, and abalistically, they are identical; the Cherubim being simply the name for he images or likenesses of any of the divisions of the celestial Hosts.
Now, as said before, the Dragons and Nâgas were the names given to the
Initiate-hermits, on account of their great Wisdom and Spirituality and heir living in caves. Thus, when Ezekiel(1158) applies the adjective
Cherub to the King of Tyre, and tells him that by his _wisdom_ and his
_understanding_ there is _no secret_ that can be hidden from him, he shows he Occultist that it is a "Prophet," perhaps still a follower of
_exoteric_ worship, who fulminates against an Initiate of another school nd not against an imaginary Lucifer, a fallen Cherub from the stars, and hen from the Garden of Eden. Thus the so-called "War" is, in one of its any meanings, also an allegorical record of the strife between the two lasses of Adepts--of the Right and of the Left Path. There were three lasses of Rishis in India, who were the earliest Adepts known; the Royal, r Râjarshis, kings and princes, who adopted the ascetic life; the Divine, r Devarshis, or the sons of Dharma or Yoga; and the Brahmarshis, escendants of those Rishis who were the founders of Gotras of Brâhmans, r caste-races. Now, leaving the mythical and astronomical keys for one oment aside, the secret teachings show many Atlanteans who belonged to hese divisions; and there were strifes and wars between them, _de facto_ nd _de jure_. Nârada, one of the greatest Rishis, was a Devarshi; and he s shown in constant and everlasting feud with Brahmâ, Daksha, and other
Gods and Sages. Therefore we may safely maintain that whatever the
_astronomical_ meaning of this universally accepted legend may be, its uman phase is based on real and historical events, disfigured into a heological dogma only to suit ecclesiastical purposes. As above so below.
Sidereal phenomena, and the behaviour of the celestial bodies in the
Heavens, were taken as a model, and the plan was carried out below, on
Earth. Thus, Space, in its abstract sense, was called the "realm of divine nowledge," and by the Chaldees or Initiates Ab Soo, the habitat (or ather, _i.e._, the source) of knowledge, because it is in Space that well the intelligent Powers which _invisibly_ rule the Universe.(1159)
In the same manner, and on the plan of the Zodiac in the _upper_ Ocean or he Heavens, a certain realm on Earth, an inland sea, was consecrated and alled the "Abyss of Learning"; twelve centres on it, in the shape of welve small islands, representing the Zodiacal Signs--two of which emained for ages the "mystery Signs"(1160)--were the abodes of twelve
Hierophants and Masters of Wisdom. This "Sea of Knowledge" or earning(1161) remained for ages there, where now stretches the Shamo or
Gobi Desert. It existed until the last great glacial period, when a local ataclysm, which swept the waters South and West and so formed the present reat desolate desert, left only a certain oasis, with a lake and one sland in the midst of it, as a relic of the Zodiacal Ring on Earth. For ges the Watery Abyss--which, with the nations that preceded the later
Babylonians, was the abode of the "Great Mother," the terrestrial post- ype of the "Great Mother Chaos" in Heaven, the parent of Ea (Wisdom), imself the early prototype of Oannes, the Man-Fish of the Babylonians--for ges, then, the "Abyss" or Chaos was the abode of Wisdom and not of Evil.
The struggle of Bel and then of Merodach, the Sun-God, with Tiamat, the
Sea and its Dragon--a "War" which ended in the defeat of the latter--has a urely cosmic and geological meaning, as well as a historical one. It is a age torn out of the history of the Secret and Sacred Sciences, their volution, growth and _death--for the profane masses_. It relates (_a_) to he systematic and gradual drying up of immense territories by the fierce
Sun at a certain pre-historic period, one of the terrible droughts which nded by a gradual transformation of once fertile lands abundantly watered nto the sandy deserts which they are now; and (_b_) to the as systematic ersecution of the Prophets of the Right Path by those of the Left. The atter, having inaugurated the birth and evolution of the sacerdotal astes, have finally led the world into all those exoteric religions, hich have been invented to satisfy the depraved taste of the "hoi polloi" nd the ignorant for ritualistic pomp and the materialization of the ever- mmaterial and Unknowable Principle.
This was a certain improvement on the Atlantean sorcery, the memory of hich lingers in the remembrance of all the literary and Sanskrit-reading ortion of India, as well as in the popular legends. Still it was a parody n, and the desecration of, the Sacred Mysteries and their Science. The apid progress of anthropomorphism and idolatry led the early Fifth, as it ad already led the Fourth Race, into sorcery once more, though on a maller scale. Finally, even the four "Adams" (symbolizing, under other ames, the four preceding Races) were forgotten, and, passing from one eneration into another, each loaded with some additional myths, were at ast drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the Pantheons. Yet hey exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions: the first as the
Tzelem, the "Shadow-Adam," the Chhâyâs of our doctrine; the second, the
"Model" Adam, the copy of the first, and the "male and female" of the xoteric _Genesis_; the third, the "Earthly Adam" before the Fall, an ndrogyne; and the fourth, the Adam after his "fall," _i.e._, separated nto sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the Garden of Eden, or the orefather of our Race--the fifth--is an ingenious compound of the above our. As stated in the _Zohar_, Adam, the first Man, is not found now on
Earth, he "is not found in all Below." For where does the lower Earth come rom? "From the _Chain of the Earth_, and from the _Heaven Above_,"
_i.e._, from the superior Globes, those which precede and are above our
Earth.
And there came out from it [the Chain] creatures differing one
from the other. Some of them in garments [solid] (skins), some in
shells (_Q'lippoth_), ... some in red shells, some in black, some
in white, and some from all the colours.(1162)
As in the Chaldćan Cosmogony of Berosus and the Stanzas just given, some reatises on the _Kabalah_ speak of creatures with two faces, some with our, and some with one face; for "the highest Adam did not come down in ll the countries, or produce progeny and have many wives," but is a ystery.
So is the Dragon a mystery. Truly says Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochaď, that to nderstand the meaning of the Dragon is not given to the "companions"
(students, or Chelâs), but only to the "little ones," _i.e._, the perfect
Initiates.(1163)
The work of the beginning the companions understand; but it is
only the little ones who understand the parable on the work in the
Principium by the _Mystery of the Serpent of the Great Sea_.(1164)
And those Christians, who may happen to read this, will also understand by he light of the above sentence who their "Christ" was. For Jesus states epeatedly that he who "shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a _little hild_, he shall not enter therein"; and if some of his sayings have been eant to apply to children without any metaphor, most of the references to he "little ones" in the Gospels, relate to the Initiates, _of whom Jesus as one_. Paul (Saul) is referred to in the _Talmud_ as the "little one."
The "Mystery of the Serpent" was this: Our Earth, or rather _terrestrial ife_, is often referred to in the Secret Teachings as the Great Sea, the
"Sea of Life" having remained to this day a favourite metaphor. The
_Siphra Dtzenioutha_ speaks of Primeval Chaos and the Evolution of the
Universe after a Destruction (Pralaya), comparing it to an uncoiling erpent:
Extending hither and thither, its tail in its mouth, the head
twisting on its neck, it is enraged and angry.... It watches and
conceals itself. Every thousand _Days_ it is manifested.(1165)
A commentary on the _Purânas_ says:
Ananta-Shesha is a form of Vishnu, the Holy Spirit of
Preservation, and a symbol of the Universe, on which it is
supposed to sleep during the intervals of the _Days_ of Brahmâ.
The seven heads of Shesha support the Universe.
So the Spirit of God "sleeps," or is "breathing" over the Chaos of
Undifferentiated Matter, before each new "Creation," says the _Siphra
Dtzenioutha_. Now one Day of Brahmâ is composed, as already explained, of
_one thousand_ Mahâ Yugas; and as each Night, or period of rest, is equal n duration to this Day, it is easy to see what this sentence in the
_Siphra Dtzenioutha_ refers to--viz., that the Serpent manifests "once in a housand days." Nor is it more difficult to see whither the initiated riter of the _Siphra_ is leading us, when he says:
Its head is broken in the waters of the Great Sea, as it is
written: Thou dividest the sea by thy strength, thou brakest the
_heads_ of the _dragons_ in the waters.(1166)
It refers to the trials of the Initiates in this physical life, the "Sea f Sorrow," if read with one key; it hints at the successive destruction f the seven Spheres of a Chain of Worlds in the Great Sea of Space, when ead with another key; for every sidereal globe or sphere, every world, tar, or group of stars, is called in symbolism a "Dragon's Head." But owever it may read, the Dragon was never regarded as Evil, nor was the
Serpent either--in antiquity. In the metaphors, whether astronomical, osmical, theogonical or simply physiological (or phallic), the Serpent as always regarded as a _divine_ symbol. When mention is made of "the
[Cosmic] Serpent which runs with 370 leaps,"(1167) it means the cyclic eriods of the great Tropical Year of 25,868 years, divided in the
Esoteric calculation into 370 periods or cycles, as one solar year is ivided into 365 days. And if Michael was regarded by the Christians as he Conqueror of Satan, the Dragon, it is because in the _Talmud_ this ighting personage is represented as the Prince of Waters, who had seven ubordinate Spirits under him--a good reason why the Latin Church made him he patron saint of every promontory in Europe. In the _Siphra
Dtzenioutha_ the Creative Force "makes sketches and spiral lines of his reation _in the shape of a Serpent_." It "holds its tail in its mouth," ecause it is the symbol of endless eternity and of cyclic periods. Its eanings, however, would require a volume, and we must end.
Thus the reader may now see for himself what are the several meanings of he "War in Heaven," and of the "Great Dragon." Thus the most solemn and readed of Church dogmas, the alpha and omega of the Christian faith, and he pillar of its Fall and Atonement, dwindles down to a Pagan symbol, in he many allegories of these pre-historic struggles.
Section V. Is Plerôma Satan's Lair?
The subject is not yet exhausted, and has to be examined from still other spects.
Whether Milton's grandiose description of the three _days'_ Battle of the
Angels of Light against those of Darkness justifies the suspicion that he ust have heard of the corresponding Eastern tradition--it is impossible to ay. Nevertheless, if not himself in connection with some Mystic, then it ust have been through some one who had obtained access to the secret orks of the Vatican. Among these there is a tradition concerning the
"Beni Shamash"--the "Children of the Sun"--relating to the Eastern allegory, ith far more minute details _in its triple version_, than one can get ither from the _Book of Enoch_, or the far more recent _Revelation_ of
St. John concerning the "Old Dragon" and his various Slayers, as has been ust shown.
It seems inexplicable to find, to this day, authors belonging to mystical ocieties who yet continue in their preconceived doubts as to the
"alleged" antiquity of the _Book of Enoch_. Thus, while the author of the
_Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches_ is inclined to see in Enoch n Initiate converted to Christianity (!!),(1168) the English compiler of
Éliphas Lévi's works, _The Mysteries of Magic_, is also of a like opinion.
He remarks that:
Outside the erudition of Dr. Kenealy, no modern scholarship
attributes any more remote antiquity to the latter work [the _Book
of Enoch_] than the fourth century B.C.(1169)
Modern scholarship has been guilty of worse errors than this one. It seems ut yesterday that the _greatest_ literary critics in Europe denied the ery authenticity of that work, together with the Orphic Hymns, and even he Book of Hermes or Thoth, until whole verses from the latter were iscovered on Egyptian monuments and tombs of the earliest dynasties. The pinion of Archbishop Laurence is quoted elsewhere.
The "Old Dragon" and Satan, which have now become singly and collectively he symbol of, and the theological term for, the "Fallen Angel," are not o described either in the _original_ Kabalah (the Chaldćan _Book of
Numbers_) or in the modern. For the most learned, if not the greatest of odern Kabalists, namely Éliphas Lévi, describes Satan in the following lowing terms:
It is that Angel who was proud enough to believe himself God;
brave enough to buy his independence at the price of eternal
suffering and torture; beautiful enough to have adored himself in
full divine light; strong enough to still reign in darkness amidst
agony, and to have made himself a throne out of his
inextinguishable pyre. It is the Satan of the republican and
heretical Milton ... the prince of anarchy, served by a hierarchy
of pure spirits(!!).(1170)
This description--one which reconciles so cunningly Theological dogma and
Kabalistic allegory, and even contrives to include a political compliment n its phraseology--is, when read in the right spirit, quite correct.
Yes, indeed; it is this grandest of ideals, this ever-living symbol--nay potheosis--of self-sacrifice for the intellectual independence of umanity; this ever Active Energy protesting against Static Inertia--the rinciple to which Self-assertion is a crime, and Thought and the Light of
Knowledge odious. As Éliphas says with unparalleled justice and irony:
It is this pretended hero of tenebrous eternities, who,
slanderously charged with ugliness, is decorated with horns and
claws, which would fit far better his implacable tormentor.(1171)
It is he who has been finally transformed into a Serpent--the Red Dragon.
But Éliphas Lévi was yet too subservient to his Roman Catholic uthorities--one may add, too jesuitical--to confess that this Devil was ankind, and never had any existence on Earth outside of that ankind.(1172)
In this, Christian Theology, although following slavishly in the steps of
Paganism, has only been true to its own time-honoured policy. It had to solate itself, and to assert its authority. Hence it could not do better han turn every Pagan Deity into a Devil. Every bright Sun-God of ntiquity--a glorious Deity by day, and its own Opponent and Adversary by ight, named the Dragon of Wisdom, because it was supposed to contain the erms of night and day--has now been turned into the antithetical Shadow of
God, and has become Satan on the sole and unsupported authority of espotic human dogma. After which all these producers of light and shadow, ll the Sun- and the Moon-Gods, have been cursed, and thus the one God hosen out of the many and Satan have both been anthropomorphized. But
Theology seems to have lost sight of the human capacity for discriminating nd finally analyzing all that is artificially forced upon its reverence.
History shows in every race and even tribe, especially in the Semitic ations, the natural impulse to exalt its own tribal deity above all thers to the hegemony of the Gods, and proves that the God of the
Israelites was such a _tribal_ God, and no more, even though the Christian
Church, following the lead of the "chosen" people, is pleased to enforce he worship of that one particular deity, and to anathematize all the thers. Whether originally a conscious or an unconscious blunder, evertheless, it _was_ one. Jehovah has ever been in antiquity only a God
"among" other "Gods."(1173) The _Lord_ appears to Abraham, and while aying, "I am the _Almighty God_," yet adds, "I will establish my covenant
... to be _a_ God unto thee" (Abraham); and unto _his seed_ after im(1174)--but not unto Âryan Europeans.
But, then, there was the grandiose and ideal figure of Jesus of Nazareth o be set off against a dark background, to gain in radiance by the ontrast; _and a darker one the Church could hardly invent_. Lacking the
_Old Testament_ symbology, ignorant of the real connotation of the name of
Jehovah--the Rabbinical secret substitute for the Ineffable and
Unpronounceable Name--the Church mistook the cunningly fabricated shadow or the reality, the anthropomorphized _generative_ symbol for the one
Secondless Reality, the ever Unknowable Cause of All. As a logical equence the Church, for purposes of duality, had to invent an nthropomorphic Devil--created, as taught by her, by God himself. Satan has ow turned out to be the monster fabricated by the Jehovah-
Frankenstein--his father's curse and a thorn in the divine side, a monster, han whom no earthly Frankenstein could have fabricated a more ridiculous ogey.
The author of _New Aspects of Life_ describes the Jewish God very orrectly from the kabalistic standpoint as:
The Spirit of the Earth, which had revealed itself to the Jew as
Jehovah.(1175)... It was that Spirit again who, after the death of
Jesus, assumed his form and personated him as the risen Christ
--the doctrine of Cerinthus and several Gnostic sects with slight ariation, as one can see. But the author's explanations and deductions re remarkable:
None knew ... better than Moses, ... [and] so well as he, how
great was the power of those [Gods of Egypt] with whose priests he
had contended, ... the gods of which Jehovah is claimed to be the
God [by the Jews only].
Asks the author:
What were these gods, these Achar of which Jehovah, the Achad, is
claimed to be the God ... by overcoming them?
To which our Occultism answers: Those whom the Church now calls the Fallen
Angels and collectively Satan, the Dragon--overcome, if we have to accept
_her_ dictum, by Michael and his Host, that Michael being simply Jehovah imself, one of the subordinate Spirits at best. Therefore, the author is gain right in saying:
The Greeks believed in the existence of ... _daimons_. But ...
they were anticipated by the Hebrews, who held _that there was a
class of personating spirits_ which they designated _demons_,
"personators."... Admitting with Jehovah, who expressly asserts
it, the existence of other gods, which ... were personators of the
One God, were these other gods simply a higher class of
personating spirits, ... which had acquired and exercised greater
powers? And is not personation _the key to the mystery of the
spirit state_? But once granting this position, _how are we to
know that Jehovah was not a personating spirit_, a spirit which
arrogated to itself that it was, and thus became, the personator
of the one unknown and unknowable God? Nay, how do we know that
the spirit calling itself Jehovah, in arrogating to itself his
attributes did not thus cause its own designation to be imputed to
the One who is in reality as nameless as incognizable?(1176)
Then the author shows that "the spirit Jehovah _is_ a personator" on its wn admission. It acknowledged to Moses "that it had appeared to the atriarchs as the God Shaddai" and the "God Helion."
With the same breath it assumed the name of Jehovah; and it is on
the faith of the assertion of this personator that the names El,
Eloah, Elohim, and Shaddai, have been read and interpreted in
juxtaposition with Jehovah as the "Lord God Almighty." [Then when]
the name Jehovah became ineffable, the designation Adonai, "Lord,"
was substituted for it, and ... it was owing to this substitution
that the "Lord" passed from the Jewish to the Christian "Word" and
World as a designation of God.(1177)
And how are we to know, the author may add, that Jehovah was not many pirits personating even that seemingly one--Jod or Jod-He?
But if the Christian Church was the first to make the existence of Satan a ogma, it was because, as shown in _Isis Unveiled_, the Devil--the powerful
Enemy of God (?!!) had to become the corner stone and pillar of the
Church. For, as a Theosophist, M. Jules Baissac, truly observes in his
_Satan ou le Diable_:
Il fallait éviter de paraître autoriser le dogme du double
principe en faisant de ce Satan créateur une puissance réelle, et
pour expliquer le mal originel, on profčre contre Manes
l'hypothčse d'une permission de l'unique Tout-Puissant.(1178)
The choice and policy were unfortunate, anyhow. Either the personator of he lower God of Abraham and Jacob ought to have been made entirely istinct from the mystic "Father" of Jesus, or--the "Fallen" Angels should ave been left unslandered by further fictions.
Every God of the Gentiles is connected with, and closely related to,
Jehovah--the Elohim; for they are all One Host, whose units differ only in ame in the Esoteric Teachings. Between the "Obedient" and the "Fallen"
Angels there is no difference whatever, except in their respective unctions, or rather in the inertia of some, and the activity of others, mong those Dhyân Chohans, or Elohim, who were "commissioned to create,"
_i.e._, to fabricate the manifested world out of the eternal material.
The Kabalists say that the true name of Satan is that of Jehovah turned pside down, for "Satan is not a black God but the negation of the white
Deity," or the Light of Truth. God is Light and Satan is the necessary
Darkness or _Shadow_ to set it off, without which pure Light would be nvisible and incomprehensible.(1179) "For the Initiates," says Éliphas
Lévi, "the Devil is not a person but a creative Force, for Good as for
Evil." The Initiates represented this Force, which presides at physical eneration, under the mysterious form of God Pan--or Nature; whence the orns and hoofs of that mythical and symbolic figure, as also the
Christian "goat" of the "Witches' Sabbath." With regard to this too,
Christians have imprudently forgotten that the "goat" was also the victim elected for the atonement of all the sins of Israel, that the scape-goat as indeed the sacrificial martyr, the symbol of the greatest mystery on arth--the "fall into generation." Only, the Jews have long forgotten the eal meaning of their (to the non-initiated) ridiculous hero, selected rom the drama of life in the Great Mysteries enacted by them in the esert; and the Christians have never known it.
Éliphas Lévi seeks to explain the dogma of his Church by paradoxes and etaphors, but succeeds very poorly in the face of the many volumes ritten by pious Roman Catholic Demonologists under the approbation and uspices of Rome, in this nineteenth century of ours. For the true Roman
Catholic, the Devil or Satan is a _reality_; the drama enacted in the
Sidereal Light according to the seer of Patmos--who desired, perhaps, to mprove upon the narrative in the _Book of Enoch_--is as real, and as istorical a fact as any other allegory and symbolical event in the
_Bible_. But the Initiates give an explanation which differs from that iven by Éliphas Lévi, whose genius and crafty intellect had to submit to certain compromise dictated to him from Rome.
Thus, the true and "uncompromising" Kabalists admit that, for all purposes f Science and Philosophy, it is enough that the profane should know that he Great Magic Agent--called by the followers of the Marquis de St.
Martin, the Martinists, the Astral Light, by the medićval Kabalists and
Alchemists the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum, and by the
Eastern Occultists Ćther, the reflection of Âkâsha--is that which the
Church calls Lucifer. That the Latin scholastics have succeeded in ransforming the Universal Soul and Plerôma--the _Vehicle of Light_ and the eceptacle of all forms, a Force spread throughout the whole Universe, ith its direct and indirect effects--into Satan and his works, is no news o any one. But now they are prepared to give out to the above-mentioned rofane even the secrets hinted at by Éliphas Lévi, without _adequate xplanation_, for the latter's policy of veiled revelations could only ead to further superstition and misunderstanding. What, indeed, can a tudent of Occultism, who is a beginner, gather from the following highly oetical sentences of Éliphas Lévi, which are as apocalyptic as the ritings of any of the Alchemists?
Lucifer [the Astral Light] ... is an intermediate force existing
in all creation; it serves to create and to destroy, and the Fall
of Adam was an erotic intoxication which has rendered his
generation a slave to this fatal Light, ... every sexual passion
that overpowers our senses is a whirlwind of that Light which
seeks to drag us towards the abyss of death. Madness,
hallucinations, visions, extasies, are all forms of a very
dangerous excitation due to this _interior phosphorus_[?]. Thus
light, finally, is of the nature of fire, the intelligent use of
which warms and vivifies, and the excess of which, on the
contrary, dissolves and annihilates.
Thus man is called upon to assume a sovereign empire over this
[Astral] Light and conquer thereby his immortality, and is
threatened at the same time with being intoxicated, absorbed, and
eternally destroyed by it.
This Light, therefore, inasmuch as it is devouring, revengeful,
and fatal, would thus really be hell-fire, the serpent of the
legend; the tormented errors of which it is full, the tears and
the gnashing of teeth of the abortive beings it devours, the
phantom of life that escapes them, and seems to mock and insult
their agony, all this would be the Devil or Satan indeed.(1180)
There is no _false_ statement in all this; nothing save a superabundance f ill-applied metaphors, as, for instance, in the application of the myth f Adam to the illustration of the astral effects. Âkâsha,(1181) the
Astral Light, can be defined in a few words; it is the Universal Soul, the
Matrix of the Universe, the Mysterium Magnum from which all that exists is orn by separation or _differentiation_. It is the cause of existence; it ills all the infinite Space, _is_ Space itself, in one sense, or both its
_sixth_ and seventh principles.(1182) But as the finite in the Infinite, s regards manifestation this Light must have its _shadowy_ side--as lready remarked. And as the Infinite can never be manifested, hence the inite world has to be satisfied with the _shadow alone_, which its ctions draw upon humanity and which men attract and _force into __ ctivity_. Hence, while the Astral Light is the Universal Cause in its nmanifested unity and infinity, it becomes, with regard to mankind, imply the effects of the causes produced by men in their sinful lives. It s not its bright denizens--whether they are called Spirits of Light or
Darkness--that produce Good or Evil, but mankind itself that determines the navoidable action and reaction in the Great Magic Agent. It is mankind hich has become the "Serpent of Genesis," and thus causes daily and ourly the Fall and Sin of the "Celestial Virgin"--which thus becomes the
Mother of Gods and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever- oving, beneficent Deity to all those who stir her _Soul_ and _Heart_, nstead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called y Éliphas Lévi--the "fatal light" which kills and destroys. Humanity, in ts units, can overpower and master its effects; but only by the holiness f their lives and by producing good causes. It has power only on the anifested _lower_ principles--the shadow of the Unknown and Incognizable
Deity in Space. But in antiquity and _reality_, Lucifer, or Luciferus, is he name of the Angelic Entity presiding over the Light of Truth as over he light of the day. In the great Valentinian Gospel _Pistis Sophia_ it s taught that of the three Powers emanating from the Holy Names of the hree Triple Powers ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), that of Sophia (the Holy Ghost ccording to these Gnostics--the most cultured of all), resides in the lanet Venus or Lucifer.
Thus to the profane, the Astral Light may be God and Devil at once--_Demon st Deus inversus_--that is to say, through every point of Infinite Space hrill the magnetic and electrical currents of _animate_ Nature, the life- iving and death-giving waves, for death on earth becomes life on another lane. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial Light, the "Holy Ghost" and
"Satan," at one and the same time, _visible_ Space being truly filled with he differentiated Breath invisibly; and the Astral Light, the manifested ffects of the two who are one, guided and attracted by ourselves, is the
_Karma_ of Humanity, both a personal and impersonal entity--personal, ecause it is the mystic name given by St. Martin to the Host of Divine
Creators, Guides and Rulers of this Planet; _impersonal_, as the Cause and
Effect of Universal Life and Death.
The Fall was the _result of man's knowledge_, for his "eyes were opened."
Indeed, he was taught Wisdom and the Hidden Knowledge by the "Fallen
Angel," for the latter had become from that day his Manas, Mind and Self- onsciousness. In each of us that golden thread of continuous
Life--periodically broken into active and passive cycles of sensuous xistence on Earth, and super-sensuous in Devachan--_is_ from the beginning f our appearance upon this Earth. It is the Sűtrâtmâ, the luminous thread f immortal _impersonal_ Monadship, on which our earthly "lives" or vanescent Egos are strung as so many beads--according to the beautiful xpression of the Vedântic Philosophy.
And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the "Lord of
Phôsphoros"--brimstone was a Theological improvement--and Lucifer, or
"Light-Bearer," is in us: it is our Mind, our Tempter and Redeemer, our ntelligent Liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. Without this rinciple--the emanation of the very essence of the pure divine principle
Mahat (Intelligence), which radiates direct from the Divine Mind--we would e surely no better than animals. The first _man_ Adam was made only a
_living soul_ (Nephesh), the last Adam was made a _quickening pirit_(1183)--says Paul, his words referring to the building or _creation_ f man. Without this _quickening_ spirit, or _human mind_ or soul, there ould be no difference between man and beast; as there is none, in fact, etween animals with respect to their actions. The tiger and the donkey, he hawk and the dove, are each one as pure and as innocent as the other, ecause _irresponsible_. Each follows its instinct, the tiger and the hawk illing with the same unconcern as the donkey eats a thistle, or the dove ecks at a grain of corn. If the Fall had the significance given to it by
Theology; if that Fall occurred as a result of an act never intended by
Nature--a _sin_, how about the animals? If we are told that they procreate heir species in consequence of that same "original sin," for which God ursed the Earth--hence everything living on it--we will put another uestion. We are told by Theology, as also by Science, that the animal was n Earth far earlier than man. We ask the former: How did it _procreate ts species_, before the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ad been plucked off? As said:
The Christians--far less clear-sighted than the great Mystic and
Liberator whose name they have assumed, whose doctrines they have
misunderstood and travestied, _and whose memory they have
blackened by their deeds_--took the Jewish Jehovah as he was, and
of course strove vainly to reconcile the _Gospel of Light and
Liberty_ with the Deity of Darkness and Submission.(1184)
But it is sufficiently proven now that all the _soi-disant_ evil Spirits ho are credited with having made war on the Gods, are identical as ersonalities; that, moreover, all the ancient religions taught the same enet, save the final conclusion, which differs from the Christian. The even primeval Gods had all a dual state, one essential, the other ccidental. In their essential state they were all the Builders or
Fashioners, the Preservers and the Rulers of this World; and in the ccidental state, clothing themselves in visible corporeality, they escended on the Earth and reigned on it as Kings and Instructors of the ower Hosts, who had incarnated once more upon it as men.
Thus, Esoteric Philosophy shows that man is truly the manifested deity in oth its aspects--good and evil, but Theology cannot admit this hilosophical truth. Teaching as it does the dogma of the Fallen Angels in ts dead-letter meaning, and having made of Satan the corner-stone and illar of the dogma of redemption--to do so would be suicidal. Having once hown the rebellious Angels _distinct_ from God and the Logos in their ersonalities, to admit that the downfall of the _disobedient_ Spirits eans simply their fall into generation and matter, would be equivalent to aying that God and Satan were identical. For since the Logos, or God, is he aggregate of that once divine Host accused of having fallen, it would aturally follow that the Logos and Satan are one.
Yet such was the real philosophical view in antiquity of the now isfigured tenet. The Verbum, or the "Son," was shown in a dual aspect by he Pagan Gnostics--in fact, he was a _duality_ in full _unity_. Hence, the ndless and various national versions. The Greeks had Jupiter, the son of
Cronus, the Father, who hurls him down into the depths of Kosmos. The
Âryans had Brahmâ (in later theology) precipitated by Shiva into the Abyss f Darkness, etc. But the Fall of all these Logoi and Demiourgoi from heir primitive exalted position, contained in all cases one and the same
Esoteric signification; the Curse, in its philosophical meaning, of being ncarnated on this Earth; an unavoidable rung in the Ladder of Cosmic
Evolution, a highly philosophical and fitting Karmic Law, without which he presence of Evil on Earth would have to remain for ever a closed ystery to the understanding of true Philosophy. To say, as the author of
_Esprits Tombés des Paiens_ does, that since--
Christianity is made to rest on two pillars, that of evil
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}), and of good ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}); on two forces, in short ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}): hence, if we suppress the punishment of the
_evil forces_, the protecting mission of the good powers will have
neither value nor sense
--is to utter the most unphilosophical absurdity. If it fits in with, and xplains, Christian dogma, it obscures the facts and truths of the rimitive Wisdom of the ages. The cautious hints of Paul have all the true
Esoteric meaning, and it took centuries of scholastic casuistry to give hem the false colouring in their present interpretations. The Verbum and
Lucifer are one in their dual aspect; and the "Prince of the Air"
(_princeps aeris hujus_) is not the "God of _that_ period," but an verlasting principle. When the latter was said to be ever _circling_ round the world (_qui circumambulat terram_), the great Apostle referred imply to the never-ceasing cycles of human incarnations, in which evil ill ever predominate unto the day when Humanity is redeemed by the true ivine Enlightenment which gives the correct perception of things.
It is easy to disfigure vague expressions written in dead and long- orgotten languages, and palm them off on the ignorant masses as truths nd _revealed_ facts. The identity of thought and meaning is the one thing hat strikes the student in all the religions which mention the tradition f the Fallen Spirits, and in those great religions there is not one that ails to mention and describe it in one or another form. Thus, Hoang-ty, he Great Spirit, sees his Sons, who had acquired _active wisdom_, falling nto the Valley of Pain. Their leader, the Flying Dragon, having drunk of he forbidden Ambrosia, _fell to the Earth_ with his Host (Kings). In the
_Zend Avesta_, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman), surrounding himself with Fire (the
"Flames" of the Stanzas), seeks to conquer the Heavens,(1185) when Ahura
Mazda, descending from the _solid_ Heaven he inhabits, to the help of the
Heavens _that revolve_ (in time and space, the manifested worlds of cycles ncluding those of incarnation), and the Amshaspands, the "seven bright
Sravah," accompanied by their stars, fight Ahriman, and the vanquished
Devas fall to the Earth along with him.(1186) In the _Vendîdâd_ the Daęvas re called "evil-doing," and are shown to rush away "into the depths of he ... world of hell," or Matter.(1187) This is an allegory which shows he Devas _compelled to incarnate_, once that they have separated hemselves from their Parent Essence, or, in other words, after the Unit ad become multiple, after differentiation and manifestation.
Typhon the Egyptian Python, the Titans, the Suras and the Asuras, all elong to the same legend of Spirits peopling the Earth. They are not
"_Demons_ commissioned to create and organize this visible universe," but he Fashioners or "Architects" of the Worlds, and the Progenitors of Man.
They are the _Fallen_ Angels, metaphorically--the "true mirrors" of the
"Eternal Wisdom."
What is the complete truth as well as the Esoteric meaning about this niversal myth? The whole essence of truth _cannot be transmitted from outh to ear_. Nor can any pen describe it, not even that of the Recording
Angel, unless man finds the answer in the sanctuary of his own heart, in he innermost depths of his divine intuition. It is the great _Seventh
Mystery_ of Creation, the first and the last; and those who read St.
John's _Apocalypse_ may find its shadow lurking under the _seventh seal_.
It can be represented only in its apparent, objective form, like the ternal riddle of the Sphinx. If the Sphinx threw herself into the sea and erished, it is not because OEdipus _had_ unriddled the secret of the ages, ut because, by anthropomorphizing the ever-spiritual and the subjective, e had dishonoured the great truth for ever. Therefore, we can give it nly from its philosophical and intellectual planes, unlocked with three eys respectively--for the last four keys of the seven that throw wide open he portals to the Mysteries of Nature are in the hands of the highest
Initiates, and cannot be divulged to the masses at large--not in this entury, at any rate.
The dead-letter is everywhere the same. The dualism in the Mazdean eligion was born from exoteric interpretation. The holy Airyaman, the
"bestower of weal,"(1188) invoked in the prayer called Airyama-ishyô, is he divine aspect of Ahriman, "the deadly, the Daęva of the Daęvas,"(1189) nd Angra Mainyu is the dark material aspect of the former. "Keep us from ur hater, O Mazda and Ârmaita Spenta,"(1190) has, as a prayer and nvocation, an identical meaning with "Lead us not into temptation," and s addressed by man to the terrible _spirit of duality_ in man himself.
For Ahura Mazda is the Spiritual, Divine, and Purified Man, and Ârmaita
Spenta, the Spirit of the Earth or materiality, is the same as Ahriman or
Angra Mainyu in one sense.
The whole of the Magian or Mazdean literature--or what remains of it--is agical, occult, hence allegorical and symbolical, even its "mystery of he law."(1191) Now the Mobed and the Parsî keep their eye on the Baresma uring the sacrifice--the divine twig off Ormazd's "Tree" having been ransformed into a bunch of metallic rods--and wonder why neither the
Amesha Spentas, nor "the high and beautiful golden Haômas, nor even their
Vohu-Manô (good thoughts), nor their Râta (sacrificial offering)," help hem much. Let them meditate on the "Tree of Wisdom," and by study ssimilate, one by one, the fruits thereof. The way to the Tree of Eternal
Life, the white Haôma, the Gaokerena, is through one end of the Earth to he other; and Haôma is in Heaven as it is on Earth. But to become once ore a priest of it, and a "healer," man must heal himself, for this must e done before he can heal others.
This proves once more that, in order to be dealt with, with at least an pproximate degree of justice, the so-called "myths" have to be closely xamined from all their aspects. In truth, every one of the seven keys has o be used in its right place, and never mixed with the others--if we would nveil the entire cycle of mysteries. In our day of dreary soul-killing
Materialism, the ancient Priest-Initiates have become, in the opinion of ur learned generations, the synonyms of clever impostors, kindling the ires of superstition in order to obtain an easier sway over the minds of en. This is an unfounded calumny, generated by scepticism and ncharitable thoughts. No one believed more than they did in Gods--or, we ay call them, the spiritual and now invisible Powers, or Spirits, the
Noumena of the phenomena; and they believed simply because _they knew_.
And though after being initiated into the Mysteries of Nature, they were orced to withhold their knowledge from the profane, who would have surely bused it, such secrecy was undeniably less dangerous than the policy of heir usurpers and successors. The former taught only that which they well new. The latter, teaching what _they do not know_, have invented, as a ecure haven for their ignorance, a jealous and cruel Deity, who forbids an to pry into his mysteries under the penalty of damnation; as well they ay, for _his_ mysteries can at best be only hinted at in polite ears, ever described. Turn to King's _Gnostics and their Remains_, and see for ourself what was the primitive Ark of the Covenant, according to the uthor, who says:
There is a Rabbinical tradition ... that the Cherubim placed over
it were represented as male and female, in the act of copulation,
in order to express the grand doctrine of the Essence of _Form_
and _Matter_, the two principles of all things. When the Chaldeans
broke into the Sanctuary and beheld this most astounding emblem,
they naturally enough exclaimed, "Is this your God, of whom you
boast, that He is such a lover of purity!"(1192)
King thinks that this tradition "savours too much of Alexandrian hilosophy to demand any credit," to which we demur. The shape and form of he wings of the two Cherubim standing on the right and left sides of the
Ark, these wings meeting over the "Holy of Holies," are an _emblem_ quite loquent in itself, not to speak of the "holy" Jod within the Ark! The
Mystery of Agathodćmon, whose legend states, "I am Chnumis, Sun of the
Universe, 700," can alone solve the mystery of Jesus, the number of whose ame is "888." It is not the key of St. Peter, or the Church dogma, but he Narthex--the Wand of the Candidate for Initiation--that has to be renched from the grasp of the long-silent Sphinx of the ages. Meanwhile:
The augurs, who, upon meeting each other, have to thrust their tongues nto their cheeks to suppress a fit of laughter, may be more numerous in ur own age than they ever were in the day of Sylla.
Section VI. Prometheus, the Titan.
His Origin In Ancient India.
In our modern day there is not the slightest doubt in the minds of the est European symbologists that the name Prometheus possessed the greatest nd most mysterious significance in antiquity. While giving the history of
Deucalion, whom the Boeotians regarded as the ancestor of the human races, nd who was the son of Prometheus, according to the significant legend, he author of the _Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_ remarks:
Thus Prometheus is something more than the archetype of humanity;
he is its _generator_. In the same way that we saw Hephćstus
moulding the first woman [Pandora] and endowing her with life, so
Prometheus kneads the moist clay, of which he fashions the body of
the first man whom he will endow with the soul-spark.(1193) After
the flood of Deucalion, Zeus, they said, had commanded Prometheus
and Athena to call forth a new race of men from the mire left by
the waters of the deluge,(1194) and, in the day of Pausanias, the
slime which the hero had used for this purpose was still shown in
Phocis.(1195) On several archaic monuments we still see Prometheus
modelling a human body, either alone or with Athena's help.(1196)
The same author reminds us of another equally mysterious personage, though ne less generally known than Prometheus, whose legend offers remarkable nalogies with that of the Titan. The name of this second ancestor and enerator is Phoroneus, the hero of an ancient poem, now unfortunately no onger extant, the Phoroneidć. His legend was localized in Argolis, where perpetual flame was preserved on his altar as a reminder that he was the ringer of fire upon earth.(1197) A benefactor of men, like Prometheus, he ad made them participators of every bliss on earth. Plato(1198) and
Clemens Alexandrinus(1199) say that Phoroneus was the first man, or the
"father of mortals." His genealogy, which assigns to him the river Inachos s his father, reminds us of that of Prometheus, which makes that Titan he son of the Oceanid Clymene. But the mother of Phoroneus was the nymph
Melia: a significant descent which distinguishes him from
Prometheus.(1200)
Melia, Decharme thinks, is the personification of the "Ash-tree," whence, ccording to Hesiod, issued the race of the age of Bronze,(1201) and which ith the Greeks is the _celestial tree_ common to every Âryan mythology.
This Ash is the Yggdrasil of Norse antiquity, which the Norns sprinkle aily with the waters from the fountain of Urd, that it may not wither. It emains verdant till the last days of the Golden Age. Then the Norns--the hree sisters who gaze respectively into the Past, the Present, and the
Future--make known the decree of Orlog or Fate (Karma), but men are onscious only of the Present.
[But when] Gultweig (gold-ore) comes, the bewitching enchantress
... who, thrice cast into the fire, arises each time more
beautiful than before and fills the souls of gods and men with
unappeasable longing, then the Norns ... enter into being, and the
blessed peace of childhood's dreams passes away, and sin comes
into existence with all its evil consequences [and Karma].(1202)
The thrice-purified Gold is--Manas, the Conscious Soul.
With the Greeks, the Ash-tree represented the same idea. Its luxuriant oughs are the Sidereal Heaven, golden by day and studded with stars by ight--the fruits of Melia and Yggdrasil, under whose protecting shadow umanity lived during the Golden Age without desire as without fear. "That ree had a fruit, or an inflamed bough, _which was lightning_"--Decharme uesses.
And here steps in the killing Materialism of the age, that peculiar twist n the modern mind, which, like a Northern blast, bends all on its way, nd freezes every intuition, allowing it no hand in the physical peculations of the day. After having seen in Prometheus no more than
"fire by friction," the learned author of the _Mythologie de la Grčce
Antique_ perceives in this "fruit" a trifle more than an allusion to errestrial fire and its discovery. It is no longer fire, owing to the all of lightning setting some dry fuel in a blaze, and thus revealing all ts priceless benefits to palćolithic men--but something more mysterious his time, though still as earthly!
A divine bird, nestled in the branches [of the celestial Ash-
tree], stole that bough [or the fruit] and carried it down on the
earth in its bill. Now the Greek word {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} is the rigid
equivalent of the Sanskrit word _bhuranyu_, "the rapid," an
epithet of Agni, considered as the carrier of the divine spark.
Phoroneus, son of Melia or of the celestial ash, thus corresponds
to a conception far more ancient, probably, than that one which
transformed the _pramantha_ [of the old Âryan Hindűs] into the
Greek Prometheus. Phoroneus is the [personified] bird, that brings
the heavenly lightning to the earth. Traditions relating to the
birth of the race of Bronze, and those which made of Phoroneus the
father of the Argolians, are an evidence to us that this
thunderbolt [or lightning], as in the legend of Hephćstus or
Prometheus, was the origin of the human race.(1203)
This still affords us no more than the external meaning of the symbols and he allegory. It is now supposed that the name of Prometheus has been nriddled. But the modern Mythologists and Orientalists see in it no onger what their fathers saw on the authority of the whole of classical ntiquity. They only find therein something far more appropriate to the pirit of the age, namely, a phallic element. But the name of Phoroneus, s well as that of Prometheus, bears not one, nor even two, but a series f esoteric meanings. Both relate to the _seven_ Celestial Fires; to Agni
Abhimânin, his three sons, and their forty-five sons, constituting the
Forty-nine Fires. Do all these numbers relate only to the terrestrial mode f fire and to the flame of sexual passion? Did the Hindű Âryan mind never oar above such purely sensual conceptions; that mind which is declared by
Prof. Max Müller to be the most spiritual and mystically inclined on the hole globe? The number of those fires alone ought to have suggested an nkling of the truth.
We are told that one is no longer permitted, in this age of rational hought, to explain the name of Pro-metheus as the old Greeks did. The atter, it seems:
Basing themselves on the apparent analogy of {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} with the
verb {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, saw in him the type of the "foreseeing" man, to
whom, for the sake of symmetry, a brother was added--Epi-metheus,
or "he who takes counsel _after_ the event."(1204)
But now the Orientalists have decided otherwise. They know the real eaning of the two names better than those who invented them. The legend s based upon an event of universal importance. It was built to ommemorate
A great event which must have strongly impressed itself upon the
imagination of the first witnesses, and its remembrance has never
since faded out from popular memory.(1205)
What was this? Laying aside every poetical _fiction_, all those dreams of he Golden Age, let us imagine--argue the modern scholars--in all its gross ealism, the first miserable state of humanity, the striking picture of hich was traced for us after Ćschylus by Lucretius, and the exact truth f which is now confirmed by Science; and then we may understand better hat a new life really began for man, on that day when he saw the first park produced by the friction of two pieces of wood, or from the veins of flint. How could men help feeling gratitude to that mysterious and arvellous being which they were henceforth enabled to create at their ill, and which was no sooner born, than it grew and expanded, developing ith singular power.
This terrestrial flame, was it not analogous in nature to that
which sent them from above its light and heat, or which frightened
them in the thunderbolt? Was it not derived from the same source?
And if its origin was in heaven, must it not have been brought
down some day on earth? If so, who was the powerful being, the
beneficent being, God or man, who had conquered it? Such are the
questions which the curiosity of the Âryans offered in the early
days of their existence, and which found their answer in the myth
of Prometheus.(1206)
The Philosophy of Occult Science finds two weak points in the above eflections, and proceeds to point them out. The miserable state of
Humanity described by Ćschylus and Lucretius was no more wretched then, in he early days of the Âryans, than it is now. That "state" was limited to he savage tribes; and the now-existing savages are not a whit more happy r unhappy than their forefathers were a million years ago.
It is an accepted fact in Science that "rude implements, exactly esembling those in use _among existing savages_," are found in river- ravels and caves, geologically "implying an enormous antiquity." So great s that resemblance that, as the author of _The Modern Zoroastrian_ tells s:
If the collection in the Colonial Exhibition of stone celts and
arrow-heads used by the Bushmen of South Africa were placed side
by side with one from the British Museum of similar objects from
Kent's Cavern or the Caves of Dordogne, no one but an expert could
distinguish between them.(1207)
And if there are Bushmen existing now, in our age of the highest ivilization, who are no higher intellectually than the race of men which nhabited Devonshire and Southern France during the Palćolithic age, why ould not the latter have lived simultaneously with, and have been the ontemporary of, other races as highly civilized for their day as we are or ours? That the sum of knowledge increases daily in mankind, "but that ntellectual capacity does not increase with it," is shown when the ntellect, if not the physical knowledge, of the Euclids, Pythagorases,
Pâninis, Kapilas, Platos, and Socrates, is compared with that of the
Newtons, Kants, and the modern Huxleys and Hćckels. On comparing the esults obtained by Dr. J. Barnard Davis, the Craniologist,(1208) with egard to the internal capacity of the skull--its volume being taken as the tandard and test for judging of the intellectual capacities--Dr. Pfaff inds that this capacity among the French (certainly in the highest rank f mankind) is 88.4 cubic inches, being thus "perceptibly smaller than hat of the Polynesians generally, which, even among many Papuans and
Alfuras of the lowest grade, amounts to 89 and 89.7 cubic inches"; which hows that it is the _quality_ and not the _quantity_ of the brain that is he cause of intellectual capacity. The average index of skulls among arious races having been now recognized to be "one of the most haracteristic marks of difference between different races," the following omparison is suggestive:
The index of breadth among the Scandinavians [is] at 75; among the
English at 76; among Holsteiners at 77; in Bresgau at 80;
Schiller's skull shows an index of breadth even of 82 ... the
Madurese also 82!
Finally, the same comparison between the oldest skulls known and the
European, brings to light the startling fact that:
_Most of these old skulls, belonging to the stone period, are
above rather than below the average of the brain of the now living
man in volume._
Calculating the measures for the height, breadth, and length in inches rom the average measurements of several skulls, the following sums are btained:
1. Old Northern skulls of the stone age: 18.877 ins.
2. Average of 48 skulls of the same period from England: 18.858 ins.
3. Average of 7 skulls of the same period from Wales: 18.649 ins.
4. Average of 36 skulls of the stone age from France: 18.220 ins.
The average of the now living Europeans is 18.579 inches; of Hottentots,
17.795 inches!
These figures show plainly that:
The size of the brain of the oldest populations known to us is not
such as to place them on a lower level than that of the now living
inhabitants of the Earth.(1209)
Besides which, they show the "missing link" vanishing into thin air. Of hese, however, more anon: we must return to our direct subject.
As the "Prometheus Vinctus" of Ćschylus tells us, the race which Jupiter o ardently desired "to quench, and plant a new one in its stead" (v.
241), suffered _mental_, not physical misery. The first boon Prometheus ave to mortals, as he tells the Chorus, was to hinder them "from
_foreseeing_ death" (v. 256); he "saved the mortal race from sinking lasted down to Hades' gloom" (v. 244); and then only, "besides" that, he ave them fire (v. 260). This shows plainly the dual character at any rate f the Promethean myth, if Orientalists will not accept the existence of he _seven keys_ taught in Occultism. This relates to the first opening of an's spiritual perceptions, not to his first seeing or "discovering" ire. For fire was never _discovered_, but existed on Earth since its eginning. It existed in the seismic activity of the early ages, volcanic ruptions being as frequent and constant in those periods as fog is in
England now. And if we are told that men appeared so late on Earth that ll but a few volcanoes were already extinct, and that geological isturbances had made room for a more settled state of things, we answer:
Let a new race of men--whether evolved from Angel or Gorilla--appear now on ny uninhabited spot of the Globe, with the exception perhaps of the
Sahara, and a thousand to one it would not be a year or two old before
"discovering fire," through lightning setting the grass or something else n flames. This assumption, that primitive man lived ages on Earth before e was made acquainted with fire, is one of the most painfully illogical f all. But old Ćschylus was an Initiate, and knew well what he was giving ut.(1210)
No Occultist acquainted with symbology and the fact that Wisdom came to us rom the East, will for a moment deny that the myth of Prometheus has eached Europe from Âryâvarta. Nor is he likely to deny that in one sense
Prometheus represents "fire by friction." Therefore, he admires the agacity of M. F. Baudry, who shows in "Les Mythes du Feu et du Breuvage
Céleste"(1211) one of the aspects of Prometheus and his origin from India.
He shows the reader the _supposed_ primitive process to obtain fire, still n use to-day in India to light the sacrificial flame. This is what he ays:
This process, such as it is minutely described in the Vedic
Sűtras, consists in rapidly turning a stick in a socket made in
the centre of a piece of wood. The friction develops intense heat
and ends by setting on fire the particles of wood in contact. The
motion of the stick is not a continuous rotation, but a series of
motions in contrary senses, by means of a cord fixed to the stick
in its middle; the operator holds one of the ends in each hand and
pulls them alternately.... The full process is designated in
Sanskrit by the verb _manthâmi, mathnáni_, which means "to rub,
agitate, shake and obtain by rubbing," and is especially applied
to rotatory friction, as is proved by its derivative _mandala_,
which signifies a circle.... The pieces of wood serving for the
production of fire have each their name in Sanskrit. The stick
which turns is called _pramantha_; the discus which receives it is
called _arani_ and _aranî_: "the two aranis" designating the
_ensemble_ of the instrument.(1212)
It remains to be seen what the Brâhmans will say to this. But even upposing that Prometheus, in one of the aspects of his myth, was onceived as the producer of fire by means of the Pramantha, or as an nimate and divine Pramantha, would this imply that the symbolism had no ther than the phallic meaning attributed to it by modern symbologists?
Decharme, at any rate, seems to have a correct glimmering of the truth; or he unconsciously corroborates all that the Occult Sciences teach with egard to the Mânasa Devas, who have endowed man with the consciousness of is immortal soul--that consciousness which hinders man "from foreseeing eath," and makes him _know_ he is immortal.(1213) "How did Prometheus ome into possession of the [divine] spark?" he asks.
Fire having its abode in heaven, it is there he must have gone to
find it before he could carry it down to men, and, to approach the
gods, he must have been a god himself.(1214)
The Greeks held that he was of the _Divine_ Race, "the son of the Titan
Iapetos";(1215) the Hindűs, that he was a Deva.
But celestial fire belonged in the beginning to the gods alone; it
was a treasure they reserved for themselves ... over which they
jealously watched.... "The prudent son of Iapetus," says Hesiod,
"deceived Jupiter by stealing and concealing in the cavity of a
narthex, the indefatigable fire of the resplendent glow."(1216)
... Thus the gift made by Prometheus to men was a conquest made
from heaven. Now according to Greek ideas [in this identical with
those of the Occultists], this possession forced from Jupiter,
this human trespassing upon the property of the gods, had to be
followed by an expiation.... Prometheus, moreover, belongs to that
race of Titans who had rebelled(1217) against the gods, and whom
the master of Olympus had hurled down into Tartarus; like them, he
is the genius of evil, doomed to cruel suffering.(1218)
What is most revolting in the explanations that follow, is the one-sided iew taken of this grandest of all myths. The most intuitional among odern writers cannot, or will not, rise in their conceptions above the evel of the Earth and cosmic phenomena. It is not denied that the moral dea in the myth, as presented in the _Theogony_ of Hesiod, plays a ertain part in the primitive Greek conception. The Titan is more than a hief of the celestial fire. He is the representation of humanity--active, ndustrious, intelligent, but at the same time ambitious, which aims at qualling divine powers. Therefore it is humanity punished in the person f Prometheus, but it is only so with the Greeks. With them, Prometheus is ot a criminal, save in the eyes of the Gods. In his relation with the
Earth, he is, on the contrary, a God himself, a friend of mankind
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), which he has raised to civilization and initiated into the nowledge of all the arts; a conception which found its most poetical xpounder in Ćschylus. But with all other nations Prometheus is--what? The
Fallen Angel, Satan, as the Church would have it? Not at all. _He is imply the image of the pernicious and dreaded effects of lightning._ He s the "evil fire" (_mal feu_)(1219) _and the symbol of the divine eproductive male organ_.
Reduced to its simple expression, the myth we are trying to
explain is then simply a [cosmic] genius of fire.(1220)
It is the former idea (the phallic) which was _preëminently_ Âryan, if we elieve Adalbert Kuhn(1221) and F. Baudry. For:
The fire used by man being the result of the action of _pramantha_
in the _arani_, the Âryas _must have_ ascribed [?] the same origin
to celestial fire, and they _must have_(1222) imagined [?] that a
god armed with the pramantha, or a divine pramantha, caused a
violent friction in the bosom of the clouds, which gave birth to
lightning and thunderbolts.(1223)
This idea is supported by the fact that, according to Plutarch's
testimony,(1224) the Stoics thought that thunder was the result of
the struggle of storm-clouds, and lightning a conflagration due to
friction; while Aristotle saw in the thunderbolt only the action
of clouds which clashed with each other. What was this theory, if
not the scientific translation of the production of fire by
friction?... Everything leads us to think that, from the highest
antiquity, and before the dispersion of the Âryas, it was believed
that the pramantha lighted the fire in the storm-cloud as well as
in the aranis.(1225)
Thus, suppositions and idle hypotheses are made to stand for discovered ruths. Defenders of the biblical dead-letter could not help the writers f missionary tracts more effectually than do materialistic Symbologists n thus taking for granted that the ancient Âryans based their religious onceptions on no higher thought than the physiological.
But it is not so, and the very spirit of Vedic Philosophy is against such n interpretation. For if, as Decharme himself confesses:
This idea of the creative power of fire is explained ... by the
ancient assimilation of the human soul to a celestial spark(1226)
--as shown by the imagery often made use of in the _Vedas_ when speaking of
Arani, it would mean something higher than simply a gross sexual onception. A Hymn to Agni in the _Veda_ is cited as an example:
Here is the pramantha; the generator is ready. Bring the mistress
of the race (the female aranî). Let us produce Agni by attrition,
according to ancient custom.
This means no worse than an abstract idea expressed in the tongue of ortals. The female Aranî, the "mistress of the race," is Aditi, the
Mother of the Gods, or Shekinah, Eternal Light--in the World of Spirit, the
"Great Deep" and Chaos; or Primordial Substance in its first remove from he Unknown, in the Manifested Kosmos. If, ages later, the same epithet is pplied to Devakî, the Mother of Krishna, or the incarnated Logos; and if he symbol, owing to the gradual and irrepressible spread of exoteric eligions, may now be regarded as having a sexual significance, this in no ay mars the original purity of the image. The subjective had been ransformed into the objective; Spirit had fallen into Matter. The niversal kosmic polarity of Spirit-Substance had become, in human hought, the mystic, but still sexual, union of Spirit and Matter, and had hus acquired an anthropomorphic colouring which it had never had in the eginning. Between the _Vedas_ and the _Purânas_ there is an abyss of hich they are the poles, like as are the seventh principle, the Âtmâ, and he first or lowest principle, the Physical Body, in the septenary onstitution of Man. The primitive and purely spiritual language of the
_Vedas_, conceived many decades of millenniums earlier than the Paurânic ccounts, found a purely human expression for the purpose of describing vents which took place 5,000 years ago, the date of Krishna's death, from hich day the Kali Yuga, or Black Age, began for mankind.
As Aditi is called Surârani, the Matrix or "Mother" of the Suras or Gods, o Kuntî, the mother of the Pândavas, is called in the _Mahâbhârata_
Pândavârani(1227)--and the term is now _physiologized_. But Devakî, the ntetype of the Roman Catholic Madonna, is a later anthropomorphized form f Aditi. The latter is the Goddess-mother, or Deva-mâtri, of seven Sons
(the six and the seven Âdityas of early Vedic times); the mother of
Krishna, Devakî, has six embryos conveyed into her womb by Jagad-dhâtri, he "Nurse of the World," the seventh, Krishna, the Logos, being ransferred to that of Rohinî. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the mother of even children, of five sons and two daughters (a later transformation of ex), in Matthew's Gospel.(1228) No one of the worshippers of the Roman
Catholic Virgin would object to reciting in her honour the prayer ddressed by the Gods to Devakî. Let the reader judge.
Thou art that Prakriti [essence], infinite and subtile, which
formerly bore Brahmâ in its womb.... Thou, eternal being,
comprising, in thy substance, the essence of all created things,
wast identical with creation; thou wast the parent of the tri-form
sacrifice, becoming the germ of all things. Thou art sacrifice,
whence all fruit proceeds; thou art the Aranî, whose attrition
engenders fire.(1229) As Aditi, thou art the parent of the
gods.... Thou art light [Jyotsnâ, the morning twilight],(1230)
whence day is begotten. Thou art humility [Samnati, a daughter of
Daksha], the mother of wisdom; thou art Niti, the parent of
harmony (Naya);(1231) thou art modesty, the progenitrix of
affection [Prashraya, explained by Vinaya]; thou art desire, of
whom love is born.... Thou art ... the mother of knowledge
[Avabodha]; thou art patience [Dhriti], the parent of fortitude
[Dhairya].(1232)
Thus Aranî is shown here to be the same as the Roman Catholic "Vase of
Election." As to its primitive meaning, it was purely metaphysical. No nclean thought traversed these conceptions in the ancient mind. Even in he _Zohar_--far less metaphysical in its symbology than any other ymbolism--the idea is an abstraction and nothing more. Thus, when the
_Zohar_ says:
All that which exists, all that which has been formed by the
ancient, whose name is holy, can only exist through a male and
female principle.(1233)
It means no more than that the divine Spirit of Life is ever coalescing ith Matter. It is the Will of the Deity that acts; and the idea is purely
Schopenhauerian.
When Atteekah Kaddosha, the ancient and the concealed of the
concealed, desired to form all things, it formed all things like
male and female. This wisdom comprises _all_ when it goeth forth.
Hence Chokmah (male Wisdom) and Binah (female Consciousness or Intellect) re said to create all between the two--the active and the passive rinciples. As the eye of the expert jeweller discerns under the rough and ncouth oyster shell the pure immaculate pearl, enshrined within its osom, his hand touching the shell but to get at its contents, so the eye f the true Philosopher reads between the lines of the _Purânas_ the ublime Vedic truths, and corrects the form with the help of the Vedântic
Wisdom. Our Orientalists, however, never perceive the pearl under the hick coating of the shell and--act accordingly.
From all that has been said in this Section, one sees clearly that, etween the Serpent of Eden and the Devil of Christianity, there is an byss. Alone the sledge hammer of Ancient Philosophy can kill this dogma.
Section VII. Enoďchion-Henoch.
The history of the evolution of the Satanic Myth would not be complete if e omitted to notice the character of the mysterious and cosmopolitan
Enoch, variously called Enos, Hanoch, and finally Enoďchion by the Greeks.
It is from his book that the first notions of the Fallen Angels were taken y the early Christian writers.
The _Book of Enoch_ is declared apocryphal. But what is an _apocryphon_?
The very etymology of the term shows that it is simply a _secret_ book,
_i.e._, one that belonged to the catalogue of temple-libraries under the uardianship of the Hierophants and Initiated Priests, and was never meant or the profane. _Apocryphon_ comes from the verb _crypto_ ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}), "to ide." For ages the _Enoďchion_, the Book of the Seer, was preserved in he "city of letters" and secret works--the ancient Kirjath-sepher, later n, Debir.(1234)
Some of the writers interested in the subject--especially Masons--have tried o identify Enoch with Thoth of Memphis, the Greek Hermes, and even with he Latin Mercury. As individuals, all of these are distinct one from the ther; professionally--if one may use this word, now so limited in its ense--one and all belong to the same category of sacred writers, of
Initiators and Recorders of Occult and ancient Wisdom. Those who in the
_Korân_(1235) are generically termed the Edris, or the "Learned," the
Initiated, bore in Egypt the name of "Thoth," the inventor of Arts,
Sciences, of writing or letters, of Music and Astronomy. Among the Jews
Edris became "Enoch," who, according to Bar-Hebrćus, "was the first nventor of writing," books, Arts, and Sciences, the first who reduced to system the progress of the planets.(1236) In Greece he was called
Orpheus, and thus changed his name with every nation. The number seven eing attached to, and connected with, each of those primitive
Initiators,(1237) as well as the number 365, of the days in the year, stronomically, it identifies the mission, character, and the sacred ffice of all these men, but certainly not their personalities. Enoch is he _seventh_ Patriarch; Orpheus is the possessor of the Phorminx, the even-stringed lyre, which is the seven-fold mystery of Initiation. Thoth, ith the seven-rayed Solar Discus on his head, travels in the Solar Boat
(the 365 degrees), jumping out every fourth (leap) year for one day.
Finally, Thoth-Lunus is the septenary God of the seven days, or the week.
Esoterically and spiritually, Enoďchion means the "Seer of the Open Eye."
The story about Enoch, told by Josephus, namely, that he had concealed his recious Rolls or Books under the pillars of Mercury or Seth, is the same s that told of Hermes, the "Father of Wisdom," who concealed his Books of
Wisdom under a pillar, and then, discovering the two pillars of stone, ound the Science written thereon. Yet Josephus, notwithstanding his onstant efforts in the direction of Israel's unmerited glorification, and hough he does attribute that Science (of Wisdom) to the _Jewish_
Enoch--writes _history_. He shows these pillars as still existing during is own time.(1238) He tells us that they were built by Seth; and so they ay have been, only neither by the Patriarch of that name, the fabled son f Adam, nor by the Egyptian God of Wisdom--Teth, Set, Thoth, Tat, Sat (the ater Sat-an), or Hermes, who are all one--but by the "Sons of the Serpent-
God," or "Sons of the Dragon," the name under which the Hierophants of
Egypt and Babylon were known before the Deluge, as were their forefathers, he Atlanteans.
What Josephus tells us, therefore, with the exception of the application ade of it, must be true _allegorically_. According to his version the two amous pillars were entirely covered with hieroglyphics, which, after heir discovery, were copied and reproduced in the most secret corners of he inner temples of Egypt, and thus became the source of its Wisdom and xceptional learning. These two "pillars," however, are the prototypes of he two "tables of stones" hewn by Moses at the command of the "Lord."
Hence, in saying that all the great Adepts and Mystics of antiquity--such s Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras and Plato--got the elements of their
Theology from those hieroglyphics, he is right in one sense, and wrong in nother. The Secret Doctrine teaches us that the Arts, Sciences, Theology, nd especially the Philosophy of every nation which preceded the last
_universally known_, but not universal, Deluge, had been recorded deographically from the primitive oral records of the Fourth Race, and hat these were the inheritance of the latter from the early Third Root-
Race before the allegorical Fall. Hence, also, the Egyptian pillars, the ablets, and even the "white oriental porphyry stone" of the Masonic egend--which Enoch, fearing that the real and precious secrets would be ost, concealed before the Deluge in the bowels of the Earth--were simply he more or less symbolical and allegorical copies from the primitive
Records. The _Book of Enoch_ is one of such copies, and is, moreover, a
Chaldćan, and now very incomplete, compendium. As already said, Enoďchion eans in Greek the "Inner Eye," or the Seer; in Hebrew, _with the help of
Masoretic points_, it means the "Initiator" and "Instructor" ({~HEBREW LETTER HET~}{~HEBREW POINT HATAF PATAH~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW POINT HOLAM~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL KAF~}{~HEBREW POINT DAGESH OR MAPIQ~}).
Enoch is a generic title; and, moreover, his legend is that of several ther prophets, Jewish and Heathen, with changes of made-up details, the oot-form being the same. Elijah is also taken up into Heaven "alive"; and he Astrologer, at the court of Isdubar, the Chaldćan Hea-bani, is ikewise raised to Heaven by the God Hea, who was _his_ patron, as Jehovah as of Elijah, whose name means in Hebrew "God-Jah," Jehovah
({~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW POINT SEGOL~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW POINT SHEVA~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW POINT QAMATS~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}),(1239) and again of Elihu, which has the same meaning. This kind f easy death, or _euthanasia_, has an Esoteric meaning. It symbolizes the
"death" of any Adept who has reached the power and degree, and also the urification, which enable him to "die" in the Physical Body, and _still ive and lead a conscious life_ in his Astral Body. The variations on this heme are endless, but the secret meaning is ever the same. The Pauline xpression,(1240) "that he should not see death" (_ut non videret ortem_), has thus an Esoteric meaning, but nothing _supernatural_ in it.
The mangled interpretation given of some biblical hints to the effect that
Enoch, "whose years will equal those of the world" (of the _solar_ year,
365 days), will share with Christ and the prophet Elijah the honours and liss of the last Advent and of the destruction of
Antichrist(1241)--signify Esoterically, that some of the Great Adepts will eturn in the Seventh Race, when all Error will be made away with, and the dvent of Truth will be heralded by those Shishta, the holy "Sons of
Light."
The Latin Church is not always logical, nor prudent. She declares the
_Book of Enoch_ an _apocryphon_, and has gone so far as to claim, through
Cardinal Cajetan and other luminaries of the Church, the rejection from he Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, otherwise, as an _inspired_ postle, would quote from and thus sanctify the _Book of Enoch_, which is lleged to be an apocryphal work. Fortunately, some of the dogmatics erceived the peril in time. Had they accepted Cajetan's resolution, they ould have been forced to reject likewise the Fourth Gospel; as St. John orrows literally from Enoch, and places _a whole sentence_ from him, in he mouth of Jesus!(1242)
Ludolph, the "father of Ethiopic literature," commissioned to investigate he various Enochian MSS. presented by Pereisc, the traveller, to the
Mazarine Library, declared that "no _Book of Enoch_ could exist among the
Abyssinians"! Further researches and discoveries worsted this too dogmatic ssertion, as all know. Bruce and Ruppel did find the _Book of Enoch_ in
Abyssinia, and what is more, brought it to Europe some years later, and
Bishop Laurence translated it. But Bruce despised it, and scoffed at its ontents; as did all the rest of the Scientists. He declared it a
_Gnostic_ work, concerning the Age of Giants who devour men--and bearing a trong resemblance to the _Apocalypse_.(1243) Giants! another _fairy- ale_!
Such, however, has not been the opinion of all the best critics. Dr.
Hanneberg places the _Book of Enoch_ along with the _Third Book of the
Maccabees--at the head of the list of those whose authority stands the earest to that of the canonical works_.(1244)
Verily, "where doctors disagree..."!
As usual, however, they are all right and all wrong. To accept Enoch as a iblical character, a single living person, is like accepting Adam as the irst man. Enoch was a generic title, applied to, and borne by, scores of ndividuals, at all times and ages, and in every race and nation. This may e easily inferred from the fact that the ancient Talmudists and the eachers of Midrashim are not agreed generally in their views about
Hanokh, the Son of Yered. Some say Enoch was a great Saint, beloved by
God, and "taken alive to heaven," _i.e._, one who reached Mukti or
Nirvâna, on Earth, as Buddha did and others still do; and others maintain hat he was a sorcerer, a wicked magician. This shows only that "Enoch," r its equivalent, was a term, even during the days of the later
Talmudists, which meant "Seer," "Adept in the Secret Wisdom," etc., ithout any specification as to the character of the title-bearer.
Josephus, speaking of Elijah and Enoch,(1245) remarks that:
It is written in the sacred books they [Elijah and Enoch]
disappeared, but so that nobody knew that they died.
It means simply that _they had died in their personalities_, as Yogîs die o this day in India, or even some Christian monks--to the world. They isappear from the sight of men and die--on the terrestrial plane--even for hemselves. A seemingly figurative way of speaking, yet _literally true_.
"Hanokh transmitted the science of (astronomical) calculation and of omputing the seasons to Noah," says the Midrash _Pirkah_;(1246) R.
Eliezar referring to Enoch that which others did to Hermes Trismegistus, or the two are identical in their Esoteric meaning. "Hanokh" in this ase, and his "Wisdom," belong to the cycle of the Fourth Atlantean
Race,(1247) and Noah to that of the Fifth.(1248) In this case both epresent the Root-Races, the present one and the one that preceded it. In nother sense, Enoch disappeared, "he walked with God, and he was not, for
God took him"; the allegory referring to the disappearance of the Sacred nd Secret Knowledge from among men; for "God" (or Java Aleim--the high
Hierophants, the Heads of the Colleges of Initiated Priests(1249)) took im; in other words, the Enochs or the Enoďchions, the Seers and their
Knowledge and Wisdom, became strictly confined to the Secret Colleges of he Prophets with the Jews, and to the Temples with the Gentiles.
Interpreted with the help of merely the symbolical key, Enoch is the type f the dual nature of man--spiritual and physical. Hence he occupies the entre of the Astronomical Cross, as given by Éliphas Lévi from a secret ork, which is a Six-pointed Star, the "Adonai." In the upper angle of the pper Triangle is the Eagle; in the left lower angle stands the Lion; in he right, the Bull; while between the Bull and the Lion, over them and nder the Eagle, is the face of Enoch or Man.(1250) Now the figures on the pper Triangle represent the Four Races, omitting the First, the Chhâyâs r Shadows, and the "Son of Man," Enos or Enoch, is in the centre, where e stands between the Fourth and the Fifth Races, for he represents the
Secret Wisdom of both. These are the four Animals of _Ezekiel_ and of the
_Revelation_. This Double Triangle which, in _Isis Unveiled_, is faced by he Hindű Ardhanârî, is by far the best. For in the latter, only the three
(for us) historical Races are symbolized; the Third, the Androgynous, by
Ardha-nârî; the Fourth, symbolized by the strong, powerful Lion; and the
Fifth, the Âryan, by that which is its most sacred symbol to this day, the
Bull (and the Cow).
A man of great erudition, a French _savant_, M. de Sacy, finds several ost singular statements in the _Book of Enoch_, "worthy of the most erious examination," he says. For instance:
The author [Enoch] makes the solar year consist of 364 days, and
seems to know periods of three, of five, and of eight years,
followed by _four_ supplementary days, which, in his system,
appear to be those of the equinoxes and solstices.(1251)
To which he adds, later on:
I see but one means to palliate them [these "absurdities"]; it is
to suppose that the author expounds some fanciful system which may
have existed _before the order of Nature had been altered at the
period of the Universal Deluge_.(1252)
Precisely so; and the Secret Doctrine teaches that this "order of nature" as been thus altered, and the series of the Earth's humanities too. For, s the angel Uriel tells Enoch:
Behold, I have showed thee all things, O Enoch; and all things
have I revealed to thee. Thou seest the sun, the moon, and _those
which conduct the stars_ of heaven, which cause all their
operations, seasons, and arrivals to return. In the days of
sinners _the years shall be shortened_.... The moon shall change
its laws....(1253)
In those days also, years before the Great Deluge that carried away the
Atlanteans and changed the face of the whole Earth (because "the _Earth_
[or its axis] _became inclined_"), Nature, geologically, astronomically, nd cosmically in general, could not have been the same, just because the
Earth _had inclined_. To quote from Enoch:
And Noah cried with a bitter voice, Hear me; hear me; hear me;
three times. And he said,... The earth labours and is violently
shaken. Surely, I shall perish with it.(1254)
This, by the way, looks like one of those many "inconsistencies," if the
_Bible_ is read literally. For, to say the least, this is a very strange ear in one who had "found grace in the eyes of the Lord" and been told to uild an Ark! But here we find the venerable Patriarch expressing as much ear as if, instead of a "friend" of God, he had been one of the Giants oomed by the wrathful Deity. The Earth had already _inclined_, and the eluge of waters had become simply a question of time, and yet Noah seems o know nothing of his intended salvation.
A decree had come indeed; the decree of Nature and the Law of Evolution, hat the Earth should change its Race, and that the Fourth Race should be estroyed to make room for a better one. The Manvantara had reached its urning point of _three and a half_ Rounds, and gigantic physical Humanity ad reached the acme of gross materiality. Hence the apocalyptic verse hat speaks of a commandment gone forth that they may be destroyed, "that
_their end may be_"--the end of the Race:
For they _knew_ [truly] every secret of the angels, every
oppressive and secret power of the _Satans_, and every power of
those who commit sorcery, as well as of those who make molten
images in the whole earth.(1255)
And now a natural question. Who could have informed the apocryphal author f this powerful vision--no matter to what age he may be assigned before he day of Galileo--that the Earth could occasionally incline her axis?
Whence did he derive such astronomical and geological knowledge if the
Secret Wisdom, of which the ancient Rishis and Pythagoras had drunk, is ut a fancy, an invention of later ages? Has Enoch read prophetically erchance in Fréderic Klée's work on the Deluge the lines:
The position of the terrestrial globe with reference to the sun
has evidently been, in primitive times, different from what it is
now; and this difference must have been caused by a displacement
of the axis of rotation of the earth.
This reminds one of that _unscientific_ statement made by the Egyptian riests to Herodotus, namely, that the Sun has not always risen where it ises _now_, and that in former times the ecliptic had cut the equator at ight angles.(1256)
There are many such "dark sayings" scattered throughout the _Purânas_,
_Bible_ and other Mythologies, and to the Occultist they divulge two acts; (_a_) that the Ancients knew as well as, and perhaps better than, he moderns do, Astronomy, Geognosy and Cosmography in general; and (_b_) hat the behaviour of the Globe has altered more than once since the rimitive state of things. Thus, Xenophantes--on the _blind_ faith of _his_
"ignorant" religion, which taught that Phaeton, in his desire to learn the
_hidden_ truth, made the Sun deviate from its usual course--asserts omewhere that, "the Sun turned toward another country"; which is a arallel--slightly more scientific, however, if not as bold--of Joshua topping the course of the Sun altogether. Yet it may explain the teaching f the Northern Mythology that before the _actual order_ of things the Sun rose in the South, and its placing the Frigid Zone (Jeruskoven) in the
East, whereas now it is in the North.(1257)
The _Book of Enoch_, in short, is a _résumé_, a compound of the main eatures of the history of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races; a very few rophecies from the present age of the world; a long retrospective, ntrospective and prophetic summary of universal and quite _historical_ vents--geological, ethnological, astronomical, and psychic--with a touch of
Theogony out of the antediluvian records. The Book of this mysterious ersonage is referred to and quoted copiously in the _Pistis Sophia_, and lso in the _Zohar_ and its most ancient Midrashim. Origen and Clement of
Alexandria held it in the highest esteem. To say, therefore, that it is a
Post-Christian forgery is to utter an absurdity and to become guilty of an nachronism, for Origen, among others, who lived in the second century of he Christian era, mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The ecret and sacred Name and its potency are well and clearly though llegorically described in the old volume. From the eighteenth to the iftieth chapter, the Visions of Enoch are all descriptive of the
Mysteries of Initiation, one of which is the Burning Valley of the "Fallen
Angels."
Perhaps St. Augustine was quite right in saying that the Church rejected he _Book of Enoch_ out of her canon owing to its too great antiquity (_ob imiam antiquitatem_).(1258) There was no room for the events noticed in t within the limit of the 4004 years B.C. assigned to the world from its
"creation"!
Section VIII. The Symbolism of the Mystery-Names Iao and Jehovah, with heir Relation to the Cross and Circle.
When the Abbé Louis Constant, better known as Éliphas Lévi, said in his
_Histoire de la Magie_ that the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the _Zohar_, and the
_Apocalypse_ of St. John, are the masterpieces of the Occult Sciences, he ught, if he had wished to be correct and clear, to have added--in Europe.
It is quite true that these works contain "more _significance_ than ords"; and that their "expression is poetical," while "in numbers" they re "exact." Unfortunately, however, before any one can appreciate the
_poetry_ of the expressions, or the _exactness_ of the numbers, he will ave to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols mployed. But man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of he fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental
Esotericism, or in the kabalistical Symbology--the _key, or value, in all heir aspects_, of the God-names, Angel-names, and Patriarch-names in the
_Bible_, their mathematical or geometrical value, and their relations to anifested Nature.
Therefore, if, on the one hand, the _Zohar_ "astonishes" the mystic, by he profundity of its views and the great simplicity of its images, or the ther hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those sed with respect to Ain Suph and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance hat:
The book is careful to explain that the human form with which it
clothes God is but _an image of the Word_, and that God should not
be expressed by any thought, or any form.
It is well known that Origen Clement, and the Rabbis confessed that the
_Kabalah_ and the _Bible_ were _veiled and secret_ books; but few know hat the Esotericism of the kabalistic books in their present _reëdited_ orm is simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the rimitive symbolism of these secret volumes.
The idea of representing the _hidden_ Deity by the circumference of a ircle, and the Creative Power--male and female, or the Androgynous Word--by he diameter across it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this onception that every great Cosmogony has been built. With the old Âryans, he Egyptians, and the Chaldćans, the symbol was complete, as it embraced he idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, eparated entirely from the incipient stage of the so-called "creation," nd comprised psychological and even spiritual evolution, and its echanical work, or cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, hough the former conception is to be distinctly found in the _Zohar_, and he _Sepher Jetzirah_, or what remains of the latter--that which has been ubsequently embodied in the _Pentateuch_ proper, and especially in
_Genesis_, is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law of reation, or rather of construction; while Theogony is hardly, if at all, utlined.
It is only in the first six chapters of _Genesis_, in the rejected _Book f Enoch_, and the misunderstood and mistranslated poem of _Job_, that rue echoes of the Archaic Doctrine may now be found. The key to it is ost now, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the arly period of the Middle Ages, in their national exclusiveness and ride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, preferred o cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share their nowledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their wn tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any ther but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, which e fitted and which fitted him, the "Lord God of Abraham and Jacob" could ardly be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian
Canon. Being the weaker, the Judeans could not help the desecration. They ept, however, the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male- emale Jehovah, and the new tabernacle proved a complete misfit for the ld God. They were, indeed, avenged!
The statement that Jehovah was the tribal God of the Jews and no higher, ill be denied like many other things. Yet the Theologians are not in a osition to tell us, in that case, the meaning of the verses in
_Deuteronomy_, which say quite plainly:
When the Most High [not the "Lord," or "Jehovah" either] divided
to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of
Adam, he set the bounds ... according to the number of the
children of Israel.... _The Lord's_ [Jehovah's] _portion is his
people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance_.(1259)
This settles the question. So impudent have been the modern translators of
Bibles and Scriptures, and so damaging are these verses, that, following n the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each ranslator has rendered these lines in his own way. While the above-cited uotation is taken _verbatim_ from the English Authorized Version, in the
French Bible,(1260) we find the "Most High" translated by "Souverain"
(Sovereign!!), the "sons of Adam" rendered by "the children of men," and he "Lord" changed into the "Eternal." For impudent sleight-of-hand, the
French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English cclesiasticism.
Nevertheless, one thing is patent: the "Lord's [Jehovah's] portion" is his
"chosen people" and none else, for, _Jacob alone is the lot of his nheritance_. What, then, have other nations, who call themselves Âryans, o do with this Semitic Deity, the tribal God of Israel? Astronomically, he "Most High" is the Sun, and the "Lord" is one of his seven planets, hether it be Iao, the Genius of the Moon, or Ildabaoth-Jehovah, the
Genius of Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.(1261) Let he "Angel Gabriel," the "Lord" of Iran, watch over his people, and
Michael-Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the Gods of other ations, nor were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained o his planet,(1262) so each Hindű Deva (a "Lord") has its allotted ortion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds mplies plurality of Gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, ut will never worship the latter.(1263)
It has been repeatedly stated in this work that every religious and hilosophical symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each pertaining to ts legitimate plane of thought, _i.e._, either purely metaphysical or stronomical; psychic or physiological, etc. These seven meanings and heir applications are difficult enough to learn when taken by themselves; ut the interpretation and the right comprehension of them become tenfold ore puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow onsecutively out of, and to follow, each other, each, or any one of these eanings, is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole ymbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably illustrates the tatement. Here are two interpretations, given by two learned Kabalists nd scholars, of one and the same verse in _Exodus_. Moses beseeches the
Lord to show him his "glory." Evidently it is not the crude dead-letter hraseology as found in the _Bible_ that is to be accepted. There are
_seven_ meanings in the _Kabalah_, of which we may give two as interpreted y the said two scholars. One of them translates while explaining:
"Thou canst not see My face;... I will put thee in a cleft of the
rock and I will cover thee with My hand while I pass by. And then
I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My _a'hoor_,"
_i.e._, My back.(1264)
And then the translator adds in a gloss:
That is, I will show you "My back," _i.e._, My visible universe,
My lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou
canst not see My invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah.(1265)
This is correct, and is the cosmo-metaphysical explanation. And now speaks he other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it involves a good any suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given, we may allow it more pace. This synopsis is from an unpublished MS., and explains more fully hat was given in Section III, on the "Holy of Holies."(1266)
The numbers of the name "Moses" are those of "I am that I am," so that the ames Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony. The word Moses is
{~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} (5 + 300 + 40), and the sum of the values of its letters is 345;
Jehovah--the Genius _par excellence_ of the Lunar Year--assumes the value of
543, or the reverse of 345.
In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is
said: And Moses said, ... Behold I come unto the children of
Israel, and shall say unto them. The God of your fathers hath sent
me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? What
shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses,
I Am That I Am.
The Hebrew words for this expression are _âhiyé asher âhiyé_, and in the alue of the sums of their letters stand thus:
{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}
21 501 21
... This being his [God's] name, the sum of the values composing
it, 21, 501, 21 is 543, or simply a use of the simple digit
numbers in the name of Moses, ... but now so ordered that the name
of 345 is reversed, and reads 543.
So that when Moses asks, "Let me see Thy face or glory," the other rightly nd truly replies, "Thou canst not see my face ... but thou _shalt see me ehind_"--the true sense, though not the precise words; for the corner and he _behind_ of 543 is the _face_ of 345. This is
For check and to keep a _strict use_ of a set of numbers to
develop certain _grand_ results, for the object of which they are
specifically employed.
As the learned Kabalist adds:
In other uses of the numbers, they saw each other face to face. It
is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the
Gnostic Cabbalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or
Joshua. And so also the division of the 24 hours of the day gives
three eights as quotient.... The chief end of all this system of
Number Checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the
Lunar Year in the Natural measure of Days.
These are the astronomical and numerical meanings in the secret Theogony f sidereo-cosmical Gods invented by the Chaldćo-Hebrews,--two meanings out f seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more.
The series of OEdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the riddle of the
Sphinx, is long indeed. For many ages she has been devouring the brightest nd the noblest intellects of Christendom; but now the Sphinx is onquered. In the great intellectual struggle which has ended in the omplete victory of the OEdipuses of Symbolism, it is, however, not the
Sphinx, who, burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself in he sea, but verily the many-sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom
Christians--the _civilized_ nations--have accepted for their God. The
Jehovah symbol has collapsed under the too close analysis, and is--drowned.
Symbologists have discovered with dismay that their adopted Deity was only mask for many other Gods, a _euhemerized_ extinct planet, at best, the
Genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter with arly Christians; that the Trinity--unless they accepted the more abstract nd metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles--was, in truth, only n astronomical triad, composed of the Sun (the Father), and the two lanets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost), Sophia, the Spirit f Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the "bright and morning tar."(1267) For, if the Father is the Sun (the "Elder Brother," in the
Eastern Inner Philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes,
Budha, Thoth), the name of whose Mother on Earth was Maia. Now this planet eceives seven times more light than any other; a fact which led the
Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the stronomical meaning), the "Seven-fold Light." Finally, _this_ God was
Bel--the Sun being Bel with the Gauls; Helios, with the Greeks; Baal, with he Phoenicians; El, in Chaldćan, hence El-ohim, Emanu-el, and El, "God," n Hebrew. But even the kabalistic God has vanished in the rabbinical orkmanship, and one has now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense f the _Zohar_ to find in it anything like Ain Suph, the Nameless Deity nd the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed by the Christians.
But it is certainly not to be found in the Mosaic books, at any rate by hose who try to read without a key to them. Ever since this key was lost,
Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions, ut in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the
Universal Deity of Its majestic character and primitive meaning.
As was said in _Isis Unveiled_:
It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between
the mystery-god {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who
participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his
phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little
reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.(1268)
In the Ophite gems of King,(1269) we find the name of Iao
repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter
simply represents one of the Genii antagonistic to Abraxas.... But
the name Iao neither originated with, nor was it the sole property
of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon
the tutelary "Spirit," the alleged protector and national deity of
the "chosen people of Israel," there is yet no possible reason why
other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One-
living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there
is the fact that Iaho or Iao was a "mystery name" from the
beginning, for {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} and {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} never came into use before the time of
king David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were
compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being
a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines,(1270) brought
thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom
came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at
Hebron ({~HEBREW LETTER HET~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL NUN~}), Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the
four (mystery-gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon
recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build
a temple to {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules
and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says Fürst: "The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the
Greek {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}, appears, apart _from its derivation_, to have been an
old mystic name of the Supreme Deity of the Shemites. Hence it was
told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor-eb--the _Cave_--under the
direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Cainite) priest of Midian. In
an old religion of the Chaldćans, whose remains are to be found
among the Neo-Platonists, the highest Divinity, enthroned above
the seven Heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle, ...
and also conceived of as Demiurgus,(1271) was called {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~} ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}),
who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and
whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phoenicians had a
Supreme God, whose name was triliteral and _secret_, and he was
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}."(1272)
The cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is ne of the most ancient--nay, perhaps, the _most_ ancient of symbols. This as been demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem in Volume I. The
Eastern Initiates show it coëval with the circle of Deific Infinitude and he first differentiation of the Essence, the union of Spirit and Matter.
This interpretation has been rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone as been accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial vents.
Let us demonstrate this statement. In Astronomy, as said, Mercury is the on of Coelus and Lux--of the Sky and Light, or the Sun; in Mythology he is he progeny of Jupiter and Maia. He is the "Messenger" of his Father
Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun; in Greek, his name Hermes means, among ther things, the "Interpreter"--the Word, the Logos, or Verbum. Now
Mercury is born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, and is the patron of the atter. As a psychopompic Genius, he conducted the Souls of the Dead to
Hades and brought them back again, an office attributed to Jesus after his
Death and Resurrection. The symbols of Hermes-Mercury (Dii Termini) were laced along, and at the turning points of, highways, as crosses are now laced in Italy, and they were _cruciform_.(1273) Every seventh day the riests anointed these Termini with oil, and once a year hung them with arlands, hence they were the _anointed_. Mercury, when speaking through is oracles, says:
I am he whom you call the Son of the Father [Jupiter] and Maia.
Leaving the King of Heaven [the Sun] I come to help you, mortals.
Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical.(1274) He as often represented as three-headed and called Tricephalus, Triplex, as ne with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus(1275) shows, was ometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because "the power of peech and eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet."
It is this cubic form which connects the Termini directly with the cross, nd it is the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury which made the rafty Eusebius say, "Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and nterprets all," for it is the Creative Word; and he shows Porphyry eaching that the Speech of Hermes--now interpreted "Word of God" (!) in
_Pymander_--a Creative Speech (Verbum), is the Seminal Principle scattered hroughout the Universe.(1276) In Alchemy "Mercury" is the radical "Moyst"
Principle, Primitive or Elementary Water, containing the Seed of the
Universe, fecundated by the Solar Fires. To express this fecundating rinciple, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or he vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians. The cruciform
Termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the
_cubic_ Hermes. The author of _Source of Measures_ tells us why.(1277)
As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the Tau, r the Egyptian, form; or again, "the circle attached to the Tau gives the nsated cross" of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests nd their "King-Initiates" for ages, and also what was meant by "the ttachment of a man to the cross," which idea "was made to coördinate with hat of the origin of human life, and hence the _phallic form_." Only the atter came into action ćons and ages after the idea of the Carpenter and
Artificer of the Gods, Vishva-karmâ, crucifying the "Sun-Initiate" on the ruciform lathe. As the same author writes:
_The attachment of a man to the cross_ ... was made use of in this
form of display by the Hindűs.(1278)
But, it was made "to coördinate" with the idea of the new rebirth of man y _spiritual_, not physical regeneration. The Candidate for Initiation as attached to the Tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and obler idea than that of the origin of mere _terrestrial_ life.
On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose n life than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, and ccording to the reading of the _Bible_ by means of the numerical method, he author of _The Source of Measures_ is quite correct.
The entire [Jewish] system seems to have been anciently regarded
as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or
God, as the _basis or law_ of the exertion practically of creative
power--_i.e._, it was the _creative design_, of which creation was
practically the application. This seems to be established by the
fact that, under the system set forth, measures of _planetary
times_ serve coördinately as measures of the _size_ of planets,
and of the peculiarity of their shapes--_i.e._, in the extension of
their equatorial and polar diameters.... This system [that of
creative design] seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure,
as a foundation for its _ritualism_ and for its display of the
works of the Deity in the way of _architecture_, by use of the
sacred unit of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the
Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.(1279)
Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system, the Jewish
Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested Duad, never the One
Absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a _number_; symbolically, _euhemerized_ Priapus; and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting fter the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a
God with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the ost learned of modern Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing ut a symbol of the manifested _creative_ and _androgyne_ Deity in its elation to, and interference with, this phenomenal world.(1280) One uthor believes that:
However man [read, the Jew and Rabbi] obtained knowledge of the
practical measure, ... by which nature was thought to adjust the
planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements,
it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the
means of his realization of the Deity--that is, he approached _so
nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own_,
only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize _a law of
creation_ established by that Being, which must have existed prior
to any creation (kabalistically called the Word).(1281)
This may have satisfied the practical _Semite_ mind, but the Eastern
Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a
Being, "having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful," is
_no_ God that has any room _beyond_ the cycle of creation. He has nought o do with the _ideal_ conception of the Eternal Universe. He is, at best, ne of the _subordinate creative_ powers, the Totality of which is called he Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos of the
Platonists.
This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest efinitions of the _Kabalah_ and its mysteries, _e.g._, by John A. Parker, s quoted in the same work:
The key of the Kabala is _thought to be the geometrical relation
of the area of the circle inscribed in the square_, or of the cube
to the sphere, giving rise to the relation of diameter to
circumference of a circle, with the numerical value of this
relation expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter to
circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god-names
Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of
these relations, respectively--the first being of circumference,
the latter of diameter), embraces all other subordinations under
it. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are
used in the Bible: (1) The perfect, and (2) The imperfect. One of
the relations between these is such that (2) subtracted from (1)
will leave a _unit_ of a diameter value in terms, or in the
denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or
a unit straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor
of circular value.(1282)
Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries f the _third_ stage of Evolution, or the "Third Creation of Brahmâ." The nitiated Hindűs know how to "square the circle" far better than any
European. But of this more anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics ommence their speculation only at that stage when the Universe "falls nto matter," as the Occultists say. Throughout the whole series of abalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the emotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the echanical and _physiological_ secrets of "creation." Shall we, then, egard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on a gigantic cale, of the act of procreation; as "divine" _phallicism_, and rhapsodize n it as the evilly-inspired author of a late work of this name has done?
The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying so, since he most careful reading of the _Old Testament_--esoterically, as well as xoterically--seems to have carried the most enthusiastic enquirers no urther than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the first to he last chapter of the _Pentateuch_ every scene, every character or event re shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the _origin of birth_ in ts crudest and most brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious he rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern
Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans.
It is not, then, in the _Bible_ that we have to search for the origin of he cross and circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to
Éliphas Lévi and the _Zohar_, we answer for the Eastern Occultists and say hat, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with Pascal, who ays that:
God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the
circumference nowhere.
Whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it, solely out of heir desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity y the circle is not Pascal's at all, as Éliphas Lévi thought. It was
_borrowed_ by the French Philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus or
Cardinal Cusa's Latin work, _De Doctâ Ignorantiâ_, in which he makes use f it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words
"Cosmic Circle," which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by he word Theos. With the Ancients both words were synonymous.
A. Cross And Circle.
In the minds of the ancient Philosophers something of the divine and the ysterious has ever been ascribed to the shape of the circle. The old orld, consistent in its symbolism and with its Pantheistic intuitions, niting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, represented
Deity and its outward Veil alike--by a circle. This merging of the two into unity, and the name Theos being given indifferently to both, is xplained, and becomes thereby still more _scientific_ and philosophical.
Plato's etymological definition of the word _theos_ ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}) has, been given lsewhere. In his _Cratylus_, he derives it from the verb _the-ein_
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}), "to move," as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies hich he connects with Deity. According to the Esoteric Philosophy, this
Deity, during its "Nights" and its "Days," or Cycles of Rest and Activity, s the "Eternal Perpetual Motion," the "Ever-Becoming, as well as the ever niversally Present, and the Ever-Existing." The latter is the root- bstraction; the former is the only possible conception in the human mind, f it disconnects this Deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, ever-ceasing evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through
ćons of duration into its original status--Absolute Unity.
It was only the minor Gods who were made to carry the symbolical ttributes of the higher ones. Thus, the God Shoo, the personification of
Ra, who appears as the "Great Cat of the Basin of Persća in An"(1283) was ften represented in the Egyptian monuments seated and holding a cross, ymbol of the four Quarters, or the Elements, attached to a circle.
In that very learned work, _The Natural Genesis_, by Gerald Massey, under he heading, "Typology of the Cross," there is more information to be had n the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would ain have proofs of the antiquity of the cross is referred to these two olumes. The author says:
The circle and cross are inseparable.... The Crux Ansata unites
the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin the
circle and the cross came to be interchangeable at times. For
example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The name
denotes the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of
time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like
manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four-
footed cross [Svastika], and a type of the four quarters. Thus the
cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. The wheel emblem
unites the cross and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake
and the Ankh-tie {~ANKH~}.(1284)
Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the
Initiates. For Raoul Rochette shows that:(1285)
The sign {~FEMALE SIGN~} occurs as the _reverse_ of a Phoenician coin, with a Ram
as the obverse.... The same sign, sometimes called Venus' Looking-
Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the
hind-quarters of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other
beautiful breeds of horses.
This proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already ecome the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the _divine_ rigin of cross and circle had begun.
Another form of the cross is given from the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society_:(1286)
At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform
curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval; thus
the figure combines the cross with the circle round it in four
parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four
segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the
Fylfot of Thor. The four-leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is
likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an
Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter
arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse
is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore
denotes the path of the earth.... Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the
following specimen, [Symbol: Oval, with large letter "Z" inside,
with horizontal crossbar] which is here presented, as the cross of
the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure
of the earth's path. The same ovoid or boat-shaped figure appears
at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a
form or a mode of Meru.
This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more spects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these.
The subject is so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes.
But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of cross and circle, spoken f in the above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and inal colour from Âryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author:
The four-armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but
the cross-sign is not always simple.(1287) This is a type that was
developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the
expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of
Egypt that was carried in the hands of the Gods, the Pharaohs, and
the mummied dead, is the Ankh {~ANKH~} the sign of life, the living, an
oath, the covenant.... The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru
[Symbol: Horizontal oval] set upright on the Tau-cross. The Ru is
the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the
_birthplace_ in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which
the Sun is reborn. Hence the _Ru of the Ankh-sign is the feminine
type of the birthplace, representing the north_. It was in the
_northern quarter_ that the Goddess of the Seven Stars, called the
"Mother of the Revolutions," gave birth to time in the earliest
cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and
cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh-cross
[Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right], a mere loop
which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop
or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, _Typhon of
the Great Bear_; as her _Ark_, the ideograph of a _period_, _an
ending_, _a time_, shown to mean one revolution. This, then,
represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great
Bear which constituted the earliest year of time, from which fact
we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter,
the birthplace of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol.
Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an _Ark_ or _Rek_ type of
reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh-cross was continued in the Cypriote
R, [Symbol: Circle with horizontal line beneath], and the Coptic
Ro, [Symbol: Figure like a Rho].(1288) The Ro was carried into the
Greek cross [Symbol: Large Greek Rho with letter Chi beneath it],
which is formed of the Ro and Chi or _R-k_.... The Rek, or Ark,
was the sign of all beginning (_Arche_) on this account, and the
Ark-tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of heaven.(1289)
Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Paurânic ersion in India gives the whole matter another colour. Without destroying he above interpretation, it is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries ith the help of the astronomical key, and thus offers a more metaphysical endering. The Ankh-tie [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right] oes not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of Pâsha, a cord hich the four-armed Shiva holds in the hand of his right back arm.(1290)
The Mahâdeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Mahâyogî, ith his third eye [Symbol: Vertical oval with dot in the middle], which s "the Ru [Symbol: Horizontal oval with dot in the middle], set upright n the Tau-cross" in another form. The Pâsha is held in the hand in such a ay that the first finger and hand near the thumb make the cross, or loop nd crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind efractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kâlî, Shiva's consort, has he same as an attribute!
The Pâsha has here a double significance, as also has Shiva's Trisűla and very other divine attribute. This dual significance lies in Shiva, for
Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian Ansated Cross in its osmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Shiva, the Pâsha becomes ingyonic. Shiva, as said before, is a name unknown to the _Vedas_. It is n the _White Yajur Veda_ that Rudra appears for the first time as the
Great God, Mahâdeva, whose symbol is the Lingam. In the _Rig Veda_ he is alled Rudra, the "howler," the beneficent and the maleficent Deity at the ame time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the _Vishnu Purâna_, he is the
God who springs from the forehead of Brahmâ, who separates into male and emale, and he is the parent of the Rudras or Maruts, half of whom are rilliant and gentle, others, black and ferocious. In the _Vedas_, he is he Divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the ame time that Divine Ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce assions make of him the "roarer," the "terrible." This is well shown in he _Brihadâranyaka Upanishad_, wherein the Rudras, the progeny of Rudra,
God of Fire, are called the "ten vital breaths (_prâna_, life), with the eart (_manas_), as eleventh,"(1291) whereas as Shiva, he is the
_destroyer_ of that life. Brahmâ calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides, even other names, signifying seven forms of manifestation, and also the even powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.
Hence the cruciform noose, or Pâsha, in the hand of Shiva, when he is epresented as an ascetic, the Mahâyogin, has no phallic signification, nd, indeed, it requires an imagination strongly bent in this direction to ind such a signification even in an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of
"door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet" it signifies the "strait gate" hat leads to the Kingdom of Heaven, far more than the "birthplace" in a hysiological sense.
It is a cross in a circle and Crux Ansata, truly; but it is a cross on hich all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogî passes hrough the "strait gate," the narrow circle that widens into an infinite ne, as soon as the Inner Man has passed the threshold.
As to the mysterious seven Rishis in the constellation of the Great Bear; f Egypt made them sacred to "the oldest genitrix, Typhon," India has onnected these symbols ages ago with Time or Yuga-revolutions, and the
Saptarshis are intimately connected with our present age-the dark Kali
Yuga.(1292) The great Circle of Time, on the face of which, Indian fancy as represented the Porpoise, or Shishumâra, has the cross placed on it by ature in its division and localization of stars, planets and onstellations. In _Bhâgavata Purâna_,(1293) it is said:
At the _extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is
directed toward the south_, and whose body is _in the shape of a
ring_ [circle], Dhruva [the ex-pole star] is placed; _along its
tail_ are Prajâpati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; _across its loins_
the seven Rishis.(1294)
This is then the first and earliest cross and circle, formed by the Deity, ymbolized by Vishnu, the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kâla, on whose lane lie crossways all the Gods, creatures, and creations born in Space nd Time-who, as the Philosophy has it, all die at the Mahâpralaya.
Meanwhile it is the seven Rishis who mark the time and the duration of vents in our septenary Life-cycle. They are as mysterious as their upposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom only one-she who hides-has proven irtuous. The Pleiades, or Krittikâs, are the nurses of Kârttikeya, the
God of War (the Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander f the Celestial Armies, or rather of the Siddhas--Siddha-sena (translated
Yogîs in Heaven, and holy Sages on the Earth)--which would make Kârttikeya dentical with Michael, the "Leader of the Celestial Hosts" and, like imself, a virgin Kumâra.(1295) Verily he is the Guha, the "Mysterious
One," as much so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittikâs, the seven Rishis nd the Pleiades, for the interpretation of all these combined reveal to he Adept the greatest mysteries of Occult Nature. One point is worth ention in this question of cross and circle, as it bears strongly upon he elements of Fire and Water, which play such an important part in the ircle and cross symbolism. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been orn of his mother Juno alone, without the participation of a father, or ike the Avatâras (Krishna, for instance)--in the West as in the
East--Kârttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner, begotten y neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra-Shiva, which was ast into the Fire (Agni) and then received by the Water (Ganges). Thus he s born from Fire and Water--a "boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the
Moon." Hence he is called Agnibhű (son of Agni) and Gangâputra (son of
Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittikâ, his nurses, as the
_Matsya Purâna_ shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the authentic ords, "the seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni," and hence
"Krittika has Âgneya as a synonym"(1296)--and the connection is easy to ollow.
It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali Yuga, he age of sin and sorrow. As the _Bhâgavata Purâna_ tells us:
When the splendour of Vishnu, named Krishna, departed for heaven,
then did the Kali age, during which men delight in sin, invade the
world....
When the seven Rishis were in Maghâ, the Kali age, comprising
1,200 [divine] years [432,000 common years] began; and, when, from
Maghâ, they shall reach Pűrvâshâdhâ, then will this Kali age
attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors.(1297)
This is the revolution of the Rishis--
When the two first stars of the seven Rishis (the Great Bear) rise
in the heavens, and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an
equal distance between them, then the seven Rishis continue
stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years,
--as a hater of Nanda makes Parâshara say. According to Bentley, it was in rder to show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this otion originated among the Astronomers.
This was by assuming an imaginary line, or great circle, passing
through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the fixed
Maghâ, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the
Great Bear.... The seven stars in the Great Bear being called the
Rishis, the circle so assumed was called the line of the Rishis;
and, being invariably fixed to the beginning of the lunar asterism
Maghâ, the precession would be noted by stating the degree, etc.,
of any movable lunar mansion cut by that line or circle, as an
index.(1298)
There has been, and there still exists, a seemingly endless controversy bout the chronology of the Hindűs. Here is, however, a point that could elp to determine--approximately at least--the age when the symbolism of the even Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began. When Kârttikeya as delivered to the Krittikâ by the Gods to be nursed, they were only ix, whence Kârttikeya is represented with _six_ heads; but when the oetical fancy of the early Âryan Symbologists made of them the consorts f the seven Rishis, they were _seven_. Their names are given, and these re Amba, Dulâ, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghâyanti, Varshayanti, and
Chupunika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, he seven Rishis were made to marry the seven Krittikâ before the isappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindű stronomers speak of a star which no one can see without the help of the trongest telescopes? This is why, perhaps, in every such case the ajority of the events described in the Hindű allegories is fixed upon as
"a very recent invention, certainly _within_ the Christian era."
The oldest Sanskrit MSS. on Astronomy begin their series of Nakshatras, he twenty-seven lunar asterisms, with the sign of Krittikâ, and this can ardly make them earlier than 2,780 B.C. This is according to the "Vedic
Calendar," which is accepted even by the Orientalists, though they get out f the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not _prove_ that he Hindűs knew anything of Astronomy at that date, and assure their eaders that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian Pandits may have cquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittikâ from the
Phoenicians, etc. However that may be, the Pleiades are the central group f the system of sidereal symbology. They are situated in the neck of the onstellation Taurus, regarded by Mädler and others, in Astronomy, as the
_central group_ of the system of the Milky Way, and in the _Kabalah_ and
Eastern Esotericism, as the _sidereal septenate_ born from the first anifested side of the upper triangle, the concealed [triangle]. This anifested side is Taurus, the symbol of One (the figure 1), or of the irst letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph ({~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}) "bull" or "ox," whose ynthesis is Ten (10), or Yod ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}), the perfect letter and number. The
Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered, even in Astronomy, as he central point around which _our universe of fixed stars revolves_, the ocus from which, and into which, the Divine Breath, Motion, works ncessantly during the Manvantara. Hence, in the sidereal symbols of the
Occult Philosophy, it is this circle with the starry cross on its face hich plays the most prominent part.
The Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the Universe, as well as he Universe itself, is formed ("created") during its periodical anifestations--by accelerated Motion set into activity by the Breath of he Ever-to-be-unknown Power--unknown to present mankind, at any ate--within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality was verywhere symbolized by a circle; hence the serpent biting its tail, epresents the Circle of Wisdom in Infinity; as does the astronomical ross--the cross within a circle--and the globe, with two wings added to it, hich then became the sacred Scarabćus of the Egyptians, its very name eing suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabćus is alled in the Egyptian papyri, Khopirron and Khopri from the verb
_khopron_, "to become," and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of uman life and of the successive "becomings" of man, through the various eregrinations and metempsychoses, or reďncarnations, of the liberated oul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in eďncarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal
Entity. As this, however, was an Esoteric Doctrine, revealed only during he Mysteries, by the Priest-hierophants and the King-initiates to the
Candidates, it was kept secret. The Incorporeal Intelligences (the
Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the orm of circles. In the primitive Philosophy of the Hierophants these
_invisible_ circles were the prototypic causes and builders of all the eavenly orbs, which were their _visible_ bodies or coverings, and of hich they were the souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in ntiquity.(1299) As Proclus says:
Before the mathematical numbers, there are the _self-moving_
numbers; before the figures apparent--the vital figures, and before
producing the material worlds _which move in a circle_, the
Creative Power produced the _invisible_ circles.(1300)
"_Deus enim et circulus est_," says Pherecydes, in his Hymn to Jupiter.
This was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular rostration and posture during the hours of contemplation. "The devotee ust approach as much as possible the form of a perfect circle," rescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread the same custom among the eople, Pierius tells his readers; and Pliny says:
During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a
ring--_totum corpus circumagimur_.(1301)
The Vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one forcibly of this mysticism f the circle, when he beheld a "whirlwind" from which came out "one
_wheel_ upon the earth" whose work "_was_ as it were a wheel in the middle f a wheel"--"for the spirit of the living creature _was_ in the heels."(1302)
"[_Spirit_] whirleth about continually, and ... returneth again according o his circuits"--says Solomon,(1303) who is made in the English
_translation_ to speak of the "wind," and in the original text to refer oth to the _spirit_ and the _sun_. But the _Zohar_, the only true gloss f the Kabalistic Preacher--in explanation of this verse, which is, erhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend--says:
It seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers
to the Spirit _under the sun_, called the Holy Spirit, that moves
circularly, toward both sides, that they [It and the sun] _should
be united in the same Essence_.(1304)
The Brâhmanical "Golden Egg," from within which emerges Brahmâ, the
Creative Deity, is the "Circle with the Central Point" of Pythagoras, and ts fitting symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed Unity--whether epresenting Parabrahman, or the "Great Extreme" of Confucius, or the
Deity concealed by Phtah, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish Ain Suph, s always found to be symbolized by a circle or the "nought" (absolute No-
Thing and Nothing, because it is Infinite and the All); while the God- anifested (by its works) is referred to as the Diameter of that Circle.
The symbolism of the underlying idea is thus made evident: the right line assing through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical sense, ength, but neither breadth nor thickness; it is an imaginary and feminine ymbol, crossing eternity, and made to rest on the plane of existence _of he phenomenal world_. It is _dimensional_, whereas its circle is imensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an quation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean acred Decad which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the one and a ircle or cipher), the Absolute All manifesting itself in the Word or
Generative Power of Creation.
B. The Fall Of The Cross Into Matter.
Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol by bjecting that it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period of ntiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time--especially in
India--are referred to _Isis Unveiled_.(1305)
Admitting for argument's sake that the ancient world was not acquainted ith our modes of calculation or Arabic figures--though in reality we know t was--yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the irst symbol in Cosmogony. Before the Trigrams of Fo-hi, Yang, the unity, nd Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Éliphas Lévi,(1306)
China had her Confucius, and her Tao-ists. The former circumscribes the
"Great Extreme" within a circle with a horizontal line across; the latter lace three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung
Sages showed the "Great Extreme" in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth n two lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later nvention. Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, otwithstanding the many epithets applied by him to the "God over all" ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}). Plato, having been initiated, could not believe in a ersonal God--a gigantic shadow of man. His epithets of "Monarch" and "Law- iver of the Universe" bear an abstract meaning well understood by every
Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that overns the Universe, and recognizes it at the same time as immutable. As
Plato says:
Beyond all _finite_ existences and _secondary_ causes, all laws,
ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), the
first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all
other ideas are grounded, ... the _ultimate_ substance _from which
all things derive their being and essence_, the First and
efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and
excellency, and goodness, which pervade the Universe.
This Mind is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme
Good,(1307) "The God" ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), and the "God over all." These words apply, s Plato himself shows, neither to the "Creator" nor to the "Father" of ur modern Monotheist, but to the _Ideal_ and Abstract Cause. For, as he ays: "This {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, the God over all, _is not the truth or the ntelligence_, but the Father of it," and its Primal Cause. Is it Plato, he greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a Sage himself, for whom there as but a single object of attainment in this life--Real Knowledge--who ould have ever believed in a Deity that curses and damns men for ever, on he slightest provocation?(1308) Surely not he who considered only those o be genuine Philosophers and students of truth who possessed the nowledge of the _really-existing_ in opposition to mere seeming; of the
_always-existing_ in opposition to the transitory: and of that which xists _permanently_ in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is eveloped and destroyed alternately.(1309) Speusippus and Xenocrates ollowed in his footsteps. The One, the original, had no _existence_, in he sense applied to it by mortal men. The {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} (the honoured) dwells in he centre as in the circumference, but it is only _the reflection_ of the
Deity--the World Soul(1310)--the plane of the surface of the circle. The ross and circle are a universal conception--as old as the human mind tself. They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so to say, nternational symbols, which expressed very often great scientific truths, esides their direct bearing upon psychological, and even physiological ysteries.
It is no explanation to say, as does Éliphas Lévi, that God, the universal
Love, having caused the male Unit to dig an abyss in the female Binary, or
Chaos, thereby produced the world. In addition to the grossness of the onception, it does not remove the difficulty of conceiving it without osing one's veneration for the rather too human-like ways of the Deity.
It is to avoid such anthropomorphic conceptions that the Initiates never sed the epithet "God" to designate the One and Secondless Principle in he Universe; and that--faithful in this to the oldest traditions of the
Secret Doctrine the world over--they deny that such imperfect and often not ery clean work could ever be produced by Absolute Perfection. There is no eed to mention here other still greater metaphysical difficulties.
Between speculative Atheism and idiotic Anthropomorphism there must be a hilosophical mean, and a reconciliation. The Presence of the Unseen
Principle throughout all Nature, and the highest manifestation of it on
Earth--Man, can alone help to solve the problem, which is that of the athematician whose _x_ must ever elude the grasp of our terrestrial lgebra. The Hindűs have tried to solve it by their Avatâras, the
Christians _think_ they have done so--by their one divine Incarnation.
Exoterically--both are wrong; Esoterically both of them are very near the ruth. Alone, among the Apostles of the Western religion, Paul seems to ave fathomed--if not actually revealed--the archaic mystery of the cross.
As for the rest of those who, by unifying and individualizing the
Universal Presence, have synthesized it into one symbol--the central point n the crucifix--they show thereby that they have never seized the true pirit of the teaching of Christ, but rather that they have degraded it in ore than one way by their erroneous interpretations. They have forgotten he spirit of that universal symbol and have selfishly monopolized it--as hough the Boundless and the Infinite could ever be limited and onditioned to one manifestation individualized in one man, or even in a ation!
The four arms of the [Symbol: cross like the letter "X"], or decussated ross, and of the Hermetic cross, pointing to the four cardinal oints--were well understood by the mystical minds of the Hindűs, Brâhmans nd Buddhists, hundreds of years before it was heard of in Europe, for hat symbol was and is found all over the world. They bent the ends of the ross and made of it their Svastika, {~UNKNOWN~} now the Wan of the Mongolian
Buddhist.(1311) It implies that the "central point" is not limited to one ndividual, however perfect; that The Principle (God) is in Humanity, and
Humanity, as all the rest, is in It, like drops of water are in the ocean, he four ends being toward the four cardinal points, hence losing hemselves in infinity.
Isarim, an Initiate, is said to have found at Hebron, on the _dead body_ f Hermes, the well known Smaragdine Tablet, which, it is said, contained he essence of Hermetic Wisdom. Upon it were traced, among others, the entences:
Separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross....
Ascend ... from the earth to heaven and then descend again to
earth.
The _riddle_ of the cross is contained in these words, and its double ystery is solved--to the Occultist.
The philosophical cross, the two lines running in opposite
directions, the horizontal and the perpendicular, the height and
breadth, which the geometrizing Deity divides at the intersecting
point, and which forms the magical as well as the scientific
quaternary, when it is inscribed within the perfect square, is the
basis of the Occultist. Within its mystical precinct lies the
master-key which opens the door of every science, physical as well
as spiritual. It symbolizes our human existence, for the circle of
life circumscribes the four points of the cross, which represent
in succession, birth, life, death, and _immortality_.(1312)
"Attach thyself," says the Alchemist, "to the four letters of the
tetragram disposed in the following manner. The letters of the
ineffable name are there, although thou mayest not discern them at
first. The incommunicable axiom is kabalistically contained
therein, and this is what is called the magic arcanum by the
masters."(1313)
Again:
The Tau, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}, and the astronomical cross of Egypt, [Symbol: Circle
with cross within] are conspicuous in several apertures of the
remains of Palenque. In one of the _basso-relievos_ of the Palace
of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured as a hieroglyphic right
under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which
leans over the first one, is in the act of covering its head with
the left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its
right with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The
position is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his
blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at
the Last Supper.(1314)
The Egyptian Hierophant had a square head-dress which he had to wear lways during his functions. These square hats are worn unto this day by he Armenian priests. The perfect Tau--formed of the perpendicular
(descending male ray) and the horizontal line (Matter, female rinciple)--and the mundane circle were attributes of Isis, and it was only t death that the Egyptian cross was laid on the breast of the mummy. The laim that the cross is purely a Christian symbol introduced after our ra, is strange indeed, when we find Ezekiel stamping the foreheads of the en of Judah who feared the Lord,(1315) with the _signum Thau_, as it is ranslated in the Vulgate. In the ancient Hebrew this sign was formed thus
[Symbol: Cross, tilted towards the northeast], but in the original
Egyptian hieroglyphics as a perfect Christian cross {~ORTHODOX CROSS~} (Tat, the emblem of tability). In the _Revelation_, also, the "Alpha and Omega"--Spirit and
Matter--the first and the last, stamps the name of his Father on the oreheads of the _elect_. Moses(1316) orders his people to mark their
_door-posts_ and _lintels_ with blood, lest the "Lord God" should make a istake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of the doomed
Egyptians. And this mark is a Tau!--the identical Egyptian handled cross, ith the half of which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a culptured ruin at Philć.
Enough has been said in the text about the Svastika and the Tau. Verily ay the cross be traced back into the very depths of the unfathomable rchaic ages! Its mystery deepens rather than clears, as we find it on the tatues of Easter Island, in old Egypt, in Central Asia, engraved on rocks s the Tau and Svastika, in Pre-Christian Scandinavia, everywhere! The uthor of the _Source of Measures_ stands perplexed before the endless hadow it throws back into antiquity, and is unable to trace it to any articular nation or man. He shows the Targums handed down by the Hebrews, bscured by translation. In _Joshua_(1317) read in Arabic, and in the
_Targum of Jonathan_, it is said: "The king of Ai he _crucified_ upon a ree."
The Septuagint rendering is of suspension from a _double word_ or
_cross_. (Wordsworth on Joshua.) ... The strangest expression of
this kind is in _Numbers_ (xxv. 4) where, by Onkelos (?) it is
read: "_Crucify them before the Lord (Jehovah) against the sun_."
The word here is {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER QOF~}{~HEBREW LETTER AYIN~}, _to nail to_, rendered properly (Fuerst) by
the Vulgate, _to crucify_. The very construction of this sentence
is mystic.(1318)
So it is, but the spirit of it has been ever misunderstood. "To crucify efore (not against) the Sun" is a phrase used of Initiation. It comes rom Egypt, and primarily from India. The enigma can be unriddled only by earching for its key in the Mysteries of Initiation. The Initiated Adept, ho had successfully passed through all the trials, was _attached_, not
_nailed_, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a Tau, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}, in Egypt, of Svastika without the four additional prolongations ({~CROSS OF JERUSALEM~} not {~UNKNOWN~}) in India, lunged in a deep sleep--the "Sleep of Siloam," as it is called to this day mong the Initiates in Asia Minor, in Syria, and even higher Egypt. He was llowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights, during hich time his Spiritual Ego was said to "confabulate" with the "Gods," escend into Hades, Amenti, or Pâtâla--according to the country--and do orks of charity to the invisible Beings, whether Souls of men or
Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in a temple crypt or ubterranean cave. In Egypt it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King's
Chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops, and carried during the night of the pproaching third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain our the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the entranced
Candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris and Thoth, the God of
Wisdom.
Let the reader who doubts the statement consult the Hebrew originals efore he denies. Let him turn to some most suggestive Egyptian _bas eliefs_. One especially from the temple of Philć, represents a _scene of nitiation_. Two God-Hierophants, one with the head of a hawk (the Sun), he other ibis-headed (Mercury, Thoth, the God of Wisdom and Secret
Learning, the assessor of Osiris-Sun), are standing over the body of a
Candidate just initiated. They are in the act of pouring on his head a ouble stream of "water" (the Water of Life and of New-birth), the streams eing interlaced in the shape of a cross and full of small ansated rosses. This is allegorical of the awakening of the Candidate who is now n Initiate, when the beams of the morning Sun, Osiris, strike the crown f his head; his entranced body being placed on its wooden Tau so as to eceive the rays. Then appeared the Hierophant-Initiators, and the acramental words were pronounced, ostensibly to the Sun-Osiris, in eality to the Spirit-Sun within, enlightening the newly-born man.
Let the reader meditate on the connection of the Sun with the cross from he highest antiquity, in both its generative and spiritually regenerative apacities. Let him examine the tomb of Bait-Oxly, in the reign of Ramses
II, where he will find the crosses in every shape and position; as also on he throne of that sovereign, and finally on a fragment representing the doration of Bakhan-Alearé, from the Hall of the ancestors of Totmes III, ow preserved in the National Library of Paris. In this extraordinary culpture and painting one sees the disk of the Sun beaming upon an nsated cross placed upon a cross of which those of the Calvary are erfect copies. The ancient MSS. mention these as the "hard couches of hose who were in [spiritual] travail, the _act of giving birth to hemselves_." A quantity of such cruciform "couches," on which the
Candidate, thrown into a dead trance at the end of his supreme Initiation, as placed and secured, were found in the underground halls of the
Egyptian Temples after their destruction. The worthy and holy Fathers of he Cyril and Theophilus types used them freely, believing they had been rought and concealed there by some new converts. Alone Origen, and after im Clemens Alexandrinus and other ex-initiates, knew better. But they referred to keep silent.
Again, let the reader read the Hindű "fables," as the Orientalists call hem, and remember the allegory of Vishvakarmâ, the Creative Power, the
Great Architect of the World, called in the _Rig Veda_ the "All-seeing
God," who "sacrifices himself to himself." The Spiritual Egos of mortals re his own essence, _one with him_, therefore. Remember that he is called
Deva-vardhika, the "Builder of the Gods," and that it is he who ties the
Sun, Sűrya, his son-in-law, on his lathe--in the exoteric allegory, but on he Svastika, in Esoteric tradition, for on Earth he is the Hierophant-
Initiator--and cuts away a portion of his brightness. Vishvakarmâ, remember gain, is the son of Yoga-siddhâ, _i.e._, the holy power of Yoga, and the abricator of the "fiery weapon," the magic Agneyastra.(1319) The arrative is given more fully elsewhere.
The author of the kabalistic work so often quoted from, asks:
The theoretical use of crucifixion then, must have been somehow
connected with the personification of this symbol [the structure
of the Garden of Paradise symbolized by a crucified man]. But how?
And as showing what? The symbol was of the origin of measures,
shadowing forth _creative law_ or _design_. What, practically, as
regards humanity, could actual crucifixion betoken? Yet, that it
was held as the effigy of some mysterious working of the same
system, is shown from the very fact of the use. There seems to be
deep below deep as to the mysterious workings of these number
values--[the symbolization of the connection of 113: 355, with
20612: 6561, by a _crucified man_]. Not only are they shown to
work in the cosmos but, ... by sympathy, they seem to work out
conditions relating to an unseen and spiritual world, and the
prophets seem to have held knowledge of the connecting links.
Reflection becomes more involved when it is considered that, the
power of expression of the law, _exactly_, by numbers clearly
defining a system, was not the _accident_ of the language, but was
its very _essence_, and of its _primary organic construction_;
therefore, neither the language, nor the mathematical system
attaching to it, could be of man's invention, unless both were
_founded upon a prior language which afterwards became
obsolete_.(1320)
The author proves these points by further elucidation, and reveals the ecret meaning of more than one dead-letter narrative, by showing that robably, {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}, _man_, was the _primordial_ word:
The very first word possessed by the Hebrews, whoever they were,
to carry the idea, by sound, of _a man_. The _essential_ of this
word was 113 [the numerical value of that word] from the
beginning, and carried with it the elements of the cosmical system
displayed.(1321)
This is demonstrated by the Hindű Vittoba, a form of Vishnu, as has lready been stated. The figure of Vittoba, even to the nail-marks on the eet,(1322) is that of _Jesus crucified_, in all its details save the ross. That _man_ was meant is proved to us further by the fact of the
Initiate being _reborn_ after his _crucifixion_ on the _Tree of Life_.
This "Tree" has now become exoterically--through its use by the Romans as n instrument of torture and the ignorance of the early Christian chemers--the _tree of death_!
Thus, one of the seven Esoteric meanings intended by this mystery of rucifixion by the mystic inventors of the system--the original elaboration nd adoption of which dates back to the very establishment of the
Mysteries--is discovered in the geometrical symbols containing the history f the evolution of man. The Hebrews--whose prophet Moses was so learned in he Esoteric Wisdom of Egypt, and who adopted their numerical system from he Phoenicians, and later from the Gentiles, from whom also they borrowed ost of their Kabalistic Mysticism--most ingeniously adapted the cosmic and nthropological symbols of the "Heathen" nations to their peculiar
_secret_ records. If Christian sacerdotalism has lost the key of this to- ay, the early compilers of the Christian Mysteries were well versed in
Esoteric Philosophy and the Hebrew Occult Metrology, and used it exterously. Thus they took the word Aish, one of the Hebrew word-forms or _man_, and used it in conjunction with that of Shânâh or _lunar year_, o mystically connected with the name of Jehovah, the supposed "Father" of
Jesus, and embosomed the mystic idea in an astronomical value and formula.
The original idea of the "man crucified" in space certainly belongs to the ncient Hindűs. Moor shows this in his _Hindű Pantheon_ in the engraving hat represents Vittoba. Plato adopted it in his decussated cross in pace, the [Symbol: cross like the letter "X"], the "second God who mpressed himself on the universe in the form of the cross"; Krishna is ikewise shown "crucified."(1323) Again it is repeated in the _Old
Testament_ in the queer injunction to crucify men before the Lord, the
Sun--which is no prophecy at all, but has a direct phallic significance. In hat same most suggestive work on the kabalistic meanings, we read again:
In symbol, the nails of the cross have for the shape of the heads
thereof a solid pyramid, and a tapering square obeliscal shaft, or
phallic emblem, for the nail. Taking the position of the _three_
nails in the man's extremities and on the cross, they form or mark
a _triangle_ in shape, one nail being at each corner of the
triangle. The wounds, or _stigmata_, in the extremities are
necessarily _four_, designative of the _square_.... The three
nails with the three wounds are in number 6, which denotes the 6
faces of the cube _unfolded_ [which make the cross or man-form, or
7, counting three horizontal and four vertical squares], on which
the man is placed; and this in turn points to the circular measure
transferred on to the edges of the cube. The _one_ wound of the
feet separates into _two_ when the feet are separated, making
_three_ together _for all_, and _four when separated_, or 7 in
all--another and _most holy_ [_with the Jews_] feminine base
number.(1324)
Thus, while the phallic or sexual meaning of the "crucifixion nails" is roven by the geometrical and numerical reading, its mystical meaning is ndicated by the short remarks upon it, as given above, in its connection ith, and bearing upon, Prometheus. He is another victim, for he is rucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, a sacrifice o his devotion to the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity.
Now, the primordial system, the double glyph that underlies the idea of he cross, is not of "human invention," for Cosmic Ideation and the piritual representation of the Divine Ego-man are at its basis. Later, it xpanded into the beautiful idea adopted by, and represented in, the
Mysteries, that of regenerated man, the mortal, who, by crucifying the man f flesh and his passions on the Procrustean bed of torture, became reborn s an Immortal. Leaving the body, the animal-man, behind him, tied on the
Cross of Initiation like an empty chrysalis, the Ego-Soul became as free s a butterfly. Still later, owing to the gradual loss of spirituality, he cross became in Cosmogony and Anthropology no higher than a _phallic ymbol_.
With the Esotericists from the remotest times, the Universal Soul or Anima
Mundi, the material reflection of the Immaterial Ideal, was the Source of
Life of all beings and of the Life-Principle of the three kingdoms. This as _septenary_ with the Hermetic Philosophers, as with all Ancients. For t is represented as a sevenfold cross, whose branches are respectively,
_light_, _heat_, _electricity_, _terrestrial magnetism_, _astral adiation_, _motion_, and _intelligence_, or what some call self- onsciousness.
As we have said elsewhere, long before the cross or its sign were adopted s symbols of Christianity, the sign of the cross was used as a mark of ecognition among Adepts and Neophytes, the latter being called
Chrests--from Chrestos, the man of tribulation and sorrow. Says Éliphas
Lévi:
The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong to
them exclusively. It is also kabalistic, and represents the
opposition and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by
the occult verse of the _Paternoster_ ... that there were
originally two ways of doing it, or, at least _two_ very different
formulas to express its meaning: one reserved for the priests and
initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for
example, the initiate, carrying his hand to his forehead, said,
_To thee_; then he added, _belong_; and continued, carrying his
hand to the breast, _the kingdom_; then to the left shoulder,
_justice_; to the right shoulder, _and mercy_. Then he joined the
two hands, adding, _throughout the generating cycles--Tibi sunt
Malchut et Geburah et Chesed per Ćonas_--an absolutely and
magnificently kabalistic sign of the cross, which the profanations
of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely
_lose_.(1325)
The "militant and official Church" did more: having helped herself to what ad never belonged to her, she took only that which the "Profane" had--the abalistic meaning of the _male_ and _female_ Sephiroth. She never lost he _inner_ and higher meaning since she never had it--Éliphas Lévi's andering to Rome notwithstanding. The sign of the cross adopted by the
Latin Church was _phallic_ from the beginning, while that of the Greeks as the cross of the Neophytes, the Chrestoi.
Section IX. The Upanishads in Gnostic Literature.
We are reminded in King's _Gnostics and their Remains_ that the Greek anguage had but one word for _vowel_ and _voice_. This has led the ninitiated to many erroneous interpretations. On the simple knowledge, owever, of this well-known fact a comparison may be attempted, and a lood of light thrown upon several mystic meanings. Thus the words, so ften used in the _Upanishads_ and the _Purânas_, "Sound" and "Speech," ay be collated with the Gnostic "Vowels" and the "Voices" of the Thunders nd Angels in _Revelation_. The same will be found in _Pistis Sophia_, and ther ancient Fragments and MSS. This was remarked even by the matter-of- act author of the above mentioned work.
Through Hippolytus, an early Church Father, we learn what Marcus--a
Pythagorean rather than a Christian Gnostic, and a Kabalist most ertainly--had received in mystic revelation. It is said that Marcus had it evealed unto him that:
The _seven heavens_(1326) ... sounded each one vowel, which, all
combined together, formed a single doxology, "the _sound_ whereof
being carried down [from these seven heavens] to earth, becomes
the creator and parent of all things that be on earth."(1327)
Translated from the Occult phraseology into still plainer language this ould read: The Sevenfold Logos having differentiated into seven Logoi, or
Creative Potencies (Vowels), these (the Second Logos, or "Sound") created ll on Earth.
Assuredly one who is acquainted with Gnostic literature can hardly help eeing in St. John's _Apocalypse_, a work of the same school of thought.
For we find John saying:
Seven thunders uttered their voices ... [and] I was about to write
... [but] I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up
those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them
not.(1328)
The same injunction is given to Marcus, the same to all other _semi_ and
_full_ Initiates. The very sameness of the expressions used, and of the nderlying ideas, always betrays a portion of the Mysteries. We must lways seek for more than one meaning in every mystery allegorically evealed, especially in those in which the number seven and its ultiplication seven by seven, or forty-nine, appear. Now when, in _Pistis
Sophia_, the Rabbi Jesus is requested by his disciples to reveal to them he "Mysteries of the Light of his Father"--_i.e._, of the Higher Self nlightened by Initiation and Divine Knowledge--Jesus answers:
Do ye seek after these mysteries? No mystery is more excellent
than they; which shall bring your souls unto the Light of Lights,
unto the place of Truth and Goodness, unto the place where there
is neither male nor female, neither form in that place but Light,
everlasting, not to be uttered. 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
their numbers thereof. And no name is more excellent than all
these (Vowels).(1329)
As says the Commentary, speaking of the "Fires":
_The Seven Fathers and the Forty-nine Sons blaze in Darkness, but they are he Life and Light and the continuation thereof through the Great Age._
Now it becomes evident that, in every Esoteric interpretation of exoteric eliefs expressed in allegorical forms, there is the same underlying dea--the basic number _seven_, the compound of _three_ and _four_, receded by the divine _three_ ([triangle]) making the perfect number
_ten_.
Also, these numbers apply equally to divisions of time, to cosmography, etaphysical and physical, as well as to man and everything else in isible Nature. Thus these seven Vowels with their forty-nine Powers are dentical with the three and the seven Fires of the Hindűs and their orty-nine Fires; identical with the numerical mysteries of the Persian
Simorgh; identical with those of the Jewish Kabalists. The latter, warfing the numbers (their mode of "blinds"), made the duration of each uccessive Renewal, or what we call in Esoteric parlance Round, 1,000 ears only or of the seven Renewals of the Globe 7,000 years, instead of, s is more likely, 7,000,000,000, and assigned to the total duration of he Universe 49,000 years only.(1330)
Now, the Secret Doctrine furnishes a key which reveals to us on the
Indisputable grounds of comparative analogy that Garuda, the allegorical nd monstrous half-man and half-bird--the Vâhana or vehicle on which
Vishnu, as Kâla or "Time," is shown to ride--is the origin of all such llegories. He is the Indian Phoenix, the emblem of cyclic and periodical ime, the "Man-lion" (Sinha), of whose representations the so-called
Gnostic gems are so full.(1331)
Over the seven rays of the lion's crown, and corresponding to
their points, stand often the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet,
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}, testifying to the Seven Heavens.(1332)
This is the Solar Lion and the emblem of the Solar Cycle, as Garuda(1333) s that of the Great Cycle, the Mahâ Kalpa, coëternal with Vishnu, and lso, of course, the emblem of the Sun and Solar Cycle. This is shown by he details of the allegory. At his birth, Garuda, on account of his
"dazzling splendour," is mistaken for Agni, the God of Fire, and was hence called Gaganeshvara, "Lord of the Sky." Its representation as
Osiris, on the Abraxas (Gnostic) gems, and by many heads of allegorical onsters, with the head and beak of an eagle or a hawk--both solar irds--denotes Garuda's solar and cyclic character. His son is Jatâyu, the ycle of 60,000 years. As well remarked by C. W. King:
Whatever its primary meaning [of the gem with the solar lion and
vowels] it was probably imported in its present shape from India
(that true fountain head of Gnostic iconography).(1334)
The mysteries of the seven Gnostic Vowels, uttered by the Thunders of St.
John, can be unriddled only by the primeval and original Occultism of
Âryâvarta, brought into India by the primeval Brâhmans, who had been
_initiated in Central Asia_. And this is the Occultism we study and try to xplain, as much as is possible, in these pages. Our doctrine of seven
Races, and seven Rounds of life and evolution around our Terrestrial Chain f Spheres, may be found even in _Revelation_.(1335) When the seven
"Thunders," or "Sounds," or "Vowels"--one meaning out of the seven for each uch vowel relates directly to our own Earth and its seven Root-Races in ach Round--"had uttered their voices," but had forbidden the Seer to write hem, and made him "seal up those things," what did the Angel, "standing pon the sea and upon the earth," do?
He lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for
ever and ever, ... that there _should be time no longer_: but in
the days of the voice of the _seventh_ angel, when he shall begin
to sound, the mystery of God [of the Cycle] should be
finished.(1336)
This means, in Theosophic phraseology, that when the Seventh Round is ompleted, then Time will cease. "There shall be time no longer"--very aturally, since Pralaya shall set in and there will remain no one on
Earth to keep a division of time, during that periodical dissolution and rrest of conscious life.
Dr. Kenealy and others believed that the calculations of the cyclic seven nd forty-nine were brought by the Rabbins from Chaldća. This is more than ikely. But the Babylonians, who had all those cycles and taught them only t their great initiatory mysteries of astrological Magic, got their isdom and learning from India. It is not difficult, therefore, to ecognize in them our own Esoteric Doctrine. In their secret computations, he Japanese have the same figures in their cycles. As to the Brâhmans, heir _Purânas_ and _Upanishads_ are good proof of it. The latter have assed entirely into Gnostic literature; and a Brâhman needs only to read
_Pistis Sophia_(1337) to recognize his forefathers' property, even to the hraseology and similes used. Let us compare. In _Pistis Sophia_ the isciples say to Jesus:
Rabbi, reveal unto us the mysteries of the Light [_i.e._, the
"Fire of Knowledge or Enlightenment"], ... forasmuch as we have
heard thee saying that there is another baptism of _smoke_, and
another baptism of the Spirit of Holy Light [_i.e._ the Spirit of
Fire].(1338)
As John says of Jesus:
I indeed baptize you with water; ... but he shall baptize you with
the Holy Ghost and with fire.
The real significance of this statement is very profound. It means that
John, a non-initiated ascetic, can impart to his disciples no greater isdom than the Mysteries connected with the plane of Matter, of which
Water is the symbol. His Gnosis was that of exoteric and ritualistic ogma, of dead-letter orthodoxy;(1339) while the wisdom which Jesus, an
Initiate of the Higher Mysteries, would reveal to them, was of a higher haracter, for it was the "Fire" Wisdom of the true Gnosis or _real_
Spiritual Enlightenment. One was Fire, the other the Smoke. For Moses, the
Fire on Mount Sinai and the Spiritual Wisdom; for the multitudes of the
"people" below, for the profane, Mount Sinai in (through) Smoke, _i.e._, he exoteric husks of orthodox or sectarian ritualism.
Now, having the above in view, read the dialogue between the sages Nârada nd Devamata in the _Anugîtâ_,(1340) an episode from the _Mahâbhârata_, he antiquity and importance of which one can learn in the "Sacred Books f the East," edited by Prof. Max Müller.(1341) Nârada is discoursing upon he "breaths" or the "life-winds," as they are called in the clumsy ranslations of such words as Prâna, Apâna, etc., whose full Esoteric eaning and application to individual functions can hardly be rendered in
English. He says of this science that:
It is the teaching of the Veda, that the _fire_ verily is all the
deities, and knowledge (of it) arises among Brâhmanas, being
accompanied by intelligence.(1342)
By "fire," says the Commentator, he means the Self. By "intelligence," the
Occultist says, Nârada meant neither "discussion" nor "argumentation," as
Arjuna Mishra believes, but "intelligence" truly, or the adaptation of the
_Fire of Wisdom_ to _exoteric ritualism_ for the profane. This is the hief concern of the Brâhmans, who were the first to set the example to ther nations who thus anthropomorphized and carnalized the grandest etaphysical truths. Nârada shows this plainly and is made to say:
The _smoke_ of that (fire) which is of excellent glory (appears)
in the shape of ... darkness [verily so!]; (its) ashes, ... [are]
passion; and ... goodness is that in connection with it, in which
the offering is thrown.(1343)
That is to say, that faculty in the disciple which apprehends the subtle ruth (the flame) which escapes heavenward, while the objective sacrifice emains as a proof and _evidence of piety_ only to the profane. For what lse can Nârada mean by the following?
Those who understand the sacrifice understand the Samâna and the
Vyâna as the _principal_ (offering). The Prâna and Apâna are
portions of the offering, ... and between them is the _fire_. That
is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas. As
to that which is distinct from these pairs, hear me speak about
that. Day and night are a pair, between them is the fire.... That
_which exists_ and _that which does not exist_ are a pair, between
them is the fire....(1344)
And after every such contrast Nârada adds:
That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by
Brâhmanas.
Now many people do not know the full meaning of the statement that Samâna nd Vyâna, Prâna and Apâna--which are explained to be "life-winds," but hich we say are principles and their respective faculties and senses--are ffered up to Udâna, the _soi-disant_ principal "life-wind," which is said o act at all the joints. And so the reader who is ignorant that the word
"Fire" in these allegories means both the "Self" and the higher Divine
Knowledge, will understand nothing in this, and will entirely miss the oint of our argument, as the translator and even the editor, the great
Oxford Sanskritist, F. Max Müller, have missed the true meaning of
Nârada's words. Exoterically, this enumeration of "life-winds" has, of ourse, the meaning, _approximately_, which is surmised in the foot-notes, amely:
The sense _appears_ to be this: The course of worldly life is due
to the operations of the life-winds which are attached to the self
and lead to its manifestations as individual souls [?]. Of these,
the Samâna and Vyâna are controlled and held under check by the
Prâna and Apâna.... The latter two are held in check and
controlled by the Udâna, which thus controls all. And the control
of this, which is the control of all five, ... leads to the
supreme self.(1345)
The above is given as an explanation of the text, which records the words f the Brâhmana, who narrates how he reached the ultimate Wisdom of
Yogism, and in this wise reached All-knowledge. Saying that he had
"perceived by means of the self the seat abiding in the self,"(1346) where wells the Brahma free from all; and explaining that that indestructible rinciple was entirely _beyond the perception of senses_--_i.e._, of the ive "life-winds"--he adds that:
In the midst of all these (life-winds) which move about in the
body and swallow up one another, blazes the Vaishvânara fire
_sevenfold_.(1347)
This "Fire," according to Nîlakantha's commentary, is identical with the
"I," the Self, which is the goal of the ascetic; Vaishvânara being a word ften used for the Self. Then the Brâhmana goes on to enumerate that which s meant by the word "sevenfold," and says:
The nose [or smell], and the tongue [taste], and the eye, and the
skin, and the ear as the fifth, the mind, and the understanding,
these are the seven tongues of the blaze of Vaishvânara.(1348)...
Those are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me.(1349)... These are the
_seven great officiating priests_.(1350)
These seven priests are accepted by Arjuna Mishra in the sense of meaning
"the soul distinguished as so many [souls, or principles] with reference o these several powers"; and, finally, the translator seems to accept the xplanation, and reluctantly admits that "they may mean" this; though he imself takes the sense to mean:
The powers of hearing etc. [the physical senses, in short], which
are presided over by the several deities.
But whatever it may mean, whether in scientific or orthodox nterpretations, this passage on page 259 explains Nârada's statements on age 276, and shows them referring to exoteric and esoteric methods and ontrasting them. Thus the Samâna and the Vyâna, though subject to the
Prâna and the Apâna, and all the four to Udâna in the matter of acquiring he Prânâyâma (of the Hatha Yogî, chiefly, or the lower form of Yoga), are et referred to as the principal offering, for, as rightly argued by K.
Trimbak Telang, their "operations are more practically important for itality"; _i.e._, they are the grossest, and are offered in the acrifice, in order that they may disappear, so to speak, in the quality f darkness of that fire or its _smoke_--mere exoteric ritualistic form.
But Prâna and Apâna, though shown as subordinate (because less gross or ore purified), have the Fire between them; the Self and the Secret
Knowledge possessed by that Self. So for the good and evil, and for "that hich exists and that which does not exist"; all these "pairs"(1351) have
Fire between them, _i.e._, Esoteric Knowledge, the Wisdom of the Divine
Self. Let those who are satisfied with the _smoke_ of the Fire remain herein they are, that is to say within the Egyptian darkness of heological fictions and dead-letter interpretations.
The above is written only for the Western students of Occultism and
Theosophy. The writer presumes to explain these things neither to the
Hindűs, who have their own Gurus; nor to the Orientalists, who think they now more than all the Gurus and Rishis, past and present, put together.
These rather lengthy quotations and examples are necessary, if only to oint out to the student the works he has to study so as to derive benefit nd learning from comparison. Let him read _Pistis Sophia_ in the light of he _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, the _Anugîtâ_ and others; and then the statement made y Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel will become clear, and the dead-letter
"blinds" disappear at once. Read the following and compare it with the xplanation from the Hindű scriptures just given.
And no Name is more excellent than all these, a Name wherein be
contained all Names, and all Lights, and all the [forty-nine]
Powers. Knowing that Name, if a man quits this body of
matter,(1352) no _smoke_ [_i.e._, no theological delusion],(1353)
no darkness, nor Power, nor Ruler of the Sphere [no _Personal_
Genius or Planetary Spirit called God] of Fate [Karma] ... shall
be able to hold back the Soul that knoweth that Name.... If he
shall utter that Name unto the fire, ... the darkness shall flee
away.... And if he shall utter that name unto ... all their
Powers, nay, even unto Barbelo,(1354) and the Invisible God, and
the three triple-powered Gods, so soon as he shall have uttered
that name in those places, they shall all be thrown one upon the
other, so that they shall be ready to melt and perish, and shall
cry aloud, O Light of every light that is in the boundless lights,
remember us also and purify us!(1355)
It is easy to see what this Light and Name are: the Light of Initiation nd the name of the "Fire-Self," which is no name, no action, but a
Spiritual, Ever-living Power, higher even than the real "Invisible God," s this Power is Itself.
But if the able and learned author of the _Gnostics and their Remains_ has ot sufficiently allowed for the spirit of allegory and mysticism in the ragments translated and quoted by him, in the above named work, from
_Pistis Sophia_--other Orientalists have done far worse. Having neither his ntuitional perception of the Indian origin of the Gnostic Wisdom still ess of the meaning of their "gems," most of them, beginning with Wilson nd ending with the dogmatic Weber, have made most extraordinary blunders ith regard to almost every symbol. Sir M. Monier Williams and others show very decided contempt for the "Esoteric Buddhists" as Theosophists are ow called; yet no student of Occult Philosophy has ever mistaken a cycle or a living personage and _vice versâ_, as is very often the case with ur learned Orientalists. An instance or two may illustrate the statement ore graphically. Let us choose the best known.
In the _Râmâyana_, Garuda is called "the maternal uncle of Sagara's 60,000 ons"; and Amshumat, Sagara's grandson, "the nephew of the 60,000 uncles" ho were reduced to ashes by the look of Kapila--the Purushottama, or
Infinite Spirit, who caused the horse which Sagara was keeping for the
Ashvamedha sacrifice to disappear. Again, Garuda's son(1356);--Garuda being imself the Mahâ Kalpa or Great Cycle--Jatâyu, the king of the feathered ribe (when on the point of being slain by Râvana who carries off Sîtâ) ays, speaking of himself: "It is 60,000 years O king, that I am born"; fter which, _turning his back_ on the Sun--he dies.
Jatâyu is, of course, the cycle of 60,000 years within the Great Cycle of
Garuda; hence he is represented as his son, or nephew, _ad libitum_, since he whole meaning rests on his being placed in the line of Garuda's escendants. Then, again, there is Diti, the mother of the Maruts, whose escendants and progeny belonged to the posterity of Hiranyâksha, "whose umber was 77 crores (or 770 millions) of men," according to the _Padma
Purâna_. All such narratives are pronounced "meaningless fictions" and bsurdities. But--truth is the daughter of time, verily; and time _will_ how.
Meanwhile, what could be easier than an attempt, at least, to verify
Paurânic chronology? There are many Kapilas; but the Kapila who slew king
Sagara's progeny--60,000 men strong--was undeniably Kapila, the founder of he Sânkhya philosophy, since it is so stated in the _Purânas_; although ne of them flatly denies the imputation without explaining its Esoteric eaning. It is the _Bhâgavata Purâna_(1357) which says that:
The report is not true that the sons of the king were scorched by
the wrath of the sage. For how can the quality of darkness, the
product of anger, exist in a Sage whose body was goodness and who
purified the world--the earth's dust, as it were, attributed to
heavens! How should mental perturbation distract that sage,
identified with the Supreme Spirit, who has steered here (on
earth) that solid vessel of the Sânkhya (philosophy), with the
help of which he who desires to obtain liberation crosses the
dreaded ocean of existence, that path to death?(1358)
The _Purâna_ is in duty bound to speak as it does. It has a dogma to romulgate and a policy to carry out--that of great secrecy with regard to ystical _divine_ truths divulged for countless ages only at Initiation.
It is not in the _Purânas_, therefore, that we have to look for an xplanation of the mystery connected with various transcendental states of eing. That the story is an allegory is seen upon its very face: the
60,000 "sons," brutal, vicious, and impious, are the personification of he _human passions_ that a "mere glance of the Sage"--the Self who epresents the highest state of purity that can be reached on
Earth--reduces to ashes. But it has also other significations, cyclic and hronological meanings, a method of marking the periods when certain Sages lourished, found also in other _Purânas_.
Now it is as well ascertained as any tradition can be, that it was at
Hardwar, or Gangâdvâra, the "door or gate of the Ganges," at the foot of he Himâlayas, that Kapila sat in meditation for a number of years. Not ar from the Sewalik range, the pass of Hardwar is called to this day
"Kapila's Pass," and the place also is named "Kapilasthen" by the scetics. It is there that the Ganges, Gangâ, emerging from its ountainous gorge, begins its course over the sultry plains of India. And t is clearly ascertained by geological survey that the tradition which laims that the ocean washed the base of the Himâlayas ages ago, is not ntirely without foundation, for distinct traces of this still remain.
The Sânkhya Philosophy may have been _brought down_ and taught by the irst, and written out by the _last_ Kapila.
Now Sâgara is the name of the ocean, and especially of the Bay of Bengal, t the mouth of the Ganges, to this day in India.(1359) Have Geologists ver calculated the number of millenniums it must have taken the sea to ecede the distance it is now from Hardwar, which is at present 1,024 feet bove its level? If they had, those Orientalists who show Kapila lourishing from the first to the ninth century A.D., might change their pinions, if only for one of two very good reasons. Firstly, the true umber of years which have elapsed since Kapila's day is unmistakably in he _Purânas_, though the translators may fail to see it; and secondly, he Kapila of the Satya, and the Kapila of the Kali Yugas, may be one and he same _individuality_, without being the same _personality_.
Kapila, besides being the name of a personage, of the once living Sage and he author of the Sânkhya Philosophy, is also the generic name of the
Kumâras, the celestial Ascetics and Virgins; therefore the very fact of he _Bhâgavata Purâna_ calling _that_ Kapila--whom it had showed just efore as a portion of Vishnu--the author of the Sânkhya Philosophy, ought o have warned the reader of a "blind" containing an Esoteric meaning.
Whether he was the son of Vitatha, as the _Harivamsha_ shows him to be, or f any one else, the author of the Sânkhya cannot be the same as the Sage f the Satya Yuga--at the very beginning of the Manvantara, when Vishnu is hown _in the form of Kapila_, "imparting to all creatures true Wisdom"; or this relates to that primordial period when the "Sons of God" taught o the newly created men those arts and sciences, which have since been ultivated and preserved in the sanctuaries by the Initiates. There are everal well-known Kapilas in the _Purânas_. First the primeval Sage, then
Kapila one of the three "secret" Kumâras, and Kapila son of Kashyapa and
Kadrű--the "many-headed serpent"(1360)--besides Kapila the great Sage and
Philosopher of the Kali Yuga. The latter, being an Initiate, a "Serpent of
Wisdom," a Nâga, was purposely blended with the Kapilas of the former ges.
Section X. The Cross and the Pythagorean Decad.
The early Gnostics claimed that their Science, the Gnosis, rested on a quare, the angles of which represented respectively Sigę (Silence),
Bythos (Depth), Nous (Spiritual Soul or Mind), and Aletheia (Truth).
It is they who were the first to reveal to the world that which had emained concealed for ages; namely, the Tau, in the shape of a
Procrustean bed, and Christos as incarnating in Chrestos, he who became or certain purposes a willing candidate for a series of tortures, mental nd physical.
For them the whole of the Universe, metaphysical and material, was ontained within, and could be expressed and described by the digits ontained in the number 10, the Pythagorean Decad.
This Decad, representing the Universe and its evolution out of Silence and he Unknown Depths of the Spiritual Soul, or Anima Mundi, presented two ides or aspects to the student. It could be, and was at first, applied to he Macrocosm, after which it descended to the Microcosm, or man. There as, then, the purely intellectual and metaphysical, or the "Inner
Science," and the as purely materialistic or "surface science," both of hich could be expounded by and contained in the Decad. It could be tudied, in short, both by the deductive method of Plato, and the nductive method of Aristotle. The former started from a divine omprehension, when the plurality proceeded from unity, or the digits of he Decad appeared, only to be finally reäbsorbed, lost in the infinite
Circle. The latter depended on sensuous perception alone, when the Decad ould be regarded either as the unity that multiplies, or matter which ifferentiates; its study being limited to the plane surface, to the ross, or the _seven_ which proceeds from the _ten_, or the perfect umber, on Earth as in Heaven.
This dual system was brought, together with the Decad, by Pythagoras from
India. That it was that of the Brachmans and Iranians, as they are called y the ancient Greek Philosophers, is warranted to us by the whole range f Sanskrit literature, such as the _Purânas_ and the _Laws of Manu_. In hese Laws or Ordinances of Manu, it is said that Brahmâ first creates the
"_ten_ Lords of Being," the ten Prajâpati or Creative Forces; which ten roduce _seven_ other Manus, or, rather, as some MSS. have it, Munîn
(instead of Manűn) "devotees," or holy beings, which are the seven Angels f the Presence in the Western religion. This mysterious number seven, orn from the upper Triangle {~WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE~}, the latter itself born from the apex hereof, or the Silent Depths of the Unknown Universal Soul (Sigę and
Bythos), is the sevenfold Saptaparna plant, born and manifested on the urface of the soil of mystery, from the threefold root buried deep under hat impenetrable soil. This idea is fully elaborated in one of the
Sections of Volume I, Part II, Section III, "Primordial Substance and
Divine Thought," which the reader should notice carefully, if he would rasp the metaphysical idea involved in the above symbol. In man as in ature, according to the Cis-Himâlayan Esoteric Philosophy, which is that f the Cosmogony of the _original_ Manu, it is the septenary division that s intended by Nature herself. The seventh principle (Purusha) alone is he Divine Self, strictly speaking; for, as said in Manu, "he [Brahmâ] aving pervaded the subtile parts of those six, of unmeasured rightness,"(1361) created or called them forth to "Self"-consciousness or he consciousness of that One Self. Of these six, five elements (or rinciples, or Tattvas, as Medhâtithi, the commentator thinks) "are called he atomic destructible elements";(1362) these are described in the above- amed Section.(1363)
We have now to speak of the mystery language, that of the prehistoric aces. It is not a phonetic, but a purely pictorial and symbolical tongue.
It is known at present in its fulness to the very few, having become with he masses for more than 5,000 years an absolutely dead language. Yet most f the learned Gnostics, Greeks and Jews, knew it, and used it, though ery differently. A few instances may be given.
On the plane above, the number is no number but a _nought_--a _circle_. On he plane below, it becomes _one_--which is an odd number. Each letter of he ancient alphabets had its philosophical meaning and _raison d'ętre_.
The number _one_ (1) signified with the Alexandrian Initiates a _body rect_, a living standing man, he being the only animal that has this rivilege. And, by adding to the "I" a head, it was transformed into a
"P," a symbol of _paternity_, of the creative potency; while "R" signified "moving man," one on his way. Hence Pater Zeus had nothing sexual or hallic either in its sound or the form of its letters; nor had {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
(according to Ragon).(1364) If we turn now to the Hebrew alphabet, we hall find that while _one_ or Aleph ({~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}) has a bull or an ox for its ymbol, _ten_, the perfect number, or _one_ of the _Kabalah_, is a Yod ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~},
_y_, _i_, or _j_), and means, as the first letter of Jehovah, the rocreative organ, and the rest.
The _odd_ numbers are divine, the _even_ numbers are terrestrial, evilish, and unlucky. The Pythagoreans hated the Binary. With them it was he origin of differentiation, hence of contrasts, discord, or matter, the eginning of evil. In the Valentinian Theogony, Bythos and Sigę (Depth,
Chaos, Matter born in Silence) are the primordial Binary. With the early
Pythagoreans, however, the Duad was that imperfect state into which the irst manifested being fell when it got detached from the Monad. It was he point from which the two roads--the good and the evil--bifurcated. All hat which was double-faced or false was called by them "binary." One was lone good and harmony, because no disharmony can proceed from One alone.
Hence the Latin word Solus in relation to the One and Only God, the
Unknown of Paul. Solus, however, very soon became Sol--the Sun.
The Ternary is the first of the odd numbers, as the triangle is the first f the geometrical figures.(1365) This number is truly the number of ystery _par excellence_. To study it on the exoteric lines one has to ead Ragon's _Cours Philosophique et Interprétatif des Initiations_, on he Esoteric--the Hindű symbolism of numerals; for the combinations which ere applied to it are numberless. It is on the Occult properties of the hree equal sides of the triangle that Ragon based his studies and founded he famous Masonic Society of the Trinosophists--those who study _three_ ciences; an improvement upon the ordinary three Masonic degrees, given to hose who study nothing except eating and drinking at the meetings of heir Lodges. As the founder writes:
The first line of the triangle offered to the apprentice for study
is the _mineral kingdom_, symbolized by Tubalc [Symbol: Three dots
in a triangle] [Tubal-Cain].
The second side on which the companion has to meditate, is the
_vegetable kingdom_, symbolized by Schibb [Symbol: Three dots in a
triangle] [Schibboleth]. In this kingdom begins the _generation of
the bodies_. This is why the letter G is presented radiant before
the eyes of the adept [?!].
The third side is left to the master mason, who has to complete
his education by the study of the _animal kingdom_. It is
symbolized by Maoben [Symbol: Three dots in a triangle] (son of
putrefaction).(1366)
The first solid figure is the Quaternary, the symbol of immortality. It is he Pyramid, for the Pyramid stands on a triangular base, and terminates ith a point at the top, thus yielding the Triad and the Quaternary or the
3 and 4.
The Pythagoreans taught the connection and relation between the Gods and he numbers, in a science called Arithmomancy. The Soul is a number, they aid, which moves of itself and contains the number 4; and spiritual and hysical man is number 3, as the Ternary represented for them not only the urface but also the principle of the formation of the physical body. Thus nimals were Ternaries only, man alone being a Septenary, _when virtuous_; Quinary when bad, for:
Number Five was composed of a Binary and a Ternary, and of these the
Binary threw everything in the perfect form into disorder and confusion.
The _perfect man_, they said, was a Quaternary and a Ternary, or _four_ aterial and _three_ immaterial elements; and these three Spirits or
Elements we likewise find in Five when it represents the microcosm. The atter is a compound of a Binary directly relating to gross Matter and of hree Spirits. Since, as Ragon says:
This ingenious figure is the union of two Greek breathings placed
over vowels which have or have not to be aspirated. The first sign
({~GREEK DASIA~}) is called the "strong" or superior "spiritus," the Spirit of
God aspired (_spiratus_) and breathed by man. The second sign ({~GREEK PSILI~})
the lower, is the soft "spiritus" representing the secondary
spirit; ... the whole embraces the whole man. It is the _universal
quintessence_, the vital fluid or life.(1367)
The more mystic meaning of the number Five is given in an excellent rticle by Mr. T. Subba Row, in _Five Years of Theosophy_, in an article ntitled "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac," in which he gives some rules hat may help the enquirer to ferret out "the deep significance of ancient
Sanskrit nomenclature in the old Âryan myths and allegories." Meanwhile, et us see what has been hitherto stated about the constellation
Capricornus in Theosophical publications, and what is known of it enerally. Every one knows that {~CAPRICORN~} is the tenth sign of the Zodiac, into hich the Sun enters at the winter solstice, about December 21st. But very ew are those who know--even in India, unless they are initiated--the real ystic connection which seems to exist, as we are told, between the names
Makara and Kumâra. The first means some amphibious animal, flippantly alled the "crocodile," as some Orientalists think, and the second is the itle of the great patrons of Yogins, according to the Shaiva _Purânas_, he sons of, and even one with, Rudra (Shiva), who is a Kumâra himself. It s through their connection with Man that the Kumâras are likewise onnected with the Zodiac. Let us try to find out what the word Makara eans.
Says the author of "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac":
Makara ... contains within itself the clue to its correct
interpretation. The letter _ma_ is equivalent to number 5, and
_kara_ means hand. Now in Sanskrit Tribhujam means a triangle,
_bhujam_ or _karam_ (both synonymous) being understood to mean a
side. So, Makaram or Panchakaram means a Pentagon.(1368)
Now the five-pointed star or pentagon represents the five limbs of an.(1369) Under the old system, we are told, Makara was the _eighth_ nstead of the tenth sign.(1370)
The sign in question is intended to represent the faces of the
universe, and indicates that the figure of the universe is bounded
by Pentagons.(1371)
The Sanskrit writers "speak also of Ashtadisha or eight faces bounding
Space," referring thus to the Loka-pâlas, the eight points of the compass, he four cardinal and the four intermediate points.
From an objective point of view the "microcosm" is represented by
the human body. Makaram may be taken to represent simultaneously
both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as external objects of
perception.(1372)
But the true Esoteric sense of the word Makara is not, in truth,
"crocodile" at all, even when it is compared with the animal depicted on he Hindű Zodiac. For it has the head and the fore-legs of an antelope and he body and tail of a fish. Hence the tenth sign of the Zodiac has been aken variously to mean a shark, a dolphin, etc.; as it is the Vâhana of
Varuna, the Ocean God, and is often called, for this reason, Jala-rűpa or
"water-form." The dolphin was the vehicle of Poseidon-Neptune with the
Greeks, and one with him, Esoterically; and this "dolphin" is the "sea- ragon" as much as the crocodile of the Sacred Nile is the Vehicle of
Horus, and Horus himself. Says the mummy-form God with the crocodile's ead:
I am the fish [and seat] of the great Horus of Kem-oor.(1373)
With the Peratć Gnostics it is Chozzar (Neptune) who converts the odecagonal pyramid into a sphere, "and paints its gate with many olours."(1374) He has _five androgyne_ ministers--he is Makara, the
Leviathan.
As the rising Sun was considered the Soul of the Gods sent to manifest tself to men every day, and as the crocodile rose out of the water at the irst sunbeam, that animal came finally to personify a solar-fire devotee n India, as it personified that Fire, or the highest Soul with the
Egyptians.
In the _Purânas_, the number of the Kumâras changes according to the xigencies of the allegory. For Occult purposes their number is given in ne place as seven, then as four, then as five. In the _Kűrma Purâna_ it s said of them:
These _five_ [Kumâras], O Brâhman, were Yogins who acquired entire
exemption from passion.
Their very name shows their connection with the said constellation Makara, nd with some other Paurânic characters connected with the zodiacal signs.
This is done in order to veil what was one of the most suggestive glyphs f the primitive Temples. The Kumâras are mixed up, astronomically, hysiologically, and mystically in general, with a number of Paurânic ersonages and events. Hardly hinted at in the _Vishnu_, they figure in arious dramas and events throughout all the other _Purânas_ and sacred iterature; so that the Orientalists, having to pick up the threads of onnection hither and thither, have ended by proclaiming the Kumâras "due hiefly to the fancy of the Purânic writers." But--
_Ma_--we are told by the author of the "Twelve Signs of the Zodiac"--is
"five"; _kara_, a "hand" with its five fingers, as also a five-sided sign r a Pentagon. The Kumâra (in this case an anagram for Occult purposes), s Yogîs, are _five_ in Esotericism, because the last two names have ever een kept secret; they are the fifth order of Brahma-devas, and the five- old Chohans, having the Soul of the five Elements in them, Water and
Ether predominating, and therefore their symbols were both _aquatic_ and
_fiery_.
Wisdom lies concealed under the couch of him who rests on the
Golden Lotus (Padma) floating on the Water.
In India this is Vishnu, one of whose Avatâras was Buddha, as claimed in ays of old. The Prachetasas, the worshippers of Nârâyana--who, like
Poseidon, moved or dwelt _over_ not under the Waters--plunged into the epths of the Ocean for their devotions and remained therein 10,000 years; nd the Prachetasas are _ten_ exoterically, but _five_, Esoterically.
Prachetâs is, in Sanskrit, the name of Varuna, the Water God, Nereus, an spect of Neptune, the Prachetasas being thus identical with the "five inisters" of the male-female Chozzar ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~} or {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}), or Poseidon, of he Peratć Gnostics. These are respectively called Ou, Aoai, Ouô, Ouôab nd ... ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~} ...),(1375) the _fifth_, a _triple_ name
(making seven in all) being lost(1376)--_i.e._, kept secret. Thus much for he "aquatic" symbol; the "fiery" connecting them with the fiery ymbol--spiritually. For purposes of identity, let us remember that as the other of the Prachetasas was Savarnâ, the daughter of the Ocean, so was
Amphitrite the mother of Neptune's mystic "ministers."
Now the reader is reminded that these "five ministers" are symbolized both n the Dolphin, who had overcome the chaste Amphitrite's unwillingness to ed Poseidon, and in Triton their son. The latter, whose body above the aist is that of a man and below a dolphin, a fish, is, again, most ysteriously connected with Oannes, the Babylonian Dag, and further also ith the Matsya (Fish) Avatâra of Vishnu, both teaching mortals Wisdom.
The Dolphin, as every Mythologist knows, was placed, for his service, by
Poseidon, among the constellations, and became with the Greeks,
Capricornus, the Goat, whose hind part is that of a dolphin, and is thus dentical with Makara, whose head is also that of an antelope and the body nd tail those of a fish. This is why the sign of the Makara was borne on he banner of Kâmadeva, the Hindű God of Love, identified, in the _Atharva
Veda_, with Agni, the Fire-god, the son of Lakshmî, as correctly given by he _Harivamsha_. For Lakshmî and Venus are one, and Amphitrite is the arly form of Venus. Now Kâma, the Makara-ketu, is Aja, the "unborn," and
Âtmâ-bhű, the "self-existent," and Aja is the Logos in the _Rig Veda_, as e is shown therein to be the first manifestation of the One; for "Desire irst arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind," that "which onnects entity with non-entity"--or Manas, the _fifth_, with Âtmâ, the
_seventh_, Esoterically--say the Sages. This is the _first_ stage. The econd, on the following plane of manifestation, shows Brahmâ--whom we elect as a representative for all the other First Gods of the ations--causing to issue from his body his Mind-born Sons, "Sanandana and thers," who, in the _fifth_ "creation," and again in the ninth (for urposes of a "blind") become the Kumâra. Let us close by reminding the eader that goats were sacrificed to Amphitrite and the Nereids on the ea-shore--as goats are sacrificed to this day to Durgâ Kâlî, who is only he _black_ side of Lakshmî (Venus), the _white_ side of Shakti--and by uggesting what connection these animals may have with Capricornus, in hich appear twenty-eight stars in the form of a goat, which goat was ransformed by the Greeks into Amalthća, Jupiter's foster-mother. Pan, the
God of Nature, had goat's feet, and changed himself into a goat at the pproach of Typhon. But this is a mystery which the writer dares not dwell pon at length, not being sure of being understood. Thus the mystical side f the interpretation must be left to the intuition of the student. Let us ote one more thing in relation to the mysterious number Five. It ymbolizes at one and the same time the Spirit of Life Eternal and the pirit of life and love terrestrial--in the human compound; and, it ncludes divine and infernal magic, and the universal and the individual uintessence of being. Thus, the five mystic words or vowels uttered by
Brahmâ at "creation," which forthwith became the Panchadasha (certain
Vedic Hymns, attributed to that God), are in their creative and magical otentiality, the _white_ side of the _black_ Tântric _five_ Ma-kâras, or he five _m's_. Makara, the constellation, is a seemingly meaningless and bsurd name; yet, even besides its anagrammatical significance in onjunction with the term Kumâra, the numerical value of its first yllable and its Esoteric resolution into _five_ has a very great and
Occult meaning in the mysteries of Nature.
Suffice it to say that, as the sign of Makara is connected with the birth f the spiritual Microcosm, and the death or dissolution of the physical
Universe--its passage into the realm of the Spiritual,(1377) so the Dhyân
Chohans, called in India Kumâras, are connected with both. Moreover, in he exoteric religions, they have become the synonyms of the Angels of
Darkness. Mâra is the God of Darkness, the Fallen One, and Death;(1378) nd yet it is one of the names of Kâma, the First God in the Vedas, the
Logos, from whom have sprung the Kumâras, and this connects them still ore with our "fabulous" Indian Makara, and the crocodile-headed God in
Egypt.(1379) The Crocodiles in the Celestial Nile are _five_, and the God
Toom, the Primordial Deity, creating the heavenly bodies and living eings, calls forth these Crocodiles in his _fifth_ "creation." When
Osiris, the "Defunct Sun," is buried and enters into Amenti, the sacred
Crocodiles plunge into the abyss of primordial Waters--the "Great Green
One." When the Sun of Life rises, they reëmerge out of the sacred river.
All this is highly symbolical, and shows how primeval Esoteric truths ound their expression in identical symbols. But, as Mr. T. Subba Row ruly declares:
The veil that was dexterously thrown over certain portions of the
mystery connected with these [Zodiacal] signs by the ancient
philosophers, _will never be lifted up for the amusement or
edification of the uninitiated public_.(1380)
Nor was number Five less sacred with the Greeks. The "Five Words" of
Brahmâ have become with the Gnostics the "Five Words" written upon the
Âkâshic (Shining) Garment of Jesus at his glorification--the words "Zama
Zama Ôzza Rachama Ôzai" ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}), translated by the
Orientalists "the robe, the glorious robe of my strength." These words ere, in their turn, the anagrammatic "blind" of the five mystic Powers epresented on the robe of the "resurrected" Initiate after his last trial f three days' trance; the five becoming _seven_ only after his "death," hen the Adept became the full Christos, the full Krishna-Vishnu, _i.e._, erged in Nirvâna. The E Delphicum, a sacred symbol, was the numeral
_five_, again; and how sacred it was is shown by the fact that the
Corinthians, according to Plutarch, replaced the wooden numeral in the
Delphic Temple by a bronze one, and this one was transmuted by Livia
Augusta into a facsimile in gold.(1381)
It is easy to recognize in the two "Spiritus"--the Greek signs (!) spoken f by Ragon--Âtmâ and Buddhi, or Divine Spirit and its Vehicle, the
Spiritual Soul.
The Six or the Senary is dealt with later in this Section, while the
Septenary will be fully treated in the course of this Volume in the
Section on "The Mysteries of the Hebdomad."
The Ogdoad or Eight symbolizes the eternal and spiral motion of cycles, he 8, {~INFINITY~}, and is symbolized in its turn by the Caduceus. It shows the egular breathing of the Kosmos presided over by the Eight Great Gods--the
Seven from the primeval Mother, the One and the Triad.
Then comes the number Nine, or the triple Ternary. It is the number which eproduces itself incessantly under all shapes and figures in every ultiplication. It is the sign of every circumference, since its value in egrees is equal to 9, _i.e._, to 3 + 6 + 0. It is a _bad_ number under ertain conditions, and very unlucky. If number 6 was the symbol of our
Globe ready to be animated by a _divine_ Spirit, 9 symbolized our Earth nformed by a _bad_ or evil Spirit.
Ten, or the Decad, brings all these digits back to unity, and ends the
Pythagorean table. Hence this figure, [Symbol: Circle with line through he middle]--_unity_ within _zero_--was the symbol of Deity, of the
Universe, and of Man. Such is the secret meaning of "the strong grip of he lion's paw, of the tribe of Judah" (the "master mason's grip") between wo hands, the joint number of whose fingers is _ten_.
If we now give our attention to the Egyptian cross, or the Tau, we may iscover this letter, which was so exalted by Egyptians, Greeks, and Jews, o be mysteriously connected with the Decad. The Tau is the Alpha and the
Omega of Secret Divine Wisdom, which is symbolized by the initial and the inal letters of Thot (Hermes). Thot was the inventor of the Egyptian lphabet, and the letter Tau closed the alphabets of the Jews and the
Samaritans, who called this character the "end" or "perfection,"
"culmination" and "security." Hence, Ragon tells us, the words Terminus,
"end," and Tectum, "roof," are symbols of shelter and security--which is ather a prosaic definition. But such is the usual destiny of ideas and hings in this world of spiritual decadence, though at the same time of hysical progress. Pan was at one time Absolute Nature, the One and Great
All; but when history catches a first glimpse of him, Pan has already umbled down into a _godling_ of the fields, a rural God; history will not ecognize him, while theology makes of him the Devil! Yet his seven-piped lute, the emblem of the seven forces of Nature, of the seven planets, the even musical notes, of all the septenary harmony in short, shows well his rimordial character. So with the cross. Far earlier than the Jews had evised their golden candlestick of the Temple with _three_ sockets on one ide and _four_ on the other, and made of number _seven_ a feminine number f generation(1382)--thus introducing the phallic element into religion--the ore spiritually-minded nations had made of the cross (as 3 + 4 = 7) their ost sacred divine symbol. In fact, circle, cross, and seven--the latter eing made a base of _circular_ measurement--are the first primordial ymbols. Pythagoras, who brought his wisdom from India, left to posterity glimpse into this truth. His School regarded number 7 as a compound of umbers 3 and 4, which they explained in a dual manner. On the plane of he noumenal world, the Triangle was, as the first conception of the anifested Deity, its image, "Father-Mother-Son"; and the Quaternary, the erfect number, was the noumenal, ideal root of all numbers and things on he physical plane. Some students, in view of the sacredness of the
Tetraktys and the Tetragrammaton, mistake the mystic meaning of the
Quaternary. The latter was with the Ancients only a _secondary_
"perfection," so to speak, because it related only to the manifested lanes. Whereas it is the Triangle, the Greek Delta ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA~}), which was the
"vehicle of the unknown Deity." A good proof of it lies in the name of the
Deity beginning with Delta. Zeus was written {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} (Deus) by the Boeotians, hence the Deus of the Latins. This, in relation to the metaphysical onception, with regard to the meaning of the septenary _in the phenomenal orld_; but for purposes of profane or exoteric interpretation, the ymbolism changed. _Three_ became the ideograph of the three _material_
Elements--Air, Water, Earth; and _four_ became the principle of all that hich is neither corporeal nor perceptible. But this has never been ccepted by the real Pythagoreans. Viewed as a compound of 6 and 1, the
Senary and the Unity, number 7 was the invisible centre, the Spirit of verything, as there exists no hexagonal body without a _seventh_ property eing found as the central point in it, as, for instance, crystals and now-flakes in so-called "inanimate" nature. Moreover, number _seven_, hey said, has all the perfection of the _unit_--the number of numbers. For s absolute _unity_ is uncreated, and impartite, hence number-less, and no umber can produce it, so is the _seven_; no digit contained within the
Decad can beget or produce it. And it is _four_ which affords an rithmetical division between _unity_ and _seven_, for it surpasses the ormer by the same number (_three_), as it is itself surpassed by the
_seven_, since _four_ is by as many numbers above _one_, as _seven_ is bove _four_.(1383)
"With the Egyptians number 7 was the symbol of _life_ eternal," says
Ragon, and adds that this is why the Greek letter Z, which is but a double
7, is the initial letter of Zaô, "I live," and of Zeus, the "father of all iving."
Moreover, figure 6 was the symbol of the Earth during the autumn and inter "sleeping" months, and figure 7 during spring and summer, as the
Spirit of Life animated her at that time--the seventh or central informing
Force. We find the same in the Egyptian mythos and symbol of Osiris and
Isis, personifying Fire and Water metaphysically, and the Sun and the Nile hysically. The number of the solar year, 365 in days, is the numerical alue of the word Neilos (Nile). This, together with the Bull, with the rescent and the ansated cross between its horns, and the Earth under its stronomical symbol ({~EARTH~}), are the most phallic symbols of later antiquity.
The Nile was the river of time with the number of a year, or year
and a day (364 + 1 = 365). It represented the parturient water of
Isis, or Mother Earth, the moon, the woman, and the cow, also the
_workshop_ of Osiris, representing the T'sod Olaum of the Hebrews.
The ancient name of this river was Eridanus, or the Hebrew Iardan,
with the Coptic or old Greek suffix. This was the door of the
Hebrew word Jared, or _source_, or _descent_ ... of the river
Jordan, which had the same mythical use with the Hebrews that the
Nile had with the Egyptians,(1384) it was the source of descent,
and held the waters of life.(1385)
It was, to put it plainly, the symbol of the personified Earth, or Isis egarded as the womb of that Earth. This is shown clearly enough; and
Jordan--the river so sacred now to Christians--held no more sublime or oetical meaning in it than the parturient waters of the Moon--Isis, or
Jehovah in his female aspect. Now, as shown by the same scholar, Osiris as the Sun, and the river Nile, and the year of 365 days; while Isis was he Moon, the bed of that river, or Mother Earth "for the parturient nergies of which water was a necessity," as also the lunar year of 354 ays, "the time-maker of the periods of gestation." All this then is exual and phallic, our modern scholars seeming to find in these symbols othing beyond a physiological or phallic meaning. Nevertheless, the three igures 365, or the number of days in a solar year, have but to be read ith the Pythagorean key to find in them a highly philosophical and moral eaning. One instance will be sufficient. It can read:
The Earth (3)--animated by (6)--the Spirit of Life (5).
Simply because 3 is equivalent to the Greek Gamma ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA~}) which is the symbol f Gaia, the Earth, while the figure 6 is the symbol of the animating or nforming principle, and the 5 is the universal quintessence which spreads n every direction and forms all matter.(1386)
The few instances and examples brought forward reveal only one small ortion of the methods used to read the symbolical ideographs and numerals f antiquity. The system being of an extreme and complex difficulty, very ew, even among the Initiates, could master _all_ the seven keys. Is it to e wondered, then, that the metaphysical gradually dwindled down into the hysical Nature; that the Sun, once upon a time the symbol of Deity, ecame, as ćons glided by, that of its creative ardour only; and that hence it fell into a glyph of phallic significance? But surely, it is not hose whose method, like Plato's, was to proceed from universals down to articulars, who could ever have begun by symbolizing their religions by exual emblems! It is quite true, though uttered by that incarnated aradox Éliphas Lévi, that "man is God on Earth, and God is man in
Heaven." But this could not, and never did apply to the One Deity, only to he Hosts of Its incarnated beams, called by us Dhyân Chohans, by the
Ancients Gods, and now transformed by the Church into Devils on the
_left_, and into the Saviour on the _right_ side!
But all such dogmas grew out of the one root, the root of Wisdom, which rows and thrives on the Indian soil. There is not an Archangel that could ot be traced back to its prototype in the sacred land of Âryâvarta. These rototypes are all connected with the Kumâras who appear on the scene of ction by "refusing"--as Sanatkumâra and Sananda--to "create progeny." Yet hey are called the "creators" of (thinking) man. More than once they are rought into connection with Nârada--another bundle of _apparent_ ncongruities, yet a wealth of philosophical tenets. Nârada is the leader f the Gandharvas, the celestial singers and musicians; Esoterically, the eason for this is explained by the fact that the Gandharvas are "the nstructors of men in the Secret Sciences." It is they, who "loving the omen of the Earth" disclosed to them the mysteries of creation; or, as in he _Veda_, the "heavenly" Gandharva is a deity who knew and revealed the ecrets of heaven and divine truths, in general. If we remember what is aid of this class of Angels in _Enoch_ and in the _Bible_, then the llegory is plain; their leader, Nârada, while refusing to procreate, eads men to become Gods. Moreover, all of these, as stated in the
_Vedas_, are Chhandajas, "will-born," or incarnated, in different
Manvantaras, _of their own will_. They are shown in exoteric literature as xisting age after age; some being "cursed to be reborn," others ncarnating as a duty. Finally, as the Sanakadikas, the seven Kumâras who ent to visit Vishnu on the "White Island" (Shveta-dvîpa), the Island nhabited by the Mahâ Yogins--they are connected with Shâka-dvîpa and the
Lemurians and Atlanteans of the Third and Fourth Races.
In the Esoteric Philosophy, the Rudras (Kumâras, Âdityas, Gandharvas,
Asuras, etc.) are the highest Dhyân Chohans or Devas as regards ntellectuality. They are those who, owing to their having acquired by elf-development the _five-fold_ nature--hence the sacredness of number
_five_--became independent of the pure Arűpa Devas. This is a mystery very ifficult to realize and understand correctly. For we see that those who ere "obedient to law" are, equally with the "rebels," _doomed to be eborn in every age_. Nârada, the Rishi, is cursed by Brahmâ to incessant eripateticism on Earth, _i.e._, to be constantly reborn. He is a rebel gainst Brahmâ, and yet has no worse fate than the Jayas--the twelve great
Creative Gods produced by Brahmâ as his assistants in the functions of reation. For the latter, lost in meditation, only _forgot to create_; and or this, they were equally cursed by Brahmâ to be born in every
Manvantara. And still they are termed--together with the rebels--Chhandajas, r those born of their own will in human form.
All this is very puzzling to one who is unable to read and understand the
_Purânas_ except in their dead-letter sense.(1387) Hence we find the
Orientalists refusing to be puzzled, and cutting the Gordian knot of erplexity by declaring the whole scheme "figments ... of Brâhmanical ancy and love of exaggeration." But to the student of Occultism, the hole is pregnant with deep philosophical meaning. We willingly leave the ind to the Western Sanskritist, but claim the essence of the fruit for urselves. We do more: we concede that in one sense much in these so- alled "fables" refers to astronomical allegories about constellations, sterisms, stars, and planets. Yet, while the Gandharva of the _Rig Veda_ ay there be made to personify the fire of the Sun, the Gandharva Devas re entities both of a physical and psychic character, while the Apsarasas
(with other Rudras) are both _qualities_ and _quantities_. In short, if ver unravelled, the Theogony of the Vedic Gods will reveal fathomless ysteries of Creation and Being. Truly says Parâshara:
These classes of thirty-three divinities ... exist age after age,
and their appearance and disappearance is in the same manner as
the sun sets and rises again.(1388)
There was a time, when the Eastern symbol of the cross and circle, the
Svastika, was universally adopted. With the Esoteric, and for the matter f that exoteric, Buddhist, the Chinaman and the Mongolian, it means the
"ten thousand truths." These truths, they say, belong to the mysteries of he Unseen Universe and Primordial Cosmogony and Theogony.
_Since Fohat crossed the Circle like two lines of flame
[horizontally and vertically], the Hosts of the Blessed Ones have
never failed to send their representatives upon the Planets they
are made to watch over from the beginning._
This is why the Svastika is always placed--as the ansated cross was in
Egypt--on the breast of the defunct Mystics. It is found on the heart of he images and statues of Buddha, in Tibet and Mongolia. It is the _seal_ laced also on the hearts of the living Initiates, burnt into the flesh or ever with some. This, because they have to keep these truths inviolate nd intact, in eternal silence and secrecy to the day they are perceived nd read by their chosen successors--new Initiates--"worthy of being ntrusted with the ten thousand perfections." So degraded, however, has it ow become, that it is often placed on the headgear of the "Gods," the ideous idols of the sacrilegious Bhons--the Dugpas or Sorcerers, of the
Tibetan borderlands--until found out by a Galukpa, and torn off together ith the head of the "God," though it would be better were it that of the orshipper which was severed from his sinful body. Still, it can never ose its mysterious properties. Throw a retrospective glance, and see it sed alike by the Initiates and Seers, as by the Priests of Troy, for many pecimens of it have been found by Schliemann on the site of that old ity. One finds it with the old Peruvians, the Assyrians, Chaldćans, as ell as on the walls of the old-world Cyclopean buildings; in the atacombs of the _New_ World, and in those of the _Old_ (?), at Rome, here--because the first Christians are supposed to have concealed hemselves and their religion--it is called Crux Dissimulata.
According to De Rossi the Swastika from an early period was a
favourite form of the cross _employed with an occult
signification_ which shows the secret was not that of the
Christian cross. One Swastika cross in the catacombs is the sign
of an inscription which reads "{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA~} [? {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ZETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA~}], _Vitalis
Vitalia_," or life of life.(1389)
But the best evidence to the antiquity of the cross is that which is rought forward by the author of _The Natural Genesis_ himself:
The value of the cross as a Christian symbol is supposed to date
from the time when Jesus Christ was crucified. And yet in the
"Christian" _iconography of the catacombs no figure of a man
appears upon the Cross during the first six or seven centuries_.
There are all forms of the cross except that--the alleged starting-
point of the new religion. That was not the initial but the final
form of the Crucifix.(1390) During some six centuries after the
Christian era the foundation of the Christian religion in a
crucified Redeemer is entirely absent from Christian art! The
earliest known form of the human figure on the cross is the
crucifix presented by Pope Gregory the Great to Queen Theodolinde
of Lombardy, now in the Church of St. John at Monza, whilst no
image of the Crucified is found in the catacombs at Rome earlier
than that of San Giulio, belonging to the seventh or eighth
century.... There is no Christ and no Crucified; the Cross is the
Christ even as the Stauros (Cross) was a type and a name of Horus
the Gnostic Christ. The Cross, not the Crucified, is the primary
symbol of the Christian Church. The Cross, not the Crucified, is
the essential object of representation in its art, and of
adoration in its religion. The germ of the whole growth and
development can be traced to the cross. And that cross is pre-
Christian, is pagan and heathen, in half a dozen different shapes.
The Cult began with the cross, and Julian was right in saying he
waged a "Warfare with the X"; which he obviously considered had
been adopted by the A-Gnostics and Mytholators to convey an
impossible significance.(1391) During centuries the cross stood
for the Christ, and was addressed as if it were a living being. It
was divinized at first and humanized at last.(1392)
Few world-symbols are more pregnant with real Occult meaning than the
Svastika. It is symbolized by the figure 6. Like that figure, it points, n its concrete imagery, as does the ideograph of the number, to the
Zenith and the Nadir, to North, South, West, and East; one finds the unit verywhere, and that unit reflected in all and every unit. It is the mblem of the activity of Fohat, of the continual revolution of the
"Wheels," and of the Four Elements, the "Sacred Four," in their mystical, nd not alone in their cosmical meaning; further, its four arms, bent at ight angles, are intimately related, as shown elsewhere, to the
Pythagorean and Hermetic scales. One initiated into the mysteries of the eaning of the Svastika, say the Commentaries, "can trace on it, with athematical precision, the evolution of Kosmos and the whole period of
Sandhyâ." Also "the relation of the Seen to the Unseen," and "the first rocreation of man and species."
To the Eastern Occultist the Tree of Knowledge, in the Paradise of man's wn heart, becomes the Tree of Life Eternal, and has nought to do with an's animal senses. It is an absolute mystery that reveals itself only hrough the efforts of the imprisoned Manas, the Ego, to liberate itself rom the thraldom of sensuous perception, and see in the light of the one ternal present Reality. To the Western Kabalist, and far more now to the uperficial Symbologist, nursed in the lethal atmosphere of Materialistic
Science, the chief explanation of the mysteries of the cross is--its sexual lement. Even the otherwise spiritualistic modern commentator discerns his feature in the cross and Svastika before all others.
The cross was used in Egypt as a protecting talisman and a symbol
of saving power. Typhon, or Satan, is actually found chained to
and bound by the cross. In the _Ritual_, the Osirian cries, "_The
Apophis is overthrown, their cords bind the South, North, East,
and West, their cords are on him. Har-ru-bah has knotted
him._"(1393) These were the Cords of the four quarters, or the
cross. Thor is said to smite the head of the serpent with his
hammer, ... a form of Swastika or four-footed cross.... In the
primitive sepulchres of Egypt the model of the Chamber had the
form of a cross.(1394) The pagoda of Mathura ... the birth-place
of Krishna, was built in the form of a cross.(1395)
This is perfect, and no one can discern in it that "sexual worship," with hich the Orientalists love to break the head of Paganism. But how about he Jews, and the exoteric religions of some Hindű sects, especially the ites of the Vallabâchâryas? For, as said, Shiva-worship, with its Lingam nd Yoni, stands too high philosophically, its modern degeneration otwithstanding, to be called a simple phallic worship. But the Tree- or
Cross-worship(1396) of the Jews, as denounced by their own Prophets, can ardly escape the charge. The "sons of the sorcerers, the seed of the dulterer,"(1397) as Isaiah calls them, never lost an opportunity of
"enflaming themselves with idols under every green tree"(1398)--which enotes no metaphysical recreation. It is from these _monotheistic_ Jews hat the Christian nations have derived their religion, their "God of
Gods, the One living God," while despising and deriding the worship of the
Deity of the ancient Philosophers. Let such believe in and worship the hysical form of the cross, by all means.
But to the follower of the true Eastern Archaic Wisdom, to him who orships in spirit nought outside the Absolute Unity, that ever-pulsating reat Heart that beats throughout, as in, every atom of Nature, each such tom contains the germ from which he may raise the Tree of Knowledge, hose fruits give Life Eternal and not physical life alone. For him, the ross and circle, the Tree or the Tau--even after every symbol relating hereto has been referred to and read, one after another--still remain a rofound mystery in their Past, and it is to that Past alone that he irects his eager gaze. He cares little whether it be the Seed from which rows the genealogical Tree of Being, called the Universe. Nor is it the
Three in One, the triple aspect of the Seed--its form, colour, and ubstance--that interest him, but rather the Force which directs its rowth, the ever mysterious, as the ever unknown. For this vital Force, hat makes the Seed germinate, burst open and throw out shoots, then form he trunk and branches, which, in their turn, bend down like the boughs of he Ashvattha, the holy Tree of Bodhi, throw their seed out, take root and rocreate other trees--this is the only Force that has reality for him, as t is the never-dying Breath of Life. The Pagan philosopher sought for the ause, the modern is content with only the effects and seeks the former in he latter. What is beyond, he does not know, nor does the modern A- nostic care; thus rejecting the only knowledge upon which he can with ull security base his Science. Yet this manifested Force has an answer or him who seeks to fathom it. He who sees in the cross, the decussated ircle of Plato, the Pagan, not the antitype of circumcision, as Christian
(St.) Augustine did,(1399) is forthwith regarded by the Church as a eathen; by Science, as a lunatic. This, because, while refusing to orship the God of physical generation, he confesses that he can know othing of the Cause which underlies the so-called _First_ Cause, the
Causeless Cause of this Vital Cause. Tacitly admitting the All-Presence of he Boundless Circle and making of it the Universal Postulate upon which he whole of the Manifested Universe is based, the Sage keeps a everential silence concerning that upon which no mortal man should dare o speculate. "The Logos of God is the revealer of man, and the Logos (the
Verb) of man is the revealer of God," says Éliphas Lévi in one of his aradoxes. To this, the Eastern Occultist would reply: On this condition, owever, that man should be dumb on the Cause that produced both God and ts Logos. Otherwise, he becomes invariably the _reviler_, not the
_revealer_, of the Incognizable Deity.
We have now to approach a mystery--the Hebdomad in Nature. Perchance, all hat we may say, will be attributed to coincidence. We may be told that his number in Nature is quite _natural_--as indeed we say it is--and has no ore significance than the illusion of motion which forms the so-called
"strobic circles." No great importance was given to these "singular llusions" when Professor Sylvanus Thompson exhibited them at the meeting f the British Association in 1877. Nevertheless we should like to learn he scientific explanation why seven should ever form itself as a reeminent number--six concentric circles around a seventh, and seven rings ithin one another round a central point, etc.--in this _illusion_, roduced by a swaying saucer, or any other vessel. We give the solution efused by Science in the Section which follows.
Section XI. The Mysteries of the Hebdomad.
We must not close this Part on the Symbolism of Archaic History, without n attempt to explain the perpetual recurrence of this truly mystic umber, the Hebdomad, in every scripture known to the Orientalists. As very religion, from the oldest to the latest, reveals its presence, and xplains it on its own grounds agreeably with its own special dogmas, this s no easy task. We can, therefore, do no better or more explanatory work han to give a bird's-eye view of all. The numbers, 3, 4, 7, are the acred numbers of Light, Life, and Union--especially in this present
Manvantara, our Life-Cycle; of which number _seven_ is the special epresentative, or the _factor_ number. This has now to be demonstrated.
If one should ask a Brâhman learned in the _Upanishads_, which are so full f the Secret Wisdom of old, why "he, of whom seven forefathers have drunk he juice of the Moon-plant," is Trisuparna, as Bopaveda is credited with aying;(1400) and why the Somapa Pitris should be worshipped by the
Brâhman Trisuparna--very few could answer the question; or, if they knew, hey would still less satisfy one's curiosity. Let us, then, hold to what he old Esoteric Doctrine teaches. As says the Commentary:
_When the first Seven appeared on Earth, they threw the seed of everything hat grows on the land into the soil. First came Three, and Four were dded to these as soon as stone was transformed into plant. Then came the econd Seven, who, guiding the Jîvas of the plants, produced the middle
[intermediate] natures between plant and moving living animal. The third
Seven evolved their Chhâyâs.... The fifth Seven imprisoned their
Essence.... Thus man became a Saptaparna._
A. Saptaparna.
Such is the name given in Occult phraseology to man. It means, as shown lsewhere, a seven-leaved plant, and the name has a great significance in he Buddhist legends. So it had, also, under disguise, in the Greek myths.
The T, or {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~} (Tau), formed from the figure 7, and the Greek letter {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA~}
(Gamma), was, as stated in the last Section, the symbol of life, and of
Life Eternal: of earthly life, because {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA~} (Gamma) is the symbol of the
Earth (Gaia)(1401); and of Life Eternal, because the figure 7 is the ymbol of the same life _linked_ with Divine Life, the double glyph xpressed in geometrical figures being:
[Symbol: a triangle over a square]
--a Triangle and a Quaternary, the symbol of Septenary Man.
Now, the number _six_ has been regarded in the Ancient Mysteries as an mblem of _physical_ Nature. For six is the representation of the six imensions of all bodies--the _six_ directions which compose their form, amely, the four directions extending to the four cardinal points, North,
South, East, and West, and the two directions of height and thickness that nswer to the Zenith and the Nadir. Therefore, while the Senary was pplied by the Sages to _physical_ man, the Septenary was for them the ymbol of that man _plus_ his immortal Soul.(1402)
J. M. Ragon gives a very good illustration of the "hieroglyphical senary," s he calls our double equilateral triangle.
The hieroglyphical senary is the symbol of the commingling of the
_philosophical three_ fires and _three_ waters, whence results the
procreation of the elements of all things.(1403)
The same idea is found in the Indian double equilateral triangle. For, hough it is called in that country the sign of Vishnu, yet in truth it is he symbol of the Triad, or Tri-műrti. For, even in the exoteric endering, the lower triangle, [Symbol: triangle], with the apex downward, s the symbol of Vishnu, the God of the Moist Principle and Water,
Nârâyana being the Moving Principle in the Nârâ, or Waters;(1404) while he triangle, with its apex upward, [Symbol: triangle], is Shiva, the
Principle of Fire, symbolized by the triple flame in his hand.(1405) It is hese two interlaced triangles, wrongly called "Solomon's Seal"--which also orm the emblem of our Society--that produce the Septenary and the Triad at ne and the same time, and are the Decad. Whatever way this [Symbol:
6-point star] is examined, all the ten numbers are contained therein. For ith a point in the middle or centre, [Symbol: 6-point star with middle ot], it is a _sevenfold_ sign or Septenary; its triangles denote number hree, or the Triad; the two triangles show the presence of the Binary; he triangles with the central point common to both yield the Quaternary; he six points are the Senary; and the central point, the Unit; the
Quinary being traced by combination, as a compound of _two_ triangles, the ven number, and of _three_ sides in each triangle, the first odd number.
This is the reason why Pythagoras and the ancients made the number _six_ acred to Venus, since:
The union of the two sexes, and the spagyrization of matter by
triads, are necessary to develop the generative force, that
prolific virtue and tendency to reproduction which is inherent in
all bodies.(1406)
Belief in "Creators," or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no olytheism, but a philosophical necessity. Like all the other Planets of ur system, the Earth has seven Logoi--the emanating Rays of the one
"Father-Ray"--the Protogonos, or the Manifested Logos, he who sacrifices is Esse (or "Flesh," the Universe) that the World may live and every reature therein have conscious being.
Numbers 3 and 4 are respectively male and female, Spirit and Matter, and heir union is the emblem of Life Eternal in Spirit on its ascending arc, nd in Matter as the ever resurrecting Element--by procreation and eproduction. The spiritual male line is vertical [Symbol: bar]; the ifferentiated matter-line is horizontal; the two forming the cross or {~CROSS OF JERUSALEM~}.
The 3 is invisible; the 4 is on the plane of objective perception. This is hy all the Matter of the Universe, when analyzed to its ultimates by
Science, can be reduced to four Elements only--Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, nd Hydrogen; and why the three primaries, the noumena of the four, or raduated Spirit or Force, have remained a _terra incognita_, and mere peculations, mere names, to exact Science. Her servants must believe in nd study first the primary causes, before they can hope to fathom the ature, and acquaint themselves with the potentialities, of the effects.
Thus, while the men of Western learning had, and still have, the four, or
Matter, to toy with, the Eastern Occultists and their disciples, the great
Alchemists the world over, have the whole septenate to study from.(1407)
As those Alchemists have it:
_When the Three and the Four kiss each other, the Quaternary joins its iddle nature with that of the Triangle [or Triad, i.e., the face of one f its plane surfaces becoming the middle face of the other], and becomes Cube; then only does it [the Cube unfolded] become the vehicle and the umber of Life, the Father-Mother Seven._
Now we are taught that all these earliest forms of organic life also ppear in septenary groups of numbers. From minerals or "soft stones that ardened," to use the phraseology of the Stanzas, followed by the "hard lants that softened," which are the product of the mineral, for "it is rom the bosom of the stone that vegetation is born";(1408) and then to an--all the primitive models in every kingdom of Nature begin by being thereal, transparent, films. This, of course, takes place only in the irst beginning of life. With the next period they consolidate, and at the
_seventh_ begin to branch off into species, _all except men_, the first of he mammalian animals(1409) in the Fourth Round.
Virgil, versed as every ancient poet was, more or less, in Esoteric
Philosophy, sang of evolution in the following strains:
_Principio cćlum ac terras camposque liquentes_
Lucentemque globum Lunć, Titaniaque astra
_Spiritus_ intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
_Mens_ agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.
Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitćque volantum
Et quć marmoreo fert monstra sub ćquore pontus.(1410)
"First came three, or the Triangle." This expression has a profound eaning in Occultism, and the fact is corroborated, in Mineralogy, Botany, nd even in Geology--as has been demonstrated in the Section on "The
Chronology of the Brâhmans"--by the compound number seven, the three and he four, being contained in it. Salt in solution proves this. For when ts molecules, clustering together, begin to deposit themselves as a olid, the first shape they assume is that of triangles, of small pyramids nd cones. It is the figure of Fire, whence the word "Pyramis"; while the econd geometrical figure in _manifested_ Nature is a Square or a Cube, 4 nd 6; for, as Enfield says, "the particles of earth being cubical, those f fire are pyramidal"--truly. The pyramidal shape is that assumed by the ines--the most primitive tree after the fern period. Thus the two pposites in cosmic Nature--fire and water, heat and cold--begin their etrographical manifestations, one by a trimetric, the other by a exagonal system. For the stellate crystals of snow, viewed under a icroscope, are all and each of them a double or a treble six-pointed tar, with a central nucleus, like a miniature star within the larger one.
Says Mr. Darwin--showing that the inhabitants of the sea-shore are greatly ffected by the tides:
The most ancient progenitors in the kingdom of the Vertebrata ...
apparently consisted of a group of marine animals.... Animals
living either about the _mean_ high-water mark, or about the
_mean_ low-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal
changes in a fortnight.... Now it is a mysterious fact that in the
higher and now terrestrial Vertebrata ... many normal and abnormal
processes have one or more weeks [septenates] as their periods ...
such as gestation of mammals, the duration of fevers.(1411)
The eggs of the pigeon are hatched in two weeks [or 14 days];
those of the fowl in three; those of the duck in four; those of
the goose in five; and those of the ostrich in seven.(1412)
This number is closely connected with the Moon, whose Occult influence is ver manifesting itself in septenary periods. It is the Moon which is the uide of the Occult side of terrestrial Nature, while the Sun is the egulator and factor of manifested life. This truth has ever been evident o the Seers and the Adepts. Jakob Böhme, by insisting on the fundamental octrine of the seven properties of everlasting Mother Nature, proved imself thereby a great Occultist.
But to return to the consideration of the septenary in ancient religious ymbolism. To the metrological key of the symbolism of the Hebrews, which eveals numerically the geometrical relations of the Circle (All-Deity) to he Square, Cube, Triangle, and all the integral emanations of the divine rea, may be added the theogonic key. This key explains that Noah, the
Deluge-Patriarch, is in one aspect the permutation of the Deity (the
Universal Creative Law), for the purpose of the formation of our Earth, ts population, and the propagation of life on it, in general.
Now bearing in mind the septenary division in divine Hierarchies, as in osmic and human constitutions, the student will readily understand that
Jah-Noah is at the head of, and is the synthesis of the lower cosmic
Quaternary. The upper Sephirothal Triad, {~WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE~}--of which Jehovah-Binah
(Intelligence) is the left, female, angle--emanates the Quaternary, {~WHITE SQUARE~}. The atter, symbolizing by itself the Heavenly Man, the sexless Adam Kadmon, iewed as Nature in the abstract, becomes a septenate again by emanating rom itself the additional three principles, the lower terrestrial or anifested physical Nature, Matter and our Earth--the seventh being
Malkuth, the "Bride of the Heavenly Man"--thus forming, with the higher
Triad, or Kether, the Crown, the full number of the Sephirothal Tree--the
10, the Total in Unity, or the Universe. Apart from the higher Triad, the ower creative Sephiroth are seven.
The above is not directly to our point, though it is a necessary reminder o facilitate the comprehension of what follows. The question at issue is o show that Jah-Noah, or the Jehovah of the Hebrew _Bible_, the alleged
Creator of our Earth, of man and all upon it, is:
(_a_) The lowest Septenary, the Creative Elohim--in his cosmic aspect.
(_b_) The Tetragrammaton or the Adam Kadmon, the "Heavenly Man" of the our letters--in his theogonic and kabalistic aspects.
(_c_) The Noah--identical with the Hindű Shishta, the human Seed, left for he peopling of the Earth from a previous creation, or Manvantara, as xpressed in the _Purânas_, or the pre-diluvian period as rendered llegorically in the _Bible_--in his cosmic character.
But whether a Quaternary (Tetragrammaton) or a Triad, the biblical
Creative God is not the Universal 10, unless blended with Ain Suph (as
Brahmâ with Parabrahman), but a septenary, one of the many septenaries of he Universal Septenate. In the explanation of the question now in hand, is position and status as Noah may best be shown by placing the 3, {~WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE~}, and
4, {~WHITE SQUARE~}, on parallel lines with the cosmic and human principles. For the atter, the old familiar classification is made use of.
As an additional demonstration of the statement, let the reader turn to abalistic works.
"_Ararat_ = _the mount of descent_ = {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}-{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}-{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}, _Hor-Jared_. Hatho
mentions it out of composition by _Arath_ = {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}. Editor of Moses
Cherenensis says: 'By this, they say, is signified _the first
place of descent_ (of the ark).' " (Bryant's _Anal._, vol. iv. pp.
5, 6, 15.) Under "_Berge_," _mountain_, Nork says of _Ararat_:
"{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER TET~}, for {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~} (_i.e._, _Ararat_ for _Arath_) _earth, Aramaic_
reduplication." Here it is seen that Nork and Hatho make use of
the same equivalent, in Arath, {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}, with the meaning of
_earth_.(1413)
Noah thus symbolizing both the Root-Manu and the Seed-Manu, or the Power hich developed the Planetary Chain, and our Earth, and the Seed-Race, the
Fifth, which was saved while the last sub-races of the Fourth, Vaivasvata
Manu, perished, the number _seven_ will be seen to recur at every step. It s Noah who, as Jehovah's permutation, represents the septenary Host of he Elohim, and is thus the Father or Creator (the Preserver) of all nimal life. Hence the verses of _Genesis_: "Of every clean beast thou halt take to thee by sevens, the male [3], and the female [4]; of fowls lso of the air by sevens,"(1414) etc., followed by all the _sevening_ of ays and the rest.
B. The Tetraktys In Relation To The Heptagon.
Thus number _seven_, as a compound of 3 and 4, is the factor element in very ancient religion, because it is _the factor element in Nature_. Its doption must be justified, and it must be shown to be _the_ number _par xcellence_, for, since the appearance of _Esoteric Buddhism_, frequent bjections have been made, and doubts expressed as to the correctness of hese assertions.
And here let the student be told at once, that in all such numerical ivisions the One universal Principle--although referred to as (the) one, ecause the Only One--never enters into the calculations. It stands, in its haracter of the Absolute, the Infinite, and the Universal Abstraction, ntirely by Itself and independent of every other Power whether noumenal r phenomenal. Says the author of the article "Personal and Impersonal
God":
This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor
non-Ego; and it is neither object nor subject.
In the language of Hindű philosophers it is the original and
eternal combination of Purusha [Spirit] and Prakriti [Matter]. As
the Advaitîs hold that an external object is merely the product of
our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and
Purusha is the only reality; it is the _one_ existence which
remains in the universe of Ideas. This ... then, is the
Parabrahman of the Advaitîs. Even if there were to be a personal
God with anything like a material Upâdhi (physical basis of
whatever form), from the standpoint of an Advaitî there will be as
much reason to doubt his noumenal existence, as there would be in
the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God
cannot be the origin of the universe, as his Ego would be the
effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its
ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that _the grand total of all
the states of consciousness in the universe_ is their deity, as
these states are constantly changing, and as cosmic idealism
ceases during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in
the Universe, which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare
Chidâkâsham (the field of consciousness) in fact.
When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is
in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of
consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the
ultimate state of unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahman by
the Advaitîs.(1415)
Although itself entirely out of human reckoning or calculation, yet this
"huge aggregation of various states of consciousness" is a septenate, in
_its_ totality entirely composed of septenary groups--simply because "the apacity of perception _exists in seven different aspects corresponding to he seven conditions of matter_,"(1416) or the seven properties, or states f matter. And, therefore, the series from one to seven, begins in the
Esoteric calculations with the first manifested principle, which is number ne if we commence from above, and number seven when reckoning from below, r from the lowest principle.
The Tetrad is esteemed in the _Kabalah_, as it was by Pythagoras, the most erfect, or rather _sacred_ number, because it emanated from the One, the irst manifested Unit, or rather the Three in One. And the latter has ever een impersonal, sexless, incomprehensible, though within the possibility f the higher mental perceptions.
The first manifestation of the eternal Monad was never meant to stand as he symbol of another symbol, the Unborn for the Element-born, or the one
Logos for the Heavenly Man. Tetragrammaton, or the Tetraktys of the
Greeks, is the Second Logos, the Demiurgos.
The Tetrad, as Thomas Taylor thinks, is, however, the _animal
itself_ of Plato who, as Syrianus justly observes, was the best of
the Pythagoreans; subsists at the extremity of the intelligible
triad, as is most satisfactorily shown by Proclus in the third
book of his treatise on the theology of Plato. And between these
two triads [the double triangle], the one intelligible, and the
other intellectual, another order of gods exists, which partakes
of both extremes.(1417)...
The Pythagorean world, according to Plutarch,(1418) _consisted of a double uaternary_.
This statement corroborates what is said about the choice, by the exoteric heologies, of the _lower_ Tetraktys. For:
The quaternary of the intellectual world [the world of Mahat] is
T'Agathon, Nous, Psyche, Hyle; while that of the sensible world
[of Matter], which is properly what Pythagoras meant by the word
Kosmos, is Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The four elements are
called by the name of _rhizômata_, the roots or principles of all
_mixed bodies_.(1419)
That is to say, the lower Tetraktys is the root of _illusion_, of the
World of Matter; and this is the Tetragrammaton of the Jews, and the
"mysterious deity," over which the modern Kabalists make such a fuss!
This number [_four_] forms the arithmetical mean between the monad
and the heptad; and this comprehends all powers, both of the
productive and produced numbers; for this, of all numbers under
ten, is made of a certain number; the duad doubled makes a tetrad,
and the tetrad doubled [or unfolded] makes the hebdomad [the
septenary]. Two multiplied into itself produces four; and retorted
into itself makes the first cube. This first cube is a _fertile
number_, the ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two
and four [depending on the monad, the _seventh_]. Thus the two
principles of temporal things, the pyramis and cube, form and
matter, flow from one fountain, the tetragon [on earth, the monad,
in heaven].(1420)
Here Reuchlin, the great authority on the _Kabalah_, shows the cube to be
"matter," whereas the pyramid or the triad is "form." With the Hermesians he number four becomes the symbol of truth only when _amplified into a ube_, which, unfolded, makes seven, as symbolizing the male and female lements and the element of Life.(1421)
Some students have been puzzled to account for the vertical line,(1422) hich is male, becoming, in the cross, a four-partitioned line (_four_ eing a female number), while the horizontal (the line of matter) becomes hree-divisioned. But this is easy of explanation. Since the middle face f the "cube unfolded" is _common_ to both the vertical and the horizontal ar, or double-line, it becomes _neutral_ ground so to say, and belongs to either. The spirit line remains triadic, and the matter line two-fold--two eing an even and therefore a female number also. Moreover, according to
Theon in his _Mathematica_, the Pythagoreans, who gave the name of Harmony o the Tetraktys, "because it is a diatessaron in sesquitertia," were of pinion that:
The division of the canon of the monochord was made by the
tetraktys in the duad, triad, and tetrad; for it comprehends a
sesquitertia, a sesquialtera, a duple, a triple, and a quadruple
proportion, the section of which is 27. In the ancient musical
notation, the tetrachord consisted of _three_ degrees or
intervals, and _four_ terms of sounds called by the Greeks
diatessaron, and by us a fourth.(1423)
Moreover, the quaternary though an even, therefore a female ("infernal") umber, varied according to its form. This is shown by Stanley.(1424) The our was called by the Pythagoreans the Key-Keeper of Nature; but in union ith the three, which made it seven, it became the most perfect and armonious number--_nature herself_. The four was "the masculine of eminine form," when forming the cross; and seven is the "Master of the
Moon," for this Planet is forced to alter her appearance every seven days.
It is on number seven that Pythagoras composed his doctrine on the Harmony nd Music of the Spheres, calling a "tone" the distance of the Moon from he Earth; from the Moon to Mercury half a tone, from thence to Venus the ame; from Venus to the Sun one and a half tones; from the Sun to Mars a one; from thence to Jupiter half a tone; from Jupiter to Saturn half a one; and thence to the Zodiac a tone; thus making seven tones--the iapason harmony.(1425) All the melody of Nature is in those seven tones, nd therefore is called the "Voice of Nature."
Plutarch explains(1426) that the most ancient Greeks regarded the Tetrad s the root and principle of all things, since it was the number of the lements which gave birth to all visible and invisible _created_ hings.(1427) With the brothers of the Rosy Cross, the figure of the ross, or _cube unfolded_, formed the subject of a disquisition in one of he Theosophic degrees of Peuvret, and was treated according to the undamental principles of light and darkness, _or good and evil_.(1428)
The intelligible world proceeds out of the divine mind [or unit]
after this manner. The Tetraktys, reflecting upon its own essence,
_the first unit, productrix of all things_, and on its own
beginning, saith thus: Once one, twice two, immediately ariseth a
tetrad, having on its top the highest unit, and _becomes a
Pyramis_, whose base is a plain tetrad, answerable to a
superficies, upon which the radiant light of the divine unity
produceth the form of incorporeal fire, by reason of the descent
of Juno (matter) to inferior things. Hence ariseth essential
light, not burning but illuminating. This is _the creation of the
middle world_, which the Hebrews call the _Supreme_, the world of
the [_their_] deity. It is termed Olympus, entirely light, and
replete with separate forms, where is the seat of the immortal
gods, _deűm domus alta_, whose top is _unity_, its wall _trinity_,
and its superficies _quaternity_.(1429)
The "superficies" has thus to remain a _meaningless surface_, if left by tself. _Unity_ only "illuminating" _quaternity_, the famous lower four as to build for itself also a wall from _trinity_, if it would be anifested. Moreover, the Tetragrammaton, or Microprosopus, is "Jehovah" rrogating to himself very improperly the "Was, Is, Will Be," now ranslated into the "I am that I am," and interpreted as referring to the ighest abstract Deity; while Esoterically and in plain truth, it means nly periodically chaotic, turbulent, and eternal Matter, with all its otentialities. For the Tetragrammaton is one with Nature, or Isis, and is he exoteric series of androgyne Gods such as Osiris-Isis, Jove-Juno,
Brahmâ-Vâch, or the Kabalistic Jah-Hovah; all male-females. Every nthropomorphic God, in old nations, as Marcellus Ficin well observed, has is name written with four letters. Thus with the Egyptians, he was Teut; he Arabs, Alla; the Persians, Sire; the Magi, Orsi; the Mahometans, Abdi; he Greeks, Teos; the ancient Turks, Esar; the Latins, Deus; to which John
Lorenzo Anania adds the German Gott; the Sarmatian Bouh; etc.(1430)
The Monad being one, and an _odd_ number, the Ancients therefore said that he odd were the only perfect numbers; and--selfishly, perhaps, yet as a act--considered them all as masculine and perfect, being applicable to the
_celestial_ Gods, while even numbers, such as two, four, six, and specially eight, as being female, were regarded as imperfect, and given nly to the _terrestrial and infernal_ Deities. Virgil records the fact by aying, "_Numero deus impare gaudet_." "The God is pleased with an odd umber."(1431)
But number _seven_, or the Heptagon, the Pythagoreans considered to be a
_religious and perfect number_. It was called Telesphoros, because by it ll in the Universe and mankind is led _to its end_, _i.e._, its ulmination.(1432) The doctrine of the Spheres ruled by the seven Sacred
Planets(1433) shows, from Lemuria to Pythagoras, the seven Powers of errestrial and sublunary Nature, as well as the seven great Forces of the
Universe, proceeding and evolving in seven tones, which are the seven otes of the musical scale.
The Heptad [our Septenary] was considered to be _the number of a virgin, ecause it is unborn_ [like the Logos or the Aja of the Vedântins]:
Without a father ... or a mother, ... _but proceeding directly
from the monad_, which is the origin and crown of all
things.(1434)
And if the Heptad is made to proceed from the Monad directly, then it is, s taught in the Secret Doctrine of the oldest schools, the perfect and acred number of this Mahâmanvantara of ours.
The Septenary, or Heptad, was sacred indeed to several Gods and Goddesses; o Mars, with his seven attendants, to Osiris, whose body was divided into even and twice seven parts; to Apollo, the Sun, amid his seven planets, nd playing the hymn to the seven-rayed on his seven-stringed harp; to
Minerva, the fatherless and the motherless, and others.(1435)
Cis-Himâlayan Occultism with its sevening, and because of such sevening, ust be regarded as the most ancient, the original of all. It is opposed y _some_ fragments left by Neo-Platonists; and the admirers of the atter, who hardly understand what they defend, say to us: See, your orerunners believed only in _triple_ man, composed of Spirit, Soul, and
Body. Behold, the Târaka Râja Yoga of India limits that division to 3, we, o 4, and the Vedântins to 5 (Koshas). To this, we of the Archaic school sk:
Why then does the Greek poet say that it is not four but _seven_ who sing he praise of the Spiritual Sun?
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}.{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}.{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}.
Seven sounding letters sing the praise of me,
The immortal God, the almighty Deity.
Why again is the _triune_ Iao, the Mystery God, called the "fourfold," and et the triadic and tetradic symbols come under one unified name with the
Christians--the Jehovah of the seven letters? Why again in the Hebrew Shebâ s the Oath (the Pythagorean Tetraktys) identical with number 7? Or, as
Mr. Gerald Massey has it:
Taking an oath was synonymous with "to seven," and the 10
expressed by the letter Jod, was the full number of Iao-Sabaoth
[--the ten-lettered God].(1436)
In Lucian's _Auction_:
Pythagoras asks, "How do you reckon?" The reply is, "One, Two,
Three, Four." Then Pythagoras says, "Do you see? In _what you
conceive_ Four there are Ten, _a perfect Triangle and our Oath_
[Tetraktys, Four!--or Seven in all]."(1437)
Why again does Proclus say:
The Father of the golden verses celebrates the Tetraktys as the
fountain of perennial nature?(1438)
Simply because those Western Kabalists who quote the _exoteric_ proofs gainst us have no idea of the real _Esoteric_ meaning. All the ancient
Cosmologies--the oldest Cosmographies of the two most ancient people of the
Fifth Root-Race, the Hindű Âryans and the Egyptians, together with the arly Chinese races, the remnants of the Fourth or Atlantean Race--based he whole of their Mysteries on number 10; the higher Triangle standing or the invisible and metaphysical World, the lower three and four, or the
Septenate, for the physical Realm. It is not the Jewish _Bible_ that rought number seven into prominence. Hesiod used the words, "the seventh s the sacred day," before the Sabbath of "Moses" was ever heard of. The se of number seven was never confined to any one nation. This is well estified by the seven vases in the Temple of the Sun, near the ruins of
Babian in Upper Egypt; the seven fires burning continually for ages before he altars of Mithra; the seven holy fanes of the Arabians; the seven eninsulas, the seven islands, seven seas, mountains, and rivers of India; nd of the _Zohar_; the Jewish Sephiroth of the seven splendours; the even Gothic deities; the seven worlds of the Chaldćans and their seven
Spirits; the seven constellations mentioned by Hesiod and Homer; and all he interminable sevens which the Orientalists find in every MS. they iscover.(1439)
What we have to say finally is this: Enough has been brought forward to how why the human principles were and are divided in the Esoteric Schools nto seven. Make it four and it will either leave man _minus_ his lower errestrial elements, or, if viewed from a physical standpoint, make of im a soulless animal. The Quaternary must be the higher or the lower--the elestial or terrestrial Tetraktys; to become comprehensible, according to he teachings of the _ancient_ Esoteric School, man must be regarded as a eptenary. This was so well understood, that even the so-called Christian
Gnostics adopted this time-honoured system.(1440) This remained for a long ime a secret, for though it was suspected, no MSS. of that time spoke of t clearly enough to satisfy the sceptic. But there comes to our rescue he literary curiosity of our age--the oldest and best preserved Gospel of he Gnostics, _Pistis Sophia_. To make the proof absolutely complete, we hall quote from an authority, C. W. King, the only Archćologist who has ad a faint glimmer of this elaborate doctrine, and the best writer of the ay on the Gnostics and their gems.
According to this extraordinary piece of religious literature--a true
Gnostic fossil--the human Entity is the Septenary Ray from the One,(1441) ust as our School teaches. It is composed of seven elements, four of hich are borrowed from the four kabalistical manifested worlds. Thus:
From Asiah it gets the Nephesh, or seat of the physical appetites
[vital breath, also]; from Jezirah, the Ruach, or seat of the
passions [? !]; from Briah, the Neshamah or reason; and from
Aziluth it obtains the Chaiah, or principle of spiritual life.
This looks like an adaptation of the Platonic theory of the Soul's
obtaining its respective faculties from the Planets in its
downward progress through their spheres. But the Pistis-Sophia,
with its accustomed boldness, puts this theory into a much more
poetical shape (§ 282). The _Inner Man_ is similarly made up of
_four_ constituents, _but these are supplied by the rebellious
Ćons of the Spheres_, being the _Power_--a particle of the Divine
light ("Divinć particula aurć") yet left in themselves; the _Soul_
[the fifth] "formed out of the tears of their eyes, and the sweat
of their torments"; the {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, _Counterfeit of the
Spirit_ (seemingly answering to our _Conscience_) [_the sixth_];
and lastly the {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, _Fate_(1442) [Karmic Ego], whose business it
is to lead the man to the end appointed for him: if he hath to die
by the fire, to lead him into the fire; if he hath to die by a
wild beast, to lead him unto the wild beast--[the _seventh_]!(1443)
C. The Septenary Element In The Vedas.
_It Corroborates the Occult Teaching Concerning the Seven Globes and the
Seven Races._
We have to go to the very source of historical information, if we would ring our best evidence to testify to the facts enunciated. For, though ntirely allegorical, the Rig Vedic hymns are none the less suggestive.
The seven Rays of Sűrya, the Sun, are therein made parallel to the seven
Worlds, of every Planetary Chain, to the seven Rivers of Heaven and Earth, he former being the seven creative Hosts, and the latter the seven Men, r primitive human groups. The seven ancient Rishis--the progenitors of all hat lives and breathes on Earth--are the seven friends of Agni, his seven
"Horses," or seven "Heads." The human race has sprung from Fire and Water, t is allegorically stated; fashioned by the Fathers, or the Ancestor- acrificers, from Agni; for Agni, the Ashvins, the Âdityas,(1444) are all ynonymous with those "Sacrificers," or the Fathers, variously called
Pitaras (or Pitris), Angirasas,(1445) and Sâdhyas, "Divine Sacrificers," he most Occult of all. They are all called Deva-putra Rishayah or the
"Sons of God."(1446) The "Sacrificers," moreover, are collectively the One
Sacrificer, the Father of the Gods, Vishvakarman, who performed the great
Sarva-medha ceremony, and ended by sacrificing himself.
In these Hymns the "Heavenly Man" is called Purusha, the "Man,"(1447) from hom Virâj was born(1448); and from Virâj, the (mortal) man. It is
Varuna--lowered from his sublime position to be the chief of the
Lords--Dhyânîs or Devas--who regulates all natural phenomena, who "makes a ath for the Sun, for him to follow." The seven Rivers of the Sky (the escending Creative Gods), and the seven Rivers of the Earth (the seven rimitive Mankinds), are under his control, as will be seen. For he who reaks Varuna's laws (Vratâni, or "courses of natural action," active aws), is punished by Indra(1449) the Vedic powerful God, whose Vrata, or aw or power, is greater than the Vratâni of any other God.
Thus, the _Rig Veda_, the oldest of _all the known_ ancient records, may e shown to corroborate the Occult Teachings in almost every respect. Its
Hymns, which are the records written by the earliest Initiates of the
Fifth (our) Race concerning the Primordial Teachings, speak of the Seven
Races (two still to come), allegorizing them by the seven "Streams"(1450) nd of the Five Races (Panchakrishtayah) which have already inhabited this orld(1451) on the five Regions (Panchapradishah)(1452) as also of the hree Continents that were.(1453)
It is only those scholars who will master the secret meaning of the
Purusha Sukta--in which the intuition of the modern Orientalists has chosen o see "one of the very latest hymns of the _Rig Veda_"--who may hope to nderstand how harmonious are its teachings and how corroborative of the
Esoteric Doctrines. He must study, in all the abstruseness of their etaphysical meaning, the relations therein between the (Heavenly) Man
(Purusha), _sacrificed_ for the production of the Universe and all in t,(1454) and the terrestrial mortal man(1455) before he realizes the idden philosophy of the verse:
15. He ["Man," Purusha, or Vishvakarman] had seven enclosing logs
of fuel, and _thrice seven_ layers of fuel; when the Gods
performed the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim.
This relates to the three septenary primeval Races, and shows the ntiquity of the _Vedas_, which knew of no other sacrifice, probably, in hese earliest _oral_ teachings; and also to the seven primeval groups of
Mankind, as Vishvakarman represents divine Humanity collectively.(1456)
The same doctrine is found reflected in the other old religions. It may, t must, have come down to us disfigured and misinterpreted, as in the ase of the Parsîs who read it in their _Vendîdâd_ and elsewhere, though ithout understanding the allusions therein contained any better than do he Orientalists; yet the doctrine is plainly mentioned in their old orks.(1457)
Comparing the Esoteric Teaching with the interpretations by Prof. James
Darmesteter, one may see at a glance where the mistake is made, and the ause that produced it. The passage runs thus:
The Indo-Iranian Asura [Ahura] was often conceived as _sevenfold_;
by the play of certain mythical [?] formulć and the strength of
certain mythical [?] numbers, the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians
had been led to speak of seven worlds,(1458) and the supreme god
was often made sevenfold, as well as the worlds over which he
ruled. The seven worlds became in Persia the seven Karshvare of
the earth: the earth is divided into seven Karshvare, _only one of
which is known and accessible to man_, the one on which we live,
namely, Hvaniratha; which amounts to saying that there are _seven
earths_.(1459) Parsi mythology knows also of seven heavens.
Hvaniratha itself is divided into seven climes. (Orm. Ahr. §
72.)(1460)
The same division and doctrine is to be found in the oldest and most evered of the Hindű scriptures--the _Rig Veda_. Mention is made therein of ix Worlds, _besides_ our Earth: the six Rajamsi above Prithivî, the
Earth, or "this" (Idam) as opposed to "that which is _yonder_" (_i.e._, he six Globes on the _three_ other planes or Worlds).(1461)
The italics are ours to point out the identity of the tenets with those of he Esoteric Doctrine, and to accentuate the mistake that is made. The
Magi or Mazdeans only believed in what other people believed in: namely, n seven "Worlds" or Globes of our Planetary Chain, of which _only one_ is ccessible to man, at the present time, our Earth; and in the successive ppearance and destruction of seven Continents or Earths on this our
Globe, each Continent being divided, in commemoration of the seven Globes
(one visible, six invisible), into seven islands or continents, seven
"climes," etc. This was a common belief in those days when the now Secret
Doctrine was open to all. It is this multiplicity of localities in eptenary divisions, which has made the Orientalists--who have, moreover, een further led astray by the oblivion of their primitive doctrines of oth the uninitiated Hindűs and Parsîs--feel so puzzled by this ever- ecurring seven-fold number as to regard it as "mythical." It is this blivion of first principles which has led the Orientalists off the right rack and made them commit the greatest blunders. The same failure is ound in the definition of the Gods. Those who are ignorant of the
Esoteric Doctrine of the earliest Âryans, can never assimilate or even nderstand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these Beings.
Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) was the head and synthesis of the seven Amesha
Spentas, or Amshaspands, and, therefore, an Amesha Spenta himself. Just as
Jehovah-Binah-Elohim was the head and synthesis of the Elohim, and no ore; so Agni-Vishnu-Sűrya was the synthesis and head, or the focus whence manated in physics and also in metaphysics, from the spiritual as well as rom the physical Sun, the seven Rays, the seven Fiery Tongues, the seven
Planets or Gods. All these became supreme Gods and _the_ One God, but only fter the loss of the primeval secrets; _i.e._, the sinking of Atlantis, r the "Flood," and the occupation of India by the Brâhmans, who sought afety on the summits of the Himâlayas, for even the high table-lands of hat is now Tibet became submerged for a time. Ahura Mazda is addressed nly as the "Most Blissful Spirit, Creator of the _Corporeal_ World" in he _Vendîdâd_. Ahura Mazda in its literal translation means the "Wise
Lord" (Ahura "lord" and Mazda "wise"). Moreover, this name of Ahura, in
Sanskrit Asura, connects him with the Mânasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who nformed the mindless man, and endowed him with his mind (Manas). Ahura
(Asura) may be derived from the root _ah_ "to be," but in its primal ignification it is what the Secret Teaching shows it to be.
When Geology shall have found out how many thousands of years ago the isturbed waters of the Indian Ocean reached the highest plateaux of
Central Asia, when the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf made one with it, hen only will they know the age of the existing Âryan Brâhmanical nation, nd also the time of its descent into the plains of Hindűstan, which did ot take place till millenniums later.
Yima, the so-called "first man" in the _Vendîdâd_, as much as his twin- rother Yama, the son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of
Universal History. He is the Progenitor of the Second human Race, hence he personification of the Shadows of the Pitris, and the Father of the
Postdiluvian Humanity. The Magi said, "Yima," as we say "man" when peaking of mankind. The "fair Yima," the first mortal who converses with
Ahura Mazda, is the _first _"man"_ who dies_ or disappears, not the first ho is born. The "son of Vîvanghat"(1462) was, like the son of Vaivasvata, he symbolical man, who stood in Esotericism as the representative of the
_first three_ Races and the collective Progenitor thereof. Of these Races he first two never died(1463) but only vanished, absorbed in their rogeny, and the Third knew death only towards its close, after the eparation of the sexes and its "Fall" into generation. This is plainly lluded to in Fargard ii of the _Vendîdâd_. Yima refuses to become the earer of the law of Ahura Mazda, saying:
"I was not born, I was not taught to be the preacher and the
bearer of thy law."(1464)
And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and "watch over" is world.
He refuses to become the priest of Ahura Mazda, because he is _his own riest and sacrificer_, but he accepts the second proposal. He is made to nswer:
"Yes!... Yes, I will nourish, and rule, and watch over thy world.
There shall be, while I am king, neither cold wind nor hot wind,
_neither disease nor death_."
Then Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of overeignty.
Thus, under the sway of Yima, three hundred _winters_ passed away,
and the earth was _replenished_ with flocks and herds, with men
and dogs and birds and with red blazing fires.
Three hundred winters mean three hundred periods or cycles. "Replenished," ark well; that is to say, all this had been on it before; and thus is roven the knowledge of the doctrine about the successive Destructions of he World and its Life-Cycles. Once the "three hundred winters" were over,
Ahura Mazda warns Yima that the Earth is becoming too full, and men have owhere to live. Then Yima steps forward, and with the help of Spenta
Ârmaita, the female Genius, or Spirit of the Earth, makes that Earth tretch out and become larger by one-third, after which "new flocks and erds and men" appear upon it. Ahura Mazda warns him again, and Yima makes he Earth by the same magic power to become larger by two-thirds. "Nine undred winters" _pass_ away, and Yima has to perform the ceremony for the
_third_ time. The whole of this is allegorical. The three processes of tretching the Earth, refer to the three successive Continents and Races ssuing one after and from the other, as explained more fully elsewhere.
After the _third_ time, Ahura Mazda warns Yima in an assembly of
"celestial gods" and "excellent mortals" that upon the material world the atal winters are going to fall, and all _life_ will perish. This is the ld Mazdean symbolism for the "Flood," and the coming cataclysm to
Atlantis, which sweeps away every Race in its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu nd Noah, Yima makes a Vara--an Enclosure, an Ark--under the God's irection, and brings thither the seed of every living creature, animals nd "Fires."
It is of this "Earth" or new Continent that Zarathushtra became the law- iver and ruler. This was the Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men f the Third began to die out. Till then, as said above, there had been no egular death, but only a transformation, for _men had no personality_ as et. They had Monads--"Breaths" of the One Breath, as impersonal as the ource from which they proceeded. They had bodies, or rather shadows of odies, which were sinless, hence Karma-less. Therefore, as there was no
Kâma Loka--least of all Nirvâna or even Devachan--for the "Souls" of men who ad no personal Egos, there could be no intermediate periods between the ncarnations. Like the Phoenix, primordial man resurrected out of his old nto a new body. Each time, and with each new generation, he became more olid, more physically perfect, agreeably with the evolutionary law, which s the Law of Nature. Death came with the complete physical organism, and ith it--moral decay.
This explanation shows one more old religion agreeing in its symbology ith the Universal Doctrine.
Elsewhere the oldest Persian traditions, the relics of Mazdeism of the till older Magians, are given, and some of them explained. Mankind did ot issue from one solitary couple. Nor was there ever a first man--whether
Adam or Yima--but a first mankind.
It may, or may not, be "mitigated polygenism." Once that both Creation _ex ihilo_ (an absurdity) and a superhuman Creator or Creators (a fact) are ade away with by Science, polygenism presents no more difficulties or nconveniences--rather fewer from a scientific point of view--than onogenism does.
In fact, it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction o Nott and Gliddon's _Types of Mankind_, Agassiz declares his belief in n indefinite number of "primordial races of men created _separately_"; nd remarks that, "whilst in every zoological province animals are of
_different_ species, _man_, in spite of the diversity of his races, always orms _one and the same_ human being."
Occultism defines and limits the number of primordial races to seven, ecause of the seven "Progenitors," or Prajâpatis, the evolvers of beings.
These are neither Gods, nor supernatural Beings, but advanced Spirits from nother and lower Planet, reborn on this Planet, and giving birth in their urn in the present Round to present Humanity. This doctrine is again orroborated by one of its echoes--among the Gnostics. In their nthropology and genesis of man they taught that "a certain company of
_seven_ Angels," formed the first men, who were no better than senseless, igantic, shadowy forms--"a mere wriggling worm" (!) writes Irenćus,(1465) ho takes, as usual, the metaphor for reality.
D. The Septenary In The Exoteric Works.
We may now examine other ancient scriptures and see whether they contain he septenary classification, and, if so, to what degree.
Scattered about in thousands of other Sanskrit texts, some still unopened, thers yet unknown, as well as in all the _Purânas_, as much as, if not uch more than, even in the Jewish _Bible_, the numbers seven and forty- ine (7 × 7) play a most prominent part. In the _Purânas_ they are found rom the seven Creations, in the first chapters, down to the seven Rays of he Sun at the final Pralaya, which expand into seven Suns and absorb the aterial of the whole Universe. Thus the _Matsya Purâna_ has:
For the sake of promulgating the Vedas, Vishnu, in the beginning
of a Kalpa, related to Manu the story of Narasimha and the events
of _seven_ Kalpas.(1466)
Then again the same _Purâna_ shows that:
In all the Manvantaras, classes of Rishis(1467) appear by seven
and _seven_, and having established a code of law and morality
depart to felicity.(1468)
The Rishis, however, represent many other things besides living sages.
In Dr. Muir's translation of the _Atharva Veda_, we read:
1. Time carries (us) forward, a steed, with _seven_ rays, a
thousand eyes, undecaying, full of fecundity. On him intelligent
sages mount; his wheels are all the worlds.
2. Thus Time moves on _seven_ wheels; he has _seven_ naves;
immortality is his axle. He is at present _all these worlds_. Time
hastens onward the first God.
3. A full jar is contained in Time. We behold him existing in many
forms. He is all these worlds in the future. They call him "Time
in the highest Heaven."(1469)
Now add to this the following verse from the Esoteric Volumes:
_Space and Time are one. Space and Time are nameless, for they are the ncognizable That, which can be sensed only through its seven Rays--which re the seven Creations, the seven Worlds, the seven Laws, etc._
Remembering that the _Purânas_ insist on the identity of Vishnu with Time nd Space,(1470) and that even the Rabbinical symbol for God is Maqom,
"Space," it becomes clear why, for purposes of a manifesting Deity--Space,
Matter, and Spirit--the one central Point became the Triangle and
Quaternary--the perfect Cube--hence _seven_. Even the Pravaha Wind--the ystic and occult force that gives the impulse to, and regulates the ourse of the stars and planets--is septenary. The _Kűrma_ and _Linga
Purânas_ enumerate seven principal winds of that name, which winds are the rinciples of Cosmic Space.(1471) They are intimately connected with
Dhruva(1472) (now Alpha), the Pole-Star, which is connected in its turn ith the production of various phenomena through cosmic forces.
Thus, from the seven Creations, seven Rishis, Zones, Continents,
Principles, etc., in the Âryan Scriptures, the number has passed through
Indian, Egyptian, Chaldćan, Greek, Jewish, Roman, and finally Christian ystic thought, until it landed in, and remained indelibly impressed on, very exoteric theology. The seven old books stolen out of Noah's Ark by
Ham, and given to Cush, his son, and the seven Brazen Columns of Ham and
Cheiron, are a reflection and a remembrance of the seven primordial
Mysteries instituted according to the "seven secret Emanations," the seven
Sounds, and seven Rays--the spiritual and sidereal models of the seven housand times seven copies of them in later ćons.
The mysterious number is once more prominent in the no less mysterious
Maruts. The _Vâyu Purâna_ shows, and the _Harivamsha_ corroborates, oncerning the Maruts--the oldest as the most incomprehensible of all the econdary or lower Gods in the _Rig Veda_:
That they are _born in every Manvantara [Round], seven times
seven_ (or forty-nine); that, in each Manvantara, _four times
seven_ (or twenty-eight) obtain emancipation, but their places are
_filled up by persons reborn in that character_.(1473)
What are the Maruts in their Esoteric meaning, and who _those persons_
"reborn in that character"? In the _Rik_ and other _Vedas_, the Maruts are epresented as the Storm Gods and the _friends and allies_ of Indra; they re the "Sons of Heaven and of Earth." This led to an allegory that makes hem the children of Shiva, the great patron of the Yogîs:
The Mahâ Yogî, the great _ascetic_, in whom is centred the highest
perfection of austere penance and abstract meditation, _by which
the most unlimited powers are attained, marvels and miracles are
worked, the highest spiritual knowledge is acquired, and union
with the great spirit of the universe is eventually gained_.(1474)
In the _Rig Veda_ the name Shiva is unknown, but the corresponding God is alled Rudra, a name used for Agni, the Fire-God, the Maruts being called herein his sons. In the _Râmâyana_ and the _Purânas_, their mother,
Diti--the sister, or complement, and a form of Aditi--anxious to obtain a on who would destroy Indra, is told by Kashyapa, the Sage, that if, "with houghts wholly pious and person entirely pure," she carries the babe in er womb "for a hundred years,"(1475) she will have such a son. But Indra oils her in the design. With his thunderbolt he _divides the embryo in er womb into seven portions_, and then divides every such portion _into even pieces again_, which become the swift-moving deities, the
Maruts.(1476) These Deities are only another _aspect_, or a development, f the Kumâras, who are patronymically Rudras, like many others.(1477)
Diti, being Aditi--unless the contrary is proven to us--Aditi, we say, or
Âkâsha in her highest form, is the Egyptian _seven-fold_ Heaven. Every rue Occultist will understand what this means. Diti, we repeat, is the ixth principle of _metaphysical_ Nature, the Buddhi of Âkâsha. Diti, the
Mother of the Maruts, is one of her terrestrial forms, made to represent, t one and the same time, the Divine Soul in the ascetic, and the divine spirations of mystic Humanity toward deliverance from the webs of Mâyâ, nd consequent final bliss. Indra is now degraded, because of the Kali
Yuga, when such aspirations are no more general but have become abnormal hrough a general spread of Ahamkâra, the feeling of Egotism, or "I-am- ess" and ignorance; but in the beginning Indra was one of the greatest
Gods of the Hindű Pantheon, as the _Rig Veda_ shows. Surâdhipa the "chief f the gods," has fallen down from Jishnu, the "Leader of the Celestial
Host"--the Hindű St. Michael--to an opponent of asceticism, the enemy of very holy aspiration. He is shown married to Aindrî (Indrânî), the ersonification of Aindriyaka, the evolution of the element of senses, hom he married "because of her _voluptuous attractions_"; after which he egan sending celestial female demons to excite the passions of holy men,
Yogîs, and "to beguile them from the potent penances which he dreaded."
Therefore, Indra, now characterized as "the god of the firmament, the ersonified atmosphere"--is in reality the cosmic principle Mahat, and the ifth human principle, Manas in its dual aspect--as connected with Buddhi, nd as allowing itself to be dragged down by the Kâma principle, the body f passions and desires. This is demonstrated by Brahmâ telling the onquered God that his frequent defeats were due to Karma, and were a unishment for his licentiousness, and the seduction of various nymphs. It s in this latter character that he seeks, to save himself from estruction, to destroy the coming "babe," destined to conquer him--the abe, of course, allegorizing the divine and steady will of the Yogî, etermined to resist all such temptations, and thus destroy the passions ithin his earthly personality. Indra succeeds again, because flesh onquers spirit.(1478) He divides the "embryo" (of new _divine_ Adeptship, egotten once more by the Ascetics of the Âryan Fifth Race) into _seven_ ortions (a reference not alone to the seven sub-races of the new Root-
Race, in each of which there will be a Manu,(1479) but also to the seven egrees of Adeptship), and then each portion into seven pieces--alluding to he Manu-Rishis of each Root-Race, and even sub-race.
It does not seem difficult to perceive what is meant by the Maruts btaining "four times seven" emancipations in every Manvantara, and by hose persons who are _re-born_ in that character, viz., of the Maruts in heir Esoteric meaning, and who "fill up their places." The Maruts epresent (_a_) the passions that storm and rage within every Candidate's reast, when preparing for an ascetic life--this mystically; (_b_) the
Occult potencies concealed in the manifold aspects of Âkâsha's lower rinciples--her body, or Sthűla Sharîra, representing the terrestrial, ower atmosphere of every inhabited Globe--this mystically and sidereally;
(_c_) actual conscious existences, beings of a cosmic and psychic nature.
At the same time, Marut in Occult parlance is one of the names given to hose Egos of great Adepts who have passed away, and are known also as
Nirmânakâyas; of those Egos for whom--_since they are beyond llusion_--there is no Devachan, who, having either voluntarily renounced
Nirvâna for the good of mankind, or who not yet having reached it, remain nvisible on Earth. Therefore are the Maruts(1480) shown, firstly, as the ons of Shiva-Rudra, the Patron Yogî, whose Third Eye (mystically) must be cquired by the Ascetic before he becomes an Adept; then, in their cosmic haracter, as the subordinates of Indra and his opponents, under various haracters. The "four times seven" emancipations have a reference to the our Rounds, and the four Races that preceded ours, in each of which
Maruta-Jîvas (Monads) have been re-born, and would have obtained final iberation, if only they had chosen to avail themselves of it. But instead f this, out of love for the good of mankind, which would struggle still ore hopelessly in the meshes of ignorance and misery _were it not for his extraneous help_, they are re-born over and over again "in that haracter," and thus "fill up their own places." _Who_ they are, "on
Earth"--every student of Occult Science knows. And he also knows that the
Maruts are Rudras, among whom also the family of Tvashtri, a synonym of
Vishvakarman, the great Patron of the Initiates, is included. This gives s an ample knowledge of their true nature.
The same for the septenary division of cosmos and the human principles.
The _Purânas_, along with other sacred texts, teem with allusions to this.
First of all, the Mundane Egg which contained Brahmâ, or the Universe, was xternally invested with _seven_ natural elements, at first loosely numerated as Water, Air, Fire, Ether, and _three secret_ elements; then he "World" is said to be "encompassed on every side" by seven elements, lso _within_ the Egg--as explained:
The world is encompassed on every side, and above, and below, by
the shell of the egg (of Brahmâ) [Andakatâha].(1481)
Around the shell flows Water, which is surrounded with Fire; Fire by Air;
Air by Ether; Ether by the Origin of the Elements (Ahamkâra); the latter y Universal Mind, or "Intellect," as Wilson translates. It relates to
Spheres of Being as much as to Principles. Prithivî is not our Earth but he World, the Solar System, and means the "broad," the "wide." In the
_Vedas_--the greatest of all authorities, though needing a key to be read orrectly--three terrestrial and three celestial Earths are mentioned as aving been called into existence simultaneously with Bhűmi, our Earth. We ave often been told that six, not _seven_, appears to be the number of pheres, principles, etc. We answer that there are, in fact, only six rinciples in man; since his body is _no_ principle, but the covering, the hell of a principle. So with the Planetary Chain; therein, speaking
Esoterically, the Earth--as well as the seventh, or rather fourth plane, ne that stands as the seventh, if we count from the first triple kingdom f the Elementals that begin its formation--may be left out of onsideration, being (to us) the only distinct body of the seven. The anguage of Occultism is varied. But supposing that _three_ Earths only, nstead of seven, are meant in the _Vedas_, what are those three, since we till know of but one? Evidently there _must be_ an Occult meaning in the tatement under consideration. Let us see. The "Earth that floats" on the
Universal Ocean of Space, which Brahmâ divides in the _Purânas_ into seven
Zones, is Prithivî, the World divided into seven principles--a cosmic ivision, looking metaphysical enough, but, in reality, _physical_ in its
Occult effects. Many Kalpas later, our Earth is mentioned, and again, in ts turn, is divided into seven Zones according to the law of analogy hich guided ancient Philosophers. After which we find on it seven
Continents, seven Isles, seven Oceans, seven Seas and Rivers, seven
Mountains, seven Climates, etc.(1482)
Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindű scriptures and philosophy that ne finds references to the seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phoenician,
Chaldćan, and Egyptian cosmogonies, and even in Rabbinical literature. The
Phoenix(1483)--called by the Hebrews Onech {~HEBREW LETTER AYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER QOF~}, from Phenoch, Enoch, the ymbol of a secret cycle and initiation, and by the Turks, Kerkes--lives a housand years, after which, kindling a flame, it is self-consumed; and hen, reborn from itself, it lives another thousand years, up to _seven imes seven_,(1484) when comes the Day of Judgment. The "seven times even," or forty-nine, are a transparent allegory, and an allusion to the orty-nine Manus, the seven Rounds, and the seven times seven human Cycles n each Round on each Globe. The Kerkes and the Onech stand for a Race
Cycle, and the mystical Tree Ababel, the "Father Tree" in the _Kurân_, hoots out new branches and vegetation at every resurrection of the Kerkes r Phoenix; the "Day of Judgment" meaning a minor Pralaya. The author of he _Book of God_ and the _Apocalypse_ believes that:
The Phoenix is ... very plainly the same as the Simorgh of Persian
romance; and the account which is given us of this last bird yet
more decisively establishes the opinion that the death and revival
of the Phoenix exhibit the successive destruction and reproduction
of the world, which many believed to be effected by the agency of
a fiery deluge [and also a watery one in its turn]. When the
Simorgh was asked her age, she informed Caherman that this world
is very ancient, for it has been already _seven times
replenished_, with beings different from men, and _seven times
depopulated_:(1485) that the age of the human race in which we now
are, is to endure seven thousand years, and that she herself had
seen _twelve_ of these revolutions, and knew not how many more she
had to see.(1486)
The above, however, is no new statement. From Bailly, in the last century, own to Dr. Kenealy, in the present, these facts have been noticed by a umber of writers; but now a connection can be established between the
Persian oracle and the Nazarene prophet. Says the author of the _Book of
God_:
The Simorgh is in reality the same as the winged Singh of the
Hindűs, and the Sphinx of the Egyptians. It is said that the
former will appear at the end of the world ... [as a] monstrous
lion-bird.... From these the Rabbins have borrowed their mythos of
an enormous Bird, sometimes standing on the earth, sometimes
walking in the ocean ... while its head props the sky; and with
the symbol, they have also adopted the doctrine to which it
relates. They teach that there are to be _seven successive
renewals_ of the globe; that each reproduced system will last
_seven_ thousand years [?]; and that the _total duration of the
Universe_ will be 49,000 years. This opinion, which involves the
doctrine of the preëxistence of each renewed creature, they may
either have learned during their Babylonian captivity, or _it may
have been part of the primeval religion_ which their priests had
preserved from remote times.(1487)
It shows rather that the initiated Jews _borrowed_, and their non- nitiated successors, the Talmudists, lost, the sense, and applied the even Rounds, and the forty-nine Races, etc., wrongly.
Not only _their_ priests, but those of every other country. The Gnostics, hose various teachings are the many echoes of the one primitive and niversal doctrine, put the same numbers, under another form, in the mouth f Jesus in the very occult _Pistis Sophia_. We say more: even the
Christian editor or author of _Revelation_ has preserved this tradition nd speaks of the _seven_ Races, four of which, with part of the fifth, re gone, and two have to come. It is stated as plainly as can be. Thus aith the angel:
And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven
mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are _seven_
kings; _five_ are fallen, and one _is_, and the other is not yet
come.(1488)
Who, in the least acquainted with the symbolical language of old, will ail to discern in the _five_ Kings that have fallen, the four Root-Races hat were, and part of the Fifth, the one that _is_; and in the _other_, hat "is not yet come," the Sixth and Seventh coming Root-Races, as also he sub-races of this, our present Race? Another still more forcible llusion to the seven Rounds and the forty-nine Root-Races in _Leviticus_, ill be found elsewhere, Part III.(1489)
E. Seven In Astronomy, Science, And Magic.
Again, number _seven_ is closely connected with the Occult significance of he Pleiades, those seven daughters of Atlas, "the six present, the eventh _hidden_." In India they are connected with their nursling, the ar God, Kârttikeya. It was the Pleiades (in Sanskrit, Krittikâs) who gave his name to the God, Kârttikeya being the planet Mars, _astronomically_.
As a God he is the son of Rudra, born without the intervention of a woman.
He is a Kumâra, a "virgin youth" again, generated in the fire from the
Seed of Shiva--the Holy Spirit--hence called Agni-bhű. The late Dr. Kenealy elieved that, in India, Kârttikeya is the secret symbol of the Cycle of he Naros, composed of 600, 666, and 777 years, according to whether solar r lunar, divine or mortal, years are counted; and that the six visible, r the seven actual sisters, the Pleiades, are needed for the completion f this most secret and mysterious of all the astronomical and religious ymbols. Therefore, when intended to commemorate one particular event,
Kârttikeya was shown, of old, as a Kumâra, an Ascetic, with _six_ eads--one for each century of the Naros. When the symbolism was needed for nother event, then, in conjunction with the seven sidereal sisters,
Kârttikeya is seen accompanied by Kaumârî, or Senâ, his female aspect. He s then riding on a peacock, the bird of Wisdom and Occult Knowledge, and he Hindű Phoenix, whose Greek relation with the 600 years of the Naros is ell known. A six-rayed star (double triangle), a Svastika, a six and ccasionally seven-pointed crown, is on his brow; the peacock's tail epresents the sidereal heavens; and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are
_hidden on his body_; for which he is also called Dvâdasha-kara, the
"twelve-handed," and Dvâdashâksha, "twelve-eyed." It is as Shakti-dhara, owever, the "spear-holder," and the conqueror of Târaka, Târaka-jit, that e is shown to be most famous.
As the years of the Naros are, in India, counted in two ways, either by ne hundred "years of the gods" (divine years), or one hundred "mortal ears," we can see the tremendous difficulty the non-initiated have in rriving at a correct comprehension of this cycle, which plays such an mportant part in St. John's _Revelation_. It is the truly apocalyptic ycle, because of its being of various lengths and relating to various re-historic events, and in none of the numerous speculations about it ave we found any but a few _approximate_ truths.
Against the duration claimed by the Babylonians for their divine ages, it as been urged that Suidas shows the Ancients counting days for years, in heir chronological computations. It is to Suidas and his authority that
Dr. Sepp appeals in his ingenious plagiarism--which we have already xposed--of the Hindű figures 432. These they give in thousands and illions of years, the duration of their Yugas, but Sepp dwarfed them to
4,320 _lunar_ years,(1490) "before the birth of Christ," as "foreordained" n the sidereal, in addition to the invisible, heavens, and proved "by the pparition of the Star of Bethlehem." But Suidas had no other warrant for his assertion than his own speculations, and he was not an Initiate. He ites, as a proof, Vulcan, and shows him reigning 4,477 years, or 4,477
_days_, as he thinks, or again rendered in years, 12 years, 3 months, and
7 days; he has, however, 5 days in his original--thus committing an error ven in such an easy calculation.(1491) True, there are other ancient riters guilty of like fallacious speculations; Calisthenes, for instance, ho assigns to the astronomical observations of the Chaldćans only 1,903 ears, whereas Epigenes recognizes 720,000 years.(1492) The whole of these ypotheses made by profane writers are due to a misunderstanding. The hronology of the Western peoples, ancient Greeks and Romans, was borrowed rom India. Now, it is said in the Tamil edition of _Bagavadam_ that 15 olar days make a Paccham; two Pacchams, or 30 days, make a month of ortals, which is only one _day_ of the Pitara Devatâ or Pitris. Again, 2 f these months constitute a Rűdű, 3 Rűdűs make an Ayanam, and 2 Ayanams a ear of mortals, which is only a _day_ of the Gods. It is from such isunderstood teachings that some Greeks have imagined that all the nitiated priests had transformed days into years!
This mistake of the ancient Greek and Latin writers became pregnant with esults in Europe. At the close of the past and the beginning of the resent century, Bailly, Dupuis, and others, relying upon the purposely utilated accounts of Hindű chronology, brought from India by certain nscrupulous and too zealous missionaries, built quite a fantastic theory n the subject. Because the Hindűs had made of half a revolution of the oon a measure of time; and because a month composed of only fifteen days, f which Quintus Curtius speaks,(1493) is found mentioned in Hindű iterature, therefore, it becomes a verified fact that their _year_ was nly half a year, when it was not called a _day_! The Chinese, also, ivided their Zodiac into twenty-four parts, and hence their year into wenty-four fortnights, but such computation did not, nor does it, prevent hem having an astronomical year just the same as ours. They also have a eriod of 60 days--the Southern Indian Rűdű--to this day in some provinces.
Moreover, Diodorus Siculus(1494) calls "_thirty days_ an Egyptian year," r that period during which the moon performs a complete revolution. Pliny nd Plutarch(1495) both speak of it; but does it stand to reason that the
Egyptians, who knew Astronomy as well as any other nation, made the
_lunar_ month consist of 30 days, when it is only 28 days with fractions?
This lunar period had an Occult meaning surely as well as had also the
Ayanam and the Rűdű of the Hindűs. The year of 2 months' duration, and the eriod of 60 days also, was a universal measure of time in antiquity, as
Bailly himself shows in his _Traité de l' Astronomie Indienne et
Orientale_. The Chinamen, according to their own books, divided their year nto two parts, from one equinox to the other;(1496) the Arabs anciently ivided the year into six seasons, each composed of two months; in the
Chinese astronomical work called _Kioo-tche_, it is said that two moons ake a measure of time, and six measures a year; and to this day the borigines of Kamschatka have their years of six months, as they had when isited by Abbé Chappe.(1497) But is all this any reason for claiming that hen the Hindű _Purânas_ say a solar _year_, they mean one solar _day_!
It was the knowledge of the natural laws which make of seven the root ature-number, so to say, in the manifested world, or at any rate in our resent terrestrial life-cycle, and the wonderful comprehension of its orkings, that unveiled to the Ancients so many of the mysteries of
Nature. It is these laws, again, and their processes on the sidereal, errestrial, and moral planes, which enabled the old Astronomers to alculate correctly the duration of the cycles and their respective ffects on the march of events; to record beforehand--to prophesy, it is alled--the influence which they would have on the course and development f the human races. The Sun, Moon, and Planets being the never-erring ime-measurers, whose potency and periodicity were well known, became thus espectively the great ruler and rulers of our little system in all its even domains, or "spheres of action."(1498)
This has been so evident and remarkable, that even many of the modern men f Science, Materialists as well as Mystics, have had their attention alled to this law. Physicians and Theologians, Mathematicians and
Psychologists, have repeatedly drawn the attention of the world to this act of periodicity in the behaviour of "Nature." These numbers are xplained in the Commentaries in the following words:
_The Circle is not the __"__One__"__ but the __"__All.__"_
_In the higher [Heaven], the impenetrable Rajah,_(_1499_)_ it [the Circle] ecomes One, because [it is] the indivisible, and there can be no Tau in t._
_In the second [of the three Rajamsi, or the three __"__Worlds__"__], the
One becomes Two [male and female], and Three [with the Son or Logos], and he Sacred Four [the Tetraktys, or Tetragrammaton]._
_In the third [the lower World or our Earth], the number becomes Four, and
Three, and Two. Take the first two, and thou wilt obtain Seven, the sacred umber of life; blend [the latter] with the middle Rajah, and thou wilt ave Nine, the sacred number of Being and Becoming._(1500)
When the Western Orientalists have mastered the real meaning of the Rig
Vedic divisions of the World--the two-fold, three-fold, six- and seven- old, and especially the nine-fold division--the mystery of the cyclic ivisions applied to Heaven and Earth, Gods and Men, will become clearer o them than it is now. For:
_There is a harmony of numbers in all nature; in the force of
gravity, in the planetary movements, in the laws of heat, light,
electricity, and chemical affinity, in the forms of animals and
plants, in the perceptions of the mind._ The direction, indeed, of
modern natural and physical science is towards a generalization
which shall express the fundamental laws of all, by one simple
numerical ratio. We would refer to Professor Whewell's _Philosophy
of the Inductive Sciences_, and to Mr. Hay's researches into the
laws of harmonious colouring and form. _From these it appears that
the number seven is distinguished in the laws regulating the
harmonious perception of forms, colours, and sounds_, and probably
of taste also, if we could analyze our sensations of this kind
with mathematical accuracy.(1501)
So much so, indeed, that more than one Physician has stood aghast at the
_septenary_ periodical return of the cycles in the rise and fall of arious complaints, and Naturalists have felt themselves at an utter loss o explain this law.
The birth, growth, maturity, vital functions, healthy revolutions
of change, diseases, decay and death, of insects, reptiles,
fishes, birds, mammals, and even of man, are more or less
controlled by a law of _completion in weeks_ [or seven
days].(1502)
Dr. Laycock, writing on the "Periodicity of Vital Phenomena,"(1503) ecords a "most remarkable illustration and confirmation of the law in nsects."(1504)
To all of which Mr. Grattan Guinness remarks very pertinently, as he efends biblical chronology:
And man's life ... is a _week_, a _week of decades_. "The days of
our years are three-score years and ten." Combining the testimony
of all these facts, we are bound to admit that _there prevails in
organic nature a law of septiform periodicity, a law of completion
in weeks_.(1505)
Without accepting the conclusions, and especially the premises of the earned founder of "The East London Institute for Home and Foreign
Missions," the writer accepts and welcomes his researches in the Occult hronology of the _Bible_; just as, while rejecting the theories, ypotheses, and generalizations of Modern Science, we bow before its great chievements in the world of the Physical, or in all the minor details of aterial Nature.
There is most assuredly an Occult "chronological system in Hebrew cripture," the _Kabalah_ being its warrant; moreover there is in it "a ystem of weeks," based on the archaic Indian system, which may still be ound in the old Jyotisha.(1506) And there are in it cycles of the "_week_ f days," of the "_week_ of months," of years, of centuries, and even of illenniums, and more, of the "week of years of years."(1507) But all this an be found in the Archaic Doctrine. And if the common source of the hronology in every scripture, however _veiled_, is denied in the case of he _Bible_; then it will have to be shown how, in face of the six days nd the seventh (a Sabbath), we can escape connecting the Genetic with the
Paurânic Cosmogonies. For the first "week of creation" shows the eptiformity of its chronology and thus connects it with Brahmâ's "seven reations." The able volume from the pen of Mr. Grattan Guinness, in which e has collected in some 760 pages every proof of this septiform alculation, is good evidence. For if the biblical chronology is, as he ays, "regulated by the law of weeks," and if it is septenary, whatever he measures of the creation week and the length of its days may be, and f, finally, "the Bible system includes weeks on a great variety of cales," then this system is shown to be identical with all the Pagan ystems. Moreover, the attempt to show that 4,320 years, in lunar months, lapsed between the "Creation" and the "Nativity," is a clear and nmistakable connection with the 4,320,000 years of the Hindű Yugas.
Otherwise, why make such efforts to prove that these figures, which are reëminently Chaldćan and Indo-Âryan, play such a part in the _New
Testament_? This we shall now prove still more forcibly.
Let the impartial critic compare the two accounts--the _Vishnu Purâna_ and he _Bible_--and he will find that the "seven creations" of Brahmâ are at he foundation of the "week of creation" in _Genesis_. The two allegories re different, but the systems are both built on the same foundation- tone. The _Bible_ can be understood _only by the light of_ the _Kabalah_.
Take the _Zohar_, the "Book of Concealed Mystery," however now disfigured, nd compare. The seven Rishis and the fourteen Manus, of the seven
Manvantaras, issue from Brahmâ's head; they are his "Mind-born Sons," and t is with them that begins the division of mankind into its Races from he Heavenly Man, the manifested Logos, who is Brahmâ Prajâpati. Speaking f the "Skull" (Head) of Macroprosopus, the Ancient One(1508) (in Sanskrit
Sanat is an appellation of Brahmâ), the _Ha Idra Rabba Qadisha_, or
"Greater Holy Assembly," says that in every one of his hairs is a hidden ountain issuing from the concealed brain.
And it shineth and goeth forth through that hair unto the hair of
Microprosopus, and from it [which is the manifest Quaternary, the
Tetragrammaton] is his brain formed; and thence that brain goeth
forth into _thirty_ and _two_ paths [or the Triad and the Duad, or
again 432].
And again:
Thirteen curls of hair exist on the one side and on the other of
the skull [_i.e._, six on one and six on the other, the thirteenth
being also the fourteenth, as it is male-female]; ... and through
them commenceth the division of the hair [the division of things,
of mankind and the races].(1509)
"We _six_ are lights which shine forth from a _seventh_ (light)," saith
Rabbi Abba; "_thou art the seventh light_"--the synthesis of us all--he dds, speaking of Tetragrammaton and his seven "companions," whom he calls he "eyes of Tetragrammaton."(1510)
Tetragrammaton is Brahmâ Prajâpati, who assumed _four_ forms, in order to reate four kinds of _supernal_ creatures, _i.e._, made himself _four- old_, or the manifest Quaternary;(1511) after that, he is re-born in the
_seven_ Rishis, his Mânasaputras, "Mind-born Sons," who became later, ine, twenty-one, and so on, and who are all said to be born from various arts of Brahmâ.(1512)
There are two Tetragrammatons: the Macroprosopus and the Microprosopus.
The first is the absolute perfect Square, or the Tetraktys within the
Circle, both abstract conceptions, and is therefore called Ain--Non-being,
_i.e._, illimitable or absolute "Be-ness." But when viewed as
Microprosopus, or the Heavenly Man, the Manifested Logos, he is the
Triangle in the Square--the _sevenfold_ Cube, not the fourfold, or the lane Square. For it is written in "The Greater Holy Assembly":
And concerning this, the children of Israel wished to inquire in
their hearts [know in their minds], like as it is written, Exod.
xvii. 7: "Is the Tetragrammaton in the midst of us, or the
Negatively Existent One?"(1513)
--where they distinguished between Microprosopus, who is called
Tetragrammaton, and between Macroprosopus, who is called Ain, the
Negatively Existent.(1514)
Therefore, Tetragrammaton is the Three _made_ four and the Four made hree, and is represented on this Earth by his seven "Companions," or
"Eyes"--the "seven eyes of the Lord." Microprosopus is, at best, only a
_secondary_ manifested Deity. For "The Greater Holy Assembly" elsewhere ays:
We have learned that there _were ten_ (_Rabbis_) [Companions]
entered into (_the Assembly_) [the Sod, "mysterious assembly or
mystery"] and that _seven_ came forth(1515) [_i.e._, _ten_ for the
unmanifested, seven for the manifested Universe].
1158. And when Rabbi Schimeon revealed the Arcana, there were
found none present there save those [seven] (_companions_). And
Rabbi Schimeon called them the seven eyes of Tetragrammaton, like
as it is written, Zach. iii. 9: "These are the seven eyes [or
principles] of Tetragrammaton" [--_i.e._, the four-fold Heavenly
Man, or pure Spirit, is resolved into septenary man, pure Matter
and Spirit].(1516)
Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male-female
Chokmah-Binah, the second and third Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the ery essence of number _seven_, in its terrestrial significance. Seven tands between four and nine--the basis and foundation, astrally, of our hysical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth.
For Christians and believers, this reference to _Zechariah_ and especially o the _Epistle of Peter_,(1517) ought to be conclusive. In the old ymbolism, "man," chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man is called a "stone."
Christ is the corner-stone, and Peter refers to all men as "lively"
(living) stones. Therefore a "stone with seven eyes" on it can only mean a an whose constitution (_i.e._, his "principles") is septenary.
To demonstrate more clearly the seven in Nature, it may be added that not nly does the number seven govern the periodicity of the phenomena of ife, but that it is also found dominating the series of chemical lements, and equally paramount in the world of sound and in that of olour as revealed to us by the spectroscope. This number is the factor,
_sine quâ non_, in the production of occult astral phenomena.
It is needless to refer in detail to the number of vibrations constituting he notes of the musical scale; they are strictly analogous to the scale f chemical elements, and also to the scale of colour as unfolded by the pectroscope, although in the latter case we deal with only _one_ octave, hile both in music and chemistry we find a series of _seven_ octaves epresented theoretically, of which _six_ are fairly complete and in rdinary use in both sciences. Thus, to quote Hellenbach:
It has been established that, from the standpoint of phenomenal
law, upon which all our knowledge rests, the vibrations of sound
and light increase regularly, that they divide themselves into
_seven_ columns, and that the successive numbers in each column
are closely allied; _i.e._, that they exhibit a close relationship
which not only is expressed in the figures themselves, but also is
practically confirmed in chemistry as in music, in the latter of
which the ear confirms the verdict of the figures.... The fact
that this periodicity and variety is governed by the number
_seven_ is undeniable, and it far surpasses the limits of mere
chance, and must be assumed to have an adequate cause, which cause
must be discovered.
Verily, then, as Rabbi Abba said:
We are six lights which shine forth from a seventh (_light_); thou
[Tetragrammaton] art the seventh light (_the origin of_) us all.
For assuredly there is no stability in those six, save (_what they
derive_) from the seventh. For all things depend from the
seventh.(1518)
The ancient and modern Western American Zuńi Indians seem to have ntertained similar views. Their present-day customs, their traditions and ecords, all point to the fact that, from time immemorial, their nstitutions, political, social and religious, were, and still are, shaped ccording to the septenary principle. Thus all their ancient towns and illages were built in clusters of six, around a seventh. It is always a roup of seven, or of thirteen, and always the six surround the seventh.
Again, their sacerdotal hierarchy is composed of six "Priests of the
House" seemingly synthesized in the seventh, who is a woman, the
"Priestess Mother." Compare this with the "seven great officiating riests" spoken of in the _Anugîtâ_, the name given to the "seven senses," xoterically, and to the seven human principles, Esoterically. Whence this dentity of symbolism? Shall we still doubt the fact of Arjuna going over o Pâtâla, the Antipodes, America, and there marrying Ulűpî, the daughter f the Nâga, or rather Nargal, king? But to the Zuńi priests.
These receive, to this day, an annual tribute of corn of seven colours.
Undistinguished from other Indians during the rest of the year, on a ertain day they come out--six priests and one priestess--arrayed in their riestly robes, each of a colour sacred to the particular God whom the riest serves and personifies; each of them representing one of the seven egions, and each receiving corn of the colour corresponding to that egion. Thus, the white represents the East, because from the East comes he first sun-light; the yellow corresponds to the North, from the colour f the flames produced by the Aurora Borealis; the red, the South, as from hat quarter comes the heat; the blue stands for the West, the colour of he Pacific Ocean, which lies to the West; black is the colour of the ether underground region--darkness; corn with grains of all colours on one ar represents the colours of the upper region--of the firmament, with its osy and yellow clouds, shining stars, etc. The "speckled" corn, each rain containing all the colours, is that of the "Priestess-Mother"--woman ontaining in herself the seeds of all races past, present and future; Eve eing the mother of all living.
Apart from these was the Sun--the Great Deity--whose priest was the piritual head of the nation. These facts were ascertained by Mr. F.
Hamilton Cushing, who, as many are aware, became a Zuńi, lived with them, as initiated into their religious mysteries, and has learned more about hem than any other man now living.
Seven is also the great magic number. In the Occult Records the weapon entioned in the _Purânas_ and the _Mahâbhârata_--the Âgneyâstra or "fiery eapon" bestowed by Aurva upon his Chelâ Sagara--is said to be constructed f seven elements. This weapon--supposed by some ingenious Orientalists to ave been a "rocket" (!)--is one of the many thorns in the side of our odern Sanskritists. Wilson exercises his penetration over it, on several ages in his _Specimens of the Hindű Theatre_, and finally fails to xplain it. He can make nothing out of the Âgneyâstra, for he argues:
These weapons are of a very unintelligible character. Some of them
are occasionally wielded as missiles; but, in general, they
_appear to be mystical powers exercised by the individual_--such as
those of paralyzing an enemy, or _locking his senses fast in
sleep_, or bringing down storm, and rain, and fire, from
heaven.(1519)... They are supposed to assume celestial shapes,
endowed with human faculties.... The _Râmâyana_ calls them the
sons of Krishâshva.(1520)
The Shastra-devatâs, "Gods of the divine weapons," are no more
Âgneyâstras, the weapons, than the gunners of modern artillery are the annon they direct. But this simple solution did not seem to strike the minent Sanskritist. Nevertheless, as he himself says of the armiform rogeny of Krishâshva, "the allegorical origin of the Âgneyâstra weapons s, undoubtedly, the more ancient."(1521) It is the fiery javelin of
Brahmâ.
The seven-fold Âgneyâstra, like the seven senses and the seven principles, ymbolized by the seven priests, are of untold antiquity. How old is the octrine believed in by Theosophists, the following Section will tell.
F. The Seven Souls Of The Egyptologists.
If one turns to those wells of information, _The Natural Genesis_ and the
_Lectures_ of Mr. Gerald Massey, the proofs of the antiquity of the octrine under analysis become positively overwhelming. That the belief of he author differs from ours can hardly invalidate the facts. He views the ymbol from a purely natural standpoint, one perhaps a trifle too aterialistic, because too much that of an ardent Evolutionist and ollower of the modern Darwinian dogmas. Thus he shows that:
The student of Böhme's books finds much in them concerning these
Seven "Fountain Spirits," and primary powers, treated as seven
properties of Nature in the alchemistic and astrological phase of
the medićval mysteries....
The followers of Böhme look on such matter as the divine
revelation of his inspired Seership. They know nothing of the
natural genesis, the history and persistence of the "Wisdom"(1522)
of the past (or of the broken links), and are unable to recognize
the physical features of the ancient "Seven Spirits" beneath their
modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link
between the theosophy of Böhme and the physical origins of
Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of _Hermes
Trismegistus_.(1523) No matter whether these teachings are called
Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or Christian,
the elemental types can only be truly known in their
beginnings.(1524) When the prophets or visionary showmen of
cloudland come to us claiming original inspiration, and utter
something new, we judge of its value by what it is in itself. But
if we find they bring us the ancient matter which they cannot
account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge it by
the primary significations rather than the latest
pretensions.(1525) It is useless for us to read our later thought
into the earliest types of expression, and then say the ancients
meant that!(1526) Subtilized interpretations which have become
doctrines and dogmas in theosophy have now to be tested by their
genesis in physical phenomena, in order that we may explode their
false pretensions to supernatural origin or supernatural
knowledge.(1527)
But the able author of _The Book of the Beginnings_ and of _The Natural
Genesis_ does--very fortunately, for us--quite the reverse. He demonstrates ost triumphantly our Esoteric (Buddhist) teachings, by showing them dentical with those of Egypt. Let the reader judge from his learned ecture on "The Seven Souls of Man."(1528) Says the author:
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.(1529)
Just so, for the Hindűs place their seven primitive Rishis in the Great
Bear, and call this constellation the abode of the Saptarshi, Riksha and
Chitra-shikhandinas. And their Adepts claim to know whether it is only an stronomical myth, or a primordial mystery having a deeper meaning than it ears on its surface. We are also told that:
The Egyptians divided the face of the sky by night into seven
parts. The primary Heaven was sevenfold.(1530)
So it was with the Âryans. One has but to read the _Purânas_ about the eginnings of Brahmâ and his Egg, to see this. Have the Âryans then, taken he idea from the Egyptians? But, as the lecturer proceeds:
The earliest forces recognized in Nature were reckoned as seven in
number. These became Seven Elementals, devils [?], or later
divinities. Seven properties were assigned to Nature--as matter,
cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station, and
division--and _seven elements or souls to man_.(1531)
All this was taught in the Esoteric Doctrine, but it was interpreted and ts mysteries unlocked, as already stated, with _seven_, not two or, at he utmost, three keys; hence the causes and their effects worked in nvisible or mystic as well as in psychic Nature, and were made referable o Metaphysics and Psychology as much as to Physiology. As the author ays:
A principle of _sevening_, so to say, was introduced, and the
number seven supplied a sacred type _that could be used for
manifold purposes_.(1532)
And it was so used. For:
The seven souls of the Pharaoh are often mentioned in the Egyptian
texts.... _Seven souls, or principles in man were identified by
our British Druids_.... The Rabbins also ran the number of souls
up to seven: so, likewise, do the Karens of India.(1533)
And then, the author, with several misspellings, tabulates the two eachings--the Esoteric and the Egyptian--and shows that the latter had the ame series and in the same order.
[Esoteric] Indian. Egyptian.
1. Rűpa, body or element of 1. Kha, body. orm.
2. Prâna, the breath of life. 2. Ba, the soul of breath.
3. Astral body. 3. Khaba, the shade.
4. Manas, or 4. Akhu, intelligence or ntelligence.(1534) perception.
5. Kâma Rűpa, or animal soul. 5. Seb, ancestral soul.
6. Buddhi, or spiritual soul. 6. Putah, the first
intellectual father.
7. Âtmâ, pure spirit. 7. Atmu, a divine, or eternal
soul.(1535)
Further on, the lecturer formulates these seven (Egyptian) Souls, as (1)
The Soul of Blood--the _formative_; (2) The Soul of Breath--that _breathes_;
(3) The Shade or Covering Soul--that _envelopes_; (4) The Soul of
Perception--that _perceives_; (5) The Soul of Pubescence--that _procreates_;
(6) The Intellectual Soul--that _reproduces intellectually_; and (7) The
Spiritual Soul--that is _perpetuated permanently_.
From the exoteric and physiological standpoint this may be very correct; t becomes less so from the Esoteric point of view. To maintain this, does ot at all mean that the "Esoteric Buddhists" _resolve men into a number f elementary spirits_, as Mr. G. Massey, in the same lecture, accuses hem of maintaining. No "Esoteric Buddhist" has ever been guilty of any uch absurdity. Nor has it been ever imagined that these shadows "become piritual beings in another world," or "seven potential spirits or lementaries of another life." What is maintained is simply that every ime the immortal Ego incarnates it becomes, as a total, a compound unit f Matter and Spirit, which together act on seven different planes of eing and consciousness. Elsewhere, Mr. Gerald Massey adds:
The seven souls [our "principles"] ... are often mentioned in the
Egyptian texts. The moon-god, Taht-Esmun, or the later sun-god,
expressed the seven nature-powers that were prior to himself, and
were summed up in him as his seven souls [we say "principles"]....
The seven stars in the hand of the Christ in Revelation, have the
same significance.(1536)
And a still greater one, as these stars represent also the _seven keys_ of he Seven Churches or the Sodalian Mysteries, kabalistically. However, we ill not stop to discuss, but add that other Egyptologists have also iscovered that the septenary constitution of man was a cardinal doctrine ith the old Egyptians. In a series of remarkable articles in the
_Sphinx_, of Munich, Herr Franz Lambert gives incontrovertible proof of is conclusions from the _Book of the Dead_ and other Egyptian records.
For details the reader must be referred to the articles themselves.
Böhme, the prince of all the medićval seers, says:
We find seven especial properties in nature whereby this only
Mother works all things [which he calls fire, light, sound (the
upper three) and _desire_, _bitterness_, _anguish_, and
_substantiality_, thus analyzing the lower in his own mystic way];
whatever the six forms are spiritually, that the seventh [the body
or substantiality], is essentially. These are the seven forms of
the Mother of all Beings, from whence all that is in this world is
generated.(1537)
And again:
The Creator hath, in the body of this world, generated himself as
it were _creaturely_ in his qualifying or Fountain Spirits, and
all the stars are ... God's powers, and the whole body of the
world consisteth in the seven qualifying or fountain
spirits.(1538)
This is rendering in mystical language our theosophical doctrine. But how an we agree with Mr. Gerald Massey when he states that:
The Seven Races of Men that have been sublimated and made
Planetary [?] by Esoteric Buddhism,(1539) may be met with in the
Bundahish as (1) the earth-men; (2) water-men; (3) breast-eared
men; (4) breast-eyed men; (5) one-legged men; (6) bat-winged men;
(7) men with tails.(1540)
Each of these descriptions, allegorical and even perverted in their later orm, is, nevertheless, an echo of the Secret Doctrine teaching. They all efer to the pre-human evolution of the "Water-men terrible and bad" by
_unaided_ Nature through millions of years, as previously described. But e deny point-blank the assertion that "these were never real races," and oint to the Archaic Stanzas for our answer. It is easy to infer and to ay that our "instructors have mistaken these shadows of the Past, for hings human and spiritual"; but that "they are neither, and never were ither," it is less easy to prove. The assertion must ever remain on a par ith the Darwinian claim that man and the ape had a common pithecoid ncestor. What the lecturer takes for a "mode of expression" and nothing ore, in the Egyptian _Ritual_, we take as having quite another and an mportant meaning. Here is one instance. Says the _Ritual_, the _Book of he Dead_:
"I am the mouse." "I am the hawk." "I am the ape."... "_I am the
crocodile whose soul comes from_ MEN."... "_I am the soul of the
gods._"(1541)
The last sentence but one is explained by the lecturer, who says arenthetically, "_that is, as a type of intelligence_," and the last as eaning, "the Horus, or Christ, as the outcome of all."
The Occult Teaching answers: It means far more.
It gives first of all a corroboration of the teaching that, while the uman Monad has passed on Globe A and others, in the First Round, through ll the three kingdoms--the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal--in this ur Fourth Round, every mammal has sprung from Man, if the semi-ethereal, any-shaped creature with the _human_ Monad in it, of the first two Races, an be regarded as Man. But it must be so called; for, in the Esoteric anguage, it is not the form of flesh, blood, and bones, now referred to s man, which is in any way the Man, but the inner divine Monad with its anifold principles or aspects.
The lecture referred to, however, much as it opposes _Esoteric Buddhism_ nd its teachings, is an eloquent answer to those who have tried to epresent the whole as a new-fangled doctrine. And there are many such, in
Europe, America, and even India. Yet, between the Esotericism of the old
Arhats, and that which has now survived in India among the few Brâhmans ho have seriously studied their Secret Philosophy, the difference does ot appear so very great. It seems centred in, and limited to, the uestion of the order of the evolution of cosmic and other principles, ore than anything else. At all events it is no greater divergence than he everlasting question of the _filioque_ dogma, which since the eighth entury has separated the Roman Catholic from the older Greek Eastern
Church. Yet, whatever the differences in the forms in which the septenary ogma is presented, the substance is there, and its presence and mportance in the Brâhmanical system may be judged by what one of India's earned meta-physicians and Vedântic scholars says of it:
The real esoteric seven-fold classification is one of the most
important, if not the most important classification, which has
received its arrangement from the mysterious constitution of this
eternal type. I may also mention in this connection that the four-
fold classification claims the same origin. The light of life, as
it were, seems to be refracted by the treble-faced prism of
Prakriti, having the three Gunams for its three faces, and divided
into seven rays, which develop in course of time the seven
principles of this classification. The progress of development
presents some points of similarity to the gradual development of
the rays of the spectrum. While the four-fold classification is
amply sufficient for all practical purposes, this real seven-fold
classification is of great theoretical and scientific importance.
It will be necessary to adopt it to explain certain classes of
phenomena noticed by occultists; and it is perhaps better fitted
to be the basis of a perfect system of psychology. It is not the
peculiar property of the "Trans-Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine." In
fact, it has a closer connection with the Brâhmanical Logos than
with the Buddhist Logos. In order to make my meaning clear I may
point out here that the Logos has seven forms. In other words,
there are seven kinds of Logoi in the Cosmos. Each of these has
became the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the
ancient Wisdom-Religion. This classification is not the seven-fold
classification we have adopted. I make this assertion without the
slightest fear of contradiction. The real classification has all
the requisites of a scientific classification. It has seven
distinct principles, which correspond with seven distinct states
of Prajńâ or consciousness. It bridges the gulf between the
objective and subjective, and indicates the mysterious circuit
through which ideation passes. The seven principles are allied to
seven states of matter, and to seven forms of force. These
principles are harmoniously arranged between two poles, which
define the limits of _human_ consciousness.(1542)
The above is perfectly correct, save, perhaps, on one point. The "seven- old classification" in the Esoteric System has never (to the writer's nowledge) been claimed by any one belonging to it, as "the peculiar roperty of the 'Trans-Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine' "; but only as having urvived in that old School alone. It is no more the property of the
Trans-, than it is of the Cis-Himâlayan Esoteric Doctrine, but is simply he common inheritance of all such Schools, left to the Sages of the Fifth
Root-Race by the great Siddhas(1543) of the Fourth. Let us remember that he Atlanteans became the terrible sorcerers, now celebrated in so many of he oldest MSS. of India, only toward their "Fall," whereby the submersion f their Continent was brought on. What is claimed is simply that the
Wisdom imparted by the "Divine Ones"--born through the Kriyâshaktic powers f the Third Race before its Fall and separation into sexes--to the Adepts f the early Fourth Race, has remained in all its pristine purity in a ertain Brotherhood. The said School or Fraternity being closely connected ith a certain island of an inland sea--believed in by both Hindűs and
Buddhists, but called "mythical" by Geographers and Orientalists--the less ne talks of it, the wiser he will be. Nor can one accept the said "seven- old classification" as having "a closer connection with the Brâhmanical
Logos than with the Buddhist Logos," since both are identical, whether the ne Logos is called Îshvara or Avalokiteshvara, Brahmâ or Padmapâni. These re, however, very small differences, more fanciful than real, in fact.
Brâhmanism and Buddhism, both viewed from their orthodox aspects, are as nimical and as irreconcilable as water and oil. Each of these great odies, however, has a vulnerable place in its constitution. While even in heir esoteric interpretation both can agree but to disagree, once that heir respective vulnerable points are confronted, every disagreement must all, for the two will find themselves on common ground. The "Achilles' eel" of orthodox Brâhmanism is the Advaita philosophy, whose followers re called by the pious "Buddhists in disguise"; as that of orthodox
Buddhism is Northern Mysticism, as represented by the disciples of the hilosophies of the Yogâchârya School of Âryâsangha and the Mahâyâna, who re twitted in their turn by their co-religionists as "Vedântins in isguise." The Esoteric Philosophy of both these can be but one if arefully analyzed and compared, as Gautama Buddha and Shankarâchârya are ost closely connected, if one believes tradition and certain Esoteric
Teachings. Thus every difference between the two will be found one of form ather than of substance.
A most mystic discourse, full of septenary symbology, may be found in the
_Anugita_(1544) There the Brâhmana narrates the bliss of having crossed eyond the regions of illusion:
In which fancies are the gadflies and mosquitoes, in which grief
and joy are cold and heat, in which delusion is the blinding
darkness, in which avarice is the beasts of prey and reptiles, in
which desire and anger are the obstructors.
The sage describes the entrance into and exit from the forest--a symbol for an's life-time--and also that forest itself:(1545)
In that forest are seven large trees [the senses, mind and
understanding, or Manas and Buddhi, included], seven fruits, and
seven guests; seven hermitages, seven (forms of) concentration,
and seven (forms of) initiation. This is the description of the
forest. That forest is filled with trees producing splendid
flowers and fruits of five colours.
The senses, says the commentator:
Are called trees, as being producers of the fruits ... pleasures
and pains ...; the guests are the powers of each sense
personified--they receive the fruits above described; the
hermitages are the trees ... in which the guests take shelter; the
seven forms of concentration are the exclusion from the self of
the seven functions of the seven senses, etc., already referred
to; the seven forms of initiation refer to the initiation into the
higher life, by repudiating as not one's own the actions of each
member out of the group of seven.(1546)
The explanation is harmless, if unsatisfactory. Says the Brâhmana, ontinuing his description:
That forest is filled with trees producing flowers and fruits of
four colours. That forest is filled with trees producing flowers
and fruits of three colours, and mixed. That forest is filled with
trees producing flowers and fruits of two colours, and of
beautiful colours. That forest is filled with trees producing
flowers and fruits of one colour, and fragrant. That forest is
filled [instead of with seven] with two large trees producing
numerous flowers and fruits of undistinguished colours [mind and
understanding--the two higher senses, or theosophically, Manas and
Buddhi]. There is one fire [the Self] here, connected with the
Brahman,(1547) and having a good mind [or _true knowledge_,
according to Arjuna Mishra]. And there is fuel here, (namely) the
five senses [or human passions]. The seven (forms of) emancipation
from them are the seven (forms of) initiation. The qualities are
the fruits.... There ... the great sages receive hospitality. And
when they have been worshipped and have disappeared, another
forest shines forth, in which _intelligence_ is the tree, and
emancipation the fruit, and which possesses shade (in the form of)
tranquillity, which depends on knowledge, which has contentment
for its water, and which has the Kshetrajńa(1548) within for the
sun.
Now, all the above is very plain, and no Theosophist, even among the least earned, can fail to understand the allegory. And yet, we see great
Orientalists making a perfect mess of it in their explanations. The "great ages" who "receive hospitality" are explained as meaning the senses,
"which, having worked _as unconnected with the self_ are finally absorbed nto it." But one fails to understand, if the senses are "unconnected" ith the "Higher Self," in what manner they can be "absorbed into it." One ould think, on the contrary, that it is just because the _personal_ enses gravitate and strive to be connected with the _impersonal_ Self, hat the latter, which is Fire, burns the lower five and purifies thereby he higher two, "mind and understanding," or the higher aspects of
Manas(1549) and Buddhi. This is quite apparent from the text. The "great ages" _disappear_ after having "been worshipped." Worshipped by whom if hey (the presumed senses) are "unconnected with the self"? By Mind, of ourse; by Manas (in this case merged in the _sixth sense_) which is not, nd cannot be, the Brahman, the Self, or Kshetrajńa--the Soul's Spiritual
Sun. Into the latter, in time, Manas itself must be absorbed. It has orshipped "great sages" and given hospitality to _terrestrial_ wisdom; ut once that "another forest shone forth" upon it, it is Intelligence
(Buddhi, the seventh sense, but sixth principle) which is transformed into
_the_ Tree--that Tree whose fruit is emancipation--which finally destroys he very roots of the Ashvattha tree, the symbol of _life_ and of its llusive joys and pleasures. And therefore, those who attain to that state f emancipation have, in the words of the above-cited Sage, "no fear fterwards." In this state "the end cannot be perceived because it extends n all sides."
"There always dwell seven females there," he goes on to say, carrying out he imagery. These females--who, according to Arjuna Mishra, are the Mahat,
Ahamkâra and five Tanmâtras--have always their faces turned downwards, as hey are obstacles in the way of spiritual ascension.
In that same [Brahman, the Self] the seven perfect sages, together
with their chiefs, ... abide, and again emerge from the same.
Glory, brilliance and greatness, enlightenment, victory,
perfection and power--these seven rays follow after this same sun
[Kshetrajńa, the Higher Self].... Those whose wishes are reduced
[the unselfish]; ... whose sins [passions] are burnt up by
penance, merging the self in the self,(1550) devote themselves to
Brahman. Those people who understand the forest of knowledge
[Brahman, or the Self], praise tranquillity. And aspiring to that
forest, they are [re-] born so as not to lose courage. Such,
indeed, is this holy forest.... And understanding it, they [the
sages] act (accordingly), being directed by the Kshetrajńa.
No translator among the Western Orientalists has yet perceived in the oregoing allegory anything higher than mysteries connected with acrificial ritualism, penance, or ascetic ceremonies, and Hatha Yoga. But e who understands symbolical imagery, and hears the voice of _Self within
Self_, will see in this something far higher than mere ritualism, however ften he may err in minor details of the Philosophy.
And here we must be allowed a last remark. No true Theosophist, from the ost ignorant up to the most learned, ought to claim infallibility for nything he may say or write upon Occult matters. The chief point is to dmit that, in many a way, in the classification of either cosmic or human rinciples, in addition to mistakes in the order of evolution, and specially on metaphysical questions, those of us who pretend to teach thers more ignorant than ourselves--are all liable to err. Thus mistakes ave been made in _Isis Unveiled_, in _Esoteric Buddhism_, in _Man_, in
_Magic: White and Black_, etc., and more than one mistake is likely to be ound in the present work. This cannot be helped. For a large or even a mall work on such abstruse subjects to be entirely exempt from error and lunder, it would have to be written from its first to its last page by a reat Adept, if not by an Avatâra. Then only should we say, "This is erily a work without sin or blemish in it!" But so long as the artist is mperfect, how can his work be perfect? "Endless is the search for truth!"
Let us love it and aspire to it for its own sake, and not for the glory or enefit a minute portion of its revelation may confer on us. For who of us an presume to have the _whole_ truth at his fingers' ends, even upon one inor teaching of Occultism?
Our chief point in the present subject, however, has been to show that the eptenary doctrine, or division of the constitution of man, was a very ncient one, and was not invented by us. This has been successfully done, or we are supported in this, consciously and unconsciously, by a number f ancient, medićval, and modern writers. What the former said, was well aid; what the latter repeated, has generally been distorted. An instance:
Read the Pythagorean Fragments, and study the septenary man as given by he Rev. G. Oliver, the learned Mason, in his _Pythagorean Triangle_, who peaks as follows:
The Theosophic Philosophy ... counted seven properties [or
principles] in man--viz.:
(1) The divine golden man.
(2) The inward holy body from fire and light, like pure silver.
(3) The elemental man.
(4) The mercurial ... paradisiacal man.
(5) The martial soul-like man.
(6) The venerine, ascending to the outward desire.
(7) The solar man, [a witness to and] an inspector of the wonders
of God [the Universe].
They had also seven fountain spirits or powers of nature.(1551)
Compare this jumbled account and distribution of Western Theosophic
Philosophy with the latest Theosophic explanations by the Eastern School f Theosophy, and then decide which is the more correct. Verily:
Wisdom hath builded her house,
She hath hewn out her _seven pillars_.(1552)
As to the charge that our School has not adopted the sevenfold lassification of the Brâhmans, but has confused it, this is quite unjust.
To begin with, the "School" is one thing, its exponents (to Europeans) uite another. The latter have first to learn the A B C of practical
Eastern Occultism, before they can be made to understand correctly the remendously abstruse classification based on the seven distinct states of
Prajńâ or Consciousness; and, above all, to realize thoroughly what Prajńâ
_is_, in Eastern metaphysics. To give a Western student that lassification is to try to make him suppose that he can account for the rigin of consciousness, by accounting for the process by which a certain nowledge, though _only one of the states_ of that consciousness, came to im; in other words, it is to make him account for something he knows on
_this_ plane, by something he knows nothing about on the other planes;
_i.e._, to lead him from the spiritual and the psychological, direct to he ontological. This is why the primary, old classification was adopted y the Theosophists--of which classifications in truth there are many.
To busy oneself, after such a tremendous number of independent witnesses nd proofs have been brought before the public, with an additional numeration from theological sources, would be quite useless. The seven apital sins and seven virtues of the Christian scheme are far less hilosophical than even the seven liberal and the seven accursed ciences--or the seven arts of enchantment of the Gnostics. For one of the atter is now before the public, pregnant with danger in the present as or the future. The modern name for it is _Hypnotism_; used as it is by cientific and ignorant Materialists, in the general ignorance of the even principles, it will soon become _Satanism_ in the full acceptation f the term.
PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED.
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. Archaic, or Modern Anthropology?
Whenever the question of the Origin of Man is offered seriously to an nbiassed, honest, and earnest man of Science, the answer comes nvariably: "We do not know." De Quatrefages with his agnostic attitude is ne of such Anthropologists.
This does not imply that the rest of the men of Science are neither fair- inded nor honest, as such a remark would be questionably discreet. But it s estimated that 75 per cent. of European Scientists are Evolutionists.
Are these representatives of Modern Thought all guilty of flagrant isrepresentation of the facts? No one says this--but there are a few very xceptional cases. However, the Scientists, in their anti-clerical nthusiasm and in despair of any alternative theory to Darwinism except hat of "special creation," are unconsciously insincere in "forcing" a ypothesis the elasticity of which is inadequate, and which resents the evere strain to which it is now subjected. Insincerity on the same ubject is, however, patent in ecclesiastical circles. Bishop Temple has ome forward as a thorough-going supporter of Darwinism in his _Religion nd Science_. This clerical writer goes so far as to regard Matter--after t has received its "primal impress"--as the unaided evolver of all cosmic henomena. This view only differs from that of Hćckel, in postulating a ypothetical Deity at "the back of beyont," a Deity which stands entirely loof from the interplay of forces. Such a metaphysical entity is no more he Theological God than is that of Kant. Bishop Temple's truce with aterialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic--apart from the fact hat it involves a total rejection of the biblical cosmogony. In the resence of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our
"learned" age, we Occultists can but smile. But how about loyalty to the
Master such theological truants profess to serve--Christ, and Christendom t large?
However, we have no desire, for the present, to throw down the gauntlet to he clergy, our business being now with materialistic Science alone. The atter, in the person of its best representatives, answers to our uestion, "We do not know;" yet the majority of them act as though
Omniscience were their heirloom, and they knew all things.
For, indeed, this negative reply has not prevented the majority of
Scientists from speculating on the question, each seeking to have his own pecial theory accepted to the exclusion of all others. Thus, from Maillet n 1748, down to Hćckel in 1870, theories on the origin of the human race ave differed as much as the personalities of their inventors themselves.
Buffon, Bory de St. Vincent, Lamarck, E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Gaudry,
Naudin, Wallace, Darwin, Owen, Hćckel, Filippi, Vogt, Huxley, Agassiz, tc., each has evolved a more or less scientific hypothesis of genesis. De
Quatrefages arranges these theories in two principal groups--one based on a apid, and the other on a very gradual transmutation; the former favouring new type (man) produced by a being entirely different, the latter eaching the evolution of man by progressive differentiations.
Strangely enough, it is from the most scientific of these authorities that as emanated the most unscientific of all the theories upon the subject of he Origin of Man. This is now so evident, that the hour is rapidly pproaching when the current teaching about the descent of man from an pe-like mammal will be regarded with less respect than the formation of
Adam out of clay, and of Eve out of Adam's rib. For
It is evident, especially after the most fundamental principles of
Darwinism, that an organized being cannot be a descendant of
another whose development is in an inverse order to its own.
Consequently, in accordance with these principles, man cannot be
considered as the descendant of any simian type whatever.(1553)
Lucae's argument _versus_ the Ape-theory, based on the different flexures f the bones constituting the axis of the skull in the cases of man and he anthropoids, is fairly discussed by Schmidt. He admits that:
The ape as he grows becomes more bestial; man ... more human--
nd seems, indeed, to hesitate a moment before he passes on:
This flexure of the cranial axis may, therefore, still be
emphasized as a human character, in contradistinction to the apes;
the peculiar characteristic of an order can scarcely be elicited
from it; and especially as to the doctrine of descent, this
circumstance seems in no way decisive.(1554)
The writer is evidently not a little disquieted by his own argument. He ssures us that it upsets any possibility of the present apes having been he progenitors of mankind. But does it not also negative the bare ossibility of the man and the anthropoid having had a common--though, so ar, an absolutely theoretical--ancestor?
Even "Natural Selection" itself is with every day more threatened. The eserters from the Darwinian camp are many, and those who were at one time ts most ardent disciples are, owing to new discoveries, slowly but teadily preparing to turn over a new leaf. In the _Journal of the Royal
Microscopical Society_ for October, 1886, we may read as follows:
PHYSIOLOGICAL SELECTION.--Mr. G. J. Romanes finds certain
difficulties in regarding natural selection as a theory for the
origin of species, as it is rather a theory of the origin of
adaptive structures. He proposes to replace it by what he calls
physiological selection, or segregation of the fit. His view is
based on the extreme sensitiveness of the reproductive system to
small changes in the conditions of life, and he thinks that
variations in the direction of greater or less sterility must
frequently occur in wild species. If the variation be such that
the reproductive system, while showing some degree of sterility
with the parent form, continues to be fertile within the limits of
the varietal form, the variation would neither be swamped by
intercrossing nor die out on account of sterility. When a
variation of this kind occurs, the physiological barrier must
divide the species into two parts. The author, in fine, regards
mutual sterility, not as one of the effects of specific
differentiation, but as the cause of it.(1555)
An attempt is made to show the above to be a complement of, and sequence o, the Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy attempt at best. The public ill soon be asked to believe that Mr. C. Dixon's _Evolution without
Natural Selection_ is also Darwinism--expanded, as the author certainly laims it to be!
But it is like splitting the body of a man into three pieces, and then aintaining that each piece is the identical man he was before, nly--expanded. Yet the author states:
Let it be clearly understood that not one single syllable in the
foregoing pages has been written antagonistic to Darwin's theory
of Natural Selection. All I have done is to explain _certain_
phenomena ... the more one studies Darwin's works, the more one is
convinced of the truth of his hypothesis [! !].(1556)
And before this, he alludes to:
The overwhelming array of facts which Darwin gave in support of
his hypothesis, and which triumphantly carried the theory of
Natural Selection over all obstacles and objections.(1557)
This does not prevent the learned author, however, from upsetting this heory as "triumphantly," and from even openly calling his work
_Evolution_ without _Natural Selection_, or, in so many words, with
Darwin's fundamental idea knocked to atoms in it.
As to Natural Selection itself, the utmost misconception prevails among any present-day thinkers, who tacitly accept the conclusions of
Darwinism. It is, for instance, a mere device of rhetoric to credit
Natural Selection with the power of _originating_ species. Natural
Selection is no entity; it is merely a convenient phrase for describing he mode in which the survival of the fit and the elimination of the unfit mong organisms are brought about by the Struggle for Existence. Every roup of organisms tends to multiply beyond the means of subsistence; the onstant battle for life--the "struggle to obtain enough to eat and to scape being eaten" added to the environmental conditions--necessitates a erpetual weeding out of the unfit. The _élite_ of any stock, thus sorted ut, propagate the species and transmit their organic characteristics to heir descendants. All useful variations are thus perpetuated, and a rogressive improvement is effected. But Natural Selection--in the writer's umble opinion, "Selection, _as a Power_"--is in reality a pure myth; specially when it is resorted to as an explanation of the Origin of
Species. It is merely a representative term expressive of the manner in hich "useful variations" are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, "it" an _produce_--_nothing_, and only operates on the rough material presented o "it." The real question at issue is: What _cause_--combined with other econdary causes--produces the "variations" in the organisms themselves?
Many of these secondary causes are purely physical--climatic, dietary, etc.
Very well. But beyond the secondary aspects of organic evolution, a deeper rinciple has to be sought for. The Materialist's "spontaneous ariations," and "_accidental_ divergencies" are self-contradictory terms n a universe of "Matter, Force and _Necessity_." Mere variability of ype, apart from the supervisory presence of a quasi-intelligent impulse, s powerless to account for the stupendous complexities and marvels of the uman body, for instance. The insufficiency of the Darwinists' mechanical heory has been exposed at length by Dr. Von Hartmann among other purely egative thinkers. It is an abuse of the reader's intelligence to write, s does Hćckel, of _blind_ indifferent cells, "arranging themselves into rgans." The Esoteric solution of the origin of animal species is given lsewhere.
Those purely _secondary_ causes of differentiation, grouped under the head f sexual selection, natural selection, climate, isolation, etc., mislead he Western Evolutionist and offer no real explanation whatever of the
"whence" of the "ancestral types" which served as the _starting point_ for hysical development. The truth is that the differentiating "causes" known o Modern Science only come into operation after the _physicalization of he primeval animal root-types out of the astral_. Darwinism only meets
Evolution at its midway point--that is to say, when astral evolution has iven place to the play of the ordinary physical forces with which our resent senses acquaint us. But even here the Darwinian Theory, even with he "expansions" recently attempted, is inadequate to meet the facts of he case. The cause underlying physiological variation in species--one to hich all other laws are subordinate and secondary--is a sub-conscious ntelligence pervading matter, ultimately traceable to a _reflection_ of he Divine and Dhyân-Chohanic wisdom.(1558) A not altogether dissimilar onclusion has been arrived at by so well known a thinker as Ed. von
Hartmann, who, despairing of the efficacy of _unaided_ Natural Selection, egards Evolution as being intelligently guided by the Unconscious--the
Cosmic Logos of Occultism. But the latter acts only mediately through
Fohat, or Dhyân-Chohanic energy, and not quite in the direct manner which he great pessimist describes.
It is this divergence among men of Science, their mutual, and often their
_self_-contradictions, that gives the writer of the present volumes the ourage to bring to light other and older teachings--if only as hypotheses or _future_ scientific appreciation. So evident, even to the humble ecorder of this archaic teaching, though not in any way very learned in
Modern Sciences, are the scientific fallacies and gaps, that she has etermined to touch upon all these, in order to place the two teachings on arallel lines. For Occultism, it is a question of self-defence, and othing more.
So far, _The Secret Doctrine_ has concerned itself with metaphysics, pure nd simple. It has now landed on Earth, and finds itself within the domain f physical Science and practical Anthropology, or those branches of study hich materialistic Naturalists claim as their rightful domain, coolly sserting, furthermore, that the higher and more perfect the working of he Soul, the more amenable it is to the analysis and explanations _of the
Zoologist and the Physiologist alone_.(1559) This stupendous pretension omes from one, who, to prove his pithecoid descent, has not hesitated to nclude the Lemuridć among the ancestors of man; these have been promoted y him to the rank of Prosimić, _indeciduate_ mammals, to which he very ncorrectly contributes a _decidua_ and a discoidal placenta.(1560) For his Hćckel was taken severely to task by de Quatrefages, and criticised y his own brother Materialists and Agnostics--Virchow and du Bois-Reymond, s great, if not greater authorities than himself.(1561)
Such opposition notwithstanding, Hćckel's wild theories are, to this day, till called by some scientific and logical. The mysterious nature of
Consciousness, of Soul, of Spirit in Man being now explained as a mere dvance on the functions of the protoplasmic molecules of the lively
Protista, and the gradual evolution and growth of human mind and "social nstincts" toward civilization having to be traced back to their origin in he civilization of ants, bees, and other creatures--the chances left for n impartial hearing of the doctrines of Archaic Wisdom are few indeed.
The _educated_ profane are told that:
The social instincts of the lower animals have, of late, been
regarded for various reasons _as clearly the origin of morals_,
even of those of man [?], ...
--and that our divine consciousness, our soul, intellect, and aspirations ave worked their "way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul" f the gelatinous Bathybius--(1562) and they seem to believe it. For such en, the Metaphysics of Occultism must produce the effect that our randest oratorios produce on the Chinaman--sounds that jar upon their erves.
Yet, are our Esoteric teachings about "Angels," the first three pre-animal uman Races, and the downfall of the Fourth, _on a lower level of fiction nd self-delusion_ than the Hćckelian "plastidular," or the inorganic
"molecular souls of the Protista"? Between the evolution of the spiritual ature of man from the above amoebian souls, and the alleged development of is physical frame from the protoplastic dweller in the ocean slime, there s an abyss which will not easily be crossed by any man in the _full_ ossession of his intellectual faculties. Physical Evolution, as Modern
Science teaches it, is a subject for open controversy; spiritual and moral evelopment on the same lines is the insane dream of a crass Materialism.
Furthermore, past as well as present daily experience teaches that no ruth has ever been accepted by learned bodies unless it has dovetailed ith the habitually preconceived ideas of their professors. "The crown of he innovator is a crown of thorns"--said Geoffroy St. Hilaire. It is only hat which fits in with popular hobbies and accepted notions that as a eneral rule gains ground. Hence the triumph of the Hćckelian ideas, otwithstanding that they are proclaimed by Virchow, du Bois-Reymond, and thers as the "_testimonium paupertatis_ of Natural Science."
Diametrically opposed as may be the materialism of the German
Evolutionists to the spiritual conceptions of Esoteric Philosophy, adically inconsistent as is their accepted anthropological system with he real facts of Nature--the pseudo-idealistic bias now colouring English hought is almost more pernicious. The pure Materialistic Doctrine admits f a direct refutation and an appeal to the logic of facts. The Idealism f the present day, not only contrives to absorb, on the one hand, the asic negations of Atheism, but lands its votaries in a tangle of
_unreality_, which culminates in a practical Nihilism. Argument with such riters is almost out of the question. Idealists, therefore, will be still ore antagonistic than even the Materialists to the Occult teachings now iven. But as no worse fate can befall the exponents of Esoteric
Anthropogenesis at the hands of their foes than being openly called by heir old and time-honoured names of "lunatics" and "ignoramuses," the resent archaic theories may be safely added to the many modern peculations, and bide their time for their full or even partial ecognition. Only, as the very existence of these archaic theories will robably be denied, we have to give our best proofs and stand by them to he bitter end.
In our race and generation the one "temple in the universe" is in rare ases--_within_ us; but our body and mind have been too defiled by both
"sin" and "science" to be outwardly anything better _now_ than a fane of niquity and error. And here our mutual position--that of Occultism and
Modern Science--ought to be once for all defined.
We, Theosophists, are willing to bow before such men of learning as the ate Prof. Balfour Stewart, Messrs. Crookes, de Quatrefages, Wallace,
Agassiz, Butlerof, and others, though, from the stand-point of the
Esoteric Philosophy, we may not agree with all they say. But nothing will ake us consent to even a show of respect for the opinions of such other en of Science as Hćckel, Carl Vogt, or Ludwig Büchner, in Germany, or ven Mr. Huxley and his co-thinkers in Materialism in England--the colossal rudition of the first named, notwithstanding. Such men are simply the ntellectual and moral murderers of future generations; especially Hćckel, hose crass Materialism often rises to the height of idiotic _naivetés_ in is reasonings. One has but to read his _Pedigree of Man, and Other
Essays_ (Aveling's Translation) to feel a desire that, in the words of
Job, his remembrance should perish from the Earth, and that he "shall have o name in the streets." Hear the creator of the mythical Sozura deriding he idea of the origin of the human race "as a supernatural [?] henomenon," as one--
That could not result from simple mechanical causes, from physical
and chemical forces, but requires the direct intervention of a
creative personality.... Now the central point of Darwin's
teaching ... lies in this, that it demonstrates the simplest
mechanical causes, purely physico-chemical phenomena of nature, as
wholly sufficient to explain the highest and most difficult
problems. Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force,
building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on
a designed plan, a series of natural forces working blindly (as we
say) without aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act of
operation, we have a necessary law of Evolution.... [So had Manu
and Kapila, and, at the same time, guiding, conscious and
intelligent Powers]. Darwin very wisely ... had put on one side
the question as to the first appearance of life. But very soon
that consequence, so full of meaning, so wide-reaching, was openly
discussed by able and brave scientific men, such as Huxley, Carl
Vogt, Ludwig Büchner. A mechanical origin of the earliest living
form was held as the necessary sequence to Darwin's teaching ...
we are at present only concerned with a single consequence of the
theory, the natural origin of the human race through almighty
Evolution.(1563)
To this, unabashed by such a scientific farrago, Occultism replies: In the ourse of Evolution, when the physical triumphed over the spiritual and ental evolution, and nearly crushed it under its weight, the great gift f Kriyâshakti remained the heirloom of only a few elect men in every age.
Spirit strove vainly to _manifest itself in its fulness in purely organic orms_ (as has been explained in Part I of this Volume), and the faculty, hich had been a natural attribute in the early humanity of the Third
Race, became one of the class regarded as simply phenomenal by
Spiritualists and Occultists, and as _scientifically impossible_ by
Materialists.
In our modern day the mere assertion that there exists a power which can reate human forms--ready-made Sheaths within which can incarnate the
_conscious_ Monads or Nirmânakâyas of past Manvantaras--is, of course, bsurd, ridiculous! That which is regarded as quite natural, on the other and, is the production of a Frankenstein's monster, _plus_ moral onsciousness, religious aspirations, genius, and a feeling of his own mmortal nature within himself--by "physico-chemical forces," guided by lind "Almighty Evolution." As to the origin of that man, not _ex nihilo_, emented by a little red clay, but from a living divine Entity onsolidating the Astral Body with surrounding materials--such a conception s too absurd even to be mentioned, in the opinion of the Materialists.
Nevertheless, Occultists and Theosophists are ready to have their claims nd theories compared as to their intrinsic value and probability with hose of the modern Evolutionists--however unscientific and superstitious hese theories may at the first glance appear. Hence the Esoteric teaching s _absolutely_ opposed to the Darwinian evolution, as applied to man, and
_partially_ so with regard to other species.
It would be interesting to obtain a glimpse of the mental representation f Evolution in the scientific brain of a Materialist. What _is_
Evolution? If asked to define the full and complete meaning of the term, either Huxley nor Hćckel will be able to do so any better than does
Webster:
The act of unfolding; the process of growth, development; as the
evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg.
Yet the bud must be traced through its parent-plant to the seed, and the gg to the animal or bird that laid it; or at any rate to the speck of rotoplasm from which it expanded and grew. And both the seed and the peck must have the latent potentialities in them for the reproduction and radual development, the unfolding of the thousand and one forms or phases f evolution, through which they must pass before the flower or the animal s fully developed? Hence, the future plan--if not a design--_must be here_. Moreover, that seed _has to be traced_, and its nature scertained. Have the Darwinians been successful in this? Or will the
Moneron be cast in our teeth? But this atom of the Watery Abysses is _not_ omogeneous matter; and there must be something or somebody that had oulded and cast it into being.
Here Science is once more silent. But since there is no self-consciousness s yet in speck, seed, or germ, according to both Materialists and
Psychologists of the modern school--Occultists agreeing in this for once ith their natural enemies--what is it that guides the force or forces so nerringly in this process of Evolution? "Blind force"? As well call
"blind" the brain which evolved in Hćckel his _Pedigree of Man_ and other ucubrations. We can easily conceive that the said brain lacks an mportant centre or two; for whoever knows anything of the anatomy of the uman, or even of any animal, body, and is still an Atheist and a
Materialist, must be "hopelessly insane," according to Lord Herbert, who ightly sees in the frame of man's body and the coherence of its parts, omething so strange and paradoxical that he holds it to be the "greatest iracle of nature." _Blind_ forces and "_no_ design" in anything under the
Sun! When no sane man of Science would hesitate to say that, even from the ittle he knows and has hitherto discovered of the forces at work in
Kosmos, he sees very plainly that every part, every speck and atom, are in armony with their fellow atoms, and these with the whole, each having its istinct mission throughout the life-cycle. But, fortunately, the reatest, the most eminent Thinkers and Scientists of the day are now eginning to rise against this "Pedigree," and even against Darwin's
Natural Selection theory, though its author had never, probably, ontemplated such widely stretched conclusions. The Russian scientist N.
T. Danilevsky, in his remarkable work, _Darwinism, a Critical
Investigation of the Theory_, upsets such Darwinism completely and without ppeal, and so does de Quatrefages in his last work. Our readers are ecommended to examine the learned paper by Dr. Bourges, a member of the
Paris Anthropological Society, read by its author at a recent meeting of hat society and called "Evolutionary Psychology; the Evolution of Spirit, tc." In it he completely reconciles the two teachings--namely of physical nd spiritual evolution. He explains the origin of the variety of organic orms--which are made to fit their environments with such evidently ntelligent design--by the existence and the mutual help and interaction of wo Principles in manifested Nature, the inner conscious Principle dapting itself to physical Nature and the innate potentialities of the atter. Thus the French scientist has to return to our old friend Archćus, r the Life-Principle--without naming it--as Dr. Richardson has done in
England in his Nerve-Force. The same idea was recently developed in
Germany by Baron Hellenbach, in his remarkable work, _Individuality in the
Light of Biology and Modern Philosophy_.
We find the same conclusions arrived at in yet another excellent volume by deep thinking Russian, N. N. Strachof, who says in his _Fundamental
Conceptions of Psychology and Physiology_:
The most clear, as the most familiar, type of development may be
found in our own mental or physical evolution, which has served
others as a model to follow.... If organisms are entities ... then
it is only just to conclude and assert that the organic life
strives to beget psychic life; but it would be still more correct
and in accordance with the spirit of these two categories of
evolution to say, that the true cause of organic life is the
tendency of spirit to manifest in substantial forms, to clothe
itself in substantial reality. It is the highest form which
contains the complete explanation of the lowest, never the
reverse.
This is admitting, as Bourges does in the Mémoire above mentioned, the dentity of this mysterious, integrally acting and organizing Principle ith the Self-Conscious and Inner Subject, which we call the Ego and the orld at large the Soul. Thus all the best Scientists and Thinkers are radually approaching the Occultists in their general conclusions.
But such metaphysically inclined men of Science are out of court and will ardly be listened to. Schiller, in his magnificent poem on the Veil of
Isis, makes the mortal youth who dared to lift the impenetrable covering all down dead, after beholding the naked Truth in the face of the stern
Goddess. Have some of our Darwinians, so tenderly united in natural election and affinity, also gazed at the Saďtic Mother bereft of her eils? One might almost suspect it after reading their theories. Their reat intellects must have collapsed while gauging too closely the ncovered face of Nature, leaving only the grey matter and ganglia in heir brains to respond to "blind" physico-chemical forces. At any rate
Shakspere's lines apply admirably to our modern Evolutionist, who ymbolizes that "proud man," who--
Drest in a little brief authority;
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep!(1564)
These have nought to do with the "Angels." Their only concern is with the uman ancestor, the pithecoid Noah who gave birth to three sons--the tailed
Cynocephalus, the tailless Ape, and the "arboreal" Palćolithic man. On his point, they will not be contradicted. Every doubt expressed is mmediately set down as an attempt to cripple scientific enquiry. The nsuperable difficulty at the very foundation of the Evolution theory, amely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate definition f the period _at_ which, and the form _in_ which, the first man appeared, s smoothed down to a trifling impediment, which is "really of no ccount." Every branch of knowledge is in the same predicament, we are nformed. The Chemist bases his most abstruse calculations simply
Upon a hypothesis of atoms and molecules, of which not one has
ever been seen, isolated, weighed, or defined. The electrician
speaks of magnetic fluids which have never tangibly revealed
themselves. No definite origin can be assigned either to molecules
or magnetism. Science cannot and does not pretend to any knowledge
of the beginnings of law, matter, or life.(1565)
And, withal, to reject a _scientific hypothesis_, however absurd, is to ommit the one unpardonable sin! We risk it.
Section II. The Ancestors Mankind is Offered by Science.
The question of questions for mankind--the problem which underlies
all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other--is the
ascertainment of the place which man occupies in Nature, and of
his relations to the universe of things.(1566)
The world stands divided this day and hesitates between _Divine
Progenitors_--be they Adam and Eve or the Lunar Pitris--and _Bathybius
Hćckelii_, the gelatinous hermit of the briny deep. Having explained the
Occult theory, it may now be compared with that of Modern Materialism. The eader is invited to choose between the two after having judged them on heir respective merits.
We may derive some consolation for the rejection of our Divine Ancestors, n finding that the Hćckelian speculations receive no better treatment at he hands of strictly _exact_ Science than do our own. Hćckel's
Phylogenesis is no less laughed at by the foes of his fantastic evolution, y other and greater Scientists, than our primeval Races will be. As du
Bois-Reymond puts it, we may believe him easily when he says that the
Ancestral trees of our race sketched in the _Schöpfungsgeschichte_
are of about as much value as are the pedigrees of the Homeric
heroes in the eyes of the historical critic.
This settled, everyone will see that one hypothesis is as good as another.
And as we find Hćckel himself confessing that neither Geology in its istory of the past nor the ancestral history of organisms will ever "rise o the position of a real 'exact' science,"(1567) a large margin is thus eft to Occult Science to make its annotations and lodge its protests. The orld is left to choose between the teachings of Paracelsus, the "father f modern chemistry," and those of Hćckel, the "father of the mythical
Sozura." We demand no more.
Without presuming to take part in the quarrel of such very learned
Naturalists as du Bois-Reymond and Hćckel _ŕ propos_ of our blood elationship to
Those ancestors [of ours] which have led up from the unicellular
classes, Vermes, Acrania, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia to the Aves
--we may put a brief question or two, for the information of our readers.
Availing ourselves of the opportunity, and bearing in mind Darwin's heories of Natural Selection, etc., we would ask Science--with regard to he origin of the human and animal species--which theory of Evolution of he two herewith described is the more scientific, or the more nscientific, if so preferred.
(1) Is it that of an Evolution which starts from the beginning with sexual ropagation?
(2) Or that teaching which shows the gradual development of organs; their olidification, and the procreation of each species, at first by simple asy separation from one into two or even several individuals; then a resh development--the first step to a species of separate distinct exes--the hermaphrodite condition; then again, a kind of parthenogenesis,
"virginal reproduction," when the egg-cells are formed within the body, ssuing from it in atomic emanations and becoming matured outside of it; ntil, finally, after a definite separation into sexes, the human beings egin procreating through sexual connection?
Of these two, the first "theory"--or rather, a "revealed fact"--is nunciated by all the exoteric Bibles, except the _Purânas_, preëminently y the Jewish Cosmogony. The second is that which is taught by the Occult
Philosophy, as has been explained.
An answer is found to our question in a volume just published by Mr.
Samuel Laing--the best lay exponent of Modern Science.(1568) In Chapter iii of his latest work, _A Modern Zoroastrian_, the author begins by witting "all ancient religions and philosophies" for "assuming a male and emale principle for their gods." At first sight, he says:
This distinction of sex appears as fundamental as that of plant
and animal.... The Spirit of God brooding over Chaos and producing
the world is only a later edition, revised according to
monotheistic ideas, of the far older Chaldean legend which
describes the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos by the coöperation
of great gods, male and female.... Thus, in the orthodox Christian
creed we are taught to repeat "begotten, not made," a phrase which
is absolute nonsense, or _non-sense_--that is, an instance of using
words like counterfeit notes, which have no solid value of an idea
behind them. For "begotten" is a very definite term, which implies
the conjunction of two opposite sexes to produce a new
individual.(1569)
However we may agree with the learned author as to the inadvisability of sing wrong words, and the terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in he old Scriptures--especially in the orthodox Christian
_Bible_--nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the ase. Firstly, all these "ancient philosophies" and "modern religions" re--as has been sufficiently shown in these two Volumes--an exoteric veil hrown over the face of Esoteric Truth; and--as the direct result of his--they are allegorical, _i.e._, mythological in form; but still they re immensely more philosophical in essence than any of the new scientific heories, so-called. Secondly, from the Orphic Theogony down to Ezra's ast remodelling of the Pentateuch, every old Scripture, having in its rigin borrowed its facts from the East, has been subjected to constant lterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there has emained but the name, a dead shell from which the spirit had been radually eliminated.
This alone ought to show that no religious work now extant can be nderstood without the help of the Archaic Wisdom, the primitive oundation on which they were all built.
But to return to the direct answer expected from Science to our direct uestion. It is given by the same author, when, following his train of hought on the unscientific euhemerization of the powers of Nature in ncient creeds, he pronounces a condemnatory verdict upon them in the ollowing terms:
Science, however, makes sad havoc with this impression of sexual
generation being the original and only mode of reproduction, and
the microscope and dissecting knife of the naturalist introduce us
to new and altogether unsuspected [?] worlds of life.
So little "unsuspected," indeed, that the original a-sexual "modes of eproduction" must have been known to the ancient Hindűs, at any rate--Mr.
Laing's assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. In view of the tatement in the _Vishnu Purâna_, quoted by us elsewhere, that Daksha
"established sexual intercourse as the means of multiplication," only fter a series of other "modes," which are all enumerated therein,(1570) t becomes difficult to deny the fact. This assertion, moreover, is found, ote well, in an _exoteric_ work. Next, Mr. Laing goes on to tell us that:
By far the larger proportion of living forms, in number at any
rate if not in size, have come into existence, without the aid of
sexual propagation.
He then instances Hćckel's Moneron, "multiplying by self-division." The ext stage the author shows in the nucleated cell, "which does exactly the ame thing." The following stage is that in
Which the organism does not divide into two equal parts, but a
small portion of it swells out ... and finally parts company and
starts on a separate existence, which grows to the size of the
parent by its inherent faculty of manufacturing fresh protoplasm
from surrounding inorganic materials.(1571)
This is followed by a many-celled organism which is formed by
Germ-buds reduced to spores, or single cells, which are emitted
from the parent.... We are now at the threshold of that system of
sexual propagation, which has [now] become the rule in all the
higher families of animals.... This organism, having advantages in
the struggle for life, established itself permanently ... and
special organs developed to meet the altered conditions. Thus at
length the distinction would be firmly established of a female
organ or ovary containing the egg or primitive cell from which the
new being was to be developed, and a male organ supplying the
fertilizing spore or cell.... This is confirmed by a study of
embryology, which shows that in the _human_ and higher animal
species the distinction of sex is not developed until a
considerable progress has been made in the growth of the
embryo.... In the great majority of plants, and in some of the
lower families of animals ... the male and female organs are
developed within the same being, and they are what is called
hermaphrodites. Another transition form is Parthenogenesis, or
virginal reproduction, in which germ-cells, apparently similar in
all respects to egg-cells, develop themselves into new
individuals, without any fructifying element.(1572)
Of all this we are as perfectly well aware as we are aware that the above as never applied by the very learned English popularizer of Huxley-
Hćckelian theories to the _genus homo_. He limits this to specks of rotoplasm, plants, bees, snails, and so on. But if he would be true to he theory of descent, he must be as true to ontogenesis, in which the undamental biogenetic law, we are told, runs as follows:
The development of the embryo (ontogeny) is a condensed and
abbreviated repetition of the evolution of the race (phylogeny).
This repetition is the more complete, the more the true original
order of evolution (palingenesis) has been retained by continual
heredity. On the other hand, this repetition is the less complete,
the more by varying adaptations the later spurious development
(cćnogenesis) has obtained.(1573)
This shows us that every living creature and thing on Earth, including an, evolved from _one common primal form_. Physical man must have passed hrough the same stages of the evolutionary process in the various modes f procreation as other animals have done; he must have _divided_ himself; hen, hermaphrodite, have given birth _parthenogenetically_ (on the mmaculate principle) to his young ones; the next stage would be the
_oviparous_--at first "without any fructifying element," then "with the elp of the fertilitary spore"; and only after the final and definite volution of both sexes, would he become a distinct "male and female," hen reproduction through sexual union would grow into universal law. So ar, all this is scientifically proven. There remains but one thing to be scertained; viz., the plain and comprehensively described processes of uch ante-sexual reproduction. This is done in the Occult books, a slight utline of which has been attempted by the writer in Part I of this
Volume.
Either this, or--man is a distinct being. Occult Philosophy may call him hat, because of his distinctly _dual_ nature. Science cannot do so, once hat it rejects every interference save mechanical laws, and admits of no rinciple outside Matter. The former--Archaic Science--allows the human hysical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to the ery highest, its present one, or from the simple to the complex--to use he accepted terms. But it claims that in this Cycle, the Fourth, the rame having already existed among the types and models of Nature from the receding Rounds--it was quite ready for man from the beginning of this
Round.(1574) The Monad had but to step into the Astral Body of the
Progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin round the shadowy prototype.(1575)
What would Science say to this? It would answer, of course, that as man ppeared on Earth as the latest of the mammalians, he had no need, any ore than these mammals, to pass through the primitive stages of rocreation as above described. His mode of procreation was already stablished on Earth when he appeared. In this case, we may reply: Since o this day not the remotest sign of a link between man and the animal has et been found, then (if the Occult Doctrine is to be repudiated) he must ave sprung _miraculously_ in Nature, like a fully armed Minerva from
Jupiter's brain; and in such case the _Bible_ is right, along with other ational "revelations." Hence the scientific scorn, so freely lavished by he author of _A Modern Zoroastrian_ upon ancient philosophies and xoteric creeds, becomes premature and uncalled for. Nor would the sudden iscovery of a "missing-link"-like fossil mend matters at all. For neither ne such solitary specimen nor the scientific inductions therefrom, could nsure its being the long-sought-for relic, _i.e._, that of an ndeveloped, still a once-speaking, Man. Something more would be required s a final proof. Besides this, even _Genesis_ takes up man, her Adam of ust, only where the Secret Doctrine leaves her "Sons of God and Wisdom" nd picks up the physical man of the Third Race. Eve is _not_ "begotten," ut is extracted out of Adam in the manner of "Amoeba A," contracting in he middle and splitting into Amoeba B--by division.(1576)
Nor has human speech developed from the various animal sounds. Hćckel's heory that "speech arose gradually from a few simple, crude animal ounds," as such "speech still remains amongst a few races of lowest ank,"(1577) is altogether unsound, as argued by Professor Max Müller, mong others. He contends that no plausible explanation has yet been given s to how the "roots" of language came into existence. A _human_ brain is ecessary for _human_ speech. And figures relating to the size of the espective brains of man and ape show how deep is the gulf which separates he two. Vogt says that the brain of the largest ape, the gorilla, easures no more than 30·51 cubic inches; while the average brains of the lat-headed Australian natives--the lowest now of the human races--amount to
99·35 cubic inches! Figures are awkward witnesses and cannot lie.
Therefore, as truly observed by Dr. F. Pfaff, whose premises are as sound nd correct as his biblical conclusions are silly:
The brain of the apes most like man does not amount to quite a
third of the brain of the lowest races of men: it is not half the
size of the brain of a new-born child.(1578)
From the foregoing it is thus very easy to perceive that in order to prove he Huxley-Hćckelian theories of the descent of man, it is not one, but a reat number of "missing links"--a true ladder of progressive evolutionary teps--that would have to be first found and then presented by Science to hinking and reasoning humanity, before it would abandon belief in Gods nd the immortal Soul for the worship of quadrumanic ancestors. Mere myths re now greeted as "axiomatic truths." Even Alfred Russel Wallace aintains with Hćckel that primitive man was a speechless ape-creature. To his Prof. Joly answers:
Man never was, in my opinion, this pithecanthropus alalus whose
portrait Hćckel has drawn as if he had seen and known him, whose
singular and completely hypothetical genealogy he has even given,
from the mere mass of living protoplasm to the man endowed with
speech and a civilization analogous to that of the Australians and
Papuans.(1579)
Hćckel, among other things, often comes into direct conflict with the
"science of languages." In the course of his attack on Evolutionism(1580)
Prof. Max Müller stigmatized the Darwinian theory as "vulnerable at the eginning and at the end." The fact is, that only the partial truth of any of the secondary "laws" of Darwinism is beyond question--M. de
Quatrefages evidently accepting natural selection, the struggle for xistence, and transformation within species, as proven not once and for ver, but only _pro tempore_. But it may not be amiss, perhaps, to ondense the linguistic case against the "ape ancestor" theory:
Languages have their phases of growth, etc., like all else in Nature. It s almost certain that the great linguistic families pass through three tages.
(1) All words are roots and are merely placed in juxtaposition (Radical anguages).
(2) One root defines the other, and becomes merely a determinative element
(Agglutinative).
(3) The determinative element (the determinating meaning of which has long apsed) unites into a whole with the formative element (Inflected).
The problem then is: Whence these roots? Prof. Max Müller argues that the xistence of these _ready-made materials of speech_ is a proof that man annot be the crown of a long organic series. This _potentiality of orming roots_ is the great crux which Materialists almost invariably void.
Von Hartmann explains it as a manifestation of the "Unconscious," and dmits its cogency _versus_ mechanical Atheism. Hartmann is a fair epresentative of the Metaphysician and Idealist of the present age.
The argument has never been met by the non-pantheistic Evolutionists. To ay with Schmidt: "Forsooth we are to halt before the origin of anguage!"--is an avowal of dogmatism and of speedy defeat.(1581)
We respect those men of Science who, wise in their generation, say: The
Prehistoric Past being utterly beyond our powers of direct observation, we re too honest, too devoted to the truth--or what we regard as truth--to peculate upon the unknown, giving out our unproven theories along with acts absolutely established in Modern Science.
The borderland of [metaphysical] knowledge is, therefore, best
left to time, which is the best test as to truth.(1582)
This is a wise and an honest sentence in the mouth of a Materialist. But hen a Hćckel, after just saying that "historical events of past time," aving "occurred many millions of years ago,(1583) ... are for ever emoved from direct observation," and that neither Geology nor
Phylogeny(1584) can or will "rise to the position of a real 'exact' cience," then insists on the development of all organisms--"from the owest vertebrate to the highest, from amphioxus to man"--we ask for a eightier proof than he can give. Mere "empirical sources of knowledge," o extolled by the author of _Anthropogeny_--when he has to be satisfied ith the qualification for his own views--are not competent to settle roblems lying beyond their domain; nor is it the province of exact
Science to place any reliance on them.(1585) If "empirical"--and Hćckel imself declares so repeatedly--then they are no better, nor any more eliable, in the sight of _exact_ research, when extended into the remote ast, than are our Occult teachings of the East, both having to be placed n the same level. Nor are his phylogenetic and palingenetic speculations reated any more favourably by the real Scientists, than are our cyclic epetitions of the evolution of the great in the minor races, and the riginal order of Evolution. For the province of exact, real Science, aterialistic though it be, is to carefully avoid anything like guess- ork, speculation which _cannot_ be verified; in short, all _suppressio eri_ and all _suggestio falsi_. The business of the men of exact Science s to observe, each in his chosen department, the phenomena of Nature; to ecord, tabulate, compare and classify the facts, down to the smallest inutić which are presented to the observation of the senses _with the elp of all the exquisite mechanism that modern invention supplies_, not y the aid of metaphysical flights of fancy. All that he has a legitimate ight to do, is to correct by the assistance of physical instruments the efects or illusions of his own coarser vision, auditory powers, and other enses. He has no right to trespass on the grounds of Metaphysics and
Psychology. His duty is to verify and to rectify all the facts that _fall nder his direct observation_; to profit by the experiences and mistakes f the Past in endeavouring to trace the working of a certain oncatenation of cause and effect, which--but only by its constant and nvarying repetition--may be called a Law. This it is which a man of
Science is expected to do, if he would become a teacher of men and remain rue to his original programme of natural or physical Sciences. Any side ath from this royal road becomes speculation.
Instead of keeping to this, what does many a so-called man of Science do n these days? He rushes into the domain of pure Metaphysics, while eriding them. He delights in rash conclusions and calls them "a deductive aw from the inductive law" of a theory based upon and drawn out of the epths of his own consciousness--that consciousness being perverted by, and oneycombed with, one-sided Materialism. He attempts to explain the
"origin" of things, which are yet embosomed only in his own conceptions.
He attacks spiritual beliefs and religious traditions millenniums old, and enounces everything, save his own hobbies, as superstition. He suggests heories of the Universe, a cosmogony developed by blind, mechanical orces of Nature alone, far more _miraculous and impossible_ than even one ased upon the assumption of _fiat lux ex nihilo_--and tries to astonish he world by his wild theory; and this theory, being known to emanate from scientific brain, is taken, on _blind faith_, as very scientific and as he outcome of Science.
Are these the opponents Occultism should dread? Most decidedly not. For uch theories are treated no better by _real_ Science than are our own by mpirical Science. Hćckel, hurt in his vanity by du Bois-Reymond, is never ired of publicly complaining of the latter's onslaught on his fantastic heory of descent. Rhapsodizing on "the exceedingly rich storehouse of mpirical evidence," he calls those "recognized Physiologists" who oppose very speculation of his drawn from the said "storehouse"--ignorant men, nd declares:
If many men, and among them even some Scientists of repute--hold
that the whole of phylogeny is a castle in the air, and
genealogical trees [from monkeys?] are empty plays of phantasy,
they only in speaking thus demonstrate their ignorance of that
wealth of _empirical sources of knowledge_ to which reference has
already been made.(1586)
We open Webster's Dictionary and read the definitions of the word
"empirical":
Depending upon experience or observation alone, _without due
regard to modern science and theory_.
This applies to the Occultists, Spiritualists, Mystics, etc. Again:
An empiric; one who confines himself to applying the results of
his own observations only [which is Hćckel's case]; one _wanting
science_ ... an ignorant and unlicensed practitioner; a quack; a
charlatan.
No Occultist or "Magician," has ever been treated to any worse epithets.
Yet the Occultist remains on his own metaphysical grounds, and does not ndeavour to rank _his knowledge_, the fruits of _his_ personal bservation and experience, among the _exact_ Sciences of modern learning.
He keeps within his legitimate sphere, where he is master. But what is one o think of a rank Materialist, whose duty is clearly traced before him, ho uses such an expression as this:
The origin of man from other mammals, and most directly from the
catarrhine ape, is a deductive law, that follows necessarily from
the inductive law of the Theory of Descent.(1587)
A "theory" is simply a hypothesis, a speculation, and _not_ a law. To say therwise is one of the many liberties taken now-a-days by Scientists.
They enunciate an absurdity, and then hide it behind the shield of
Science. A deduction from theoretical speculation is nothing more than a
_speculation on a speculation_. Sir William Hamilton has already shown hat the word theory is now used
In a very loose and improper sense ... that it is convertible into
_hypothesis_, and _hypothesis_ is commonly used as another term
for _conjecture_, whereas the terms "theory" and "theoretical" are
properly used in opposition to the terms practice and practical.
But Modern Science puts an extinguisher on the latter statement, and mocks t the idea. Materialistic Philosophers and Idealists of Europe and
America may be agreed with the Evolutionists as to the physical origin of an, yet it will never become a general truth with the true Metaphysician; nd the latter defies the Materialists to make good their arbitrary ssumptions. That the ape-theory theme(1588) of Vogt and Darwin, on which he Huxley-Hćckelians have of late composed such extraordinary variations, s far less scientific--because clashing with the fundamental laws of that heme itself--than ours can ever be shown to be, is very easy of emonstration. Let the reader only turn to the excellent work on _Human
Species_ by the great French Naturalist de Quatrefages, and our statement ill at once be verified.
Moreover, between the Esoteric teaching concerning the Origin of Man and
Darwin's speculations, no man, unless he is a rank Materialist, will esitate. This is the description given by Mr. Darwin of "the early rogenitors of man."
They must have been once covered with hair, both sexes having
beards; their ears were probably pointed and capable of movement;
and their bodies were provided with a tail, having the proper
muscles. Their limbs and bodies were also acted on by many muscles
which now only occasionally reäppear, but are normally present in
the Quadrumana.... The foot was then prehensile, judging from the
condition of the great toe in the foetus; and our progenitors, no
doubt, were arboreal in their habits, and frequented some warm
forest-clad land. The males had great canine teeth, which served
them as formidable weapons.(1589)
Darwin connects man with the type of the tailed catarrhines:
And consequently removes him a stage backward in the scale of
evolution. The English naturalist is not satisfied to take his
stand upon the ground of his own doctrines, and, like Hćckel, on
this point places himself in direct variance with one of the
fundamental laws which constitute the principal charm of
Darwinism.
And then the learned French Naturalist proceeds to show how this undamental law is broken. He says:
In fact, in the theory of Darwin, transmutations do not take
place, either by chance or in every direction. They are ruled by
certain laws which are due to the organization itself. If an
organism is once modified in a given direction, it can undergo
secondary or tertiary transmutations, but will still preserve the
impress of the original. It is the law of _permanent
characterization_, which _alone_ permits Darwin to explain the
filiation of groups, their characteristics, and their numerous
relations. It is by virtue of this law that _all_ the descendants
of the first mollusc have been molluscs; _all_ the descendants of
the first vertebrate have been vertebrates. It is clear that this
constitutes one of the foundations of the doctrine. It follows
that two beings belonging to two distinct types can be referred to
_a common ancestor_, but the one cannot be the descendant of the
other.
Now man and apes present a very striking contrast in _respect to
type_. Their organs ... correspond almost exactly term for term:
but these organs are arranged after a very different plan. In man
they are so arranged that he is essentially a _walker_, while in
apes they necessitate his being a _climber_.... There is here an
anatomical and mechanical distinction.... A glance at the page
where Huxley has figured side by side a human skeleton and the
skeletons of the most highly developed apes is a sufficiently
convincing proof.
The consequence of these facts, from the point of view of the
logical application of the law of _permanent characterizations_,
is that man cannot be descended from an ancestor who is already
characterized as an ape, any more than a catarrhine tailless ape
can be descended from a tailed catarrhine. A _walking animal_
cannot be descended from a _climbing_ one. This was clearly
understood by Vogt.
In placing man among the primates, he declares without hesitation
that the lowest class of apes have passed the landmark (the common
ancestor), from which the different types of this family have
originated and diverged. [This ancestor of the apes, Occult
Science sees in the lowest human group during the Atlantean
period, as shown before.] We must, then, place the origin of man
beyond the last ape [corroborating our doctrine], if we wish to
adhere to one of the laws most emphatically necessary to the
Darwinian theory. We then come to the prosimić of Hćckel, the
loris, indris, etc. But these animals also are climbers; we must
go further, therefore, in search of our first direct ancestor. But
the genealogy by Hćckel brings us from the latter to the
_marsupials_. From men to the kangaroo the distance is certainly
great. Now neither living nor extinct fauna show the intermediate
types which ought to serve as landmarks. This difficulty causes
but slight embarrassment to Darwin.(1590) We know that he
considers the want of information upon similar questions as a
proof in his favour. Hćckel doubtless is as little embarrassed. He
admits the existence of an absolutely theoretical _pithecoid man_.
Thus, since it has been proved that, according to Darwinism
itself, the origin of man must be placed beyond the eighteenth
stage, and since it becomes, in consequence, _necessary_ to fill
up the gap between marsupials and man, will Hćckel admit the
existence of _four unknown intermediate groups_ instead of one?
Will he complete his genealogy in this manner? It is not for me to
answer.(1591)
But see Hćckel's famous genealogy, in _The Pedigree of Man_, called by him he "Ancestral Series of Man." In the "Second Division" (eighteenth stage) e describes--
Prosimić, allied to the Loris (Stenops) and Makis (Lemur), without
marsupial bones and cloaca, _with placenta_.(1592)
And now turn to de Quatrefages' _The Human Species_,(1593) and see his roofs, based on the latest discoveries, to show that the Prosimić of
Hćckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta. They cannot be the ncestors of the apes even, let alone man, according to a fundamental law f Darwin himself, as the great French Naturalist shows. But this does not ismay the "animal theorists" in the least, for self-contradiction and aradoxes are the very soul of modern Darwinism. Witness--Mr. Huxley; aving himself shown, with regard to fossil man and the "missing link," hat:
Neither in Quaternary ages nor at the present time does any
intermediary being fill the gap which separates man from the
Troglodyte;
nd that to "deny the existence of this gap _would be as reprehensible as bsurd_," the great man of Science denies his own words _in actu_ by upporting with all the weight of his scientific authority that _most_
"absurd" of all theories--the _descent of man from an ape_!
Says de Quatrefages:
This genealogy is wrong throughout, and is founded on a material
error.
Indeed, Hćckel bases his descent of man on the seventeenth and eighteenth tages, the Marsupialia and Prosimić--(genus Hćckelii?). Applying the atter term to the Lemuridć--hence making of them animals with a lacenta--he commits a zoological blunder. For after having himself divided ammals according to their anatomical differences into two groups--the
_indeciduata_, which have no decidua (or special membrane uniting the lacentć), and the _deciduata_, those who possess it--he includes the
Prosimić in the latter group. Now we have shown elsewhere what other men f Science had to say to this. As de Quatrefages says:
The anatomical investigations of ... Milne Edwards and Grandidier
upon the animals ... place it beyond all doubt that the Prosimić
of Hćckel have no decidua and a diffuse placenta. They are
_indeciduata_. Far from any possibility of their being the
ancestors of the apes, according to the principles laid down by
Hćckel himself, they cannot even be regarded as the ancestors of
the zonoplacental mammals ... and ought to be connected with the
Pachydermata, the Edentata, and the Cetacea.(1594)
And yet Hćckel's inventions pass with some as _exact Science_!
The above mistake, if indeed it be one, is not even hinted at in Hćckel's
_Pedigree of Man_, translated by Aveling. If the excuse may stand good hat at the time the famous "genealogies" were made, "the embryogenesis of he Prosimić was not known," it is familiar now. We shall see whether the ext edition of Aveling's translation will have this important error ectified, or if the seventeenth and eighteenth stages will remain as they re to blind the profane, as one of the _real_ intermediate links. But, as he French Naturalist observes:
Their [Darwin's and Hćckel's] process is always the same,
considering the unknown as a _proof_ in favour of their theory.
It comes to this. Grant to man an immortal Spirit and Soul; endow the hole animate and inanimate creation with the monadic principle gradually volving from latent and passive into active and positive polarity--and
Hćckel will not have a leg to stand upon, whatever his admirers may say.
But there are important divergencies even between Darwin and Hćckel. While he former makes us proceed from the _tailed_ catarrhine, Hćckel traces ur hypothetical ancestor to the _tailless_ ape, though, at the same time, e places him in a hypothetical "stage" immediately preceding his--Menocerca with tails (nineteenth stage).
Nevertheless, we have one thing in common with the Darwinian school, that s the law of gradual and extremely slow Evolution, embracing many million ears. The chief quarrel, it appears, is with regard to the nature of the rimitive "ancestor." We shall be told that the Dhyân Chohan, or the
"progenitor" of Manu, is a hypothetical being unknown on _the physical lane_. We reply that it was believed in by the whole of Antiquity, and is y nine-tenths of the present humanity; whereas not only is the pithecoid an, or ape-man, a purely hypothetical creature of Hćckel's creation, nknown and untraceable on this Earth, but further its genealogy--as nvented by him--clashes with scientific facts and all the known data of odern discovery in Zoology. It is simply absurd, even as a fiction. As de
Quatrefages demonstrates in a few words, Hćckel "admits the existence of n absolutely theoretical pithecoid man"--a hundred times more difficult to ccept than any Deva ancestor. And it is not the only instance in which he roceeds in a similar manner in order to complete his genealogical table.
In fact he very naďvely admits his inventions himself. Does he not confess he non-existence of his Sozura (fourteenth stage)--a creature entirely nknown to Science--by confessing over his own signature, that:
The proof of its existence arises from the necessity of an
intermediate type between the thirteenth and the fourteenth
stages[!].
If so, we might maintain with as much scientific right, that the proof of he existence of our three ethereal Races, and of the three-eyed men of he Third and Fourth Root-Races, "arises also from the necessity of an ntermediate type" between the animal and the Gods. What reason would the
Hćckelians have to protest in this special case?
Of course there is a ready answer: Because we do not grant the presence of he Monadic Essence. The manifestation of the Logos as individual onsciousness in the animal and human creation is not accepted by exact
Science, nor does it cover the whole ground, of course. But the failures f Science and its arbitrary assumptions are far greater on the whole than ny "extravagant" Esoteric doctrine can ever furnish.(1595) Even thinkers f the school of Von Hartmann have become tainted with the general pidemic. They accept the Darwinian Anthropology (more or less), though hey also postulate the individual Ego as a manifestation of the
Unconscious (the Western presentation of the Logos or Primeval Divine
Thought). They say the evolution of the physical man is from the animal, ut that mind in its various phases is altogether a thing apart from aterial facts, though organism, as a Upâdhi, is necessary for its anifestation.
Plastidular Souls, And Conscious Nerve-Cells.
But one can never see the end of such wonders with Hćckel and his school, hom the Occultists and Theosophists have every right to consider as aterialistic tramps trespassing on private metaphysical grounds. Not atisfied with the paternity of Bathybius (Hćckelii), "plastidular souls" nd "atom-souls"(1596) are now invented, on the basis of purely blind echanical forces of matter. We are informed that:
The study of the evolution of soul-life shows us that this has
worked its way up from the lower stages of the simple cell-soul,
through an astonishing series of gradual stages in evolution, up
to the soul of man.(1597)
"Astonishing," truly--based as this wild speculation is on the
_consciousness_ of the "nerve cells." For as he tells us:
Little as we are in a position, at the present time, to explain
fully the nature of consciousness,(1598) yet the comparative and
genetic observation of it clearly shows, that it is only a higher
and more complex function of the nerve cells.(1599)
Mr. Herbert Spencer's song on consciousness--is sung, it seems, and may enceforth be safely stored up in the lumber room of obsolete peculations. Where, however, do Hćckel's "complex functions" of _his_ cientific "nerve-cells" land him? Once more right into the Occult and ystic teachings of the _Kabalah_ about the descent of Souls as conscious nd unconscious Atoms; among the Pythagorean Monad and the Monads of
Leibnitz, and the "Gods, Monads, and Atoms" of our Esoteric eaching;(1600) into the _dead letter_ of Occult teachings, left to the
_amateur_ Kabalists and professors of ceremonial Magic. For this is what e says, in explaining his newly-coined terminology:
Plastidule-Souls. The plastidules or protoplasmic molecules, the
smallest, homogeneous parts of the protoplasm are, on our plastid
theory, to be regarded as the active factors of all life-
functions. The plastidular soul differs from the inorganic
molecular soul in that it possesses memory.(1601)
This he develops in his mirific lecture on the "Perigenesis of Plastidule, r the Wave-motions of Living Particles." It is an improvement on Darwin's heory of "Pangenesis," and a further approach, a cautious move, towards
"Magic." The former is a conjecture that:
Some of the actual identical atoms which formed part of ancestral
bodies are thus transmitted through their descendants for
generation after generation, so that we are literally "flesh of
the flesh" of the primeval creature who has developed into man
--explains the author of _A Modern Zoroastrian_.(1602) The latter,
Occultism, teaches that--(_a_) the life-atoms of our (Prâna) Life-
Principle, are never entirely lost when a man dies. That the atoms best mpregnated with the Life-Principle, an independent, eternal, conscious actor, are partially transmitted from father to son by heredity, and are artially drawn once more together and become the animating principle of he new body in every new incarnation of the Monads. Because (_b_), as the
Individual Soul is ever the same, so are the atoms of the lower principles
(the body, its astral, or life-double, etc.), drawn as they are by ffinity and Karmic law always to the same individuality in a series of arious bodies.(1603)
To be just and, to say the least, logical, our modern Hćckelians ought to ass a resolution that henceforth the "Perigenesis of the Plastidule," and ther similar lectures, should be bound up with those on "Esoteric
Buddhism" and "The Seven Principles in Man." Thus the public will have a hance, at any rate, of comparing the two teachings and then of judging hich is the more or the less absurd, even from the standpoint of aterialistic and exact Science.
Now the Occultists, who trace every atom in the Universe, whether an ggregate or single, to One Unity, the Universal Life; who do not ecognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic; who know of no such hing as dead Matter--the Occultists are consistent with their doctrine of
Spirit and Soul when speaking of memory in every atom, of will and ensation. But what can a Materialist mean by the qualification? The law f biogenesis, in the sense applied to it by the Hćckelians, is the result f the ignorance on the part of the man of Science of _Occult_ Physics. We now and speak of "life-atoms," and of "sleeping-atoms," because we regard hese two forms of energy--the kinetic and the potential--as produced by one nd the same force, or the One Life, and regard the latter as the source nd mover of all. But what is it that furnished with energy, and specially with memory, the "plastidular souls" of Hćckel? The "wave otion of living particles" becomes comprehensible on the theory of a
Spiritual One Life, of a universal Vital Principle independent of _our_
Matter, and manifesting as atomic energy only on _our_ plane of onsciousness. It is that which, individualized in the human cycle, is ransmitted from father to son.
Now Hćckel, modifying Darwin's theory, suggests "more plausibly," as the uthor of _A Modern Zoroastrian_ thinks:
That not the identical atoms, but their peculiar motions and mode
of aggregation have been thus transmitted [by heredity].(1604)
If Hćckel, or any other Scientist, knew more than any of them does know of he nature of the atom, he would not have improved the occasion in this ay. For he only states, in more metaphysical language than Darwin, one nd the same thing. The Life-Principle, or Life Energy, which is mnipresent, eternal, indestructible, is a Force and a Principle as
_noumenon_, while it is Atoms, as _phenomenon_. It is one and the same hing, and cannot be considered as separate except in Materialism.(1605)
Further, Hćckel enunciates concerning the Atom-Souls that which, at first ight, appears as occult as the Monad of Leibnitz:
The recent contest as to the nature of atoms, which we must regard
as in some form or other the ultimate factors in all physical and
chemical processes, seems to be capable of easiest settlement by
the conception that these very minute masses possess, as centres
of force, a persistent soul, that every atom has sensation and the
power of movement.(1606)
He does not say a word concerning the fact that this is Leibnitz' theory, nd one that is preëminently Occult. Nor does he understand the term
"soul" as we do; for, with Hćckel it is simply, along with consciousness, he product of the grey matter of the brain, a thing which, as the cell- oul
Is as indissolubly bound up with the protoplasmic body as is the
human soul with the brain and spinal cord.(1607)
He rejects the conclusions of Kant, Herbert Spencer, of du Bois-Reymond nd Tyndall. The latter expresses the opinion of all the great men of
Science, as of the greatest thinkers of this and past ages, in saying hat:
The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding
facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Were our minds and senses
so ... illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very
molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their
motions, all their groupings ... electric discharges ... we should
be as far as ever from the solution of the problem.... The chasm
between the two classes of phenomena would still remain
intellectually impassable.
But the complex function of the nerve-cells of the great German Empiric, r, in other words, his consciousness, will not permit him to follow the onclusions of the greatest thinkers of our globe. _He is greater than hey._ He asserts this, and _protests_ against all:
No one has the right to hold that in the future we shall not be
able to pass beyond these limits of our knowledge that to-day seem
impassable.(1608)
And he quotes from Darwin's introduction to _The Descent of Man_ the ollowing words, which he modestly applies to his scientific opponents and imself:
It is always those who know little, and not those who know much,
that positively affirm that this or that problem will never be
solved by Science.
The world may rest satisfied. The day is not far off when the "thrice reat" Hćckel will have shown, to his own satisfaction, that the onsciousness of Sir Isaac Newton was, physiologically speaking, but the eflex action (or _minus_ consciousness) caused by the perigenesis of the lastidules of our common ancestor and old friend, the Moneron Hćckelii.
Though, the said Bathybius has been found out and exposed as a pretender imulating the organic substance _it is not_, and though among the hildren of men, Lot's wife alone--and even this, only after her isagreeable metamorphosis--could claim as her forefather the pinch of salt
_it is_; all this will not dismay him in the least. He will go on sserting, as coolly as he has always done, that it was only the peculiar ode and motion of the ghost of the long-vanished atoms of our Father
Bathybius, which--transmitted across ćons of time into the cell-tissue of he grey matter of the brains of every great man--caused Sophocles and
Ćschylus, and Shakspere as well, to write their tragedies, Newton, his
_Principia_, Humboldt, his _Cosmos_, etc. It also prompted Hćckel to nvent Grćco-Latin names three inches long, pretending to mean a good eal, and meaning--nothing.
Of course we are quite aware that the true, honest Evolutionist agrees ith us; and that he is the first to say that not only is the geological ecord imperfect, but that there are enormous gaps in the series of itherto discovered fossils, which can never be filled. He will tell us, oreover, that "no Evolutionist assumes that man is descended from any xisting ape or any extinct ape either," but that man and apes originated
_probably_ ćons back, in some common root stock. Still, as de Quatrefages oints out, he will urge as an evidence corroborating his claim this ealth of absent proofs as well, saying that:
All living forms have not been preserved in the fossil series, the
chances of preservation being few and far between ... [even
primitive man] burying or burning his dead.
This is just what we ourselves claim. It is just as _possible_ that the uture may have in store for us the discovery of the giant skeleton of an
Atlantean, thirty feet high, as of the fossil of a pithecoid "missing ink"; only the former is more _probable_.
Section III. The Fossil Relics of Man and the Anthropoid Ape.
A. Geological Facts Bearing On The Question Of Their Relationship.
The data derived from scientific research as to "primeval man" and the ape end no countenance to theories deriving the former from the latter.
"Where, then, must we look for primeval man?"--still queries Mr. Huxley, fter having vainly searched for him in the very depths of the Quaternary trata.
Was the oldest Homo sapiens Pliocene or Miocene, or yet more
ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an ape
more anthropoid, or a man more pithecoid than any yet known, await
the researches of some unborn palćontologist? Time will
show.(1609)
It will--undeniably--and thus vindicate the Anthropology of the Occultists.
Meanwhile, in his eagerness to vindicate Mr. Darwin's _Descent of Man_,
Mr. Boyd Dawkins believes that he has all but found the "missing link"--in heory. It was due to Theologians more than to Geologists that, till early 1860, man had been considered as a relic no older than the Adamic rthodox 6,000 years. As Karma would have it, though, it was left to a
French Abbé--Bourgeois--to give this easy-going theory even a worse blow han had been given to it by the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes.
Everyone knows that the Abbé discovered and brought to light good evidence hat man was already in existence during the Miocene period, for flints of ndeniably human making were excavated from Miocene strata. In the words f the author of _Modern Science and Modern Thought_:
They must either have been chipped by man, or, as Mr. Boyd Dawkins
supposes, by the dryopithecus or some other anthropoid ape which
had a dose of intelligence so much superior to the gorilla or
chimpanzee, as to be able to fabricate tools. But in this case the
problem would be solved and the missing link discovered, for such
an ape might well have been the ancestor of Palćolithic man.(1610)
Or--_the descendant of Eocene man_, which is a variant offered to the heory. Meanwhile, the dryopithecus with such fine mental endowments is et to be discovered. On the other hand, Neolithic and even Palćolithic an having become an absolute certainty, and as the same author justly bserves:
If 100,000,000 years have elapsed since the earth became
sufficiently solidified to support vegetable and animal life, the
Tertiary period may have lasted for 5,000,000; or for 10,000,000
years, if the life-sustaining order of things has lasted, as Lyell
supposes for at least 200,000,000 years--(1611)
hy should not another theory be tried? Let us carry man, as a hypothesis, o the close of Mesozoic times--admitting _argumenti causâ_ that the (much ore recent) higher apes then existed! This would allow ample time for man nd the modern apes to have diverged from the mythical "ape more nthropoid," and even for the latter to have degenerated into those that re found _mimicking_ man in using "branches of trees as clubs, and racking cocoa-nuts with hammer and stones."(1612) Some savage tribes of illmen in India build their abodes on trees, just as the gorillas build heir dens. The question, which of the two, the beast or the man, has ecome the imitator of the other, is scarcely an open one, even granting
Mr. Boyd Dawkins' theory. The fanciful character of this hypothesis, is, owever, generally admitted. It is argued that while in the Pliocene and
Miocene periods there were true apes and baboons, and man was undeniably ontemporaneous with the former of these times--though, as we see, orthodox
Anthropology still hesitates, in the teeth of facts, to place him in the ra of the dryopithecus, which latter--
Has been considered by some anatomists as in some respects
superior to the chimpanzee or the gorilla ... (1613)
et, in the Eocene there have been no other fossil _primates_ unearthed nd no pithecoid stocks found save a few extinct lemurian forms. And we ind it also hinted that the dryopithecus _may have been_ the "missing ink," though the brain of the creature no more warrants the theory than oes the brain of the modern gorilla. (See also Gaudry's speculations.)
Now we would ask who among the Scientists is ready to prove that _there as no man_ in existence in the early Tertiary period? What is it that revented his presence? Hardly thirty years ago his existence any farther ack than six or seven thousand years was indignantly denied. Now he is efused admission into the Eocene age. Next century it may become a uestion whether man was not contemporary with the "flying dragon," the terodactyl, the plesiosaurus and iguanodon, etc. Let us listen, however, o the echo of Science.
Now, wherever anthropoid apes lived it is clear that, whether as a
question of anatomical structure, or of climate and surroundings,
man, or some creature which was the ancestor of man, might have
lived also. Anatomically speaking, apes and monkeys are as much
special variations of the mammalian type as man, whom they
resemble bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, and the physical
animal man is simply an instance of the quadrumanous type
specialized for erect posture and a larger brain(1614).... If he
could survive, as we know he did, the adverse conditions and
extreme vicissitudes of the Glacial period, there is no reason why
he might not have lived in the semi-tropical climate of the
Miocene period, when a genial climate extended even to Greenland
and Spitzbergen.(1615)
When most of the men of Science who are uncompromising in their belief in he descent of man from an "extinct anthropoid mammal;" will not accept ven the bare tenability of any other theory than an ancestor common to an and the dryopithecus, it is refreshing to find in a work of real cientific value such a margin for compromise. Indeed, it is as wide as it an be made under the circumstances, _i.e._, without immediate danger of etting knocked off one's feet by the tidal wave of science-adulation.
Believing that the difficulty of accounting--
For the development of intellect and morality by evolution is not
so great as that presented by the difference as to physical
structure(1616) between man and the highest animal--
he same author says:
But it is not so easy to see how this difference of physical
structure arose, and how a being came into existence which had
such a brain and hand, and such undeveloped capabilities for an
almost unlimited progress. The difficulty is this: the difference
in structure between the lowest existing race of man and the
highest existing ape is too great to admit of the possibility of
one being the direct descendant of the other. The negro in some
respects makes a slight approximation towards the Simian type. His
skull is narrower, his brain less capacious, his muzzle more
projecting, his arm longer than those of the average European man.
Still he is essentially a man, and separated by a wide gulf from
the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Even the idiot or crétin, whose
brain is no larger and intelligence no greater than that of the
chimpanzee, is an arrested man, not an ape.
If, therefore, the Darwinian theory holds good in the case of man
and ape, we must go back to some common ancestor from whom both
may have originated.... But to establish this as a _fact_ and not
a _theory_ we require to find that ancestral form, or, at any
rate, some intermediate forms tending towards it ... in other
words ... the "missing link." Now it must be admitted that,
hitherto, not only have no such missing links been discovered, but
the oldest known human skulls and skeletons which date from the
Glacial period, and are probably at least 100,000 years old, show
no very decided approximation towards any such pre-human type. On
the contrary, one of the oldest types, that of the men of the
sepulchral cave of Cro-Magnon,(1617) is that of a fine race, tall
in stature, large in brain, and on the whole superior to many of
the existing races of mankind. The reply of course is that the
time is insufficient, and if man and the ape had a common
ancestor, that as a highly developed anthropoid ape, certainly,
and man, probably, already existed in the Miocene period, such
ancestor must be sought still further back at a distance compared
with which the whole Quaternary period sinks into
insignificance.... All this is true, and it may well make us
hesitate before we admit that man ... is alone an exception to the
general law of the universe, and is the creature of a special
creation. This is the more difficult to believe, as the ape family
which man so closely resembles [?] in physical structure contains
numerous branches which graduate into one another, but the
extremes of which differ more widely than man does from the
highest of the ape series. If a special creation is required for
man, must there not have been special creations for the
chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang, and for at least 100 different
species of apes and monkeys which are all built on the same
lines?(1618)
There _was_ a "special creation" for man, and a "special creation" for the pe, _his_ progeny; only on other lines than ever bargained for by
Science. Albert Gaudry and others give some weighty reasons why man cannot e regarded as the crown of an ape-stock. When one finds that not only was he "primeval savage" (?) a reality in the Miocene times, but that, as de
Mortillet shows, the flint relics he has left behind him were splintered
_by fire_ in that remote epoch; when we learn that the dryopithecus,
_alone of the anthropoids_, appears in those strata, what is the natural nference? That the Darwinians are in a quandary. The very man-like gibbon s _still in the same low grade of development, as it was when it oëxisted with man at the close of the Glacial period_. It has not ppreciably altered since the Pliocene times. Now there is little to hoose between the dryopithecus and the existing anthropoids--gibbon, orilla, etc. If, then, the Darwinian theory is all-sufficient, how are we o "explain" the evolution of this ape into man during the first half of he Miocene? The time is far too short for such a theoretical ransformation. The extreme slowness with which variation in species upervenes renders the thing inconceivable--more especially on the "natural election" hypothesis. The enormous mental and structural gulf between a avage acquainted with fire and the mode of kindling it, and a brutal nthropoid, is too great to bridge even in idea, during so contracted a eriod. Let the Evolutionists push back the process into the preceding
Eocene, if they prefer to do so; let them even trace both man and ryopithecus to a common ancestor; the unpleasant consideration has, evertheless, to be faced that in Eocene strata the anthropoid fossils are s conspicuous by their absence, as is the fabulous pithecanthropus of
Hćckel. Is an exit out of this _cul de sac_ to be found by an appeal to he "unknown," and a reference, with Darwin, to the "imperfection of the eological record"? So be it; but the same right of appeal must then be qually accorded to the Occultists, instead of remaining the monopoly of uzzled Materialism. Physical man, we say, existed before the first bed of he Cretaceous rocks was deposited. In the early part of the Tertiary age, he most brilliant civilization the world has ever known flourished at a eriod when the Hćckelian man-ape is conceived as roaming through primeval orests, and Mr. Grant Allen's putative ancestor as swinging himself from ough to bough with his hairy mates, the degenerated Liliths of the Third
Race Adam. Yet there were no anthropoid apes in the brighter days of the ivilization of the Fourth Race; but Karma is a mysterious law, and no especter of persons. The monsters bred in sin and shame by the Atlantean
Giants, "blurred copies" of their bestial sires, and hence of modern man, ccording to Huxley, now mislead and overwhelm with error the speculative
Anthropologist of European Science.
Where did the first men live? Some Darwinists say in Western Africa, some n Southern Asia, others again believe in an independent origin of human tocks in Asia and America from a simian ancestry. Hćckel, however, dvances gaily to the charge. Starting from his prosimia, "the ancestor ommon to all other catarrhini including man"--a "link" now, however, isposed of for good by recent anatomical discoveries--he endeavours to ind a habitat for the primeval pithecanthropus alalus.
In all probability it [the transformation of animal into man]
occurred in Southern Asia, in which region many evidences are
forthcoming that here was the original home of the different
species of man. Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest
cradle of the human race, but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the
south of Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian
Ocean. The period during which the evolution of the anthropoid
apes into ape-like men took place was probably the last part of
the Tertiary period, the Pliocene age, and perhaps the Miocene
age, its forerunner.(1619)
Of the above speculations, the only one of any worth is that referring to
Lemuria, which _was_ the cradle of mankind--of the physical sexual creature ho materialized through long ćons out of the ethereal hermaphrodites.
Only, if it is proved that Easter Island is an actual relic of Lemuria, we ust believe that according to Hćckel the "dumb ape-men," just removed rom a brutal mammalian monster, built the gigantic portrait-statues, two f which are now in the British Museum. Critics are mistaken in terming
Hćckelian doctrines "abominable, revolutionary, immoral"--though
Materialism is the legitimate outcome of the ape-ancestor myth--they are imply too absurd to demand disproof.
B. Western Evolutionism: The Comparative Anatomy Of Man And The Anthropoid
In No Way A Confirmation Of Darwinism.
We are told that while every other heresy against Modern Science may be isregarded, this, our denial of the Darwinian theory as applied to man, ill be the one "unpardonable" sin. The Evolutionists stand firm as rock n the evidence of similarity of structure between the ape and man. The natomical evidence, it is urged, is quite overpowering in this case; it s bone for bone, and muscle for muscle, even the brain conformation being ery much the same.
Well, what of that? All this was known before King Herod; and the writers f the _Râmâyana_, the poets who sang the prowess and valour of Hanumân, he Monkey-God, "whose feats were great and wisdom never rivalled," must ave known as much about his anatomy and brain as does any Hćckel or
Huxley in our modern day. Volumes upon volumes have been written upon this imilarity, in antiquity as in more modern times. Therefore, there is othing new given to the world or to philosophy in such volumes as
Mivart's _Man and Apes_, or Messrs. Fiske and Huxley's defence of
Darwinism. But what are those crucial proofs of man's descent from a ithecoid ancestor? If the Darwinian theory is not the true one, we are old, if man and ape do not descend from a common ancestor, then we must xplain the reason of:
(i) The similarity of structure between the two; the fact that the higher nimal world--man and beast--is physically of one type or pattern.
(ii) The presence of rudimentary organs in man, _i.e._, traces of former rgans now atrophied by disuse. Some of these organs, it is asserted, ould not have had any scope for employment, except in a semi-animal, emi-arboreal monster. Why, again, do we find in man those "rudimentary" rgans--as useless as its rudimentary wing is to the apteryx of
Australia--the vermiform appendix of the cćcum, the ear muscles,(1620) the
"rudimentary tail" with which children are still sometimes born, etc.?
Such is the war cry; and the cackle of the smaller fry among the
Darwinians is louder, if possible, than even that of the scientific
Evolutionists themselves!
Furthermore, the latter--with their great leader Mr. Huxley, and such minent Zoologists as Mr. Romanes and others--while defending the Darwinian heory, are the first to confess the almost insuperable difficulties in he way of its final demonstration. And there are as great men of Science s the above-named, who deny, most emphatically, the uncalled-for ssumption, and loudly denounce the unwarrantable exaggerations on the uestion of this supposed similarity. It is sufficient to glance at the orks of Broca, Gratiolet, Owen, Pruner-Bey, and finally at the last great ork of de Quatrefages, _Introduction ŕ __ l'Étude des Races Humaines,
Questions Générales_, to discover the fallacy of the Evolutionists. We may ay more: the exaggerations concerning this alleged similarity of tructure between man and the anthropomorphous ape have become so glaring nd absurd of late, that even Mr. Huxley has found himself forced to rotest against the too sanguine expectations. It was that great Anatomist ersonally who called the "smaller fry" to order, by declaring in one of is articles that the differences between the structure of the human body nd that of the highest anthropomorphous pithecoid, were not only _far rom being trifling and unimportant_, but were, on the contrary, very reat and suggestive:
Every bone of a gorilla bears marks by which it might be
distinguished from the corresponding bone of a man.(1621)
Among the existing creatures there is not one single intermediate form hat could fill the gap between man and the ape. To ignore that gap, he dded, "would be no less wrong than absurd."
Finally, the absurdity of such an _unnatural_ descent of man is so alpable in the face of all the proofs and evidence as to the skull of the ithecoid compared to that of man, that de Quatrefages resorted nconsciously to our Esoteric theory by saying that it is rather the apes hat can claim descent from man than _vice versâ_. As proven by Gratiolet, ith regard to the cavities of the brain of the anthropoids--in which pecies that organ develops in an inverse ratio to what would be the case ere the corresponding organs in man really the product of the development f the said organs in the apes--the size of the human skull and its brain, s well as the cavities, increase with the individual development of man.
His intellect develops and increases with age, while his facial bones and aws diminish and straighten, thus becoming more and more spiritualized; hereas with the ape it is the reverse. In its youth the anthropoid is far ore intelligent and good-natured, while with age it becomes duller; and, s its skull recedes and seems to diminish as it grows, its facial bones nd jaws develop, the brain being finally crushed, and thrown entirely ack, to make with every day more room for the animal type. The organ of hought--the brain--recedes and diminishes, entirely conquered and replaced y that of the wild beast--the jaw apparatus.
Thus, as wittily remarked in the French work, a gorilla could with perfect ustice address an Evolutionist, claiming its right of descent from him.
It would say to him: We, anthropoid apes, form a retrogressive departure rom the human type, and therefore our development and evolution are xpressed by a transition from a human-like to an animal-like structure of rganism; but in what way could _you_, men, descend from us--how can you orm a continuation of our genus? For, to make this possible, your rganization would have to differ still more than ours does from the human tructure, it would have to approach still closer to that of the beast han ours does; and in such a case justice demands that you should give up o us your place in nature. You are lower than we are, once that you nsist on tracing your genealogy from our kind; for the structure of our rganization and its development are such that we are unable to generate orms of a higher organization than our own.
This is where the Occult Sciences agree entirely with de Quatrefages.
Owing to the very type of his development man cannot _descend_ from either n ape or an ancestor common to both apes and men, but shows his origin to e from a type far superior to himself. And this type is the "Heavenly
Man"--the Dhyân Chohans, or the Pitris so-called, as shown in the first
Part of this Volume. On the other hand, the pithecoids, the orang-outang, he gorilla, and the chimpanzee _can_, and, as the Occult Sciences teach,
_do_, descend from the animalized Fourth human Root-Race, being the roduct of man and an extinct species of mammal--whose remote ancestors ere themselves the product of Lemurian bestiality--which lived in the
Miocene age. The ancestry of this semi-human monster is explained in the
Stanzas as originating in the sin of the "mind-less" races of the middle
Third Race period.
When it is borne in mind that all forms which now people the Earth are so any variations on _basic types_ originally thrown off by the Man of the
Third and Fourth Round, such an evolutionist argument as that insisting on he "unity of structural plan" characterizing all vertebrates, loses its dge. The basic types referred to were very few in number in comparison ith the multitude of organisms to which they ultimately gave rise; but a eneral unity of type has, nevertheless, been preserved throughout the ges. The economy of Nature does not sanction the coëxistence of several tterly opposed "ground plans" of organic evolution on one planet. Once, owever, that the general drift of the Occult explanation is formulated, nference as to detail may well be left to the intuitive reader.
Similarly with the important question of the "rudimentary" organs iscovered by Anatomists in the human organism. Doubtless this line of rgument, when wielded by Darwin and Hćckel against their European dversaries, proved of great weight. Anthropologists, who ventured to ispute the derivation of man from an animal ancestry, were sorely puzzled ow to deal with the presence of gill-clefts, with the "tail" problem, and o on. Here again Occultism comes to our assistance with the necessary ata.
The fact is that, as previously stated, the human type is the repertory of ll potential organic forms, and the central point from which these latter adiate. In this postulate we find a true "evolution" or "unfolding"--in a ense which cannot be said to belong to the mechanical theory of Natural
Selection. Criticizing Darwin's inference from "rudiments," an able writer emarks:
Why is it not just as probably a true hypothesis to suppose that
man was first created with these rudimentary sketches in his
organization, and that they became useful appendages in the lower
animals into which man degenerated, as it is to suppose that these
parts existed in full development, activity and practical use, in
the lower animals out of whom man was generated?(1622)
Read for "into which man degenerated," "the prototypes which man _shed_ in he course of his astral developments," and an aspect of the true Esoteric olution is before us. But a wider generalization is now to be formulated.
So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the ammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed y Man. The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the resultants of he Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of he Earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the eposition of the first Laurentian rocks. "Evolution" has to deal with the rogressive modifications, which Palćontology shows to have affected the ower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological time. It oes not, and from the nature of things cannot, touch on the subject of he pre-physical types which served as the basis for future ifferentiation. Tabulate the general laws controlling the development of hysical organisms it certainly may, and to a certain extent it has cquitted itself ably of the task.
To return to the immediate subject of discussion. The mammalia, whose irst traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the
Secondary period, were evolved from _purely_ astral progenitors ontemporary with the Second Race. They are thus _post-human_, and, onsequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between heir embryonic stages and those of Man, who necessarily embraces in imself and epitomizes in his development the features of the group he riginated. This explanation disposes of a portion of the Darwinist brief.
But how to account for the presence of the gill-clefts in the
human foetus, which represent the stage through which the branchić
of the fish are developed;(1623) for the pulsating vessel
corresponding to the heart of the lower fishes, which constitutes
the foetal heart; for the entire analogy presented by the
segmentation of the human ovum, the formation of the blastoderm,
and the appearance of the "gastrula" stage, with corresponding
stages in lower vertebrate life and even among the sponges; for
the various types of lower animal life which the form of the
future child shadows forth in the cycle of its growth?... How
comes it to pass that stages in the life of fishes, whose
ancestors swam [ćons before the epoch of the First Root-Race] in
the seas of the Silurian period, as well as stages in that of the
later amphibian, reptilian fauna, are mirrored in the "epitomized
history" of human foetal development?
This plausible objection is met by the reply that the Third Round errestrial animal forms were just as much referable to types thrown off y Third Round Man, as that new importation into our planet's area--the ammalian stock--is to the Fourth Round Humanity of the Second Root-Race.
The process of human foetal growth epitomizes not only the general haracteristics of the Fourth, but of the Third Round terrestrial life.
The diapason of type is run through in brief. Occultists are thus at no oss to "account for" the birth of children with an actual caudal ppendage, or for the fact that the tail in the human foetus is, at one eriod, double the length of the nascent legs. The potentiality of every rgan useful to animal life is locked up in Man--the Microcosm of the
Macrocosm--and abnormal conditions may not unfrequently result in the trange phenomena which Darwinists regard as "reversion to ancestral eatures."(1624) Reversion, indeed, but scarcely in the sense contemplated y our present-day empiricists!
C. Darwinism And The Antiquity Of Man: The Anthropoids And Their Ancestry.
The public has been notified by more than one eminent modern Geologist and an of Science, that:
All estimate of geological duration is not merely imperfect, but
necessarily impossible; for we are ignorant of the causes, though
they must have existed, which quickened or retarded the progress
of the sedimentary deposits.(1625)
And now another man of Science, as well known (Croll) calculating that the
Tertiary age began either fifteen or two-and-a-half million years ago--the ormer being a more correct calculation, according to Esoteric Doctrine, han the latter--there seems in this case, at least, no very great isagreement. Exact Science, refusing to see in man a "special creation"
(to a certain degree the Secret Sciences do the same), is at liberty to gnore the first three, or rather two-and-a-half Races--the spiritual, the emi-astral, and the semi-human--of our teachings. But it can hardly do the ame in the case of the Third, at its closing period, the Fourth, and the
Fifth Races, since it already divides mankind into Palćolithic and
Neolithic man.(1626) The Geologists of France place man in the Mid-Miocene ge (Gabriel de Mortillet), and some even in the Secondary period, as de
Quatrefages suggests; while the English _savants_ do not generally accept uch antiquity for their species. But they may know better some day. For, s says Sir Charles Lyell:
If we consider the absence or extreme scarcity of human bones and
works of art in all strata, whether marine or fresh-water, even in
those formed in the immediate proximity of land inhabited by
millions of human beings, we shall be prepared for the general
dearth of human memorials in glacial formations, whether recent,
pleistocene, or of more ancient date. If there were a few
wanderers over lands covered with glaciers, or over seas infested
with icebergs, and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in
moraines or in marine drifts, the chances, after the lapse of
thousands of years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must
be infinitesimally small.(1627)
The men of Science avoid pinning themselves down to any definite statement oncerning the age of man, as indeed they are hardly able to make any, and hus leave enormous latitude to bolder speculations. Nevertheless, while he majority of the Anthropologists carry back the existence of man _only_ nto the period of the post-glacial drift, or what is called the
Quaternary period, those of them who, as Evolutionists, trace man to a ommon origin with the monkey, do not show great consistency in their peculations. The Darwinian hypothesis demands, in reality, a far greater ntiquity for man, than is even dimly suspected by superficial thinkers.
This is proven by the greatest authorities on the question--Mr. Huxley, for nstance. Those, therefore, who accept the Darwinian evolution, _ipso acto_ hold very tenaciously to an antiquity of man so very great, indeed, hat it falls not so far short of the Occultist's estimate.(1628) The odest thousands of years of the _Encyclopćdia Britannica_ and the 100,000 ears, to which Anthropology in general limits the age of Humanity, seem uite microscopical when compared with the figures implied in Mr. Huxley's old speculations. The former, indeed, makes of the original race of men pe-like cave-dwellers. The great English Biologist, in his desire to rove man's pithecoid origin, insists that the transformation of the rimordial ape into a human being must have occurred _millions of years ack_. For in criticizing the excellent cranial capacity of the
Neanderthal skull, notwithstanding his assertion that it is overlaid with
"pithecoid bony walls," coupled with Mr. Grant Allen's assurances that his skull--
Possesses large bosses on the forehead, strikingly [?] suggestive
of those which give the gorilla its peculiarly fierce
appearance(1629)--
till Mr. Huxley is forced to admit that, in the said skull, his theory is nce more defeated by the--
Completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones,
together with the fair development of the Engis skull.
In consequence of all this we are notified that these skulls--
Clearly indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock
whence man has proceeded, need no longer be sought by those who
entertain any form of the doctrine of progressive development in
the newest Tertiaries; but that they may be looked for in an epoch
more distant from the age of the elephas primigenius than that is
from us.(1630)
An _untold_ antiquity for man is thus, then, the scientific _sine quâ non_ n the question of Darwinian Evolution, since the oldest Palćolithic man hows as yet no appreciable differentiation from his modern descendant. It s only of late that Modern Science has with every year begun to widen the byss that now separates her from ancient Science, as that of Pliny and
Hippocrates; none of the old writers would have derided the Archaic
Teachings with respect to the evolution of the human races and animal pecies, as the present day Scientist--Geologist or Anthropologist--is sure o do.
The pendulum of thought oscillates between extremes. Having now finally mancipated herself from the shackles of Theology, Science has embraced he opposite fallacy; and in the attempt to interpret Nature on purely aterialistic lines, she has built up that most extravagant theory of the ges--the derivation of man from a ferocious and brutal ape. So rooted has his doctrine now become, in one form and another, that the most Herculean fforts will be needed to bring about its final rejection. The Darwinian
Anthropology is the incubus of the Ethnologist, a sturdy child of modern
Materialism, which has grown up and acquired increasing vigour, as the neptitude of the theological legend of Man's "creation" became more and ore apparent. It has thriven on account of the strange delusion that--as a
Scientist of repute puts it:
All hypotheses and theories with respect to the rise of man can be
reduced to two [the evolutionist and the biblical exoteric
account].... There is no other hypothesis conceivable [!!].
The anthropology of the Secret Volumes is, however, the best possible nswer to such a worthless contention.
The anatomical resemblance between man and the higher ape, so frequently ited by Darwinists as pointing to some former ancestor common to both, resents an interesting problem, the proper solution of which is to be ought for in the Esoteric explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid tocks. We have given it as far as it was useful, by stating that the estiality of the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of uge man-like monsters--the offspring of human and animal parents. As time olled on, and the still semi-astral forms consolidated into the physical, he descendants of these creatures were modified by external conditions, ntil the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the
Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the
"Mindless"--this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their rime were the apes now known as anthropoid.
It may be useful to compare this very simple theory--and we are willing to ffer it merely as a hypothesis to the unbelievers--with the Darwinian cheme, so full of insurmountable obstacles, that no sooner is one of them vercome by a more or less ingenious hypothesis, than ten worse ifficulties are forthwith discovered behind the one disposed of.
Section IV. Duration of the Geological Periods, Race Cycles, and the
Antiquity of Man.
Millions of years have sunk into Lethe, leaving no more recollection in he memory of the profane than the few millenniums of the orthodox Western hronology as to the Origin of Man and the history of the primeval races.
All depends on the proofs found for the antiquity of the Human Race. If he still-debated man of the Pliocene or even the Miocene period was the
Homo primigenius, then Science _may_ be right (_argumenti causâ_) in asing its present Anthropology--as to the date and mode of origin of Homo apiens--on the Darwinian theory.(1631) But if the skeletons of man should t any time be discovered in the Eocene strata, while no fossil ape is ound there, and the existence of man is thus proved to be prior to that f the anthropoid--then Darwinians will have to exercise their ingenuity in nother direction. Moreover, it is said in well-informed quarters that the wentieth century will be still in its earliest teens when such undeniable roof of man's priority will be forthcoming.
Even now much evidence is being brought forward to prove that the dates itherto assigned for the foundations of cities, civilizations and various ther historical events have been absurdly curtailed. This was done as a eace-offering to biblical chronology. The well-known Palćontologist Ed.
Lartet writes:
No date is to be found in Genesis, which assigns a time for the
birth of primitive humanity.
But Chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the
_Bible_ facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one undred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single ate of "Creation."
And between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194
years, in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the
world and the birth of Christ. Within the last few years,
archćologists have had also to throw back by nearly 3,000 years
the beginnings of Babylonian civilization. On the foundation
cylinder deposited by Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, conquered by
Cyrus--are found the records of the former, in which he speaks of
his discovery of the foundation stone that belonged to the
original temple built by Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, of Accadia, the
conqueror of Babylonia, who, says Nabonidus, lived 3,200 years
before his own time.(1632)
We have shown in _Isis Unveiled_ that those who based history on the hronology of the Jews--a race which had none of its own and rejected the
Western till the twelfth century--would lose their way, for the Jewish ccount could only be followed through kabalistic computation, and only hen with key in hand. We characterized the late George Smith's chronology f the Chaldćans and Assyrians, which he had made to fit in with that of
Moses, as quite fantastic. And now, in this respect at least, later
Assyriologists have corroborated our denial. For, whereas George Smith akes Sargon I (the prototype of Moses) reign in the city of Akkad about
1600 B.C.--probably out of a latent respect for Moses, whom the _Bible_ akes to flourish 1571 B.C.--we now learn from the first of the six Hibbert
Lectures delivered by Professor A. H. Sayce, of Oxford, in 1887, that:
Old views of the early annals of Babylonia and its religions have
been much modified by recent discovery. The first Semitic Empire,
it is now agreed, was that of Sargon of Accad, who established a
great library, patronized literature, and extended his conquests
across the sea into Cyprus. It is now known that he reigned as
early as B.C. 3,750.... The Accadian monuments found by the French
at Tel-loh must be even older, reaching back to about B.C. 4,000.
In other words, to the fourth year of the World's creation agreeably with
_Bible_ chronology, and when Adam was in his swaddling clothes. Perchance, n a few years more, the 4,000 years may be further extended. The well- nown Oxford lecturer remarked in his disquisitions upon "The Origin and
Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient
Babylonians," that:
The difficulties of systematically tracing the origin and history
of the Babylonian Religion were considerable. The sources of our
knowledge of the subject were almost wholly monumental, very
little help being obtainable from classical or Oriental writers.
Indeed, it was an undeniable fact that the Babylonian priesthood
intentionally swaddled up the study of the religious texts in
coils of almost insuperable difficulty.
That they have confused the dates, and especially the order of events
"intentionally," is undeniable, and for a very good reason: their writings nd records were all Esoteric. The Babylonian priests did no more than the riests of other ancient nations. Their records were meant only for the
Initiates and their disciples, and it is only the latter who were urnished with the keys to the true meaning. But Professor Sayce's remarks re promising. For he explains the difficulty by saying that as:
The Nineveh library contained mostly copies of older Babylonian
texts, and the copyists pitched upon such tablets only as were of
special interest to the Assyrian conquerors, belonging to a
comparatively late epoch, this added much to the greatest of all
our difficulties--namely, our being so often left in the dark as to
the age of our documentary evidence, and the precise worth of our
materials for history.
Thus one has a right to infer that some still fresher discovery may lead o a new necessity for pushing the Babylonian dates so far beyond the year
4,000 B.C., as to make them _pre-cosmic_ in the judgment of every _Bible_ orshipper.
How much more would Palćontology have learned had not millions of works een destroyed! We talk of the Alexandrian Library, which has been thrice estroyed, namely, by Julius Cćsar 48 B.C., in A.D. 390, and lastly in the ear A.D. 640 by the general of Kaliph Omar. What is this in comparison ith the works and records destroyed in the primitive Atlantean Libraries, herein records are said to have been traced on the tanned skins of igantic antediluvian monsters? Or again in comparison with the estruction of the countless Chinese books by command of the founder of he Imperial Tsin dynasty, Tsin Shi Hwang-ti, in 213 B.C.? Surely the rick-clay tablets of the Imperial Babylonian Library, and the priceless reasures of the Chinese collections, could never have contained such nformation as one of the aforesaid "Atlantean" skins would have furnished o the ignorant world.
But even with the extremely meagre data at hand, Science has been able to ee the necessity of throwing back nearly every Babylonian date, and has one so quite generously. We learn from Professor Sayce that even the rchaic statues at Tel-loh, in Lower Babylonia, have suddenly been ssigned a date contemporary with the fourth dynasty in Egypt.(1633)
Unfortunately, dynasties and pyramids share the fate of geological eriods; their dates are arbitrary, and depend on the whims of the espective men of Science. Archćologists know now, it is said, that the fore-mentioned statues are fashioned out of green diorite, that can only e got in the Peninsula of Sinai; and
They accord in the style of art, and in the standard of
measurement employed, with the similar diorite statues of the
pyramid builders of the third and fourth Egyptian dynasties....
Moreover, the only possible period for a Babylonian occupation of
the Sinaitic quarries must be placed shortly after the close of
the epoch at which the pyramids were built; and thus only can we
understand how the name of Sinai could have been derived from that
of Sin, the primitive Babylonian moon-god.
This is very logical, but what is the date fixed for these dynasties?
Sanchuniathon's and Manetho's synchronistic tables--or whatever remained of hese after holy Eusebius had the handling of them--have been rejected; and till we have to remain satisfied with the four or five thousand years
B.C., so liberally allotted to Egypt. At all events one point is gained.
There is, at last, a city on the face of the Earth which is allowed, at east, 6,000 years, and it is Eridu. Geology has discovered it. According o Professor Sayce again:
They are now also able to obtain time for the silting up of the
head of the Persian Gulf, which demands a lapse of between 5,000
and 6,000 years since the period when Eridu, now twenty-five miles
inland, was the seaport at the mouth of the Euphrates, and the
seat of Babylonian commerce with Southern Arabia and India. More
than all, the new chronology gives time for the long series of
eclipses recorded in the great astronomical work called "The
Observations of Bel"; and we are also enabled to understand the
otherwise perplexing change in the position of the vernal equinox,
which has occurred since our present zodiacal signs were named by
the earliest Babylonian astronomers. When the Accadian calendar
was arranged and the Accadian months were named, the sun at the
vernal equinox was not, as now, in Pisces, or even in Aries, but
in Taurus. The rate of the precession of the equinoxes being
known, we learn that at the vernal equinox the sun was in Taurus
from about 4,700 years B.C., and we thus obtain astronomical
limits of date which cannot be impugned.(1634)
It may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir C.
Lyell's nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of he Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene eriods--this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these ges and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations, wo-and-a-half and fifteen million years being assigned at different times o one and the same age (the Tertiary); and since no two Geologists or
Naturalists seem to agree on this point--Esoteric Teachings may remain uite indifferent to the appearance of man in the Secondary or the
Tertiary age. If the latter age may be allowed even so much as fifteen illion years' duration--well and good; for the Occult Doctrine, jealously uarding its real and correct figures so far as concerns the First,
Second, and two-thirds of the Third Root-Race, gives clear information pon one point only--the age of Vaivasvata Manu's humanity.(1635)
Another definite statement is that during the so-called Eocene period the
Continent to which the Fourth Race belonged, and on which it lived and erished, showed the first symptoms of sinking, and that it was in the
Miocene age that it was finally destroyed--save the small island mentioned y Plato. These points have now to be checked by scientific data.
A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe, Animal
Evolution, And Man.
May we not be permitted to throw a glance at the works of specialists? The ork on _World-Life: Comparative Geology_, by Prof. A. Winchell, furnishes s with curious data. Here we find an opponent of the nebular theory miting with all the force of the hammer of his _odium theologicum_ on the ather contradictory hypotheses of the great stars of Science, in the atter of sidereal and cosmic phenomena based on their respective elations to terrestrial durations. The "too imaginative physicists and aturalists" do not fare very easily under this shower of their own peculative computations placed side by side, and cut rather a sorry igure. Thus he writes:
Sir William Thompson, on the basis of the observed principles of
cooling, concludes that no more than 10 million years [elsewhere
he makes it 100,000,000] can have elapsed since the temperature of
the earth was sufficiently reduced to sustain vegetable
life.(1636) Helmholz calculates that 20 million years would
suffice for the original nebula to condense to the present
dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb requires only 10 millions
to attain a temperature of 212° Fahr.(1637) Croll estimates 70
million years for the diffusion of the heat....(1638) Bischof
calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth
to cool from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Centigrade. Reade,
basing his estimate on observed rates of denudation, demands 500
million years since sedimentation began in Europe.(1639) Lyell
ventured a rough guess of 240 million years; Darwin thought 300
million years demanded by the organic transformations which his
theory contemplates, and Huxley is disposed to demand 1,000
millions [!!].... Some biologists ... seem to close their eyes
tight and leap at one bound into the abyss of millions of years,
of which they have no more adequate estimate than of
infinity.(1640)
Then he proceeds to give what he takes to be more correct geological igures: a few will suffice.
According to Sir William Thompson "the whole incrusted age of the world is
80,000,000 years"; and agreeably with Prof. Houghton's calculations of a inimum limit for the time since the elevation of Europe and Asia, three ypothetical ages for three _possible_ and different modes of upheaval are iven, varying from the modest figure of 640,730 years, through 4,170,000 ears to the tremendous figure of 27,491,000 years!!
This is enough, as one can see, to cover our claims for the four
Continents and even the figures of the Brâhmans.
Further calculations, the details of which the reader may find in Prof.
Winchell's work,(1641) bring Houghton to an approximation of the edimentary age of the globe--11,700,000 years. These figures are found too mall by the author, who forthwith extends them to 37,000,000 years.
Again, according to Croll,(1642) 2,500,000 years "represents the time ince the beginning of the Tertiary age" in one work; and according to nother modification of his view, 15,000,000 only have elapsed since the eginning of the Eocene period,(1643) this, being the first of the three
Tertiary periods, leaves the student suspended between two-and-a-half and ifteen millions. But if one has to hold to the former moderate figures, hen the whole incrusted age of the world would be 131,600,000 ears.(1644)
As the last Glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago
(Prof. Croll's view), therefore, man must have appeared on Earth from
100,000 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell with reference o the antiquity of the Mediterranean race:
It is generally believed to have made its appearance during the
later decline of the continental glaciers. It does not concern,
however, the antiquity of the Black and Brown races, since there
are numerous evidences of their existence in more southern
regions, in times remotely pre-glacial.(1645)
As a specimen of geological _certainty_ and _agreement_, these figures lso may be added. Three authorities--Messrs. T. Belt, F.G.S., Robert Hunt,
F.R.S., and J. Croll, F.R.S.,--in estimating the time that has elapsed ince the Glacial epoch, give figures that vary to an almost incredible xtent:
Belt: 20,000 years.
Hunt: 80,000 years
Croll: 240,000 years(1646)
No wonder that Mr. Pengelly confesses that:
It is at present and perhaps always will be impossible to reduce,
even approximately, geological time into years or even into
millenniums.
A wise word of advice from the Occultists to the gentlemen Geologists; hey ought to imitate the cautious example of Masons. As chronology, they ay, cannot measure the era of the creation, therefore, their "Antient and
Primitive Rite" uses 000,000,000 as the nearest approach to reality.
The same uncertainty, contradictions and disagreement reign on all other ubjects.
The scientific authorities on the Descent of Man are again, for all ractical purposes, a delusion and a snare. There are many Anti-Darwinists n the British Association, and Natural Selection begins to lose ground.
Though at one time the saviour, which seemed to rescue the learned heorists from a final intellectual collapse into the abyss of fruitless ypothesis, it begins to be distrusted. Even Mr. Huxley is showing signs f truancy, and thinks "natural selection _not the sole_ factor":
We greatly suspect that she [Nature] does make considerable jumps in the ay of variation now and then, and that these saltations give rise to some f the gaps which appear to exist in the series of known forms.(1647)
Again, C. R. Bree, M.D., argues in this wise in considering the fatal gaps n Mr. Darwin's theory:
It must be again called to mind that the intermediate forms must
have been vast in numbers.... Mr. St. George Mivart believes that
change in evolution may occur more quickly than is generally
believed; but Mr. Darwin sticks manfully to his belief, and again
tells us "_natura non facit saltum_."(1648)
Herein the Occultists are at one with Mr. Darwin.
Esoteric teaching fully corroborates the idea of Nature's slowness and ignified progression. "Planetary impulses" are all periodical. Yet this
Darwinian theory, correct as it is in minor particulars, agrees no more ith Occultism than with Mr. Wallace, who, in his _Contributions to the
Theory of Natural Selection_, shows pretty conclusively that something
_more_ than Natural Selection is requisite to produce physical man.
Let us, meanwhile, examine the _scientific_ objections to this scientific heory, and see what they are.
Mr. St. George Mivart is found arguing that:
It will be a moderate computation to allow 25,000,000 for the
deposit of the strata down to and including the Upper Silurian.
If, then, the evolutionary work done during this deposition only
represents a hundredth part of the sum total, we shall require
2,500,000,000 (two thousand five hundred million) years for the
complete development of the whole animal kingdom to its present
state. Even one quarter of this, however, would far exceed the
time which physics and astronomy seem able to allow for the
completion of the process.
Finally, a difficulty exists as to the reason of the absence of
rich fossiliferous deposits in the oldest strata--if life was then
as abundant and varied, as, on the Darwinian theory, it must have
been. Mr. Darwin himself admits "the case at present must remain
inexplicable; and this may be truly urged as a valid argument
against the views" entertained in his book.
Thus, then, we find a remarkable (and on Darwinian principles all
but inexplicable) absence of minutely graduated transitional
forms. All the most marked groups--bats, pterodactyles, chelonians,
ichthyosaurians, amoura, etc.--appear at once upon the scene. Even
the horse, the animal whose pedigree has been probably best
preserved, affords no conclusive evidence of specific origin by
significant fortuitous variations; while some forms, as the
labyrinthodonts and trilobites, which seemed to exhibit gradual
change, are shown by further investigation to do nothing of the
sort.... All these difficulties are avoided if we admit that new
forms of animal life of all degrees of complexity appear from time
to time with comparative suddenness, being evolved according to
laws in part depending on surrounding conditions, in part
internal--similar to the way in which crystals (and, perhaps from
recent researches, the lowest forms of life) build themselves up
according to the internal laws of their component substance, and
in harmony and correspondence with all environing influences and
conditions.(1649)
"The internal laws of their component substance." These are wise words, nd the admission of the possibility is prudent. But how can these nternal laws be ever recognized, if Occult teaching be discarded? As a riend writes, while drawing our attention to the above speculations:
In other words, the doctrine of Planetary Life-Impulses must be
admitted. Otherwise, why are species now _stereotyped_, and why do
even domesticated breeds of pigeons and many animals relapse into
their ancestral types when left to themselves?
But the teaching about Planetary Life-Impulses has to be clearly defined nd as clearly understood, if present confusion is not to be made still ore perplexing. All these difficulties would vanish as the shadows of ight disappear before the light of the rising Sun, if the following
Esoteric Axioms were admitted:
(_a_) The existence and the enormous antiquity of our Planetary Chain;
(_b_) The actuality of the Seven Rounds
(_c_) The separation of human Races (outside the purely anthropological ivision) into seven distinct Root-Races, of which our present European
Humanity is the Fifth;
(_d_) The antiquity of man in this (Fourth) Round; and finally
(_e_) That as these Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from he latter back again into relative physical tenuity of texture, so every iving (so-called) _organic_ species of animals, with vegetation included, hanges with every new Root-Race.
Were this admitted, if even only along with other, and surely, on maturer onsideration, no less absurd, suppositions--if Occult theories have to be onsidered "absurd" at present--then every difficulty would be made away ith. Surely Science ought to try and be more logical than it now is, as t can hardly maintain the theory of man's descent from an anthropoidal ncestor, and deny in the same breath any reasonable antiquity to such a an! Once Mr. Huxley talks of "the vast intellectual chasm between the ape nd man," and "the present enormous gulf between them,"(1650) and admits he necessity of extending scientific allowances for the age of man on
Earth for such slow and progressive development, then all those men of
Science who are of his way of thinking, at any rate, ought to come to at east some approximate figures, and agree upon the probable duration of hose Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene periods of which so much is said, and bout which nothing definite is known--even if they dare not venture
_beyond_. But no two Scientists seem to agree. Every period seems to be a ystery in its duration, and a thorn in the side of the Geologists; and, s just shown, they are unable to harmonize their conclusions even with egard to the comparatively recent geological formations. Thus, no eliance can be placed on their figures when they do give any, for with hem it is all either millions or simply thousands of years!
That which is said may be strengthened by the confessions made by hemselves and the synopsis of these, to be found in that "Circle of
Sciences," the _Encyclopćdia Britannica_, which shows the mean accepted in he geological and anthropological riddles. In that work the cream of the ost authoritative opinions is skimmed off and presented; nevertheless, we ind in it a refusal to assign any definite chronological date, even to uch comparatively speaking late epochs as the Neolithic era, though, for wonder, an age is established for the beginnings of certain geological eriods; at any rate for some few, the duration of which could hardly be ny more shortened, without an immediate conflict with facts.
Thus, it is surmised in the great Encyclopćdia that:
One hundred million years have passed ... since the solidification
of our earth, when the earliest form of life appeared upon
it.(1651)
But it seems quite as hopeless to try to convert the modern Geologists and
Ethnologists, as it is to make Darwinian Naturalists perceive their istakes. About the Âryan Root-Race and its origins, Science knows as ittle as of the men from other Planets. With the exception of Flammarion, nd of a few Mystics among Astronomers, even the habitableness of other
Planets is mostly denied. Yet such great Adept Astronomers were the
Scientists of the earliest races of the Âryan stock, that they seem to ave known far more about the races of Mars and Venus than the modern
Anthropologist knows of those of the early stages of the Earth.
Let us leave Modern Science aside for a moment and turn to Ancient
Knowledge. As we are assured by Archaic Scientists that all such eological cataclysms--from the upheaval of oceans, deluges, and shifting f continents, down to the present year's cyclones, hurricanes, arthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and even the extraordinary eather and seeming shifting of seasons which are perplexing all European nd American Meteorologists--are due to, and depend on the Moon and
Planets; aye, that even modest and neglected constellations have the reatest influence on the meteorological and cosmical changes, over, and ithin our Earth--let us give one moment's attention to our sidereal espots, the rulers of our globe and men. Modern Science denies any such nfluence; Archaic Science affirms it. We will see what both say with egard to this question.
B. On Chains Of Planets And Their Plurality.
Did the Ancients know of Worlds besides their own? What are the data of he Occultists in affirming that every Globe is a Septenary Chain of
Worlds--of which only one member is visible--and that these are, were, or ill be, "man-bearing," just as is every visible Star or Planet? What do hey mean by "a moral and physical influence" exerted on our Globe by the
Sidereal Worlds?
Such are the questions often put to us, and they have to be considered rom every aspect. To the first of the two queries the answer is: We elieve it because the first law in nature is uniformity in diversity, and he second is analogy. "As above, so below." The time is gone by for ever hen our pious ancestors believed that our Earth was in the centre of the
Universe, and the Church and her arrogant servants could insist that the upposition that any other Planet could be inhabited should be regarded as lasphemy. Adam and Eve, the Serpent and Original Sin, followed by
Atonement through Blood, have been too long in the way of progress, and niversal truth has thus been sacrificed to the insane conceit of us ittle men.
Now what are the proofs thereof? Beyond inferential evidence and logical easoning, there are none for the profane. To the Occultists, who believe n the knowledge acquired by countless generations of Seers and Initiates, he data offered in the Secret Books are all-sufficient. The general ublic needs other proofs, however. There are some Kabalists, and even ome Eastern Occultists, who, failing to find uniform evidence upon this oint in all the mystic works of the nations, hesitate to accept the eaching. Even such "uniform evidence" will be forthcoming presently.
Meanwhile, we may approach the subject from its general aspect, and see hether belief in it is so very absurd, as some Scientists along with ther Nicodemuses would have it. Unconsciously, perhaps, in thinking of a lurality of inhabited "Worlds," we imagine them to be like the Globe we nhabit, and to be peopled by beings more or less resembling ourselves.
And in so doing we are only following a natural instinct. Indeed, so long s the enquiry is confined to the life-history of this Globe, we can peculate on the question with some profit, and ask ourselves, with some ope of at least asking an intelligible question, what were the "Worlds" poken of in all the ancient scriptures of Humanity? But how do we know
(_a_) what kind of beings inhabit the Globes in general; and (_b_) whether hose who rule Planets superior to our own do not exercise the same nfluence on our Earth _consciously_, that we may exercise
_unconsciously_, say on the small planets (planetoids or asteroids) in the ong run, by our cutting the Earth in pieces, opening canals, and thereby ntirely changing our climates. Of course, like Cćsar's wife, the lanetoids, cannot be affected by our suspicion. They are too far, etc.
Believing in Esoteric Astronomy, however, we are not so sure of that.
But when, extending our speculations beyond our Planetary Chain, we try to ross the limits of the Solar System, then indeed we act as do resumptuous fools. For--while accepting the old Hermetic axiom, "as above, o below"--as we may well believe that Nature on Earth displays the most areful economy, utilizing every vile and waste thing in her marvellous ransformations, and withal _never_ repeating herself, so we may justly onclude that there is no other Globe in all her infinite systems so losely resembling this Earth, that the ordinary powers of man's thought hould be able to imagine and reproduce its semblance and ontainment.(1652)
And indeed we find in the romances as in all the so-called scientific ictions and spiritistic "revelations" from Moon, Stars, and Planets, erely fresh combinations or modifications of the men and things, the assions and forms of life, with which we are familiar, though even on the ther Planets of our own System nature and life are entirely different rom those prevailing on our own. Swedenborg was preeminent in inculcating uch an erroneous belief.
But even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of onsciousness other than that to which the physical senses link him. Men ream; they sleep the profound sleep which is too deep for its dreams to mpress the physical brain; and in these states there must still be onsciousness. How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored, can
_we_ hope to speculate with profit on the nature of Globes which, in the conomy of Nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and uite different from _any_ which man experiences here?
And this is true to the letter. For even great Adepts (those initiated of ourse), trained Seers though they be, can only claim thorough cquaintance with the nature and appearance of Planets and their nhabitants belonging to our Solar System. They _know_ that almost all the
Planetary Worlds are inhabited, but--even in spirit--they can have access nly to those of our System; and they are also aware how difficult it is,
_even for them_, to put themselves into full rapport even with the planes f consciousness _within_ our System, differing as they do from the states f consciousness possible on this Globe; such, for instance, as those hich exist on the Chain of Spheres on the three planes beyond that of our
Earth. Such knowledge and intercourse are possible to them because they ave learned how to penetrate to planes of consciousness which are closed o the perceptions of ordinary men; but were they to communicate their nowledge, the world would be no wiser, because men lack that experience f other forms of perception which alone could enable them to grasp what hey might be told.
Still the fact remains that most of the Planets, like the Stars beyond our
System, are inhabited, a fact which has been admitted by the men of
Science themselves. Laplace and Herschel believed it, though they wisely bstained from imprudent speculation; and the same conclusion has been orked out and supported with an array of scientific considerations by C.
Flammarion, the well-known French Astronomer. The arguments he brings orward are strictly scientific, and are such as appeal even to a aterialistic mind, which would remain unmoved by such thoughts as those f Sir David Brewster, the famous Physicist, who writes:
Those "barren spirits" or "base souls," as the poet calls them,
who might be led to believe that the earth is the only inhabited
body in the universe, would have no difficulty in conceiving the
earth also to have been destitute of inhabitants. What is more, if
such minds were acquainted with the deductions of geology, they
would admit that it was uninhabited for myriads of years; and here
we come to the impossible conclusion that during these myriads of
years there was not a single intelligent creature in the vast
domains of the Universal King, and that before the protozoic
formations there existed neither plant nor animal in all the
infinity of space.(1653)
Flammarion shows, in addition, that all the conditions of life--even as
_we_ know it--are present on some at least of the Planets, and points to he fact that these conditions must be much more favourable on them than hey are on our Earth.
Thus scientific reasoning, as well as observed facts, concurs with the tatements of the Seer, and the innate voice in man's own heart in eclaring that life--intelligent, conscious life--_must_ exist on other orlds than ours.
But this is the limit beyond which the ordinary faculties of man cannot arry him. Many are the romances and tales, some purely fanciful, others ristling with scientific knowledge, which have attempted to imagine and escribe life on other Globes. But one and all they give but some istorted copy of the drama of life around us. It is either, with
Voltaire, the men of our own race under a microscope, or, with de
Bergerac, a graceful play of fancy and satire; but we always find that at ottom the new world is but the one we ourselves live in. So strong is his tendency that even great natural, though non-initiated, Seers, fall ictims to it when untrained; witness Swedenborg, who goes so far as to ress the inhabitants of Mercury, whom he meets with in the spirit-world, n clothes such as are worn in Europe!
Commenting on this tendency, Flammarion says:
It seems as if in the eyes of those authors who have written on
this subject, the Earth were the type of the Universe, and the man
of Earth, the type of the inhabitants of the Heavens. It is, on
the contrary, much more probable, that, since the nature of other
planets is essentially varied, and the surroundings and conditions
of existence essentially different, while the forces which preside
over the creation of beings and the substances which enter into
their mutual constitution are essentially distinct, it would
follow that our mode of existence cannot be regarded as in any way
applicable to other globes. Those who have written on this subject
have allowed themselves to be dominated by terrestrial ideas, and
have therefore fallen into error.(1654)
But Flammarion himself falls into the very error which he here condemns, or he tacitly takes the conditions of life on Earth as the standard by hich to determine the degree to which other Planets are adapted for abitation by "other humanities."
Let us, however, leave these profitless and empty speculations, which, hough they seem to fill our hearts with a glow of enthusiasm and to nlarge our mental and spiritual grasp, do but in reality cause a actitious stimulation, and blind us more and more to our ignorance not nly of the world we inhabit, but even of the infinitude contained within urselves.
When, therefore, we find "other worlds" spoken of in the Bibles of
Humanity, we may safely conclude that they not only refer to other states f our Planetary Chain and Earth, but also to other inhabited Globes--Stars nd Planets; withal, that no speculations were ever made about the latter.
The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of Life. But no really nitiated Seer of any civilized nation has ever taught that life on other
Stars could be judged by the standard of terrestrial life. What is enerally meant by "Earths" and "Worlds," relates (_a_) to the "rebirths" f our Globe after each Manvantara and a long period of Obscuration; and
(_b_) to the periodical and entire changes of the Earth's surface, when ontinents disappear to make room for oceans, and oceans and seas are iolently displaced and sent rolling to the poles, to cede their mplacements to new continents.
We may begin with the _Bible_--the youngest of the World-scriptures. In
_Ecclesiastes_, we read these words of the King-Initiate:
One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the
earth abideth for ever.... The thing that hath been, it is that
which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be
done, and there is no new thing under the sun.(1655)
Under these words it is not easy to see the reference to the successive ataclysms by which the Races of mankind are swept away, or, going further ack, to the various transitions of the Globe during the process of its ormation. But if we are told that this refers only to _our_ world _as we ow see it_, then we shall refer the reader to the _New Testament_, where
St. Paul speaks of the Son (the manifested Power) whom God hath appointed eir of all things, "by whom also he made the worlds" (plural).(1656) This
"Power" is Chokmah, the Wisdom and the Word.
We shall probably be told that by the term "worlds," the stars, heavenly odies, etc., were meant. But apart from the fact that "stars" were not nown as "worlds" to the ignorant editors of the Epistles, even if they ust have been thus known to Paul, who was an Initiate, a "Master-
Builder," we can quote on this point an eminent Theologian, Cardinal
Wiseman. In his work (i. 309) treating of the indefinite period of the six ays--or shall we say "too definite" period of the six days--of creation and he 6,000 years, he confesses that we are in total darkness as to the eaning of this statement of St. Paul, unless we are permitted to suppose hat allusion is made in it to the period which elapsed between the
_first_ and _second_ verses of chapter i of _Genesis_, and thus to those rimitive revolutions, _i.e._, the destructions and the reproductions of he world, indicated in chapter i of _Ecclesiastes_; or, to accept, with o many others, and in its _literal sense_, the passage in chapter i of
_Hebrews_, that speaks of the creation of "worlds"--in the plural. It is ery singular, he adds, that all the cosmogonies should agree to suggest he same idea, and preserve the tradition of a first series of evolutions, owing to which the world was destroyed and again renewed.
Had the Cardinal studied the _Zohar_ his doubts would have been changed nto certainties. Thus saith the "Idra Suta":
There were old worlds which perished as soon as they came into
existence; worlds with and without form called Scintillas--for they
were like the sparks under the smith's hammer, flying in all
directions. Some were the primordial worlds which could not
continue long, because the "Aged"--his name be sanctified--had not
as yet assumed his form,(1657) the workman was not yet the
"Heavenly Man."(1658)
Again in the _Midrash_, written long before the _Kabalah_ of Simeon Ben
Iochai, Rabbi Abahu explains:
The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively formed and
destroyed sundry worlds before this one(1659).... Now this refers
both to the first races [the "Kings of Edom"] and to the worlds
destroyed.(1660)
"Destroyed" means here what we call "obscuration." This becomes evident hen we read the explanation given further on:
Still when it is said that they [the worlds] _perished_, it is
only meant thereby that they [their humanities] lacked the true
form, till the human [our] form came into being, in which all
things are comprised and which contains all forms ...--it does not
mean death, but only denotes a sinking down from their status
[that of worlds in activity].(1661)
When, therefore, we read of the "destruction" of the Worlds, the word has any meanings, which are very clear in several of the Commentaries on the
_Zohar_ and in Kabalistic treatises. As said elsewhere, it means not only he destruction of many Worlds which have ended their life-career, but lso that of the several Continents which have disappeared, as also their ecline and geographical change of place.
The mysterious "Kings of Edom" are sometimes referred to as the "Worlds" hat had been destroyed; but it is a "cloak." The Kings who reigned in
Edom before there reigned a King in Israel, or the "Edomite Kings," could ever symbolize the "prior worlds," but only the "attempts at men" on this
Globe--the Pre-Adamite Races, of which the _Zohar_ speaks, and which we xplain as the First Root-Race. For as, speaking of the six Earths (the ix "Limbs" of Microprosopus), it is said that the seventh (our Earth) ame not into the computation when the six were created (the six Spheres bove our Globe in the Terrestrial Chain), so the first seven Kings of
Edom are left out of calculation in _Genesis_. By the law of analogy and ermutation, in the Chaldćan _Book of Numbers_, as also in the _Books of
Knowledge_ and of _Wisdom_, the "seven primordial worlds" mean also the
"seven primordial" races (sub-races of the First Root-Race of the
Shadows); and, again, the Kings of Edom are the sons of "Esau, the father f the Edomites";(1662) _i.e._, Esau represents in the _Bible_ the race hich stands between the Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the
Âryan. "Two _nations_ are in thy womb," said the Lord to Rebekah; and Esau as _red_ and _hairy_. From verse 24 to 34, chapter xxv of _Genesis_ ontains the allegorical history of the birth of the Fifth Race.
Says the _Siphra Dtzenioutha_:
And the Kings of ancient days died and their chiefs [crowns] were
found no more.
And the _Zohar_ states:
The Head of a nation that has not been formed at the beginning in
the likeness of the White Head: its people is not from this
Form.... Before it [the White Head, the Fifth Race or Ancient of
the Ancients] arranged itself in its [own, or present] Form ...
all Worlds have been destroyed; therefore it is written: and Bela,
the Son of Beor, reigned in Edom [_Gen._, xxxvi. Here the "Worlds"
stand for Races]. And he [such or another King of Edom] died, and
another reigned in his stead.
No Kabalist who has hitherto treated of the symbolism and allegory hidden nder these "Kings of Edom" seems to have perceived more than one aspect f them. They are neither the "worlds that were destroyed," nor the "Kings hat died"--alone; but both, and much more, to treat of which there is no pace at present. Therefore, leaving the mystic parables of the _Zohar_, e will return to the hard facts of materialistic Science; first, however, iting a few from the long list of great thinkers who have believed in the lurality of inhabited Worlds in general, and in Worlds that preceded our wn. These are, the great mathematicians Leibnitz and Bernouilli, Sir
Isaac Newton himself, as may be read in his _Optics_; Buffon, the
Naturalist; Condillac, the Sceptic; Bailly, Lavater, Bernardin de St.
Pierre, and, as a contrast to the two last named--suspected at least of
Mysticism--Diderot and most of the writers of the _Encyclopćdia_. Following hese come Kant, the founder of modern Philosophy; the poet Philosophers,
Goethe, Krause, Schelling; and many Astronomers, from Bode, Fergusson and
Herschel, to Lalande and Laplace, with their many disciples in more recent ears.
A brilliant list of honoured names indeed; but the facts of physical
Astronomy speak even more strongly than these names in favour of the resence of life, of even organized life, on other Planets. Thus in four eteorites which fell respectively at Alais in France, in the Cape of Good
Hope, in Hungary, and again in France, on analysis, there was found raphite, a form of carbon known to be invariably associated with organic ife on this Earth of ours. And that the presence of this carbon is not ue to any action occurring within our atmosphere is shown by the fact hat carbon has been found in the very centre of a meteorite; while in one hich fell at Argueil, in the south of France, in 1857, there was found ater and turf, the latter being always formed by the decomposition of egetable substances.
And further, examining the astronomical conditions of the other Planets, t is easy to show that several are far better adapted for the development f life and intelligence--even under the conditions with which men are cquainted--than is our Earth. For instance, on the Planet Jupiter the easons, instead of varying between wide limits as do ours, change by lmost imperceptible degrees, and last twelve times as long as ours. Owing o the inclination of its axis the seasons on Jupiter are due almost ntirely to the eccentricity of its orbit, and hence change slowly and egularly. We shall be told, that no life is possible on Jupiter, as it is n an incandescent state. But not all Astronomers agree with this. For nstance, what we state is declared by M. Flammarion; and _he_ ought to now.
On the other hand Venus would be less adapted for human life such as xists on Earth, since its seasons are more extreme and its changes of emperature more sudden; though it is curious that the duration of the day s nearly the same on the four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth nd Mars.
On Mercury, the Sun's heat and light are seven times what they are on the
Earth, and Astronomy teaches that it is enveloped in a very dense tmosphere. And as we see that life appears more active on Earth in roportion to the light and heat of the Sun, it would seem more than robable that its intensity is far, far greater on Mercury than here.
Venus, like Mercury, has a very dense atmosphere, as also has Mars, and he snows which cover their poles, the clouds which hide their surface, he geographical configuration of their seas and continents, the ariations of seasons and climates, are all closely analogous--at least to he eye of the physical Astronomer. But such facts and the considerations o which they give rise have reference only to the possibility of the xistence on these Planets of human life as known on Earth. That some orms of life such as we know are _possible_ on these Planets, has been ong since abundantly demonstrated, and it seems perfectly useless to go nto detailed questions of the physiology, etc., of these hypothetical nhabitants, since, after all, the reader can arrive only at an imaginary xtension of his familiar surroundings. It is better to rest content with he three conclusions which M. Flammarion, whom we have so largely quoted, ormulates as rigorous and exact deductions from the known _facts_ and aws of Science.
. The various forces which were active in the beginning of evolution gave irth to a great variety of beings on the several worlds; both in the rganic and inorganic kingdoms.
i. The animated beings were constituted from the first according to forms nd organisms in correlation with the physiological state of each nhabited globe.
ii. The humanities of other worlds differ from us, as much in their inner rganization as in their external physical type.
Finally the reader who may be disposed to question the validity of these onclusions as being opposed to the _Bible_, may be referred to an
Appendix in M. Flammarion's work dealing in detail with this question, ince in a work like the present it seems unnecessary to point out the ogical absurdity of those churchmen who deny the plurality of worlds on he ground of biblical authority.
In this connection we may well recall those days when the burning zeal of he Primitive Church opposed the doctrine of the Earth's rotundity, on the round that the nations at the Antipodes would be outside the pale of alvation; and again, we may remember how long it took for a nascent
Science to break down the idea of a solid firmament, in the grooves of hich the stars moved for the special edification of terrestrial humanity.
The theory of the Earth's rotation was met by a like opposition--even to he martyrdom of its discoverers--because, besides depriving our orb of its ignified central position in space, the theory produced an appalling onfusion of ideas as to the Ascension--the terms "up" and "down" being roved to be merely relative, thus complicating not a little the question f the precise locality of Heaven!(1663)
According to the best modern calculations, there are no less than
500,000,000 Stars of various magnitudes, within the range of the best elescopes. As to the distances between them, they are incalculable. Is, hen, our microscopical Earth--a "grain of sand on an infinite sea- hore"--the only centre of intelligent life? Our own Sun, itself 1,300,000 imes larger than our Planet, sinks into insignificance beside the giant
Sun, Sirius, and the latter in its turn is dwarfed by other luminaries in nfinite Space. The self-centred conception of Jehovah as the special uardian of a small and obscure semi-nomadic tribe, is tolerable beside hat which confines sentient existence to our microscopical Globe. The rimary reasons were without doubt: (_a_) astronomical ignorance on the art of the early Christians, coupled with an exaggerated appreciation of an's own importance--a crude form of selfishness; and (_b_) the dread hat, if the hypothesis of millions of other inhabited Globes were ccepted, the crushing rejoinder would ensue: "Was there then a Revelation o each World?"--involving the idea of the Son of God eternally "going the ounds," as it were. Happily it is now unnecessary to waste time and nergy in proving the possibility of the existence of such Worlds. All ntelligent persons admit it. That which now remains to be demonstrated s, that if it is once proven that there are inhabited Worlds besides our wn, with humanities entirely different from each other as from our own--as aintained in the Occult Sciences--then the evolution of the preceding
Races is half proved. For where is that Physicist or Geologist who is repared to maintain that the Earth has not changed scores of times, in he millions of years which have elapsed in the course of its existence; nd that changing its "skin," as it is called in Occultism, the Earth has ot had each time her special Humanities adapted to such atmospheric and limatic conditions as were entailed by such change? And if so, why should ot our preceding four and entirely different Mankinds have existed and hrived before our Adamic Fifth Root Race?
Before closing our debate, however, we have to examine the so-called rganic evolution more closely. Let us search well and see whether it is uite impossible to make our Occult data and chronology agree--up to a ertain point--with those of Science.
C. Supplementary Remarks On Esoteric Geological Chronology.
It seems possible to calculate the approximate duration at any rate of the eological periods from the combined data of Science and Occultism now efore us. Geology is, of course, able to determine one thing with almost ertainty--the thickness of the several deposits. Now, it also stands to eason that the time required for the deposition of any stratum on a sea- ottom must bear a strict proportion to the thickness of the mass thus ormed. Doubtless the _rate_ of the erosion of land, and of the sorting ut of matter on to ocean beds, has varied from age to age, and ataclysmic changes of various kinds have broken the "uniformity" of rdinary geological processes. Provided, then, that we have some definite umerical basis on which to work, our task is rendered less difficult than t might at first sight appear. Making due allowance for variations in the ate of deposit, Professor Lefčvre gives us the relative figures which sum p geological time. He does not attempt to calculate the lapse of years ince the first bed of the Laurentian rocks was deposited, but postulating hat time as _x_, he presents us with the relative proportions in which he various periods stand to it. Let us premise our estimate by stating hat, roughly speaking, the Primordial rocks are 70,000 ft., the Primary
42,000 ft., the Secondary 15,000 ft., the Tertiary 5,000 ft., and the
Quaternary some 500 ft. in thickness:
Dividing into a hundred parts the time, _whatever its actual
length_, that has passed since the dawn of life on this earth
[lower Laurentian strata], we shall be led to attribute to the
Primordial age more than half of the whole duration, say 53.5; to
the Primary 32.2; to the Secondary 11.5; to the Tertiary 2.3; to
the Quaternary 0.5 or one-half per cent.(1664)
Now, as it is certain, on Occult data, that the time which has elapsed ince the first sedimentary deposits is 320,000,000 years, we are able to onstruct the following table:
ROUGH APPROXIMATIONS OF LENGTH OF GEOLOGICAL PERIODS IN YEARS.
Primordial (Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian): 171,200,000.
Primary (Devonian, Coal, Permian): 103,040,000.
Secondary (Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous): 36,800,000.
Tertiary (Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene): 7,360,000.
Quaternary: 1,600,000.(1665)
Such estimates harmonize with the statements of Esoteric Ethnology in lmost every particular. The Tertiary Atlantean part-cycle, from the "apex f glory" of that Race in the early Eocene to the great Mid-Miocene ataclysm, would appear to have lasted some three-and-a-half to four illion years. If the duration of the Quaternary is not, as seems likely, ather over-estimated, the sinking of Ruta and Daitya would be Post-
Tertiary. It is probable that the results here given allow somewhat too ong a period to both the Tertiary and Quaternary, as the Third Race goes ery far back into the Secondary age. Nevertheless, the figures are most uggestive.
But the argument from geological evidence being in favour of only
100,000,000 years, let us compare our claims and teachings with those of xact Science.
Mr. Edward Clodd,(1666) in referring to M. de Mortillet's work _Matériaux our l'Histoire de l'Homme_, which places man in the Mid-Miocene eriod,(1667) remarks that:
It would be in defiance of all that the doctrine of evolution
teaches, and moreover win no support from believers in special
creation and the fixity of species, to seek for so highly
specialized a mammalian as man at an early stage in the life-
history of the globe.
To this, one could answer: (_a_) the doctrine of evolution, as inaugurated y Darwin and developed by later evolutionists, is not only the reverse of nfallible, but it is repudiated by several great men of Science, _e.g._, e Quatrefages, in France, Dr. Weismann, an ex-evolutionist in Germany, nd many others, the ranks of the Anti-Darwinists growing stronger with very year;(1668) and (_b_) truth to be worthy of its name, and remain ruth and fact, hardly needs to beg for support from any class or sect.
For were it to win support from believers in special creation, it would ever gain the favour of the evolutionists, and _vice versâ_. Truth must est upon its own firm foundation of facts, and take its chance of ecognition, when every prejudice in the way is disposed of. Though the uestion has been already fully considered in its main aspect, it is, evertheless, advisable to combat every so-called "scientific" objection s we go along, when making what are regarded as heretical and anti- cientific statements.
Let us briefly glance at the divergencies between orthodox and Esoteric
Science, on the question of the age of the globe and of man. With the two espective synchronistic tables before him, the reader will be enabled to ee at a glance the importance of these divergencies; and to perceive, at he same time, that it is not impossible--nay, it is most likely--that urther discoveries in Geology and the finding of fossil remains of man ill force Science to confess that it is Esoteric Philosophy which is ight after all, or, at any rate, nearer to the truth.
PARALLELISM OF LIFE.
SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES: Science divides the period of the Globe's history, ince the beginning of life on Earth (or the Azoic age), into five main ivisions or periods, according to Hćckel.(1669)
ESOTERIC THEORY: Leaving the classification of the geological periods to
Western Science, Esoteric Philosophy divides only the Life-periods on the
Globe. In the present Manvantara the actual period is separated into seven
Kalpas and seven great human Races. Its first Kalpa, answering to the
Primordial Epoch is the age of the Primeval.
SCIENTIFIC: PRIMORDIAL EPOCH: Laurentian, Cambrian, Silurian. The
Primordial epoch, Science tells us, is by no means devoid of vegetable and nimal life. In the Laurentian deposits are found specimens of the Eozoon anadense--a chambered shell. In the Silurian are discovered sea-weeds
(algć), molluscs, crustacea, and lower marine organisms, also the first race of fishes. The Primordial epoch shows algć, molluscs, crustacea, olyps, and marine organisms, etc. Science teaches, therefore, that marine ife was present from the very beginnings of time, leaving us, however, to peculate for ourselves as to _how_ life appeared on Earth. If it rejects he biblical "creation" (as we do), why does it not give us another, pproximately plausible hypothesis?
ESOTERIC: "PRIMEVAL"(1670): Devas or Divine Men, the "Creators" and
Progenitors.(1671) The Esoteric Philosophy agrees with the statement made y Science (see preceding), demurring, however, to one particular. The
300,000,000 years of vegetable life (see "Brâhmanical Chronology") receded the "Divine Men," or Progenitors. Also, no teaching denies that here were traces of life _within_ the Earth, besides the Eozoon anadense, in the Primordial Epoch. Only, whereas the said vegetation elonged to this Round, the zoological relics now found in the Laurentian,
Cambrian, and Silurian systems, so called, are the _relics_ of the Third
Round. At first astral like the rest, they consolidated and materialized
_pari passu_ with the new vegetation.
SCIENTIFIC: PRIMARY: Devonian,(1672) Coal, Permian. "Fern-forests, igillaria, coniferć, fishes, first trace of reptiles." Thus saith Modern
Science.
ESOTERIC: "PRIMARY": Divine Progenitors (Secondary Groups), and the two nd a half Races. The Esoteric Doctrine repeats that which was said above.
These are all relics of the preceding Round.(1673)
Once, however, the prototypes are projected out of the Astral Envelope of he Earth, an indefinite amount of modification ensues.
SCIENTIFIC: SECONDARY: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous. This is the age of
Reptiles, of the gigantic megalosauri, ichthyosauri, plesiosauri, etc.
Science denies the presence of man in this period. But it has still to xplain how men came to know of these monsters and describe them _before_ he age of Cuvier! The old annals of China, India, Egypt, and even of
Judea are full of them, as demonstrated elsewhere. In this period also ppear the first marsupial mammals(1674)--insectivorous, carnivorous, hytophagous; and, as Prof. Owen thinks, a herbiferous hoofed mammal.
Science does not admit the appearance of man before _the close_ of the
Tertiary period.(1675) Why? Because man has to be shown younger than the igher mammals. But Esoteric Philosophy teaches us the reverse. And as
Science is quite unable to come to anything like an approximate conclusion s to the age of man, or even as to the geological periods, the Occult eaching is, therefore, more logical and reasonable, even if accepted only s a hypothesis.
ESOTERIC: "SECONDARY": According to every calculation the Third Race had lready made its appearance, as during the Triassic there were already a ew mammals, and it must have separated before their appearance.
This, then, is the age of the Third Race, in which the origins of the arly Fourth may be perhaps also discoverable. We are, however, here left ntirely to conjecture, as no definite data are yet given out by the
Initiates.
The analogy is but a poor one, still it may be argued that, as the early ammalia and pre-mammalia are shown in their evolution merging from one ind into a higher one, anatomically, so are the human races in their rocreative processes. A parallel might certainly be found between the onotremata, didelphia (or marsupialia) and the placental mammals, divided n their turn into three orders(1676) like the First, Second, and Third
Root-Races of men.(1677) But this would require more space than can be now llotted to the subject.
SCIENTIFIC: TERTIARY(1678): Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene. No man is yet llowed to have lived during this period.
Says Mr. E. Clodd, in _Knowledge_: "Although the placental mammals and the rder of primates to which man is related, appear in Tertiary times, and he climate, tropical in the Eocene age, warm in the Miocene, and emperate in the Pliocene, was favourable to his presence, the proofs of is existence in Europe before the close of the Tertiary epoch ... are not enerally accepted here."
ESOTERIC: "TERTIARY": The Third Race has now almost utterly disappeared, arried away by the fearful geological cataclysms of the Secondary age, eaving behind it but a few hybrid races.
The Fourth, born millions of years before(1679) the said cataclysm took lace, perished during the Miocene period,(1680) when the Fifth (our Âryan
Race) had had one million years of independent existence.(1681) How much lder it is from its origin--who knows? As the "historical" period began ith the Indian Âryans, with their _Vedas_ for their multitudes,(1682) and ar earlier in the Esoteric Records, it is useless to establish here any arallels.
Geology has now divided the periods and placed man in the Quaternary.
SCIENTIFIC: QUATERNARY: Palćolithic Man, Neolithic Man, Historical Period.
ESOTERIC: "QUATERNARY": If the Quaternary period is allowed 1,500,000 ears, then only does our Fifth Race belong to it.
Yet--_mirabile dictu_--while the non-cannibal Palćolithic man, who must have ertainly antedated cannibal Neolithic man by hundreds of thousands of ears,(1683) is shown to be a remarkable artist, Neolithic man is made out o be almost an abject savage, his lake dwellings notwithstanding.(1684)
For see what a learned Geologist, Mr. Charles Gould, tells the reader in is _Mythical Monsters_:
Palćolithic men were unacquainted with pottery and the art of
weaving, and apparently had no domesticated animals or system of
cultivation; but the Neolithic lake-dwellers of Switzerland had
looms, pottery, cereals, sheep, horses, etc. Implements of horn,
bone, and wood were in common use among both races, but those of
the older are frequently distinguished by their being sculptured
with great ability, or ornamented with life-like engravings of the
various animals living at the period; whereas there appears to
have been a marked absence of any similar artistic ability(1685)
on the part of Neolithic man.(1686)
Let us give the reasons for this.
(1) The oldest fossil man, the primitive cave-men of the old Palćolithic eriod, and of the Pre-Glacial period (of whatever length, and however far ack), is always the same genus man, and there are no fossil remains roving for him
What the Hipparion and Anchitherium have proved for the genus
horse--that is, gradual progressive specialization from a simple
ancestral type to more complex existing forms.(1687)
(2) As to the so-called Palćolithic hatchets:
When placed side by side with the rudest forms of stone hatchets
actually used by the Australian and other savages, it is difficult
to detect any difference.(1688)
This goes to prove that there have been savages _at all times_; and the nference would be that there might have been civilized people in those ays as well, cultured nations contemporary with those rude savages. We ee such a thing in Egypt 7,000 years ago.
(3) An obstacle which is the direct consequence of the two preceding: Man, f no older than the Palćolithic period, could not possibly have had the ctual time necessary for his transformation from the "missing link" into hat he is known to have been even during that remote geological time,
_i.e._, even _a finer specimen of manhood than many of the now existing aces_.
The above lends itself naturally to the following syllogism: (1) The
_primitive_ man (known to Science) was, in some respects, even a finer man f his genus than he is now. (2) The earliest monkey known, the lemur, was
_less_ anthropoid than the modern pithecoid species. (3) Conclusion: Even hough a _missing link_ were found, the balance of evidence would remain ore in favour of the ape _being a degenerated man_, made dumb by some ortuitous circumstances,(1689) than in favour of the descent of man from pithecoid ancestor. The theory cuts both ways.
On the other hand, if the existence of Atlantis be accepted, and the tatement be believed that in the Eocene age--
Even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race
men, the Atlanteans, had already reached its highest point,(1690)
hen some of the present difficulties of Science might easily be made to isappear. The rude workmanship of the Palćolithic tools proves nothing gainst the idea that, side by side with their makers, there lived nations ighly civilized. We are told that:
Only a very small portion of the earth's surface has been
explored, and of this a very small portion consists of ancient
land surfaces or fresh water formations, where alone we can expect
to meet with traces of the higher forms of animal life. And even
these have been so imperfectly explored, that where we now meet
with thousands and tens of thousands of undoubted human remains
lying almost under our feet, it is only within the last thirty
years that their existence has even been suspected.(1691)
It is very suggestive also that along with the rude hatchets of the lowest avage, explorers meet with specimens of workmanship of such artistic erit as could hardly be found, or expected, in a modern peasant belonging o any European country--unless in exceptional cases. The "portrait" of the
"Reindeer Feeding," from the Thayngin grotto in Switzerland, and those of he man running, with two horses' heads sketched close to him--a work of he Reindeer period, _i.e._, at least 50,000 years ago--are pronounced by
Mr. Laing to be not only exceedingly well done, but the former, the
"Reindeer Feeding," is described as one that "would do credit to any odern animal painter"--by no means exaggerated praise, as anyone may see, y glancing at the sketch given below from Mr. Gould's work. Now, since we ave our greatest painters of Europe side by side with the modern
Esquimaux, who also have a tendency, like their Palćolithic ancestors of he Reindeer period, the rude and savage human species, to be constantly rawing with the point of their knives sketches of animals, scenes of the hase, etc., why could not the same have happened in those days? Compared ith the specimens of Egyptian drawing and sketching--7,000 years ago--the
"earliest portraits" of men, horses' heads, and reindeer, made 50,000 ears ago, _are certainly superior_. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of those eriods are known to have been a highly civilized nation, whereas the
Palćolithic men are called _savages_ of the lower type. This is a small atter seemingly, yet it is extremely suggestive as showing how every new eological discovery is made to fit in with current theories, instead of itting the theories to include the discovery. Yes; Mr. Huxley is right in aying, "Time will show." It will, and it must vindicate Occultism.
Meanwhile, the most uncompromising Materialists are driven by necessity nto the most Occult-like admissions. Strange to say, it is the most aterialistic--those of the German school--who, with regard to _physical_ evelopment, come the nearest to the teachings of the Occultists. Thus,
Professor Baumgärtner believes that:
The germs for the higher animals could only be the eggs of the
lower animals; ... besides the advance of the vegetable and animal
world in development, there occurred in that period the formation
of _new original germs_ [which formed the basis of new
metamorphoses, etc.] ... the first men who proceeded from the
germs of animals beneath them, lived first in a larva state.
Just so; in a larva state, we say too, only from no "animal" germ; and hat larva was the soulless astral form of the pre-physical Races. And we elieve, as the German professor does, with several other men of Science n Europe now, that the human races--
Have not descended from one pair, but appeared immediately in
numerous races.(1692)
Therefore, when we read _Force and Matter_, and find that Emperor of
Materialists, Büchner, repeating after Manu and Hermes, that:
Imperceptibly the plant glides into the animal, the animal into
the man(1693)
--we need only add "and man into a spirit," to complete the kabalistic xiom. The more so, since we read the following admission:
Evolved by spontaneous generation ... that whole rich and
multiform organic world ... has developed itself progressively, in
the course of endless periods of time, by the aid of natural
phenomena.(1694)
The whole difference lies in this: Modern Science places her materialistic heory of primordial germs on Earth, and the _last germ_ of life on this
Globe, of man, and everything else, between _two voids_. Whence the
_first_ germ, if both spontaneous generation and the interference of xternal forces, are absolutely rejected now? Germs of organic life, we re told, by Sir William Thompson, came to our Earth in some meteor. This elps in no way, and only shifts the difficulty from this Earth to the upposed meteor.
These are our agreements and disagreements with Science. About the
"endless periods" we are, of course, at one even with materialistic peculation; for we believe in Evolution, though on different lines.
Professor Huxley very wisely says:
If any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct,
we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has
yet been made of the antiquity of man.(1695)
But when we are told that this man is a product of the natural forces nherent _in_ Matter--Force, according to modern views, being but a quality f Matter, a "mode of motion," etc.--and when we find Sir William Thompson epeating in 1885 what was asserted by Büchner and his school thirty years go, we fear all our reverence for real Science is vanishing into thin ir! One can hardly help thinking that Materialism is, in certain cases, a
_disease_. For when men of Science, in the face of magnetic phenomena and he attraction of iron particles through insulating substances, like lass, maintain that the said attraction is due to "molecular motion," or o the "rotation of the molecules of the magnet," then, whether the eaching comes from a "credulous" Theosophist innocent of any notion of
Physics, or from an eminent man of Science, it is equally ridiculous. The ndividual who asserts such a theory in the teeth of _fact_, is only one ore proof that: "When people have not a niche in their minds into which o shoot facts, so much the worse for the facts."
At present the dispute between the spontaneous generationists and their pponents is at rest, having ended in the provisional victory of the atter. But even they are forced to admit, as Büchner did, and Messrs.
Tyndall and Huxley still do--that spontaneous generation _must have ccurred once_, under "special thermal conditions." Virchow refuses even o argue the question; it _must_ have taken place some time in the history f our planet; and there's an end of it. This seems to look more natural han Sir William Thompson's hypothesis just quoted, that the germs of rganic life fell on our Earth in some meteor; or the other "scientific" ypothesis coupled with the recently adopted belief that there exists _no_
"vital principle" whatever, but only vital phenomena, which can all be raced to the molecular forces of the original protoplasm. But this does ot help Science to solve the still greater problem--the origin and the
_descent_ of Man, for here is a still worse plaint and lamentation.
While we can trace the skeletons of Eocene mammals through several
directions of specialization in succeeding Tertiary times, man
presents the phenomenon of an _unspecialized_ skeleton which
cannot fairly be connected with any of these lines.(1696)
The secret could be soon told, not only from the Esoteric but even from he standpoint of every religion the world over, without mentioning the
Occultists. The "specialized skeleton" is sought for in the wrong place, here it can never be found. Scientists expect to discover it in the hysical remains of man, in some pithecoid "missing link," with a skull arger than that of the ape's, and with a cranial capacity smaller than in an, instead of looking for that specialization in _the super-physical ssence of his inner astral constitution, which can hardly be excavated rom any geological strata_! Such a tenacious, hopeful clinging to a self- egrading theory is the most wonderful feature of the day.
Meanwhile, there are specimens of engravings made by Palćolithic
"savages": Palćolithic meaning the "earlier Stone-age" man, one supposed o have been as savage and brutal as the brutes he lived with. Leaving the odern South Sea islander, or even any Asiatic race, aside, we defy any rown-up schoolboy, or even a European youth, one who has never studied rawing, to execute such an engraving or even a pencil sketch as good.
Here we have the true artistic _raccourci_, and correct lights and shadows ithout any _plane_ model before the artist, who copied direct from ature, thus exhibiting a knowledge of anatomy and proportion. The artist ho engraved this reindeer belonged, we are asked to believe, to the rimitive "semi-animal" savages (contemporaneous with the mammoth and the oolly rhinoceros), whom some over-zealous Evolutionists once sought to icture to us as distinct approximations to the type of their hypothetical
"pithecoid man"!
This engraved antler proves as eloquently as any fact can do, that the volution of the Races has ever proceeded in a series of rises and falls, hat man is, perhaps, as old as incrustated Earth, and--if we can call his ivine ancestor "man"--is far older still.
Even de Mortillet himself seems to experience a vague distrust of the onclusions of modern Archćologists, when he writes:
The pre-historic is a new science, far, very far, from having said
its last word.(1697)
According to Lyell, one of the highest authorities on the subject, and the
"father" of Geology:
The expectation of always meeting with a lower type of human
skull, the older the formation in which it occurs, _is based on
the theory of progressive development_, and it _may_ prove to be
sound; nevertheless we must remember that as yet _we have no
distinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are
called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in
chronological order that of the higher races_.(1698)
Nor has such evidence been found to this day. Science is thus offering for ale the skin of a bear, which has hitherto never been seen by mortal eye!
This concession of Lyell's reads most suggestively with the subjoined tterance of Professor Max Müller, whose attack on Darwinian Anthropology rom the standpoint of language has, by the way, never been satisfactorily nswered:
What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter of their
history? [Compare this with the Esoteric view of the Australians,
Bushmen, as well as of Palćolithic European man, the Atlantean
offshoots retaining a relic of a lost culture, which throve when
the parent Root-Race was in its prime.] Do we ever get an insight
into their antecedents? Can we ever understand what after all is
everywhere the most important and the most instructive lesson to
learn--how they have come to be what they are?... Their language
proves, indeed, that these so-called heathens, with their
complicated systems of mythology, their artificial customs, their
unintelligible whims and savageries, are not the creatures of to-
day or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for these
savages, they must be as old as the Hindűs, the Greeks and Romans
[far older] ... They may have passed through ever so many
vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive, may be, for all
we know, a relapse into savagery or a corruption of something that
was more rational and intelligible in former stages.(1699)
Professor George Rawlinson, M.A., remarks:
"The primeval savage" is a familiar term in modern literature, but
there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather
_all the evidence looks the other way_.(1700)
In his _Origin of Nations_, he rightly adds:
_The mythical traditions of almost all nations place at the
beginning of human history a time of happiness and perfection_, a
"golden age" which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but
many of civilization and refinement.(1701)
How is the modern Evolutionist to meet this consensus of evidence?
We repeat the question asked in _Isis Unveiled_:
Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that
there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized?
When the present population of the Earth has disappeared, and some
Archćologist belonging to the "coming race" of the distant future
shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or
Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that
mankind in the nineteenth century was "just emerging from the
Stone age"?(1702)
Another strange inconsistency in scientific theories is that Neolithic man s shown as being far more of a primitive savage than Palćolithic. Either
Lubbock's _Pre-historic Man_, or Evans' _Ancient Stone Implements_ must be t fault, or--both. For this is what we learn from these works and others:
(1) As we pass from Neolithic to Palćolithic man, the stone implements ecome rude lumbering makeshifts, instead of gracefully shaped and olished instruments. Pottery, and other useful arts disappear as we escend the scale. And yet the latter could engrave such a reindeer!
(2) Palćolithic man lived in caves which he shared with hyćnas and ions,(1703) whereas Neolithic man dwelt in lake-villages and buildings.
Every one who has followed even superficially the geological discoveries f our day, knows that a gradual improvement in workmanship is found, from he clumsy chipping and rude chopping of the early Palćolithic hatchets, o the relatively graceful stone celts of that part of the Neolithic eriod immediately preceding the use of metals. But this is _in Europe_, nly a few portions of which were barely rising from the waters in the ays of the highest Atlantean civilization. There were rude savages and ighly civilized people then, as there are now. If 50,000 years hence, igmy Bushmen are exhumed from some African cavern together with far arlier pigmy elephants, such as were found in the cave deposits of Malta y Milne Edwards, will that be a reason for maintaining that in our age ll men and all elephants were pigmies? Or if the weapons of the Veddhas f Ceylon are found, will our descendants be justified in setting us all own as Palćolithic savages? All the articles which Geologists now xcavate in Europe can certainly never date earlier than the close of the
Eocene age, since the lands of Europe were not even above water before hat period. Nor can what we have said be in the least invalidated by heorists telling us that these quaint sketches of animals and men by
Palćolithic man, were executed only toward the close of the Reindeer eriod--for this explanation would be a very lame one indeed, in view of he Geologists' ignorance of even the approximate duration of periods.
The Esoteric Doctrine teaches distinctly the dogma of the risings and alls of civilization; and now we learn that:
It is a remarkable fact that cannibalism seems to have become more
frequent as man advanced in civilization, and that while its
traces are frequent in Neolithic times they become very scarce or
altogether disappear in the age of the mammoth and the
reindeer....(1704)
--another evidence of the cyclic law and the truth of our teachings.
Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the
Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter
(Chinamen, African negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The
_Vedas_ countenance no idols; all the modern Hindű writings do.
In the early Egyptian tombs, and in the remains of the pre-
historic cities excavated by Dr. Schliemann, images of owl- and
ox-headed goddesses, and other symbolical figures or idols, are
found in abundance. But when we ascend into Neolithic times, such
idols are no longer found, or, if found, it is so rarely that
archćologists still dispute as to their existence ... the only
ones which may be said with some certainty to have been idols are
one or two discovered by M. de Braye in some artificial caves of
the Neolithic period ... which appear to be intended for female
figures of life size.(1705)
And these may have been simply statues. Anyhow, all this is one among the any proofs of the cyclic rise and fall of civilization and religion. The act that no traces of human relics or skeletons are so far found beyond
Post-Tertiary or Quaternary times--though Abbé Bourgeois' flints may serve s a warning(1706)--seems to point to the truth of another Esoteric tatement, which runs thus:
_Seek for the remains of thy forefathers in the high places. The vales ave grown into mountains and the mountains have crumbled to the bottom of he seas._
Fourth Race mankind, thinned after the last cataclysm by two-thirds of its opulation, instead of settling on the new continents and islands that
_reäppeared_--while their predecessors formed the floors of new ceans--deserted that which is now Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for he summits of gigantic mountains, the seas that surrounded some of the atter having since "retreated" and made room for the table lands of
Central Asia.
The most interesting example of this progressive march is perhaps afforded y the celebrated Kent's Cavern at Torquay. In that strange recess, xcavated by water out of the Devonian limestone, we find a most curious ecord preserved for us in the geological memoirs of the Earth. Under the locks of limestone, which heaped the floor of the cavern, were iscovered, embedded in a deposit of black earth, many implements of the
Neolithic period of _fairly excellent workmanship_, with a few fragments f pottery--possibly traceable to the era of the Roman colonization. There s no trace of Palćolithic man here. No flints or traces of the extinct nimals of the Quaternary period. When, however, we penetrate still deeper hrough the dense layer of stalagmite beneath the black mould into the red arth, which, of course, itself once formed the pavement of the retreat, hings assume a very different aspect. _Not one implement_ fit to bear omparison with the _finely-chipped weapons found in the overlying tratum_ is to be seen; only a host of the rude and lumbering little atchets (with which the monstrous giants of the animal world were subdued nd killed by little man, we have to think?) and scrapers of the
Palćolithic age, mixed up confusedly with the bones of species now either xtinct or emigrated, driven away by change of climate. It is the rtificer of these ugly little hatchets, you see, who sculptured the eindeer over the brook, on the antler as shown above! In all cases we eet with the same evidence that, from historic to Neolithic and from
Neolithic to Palćolithic man, things slope downwards on an inclined plane rom the rudiments of civilization to the most abject barbarism--_in Europe gain_. We are made also to face the "Mammoth age"--the extreme or earliest ivision of the Palćolithic age--in which the great rudeness of implements eaches its maximum, and the brutal (?) appearance of contemporary skulls, uch as the Neanderthal, points to a very low type of humanity. But they ay sometimes point also to something else; to a race of men quite istinct from our (Fifth Race) Humanity.
As said by an Anthropologist in _Modern Thought_:
The theory, scientifically based or not, of Peyrčre may be
considered to be equivalent to that which divided man in two
species. Broca, Virey, and a number of the French anthropologists
have recognized that the lower race of man, comprising the
Australian, Tasmanian, and Negro race, excluding the Kaffirs and
the Northern Africans, _should be placed apart_. The fact that in
this species, or rather sub-species, the third lower molars are
usually larger than the second, and the squamosal and frontal
bones are generally united by suture, places the _Homo afer_ on
the level of being as good a distinct species as many of the kinds
of finches. I shall abstain on the present occasion from
mentioning the facts of hybridity, whereon the late Professor
Broca has so exhaustively commented. The history, in the past ages
of the world, of this race is peculiar. It has _never originated a
system of architecture or a religion of its own_.(1707)
It is peculiar, indeed, as we have shown in the case of the Tasmanians.
However it may be, _fossil_ man in Europe can neither prove nor disprove he antiquity of man on this Earth, nor the age of his earliest ivilizations.
It is time that the Occultists should disregard any attempts to laugh at hem, scorning the heavy guns of the satire of the men of Science as much s the pop-guns of the profane, since it is impossible, so far, to obtain ither proof or disproof, while their theories can stand the test better han can the hypotheses of the Scientists, at any rate. As to the proof of he antiquity which they claim for man, they have Darwin himself and Lyell ith them. The latter confesses that they, the Naturalists--
Have already obtained evidence of the existence of man at so
remote a period that there has been time for many conspicuous
mammalia, once his contemporaries, to die out, and _this even
before the era of the earliest_ historical records.(1708)
This is a statement made by one of England's great authorities upon the uestion. The two sentences that follow are as suggestive, and may well be emembered by students of Occultism, for with all others he says:
In spite of the long lapse of prehistoric ages during which he
[man] must have flourished on earth, _there is no proof of any
perceptible change in his bodily structure_. If, therefore, he
ever diverged from some unreasoning brute ancestor, we must
suppose him to have existed at a far more distant epoch, _possibly
on some continents or islands now submerged_ beneath the ocean.
Thus lost continents are officially suspected. That worlds, and also aces, are periodically destroyed by fire (volcanoes and earthquakes) and ater, in turn, and are periodically renewed, is a doctrine as old as man.
Manu, Hermes, the Chaldćans, all antiquity, believed in this. Twice lready has the face of the Globe been changed by fire, and twice by ater, since man appeared on it. As land needs rest and renovation, new orces, and a change for its soil, so does water. Thence arises a eriodical redistribution of land and water, change of climates, etc., all rought on by geological revolution, and ending in a final change in the xis of the Earth. Astronomers may pooh-pooh the idea of a periodical hange in the behaviour of the Globe's axis, and smile at the conversation iven in the _Book of Enoch_ between Noah and his "grandfather" Enoch; the llegory is, nevertheless, a geological and an astronomical fact. There is secular change in the inclination of the Earth's axis, and its appointed ime is recorded in one of the great Secret Cycles. As in many other uestions, Science is gradually moving toward our way of thinking. Dr.
Henry Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., writes in the _Popular Science Review_:
If it be necessary to call in extra-mundane causes to explain the
great increase of ice at this glacial period, I would prefer the
theory propounded by Dr. Robert Hooke in 1688; since, by Sir
Richard Phillips and others; and lastly by Mr. Thomas Belt, C.E.,
F.G.S.; namely, a slight increase in the present obliquity of the
ecliptic, a proposal in perfect accord with other known
astronomical facts, and the introduction of which involves no
disturbance of the harmony which is essential to our cosmical
condition as a unit in the great solar system.(1709)
The following, quoted from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., elivered in March, 1885, on "The Extinct Lake of Bovey Tracey," shows the esitation, in the face of every evidence in favour of Atlantis, to accept he fact.
Evergreen figs, laurels, palms, and ferns having gigantic rhizomes
have their existing congeners _in a sub-tropical climate, such, it
cannot be doubted, as prevailed in __ Devonshire in Miocene
times_, and are thus calculated to suggest caution when the
_present climate_ of any district is regarded as normal.
When, moreover, Miocene plants are found in Disco Island, on the
west coast of Greenland, lying between 69° 20´ and 70° 30´ N.
lat.; when we learn that among them were two species found also at
Bovey (Sequoia couttsić, Quercus lyelli); when, to quote Professor
Heer, we find that "the 'splendid evergreen' (Magnolia
inglefieldi) 'ripened its fruits so far north as on the parallel
of 70°' " (_Phil. Trans._, clix. 457, 1869); when also the number,
variety, and luxuriance of the Greenland Miocene plants are found
to have been such that, had land continued so far, some of them
would in all probability have flourished at the Pole itself, the
problem of changes of climate is brought prominently into view,
but only to be dismissed apparently with the feeling that the
_time for its solution has not yet arrived_.
It seems to be admitted on all hands that the Miocene plants of
Europe have their nearest and most numerous existing analogues in
North America, and hence arises the question: How was the
migration from one area to the other effected? Was there, as some
have believed, an Atlantis?--a continent, or an archipelago of
large islands, occupying the area of the North Atlantic. There is
perhaps nothing unphilosophical in this hypothesis; for since, as
geologists state, "the Alps have acquired 4,000, and even in some
places more than 10,000 feet of their present altitude since the
commencement of the Eocene period" (Lyell's _Principles_, 11th
ed., p. 256, 1872), a Post-Miocene[?] depression might have
carried the hypothetical Atlantis into almost abysmal depths. But
an Atlantis is apparently unnecessary and uncalled for. According
to Professor Oliver, "A close and very peculiar analogy subsists
between the Flora of Tertiary Central Europe and the recent Floras
of the American States and of the Japanese region; an analogy much
closer and more intimate than is to be traced between the Tertiary
and recent Floras of Europe. We find the Tertiary element of the
Old World to be intensified towards its extreme eastern margin, if
not in numerical preponderance of genera, yet in features which
especially give a character to the Fossil Flora.... This accession
of the Tertiary element is rather gradual and not abruptly assumed
in the Japan islands only. Although it there attains a maximum, we
may trace it from the Mediterranean, Levant, Caucasus, and Persia
... then along the Himâlaya and through China.... We learn also
that during the Tertiary epoch, counterparts of Central European
Miocene genera certainly grew in North-West America.... We note
further that the present Atlantic Islands' Flora affords no
substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the
mainland of the New World.... The consideration of these facts
lead me to the opinion that botanical evidence does not favour the
hypothesis of an Atlantis. On the other hand, it strongly favours
the view that at some period of the Tertiary epoch North-Eastern
Asia was united to North-Western America, perhaps by the line
where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends." (_Nat. Hist.
Rev._, ii. 164, 1862, Art., "The Atlantis Hypothesis in its
Botanical Aspect.")
See, however, on these points, "Scientific and Geological Proofs of the
Reality of Several Submerged Continents."
But nothing short of a pithecoid man will ever satisfy the luckless earchers after the thrice hypothetical "missing link." Yet, if beneath he vast floors of the Atlantic, from the Teneriffe Pic to Gibraltar, the ncient emplacement of the lost Atlantis, all the submarine strata were to e broken up miles deep, no such skull as would satisfy the Darwinists ould be found. As Dr. C. R. Bree remarks, no missing links between man nd ape having been discovered in various gravels and formations above the
Tertiary strata, if these forms had gone down with the continents now overed with the sea, they might still have been found--
In those beds of contemporary geological strata which have _not_
gone down to the bottom of the sea.(1710)
Yet they are as fatally absent from the latter as from the former. Did not reconceptions fasten vampire-like on man's mind, the author of The
_Antiquity of Man_ would have found a clue to the difficulty in that same ork of his, by going ten pages back (to p. 530) and reading over a uotation of his own from Professor G. Rolleston's work. This
Physiologist, he says, suggests that as there is considerable plasticity n the human frame, not only in youth and during growth, but even in the dult, we ought not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the evelopment theory seem to do, that each advance in physical power depends n an improvement in bodily structure, for why may not _the soul, or the igher intellectual and moral faculties play the first instead of the econd part in a progressive scheme_?
This hypothesis is made in relation to evolution _not being entirely due_ o "natural selection"; but it applies as well to the case in hand. For e, too, claim that it is the "Soul," or the Inner Man, that descends on
Earth first, the psychic Astral, the mould on which physical man is radually built--his Spirit, intellectual and moral faculties awakening ater on as that physical stature grows and develops.
"Thus incorporeal spirits to smaller forms reduced their shapes immense," nd became the men of the Third and the Fourth Races. Still later, ages fter, appeared the men of our Fifth Race, reduced from what we should all the still gigantic stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half hat size at present.
Man is certainly _no_ special creation. He is the product of Nature's radual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But his is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and hinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution--is the
"Eternal Pilgrim," the Protean differentiation in Space and Time of the
One Absolute "Unknowable."
In his _Antiquity of Man_(1711) Sir Charles Lyell quotes--perhaps in rather mocking spirit--what Hallam says in his _Introduction to the Literature f Europe_:
If man was made in the image of God, he was also made in the image
of an ape. The framework of the body of him who has weighed the
stars and made the lightning his slave, approaches to that of a
speechless brute who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus
standing on the frontier land between animal and angelic natures,
what wonder that he should partake of both!(1712)
An Occultist would have put it otherwise. He would say that man was indeed ade in the image of a type projected by his progenitor, the creating
Angel-Force, or Dhyân Chohan; while the wanderer of the forest of Sumatra as made _in the image of man_, since the framework of the ape, we say gain, is the revival, the resuscitation by abnormal means, of the actual orm of the Third Round and of the Fourth Round Man as well, later on.
Nothing is lost in Nature, _not an atom_: this is at least certain on cientific data. Analogy would appear to demand that _form_ should be qually endowed with permanency.
And yet what do we find? Says Sir William Dawson, F.R.S.:
It is farther significant that Professor Huxley, in his lectures
in New York, while resting his case as to the lower animals mainly
on the supposed genealogy of the horse, which has often been shown
to amount to no certain evidence, avoided altogether the
discussion of the origin of men from the apes, now obviously
complicated with so many difficulties that both Wallace and Mivart
are staggered by them. Professor Thomas in his recent lectures
(_Nature_, 1876), admits that there is no lower man known than the
Australian, and that there is no known link of connection with the
monkeys; and Hćckel has to admit that the penultimate link in his
phylogeny, the ape-like man, is absolutely unknown (_History of
Creation_).... The so-called "tallies" found with the bones of
Palćocosmic men in European caves, and illustrated in the
admirable works of Christy and Lartet, show that the rudiments
even of writing were already in possession of the oldest race of
men known to archćology or geology.(1713)
Again, in Dr. C. R. Bree's _Fallacies of Darwinism_, we read:
Mr. Darwin justly says that the difference physically and, more
especially, mentally, between the lowest form of man and the
highest anthropomorphous ape, is enormous. Therefore, _the
time_--which in Darwinian evolution must be almost inconceivably
slow--must have been _enormous_ also during man's development from
the monkey(1714). The chance, therefore, of some of these
variations being found in the different gravels or fresh-water
formations above the tertiaries, must be very great. And yet not
one single variation, not one single specimen of a being between a
monkey and a man has ever been found! Neither in the gravel, not
the drift-clay, nor the fresh-water beds and gravel and drift, nor
in the tertiaries below them, has there ever been discovered the
remains of any member of the missing families between the monkey
and the man, as _assumed_ to have existed by Mr. Darwin. Have they
gone down with the depression of the earth's surface and are they
now covered with the sea? If so, it is beyond all probability that
they should not also be found in those beds of contemporary
geological strata which have _not_ gone down to the bottom of the
sea; still more improbable that some portions should not be
dredged from the ocean-bed like the remains of the mammoth and the
rhinoceros, which are also found in fresh-water beds and gravel
and drift!... The celebrated Neanderthal skull, about which so
much has been said, belongs confessedly to this remote period
[bronze and stone ages], and yet presents, although it may have
been the skull of an idiot, immense differences from the highest
known anthropomorphous ape.(1715)
Our Globe being convulsed each time that it _reäwakens_ for a new period f activity, like a field which has to be ploughed and furrowed before resh seed for its new crop is thrown into it--it does seem quite hopeless hat fossils belonging to its previous Rounds should be found in the beds f either its oldest or its latest geological strata. Every new Manvantara rings along with it the renovation of forms, types and species; every ype of the preceding organic forms--vegetable, animal and human--changes nd is perfected in the next, even to the mineral, which has received in his Round its final opacity and hardness; its softer portions formed the resent vegetation; the astral relics of previous vegetation and fauna ere utilized in the formation of the lower animals, and in determining he structure of the primeval Root-Types of the highest mammalia. And, inally, the form of the gigantic ape-man of the former Round has been eproduced in this one by human bestiality, and transfigured into the
_parent_ form in the modern anthropoid.
This doctrine, even imperfectly delineated as it is under our inefficient en, is assuredly more logical, more consistent with facts, and _far more_ robable, than many "scientific" theories; that, for instance, of the irst organic germ descending on a meteor to our Earth--like Ain Suph on ts Vehicle, Adam Kadmon. Only, the latter descent is allegorical, as very one knows, and the Kabalists have never offered this figure of peech for acceptance in its dead-letter garb. But the germ-in-the-meteor heory, as coming from such high scientific quarters, is an eligible andidate for axiomatic truth and law, a theory people are in honour bound o accept, if they would be on a right level with Modern Science. What the ext theory necessitated by the materialistic premisses will be--no one can ell. Meanwhile, the _present_ theories, as anyone can see, clash far more iscordantly among themselves than even with those of the Occultists utside the sacred precincts of learning. For what is there, next in rder, now that exact Science has made even of the life-principle an empty ord, a meaningless term, and insists that life is an effect _due to the olecular action of the primordial protoplasm_? The new doctrine of the
Darwinists may be defined and summarized in the few words, from Mr.
Herbert Spencer:
The hypothesis of special creations turns out to be
worthless--worthless, by its derivation; worthless, in its
intrinsic incoherence; worthless, as absolutely without evidence;
worthless, as not supplying an intellectual need; worthless, as
not satisfying a moral want. We must, therefore, consider it as
counting for nothing in opposition to any other hypothesis
respecting the origin of organic beings.(1716)
Section V. Organic Evolution and Creative Centres.
It is argued that Universal Evolution, otherwise the gradual development f species in all the kingdoms of Nature, works by uniform laws. This is dmitted, and the law is enforced far more strictly in Esoteric than in
Modern Science. But we are also told, that it is equally a law that:
Development works from the less to the more perfect, and from the
simpler to the more complicated, by incessant changes, small in
themselves, but constantly accumulating in the required
direction(1717).
It is from the infinitesimally small that the comparatively gigantic pecies are produced.
Esoteric Science agrees with this, but adds that this law applies only to hat is known to it as the Primary Creation--the evolution of Worlds from
Primordial Atoms, and the Pre-primordial ATOM, at the first ifferentiation of the former; and that during the period of cyclic volution in Space and Time, this law is limited and works only in the ower kingdoms. It did so work during the first geological periods, from imple to complex, on the rough material surviving from the relics of the
Third Round, which relics are projected into objectivity when terrestrial ctivity recommences.
No more than Science, does the Esoteric Philosophy admit "design" or
"special creation." It rejects every claim to the "miraculous," and ccepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws of Nature. But it eaches a cyclic law, a double stream of Force (or Spirit) and of Matter, hich, starting from the Neutral Centre of Being, develops by its cyclic rogress and incessant transformations. The primitive germ from which all ertebrate life has developed throughout the ages, being distinct from the rimitive germ from which vegetable and animal life have evolved, there re side laws whose work is determined by the conditions in which the aterials to be worked upon are found by them, and of which
Science--Physiology and Anthropology especially--seems to be little aware.
Its votaries speak of this "primitive germ," and maintain that it is shown eyond any doubt that:
The design [and the "designer"], if there be any [in the case of
man, with the wonderful structure of his limbs, and his hand
especially], must be placed very much farther back, and is, in
fact, involved in the primitive germ, from which all vertebrate
life certainly, and probably all life, animal or vegetable, have
been slowly developed.(1718)
This is as true of the "primitive germ" as it is false that that "germ" is nly "very much farther back" than man is; for it is at an immeasurable nd inconceivable distance, _in Time_, though not in Space, from the rigin even of our Solar System. As the Hindű philosophy very justly eaches, the "Aniyâmsam Anîyasâm," can be known only through false otions. It is the "Many" that proceed from the "One"--the living spiritual erms _or centres of forces_--each in a septenary form, which first enerate, and then give the primary impulse to the law of evolution and radual slow development.
Limiting the teaching strictly to this our Earth, it may be shown that, as he ethereal forms of the first Men are first projected on seven zones by even Dhyân-Chohanic Centres of Force, so there are centres of creative ower for every root or parent species of the host of forms of vegetable nd animal life. This is, again, no "special creation," nor is there any
"design," except in the general "ground-plan" worked out by the Universal
Law. But there are certainly "designers," though these are neither mnipotent nor omniscient in the absolute sense of the term. They are imply Builders, or Masons, working under the impulse given them by the ver-to-be-unknown (on our plane) Master Mason--the One Life and Law.
Belonging to this sphere, they have no hand in, nor possibility of working n any other, during the present Manvantara, at any rate. That they work n cycles and on a strictly geometrical and mathematical scale of rogression, is what the extinct animal species amply demonstrate; that hey act by design in the details of minor lives (of side animal issues, tc.) is sufficiently proved by natural history. In the "creation" of new pecies, departing sometimes very widely from the parent stock, as in the reat variety of the genus Felis--like the lynx, the tiger, the cat, tc.--it is the "designers" who direct the new evolution by adding to, or epriving the species of certain appendages, either needed or becoming seless in the new environments. Thus, when we say that Nature provides or every animal and plant, whether large or small, we speak correctly.
For it is these terrestrial Spirits of Nature, who form the aggregated
Nature--which, if it fails occasionally in its design, is neither to be onsidered blind, nor to be taxed with the failure; since, belonging to a
_differentiated_ sum of qualities and attributes, it is in virtue of that lone _conditioned and imperfect_.
Were there no such thing as evolutionary cycles, as an eternal spiral rogress into Matter with a proportionate _obscuration_ of Spirit (though he two are one) followed by an inverse ascent into Spirit and the defeat f Matter--active and passive by turn--how could we explain the discoveries f Zoology and Geology? How is it that, on the dictum of authoritative
Science, one can trace the animal life from the mollusc up to the great ea-dragon, from the smallest land-worm up again to the gigantic animals f the Tertiary period; and that the latter were once crossed is shown by he fact of all those species decreasing, dwindling down and becoming warfed. If the seeming process of development working from the less to he more perfect, and from the simpler to the more complex, were a niversal law indeed, instead of being a very imperfect generalization of mere secondary nature in the great cosmic process, and if there were no uch cycles as those claimed, then the Mesozoic fauna and flora ought to hange places with the latest Neolithic. It is the plesiosauri and the chthyosauri that we ought to find developing from the present sea- and iver-reptiles, instead of these giving place to their dwarfed modern nalogies. It is, again, our old friend, the good-tempered elephant, that ould be the fossil antediluvian ancestor, and the mammoth of the Pliocene ge who would be in the menagerie; the megalonyx and the gigantic egatherium would be found instead of the lazy sloth in the forests of
South America, in which the colossal ferns of the carboniferous periods ould take the place of the mosses and the present trees--dwarfs, even the iants of California, in comparison with the Titan-trees of past eological periods. Surely the organisms of the megasthenian world of the
Tertiary and the Mesozoic ages must have been _more complex and perfect_ han those of the microsthenian plants and animals of the present age? The ryopithecus, for instance, is more perfect anatomically, is more fit for greater development of brain power, than the modern gorilla or gibbon.
How is all this, then? Are we to believe that the constitution of all hose colossal land- and sea-dragons, of the gigantic flying reptiles, was ot far more developed and complex than the anatomy of the lizards, urtles, crocodiles, and even of the whales--in short, of all those animals ith which we are acquainted?
Let us admit, however, for argument's sake, that all those cycles, races, eptenary forms of evolution, and the _tutti quanti_ of Esoteric teaching, re no better than a delusion and a snare. Let us agree with Science and ay that man--instead of being an imprisoned "spirit," and his vehicle, the hell or body, a gradually perfected and now complete mechanism for aterial and terrestrial uses, as claimed by the Occultists--is simply a ore developed animal, whose primal form emerged from one and the same rimitive germ on this Earth as the flying dragon and the gnat, the whale nd the amoeba, the crocodile and the frog, etc. In this case, he must ave passed through the identical developments and through the same rocess of growth as all the other mammals. If man is an animal, _and othing more_, a highly intellectual "ex-brute," he should at least be llowed to have been a gigantic mammal of his kind, a "meganthropus" in is day. This is exactly what Esoteric Science shows to have taken place n the first three Rounds, and in this, as in most other things, it is ore logical and consistent than Modern Science. It classifies the human ody with the brute creation, and maintains it in the path of animal volution, from first to last, while Science leaves man a parentless rphan born of sires unknown, an "unspecialized skeleton" truly! And this istake is due to a stubborn rejection of the doctrine of cycles.
A. The Origin And Evolution Of The Mammalia: Science And Esoteric
Phylogeny.
Having dealt almost exclusively with the question of the origin of man in he foregoing criticism of Western Evolutionism, it may not be amiss to efine the position of the Occultists with regard to the differentiation f species. The pre-human fauna and flora have been already dealt with enerally in the Commentary on the Stanzas, and the truth of much of odern biological speculation has been admitted, _e.g._, the derivation of irds from reptiles, the _partial_ truth of "natural selection," and the ransformation theory generally. It now remains to clear up the mystery of he origin of those first mammalian faunć which M. de Quatrefages so rilliantly endeavours to prove contemporary with the Homo primigenius of he Secondary Age.
The somewhat complicated problem relating to the "Origin of Species"--more specially of the varied groups of fossil or existing mammalian faunć--will e rendered less obscure by the aid of a diagram. It will then be apparent o what extent the "factors of organic evolution," relied upon by Western
Biologists,(1719) are to be considered as adequate to meet the facts. The ine of demarcation between ethereo-spiritual, astral and physical volution must be drawn. Perhaps, if Darwinians deigned to consider the ossibility of the second process, they would no longer have to lament the act that:
We are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the
origin of the mammals!(1720)
At present the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the viparous vertebrates and mammalia constitutes a hopeless crux to those hinkers who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic orms in a continuous line of descent.
Let us take, for instance, the case of the ungulate mammals, since it is aid that in no other division do we possess such abundant fossil aterial. So much progress has been made in this direction, that in some nstances the intermediate links between the modern and Eocene ungulates ave been unearthed; a notable example being that of the complete proof of he derivation of the present one-toed horse from the three-toed nchitherium of the old Tertiary. This standard of comparison between
Western Biology and the Eastern Doctrine could not, therefore, be improved pon. The pedigree here utilized, as embodying the views of Scientists in eneral, is that of Schmidt, based on the exhaustive researches of
Rütimeyer. Its _approximate_ accuracy--from the standpoint of volutionism--leaves little to be desired:
[Illustration: Ungulate Mammals]
Ungulate Mammals
At this, the midway point of evolution, Science comes to a standstill.
The _root_ to which these two families lead back is unknown.(1721)
[Illustration: The Root]
The Root According to Occultism
Schmidt's diagram represents the realm explored by Western Evolutionists, he area in which climatic influences, "natural selection," and all the ther _physical_ causes of organic differentiation are present. Biology nd Palćontology find their province here in investigating the many hysical agencies which so largely contribute, as has been shown by
Darwin, Spencer and others, to the "segregation of species." But even in his domain the sub-conscious workings of the Dhyân-Chohanic wisdom are at he root of all the "ceaseless striving towards perfection," though its nfluence is vastly modified by those purely material causes which de
Quatrefages terms the "milieu" and Spencer the "environment."
The "midway point of evolution" is that stage where the _astral_ rototypes definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become ubject to the differentiating agencies now operative around us. Physical ausation supervenes immediately on the assumption of the "coats of kin"--_i.e._, the physiological equipment in general. The forms of men and f other mammals previous to the separation of the sexes(1722) are woven ut of astral matter, and possess a structure utterly unlike that of the hysical organisms which eat, drink, digest, etc. The known physiological ontrivances requisite for these functions were almost entirely evolved ubsequently to the incipient physicalization of the seven Root-Types out f the astral--during the "midway halt" between the two planes of xistence. Hardly had the "ground-plan" of evolution been limned out in hese ancestral types, than there supervened the influence of the ccessory terrestrial laws, familiar to us, resulting in the whole crop of ammalian species. Ćons of slow differentiation were, however, required to ffect this end.
The second diagram represents the domain of the purely astral prototypes revious to their descent into gross matter. Astral matter, it must be oted, is fourth-state matter, having, like our gross matter, its own
"protyle." There are several protyles in Nature, corresponding to the arious planes of matter. The two sub-physical elemental kingdoms, the lane of mind, Manas, or fifth-state matter, as also that of Buddhi, ixth-state matter, are each and all evolved from one of the six protyles hich constitute the basis of the Object-Universe. The three "states" so- alled of our terrestrial matter, known as the "solid," "liquid," and
"gaseous," are only, in strict accuracy, _sub_-states. As to the former eality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in hysiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of he so-called spiritualistic "materializations."
In all these instances a complete temporary mergence of the astral into he physical takes place. The evolution of _physiological_ man out of the stral races of the _early_ Lemurian age--the Jurassic age of Geology--is xactly paralleled by the "materialization" of "spirits" (?) in the séance oom. In the case of Professor Crookes' "Katie King," the presence of a
_physiological_ mechanism--heart, lungs, etc.--was indubitably demonstrated!
This, in a way, is the Archetype of Goethe. Listen to his words:
Thus much we should have gained ... all the nine perfect organic
beings ... [are] formed according to an archetype which merely
fluctuates more or less in its very persistent parts and,
moreover, day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of
reproduction.
This is a seemingly imperfect foreshadowing of the Occult fact of the ifferentiation of species from the primal astral Root-Types. Whatever the hole _posse comitatus_ of "natural selection," etc., may effect, the
_fundamental unity of structural plan_ remains practically unaffected by ll subsequent modifications. The "unity of type" common, in a sense, to ll the animal and human kingdoms, is not, as Spencer and others appear to old, a proof of the consanguinity of _all_ organic forms, but a witness o the essential unity of the "ground-plan" Nature has followed in ashioning her creatures.
To sum up the case we may again avail ourselves of a tabulation of the ctual factors concerned in the differentiation of species. The stages of he process itself need no further comment here, for they follow the basic rinciples underlying organic development, and we do not need to enter on he domain of the biological specialist.
FACTORS CONCERNED IN THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE.
Basic astral prototypes pass into the physical, the Dhyân-Chohanic mpulse, constituting Lamarck's "inherent and necessary" law of evelopment. It lies behind all minor agencies: variation transmitted by
Heredity, Natural Selection, Sexual Selection Physiological Selection,
Isolation. Correlation of Growth, Adaptation to Environment. (Intelligent s opposed to Mechanical Causation.)
B. The European Palćolithic Races: Whence, And How Distributed.
Is Science opposed to those who maintain that, down to the Quaternary eriod, the distribution of the human races was widely different from what t is now? Is Science against those who, further, maintain that the fossil en found in Europe-although they have almost reached a plane of sameness nd unity which continues till this day, regarded from the fundamental hysiological and anthropological aspects--still differ, sometimes greatly, rom the type of the now existing populations? The late M. Littré admits his in an article published by him in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ (March
1st, 1859) on the Mémoire called _Antiquités Celtiques et Antediluviennes_ y Boucher de Perthes (1849). Littré therein states that: (_a_) in these eriods when the mammoths, exhumed in Picardy in company with man-made atchets, lived in the latter region, there must have been an eternal pring reigning over all the terrestrial globe;(1723) nature was the ontrary of what it is now, and thus is left _an enormous margin for the ntiquity of those __"__periods__"_; he then adds (_b_):
Spring, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine at Ličge, found in a
grotto near Namur, in the mountain of Chauvaux, numerous human
bones "of a race quite distinct from ours."
Skulls exhumed in Austria offer a great analogy with those of negro races n Africa, according to Littré, while others, discovered on the shores of he Danube and the Rhine, resemble the skulls of the Caribs and of the ncient inhabitants of Peru and Chili. Still, the Deluge, whether Biblical r Atlantean, is denied. But further geological discoveries made Gaudry rite conclusively:
Our forefathers were positively contemporaneous with the
rhinoceros tichorrhinus, the hippopotamus major.
And he added that the soil called _diluvial_ in geology--
Was formed partially at least after man's apparition on earth.
Upon this, Littré pronounced himself finally. He then showed the ecessity, in face of "the resurrection of so many old witnesses," of ehandling all the origins, all the durations, and added that there was an ge hitherto unknown to study--
Either at the dawn of the actual epoch, or, as I believe, at the
beginning of the epoch which preceded it.
The types of the skulls found in Europe are of two kinds, as is well nown: the orthognathous and the prognathous, or the Caucasian and the
Negroid types--such as are now found only among the African and the lower avage tribes. Professor Heer--who argues that the facts of Botany ecessitate the hypothesis of an Atlantis--has shown that the plants of the
Neolithic lake-villagers are mainly of African origin. How did these lants appear in Europe if there were no former point of union between
Europe and Africa? How many thousand years ago did the seventeen men live hose skeletons were exhumed in the department of the Haute Garonne, in a quatting posture near the remains of a coal fire, with some amulets and roken crockery around them, and in company with the ursus spelćus, the lephas primigenius, the aurochs (regarded by Cuvier as a distinct pecies), the megaceros hibernicus--all antediluvian mammals? Certainly hey must have lived in a most distant epoch, but not in one which carries s further back than the Quaternary. A much greater antiquity for man has et to be proved. Dr. James Hunt, the late President of the
Anthropological Society, puts it at nine million years. This man of
Science, at any rate, makes some approach to our Esoteric computation, if e leave out of the computation the first two semi-human, ethereal Races, nd the early Third Race.
The question, however, arises--who were these Palćolithic men of the
European Quaternary epoch? Were they aboriginal, or were they the outcome f some immigration dating back into the unknown past? The latter is the nly tenable hypothesis, as all Scientists agree in eliminating Europe rom the category of possible "cradles of mankind." Whence, then, radiated he various successive streams of "primitive" men?
The earliest Palćeolithic men in Europe--about whose origin Ethnology is ilent, and whose very characteristics are but imperfectly known, though xpatiated on as "ape-like" by imaginative writers such as Mr. Grant
Allen--were of pure Atlantean and "Africo"-Atlantean stocks.(1724) (It must e borne in mind that by this time the Atlantean Continent itself was a ream of the past.) Europe in the Quaternary epoch was very different from he Europe of to-day, being then only in process of formation. It was nited to Northern Africa--or rather to what is now Northern Africa--by a eck of land running across the present Straits of Gibraltar--Northern
Africa thus constituting as it were an extension of the present Spain, hile a broad sea filled the great basin of the Sahara. Of the vast
Atlantis, the main bulk of which sank in the Miocene, there remained only
Ruta and Daitya and a stray island or so. The Atlantean connections of the orefathers(1725) of the Palćolithic cave-men are evidenced by the pturning of fossil skulls in Europe, reverting closely to the type of the
West Indian Carib and ancient Peruvian--a mystery indeed for all those who efuse to sanction the "hypothesis" of a former Atlantic continent to ridge what is now an ocean. What are we also to make of the fact that hile de Quatrefages points to that "magnificent race," the tall Cro-
Magnon cave-men, and to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, as epresentatives of one type, Virchow also allies the Basques with the atter in a similar way? Professor Retzius independently proves the elationship of the aboriginal American dolichocephalous tribes and these ame Guanches. The several links in the chain of evidence are thus ecurely joined together. Legions of similar facts could be adduced. As to he African tribes--themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified y climate and conditions--they crossed into Europe over the peninsula hich made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these
European cave-men, as the Cro-Magnon, for instance. But, as was to be xpected, _progress is almost non-existent_ through the whole of the vast eriod allotted by Science to the Chipped-Stone age.(1726) _The cyclic mpulse downwards_ weighs heavily on the stocks thus transplanted--the ncubus of the Atlantean Karma is upon them. Finally, Palćolithic man akes room for his successor--and disappears almost entirely from the cene. Professor André Lefčvre asks in this connection:
Has the Polished succeeded the Chipped-Stone Age by an
imperceptible transition, or was it due to an invasion of
brachycephalous Kelts? But whether the deterioration produced in
the populations of La Vézčre was the result of violent crossings,
or of a general retreat northwards in the wake of the reindeer, is
of little moment to us.
He continues:
Meantime the bed of the ocean has been upheaved, Europe is now
fully formed, her flora and fauna are fixed. With the taming of
the dog begins the pastoral life. We enter on those polished stone
and bronze periods, which succeed each other at irregular
intervals, which even overlap one another in the midst of ethnical
migrations and fusions, at once more confused and of shorter
duration than less advanced and more rudimentary ages. The
primitive European populations are interrupted in their special
evolution, and without perishing, become absorbed in other races,
engulfed, as it were, by the successive waves of migration
overflowing from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis [? far too
late by ćons of years] and from prolific Asia. On the one hand
came the Iberians, on the other Pelasgians, Ligurians, Sicanians,
Etruscans--all forerunners of the great Âryan Invasion [Fifth
Race].(1727)
Section VI. Giants, Civilizations, and Submerged Continents Traced in
History.
When statements such as are comprised in the above heading are brought orward, the writer is, of course, expected to furnish _historical_ nstead of _legendary_ evidence in support of such claims. Is this ossible? Yes; for evidence of such a nature is plentiful, and has simply o be collected and brought together in order to become overwhelming in he eyes of the unprejudiced.
Once the sagacious student gets hold of the guiding thread he may find out uch evidence for himself. We give _facts_ and show landmarks; let the ayfarer follow them. What is adduced here is amply sufficient for _this_ entury.
In a letter to Voltaire, Bailly finds it quite natural that the sympathies f the "grand old invalid of Ferney" should be attracted to the epresentatives of "knowledge and wisdom," the ancient Brâhmans. He then dds a curious statement. He says:
But your Brâhmans are very young in comparison with their archaic
instructors.(1728)
Bailly, who knew nought of the Esoteric teachings, nor of Lemuria, elieved, nevertheless, unreservedly in the lost Atlantis, and also in everal pre-historic and civilized nations which had disappeared without eaving any undeniable trace. He had studied the ancient classics and
_traditions_ extensively, and he saw that the Arts and Sciences known to hose we now call the "ancients," were--
Not the achievements of any of the now or even then existing
nations, nor of any of the historical peoples of Asia....
nd that, notwithstanding the learning of the Hindűs, their undeniable riority in the early part of their race had to be referred to a people or race still more ancient and more learned than were even the Brâhmans hemselves.(1729)
Voltaire, the greatest sceptic of his day, the materialist _par xcellence_, shared Bailly's belief. He thought it quite likely that:
Long before the empires of China and India, there had been nations
cultured, learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians
overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of
ignorance and savagery, or what they call the state of pure
nature.(1730)
That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, as with Bailly a "question of historical facts." For, he wrote:
I make great case of ancient traditions preserved through a long
series of generations.
It _was_ possible, he thought, that a _foreign_ nation should, after nstructing another nation, so disappear that it should leave no traces ehind. When asked how it could have happened that this ancient, or rather rchaic, nation should not have left at least some recollection in the uman mind, he answered that Time was a pitiless devourer of facts and vents. But the history of the Past was never entirely lost, for the Sages f old Egypt had preserved it, and "it is so preserved to this day lsewhere." The priests of Saďs said to Solon, according to Plato:
You are unacquainted with that most noble and excellent race of
men, who once inhabited your country, from whom you and your whole
present state are descended,(1731) though only a small remnant of
this admirable people is now remaining.... These writings relate
what a prodigious force your city once overcame, when a mighty
warlike power, rushing from the Atlantic sea, spread itself with
hostile fury over all Europe and Asia.(1732)
The Greeks were but the dwarfed and weak remnant of that once glorious ation.(1733)
What was this nation? The Secret Doctrine teaches that it was the latest eventh sub-race of the Atlantean, already swallowed up in one of the arly sub-races of the Âryan stock, one that had been gradually spreading ver the continent and islands of Europe, as soon as they had begun to merge from the seas. Descending from the high plateaux of Asia, where the wo races had sought refuge in the days of the agony of Atlantis, it had een slowly settling and colonizing the freshly emerged lands. The mmigrant sub-race had rapidly increased and multiplied on that virgin oil; had divided into many family races, which in their turn divided into ations. Egypt and Greece, the Phoenicians, and the Northern stocks, had hus proceeded from that one sub-race. Thousands of years later, other aces--the remnants of the Atlanteans--"yellow and red, brown and black," egan to invade the new continent. There were wars in which the new comers ere defeated, and they fled, some to Africa, others to remote countries.
Some of these lands became islands in course of time, owing to new eological convulsions. Being thus forcibly separated from the continents, he result was that the undeveloped tribes and families of the Atlantean tock fell gradually into a still more abject and savage condition.
Did not the Spaniards in the Cibola expeditions meet with _white_ savage hiefs; and has not the presence of African negro types in Europe in the re-historic ages been now ascertained? It is this presence of a foreign ype associated with that of the negro, and also with that of the
Mongolian, which is the stumbling-block of Anthropology. The individual ho lived at an incalculably distant period at La Naulette, in Belgium, is n example. Says an Anthropologist:
The caves on the banks of the Lesse, in South-Eastern Belgium,
afford evidence of what is, perhaps, the lowest man, as shown by
the Naulette jaw. Such man, however, had amulets of stone,
perforated for the purpose of ornament; these are made of a
psammite now found in the basin of the Gironde.(1734)
Thus Belgian man was extremely ancient. The man who was antecedent to the reat flood of waters--which covered the highlands of Belgium with a eposit of lehm or upland gravel thirty metres above the level of the resent rivers--must have combined the characters of the Turanian and the
Negro. The Canstadt, or La Naulette, man may have been black, and he had othing to do with the Âryan type whose remains are contemporary with hose of the cave bear at Engis. The denizens of the Aquitaine bone-caves elong to a far later period of history, and may not be as ancient as the ormer.
If the statement be objected to on the ground that Science does not deny he presence of man on Earth from an enormous antiquity, though that ntiquity cannot be determined, since such presence is conditioned by the uration of geological periods, the age of which is not ascertained; if it s argued that the Scientists object most decidedly to the claim that man receded the animals, for instance; or that civilization dates from the arliest Eocene period; or again, that there have ever existed giants, hree-eyed and four-armed and four-legged men, androgynes, etc.--then the bjectors are asked in their turn, "How do you know? What proof have you esides your personal hypotheses, each of which may be upset any day by ew discoveries?" And these future discoveries are sure to prove that, hatever this earlier type of man known to Anthropologists may have been n complexion, he was in no respect _apish_. The Canstadt man, the Engis an, alike possessed essentially human attributes.(1735) People have ooked for the missing link at the wrong end of the chain; and the
Neanderthal man has long since been dismissed to the "limbo of all hasty lunders." Disraeli divided man into the associates of the apes and the ngels. Reasons are here given in favour of an "angelic theory"--as
Christians would call it, as applicable to at least some of the races of en. At all events, if man be held to exist only since the Miocene period, ven then humanity as a whole could not be composed of the abject savages f the Palćolithic age, as they are now represented by the Scientists. All hey say is mere arbitrary speculative guess-work, invented by them to nswer to, and fit in with, their own fanciful theories.
We speak of events hundreds of thousands of years old, nay, even millions f years old--if man date from the geological periods(1736)--not of any of hose events which happened during the few thousand years of the pre- istoric margin allowed by timid and ever-cautious history. Yet there are en of Science who are almost of our way of thinking. From the brave onfession of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who says that:
Traditions, whose traces recur in Mexico, in Central America, in
Peru, and in Bolivia, suggest the idea that man existed in these
different countries at the time of the gigantic upheaval of the
Andes, and that he has retained the memory of it--
own to the latest Palćontologists and Anthropologists, the majority of cientific men is in favour of just such an antiquity. _Ŕpropos_ of Peru, as any satisfactory attempt been made to determine the ethnological ffinities and characteristics of the race which reared those Cyclopean rections, the ruins of which display the relics of a great civilization?
At Cuelap, for instance, such are found, consisting--
Of a wall of wrought stones, 3,600 feet long, 560 broad, and 150
feet high, constituting a solid mass with a level summit. On this
mass was another, 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 feet high,
making an aggregate height of 300 feet. In it were rooms and
cells.(1737)
A most suggestive fact is the _startling resemblance between the rchitecture of these colossal buildings and that of the archaic European ations_. Mr. Fergusson regards the analogies between the ruins of "Inca" ivilization and the Cyclopean remains of the Pelasgians in Italy and
Greece, as a coincidence--
The most remarkable in the history of architecture.... It is
difficult to resist the conclusion that there may be some relation
between them.
The "relation" is simply explained by the derivation of the stocks who evised these erections, from a common centre in an Atlantic continent.
The acceptance of the latter can alone assist us to approach a solution of his and similar problems in almost every branch of Modern Science.
Dr. Lartet, treating upon the subject, settles the question by declaring hat:
The truth, so long contested, of the coëxistence of man with the
great extinct species [elephas primigenius, rhinoceros
tichorrhinus, hyćna spelća, ursus spelćus, etc.], appears to me to
be henceforth unassailable and definitely conquered by
science.(1738)
It is shown elsewhere that such is also de Quatrefages' opinion. He says:
Man has in all probability seen Miocene times(1739) and
consequently the entire Pliocene epoch. Are there any reasons for
believing that his traces will be found further back still?... He
may then have been contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia, and
go back as far as the Secondary period.(1740)
Egypt is far older than Europe as now traced on the map. Atlanto-Âryan ribes began to settle on it when the British Islands(1741) and France ere not even in existence. It is well known that "the tongue of the
Ćgyptian Sea," or the Delta of lower Egypt, became firm land very radually, and followed the highlands of Abyssinia; unlike the latter, hich arose suddenly, comparatively speaking, it was very slowly formed, hrough long ages, from successive layers of sea-slime and mud, deposited nnually by the soil brought down by a large river, the present Nile. Yet ven the Delta, as a firm and fertile land, has been inhabited for more han 100,000 years. Later tribes, with still more Âryan blood in them than heir predecessors, arrived from the East, and _conquered_ it from a eople whose very name is lost to posterity, except in the Secret Books.
It is this natural barrier of slime, which sucked in slowly and surely very boat that approached those inhospitable shores, that was, till ithin a few thousand years B.C., the best safeguard of the later
Egyptians, who had managed to reach it through Arabia, Abyssinia, and
Nubia, led on by Manu Vînâ in the day of Vishvâmitra.(1742)
So evident does the antiquity of man become with every day, that even the
Church is preparing for an _honourable_ surrender and retreat. The learned
Abbé Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has categorically declared that re-historic Palćontology and Archćology may, without any harm to the
Scriptures, discover in the Tertiary beds as many traces as they please of
Pre-Adamite man.
Since it disregards all creations anterior to the last deluge but
one [that which produced the diluvium, according to the Abbé],
Bible revelation leaves us free to admit the existence of man in
the grey diluvium, in Pliocene, and even Eocene strata. On the
other hand, however, geologists are not all agreed on regarding
the men who inhabited the globe in these primitive ages as our
ancestors.(1743)
The day on which the Church shall find that its only salvation lies in the
Occult interpretation of the _Bible_ may not be so far off as some magine. Already many an Abbé and ecclesiastic has become an ardent
Kabalist, and as many appear publicly in the arena, breaking a lance with
Theosophists and Occultists in support of the metaphysical interpretation f the _Bible_. But they commence, unfortunately for them, at the wrong nd. They are advised, before they begin to speculate upon the
_metaphysical_ in their Scriptures, to study and master that which relates o the purely _physical_--_e.g._, its hints on Geology and Ethnology. For uch allusions to the septenary constitution of the Earth and Man, to the even Rounds and Races, abound in the _New_ as in the _Old Testament_, and re as visible as the Sun in the heavens to him who reads both ymbolically. To what do the laws in chapter xxiii of _Leviticus_ apply?
What is the philosophy of reason for all such hebdomadal offerings and ymbolical calculations as:
Ye shall count ... from the morrow after the Sabbath ... that ye
brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be
complete.... And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without
blemish, etc.(1744)
We shall be contradicted, no doubt, when we say that all these "wave" and
"peace" offerings were in commemoration of the _seven_ "Sabbaths" of the
Mysteries. These Sabbaths are seven Pralayas between seven Manvantaras, or hat we call Rounds; for "Sabbath" is an elastic word, meaning a period of est of whatever nature, as explained elsewhere. And if this is not ufficiently conclusive, then we may turn to the verse which adds:
Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number
fifty days [forty-nine, 7 × 7, stages of activity, and forty-nine
stages of rest, on the seven Globes of the Chain, and then comes
the rest of Sabbath, the _fiftieth_]; and ye shall offer _a new
meat offering_ unto the Lord.(1745)
That is, ye shall make an offering of your flesh or "coats of skin," and, ivesting yourselves of your bodies, ye shall remain pure spirits. This aw of offering, degraded and materialized with ages, was an institution hat dated from the earliest Atlanteans; it came to the Hebrews _viâ_ the
"Chaldees," who were the "wise men" of a _caste_, not of a nation, a ommunity of great Adepts come from their "Serpent-holes," who had settled n Babylonia ages before. And if this interpretation from _Leviticus_
(full of the disfigured _Laws of Manu_) is found too far-fetched, then urn to _Revelation_. Whatever interpretation profane mystics may give to he famous chapter xvii, with its riddle of the woman in purple and carlet; whether Protestants nod at the Roman Catholics, when reading
"Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the
Earth," or Roman Catholics glare at the Protestants, the Occultists ronounce, in their impartiality, that these words have applied from the irst _to all and every exoteric_ Churchianity--"ceremonial magic" of old, ith its terrible effects, and now the harmless, because distorted, farce f ritualistic worship. The "mystery" of the woman and of the beast, are he symbols of soul-killing Churchianity and of Superstition.
The beast that ... was, and is not, ... and yet is. And here is
the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains
[seven Continents and seven Races] on which the woman sitteth--
he symbol of all the exoteric, barbarous, idolatrous faiths which have overed that symbol "with the blood of the saints and the blood of the artyrs" who protested and do protest.
And there are seven kings [seven Races]; five are fallen [our
Fifth Race included], and one is [the Fifth continues], and the
other [the Sixth and the Seventh Races] is not yet come; and when
he [the Race "king"] cometh, he must continue a short space.(1746)
There are many such apocalyptic allusions, but the student has to find hem out for himself.
If the _Bible_ combines with Archćology and Geology to show that human ivilization has passed through three more or less distinct stages, in
Europe at least; and if man, both in America and Europe, as much as in
Asia, dates from geological epochs--why should not the statements of _The
Secret Doctrine_ be taken into consideration? Is it more philosophical or ogical and scientific to _disbelieve_, with Mr. Albert Gaudry, in Miocene an, while believing that the famous Thenay flints(1747) "were carved by he dryopithecus monkey"; or, with the Occultist, that the nthropomorphous monkey came ages after man? For if it is once conceded, nd even scientifically demonstrated, that:
There was not in the middle of the Miocene epoch a single species
of mammal identical with species now extant(1748)
--and that man was then just as he is now; only taller, and more athletic han we are(1749)--then where is the difficulty? That they could hardly be he descendants of monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the
Miocene epoch,(1750) is, on the other hand, testified to by several minent Naturalists:
Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages, who had to fight against
the mammoth with stone weapons for arms, we find all those
craniological characters generally considered as the sign of great
intellectual development.(1751)
Unless man emerged spontaneously, endowed with all his intellect and isdom, from his brainless catarrhine ancestor, he could not have acquired uch brain within the limits of the Miocene period, if we are to believe he learned Abbé Bourgeois.
As to the matter of giants, though the tallest man hitherto found in
Europe among fossils is the "Mentone man" (6ft. 8in.), others may yet be xcavated. Nilsson, quoted by Lubbock, states that:
In a tomb of the Neolithic age ... a skeleton of extraordinary
size was found in 1807.
It was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.
And if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7ft. to even
9ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves--on the law of atavism, or the eäppearance of ancestral features of character--that there was a time when
9ft. and 10ft. was the average height of humanity, even in our latest
Indo-European race.
But as the subject has been sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on o the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see what the old Greeks knew of hese early races and what the moderns now know.
The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended he forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred, ad fought with the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race f Palćolithic savages. Nevertheless, even in the days of Plato, with the xception of priests and initiates, no one seems to have preserved any istinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had een separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were hemselves descended from an _alien_ race, and had settled in Egypt some
400,000 years before,(1752) but their Initiates had preserved all the ecords. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they had still in their ossession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little
Atlanto-Aryan sub-race.(1753) If we allow only twenty years as an average igure for the reign of each king, the duration of the Egyptian Empire has o be pushed back, from the days of Herodotus, about 17,000 years.
Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern
Archćologists will not give it more than 5,000, or at the utmost 6,000 ears, and generously concede to Thebes, with its hundred gates, 7,000 ears from the date of its foundation. And yet there are records which how Egyptian priests--Initiates--journeying in a north-westerly direction,
_by land_, _viâ_ what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North nd travelling through the future Phoenician settlements of Southern Gaul; hen still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to he West again and arrived, _still travelling by land_, on the north- estern promontory of the New Continent.(1754)
What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place he date of such visits? The Archaic Records show the Initiates of the econd sub-race of the Âryan family moving from one land to the other for he purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of olossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptacles or the ashes of generations to come. When did this occur? The fact of heir crossing from France to Great Britain _by land_ may give an idea of he date when such a journey could have been performed on _terra firma_.
It was when:
The level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher
than it is at the present day. The valley of the Somme was not
hollowed to the depth it has now attained; Sicily was joined to
Africa, Barbary to Spain. Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt, the
palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not yet in existence, and the
bold navigators of Tyre and Sidon, who at a later date were to
undertake their perilous voyages along the coasts of Africa, were
yet unborn. What we know with certainty is that European man was
contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary epoch
... that he witnessed the upheaval of the Alps(1755) and the
extension of the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands
of years before the dawn of the remotest historical traditions. It
is even possible that man was the contemporary of extinct mammalia
of species yet more ancient ... of the elephas meridionalis of the
sands of St. Prest, or at the least of the elephas antiquus,
assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since their bones
are found in company with carved flints in several English caves,
associated with those of the rhinoceros hćemitechus and even of
the machairodus latidens, which is of still earlier date. M. Ed.
Lartet is also of opinion that there is nothing really impossible
in the existence of man as early as the Tertiary period.(1756)
If "there is nothing impossible" scientifically, in the idea, and it may e admitted that man was already in existence as early as the Tertiary eriod, then it is just as well to remind the reader that Mr. Croll places he beginning of that period 2,500,000 years back; but there was a time hen he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.
And if all this may be said of _European_ man, how great is the antiquity f the Lemuro-Atlantean and of the Atlanto-Âryan man? Every educated erson who follows the progress of Science, knows how all vestiges of man uring the Tertiary period are received. The calumnies that were poured on
Desnoyers in 1863, when he announced to the Institute of France that he ad made a discovery
In the undisturbed Pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres,
proving the coëxistence of man and the elephas meridionalis--
ere equal to the occasion. The later discovery, in 1867, by the Abbé
Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the reception it was iven at the Pre-historic Congress held at Brussels in 1872, proves that he average man of Science will see _only that which he wishes to ee_.(1757)
The modern Archćologist, though speculating _ad infinitum_ upon the olmens and their builders, knows, in fact, nothing either of them or of heir origin. Yet these weird and often colossal monuments of unhewn tones--which consist generally of four or seven gigantic blocks placed ogether--are strewn over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups or ows. Stones of enormous size are found placed horizontally and variously pon two, three, four, and as in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People ame them "devil's altars," druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of
Carnac in Morbihan, Brittany--nearly a mile in length and numbering 11,000 anged in eleven rows--are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The conical enhir of Loch-maria-ker, in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length and early two yards across. The menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises hirty feet above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such olmens and pre-historic monuments are met with in almost every latitude.
They are found in the Mediterranean basin; in Denmark (among the local umuli from twenty-seven to thirty-five feet in height); in Shetland; in
Sweden, where they are called Ganggriften (or tombs with corridors); in
Germany, where they are known as the giant tombs (Hünengräben); in Spain, here is the dolmen of Antiguera near Malaga; in Africa; in Palestine and
Algeria; in Sardinia, with the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei Giganti, or tombs f giants; in Malabar; in India, where they are called the tombs of the
Daityas (Giants) and of the Râkshasas, the Men-demons of Lankâ; in Russia nd Siberia, where they are known as the Koorgan; in Peru and Bolivia, here they are termed the Chulpas or burial places, etc.
There is no country from which they are absent. Who built them? Why are hey all connected with serpents and dragons, with alligators and rocodiles? Because remains of "Palćolithic man" were, it is thought, ound in some of them, and because, in the funeral mounds of America, odies of later races were discovered with the usual paraphernalia of bone ecklaces, weapons, stone and copper urns, etc., they are, therefore, ncient _tombs_! But surely the two famous mounds--one in the Mississippi alley and the other in Ohio--known respectively as the "Alligator Mound" nd the "Great Serpent Mound," were never meant for tombs.(1758) Yet one s told authoritatively that the mounds, and the mound or dolmen builders, re all "Pelasgic" in Europe, antecedent to the Incas in America, yet not f "extremely distant times." They are built by "no race of dolmen uilders," who _never existed_ save in the earlier archćological fancy
(opinion of De Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp). Finally Virchow's pinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now accepted as an axiom. Says hat German Biologist:
The tombs alone are gigantic, and not the bones they contain.
And Archćology has but to bow and submit to the decision.(1759)
That no gigantic skeletons have been hitherto found in the "tombs" is no eason for saying that the remains of giants were never in them.
_Cremation was universal_ till a comparatively recent period--some 80,000 r 100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned ith Atlantis. Nevertheless, classical writers, as we have shown lsewhere, often speak of giant skeletons being excavated in their day.
Moreover, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton ver yet found is older than between 50,000 or 60,000 years,(1760) and an's size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, from the time of the hird sub-race of the Âryan stock, which sub-race--born and developed in
Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions--had become
European. Since then, as we have said, it has been steadily decreasing. It s truer, therefore, to say that the tombs alone are archaic, and not ecessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them; and that those ombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,(1761) or ather the ashes of generations of giants.
Nor were all such cyclopean structures intended for sepulchres. It is with he so-called Druidical remains, such as Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge n Great Britain, that the travelling Initiates above alluded to had to o. And these gigantic monuments are all symbolic records of the World's istory. They are not Druidical, but universal. Nor did the Druids build hem, for they were only the heirs of the cyclopean lore left to them by enerations of mighty builders and--"magicians," both good and bad.
It will always be a subject of regret that History, rejecting _ŕ priori_ he actual existence of giants, has preserved to us so little of the ecords of antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every Mythology--which fter all _is_ Ancient History--the giants play an important part. In the ld Norse Mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom he sons of the Gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of eities and men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants the brethren f the dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the Gods to the history of the evelopment of the Âryan Race, will only receive credence amongst the elievers in the Âryan theory as expounded by Max Müller. Granting that he Turanian races were typified by the dwarfs (Dwergar), and that a dark, ound-headed, and dwarfish race was driven northward by the fair-faced
Scandinavians, or Ćsir, the Gods being like unto men, there still exists either in history nor in any other scientific work any anthropological roof whatever of the existence in Time or Space of a race of giants. Yet hat such exist, relatively and _de facto_ side by side with dwarfs,
Schweinfurth can testify. The Nyam-Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs, hile their next neighbours, several tribes of comparatively fair- omplexioned Africans, are giants when confronted with the Nyam-Nyams, and ery tall even among Europeans, for their women are all above six and a alf feet high.
In Cornwall and in ancient Britain the traditions of these giants are, on he other hand, excessively common; they are said to have lived even down o the time of King Arthur. All this shows that giants lived to a later ate amongst the Celtic than among the Teutonic peoples.
If we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants of
Tarija on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated
Gods and men. These old beliefs, which term certain localities "Los Campos e los Gigantes," the "Fields of Giants," are always concomitant with the xistence of Pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of Pliocene raised eaches. "All the giants are not under Mount Ossa," and it would be poor
Anthropology indeed that would restrict the traditions of giants to Greek nd Bible mythologies. Slavonian countries, Russia especially, teem with egends about the Bogaterey (mighty giants) of old; and Slavonian olklore, most of which has served for the foundation of national istories, the oldest songs, and the most archaic traditions, speaks of he giants of old. Thus we may safely reject the modern theory that would ake of the Titans mere symbols standing for cosmic forces. They were real iving men, whether twenty or only twelve feet high. Even the Homeric eroes, who, of course, belonged to a far more recent period in the istory of the races, appear to have wielded weapons of a size and weight eyond the strength of the strongest men of modern times.
Not twice ten men the mighty bulk could raise,
Such men as live in these degenerate days.
If the fossil footprints at Carson, Nevada, U.S.A., are human, they ndicate gigantic men, and of their genuineness there can remain no doubt.
It is to be deplored that the modern and scientific evidence for gigantic en should rest on footprints alone. Over and over again, the skeletons of ypothetical giants have been identified with those of elephants and astodons. But all such blunders before the days of Geology, and even the raveller's tales of Sir John Mandeville, who says that he saw giants ifty-six feet high, in India, only show that belief in the existence of iants has never, at any time, died out of the thoughts of men.
That which is known and accepted is, that several races of gigantic men ave existed and left distinct traces. In the _Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_(1762) such a race is shown as having existed at
Palmyra and possibly in Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite different rom those of the Jews. It is not improbable that another such race xisted in Samaria, and that the mysterious people who built the stone ircles in Galilee, hewed Neolithic flints in the Jordan valley, and reserved an ancient Semitic language quite distinct from the square
Hebrew character, were of very large stature. The English translations of he _Bible_ can never be relied upon, even in their modern revised forms.
They tell us of the Nephilim, translating the word by "giants," and urther adding that they were "hairy" men, probably the large and powerful rototypes of the later satyrs so eloquently described by patristic fancy; ome of the Church Fathers assuring their admirers and followers that they ad themselves seen these "satyrs"--some alive, others "pickled" and
"preserved." The word "giants" being once adopted as a synonym of
Nephilim, the commentators have since identified them with the sons of
Anak. The filibusters who seized on the Promised Land found a preëxisting opulation far exceeding their own in stature, and called it a race of iants. But the races of really gigantic men had disappeared ages before he birth of Moses. These tall people existed in Canaan, and even in
Bashan, and may have had representatives in the Nabatheans of Midian. They ere of far greater stature than the undersized Jews. Four thousand years go their cranial conformation and large stature separated them from the hildren of Heber. Forty thousand years ago their ancestors may have been f still more gigantic size, and four hundred thousand years earlier they ust have been in proportion to men in our days as the Brobdingnagians ere to the Lilliputians. The Atlanteans of the middle period were called he "Great Dragons," and the first symbol of their tribal deities, when he "Gods" and the Divine Dynasties had forsaken them, was that of a giant erpent.
The mystery veiling the origin and the religion of the Druids is as great s that of their supposed fanes to the modern Symbologist, but not to the nitiated Occultists. Their priests were the descendants of the last
Atlanteans, and what is known of them is sufficient to allow the inference hat they were Eastern priests, akin to the Chaldćans and Indians, though ittle more. It may be inferred that they symbolized their deity as the
Hindűs do their Vishnu, as the Egyptians did their Mystery God, and as the uilders of the Ohio great Serpent Mound worshipped theirs--namely under he form of the "Mighty Serpent," the emblem of the eternal deity Time--the
Hindű Kâla. Pliny called them the "Magi of the Gauls and Britons." But hey were more than that. The author of _Indian Antiquities_ finds much ffinity between the Druids and the Brâhmans of India. Dr. Borlase points o a close analogy between them and the Magi of Persia;(1763) others will ee an identity between them and the Orphic priesthood of Thrace--simply ecause they were connected, in their Esoteric Teachings, with the niversal Wisdom Religion, and thus presented affinities with the exoteric orship of all.
Like the Hindűs, the Greeks and Romans--we speak of the Initiates--the
Chaldees and the Egyptians, the Druids believed in the doctrine of a uccession of "worlds," as also in that of seven "creations" (of new ontinents) and transformations of the face of the Earth, and in a seven- old night and day for each Earth or Globe. Wherever the serpent with the gg is found, there this tenet was surely present. Their Dracontia are a roof of it. This belief was so universal that, if we seek for it in the
Esotericism of various religions, we shall discover it in all. We shall ind it among the Âryan Hindűs and Mazdeans, the Greeks, the Latins, and ven among the old Jews and early Christians, whose modern stocks hardly omprehend now what they read in their Scriptures. In the _Book of God_ we ead:
The world, says Seneca, being melted and having reëntered into the
bosom of Jupiter, this god continues for some time totally
concentred in himself and remains concealed, as it were, wholly
immersed in the contemplation of his own ideas. Afterwards we see
a new world spring from him, perfect in all its parts. Animals are
produced anew. An innocent race of men is formed.
And again, speaking of a mundane dissolution as involving the destruction r death of all, he teaches us that:
When the laws of nature shall be buried in ruin, and the last day
of the world shall come, the Southern Pole shall crush, as it
falls, all the regions of Africa, and the North Pole shall
overwhelm all the countries beneath its axis. _The affrighted Sun
shall be deprived of its light_; the palace of heaven falling to
decay shall produce at once both life and death, and some kind of
dissolution shall equally seize upon all the deities, who thus
shall return into their original chaos.(1764)
One might imagine oneself reading the Paurânic account by Parâshara of the reat Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has
Christianity nothing of the kind? It has, we say. Let the reader open any
English _Bible_ and read chapter iii of the Second _Epistle of Peter_, and e will find there the same ideas:
There shall come in the last days scoffers ... saying, Where is
the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all
things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God
the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water
and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being
overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth
which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto
fire ... the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless we ... look
for new heavens and a new earth.(1765)
If the interpreters choose to see in this a reference to the creation, the eluge, and the promised coming of Christ, when they shall live in a New
Jerusalem in Heaven, this is no fault of "Peter." What the writer of the
Epistle meant was the destruction of this Fifth Race of ours by ubterranean fires and inundations, and the appearance of new continents or the Sixth Root-Race. For the writers of the Epistles were all learned n symbology if not in science.
It has been mentioned elsewhere that the belief in the septenary onstitution of our Chain was the oldest tenet of the early Iranians, who ot it from the first Zarathushtra. It is time to prove it to those Parsîs ho have lost the key to the meaning of their Scriptures. In the _Avesta_ he Earth is considered septempartite and tripartite at one and the same ime. This is regarded by Dr. Geiger as an incongruity, for the following easons, which he calls discrepancies. The _Avesta_ speaks of the three hirds of the Earth because the _Rig Veda_ mentions:
Three earths.... Three strata or layers, one lying above the
other, are said to be meant by this.(1766)
But he is quite mistaken, as are all exoteric profane translators. The
_Avesta_ has not borrowed the idea from the _Rig Veda_, but simply repeats he Esoteric Teaching. The "three strata or layers" do not refer to our
Globe alone, but to three layers of the Globes of our Terrestrial
Chain--two by two, on each plane, one on the descending, the other on the scending arc. Thus, with reference to the six Spheres or Globes above our
Earth, the seventh and the fourth, the Earth is _septempartite_, while ith regard to the planes over our plane--it is _tripartite_. This meaning s carried out and corroborated by the text of the _Avesta_, and even by he speculations--most laborious and unsatisfactory guess-work--of the ranslators and commentators. It thus follows that the division of the
Earth, or rather the Earth's Chain, into seven Karshvars is not in ontradiction with the three "zones," if this word is read "planes." As
Geiger remarks, this septenary division is very old--the oldest of ll--since the Gâthas already speak of the "septempartite earth."(1767)
For:
According to the statements of the later Parsî Scriptures, the
_seven Kęrshvars are to be considered as completely disconnected
parts of the earth_ [which they surely are. For] between them
_there flows the ocean_, so that it is impossible, as stated in
several passages, to pass from one Kęrshvar to another.(1768)
The "Ocean" is _Space_, of course, for the latter was called "Waters of
Space" before it was known as Ether. Moreover, the word Karshvar is onsistently rendered as Dvîpa, and Hvaniratha is rendered by Jambudvîpa
(Neryosangh, the translator of the _Yasna_).(1769) But this fact is not aken into account by the Orientalists, and therefore we find even such a earned Zoroastrian and Parsî by birth as the translator of Dr. Geiger's ork, passing unnoticed and without a word of comment sundry remarks of he former on the "incongruities" of this kind abounding in the Mazdean
Scriptures. One of such "incongruities" and "coďncidences" concerns the imilarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to the even Dvîpas--islands, or continents, rather--as met with in the _Purânas_, amely:
The Dvîpas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean,
surround Jambudvîpa, which is situated in the centre, [and]
according to the Iranian view, the Kęrshvar Qaniratha is likewise
situated in the centre of the rest, they form no concentric
circles, but each of them [the six other Karshvars] is a peculiar
individual space, and so they group themselves round [above]
Qaniratha.(1770)
Now Qaniratha--better Hvaniratha--is not, as believed by Geiger and his ranslator, "the country inhabited by the Irânian tribes," and "the other ames" do not mean "the adjacent territories of foreign nations in the
North, South, West, and East," but signify our Globe or Earth. For that hich is meant by the sentence which follows the last quoted, namely, hat:
Two, Vorubarshti and Voruzarshti, lie in the North; two,
Vidadhafshu and Tradadhafshu, in the South; Savahi and Arzahi in
the East and West
--is simply the very graphic and accurate description of the Chain of our
Planet, the Earth, represented in the _Book of Dzyan_ (11) thus:
[Illustration: The Chain of Earth]
The Mazdean names given above have only to be replaced by those used in he Secret Doctrine to present us with the Esoteric tenet. The "Earth"
(our world) _is_ tripartite, because the Chain of the Worlds is situated n three different planes above our Globe; and it is septempartite because f the seven Globes or Spheres which compose the Chain. Hence the further eaning given in _Vendidâd_ (xix. 39), showing that:
Qaniratha alone is combined with _imat_, "this" (earth), while all
other Karshvares are combined with the word "_avat_," "that" or
_those_--upper earths.
Nothing could be plainer. The same may be said of the modern comprehension f all other ancient beliefs.
The Druids, then, understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, when, all ther fires being extinguished on the first of November, their sacred and nextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon, like those f the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And like the early Fifth Race and ater Chaldees, like the Greeks, and again like the Christians--who do the ame to this day, without suspecting the real meaning--they greeted the
Morning Star, the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.(1771) Strabo speaks of an sland near to Britannia:
Where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites as
in Samothrace and this island was Sacred Ierna(1772)--
here a perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man, ot as Lucian explains:
That the same spirit shall animate a new body, not here, but in a
different world--
ut in a series of reďncarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus ays, they declared that the souls of men, after determinate periods, ould pass into other bodies.(1773)
These tenets came to the Fifth Race Âryans from their predecessors of the
Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They had piously preserved the teachings, hich told them how their parent Root-Race, becoming with every generation ore arrogant, owing to the acquisition of superhuman powers, had been radually gliding toward its end. Those records reminded them of the giant ntellect of the preceding races as well as of their giant size. We find he repetition of those records in every age of history, in almost every ld fragment which has descended to us from antiquity.
Ćlian preserved an extract from Theophrastus written during the days of
Alexander the Great. It is a dialogue between Midas, the Phrygian, and
Silenus. The former is told of a continent that had existed in times of ld, so immense, that Asia, Europe and Africa seemed like poor islands ompared with it. _It was the last to produce_ animals and plants of igantic magnitudes. There, said Silenus, men grew to double the size of he tallest man in his (the narrator's) time, and they lived till they ere twice as old. They had wealthy cities with temples, and one of such ities held more than a million of inhabitants in it, gold and silver eing found there in great abundance.
Grote's suggestion that Atlantis was but a myth arisen from a irage--clouds on a dazzling sky taking the appearance of islands on a olden sea--is too disingenuous to be further noticed.
A. Some Statements About The Sacred Islands And Continents In The
Classics, Explained Esoterically.
All that which precedes was known to Plato, and to many others. But as no
Initiate had the right to divulge and declare all he knew, posterity got nly hints. Aiming more to instruct as a Moralist than as a Geographer and
Ethnologist or Historian, the Greek Philosopher merged the history of
Atlantis, which covered several million years, into one event which he ocated on one comparatively small island 3,000 stadia long by 2,000 wide
(or about 350 miles by 200, which is about the size of Ireland); whereas he priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as "all Asia and Lybia" ut together.(1774) But, however altered in its general aspect, Plato's arrative bears the impress of truth upon it.(1775) It was not he who nvented it, at any rate, since Homer, who preceded him by many centuries, lso speaks in his _Odyssey_ of the Atlantes--who are our Atlanteans--and of heir island. Therefore the tradition was older than the bard of Ulysses.
The Atlantes and the Atlantides of Mythology are based upon the Atlantes nd the Atlantides of History. Both Sanchuniathon and Diodorus have reserved the histories of those heroes and heroines, however much their ccounts may have become mixed up with the mythical element.
In our own day we witness the extraordinary fact that such comparatively ecent personages as Shakspere and William Tell are all but denied, an ttempt being made to show one to be a _nom de plume_, and the other a erson who never existed. What wonder then, that the two powerful
Races--the Lemurians and the Atlanteans--have been merged into and dentified, in time, with a few half mythical peoples, who all bore the ame patronymic.
Herodotus speaks of the Atlantes--a people of Western Africa--who gave their ame to Mount Atlas: who were vegetarians, and "whose sleep was never isturbed by dreams"; and who, moreover,
Daily cursed the sun at his rising and at his setting because his
excessive heat scorched and tormented them.
These statements are based upon moral and psychic facts and not on hysiological disturbance. The story of Atlas gives the key to this. If he Atlanteans never had their sleep disturbed by dreams, it is because hat particular tradition is concerned with the earliest Atlanteans, whose hysical frame and brain were not yet sufficiently consolidated, in the hysiological sense, to permit the nervous centres to act during sleep.
With regard to the other statement--that they daily "cursed the sun"--this gain had nothing to do with the heat, but with the moral degeneration hat grew with the Race. It is explained in our Commentaries.
_They [the sixth sub-race of the Atlanteans] used magic incantations even gainst the Sun_--
ailing in which they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were credited ith the power of calling down the Moon, as Greek history assures us. The
Atlanteans of the later period were renowned for their magic powers and ickedness, their ambition and defiance of the Gods. Thence the same raditions, taking form in the _Bible_, about the antediluvian giants and he Tower of Babel, and found also in the _Book of Enoch_.
Diodorus records another fact or two: the Atlanteans boasted of possessing he land in which all the Gods had received their birth; as also of having ad Uranus for their first King, he being also the first to teach them
Astronomy. Very little more than this has come down to us from antiquity.
The myth of Atlas is an allegory easily understood. Atlas is the old
Continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one ymbol. The poets attribute to Atlas, as to Proteus, a superior wisdom and universal knowledge, and especially _a thorough acquaintance with the epths of the ocean_; for both Continents bore Races instructed by
_divine_ Masters, and both were transferred to the bottom of the seas, here they now slumber until their next reäppearance above the waters.
Atlas is the son of an ocean nymph, and his daughter is Calypso--the
"watery deep." Atlantis has been submerged beneath the waters of the cean, and its progeny is now sleeping its eternal sleep on the ocean loors. The _Odyssey_ makes of him the guardian and the "sustainer" of the uge pillars that separate the Heavens from the Earth. He is their
"supporter." And as both Lemuria, destroyed by submarine fires, and
Atlantis, submerged by the waves, perished in the ocean deeps,(1776) Atlas s said to have been compelled to leave the surface of the Earth, and join is brother Iapetus in the depths of Tartarus.(1777) Sir Theodore Martin s right in interpreting this allegory as meaning:
[Atlas] standing on the solid floor of the inferior hemisphere of
the universe, and thus carrying at the same time the disc of the
earth and the celestial vault--the solid envelope of the superior
hemisphere.(1778)
For Atlas is Atlantis, which supports the new continents and their orizons on its "shoulders."
Decharme, in his _Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_, expresses a doubt as to he correctness of Pierron's translation of the Homeric word {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH DASIA AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} by
_sustinet_, as it is not possible to see:
How Atlas can support or bear at once several pillars situated in
various localities.
If Atlas were an individual it would be an awkward translation. But, as he ersonifies a Continent in the West said to support Heaven and Earth at nce,(1779) _i.e._, the feet of the giant tread the earth while his houlders support the celestial vault--an allusion to the gigantic peaks of he Lemurian and Atlantean Continents--the epithet "supporter" becomes very orrect. The term _conservator_ for the Greek word {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH DASIA AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}, which Decharme, ollowing Sir Theodore Martin, understands as meaning {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} and
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}, does not render the same sense.
The conception was certainly due to the gigantic mountain chain running long the terrestrial border or disc. These mountain peaks plunged their oots into the very bottom of the seas, while they raised their heads eavenward, their summits being lost in the clouds. The ancient continents ad more mountains than valleys on them. Atlas and the Teneriffe Peak, now wo of the dwarfed relics of the two lost Continents, were thrice as lofty uring the day of Lemuria and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Thus, the
Lybians called Mount Atlas the "Pillar of Heaven," according to
Herodotus,(1780) and Pindar qualified the later Ćtna as the "Celestial
Pillar."(1781) Atlas was an inaccessible island peak in the days of
Lemuria, when the African continent had not yet been raised. It is the ole Western relic which survives, _independent_, belonging to the
Continent on which the Third Race was born, developed and fell,(1782) for
Australia is now part of the Eastern Continent. Proud Atlas, according to
Esoteric tradition, having sunk one-third of its size into the waters, its wo parts remained as an heirloom of Atlantis.
This again was known to the priests of Egypt and to Plato himself, the olemn oath of secrecy, which extended even to the mysteries of Neo-
Platonism, alone preventing the whole truth from being told.(1783) So ecret was the knowledge of the last island of Atlantis, indeed--on account f the superhuman powers possessed by its inhabitants, the last direct escendants of the Gods or Divine Kings, as it was thought--that to divulge ts whereabouts and existence was punished by death. Theopompus says as uch in his ever-suspected _Meropis_, when he speaks of the Phoenicians as eing the only navigators in the seas which wash the Western coast of
Africa; who did it with such mystery that very often they sunk their own essels to make the too inquisitive foreigners lose all trace of them.
There are Orientalists and Historians--and they form the majority--who, hile feeling quite unmoved at the rather crude language of the _Bible_, nd some of the events narrated in it, show great disgust at the
"immorality" in the Pantheons of India and Greece.(1784) We may be told hat before them Euripides, Pindar, and even Plato, express the same isgust; that they too felt irritated with the tales invented--"those iserable stories of the poets," as Euripides phrases it.(1785)
But there may have been another reason for this, perhaps. To those who new that there was more than one key to Theogonic Symbolism, it was a istake to have expressed it in a language so crude and misleading. For if he educated and learned Philosopher could discern the kernel of wisdom nder the coarse rind of the fruit, and knew that the latter concealed the reatest laws and truths of psychic and physical nature, as well as the rigin of all things--not so with the uninitiated profane. For him the ead-letter was religion; the interpretation--sacrilege. And this dead- etter could neither edify nor make him more perfect, seeing that such an xample was given him by his Gods. But to the Philosopher--especially the
Initiate--Hesiod's _Theogony_ is as historical as any history can be. Plato ccepts it as such, and gives out as much of its truths as his pledges ermitted.
The fact that the Atlantes claimed Uranus for their first king, and that
Plato commences his story of Atlantis by the division of the great
Continent by Neptune, the grandson of Uranus, shows that there were ontinents before Atlantis and kings before Uranus. For Neptune, to whose ot the great Continent fell, finds on a small island only one human ouple made of clay--_i.e._, the first physical _human_ man, whose origin egan with the last sub-races of the Third Root-Race. It is their daughter
Clito that the God marries, and it is his eldest son Atlas who receives or his part the mountain and the continent which were called by his ame.(1786)
Now all the Gods of Olympus, as well as those of the Hindű Pantheon and he Rishis, were the septiform personations (1) of the Noumena of the
Intelligent Powers of Nature; (2) of Cosmic Forces; (3) of Celestial
Bodies; (4) of Gods or Dhyân Chohans; (5) of Psychic and Spiritual Powers;
(6) of Divine Kings on Earth, or the incarnations of the Gods; and (7) of
Terrestrial Heroes or Men. The knowledge how to discern among these seven orms the one that is intended, belonged at all times to the Initiates, hose earliest predecessors had created this symbolical and allegorical ystem.
Thus while Uranus, or the Host representing this celestial group, reigned nd ruled over the Second Race and their then Continent, Cronus or Saturn overned the Lemurians; and Jupiter, Neptune(1787) and others fought in he allegory for Atlantis, which was the whole Earth in the day of the
Fourth Race. Poseidonis, or the last island of Atlantis--the "third step" f Idas-pati, or Vishnu, in the mystic language of the Secret Books--lasted ill about 12,000 years ago.(1788) The Atlantes of Diodorus were right in laiming that it was their country, the region surrounding Mount Atlas, here "the Gods were born"--_i.e._, "incarnated." But it was after their ourth incarnation that they became, for the first time, human kings and ulers.
Diodorus speaks of Uranus as the first king of Atlantis, confusing, either onsciously or otherwise, the Continents; but as we have shown, Plato ndirectly corrects the statement. The first astronomical teacher of men as Uranus, because he is one of the seven Dhyân Chohans of that Second
Period or Race. Thus also in the second Manvantara, that of Svârochisha, mong the seven sons of the Manu, the presiding Gods or Rishis of that ace, we find Jyotis,(1789) the teacher of Astronomy (Jyotisha), one of he names of Brahmâ. And thus also the Chinese revere Tien (or the Sky,
Ouranos), and name him as their first teacher of Astronomy. Uranus gave irth to the Titans of the Third Race, and it is they, personified by
Saturn-Cronus, who mutilated him. For as it is the Titans who _fell into eneration_, when "creation by _will_ was superseded by physical rocreation," they needed Uranus no more.
And here a short digression must be permitted and pardoned. In consequence f the last scholarly production of Mr. Gladstone in the _Nineteenth
Century_, "The Greater Gods of Olympos," the ideas of the general public bout Greek Mythology have been still further perverted and biassed. Homer s credited with an inner thought, which is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as,
"the true key to the Homeric conception," whereas this "key" is merely a
"blind."
[Poseidon] is indeed essentially of the earth earthy ... strong
and self-asserting, sensual and intensely jealous and vindictive--
ut this is because he symbolizes the Spirit of the Fourth Root-Race, the
Ruler of the Seas, that Race which lives above the surface of the eas,(1790) which is composed of the giants, the children of Eurymedon, he race which is the father of Polyphemus, the Titan, and the one-eyed
Cyclops. Though Zeus reign over the Fourth Race, it is Poseidon who rules, nd who is the true key to the triad of the Cronid Brothers, and to our
_human_ races. Poseidon and Nereus are _one_; the former the Ruler or
Spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of its submersion, the latter, fter. Neptune is the titanic strength of the _living_ Race, Nereus, its
Spirit, reďncarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Âryan Race; and this is hat the Greek scholar of England has not yet discovered, or even dimly erceived. And yet he makes many observations upon the "artfulness" of
Homer, who never names Nereus, at whose designation we arrive only through he patronymic of the Nereids!
Thus the tendency of even the most erudite Hellenists is to confine their peculations to the exoteric images of Mythology and to lose sight of heir inner meaning; and it is remarkably illustrated in the case of Mr.
Gladstone, as we have shown. While almost the most conspicuous figure of ur age as a statesman, he is at the same time one of the most cultured cholars to whom England has given birth. Grecian literature has been the eloved study of his life, and he has found time amid the bustle of public ffairs to enrich contemporary literature with contributions to Greek cholarship, which will make his name famous through coming generations.
At the same time, as his sincere admirer, the present writer cannot but eel a deep regret that posterity, while acknowledging his profound rudition and splendid culture, will yet, in the greater light which
_must_ then shine upon the whole question of Symbolism and Mythology, udge that he has failed to grasp the spirit of the religious system which e has often criticized from the dogmatic Christian standpoint. In that uture day it will be perceived that the Esoteric key to the mysteries of he Christian as well as of the Grecian Theogonies and Sciences, is the
Secret Doctrine of the pre-historic nations, which, along with others, he as denied. It is that doctrine alone which can trace the kinship of all uman religious speculations, or even of so-called "revelations," and it s this teaching which infuses the spirit of life into the lay figures on he Mounts of Meru, Olympus, Walhalla, or Sinai. If Mr. Gladstone were a ounger man, his admirers might hope that his scholastic studies would be rowned by the discovery of this underlying truth. As it is, he but wastes he golden hours of his declining years in futile disputations with that iant free-thinker, Col. Ingersoll, each fighting with the weapons of xoteric temper, drawn from the arsenals of ignorant Literalism. These two reat controversialists are equally blind to the true Esoteric meaning of he texts which they hurl at each other's heads like iron bullets, while he world alone suffers by such controversies; since the one helps to trengthen the ranks of Materialism, and the other those of blind
Sectarianism of the dead-letter. And now we may return once more to our mmediate subject.
Many a time Atlantis is spoken of under another name, one unknown to our ommentators. The _power of names_ is great, and has been known since the irst men were instructed by the _Divine_ Masters. And as Solon had tudied it, he translated the "Atlantean" names into names devised by imself. In connection with the continent of Atlantis, it is desirable to ear in mind that the accounts which have come down to us from the old
Greek writers contain a confusion of statements, some referring to the reat Continent and others to the last small island of Poseidonis. It has ecome customary to take them all as referring to the latter only, but hat this is incorrect is evident from the incompatibility of the various tatements as to the size, etc., of "Atlantis."
Thus, in the _Critias_, Plato says, that the plain surrounding the city as itself surrounded by mountain chains, and the plain was smooth and evel, and of an oblong shape, lying north and south, three thousand tadia in one direction and two thousand in the other; they surrounded the lain by an enormous canal or dike, 101 feet deep, 606 feet broad, and
1,250 miles in length.(1791)
Now in other places the entire size of the _island_ of Poseidonis is given s about the same as that assigned here to the "_plain_ around the city" lone. Obviously, one set of statements refers to the great Continent, and he other to its last remnant--Plato's island.
And, again, the standing army of Atlantis is given as upwards of a million en; its navy as 1,200 ships and 240,000 men. Such statements are quite napplicable to a small island state, of about the size of Ireland!
The Greek allegories give to Atlas, or Atlantis, seven daughters--seven ub-races--whose respective names are Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope,
Merope, Alcyone, and Celćno. This ethnologically--as they are credited with aving married Gods and with having become the mothers of famous heroes, he founders of many nations and cities. Astronomically, the Atlantides ave become the seven Pleiades (?). In Occult Science the two are onnected with the destinies of nations, those destinies being shaped by he past events of their early lives according to Karmic Law.
Three great nations claimed in antiquity a direct descent from the kingdom f Saturn or Lemuria, confused with Atlantis several thousands of years efore our era; and these were the Egyptians, the Phoenicians
(Sanchuniathon), and the old Greeks (Diodorus, after Plato). But the ldest civilized country of Asia--India--can likewise be shown to claim the ame descent. Sub-races, guided by Karmic Law or destiny, repeat nconsciously the first steps of their respective mother-races. As the omparatively fair Brâhmans--when invading India with its dark-coloured
Dravidians--have come from the North, so the Âryan Fifth Race must claim ts origin from northern regions. The Occult Sciences show that the ounders, the respective groups of the seven Prajâpatis, of the Root-Races ave all been connected with the Pole Star. In the Commentary we find:
_He who understands the age of Dhruva_(_1792_)_ who measures 9090
mortal years, will understand the times of the Pralayas, the final
destiny of nations, O Lanoo._
Moreover there must have been a good reason why an Asiatic nation should ocate its great Progenitors and Saints in Ursa Major, a _northern onstellation_. It is 70,000 years, however, _since the Pole of the Earth ointed to the further end of Ursa Minor's tail_; and many more thousand ears since the seven Rishis could have been identified with the onstellation of Ursa Major.
The Âryan Race was born and developed in the far North, though after the inking of the Continent of Atlantis its tribes emigrated further South nto Asia. Hence Prometheus is the son of Asia, and Deucalion, his son, he Greek Noah--he who created men out of the stones of mother Earth--is alled a northern Scythe, by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the brother of
Atlas and is tied down to Mount Caucasus amid the snows.(1793)
Greece had her _Hyperborean_ as well as her _Southern_ Apollo. Thus nearly ll the Gods of Egypt, Greece, and Phoenicia, as well as those of other
Pantheons, are of a northern origin and originated in Lemuria, towards the lose of the Third Race, after its full physical and physiological volution had been completed.(1794) All the "fables" of Greece would be ound to be built on historical facts, if that history had only passed to osterity unadulterated by myths. The "one-eyed" Cyclopes, the giants abled as the sons of Coelus and Terra--three in number, according to
Hesiod--were the last three sub-races of the Lemurians, the "one-eye" eferring to the wisdom-eye;(1795) for the two front eyes were fully eveloped as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race. The llegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of
Ithaca himself was saved by putting out the eye of Polyphemus with a fire- rand, is based upon the psycho-physiological atrophy of the "third eye."
Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Fourth Race, and, though "Sage" in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in the pinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.(1796) His adventure with the latter--a avage gigantic race, the antithesis of cultured civilization in the
_Odyssey_--is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the
Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual nd physical culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of he Third Race to lose their all-penetrating _spiritual_ eye. The other llegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclopes to avenge the death of his on Asclepius, does not refer to the three sub-races represented by the hree sons of Heaven and Earth, but to the Hyperborean Arimaspian
Cyclopes, the last of the race endowed with the "wisdom-eye." The former ave left relics of their buildings everywhere, in the South as much as in he North; the latter were confined to the North solely. Thus Apollo--pre- minently the God of the Seers, whose duty it is to punish desecration, illed them--his shafts representing human passions, fiery and lethal--and id his shaft behind a mountain in the Hyperborean regions.(1797)
Cosmically and astronomically this Hyperborean God is the Sun personified, hich during the course of the Sidereal Year--25,868 years--changes the limates on the Earth's surface, making frigid regions of tropical, and
_vice versâ_. Psychically and spiritually his significance is far more mportant. As Mr. Gladstone pertinently remarks in his "Greater Gods of
Olympos":
The qualities of Apollo (jointly with Athenę) are impossible to be
accounted for without repairing to sources, which lie beyond the
limit of the traditions most commonly explored for the elucidation
of the Greek mythology.(1798)
The history of Latona (Leto), Apollo's mother, is most pregnant in various eanings. Astronomically, Latona is the polar region and the night, giving irth to the Sun, Apollo, Phoebus, etc. She is born in the Hyperborean ountries, wherein all the inhabitants were priests of her son, elebrating his resurrection and descent to their country every nineteen ears at the renewal of the lunar cycle.(1799) Latona is the Hyperborean
Continent, and its Race--geologically.(1800)
When the astronomical meaning cedes its place to the spiritual and ivine--Apollo and Athene transforming themselves into the form of "birds," he symbol and glyph of the higher divinities and angels--then the bright
God assumes divine creative powers. Apollo becomes the personification of eership, when he sends the astral double of Ćneas to the battle ield,(1801) and has the gift of appearing to his seers without being isible to other persons present,(1802) a gift, however, shared by every igh Adept.
The King of the Hyperboreans was, therefore, the son of Boreas, the North
Wind, and the High Priest of Apollo. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe--the
Atlantean Race--the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, personifying he seven sub-races of the Fourth Race and their seven branches(1803) llegorizes the history of the two Continents. The wrath of the "Sons of
God," or of "Will and Yoga," at seeing the steady degradation of the
Atlanteans was great;(1804) and the destruction of the children of Niobe y the children of Latona--Apollo and Diana, the deities of light, wisdom nd purity, or the Sun and Moon astronomically, whose influence causes hanges in the Earth's axis, deluges and other cosmic cataclysms--is thus ery clear.(1805) The fable about the never-ceasing tears of Niobe, whose rief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain--Atlantis covered with ater--is no less graphic as a symbol. Niobe, let it be remembered, is the aughter of one of the Pleiades, or Atlantides, the grand-daughter of
Atlas therefore,(1806) because she represents the last generations of the oomed Continent.
A true remark, that of Bailly, which says that Atlantis had an enormous nfluence on antiquity. He adds:
If these mythical names are mere allegories, then all that they
have of truth comes from Atlantis; if the fable is a real
tradition--however altered--then the ancient history is wholly their
history.(1807)
So much so, that all ancient writings--prose and poetry--are full of the eminiscences of the Lemuro-Atlanteans, the first _physical_ Races, though he Third and the Fourth in number in the evolution of Fourth Round
Humanity on our Globe. Hesiod records the tradition about the men of the
Age of Bronze, whom Jupiter had made out of ash-wood and who had hearts arder than diamond. Clad in bronze from head to foot, they passed their ives in fighting. Monstrous in size, endowed with a terrible strength, nvincible arms and hands descended from their shoulders, says the oet.(1808) Such were the giants of the first physical Races.
The Iranians have a reference to the later Atlanteans in _Yasna_, ix. 15.
Tradition maintains that the "Sons of God," or the great Initiates of the
Sacred Island, took advantage of the Deluge to rid the Earth of all the
Sorcerers among the Atlanteans. The said verse addresses Zarathushtra as ne of the "Sons of God." It says:
Thou, O Zarathushtra, didst make all demons [Sorcerers], who
before roamed the world in human forms, conceal themselves in the
earth [helped them to submersion].
The Lemurians, and also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two istinct classes--the "Sons of Night" or Darkness, and the "Sons of the
Sun" or Light. The old books tell us of terrible battles between the two, hen the former, leaving their land of Darkness, whence the Sun departed or long months, descended from their inhospitable regions and "tried to rench the Lord of Light" from their better-favoured brothers of the quatorial regions. We may be told that the Ancients knew nothing of the ong night of six months' duration in the polar regions. Even Herodotus, ore learned than the rest, only mentions a people who slept for six onths in the year, and remained awake the other half. Yet the Greeks knew ell that there was a country in the North where the year was divided into day and night each of six months' duration, for Pliny distinctly says o.(1809) They speak of the Cimmerians and of the Hyperboreans, and draw a istinction between the two. The former inhabited the Palus Mćotis--between
45° and 50° latitude. Plutarch explains that they were but a _small ortion_ of a _great nation_ driven away by the Scythians--which nation topped near the Tanais, after _having crossed Asia_.
These warlike multitudes lived formerly on the ocean shores, in
dense forests, and _under a tenebrous sky_. There the pole is
almost touching the head, there _long nights and days divide the
year_.(1810)
As to the Hyperboreans, these peoples, as expressed by Solinus Polyhistor:
Sow in the morning, reap at noon, gather their fruits in the
evening, and store them during the night in their caves.(1811)
Even the writers of the _Zohar_ knew this fact, as it is written:
In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old [or the Ancient], we learn ...
there are some countries of the earth which are lightened, whilst
others are in darkness; these have the day, when for the former it
is night; and there are countries in which it is constantly day,
or in which at least the night continues only some instants.(1812)
The island of Delos, the Asteria of Greek Mythology, was never in Greece, or this country, in that day, was not yet in existence, not even in its olecular form. Several writers have shown that it represented a country r an island, far larger than the small dots of land which became Greece.
Both Pliny and Diodorus Siculus place it in the Northern Seas. One calls t Basilea, or "Royal";(1813) the other, Pliny, names it Osericta,(1814) a ord which, according to Rudbeck,(1815) had
A significance in the northern languages, equivalent to the Island
of the Divine Kings or God-kings--
r again the "Royal Island of the Gods," because the Gods were born there,
_i.e._, the Divine Dynasties of the Kings of Atlantis proceeded from that lace. Let Geographers and Geologists seek for it among that group of slands discovered by Nordenskiöld on his "Vega" voyage in the Arctic egions.(1816) The Secret Books inform us that _the climate has changed in hose regions more than once_, since the first men inhabited those now lmost inaccessible latitudes. They were a Paradise before they became
Hell; the dark Hades of the Greeks, and the cold Realm of Shades where the
Scandinavian Hel, the Goddess-Queen of the country of the dead, "holds way deep down in Helheim and Niflheim." Yet it was the birthplace of
Apollo, who was the brightest of Gods, in Heaven--astronomically--as he was he most enlightened of the Divine Kings who ruled over the early nations, n his human meaning. The latter fact is borne out in the _Iliad_, wherein
Apollo is said to have appeared four times in his own form (as the God of he Four Races) and six times in human form,(1817) _i.e._, as connected ith the Divine Dynasties of the earlier unseparated Lemurians.
It is those early mysterious peoples, their countries--which have now ecome uninhabitable--as well as the name given to "man" both dead and live, which have furnished an opportunity to the ignorant Church Fathers or inventing a Hell, which they have transformed into a burning instead f a freezing locality.(1818)
It is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the
Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths--known to and communicating ith the Greeks--who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants f their last sub-races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root- aces of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub-race of Atlantis.
Plato hints as much in speaking of the latter, whose name, it is averred, ame from _pelagus_, the "great sea." Noah's Deluge is astronomical and llegorical, but it is not mythical, for the story is based upon the same rchaic tradition of men--or rather of nations--who were saved during the ataclysms, in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that he Chaldćan Xisuthrus, the Hindű Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun--the
"Beloved of the Gods," who rescued him from the flood in a canoe--or the
Swedish Belgamer, for whom the Gods did the same in the North, are all dentical as personages. But their legends have all sprung from the atastrophe which involved both the Continent and the Island of Atlantis.
The allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in orcery is no myth. Biblical events _are_ revealed indeed. But it is either by the voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, nor y a divine finger tracing the record on tablets of stone, but simply hrough tradition _viâ_ Pagan sources. It was not surely the _Pentateuch_ hat Diodorus was repeating when he wrote about the Titans--the giants born f Heaven and Earth, or, rather, born of the Sons of God who took to hemselves for wives the daughters of men who were fair. Nor was
Pherecydes quoting from _Genesis_ when giving details on those giants hich are not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures. He says that the
Hyperboreans were of the race of the Titans, a race which descended from he earliest giants, and that it was that Hyperborean region which was the irthplace of the first giants. The Commentaries on the Sacred Books xplain that the said region was the far North, the Polar Lands now, the
Pre-Lemurian earliest Continent, embracing once upon a time the present
Greenland, Spitzbergen, Sweden, Norway, etc.
But who were the Nephilim of _Genesis_ (vi. 4)? There were Palćolithic and
Neolithic men in Palestine ages before the events recorded in the Book of he Beginnings. The theological tradition identifies these Nephilim with airy men or satyrs, the latter being mythical in the Fifth Race, and the ormer historical in both the Fourth and Fifth Races. We have stated lsewhere what the prototypes of these satyrs were, and have spoken of the estiality of the early and later Atlantean Race. What is the meaning of
Poseidon's amours under such a variety of _animal_ forms? He became a olphin to win Amphitrite; a horse, to seduce Ceres; a ram, to deceive
Theophane, etc. Poseidon is not only the personation of the Spirit and
Race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of these giants. Gesenius and thers devote an enormous space to the meaning of the word Nephilim and xplain very little. But Esoteric Records show these hairy creatures to be he last descendants of those Lemuro-Atlantean Races, which begot children n female animals, of species now long extinct; thus producing dumb men,
"monsters," as the Stanzas have it.
Now Mythology, built upon Hesiod's _Theogony_, which is but a poetized ecord of actual traditions, or oral history, speaks of three giants, alled Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges, living in a dark country where they ere imprisoned by Cronus for their rebellion against him. All the three re endowed by myth with a hundred arms and fifty heads, the latter tanding for races, the former for sub-races and tribes. Bearing in mind hat in Mythology every personage almost is a God or Demi-god, and also a ing or simple mortal in his second aspect,(1819) and that both stand as ymbols for lands, islands, powers of nature, elements, nations, races and ub-races, the Esoteric Commentary will become comprehensible. It says hat the three giants are three polar lands which have changed form everal times, at each new cataclysm, or disappearance of one continent to ake room for another. The whole Globe is convulsed periodically; and has een so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times.
Yet, though the whole face of the Earth was transformed thereby each time, he conformation of the Arctic and Antarctic Poles has but little altered.
The polar lands unite and break off from each other into islands and eninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore Northern Asia is called he "Eternal or Perpetual Land," and the Antarctic the "Ever-living" and he "Concealed"; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other egions disappear and reäppear in turn, into and above the Great Waters.
From the first appearance of the great Continent of Lemuria, the three olar giants have been imprisoned in their circle by Cronus. Their gaol is urrounded by a wall of bronze, and the exit is through gates fabricated y Poseidon--or Neptune--hence by the seas, which they cannot cross; and it s in that damp region, where eternal darkness reigns, that the three rothers languish. The _Iliad_ makes it Tartarus.(1820) When the Gods and
Titans rebelled in their turn against Zeus--the deity of the Fourth
Race--the Father of the Gods bethought himself of the imprisoned giants hat they might help him to conquer the Gods and Titans, and to recipitate the latter into Hades; or, in clearer words, to have Lemuria urled amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make oom for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn.(1821)
The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small cale of the great cataclysm; and, remaining impressed on the memory of he Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate f Atlantis. So, also, the war between the Râkshasas of Lankâ and the
Bhârateans, the _mčlée_ of the Atlanteans and Âryans in their supreme truggle, or the conflict between the Devs and Izeds, or Peris, became, ges later, the struggle of Titans, separated into two inimical camps, and till later the war between the Angels of God and the Angels of Satan.
Historical facts became theological dogmas. Ambitious scholiasts, men of a mall sub-race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the
Âryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the orld, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed hinking humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan.
But as it is now the conviction of more than one Greek scholar--as it was hat of Bailly and Voltaire--that Hesiod's _Theogony_ is based upon istorical facts,(1822) it becomes easier for the Occult Teachings to find heir way into the minds of thoughtful men, and therefore are these assages from Mythology brought forward in our discussion upon modern earning in this Addendum.
Such symbols as are found in all the exoteric creeds are so many landmarks f pre-historic truths. The sunny, happy land, the primitive cradle of the arliest human races, has become several times since then Hyperborean and
Saturnine;(1823) thus showing the Golden Age and Reign of Saturn from ultiform aspects. It was many-sided in its character indeed--climatically, thnologically and morally. For the Third, Lemurian Race must be hysiologically divided into the early androgynous and the later bi-sexual ace; and the climate of its dwelling-places and continents into that of n eternal spring and eternal winter, into life and death, purity and mpurity. The cycle of legends is ever being transformed on its journey by opular fancy. Yet it may be cleansed from the dross it has picked up on ts way through many nations, and through the countless minds which have dded their own exuberant additions to the original facts. Leaving for a hile the Greek interpretations, we may seek for some more corroborations f the latter in the scientific and geological proofs.
Section VII. Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of Several
Submerged Continents.
It may not be amiss--for the benefit of those who resolve the tradition of lost Miocene Atlantis into an "antiquated myth"--to append a few cientific admissions on this point. Science, it is true, is largely ndifferent to such questions. But there are Scientists ready to admit hat, in any case, a cautious agnosticism as to geological problems oncerning the remote past is far more philosophical than _ŕ priori_ enial, or even hasty generalizations on insufficient data.
Meanwhile two very interesting instances, that have been lately met with, ay be pointed out as "confirming" certain passages in the letter of a
Master, published in _Esoteric Buddhism_. The eminence of the authorities ill not be questioned (we italicize the corresponding passages):
Extract from _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 70.
(1.)
The sinking of Atlantis (the group of continents and isles) began
during the Miocene period ... and it culminated first in the final
disappearance of the largest continent, _an event coincident with
the elevation of the Alps_, and second with that of the last of
the fair islands mentioned by Plato.
Extract from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.
(1.)
Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis--a continent or
archipelago of large islands occupying the area of the North
Atlantic? There is, perhaps, nothing unphilosophical in the
hypothesis. For since, as geologists state, "_The Alps have
acquired 4,000 and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of
their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene
epoch_" (Lyell's _Principles_, p. 256, 2nd Ed.)--_a Post-Miocene
depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into
almost abysmal depths_.(1824)
Extract from _Esoteric Buddhism_, pp. 64, 65.
(2.)
Lemuria ... should no more be confounded with the Atlantis
Continent than Europe with America. Both sank and were drowned
with their high civilizations and "gods"; yet between the two
catastrophes a period of about 700,000 years elapsed, Lemuria
flourishing and ending her career just about that lapse of time
before the early part of the _Eocene_ age, since its Race was the
Third. Behold _the relics of that once great nation in some of the
flat-headed aborigines of your Australia_.
Extract from an article in the _Popular Science Review_, v. 18, by
Professor Seemann, Ph.D., F.L.S., V.-P.A.S.
(2.)
It would be premature to say, because no evidence has yet been
adduced, _that men may not have existed in the Eocene age_,
especially as it can be shown that _a race of men, the lowest we
know of, co-exists with that remnant of the Eocene flora which
still survives on the continent and islands of Australia_.
Extract from _The Pedigree of Man_, p. 81.
Hćckel, who fully accepts the reality of a former Lemuria, also
regards the _Australians as direct descendants of the Lemurians_.
Persistent forms of both [his Lemurian] stems are in all
probability still surviving, of the former in the Papuans and
Hottentots, of the latter in the _Australians_ and in one division
of the Malays.
With regard to a former civilization, of which a _portion_ of these egraded Australians are the last surviving offshoot, the opinion of
Gerland is strongly suggestive. Commenting upon the religion and mythology f the tribes, he writes:
The statement that Australian civilization [?] indicates a higher
grade, is nowhere more clearly proved than here [in the province
of religion] where everything resounds like the expiring voices of
a previous and richer age.... The idea that the Australians have
no trace of religion or mythology is thoroughly false. But this
religion is certainly quite deteriorated.(1825)
As to Hćckel's view of the relationship between the Australians and the
Malays, as two branches of a common stock, he is in error when he classes he Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a _mixed_ stock, esulting from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub-races with the eventh sub-race of the Third Root-Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of ndirect Lemuro-Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact--to those oncrete thinkers who demand a _physical_ proof of Karma--that the lowest aces of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an xtraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that hey were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is aking place all over the Globe, among those races, whose "time is p"--among just those stocks, be it remarked, which Esoteric Philosophy egards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is naccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is _invariably_ ue to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet, runkenness, etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as ffering an all-sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the halanx of facts now so closely arrayed. Even the Materialist Lefčvre ays:
Nothing can save those that have run their course. It would be
necessary to extend their destined cycle.... _The peoples that
have been relatively most spared, those who have defended
themselves most valiantly, Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less
decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European
intrusion._(1826)
True; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed, an instance of the peration of Cyclic Law, difficult to account for on materialist lines?
Whence the "destined cycle" and the order here testified to? Why does this
(Karmic) sterility attack and root out certain races at their "appointed our"? The answer that it is due to a "mental disproportion" between the olonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does not xplain the sudden "checks to fertility" which so frequently supervene.
The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of the most ysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to ecognize, with Occultists, that the true solution has to be sought for in comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lčfevre remarks:
The time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three
great human types.
The time is before the Sixth Root-Race dawns; the three types are the hite (Âryan, Fifth Root-Race), the yellow, and the African negro--with heir crossings (Atlanto-European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans,
Australians, Polynesians, etc.--all are dying out. Those who realize that very Root-Race runs through a gamut of seven sub-races with seven ranchlets, etc., will understand the "why." The tide-wave of incarnating
Egos has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less enile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some xtraordinary and _unexplained_ statistics as to race extinction are given y de Quatrefages.(1827) No solution, except on Occult lines, is able to ccount for these.
But we have digressed from our direct subject. Let us hear now what
Professor Huxley has to say on the subject of former Atlantic and Pacific
Continents.
He writes in _Nature_:
There is nothing, so far as I am aware, in the biological or
geological evidence at present accessible, to render untenable the
hypothesis that _an area of the Mid-Atlantic or Pacific sea-bed as
big as Europe_, should have been upheaved as high as Mont Blanc,
and have subsided again any time since the Palćozoic epoch, if
there were any grounds for entertaining it.(1828)
That is to say, then, that there is nothing to militate against _positive_ vidence of the fact; nothing, therefore, against the geological ostulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Berthold Seemann assures us in he _Popular Science Review_ that:
The facts which botanists have accumulated for reconstructing
these lost maps of the globe are rather comprehensive; and they
have not been backward in demonstrating the former existence of
several large tracts of solid land in parts now occupied by great
oceans. The many striking points of contact between the present
floras of the United States and Eastern Asia, induced them to
assume that, during the present order of things, there existed a
continental connection between South-Eastern Asia and Western
America. The singular correspondence of the present flora of the
Southern United States with that of the lignite flora of Europe
induces them to believe that, in the Miocene period, Europe and
America were connected by a land passage, of which Iceland,
Madeira, and the other Atlantic islands are remnants; that, in
fact, the story of an Atlantis, which an Egyptian priest told to
Solon, is not purely fictitious, but rests upon a solid historical
basis.... Europe of the Eocene period received the plants which
spread over mountains and plains, valleys and river-banks (from
Asia generally), neither exclusively from the South nor from the
East. The West also furnished additions, and if at that period
these were rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the
bridge was already building, which, at a later period, was to
facilitate communication between the two continents in such a
remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the Western
Continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of
Atlantis, then probably just [?] just rising above the
ocean.(1829)
And in another number of the same review(1830) Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, M.A.,
F.L.S., in an article entitled "The Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations," lludes to the same subject:
Is it probable that land could have existed where now the broad
Atlantic rolls? All tradition says so: old Egyptian records speak
of Atlantis, as Strabo and others have told us. The Sahara itself
is the sand of an ancient sea, and the shells which are found upon
its surface prove that, no longer ago than the Miocene period, a
sea rolled over what is now desert. The voyage of the "Challenger"
has proved the existence of three long ridges(1831) in the
Atlantic Ocean,(1832) one extending for more than three thousand
miles, and lateral spurs may, by connecting these ridges, account
for the marvellous similarity of the fauna of the Atlantic
islands.(1833)...
The submerged continent of _Lemuria_, in what is now the Indian
Ocean, is considered to afford an explanation of many difficulties
in the distribution of organic life, and, I think, the existence
of a _Miocene Atlantis_ will be found to have a strong elucidative
bearing on subjects of greater interest [truly so!] than the
migration of the lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that
land existed in former ages where the North Atlantic now rolls,
not only is a motive found for these apparently suicidal
migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we call
instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial
inheritance of previously acquired experience.
At certain periods, we learn, multitudes of these animals swim to sea and erish. Coming, as they do, from all parts of Norway, the powerful nstinct which survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their rogenitors impels them to seek a continent, once existing but now ubmerged beneath the ocean, and to court a watery grave.
In an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace's _Island
Life_--a work devoted largely to the question of the distribution of nimals, etc.--Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes:
By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of
different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that the
distribution of life upon the land as we now see it has been
accomplished without the aid of important changes in the relative
positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we
must believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New
Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at
some period not remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of
1,000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as
"utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at
our command" [! !], the supposition that temperate Europe and
temperate America, Australia, and South America, have ever been
connected, except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic Circles, and
that lands now separated by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth
have ever been united.
Mr. Wallace, it must be admitted, has succeeded in explaining the
chief features of existing life distribution, without bridging the
Atlantic or Pacific, except towards the Poles, yet I cannot help
thinking that some of the facts might perhaps be more easily
explained by admitting the former existence of the connection
between the coast of Chili and Polynesia(1834) and Great Britain
and Florida, shadowed by the sub-marine banks which stretch
between them. Nothing is urged that renders these more direct
connections impossible, and no physical reason is advanced why the
floor of the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth. The
route by which [according to the Anti-Atlantean and Lemurian
hypotheses of Wallace] the floras of South America and Australia
are supposed to have mingled, is beset by almost insurmountable
obstacles, and the apparently sudden arrival of a number of
subtropical American plants in our Eocenes necessitates a
connection more to the South than the present 1,000 fathom line.
Forces are unceasingly acting, and there is _no reason why an
elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean
should cease to act until a continent is formed_. They have acted
and lifted out from the sea, in comparatively recent geological
time, the loftiest mountains on earth. Mr. Wallace himself admits
repeatedly that sea-beds have been elevated 1,000 fathoms, and
islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms; and to
suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it
seems to me, to again quote from _Island Life_, "utterly
gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our
command."(1835)
The "father" of English Geology--Sir Charles Lyell--was a uniformitarian in is views of continental formation. We find him saying:
Professors Unger (_Die Versunkene Insel Atlantis_) and Heer
(_Flora Tertiaria Helvetić_) have advocated on botanical grounds
_the former existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of
the tertiary period_, as affording the only plausible explanation
that can be imagined of the analogy between the Miocene flora of
Central Europe, and the existing flora of Eastern America.
Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the
American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan,
inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the
migration of species, to which the community of types in the
Eastern States of North America, and the Miocene flora of Europe
is due, took place when there was an overland communication from
America to Eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth
parallels of latitude, or south of Behring's Straits, following
the direction of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may
have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or
Postpliocene, antecedently to the Glacial epoch, to Amoorland, on
the East coast of Northern Asia.(1836)
The unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to void the hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too apparent to scape notice. _If the botanical evidences stood alone_, scepticism would e partially reasonable; but in this case all branches of Science converge o one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater rrors than it would be exposed to by the admission of our two now nvisible Continents. It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of he Mathematician Laplace down to our own, and that only a few years go.(1837) We have Professor Huxley's authority for saying that there is o _ŕ priori_ improbability whatever against possible evidences supporting he belief. But now that the _positive evidence is brought forward_, will hat eminent Scientist admit the corollary?
Touching on the problem in another place Sir Charles Lyell tells us:
Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much
information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost
all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former
successive destruction and renovation of the world [_continental_,
not cosmic, catastrophes]. We learn from Plutarch that this was
the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the
fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of
the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in the Indian
systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of every
successive world. The returns of great catastrophes were
determined by the period of the Annus Magnus, or great year, a
cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets,
and terminating when these return together to the same sign whence
they were supposed at some remote epoch to have set out.... We
learn particularly from the _Timćus_ of Plato that the Egyptians
believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and
deluges. The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of
catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world.
These, they taught, were of two kinds--the cataclysm, or
_destruction by deluge_, which sweeps away the whole human race,
and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions of
nature, and the _ecpyrosis_, or _conflagration_, which destroys
the globe itself [submarine volcanoes]. From the Egyptians they
derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state
of innocence [nascent simplicity of the first sub-races of each
Root-Race]. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no
longer bear with the wickedness of men [degeneracy into magical
practices and gross animality of the Atlanteans], and a shock of
the elements, or a deluge, overwhelmed them; after which calamity,
Astrća again descended on the earth to renew the golden age [dawn
of a new Root-Race].(1838)
Astrća, the Goddess of Justice, is the last of the deities to forsake the
Earth, when the Gods are said to abandon it and to be taken up again into eaven by Jupiter. But, no sooner does Zeus carry from Earth Ganymedes--the bject of _lust_, personified--than the Father of the Gods throws down
Astrća on the Earth again, on which she falls _upon her head_. Astrća is
Virgo, the constellation of the Zodiac. Astronomically it has a very plain ignificance, and one which gives the key to the occult meaning. But it is nseparable from Leo, the sign that precedes it, and from the Pleiades and heir sisters, the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the brilliant leader. All hese are connected with the periodical renovations of the Earth, with egard to its continents--even Ganymedes, who in astronomy is Aquarius. It as already been shown that while the South Pole is the "Pit" (or the nfernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is eographically the First Continent; while astronomically and etaphorically the Celestial Pole, with its Pole Star in Heaven, is Meru, r the Seat of Brahmâ, the Throne of Jupiter, etc. For in the age when the
Gods forsook the Earth and were said to ascend into Heaven, the ecliptic ad become parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to escend from the North Pole to the north horizon. Aldebaran was in onjunction then with the Sun, as it was 40,000 years ago, at the great estival in commemoration of that Annus Magnus, of which Plutarch spoke.
Since that Year--40,000 years ago--there has been a retrograde motion of the quator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in conjunction with the ernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus, even in Christian
Mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous Orphic Hymn on he great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole Esotericism of the vent. Pluto, in the Pit, carries off Eurydice, bitten by the Polar
Serpent. Then Leo, the Lion, is vanquished. Now, when the Lion is "in the
Pit," or below the South Pole, then Virgo, as the next sign, follows him, nd when her head, down to the waist, is below the southern horizon--she is nverted. On the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge onstellations; and Aldebaran--he who follows, or _succeeds_ the daughters f Atlas, or the Pleiades--looks down from the eye of Taurus. It is from his point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were ommenced. The student has to remember also, that when
Ganymedes--Aquarius--is raised to heaven--or above the horizon of the North
Pole--Virgo or Astrća, who is Venus-Lucifer, descends head downwards below he horizon of the South Pole, or the Pit; which Pit, or the Pole, is also he Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise his intuition by lacing these facts together; no more can be said. Lyell remarks:
The connection between the doctrine of successive catastrophes and
repeated deteriorations in the moral character of the human race,
is more intimate and natural than might at first be imagined. For,
in a rude state of society, all great calamities are regarded by
the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.... In
like manner in the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests
of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of
the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that
_the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of
the inhabitants_.(1839)
True; but was it not owing to the fact that all Esoteric truths were given ut to the public by the Initiates of the temples _under the guise of llegories_? "Jupiter," is merely the personification of that immutable
Cyclic Law, which arrests the downward tendency of each Root-Race after ttaining the zenith of its glory.(1840) We must admit allegorical eaching, unless we hold with Prof. John Fiske's singularly dogmatic pinion that a myth:
Is an explanation by the uncivilized mind, of some natural
phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, for the
ingenuity is wasted [!!] which strives to detect in myths the
remnants of a refined primeval science--but an explanation.
Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of
allegory [how does Mr. Fiske know?], nor were they such sorry
pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve
their purpose.(1841)
We venture to say the language of the initiated few was far more "plain," nd their Science-Philosophy far more comprehensive and satisfying alike o the physical and _spiritual_ wants of man, than even the terminology nd system elaborated by Mr. Fiske's master--Herbert Spencer. What, owever, is Sir Charles Lyell's "explanation" of the "myth"? Certainly, he n no way countenances the idea of its "astronomical" origin, as asserted y some writers.
The two interpreters are entirely at variance with one another. Lyell's olution is as follows. A disbeliever in cataclysmal changes from the bsence (?) of any reliable historical data on the point, as well as from strong bias to the uniformitarian conceptions of geologic changes,(1842) e attempts to trace the Atlantis "tradition" to the following sources:
(1) Barbarous tribes connect catastrophes with an avenging God, who is ssumed in this way to punish immoral races.
(2) Hence the commencement of a new race is logically a virtuous one.
(3) The primary source of the geologic basis of the tradition was Asia--a ontinent subject to violent earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts would thus e handed down the ages.
(4) Egypt, being herself free from earthquakes, nevertheless based her not nconsiderable geologic knowledge on these cataclysmal traditions.
An ingenious "explanation," as all such are! But proving a negative is roverbially a difficult task. Students of Esoteric Science, who know what he resources of the Egyptian priesthood really were, need no such aboured hypothesis. Moreover, while an imaginative theorist is always ble to furnish a reasonable solution of problems which, in one branch of
Science, seem to necessitate the hypothesis of periodical cataclysmic hanges on the surface of our planet, the impartial critic who is not a pecialist, will recognize the immense difficulty of explaining away the umulative evidences--namely, the archaeological, ethnological, geological, raditional, botanical, and even biological--in favour of former continents ow submerged. When each science is fighting for its own hand, the umulative force of the evidence is almost invariably lost sight of.
In the _Theosophist_ we wrote:
We have as evidence the most ancient traditions of various and
wide-separated peoples--legends in India, in ancient Greece,
Madagascar, Sumatra, Java, and all the principal isles of
Polynesia, as well as the legends of both Americas. Among savages,
and in the traditions of the richest literature in the world--the
Sanskrit literature of India--there is an agreement in saying,
that, ages ago, there existed in the Pacific Ocean, a large
Continent, which by a geological upheaval was engulfed by the
sea(1843) [Lemuria]. And it is our firm belief ... that most, if
not all, of the islands from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia,
are fragments of that once immense submerged Continent. Both
Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the
ocean, and which, since the memory of man, never had nor could
have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have
yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their
respective countries extended far, far into the Sea; that there
were in the world but two immense continents, one inhabited by
yellow, the other by dark men; and that the Ocean, by command of
the Gods, and to punish them for their incessant quarrelling,
swallowed them up. Notwithstanding the geographical fact that New
Zealand, and Sandwich and Easter Islands, are at a distance from
each other of between 800 and 1,000 leagues, and that, according
to every testimony, neither these nor any other intermediate
islands, for instance, the Marquesan, Society, Fiji, Tahitian,
Samoan, and other islands, could, since they became islands,
ignorant as their people were of the compass, have communicated
with each other before the arrival of Europeans; yet they one and
all maintain that their respective countries extended far toward
the West, on the Asian side. Moreover with very small differences,
they all speak dialects evidently of the same language, and
understand each other with little difficulty, have the same
religious beliefs and superstitions, and pretty much the same
customs. And as few of the Polynesian islands were discovered
earlier than a century ago, and the Pacific Ocean itself was
unknown to Europe until the days of Columbus, and these islanders
have never ceased repeating the same old traditions since the
Europeans first set foot on their shores, it seems to us a logical
inference that our theory is nearer to the truth than any other.
Chance would have to change its name and meaning, were all this
due but to chance alone.(1844)
Professor Schmidt, writing in defence of the hypothesis of a former
Lemuria, declares:
A great series of animal-geographical facts is explicable only on
the hypothesis of the former existence of a Southern Continent of
which the Australian mainland is a remnant.... [The distribution
of species] points to the vanished land of the south, where
perhaps the home of the progenitors of the Maki of Madagascar may
also be looked for.(1845)
Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his _Malay Archipelago_, arrives at the following onclusion after a review of the mass of evidence at hand:
The inference that we must draw from these facts is undoubtedly
that the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Java and Borneo do
essentially form a part of a former Australian or Pacific
Continent, although some of them may never have been actually
joined to it. This continent must have been broken up not only
before the Western Islands were separated from Asia, but probably
before the extreme south-eastern portion of Asia was raised above
the waters of the ocean, for a great part of the land of Borneo
and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent
formation.(1846)
According to Hćckel:
Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of the
human race; but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the South of
Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian
Ocean.(1847)
In one sense Hćckel is right as to Lemuria--the "cradle of the human race."
That Continent _was_ the home of the first _physical_ human stock--the ater Third-Race Men. Previous to that epoch the Races were far less onsolidated and physiologically quite different. Hćckel makes Lemuria xtend from Sunda Island to Africa and Madagascar and eastwards to Upper
India.
Professor Rütimeyer, the eminent Palćontologist, asks:
Need the conjecture that the almost exclusively graminivorous and
insectivorous marsupials, sloths, armadilloes, ant-eaters and
ostriches, once possessed an actual point of union in a Southern
Continent of which the present flora of Terra del Fuego and
Australia must be the remains--need this conjecture raise
difficulties at a moment when, from their fossil remains, Heer
restores to our sight the ancient forests of Smith's Sound and
Spitzbergen?(1848)
Having now dealt generally with the broad scientific attitude on the two uestions, it will, perhaps, conduce to an agreeable brevity, if we sum up he more striking isolated facts in favour of that fundamental contention f Esoteric Ethnologists--the reality of Atlantis. Lemuria is so widely ccepted, that further pursuit of the subject is unnecessary. With regard, owever, to the former, it is found that:
(1) The Miocene florć of Europe have their most numerous and striking nalogues in the florć of the United States. In the forests of Virginia nd Florida are found the magnolias, tulip-trees, evergreen oaks, plane rees, etc., which correspond with European Tertiary flora, term for term.
How was the migration effected, if we exclude the theory of an Atlantic
Continent bridging the ocean between America and Europe? The proposed
"explanation" to the effect that the transition was by way of Asia and the
Aleutian Islands is a mere uncalled-for theory, obviously upset by the act that a large number of these florć only appear _East_ of the Rocky
Mountains. This also negatives the idea of a Trans-Pacific migration. They re now superseded by European continents and islands to the North.
(2) Skulls exhumed on the banks of the Danube and Rhine bear a _striking imilarity_ to those of the Caribs and Old Peruvians (Littré). Monuments ave been exhumed in Central America, which bear representations of ndoubted _negro_ heads and faces. How are such facts to be accounted for xcept on the Atlantean hypothesis? What is now N.W. Africa was once onnected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which now remain.
(3) According to Farrar the "_isolated_ language" of the Basques has no ffinities with the other languages of Europe,(1849) but with:
The aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent [America]
and those alone.(1850)
Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.
Palćolithic European man of the Miocene and Pliocene times was a pure
Atlantean, as we have previously stated. The Basques are, of course, of a uch later date than this, but their affinities, as here shown, go far to rove the original extraction of their remote ancestors. The "mysterious" ffinity between their tongue and that of the Dravidian races of India ill be understood by those who have followed our outline of continental ormations and shiftings.
(4) Stones have been found in the Canary Islands bearing sculptured ymbols similar to those found on the shore of Lake Superior. Berthollet as induced by such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early en of the Canary Islands and America.(1851)
The Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the
Atlanteans. This fact will account for the _great stature_ evidenced by heir old skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners, the
Cro-Magnon Palćolithic men.
(5) Any experienced mariner has but to navigate the fathomless ocean along he Canary Islands to ask himself the question when or how that group of olcanic and rocky little islands has been formed, surrounded on every ide by that vast watery space. Frequent questions of this kind led inally to the expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which took place n the first quarter of the present century. Some Geologists maintained hat the volcanic islands had been raised right from the bottom of the cean, the depth of which in the immediate vicinity of the island varies rom 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Others were inclined to see in these roups--including Madeira, the Azores, and the islands of Cape de Verde--the emnants of a gigantic but submerged continent which had once united
Africa with America. The latter men of Science supported their hypothesis y a mass of evidence in its favour, drawn from ancient "myths." Hoary
"superstitions," such as the fairy-like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of he Hesperides, Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders, all of them ythoi connected with the Peak of Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical
Science. The identity of animal and vegetable species, showing either a revious connection between America and the remaining groups of the slands--the hypothesis of their having been drifted from the New to the
Old World by the waves was too absurd to stand long--found more serious onsideration. But it is only quite lately, and after Donnelly's book had een published several years, that the theory has had a greater chance han ever of becoming an accepted fact. Fossils found on the _Eastern
Coast_ of South America have now been _proved_ to belong to the Jurassic ormations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic fossils of
_Western_ Europe and _Northern_ Africa. The geological structure of both oasts is also almost identical; the resemblance between the smaller arine animals dwelling in the more shallow waters of the South American, he Western African, and the South European coasts, is also very great.
All such facts are bound to bring Naturalists to the conclusion that there as been, in distant pre-historic ages, a continent which extended from he coast of Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands nd North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.
(6) The great resemblance between the Jurassic fossils of South America,
North Africa, and Western Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and dmits of no explanation, unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis.
But why, also, is there so marked a similarity between the fauna of the
(now) isolated Atlantic islands? Why did the specimens of Brazilian fauna redged up by Sir C. Wyville Thompson resemble those of Western Europe?
Why does a resemblance exist between many of the West African and West
Indian animal groups? Again:
When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared,
one cannot but be struck with their identity; all, or nearly all,
belong to the same genera, while many, even of the species, are
common to both continents ... indicating that they radiated from a
common centre [Atlantis].(1852)
The horse, according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large roportion of the once "missing links" connecting it with inferior forms ave been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse penetrate into
Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the oceanic interspaces?
Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the Old World, how did uch forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the first instance n the migration hypothesis?
Again:
Buffon had ... remarked the repetition of the African in the
American fauna, how, for example, the llama is a juvenescent and
feeble copy of the camel, and how the puma of the New represents
the lion of the Old World.(1853)
(7) The following quotation runs with No. 2, but its significance is such nd the writer cited is so authoritative, that it deserves a place to tself:
With regard to the primitive dolichocephalć of America, I
entertain a hypothesis still more bold, namely, that they are
nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the
Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks, Copts, which
Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian-Atlantidć. We find one
and the same form of skull in the Canary Islands, in front of the
African coast, and in the Carib islands, on the opposite coast
which faces Africa. The colour of the skin on both sides of the
Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a
reddish-brown.(1854)
If, then, Basques and Cro-Magnon Cave-Men are of the same race as the
Canarese Guanches, it follows that the former are also allied to the borigines of America. This is the conclusion necessitated by the ndependent investigations of Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages. The
Atlantean affinities of these three types become patent.
(8) The sea-soundings undertaken by H.M.S. "Challenger" and the "Dolphin," ave established the fact that a huge elevation some 3,000 miles in ength, projecting upwards from the abysmal depths of the Atlantic, xtends from a point near the British Islands southwards, curving round ear Cape de Verde, and running in a south-easterly direction along the
West African coast. This elevation averages some 9,000 feet in height, and ises above the waves at the Azores, Ascension, and other places. In the cean depths around the neighbourhood of the former the ribs of a once assive piece of land have been discovered.(1855)
The inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface could
never have been produced in accordance with any known laws for the
deposition of sediment, nor by submarine elevation; but, on the
contrary, must have been carved by agencies acting above the
water-level.(1856)
It is most probable that necks of land formerly existed knitting Atlantis o South America, somewhere above the mouth of the Amazon, to Africa near
Cape de Verde, while a similar point of juncture with Spain is not nlikely, as contended for by Donnelly.(1857) Whether the latter existed r not, is of no consequence, in view of the fact that what is now N.W.
Africa was--before the elevation of the Sahara and the rupture of the
Gibraltar connection--an extension of Spain. Consequently no difficulty can e raised as to how the migration of the European fauna, etc., took place.
Enough has now been said from the purely scientific standpoint, and it is eedless, in view of the manner in which the subject has already been eveloped on the lines of Esoteric Knowledge, to swell the mass of estimony further. In conclusion, the words of one of the most intuitive riters of the day may be cited as admirably illustrative of the opinions f the Occultist, who awaits in patience the dawn of the coming day:
We are but beginning to understand the past; one hundred years ago
the world knew nothing of Pompeii or Herculaneum; nothing of the
lingual tie that binds together the Indo-European nations; nothing
of the significance of the vast volume of inscriptions upon the
tombs and temples of Egypt; nothing of the meaning of the arrow-
headed inscriptions of Babylon; nothing of the marvellous
civilizations revealed in the remains of Yucatan, Mexico, and
Peru. We are on the threshold. Scientific investigation is
advancing with giant strides. Who shall say that one hundred years
from now, the great museums of the world may not be adorned with
gems, statues, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while the
libraries of the world shall contain translations of its
inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of the
human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the
thinkers of to-day.(1858)
And now to conclude.
We have concerned ourself with the ancient records of the nations, with he doctrine of chronological and psychic cycles, of which these records re the tangible proof; and with many other subjects, which may, at first ight, seem out of place in this Volume. But they are necessary in truth.
In dealing with the secret annals and traditions of so many nations, whose ery origins have never been ascertained on more secure grounds than nferential suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and philosophy of more han pre-historic races, it is not quite as easy to deal with the subject atter as it would be if only the philosophy and evolution of one special ace, were concerned. The Secret Doctrine was the common property of the ountless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which istory refuses to deal, and to which Esoteric Teachings assign dates ncompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The birth and volution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very night of
Time, and that even which is historic--_i.e._, that which is found cattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical literature--is, n almost every case, attributed by modern criticism to lack of bservation in the ancient writers, or to superstition born out of the gnorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat this subject s one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some well- nown historical nation. It is only by bringing before the reader an bundance of proofs all tending to show that in every age, under every ondition of civilization and knowledge, the educated classes of every ation made themselves the more or less faithful echoes of one identical ystem and its fundamental traditions--that he can be made to see that so any streams of the same water must have had a common source from which hey started. What was this source? If coming events are said to cast heir shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress ehind them. It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their antastic silhouettes on the external screen of every Religion and
Philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along and comparing hem, trace out finally the body that produced them. There must be truth nd fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the oundation of its religions and its faith. Moreover, as Haliburton said:
Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; hear both sides, and
all will be clear.
The public has hitherto had access to, and has heard but one side, or ather the one-sided views of two diametrically opposed classes of men, hose _primâ facie_ propositions or respective premises differ widely, but hose final conclusions are the same--the men of Science and Theology. And ow our readers have an opportunity of hearing the other, and so of earning the defendants' justification and the nature of our arguments.
If the public is to be left to its old opinions--namely, on one side, that
Occultism, Magic, the legends of old etc., are all the outcome of gnorance and superstition; and on the other, that everything outside the rthodox groove is the work of the devil--what will be the result? In other ords, had no theosophical and mystic literature obtained a hearing for he last few years, the present work would have had but a poor chance of mpartial consideration. It would have been proclaimed--and by many will till be proclaimed--a fairy tale woven out of abstruse problems, poised n, and based on the air; built of soap-bubbles, bursting at the slightest ouch of serious reflection, with no foundation to stand upon. Even the ncient "superstitious and credulous" classical writers have no word of eference to it in clear and unmistakable terms, and the symbols hemselves fail to yield a hint of the existence of such a system. Such ould be the verdict of all. But when it becomes undeniably proven that he claim of the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an
Esoteric History of the world is based on fact; that though hitherto nknown to the masses and a veiled mystery even to the learned--because hey have never had the key to a right understanding of the abundant hints hrown out by the ancient classics--it is still no fairy tale, but an ctuality; then the present work will become but the pioneer of many more uch books. The statement that hitherto even the keys discovered by some reat scholars have proved too rusty for use, and that they are but the ilent witnesses that there do exist mysteries behind the veil which are nreachable without a new key, is borne out by too many proofs to be asily dismissed. An instance may be given as an illustration out of the istory of Freemasonry.
In his _Maçonnerie Occulte_, Ragon, an illustrious and learned Belgian
Mason, rightly or wrongly reproaches the English Masons with having aterialized and dishonoured Masonry, once based upon the Ancient
Mysteries, by adopting, owing to a mistaken notion of the origin of the raft, the name of "Free Masonry" and "Free Masons." The mistake is due, e says, to those who connect Masonry with the _building_ of Solomon's
Temple. He derides the idea, and says:
The Frenchman knew well, when he adopted the title of Freemason,
that it was no question of building the smallest wall, but that,
initiated into the Mysteries veiled under the name of Freemasonry,
which could only be the continuation or the renovation of the
ancient Mysteries, he was to become a "Mason" after the manner of
Apollo or Amphion. And do not we know that the ancient initiated
poets, when speaking of the _foundation of a city_, meant thereby
the establishment of a doctrine? Thus Neptune, God of reasoning,
and Apollo, God of hidden things, presented themselves as masons
before Laomedon, Priam's father, to help him to build the city of
Troy--that is to say, to establish the Trojan religion.(1859)
Such veiled sentences with double meaning abound in ancient classical riters. Therefore, if an attempt had been made to show that, for nstance, Laomedon was the founder of a branch of Archaic Mysteries, in hich the earth-bound material soul, the Fourth Principle, was personified n Menelaus' faithless wife, the fair Helen, and if Ragon had not come to orroborate what we asserted, we might have been told that no classical uthor speaks of it, and that Homer shows Laomedon building a _city_, not ounding an _Esoteric Worship_ or _Mysteries_. Who are those left now, ave a few Initiates, who understand the language and correct meaning of uch symbolical terms?
But though we have pointed to many a misconceived symbol bearing on our hesis, there still remains more than one difficulty to be overcome. Most mportant among several such obstacles is that of chronology. But this ould hardly be helped. Wedged in between theological chronology and that f the Geologists, backed by all the materialistic Anthropologists, who ssign dates to man and nature which fit in with their own theories lone--what could the writer do except what she has done? Since Theology laces the Deluge 2448 B.C., and the World's Creation only 5890 years ago; nd since the accurate researches by the methods of "exact" Science, have ed the Geologists and Physicists to assign to the incrusted age of our
Globe between ten million and one thousand million of years(1860) (a
_trifling_ difference, verily!); and since the Anthropologists, to vary heir divergence of opinion as to the appearance of man, ask for between
25,000 and 500,000 years--what can one who studies the Occult Doctrine do, ut bravely present the Esoteric calculations before the world?
But to do this, corroboration by even a few "historical" proofs has been ecessary, though all know the real value of the so-called "historical vidence." For, whether man appeared on Earth 18,000 or 18,000,000 years go, can make no difference to profane history, since it only begins about couple of thousand years before our era, and since, even then, it rapples hopelessly with the clash and din of contradictory and mutually- estroying opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view of the respect in hich the average reader has been brought up for exact Science, even that hort Past would remain meaningless, unless the Esoteric Teachings were orroborated and supported on the spot--_whenever possible_--by references o historical names of a so-called historical period. This is the only uide that can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to start mong the, to him, unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the re-historic ages. This necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped hat the desire to do so, which has led the writer to be constantly ringing ancient and modern evidence as a corroboration of the archaic and uite unhistoric Past, will not bring on her the accusation of having orely jumbled up, without order or method, the various and widely- eparated periods of history and tradition. But literary form and method ad to be sacrificed to the greater clearness of the general exposition.
To accomplish the proposed task, the writer has had to resort to the ather unusual means of dividing each Volume into three Parts; the first f which only is the consecutive, though very fragmentary, history of the
Cosmogony and the Evolution of Man on this Globe. In treating of Cosmogony nd then of the Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that n religion, from the very earliest, has ever been based entirely on iction, that none was the object of special revelation, and that it is ogma alone which has ever been killing primeval truth; finally, that no uman-born doctrine, no creed, however sanctified by custom and antiquity, an compare in sacredness with the religion of Nature. The Key of Wisdom hat unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost anctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only; and that bosom is in he countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century, Emanuel
Swedenborg. There lies the Heart of Nature, that shrine whence issued the arly races of primeval humanity, and which is the cradle of _physical_ an.
Thus far have proceeded the rough outlines of the beliefs and tenets of he archaic, earliest Races, contained in their hitherto secret scriptural
Records. But our explanations are by no means complete, nor do they retend to give out the full text, or to have been read by the help of ore than three or four keys out of the sevenfold bunch of Esoteric nterpretation; and even this has only been partially accomplished. The ork is too gigantic for any one person to undertake, far more to ccomplish. Our main concern has been simply to prepare the soil. This, we rust we have done. These two Volumes only constitute the work of a ioneer who has forced his way into the well-nigh impenetrable jungle of he virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made n felling and uprooting the deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice, nd conceited ignorance, so that these two Volumes should form for the tudent a fitting prelude for other works. Until the rubbish of the ages s cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these pages are edicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in he Third Volume should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends pon the reception with which Volumes I and II shall meet at the hands of
Theosophists and Mystics, whether the last Volume will ever be published.
SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH.
THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN TRUTH.
END OF VOLUME II.
[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.]
FOOTNOTES
1 See _Genesis_ ii. 19. Adam is formed in verse 7, and in verse 19 it
is said: "Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the
field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see
what he would call them." Thus man was created _before_ the animals;
for the animals mentioned in chapter i are the signs of the Zodiac,
while the man, "male and female," is not man, but the Host of the
Sephiroth, Forces, or Angels, "made in his [God's] image and after
his likeness." The Adam, man, is not made in that likeness, nor is
it so asserted in the _Bible_. Moreover, the Second Adam is
Esoterically a septenary which represents seven men, or rather
groups of men. For the first Adam, the Kadmon, is the synthesis of
the _ten_ Sephiroth. Of these, the upper Triad remains in the
Archetypal World as the future "Trinity," while the seven lower
Sephiroth create the manifested material world; and this septennate
is the Second Adam. _Genesis_, and the mysteries upon which it was
fabricated, came from Egypt. The "God" of the 1st chapter of
_Genesis_ is the Logos, and the "Lord God" of the 2nd chapter the
Creative Elohim, the lower Powers.
2 Thus saith Pymander: "This is the mystery that to this day was
hidden. Nature being mingled with the Heavenly Man [Elohim, or
Dhyânis], brought forth a wonder ... seven Men, all males and
females [Hermaphrodite] ... according to the nature of the seven
Governors" (ii. 29), or the seven Hosts of the Pitris or Elohim, who
projected or created him. This is very clear, but yet, see the
interpretations of even our modern theologians, men supposed to be
intellectual and learned. In the _Theological and Philosophical
Works of Hermes Trismegistus, Christian [?] Neoplatonist_, a work
compiled by John David Chambers, of Oriel College, Oxford, the
translator wonders "for whom these seven Men are intended?" He
solves the difficulty by concluding that, as "the original pattern
Man [Adam Kadmon of _Genesis_ i] was masculine-feminine, ... the
seven may signify the succeeding patriarchs named in _Genesis_" (p.
9). A truly theological way of cutting the Gordian knot!
3 George Smith's _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 103.
4 Compare _Zohar_, _Siphra Dtzenioutha_, _Idra Suta_, 2928, Franck,
_La Kabbale_, p. 205.
5 _Siphra Dtzenioutha._
6 As it is now asserted that the Chaldćan tablets, which give the
allegorical description of Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, even
to the legend of the Tower of Babel, were written "before the time
of Moses" (Smith's _Chaldean Account of Genesis_), how can the
_Pentateuch_ be called a "revelation"? It is simply another version
of the same story.
7 _Philosophumena_, v. 7; Miller's edition, p. 98.
8 _Ibid._, p. 108.
9 P. 86.
10 See Pliny, iv, c. 12; Strabo, 10; Herodotus, vii, c. 109; Pausanias,
vii, c. 4, etc.
11 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 82.
12 See _Bund._, 79, 12.
13 By "original" we mean the Amshaspend, called "Zarathushtra, the lord
and ruler of the Vara made by Yima in that land." There were several
Zarathushtras or Zertusts, the _Dabistan_ alone enumerating
thirteen; but these were all reincarnations of the first one. The
last Zoroaster was the founder of the Fire-temple of Azareksh, and
the writer of the works on the primeval sacred Magian religion
destroyed by Alexander.
14 In India called a "Day of Brahmâ."
15 x. 86.
16 See Volcker, _Mythological Geography_, pp. 145 to 170.
17 _Mythical Monsters_, p. 47.
18 It is to be remarked, however, that Mr. Wallace does not accept Mr.
Sclater's idea, and even opposes it. Mr. Sclater supposes a land or
continent formerly uniting Africa, Madagascar, and India but not
Australia and India; and Mr. A. R. Wallace shows, in his
_Geographical Distribution of Animals_ and _Island Life_, that the
hypothesis of such a land is quite uncalled for on the alleged
zoological grounds. But he admits that a much closer proximity of
India and Australia did certainly exist, and at a time so very
remote that it was "certainly pre-tertiary," adding in a private
letter that "no name has been given to this supposed land." Yet the
land did exist, and was of course "pre-tertiary," for Lemuria, if we
accept this name for the third Continent, had perished before
Atlantis fully developed, and Atlantis had sunk and its chief
portions disappeared before the end of the Miocene period.
19 See _Esoteric Buddhism_.
20 One more "coincidence":
"Now it is proved that in geologically recent times, this region of
North Africa was in fact a peninsula of Spain, and that its union
with Africa (proper) was effected on the North by the rupture of
Gibraltar, and on the South by an upheaval to which the Sahara owes
its existence. The shores of this former sea of Sahara are still
marked by the shells of the same Gastropoda that live on the shores
of the Mediterranean." (Prof. Oscar Schmidt, _Doctrine of Descent
and Darwinism_, p. 244.)
21 iii. fol. 10a.
22 A. Winchell, Professor of Geology, _World-Life_, p. 369.
23 Mr. Charles Gould, late geological surveyor of Tasmania, in
_Mythical Monsters_, p. 84.
24 Sir Charles Lyell, who is credited with having "happily invented"
the terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, to mark the three divisions
of the Tertiary Age, ought really to have settled upon some
approximate length for his "mind-offspring." Having left the
duration of these periods, however, to the speculations of
specialists, the greatest confusion and perplexity are the result of
that happy thought. It seems like a hopeless task to succeed in
quoting a single set of figures from one work, without the risk of
finding it contradicted by the same author in an earlier or a
subsequent volume. Sir William Thomson, one of the most eminent
among the modern authorities, has changed his opinion about half-a-
dozen times upon the age of the Sun and the date of the
consolidation of the Earth's crust. In Thomson and Tait's _Natural
Philosophy_, we find only ten million years allowed since the time
when the temperature of the Earth permitted vegetable life to appear
on it. (App. E _et seq._; also _Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin._, xxiii. Pt.
1, 157, 1862, where 847 is cancelled.) Mr. Darwin gives Sir William
Thomson's estimate as "a minimum of 98 and a maximum of 200 millions
of years since the consolidation of the crust." (See Ch. Gould, _op.
cit._, p. 83.) In the same work (_Nat. Phil._) 80 millions are given
from the time of incipient incrustation to the present state of the
world. And in his last lecture, as shown elsewhere, Sir William
Thomson declares (1887) that the Sun is not older than 15 millions
of years! Meanwhile, basing his arguments as to the limits of the
age of the Sun's heat, on figures previously established by Sir
William Thomson, Mr. Croll allows 60 millions of years since the
beginning of the Cambrian period. This is hopeful for the lovers of
_exact_ knowledge. Thus, whatever figures are given by Occult
Science, they are sure to be corroborated by those of some one among
the modern men of Science who are considered as authorities.
25 See _Proceedings_, Royal Society, London, xxviii. 281.
26 Gould, _Mythical Monsters_, p. 91.
27 Only forty-nine Shlokas out of several hundred are here given, and
not every verse is translated verbatim, a periphrasis being
sometimes used for the sake of clearness and intelligibility, where
a literal translation would be quite unintelligible.
28 The idea and the spirit of the sentence only is here given, as a
verbal translation would convey very little to the reader.
29 The Fourth Globe, or our Earth. All the glosses on the translation
of the text of the Stanzas and Commentaries are the writer's. In
some places they may be incomplete and even inadequate from the
Hindű standpoint; but in the meaning attached to them in Trans-
Himâlayan Esotericism they are correct. In every case the writer
takes any blame upon herself. As she has never claimed personal
infallibility, that which is given on her own authority may leave
much to be desired, particularly in the very abstruse cases where
too deep metaphysic is involved. The teaching is offered as it is
understood; and seeing that there are seven keys of interpretation
to every symbol and allegory, a meaning which may not be suitable
from, say, the psychological or astronomical aspect, will
nevertheless be found quite correct from the physical or
metaphysical.
30 The Planetary Spirits.
31 Loka Chakshus.
32 The Planets.
33 According to Dr. A. Wilder's learned definition, Genesis, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~},
is not generation, but "_a coming out of the eternal_ into the
Cosmos and Time"; "a coming from _esse_ into _exsistere_," or from
"Be-ness" into "Being"--as a Theosophist would say.
34 For a clearer explanation of the origins, as contained in the
Esotericism of the _Bhagavad Gita_, see the Notes thereon published
in _The Theosophist_ for February, March and June, 1887, Madras.
35 See the Sephirothal Tree.
36 _Zohar_, _Idra Suta_, Sec. VII.
37 J. B. Alden; New York, 1888: ii. 432, 434.
38 It has been repeatedly stated that the Serpent is the symbol of
wisdom and of Occult knowledge. "The Serpent has been connected with
the god of wisdom from the earliest times of which we have any
historical notice," writes C. Staniland Wake. "This animal was the
especial symbol of Thoth or Taut ... and of all those gods, such as
Hermes [?] and Seth who can be connected with him. This is true also
of the third member of the primitive Chaldćan triad, Hea or Hoa."
According to Sir Henry Rawlinson, "the most important titles of this
deity refer to 'his functions as the source of all knowledge and
science.' Not only is he 'the intelligent fish,' but his name may be
read as signifying both 'life' and a 'serpent' [an initiated Adept],
and he may be considered as 'figured by the great serpent which
occupies so conspicuous a place among the symbols of the gods on the
black stones recording Babylonian benefactions.' " (_The Great
Pyramid_, p. 75). Esculapius, Serapis, Pluto, Esmun and Kneph, are
all deities with the attributes of the serpent, says Dupuis. They
are all _healers_, givers of health, spiritual and physical, and of
_enlightenment_. The crown formed of an asp, the Thermuthis belongs
to Isis, Goddess of Life and Healing. The _Upanishads_ have a
treatise on the _Science of Serpents_--in other words, the Science of
Occult Knowledge; and the Nâgas of the exoteric Buddhist are not
"the fabulous creatures, of the nature of serpents ... being
superior to man, and regarded as protectors of the law of Buddha,"
as Schlagintweit believes, but real living men, some superior to men
by virtue of their Occult Knowledge, and the _protectors of Buddha's
law_, inasmuch as _they interpret his metaphysical tenets
correctly_, others inferior _morally_ as being "black magicians."
Therefore it is truly declared that Gautama Buddha "is said to have
taught them a more philosophical religious system than to men, who
were not sufficiently advanced to understand it at the time of his
appearance" (_ibid._, p. 72).
39 Compare the _Symbols of the Bonzes_.
40 The Mandragora is the Mandrake of the _Bible_, of Rachel and Leah.
The roots of the plant are fleshy, hairy, and forked, representing
roughly the limbs, the body, and even head of a man. Its magical and
mysterious properties have been proclaimed in fable and play from
the most archaic ages. From Rachel and Leah, who indulged in
witchcraft with them, down to Shakespeare, who speaks of
"shrieking"--
"Like mandrakes torn out of the earth
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad"
--the mandragora was _the_ magic plant _par excellence_.
These roots are without any apparent stalk, large leaves growing out
of the head of the root, like a gigantic crop of hair. They present
little similitude to man when found in Spain, Italy, Asia Minor, or
Syria, but on the Isle of Candia, and in Karamania near the city of
Adan, they have a wonderfully human form, and are very highly prized
as amulets. They are also worn by women as a charm against
sterility, and for other purposes. They are especially effective in
"Black Magic."
41 The Sun.
42 Earth.
43 Copernicus wrote his theories on the "Revolution of the Heavenly
Bodies" in the sixteenth century, and the _Zohar_, even if compiled
by Moses de Leon in the thirteenth century, states that:
"In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old (or, the Ancient), we learn ...
that the earth turns upon itself in the form of a circle; that some
are on top, the others below; that ... there are some countries of
the earth which are lightened, whilst others are in darkness; these
have the day, when for the former it is night; and there are
countries in which it is constantly day, or in which at least the
night continues only some instants." (_Zohar_, iii, fol. 10a, quoted
in Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 139.)
44 See also the 21st Fargard of the _Vendídád_ on the celestial
militia.
45 _Idolat._, II. 373.
46 Science teaches that Venus receives from the Sun twice as much light
and heat as the Earth. Thus this Planet, precursor of the dawn and
the twilight, the most radiant of all the Planets, is said to give
the Earth one-third of the supply she receives, and has two parts
left for herself. This has an Occult as well as an astronomical
meaning.
47 "As it is above, so below," is the fundamental axiom of Occult
Philosophy. As the Logos is seven-fold, _i.e._, throughout Kosmos it
appears as seven Logoi under seven different forms, or, as taught by
learned Brâhmans, "each of these is the central figure of one of the
seven main branches of the ancient Wisdom Religion"; and, as the
seven principles which correspond to the seven distinct states of
Prajnâ, or Consciousness, are allied to seven states of Matter and
seven forms of Force, the division must be the same in all that
concerns the Earth.
48 Venus is thus {~FEMALE SIGN~}, the Earth {~EARTH~}.
49 In the Esoteric Philosophy it is male and female, or hermaphrodite;
hence the "bearded" Venus in mythology.
50 Therefore, putting aside its religio-metaphysical aspect, the Cross
of the Christians is symbolically far more phallic than the Pagan
Svastika. Compare vol. i. pp. 34, 35.
51 The ansated cross is the astronomical planetary sign of Venus,
"signifying the existence of _parturient energy_ in the sexual
sense, and this was one of the attributes of Isis, the Mother, of
Eve, Hauvah, or Mother-Earth, and was so recognized among all the
ancient peoples in one or another mode of expression." (From a
modern Kabalistic MS.)
52 See Moore's _Hindű Pantheon_.
53 Athenćus shows that the first letter of Satan's name was represented
in days of old by an arc and crescent; and some Roman Catholics,
kind, good men, would persuade the public that it is in honour of
Lucifer's crescent-like horns that Mussulmans have chosen the
crescent for their national arms. Venus, ever since the
establishment of Roman Catholic dogmatism, has been identified with
Satan and Lucifer, or the Great Dragon, contrary to all reason and
logic. As shown by symbologists and Astronomers:
"The association between the serpent and the idea of darkness had an
astronomical foundation. The position which the constellation Draco
at one time occupied showed that the Great Serpent was the ruler of
the night. This constellation was formerly at the very centre of the
heavens, and is so extensive that it was called the Great Dragon.
Its body spreads over seven signs of the Zodiac; and Dupuis, who
sees in the Dragon of the Apocalypse a reference to the celestial
serpent, says, 'It is not astonishing that a constellation so
extended should be represented by the author of that book as a great
dragon with seven heads, who drew the third part of the stars from
heaven and cast them to the earth.' " (Staniland Wake, _The Great
Pyramid_, p. 79; Dupuis, iii. 255.)
Only Dupuis never knew _why_ Draco, once the pole-star--the symbol of
Guide, Guru and Director--had been thus degraded by posterity. "The
Gods of our fathers are our devils," says an Asiatic proverb. When
Draco ceased to be the "lode-star," the guiding sidereal divinity,
it shared the fate of all the fallen Gods. Seth and Typhon was at
one time, Bunsen tells us, "a great God universally adored
throughout Egypt, who conferred on the sovereigns of the 18th and
19th Dynasties the symbols of life and power. But subsequently, in
the course of the 20th Dynasty, he is suddenly treated as an evil
Demon, insomuch that his effigies and name are obliterated on all
the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached." The real
Occult reason will be given in these pages.
54 _De Civitate Dei_, LXXI. viii.
55 Shukra is the son of Bhrigu the great Rishi, and one of the Seven
Prajâpati, the founder of the Race of Bhârgavas, in which Parashu
Râma is born.
56 This is a flat contradiction of Swedenborg, who _saw_, in "the first
Earth of the Astral World," inhabitants dressed as are the peasants
in Europe; and on the Fourth Earth women clad as are the
shepherdesses in a _bal masqué_! Even the famous astronomer Huygens
laboured under the mistaken idea that other worlds and planets have
species of beings identical with those who live on our Earth,
possessing the same figures, senses, brain-power, arts, sciences,
dwellings, even to the same fabric for their wearing apparel!
(_Théorie du Monde._)
57 This is a modern gloss. It is added to the old Commentaries for the
clearer comprehension of those disciples who study Esoteric
Cosmogony after having passed through Western learning. The earlier
Glosses are too redundant with adjectives and figures of speech to
be easily assimilated.
58 "Beyond" the Great Range, means, in this case, India, as being the
Trans-Himâlayan region for the Tibetan region.
59 The term Pitris is used by us in these Shlokas to facilitate their
comprehension, but it is not so used in the original Stanzas, where
they have distinct appellations of their own, besides being called
"Fathers" and "Progenitors."
60 It is erroneous to take literally the _worship_ of the human
Bodhisattvas, or Manjushrî. It is true that, exoterically, the
Mahâyâna school teaches adoration of these without distinction, and
that Huien-Tsang speaks of some disciples of Buddha as being
worshipped. But, Esoterically, it is not the disciple or the learned
Manjushrî _personally_ that received honours, but the divine
Bodhisattvas and Dhyâni-Buddhas that animated (_amilakha_, as the
Mongolians say) the human forms.
61 The author of this work is Augustus Le Plongeon. He and his wife are
well known in the United States for their untiring labours in
Central America. It is they who discovered the sepulchre of the
royal Kan Coh, at Cichen-Itza. The author seems to believe and to
seek to prove that the Esoteric learning of the Âryans and the
Egyptians was derived from the Mayas. But, although certainly coëval
with Plato's Atlantis, the Mayas belonged to the Fifth Continent,
which was preceded by Atlantis and Lemuria.
62 More correctly _In Matrem Deorum_, _Oratio_ v.
63 P. 143.
64 These _seven caves_, _seven cities_, etc., etc., stand in every case
for the seven centres, or zones, upon which the seven primitive
groups of the first Root-Race were born.
65 The engraving is reproduced in the _Sacred Mysteries of the Mayas
and the Quiches_ on p. 134.
66 See _Source of Measures_, p. 50-53.
67 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. pp. 300 _et seq._, for a proof of the
antiquity of the decimal system of figures.
68 See _Masonic Review_, Cincinnati, June, 1886, Art. "The
Cabbalah.--No. VI," p. 10.
69 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
70 _Ibid._, p. 11.
71 See _Source of Measures_, pp. 276, _et seq._, App. VII.
72 Art., _Masonic Review_, pp. 11, 12.
73 In the Book _Al-Chazari_, by Jehuda-ha-Levi, translated by Dr. D.
Cassel.
74 Art. cited, pp. 12, 13.
75 i. pp. 117 _et seq._
76 Art. cited, p. 2.
77 _Ibid._, p. 14.
78 The appellation _Ak-ad_ (or Akkadians) is of the same class as _Ad-
m_, _Ha-va_ (Eve) _Ćd-en_ (Eden); _Ak-Ad_ meaning "Son of _Ad_,"
like the sons of Ad in Ancient Arabia. _Ad-ad_, the "only one" and
the "first," was the _Ad-on_ or "Lord" of Syria and consort of _Ad-
ar-gat_ or Aster't, the Syrian Goddess. And Gan-Ćden (Eden) or
Gandunia was Babylonia and Mesopotamia. In Assyrian _Ak_ meant
Creator, the letter _k_ being pronounced _kh_ (_ah_) gutturally.
According to Swedenborg's mysticism Adam was not a man but a church
(?) of primitive light. In the _Vedas_, _Ad_-iti is the primitive
light, the Âkâsha of the phenomenal world.
79 Adam-Jehovah, Brahmâ and Mars are, in one sense, identical; they are
all symbols for primitive or initial _generative powers_ for the
purposes of human procreation. Adam is red, and so also are
Brahmâ-Virâj and Mars--God and Planet. Water is the "blood" of the
Earth; therefore, all these names are connected with Earth and
Water. "It takes _earth_ and _water_ to create a _human_ soul," says
Moses. Mars is identical with Kârttikeya, God of War (in one
sense)--which God is born of the Sweat of Shiva, Shiva-gharmaja and
the Earth. In the _Mahâbhârata_ he is shown as born without the
intervention of a woman. And he is also called Lohita, the Red, like
Adam, and the other "first men." Hence, the author of _The Source of
Measures_ is quite right in thinking that Mars (and all the other
Gods of like attributes), "being the _god of war_ and of
_bloodshed_, was but a secondary idea flowing out of the primary one
of shedding of blood in conception for the first time." Hence
Jehovah became later a fighting God, "Lord of Hosts," and one who
commands war. He is the aggressive Zodh--or Cain, by permutation, who
_slew_ his (female) _brother_, whose "blood crieth from the ground,"
the _Earth_ having opened _her mouth_ to receive the _blood_.
(_Genesis_ iii.)
80 Apollo Karneios is certainly a Greek transformation from the Hindű
Krishna-Karna. Karna means radiant, and Karneios, which was a title
of Apollo with the Celts as with the Greeks, meant "Sun-born."
81 Kumuda-Pati.
82 Pitri-Pati.
83 Budha, Mercury.
84 The Moon.
85 Ushanas-Shukra, or Venus, is our Lucifer, the Morning-Star, of
course. The ingenuity of this allegory in its manifold meanings is
great indeed. Thus Brihaspati (the Planet Jupiter), or
Brahmanaspati, is, in the _Rig Veda_, a deity who is the symbol and
the prototype of the _exoteric_ or ritualistic worship. He is
priest, sacrificer, suppliant, and the medium through which the
prayers of mortals reach the Gods. He is the Purohita (Family
Priest, or Court Chaplain) of the Hindű Olympus and the spiritual
Guru of the Gods. Soma is the Mystery God and presides over the
mystic and Occult nature in man and the Universe. Târâ, the priest's
wife, who symbolizes the worshipper, prefers Esoteric truths to
their mere shell, exotericism; hence she is shown as carried off by
Soma. Now Soma is the sacred juice of that name, giving mystic
visions and trance revelations, the _result of which union_ is Budha
(Wisdom), Mercury, Hermes, etc.; that Science in short which to this
day is proclaimed by the Brihaspatis of Theology as Devilish and
Satanic. What wonder that by expanding the cycle of this allegory we
find Christian Theology espousing the quarrel of the Hindű Gods, and
regarding Ushanas (Lucifer), who helped Soma against that ancient
personification of ritualistic worship (Brahmanaspati, the Lord of
the Brâhmans, now become Jupiter-Jehovah) as Satan, the "Enemy of
God"!
86 As shown elsewhere, it is only the Heavenly Man, Adam-Kadmon, of the
first chapter of _Genesis_, who is made "in the image and likeness
of God." Adam of the second chapter is not said to be made in that
_image_ nor in the divine likeness, before he ate of the forbidden
fruit. The former Adam is the Sephirothal Host; the second Adam is
the mindless First human Root-Race; the third Adam is the Race that
separated, whose eyes are opened.
87 The Earth.
88 Achyuta is an almost untranslatable term. It means that which is not
subject to fall or change for the worse: the Unfalling; and it is
the reverse of Chyuta, the Fallen. The Dhyânîs who incarnate in the
human forms of the Third Root-Race and endow them with intellect
(Manas) are called the Chyuta for they fall into generation.
89 This is perhaps the reason why, in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, we are told
that Brahmâ had communicated to Nârada in the beginning that all men
whatsoever, even Mlechchhas, outcasts and barbarians, might know the
true nature of Vâsudeva and learn to have faith in that Deity.
90 See _Asiatic Researches_, i. 265.
91 _Book of God_, 60.
92 Shesha, who is also Ananta, the infinite, and the "Cycle of
Eternity" in Esotericism, is credited with having given his
astronomical knowledge to Garga, the oldest astronomer of India, who
propitiated him, and forthwith knew all about the Planets and how to
read omens.
93 See _The History of Indian Literature_, p. 253, by Prof. A. Weber:
in Trübner's Oriental Series.
94 Even the Maya Indians of Guatemala had their Zodiac from untold
antiquity. And "primitive man acted in the same manner independently
of time or locality in every age," observes a French writer.
95 _Ibid._, p. 2.
96 The _Tirukkanda Panchanga_, for the Kali Yuga 4986, by Chintamany
Raghauaracharya, son of the famous Government astronomer of Madras,
and Tartakamala Venkata Krishna Rao.
97 Of years, 300 million years, or Three Occult Ages. The _Rig Veda_
has the same division. In the "Physician's Hymn," (X 97 1) it is
said that "the plants came into being _Three Ages_ (Triyugam) before
the gods" on our Earth. (See "Chronology of the Brâhmans" at the end
of this Stanza.)
98 Forms.
99 Minerals.
100 Vegetation.
101 Sarísripa, svapada.
102 The Earth.
103 These two must not be confused with the Seven Creations or Divisions
in each Kalpa. The _Primary_ and _Secondary_ Creations are here
meant.
104 In _Bereschith Rabba_, Parscha IX.
105 i. 31.
106 See _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, Sayce, p. 39.
107 Whence the identity of the ideas? The Chinese have the same
traditions. According to the commentator Kwoh P'oh, in the work
called _Shan-Hai-King_, "Wonders by Sea and Land," a work which was
written by the historiographer Chung Ku from engravings on nine urns
made by the Emperor Yü (B.C. 2255), an interview is mentioned with
men _having two distinct faces on their heads_, before and behind,
monsters with bodies of goats and human faces, etc. Gould, in his
_Mythical Monsters_ (p. 27), giving the names of some authors on
Natural History, mentions _Shan-Hai-King_. "According to the
commentator Kwoh P'oh (A.D. 276-324) this work was compiled three
thousand years before his time, or at seven dynasties' distance.
Yang Sun of the Ming Dynasty (commencing A.D. 1368) states that it
was compiled by Kung Chia and Chung Ku (?)"--as stated above. "Chung
Ku ... at the time of the last emperor of the Hia dynasty (B.C.
1818), fearing that the emperor might destroy the books treating of
the ancient time, carried them in his flight to Yin."
108 Cory's _Ancient Fragments_, original edition, p. 25.
109 _Qabbalah_, p. 246.
110 From the mineral, vegetable, and animal remains.
111 Rounds.
112 Solar-lunar.
113 Gods and Planetary Spirits, especially the Ribhus. "The three
Ribhus" who also become "thrice seven" in number of their gifts.
114 Remember the "winged races" of Plato, and the _Popol Vuh_ accounts
of the first human race, which could walk, fly, and see objects,
however distant.
115 See _Mythical Monsters_, by Charles Gould.
116 In the first volume of the lately published _Introduction ŕ l'Étude
des Races Humaines_, by M. de Quatrefages, there is proof that since
the Post-Tertiary Period and even before that time--since many Races
were already scattered during that Age on the face of the Earth--man
has not altered one iota in his physical structure. And if man was
surrounded for ages by a fauna that altered from one period or cycle
to another, which died out, which was reborn in other forms--so that
now there does not exist one single animal on Earth, large or small,
contemporary with the man of that period--if, then, every animal has
been transformed save man himself, this fact goes to prove not only
his antiquity, but that he is a _distinct Kingdom_. Why should he
alone have escaped transformation? Because, says de Quatrefages, the
weapon used by him, in his struggle with Nature, and the ever-
changing geological conditions and elements, was "his _psychic
force_, not his physical strength or body," as in the case of
animals. Give man only that dose of intelligence and reason with
which other mammalia are endowed, and with his present bodily
organization he will show himself the most helpless of creatures of
Earth. And as everything goes to prove that the human organism with
all its characteristics, peculiarities and idiosyncrasies existed
already on our Globe in those far distant geological periods when
there was not yet _one single specimen of the now-existing forms of
mammalia_, what is the unavoidable conclusion? Why this: Since all
the human races are of one and the same species, it follows that
this species is the _most ancient of all_ the now-living mammalia.
Therefore it is the most stable and persevering of all, and was
already as fully developed as it is now when all the other mammalia
now known had not made even their first approach to appearance on
this Earth. Such is the opinion of the great French Naturalist, who
gives thereby a terrible blow to Darwinism.
117 They said.
118 The Monads of the "presentments" of men of the Third Round, the huge
ape-like forms.
119 The Waters.
120 In the Esoteric System the seven "principles" in man are represented
by seven letters. The first two are _more_ sacred than the four
letters of the Tetragrammaton.
121 The Intermediate Spheres, wherein the Monads, which have not reached
Nirvâna, are said to slumber in unconscious inactivity between the
Manvantaras.
122 Explained elsewhere. The Three Fires, Pâvaka, Pavamâna, and Shuchi,
who had forty-five Sons, who, with their three Fathers, and their
Father Agni, constitute the forty-nine Fires. Pavamâna, Fire
produced by friction, is the parent of the "Fire of the Asuras";
Shuchi, Solar Fire, is the parent of the "Fire of the Gods"; and
Pâvaka, Electric Fire, is the Father of the "Fire of the Pitris."
(See _Vâyu Purâna_.) But this is an explanation on the material and
terrestrial plane. The Flames are evanescent and only periodical;
the Fires--eternal in their triple unity. They correspond to the
_four_ lower, and the _three_ higher human "principles."
123 The Suras, who become later the A-Suras.
124 Âtmâ, Buddhi and Manas. In Devachan the higher element of the Manas
is needed to make it a state of perception and consciousness for the
disembodied Monad.
125 _Catechism_, Book iii. Sec. 9.
126 See _Vishnu Purâna_, Book I. Ch. V., closing Shloka. Fitzedward
Hall's rendering of the text, in Wilson's Translation, i. 88. Also
_Mânava-Dharma Shâstra_, i. 30.
127 This has in Esotericism a direct bearing upon the seven "principles"
of the manifested Brahmâ, or Universe, in the same order as in man.
Exoterically, it is only four "principles."
128 Wilson's Translation, i. 81.
129 Demons is a very loose word to use, as it applies to a great number
of inferior--_i.e._, more material--Spirits, or minor Gods, who are so
termed because they "war" with the higher ones; but they are no
devils.
130 The same order of principles in man: Âtmâ (Spirit), Buddhi (Soul),
its vehicle, as Matter is the Vâhan of Spirit, and Manas (Mind), the
third, or the fifth microcosmically. On the _plane of personality_,
Manas is the first.
131 Thus, says the Commentary, the saying, "by day the Gods are most
powerful, and by night the Demons," is purely allegorical.
132 This "thinking of oneself" as this, that, or the other, is the chief
factor in the production of every kind of psychic or even physical
phenomena. The words "whosoever shall say to this mountain be thou
removed and cast into the sea, and _shall not doubt_ ... that thing
will come to pass," are no vain words. Only the word "faith" ought
to be translated by "Will." Faith without Will is like a wind-mill
without _wind_--barren of results.
133 The same idea is found in the first four chapters of _Genesis_, with
their "Lord" and "God," which are the Elohim and the Androgynous
Eloha.
134 P. 398.
135 P. 107.
136 Spirits.
137 Also Spirits.
138 vi. 2-6.
139 But see the difficulties suggested later, in the works of various
Geologists, against this theory. Compare Sir R. S. Ball's articles
in _Nature_, xxv, 79-82, 103-107, Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 1881.
140 The Rűpas.
141 The Goddess who gave birth to these primordial monsters, in the
account of Berosus, was Thalatth, in Greek Thalassa, the "Sea."
142 See, for comparison, the account of creation by Berosus, as
preserved in Alexander Polyhistor, and the hideous beings born from
the two-fold principle--Earth and Water--in the abyss of Primordial
Creation: Narâs (Centaurs, men with the limbs of horses and human
bodies), and Kinnaras (men with the heads of horses) created by
Brahmâ in the commencement of the Kalpa.
143 For a similar admission see Prof. Lefčvre's _Philosophy_, 481.
144 xii. 10,308.
145 The Esoteric Doctrine says that this "Cosmic Evolution" refers only
to our Solar System; while exoteric Hindűism makes the figures
refer, if we do not mistake, to the whole Universal System.
146 Another point of disagreement. Occultism says that the astral
prototypes of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms up to man
have taken that time (300 million years) to evolve, reforming out of
the cast-off materials of the preceding Round, which, though very
dense and physical in their own cycle, are relatively ethereal as
compared with the materiality of our present middle Round. At the
expiration of these 300 million years, Nature, on the way to the
physical and material, down the arc of descent, begins with mankind
and works downwards, hardening or materializing forms as it
proceeds. Thus the fossils found in strata, to which an antiquity,
not of eighteen, but of many hundreds of millions of years, must be
ascribed, belong in reality to forms of the preceding Round, which,
while living, were far more ethereal than physical, _as we know the
physical_. That we perceive and disinter them as tangible forms, is
due to the process of materialization or crystallization referred
to, which took place subsequently, at the beginning of the Fourth
Round, and reached its maximum after the appearance of man,
proceeding parallel with his physical evolution. This alone
illustrates the fact that the degree of materiality of the Earth
changes _pari passu_ with that of its inhabitants. And thus man now
finds, as tangible fossils, what were once the (to his present
senses) ethereal forms of the lower kingdoms. The above Brâhmanical
figures refer to evolution beginning on Globe A, and in the First
Round. In this Volume we speak only of this, the Fourth Round.
147 This difference and the change of cyphers in the last three triplets
of figures, the writer cannot undertake to account for. According to
every calculation, once the three hundred millions are subtracted,
the figures ought to stand, 1,655,884,687. But they are given as
stated in the Tamil calendar above-named and as they were
translated. The school of the late Pandit Dayânand Sarasvati,
founder of the Ârya Samâj, gives a date of 1,960,852,987. See the
_Ârya Magazine_ of Lahore, the cover of which bears the words:
"Âryan era 1,960,852,987."
148 Vaivasvata Manu is the one Human Being--some versions add to him the
seven Rishis--who in the Matsya Avatâra allegory is saved from the
Deluge in a boat, like Noah in the Ark. Therefore, this Vaivasvata
Manvantara would be the "post-diluvian" period. This, however, does
not refer to the later "Atlantean" or Noah's Deluge, nor to the
Cosmic "Deluge" or Pralaya of obscuration, which preceded our Round,
but to the appearance of mankind in the latter Round. There is a
great difference made, however, between the Naimitika, Occasional or
Incidental, Prâkritika, Elemental, Atyantika, the Absolute, and
Nitya, the Perpetual Pralaya; the latter being described as
"Brahmâ's contingent recoalescence of the Universe at the end of
Brahmâ's Day." The question was raised by a learned Brâhman
Theosophist: "Whether there is such a thing as Cosmic Pralaya;
because, otherwise, the Logos (Krishna) would have to be reborn, and
he is Aja (unborn)." We cannot see why. The Logos is said to be born
only metaphorically, as the Sun is born daily, or rather a beam of
that Sun is born in the morning and is said to die when it
disappears, whereas it is simply reäbsorbed into the parent essence.
Cosmic Pralaya is for things visible, not for the Arűpa, Formless,
World. The Cosmic or Universal Pralaya comes only at the end of one
hundred Years of Brahmâ, when the Universal Dissolution is said to
take place. Then the Avyaya, say the exoteric Scriptures, the
Eternal Life symbolized by Vishnu, assuming the character of Rudra,
the Destroyer, enters into the Seven Rays of the Sun and drinks up
all the waters of the Universe. "Thus fed, the seven Solar Rays
dilate to _seven suns_ and set fire to the whole Cosmos."
149 Since a Mahâ Yuga is the 1,000th part of a Day of Brahmâ.
150 _Op. cit._, Art. "Geology."
151 _Ibid._ This allows a chance even to the Biblical "Adam Chronology"
of 6,000 years.
152 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, 48.
153 To the Silurian period as regards molluscs and animal life--granted;
but what do they know of man?
154 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
155 _Ibid._, 49.
156 Winchell, _World-Life_, 180.
157 _Op. cit._, 49.
158 Wilson's _Vishnu Purâna_, i. 51.
159 i. 32.
160 The atmosphere, or the air, the firmament.
161 _Harivamsha_, i. 36.
162 _Genesis_, i. 6-9.
163 Lords.
164 They were told.
165 _i.e._, the Jivas or Monads.
166 Mother Earth or Nature.
167 For external bodies.
168 According to the wonderful chronology of Bentley, who wrote in days
when Biblical chronology was still undisputed; and also according to
that of those modern Orientalists who dwarf the Hindű dates as far
as they can.
169 Now Shrî is the daughter of Bhrigu, one of the Prajâpatis and
Rishis, the chief of the Bhrigus, the "Consumers," the Aërial Class
of Gods. She is Lakshmî, the wife of Vishnu, and she is Gaurî, the
"bride of Shiva," and she is Sarasvatî, the "watery," the wife of
Brahmâ, because the three Gods and Goddesses are one, under three
aspects. Read the explanation by Parâshara, in _Vishnu Purâna_ (I.
viii., Wilson's Trans., i. 119), and you will understand. "The lord
of Shrî is the moon," he says, and "Shrî is the wife of Nârâyana,
the God of Gods": Shrî or Lakshmî (Venus) is Indrânî, as she is
Sarasvatî, for in the words of Parâshara: "Harî [or Îshvara, the
'Lord'] is all that is called male [in the Universe]; Lakshmî is all
that is termed female. There is nothing else than they." Hence she
is female, and "God" is male Nature.
170 Shrî is Goddess of, and herself "Fortune and Prosperity."
171 _Masonic Review_ (Cincinnati), June, 1886. Art. "The Cabbalah.--No.
VI," 15-17.
172 The Moon-Gods.
173 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. vii., Wilson's Trans., i. 101.
174 See _Mahâbhârata_, _Mokshadharma Parvan_.
175 Because, as the allegory shows, the Gods who had no personal merit
of their own, dreading the sanctity of those self-striving
incarnated Beings who had become Ascetics and Yogîs, and thus
threatened to upset the power of the former by their _self-acquired_
powers--denounced them. All this has a deep philosophical meaning and
refers to the evolution and acquirement of divine powers through
_self-exertion_. Some Rishi-Yogîs are shown in the _Purânas_ to be
far more powerful than the Gods. Secondary Gods or temporary Powers
in Nature (the Forces) are doomed to disappear; it is only the
spiritual Potentiality in man which can lead him to become one with
the INFINITE and the ABSOLUTE.
176 The Triangle becomes a Pentagon (five-fold) on Earth.
177 Seth, as Bunsen and others have shown, is not only the "primitive
God" of the Semites--early Jews included--but also their "semi-divine
ancestor." For, says Bunsen (_God in History_, i. 233, 234): "The
Seth of Genesis, the father of Enoch (the man) must be considered as
originally running parallel with that derived from the Elohim,
Adam's father." "According to Bunsen, the Deity (the God Seth) was
the _primitive god_ of Northern Egypt and Palestine," says Staniland
Wake, in _The Great Pyramid_ (p. 61). And Seth became considered in
the later Theology of the Egyptians as an "evil demon," says the
same Bunsen, for he is one with Typhon and one with the Hindű Demons
as a logical sequel.
178 _I Corinth._, xv. 47.
179 _Vâyu Purâna_; _Harivamsha_, 170.
180 See Mather's _Kabbalah Unveiled_, p. 302.
181 Translated in Isaac Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 386.
182 _Zohar_ iii., 135a, 292a, _Idra Zootah_. Brody Ed., _Idrah Zootah_.
183 _Gen._ xxvi. 31 _et seq._; Myer's _Qabbalah_, _ibid._
184 _Zohar_, iii. 290a, Brody Ed. Indrah Zootah, quoted in Isaac Myer's
_Qabbalah_, pp. 387, 388.
185 ii. 5.
186 Or Mind-born.
187 Fohat.
188 "Huxley, supported by the most evident discoveries in Comparative
Anatomy, could utter the momentous sentence that the anatomical
differences between man and the highest apes are less than those
between the latter and the lowest apes. In relation to our
genealogical tree of man, the necessary conclusion follows that the
human race has _evolved gradually from the true apes_." (_The
Pedigree of Man_, by Ernst Hćckel, translated by Ed. B. Aveling, p.
49.)
What may be the scientific and logical objections to the opposite
conclusion--we would ask? The anatomical resemblances between Man and
the Anthropoids--grossly exaggerated as they are by Darwinists, as M.
de Quatrefages shows--are simply enough accounted for when the origin
of the latter is taken into consideration.
"Nowhere, in the older deposits, is an ape to be found that
approximates more closely to man, or a man that approximates more
closely to an ape."
"The same gulf which is found to-day between man and ape, goes back
with undiminished breadth and depth to the Tertiary period. This
fact alone is enough to make its untenability clear." (Dr. F. Pfaff,
Prof. of Natural Science in the University of Erlangen.)
189 See _Yoga Shâstra_, ii. 32.
190 Voltaire.
191 _Mânava-Dharma Shâstra_, iii. 196.
192 _Matsya_ and _Padma Purânas_ and Kullűka on the _Mânava-Dharma
Shâstra_, iii. 195. We are quite aware that the _Vâyu_ and _Matsya
Purânas_ identify (agreeably to Western interpretation) the
Agnishvâtta with the seasons, and the Barhishad Pitris with the
months; adding a fourth class--Kâvyas--cyclic years. But do not
Christian Roman Catholics identify their Angels with Planets, and
are not the Seven Rishis become the Saptarshis--a constellation? They
are Deities presiding over all the cyclic divisions.
193 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson, iii. 158, 159.
194 Shll. 935, 936.
195 The _Vâyu Purâna_ shows the region called Virâja-loka inhabited by
the Agnishvâttas.
196 Wilson, _ibid._, iii. 17. Note by Fitzedward Hall.
197 _Loc. cit._, _ibid._
198 See _Theosophist_, February, 1887, p. 360.
199 See Wilson, ii. 26.
200 See _Vâyu Purâna_.
201 Chhâyâs.
202 Or Amânasas.
203 Thus.
204 Complexion.
205 Also.
206 Creator.
207 Phantoms.
208 Image or shadow.
209 This was hinted at in _Isis Unveiled_ (I. xxxviii.), though the full
explanation could not then be given: "The Pitris are not the
ancestors of the present living men, but those of the [first] human
kind or Adamic race; the spirits of _human_ races, which, on the
great scale of descending evolution, preceded our races of men, and
were physically, as well as spiritually, far superior to our modern
pigmies. In _Mânava-Dharma Shâstra_ they are called the _Lunar_
ancestors."
210 See the "Laws of Manu"--_Mânava-Dharma Shâstra_, iii. 203.
211 "Sacred Books of the East," Vol. IV, _The Zend-Avesta_, Pt. I.
lviii, Trans. by James Darmesteter.
212 Compare also what is said about Makara and the Kumâras in connection
with the Zodiac.
213 Whence the subsequent assertions of St. John's vision, referred to
in his Apocalypse, about, "the great red dragon having seven heads
and _ten_ horns, and seven crowns upon his heads," whose "tail drew
the _third part_ of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the
earth." (Ch. xii.)
214 See _Harivamsha_, 932.
215 The verse "did cast them to the earth," plainly shows its origin in
the grandest and oldest allegory of the Âryan Mystics, who, after
the destruction of the Atlantean _giants_ and _sorcerers_, concealed
the truth--_astronomical_, _physical_, and _divine_, as it is a page
out of _pre-cosmic_ Theogony--under various allegories. Its true
Esoteric interpretation is a veritable Theodice of the "Fallen
Angels," so called: the _willing_ and the _unwilling_, the
_creators_ and those who _refused to create_, being now mixed up
most perplexingly by Christian Catholics, who forget that their
highest Archangel, St. Michael, who is shown to conquer (to master
and to assimilate) the _Dragon of Wisdom_ and of divine Self-
sacrifice--now miscalled and calumniated as Satan--_was the first to
refuse to create_! This has led to endless confusion. So little does
Christian Theology understand the paradoxical language of the East
and its symbolism, that it even explains, in its _dead-letter
sense_, the Chinese Buddhist and Hindű exoteric rite of raising a
noise during certain eclipses to scare away the "great red dragon,"
which laid a plot to carry away the "light"! But here "light" means
Esoteric Wisdom, and we have sufficiently explained the secret
meaning of the terms Dragon, Serpent, etc., all of which refer to
Adepts and Initiates.
216 See _Genesis_ and Plato's _Timćus_.
217 In spite of all efforts to the contrary, Christian Theology--having
burdened itself with the Hebrew Esoteric account of the creation of
man, which it understands _literally_--cannot find any reasonable
excuse for its "God, the Creator," who produces a man devoid of mind
and sense; nor can it justify the punishment following an act, for
which Adam and Eve might plead _non compos_. For if the couple be
admitted to be ignorant of good and evil before the eating of the
forbidden fruit, how could it be expected to know that _disobedience
was evil_? If primeval man was meant to remain a half-witted, or
rather witless, being, then his creation was aimless and even
_cruel_, if produced by an omnipotent and perfect God. But Adam and
Eve are shown, even in _Genesis_, to be created by a Class of lower
divine Beings, the Elohim, who are so jealous of their personal
prerogatives as reasonable and intelligent creatures, that they will
not allow man to become "as one of us." This is plain, even from the
dead-letter meaning of the _Bible_. The Gnostics, then, were right
in regarding the Jewish God as belonging to a Class of lower,
material and not very holy denizens of the invisible World.
218 In _Isis Unveiled_ several of these Gnostic systems are given. One
is taken from the _Codex Nazarćus_, the Scripture of the Nazarenes,
who, although they existed long before the days of Christ, and even
before the laws of Moses, were Gnostics, and many of them Initiates.
They held their "Mysteries of Life" in Nazara (ancient and modern
Nazareth), and their doctrines are a faithful echo of the teachings
of the Secret Doctrine--some of which we are now endeavouring to
explain.
219 i. 18. See the translation from the Greek by François, Monsieur de
Foix, Evesque d'Ayre: the work dedicated to Marguerite de France,
Reine de Navarre. Edition of 1579, Bordeaux.
220 _Asgard and the Gods_, p. 4.
221 Mr. James Darmesteter, the translator of the _Vendidâd_, speaking of
it, says: "The tree, _whatever it is_...."--"Sacred Books of the
East," vol. iv. p. 209.
222 Plato's _Timćus_.
223 See _Asgard and the Gods_, p. 305.
224 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
225 "The father of the sacred fire," writes Prof. Jolly, "bore the name
of Tvashtri ... His mother was Mâyâ. He himself was styled Akta
(_anointed_ {~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}) after the priest had poured upon his head the
spirituous (?) Soma, and on his body butter purified by sacrifice."
(_Man before Metals_, p. 190.) The source of his information is not
given by the French Darwinist. But the lines are quoted to show that
light begins to dawn even upon the Materialists. Adalbert Kühn, in
his _Die Herabkunft des Feuers_, identifies the two signs [Symbol:
swastika] and [Symbol: swastika with dots around the center] with
Arani, and designates them under this name. He adds: "This process
of kindling fire naturally led men to the idea of sexual
reproduction," etc. Why could not a more dignified idea, and one
more Occult, have led man to invent this symbol, in so far as it is
connected, in one of its aspects, with human reproduction? But its
chief symbolism refers to Cosmogony.
"Agni, in the condition of Akta, or anointed, is suggestive of
Christ," remarks Prof. Jolly. "Mâyâ, Mary, His mother; Tvashtri, St.
Joseph, the carpenter of the Bible." In the _Rig Veda_, Vishvakarman
is the highest and oldest of the Gods and their "Father." He is the
"carpenter or builder," because God is called even by the
Monotheists, the "Architect of the Universe." Still, the original
idea is purely metaphysical, and had no connection with the later
Phallicism.
226 The real Manushya.
227 Barishad (?).
228 The Kavyavâhana, electric fire.
229 Shuchi, the spirit in the Sun.
230 The Pitris and the two Fires.
231 The form.
232 It is not clear why Bhűtas should be rendered by the Orientalists as
"evil spirits" in the _Purânas_. In the _Vishnu Purâna_ (I. v,
Wilson's Trans., Fitzedward Hall's note, i. 83) the Shloka simply
says: "Fiends, frightful from being monkey-coloured and
carnivorous"; and the word in India now means "ghosts," ethereal or
_astral_ phantoms, while in Esoteric Teaching it means _elementary_
substances, something made of attenuated, non-compound essence, and,
specifically, the astral Double of any man or animal. In this case
these primitive men are the Doubles of the first ethereal Dhyânîs or
Pitris.
233 See _Pymander_, Everard's Trans., II. 17-29.
234 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 92.
235 P. 91.
236 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
237 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
238 Human Monad.
239 Astral shadow.
240 Kâma Rűpa.
241 Shuchi, the fire of passion and animal instinct.
242 Solar Fire.
243 Nascent Man.
244 Later.
245 Race.
246 See Shloka 22.
247 See _Genesis of the Elements_, by W. Crookes, p. 21.
248 _Pymander_, i. 6. The opponents of Hindűism may call the above
Pantheism, Polytheism, or anything they may please. If Science is
not entirely blinded by prejudice, it will see in this account a
profound knowledge of Natural Sciences and Physics, as well as of
Metaphysics and Psychology. But to find this out, one has to study
the personifications, and then convert them into chemical atoms. It
will then be found to satisfy both physical and even purely
materialistic Science, as well as those who see in evolution the
work of the "Great Unknown Cause" in its phenomenal and illusive
aspects.
249 _Sc._ Race.
250 Shlokas, 153, 154.
251 It is symbolized in the Pythagorean Triangle, the ten yods within,
and the seven points of the Triangle and the Square.
252 Whence the Kabalistic name of "Shells" given to the Astral Form, the
Body called Kâma Rűpa, left behind by the Higher Angels in the shape
of the Higher Manas, when the latter leaves for Devachan, forsaking
its residue.
253 Mackenzie's _Royal Masonic Cyclopćdia_, pp. 409-411.
254 viii. 20.
255 _De Bell. Jud._, ii. 12.
256 _De Gignat_, p. 222C.; _De Somniis_, p. 455D.; which shows that the
Essenes believed in re-birth and many reďncarnations on Earth, as
Jesus himself did, a fact we can prove from the _New Testament_
itself.
257 I. vi. 3.
258 _Zohar_, ii. 229b.
259 It is corroborated, however, as we have shown, by the Esotericism of
_Genesis_. Not only are the animals created therein after the "Adam
of Dust," but vegetation is shown _in_ the Earth before "the heavens
and the earth were created." "Every plant of the field before it was
in the earth" (ii. 5). Now, unless the Occult interpretation is
accepted--which shows that in this Fourth Round the Globe was covered
with vegetation, and the First (Astral) Humanity was produced before
almost anything could grow and develop thereon--what can the dead
letter mean? Simply that the grass was in the earth of the Globe
before that Globe was created? And yet the meaning of verse 6, which
says that "there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the
whole face of the ground," before it rained, and caused the trees,
etc., to grow, is plain enough. It shows also in what geological
period it occurred, and further what is meant by "heaven" and
"earth." It meant the firmament and dry _incrustated_ land,
separated and ridden of its vapours and exhalations. Moreover, the
student must bear in mind that, as Adam Kadmon, the "male and female
being" of _Genesis_ i, is no physical human being but the host of
the Elohim, among which was Jehovah himself--so the animals,
mentioned in that chapter as "created" before man in the dead-letter
text, were no animals, but the zodiacal signs and other sidereal
bodies.
260 _Book of Dzyan_, iii. 19.
261 Kenealy, _The Book of God_, pp. 114, 115.
262 To those who would enquire: What has Hydrogen to do with air or
oxygenation?--it is answered: Study first the ABC of Occult Alchemy.
In their anxiety, however, to identify Pymander, the "mouth of
mystery," with St. John the Baptist prophetically, the Christian
Symbologists thus identified also the seven Kabiri and the Assyrian
Bulls with the Cherubs of the Jews and the Apostles. Having,
moreover, to draw a line of demarcation between the _four_ and the
_three_ the latter being the _Fallen_ Angels; and furthermore to
avoid connecting these with the "Seven Spirits of the Face," the
Archangels, they unceremoniously threw out all they did not choose
to recognize. Hence the perversion in the order of the Elements, in
order to make them dovetail with the order of the Gospels, and to
identify the Angel-Man with Christ. With the Chaldees, the
Egyptians--from whom Moses adopted the Chroub (Cherubs in their
animal form)--and the Ophites; with all these, the Angels, the
Planets, and the Elements, were symbolized mystically and
alchemically by the Lion (Mikael); the Bull (Uriel); the Dragon
(Raphael); the Eagle (Gabriel); the Bear (Thot-Sabaoth); the Dog
(Era-taoth); the Mule (Uriel or Thantabaoth). All these have a
qualificative meaning.
263 See _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, pp. 370 _et seqq._
264 Sepher _M'bo Sha-arim_, near the end, translated by Isaac Myer,
_Qabbalah_, p. 110.
265 Form.
266 Shadow.
267 S. Laing, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 90.
268 And why not all the progenitive First Races, human as well as
animal; and why _one_ "remote progenitor"?
269 Obviously so, on the lines of Evolutionism, which traces the
Mammalia to some amphibian ancestor.
270 Second Edition, p. 161.
271 _Ibid._, p. 162.
272 De Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, p. 124; "International
Scientific Series," Volume XXVI.
273 _Ibid._, p. 125.
274 Fol. 186.
275 _Odyssey_, xi. 298-305; _Iliad_, iii. 243.
276 Hyg., _Fab._, 80. Ovid., _Fast._, 700, etc. See Decharme's
_Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_, p. 6.
277 See Decharme, _ibid._, p. 652.
278 _Nem._, x. 80 _et seqq._ Theocr., xxiv. 131.
279 XXXIV. v. 5. Theocr., xxii. 1.
280 iii. 10. 7.
281 Apollodorus, iii. 1.
282 Castor's tomb was shown in Sparta, in days of old, says Pausanias
(iii. 13, 1); and Plutarch says that he was called at Argos the
demi-mortal or demi-hero, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. (_Qućst. Gr._, 23.)
283 Pindar, _Nem._, x. 60, _seqq._, Dissen.
284 Schol. Eurip., _Orest._, 463, Dindorf. See Decharme, _op. cit._, p.
654.
285 The Monad is impersonal and a God _per se_, albeit unconscious on
this plane. For divorced from its third (often called fifth)
principle, Manas, which is the horizontal line of the first
manifested Triangle or Trinity, it can have no consciousness or
perception of things on this earthly plane. "The highest sees
through the eye of the lowest" in the manifested world; Purusha
(Spirit) remains blind without the help of Prakriti (Matter) in the
material spheres; and so does Âtmâ-Buddhi without Manas.
286 _Moral._, p. 484f.
287 This strange idea and interpretation are accepted by Decharme in his
_Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_ (p. 655). "Castor and Pollux," he
says, "are nothing but the Sun and Moon, conceived as twins.... The
Sun, the immortal and powerful being that disappears every evening
from the horizon and descends under the Earth, as though he would
make room for the fraternal orb which comes to life with night, is
Pollux, who sacrifices himself for Castor; Castor, who, inferior to
his brother, owes to him his immortality; for the Moon, says
Theophrastus, is only another, but feebler Sun (_De Ventis_, 17)."
288 See _Book of Enoch_, Trans. by Bishop Laurence, 1883.
289 Adam (Kadmon) is, like Brahmâ and Mars, the symbol of the
_generative_ and _creative_ power typifying Water and Earth--an
Alchemical secret. "It takes Earth and Water to create a human
Soul," said Moses. Mars is the Hindű Mangala, the planet Mars,
identical with Kârttikeya, the "War-God"; he is Gharma-ja, born of
Shiva's _sweat_, and of the Earth. He is Lohita, the red, like
Brahmâ also and Adam. The Hindű Mars is, like Adam, born from no
woman and mother. With the Egyptians, Mars was the primeval
generative Principle, and so are Brahmâ, in exoteric teaching, and
Adam, in the Kabalah.
290 Abel is Chebel, meaning "pains of birth," conception.
291 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 398, where Jehovah is shown to be Adam and
Eve blended, and Hevah, and Abel, the _feminine serpent_.
292 See _Isis Unveiled_, I. 305: "The union of these two Races produced
a _third_ ... Race."
293 _Genesis_, v. 2.
294 _Ibid._, v. 3.
295 P. 159.
296 Jod in the Kabalah has for symbol the hand, the forefinger and the
lingam, while numerically it is the perfect one; but it is also the
number 10, male and female, when divided.
297 _Vishnu Purâna_, i. ii.: Wilson's Trans., i. 20.
298 Quoted in Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 110.
299 See _Source of Measures_, p. 277.
300 II. 464, _et seqq._
301 _Jeremiah_, x. 11.
302 _Isis Unveiled_, II. 462, 463.
303 See for comparison _Hosea_, xii. 6, where it is so punctuated.
304 _Isis Unveiled_, I. 156.
305 Race.
306 The Moon.
307 Hamsa.
308 _Text-Book of Physiology_, Third Edition, 1879, p. 623.
309 See the _Timćus_.
310 See Extracts from that Essay in _The Theosophist_, of February,
1883, from which the following is condensed.
311 Compare Ezekiel's vision (chap. i) of the four Divine Beings who
"had the likeness of a man" and yet had the appearance of a wheel,
"when they went, they went upon their four sides ... for the spirit
of the living creature was in the wheels."
312 Eugibinus, a Christian, and the Rabbis Samuel, Menasseh ben Israel,
and Maimonides taught that "Adam had _two_ faces and _one_ person,
and from the beginning he was both male and female--male on one side
and female on the other [like Manu's Brahmâ]; but afterwards the
parts were separated." The one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm of
David was cited by Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eliazar as evidence of this:
"Thou hast _fashioned_ me _behind_ and _before_," not _beset_ as in
the _Bible_, which is absurd and meaningless, and this shows, as
Prof. Wilder thinks, "that the primeval form of mankind was
androgynous."
313 See the union of Chokmah, Wisdom, with Binah, Intelligence, or
Jehovah, the Demiurge, called Understanding in the _Proverbs of
Solomon_ (vii). Unto men Wisdom (divine Occult Wisdom) crieth: "Oh,
ye simple, understand Wisdom; and ye fools, be of an understanding
heart." It is Spirit and Matter, the Nous and the Psyche; of the
latter of which St. James says that it is "earthly, sensual, and
devilish."
314 _Pluralité des Mondes_, p. 69.
315 A hypothesis evolved in 1881 by Mr. W. Mattieu Williams seems to
have impressed Astronomers but little. Says the author of "The Fuel
of the Sun," in _Knowledge_, Dec. 23, 1881:
"Applying now the researches of Dr. Andrews to the conditions of
solar existence ... I conclude that the sun has _no nucleus_, either
solid, liquid, or gaseous, but is composed of dissociated matter in
the critical state, surrounded, first, by a flaming envelope, due
to the recombination of the dissociated matter, and outside of this,
by another envelope of vapours due to this combination."
This is a novel theory to be added to other hypotheses, _all
scientific and orthodox_. The meaning of the "critical state" is
explained by Mr. W. Mattieu Williams in the same journal (Dec. 9,
1881), in an article on "Solids, liquids, and Gases." Speaking of an
experiment by Dr. Andrews on carbonic acid, the Scientist says that:
"When 88° is reached, the boundary between liquid and gas vanishes;
liquid and gas have blended into one mysterious intermediate fluid;
an indefinite fluctuating something is there filling the whole of
the tube--an etherealized liquid or a visible gas. Hold a red-hot
poker between your eye and the light; you will see an upflowing wave
of movement of what appears like liquid air. The appearance of the
hybrid fluid in the tube resembles this, but is sensibly denser, and
evidently stands between the liquid and gaseous states of matter, as
pitch or treacle stands between solid and liquid."
The temperature at which this occurs has been named by Dr. Andrews
the "critical temperature"; here the gaseous and the liquid states
are "continuous," and it is probable that all other substances
capable of existing in both states have their own particular
critical temperatures.
Speculating further upon this "critical" state, Mr. W. Mattieu
Williams emits some quite Occult theories about Jupiter and other
Planets. He says:
"Our notions of solids, liquids, and gases are derived from our
experiences of the state of matter here upon this Earth. Could we be
removed to another planet, they would be curiously changed. On
Mercury water would rank as one of the condensible gases; on Mars,
as a fusible solid; but what on Jupiter?
"Recent observations justify us in regarding this as a miniature
sun, with an external envelope of cloudy matter, apparently of
partially-condensed water, but red-hot, or probably still hotter
within. His vaporous atmosphere is evidently of enormous depth, and
the force of gravitation being on his visible outer surface two-and-
a-half times greater than that on our earth's surface, the
atmospheric pressure, in descending below this visible surface, must
soon reach that at which the vapour of water would be brought to its
critical condition. Therefore we may infer that the oceans of
Jupiter are neither of frozen, liquid, nor gaseous water, but are
oceans, or atmospheres of _critical_ water. If any fish or birds
swim or fly therein, they must be very _critically_ organized."
As the whole mass of Jupiter is 300 times greater than that of the
Earth, and its compressing energy towards the centre proportional to
this, its materials, if similar to those of the Earth, and no
hotter, would be considerably more dense, and the whole planet would
have a higher specific gravity; but we know by the movement of its
satellites that, instead of this, its specific gravity is less than
a fourth of that of the Earth. This justifies the conclusion that it
is intensely hot; for even hydrogen, if cold, would become denser
than Jupiter under such pressure.
"As all elementary substances may exist as solids, liquids, or
gases, or, critically, according to the conditions of temperature
and pressure, I am justified in hypothetically concluding that
Jupiter is neither a solid, a liquid, nor a gaseous planet, but a
_critical_ planet, or an orb composed internally of associated
elements in the _critical_ state, and surrounded by a dense
atmosphere of their vapours and those of some of their compounds
such as water. The same reasoning applies to Saturn and other large
and rarefied planets."
It is gratifying to see how "scientific imagination" approaches
every year more closely to the borderland of our Occult Teachings.
316 _The Day after Death_, p. 23.
317 Cremona Ed., iii. 76a; Brody Ed., iii. 159a; _Qabbalah_. Isaac Myer,
p. 420.
318 So destroyed.
319 The first occurred when what is now the North Pole was separated
from the later Continents.
320 We must remember that at the head of all the Babylonian Gods were
Ea, Anu, and the primeval Bel; and that Ea, the first, was the God
of Wisdom, the great "God of Light" and of the Deep, and that he was
identified with Oannes, or the Biblical Dagon--the Man-Fish who rose
out of the Persian Gulf.
321 It is far later on that the Moon became a male God; with the Hindus
it was Soma, with the Chaldćans Nanak or Nanar, and Sin, the son of
Mulil, the older Bel. The Akkadians called him the "Lord of Ghosts";
and he was the God of Nipur (Niffer) in northern Babylonia. It is
Mulil who caused the waters of the Flood to fall from Heaven on
Earth, because of which Xisuthrus would not allow him to approach
his altar. As the modern Assyriologists have now ascertained, it is
the northern Nipur which is the centre whence Chaldćan (Black) Magic
spread; and Eridu (the Southern) which was the primitive seat of the
worship of the culture God, the God of Divine Wisdom--the Sun-God
being the Supreme Deity everywhere. With the Jews, the Moon is
connected with Israël's Jehovah and his seed, for Ur was the chief
seat of the worship of the Moon-God, and Abraham is said to have
come from Ur, when from A-bra(h)m, he becomes Abraham.
322 When Nârada, the virgin-ascetic, threatened to put an end to the
human race by preventing Daksha's sons from procreating it.
323 x. 6.
324 This is corroborated by a learned Brahman. In his most excellent
Lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_ (_Theosophist_, April, 1887, p. 444)
the lecturer says:
"There is a peculiarity to which I must call your attention. He
[Krishna] speaks here of four Manus. Why does he speak of four? We
are now in the seventh Manvantara--that of Vaivasvata. If he is
speaking of the past Manus, he ought to speak of six, but he only
mentions four. In some commentaries an attempt has been made to
interpret this in a peculiar manner.
"The word 'Chatvârah' is separated from the word 'Manavah,' and is
made to refer to Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatkumâra, and Sanatsujâta,
who were also included among the mind-born sons of Prajâpati.
"But this interpretation will lead to a most absurd conclusion, and
make the sentence contradict itself. The persons alluded to in the
text have a qualifying clause in the sentence. It is well known that
Sanaka and the other three refused to create, though the other sons
had consented to do so: therefore, in speaking of those persons from
whom humanity has sprung into existence, it would be absurd to
include these four also in the list. The passage must be interpreted
without splitting the compound into two nouns. The number of Manus
will then be four, and the statement would then contradict the
Paurânic account, though it would be in harmony with the Occult
theory. You will recollect that it is stated [in Occultism] that we
are now in the Fifth Root-Race. Each Root-Race is considered as the
Santati of a particular Manu. Now, the Fourth Race has passed, or,
in other words, there have been four past Manus."
325 Stockwell, _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, xviii.; R. W.
McFarland, _American Journal of Science_, III. xi. 450; and Croll's
_Climate and Time_. Lemuria was not submerged by a flood, but was
destroyed by volcanic action, and afterwards sank.
326 Coste, I. iv. 19.
327 Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and the prototype of the Israëlitish
Jehovah. As connected with Argha, the Moon or Ark of salvation, Noah
is mythologically one with Saturn. But then this cannot relate to
the terrestrial flood. (See Faber's _Cabiri_, I. 35, 43, and 45.)
328 _Ibid._, II. 240.
329 Sanchuniathon says that the Titans were the sons of Kronos, and
seven in number; and he calls them fire-worshippers, Aletć (Sons of
Agni?) and diluvians. Al-ait is the God of Fire.
330 _Ibid._, i. 130, note.
331 Of which _seven_, let us remark, the Âryans, and not the Semites,
were the originators, while the Jews got that number from the
Chaldćans.
332 Seven individual Sons of God, or Pitaras, Pitris; also in this case
the sons of Kronos or Saturn (Kâla, "Time") and Arkites, like the
Kabiri and Titans, as their name--"_Lunar_ Ancestors"--shows; the Moon
being the Ark, or Argha, on the Watery Abyss of Space.
333 _Asiatic Researches_, v. 246.
334 _Kabiri_, _ibid._, _loc. cit._
335 Orpheus apud Proclum _in Timćum_, v. 295.
336 Arnobius, _Contra Gentes_, iii. 124; quoted by Faber, _op. cit._, i.
135.
337 _Ant._, iii. 8.
338 _Bibl._, iii. 170.
339 Aretia is the female form of Artes, the Egyptian Mars. Thence the
Chaldćan (and now Hebrew) word {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER TSADI~} (Arets), "Earth." Seyffarth, the
author of _Beiträge zur Kenntniss_ (under "_Artes_," _Mars_) quotes
as follows: "Addit Cedrenus (Salm. I. c): Stella Martis ab Ćgyptiis
vocatur Ertosi (plantare, generare). Significat autem hoc omnis
generis procreationem et _vivificationem_, omnisque substantić et
materić naturam et vim ordinantem atque procreantem." It is Earth as
"source of being"; or, as explained by the author of _The Source of
Measures_ (p. 186), Arts is the same in Hebrew and Egyptian, and
both "combine the primal idea of _earth as source_; precisely as in
the Hebrew itself, under another form, _Adam_ and _Mâdim_, _Mars_,
are the same, and combine the idea of _earth_, with _Adam_ under the
form of _h-adam-h_."
340 _Ant._, v. 64.
341 Nonnus, _Dionys._, xviii. 319. Quoted by Faber, _op. cit._, i. 328.
342 See _Isis Unveiled_, II. 420 _et seq._, where one or two of the
seven meanings are hinted at.
343 Chap. lxiv (Sect. xi).
344 _Isis Unveiled_, II. 423, 424.
345 _Ibid._, 423, note.
346 One has to remember that, in the Hindű Philosophy, every
differentiated unit is such only through the Cycles of Mâyâ, being
one in its essence with the Supreme or One Spirit. Hence arises the
seeming confusion and contradiction in the various _Purânas_, and at
times in the same _Purâna_, about the same individual. Vishnu--as the
many-formed Brahmâ, and as Brahma (neuter)--is one, and yet he is
said to be all the twenty-eight Vyâsas.
"In every Dvâpara (or third) age, Vishnu, in the person of Vyâsa,
divides the Veda, which is (properly, but) one, into many
portions.... Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the
great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara, in the Dvâpara age; and,
consequently, eight and twenty Vyâsas have passed away." (_Vishnu
Purâna_, iii. 3; Wilson's Trans., iii. 33, 34.) "[They who were all]
in the form of Veda-Vyâsa; who were the Vyâsas of their respective
eras." (_Ibid._, _loc. cit._, p. 33.) "This world is Brahmâ, in
Brahmâ, from Brahmâ ... nothing further to be known." Then, again,
in the _Harivamsha_: "There were (in the first Manvantara) seven
celebrated sons of Vasishtha, who (in the _third_ Manvantara) were
sons of Brahmâ (_i.e._, Rishis), the illustrious progeny of Űrjâ."
(_Ibid._, iii. 6, note.) This is plain: the Humanity of the First
Manvantara is that of the seventh and of all the intermediate ones.
The Mankind of the First Root-Race is the mankind of the Second,
Third, Fourth, Fifth, etc. To the last it forms a cyclic and
constant reďncarnation of the Monads belonging to the Dhyân Chohans
of our Planetary Chain.
347 The Dvâpara Yuga differs for each Race. All Races have their own
Cycles, which fact causes a great difference. For instance, the
Fourth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans was in its Kali Yuga, when they
were destroyed, whereas the Fifth was in its Satya or Krita Yuga.
The Âryan Race is now in its Kali Yuga, and will continue to be in
it for 427,000 years longer, while various "Family Races," called
the Semitic, Hamitic, etc., are in their own special cycles. The
forthcoming Sixth Sub-Race--which may begin very soon--will be in its
Satya (Golden) Age while we reap the fruit of our iniquity in our
Kali Yuga.
348 See _Asiatic Researches_, viii. 280.
349 See Dowson's _Hindű Classical Dictionary_, _sub voce_ "Idâ."
350 See _Posthumous Humanity_: Translated by H. S. Olcott London, 1887.
351 Professor Newcomb says the heat evolved by contraction would last
only 18,000,000 years. (_Popular Astronomy_, 509.) While a
temperature permitting the existence of water could not be reached
earlier than 10,000,000 years ago. (Winchell's _World-Life_, 356.)
But Sir William Thomson says that the whole age of the incrustation
of the Earth is 80,000,000 years, though, this year, he has again
altered his opinion and allows only 15,000,000 years as the age of
the Sun. As will be shown in the Addenda, the divergence of
scientific opinions is so great that no reliance can ever be placed
upon _scientific_ speculation.
352 The essay on _The Plurality of Worlds_ (1853)--an anonymous work, yet
well known to have been the production of Dr. Whewell--is a good
proof of this. No Christian ought to believe in either the plurality
of Worlds or the geological age of the Globe, argues the author;
because, if it is asserted that this World is only one among the
many of its kind, which are all the work of God, as it is itself;
that all are the seat of life, all the realm and dwelling of
intelligent creatures endowed with will, subject to law and capable
of free-will; then, it would be extravagant to think that _our_
World should have been the subject of God's favours and His special
interference, of His communications and His _personal visit_. Can
the Earth presume to be considered the centre of the moral and
religious Universe, he asks, if it has not the slightest distinction
to rely upon in the physical Universe? Is it not as absurd to uphold
such an assertion (of the plurality of inhabited worlds), as it
would be to-day to uphold the old hypothesis of Ptolemy, who placed
the Earth in the centre of our system? The above is quoted from
memory, yet _almost textually_. The author fails to see that he is
bursting his own soap-bubble with such a defence.
353 _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 58.
354 _De Coelo_, II. 13.
355 Or what is more generally known as Protoplasm. This substance
received the name of "Sarcode" from Prof. Dujardin Beaumetz far
earlier than its present appellation.
356 The Monera are indeed Protista. They are neither animals nor plants,
writes Hćckel; "the whole body of the Moneron represents nothing
more than a single thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a
firmly adhesive condition." (_Journal of Microscopical Science_,
Jan., 1869, p. 28.)
357 Behold the Iguanodon of the Mesozoic ages--the monster 100 feet
long--now transformed into the small Iguana lizard of South America.
Popular traditions about "giants" in days of old, and their mention
in every mythology, including that of the _Bible_, may some day be
shown to be founded on fact. In nature, the logic of analogy alone
should make us accept these _traditions_ as scientific verities.
358 These are the opinions of Burmeister and Czolbe. See _Force and
Matter_, by L. Büchner, edited, by J. F. Collingwood, F.R.S.L., p.
61.
359 _Vishnu Purâna_, II. viii; Fitzedward Hall's rendering in Wilson's
Translation, ii. 241.
360 _Ibid._, p. 242.
361 _Introduction ŕ l'Étude des Races Humaines._
362 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, by S. Laing, p. 32.
363 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 70.
364 The same fate is in store for spiritualistic phenomena and all the
other psychological manifestations of the _inner_ man. Since the
days of Hume, whose researches culminated in a nihilistic Idealism,
Psychology has gradually shifted its position to one of crass
Materialism. Hume is regarded as a Psychologist, and yet he denied
_ŕ priori_ the possibility of phenomena in which millions now
believe, including many men of Science. The Hylo-Idealists of to-day
are rank Annihilationists. The schools of Spencer and Bain are
respectively positivist and materialist, and not metaphysical at
all. It is _Psychism_ and not Psychology; it reminds one as little
of the Vedântic teaching as does the pessimism of Schopenhauer and
von Hartmann recall the Esoteric Philosophy, the heart and soul of
_true_ Buddhism.
365 It must be noted that, though the astral and physical planes of
Matter ran parallel with one another even in the earliest geological
ages, yet they were not in the same phases of manifestation in which
they are _now_. The Earth did not reach its present _grade of
density_ till 18,000,000 years ago. Since then _both_ the physical
and astral planes have become grosser.
366 The conception and definition of the Absolute by Cardinal Cusa may
satisfy only the Western mind, prisoned, so unconsciously to itself,
and entirely degenerated, by long centuries of scholastic and
theological sophistry. But this "recent philosophy of the Absolute,"
traced by Sir William Hamilton to Cusa, would never satisfy the more
acutely metaphysical mind of the Hindű Vedântin.
367 Cudworth's _Intellectual System_, I. 328.
368 Issued from the Body of Brahmâ when it became Night.
369 Intellectually vile.
370 Still senseless Race.
371 Race.
372 Intensified.
373 The vehicle of Desire.
374 Higher knowledge.
375 Monads.
376 Primitive human species.
377 _Inst. Div._, II. viii; quoted in Myer's _Qabbalah_, 116.
378 _Op. cit._, I. v; Wilson's Trans., Fitzedward Hall's rendering, i.
72.
379 _Ibid._, ii. 10.
380 _Ibid._, i. 83.
381 Whom Manu calls "paternal grandfathers" (iii. 284). The Rudras are
the seven manifestations of Rudra-Shiva, the "destroying God," and
_also_ the grand Yogi and Ascetic.
382 To speak of _life_ as having arisen, and of the human race as having
originated, in this _absurdly unscientific_ way, in the face of the
modern Pedigrees of Man, is to court instantaneous annihilation. The
Esoteric Doctrine risks the danger, nevertheless, and even goes so
far as to ask the impartial reader to compare the above hypothesis
(if it is one) with Hćckel's theory--now fast becoming an axiom with
Science--which we quote verbatim as follows:
"How did life, the living world of organisms, arise? And, secondly,
the special question: How did the human race originate? The first of
these two enquiries, that as to the first appearance of living
beings, can only be decided empirically [!!] by proof of the so-
called Archebiosis, or equivocal generation, or the spontaneous
production of organisms of the simplest conceivable kind. Such are
the Monera (Protogenes, Protamoeba, Protomyxa, Vampyrella),
exceedingly simple microscopic masses of protoplasm without
structure or organization, which take in nutriment and _reproduce
themselves by division_. Such a Moneron as that primordial organism
_discovered_ by the renowned English zoologist Huxley and named
Bathybius Hćckelii, appears as a continuous thick protoplasmic
covering at the greatest depths of the ocean, between 3,000 and
30,000 feet. _It is true that the first appearance of such Monera
has not up to the present moment been actually observed_; but there
is nothing intrinsically improbable in such an Evolution." (_The
Pedigree of Man_, Aveling's translation, p. 33.)
The Bathybius protoplasm having recently turned out to be no organic
substance at all, there remains little to be said. Nor, after
reading this, does one need to consume further time in refuting the
further assertion that: "In that case man also has, _beyond a doubt_
[to the minds of Hćckel and his like], arisen from the lower
Mammalia, apes, the earlier simian creatures, the still earlier
Marsupialia, Amphibia, Pisces, by progressive transformations" (p.
36)--all produced by "a series of _natural forces working blindly,
... without aim, without design_."
The above-quoted passage bears its criticism on its own face.
Science is made to teach that, which, up to the present time, "_has
never been actually observed_." She is made to deny the phenomenon
of an _intelligent_ nature and a vital force independent of form and
matter, and to find it more scientific to teach the miraculous
performance of "natural forces _working blindly without aim or
design_." If so, then we are led to think that the physico-
mechanical forces of the brains of certain eminent Scientists are
leading them on as blindly to sacrifice logic and common sense on
the altar of mutual admiration. Why should the protoplasmic Moneron
producing the first living creature through _self-division_ be held
as a very scientific hypothesis, and an ethereal pre-human race
generating the primeval men in the same fashion be tabooed as
unscientific superstition? Or has Materialism obtained a sole
monopoly in Science?
383 The Râkshasas, regarded in Indian popular theology as Demons, are
called the "Preservers" beyond the Himâlayas. This double meaning
has its origin in a philosophical allegory, which is variously
rendered in the _Purânas_. It is stated that when Brahmâ created the
Demons, Yakshas (from _yaksh_, to eat) and the Râkshasas, both of
which kinds of Demons, as soon as born, wished to devour their
Creator, "those among them that called out 'Not so: oh! let him be
saved [preserved]!' were named Râkshasas." (_Vishnu Purâna_, I. v.;
Wilson, i. 82.) The _Bhâgavata Purâna_ (III. 20, 19-21; _ibid._,
_loc. cit._) renders the allegory differently. "Brahmâ transformed
himself into night [or ignorance] invested with a body." This the
Yakshas and Râkshasas seized, exclaiming, "Do not spare it; devour
it." Brahmâ cried out, "Do not devour me; spare me." This has an
inner meaning of course. The "Body of Night" is the darkness of
ignorance, and it is the darkness of silence and secrecy. Now the
Râkshasas are shown in almost every case to be Yogîs, pious Sâdhus
and Initiates, a rather unusual occupation for Demons. The meaning
then is that while we have power to dispel the darkness of
ignorance--"devour it"--we have to preserve the sacred truth from
profanation. "Brahmâ is for the Brâhmans alone," says that proud
caste. The moral of the _fable_ is evident.
384 The gradual evolution of man in the Secret Doctrine shows that all
the later (to the profane the earliest) Races have their _physical_
origin in the early Fourth Race. But it is the sub-race, which
preceded the one that separated sexually, that is to be regarded as
the _spiritual_ ancestors of our present generations, and especially
of the Eastern Âryan Races. Weber's idea that the Indo-Germanic Race
preceded the Âryan Vedic Race is, to the Occultist, grotesque to the
last degree.
385 _Cf._ especially Schmidt's _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp.
39 _et seqq._, and Laing's _A Modern Zoroastrian_, pp. 102-111.
386 Every process of healing and cicatrization in the higher animal
groups--even in the case of reproduction of mutilated limbs with the
Amphibians--is effected by _fission_ and _gemmation_ of the
elementary morphological elements.
387 The term here means neither the dolicho-cephalic nor the brachyo-
cephalic, nor yet skulls of a smaller volume, but simply brains
devoid of intellect generally. The theory which would judge of the
intellectual capacity of a man according to his cranial capacity,
seems absurdly illogical to one who has studied the subject. The
skulls of the stone period, as well as those of African races
(Bushmen included) show that the first are above rather than below
the average of the brain capacity of the modern man, and the skulls
of the last are on the whole (as also in the case of Papuans and
Polynesians generally) larger by one cubic inch than that of the
average Frenchman. Again, the cranial capacity of the Parisian of
to-day represents an average of 1437 cubic centimetres compared to
1523 of the Auvergnat.
388 A. Lefčvre, _Philosophy_, p. 498.
389 _Principles of Zoology_, p. 206.
390 i. 154.
391 The boneless.
392 The _first_ Sweat-born. This is explained in the Section which
follows this series of Stanzas in the allegory from the _Purânas_
concerning Kandu, the holy sage, and Pramlochâ, the nymph who is
alleged to have hypnotized him; a suggestive allegory,
scientifically, as the drops of perspiration which she exuded, are
the symbols of the spores of Science.
393 This will be explained as we proceed. This unwillingness to fashion
men, or create, is symbolized in the _Purânas_ by Daksha's dealings
with his opponent Nârada, the "strife-making ascetic."
394 Androgyne Third Race. The Evolutionist Professor Schmidt alludes to
"the fact of the separation of sexes, as to the derivation of which
from species _once hermaphrodite_ all [the believers in Creation
naturally excepted] are assuredly of one accord." (_Doctrine of
Descent and Darwinism_, p. 159.) Such indeed is the incontestable
evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. Apart from
such palpable traces of a primeval hermaphroditism, the fact may be
noted that, as Laing writes, "a study of embryology ... shows that
in the _human higher animal_ species the distinction of sex is not
developed until a _considerable progress_ has been made in the
growth of the embryo." (_A Modern Zoroastrian_, p. 106.) The Law of
Retardation--operative alike in the case of human races, animal
species, etc., when a higher type has once been evolved--still
preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority
of plants and many lower animals.
395 Vehicle.
396 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. vii; Wilson, i. 100.
397 See _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 111.
398 For explanations and a philosophical account of the nature of those
Beings, which are now viewed as the "evil" and rebellious Spirits,
the Creators by Kriyâshakti, the reader is referred to the chapters
on "The Myth of the 'Fallen Angel,' in its Various Aspects," in Part
II of this Volume.
399 _Vishnu Purâna_, III. ii.
400 In the oldest MS. of the _Vishnu Purâna_ in the possession of an
Initiate in Southern India, the God is not Indra, but Kâma, the God
of love and desire.
401 These are the exoteric figures given in a purposely reversed and
distorted way, being the figure of the duration of the cycle between
the First and Second human Race. All Orientalists to the contrary,
there is not a word in any of the _Purânas_ that has not a special
esoteric meaning.
402 _Vishnu Purâna_, I. xv; Wilson, ii. 5. Compare also Vivien's
temptation of Merlin (Tennyson)--the same legend in Irish tradition.
403 x. 129.
404 The text has: "From Brahmâ, continuing to meditate, were born mind-
engendered progeny, with forms and faculties derived from his
corporeal nature, _embodied spirits_, produced from the limbs
(Gâtra) of Dhîmat (all-wise deity)." All these beings were the abode
of the three qualities of Devasarga, or divine creation, which, as
the five-fold creation, is _devoid of clearness of perception,
without reflection_, dull of nature. "But as they _did not multiply
themselves_, Brahmâ created other mind-born sons like himself,"
namely, the Brahmarshis, or the Prajâpatis, ten and seven in number.
"Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas (Brahmâ) were previously
created," but as shown elsewhere, they were "_without desire or
passion_, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the universe and
undesirous of progeny." (_Vishnu Purâna_, X. vii; Wilson's Trans.,
i. 100, 101.) These Sanandana and other Kumâras are then the Gods,
who after refusing to "create progeny" are forced to incarnate in
senseless men. The reader must pardon unavoidable repetitions in
view of the great number of facts given.
405 Compare Schlagintweit's _Buddhism in Tibet_, pp. 88-90.
406 See Edkins' _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 208.
407 The previous Third Round.
408 Of this Round.
409 An allegorical reference to the "Sacred Animals" of the Zodiac and
other heavenly bodies. Some Kabalists see in them the prototypes of
the animals.
410 In _Hesiod_, Zeus creates his Third Race of men out of ash-trees. In
the _Popol Vuh_ the Third Race of men is created out of the tree
Tzita and the marrow of the reed called Sibac. But Sibac means "egg"
in the mystery language of the Artufas, or Initiation caves. In a
report sent in 1812 to the Cortes by Don Baptista Pino it is said:
"All the Pueblos have their Artufas--so the natives call subterranean
rooms with only a single door where they (secretly) assemble....
These are impenetrable temples ... and the doors are always closed
to the Spaniards.... They adore the Sun and Moon ... fire and the
great _Snake_ (the creative power), whose eggs are called Sibac."
411 There is a notable difference _esoterically_ between the words Sarpa
and Nâga, though they are both used indiscriminately. Sarpa,
serpent, is from the root _srip_, to creep, compare, Lat., _serp-o_;
and they are called Ahi, from _hâ_, to abandon. The Sarpas were
produced from Brahmâ's hair, which, owing to his fright at beholding
the Yakshas, whom he had created horrible to behold, fell off from
the head, each hair becoming a serpent. They are called "Sarpa from
their creeping and Ahi because they had deserted the head." (Wilson,
i. 83.) But the Nâgas, in the allegories, their serpent's tail
notwithstanding, do not creep, but manage to walk, run and fight.
412 Wilson translates the word as "demigods" (_Vishnu Purâna_, i. 130);
but Raumas are simply a race, a tribe.
413 xii. 10,308.
414 Wilson, _ibid._, p. 123.
415 _Ibid._, ii. 10.
416 Serpents.
417 Race.
418 Also.
419 Into male and female.
420 Then.
421 Man.
422 The "narrow-headed." Compare Shloka 24.
423 The "narrow-headed."
424 See Commentary on Shloka 36.
425 These "animals," or monsters, are not the anthropoid or any other
apes, but verily what the Anthropologists might call the "missing
link," the primitive lower man.
426 The shame of their animal origin which our modern Scientists would
emphasize if they could.
427 _The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp. 186, 187. The "unknown
ancestry" referred to are the _primćval_ astral prototypes.
428 "A very strong argument in favour of variability is supplied by the
science of embryology. Is not a man in the uterus ... a simple cell,
a vegetable with three or four leaflets, a tadpole with branchić, a
mammal with a tail, lastly a primate [?] and a biped? It is scarcely
possible not to recognize in the embryonic evolution a rapid sketch,
a faithful summary, of the entire organic series." (Lefčvre,
_Philosophy_, p. 484.)
The summary alluded to is, however, only that of the _store of
types_ hoarded up in man, the microcosm. This simple explanation
meets all such objections, as the presence of the rudimentary tail
in the foetus--a fact triumphantly paraded by Hćckel and Darwin as
conclusively in favour of the Ape-Ancestor Theory. It may also be
pointed out that _the presence of a vegetable with leaflets_ in the
embryonic stages is _not explained_ on ordinary evolutionist
principles. Darwinists have not traced man through the vegetable,
but Occultists have. _Why then this feature in the embryo_, and how
do the former explain it?
429 "The Proofs of Evolution," a lecture by Hćckel.
430 Vol. i. pp. 388-390.
431 See Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, pp. 21, _et seqq._
432 _Origin of Species_, pp. 448, 449, first edition.
433 Vol. i. p. 154.
434 The sin committed with the animals.
435 The Spirits, the "Sons of Wisdom."
436 Who had refused to "create."
437 Mindless.
438 Mind.
439 This verse in the _Rig Veda_ (x. 5, 6): "The Seven Wise Ones [Rays
of Wisdom, Dhyânis] fashion Seven Paths [or Lines, and also Races in
another sense]. To one of these may the distressed mortal come"--a
verse interpreted solely from the astronomical and cosmic aspect, is
one of the most pregnant in occult meaning. The "Paths" may mean
Lines (Maryâdâh), but they are primarily Beams of Light falling on
the Paths leading to Wisdom. (See _Rig Veda_, iv. 5-13.) It means
"Ways" or Paths. They are, in short, the seven Rays which fall free
from the Macrocosmic Centre, the seven Principles in the
metaphysical, the seven Races in the physical sense. All depends
upon the key used.
440 _Rig Veda_, x. 10, 5, 2.
441 It is next to impossible to translate verbally some of these old
Commentaries. We are often obliged to give the meaning only, and
thus retranslate the verbatim translations.
442 Rudra, as a Kumâra, is Nîlalohita--red and blue.
443 This, regardless of modern materialistic evolution, which speculates
in this wise: "The primitive human form, whence as we think all
human species sprang, has perished this long time. [This we deny: it
has only decreased in size and changed in texture.] But many facts
point to the conclusion that it was hairy and dolichocephalic.
[African races are even _now_ dolichocephalic in a great measure,
but the palćolithic Neanderthal skull, the oldest we know of, is of
a large size, and no nearer to the capacity of the gorilla's cranium
than that of any other now-living man.] Let us, for the time being,
call this hypothetical species _homo primigenius_.... This first
species, or the ape-man, the ancestor of all the others, _probably_
arose in the _tropical regions_ of the old world from _anthropoid
apes_." Asked for proofs, the Evolutionist, not the least daunted,
replies: "Of these _no fossil remains are as yet known to us, but
they were probably akin to the Gorilla and Orang of the present
day_." And then the Papuan negro is mentioned as the probable
descendant in the first line. (_Pedigree of Man_, p. 80.)
Hćckel holds fast to Lemuria, which, with East Africa and South Asia
also, he mentions as the possible cradle of the primitive ape-men.
So also do many Geologists. Mr. A. R. Wallace admits its reality,
though in a rather modified sense, in his _Geographical Distribution
of Animals_. But let not Evolutionists speak so lightly of the
comparative size of the brains of man and the ape, for this is very
_unscientific_, especially when they pretend to see no difference
between the two, or very little at any rate. For Vogt himself showed
that, while the highest of the apes, the Gorilla, has a brain of
only 30 to 51 cubic inches, the brain of the lowest of the
Australian aborigines amounts to 99·35 cubic inches. The former is
thus "not half of the size of the brain of a new-born babe," says
Pfaff.
444 Ellis' _Polynesian Researches_, Vol. II, p. 38. Missionaries seem to
have pounced upon this name _Ivi_ and made of it _Eve_. But, as
shown by Professor Max Müller, Eve is not the Hebrew name but a
European transformation of {~HEBREW LETTER HET~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, Châvah, life, or mother of all
living; "while the Tahitian _ivi_, and the Maori, _wheva_, meant
bone, and bone only." (_Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p.
304.)
445 _Chaire d'Hébreu au Collége de France_, p. 20.
446 Of such semi-animal creatures, the sole remnants known to Ethnology
were the Tasmanians, a _portion_ of the Australians and a mountain
tribe in China, the men and women of which are entirely covered with
hair. They were the last descendants in a _direct_ line of the semi-
animal latter-day Lemurians referred to. There are, however,
considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced
by various crossings with such semi-human stocks--_e.g._, the wild
men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among
Âryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos,
Andaman Islanders, etc.
The Australians of the Gulf of St. Vincent and the neighbourhood of
Adelaide are _very hairy_, and the brown down on the skin of boys of
five or six years of age assumes a _furry appearance_. They are,
however, degraded _men_; not the closest approximation to the
"pithecoid man," as Hćckel so sweepingly affirms. Only a portion of
these men are a Lemurian relic. (_Cf._ _Esoteric Buddhism_, pp. 64
_et seqq._)
447 In calling the animal "soulless" we do not deprive the beast, from
the humblest to the highest species, of a Soul, but only of a
conscious surviving Ego-Soul, _i.e._, that principle which survives
after a man, and reďncarnates in a like man. The animal has an
Astral Body, that survives the physical form for a short period;
nevertheless its (animal) Monad does not reďncarnate in the same,
but in a higher species, and has no "Devachan" of course. It has the
_seeds_ of all the human principles in itself, but they are
_latent_.
448 _Manual of Geology_, p. 302.
449 The "fables" and "myths" about Leda and Jupiter, and such like,
could never have sprung up in people's fancy, had not the allegory
rested on a fact in Nature. Evolution, gradually transforming man
into a mammal, did in his case only what it did in that of other
animals. But this does not prevent man from having always stood at
the head of the animal world and other organic species, and from
having preceded the former.
450 See the Section on "The Chronology of the Brâhmans," p. 69.
451 To avoid confusion, let the reader remember that the term Root-Race
applies to one of the seven great Races, sub-race to one of its
great Branches, and family-race to one of the sub-divisions, which
include nations and large tribes.
452 In the Section on "The Fifth Race and its Divine Instructors," in
the Commentary on Stanza XII, the nature of these "Instructors" is
explained.
453 The present yellow races are the descendants, however, of the early
branches of the Fourth Race. Of the Third, the only _pure and
direct_ descendants are, as said above, a portion of the fallen and
degenerated Australians, whose far distant ancestors belonged to a
division of the seventh sub-race of the Third. The rest are of mixed
Lemuro-Atlantean descent. They have since then entirely changed in
stature and intellectual capacities.
454 _Language_ is certainly coëval with reason, and could never have
been developed before men became one with the informing principles
in them--those who fructified and awoke to life the mânasic element
dormant in primitive man. For, as Professor Max Müller tells us in
his _Science of Thought_: "Thought and language are identical." To
add to this, however, the reflection that _thoughts which are too
deep for words, do not really exist at all_, is rather risky, for
thought impressed upon the astral tablets exists in eternity whether
expressed or not. _Logos_ is both reason and speech. But language,
proceeding in cycles, is not always adequate to express _spiritual_
thoughts. Moreover, in one sense, the Greek Logos is the equivalent
of the Sanskrit Vâch, "the immortal (intellectual) ray of spirit."
And the fact that Vâch (as Devasenâ, an _aspect_ of Sarasvatî, the
Goddess of Hidden Wisdom) is the spouse of the eternal celibate
Kumâra, unveils a suggestive, though veiled, reference to the
Kumâras, those "who refused to create," but who were compelled later
on to complete _divine_ Man by incarnating in him. All this will be
fully explained in the Sections that follow.
455 Ptolemy, speaking in his ninth table of the Kabolitć or Kabul
tribes, calls them {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}, Aristophyli, the aristocratic or
noble tribes. The Afghans call themselves Ben-Issraël, children of
Is (sa) raël, from Issa, "woman and also earth," sons of Mother
Earth. But if you call an Afghan Yahoudi (Jew), he will kill you.
The names of the supposed twelve tribes of the Jews, and the names
of the real twelve tribes of the Afghans, are the same. The Afghans
being far older (at any rate, their Arabic stock) than the
Israëlites, no one need be surprised to find such tribal names among
them as Youssoufzic, sons of Joseph, in Punjcaure and Boonere;
Zablistanee (Zebulon); Ben-manasseh, sons of Manasseh, among the
Khojar Tartars; Isaguri, or Issachar, now Ashnagor in Afghanistan,
etc. The whole twelve names of the so-called twelve tribes are names
of the signs of the Zodiac, as is now well proven. In any case, the
names of the oldest Arabic tribes, re-transliterated, yield the
names of the zodiacal signs and likewise of the mythical sons of
Jacob. Where are the traces of the Jewish twelve tribes? Nowhere.
But there is a trace, and a deep one, that the Jews have tried to
deceive people with the help of these names. For, see what happens
ages after the _ten tribes_ had wholly disappeared from Babylon.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to have the Hebrew Law translated for
him into Greek (the famous Septuagint), wrote to the high priest of
the Jews, Eleazar, to send him _six men from each of the twelve
tribes_; and the _seventy-two representatives_ (of whom sixty were
ghosts apparently) came to the king in Egypt and translated the Law
amid miracles and wonders. See Butler's _Horć Biblicć_, Josephus,
and Philo Judćus.
456 The Commentary explains that the apes are the only species, among
the animals, which has gradually, and with every generation and
variety, tended more and more to return to the original type of its
male forefather--the dark gigantic Lemurian and Atlantean.
457 Androgyne.
458 Dr. A. Wilder; who says that Gan-duniyas is a name of Babylonia.
459 Vol. i. pp. 575, 576.
460 _Foe-koue-ki; ou Relations des Royaumes Bouddhiques_; par Chy Fa-
hian: translated by Abel Remusat.
461 Seventh year, 1855.
462 De Mirville's _Des Esprits_, ii. 423. See also Moses Maimonides,
_More Nevochim_.
463 _Sciences Occultes_, p. 464.
464 _Révolution du Globe_, Vol. v. p. 247.
465 We read in De Mirville's "Mémoire â l'Académie" (ii. 431) of the
"naďve astonishment of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, when M. de Paravey
showed to him, in some old Chinese works and Babylonian tiles,
dragons, ... ornithorhynchuses and saurians (aquatic animals _found
only in Australia_), etc., extinct animals that he had thought
unknown on earth ... till his own day."
466 See _Isaiah_, xxx. 6: "The viper and the flying serpent," and the
fiery serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses.
467 The fossils, reconstructed by Science which we know, ought to be
sufficient warrant for the possibility of even a Leviathan, not to
mention Isaiah's flying serpents, or Saraph Mehophep, words which
are translated in all the Hebrew dictionaries as "Saraph," enflamed
or fiery venom, and "Mehophep," flying. But, although Christian
Theology has always connected both Leviathan and Saraph Mehophep
with the Devil, the expressions are metaphorical and have nought to
do with the "Evil One." Nevertheless, the word "Dragon" has now
become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk now
signifies "Devil," whence, as we are told by Cambry (_Monuments
Celtiques_, p. 299), the Devil's Tomb in England, Droghedanum
Sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o'-the-wisps are
called Drac, and in Bretagne Dreag and Wraie or wraith; the castle
of Drogheda in Ireland meaning the Devil's castle. (De Mirville,
_ibid._, ii. 423.)
468 The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian
stories given by Father Kircher, in his _OEdipus Ćgyptiacus_, "De
Genesi Draconum," quite seriously. According to that Jesuit, he
himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669 by a Roman peasant, as
the director of the Museo Barberini sent it to him, to take the
beast's likeness, which Father Kircher did and had it published in
one of his _in-folios_. After this he received a letter from
Christopher Scherer, Prefect of the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland,
in which that official certifies to his having seen himself, _with
his own eyes_, one fine summer night in 1619, a living dragon.
Having remained on his balcony "to contemplate the perfect purity of
the firmament," he writes, "I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from
one of the caves of Mount Pilatus and direct himself rapidly towards
Fluelen to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was
still longer and his neck stretched out. His head and jaws were
those of a serpent. In flying, he emitted on his way numerous sparks
(? !).... I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon,
looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight and the
conformation of his body that I saw a _veritable dragon_. I am happy
to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the _very real_
existence of those animals"--in _dreams_, the writer ought to have
added, of long past ages. (_Ibid._, p. 424.)
469 As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic
refers the reader to the picture of the incident painted by Simon de
Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal of the Church Notre Dame
du Don at Avignon, notwithstanding the prohibition of the Sovereign
Pontiff, who "would not allow this triumph of love to be enthroned
in the holy place"; and adds: "Time has injured the work of art, but
has not weakened its tradition." (_Ibid._, p. 425.) De Mirville's
"Dragon-Devils" of our era seem to have no luck, as they disappear
most mysteriously from the museums where they are said to have been.
Thus the Dragon embalmed by Ulysses Aldovrandus and presented to the
Musée du Sénat, either in Naples or Bologna, "was there still in
1700," but is there no more. (_Ibid._, p. 427.)
470 _Op. cit._, ii. 422.
471 _Ibid._, p. 433.
472 _Ibid._, pp. 432, 433. This is about as just as though, a few
millenniums hence, a fanatic of some future new creed, who was bent
upon glorifying _his_ religion at the expense of _ancient_
Christianity, were to say: Everywhere the quadruped lamb was adored.
The nun, calling it the Agnus, placed it on her bosom; the priest
laid it on the altar. It figured in every Paschal meal, and was
glorified loudly in every temple. And yet the Christians dreaded it
and hated it, for they slew and devoured it. Heathens, at any rate,
do not eat their sacred symbols. We know of no serpent or reptile-
eaters, except in Christian civilized countries, where they begin
with frogs and eels, and must end with real snakes, as they have
begun with lamb and ended with horse-flesh.
473 _Ibid._, p. 423.
474 _Pantheon_, 3.
475 The Solar Chnouphis, or Agathodćmon, is the Christos of the
Gnostics, as every scholar knows. He is intimately connected with
the Seven Sons of Sophia (Wisdom), the Seven Sons of Aditi,
Universal Wisdom, her eighth being Mârttânda, the Sun, which Seven
are the Seven Planetary Regents or Genii. Therefore Chnouphis was
the Spiritual Sun of Enlightenment, of Wisdom, hence the patron of
all the Egyptian Initiates, as Bel-Merodach, or Bel-Belitanus,
became later with the Chaldćans.
476 Hermes, or rather Thot, was a generic name. Abul Feda shows in his
_Historia Anti-Islamitica_, five Hermes, and the names of Hermes,
Nebo, Thot were given respectively in various countries to great
Initiates. Thus Nebo, the son of Merodach and Zarpanitu, whom
Herodotus calls Zeus-Belos, gave his name to all the great Prophets,
Seers and Initiates. They were all "Serpents of Wisdom," as
connected with the Sun astronomically, and with Wisdom spiritually.
477 _Pantheon_, text 15.
478 i. 555.
479 _Genesis_, xlix. 17, 18, and 5, 6.
480 Dunlap, in his Introduction to _Sod, the Mysteries of Adoni_ (xi),
explains the word "Sod" as _arcanum_, religious mystery, on the
authority of Schindler's _Penteglott_, 1201. "The secret of the Lord
is with them that fear him," says _Psalm_, xxv. 14. This is a
mistranslation of the Christians, for it ought to read: "Sod Ihoh
(the Mysteries of Ihoh) are for _those who fear him_." "Al [El] is
terrible in the great Sod of the Kedeshim (the Priests, the Holy,
the Initiated)."--_Psalm_, lxxxix. 7 (_ibid._). The Kedeshim were
very far from holy. See the Section on "The Holy of Holies," in Part
II of this Volume.
481 "The members of the Priest-Colleges were called Sodales," says
Freund's _Latin Lexicon_ (iv. 448). "Sodalities were constituted in
the Idćan Mysteries of the Mighty Mother," writes Cicero in _De
Senectute_. (Dunlap, _ibid._, p. xii.)
482 xxx. 6.
483 The priests of Baal who jumped over the fires. But this was a Hebrew
term and a local one. Saraph means "fiery or flaming venom."
484 _Book of the Dead_, ch. xxxix.
485 The same ram's horns are found on the heads of Moses which were seen
on some old medals by the writer in Palestine, one of which is still
in her possession. The horns, forming part of the shining aureole on
the statue of Moses in Rome by Michael Angelo, are vertical instead
of being bent down to the ears, but the emblem is the same; hence
the Brazen Serpent.
486 But see Harris' _Magic Papyrus_, No. v, and the ram-headed Ammon
manufacturing men on a potter's wheel.
487 Brasseur de Bourbourg, _Mexique_, pp. 135 and 574.
488 Ulűpî (Ulűpl) has an entirely Atlantean ring about it. Like
Atlantis, it is neither a Greek nor a Sanskrit name, but reminds one
of Mexican names.
489 _Mahâbhârata_, Âdi Parva, Shlokas 7788, 7789. The _Bhâgavata Purâna_
(ix. xx. 31), as explained by Shrîdhara, the commentator, makes
Ulűpî the daughter of the king of Manipűra (see _Vishnu Purâna_,
Wilson, iv. 160); but the late Pandit Dayânand Sarasvatî, certainly
the greatest Sanskrit and Paurânic authority in India on such
questions, personally corroborated that Ulűpî was daughter of the
king of the Nâgas in Pâtâla, or America, 5,000 years ago, and that
the Nâgas were Initiates.
490 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 293.
491 Foh-tchou, in Chinese meaning literally Buddha's lord, or the
teacher of the doctrines of Buddha--Foh.
492 This mountain is situated south-west of China, almost between China
and Tibet.
493 _Ibid._, pp. 293, 294.
494 Let the reader be reminded that in the _Zohar_, and also in all the
Kabalistic works, it is maintained that "Metatron united with
Shekinah." Now Shekinah as the Veil (Grace) of Ain Suph,
representing the Logos, is that very Tree of Knowledge; while
Shamaël--the dark _aspect_ of the Logos--occupies only the bark of
that tree, and has the knowledge of _evil_ alone. As Lacour, who saw
in the scene of the Fall (_Genesis_, iii) an incident pertaining to
Egyptian Initiation, says: "The Tree of the Divination, or of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil ... is the science of Tzyphon, the Genius
of Doubt, _tzy_ to teach, and _phon_, doubt. Tzyphon is one of the
Aleim; we shall see him presently under the name of Nach, the
tempter" (_Les OEloim_, vol. ii. p. 218). He is now known to
Symbologists under the name of Jehovah.
495 This is the view taken and adopted by all the Church Fathers, but it
is not the real Esoteric Teaching. The _curse_ did not begin with
the formation of either man or woman, for their separation was a
natural sequence of evolution, but with _the breaking of the law_.
496 By which _human_ nature lives; not even the animal--but the
misguided, sensual and vicious nature, which _men_, not Nature,
created. See the Section "Cross and Circle."
497 See _Zohar_, i. 172, _a_ and _b_.
498 Compare the Section on "The Mysteries of the Hebdomad" in Part II of
this Volume.
499 Gould's _Mythical Monsters_, p. 1.
500 _The Unicorn: a Mythological Investigation_, Robert Brown, junr.,
F.S.A. London, 1881.
501 _Mythical Monsters_, pp. 2-4.
502 _Ibid._, p. 20.
503 _Ibid._, pp. 36, 37.
504 _The Human Species_, p. 52.
505 _Manual of Geology_, p. 301.
506 _Ibid._, p. 17.
507 Gould's _Mythical Monsters_, p. 16. See also _Recherches, etc., des
Mammifčres_, plate 1. Paris, 1868 to 1874.
508 Preface to the _Shan Hai King_, or "Wonders by Land and Sea."
509 Vol. i. pp. 589, _et seqq._
510 There are Archćologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, refuse any
great antiquity to even one single monument in India. In his work,
_Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India_, he ventures to
express the very extraordinary opinion that "Egypt had ceased to be
a nation before the earliest of the cave-temples of India was
excavated." In short, he does not admit the existence of any cave-
temple anterior to the reign of Ashoka, and seems anxious to prove
that most of these rock-cut temples were executed during a period
extending from the time of that pious Buddhist king until the
destruction of the Andhra dynasty of Magadha, in the beginning of
the fifth century. We believe such a claim to be perfectly
arbitrary. Further discoveries will show that it is erroneous and
unwarranted.
511 America, at the time of its discovery, was called _Atlanta_ by some
native tribes.
512 Since then Donnelly's _Atlantis_ has appeared, and soon its actual
existence will have become a scientific fact.
513 It is so divided to this day, and Theosophists and Occultists, who
have learned something of the occult but undeniable power of
Dugpaship at their own expense, know this but too well.
514 See De Mirville's _Pneumatologie: Des Esprits_, iii. 57, _et seqq._
515 See Max Müller, _Chips_, i. 339; "Popol Vuh." Compare also Holmberg,
_Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des Russischen Amerika_.
Helsingfors, 1855.
516 _Op. cit._, pp. 13-15.
517 _Ibid._, p. 308.
518 An approach to the statues at Bamian--also a Buddha 200 feet high--is
found near a Jain settlement in Southern India, and appears to be
the only one that remains at present.
519 Even Wilson admits that Râma and Râvana were personages founded on
historical facts. "The traditions of the South of India uniformly
ascribe its civilization ... and the settlement of civilized Hindűs
[the Fifth Race] to the conquest of Lankâ by Râma" (_Vishnu Purâna_,
iii. 318)--the victory of the "Sons of Gods" over the Atlantean
sorcerers, says the _true_ tradition.
520 Thus we are shown one hero, to give an instance, first born as the
"unrighteous but valiant monarch" (Purusha) of the Daityas,
Hiranyakashipu, slain by the Avatâra Nara-sinha (Man-lion). Then he
was born as Râvana, the giant king of Lankâ, and killed by Râma;
after which he is reborn as Shishupâla, the son of Rajarshi (King
Rishi) Damaghosha, when he is again killed by Krishna, the last
incarnation of Vishnu. This parallel evolution of Vishnu (Spirit)
with a Daitya, as man, may seem meaningless, yet it gives us the key
not only to the respective dates of Râma and Krishna but even to a
certain psychological mystery.
521 Compare _Hibbert Lectures_, 1877, Sayce, pp. 134-138.
522 The Gods became No-Gods.
523 Race.
524 Yellow-white.
525 Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown
and yellow giant races, that one ought to speak of _man_, since it
was the Fourth Race only which was the first _completely human
species_, however much larger in size than we are now. In _Man:
Fragments of Forgotten History_ (by two Chelâs), all that is said of
the Atlanteans is quite correct. It is chiefly this Race which
became "black with sin," that brought the divine names of the
Asuras, the Râkshasas and the Daityas, into disrepute, and passed
them on to posterity as the names of fiends. For, as said, the
Suras, Gods or Devas, having incarnated in the wise men of Atlantis,
the names of Asuras and Râkshasas were given to the ordinary
Atlanteans. Owing to the incessant conflicts of the latter with the
last remnants of the Third Race and the "Sons of Will and Yoga,"
their names have led to the later allegories about them in the
_Purânas_. "Asura was the generic appellation of all the Atlanteans
who were the enemies of the spiritual heroes of the Âryans (Gods)."
(_Man_, p. 77.)
526 In the beginning.
527 The sub-races.
528 Their colours.
529 Stanza VII, Shloka 24.
530 See Shlokas 32, 34.
531 In general, the so-called orthodox Christian conceptions about the
"fallen" Angels or Satan, are as remarkable as they are absurd.
About a dozen could be cited, of the most varied character as to
details, and all from the pens of educated lay authors, "university
graduates" of the present quarter of our century. Thus, the author
of _Earth's Earliest Ages_, G. H. Pember, M.A., devotes a thick
volume to proving Theosophists, Spiritualists, Agnostics, Mystics,
metaphysicians, poets, and every contemporary author on Oriental
speculations, to be the devoted servants of the "Prince of the Air,"
and irretrievably damned. He describes Satan and his Antichrist in
this wise:
"Satan is the 'Anointed Cherub' of old.... God created Satan, the
fairest and wisest of all His creatures in this part of His
Universe, and made him Prince of the World, and of the Power of the
Air.... He was placed in an Eden, which was both far anterior to the
Eden of Genesis ... and of an altogether different and more
substantial character, resembling the New Jerusalem. Thus, Satan
being perfect in wisdom, and beauty, his vast empire is our earth,
if not the whole solar system.... Certainly no other angelic power
of greater or even equal dignity has been revealed to us. The
Archangel Michael himself is quoted by Jude as preserving towards
the Prince of Darkness _the respect due to a superior_, however
wicked he may be, until God has formally commanded his deposition."
Then we are informed that "Satan was from the moment of his creation
surrounded by the _insignia of royalty_" (! !): that he "awoke to
consciousness to find the air filled with the rejoicing music of
those whom God had appointed." Then the Devil "passes from the
royalty to his _priestly dignity_" (! ! !). "Satan was also a
_priest of the Most High_," etc., etc. And now--"Antichrist will be
Satan incarnate." (Chap. III and pp. 56-59.) The pioneers of the
coming Apollyon have already appeared--they are the Theosophists, the
Occultists, the authors of the _Perfect Way_, of _Isis Unveiled_, of
the _Mystery of the Ages_, and even of the _Light of Asia_ ! ! The
author notes the "avowed origin" of Theosophy from the "descending
angels," from the "Nephilim," or the Angels of _Genesis_ (vi), and
the Giants. He ought to note his own descent from them also, as our
_Secret Doctrine_ endeavours to show--unless he refuses to belong to
the present humanity.
532 Compare x. 8, where it speaks of all who have come before Jesus,
being "thieves and robbers."
533 Verse 14.
534 _Luke_, x. 18.
535 It is not correct to refer to Christ--as some Theosophists do--as
Buddhi, the sixth principle in man. The latter _per se_ is a passive
and latent principle, the Spiritual Vehicle of Âtmâ, inseparable
from the manifested Universal Soul. It is only in union and in
conjunction with _Self-consciousness_ that Buddhi becomes the Higher
Self and the Divine, discriminating Soul. Christos is the seventh
principle, if anything.
536 xix. 7.
537 _Ibid._, verse 8.
538 xviii. 24.
539 To make it plainer, any one who reads the passage in _Luke_, will
see that the remark follows the report of the _seventy_, who rejoice
that "even the devils [the spirit of controversy and reasoning, or
the opposing power, since Satan means simply 'adversary' or
'opponent'] are subject unto us through thy name." (_Luke_, x. 17.)
Now, "thy name" means the name of Christos, or Logos, or the Spirit
of true Divine Wisdom, as distinct from the spirit of intellectual
or mere materialistic reasoning--the Higher Self in short. And when
Jesus remarks on this that he has "beheld Satan as lightning fall
from heaven," it is a mere statement of his clairvoyant powers,
notifying to them that he already knew it, and a reference to the
incarnation of the Divine Ray--the Gods or Angels--which _falls into
generation_. For not all men, by any means, benefit by that
incarnation, and with some the power remains latent and dead during
the whole life. Truly "no man knoweth who the Son is, but the
Father; and who the Father is, but the Son," as added by Jesus then
and there (verse 22)--the "Church of Christ" less than any one else.
The Initiates alone understood the secret meaning of the terms
"Father" and "Son," and knew that it referred to Spirit and Soul on
the Earth. For the teachings of Christ were Occult teachings, which
could only be explained at Initiation. They were never intended for
the masses, for Jesus forbade the twelve to go to the Gentiles and
the Samaritans (_Matth._, x. 5), and repeated to his disciples that
the "mystery of the kingdom of God" was for them alone, not for the
multitudes (_Mark_, iv. 11).
540 So, for instance, in the _Purânas_, Pulastya, a Prajâpati, or son of
Brahmâ--the progenitor of the Râkshasas, and the grandfather of
Râvana, the great king of Lankâ in the _Râmâyana_--had, in a _former
birth_, a son named Dattoli, "who is now known as the sage Agastya,"
says _Vishnu Purâna_ (Wilson's Trans., i. 154). This name of Dattoli
alone, has six more variants to it, or seven meanings. He is called
respectively, Dattoli, Dattâli, Dattotti, Dattotri, Dattobhri,
Dambhobhi and Dambholi. These seven variants have each a secret
sense, and refer in the Esoteric Commentaries to various
ethnological classifications, and also to physiological and
anthropological mysteries of the primitive races. For, surely, the
Râkshasas are not Demons, but simply the primitive and ferocious
Giants, the Atlanteans, who were scattered on the face of the Globe,
as the Fifth Race is now. Vasishtha is a warrant of this, if his
words addressed to Parâshara, who attempted a bit of Jadoo
(sorcery), which he calls "sacrifice," for the destruction of the
Râkshasas, mean anything. For he says: "Let no more of these
_unoffending_ 'Spirits of Darkness' be consumed." (See for details,
_Mahâbhârata_, Âdi Parvan, s. 176; also _Linga Purâna_, Pűrvârdha,
s. 64; Wilson, _ibid._, i. 8, 9.)
541 We have a passage from a Master's letter which has a direct bearing
upon these incarnating Angels. Says the letter: "Now there are, and
there must be, failures in the ethereal Races of the many Classes of
Dhyân Chohans, or Devas [_progressed entities_ of a _previous_
Planetary Period], as well as among men. But still, as the
_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, this then happens.
Where a new Solar System has to be evolved, these Dhyân Chohans are
borne in by influx 'ahead' of the Elementals [entities ... to be
developed into humanity at a _future_ time] and remain as a latent
or inactive spiritual force, in the Aura of a nascent World ...
until the stage of human evolution is reached.... Then they become
an _active force_ and commingle with the Elementals, to _develop
little by little the full type of humanity_." That is to say, to
develop in man, and endow him with his Self-conscious Mind, or
Manas.
542 Appendix XV, pp. 369, _et seqq._
543 When the Earth with its Planetary Chain and Man were to appear.
544 Our Earth and the physical plane of consciousness.
545 When the pure, celestial Beings or Dhyân Chohans, and the great
Pitris of various classes were commissioned--the one to evolve their
Images or Chhâyâs, and make of them physical man, the others to
inform and thus endow him with divine intelligence and the
comprehension of the Mysteries of Creation.
546 The "dynasties of kings" who all regard themselves as the
"anointed," reigning by the "Grace of God," whereas in truth, they
reign by the grace of Matter, the Great Illusion, the Deceiver.
547 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._, verse 10.
548 See the "Primeval Manus of Humanity."
549 The "Heavenly Man," please mark again the word, is the "Logos" or
the "Son" Esoterically. Therefore, once that the title was applied
to Christ, who was declared to be God and the very God himself,
Christian Theology had no choice. In order to support its dogma of a
personal Trinity it had to proclaim, as it still does, that the
Christian Logos is the only true one, and that all the Logoi of
other religions are false, and are only the masquerading Evil
Principle, Satan. See whereto this has led Western Theology!
550 "For the Mind, a deity abounding in both sexes, being Light and
Life, brought forth by its Word another Mind or Workman; which,
being God of the Fire and the Spirit, fashioned and formed seven
other Governors, which in their Circles contain the Phenomenal
World, and whose disposition is called Fate or Destiny." (Sect. ix.
c. 1, ed. of 1579.)
Here it is evident that Mind, the Primeval Universal Divine Thought,
is neither the Unknown Unmanifested One, since it abounds in both
sexes--is male and female--nor yet the Christian "Father," as the
latter is a male and not an androgyne. The fact is that the
"Father," "Son," and "Man" are hopelessly mixed up in the
translations of _Pymander_.
551 The allegory of the fire of Prometheus is another version of the
rebellion of the proud Lucifer, who was hurled down to the
"bottomless pit," or simply on to our Earth, to live as man. The
Hindű Lucifer, the Mahâsura, is also said to have become envious of
the Creator's resplendent Light, and, at the head of inferior Asuras
(not Gods, but Spirits), to have rebelled against Brahmâ; for which
Shiva hurled him down to Pâtâla. But, as philosophy goes hand in
hand with allegorical fiction in Hindű myths, the "Devil" is made to
repent, and is afforded the opportunity to progress: he is a sinful
man _esoterically_, and can by Yoga, devotion, and adeptship, reach
his status of "one with the deity," once more. Hercules, the Sun-
God, descends to Hades (the Cave of Initiation) to deliver the
victims from their tortures, etc. The Christian Church alone creates
_eternal_ torment for the Devil and the damned that she has
invented.
552 Why, for instance, should Éliphas Lévi, the very fearless and
outspoken Kabalist, have hesitated to divulge the mystery of the
Fallen Angels so-called? That he knew the fact and the real meaning
of the allegory, both in its religious and mystical, as well as in
its physiological sense, is proved by his voluminous writings and
frequent allusions and hints. Yet Éliphas, after having alluded to
it a hundred times in his previous works, says in his later
_Histoire de la Magie_ (pp. 220, 221): "We protest with all our
might against the sovereignty and the ubiquity of Satan. We _pretend
neither to deny nor affirm here the tradition on the Fall of the
Angels_.... But if so ... then the prince of the Angelic Rebels can
be at best the last and the most powerless among the condemned--now
that he is separated from deity--which is the principle of every
power." This is hazy and evasive enough; but see what Hargrave
Jennings writes in his weird, staccato-like style:
"Both Saint Michael and Saint George are types. They are sainted
personages, or dignified heroes, or powers apotheosized. They are
each represented with their appropriate faculties and attributes.
These are reproduced and stand multiplied--distinguished by different
names in all the mythologies [including the Christian]. But the idea
regarding each is a general one. This idea and representative notion
is that of the all-powerful champion--child-like in his 'virgin
innocence'--so powerful that this God-filled innocence (the Seraphim
'know most,' the Cherubim 'love most') can shatter the world
(articulated--so to use the word--in the magic of Lucifer, but
condemned), in opposition to the artful constructions, won out of
the permission of the Supreme--artful constructions ('this side
life')--of the magnificent apostate, the mighty rebel, but yet, at
the same time, the 'Light-bringer,' the Lucifer--the 'Morning Star,'
the 'Son of the Morning'--the very highest title 'out of heaven,' for
in heaven it cannot be, but out of heaven it is everything. In an
apparently incredible side of his character--for let the reader
carefully remark that qualities are of no sex--this Archangel Saint
Michael is the invincible, sexless, celestial 'Energy'--to dignify
him by his grand characteristics--the invincible 'Virgin-Combatant,'
clothed ... and at the same time armed, in the denying mail of the
Gnostic 'refusal to create.' This is another myth, a 'myth within
myths,' ... a stupendous 'mystery of mysteries,' because it is so
impossible and contradictory. Unexplainable as the Apocalypse.
Unrevealable as the 'Revelation.' " (_Phallicism_, pp. 212, 213.)
Nevertheless, this _unexplainable_ and _unrevealable_ mystery will
now be explained and revealed by the doctrines of the East. Though,
of course, as the very erudite, but still more puzzling author of
_Phallicism_ gives it, no uninitiated mortal would ever understand
his real drift.
553 "Creation"--out of preëxistent eternal Substance, or Matter, of
course, which Substance, according to our teachings, is Boundless,
Ever-existing Space.
554 The Luciferians, a sect of the fourth century who are alleged to
have taught that the soul was a _carnal_ body transmitted to the
child by its father, and the Lucianists, another and earlier sect of
the third century A.D., who taught all this, and further, that the
_animal_ soul was not immortal, philosophized on the grounds of the
real Kabalistic and Occult teachings.
555 This "Central Sun" of the Occultists even Science is obliged to
accept astronomically, for it cannot deny the presence in sidereal
space of a central body in the Milky Way, a point unseen and
mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our Sun and
System. But this "Sun" is viewed differently by the Occultists of
the East. While the Western and Jewish Kabalists--and even some pious
modern Astronomers--claim that in this Sun the God-head is specially
present, referring to it the volitional acts of God--the Eastern
Initiates maintain that, as the Supra-divine Essence of the Unknown
Absolute is equally in every domain and place, the "Central Sun" is
simply the centre of Universal Life-Electricity; the reservoir
within which that Divine Radiance, already differentiated at the
beginning of every "creation," is focussed. Though still in a Laya,
or neutral condition, it is, nevertheless, the one attracting, as
also the ever-emitting, Life-Centre.
556 _Op. cit._, pp. 287-289.
557 See Commentary to Stanza VII, Volume I.
558 The _fourth_ and the _fifth_ from _below_ beginning with the
Physical Body; the _third_ and the _fourth_, if we reckon from Âtmâ.
559 _New Aspects of Life._
560 Angelic, Spiritual Essences, immortal in their Being, because
unconditioned in Eternity; but periodical and conditioned in their
Manvantaric manifestations.
561 _Op. cit._, pp. 97, 98, 2nd ed., 1887.
562 The history of Prometheus, Karma, and human consciousness, is to be
found in Part II, Section V.
563 By an Englishman whose erratic genius killed him. The son of a
Protestant clergyman, he became a Mohammedan; then a rabid Atheist;
after meeting with a Master, a Guru, he became a Mystic; then a
Theosophist who doubted, despaired--threw up _white_ for _black_
magic, went insane and joined the Roman Church. Then again turning
round, anathematized her, re-became an Atheist, and died cursing
humanity, knowledge, and God, in whom he had ceased to believe.
Furnished with all the Esoteric data to write his "War in Heaven,"
he made a semi-political article out of it, mixing Malthus with
Satan, and Darwin with the Astral Light. Peace be to his--_Shell_. He
is a warning to the Chelâs who fail. His forgotten tomb may now be
seen in the Mussulman burial ground of Joonaghur, Kathiawar, India.
564 The author talks of the _active, fighting_, damning Jehovah as
though he were a synonym of Parabrahman! We have quoted from this
article to show where it dissents from Theosophic teachings;
otherwise it would be quoted some day against us, as everything
published in the _Theosophist_ generally is.
565 _The Theosophist_, vol. iii. p. 68.
566 Explaining the _Kabalah_, Dr. Henry Pratt says: "Spirit was to man
[to the Jewish Rabbin, rather!] a bodiless, disembodied, or
deprived, and degraded being, and hence was termed by the ideograph
Nahash, 'Deprived'; represented as appearing to and seducing the
human race--man through the woman.... In the picture from this
Nahash, this spirit was represented by a serpent, because from its
_destitution of bodily members_, the serpent was looked upon as a
deprived and depraved and degraded creature." (_New Aspects of
Life_, p. 235.) Symbol for symbol there are those who would prefer
that of the serpent--the symbol of wisdom and eternity, deprived of
limbs as it is--to the Jod ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~})--the poetical ideograph of Jehovah in
the _Kabalah_--the God of the male symbol of generation.
567 _Zohar_, iii. 61c.
568 Daksha, the "intelligent, the competent." "This name generally
carries with it the idea of _creative power_." He is a son of Brahmâ
and of Aditi, and agreeably to other versions, a self-born power,
which, like Minerva, sprang from his father's body. He is the chief
of the Prajâpatis, the Lords or Creators of Being. In _Vishnu
Purâna_, Parâshara says of him: "In every Kalpa [or Manvantara]
Daksha and the rest are born and are again destroyed." And the _Rig
Veda_ says that "Daksha sprang from Aditi and Aditi from Daksha," a
reference to the eternal cyclic re-birth of the same divine Essence.
569 _Bhâgavata Purâna_, iv. 24, 4.
570 No one of these Orders is distinct from the Pitris or Progenitors.
As says Manu (iii. 284): "The wise call our fathers Vasus; our
paternal grandfathers, Rudras; our paternal great grandfathers,
Âdityas; agreeably to a text of the Vedas." "This is an everlasting
Vedic text," says another translation.
571 As now discovered by the late G. Smith in the Babylonian cylinder
literature, it was the same in Chaldćan Theogony. Ishtar, "eldest of
Heaven and of Earth." Below him the Igigi or Angels of Heaven, and
the Anűnaki, or Angels of Earth. Below these again various classes
of Spirits and "Genii" called Sadu, Vadukku, Ekimu, Gallu--of which
some were good, some evil. (See Smith's _Babylonian Mythology_, also
Sayce's _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 141.)
572 Some superior, others inferior, _to suit the Karma_ of the various
reďncarnating Monads, which could not all be of the same degree of
purity in their last births in other Worlds. This accounts for the
difference of races, the inferiority of the savage and other human
varieties.
573 "There are," says Topinard in the English edition of his
_Anthropology_, with a preface by Professor Broca, "_three_
fundamental elements of colour in the human organism--namely, the
_red_, the _yellow_, and the _black_, which, mixed in variable
quantities with the white of the tissues, give rise to those
numerous shades seen in the human family." Here is Science again
unintentionally supporting Occultism.
574 It must be remembered that the "last remnants" here spoken of, refer
to those portions of the "Great Continent" which still remained, and
not to any of the numerous islands which existed contemporaneously
with the Continent. Plato's "island," for instance, was one of such
remnants; the others having sunk at various periods previously. An
Occult "tradition" teaches that such submersions occur whenever
there is an eclipse of the "Spiritual Sun."
575 See the remarks on the Root and Seed Manus _infra_, and the Section
on "The Primeval Manus of Humanity," at the end of the Commentaries
on this Stanza.
576 Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate attempt to reconcile the Genetic account
with Science (see his "Dawn of Creation" and "Proem to Genesis," in
_The Nineteenth Century_, 1886), has brought upon him the Jovian
thunderbolt hurled by Mr. Huxley. The dead-letter account warranted
no such attempt; and his fourfold order, or division, of animated
creation, has turned into the stone which, instead of killing the
fly on the sleeping friend's brow, killed the man himself. Mr.
Gladstone has killed _Genesis_ for ever. But this does not prove
that there is no Esotericism in the latter. The fact that the Jews
and all the Christians, the modern as well as the early sects, have
accepted the narrative _literally_ for two thousand years, proves
only their ignorance, and shows the great ingenuity and constructive
ability of the Initiated Rabbis, who built the two accounts--the
Elohistic and Jehovistic--Esoterically, and purposely confused the
meaning by the vowelless glyphs or word-signs in the original text.
The six days (Yom) of creation do mean six periods of evolution, and
the seventh day is that of culmination, of perfection--not of rest.
These refer to the seven Rounds and the seven Races with a distinct
"creation" in each; though the use of the words Boker, "dawn" or
"morning," and Ereb, "evening twilight"--which have Esoterically the
same meaning as Sandhyâ, "twilight," in Sanskrit--have led to a
charge of the most crass ignorance of the order of evolution.
577 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 337.
578 Dowson's _Hindű Classical Dictionary_, _sub voce_.
579 _Op. cit._, p. 335.
580 "Follow the law of analogy"--the Masters teach. Âtmâ-Buddhi is dual
and Manas is triple, inasmuch as the former has two aspects, and the
latter three, _i.e._, as a "principle" _per se_, which gravitates,
in its higher aspect, to Âtmâ-Buddhi, and follows, in its lower
nature, Kâma, the seat of terrestrial and animal desires and
passions. Now compare the evolution of the Races, the First and the
Second of which are of the nature of Âtmâ-Buddhi, of which they are
the passive Spiritual progeny, while the Third Root-Race shows three
distinct divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically--the
earliest sinless, the middle portions awakening to intelligence, and
the third and last decidedly _animal_, _i.e._, Manas succumbs to the
temptations of Kâma.
581 Laing, _op. cit._, _ibid._
582 The whole trouble is this: neither Physiologists nor Pathologists
will recognize that the cell-germinating substance, the
Cytoblastema, and the mother-lye from which crystals originate, are
one and the same essence, save in differentiation for certain
purposes.
583 Huxley, _Proceedings of the Royal Institution_, iii. 151.
584 _Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera_, p. xi.
585 _Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow_, vol. iii. Very
strangely, however, he has recently again changed his opinion. The
Sun, he says, is only 15,000,000 years old.
586 Bastian, _The Beginnings of Life_, ii. 622.
587 Laing, _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 171.
588 In _Isis Unveiled_, vol. i. p. 389, this is noticed and half
explained.
589 Hence the philosophy in the allegory of the 7, 10, and finally 21,
Prajâpatis, Rishis, Munis, etc., who all are made the "fathers" of
various beings and things. The order of the seven classes, or orders
of plants, animals, and even inanimate things, given at random in
the _Purânas_, is found in several commentaries in the correct
rotation. Thus, Prithu is the father of the Earth. He "milks" her,
and makes her bear every kind of grain and vegetable, all enumerated
and specified. Kashyapa is the "father" of all the reptiles, snakes,
demons, etc.
590 See vol. i. pp. 151, _et seqq._, concerning the "Tree of
Evolution"--the "Mundane Tree."
591 Checked and modified, however, by the Law of Retardation, which
imposes a restriction on the advance of all species when a _higher
type_ makes its appearance.
592 See _Origin of Species_, p. 145.
593 Bastian, _Beginnings of Life_, ii. pp. 622, 623.
594 Vol. ii. p. 278.
595 _Op. cit._, i. 9.
596 _Ibid._, ii. 283, 284.
597 See his _Lettres sur l'Atlantide_.
598 This is shown by Faber, again a pious Christian, who says that: "The
Noëtic family also ... bore the appellations of Atlanteans and
Titans; and the great patriarch himself was called, by way of
eminence, Atlas and Titan." (_Ibid._, ii. 285.) And if so, then,
_according to the Bible_, Noah must have been the progeny of the
Sons of God, the Fallen Angels, agreeably to the same authority, and
of the "daughters of men who were fair." (See _Genesis_, vi.) And
why not, since his father Lamech slew a man, and was, with all his
sons and daughters, who perished in the Deluge, as bad as the rest
of mankind?
599 In that wonderful volume of Donnelly, _Atlantis, the Antediluvian
World_, the author, speaking of the Âryan colonies from Atlantis,
and of the arts and sciences--the legacy of our Fourth Race--bravely
announces that "the roots of the institutions of to-day reach back
to the Miocene age." This is an enormous allowance for a modern
scholar to make; but civilization dates still further back than the
Miocene Atlanteans. Secondary-period man will be discovered, and
with him his long forgotten civilization.
600 Nature is the _Natural_ Body, the Shadow of the Progenitors.
601 Man is the "Heavenly Man," as already stated.
602 _Divine Pymander_, i. 16.
603 The _Pymander_ of our museums and libraries is an abridgment of one
of the Books of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria. In the Third
Century it was remodelled after old Hebrew and Phoenician MSS. by a
Jewish Kabalist, and called the _Genesis of Enoch_. But even its
disfigured remnants show how closely its text agrees with the
Archaic Doctrine, as is shown in the creation of the Seven Creators
and Seven Primitive Men. As to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and
Cadmus, these are all generic names, branches and offshoots of the
seven primordial Sages--incarnated Dhyân Chohans or Devas, in
_illusive_, not mortal bodies--who taught Humanity all it knew, and
whose earliest disciples assumed their Master's names. This custom
passed from the Fourth to the Fifth Race. Hence the sameness of the
traditions about Hermes--of whom Egyptologists count five--Enoch,
etc.; they are all inventors of letters; none of them die; they
still live, and are the first Initiators into, and Founders of, the
Mysteries. It was only very lately that the _Genesis of Enoch_
disappeared from among the Kabalists. Guillaume Postel saw it. It
was most certainly in a great measure a transcript from the Books of
Hermes, and far anterior to the Books of Moses, as Éliphas Lévi
tells his readers.
604 Uranus is a modified Varuna, the "universal encompasser," the "all-
embracer," and one of the oldest of the Vedic Deities--Space, the
maker of Heaven and Earth, since both are manifested out of his (or
its) seed. It is only later that Varuna became the chief of the
Âdityas and a kind of Neptune riding on the "Leviathan"--Makara, now
the most sacred and mysterious of the Signs of the Zodiac. Varuna,
without whom "no creature can even wink," was degraded like Uranus,
and, like him, _fell into generation_; his functions--"the grandest
cosmical functions," as Muir calls them--having been degraded from
Heaven to Earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same
Orientalist says: "The attributes and functions ascribed to Varuna
[in the Vedas] impart to his character a moral elevation and
sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity."
But to understand correctly the reason of his fall, like as that of
Uranus, one has to see in every exoteric religion the imperfect and
sinful work of man's fancy, and also to study the mysteries which
Varuna is said to have imparted to Vasishtha. Only "his secrets and
those of Mitra _are not to be revealed to the foolish_."
605 _Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_, p. 7.
606 Cronus is not only {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, Time, but also, as Bréal showed, in his
_Hercule et Cacus_ (p. 57), comes from the root _kar_, "to make, to
create." Whether Bréal and Decharme, who quotes him, are as right in
saying that in the _Vedas_, Krânan (_sic_) is a Creative God, we
have our doubts. Bréal probably meant Karma, or rather Visvakarman,
the Creative God, the "omnificent" and the "great architect of the
world."
607 See Stanzas III--X, _et seqq._, and also Berosus' account of primeval
creation.
608 The Titanic struggle, in Theogony at least, is the fight for
supremacy between the children of Uranus and Gća (or Heaven and
Earth in their abstract sense), the Titans, against the children of
Cronus, whose chief is Zeus. It is the everlasting struggle going on
to this day between the Spiritual Inner Man and the man of flesh, in
one sense.
609 Just as the "Lord God," or Jehovah, is Cain, esoterically, and the
"tempting serpent" as well; the male portion of the androgynous
Eve--before her "Fall," the female portion of Adam Kadmon--the left
side, or Binah, of the right side, Chokmah, in the first Sephirothal
Triad.
610 Decharme, _op. cit._, p. 284.
611 In the Egyptian legend, called the "Two Brothers," translated by M.
Maspéro (the ex-director of the Boulaq Museum), the original of
Pandora is given. Noom, the famous heavenly artist, creates a
marvellous beauty, a girl whom he sends to Batoo, after which the
happiness of the latter is destroyed. Batoo is man, and the girl
Eve, of course. (See _Revue Archéologique_, March, 1878, and also
Decharme, _ibid._, p. 285.)
612 Yima is not the "first man" in the _Vendîdâd_, but only in the
theories of the Orientalists.
613 Boeotia was submerged and subsequently ancient Athens and Eleusis.
614 _Opera et Dies_, v. 108.
615 _Nem._, VI. i.
616 See _Apollod._, i. 7, 2; and Ovid, _Metam._, i. 260, _et seqq._
617 _Deutsche Mythol._, i. 545, 3rd edit., and Hanusch _Schlawische
Myth._, p. 235. See Decharme, _ibid._, p. 288, who gives "nine
times," and not seven.
618 Hesiod, _Opera et Dies_, 143-155.
619 See Ćschylus, _Septem contra Thebas_.
620 Decharme, _ibid._, pp. 289, 290.
621 Races.
622 It was said.
623 In Sanskrit Dâkinî.
624 The name is used here in the sense, and as a synonym, of
"sorcerers." The Atlantean Races were many, and their evolution
lasted for millions of years. All of them were not bad, but became
so towards the end of their cycle, as we, the Fifth Race, are now
fast becoming.
625 The "Gods of the Elements" are by no means the Elementals. The
latter are at best used by them as vehicles and materials in which
to clothe themselves.
626 Cain was the "sacrificer," as shown at first in Chap. iv. of
_Genesis_, of "the fruit of the ground," of which he was the _first
tiller_, while Abel "brought of the firstlings of his flock" to the
Lord. Cain is the symbol of the first male, Abel of the first female
humanity, Adam and Eve being the types of the Third Race. The
"murdering" is blood-shedding, but not taking life.
627 _Genesis_, vi.
628 It is, perhaps, with an eye to this _degradation_ of the highest and
purest Spirits, who broke through the intermediate planes of lower
consciousness, the "Seven Circles of Fire" of _Pymander_, that St.
James is made to say "This wisdom (_sophia_) descendeth not from
above, but is earthly, sensual, _devilish_"; now this Sophia is
Manas, the "Human Soul," the Spiritual Wisdom or Soul being Buddhi,
which being so near the Absolute, is, _per se_, only _latent_
consciousness, and is dependent upon Manas for manifestation beyond
its own plane.
629 This is the "Undying Race," as it is called in Esotericism, and
exoterically the fruitless generation of the first progeny of
Daksha, who curses Nârada, the divine Rishi, for having dissuaded
the Haryashvas and the Shabalâshvas (the sons of Daksha) from
procreating their species, by saying: "Be born in the womb; there
shall not be a resting place for thee in all these regions." After
this, Nârada, the representative of that race of _fruitless_
ascetics, is said, as soon as he dies in one body, to be reborn in
another.
630 Âdi Parvan, p. 113.
631 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., ii. 12.
632 The traditions of every country and nation point to this fact.
Donnelly quotes from Father Duran's _Historia Antigua de la Nueva
Espańa_ of 1885, in which a native of Cholula, a centenarian,
accounts for the building of the great pyramid of Cholula, as
follows: "In the beginning, before the light of the sun had been
created, this land [Cholula] was in obscurity and darkness ... but
immediately _after the light of the sun arose in the East_, there
appeared gigantic men ... who built the said pyramid, its builders
being scattered after that to all parts of the earth."
"A great deal of the Central American history is taken up with the
doings of an ancient race of Giants called Quinanes," says the
author of _Atlantis_ (p. 204).
633 _Histoire de la Terre_, p. 154.
634 There are critics who, finding no evidence for the existence of
Tertullian save in the writings of Eusebius, "the veracious," are
inclined to doubt it.
635 _Heroica_, p. 35.
636 _Hist. Nat._, VII. xvi.
637 See for the above De Mirville, _Pneumatologie Des Esprits_, iii.
46-48.
638 _Élévations_, p. 56.
639 And that, notwithstanding the formal prohibition at the great Church
Council of Elyrus in A.D. 303, when it was declared that "the form
of God, which is immaterial and invisible, shall not be limited by
figure or shape." In 692, the Council of Constantinople similarly
prohibited the faithful "to paint or represent Jesus _as a lamb_,"
as also "to bow the knee in praying, as it is the act of idolatry."
But the Council of Nicća (787) brought this idolatry back, while
that of Rome (883) excommunicated John, the Patriarch of
Constantinople, for showing himself an enemy of image worship.
640 _Genesis_, v. Treating of the Chinese Dragon and the literature of
China, Mr. Charles Gould, in his _Mythical Monsters_ (p. 212),
writes: "Its mythologies, histories, religions, popular stories, and
proverbs, all teem with references to a mysterious being _who has a
physical nature and spiritual attributes_. Gifted with an accepted
form, which he has the supernatural power of casting off for the
assumption of others, he has the power of influencing the weather,
producing droughts or fertilizing rains at pleasure, of raising
tempests and allaying them. Volumes could be compiled from the
scattered legends which everywhere abound relating to this subject."
This "mysterious being" is the _mythical_ Dragon, _i.e._, the symbol
of the _historical_ and actual Adept, the Master and Professor of
Occult Sciences of old. It has already been stated elsewhere, that
the great "Magicians" of the Fourth and Fifth Races were generally
called "Serpents" and "Dragons" after their Progenitors. All these
belonged to the Hierarchy of the so-called "Fiery Dragons of
Wisdom," the Dhyân Chohans, answering to the Agnishvâtta Pitris, the
Maruts and Rudras generally, as the issue of Rudra their father, who
is identified with the God of Fire. More is said in the text. Now
Clement, an initiated Neo-Platonist, knew, of course, the origin of
the word "Dragon," and why the initiated Adepts were so called, as
he knew the secret of the Agathodćmon, the Christ, the seven-
vowelled Serpent of the Gnostics. He knew that the dogma of his new
faith required the transformation of all the _rivals_ of Jehovah--the
Angels supposed to have rebelled against that "Elohim," as the Titan
Prometheus rebelled against Zeus, the usurper of his father's
kingdom--and that "Dragon" was the mystic appellation of the "Sons of
Wisdom"; from this knowledge came his definition, as cruel as it was
arbitrary, "serpents and giants signify _demons_," _i.e._, not
"Spirits," but _Devils_, in Church parlance.
641 Part IV, Ch. xxvii, p. 291.
642 "What would you say to our affirmation that the Chinese--I now speak
of the inland, the true Chinamen, not of the hybrid mixture between
the Fourth and Fifth Races now occupying the throne--the aborigines
who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and
last branch of the Fourth Race, reached their highest civilization
when the Fifth had hardly appeared in Asia." (_Esoteric Buddhism_,
p. 67.) And this handful of the inland Chinese are all of a very
high stature. Could the most ancient MSS. in the Lolo language (that
of the aborigines of China) be got at and correctly translated, many
a priceless piece of evidence would be found. But they are as rare
as their language is unintelligible. So far, one or two European
Archćologists only have been able to procure such priceless works.
643 Quoted in De Mirville, _op. cit._, iii. 53. Remember the same
statement in the _Book of Enoch_, as also the ladder seen by Jacob
in his dream. The "two worlds" mean, of course, the two _planes_ of
Consciousness and Being. A seer can commune with Beings of a higher
plane than the Earth, without quitting his arm-chair.
644 See the Commentary on the Four Races--and on the "Sons of Will and
Yoga," the immaculate progeny of the Androgynous Third Race.
645 In the _Kabalah_ the pronunciation of the four-lettered _ineffable_
Name is "a most secret arcanum"--"a secret of secrets."
646 _The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 81.
647 _Ibid._, p. 84, lines 12, 14 and 15.
648 Returning once more to this most important subject in Archaic
Cosmogony, even in the Norse legends, in the Sacred Scrolls of the
Goddess Saga, we find Loki, the brother by blood of Odin--just as
Typhon, Ahriman, and others are respectively brothers of Osiris and
Ormazd--becoming evil only later, when he had mingled too long with
humanity. Like all other Fire or Light Gods--Fire burning and
destroying as well as warming and giving life--he ended by being
regarded in the destructive sense of "Fire." The name _Loki_, we
learn from _Asgard and the Gods_ (p. 250), has been derived from the
old word _liuhan_, to enlighten. It has, therefore, the same origin
as the Latin _lux_, light. Hence Loki is identical with Lucifer or
Light-bringer. This title, being given to the Prince of Darkness, is
very suggestive and is in itself a vindication against theological
slander. But Loki is still more closely related to Prometheus, for
he is shown chained to a sharp rock, while Lucifer, also identified
with Satan, was chained down in Hell; a circumstance, however, which
prevented neither of them from acting with all freedom on Earth, if
we accept the theological paradox in its fulness. Loki is a
beneficent, generous and powerful God in the beginnings of time, and
the principle of good, and not of evil, in early Scandinavian
Theogony.
649 The Greek mythos alluded to a few pages back, namely the mutilation
of Uranus by his son Cronus, is an allusion to this "theft" of the
_divine creative Fire_ by the Son of the Earth and Heavens. If
Uranus, the personification of the Celestial Powers, has to cease
creating (he is made impotent by Cronus (Chronos), the God _in
Time_), so, in the Egyptian Cosmogony, it is Thot, the God of
Wisdom, who regulates this fight between Horus and Set, the latter
being served by the former as Uranus is by Cronus. (See _Book of the
Dead_, xvii, line 26.) In the Babylonian account it is the God Zu,
who strips the "Father of the Gods" of "_umsimi_"--the ideal creative
organ, not the "crown" (!) as G. Smith thought (_op. cit._, pp. 115,
116). For, in the fragment K. 3454 (British Museum), it is said very
clearly, that Zu having stripped the "venerable of heaven" of his
_desire_, he carried away the "_umsimi_ of the gods," and burnt
thereby "the _tereti_ [the power] of all the gods," thus "governing
the whole of the _seed_ of all the angels." As the _umsimi_ was "_on
the seat_" of Bel, it could hardly be the "crown." A fourth version
is in the _Bible_. Ham is the Chaldćan Zu, and both are cursed for
the same allegorically described crime.
650 Quoted by Christian Ginsburg from the _Kabalah_.
651 Schlagintweit, _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 248. These are the Beings
whose legendary existence has served as a ground-work upon which to
build the Rabbinical Lilith, and what the believers in the _Bible_
would term the Antediluvian women, and the Kabalists the Pre-Adamite
races. They are no fiction--this is certain, however fantastic the
exuberance of later growth.
652 _Op. cit._, pp. 101, 102.
653 For suggestiveness, we would recommend a short article by Visconde
de Figaničre, F.T.S., in _The Theosophist_, entitled "Esoteric
Studies." Its author expounds therein quite an Occult theory, though
to the world a new idea--"the _progress_ of the Monad concurring with
the _retrogression_ of Form, _i.e._, with decrease of the _vis
formativa_." (Vol. viii. p. 666.) He says, "Who knows what shape
vehicled the Ego in remote rings [Rounds, or Races?]?... May not
man's type ... have been that of the Simiadć in its variety? Might
not the Monkey-kingdom of Râmâyana fame rest on some far-off
tradition relating to a period when that was the common lot, or
rather aspect, of man?" And the author winds up a very clever,
though too short, exposition of his theory by saying that which
every true Occultist will endorse: "With physico-ethereal man there
must be _involution_ of sex. As physico-astral man depended on
entities of the sub-human class (evolved from animal prototypes) for
rebirth, so will physico-ethereal man find among the graceful,
shapely orders issuing from the _air_-plane, one or more which will
be developed for his successive embodiments _when procreated forms
are given_--a process which will include all mankind only very
gradually. The [_Pre_-?] Adamic and Post-Adamic races were giants;
their ethereal counterparts may possibly be liliputians--beauteous,
luminous, diaphanous--but will assuredly be giants in mind" (p. 671).
654 It may be objected that this is a contradiction. That, as the first
Root-Race appeared 300,000,000 years after the vegetation had
evolved, the Seed of vegetable life could not be in the First Race.
We say it could; for up to man's appearance in _this_ Round, the
vegetation was of quite another kind to what it is now, and quite
ethereal; this, for the simple reason that no grass or plants could
have been physical, before there were animal or other organisms to
breathe out the carbonic acid which vegetation has to imbibe for its
development, its nutrition and growth. They are interdependent in
their _physical_ and achieved forms.
655 _Zohar_, i. 21a.
656 _Ibid._, iii. 48a.
657 _Ibid._, ii. 76a.
658 _Op. cit._, p. 666.
659 It is stated in the _Zohar_ that the "primordial worlds" (sparks)
could not continue because _man was not as yet_. "The _human_ form
contains everything; and as it did not as yet exist, the worlds were
destroyed."
660 "The Sacred Books of the East," vol. iv; _The Vendîdâd_, J.
Darmesteter; Fargard ii. vv. 27 (70) and 28 (74).
661 This is the meaning when the allegory and symbol are opened and read
by means of the _human_ key, or the key to Terrestrial
Anthroposophy. This interpretation of the "Ark" symbolism does not
in the least interfere with its astronomical, or even theogonic
keys; nor with any of the other six meanings. Nor does it seem less
scientific than the modern theories about the origin of man. As
said, it has seven keys to it, like the rest.
662 _Ibid._, v. 30 (87).
663 _Ibid._, v. 31 (93).
664 _Ibid._, v. 40 (131).
665 See also _Bund._, xv.
666 _Ibid._, 42 (137).
667 _Bund._, xix and xxiv.
668 S. L. MacGregor Mathers, _Kabbalah Unveiled_, p. 104.
669 _Zohar_, ii. 8b.
670 _Zohar_, iii. 278a; Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 217.
671 Darwinian Evolutionists who are so wont to refer to the evidence of
_reversion to type_--the full meaning of which, in the case of human
monsters, is embraced in the Esoteric solution of the embryological
problem--as proof of their arguments, would do well to enquire into
those instances of _modern giants_ who are often 8, 9, and even 11
feet high. Such _reversions_ are imperfect, yet undeniable
reproductions of the original towering man of primeval times.
672 See _Mythical Monsters_, by Ch. Gould, from whose interesting and
scientific volume a few passages are quoted further on. See also, in
A. P. Sinnett's _Occult World_, the description of a cavern in the
Himâlayas filled with relics of giant human and animal bones.
673 _I.e._, the Third Eye was at the back of the head. The statement
that the latest hermaphrodite humanity was "four-armed," unriddles
probably the mystery of all the representations and idols of the
exoteric Gods of India. On the Acropolis of Argos, there was a
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, a rudely carved wooden statue, attributed to Dćdalus,
representing a three-eyed colossus, which was consecrated to Zeus
Triôpęs, the "Three-eyed." The head of the "god" has two eyes in its
face and one above on the top of the forehead. It is considered the
most archaic of all the ancient statues. (_Schol. Vatic, ad Eurip.
Troad._, 14.)
674 The _inner vision_ could henceforth be acquired only through
training and initiation, save in the cases of "natural and born
magicians"--sensitives and mediums, as they are called now.
675 This expression "petrified" instead of "ossified" is curious. The
"back eye," which is of course the Pineal Gland, so-called, the
small pea-like mass of grey nervous matter attached to the back of
the third ventricle of the brain, is said to almost invariably
contain _mineral concretions_ and _sand_, and "nothing more."
676 "Deeply placed within the head, covered by thick skin and muscles,
true eyes, that cannot see, are found in certain animals," says
Hćckel. "Among the Vertebrata there are blind moles and field-mice,
blind snakes and lizards.... They shun the daylight, dwelling ...
under the ground.... [They] were _not originally blind_, but have
evolved from ancestors that lived in the light and had well-
developed eyes. The atrophied eye beneath the opaque skin may be
found in these blind beings in every stage of reversion." (Hćckel,
_Pedigree of Man_, "Sense Organs." p. 343: Aveling's Trans.) And if
_two_ eyes could become so atrophied in lower animals, why not _one_
eye--the Pineal Gland--in man, who is but a higher animal in his
physical aspect?
677 _Op. cit._, ii. 830, 831, ninth edition; "The Thalamencephalon or
Inter-brain."
678 The "nervous ether" of Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S.; the nerve-aura
of Occultism. The "animal spirits" (?) are equivalent to the
currents of nerve-auric compound circulation.
679 Let us remember that the _First_ Race is shown, in Occult Science,
as spiritual within and ethereal without; the _Second_, psycho-
spiritual mentally, and ethereo-physical bodily; the _Third_, still
bereft of intellect in its beginning, is astro-physical in its body,
and lives an inner life, in which the psycho-spiritual element is in
no way as yet interfered with by the hardly nascent physiological
senses. Its two front eyes look before them without seeing either
past or future. But the Third Eye "_embraces Eternity_."
680 But in a very different manner to that pictured by Hćckel as an
"_evolution by Natural Selection in the struggle for existence_"
(_Pedigree of Man_, "Sense Organs," p. 335; Aveling's Trans.). The
mere "thermal sensibility of the skin," to hypothetical light-waves,
is absurdly incompetent to account for the beautiful combination of
adaptations existing in the eye. We have shown that "natural
selection" is a pure myth when credited with the _origination_ of
variations, as the "survival of the fittest" can only take place
after useful variations have sprung up, together with improved
organisms. Whence came the "useful variations," which developed the
eye? Only from "blind forces ... without aim, without design"? The
argument is puerile. The true solution of the mystery is to be found
in the impersonal Divine Wisdom, in its Ideation--reflected through
Matter.
681 Palćontology has ascertained that in the animals of the Mesozoic
age--the Saurians especially, such as the antediluvian Labyrinthodon,
whose fossil skull exhibits a perforation otherwise inexplicable--the
third, or odd eye must have been much developed. Several
Naturalists, among others E. Korscheldt, feel convinced that
whereas, notwithstanding the opaque skin covering it, such an eye in
the reptiles of the present period can only distinguish light from
darkness (as the human eyes do when bound with a handkerchief, or
even tightly closed), in the now extinct animals that eye functioned
and was a real organ of vision.
682 Gould's _Mythical Monsters_, p. 27.
683 Karma is a word of many meanings, and has a special term for almost
every one of its aspects. As a synonym of sin, it means the
performance of some action for the attainment of an object of
_worldly_, hence _selfish_, desire, which cannot fail to be hurtful
to somebody else. Karma is action, the cause; and Karma again is the
"Law of Ethical Causation"; the _effect_ of an act produced
egotistically, in face of the great Law of Harmony which depends on
altruism.
684 Objectors to the doctrine of Karma should recall the fact that it is
absolutely out of the question to attempt a reply to the Pessimists
on other data. A firm grasp of the principles of Karmic Law knocks
away the whole basis of the imposing fabric reared by the disciples
of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann.
685 The doctrine and theology of the Calvinists. "The purpose of God
_from eternity_ respecting all events"--which becomes _fatalism_ and
kills free will, or any attempt of exerting it for good. "It is the
preässignment or allotment of men to everlasting happiness or
misery." (_Catechism._) A noble and encouraging doctrine this!
686 In order to make Karma more comprehensible to the Western mind,
which is better acquainted with the Greek than with Âryan
philosophy, some Theosophists have made an attempt to translate it
by Nemesis. Had Nemesis been known to the Profane in antiquity, as
it was understood by the Initiate, this translation of the term
would be unobjectionable. As it is, Nemesis has been too much
anthropomorphized by Greek fancy to permit our using it without an
elaborate explanation. With the early Greeks, "from Homer to
Herodotus, she was no goddess, but a _moral feeling_ rather," says
Decharme; the barrier to evil and immorality. He who transgresses
it, commits a sacrilege in the eyes of the Gods, and is pursued by
Nemesis. But, with time, that "feeling" was deified, and its
personification became an ever-fatal and punishing Goddess.
Therefore, if we would connect Karma with Nemesis, we must do so in
her triple character as Nemesis, Adrasteia and Themis. For, while
the last is the Goddess of Universal Order and Harmony, who, like
Nemesis, is commissioned to repress every excess, and keep man
within the limits of Nature and righteousness under severe penalty,
Adrasteia, the "inevitable," represents Nemesis as the immutable
effect of causes created by man himself. Nemesis, as the daughter of
Dikę, is the equitable Goddess reserving her wrath for those alone
who are maddened with pride, egoďsm, and impiety. (See Mesomed.,
_Hymn. Nemes._, v. 2, from Brunck, _Analecta_ II. p. 292; quoted in
_Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_, p. 304.) In short, while Nemesis
is a mythological, exoteric Goddess, or _Power_, personified and
anthropomorphized in its various aspects, Karma is a highly
philosophical truth, a most divine and noble expression of the
primitive intuition of man concerning Deity. It is a doctrine which
explains the origin of Evil, and ennobles our conceptions of what
divine immutable Justice ought to be, instead of degrading the
unknown and unknowable Deity by making it the whimsical, cruel
tyrant, which we call "Providence."
687 Pralaya--a word already explained--is not a term that applies _only_
to every "Night of Brahmâ," or the World's Dissolution following
every Manvantara, equal to 71 Mahâyugas. It applies also to each
"Obscuration" as well, and even to every Cataclysm that puts an end,
by Fire or by Water in turn, to each Root-Race. Pralaya is a general
term like the word "Manu" the generic name for the Shishtas, who,
under the appellation of "Kings," are said in the _Purânas_ to be
preserved "with the seed of all things, in an ark, from the waters
of that inundation [or the fires of a general volcanic
conflagration, the commencement of which we already see for our
Fifth Race in the terrible earthquakes and eruptions of these late
years, and especially in the present year (1888)], which, in the
season of a Pralaya overspreads the world [the Earth]." (_Vishnu
Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., I. lxxxi.) Time is only a form of
Vishnu--truly, as Parâshara says in the _Vishnu Purâna_. In the Hindű
Yugas and Kalpas, we have the regular descending series 4, 3, 2,
with ciphers, multiplied, as occasion requires, for Esoteric
purposes, but not, as Wilson and other Orientalists thought, for
"sectarian embellishments." A Kalpa may be an Age, or Day of Brahmâ,
or a sidereal Kalpa, astronomical and earthly. These calculations
are found in all the _Purânas_, but some differ--as for instance, the
"Year of the seven Rishis," 3,030 mortal years, and the "Year of
Dhruva," 9,090, in the _Linga Purâna_, which are again Esoteric, and
_do_ represent actual (and secret) chronology. As said in the
_Brahma Vaivarta_: "Chronologers compute a Kalpa by the life of
Brahmâ. _Minor_ Kalpas, as Samvarta and the rest, are numerous."
"Minor Kalpas" denote here every period of Destruction, as was well
understood by Wilson himself, who explains the latter as "those in
which the Samvarta wind or other destructive agents operate."
(_Ibid._, p. 54.)
688 An intuition and a presentiment of the Shishtas may be found in Mr.
Sinnett's _Esoteric Buddhism_. See the "Annotations"--the "Noah's Ark
Theory," pp. 146, 147, fifth edition.
689 The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by
Virâj, and that he then produced the ten Prajápatis, who again
produced seven Manus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other
Manus (_Manu_, i. 33-36) relates to other still earlier mysteries,
and is at the same time a "blind" with regard to the doctrine of the
Septenary Chain, and the simultaneous evolution of seven Humanities,
or Men. However, the present work is written on the records of Cis-
Himâlayan Secret Teachings, and Brâhmanical Esoteric Philosophy may
now differ in form as does the Kabalah. But they were identical in
hoary antiquity.
690 There is another Esoteric reason besides this for it. A Vaivasvata
is the _seventh_ Manu, because this our Round, although the Fourth,
is in the _preseptenary_ Manvantara, and the Round itself is in its
_seventh_ stage of materiality or physicality. The close of its
middle racial point occurred during the Fourth Root-Race, when Man
and all Nature reached their lowest state of gross Matter. From that
time, _i.e._, from the end of the three and a half Races, Humanity
and Nature entered on the ascending arc of their Racial Cycle.
691 The interval that precedes each Yuga is called a Sandhyâ, composed
of as many hundreds of years as there are thousands in the Yuga; and
that which follows the latter is named Sandhyâmsha, and is of
similar duration, as we are told in _Vishnu Purâna_. "The interval
between the Sandhyâ and the Sandhyâmsha is the Yuga denominated
Krita, Tretâ, etc. The [four] Krita, Tretâ, Dvâpara, and Kali
constitute a great age, or aggregate of four ages: a thousand such
aggregates are a Day of Brahmâ; and fourteen _Manus reign within
that term_." (_Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 49.) Now had we to accept this
literally then there would be only one Manu for every 4,320,000,000
years. As we are taught that it took 300 million years for the two
lower kingdoms to evolve, and that our Humanity is just 18 and some
odd millions old--where were the other Manus spoken of, unless the
allegory means what the Esoteric Doctrine teaches as to the 14 being
each multiplied by 49.
692 The words "Creation," "Dissolution," etc., do not correctly render
the right meaning of either Manvantara or Pralaya. The _Vishnu
Purâna_ enumerates several: "The dissolution of all things is of
four kinds," Parâshara is made to say: Naimittika (Occasional), when
Brahmâ slumbers (his Night, when, "at the end of this Day occurs a
re-coalescence _of the Universe_, called Brahmâ's contingent re-
coalescence," because Brahmâ _is_ this Universe itself); Prâkritika
(Elemental), when the return of this Universe to its original nature
is partial and physical; Âtyantika (Absolute), identification of the
_Embodied_ with the incorporeal Supreme Spirit--Mahâtmic state,
whether temporary or until the following Mahâ Kalpa: also Absolute
Obscuration--as of a whole Planetary Chain, etc.; and Nitya
(Perpetual), Mahâ Pralaya for the Universe, _Death_--for man. Nitya
is the extinction of life, like the "extinction of a lamp," also "in
sleep at night." Nitya Sarga is "constant or perpetual creation," as
Nitya Pralaya is "constant or perpetual destruction of all that is
born." "That which ensues after a minor dissolution is called
ephemeral creation." (_Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., i. 113,
114.) The subject is so difficult that we are obliged to repeat our
statements.
693 But see the superb definitions of Parabrahman and the Logos in T.
Subba Row's Lectures on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_ in the early numbers of
_The Theosophist_ of 1887.
694 See preceding foot-note.
695 See _Manu_, i. 32, 33. Vaishvânara is, in another sense, the living
magnetic fire that pervades the manifested Solar System. It is the
most objective (though to us the reverse) and ever present aspect of
the One Life, for it is the Vital Principle. (See _Theosophist_,
July, 1883, p. 249.) It is also a name of Agni.
696 _Op. cit._, pp. 134, 135.
697 This--in the period of _Secondary_ Creation, so called. Of the
_Primary_, when Earth is in possession of the three _Elemental_
Kingdoms, we cannot speak for several reasons, one of which is,
that, no one but a great seer, or one naturally intuitional, will be
able to realize that which can never be expressed in any existing
terms.
698 Hippocrates said that number _seven_ "by its occult virtues tended
to the accomplishment of all things, to be the dispenser of life and
fountain of all its changes." The life of man he divided into seven
ages, as did Shakespeare, for "as the moon changes her phases every
seven days, this number influences all sublunary beings," and even
the Earth, as we know. The teeth of a child appear in the seventh
month, and he sheds them at seven years; at twice seven puberty
begins, at three times seven his mental and vital powers are
developed, at four times seven he is in his full strength, at five
times seven his passions are most developed, etc. Thus also for the
Earth; it is now in its middle age, yet very little wiser for it.
The Tetragrammaton, the four-lettered sacred name of the Deity, can
be resolved on Earth only by becoming septenary through the manifest
Triangle proceeding from the concealed Tetraktys. Therefore, the
number seven has to be adopted on this plane. As written in the
_Kabalah_ ("The Greater Holy Assembly," v. 1161): "For assuredly
there is no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the
_seventh_. For _all things depend_ from the _seventh_." (S. L.
MacGregor Mathers' _Kabbalah_, p. 255.)
699 Compare Stanzas III. _et seqq._
700 St. Augustin says of Jesus: "He is a _fish_ that lives in the midst
of waters." Christians called themselves "Little
Fishes"--_Pisciculi_--in their sacred Mysteries. "So many _fishes_
bred in the _water_, and saved by _one great fish_," says Tertullian
of the Christians and Christ and the Church.
701 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 55.
702 This event--viz., the destruction of the famous island of Ruta and
the smaller island Daitya--which occurred 850,000 years ago in the
later Pliocene times, must not be confounded with the submersion of
the main Continent of Atlantis during the Miocene period. Geologists
cannot bring the Miocene so near as 850,000 years, whatever they may
do; it is, in reality, several million years ago that the main
Atlantis perished.
703 See _The Athenćum_, Aug. 25th, 1860.
704 Mr. Huxley divides these races into the quintuple group of
Australoids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthochroics and
Melanochroics--all issuing from imaginary Anthropoids. And yet, while
protesting against those who say "that the structural differences
between man and apes are small and insignificant," and adding that
"every bone of the gorilla bears a mark by which it can be
distinguished from a corresponding human bone, and that in the
present state of creation, at least, no intermediary being fills the
gap which separates the man from the troglodyte"--the great Anatomist
goes on speaking of the _simian_ characteristics in man! (See de
Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, P. 113.)
705 _Op. cit._, Isaac Myer, p. 422.
706 _Zohar_, i. 119b, col. 475; _ibid._, p. 412.
707 The Lemurians.
708 Lava.
709 Marble.
710 Of the subterranean fires.
711 This is the reason, perhaps, why even Easter Island, with its
wondrous gigantic statues--a speaking witness to a submerged
continent with a civilized mankind on it--is hardly mentioned
anywhere in modern Encyclopćdias. Its mention is carefully avoided
except in some books of travels. Modern Science has an undeniable
predilection for forcing hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, upon
the cultured public, as well-established evidence: for offering it
_guesses_ instead of knowledge, and calling them "scientific
conclusions." Its specialists will evolve a thousand and one
contradictory speculations rather than confess an _awkward self-
evident fact_--preëminent among such specialists being Hćckel and his
English admirers and co-thinkers. Yet "they are authorities"--we are
sternly reminded. What of that? The Pope of Rome is also an
authority and an infallible one--for _his_ followers; whereas the
remarkable fallibility of scientific speculations is being proven
periodically with every change of the moon.
712 Our best modern novelists, although they are neither Theosophists
nor Spiritualists, nevertheless begin to have very psychological and
suggestively Occult dreams; witness Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson and
his _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, than which no grander
psychological essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist
Mr. Rider Haggard also had a prophetic, or rather a retrospective,
clairvoyant dream before he wrote _She_? His imperial Kor, the great
city of the dead, whose surviving inhabitants sailed northwards
after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems, in its
general outlines, to step out from the imperishable pages of the old
archaic records. Ayesha suggests "that those men who sailed north
may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians"; and then seems to
attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a Master quoted in
_Esoteric Buddhism_, for, she says: "Time after time have nations,
ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and
passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains.
This [the nation of Kor] is but one of several; for time eats up the
work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor,
and _then mayhap the sea swallows them, or the earthquake shakes
them in_.... Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I
think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were
many. But the barbarians ... came down upon them, and took their
women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a
bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in
the tombs with its fathers' bones" (pp. 180, 181).
Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now
degraded and down-fallen races of humanity. Geologists and
Anthropologists would place at the head of humanity--as descendants
of Homo Primigenius--the ape-man, of which "_no fossil remains are as
yet known to us_," though they "were _probably_ akin to the
_Gorilla_ and _Orang of the present day_" (Hćckel). In answer to
whose "probably," Occultists point to another and a greater
probability--viz., the one given in our text.
713 Robert Brown, _The Countries of the World_, vol. iv. p. 43.
714 See Stanza II. This would account for the variation and great
difference between the intellectual capacities of races, nations,
and individual men. While incarnating into, and in other cases only
informing, the human vehicles evolved by the first brainless
("manas-less") Race, the incarnating Powers and Principles had to
take into account, and make their choice between, the past Karmas of
the Monads, between which and their bodies they had to become the
connecting link. Moreover, as correctly stated in _Esoteric
Buddhism_ (p. 30), "the fifth principle, or human (intellectual)
soul, in the majority of mankind is not even yet fully developed."
715 It is said by the incarnate Logos, Krishna, in the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_,
"The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my
nature, were born from my mind: from them sprang [emanated or were
born] the human race and the world" (x. 6).
Here, by the seven Great Rishis, the seven great Rűpa Hierarchies or
Classes of Dhyân Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the
seven Rishis, Saptarshi, are the Regents of the seven stars of the
Great Bear, and therefore, of the same nature as the Angels of the
Planets, or the seven Great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn
as men on Earth in various Kalpas and Races. Moreover, "the four
preceding Manus" are the four Classes of the originally Arűpa
Gods--the Kumâras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.; who are also said
_to have incarnated_. They are not Prajâpatis, as are the first, but
their informing "principles"--some of which have incarnated in men,
while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their
"reflections." As Krishna truly says--the same words being repeated
later by another _vehicle_ of the Logos--"I am the the same to all
beings ... those who worship me [the sixth principle or the _divine_
Intellectual Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the
higher faculties of Manas] _are in me, and I am in them_." (_Ibid._,
x. 29.) The Logos, being no "personality" but the Universal
Principle, is represented by all the divine Powers, _born of its
Mind_--the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the
"Intellectual Breaths"--those Angels who are said to _have made
themselves independent_, _i.e._, passed from the passive and
quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is
recognized, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But
see Mr. Subba Row's excellent Lecture on the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_
(_Theosophist_, April, 1887, p. 444).
716 _Op. cit._, p. 152.
717 It was the northern parts of the Toyâmbudhi, or sea of fresh water,
in Shveta-dvîpa, which the seven Kumâras--Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana,
Sanatkumâra, Jâta, Vodhu, and Panchashikha--visited agreeably with
exoteric tradition. (See the Uttara Khanda of the _Padma Purâna,
Asiatick Researches_, vol. xi. pp. 99, 100.)
718 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., ii. 109.
719 See _Bibliotheca Indica_, Trans. of the _Golâdhyâya of the
Siddhânta-shiromani_, iii. 21-44.
720 _Ibid._, pp. 106, 107.
721 P. 321.
722 Wilson, _ibid._, p. 137.
723 In a lecture, Professor Pengelly, F.R.S., quotes Professor Oliver to
the effect "that the present Atlantic islands' flora affords no
substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the
mainland of the New World," but adds himself that, at the same time,
"at some period of the Tertiary epoch, N.-E. Asia was united to
N.-W. America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of
islands now extends." Thus Occult Science alone can reconcile the
contradictions and hesitations of Modern Science. But again, surely
the argument for the existence of Atlantis does not rest on Botany
alone.
724 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson, v. 381, 382.
725 As shown in the "Preliminary Notes" to this Volume, it stands to
reason that neither the name of Lemuria nor even of Atlantis are the
real _archaic_ names of the lost Continents. They have been adopted
by us simply for the sake of clearness. Atlantis was the name given
to those portions of the submerged Fourth Race Continent which were
"beyond the Pillars of Hercules," and which happened to keep above
water after the general Cataclysm. The last remnant of these--Plato's
Atlantis, or "Poseidonis," which is another _substitute_, or rather
a translation of the real name--was the last of the Continent above
water some 11,000 years ago. Most of the correct names of the
countries and islands of both Continents are given in the _Purânas_;
but to mention them specially, as found in other more ancient works,
such as the _Sűrya Siddhânta_, would necessitate too lengthy
explanations. If, in earlier writings, the two seem to have been too
faintly distinguished, this must be due to careless reading and want
of reflection. If ages hence, Europeans are referred to as Âryans,
and a reader confuses them with the Hindűs and the latter with the
Fourth Race, because some of them lived in ancient Lankâ--the blame
will not fall on the writer.
726 See Part III, Section VI, of this Volume.
727 See Professor J. D. Dana's article, _American Journal of Science_,
III. v. 442, 443; Winchell's _World-Life_, p. 352.
728 Speaking on periodical elevation and subsidence of the equatorial
and polar regions, and ensuing changes of climate, Dr. Winchell,
Professor of Geology in the University of Michigan, says: "As the
movements here contemplated are cyclical, the same conditions would
recur again and again; and accordingly the same fauna might return
again and again to the same region, with intervals of occupation by
another fauna. Progressive sedimentation would preserve the records
of such faunal alterations; and there would be presented the
phenomena of 'colonies,' 'reäpparitions,' and other faunal
dislocations in the vertical and horizontal distributions of fossil
remains. These phenomena are well known to the student of geology."
(_Op. cit._, p. 281.)
729 See _American Naturalist_, xviii. 15-26.
730 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 339, 340.
731 _Pedigree of Man_, Aveling's Trans., pp. 80, 81.
732 _Ibid._, p. 82.
733 _Op. cit._, p. 81.
734 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 65.
735 "Half-grown babes" in comparison with their giant brethren on other
Zones. So would we now, should a like calamity overtake us.
736 This relates to Lemuria.
737 There are other cycles, of course, _cycles within cycles_--and it is
just this which creates such a difficulty in the calculations of
racial events. The circuit of the ecliptic is completed in 25,868
years, and, with regard to our Earth, it is calculated that the
equinoctial point falls back 50.1" annually. But there is another
cycle within this one. It is said that: "As the apsis goes forward
to meet it at the rate of 11.24", annually, this would complete a
revolution in one hundred and fifteen thousand three hundred and two
years (115,302). The approximation of the equinox and the apsis is
the sum of these motions, 61.34", and hence the equinox returns to
the same position in relation to the apsis in 21,128 years. (See the
article on "Astronomy" in the _Encyclopćdia Britannica_.) We
mentioned this cycle in _Isis Unveiled_ (vol. i), in relation to
other cycles. Each has a marked influence on its contemporary race.
738 The Atlanteans.
739 Twenty-seven feet.
740 The Lemurians.
741 Race.
742 Compare the following Section, entitled "Cyclopean Ruins and
Colossal Stones as Witnesses to Giants."
743 See Denon's _Voyage en Egypte_, vol. ii.
744 See _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 65.
745 _Cf._ the chart adapted from the _Challenger_ and _Dolphin_
soundings in Donnelly's _Atlantis: the Antediluvian World_, p. 47.
746 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 58.
747 _History of English Literature_, p. 23.
748 Quoted in _Atlantis_, p. 132.
749 _Numbers_, xiii. 33.
750 _Deut._, iii. 11.
751 Robert Brown, _The Countries of the World_, p. 43.
752 Mentioned on pp. 44, _et seqq._
753 _Ibid._, pp. 43, 44, _et seqq._, and pp. 310, 311.
754 De la Vega, IX. ix, quoted in De Mirville's _Pneumatologie_, iii.
55.
755 The first and second, in common with Bartholdi's statue, have an
entrance at the foot, leading by a winding staircase cut in the rock
up into the heads. The eminent French Archćologist and
Anthropologist, the Marquis de Nadeylac, in his work, justly remarks
that there never was in ancient or in modern times a sculptured
human figure more colossal than the first of the two.
756 _Essays_, xxvi.
757 _I Corinth._, x. 4.
758 _Pneumatologie_, iii. p. 283.
759 Saturn is Chronos--"Time." His swallowing Jupiter-lapis may turn out
one day a prophecy. "Peter (_cephas_, _lapis_), is the _stone_ on
which the Church of Rome is built"--we are assured. But Cronus
(Chronos) is as sure to "swallow" _it_ one day, as he has swallowed
Jupiter-lapis and still greater characters.
760 _Ibid._, p. 284.
761 M. Falconnet, _op. cit._, t. vi, _Mém._, p. 513; quoted by De
Mirville, _op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 285.
762 The same, of course, as the "small voice" heard by Elijah after the
earthquake at the mouth of the cave. (_I Kings_, xix. 12.)
763 The rocking, or "logan," stones bear various names; such as the
_clacha-brath_ of the Celt, the "destiny or judgment-stone"; the
divining-stone, or "stone of the ordeal," and the oracle-stone; the
moving or animated stone of the Phoenicians; the rumbling stone of
the Irish. Brittany has its "_pierres branlantes_" at Huelgoat. They
are found in the Old and the New Worlds; in the British Islands,
France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as also in North
America. (See Hodson's _Letters from North America_, vol. ii. p.
440.) Pliny speaks of several in Asia (_Hist. Nat._, i. 96); and
Apollonius Rhodius expatiates on the rocking stones, and says that
they are "stones placed on the apex of a tumulus, and so sensitive
_as to be movable by the mind_" (Ackerman's _Arth. Index_, p. 34),
referring no doubt to the ancient priests who moved such stones by
will-power from a distance.
764 See _Dictionnaire des Religions_, l'Abbé Bertrand, Arts., "Herćscus"
and "Bétyles"; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 287, who has "Heraiclus";
but see Bunsen's _Egypt_, i. 95.
765 See among others, _History of Paganism in Caledonia_, by Dr. Th. A.
Wise, F.R.A.S., etc.
766 _Sépulture des Tartares_, arch. vii. p. 2227.
767 _Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes_, i. 230.
768 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 290. If Ham was a Titan or Giant then were
Shem and Japhet also Titans. They are either all Arkite Titans, as
Faber shows--or myths.
769 Diodorus Siculus asserts that in the days of Isis, some men were
still of a vast stature, and were denominated by the Hellenes
Giants. "{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH YPOGEGRAMMENI~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}."
770 _Antiquités Celtiques_, p. 88.
771 Cambry, _ibid._, 90.
772 _Op. cit._, p. 473. "It is difficult," writes Creuzer, "not to
suspect in the structures of Tiryns and Mycenć planetary forces
supposed to be moved by celestial powers, analogous to the famous
Dactyli." (_Pelasges et Cyclopes._) To this day Science is in
ignorance on the subject of the Cyclopes. They are supposed to have
built all the so-called "Cyclopean" works whose erection would have
necessitated several regiments of Giants, and yet they were only
seventy-seven in all, or about one hundred, as Creuzer thinks. They
are called Builders, and Occultism calls them the _Initiators_, who
by initiating some Pelasgians, thus laid the foundation stone of
true _Masonry_. Herodotus associates the Cyclops with Perseus "the
son of an Assyrian demon" (I. vi.). Raoul Rochette found that
Palćmonius, the Cyclops, to whom a sanctuary was raised, was the
"Tyrian Hercules." In any case, he was the Builder of the sacred
columns of Gadir, covered with mysterious characters--of which
Apollonius of Tyana was the only one in his age who possessed the
key--and with figures which may still be found on the walls of
Ellora, the gigantic ruins of the temple of Vishvakarman, "the
builder and artificer of the Gods."
773 _Hist. Nat._, t. xxxvi. p. 592; De Mirville, _op. cit._, _ibid._, p.
289.
774 _Dieu et les Dieux_, p. 567.
775 De Mirville, _op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 291. Messrs. Richardson and
Barth are said to have been amazed at finding in the Desert of
Sahara the same trilithic and raised stones which they had seen in
Asia, Circassia, Etruria, and in all the North of Europe. Mr.
Rivett-Carnac, B.C.S., of Allahabad, the distinguished Archćologist,
shows the same amazement on finding the description, given by Sir J.
Simpson, of the cuplike markings on stones and rocks in England,
Scotland, and other Western countries; "offering an extraordinary
resemblance" to "the marks on the trap boulders which encircle the
barrows near Nagpur"--the City of Snakes. The eminent scholar saw in
this "another and very extraordinary addition to the mass of
evidence ... that a branch of the nomadic tribes, who swept at an
early date over Europe, penetrated into India also." We say Lemuria,
Atlantis and her Giants, and the earliest races of the Fifth Root-
Race had all a hand in these betyli, lithoi, and "magic" stones in
general. The cup-marks noticed by Sir J. Simpson, and the "holes
scooped out on the face" of rocks and monuments found by Mr. Rivett-
Carnac "of different sizes varying from six inches to an inch and a-
half in diameter, and in depth from one to one and a-half inch ...
generally arranged in perpendicular lines presenting many
permutations in the number and size and arrangement of the cups"--are
simply _written records_ of the oldest races. Whosoever examines
with attention the drawings made of such marks in _Archćological
Notes on Ancient Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India, etc._, will
find therein the most primitive style of marking or recording.
Something of the sort was adopted by the American inventors of the
Morse code of telegraphic writing, which reminds us of the Ogham
writing, a combination of long and short strokes, as Mr. Rivett-
Carnac describes it, "cut on sandstone." Sweden, Norway, and
Scandinavia are full of such _written_ records, for the Runic
characters follow the cup-marks and long and short strokes. In
Johannes Magnus' Infolio one may see the representation of the demi-
god, the giant Starchaterus (Starkad, the pupil of Hroszharsgrani,
the Magician), holding under each arm a huge stone covered with
Runic characters. This Starkad, according to Scandinavian legend,
went to Ireland and performed marvellous deeds in the North and
South, East and West. (See _Asgard and the Gods_, pp. 218-221.)
776 _Hist. Nat._, XXXVII. liv.
777 _Ibid._, II. xxxviii.
778 Charton, _Magasin Pittoresque_ (1853), p. 32. Quoted by De Mirville,
_op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 293.
779 T. A. Wise, _History of Paganism in Caledonia_, p. 36.
780 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 288.
781 _Essays on Physiology_, p. 144.
782 _Principles of Biology_, Appendix, p. 482.
783 We shall treat of the Divine Instructors in Stanza XII.
784 Men.
785 Of the primitive Divine Stock.
786 Race.
787 Race.
788 _The Great Pyramid._
789 _Knowledge_, i. p. 243; quoted by Staniland Wake, _op. cit._, pp.
81, 82.
790 _Nineteenth Century_, 1882, p. 236; quoted by Staniland Wake,
_ibid._, p. 82.
791 _Op. cit._, XI. xvii.
792 As shown by H. Lizeray in his _Trinité Chrétienne Devoilée_, the
Dragon, being placed between the immutable Father (the Pole, a fixed
point) and mutable Matter, transmits to the latter the influences he
receives from the former, whence his name--the Verbum.
793 Symbolized by the Egyptians under the form of a serpent with a
hawk's head.
794 _Revue Archéologique_, 1885.
795 Mackey's _Sphinxiad: or, The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients
Demonstrated by Restoring to their Fables and Symbols their Original
Meanings_, p. 42.
796 _Ibid._, p. 47.
797 Also translated as "Blissful Immortals" by Dr. W. Geiger; but the
first is more correct.
798 These "seven" became the eight, the Ogdoad, of the later
_materialized_ religions, the seventh, or the highest "principle,"
being no longer the pervading Spirit, the Synthesis, but becoming an
anthropomorphic number, or additional unit.
799 These elements are: the cosmic, the terrene, the mineral, the
vegetable, the animal, the aqueous, and finally the human--in their
physical, spiritual, and psychic aspects.
800 P. 53.
801 _Thalia_, lxxvii.
802 Who adds that "the Egyptians had various ways of representing the
angle of the poles. In Perry's _View of the Levant_ there is a
figure representing the _south pole_ of the Earth in the
constellation of the _Harp_, in which the poles appear like two
_straight rods_ surmounted with hawks' wings, to distinguish the
north from the south. But the symbols of the poles ... are,
sometimes, in the form of serpents, with the heads of hawks to
distinguish the north from the south end." (_Op. cit._, p. 41.)
803 Faber and Bishop Cumberland would make these all the later pagan
personifications of "the Noëtic Ark, and ... no other than the
patriarch [Noah] and his family"(!), as the former writer puts it in
his _Cabiri_ (i. 136); because, we are told, that most probably
after the Deluge in commemoration of the event, the pious Noachidć
established a religious festival, which was, later on, corrupted by
their _impious_ descendants, who made of "Noah and his family"
demons or hero-gods; "and at length unblushing obscenity usurped the
name and garb of religion" (_ibid._, i. p. 10). Now this is indeed
putting an extinguisher upon the human reasoning powers, not only of
antiquity, but even of our present generations. Reverse the
statement, and after the words "Noah and his family" explain that
what was meant is simply the Jewish version of a Samothracian
mystery, of Saturn, or Cronus-Cydyk and his Sons, and then we may
say _Amen_.
804 Who were later on, with the Greeks, limited to Castor and Pollux
only. But in the days of Lemuria, the Dioscuri, the "Egg-born," were
the Seven Dhyân Chohans (Agnishvâtta-Kumâra) who incarnated in the
Seven Elect of the Third Race.
805 _Op. cit._, i. 133.
806 Clement of Alexandria recognized the astronomical significance of
Chapters xxv _et seqq._ of _Exodus_. He says that, according to the
Mosaic doctrine, the seven Planets help in the generation of
terrestrial things. The two Cherubs standing on the two sides of the
sacred Tetragrammaton represent Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
807 Vyse, _Operations_, etc., ii. 258.
808 Palgrave, ii. 264.
809 Vyse, _ibid._, ii. 342.
810 P. 57.
811 The speculation of Mackey, the self-made adept of Norwich, in his
_Mythological Astronomy_, is a curious idea--yet one perhaps not so
very far from the truth. He says that the Kabiri named Axieros and
Axiokersa (_a_) derived their names from _kab_ or _cab_, a
"measure," and from _urim_, the "heavens"--the Kabirim being thus "a
measure of the heavens"; and (_b_) that their distinctive names,
implying the _principle of generation_, referred to the sexes. For
"the word _sex_ was formerly understood by _ax_; which ... has, in
our time, settled into sex. [And he refers to _Encyclopćdia
Londiniensis_, at the word 'aspiration.'] Now if we give the
aspirated sound to Axieros, it would become _Sax_ or _Sexieros_; and
the other pole would be _Sexiokersa_. The two poles would thus
become the generators of the other powers of nature--they would be
the _Parents_ of the other powers; therefore, the most powerful
Gods." (_Op. cit._, p. 39.)
812 ii. 51.
813 i. 9-17.
814 Decharme, _Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_, p. 270.
815 The word _guebra_ comes from Kabiri (_Gabiri_), and means the
Persian ancient fire-worshippers, or Parsîs. Kabiri became Gabiri
and then remained as an appellation of the Zoroastrians in Persia.
(See Hyde's _De Religione Persarum_, c. 29.)
816 I. ix. 751.
817 See Macrob., _Sat._, I. iii. c. 4, p. 376.
818 Pausan., ix. 22; 5.
819 Herodotus, iii. 37.
820 Quoted in Gould's _Mythical Monsters_, p. 399.
821 Appendix, p. 13; quoted by Faber, _Cabiri_, ii. pp. 289-291.
822 The Amshaspands are six--if Ormazd, their chief and Logos, is
excluded. But in the Secret Doctrine he is the seventh and highest,
just as Phtah is the seventh Kabir among the Kabiri.
823 In the _Purânas_ it is identified with Vishnu's or Brahma's Shveta-
dvîpa of Mount Meru.
824 Ed. Fleisher, p. 16.
825 MS., 47 in Nic. Cat.
826 MS., 785, Uri's Cat.; quoted by Col. Vyse, _Operations at the
Pyramids of Gizeh_, ii. 364; see Staniland Wake, _The Great
Pyramid_, p. 94.
827 De Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iii. 29.
828 Staniland Wake, _ibid._, p. 96.
829 _Ibid._, p. 97.
830 _Égypte_, iv. 441; De Mirville, _op. cit._, iii. 41.
831 _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, xxxii. 442; see De Mirville,
_Pneumatologie_, iii. 18.
832 _Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne_; see De Mirville, _op. cit._,
_ibid._, p. 15.
833 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 41.
834 _Ibid._, pp. 16, 17.
835 In the _Vishnu Purâna_, with careful reading, may be found many
corroborations of the same (Book II, chaps, iii, iv, _et seqq._).
The reigns of Gods, lower Gods, and Men are all enumerated in the
descriptions of the seven islands, seven seas, seven mountains,
etc., ruled by Kings. Each King is invariably said to have _seven_
sons, an allusion to the seven sub-races. One instance will do. The
King of Kusha-Dvîpa had seven sons ... "after whom the seven
portions or Varsha of the island were called.... _There reside
mankind, along with Daityas and Dânavas, as well as with spirits of
heaven_ [_Gandharvas_, _Yakshas_, _Kimpurushas_, etc.] _and Gods._"
(Wilson's Trans., ii. 195.) There is but one exception in the case
of King Priyavrata, the son of the first Manu, Svâyambhuva--who had
_ten_ sons. But of these, three--Medha, Agnibâhu, and Putra (_ibid._,
ii. 101)--became ascetics, and refused their portions. Thus
Priyavrata divided the Earth again into _seven_ continents.
836 _Égypte_, pp. 450-455: De Mirville, _ibid._, pp. 41, 42.
837 As a general rule, _now_ that the very nature of the _inner_ man has
become as blind as his physical nature, man on this Globe is as the
Amphioxus is in the ocean. Seen by millions of various other fishes
and creatures that surround it, the Amphioxus species--having neither
brain nor any of the senses possessed by the other classes--sees them
not. Who knows whether, on the Darwinian theory, these Branchiostoma
are not the direct ancestors of our Materialists?
838 The Occultists have been accused of worshipping Gods or Devils! We
deny this. Among the numberless hosts of Spirits--entities that have
been or that will be men--there are some immeasurably superior to the
human race, higher and holier than the highest saint on Earth, and
wiser than any mortal without exception. And there are those again
who are no better than we are, and some also who are far worse and
inferior to the lowest savage. It is these last that command the
readiest communication with our Earth, who perceive and sense us, as
the clairvoyants perceive and sense them. The close proximity of our
respective abodes and planes of perception are, unfortunately, in
favour of such inter-communication, as they are ever ready to
interfere with our affairs for weal or woe. If we are asked how it
is that none but sensitive hysterical natures, neuro- and psycho-
pathic persons, see--and occasionally talk with--"spirits," we answer
the question by several other queries. We ask: Do you know the
nature of hallucination, and can you define its psychic process? How
can you tell that all such visions are due merely to physical
hallucinations? What makes you feel so sure that mental and nervous
diseases, while drawing a veil over our _normal_ senses (so-called),
_do not_ reveal at the same time vistas unknown to the healthy man,
by throwing open doors usually closed against your scientific (?)
perceptions; or that a psycho-spiritual faculty _does not_ forthwith
replace the loss, or the temporary atrophy, of a purely physical
sense? It is disease or the exuberance of nervous fluid which
produces mediumship and visions--hallucinations, as you call them.
But what _does_ Science know even of mediumship? Truly were the
modern Charcots to pay attention to the delirium of their patients
from a more psychic standpoint, Science--Physiology especially--might
be more benefited than it is now, and truth have a wider field of
fact in its knowledge.
839 i. 70; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 26.
840 These were the early Âryans and the bulk of the Fourth Root-Race--the
former pious and meditative (given to yoga-contemplation), the
latter a fighting race of sorcerers, who were rapidly degenerating
owing to their uncontrolled passions.
841 The Northern and Southern Divisions of Lemuria-Atlantis. The
Hyperborean and the Equatorial lands of the two Continents.
842 De Rougemont, _Peuple Primitif_, iii. 157; De Mirville, _ibid._, p.
29. This is Occult and refers to the property of iron which is
attracted by some magnetic elements, and repelled by others. Such
elements, by an Occult process, can be made as impervious to it as
water to a blow.
843 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
844 The First Continent, or Island, if so preferred, "the cap of the
North Pole," has never perished; nor will it to the end of the Seven
Races.
845 See De Rougemont, _ibid._
846 Boulanger, _Rčgne des Dieux_, Introd.; see De Mirville, _op. cit._,
_ibid._, pp. 32, 33.
847 The Secret Doctrine explains and expounds what Plato says, for it
teaches that those "Inventors" were Gods and Demi-gods (Devas and
Rishis) who had become--some deliberately, some compelled by
Karma--incarnated in man.
848 The preceding paragraphs are condensed from Plato, _Legg._, l.
iv--_id., in Crit., et in Politic._; De Mirville, _ibid._, pp. 33,
34.
849 Argyle, _Unity of Nature_.
850 _Book of the Dead_, xcix. 33; and clvi. 4. The reader is referred to
Stanza VII, Shloka 1 (i. 240), wherein this verse is explained in
another of its meanings, and also to the _Book of the Dead_, cix. 4
and 5. This is a direct reference to the Esoteric division of man's
"principles" symbolized by the divine wheat. The legend which
inscribes the third Register of the papyrus (_Book of the Dead_,
cx.) states: "This is the region of the Manes [disembodied men]
_seven_ cubits high--[to wit, those just translated and supposed to
be still sevenfold with all their 'principles,' even the body being
represented _astrally_ in the Kâma Loka or Hades, before their
separation]; and there is wheat _three_ cubits high for Mummies in a
_state of perfection_ [_i.e._, those already separated, whose
_three_ higher principles are in Devachan] who are permitted to
glean it." This region (Devachan) is called "the land of the Re-
birth of Gods," and is shown to be inhabited by Shoo, Tefnoot, and
Seb. The "region for the Manes _seven_ cubits high"--for the yet
imperfect Mummies--and the region for those "in a state of
perfection" who "glean wheat _three_ cubits high," is as clear as
possible. The Egyptians had the same Esoteric Philosophy which is
now taught by the Cis-Himâlayan Adepts, and the latter, when,
buried, have corn and wheat placed over them.
851 I. xiv. There are Egyptologists who have quite erroneously tried to
identify Osiris with Menes. Bunsen assigns to Menes an antiquity of
5,867 years B.C., and is denounced for it by Christians. But "Isis-
Osiris" reigned in Egypt before the Zodiac was painted on the
ceiling of the temple of Dendera, and that is over 75,000 years ago!
852 In the text, "corked up" or "screwed up."
853 _Zohar_, part i, col. 177; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 88.
854 _Genesis_, vi. 4.
855 _Prćlectiones Theol._, ch. ii; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 84.
856 _Réflexions Critiques sur l'Origine des Anciens Peuples._
857 Rabbi Parcha.
858 i. 6.
859 _Book of Ruth and Schadash_, fol. 63, col. 3, Amsterdam edition.
860 _Zohar_, part ii, col. 73; De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 86.
861 _Ibid._, p. 87.
862 _More Nevochim_, xxvi. 8.
863 _Sagra Scrittura._
864 ii. pp. 14, 29.
865 Chap. viii; Laurence's Translation, pp. 7 and 8.
866 _Job_, i. 6.
867 The Chaldćan _Book of Numbers_.
868 _Archćology_, xxv. 220, London.
869 _Die Phoinizier_, 70.
870 See Sanchuniathon in Eusebius, _Pr. Ev._, 36; _Genesis_, xvi.
871 _Society of Antiquaries of London_, xxv. 220.
872 _Cartas_, 51; see _Isis Unveiled_, i. 553, _et seqq._
873 He is thus named and included in the list of the Dânavas in _Vâyu
Purâna_; the Commentator of _Bhâgavata Purâna_ calls him a son of
Danu, but the name means also "Spirit of Humanity."
874 Kashyapa is called the son of Brahmâ, and is the "Self-born" to whom
a great part of the work of creation is attributed. He is one of the
seven Rishis; exoterically, the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ;
while the _Atharva Veda_ says, "The Self-born Kashyapa sprang from
Time," and _Esoterically_ Time and Space are forms of the One
_incognizable_ Deity. As an Âditya, Indra is son of Kashyapa, as
also Vaivasvata Manu, our Progenitor. In the instance given in the
text, he is Kashyapa-Âditya, the Sun and the Sun-god, from whom all
the "Cosmic" Demons, Dragons (Nâgas), Serpent or Snake-gods, and
Dânavas or Giants, are born. The meaning of the allegories given
above is purely astronomical and cosmical, but will serve to prove
the identity of all.
875 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., ii. 72.
876 All such stories differ in the _exoteric_ texts. In the
_Mahâbhârata_, Kârttikeya, "the six-faced Mars," is the son of Rudra
or Shiva, Self-born _without a mother_ from the seed of Shiva cast
into the fire. But Kârttikeya is generally called Agnibhű, "Fire-
born."
877 Hiranyâksha is ruler or king of the _fifth_ region of Pâtâla, a
Snake-god.
878 The Elohim also feared the Knowledge of Good and Evil for Adam, and
therefore are shown as expelling him from Eden or killing him
_spiritually_.
879 The story told is, that Târaka (called also Kâlanâbha), owing to his
extraordinary Yoga-powers, had obtained all the divine knowledge of
Yoga-vidyâ and the Occult powers of the Gods, who conspired against
him. Here we see the "obedient" Host of Archangels or minor Gods
conspiring against the (future) Fallen Angels, whom Enoch accuses of
the great crime of disclosing to the world all "the _secret things_
done in heaven." It is Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Suryal and Uriel
who denounced to the Lord God those of their Brethren who were said
_to have pried into the divine mysteries_ and taught them to men; by
this means they themselves escaped a like punishment. Michael was
commissioned to fight the Dragon, and so was Kârttikeya, and under
the same circumstances. Both are "Leaders of the Celestial Host,"
both Virgins, both "Leaders of Saints," "Spear-holders" (Shakti-
dharas), etc. Kârttikeya is the original of Michael and St. George,
as surely as Indra is the prototype of Kârttikeya.
880 The "life and the light" of the material _physical_ world, the
delight of the senses--not of the soul. Apollo is preëminently the
_human_ God, the God of emotional, pomp-loving and theatrical Church
ritualism, with lights and music.
881 See _Revelation_ (xii) where we find Apollo's mother persecuted by
the Python, the Red Dragon, who is also Porphyrion, the scarlet or
red Titan.
882 _Book of God_, p. 88.
883 No "God"--whether called Bel or Jehovah--who _curses_ his (supposed)
own work, because he has made it imperfect, can be the One Infinite
Absolute Wisdom.
884 In the Indian allegory of Târakâmaya, the War between the Gods and
the Asuras headed by Soma (the Moon, the King of Plants), it is
Vishvakarmâ, the artificer of the Gods, who, like Vulcan (Tubal-
Cain), forges their weapons for them.
885 _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 304. We have said elsewhere that
the "woman with child" of _Revelation_ was Aima, the Great Mother,
or Binah, the third Sephira, "whose name is Jehovah"; and the
"Dragon," who seeks to devour her coming child (the Universe), is
the Dragon of Absolute Wisdom--that Wisdom which, recognizing the
non-separateness of the Universe and everything in it from the
Absolute ALL, sees in it no better than the great Illusion,
Mahâmâyâ, hence the cause of misery and suffering.
886 The "seven Karshvares of the Earth"--the seven Spheres of our
Planetary Chain, the seven Worlds, also mentioned in the _Rig Veda_,
are fully referred to elsewhere. There are six Râjamsi (Worlds)
above Prithivî, the Earth, or "this" (Idâm), as opposed to that
which is _yonder_ (the six Globes on the three other planes). ( See _Rig Veda_, i. 34; iii. 56; vii. 10411, and v. 60, 6.)
887 Darmesteter's Trans., "Sacred Books of the East," vol. iv. p. 207.
888 _Ibid._, p. 217.
889 _Ibid._, p. 208.
890 _Book of the Dead_, xvii. 62; Anubis is Horus who melts "in him who
is eyeless."
891 See Lenoir's _Du Dragon de Metz_.
892 See also _Egyptian Pantheon_, pp. 20, 23.
893 _Book of the Dead_, xvii. 54 and 49.
894 These "Evil Spirits" can by no means be identified with Satan or the
Great Dragon. They are the Elementals generated or begotten by
ignorance--cosmic and human passions--or Chaos.
895 _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 403.
896 See _Numbers_, xxi. 8, 9. God orders Moses to build a brazen Serpent
(Saraph), to _look upon_ which heals those bitten by the Fiery
Serpents. The latter were the Seraphim, each one of which, as Isaiah
shows (vi. 2), "had six wings"; they are the symbols of Jehovah, and
of all the other Demiurgi who produce out of themselves six sons or
likenesses--seven with their Creator. Thus, the Brazen Serpent _is_
Jehovah, the chief of the "Fiery Serpents." And yet, in _II Kings_
(xviii. 4) it is shown that king Hezekiah, who, like as David his
father, "did that which was right in the sight of the Lord"--"brake
in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made ... and called it
Nehushtan," or piece of brass.
897 "And Satan stood up against Israel and provoked David to number
Israel" (_I Chronicles_, xxi. 1). "The anger of the Lord [Jehovah]
was kindled against Israel, and he moved David ... to say, Go,
number Israel" (_II Samuel_, xxiv. 1). The two are then identical.
898 ii. 18, 22.
899 Dozens of the most erudite writers have sifted thoroughly the
various meanings of the name J'hovah (with, and without the
Masoretic points), and shown their multifarious bearings. The best
of such works is the _Source of Measures: the Hebrew Egyptian
Mystery_, by J. Ralston Skinner, so often already referred to.
900 In the above-mentioned work (p. 233), verse 26 of chapter iv of
_Genesis_ is correctly translated "then men began to call
_themselves_ Jehovah," but less correctly explained, perhaps, as the
last word ought to be written Jah (male) Hovah (female), to show
that from that time the race of distinctly separate man and woman
began.
901 See for explanation the excellent pages of Appendix vii of the same
work.
902 _Op. cit._, p. 293.
903 _Rabba Battra_, 16a.
904 In Demonology, Satan is the leader of the opposition in Hell, the
monarch of which was Beelzebub. He belongs to the fifth kind or
class of Demons (of which there are nine according to medićval
Demonology), and he is at the head of witches and sorcerers. But see
elsewhere the true meaning of Baphomet, the goat-headed Satan, one
with Azazel, the scape-goat of Israel. Nature is the God Pan.
905 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 184.
906 See _Codex Nazarćus_, iii. 73.
907 He is also Vulcan or Vul-cain, the greatest God with the later
Egyptians, and the greatest Kabir. The God of Time was Chiun in
Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chiun is the same as Cain. (_Source
of Measures_, p. 278.)
908 See Strabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes, xiv. p. 653 _sqq._
Callim., _in Del._, 31. Stat., _Silv._, iv. 6, 47, etc.
909 _Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_, p. 271.
910 Nothing could be more awkward and childish, we say, than this
fruitless attempt to disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth,
or to conceal the identity of names under a different spelling.
Thus, Cain has a Son Enoch, and Seth a Son Enoch (also Enos,
Ch'anoch, Hanoch--one may do what one likes with unvowelled Hebrew
names). In the Cainite line Enoch begets Irad, Irad Mehujael, the
latter Methusael, and Methusael, Lamech. In the Sethite line, Enoch
begets Cainan, and this one Mahalaleel (a variation on Mehujael),
who gives birth to Jared (or Irad); Jared to Enoch (number 3), who
produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally Lamech closes the
list. (See _Genesis_, iv. v.) Now all these are symbols
(kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods
and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other Pagan
symbolical creed. This has been proven by a number of writers.
911 See _Analysis of Ancient Mythology_, ii. 760.
912 vi. 9.
913 See _New Encyclopćdia_, by Abraham Rees, F.R.S.
914 See _Hebrews_, v. 6; vii. 1, _et seqq._
915 The Ćolian name of Mars was Areus ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}), and the Greek Ares ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~})
is a name over the etymological significance of which, Philologists
and Indianists, Greek and Sanskrit scholars, have vainly worked to
this day. Very strangely, Max Müller connects both the names Mars
and Ares with the Sanskrit root _mar_, whence he traces their
derivation, and from which, he says, comes the name of the Maruts or
Storm-gods. Welcker, however, offers a more correct etymology. ( See _Griech. Götterlehre_, i. 415.) However it may be, etymologies of
roots and words alone will never yield the Esoteric meaning fully,
though they may help to useful guesses.
916 As the same author shows: "The very name Vulcain appears in the
reading, for in the first words (_Gen._, iv. 5) is to be found
V'elcain, or V'ulcain, agreeably to the deepened _u_ sound of the
letter _vau_. Out of its immediate context, it may be read as, '_and
the god Cain_,' or Vulcain. If, however, anything is wanting to
confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: '{~HEBREW LETTER QOF~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL NUN~} _Cain, the iron
point of a lance, a smith_ (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron
tools and smith work' " (p. 278).
917 _Op. cit._, p. 186.
918 _Append. de Cabiris ap. Orig. Gent._, pp. 364, 376; and the latter
statement on p. 357. See Faber's _Cabiri_, i. 8.
919 Some derive the word from Paras which produced Pars, Pers, Persia;
but it may be equally derived from Pitaras or Pitris, the Hindű
progenitors of the Fifth Race--the Fathers of Wisdom or the Sons of
"Will and Yoga"--who were called Pitaras, as were the divine Pitris
of the First Race.
920 See for these traditions the _Collection of Persian Legends_, in
Russian, Georgian, Armenian, and Persian; Herbelot's narrative
_Légendes Persanes_, "Bibliothčque Orientale," p. 298, 387, etc.,
and Danville's _Mémoires_. We give in a condensed narrative that
which is scattered in hundreds of volumes in European and Asiatic
languages, as well as in oral traditions.
921 _Genesis_, iv. 16, _et seqq._
922 The _main_ Continent perished in the Miocene times, as already
stated.
923 From Bede downwards all the chronologists of the Church have
differed among themselves, and contradicted each other. "The
chronology of the Hebrew text has been grossly altered, especially
in the interval next after the Deluge"--says Whiston (_Old Test._, p.
20).
924 ii. 170, 171.
925 Hence king Solomon, whose traces are nowhere to be found outside of
the _Bible_. The description of his magnificent palace and city
dovetail with those of the Persian tales, though they were unknown
to all Pagan travellers, even to Herodotus.
926 Herbelot, _op. cit._, p. 829.
927 _Orient. Trad._, p. 454. See also Bailly's _Lettres sur
l'Atlantide_.
928 See _Orient. Collect._, ii. 119.
929 _Ibid._ Remember that the Rabbins teach that there are to be seven
successive renewals of the Globe; that each will last 7,000 years,
the total duration being thus 49,000 years. (See Rabbi Parcha's
_Wheel_; also Kenealy's _Book of God_, p. 176.) This refers to seven
Rounds, seven Root-Races, and sub-races, the truly Occult figures,
though sorely confused.
930 _Tales of Derbent._
931 Mergain, or Morgana, the fairy sister of King Arthur, is thus shown
of Oriental descent.
932 Where we find her, indeed, in Great Britain, in the romance of the
Knights of the Round Table. Whence the identity of name and fairy-
hood, if both heroines did not symbolize the same historical event
which passed into a legend?
933 Herbelot, p. 593; _Armenian Tales_, p. 35.
934 To this day the aborigines of Caucasus speak of their mountains as
Kap-kaz, using the consonant _p_ instead of the usual _v_ (Kav-kaz
or Caucasus). But their bards say that it requires seven months for
a swift horse to reach the "dry land" beyond Kaf, holding North
without ever deviating from one's way.
935 Bailly thought he saw in this Horse a twelve-oared ship. The Secret
Doctrine teaches that the early Third Race built boats and flotillas
before it built houses. But the "Horse," though a much later animal,
has, nevertheless, a more occult primitive meaning. The crocodile
and the hippopotamus were considered sacred and represented divine
symbols, both with the ancient Egyptians and with the Mexicans.
Poseidon is, in Homer, the God of the Horse, and assumes that form
himself to please Ceres. Arion, their progeny, is one of the aspects
of that "Horse," which is a Cycle.
936 The severed parts must be Norway and other lands in the
neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle.
937 Cosmas Indicopleustes in _Collect. Novâ Patrum_, t. ii. p. 188; also
see _Journ. des Savants_, Suppl. 1707, p. 20.
938 The two Poles are called the "right" and "left ends" of our
Globe--the Right being the North Pole--or the head and feet of the
Earth. Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the
North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much
connected with and influence "right" and "left" hand magic.
939 The more one approaches the Poles the less rotation is felt; at the
Poles proper, the diurnal revolution is quite neutralized. Hence the
expression that the Sphere is "motionless."
940 It is averred in Occultism that the land or island, which crowns the
North Pole like a skull-cap, is the only one which prevails during
the whole Manvantara of our Round. All the central continents and
lands will emerge from the sea bottom many times in turn, but this
land will never change.
941 Bear in mind that the Vedic and Avestaic name of Fohat is Apâm-
Napât. In the _Avesta_ he stands between the Fire-yazatas and the
Water-yazatas. The literal meaning is "Son of the Waters," but these
"Waters" are not the liquid we know, but Ćther--the Fiery Waters of
Space. Fohat is the "Son of Ćther" in its highest aspect, Âkâsha,
the Mother-Father of the primitive Seven, and of Sound or the Logos.
Fohat is the Light of the Logos.
942 This "Water" is the blood or fluid of Life which animates the Earth,
compared here to a living body.
943 Occult teaching corroborates the popular tradition which asserts the
existence of a Fountain of Life in the bowels of the Earth and in
the North Pole. It is the blood of the Earth, the electro-magnetic
current, which circulates through all the arteries, and which is
said to be found stored in the "navel" of the Earth.
944 Occultism points to the Himâlayan Chain as that "belt," and
maintains that whether under the water or above, it encircles the
Globe. The "navel" is described as situated towards the setting Sun
or to the West of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which
mountain is North of the Himâlaya. Meru is _not_ "the fabulous
mountain _in_ the navel or centre of the earth," but its roots and
foundations are in that "navel," while it is in the far North
itself. This connects it with the "Central" Land "that never
perishes"; the land in which "the day of the mortal lasts six months
and his night another six months." As the _Vishnu Purâna_ has it:
"For the North of Meru there is, therefore, always night during day
in _other regions_; for Meru is North of all the Dvipas and Varshas"
(islands and countries). (Book ii. chap. viii.) Meru is therefore
neither on Atlas as Wilford suggests, nor, as Wilson tried to show,
"absolutely in the centre of the globe," only because "relatively
with the inhabitants of the several portions, to all of whom the
East is that quarter where the sun first appears."
945 Even the Commentaries do not refrain from Oriental metaphor. The
Globe is likened to the body of a woman, "Mother-Earth." From her
neck downward, means from the inland sea now beyond the impassable
barrier of ice. The Earth, as Parâshara says, "is the mother and
nurse, augmented with all creatures and their qualities, the
_comprehender_ of all the worlds."
946 For the Stanzas call this locality by a term translated in the
Commentary as _a place of no latitude_ (Niraksha), the Abode of the
Gods. As a scholiast says in the _Sűrya Siddhânta_ (xii. 42-44):
"Above them goes the sun when situated at the equinoxes; they have
neither equinoctial shadow nor elevation of the pole (_akshonnati_).
"In both directions from Meru are two pole-stars (_dhruvatârâ_),
fixed in the midst of the sky, to those _who are situated in places
of no latitude_ (_niraksha_), both these have their place in the
horizon.
"Hence there is, in those cities [in that land], no elevation of the
poles, the two pole-stars being situated in their horizon; but their
degrees of co-latitude (_lambaka_) are ninety: at Meru the degrees
of latitude (_aksha_) are of the same number." (See _Vishnu Purâna_,
Wilson's Trans., ii. 208.)
947 Wilford makes many mistakes. He identifies, for instance, Shveta-
dvîpa, the White Island, the "island in the northern part of
Toyambhudi," with England, and then tries to identify it with Atala.
(a nether region) and Atlantis. Now the Shveta-dvîpa is the abode of
Vishnu (exoterically), and Atala is a hell. He also places it in the
Euxine or Ikshu (Black) Sea, and then seems to connect it, in
another place, with Africa and Atlas.
948 _Asiatick Researches_, viii. 280.
949 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 201.
950 Every name in the _Purânas_ has to be examined at least under two
aspects, geographically and metaphysically, in its allegorical
application; _e.g._, Nîla, the (blue) mountain which is one of the
boundaries to the north of Meru, is again to be sought
geographically in a mountain range in Orissa, and yet again in a
mountain quite different from the others, in Western Africa. Jambu-
dvîpa is Vishnu's dominion--the World, limited in the _Purânas_ to
our Globe, the region which contains Meru _only_, and again it is
divided to contain Bharata-varsha (India), its _best_ division, and
the fairest, says Parâshara. Likewise with Pushkara and all others.
951 _Ibid._, p. 202.
952 _Sűrya Siddhânta_, Whitney's Trans., v. 5.
953 _Asiatick Researches_, iii. 300.
954 Jambu, Plaksha, Shâlmali, Kusha, Krauncha, Shâka, and Pushkara.
955 Such as Shâka and Pushkara, for instance, which do not yet exist,
but into which will enter such lands as some portions of America, of
Africa, and Central Asia, with the Gobi region. Let us bear in mind
that Upadvîpas mean "root" islands, or the dry land in general.
956 They were called Demons, Asuras, Giants, and monsters, because of
their wickedness; and thus their country was likened to Atala--a
Hell.
957 Not on the river Nile, surely, but near the Nila mountains of the
Atlas range.
958 _Asiatick Researches_, iii. 225.
959 See vols. viii, x, and xi, of _Asiatick Researches_.
960 _Op. cit._, iii. 326.
961 _Ibid._
962 Says Wilford of the division of Atlantis and Bhârata or India,
confusing the two accounts and Priyavrata with Medhâtithi: "This
division was made by Priyavrata.... He had ten sons, and it was his
intention to divide the whole world between them equally.... In the
same manner Neptune divided the Atlantis between his ten sons: one
of them had ... the extremity of the Atlantis"--which "is probably
the old continent, at the extremity of which is Gades.... This
Atlantis was overwhelmed with a flood; and it seems that _by the
Atlantis, we should understand the antediluvian Earth_, over which
ten princes were born to rule, according to the mythology of the
West [and of the East, also] but _seven_ of them only sate upon the
throne." (_Op. cit._, viii. 286.) Some also are of opinion that of
the seven Dvîpas _six_ were destroyed by a flood. Wilford takes it
to be "Gades which included Spain," but it was Plato's
island--rather.
963 America, the "new" world, is thus, though not _much_, older--still it
_is_ older--than Europe, the "old" world.
964 If Div or Dev-sefid's (the Târadaitya's) abode was on the _seventh
stage_, it is because he came from Pushkara, the Pâtâla (antipodes)
of India, or from America. The latter touched the walls, so to say,
of Atlantis, before the latter finally sank. The word Pâtâla meaning
both the antipodal countries and infernal regions, these became
synonymous in ideas and attributes as well as in name.
965 Neither Atlantis, nor yet Shankha-dvîpa, was ever called "White
Island." When tradition says that "the White Island became black on
account of the sins of the people," it only means the denizens of
the "White Island," or Siddhapura, or Shveta-dvîpa, who descended to
the Atlantis of the Third and Fourth Races, to "inform the latter;
and who, having incarnated, became black with sin" figure of speech.
All the Avatâras of Vishnu are said to come originally from the
White Island. According to Tibetan tradition the White Island is the
only locality which escapes the general fate of other Dvipas; it can
be destroyed by neither fire nor water, for--it is the "Eternal
Land."
966 _Asiatick Researches_, xi. 27.
967 _Genesis_, ix. 1.
968 How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the
laws of Manu on connubial life, when compared with the licence
tacitly allowed to man in civilized countries. That those laws have
been neglected for the last two millenniums does not prevent us from
admiring their forethought. The Brâhman was a Grihasta, a family
man, till a certain period of his life, when, after begetting a son,
he broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. His very
connubial life was regulated by his Brâhman astrologer in accordance
with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjâb, for
instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of
European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Âryan
castes, one still finds the finest men--so far as stature and
physical strength go--on the whole Globe; whereas the mighty men of
old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in
Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with every century--and
almost with every year--dwarfed and weakened.
969 Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied.
970 In Mrs. Anna Swanwick's volume, _The Dramas of Ćschylus_, it is said
of "Prometheus Bound" ("Bohn's Classical Library," p. 334), that
Prometheus truly appears in it "as the champion and benefactor of
mankind, whose condition: ... is depicted as weak and miserable in
the extreme.... Zeus, it is said, proposed to annihilate these puny
ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new race in their stead."
We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the
first product of Nature and the Sea, in the Stanzas. "Prometheus
_represents_ himself as having frustrated this design, and as being
consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most
agonizing pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We
have, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will [of
intellectual humanity, or the higher aspect of Manas], depicted _as
the sublime philanthropist_, while Zeus, the Supreme Deity of
Hellas, is portrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a character
peculiarly revolting to Athenian sentiment." The reason for it is
explained further on. The "Supreme Deity" bears, in every ancient
Pantheon--including that of the Jews--a _dual_ character, composed of
light and shadow.
971 The animal world, having simple instinct to guide it, has its
_seasons of procreation_, and the sexes become neutralized during
the rest of the year. Therefore, the free animal knows sickness but
once in its life--before it dies.
972 Introduction to "Prometheus Bound," p. 340.
973 From {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}-{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, "forethought." "Professor Kuhn," we are told in the
above-named volumes, _The Dramas of Ćschylus_, "considers the name
of the Titan to be derived from the Sanskrit word Pramantha, the
instrument used for kindling fire. The root _mand_ or _manth_,
implies rotatory motion, and the word _manthâmi_, used to denote the
process of fire kindling, acquired the secondary sense of snatching
away; hence we find another word of the same stock, _pramatha_,
signifying theft." This is very ingenious, but perhaps not
altogether correct; besides, there is a very prosaic element in it.
No doubt in physical nature, the higher forms may develop from the
lower ones, but it is hardly so in the world of thought. And as we
are told that the word _manthâmi_ passed into the Greek language and
became the word _manthanô_, to learn--that is to say, to appropriate
knowledge, whence _prometheia_, fore-knowledge, fore-thought--we may
find, in searching, a more poetical origin for the "fire-bringer"
than that displayed in its Sanskrit origin. The Svastica, the sacred
sign and the instrument for kindling _sacred_ fire, may explain it
better. "Prometheus, the fire-bringer, is the Pramantha
personified," continues the author, "and finds his prototype in the
Âryan Mâtarishvan, a divine ... personage, closely associated with
Agni, the fire-god of the Vedas." Matih, in Sanskrit, is
"understanding," and a synonym of Mahat and Manas, and must be of
some account in the origin of the name; Pramatih is the son of
Fohat, and has his story also.
974 Cronus is "Time," and thus the allegory becomes very suggestive.
975 It is complained by the author of the version and translator of
"Prometheus Bound" that in this tracing of Io's wanderings, "no
consistency with our own known geography is attainable" (p. 379).
There may be good reason for it. First of all it is the journey and
wandering from place to place of the _Race_ from which the "tenth,"
or Kalki Avatâra, so called, is to issue. This he calls the "kingly
race born in _Argos_" (888). But Argos has no reference here to
Argos in Greece. It comes from _arg_ or _arka_--the female generative
power symbolized in the Moon--the navi-formed Argha of the Mysteries,
meaning the Queen of Heaven. Eustathius shows that, in the dialect
of the Arg-ians, Io signified the Moon; while Esotericism explains
it as the divine Androgyne, or the mystic Ten (10); in Hebrew 10 is
the perfect number, or Jehovah. Arghya in Sanskrit is the libation
cup, the navi-form or boat-shaped vessel in which flowers and fruit
are offered to the Deities. Arghyanâth is a title of the Mahâ
Chohan, meaning the "Lord of Libations"; and Arghyavarsha, the "Land
of Libations," is the mystery name of that region which extends from
Kailâsa mountain nearly to the Shamo Desert--from within which the
Kalki Avatâra is expected. The Airyâna-Varsedya of the Zoroastrians,
as a locality, is identical with it. It is now said to have been
situated between the Sea of Aral, Baltistan, and Little Tibet; but
in olden times its area was far larger, as it was the birth-place of
_physical_ humanity, of which Io is the mother and symbol.
976 _Op. cit._, p. 385, note.
977 i. 569, 570.
978 Alexander, who was better acquainted with Attock than with India--for
he never entered India proper--could not have failed to hear the
Indus, near its very sources, called Nîl and Nîlâ. The mistake--if
mistake it is--is thus easily accounted for.
979 That Io is identical, allegorically, with Isis and the Moon is shown
by her being "cow-horned." The allegory undeniably reached Greece
from India, where Vâch--the "melodious Cow" of the _Rig Veda_, "from
whom mankind was produced" (_Bhâgavata Purâna_) is shown in the
_Aitareya Brâhmana_ as pursued by her father Brahmâ, who was moved
by an illicit passion, and changed her into a Deer. Hence Io,
refusing to yield to Jupiter's passion, becomes "horned." The Cow
was in every country the symbol of the passive generative power of
nature, Isis, Vâch, Venus--the mother of the prolific God of Love,
Cupid, but, at the same time, that of the Logos whose symbol, with
the Egyptians and the Indians, became the Bull, as testified to by
the Apis and the Hindű Bulls in the most ancient temples. In
Esoteric Philosophy the Cow is the symbol of Creative Nature, and
the Bull (her calf) the Spirit which vivifies her, or the "Holy
Spirit," as Dr. Kenealy shows. Hence the symbol of the horns. These
were sacred also with the Jews, who placed on the altar horns of
Shittim wood, by seizing which a criminal ensured his safety.
980 _Tuscul. Qućst._, I. ii. 20.
981 _Strom._, I. ii, _Oper._, i. 467, Ed. Potter's.
982 Herodotus and Pausanias supposed that the cause of the condemnation
was that Ćschylus, adopting the Theogony of the Egyptians, made
Diana the daughter of Ceres, and not of Latona. (See Ćlian, _Var.
Hist._, I. v. xviii; i. 433, Edition Gronov.) But Ćschylus _was_
initiated.
983 The Sabasia was a periodical festival with Mysteries enacted in
honour of some Gods, a variant on the Mithraic Mysteries. The whole
evolution of the Races was performed in these Mysteries.
984 Mrs. A. Swanwick, _op. cit._
985 See the foot-note (p. 431) concerning the etymology of {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}-{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} or
_forethought_. Prometheus confesses it in the drama when saying:
O holy ether, swiftly-wingčd gales....
Behold what I, a god, from gods endure.
And yet what say I? _Clearly I foreknow_
All that must happen....
... The Destined it behoves,
As best I may, to bear, for well I wot
How incontestable the strength of Fate.... (105)
"Fate" stands here for Karma, or Nemesis.
986 Mankind is obviously divided into God-informed men and lower human
creatures. The intellectual difference between the Âryan and other
civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is
inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, no
generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human
specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African
tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Âryans, the Semites,
and the Turanians so-called. The "Sacred Spark" is missing in them,
and it is they who are the only _inferior_ races on the Globe, now
happily--owing to the wise adjustment of Nature which ever works in
that direction--fast dying out. Verily mankind is "of one blood,"
_but not of the same essence_. We are the hot-house, artificially
quickened plants in Nature, having in us a spark, which in them is
latent.
987 The philosophical view of Indian metaphysics places the Root of Evil
in the differentiation of the Homogeneous into the Heterogeneous, of
the Unit into Plurality.
988 _Sap._, i. 13.
989 Gautama Buddha, named Shâkya Thüb-pa, is the _twenty-seventh_ of the
last group, as most of these Buddhas belong to the Divine Dynasties
which instructed mankind.
990 Of these Buddhas, or the "Enlightened," the far distant predecessors
of Gautama, the Buddha, who represent, we are taught, once living?
men, great Adepts and Saints, in whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had
incarnated, and who were, therefore, so to speak, minor Avatâras of
the Celestial Beings--eleven only belong to the Atlantean Race, and
twenty-four to the Fifth Race, from its beginnings. They are
identical with the Tirthankaras of the Jainas.
991 This may account for the similarity of the artificial mounds in the
United States of America, and the tumuli in Norway. It is this
identity that has led some American Archćologists to suggest that
Norwegian mariners had _discovered_ America about one thousand years
ago. (See Holmboe's _Traces de Bouddhisme en Norvčge_, p. 23.) There
is no doubt that America is that "far distant land into which pious
men and heavy storms had transferred the sacred doctrine," as a
Chinese writer suggested by his description to Neumann. But neither
Professor Holmboe, of Stockholm, nor the American Archćologists,
have guessed the right age of the mounds, or the tumuli. The fact
that Norwegians may have re-discovered the land that their long-
forgotten forefathers believed to have perished in the general
submersion, does not conflict with the other fact that the Secret
Doctrine of the land which was the cradle of physical man, and of
the Fifth Race, had found its way into the so-called New World ages
and ages before the "Sacred Doctrine" of Buddhism.
992 See _Physiological Selection_, by G. J. Romanes, F.R.S.
993 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 65.
994 _Exodus_, xi.
995 Wrote the late Brahmachârî Bawa, a Yogî of great renown and
holiness: "Extensive works on 'Ashtar Vidiâ' and such other sciences
were at different times compiled in the languages of the times from
the Sanskrit originals. But they, together with the Sanskrit
originals, were lost at the time of the partial deluge of our
county." (The _Theosophist_, June, 1880, "Some Things the Âryans
Knew.") For Agnyastra, see Wilson's _Specimens of the Hindű
Theatre_, i. 297.
996 Some wonderful, artificially-made beast, similar in some way to
Frankenstein's creation, which spoke and warned his master of every
approaching danger. The master was a "Black Magician," the
mechanical animal was informed by a Djin, an Elemental, according to
the accounts. The blood of a pure man alone could destroy him. See Part II, Section XXV, "Seven in Astronomy, Science, and Magic."
997 The four Karmic Gods, called the Four Mahârâjahs in the Stanzas.
998 _Mythical Monsters_, p. 19.
999 _Travels in Egypt_, vol. ii.
1000 _The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated_ (p. 3), by
a strangely intuitional Symbologist and Astronomer, a kind of a
self-made Adept of Norwich, who lived in the first quartet of this
century.
1001 See Proctor, _Knowledge_, i. pp. 242, 400.
1002 Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, ii. 345.
1003 _The Great Pyramid_, pp. 36, 37.
1004 Staniland Wake, _op. cit._, pp. 6, 7.
1005 _Ibid._
1006 _The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated_, pp. 4, 5.
1007 The term "Atlantean" must not mislead the reader to regard these as
one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said
"Asiatics." Many, multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who
represented several "humanities," and almost a countless number of
races and nations, more varied indeed than would be the "Europeans,"
were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five existing
parts of the world, which, at the rate colonization is proceeding,
will be the case, perhaps, in less than two or three hundred years.
There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants
and dwarfs, as some African tribes comparatively are, even now.
1008 Says a teacher in _Esoteric Buddhism_ (p. 64): "In the Eocene age,
even in its very first part, the great cycle of the Fourth Race men,
the [Lemuro-] Atlanteans, had already reached its highest point [of
civilization], and the great Continent, the father of nearly all the
present continents, showed the first symptoms of sinking." And on
page 70, it is shown that Atlantis as a whole perished during the
Miocene period. To show how the continents, races, nations and
cycles overlap each other, one has but to think of Lemuria, the last
of whose lands perished about 700,000 years before the beginning of
the Tertiary period (p. 65), and the last of "Atlantis" only 11,000
years ago; thus both overlapping--one the Atlantean period, and the
other the Âryan.
1009 See _Traité de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale_, part iii.
1010 Ceylon.
1011 This is not so. The forefathers of the Âryan Brâhmans had their
Zodiac and Zodiacal calculations from those born by Kriyâshakti
power, the "Sons of Yoga"; the Egyptians from the Atlanteans of
Ruta.
1012 The former, therefore, may have registered time for seven or eight
millions of years, but the Egyptians _could not_.
1013 _Op. cit._, p. 6.
1014 This question was amply challenged, and as amply discussed and
answered. See _Five Years of Theosophy_, Art., "Mr. Sinnett's
_Esoteric Buddhism_," pp. 325-346.
1015 _Ruins of Empires_, p. 360. Volney says that, as Aries was in its
15th degree 1,447 B.C., it follows that the first degree of Libra
could not have coincided with the Vernal Equinox more lately than
15,194 years B.C., to which if you add 1,790 since Christ, when
Volney wrote this, it appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since
the (Greek or rather Hellenic) origin of the Zodiac.
1016 The word "historical" is used, because, although historians have
almost absurdly dwarfed the dates that separate certain events from
our modern day, nevertheless, once that they are known and accepted,
they belong to history. Thus, the Trojan War _is_ a historical
event, which, though even less than 1,000 years B.C. are assigned to
it, really took place more nearly 6,000 than 5,000 years B.C.
1017 It is a historical fact that Sanchuniathon compiled the full record
of the Phoenician religion from annals and state documents in the
archives of the _older_ Phoenician cities, and wrote it in Phoenician
characters in 1,250 B.C.
1018 Prof. Virchow, in Appendix I, to Schliemann's _Ilios_. Murray, 1880.
1019 Gosse writes of the latter: "She is set down a thorough heretic, not
at all to be believed, a manufacturer of unsound natural history, an
inventor of false facts in science." (_Romance of Natural History_,
2nd Series, p. 227.)
1020 Pp. 9, 10.
1021 _Popular Science Monthly_, No. 60, April, 1877.
1022 Dr. Cover writes: "That famous bird of Washington was a myth; either
Audubon was mistaken, or else, as some do not hesitate to affirm, he
_lied_ about it."
1023 _Ibid._, pp. 10, 11.
1024 _Mythical Monsters_, p. 13, note.
1025 So far back as July, 1888, at a time when the MS. of this work had
not yet left my writing table, and _The Secret Doctrine_ was utterly
unknown to the world, it was already being denounced as a product of
my brain and no more. These are the flattering terms in which the
_Evening Telegraph_ (of America) referred to this still unpublished
work in its issue of June 30, 1888: "_Among the fascinating books
for July reading_ is Mme. Blavatsky's new book on Theosophy ... (!)
_The Secret Doctrine_.... But because she can soar back into the
Brahmin ignorance ... (!?) _is no proof that everything she says is
true_." And once the prejudiced verdict has been given on the
mistaken notion that my book was out, and that the reviewer had read
it--neither of which was or could be the case--now that it is really
out, the critic will have to support his first statement, whether
correct or otherwise, and will get out of it, probably by a more
slashing criticism than ever.
1026 _Science of Language_, p. 168.
1027 _The Human Species_, p. 274.
1028 See above, the diagram of the Genealogical Tree of the Fifth Race.
1029 The Hegelian doctrine, which identifies Absolute Being or "Be-ness"
with "Non-Being," and represents the Universe as an Eternal
Becoming, is identical with the Vedânta Philosophy.
1030 _The Religions of India_, p. xiii.
1031 Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 175.
1032 See De Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iii. pp. 218 _et seqq._
1033 _Op. cit._, _ibid._
1034 See _Genesis_ and the authorized chronology. In chapter viii, "Noah
leaveth the ark"--2,348 B.C. In chapter x, "Nimrod the first
monarch," stands over 1,998 B.C.
1035 _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, June, 1860, p. 415.
1036 April 30, 1860.
1037 "I will mention to thee the writings ... respecting the belief and
institutions of the Sabćans," he says. "The most famous is the Book,
_The Agriculture of the Nabatheans_, which has been translated by
Ibn Wahohijah. This book is full of heathenish foolishness.... It
speaks of preparations of Talismans, the drawing down of the powers
of the Spirits, Magic, Demons, and Ghouls, which make their abode in
the desert." (Maimonides, quoted by Dr. D. Chwolsohn; _Die Ssabier
und der Ssabismus_, ii. 458.) The Nabatheans of Mount Lebanon
believed in the seven Archangels, as their forefathers had believed
in the seven Great Stars, the abodes and bodies of these Archangels,
which are believed in to this day by the Roman Catholics, as is
shown elsewhere.
1038 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 197.
1039 i. 354.
1040 Sayce; _cf._, p. 115, 2nd ed.
1041 _Op. cit._, pp. 418, 419.
1042 _Ibid._, p. 118.
1043 Simply, the womb, the "Holy of Holies" with the Semites.
1044 See the Valentinian Table in Epiphanius, _Adv. Hćr._, I. xxxi. 2.
1045 But it was not so in reality, as witness their prophets. It is the
later Rabbis and the Talmudic scheme that killed out all
spirituality from the body of their symbols; leaving only their
Scriptures--a dead shell, from which the soul has departed.
1046 See _II Samuel_, vi. 16-22.
1047 _Psalms_, xxiv. 3.
1048 _II Kings_, xxiii. 7; see Dunlap, _Sôd; The Mysteries of Adoni_, p.
41.
1049 _Judges_, xxi. 21, 23 _et passim_.
1050 _I Kings_, xviii. 26.
1051 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 49.
1052 _Ibid._, ii. 444.
1053 The author of the _Qabbalah_ makes several attempts to prove
conclusively the antiquity of the _Zohar_. Thus he shows that Moses
de Leon could not be the author or the forger of the Zoharic works
in the thirteenth century, as he is accused of being, since Ibn
Gebirol gave out the same philosophical teaching 225 years before
the day of Moses de Leon. No true Kabalist or scholar will ever deny
the fact. It is certain that Ibn Gebirol based his doctrines upon
the oldest Kabalistic sources, namely, the Chaldćan _Book of
Numbers_, as well as some no longer extant Midrashim, the same, no
doubt, as those used by Moses de Leon. But it is just the difference
between the two ways of treating the same Esoteric subjects,
which--while proving the enormous antiquity of the Esoteric
System--points to a decided ring of Talmudistic and even Christian
sectarianism in the compilation and glossaries of the Zoharic system
by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol _never quoted_ from the Scriptures to
enforce the teachings (Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 7). Whereas Moses de
Leon has made of the _Zohar_ that which it has remained to this day,
"a running commentary on the Five Books, or Pentateuch" (_ibid._),
with a few later additions made by Christian hands. One follows the
Archaic Esoteric Philosophy; the other, only that portion which was
adapted to the _lost_ Books of Moses restored by Ezra. Thus, while
the system, or the trunk on which the primitive original _Zohar_ was
engrafted, is of an immense antiquity, many of the (later) Zoharic
offshoots are strongly coloured by the peculiar views held by
Christian Gnostics (Syrian and Chaldćan), the friends and co-workers
of Moses de Leon who, as shown by Munk, accepted their
interpretations.
1054 See Franck's _Kabbala_, Preface.
1055 i. 14.
1056 See Schwartze, _op. cit._, _pagg._ 359, 361, _et seqq._
1057 Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, p. 374.
1058 Timćus, the Locrian, speaking of "Arka" [Arche], calls her "the
principle of best things" ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}). The word _arcane_,
"hidden," or secret, is derived from this. "To no one is the
_Arcane_ shown except to the ... Most High" (_Codex
Nazarćus_)--alluding to Nature the female, and Spirit, the male
Power. Ćsculapius, as a Sun-God was called _Archagetas_, "born from
the Archa," the divine Virgin-Mother of the Heavens. (See Kenealy,
_Book of God_, p. 10.)
1059 Kenealy, _op. cit._, _ibid._
1060 This is composed of ten dots arranged triangularly in four rows. It
is the Tetragrammaton of the Western Kabalists.
1061 From an MS.
1062 See G. Maspéro, _Guide au Musée Boulaq_, 1884, p. 168, No. 1981.
1063 _Ibid._, p. 169, No. 1998.
1064 _Ibid._, p. 172, No. 2068.
1065 The student must be aware that Jethro is not called the "father-in-
law" of Moses because Moses was really married to one of his seven
daughters. Moses was an Initiate, if he ever existed, and as such an
Ascetic, a Nazar, and could never have been married. It is an
allegory like everything else. Zipporah (the "shining") is one of
the personified Occult Sciences given by Reuel-Jethro, the Midian
priest Initiator, to Moses, his Egyptian pupil. The "well" by which
Moses sat down in his flight from the Pharaoh symbolizes the "Well
of Knowledge."
1066 i. pp. 106-108 and elsewhere.
1067 In Hebrew the phallic symbol Lingam and Yoni.
1068 See Vol. I, Stanza IV, Shloka 3.
1069 It is at that Step that one arrives on the plane of the level or
floor and open entrance to the King's Chamber, the Egyptian "Holy of
Holies."
1070 The Candidate for Initiation always personified the God of the
Temple he belonged to, as the High Priest personified the God at all
times; just as the Pope now personates Peter and even Jesus Christ
upon entering the inner sanctuary--the Christian "Holy of Holies."
1071 _Genesis_, i. 27.
1072 Jehovah says to Moses: "the summation of my name is _sacr_, the
carrier of the germ"--phallus. "It is ... the vehicle of enunciation,
and truly enough, as the _sacr_, or carrier of the germ, its use
passed down through ages to the _sacr-factum_ of the Roman priest,
and the _sacr-fice_, and _sacr-ment_ of the English speaking race."
(_Source of Measures_, p. 236.) Hence marriage is a _sacrament_ in
the Greek and Roman Churches.
1073 4to, London, 1684, vol. i. pp. 120, 121.
1074 _Op. cit._, p. 67.
1075 _Source of Measures_, 159.
1076 _Op. cit._, p. 187.
1077 _Op. cit._, p. 271.
1078 From the same author. See also the Section on "The Symbolism of the
Mystery Names Iao and Jehovah."
1079 In _Genesis_ (iv. 26), it is mis-translated. "And he called his name
Enos [man]: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord"--which
has no sense in it, since Adam and the others must have done the
same.
1080 Strictly speaking, the Jews are an artificial Âryan race, born in
India, and belonging to the Caucasian division. No one who is
familiar with the Armenians and the Parsîs can fail to recognize in
the three the same Âryan, Caucasian type. From the seven primitive
types of the Fifth Race there now remain on Earth but three. As
Prof. W. H. Flower aptly said in 1885: "I cannot resist the
conclusion so often arrived at by various anthropologists--that the
primitive man, whatever he may have been, has in the course of ages
diverged into three extreme types, represented by the Caucasian of
Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of Africa, and that
all existing individuals of the species can be ranged around these
types." (The President's Address at the Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain, etc.) Considering that our Race has reached its fifth
sub-race, how can it be otherwise?
1081 Whenever such analogies between the Gentiles and the Jews, and later
the Christians, have been pointed out, it has been the invariable
custom of the latter to say that it was the work of the Devil who
forced the Pagans to imitate the Jews for the purpose of throwing a
slur on the religion of the _one, true living_ God. To this Faber
says very justly: "Some have imagined that the Gentiles were servile
copyists of the Israelites, and that each point of similitude was
borrowed from the Mosaical Institutes. But this theory will by no
means solve the problem. Both because we find the very same
resemblance in the ceremonies of nations far distant from Palestine,
as we do in the rites of those who are in its immediate vicinity,
and because it seems incredible that all should have borrowed from
one which was universally disliked and despised." (_Pagan Idolatry_,
i. 104.)
1082 _Luke_, i. 28.
1083 Their consecrated Pillars (unhewn stones) erected by Abraham and
Jacob were _Lingams_.
1084 _Op. cit._, p. 67.
1085 See _Introduction to the Old Testament_, and also Bishop Colenso's
_Elohistic and Jehovistic Writers_.
1086 King's _Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 327, 2nd ed.
1087 _Ibid._, p. 326.
1088 Such a Pseudo-Kabalist was the Marquis de Mirville in France, who
studied the _Zohar_ and other old remnants of Jewish Wisdom under
the "Chevalier" Drach, an ancient Rabbi Kabalist converted to the
Romish Church, and with his help wrote half a dozen volumes full of
slander and calumnies against every prominent Spiritualist and
Kabalist. From 1848 up to 1860 he persecuted unrelentingly the old
Count d'Ourches, one of the earliest Eastern Occultists in France, a
man the scope of whose Occult knowledge will never be appreciated
correctly by his survivors, because he screened his real beliefs and
knowledge under the mask of Spiritism.
1089 See _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, pp. 101-115.
1090 _Exodus_, xxii. 28.
1091 _Deut._, iv. 19.
1092 _Jude_, 8, 9.
1093 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 487, _et seqq._
1094 Treat, _Kiddusheem_, 81. But see Myer's _Qabbalah_, pp. 92, 94.
1095 Marangone, in his _Delle Grandezze del Archangelo Sancti Mikaele_,
exclaims: "O grandest Star, who followest the Sun who is Christ!...
O living image of Divinity! O great thaumaturgist of the Old
Testament! O invisible Vicar of Christ in his Church!..." The work
is held in great honour in the Latin Church.
1096 _Pneumatologie_, v. 516.
1097 _Ibid._, p. 515.
1098 _Ibid._, p. 514.
1099 _Isaiah_, lxiii. 8, 9.
1100 Metator and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}.
1101 _Pneumatologie_, p. 515. "La Face et le Représentant du Verbe."
1102 That which is called in the _Vendidâd_ Fravarshi, the immortal part
of an individual; that which outlives man--the Higher Ego, say the
Occultists, or the Divine Double.
1103 Darmesteter's Trans., p. 208.
1104 _Orm. Ahr._, §§ 112, 113; quoted by Darmesteter, "Sacred Books of
the East," vol. iv. introd., p. lxxiv.
1105 _De Idol._, ii. 373.
1106 See De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 515.
1107 _Ibid._ See also plates in King's _Gnostics and their Remains_.
1108 P. 518.
1109 _The Book of Enoch the Prophet_, p. xlviii. Ed. 1883.
1110 _Op. cit._, pp. xxxiv, xxxv.
1111 Saith Uriel in the _Book of Enoch_ (xxvi. 3): "Those who have
received mercy shall for ever bless God ... the _Everlasting
King_"--who will reign over them.
1112 _Vishnu Purâna_, III. ii; Wilson's Trans., iii. 31.
1113 _Matthew_, xxiv. 27.
1114 _Luke_, x. 18.
1115 The Protestant _Bible_ defines Behemoth _innocently_--"The _elephant_
as some think"; see marginal note (_Job_, xl. 15) in the Authorized
Version.
1116 _Job_, xl. 19.
1117 Astronomy, however, knows nothing of stars that have _disappeared_,
unless it be simply from visibility; but never from existence since
the science of Astronomy became known. Temporary stars are only
_variable_ stars, and it is believed that even the _new_ stars of
Kepler and Tycho Brahé may still be seen.
1118 This refers to the "Kings of Edom."
1119 Another proof, if any were needed, that the ancient Initiates knew
of more than _seven_ planets is to be found in the _Vishnu Purâna_
(II. xii) where, describing the chariots attached to Dhruva (the
Pole Star), Parâshara speaks of "the chariots of the _nine_
planets," which are attached by aërial cords.
1120 Justin, _Cum Tryphone_, p. 284.
1121 A division indicative of time.
1122 Sanchuniathon calls Time the oldest Ćon, Protogonos, the "First-
born."
1123 Philo Judćus, _Cain and his Birth_, p. xvii.
1124 _Principles of Psychology_, 474.
1125 It is suggestive of that spirit of paradoxical negation so
conspicuous in our day, that while the evolution hypothesis has won
its rights of citizenship in Science as taught by Darwin and Hćckel,
yet both the Eternity of the Universe and the Preëxistence of a
Universal Consciousness, are rejected by modern Psychologists.
"Should the Idealist be right, the doctrine of evolution is a
dream," says Mr. Herbert Spencer.
1126 _Zohar_, 9b.
1127 Verse 6.
1128 Mercure Trismegiste, _Pimandre_, chap. i, sec. 16: "Oh, ma pensée,
que s'ensuit-il? car je désire grandement ce propos. Pimandre diet,
ceci est un mystčre celé, jusques ŕ ce jour d'hui. Car nature, soit
mestant avec l'hôme, a produit le miracle trčs merveilleux, aîant
celluy qui ie t'av diet, la nature de l'harmonie des sept du pčre,
et de l'esprit. _Nature ne s'arresta pas lŕ_, mais incontinent a
produict _sept hômes, selon les natures des sept gouverneurs_ en
puissance des deux sexes et esleuez.... La génération de ces _sept_
s'est donnée en ceste maničre...."
And a gap is made in the translation, which can be filled partially
by resorting to the Latin text of Apuleius. The commentator, the
Bishop, says: "Nature produced in him [man] seven men" (seven
principles).
1129 xxviii. 2-8.
1130 _Ibid._
1131 _Ibid._, 17.
1132 _Ibid._, 13-16.
1133 _Ibid._, 18.
1134 _Ibid._, 19.
1135 xxxi. 16, 17. The only Pharaoh whom the _Bible_ shows going down
into the Red Sea was the king who pursued the Israelites, and who
remained unnamed, for very good reasons perhaps. The story was
surely made up from the Atlantean legend.
1136 xxviii. 13, 14.
1137 xxxi. 3-9.
1138 _Vishnu Purâna._ I. xv.
1139 This is pure allegory. The Waters are a symbol of Wisdom and of
Occult Learning. Hermes represented the Sacred Science under the
symbol of Fire; the Northern Initiates, under that of Water. The
latter is the production of Nara, the "Spirit of God," or rather
Paramâtman, the "Supreme Soul," says Kullűka Bhatta; Nârâyana,
meaning "he who abides in the deep" or is plunged in the Waters of
Wisdom--"water being the body of Nara" (_Vâyu Purâna_). Hence arises
the statement that for 10,000 years they remained in austerity "in
the vast ocean"; and are shown emerging from it. Ea, the God of
Wisdom, is the "Sublime Fish," and Dagon or Oannes is the Chaldćan
Man-Fish, who emerges from the Waters to teach Wisdom.
1140 Chap. v; "Sacred Books of the East," vol. viii. p. 257.
1141 This is explained by the able translator of _Anugîtâ_ in a foot-note
(p. 258) in these words: "The sense appears to be this: The course
of worldly life is due to the operations of the life-winds which are
attached to the Self, and lead to its manifestations as individual
souls."
1142 Vaishvânara is a word often used to denote the Self--explains
Nîlakantha.
1143 _Ibid._, p. 259. Translated by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A.,
Bombay.
1144 _Matthew_, iii. 10.
1145 _Isaiah_, x. 19.
1146 _Op. cit._, i. 133.
1147 1845, p. 41.
1148 See Dowson's _Hindű Classical Dictionary_ for further information on
above.
1149 See _Five Years of Theosophy_, art., "The Elixir of Life."
1150 The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body,
and yet away from it in his Spiritual Form. Freed from the former,
he soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming
virtually "as one of the Gods," and yet preserving in his physical
brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma
is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous
Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve, "lest man should become as one of
us."
1151 We see the same in the modern exoteric religions.
1152 _Historical View of the Hindű Astronomy._ Quoting from the work in
reference to "Argabhatta" [? Âryabhatta] who is said to give a near
approach to the true relation among the various values for the
computations of the value of {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}, the author of _The Source of
Measures_ reproduces a curious statement. "Mr. Bentley," it is said,
"was greatly familiar with the Hindű astronomical and mathematical
knowledge.... This statement of his may then be taken as authentic.
The same remarkable trait, among so many Eastern and ancient
nations, of _sedulously concealing the arcana of this kind of
knowledge, is a marked one_ among the Hindűs. That which was given
out to be popularly taught, and to be exposed to public inspection,
_was but the approximate of a more exact but hidden knowledge_. And
this very formulation of Mr. Bentley will strangely exemplify the
assertion; and, explained, will show that it [the Hindű _exoteric_
astronomy and sciences] was derived _from a system exact beyond the
European one_, in which Mr. Bentley himself, of course, trusted, as
far in advance of the Hindű knowledge, at any time, in any
generation" (pp. 86, 87).
This is Mr. Bentley's misfortune, and does not take away from the
glory of the ancient Hindű Astronomers, who were all Initiates.
1153 The Secret Doctrine teaches that every event of universal
importance, such as geological cataclysms at the end of one Race and
the beginning of a new one, involving a great change each time in
mankind, spiritual, moral and physical--is precogitated and
preconcerted, so to say, in the sidereal regions of our planetary
system. Astrology is built wholly upon this mystic and intimate
connection between the heavenly bodies and mankind; and it is one of
the great secrets of Initiation and Occult Mysteries.
1154 See Darmesteter's _Vendidâd_, Introd., p. lviii.
1155 See _Isaiah_, xiv. 12.
1156 _Genesis_, vi.
1157 The Nâgas are described by the Orientalists as a mysterious people
whose landmarks are found abundantly in India to this day, and who
lived in Nâga-dvîpa, one of the _seven_ continents or divisions of
Bhâratavarsha (old India); the town of Nagpur being one of the most
ancient cities in the country.
1158 xxviii. 3, 4.
1159 Not less suggestive are the qualities attributed to Rudra Shiva, the
great Yogî, the forefather of all the Adepts--in Esotericism one of
the greatest Kings of the Divine Dynasties. Called the "earliest"
and the "last," he is the patron of the Third, Fourth, and the Fifth
Root-Races. For, in his earliest character, he is the ascetic Dig-
ambara, "clothed with the elements," Tri-lochana, the "three-eyed,"
Pancha-ânana, the "five-faced," an allusion to the past Four and the
present Fifth Race, for, though five-faced, he is only "four-armed,"
as the Fifth Race is still alive. He is the "God of Time," Saturn-
Cronus, as his "drum" Damaru, in the shape of an hour-glass, shows;
and if he is accused of having cut off Brahma's fifth head, and left
him with only four, it is again an allusion to a certain degree in
Initiation, and also to the Races.
1160 Gustav Seiffarth's idea that the signs of the Zodiac were in ancient
times only ten is erroneous. Ten only were known to the profane; the
Initiates, however, knew them all, _from the time of the separation
of mankind into sexes_, whence arose the separation of Virgo-Scorpio
into two. This separation, owing to the addition of a secret sign
and the Libra invented by the Greeks, instead of the secret name
which was not given, made twelve. (See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 456.)
1161 The above is, perhaps, a key to the Dalaď Lama's symbolical name--the
"Ocean" Lama, meaning the Wisdom-Ocean. Abbé Huc speaks of this.
1162 _Zohar_, iii. 9b, 10a, Brody Ed. Cremona Ed. iii. fol. 4a, col. 14.
Myer's _Qabbalah_, pp. 416, 417.
1163 Such was the name given in ancient Judea to the Initiates, called
also the "Innocents" and the "Infants," _i.e._, once more "reborn."
This _key_ opens a vista into one of the _New Testament_ mysteries;
the slaughter by Herod of the 40,000 "Innocents." There is a legend
to this effect, and the event, which took place almost a century
B.C., shows the origin of the tradition blended at the same time
with that of Krishna and his uncle Kansa. In the case of the _New
Testament_, Herod stands for Alexander Jannćus (of Lyda), whose
persecution and murder of hundreds and thousands of Initiates led to
the adoption of the _Bible_ story.
1164 _Zohar_, ii. 34.
1165 i. § 16.
1166 _Op. cit._, lxxiv. 13.
1167 _Ibid._, § 33.
1168 P. 16.
1169 "Biographical and Critical Essay," p. xxxviii.
1170 _Histoire de la Magic_, pp. 16, 17.
1171 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1172 What _devil_ could be possessed of more cunning, craft and cruelty
than the Whitechapel murderer, "Jack the Ripper" of 1888, whose
unparalleled, blood-thirsty and cool wickedness led him to slaughter
and mutilate in cold blood seven unfortunate and _otherwise_
innocent women! One has but to read the daily papers to find in
those wife- and child-beating, drunken brutes (husbands and
fathers!), a _small_ percentage of whom is daily brought before the
courts, the complete personifications of the devils of the Christian
Hell!
1173 _Psalm_, lxxxii.
1174 _Genesis_, xvii. 7.
1175 _Op. cit._, p. 209.
1176 _Ibid._, pp. 144, 145.
1177 _Ibid._, p. 146.
1178 _Op. cit._, p. 9. After the Polymorphic Pantheism of some Gnostics
came the Exoteric Dualism of Manes, who was accused of personifying
Evil and making of the Devil a God--the rival of God himself. We do
not see that the Christian Church has so much improved on that
exoteric idea of the Manicheans, for she calls God her King of
Light, and Satan the King of Darkness, to this day.
1179 To quote in this relation Mr. S. Laing, in his admirable work
_Modern Science and Modern Thought_ (p. 222): "From this dilemma
[the existence of evil in the world] there is no escape, unless we
give up altogether the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, and adopt
frankly the scientific idea of a First Cause, inscrutable and past
finding out; and of a universe whose laws we can trace, but of whose
real essence we know nothing, and can only suspect or faintly
discern a fundamental law which may make the polarity of good and
evil a necessary condition of existence." Were Science to know "the
real essence," instead of knowing nothing of it, the faint suspicion
would turn into the certitude of the existence of such a law, and
the knowledge that this law is connected with Karma.
1180 _Histoire de la Magie_, pp. 196, 197.
1181 Âkâsha is _not_ the Ether of Science, as some Orientalists translate
it.
1182 Says Johannes Tritheim, the Abbot of Spanheim, the greatest
Astrologer and Kabalist of his day: "The art of divine magic
consists in the ability to perceive the essence of things in the
Light of Nature [Astral Light], and by using the soul-powers of the
spirit to produce material things from the unseen universe, and in
such operations the Above and the Below must be brought together and
made to act harmoniously. The Spirit of Nature [Astral Light] is a
unity, creating and forming everything, and by acting through the
instrumentality of man it may produce wonderful things. Such
processes take place according to law. You will learn the law by
which these things are accomplished, if you learn to know yourself.
You will know it by the power of the spirit that is in yourself, and
accomplish it by mixing your spirit with the essence that comes out
of yourself. If you wish to succeed in such a work you must know how
to separate spirit and life in Nature, and, moreover, to separate
the astral soul in yourself and to make it tangible, and then the
substance of the soul will appear visibly and tangibly, rendered
objective by the power of the spirit." (Quoted in Dr. Franz
Hartmann's _Paracelsus_, pp. 164, 165.)
1183 The real original text of _I Corinthians_, xv. 44, rendered
kabalistically and Esoterically would read: "It is sown a _soul_
body [not 'natural' body], it is raised a _spirit_ body." St. Paul
was an Initiate, and his words have quite a different meaning when
read Esoterically. The body "is sown in _weakness_ [passivity]; it
is raised in power" (v. 43)--or in spirituality and intellect.
1184 "The War in Heaven" (_Theosophist_, iii. 24, 36, 67), by Godolphin
Mitford, later in life Murad Ali Beg. Born in India, the son of a
missionary, G. Mitford was converted to Islam, and died a Mahomedan
in 1884. He was a most extraordinary Mystic, of great learning and
remarkable intelligence. But he left the Right Path and forthwith
fell under Karmic retribution. As well shown by the author of the
article quoted, "The followers of the defeated 'Elohim' first
massacred by the victorious Jews [the Jehovites], and then persuaded
by the victorious Christians and Mohamedans, continued
[nevertheless].... Some [of these scattered sects] ... have lost
even the tradition of the true rationale of their belief--to worship
in secrecy and mystery the Principle of Fire, Light, and Liberty.
Why do the Sabean Bedouins (avowedly Monotheists when dwelling in
the Mohamedan cities) in the solitude of the desert night yet invoke
the starry 'Host of Heaven'? Why do the Yezidis, the 'Devil
Worshippers,' worship the 'Muluk-Taoos'--the 'Lord Peacock'--the
emblem of _Pride_ and of Hundred-eyed Intelligence [and of
Initiation also], which was expelled from Heaven with Satan,
according to an old Oriental tradition? Why do the Gholaites and
their kindred Mesopotamo-Iranian Mohamedan Sects believe in the
'Noor Illahee'--the 'Light of the Elohim'--transmitted in _anastasis_
through a hundred Prophet-Leaders? It is because they have continued
in ignorant superstition the traditional religion of the 'Light
Deities' whom Jahveh overthrew!" (p. 69)--is _said_ to have
overthrown rather; for by overthrowing _them_ he would have
overthrown himself. The Muluk-Taoos is Maluk, "Ruler," as is shown
in the foot-note. It is only a new form of Moloch, Melek, Molech,
Malayak, and Malachim--Messengers, Angels, etc.
1185 So does every Yogi and even Christian, for one must take the Kingdom
of Heaven _by violence_--we are taught. Why then should such a desire
make of any one a Devil?
1186 _Acad. des Inscrip._, xxxix. 690.
1187 Fargard, xix. 47; Darmesteter's Trans., p. 218.
1188 _Vendidad_, Far. xx. 12; _op. cit._, p. 222.
1189 _Ibid._, Far. xix. 43; _op. cit._, p. 218.
1190 From the _Vendidad Sadah_, quoted by Darmesteter, _op. cit._, p.
223.
1191 See the Gâtha in Yasna xliv.
1192 _Op. cit._, p. 441.
1193 _Apollodorus_, I. 7, 1.
1194 Ovid., _Metam._, I. 81. _Etym. M._, v. {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}.
1195 Pausanias, X. 4, 4.
1196 _Op. cit._, p. 264.
1197 Pausanias, II. 19, 5; _cf._ 20, 3.
1198 _Timćus_, p. 22.
1199 _Strom._, I. p. 380.
1200 Decharme, _ibid._, p. 265.
1201 _Opera et Dies_, 142-145. According to the Occult Teaching, three
Yugas passed away during the time of the Third Root-Race, _i.e._,
the Satya, the Tretŕ, and the Dvâpara Yuga--answering to the Golden
Age in its early innocence; to the Silver, when it reached its
maturity; and to the Bronze Age, when, separating into sexes, it
became the mighty Demi-gods of old.
1202 _Asgard and the Gods_, pp. 11, 13.
1203 _Op. cit._, p. 266.
1204 _Ibid._, p. 258.
1205 _Ibid._, p. 257.
1206 _Ibid._, p. 258.
1207 _Op. cit._, p. 145.
1208 _Transactions of the Royal Society_, London, 1868.
1209 _The Age and Origin of Man._
1210 The modern attempt of some Greek scholars (poor and pseudo scholars,
they would have appeared in the day of the old Greek writers!) to
explain the real meaning of the ideas of Ćschylus--which, as being an
ignorant ancient Greek, he could not express so well himself--is
absurdly ludicrous!
1211 _Revue Germanique_, 1861, pp. 356, _et seqq._ See also _Mémoires de
la Société de la Linguistique_, i. pp. 337. _et seqq._
1212 Quoted by Decharme, _op. cit._, pp. 258, 259. There is the _upper_
and _nether_ piece of timber used to produce this sacred fire by
attrition at sacrifices, and it is the Araně which contains the
socket. This is proven by an allegory in the _Vâyu_ and other
_Purânas_, which tell us that Nimi, the son of Ikshvŕku, had left no
successor, and that the Rishis, fearing to leave the Earth without a
ruler, introduced the king's body into the socket of an Arani--like
an upper Araně--and produced from it a prince named Janaka. "It was
by reason of the peculiar way in which he was engendered that he was
called Janaka." See also Goldstücker's _Sanskrit Dictionary_, _sub
voce_. (_Vishnu Purána_, Wilson's Trans., iii. 330.) Devaki,
Krishna's mother, in a prayer addressed to her, is called "the Aranî
whose attrition engenders fire."
1213 The Monad of the animal is as immortal as that of man, yet the brute
knows nothing of this; it lives an animal life of sensation just as
the first human would have lived, on attaining physical development
in the Third Race, had it not been for the Agnishvâtta and the
Mânasa Pitris.
1214 _Op. cit._, p. 259.
1215 {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. _Theog._, p. 528.
1216 _Theog._, 565.
1217 The Fallen Angels, therefore; the Asuras of the Indian Pantheon.
1218 Decharme, _op. cit._, pp. 259, 260.
1219 _Ibid._, p. 263.
1220 _Ibid._, p. 261.
1221 _Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks_ (Berlin, 1859).
1222 The italics are ours; they show how assumptions are raised to laws
in our day.
1223 Decharme, _op. cit._, p. 262.
1224 _Philosoph. Placit._, iii. 3.
1225 Baudry, _Revue Germanique_, 14 avril, 1861, p. 368.
1226 _Op. cit._, pp. 264, 265.
1227 See _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., v. 96, note.
1228 xiii. 55, 56.
1229 "Womb of Light," "Holy Vessel," are the epithets of the Virgin.
1230 The Virgin is often addressed as the "Morning Star" and the "Star of
Salvation."
1231 Wilson translates: "Thou art kingly policy, the parent of order."
1232 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., iv. pp. 264, 265.
1233 iii. 290.
1234 See _Joshua_, xv, 15.
1235 Surât xix.
1236 See Mackenzie's _Royal Masonic Cyclopćdia_, _sub voce_ "Enoch."
1237 Khanoch, or Hanoch, or Enoch Esoterically means the "Initiator" and
"Teacher," as well as Enos, the "Son of Man." (See _Genesis_, iv.
26.)
1238 De Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iii. 70.
1239 Mackenzie, _op. cit._, _sub voc._
1240 _Hebrews_, xi. 5.
1241 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 71.
1242 Compare the "thieves and robbers" incident, p. 506, _supra_.
1243 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 73.
1244 _Ibid._, p. 76.
1245 _Antiquities_, ix. 2.
1246 Cap. viii.
1247 Says the _Zohar_, "Hanokh had a book which was one with the Book of
the Generations of Adam; this is the Mystery of Wisdom."
1248 Noah is heir to the Wisdom of Enoch; in other words, the Fifth is
heir to the Fourth Race.
1249 See _Isis Unveiled_, i. 575, _et seqq._
1250 See the illustration in _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 452.
1251 See Danielo's criticisms upon De Sacy, in the _Annales de
Philosophie_, p. 393, deuxičme article.
1252 De Mirville, _ibid._, pp. 77, 78.
1253 Ch. lxxix, Laurence's Trans.
1254 _Ibid._, ch. lxiv.
1255 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._, v. 6.
1256 Bailly, _Astronomie Ancienne_, i. 203, and ii. 216; De Mirville,
_ibid._, p. 79.
1257 De Mirville, _ibid._, p. 80.
1258 _City of God_, XV. xxiii.
1259 _Op. cit._, xxxii. 8, 9.
1260 Of the Protestant Biblical Society of Paris, according to the
version revised in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald.
1261 With the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth (Hermes), who was chief of
the Seven (see _Book of the Dead_). Their names are given by Origen,
as Adonai (of the Sun), Iao (of the Moon), Eloi (Jupiter), Sabao
(Mars), Orai (Venus), Astaphai (Mercury), and, finally, Ildabaoth
(Saturn). See King's _Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 344.
1262 See Origen's Copy of the Chart or Diagramma of the Ophites, in his
_Contra Celsum_.
1263 See Part III of this Volume, Section IV, B, "On Chains of Planets
and their Plurality."
1264 _Exodus_, xxxiii. 18, 19; see Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 226.
1265 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1266 _Supra_, p. 481.
1267 See _Revelation_, xxii. 16.
1268 _Op. cit._, ii. 301.
1269 _Gnostics and their Remains._
1270 _II Samuel._
1271 By very few though, for the creators of the material universe were
always considered as subordinate Gods to the Most High Deity.
1272 _Op. cit._, ii. 296, 297. Fürst gives citations from Lydus and
Cedrenus in support of his statements.
1273 See plate 77 in vol. i of Montfaucon's _Antiquities_. The disciples
of Hermes, after their death, go to his planet, Mercury--their
Kingdom of Heaven.
1274 Cornutus.
1275 Lydus, _De Mensibus_, iv.
1276 _Preparat. Evang._, I. iii. 2.
1277 But see p. 480, _supra_, concerning the Gnostic Priapus.
1278 _Op. cit._, p. 52.
1279 _Ibid._, pp. 3, 4.
1280 Let the reader refer to the _Zohar_ and the two _Qabbalahs_ of Isaac
Myer and S. L. MacGregor Mathers, with interpretations, if he would
satisfy himself of this.
1281 _Ibid._, p. 5.
1282 _Ibid._, p. 12.
1283 See _Book of the Dead_, xvii. 45-47.
1284 _Op. cit._, i. 421, 422.
1285 _De la Croix Ansée_, _Mem. de l'Académie des Sciences_, pl. 2, Nos.
8, 9, also 16, 2, p. 320; quoted in _Natural Genesis_, p. 423.
1286 Vol. xviii. p. 393, pl. 4; Inman, fig. 38; Gerald Massey, _op.
cit._, _ibid._, p. 422.
1287 Certainly not; for very often there are symbols _made to symbolize
other symbols_, and these are in turn used in ideographs.
1288 The R of the Slavonian and Russian alphabets (the Kyriletza
alphabet) is also the Latin P.
1289 _Ibid._, p. 423.
1290 See Moor's _Hindű Pantheon_, plate xiii.
1291 See Dowson's _Hindű Classical Dictionary_, _sub voc._ "Rudra."
1292 Described in the _Mission des Juifs_, by the Marquis St. Yves
d'Alveydre, the hierophant and leader of a large party of French
Kabalists, as the Golden Age!
1293 V. xxiii.
1294 Translated from Burnouf's French Translation, quoted by Fitzedward
Hall, in Wilson's _Vishnu Purâna_, ii. 307.
1295 The more so since he is the reputed slayer of Tripurâsura and the
Titan Târaka. Michael is the conqueror of the dragon, and Indra and
Kârttikeya are often made identical.
1296 _Ibid._, iv. 235.
1297 _Op. cit._, XII. ii. 26-32; quoted in _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's
Trans., iv. 230. Nanda is the first Buddhist sovereign,
Chandragupta, against whom all the Brâhmans were so arrayed, he of
the Morya Dynasty, and the grandfather of Ashoka. This is one of
those passages that do not exist in the earlier Paurânic MSS. They
were added by the Vaishnavas, who, out of sectarian spite, were
almost as great interpolators as the Christian Fathers.
1298 _Historical View of the Hindű Astronomy_, p. 65, as quoted by
Wilson, _op. cit._, p. 233.
1299 See _Ezekiel_, i.
1300 _In Quint. Lib. Euclid._
1301 The Goddess Basht, or Pasht, was represented with the head of a cat.
This animal was held sacred in Egypt for several reasons. It was a
symbol of the Moon, the "Eye of Osiris" or the "Sun," during night.
The cat was also sacred to Sokhit. One of the mystic reasons was
because of its body being rolled up in a circle when asleep. The
posture is prescribed for occult and magnetic purposes, in order to
regulate, in a certain way, the circulation of the vital fluid, with
which the cat is preëminently endowed. "The nine lives of a cat" is
a popular saying based on good physiological and occult reasons. Mr.
Gerald Massey gives also an astronomical reason for it which may be
found in vol. i. pp. 322, 323, of the present work. "The cat saw the
sun, had it in its eye by night [was the eye of night], when it was
otherwise unseen by men [for as the Moon reflects the light of the
Sun, so the cat was supposed to reflect it on account of its
phosphorescent eyes]. _We_ might say the moon _mirrored_ the solar
light, because we have _looking glasses_. With them the cat's eye
_was_ the mirror." (_Luniolatry Ancient and Modern_, p. 2.)
1302 _Ezekiel_, i. 4, 15, 16, 20.
1303 _Eccles._, i. 6.
1304 Fol. 87, col. 346.
1305 Vol. ii. pp. 299, 300.
1306 _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_, i. 124. Also in _T'sang-t-ung-
ky_, by Wei-Pa-Yang.
1307 Cocker's _Christianity and Greek Philosophy_, xi. p. 377.
1308 The cry of despair uttered by Count de Montlosier, in his _Mystčres
de la Vie Humaine_ (p. 117), is a warrant that the Cause of
"excellence and goodness," supposed by Plato to pervade the Universe
is neither _his_ Deity, nor _our_ World. "Au spectacle de tant de
grandeur opposé ŕ celui de tant de misčre, l'esprit qui se met ŕ
observer ce vaste ensemble, se represente je ne sais quelle grande
divinité, _qu' une divinité, plus grande et plus pressante_ encore,
aurait comme brisée et mise en pičces en dispersant les débris dans
tout l'Univers." The "still greater and still more exacting
divinity" than the God of this world, supposed to be so "good"--is
Karma. And this true Divinity shows well that the lesser one, our
_inner_ God (personal for the time being), has no power to arrest
the mighty hand of this greater Deity--the Cause awakened by our
actions generating smaller causes--which is called the Law of
Retribution.
1309 See _Isis Unveiled_, i. xii and xviii.
1310 Stobćus, _Ecl._, i. 862.
1311 The Svastika is certainty one of the oldest symbols of the Ancient
Races. In our century, says Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (_Royal Masonic
Cyclopćdia_), the Svastika "has survived in the form of the mallet"
in the Masonic Fraternity. Among the many "meanings," given by the
author, we do not find the most important, Masons evidently being
ignorant of it.
1312 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 508.
1313 _Ibid._, p. 506.
1314 _Ibid._, p. 572.
1315 _Ezekiel_, ix. 4.
1316 _Exodus_, xii. 22.
1317 viii. 29.
1318 _Op. cit._, p. 204.
1319 See Dowson's _Hindű Classical Dictionary_.
1320 _The Source of Measures_, p. 204.
1321 _Ibid._, p. 205.
1322 See Moor's _Hindű Pantheon_, where Vittoba's left foot, in the
figure of his idol, bears the mark of the nails.
1323 See Dr. Lundy's _Monumental Christianity_, fig. 72.
1324 _Source of Measures_, p. 52.
1325 _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_, ii. 88.
1326 The "Heavens" are identical with "Angels," as already stated.
1327 _Philosophumena_, vi. 48; quoted by King, _op. cit._, p. 200.
1328 _Op. cit._, x. 3, 4.
1329 _Pistis Sophia_, _pag._ 378; King, _ibid._, _loc. cit._
1330 See the Section on "The Chronology of the Brâhmans," p. 69, _supra_.
1331 As confessed by C. W. King, the great authority on Gnostic
antiquities, these "Gnostic" gems are not the work of the Gnostics,
but belong to Pre-Christian periods, and are the work of "magicians"
(_op. cit._, p. 241).
1332 King, _ibid._, p. 218.
1333 The lack of intuition in Orientalists and Antiquarians past and
present, is remarkable. Thus, Wilson, the translator of _Vishnu
Purâna_, declares in his Preface that in the _Garuda Purâna_ he
found "no account of the birth of Garuda." Considering that an
account of "Creation" in general is given therein, and that Garuda
is coëternal with Vishnu, the Mahâ Kalpa, or Great Life-Cycle,
beginning with and ending with the _manifesting_ Vishnu, what other
account of Garuda's birth could be expected!
1334 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1335 See _Revelation_, xvii. 2 and 10; and _Leviticus_, xxiii. 15 to 18;
the first passage speaking of the "seven Kings," of whom _five_ have
gone; and the second about the "seven Sabbaths," etc.
1336 _Op. cit._, x. 5-7.
1337 _Pistis Sophia_ is an extremely important document, a genuine
Evangel of the Gnostics, ascribed, at random to Valectinus, but much
more probably a Pre-Christian work as to its original. A Coptic MS.
of this work was brought back by Bruce from Abyssinia and discovered
by Schwartze, in the British Museum, quite accidentally, and
translated by him into Latin. The text and Schwartze's version were
published by Petermann in the year 1853. In the text itself the
authorship of this Book is ascribed to Philip the Apostle, whom
Jesus bids sit down and write the revelation. It is genuine and
ought to be as canonical as any other Gospel. Unfortunately it
remains to this day untranslated into English.
1338 King, _op. cit._, p. 200.
1339 In the Cycle of Initiation, which was very long, Water represented
the first and lower steps toward purification, while trials
connected with Fire came last. Water could regenerate the Body of
Matter; Fire alone, that of the Inner Spiritual Man.
1340 Chap. ix.
1341 See the Introduction by Káshináth Trimbak Telang, M.A.
1342 "Sacred Books of the East," vol. viii. p. 276.
1343 _Ibid._
1344 _Ibid._
1345 Pp. 258, 259.
1346 _Ibid._, p. 257.
1347 _Ibid._, p. 259.
1348 In the astronomical and cosmical key, Vaishvânara is Agni, son of
the Sun, or Vishvânara, but in the psycho-metaphysical symbolism it
is the Self, in the sense of non-separateness, _i.e._, both divine
and human.
1349 Here the speaker personifies the said divine Self.
1350 _Ibid._
1351 Compare with these "pairs of opposites," in the _Anugîtâ_, the
"pairs" of Ćons, in the elaborate system of Valentinus, the most
learned and profound Master of the Gnosis. As the "pairs of
opposites," male and female, are all derived from Âkâsha
(undeveloped and developed, differentiated and undifferentiated, or
Self or Prajâpati), so are the Valentinian "pairs" of male and
female Ćons shown to emanate from Bythos, the preëxisting eternal
Depth, and in their secondary emanation from Ampsiu-Ouraan, or
sempiternal Depth and Silence, the second Logos. In the Esoteric
emanation there are seven chief "pairs of opposites"; and so also in
the Valentinian system there were fourteen, or twice seven.
Epiphanius "copied one pair twice over," Mr. C. W. King thinks, "and
thus adds one pair to the proper fifteen." (_The Gnostics and their
Remains_, pp. 263, 264.) Here King falls into the opposite error;
the pairs of Ćons are not 15 (a "blind") but 14, as the _first_ Ćon
is That from which others emanate, Depth and Silence being the first
and only emanation from Bythos. As Hippolytus shows: "The Ćons of
Valentinus are confessedly the _six_ Radicals of Simon (Magus),"
with the _seventh_, Fire, at their head. And these are: Mind,
Intelligence, Voice, Name, Reason and Thought, subordinate to Fire,
the Higher Self, or precisely the "Seven Winds" or the "Seven
Priests" of _Anugîtâ_.
1352 Not necessarily at death only, but during Samâdhi or mystic trance.
1353 All the words and sentences between parenthetical marks are the
writer's. This is translated directly from the Latin translation.
King's translation conforms too much to Gnosticism as explained by
the Church Fathers.
1354 Barbelo is one of the three "Invisible Gods," and, as C. W. King
believes, includes the "Divine Mother of the Saviour," or rather
Sophia Achamoth (_cf._ _Pistis Sophia_, pag. 359).
1355 _Pagg._ 378, 379.
1356 In other _Purânas_ Jatâyu is the son of Aruna, Garuda's brother,
both the sons of Kashyapa. But all this is external allegory.
1357 IX. viii. 12, 13.
1358 From Burnouf's Translation; see Wilson's _Vishnu Purâna_, iii. 300.
1359 Wilson, _ibid._, p. 302, note.
1360 See _Vâyu Purâna_, which places him in the list of the forty
renowned sons of Kashyapa.
1361 _The Ordinances of Manu_, i. 16; Burnell's Translation, p. 3, note.
1362 _Ibid._, 27; p. 5.
1363 Vol. i. pp. 355, _et seqq._
1364 _Orthodoxie Maçonnique Suivie de la Maçonnerie Occulte et de
l'Initiation Hermétique_, J. M. Ragon, p. 430; see also the whole of
Chapter XXVII, "Puissance des Nombres d'aprčs Pythagore" for what
follows.
1365 The reason for it is simple, and was given in _Isis Unveiled_. In
geometry, one straight line fails to represent a perfect figure, nor
can two straight lines constitute a perfect figure. The triangle is
the first perfect figure.
1366 Ragon, _ibid._, p. 428, note.
1367 _Ibid._, p. 431.
1368 _Op. cit._, p. 113.
1369 Now what is the meaning and the reason of this figure? The reason is
that Manas is the _fifth_ principle, and that the Pentagon is the
symbol of Man--not only of the five-limbed, but rather of the
_thinking, conscious_ Man.
1370 The reason for it becomes apparent when Egyptian symbology is
studied. See further on.
1371 _Ibid._, p. 114.
1372 _Ibid._, pp. 114, 115.
1373 _Book of the Dead_, lxxxviii. 2.
1374 _Philosophumena_, v. 14.
1375 See _Philosophumena_, v. 14.
1376 So is Brahma's _fifth_ head, said to be lost, burnt to ashes by
Shiva's "central eye"; Shiva being also Panchânana "five-faced."
Thus the number is preserved and secrecy maintained on the true
Esoteric meaning.
1377 "When the Sun passes away behind the 30th degree of Makara and will
reach no more the sign of the Mînam (Pisces) then the Night of
Brahmâ has come."
1378 Death of every physical thing truly; but Mâra is also the
unconscious quickener of the birth of the Spiritual.
1379 Osiris is called in the _Book of the Dead_ (cxlii. B. 17) "Osiris,
the double crocodile." "He is the good and the bad Principle; the
Day and the Night Sun, the God and the mortal man." Thus far the
Macrocosm and the Microcosm.
1380 _Op. cit._, p. 117.
1381 King's _Gnostics and their Remains_, p. 297.
1382 Reflecting on the cross, the author of _The Source of Measures_
shows that this candlestick in the Temple "was so composed that,
counting on either side, there were _four_ candle-sockets; while, at
the apex, there being _one in common_ to both sides, there were in
fact 3 to be counted on the one side and 4 on the other, making in
all the number 7, upon the self-same idea of one in common with the
cross display. Take a line of one unit in breadth by 3 units long,
and place it on an incline; take another of 4 units long, and lean
it upon this one, from an opposite incline, making the top unit of
the 4 in length the corner or apex of a triangle. This is the
display of the candlestick. Now, take away the line of 3 units in
length, and _cross_ it on the one of 4 units in length, and the
cross form results. The same idea is conveyed in the six days of the
week in Genesis, crowned by the seventh, which was used by itself as
a base of circular measure" (p. 51).
1383 From a MS. supposed to be by "St. Germain," embodied by Ragon, _op.
cit._, p. 434.
1384 It had no such meaning in the beginnings, nor during the earlier
dynasties.
1385 From an unpublished MS.
1386 From St. Germain's MS.
1387 Yet this sense, if once mastered, will turn out to be the secure
casket which holds the keys to the Secret Wisdom. True, a casket so
profusely ornamented that its fancy-work hides and conceals entirely
any spring for opening it, and thus makes the unintuitional believe
it has not, and cannot have, any opening at all. Still the keys are
there, deeply buried, yet ever present to him who searches for them.
1388 _Vishnu Purúna_, I. xv; Wilson's Trans., ii. 29.
1389 Quoted in Gerald Massey's _The Natural Genesis_, i. 427.
1390 With the Christians, most undeniably. With the Pre-Christian
Symbologists it was, as said, the Bed or Couch of Torture during the
Initiation Mystery, the "Crucifix" being placed horizontally, on the
ground, and not erect, as at the time when it became the Roman
gallows.
1391 So it was, and could not be otherwise. Julian, the Emperor, was an
Initiate, and as such knew well the "mystery-meaning" both
metaphysical and physical.
1392 _Op. cit._, _ibid._, p. 433.
1393 _Book of the Dead._ xxxix. Apophis or Apap is the Serpent of Evil,
the symbol of human passions. The Sun (Osiris-Horus) destroys him,
and Apap is thrown down, bound and chained. The God Aker, the "Chief
of the Gate of the Abyss" of Aker, the Realm of the Sun (xv. 39),
binds him. Apophis is the enemy of Ra (Light), but the "great Apap
has fallen!" exclaims the Defunct. "The Scorpion has hurt thy
mouth," he says to the conquered enemy (xxxix. 7). The Scorpion is
the "worm that never dies" of the Christians. Apophis is bound on
the Tau or Tat, the "emblem of stability." (See the erection of Tat
in Tatoo, xviii.)
1394 So have the crypts in Cis-Himâlayan regions where Initiates live,
and where their ashes are placed for seven lunar years.
1395 _The Natural Genesis_, i. 432.
1396 The Cross and the Tree are identical and synonymous in symbolism.
1397 lvii. 3.
1398 _Ibid._, 5.
1399 Sermon clx.
1400 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., iii. 174, note by Fitzedward Hall.
1401 Hence the Initiates in Greece called the Tau {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, "son of Gaia,"
"sprung from Earth," like Tityos in the _Odyssey_ (vii. 324).
1402 Ragon, _Orthodoxie Maçonnique_, etc., pp. 432, 433.
1403 _Ibid._, p. 433, note.
1404 See the _Mahâbhârata_, _e.g._, III. 189, 3, where Vishnu says, "I
called the name of water Nârâ in ancient times, and am hence called
Nârâyana, for that was always the abode I moved in (Ayana)." It is
into the Water, or Chaos, the "Moist Principle" of the Greeks and
Hermes, that the first seed of the Universe is thrown. "The 'Spirit
of God' moves on the dark waters of Space"; hence Thales makes of it
the primordial element and prior to Fire, which was yet latent in
that Spirit.
1405 See the bronze statue of Tripurântaka Shiva, "Mahâdeva destroying
Tripurâsura," at the Museum of the India House.
1406 Ragon, _ibid._, p. 433, note.
1407 There are learned Brâhmans who have protested against our septenary
division. They are right from their own standpoint, as we are right
from ours. Leaving the three _aspects_, or _adjunct principles_ out
of calculation, they accept only four Upâdhis, or Bases, including
the Ego--the reflected image of the Logos in the Kârana Sharîra--and
even "strictly speaking ... only three Upâdhis." For purely
theoretical metaphysical philosophy, or purposes of meditation,
these three may be sufficient, as shown by the Târaka Yoga system;
but for _practical occult teaching_ our septenary division is the
best and easiest. It is, however, a matter of school and choice.
1408 _Commentary_, Book ix. F. 19.
1409 Protista are not animals. The reader is asked to bear in mind that
when we speak of "animals," the mammalians alone are meant.
Crustacea, fishes, and reptiles are contemporary with, and most have
preceded, _physical_ man in this Round. All were bisexual, however,
before the age of mammalia in the closing portion of the Secondary
or Mesozoic ages, _yet nearer to the Palćozoic than the Cćnozoic
ages_. Smaller marsupial mammalia are contemporary with the huge
reptilian monsters of the Secondary.
1410 _Ćneid_, vi. 725-729. "First [Divine] Spirit within sustains the
heavens, the earth and watery plains, the moon's orb and shining
stars and the [Eternal] Mind diffused through all the parts [of
Nature], actuates the whole stupendous frame and mingles with the
vast body [of the Universe]. Thence proceed _the race of men and
beasts_, the _vital principles_ of the flying kind and the monsters
which the Ocean breeds under its smooth crystal plane." "All
proceeds from Ether and from its seven natures"--said the Alchemists.
Science knows these only in their superficial effects.
1411 Compare _Descent of Man_, p. 164.
1412 Bartlett's _Land and Water_.
1413 _Source of Measures_, p. 65. The author explains: "_Note_ that in
Hebrew, _Jared_, the father of Enoch, is construed to be '_the mount
of descent_,' and it is said to be the same with _Ararat_, on which
the cubical structure of _Noah_, or _foundation measure_, rested.
_Jared_, in Hebrew, is {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}. The root derivations are the same with
those of _Ararat_, of _acre_, of _earth_. The Hebrew {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~} is
_literally, in British_, Y R D; hence, in _Jared_, is to be found
_literally_, our English word _yard_ (and also {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW PUNCTUATION MAQAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}, for _Jah_, or
_Jehovah, is rod_). It is noteworthy that the son of _Jared_, viz.,
_Enoch_, lived 365 years; and it is said of him, by rabbinical
commentators, that the year period of 365 days was discovered by
him, thus bringing, again, _time_ and _distance_ values together,
_i.e._, _year time_ descended, by coördination, through the _yard_,
or _Jared_, who _thus was its father_, in or through _Enoch_; and
truly enough, 1296 = _yard_ (or _Jared_) × 4 = 5184, the
characteristic value of the solar day, in _thirds_, which, as
stated, may be styled the _parent, numerically_, of the solar year"
(_ibid._). This, however, by the astronomical and numerical
kabalistic methods. Esoterically, Jared is the Third Race and Enoch
the Fourth--but as he is taken away alive he symbolizes also the
Elect saved in the Fourth, while Noah is the Fifth from the
beginning--the family saved from the Waters, eternally and
_physically_.
1414 vii. 2, 3.
1415 _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 202, 203.
1416 _Ibid._, p. 200.
1417 Oliver's _Pythagorean Triangle_, p. 104.
1418 _De Anim. Procr._, 1027.
1419 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 112.
1420 Reuchlin č Cabala, l. ii; Oliver, _ibid._, p. 104.
1421 In _The Source of Measures_, the author shows (pp. 50, 51) that the
figure of the cube unfolded in connection with the circle "becomes
... a _cross proper_, or of the _tau_ form, and the attachment of
the circle to this last gives the _ansated cross_ of the
Egyptians.... While there are but 6 faces to a cube, the
representation of the cross as the cube unfolded, as to the cross-
bars, displays one face of the cube _as common to two bars_, counted
as belonging to either [_i.e._, once counted horizontally, and once
vertically]; ... 4 for the upright, and 3 for the cross-bar, making
_seven_ in all. Here we have the famous 4 and 3 and 7." Esoteric
Philosophy explains that _four_ is the symbol of the Universe in its
potential state, or Chaotic Matter, and that it requires Spirit to
permeate it actively; _i.e._, the primordial _abstract_ Triangle has
to quit its one-dimensional quality and spread across that Matter,
thus forming a _manifested_ basis on the three-dimensional space, in
order that the Universe should manifest intelligibly. This is
achieved by the cube unfolded. Hence the _ansated_ cross as the
symbol of man, generation and life. In Egypt Ank signified "soul,"
"life" and "blood." It is the _ensouled, living_ man, the septenary.
1422 _Supra_, p. 626.
1423 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 114.
1424 _Pythag._, p. 61.
1425 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 172.
1426 _De Plac. Phil._, p. 878.
1427 See Oliver, _ibid._, p. 106.
1428 _Ibid._, p. 108.
1429 Reuchlin, _ut supra_, p. 689; Oliver, _ibid._, pp. 112, 113.
1430 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 118.
1431 _Bucolica_, Ecl. viii. 75.
1432 Philo, _De Mund. Opif._; Oliver, _ibid._, p. 172.
1433 The seven Planets are not limited to this number because the
Ancients knew of no others, but simply because they were the
primitive or primordial "Houses" of the seven Logoi. There may be
nine and ninety-nine other planets discovered--this does not alter
the fact of these seven alone being sacred.
1434 Oliver, _ibid._, pp. 173, 174.
1435 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1436 _The Natural Genesis_, i. 545.
1437 _Ibid._
1438 In _Timćus_, iii.; _ibid._
1439 Oliver, _ibid._, p. 175.
1440 See Section F., _infra_, "The Seven Souls of the Egyptologists."
1441 The Seven Centres of Energy evolved, or rendered objective by the
action of Fohat upon the One Element; or, in fact, the "Seventh
Principle" of the Seven Elements which exist throughout manifested
Kosmos. We may here point out that they are in truth the Sephiroth
of the Kabalists; the "Seven gifts of the Holy Ghost" in the
Christian system; and in a mystical sense, the seven children or
sons of Devakî killed before the birth of Krishna by Kansa. Our
seven principles symbolize all of these. We have to part or separate
from them before we reach the Krishna or Christ-state, that of a
Jîvanmukta, and centre ourselves entirely in the highest, the
Seventh or the One.
1442 {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, is destiny, not "Fate," in this case, as it is an
appellation, not a proper noun. (See Wolf's transl., _Odyssey_,
xxii. 413.) But Moira, the Goddess of Fate, is a deity who, like
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI AND PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, _gives to all their portion of good and evil_ (Liddell and
Scott's Lexicon), and is therefore Karma. By this abbreviation,
however, _the subject_ to Destiny or Karma is meant, the Self or
Ego, and that which is reborn. Nor is {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} our
conscience, but our Buddhî; nor is it again the "counterfeit" of
Spirit but "modelled after," or a "counterpart" (Aristoph.,
_Thesmophor._, 27) of the Spirit--which Buddhî is, as the vehicle of
Âtmâ.
1443 _The Gnostics and their Remains_, pp. 37, 38.
1444 _Rig Veda_, iii. 54. 16; ii. 29. 3, 4.
1445 Prof. Roth (in Peter's Lexicon) defines the Angirasas as an
intermediate race of higher Beings between Gods and Men; while Prof.
Weber, according to his invariable custom of modernizing and
anthropomorphizing the divine, sees in them the original priests of
the religion which was common to the Âryan Hindűs and Persians. Roth
is right. "Angirasas" was one of the names of the Dhyânîs, or Deva-
Instructors (Guru-Devas), of the late Third, the Fourth, and even of
the Fifth Race Initiates.
1446 _Ibid._, x. 62. 1, 4.
1447 _Ibid._, x. 90. 1.
1448 _Ibid._, x. 90. 5.
1449 _Rig Veda_, x. 113. 5.
1450 _Ibid._, i. 35. 8.
1451 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1452 _Ibid._, ix. 86. 29.
1453 Only three submerged, or otherwise destroyed, Continents--for the
first Continent of the First Race exists to this day and will
prevail to the last--are described in the Occult Doctrine, the
Hyperborean, the Lemurian (adopting a name now known in Science),
and the Atlantean. Most of Asia issued from under the waters after
the destruction of Atlantis; Africa came still later, while Europe
is the fifth and the latest continent--portions of the two Americas
being far older. But of these, more anon. The Initiates who recorded
the _Vedas_--or the Rishis of our Fifth Race--wrote at a time when
Atlantis had already gone down. Atlantis is the _fourth_ Continent
that _appeared_, but the _third_ that _disappeared_.
1454 Compare Vishvakarman.
1455 _Ibid._, x. 20. 1, 16.
1456 Nor is this Archaic Teaching so very _unscientific_, since one of
the greatest Naturalists of the age--the late Professor
Agassiz--admitted the multiplicity of the geographical origins of
man, and supported it to the end of his life. The unity of the human
species was accepted by the illustrious Professor of Cambridge
(U.S.A.) in the same way as it is by the Occultists--namely, in the
sense of their essential and original homogeneity and their origin
from one and the same source, _e.g._, Negroes, Âryans, Mongols,
etc., have all originated in the same way and from the same
ancestors. These latter were all of one essence, though
differentiated, since they belonged to seven planes which differed
in degree though not in kind. That original physical difference was
only a little more accentuated by that of geographical and climatic
conditions, later on. This is not the theory of Agassiz, of course,
but the Esoteric version. It is fully discussed in the Addenda, Part
III.
1457 See the enumeration of the seven Spheres--not the "Karshvare of the
earth," as generally believed--in Fargard xix. 30, _et seqq._
1458 The seven Worlds are, as has been said, the seven Spheres of the
Chain, each presided over by one of the seven "Great Gods" of every
religion. When the religions became degraded and anthropomorphized,
and the metaphysical ideas nearly forgotten, the synthesis or the
highest, the seventh, was separated from the rest, and that
personification became the _eighth_ God, whom Monotheism tried to
unify but--failed. In no exoteric religion is God really one, if
analyzed metaphysically.
1459 The six invisible Globes of our Chain are both "Worlds" and "Earths"
as is our own, although invisible. But where could be the _six_
invisible Earths on _this_ Globe?
1460 _Vendîdâd_, S. B. E., vol. iv. pp. lix. lx., and note.
1461 See _Rig Veda_, i. 34; iii. 56; vii. 10. 411, and v. 60. 6.
1462 _Vendîdâd_, _op. cit._, p. 13.
1463 Death came only after man had become a _physical_ creature. The men
of the First Race, and also of the Second, dissolved and disappeared
in their progeny.
1464 _Op. cit._, p. 12.
1465 I. xxiv. 1.
1466 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., i. lxxx.
1467 As Parâshara says: "These are the seven persons by whom in the
several Manvantaras created beings have been protected. Because the
whole world has been pervaded by the energy of the deity, he is
entitled Vishnu, from the root Vish, 'to enter,' or ''pervade'; for
all the gods, the Manus, the seven Rishis, the sons of the Manus,
the Indras, the sovereigns of the gods, all are but the impersonated
might [Vibhűtayah, potencies] of Vishnu." (_Ibid._, iii. 18, 19.)
Vishnu is the Universe; and the Universe itself is divided in the
_Rig Veda_ into _seven_ regions--which ought to be sufficient
authority, for the Brâhmans at all events.
1468 _Ibid._, iii. 15.
1469 Hymn xix. 53.
1470 Vishnu is _all_--the worlds, the stars, the seas, etc. Vishnu "is all
that is, all that is not.... [But] he is not a substance
(Vastubhűta)." (_Vishnu Purâna_, Book II, Ch. xii; Wilson's Trans.,
ii. 309.) "That which people call the highest God is not a substance
but the _cause_ of it; not one that is here, there, or elsewhere,
_not what we see_, but that in which all is--Space."
1471 _Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., ii. 306.
1472 Therefore it is said in the _Purânas_ that the sight at night of
Dhruva, the polar star, and of the celestial Porpoise (Shishumâra, a
constellation) "expiates whatever sin has been committed during the
day." (_Ibid._, p. 306.) The fact is that the rays of the four stars
in the "circle of perpetual apparition"--the Agni, Mahendra,
Kashyapa, and Dhruva, placed in the tail of Ursa Minor
(Shishumâra)--focussed in a certain way and on a certain object,
produce extraordinary results. The Astro-magians of India will
understand what is meant.
1473 _Ibid._, iii. 15.
1474 Dowson's _Hindű Classical Dictionary_, _sub voc._ "Shiva," p. 298.
1475 _Vishnu Purâna_, _op. cit._, ii. 78.
1476 In the _Râmâyana_ it is Bâla-Râma, Krishna's elder brother, who does
this.
1477 With regard to the origin of Rudra, it is stated in several
_Purânas_ that his (spiritual) progeny, _created in him by Brahmâ_,
is not confined to either the _seven_ Kumâras or the _eleven_
Rudras, etc., but "comprehends infinite numbers of beings _in person
and equipments like their_ (virgin) father. Alarmed at their
fierceness, numbers, and _immortality_, Brahmâ desires his son Rudra
to form creatures of a different and mortal nature." Rudra _refusing
to create_, desists, etc., hence Rudra is the first _rebel_.
(_Linga_, _Vâyu_, _Matsya_, and other _Purânas_.)
1478 Diti is shown to have been thus frustrated in the Dvâpara Yuga,
during that period when the Fourth Race was flourishing.
1479 Notwithstanding the terrible, and evidently _purposed_, confusion of
Manus, Rishis, and their progeny in the _Purânas_, one thing is made
clear: there have been and there will be seven Rishis in every Root-
Race, called also Manvantara in the sacred books, just as there are
fourteen Manus in every Round, the presiding Gods, the Rishis and
sons of the Manus, being identical. (See _Vishnu Purâna_, III. i;
Wilson's Trans., iii. 19.) Six Manvantaras are given, the seventh
being our own, in the _Vishnu Purâna_. The _Vâyu Purâna_ furnishes
the nomenclature of the sons of the fourteen Manus in every
Manvantara, and the sons of the seven Sages or Rishis. The latter
are the progeny of the Progenitors of mankind. All the _Purânas_
speak of the seven Prajâpatis of this period or Round.
1480 "Châkshusha was the Manu of the sixth period [Third Round and Third
Race], in which Indra was Manojava"--Mantradruma in the _Bhâgavata
Purâna_. (_Vishnu Purâna_, Wilson's Trans., iii. 12.) As there is a
perfect analogy between the Great Round (Mahâkalpa), each of the
seven Rounds, and each of the seven great Races in every one of the
Rounds--therefore, Indra of the sixth period, or Third Round,
corresponds to the close of the Third Race, at the time of the Fall
or the separation of sexes. Rudra, as the father of the Maruts, has
many points of contact with Indra, the Marutvân, or "Lord of the
Maruts." Rudra is said to have received his name because of his
weeping. Hence Brahmâ called him Rudra; but _he wept yet seven times
more and so obtained seven other names_--of which he uses one during
_each_ "period."
1481 _Ibid._, ii. 231.
1482 In _Vishnu Puranâ_, Book II. Chap. iv. (Wilson, ii. 205), it is
stated that the "Earth," "with its continents, mountains, oceans,
and exterior shell, is _fifty crores_ [five hundred millions] of
Yojanas in extent"; to which the translator remarks: "_This
comprises the planetary spheres_; for the diameter of the seven
zones and oceans--each ocean being of the same diameter as the
continent it encloses, and each successive continent being twice the
diameter of that which precedes it--amounts to but two crores or
fifty-four lakhs.... 'Whenever any contradictions in different
Purânas are observed, they are to be ascribed ... to differences of
Kalpas and _the like_.' " "The like" ought to read "occult meaning,"
an explanation which is withheld by the commentator, who wrote for
exoteric, _sectarian_ purposes, and was misunderstood by the
translator for various other reasons, the least of which
is--ignorance of the Esoteric Philosophy.
1483 The Phoenix, although generally connected with the Solar Cycle of 600
years--the Western cycle of the Greeks and other nations--is a generic
symbol for several kinds of cycles, ciphers being taken out or more
added according to which cycle is meant.
1484 See _Book of Ali_, Russian transl.
1485 The tense is past, because the book is allegorical, and has to veil
the truths it contains.
1486 _Oriental Collections_, ii. 119; quoted by Kenealy, _op. cit._, pp.
175, 176.
1487 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1488 _Op. cit._, xvii. 9, 10.
1489 Section VI; _Leviticus_, xxiii. 15, _et seqq._
1490 _Vie de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ_, Introduction; quoted by De
Mirville, _Pneumatologie_, iv. 50.
1491 See Suidas, _sub voc._ {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}.
1492 Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 56.
1493 "Menses in quinos dies descripserunt dies" (lviii. 9).
1494 Lib. i. c. 26.
1495 _Hist. Nat._, vii. 48, and _Life of Numa_, 16.
1496 _Mčm. Acad. Ins._, xvi. c. 48; iii. 183.
1497 _Voyage en Sibérie_, iii. 19.
1498 The spheres of action of the combined Forces of Evolution and Karma
are (1) the Super-spiritual or Noumenal; (2) the Spiritual; (3) the
Psychic; (4) the Astro-ethereal; (5) the Sub-astral; (6) the Vital;
and (7) the purely Physical Spheres.
1499 Adbhutam, see _Atharva Veda_, x. 105.
1500 In Hindűism, as understood by the Orientalists from the _Atharva
Veda_, the three Rajamsi refer to the three "strides" of Vishnu; his
ascending higher step being taken in the highest world (_A. V._,
vii. 99, 1; _cf._ i. 155, 5). It is the Divo Rajah, or the "sky," as
they think it. But it is something besides this in Occultism. The
sentence, _pâreshu gűhyeshu vrateshu_ (_cf._, i. 155, 3, and ix. 75,
2, or again, x. 114), in _Atharva Veda_, has yet to be explained.
1501 _Medical Review_, July, 1844.
1502 H. Grattan Guinness, F.R.G.S., in his _Approaching End of the Age_,
p. 258.
1503 _Lancet_, 1842, 1843.
1504 Having given a number of illustrations from natural history, the
doctor adds: "The facts I have briefly glanced at are general facts,
_and cannot happen day after day in so many millions of animals of
every kind_. FROM THE LARVA OR OVUM OF A MINUTE INSECT UP TO MAN,
_at definite periods_, from a mere _chance or coincidence_.... Upon
the whole it is, I think, impossible to come to any less general
conclusion than this, that, _in animals, changes occur every three
and a half, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, or twenty-eight days, or at
some definite number of weeks_"--or septenary cycles. Again, the same
Dr. Laycock states that: "Whatever type the fever may exhibit,
_there will be a paroxysm on the seventh day.... fourteenth will be
remarkable as a day of amendment_ ... [either cure or death taking
place]. If the fourth [paroxysm] be severe, and the fifth less so,
the disease will end at the _seventh_ paroxysm, and ... the change
for the better ... will be seen on the fourteenth day ... namely,
about three or four o'clock a.m., when the system is most languid."
(_Approaching End of the Age_, by Grattan Guinness, pp. 258 to 269,
wherein this is quoted).
This is pure "soothsaying" by cyclic calculations, and it is
connected with Chaldćan Astrolatry and Astrology. Thus Materialistic
Science--in its medicine, _the most materialistic of all_--applies our
Occult laws to diseases, studies natural history with its help,
recognizes its presence as a fact in Nature, and yet must needs
pooh-pooh the same archaic knowledge when claimed by the Occultists.
For if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in Nature, _and it is
one_, as proven; if it is found controlling both evolution and
_involution_ (or death) in the realms of entomology, ichthyology and
ornithology, as in the kingdom of the animal mammalia and man--why
cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its
natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and _mental_
development? And why, furthermore, should not the most ancient
Adepts have studied and thoroughly mastered these cyclic laws under
all their aspects? Indeed, Dr. Stratton states as a physiological
and pathological fact, that "in health the human pulse is more
frequent in the morning than in the evening for six days out of
seven; and that on the _seventh_ day it is slower." (_Edinburgh
Medical and Surgical Journal_, Jan. 1843; _ibid., loc. cit._) Why,
then, should not an Occultist show the same in cosmic and
terrestrial life in the pulse of the Planet and Races? Dr. Laycock
divides life by _three_ great _septenary_ periods; the first and
last, each stretching over 21 years, and the central period or prime
of life lasting 28 years, or four times seven. He subdivides the
first into _seven_ distinct stages, and the other two into _three_
minor periods, and says that: "The fundamental unit of the greater
periods is _one week of seven days_, _each day being twelve hours_,
and that single and compound _multiples_ of this unit, determine the
length of these periods by the same ratio, as multiples of the unit
of twelve hours determine the lesser periods. _This law binds all
periodic vital phenomena together, and links the periods observed in
the lowest annulose animals, with those of man himself, the highest
of the vertebrata._" (_Ibid._, p. 267.) If Science does this, why
should she scorn the Occult information, that--to use Dr. Laycock's
language--_one_ Week of the Manvantaric (Lunar) Fortnight, of
fourteen Days (or seven Manus), that Fortnight of twelve Hours in a
Day representing seven Periods or seven Races--is now passed? This
language of Science fits our Doctrine admirably. Mankind _has_ lived
over "_a week of seven days_, each day being _twelve hours_," since
three and a half Races are now gone for ever, the Fourth is
submerged, and we are now in the Fifth Race.
1505 _Op. cit._, p. 269.
1506 See for the length of such cycles or Yugas in _Vriddha Garga_ and
other ancient astronomical sections (Jyotisha). They vary from the
cycle of five years--which Colebrooke calls "the cycle of the Vedas,"
specified in the institutes of Parâshara, "and the basis of
calculation for larger cycles" (_Miscell. Essays_, i. 106 and
108)--up to the Mahâ Yuga or the famous cycle of 4,320,000 years.
1507 The Hebrew word for "week" is _seven_; and any length of time
divided by _seven_ would have been a "week" with them--even
49,000,000 years, as it is seven times seven millions. But their
calculation is throughout septiform.
1508 Brahmâ creates in the first Kalpa, or on the first Day, various
"sacrificial animals" (Pashavah), or the celestial bodies and the
Zodiacal signs, and "plants," _which_ he uses in _sacrifices_ at the
opening of Tretâ Yuga. The Esoteric meaning shows him proceeding
cyclically and creating astral Prototypes on the _descending_
spiritual arc and then on the _ascending_ physical arc. The latter
is the subdivision of a _two-fold_ creation, sub-divided again into
seven descending and seven ascending degrees of Spirit falling, and
of Matter ascending; the inverse of what takes place--as in a mirror
which reflects the right on the left side--in this Manvantara of
ours. It is the same Esoterically in the Elohistic _Genesis_ (chap.
i), and in the Jehovistic copy, as in Hindű cosmogony.
1509 _Op. cit._, vv. 70, 71, 80; _The Kabbalah Unveiled_, S. L. MacGregor
Mathers, pp. 120, 121.
1510 "The Greater Holy Assembly," v. 1,160.
1511 See _Vishnu Purâna_, I. v.
1512 It is very surprising to see theologians and Oriental scholars
expressing indignation at the "depraved taste" of the Hindű mystics,
who, not content with having "invented" the Mind-born Sons of
Brahmâ, make the Rishis, Manus, and Prajâpatis of every kind spring
from _various parts of the body_ of their primal Progenitor, Brahmâ.
(See Wilson's footnote in his _Vishnu Purâna_, i. 102.) Because the
average public is unacquainted with the Kabalah, the key to, and
glossary of, the much veiled Mosaic Books, therefore, the clergy
imagines the truth will never out. Let any one turn to the English,
Hebrew, or Latin texts of the _Kabalah_, now so ably translated by
several scholars, and he will find that the Tetragrammaton, which is
the Hebrew IHVH, is also both the "Sephirothal Tree"--_i.e._, it
contains all the Sephiroth except Kether, the crown--and the united
Body of the Heavenly Man (Adam Kadmon) from whose Limbs emanate the
Universe and everything in it. Furthermore, he will find that the
idea in the Kabalistic Books, the chief of which in the _Zohar_ are
the "Book of Concealed Mystery," and of the "Greater" and the
"Lesser Holy Assembly," is entirely phallic and far more crudely
expressed than is the four-fold Brahmâ in any of the _Purânas_. ( See _The Kabbalah Unveiled_, by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, chapter xxii.
of "The Lesser Holy Assembly," concerning the remaining members of
Microprosopus.) For, this "Tree of Life" is also the "Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil," whose chief mystery is that of human
procreation. It is a mistake to regard the _Kabalah_ as _explaining_
the mysteries of Kosmos or Nature; it explains and unveils only a
few allegories in the _Bible_, and _is more esoteric_ than is the
latter.
1513 Simplified in the English _Bible_ to: "Is the Lord [!!] among us, or
not?"
1514 Verse 83; _op. cit._, p. 121.
1515 Translators often render the word "Companion" (Angel, also Adept) by
"Rabbi," just as the Rishis are called Gurus. The _Zohar_ is, if
possible, more occult than the _Book of Moses_; to read the "Book of
Concealed Mystery" one requires the keys furnished by the genuine
Chaldćan _Book of Numbers_, which is not extant.
1516 Verses 1152, 1158, 1159; _op. cit._, p. 254.
1517 _I Peter_, ii. 2-5.
1518 "The Greater Holy Assembly," vv. 1160, 1161; _op. cit._, p. 255.
1519 See pp. 445, 446, _supra_.
1520 _Op. cit._, i. 297, 2nd ed.
1521 It is. But Âgneyâstra are fiery "missile weapons," not "edged"
weapons, as there is some difference between Shastra and Astra in
Sanskrit.
1522 Yet there are some, who may know something of these, even outside
the author's lines, wide as they undeniably are.
1523 This connecting link, like others, was pointed out by the present
writer nine years before the appearance of the work from which the
above is quoted, namely in _Isis Unveiled_, a work full of such
guiding links between ancient, medićval, and modern thought, but,
unfortunately, too loosely edited.
1524 Ay; but how can the learned writer prove that these "beginnings"
were precisely in Egypt, and nowhere else; and only 50,000 years
ago?
1525 Precisely; and this is just what the Theosophists do. They have
never claimed "original inspiration," not even as mediums claim it,
but have always pointed, and do now point, to the "primary
signification" of the symbols, which they trace to other countries,
older even than Egypt; significations, moreover, which emanate from
a Hierarchy (or Hierarchies, if preferred) of _living_ Wise
Men--mortals notwithstanding that Wisdom--who reject every approach to
_supernaturalism_.
1526 But where is the proof that the Ancients did not mean precisely that
which the Theosophists claim? Records exist for what they say, just
as other records exist for what Mr. Gerald Massey says. His
interpretations are very correct, but are also very one-sided.
Surely Nature has more than one _physical aspect_; for Astronomy,
Astrology, and so on, are all on the physical, not the spiritual,
plane.
1527 _The Natural Genesis_, i. 318. It is to be feared that Mr. Massey
has not succeeded. We have our followers as he has his followers,
and Materialistic Science steps in and takes little account of both
his and our speculations!
1528 The fact that this learned Egyptologist does not recognize in the
doctrine of the "Seven Souls," as he terms our "principles," or
"metaphysical '_concepts_,' " anything but "the primitive biology or
physiology of the soul," does not invalidate our argument. The
lecturer touches on only two keys, those that unlock the
astronomical and the physiological mysteries of Esotericism, and
leaves out the other five. Otherwise he would have promptly
understood that what he calls the physiological divisions of the
living Soul of man, are regarded by Theosophists as also
psychological and spiritual.
1529 _Op. cit._, p. 2.
1530 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1531 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1532 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._
1533 _Ibid._, p. 4.
1534 This is a great mistake made in the Esoteric enumeration. Manas is
the fifth, not the fourth; and Manas corresponds precisely with Seb,
the Egyptian fifth principle, for that portion of Manas which
follows the two higher principles, is the ancestral soul, indeed,
the bright, immortal thread of the higher Ego, to which clings the
spiritual aroma of all the lives or births.
1535 _Ibid._, p. 2.
1536 _Ibid._, pp. 2, 3.
1537 _Signatura Rerum_, xiv. pars. 10, 14, 15; _The Natural Genesis_, i.
317.
1538 _Aurora_, xxiv. 27.
1539 This is indeed news! It makes us fear that the lecturer had never
read _Esoteric Buddhism_ before criticizing it. There are too many
such misconceptions in his notices of it.
1540 "The Seven Souls of Man," pp. 26, 27.
1541 _Ibid._, p. 26.
1542 _The Theosophist_, 1887 (Madras), pp. 705, 706.
1543 According to _Shvetâshvatara-Upanishad_ (357) the Siddhas are those
who are possessed from birth of "superhuman" powers, as also of
"knowledge and indifference to the world." According to the Occult
teachings, however, the Siddhas are Nirmânakâyas or the "spirits"--in
the sense of an individual, or _conscious_ spirit--of great Sages
from spheres on a higher plane than our own, who voluntarily
incarnate in mortal bodies in order to help the human race in its
upward progress. Hence their innate knowledge, wisdom and powers.
1544 "The Sacred Books of the East," viii. 284, _et seqq._
1545 I propose to follow here the text and not the editor's commentaries,
who accepts Arjuna Mishra and Nilakantha's _dead-letter_
explanations. Our Orientalists never trouble to think that if a
native commentator is a non-initiate, he could not explain
correctly, and if an Initiate, would not.
1546 See _Chhândogya_, p. 219, and Shankara's commentary thereupon.
1547 The editor explains here, saying, "I presume devoted to the
Brahman." We venture to assert that the "Fire" or Self is the real
Higher SELF "connected with," that is to say _one_ with Brahma, the
One Deity. The "Self" separates itself no longer from the Universal
Spirit.
1548 The "Supreme Self," says Krishna, in the _Bhagavad Gitâ_, pp. 102,
_et seqq._
1549 As Mahat, or Universal Intelligence, is first born, or manifests, as
Vishnu, and then, when it falls into Matter and develops self-
consciousness, becomes egoism, selfishness, so Manas is of a dual
nature. It is respectively under the Sun and Moon, for as
Shankarâchârya says: "The moon is the mind, and the sun the
understanding." The Sun and Moon are the deities of our planetary
Macrocosmos, and therefore Shankara adds that: "The mind and the
understanding are the respective deities of the [human] organs."
(See _Brihadâranyaka_, pp. 521, _et seqq._) This is perhaps why
Arjuna Mishra says that the Moon and the Fire (the Self, the Sun)
constitute the universe.
1550 "The body in the soul," as Arjuna Mishra is credited with saying, or
rather "the soul in the spirit", and on a still higher plane of
development, the Self or Âtman in the Universal Self.
1551 _Op. cit._, p. 179.
1552 _Prov._, ix. 1.
1553 De Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, p. 111. The respective
developments of the human and simian brains are referred to. "In the
ape the temporo-sphenoidal convolutions, which form the middle lobe,
make their appearance and are completed before the anterior
convolutions which form the frontal lobe. In man, on the contrary,
the frontal convolutions are the first to appear, and those of the
middle lobe are formed later." (_Ibid._)
1554 _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 290.
1555 Series II, Vol. VI, p. 769 (Ed. 1886). To this an editorial remark
adds that an "F.J.B.," in the _Athenćum_ (No. 3069, Aug. 21, 1886,
pp. 242-3), points out that Naturalists have long recognized that
there are "morphological" and "physiological" species. The former
have their origin in men's minds, the latter in a series of changes
sufficient to affect the internal as well as the external organs of
a group of allied individuals. The "physiological selection" of
morphological species is a confusion of ideas; that of physiological
species a redundancy of terms.
1556 _Op. cit._, p. 79.
1557 _Ibid._, p. 48.
1558 Nägeli's "principle of perfectibility"; von de Baer's "striving
towards the purpose"; Braun's "divine breath as the inward impulse
in the evolutionary history of Nature"; Professor Owen's "tendency
to perfectibility," etc., are all expressive of the veiled
manifestations of the universal guiding Fohat, rich with the Divine
and Dhyân-Chohanic thought.
1559 Hćckel on "Cell-Souls and Soul-Cells," _Pedigree of Man_, Aveling's
Trans., see pp. 136, 150.
1560 See _infra_, M. de Quatrefages' _exposé_ of Hćckel, in Section II,
"The Ancestors Mankind is offered by Science."
1561 Strictly speaking, du Bois-Reymond is an Agnostic, and not a
Materialist. He has protested most vehemently against the
materialistic doctrine, which affirms mental phenomena to be merely
the product of molecular motion. The most accurate _physiological_
knowledge of the structure of the brain leaves us "nothing but
matter in motion," he asserts; "_we must go further_, and admit the
utterly incomprehensible nature of the psychical principle, which it
is _impossible to regard_ as a mere outcome of material causes."
1562 See Hćckel's "Present Position of Evolution," _op. cit._, pp. 23,
24, 296, 297, notes.
1563 _Op. cit._, pp. 34, 35, 36.
1564 _Measure for Measure_, Act ii, Scene 2.
1565 _Knowledge_, January, 1882.
1566 T. Huxley, _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 57.
1567 _Op. cit._, "The Proofs of Evolution," p. 273.
1568 Author of _Modern Science and Modern Thought_.
1569 _Op. cit._, pp. 102, 103.
1570 _Op. cit._, ii. 12, Wilson's Transl.
1571 _Op. cit._, p. 104. In this, as has been shown in Part I, Modern
Science has again been anticipated, far beyond its own speculations,
by Archaic Science.
1572 _Ibid._, pp. 104-106.
1573 _Anthrop._, 3rd edition, p. 11.
1574 Theosophists will remember that, according to Occult teaching,
cyclic Pralayas so-called are but "Obscurations," during which
periods Nature, _i.e._, everything visible and invisible on a
resting Planet--remains _in statu quo_. Nature rests and slumbers, no
work of destruction going on upon the Globe even if no active work
be done. All forms, as well as their astral types, remain as they
were at the last moment of its activity. The "Night" of a Planet has
hardly any twilight preceding it. It is caught like a huge mammoth
by an avalanche, and remains slumbering and frozen till the next
dawn of its new Day--a very short one indeed in comparison to the Day
of Brahmâ.
1575 This will be pooh-poohed, because it will not be understood by our
modern men of Science; but every Occultist and Theosophist will
easily realize the process. There _can be no objective_ form on
Earth, nor in the Universe either, without its astral prototype
being first formed in Space. From Phidias down to the humblest
workman in the ceramic art, a sculptor has had to create first of
all a model in his mind, then sketch it in dimensional lines, and
then only can he reproduce it in a three dimensional or objective
figure. And if the human mind is a living demonstration of such
successive stages in the process of Evolution, how can it be
otherwise when Nature's Mind and creative powers are concerned?
1576 See _A Modern Zoroastrian_, p. 103.
1577 "Darwinian Theory" in _Pedigree of Man_, p. 22.
1578 _The Age and Origin of Man._
1579 _Man before Metals_, p. 320, "International Scientific Series."
1580 _Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language_, 1873.
1581 _Cf._ his _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 304.
1582 _A Modern Zoroastrian_, p. 136.
1583 It thus appears that in its anxiety to prove our noble descent from
the catarrhine "baboon," Hćckel's school has pushed back the times
of pre-historic man millions of years. (See _Pedigree of Man_, p.
273.) Occultists, render thanks to Science for such corroboration of
our claims!
1584 This seems a poor compliment to pay Geology, which is not a
speculative but as exact a Science as Astronomy--save, perhaps, its
too risky chronological speculations. It is mainly a "descriptive"
as opposed to an "abstract" Science.
1585 Such newly-coined words as "perigenesis of plastids," "plastidule
souls" (!), and others less comely, invented by Hćckel, may be very
learned and correct in so far as they may express very graphically
the ideas in his own vivid fancy. As _facts_, however, they remain
for his less imaginative colleagues painfully cćnogenetic--to use his
own terminology; _i.e._, for true Science they are spurious
speculations, so long as they are derived from "empirical sources."
Therefore, when he seeks to prove that "the origin of man from other
mammals, and most directly from the catarrhine apes, is a deductive
law, that follows necessarily from the inductive law of the theory
of descent" (_Anthropogeny_, p. 392, quoted in _Pedigree of Man_, p.
295.)--his no less learned foes (du Bois-Reymond--for one) have a
right to see in this sentence a mere jugglery of words; a
"_testimonium paupertatis_ of Natural Science"--as he himself
complains, speaking, in return, of du Bois-Reymond's "astonishing
ignorance." (See _Pedigree of Man_, notes on pp. 295, 296.)
1586 _Pedigree of Man_, p. 273.
1587 _Anthropogeny_, p. 392. Quoted in _Pedigree of Man_, p. 295.
1588 The _mental_ barrier between man and ape, characterized by Huxley as
an "enormous gap, a distance practically immeasurable" (! !) is,
indeed, in itself conclusive. Certainly it constitutes a standing
puzzle to the Materialist, who relies on the frail reed of "natural
selection." The physiological differences between Man and the Apes
are in reality--despite a curious community of certain
features--equally striking. Says Dr. Schweinfurth, one of the most
cautious and experienced of Naturalists:
"In modern times there are no animals in creation that have
attracted a larger amount of attention from the scientific student
of nature than these great quadrumana [the anthropoids], which are
stamped with such a singular resemblance to the human form as to
have justified the epithet of anthropomorphic.... But all
investigation at present only leads human intelligence to a
confession of its insufficiency; and nowhere is caution more to be
advocated, nowhere is premature judgment more to be deprecated than
in the attempt to bridge over the mysterious chasm which separates
man and beast." (_Heart of Africa_, i., 520. Ed., 1873.)
1589 _The Descent of Man_, p. 160. Ed. 1888. A ridiculous instance of
evolutionist contradictions is afforded by Schmidt (_Doctrine of
Descent and Darwinism_, p. 292). He says: "Man's kinship with the
apes is ... not impugned by the bestial strength of the teeth of a
male orang or gorilla." Mr. Darwin, on the contrary, endows this
fabulous being with teeth used as weapons!
1590 According even to a fellow-thinker, Professor Schmidt, Darwin has
evolved "a certainly not flattering, and perhaps in many points not
correct, portrait of our presumptive ancestors in the phase of
dawning humanity." (_Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 284.)
1591 _The Human Species_, pp. 106-108.
1592 _Op. cit._, p. 77.
1593 Pp. 109, 110.
1594 _Op. cit._, p. 110.
1595 Of course the Esoteric system of Fourth Round Evolution is much more
complex than the paragraph and quotations referred to categorically
assert. It is practically a _reversal_--both in embryological
inference and succession in time of species--of the current Western
conception.
1596 According to Hćckel, there are also "cell-souls" and "atom-cells";
an "inorganic molecular soul" without, and a "plastidular soul"
with, or possessing, memory. What are our Esoteric teachings to
this? The _divine and human_ soul of the seven principles in man
must, of course, pale and give way before such a stupendous
revelation!
1597 _The Pedigree of Man_, p. 296.
1598 A valuable confession, this. Only it makes the attempt to trace the
_descent_ of consciousness in man, as well as of his physical body,
from Bathybius Hćckelii, still more humorous and _empirical_ in the
sense of Webster's second definition.
1599 _Ibid._
1600 Those who take the opposite view and look upon the existence of the
human Soul--"as a supernatural, a spiritual phenomenon, conditioned
by forces altogether different from ordinary physical forces," mock,
he thinks, "in consequence, all explanation that is simply
scientific." They have no right it seems, to assert that "psychology
is, in part, or in whole, a spiritual science, not a physical one."
The new discovery by Hćckel--one taught for thousands of years in all
the Eastern religions, however--that animals have souls, will, and
sensation, hence, soul-functions, leads him to make of Psychology
the science of the Zoologists. The archaic teaching that the "soul"
(the animal and human souls, or Kâma and Manas) "has its
developmental history"--is claimed by Hćckel as his own discovery and
innovation on an "untrodden [?] path"! He, Hćckel, will work out the
comparative evolution of the soul in man and in other animals. The
comparative morphology of the soul-organs, and the comparative
physiology of the soul-functions, both founded on Evolution, thus
become the psychological [really materialistic] problem of the
scientific man. ("Cell-souls and Soul-cells," pp. 135, 136, 137,
_Pedigree of Man_.)
1601 _The Pedigree of Man_, note 20, p. 296.
1602 P. 119.
1603 See "Transmigration of Life-Atoms," in _Five Years of Theosophy_,
pp. 533-539. The collective aggregation of these atoms forms thus
the Anima Mundi of our Solar System, the Soul of our little
Universe, each atom of which is of course a Soul, a Monad, a little
universe endowed with consciousness, hence with memory. (Vol. I,
Part III, "Gods, Monads, and Atoms.")
1604 _Op. cit._, p. 119.
1605 In "The Transmigration of Life-Atoms" (_Five Years of Theosophy_, p.
535), we say of the Jîva, or Life-Principle, in order to better
explain a position which is but too often misunderstood: "It is
omnipresent ... though [on this plane of manifestation often] ... in
a dormant state [as in stone].... The definition which states that
when this indestructible force is 'disconnected with one set of
atoms [_molecules_ ought to have been said] it becomes immediately
attracted by others,' does not imply that it abandons entirely the
first set [because the atoms themselves would then disappear], but
only that it transfers its _vis viva_, or living power--the energy of
motion, to another set. But because it manifests itself in the next
set as what is called kinetic energy, it does not follow that the
first set is deprived of it altogether; for it is still in it, as
potential energy or life latent." Now what can Hćckel mean by his
"not identical atoms, but their peculiar motion and mode of
aggregation," if it is not the same kinetic energy we have been
explaining? Before evolving such theories, he must have read
Paracelsus and studied _Five Years of Theosophy_ without properly
digesting the teachings.
1606 _Op. cit._, note 21, p. 296.
1607 _Ibid._, note 19.
1608 _Ibid._, note 23.
1609 _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 159.
1610 _Op cit._, p. 157.
1611 _Ibid._, p. 161.
1612 This the way _primitive man_ must have acted? We are not aware of
men, not even of savages, in our age, who are known to have imitated
the apes which lived side by side with them in the forests of
America and the islands. But we do know of large apes who, tamed and
living in houses, will mimic men to the length of donning hats and
coats. The writer once had a chimpanzee who, without being taught,
opened a newspaper and pretended to read it. It is the descending
generations, the children, who mimic their parents--not the reverse.
1613 _Ibid._, p. 151.
1614 It is asked, whether it would change one iota of the scientific
truth and fact contained in the above sentence if it were to read:
"the ape is simply an instance of the biped type specialized for
going on all fours generally, and with a smaller brain."
Esoterically speaking, this is the real truth, and not the reverse.
1615 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, pp. 151, 152.
1616 We cannot follow Mr. Laing here. When avowed Darwinists like Huxley
point to "the great gulf which intervenes between the lowest ape and
the highest man in intellectual power," the "enormous gulf ...
between them," the "immeasurable and practically infinite divergence
of the human from the simian stirps" (_Man's Place in Nature_, p.
102 and note); when even the physical basis of mind--the brain--so
_vastly_ exceeds in size that of the highest existing apes; when men
like Wallace are forced to invoke the agency of extra-terrestrial
intelligences in order to explain the rise of such a creature as the
pithecanthropus alalus, or speechless savage of Hćckel, to the level
of the large-brained and _moral_ man of to-day--when all this is the
case, it is idle to dismiss evolutionist puzzles so lightly. If the
_structural_ evidence is so unconvincing and, taken as a whole, so
hostile to Darwinism, the difficulties as to the "how" of the
evolution of the human _mind_ by natural selection are tenfold
greater.
1617 A race which MM. de Quatrefages and Hamy regard as a branch of the
same stock whence the Canary Island Guanches sprung--offshoots of the
Atlanteans, in short.
1618 _Ibid._, pp. 180-182.
1619 _Pedigree of Man_, p. 73.
1620 Professor Owen believes that these muscles--the attollens, retrahens,
and attrahens aurem--were actively functioning in men of the Stone
age. This may or may not be the case. The question falls under the
ordinary "occult" explanation, and involves no postulate of an
"animal progenitor" to solve it.
1621 _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 104. To cite another good authority: "We
find one of the most man-like apes (gibbon) in the Tertiary period,
and this species is _still in the same low grade_, and _side by
side_ with it at the end of the Ice period, man is found in the same
high grade as to-day, the ape not having approximated more nearly to
the man, and modern man not having become further removed from the
ape than the first (fossil) man ... these facts contradict a theory
of constant progressive development." (Pfaff.) When, according to
Vogt, the average Australian brain = 99·35 cub. inches; that of the
gorilla 30·51, and that of the chimpanzee only 25·45, the _giant
gap_ to be bridged by the advocate of "Natural" Selection becomes
apparent.
1622 Geo. T. Curtis, _Creation or Evolution?_ p. 76.
1623 "At this period," writes Darwin, "the arteries run in arch-like
branches, as if to carry the blood to branchić which are not present
in the higher vertebrata, though the slits on the side of the neck
still remain, marking their former [?] position."
It is noteworthy that, though gill-clefts are absolutely useless to
all but amphibia and fishes, etc., their appearance is regularly
noted in the foetal development of vertebrates. Even children are
occasionally born with an opening in the neck corresponding to one
of the clefts.
1624 Those who with Hćckel regard the gill-clefts with their attendant
phenomena as illustrative of an active function in our amphibian and
piscine ancestors (see his twelfth and thirteenth stages), ought to
explain why the "vegetable with leaflets" (Prof. André Lefčvre)
represented in foetal growth, does not appear in his twenty-two
stages through which the Monera have passed in their ascent to Man.
Hćckel does _not_ postulate a _vegetable_ ancestor. The
embryological argument is thus a two-edged sword and here cuts its
possessor.
1625 Lefčvre, _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, pt. ii. p. 480,
"Library of Contemporary Science."
1626 We confess to not being able to see any good reasons for Mr. E.
Clodd's positive statement in _Knowledge_. Speaking of the men of
Neolithic times, "concerning whom Mr. Grant Allen has given ... a
vivid and accurate sketch," and who are "the direct ancestors of
peoples of whom remnants yet lurk in out-of-the-way corners of
Europe, where they have been squeezed or stranded," he adds, "but
the men of Palćolithic times can be identified with no existing
races; they were savages of a more degraded type than any extant;
tall, yet barely erect, with short legs and twisted knees, with
prognathous, that is, projecting ape-like jaws, and small brains.
Whence they come we cannot tell, and their 'grave knoweth no man to
this day.' "
Besides the possibility that there may be men who _know_ whence they
came and how they perished--it is not true to say that the
Palćolithic men, or their fossils, are all found with "small
brains." The oldest skull of all those hitherto found, the
"Neanderthal skull," is of average capacity, and Mr. Huxley was
compelled to confess that it was no real approximation whatever to
that of the "missing link." There are aboriginal tribes in India
whose brains are far smaller and nearer to that of the ape than any
hitherto found among the skulls of Palćolithic man.
1627 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 246.
1628 The actual time required for such a theoretical transformation is
necessarily enormous. "If," says Professor Pfaff, "in the hundreds
of thousands of years which you [the Evolutionists] accept between
the rise of palćolithic man and our own day, a greater distance of
man from the brute is not demonstrable [_the most ancient man was
just as far removed from the brute as the now living man_], what
reasonable ground can be advanced for believing that man has been
developed from the brute, and has receded further from it by
infinitely small gradations.... _The longer the interval of time
placed between our times and the so-called palćolithic men, the more
ominous and destructive for the theory of the gradual development of
man from the animal kingdom is the result stated._" Huxley writes
(_Man's Place in Nature_, p. 159) that the _most liberal_ estimates
for the antiquity of man _must be still further_ extended.
1629 _Fortnightly Review_, 1882. The baselessness of this assertion, as
well as that of many other exaggerations of the imaginative Mr.
Grant Allen, was ably exposed by the eminent Anatomist, Professor R.
Owen, in _Longman's Magazine_, No. 1. Must it be repeated, moreover,
that the Cro-Magnon Palćolithic type is superior to that of a very
large number of existing races?
1630 It thus stands to reason that Science would never dream of a Pre-
Tertiary man, and that de Quatrefages' Secondary man makes every
Academician and F.R.S. faint with horror because, to preserve the
ape-theory, Science must make man Post-Secondary. This is just what
de Quatrefages has twitted the Darwinists with, adding, that on the
whole there were more scientific reasons for tracing the ape from
man than man from the anthropoid. With this exception Science has
not one single valid argument to offer against the antiquity of man.
But in this case modern Evolution demands far more than the fifteen
million years of Croll for the Tertiary period, for two very simple
but good reasons: (_a_) no anthropoid ape has been found before the
Miocene period; (_b_) man's flint relics have been traced to the
Pliocene and their presence _suspected_, if not accepted by all, in
the Miocene strata. Again, where is the "missing link" in such case?
And how could even a Palćolithic savage, a "man of Canstadt," evolve
into a _thinking_ man from the brute dryopithecus of the Miocene _in
so short a time_? One sees now the reason why Darwin rejected the
theory that only 60,000,000 years had elapsed since the Cambrian
period. "He judges from the small amount of organic change since the
commencement of the glacial epoch, and adds that the previous 140
million years can hardly be considered as sufficient for the
development of the varied forms of life which certainly existed
toward the close of the Cambrian period." (Ch. Gould, _Mythical
Monsters_, p. 84.)
1631 It may here be remarked that those Darwinians who, with Mr. Grant
Allen, place our "hairy arboreal" ancestors so far back as the
Eocene age, are landed in rather an awkward dilemma. No fossil
anthropoid ape--much less the fabulous common ancestor assigned to
man and the pithecoid--appears in Eocene strata. The first
presentment of an anthropoid ape is Miocene.
1632 Ed. Lartet, "Nouvelles Recherches sur la Coëxistence de l'Homme et
des Grands Mammifčres Fossils de la Derničre Période Géologique."
_Annales des Soc. Nat._, xv. 256.
1633 See the Hibbert Lectures for 1887, p. 33.
1634 From a Report of the Hibbert Lectures, 1887. _Lectures on the Origin
and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated by the Religion of the
Ancient Babylonians._ By A. H. Sayce.
1635 See _supra_ "Chronology of the Brâhmans."
1636 _Nat. Philos._, by Thomson and Tait, App. D. Trans. Royal Soc.,
Edin., xxiii. pt. 1.
1637 _Popular Astronomy_, p. 509.
1638 _Climate and Time_, p. 335.
1639 Address, Liverpool Geological Society, 1876.
1640 _World-Life_, pp. 179, 180.
1641 _Ibid._, pp. 367, 368.
1642 _Climate and Time._
1643 Quoted in Mr. Ch. Gould's _Mythical Monsters_, p. 84.
1644 According to Bischof, 1,004,177 years, according to Chevandier's
calculations 672,788 years, were required for the so-called Coal
formation. "The time required for the development of the strata of
the Tertiary period, ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 feet in thickness,
must have been at least 350,000 years." (See _Force and Matter_,
Büchner, p. 159, Ed. 1884.)
1645 _Op. cit._, p. 379.
1646 But see "The Ice-Age Climate and Time," _Popular Science Review_,
xiv. 242.
1647 Review of Kölliker's Criticisms.
1648 _Fallacies of Darwinism_, p. 160.
1649 _The Genesis of Species_, Chap. VI, pp. 160-162, Ed. 1871.
1650 _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 102, note.
1651 Vol. x. art. "Geology," p. 227. "100,000,000 of years is probably
amply sufficient for all the requirements of Geology," says the
text. In France, some _savants_ do not find it nearly "sufficient."
Le Couturier claims 350 million years; Buffon was satisfied with 34
millions--but there are those in the more modern schools who will not
be content with less than 500 million years.
1652 We are taught that the highest Dhyân Chohans, or Planetary Spirits
(beyond the cognizance of the law of analogy), are in ignorance of
what lies beyond the visible Planetary Systems, since their essence
cannot assimilate itself to that of worlds beyond our Solar System.
When they reach a higher stage of evolution these other universes
will be open to them; meanwhile they have complete knowledge of all
the worlds within the limits of our Solar System.
1653 Since no single atom in the entire Kosmos is without life and
consciousness, how much more then must its mighty globes be filled
with both--though they remain sealed books to us men who can hardly
enter even into the consciousness of the forms of life nearest us?
We do not know _ourselves_, then how can we, if we have never been
trained and initiated, fancy that we can penetrate the consciousness
of the smallest of the animals around us?
1654 _Pluralité des Mondes_, p. 439.
1655 _Op. cit._, i. 4, 9.
1656 _Hebrews_, i. 2. This relates to the Logos of every Cosmogony. The
_unknown_ Light--with which he is said to be coëternal and coëval--is
reflected in the First-Born, the Protogonos; and the Demiurgos or
the Universal Mind directs his Divine Thought into the Chaos that
under the fashioning of minor Gods will be divided into the Seven
Oceans--Sapta Samudras. It is Purusha, Ahura Mazda, Osiris, etc., and
finally the Gnostic Christos, who is in the _Kabalah_, Chokmah, or
Wisdom, the "Word."
1657 The _form_ of Tikkun or the Protogonos, "First-Born," _i.e._, the
Universal Form and Idea, had not yet been mirrored in Chaos.
1658 _Zohar_, iii. 292c. The "Heavenly Man" is Adam Kadmon--the synthesis
of the Sephiroth, as "Manu Svâyambhuva" is the synthesis of the
Prajâpatis.
1659 _Bereshith Rabba_, Parsha IX.
1660 This refers to the three Rounds that preceded our Fourth Round.
1661 "Idra Suta," _Zohar_, iii. 136c. "A sinking down from their
status"--is plain; from active Worlds they have fallen into a
temporary obscuration--they rest, and hence are entirely changed.
1662 _Gen._, xxxvi. 43.
1663 In that learned and witty work, _God and his Book_, by the
redoubtable "Saladin" of Agnostic repute, the amusing calculation
that, if Christ had ascended with the rapidity of a cannon ball, he
would not yet have reached even Sirius, reminds one vividly of the
past. It raises, perhaps, a not ill-founded suspicion that even our
age of scientific enlightenment may be as grossly absurd in its
materialistic negations as the men of the Middle Ages were absurd
and materialistic in their religious affirmations.
1664 _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, p. 481.
1665 Probably in excess.
1666 _Knowledge_, Art. "The Antiquity of Man in Western Europe," March
31st, 1882.
1667 Who, in another work, _La Préhistorique Antiquité de l'Homme_, some
twenty years ago, generously allowed only 230,000 years to our
mankind! Since we learn now that he places man in the Mid-Miocene
period, we must say that the much respected Professor of Prehistoric
Anthropology in Paris is somewhat contradictory and inconsistent, if
not _naďf_ in his views.
1668 The root and basic idea of the origin and transformation of
species--the _heredity_ of acquired faculties--seems to have found
lately very serious opponents in Germany. Du Bois-Reymond and Dr.
Pflüger, the Physiologists, besides other men of Science as eminent
as any, find insuperable difficulties and even impossibilities in
the doctrine.
1669 _History of Creation_, p. 20.
1670 The same names are retained as those given by Science, to make the
parallels clearer. Our terms are quite different.
1671 Let the student remember that the Doctrine teaches that there are
seven degrees of Devas or "Progenitors," or seven Classes, from the
most perfect to the less exalted.
1672 It may be said that we are inconsistent in not introducing into this
table a Primary-age Man. The parallelism of Races and geological
periods here adopted, is, so far as the origin of the First and
Second are concerned, purely tentative, no direct information being
available. Having previously discussed the question of a possible
race in the Carboniferous age, it is needless to renew the debate.
1673 During the _interim_ between one Round and another, the Globe and
everything on it remains _in statu quo_. Remember, vegetation began
in its ethereal form before what is called the Primordial, running
through the Primary, and condensing in it, and reaching its full
physical life in the Secondary.
1674 Geologists tell us that "in the Secondary epoch, the only mammals
which have been [hitherto] discovered in Europe are the fossil
remains of a small marsupial or pouch-bearer." (_Knowledge_, March
31st, 1882, p. 464.) Surely the marsupial or didelphis (the only
surviving animal of the family of those which were on Earth during
the presence on it of androgyne man) cannot be the only animal that
was then on Earth? Its presence speaks loudly for that of other
(though unknown) mammals, besides the monotremes and marsupials, and
thus shows the appellation of "mammalian age" given only to the
Tertiary period to be misleading and erroneous, as it allows one to
infer that there were no mammals, but reptiles, birds, amphibians,
and fishes alone in the Mesozoic times--the Secondary.
1675 Those who feel inclined to sneer at that doctrine of Esoteric
Ethnology, which pre-supposes the existence of Men in the Secondary
age, will do well to note the fact that one of the most
distinguished Anthropologists of the day, M. de Quatrefages,
seriously argues in that direction. He writes: "There is then
nothing impossible in the idea that he [man] ... should have
appeared upon the globe with the first representatives of the type
to which he belongs by his organization." (_The Human Species_, p.
153.) This statement approximates most closely to our fundamental
assertion that man preceded the other mammalia.
Professor Lefčvre admits that the "labours of Boucher de Perthes,
Lartet, Christy, Bourgeois, Desnoyers, Broca, De Mortillet, Hamy,
Gaudry, Capellini, and a hundred others, have overcome all doubts,
and clearly established the progressive development of the human
organism and industries from the miocene epoch of the tertiary age."
(_Philosophy Historical and Critical_, Pt. II, p. 499, Chapter II,
On Organic Evolution. "Library of Contemporary Science.") Why does
he reject the possibility of a Secondary-age man? Simply because he
is involved in the meshes of the Darwinian Anthropology. "The origin
of man is bound up with that of the higher mammals"; he appeared
"only with the _last_ types of his class"! This is not argument, but
dogmatism. Theory can never excommunicate fact. Must everything give
place to the mere working hypotheses of Western Evolutionists?
Surely not!
1676 These placentalia of the third sub-class are divided, it appears,
into villiplacentalia (placenta composed of many separate scattered
tufts), the zonoplacentalia (girdle-shaped placenta), and the
discoplacentalia (or discoid). Hćckel sees in the marsupialia
didelphia, one of the connecting links _genealogically_ between man
and the moneron!!
1677 This inclusion of the First Race in the Secondary is necessarily
only a provisional working hypothesis--the actual chronology of the
First, Second, and early Third Races being closely veiled by the
Initiates. For all that can be said on the subject, the First Root-
Race may have been Pre-Secondary, as is, indeed, taught.
1678 The above parallels stand good only if Professor Croll's earlier
calculations are adopted, namely, of 15,000,000 years since the
beginning of the Eocene period (see Charles Gould's _Mythical
Monsters_, p. 84), not those in his _Climate and Time_, which allow
only two-and-a-half million years, or at the utmost three million
years' duration to the Tertiary age. This, however, would make the
whole duration of the incrusted age of the world only 131,600,000
years, according to Professor Winchell, whereas in the Esoteric
Doctrine, sedimentation began in _this_ Round approximately over
320,000,000 years ago. Yet his calculations do not clash much with
ours with regard to the epochs of glacial periods in the Tertiary
age, which is called in our Esoteric books the "Age of the Pigmies."
With regard to the 320,000,000 of years assigned to sedimentation,
it must be noted that even a greater time elapsed during the
preparation of this Globe for the Fourth Round _previous to
stratification_.
1679 Though we apply the term "truly human," only to the Fourth Atlantean
Root-Race, yet the Third Race is almost human in its latest portion,
since it is during its fifth sub-race that mankind separated
sexually, and that the _first man was born_ according to the now
normal process. This "first man" answers, in the _Bible_, to Enos or
Henoch, son of Seth (_Genesis_, iv.).
1680 Geology records the former existence of a universal ocean, and
sheets of marine sediment uniformly present everywhere testify to
it; but it is not even the epoch referred to in the allegory of
Vaivasvata Manu. The latter is a Deva-Man (or Manu) saving in an Ark
(the female principle) the germs of humanity, and also the seven
Rishis--who stand here as the symbols for the seven human
principles--of which allegory we have spoken elsewhere. The
"Universal Deluge" is the Watery Abyss of the Primordial Principle
of Berosus. (See Stanzas ii to viii, in Part I.) How, if 15 million
years are allowed by Croll to have elapsed since the Eocene period
(which we state on the authority of a Geologist, Mr. Ch. Gould),
only 60 millions are assigned by him "since the beginning of the
Cambrian period, in the Primordial age"--passes comprehension. The
Secondary strata are twice the thickness of the Tertiary, and
Geology thus shows the Secondary age alone to be of twice the length
of the Tertiary. Shall we then accept only 15 million years for both
the Primary and the Primordial? No wonder Darwin rejected the
calculation.
1681 See _Esoteric Buddhism_, pp. 53-55, Fourth Ed.
1682 We hope that we have furnished all the scientific data for it
elsewhere.
1683 It is conceded by Geology to be "beyond doubt that a considerable
period must have supervened after the departure of Palćolithic man
and before the arrival of his Neolithic successor." (See James
Geikie's _Prehistoric Europe_, and Ch. Gould's _Mythical Monsters_,
p. 98.)
1684 Resembling in a manner the pile-villages of Northern Borneo.
1685 "The most clever sculptor of modern times would probably not succeed
very much better, if his graver were a splinter of flint, and stone
and bone were the materials to be engraved"! (Prof. Boyd Dawkins'
_Cave-Hunting_, p. 344.) It is needless after such a concession to
further insist on Huxley's, Schmidt's, Laing's, and others'
statements to the effect that Palćolithic man cannot be considered
to lead us back in any way to a pithecoid human race; thus they
demolish the fantasies of many superficial evolutionists. The relic
of artistic merit here _reäppearing_ in the Chipped-Stone-age men,
is traceable to their _Atlantean_ ancestry. Neolithic man was a
fore-runner of the great Âryan invasion, and immigrated from quite
another quarter--Asia, and in a measure Northern Africa. The tribes
peopling the latter towards the North-West, were certainly of an
Atlantean origin--dating back hundreds of thousands of years before
the Neolithic Period in Europe--but they had so diverged from the
parent type as to present no longer any marked characteristic
peculiar to it. As to the contrast between Neolithic and Palćolithic
man, it is a remarkable fact that, as Carl Vogt points out, _the
former was a cannibal, the much earlier man of the Mammoth era was
not_. Human manners and customs do not seem to improve with time,
then? Not in this instance at any rate.
1686 _Op. cit._, p. 97.
1687 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 181.
1688 _Ibid._, p. 112.
1689 On the data furnished by Modern Science, Physiology, and Natural
Selection, and without resorting to any miraculous creation, two
human negro specimens of the lowest intelligence--say idiots born
dumb--might by breeding produce a dumb Pastrana species, which would
start a new modified race, and thus produce, in the course of
geological time, the regular anthropoid ape.
1690 _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 64.
1691 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 98.
1692 _Anfänge zu einer Physiologischen Schöpfungs-geschichte der
Pflanzen- und Thierwelt, 1885._
1693 _Op. cit._, p. 212.
1694 _Ibid._, p. 11.
1695 _Man's Place in Nature_, p. 159.
1696 Sir W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., _Origin of the World_, p. 39.
1697 _Prehistoric Antiquity of Man_, 1883.
1698 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 25.
1699 _India, What can it Teach Us?_ A course of Lectures delivered before
the University of Cambridge in 1882. Lecture III., p. 110, Ed. 1892.
1700 _Antiquity of Man Historically Considered._ "Present Day Tracts,"
Vol. II, Essay IX, p. 25.
1701 _Op. cit._, pp. 10, 11.
1702 _Op. cit._, i. 4.
1703 Palćolithic man must have been endowed in his day with thrice
Herculean force and magic invulnerability, or else the lion was as
weak as a lamb at that period, for both to share the same dwelling.
We may as well be asked to believe that it is that lion or hyćna
which engraved the deer on the antler, as be told that this piece of
workmanship was done by a savage of such a kind.
1704 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 164.
1705 _Ibid._, p. 199.
1706 More than twenty specimens of fossil monkeys have been found in one
locality alone, in Miocene strata (Pikermi, near Athens). If man was
not then, the period is too short for him to have been
_transformed_--stretch it as one may. And if he was, and if no monkey
is found earlier, what follows?
1707 Dr. C. Carter Blake, Art., "The Genesis of Man."
1708 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 530.
1709 New Series, i. 115, Art., "Evidences of the Age of Ice."
1710 _Fallacies of Darwinism._
1711 _Op. cit._, p. 501, Ed. 1863.
1712 _Op. cit._, iv. 162.
1713 See on this question Wilson's _Prehistoric Man_, ii. 54; _Origin of
the World_, pp. 393, 394.
1714 And how much more "enormous" if we reverse the subjects, and say
during the monkey's development from the Third Race Man.
1715 _Op. cit._, pp. 160, 161.
1716 _Principles of Biology_, i. 345.
1717 _Modern Science and Modern Thought_, p. 94.
1718 _Ibid._
1719 The Darwinian theory has been so strained, that even Huxley was
forced at one time to deprecate its occasional degeneration into
"fanaticism." Oscar Schmidt presents a good instance of a thinker
who unconsciously exaggerates the worth of a hypothesis. He admits
(_The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 158), that "natural
selection ... is in some cases ... inadequate, ... in others ... not
requisite, as the solution of the formation of species is found in
other natural conditions." He also asserts the "intermediate grades
are ... wanting, which would entitle us to infer with certainty the
direct transition from implacental to placental mammals" (p. 271);
that "we are referred entirely to conjecture and inference for the
origin of the mammals" (p. 268); and he speaks of the repeated
failures of the framers of "hypothetical pedigrees," more especially
of Hćckel, while regarding their attempts as valuable (p. 250).
Nevertheless he asserts (p. 194) that "what we have gained by the
doctrine of descent based on the theory of selection ... is the
knowledge of the connection of organisms as consanguineous beings."
Knowledge, in the face of the above-cited concessions, is, then, the
synonym for conjecture and theory only?
1720 _The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 268.
1721 _Ibid._, pp. 273-275.
1722 Bear in mind, please, that though the animals--mammalians
included--have all been evolved after and partially _from_ man's
cast-off tissues, still, as a far lower being, the mammalian animal
became placental and separated far earlier than man.
1723 Scientists now admit that Europe enjoyed in the Miocene times a
warm, in the Pliocene or later Tertiary, a temperate climate.
Littré's contention as to the balmy spring of the Quaternary--to
which deposits M. de Perthes' discoveries of flint implements are
traceable (since when the Somme has worn down its valley many scores
of feet)--must be accepted with much reservation. The Somme-Valley
relics are _post-glacial_, and possibly point to the immigration of
savages during one of the more temperate periods intervening between
_minor_ ages of Ice.
1724 "Whence they [the old cave-men] came, we cannot tell" (Grant Allen).
"The palćolithic hunters of the Somme Valley did not originate in
that inhospitable climate, but moved into Europe from some more
genial region" (Dr. Southall, _Epoch of the Mammoth_, p. 315).
1725 The _pure_ Atlantean stocks--of which the tall Quaternary cave-men
were, in part, the direct descendants--immigrated into Europe long
prior to the Glacial period; in fact as far back as the Pliocene and
Miocene times in the Tertiary. The worked Miocene flints of Thenay,
and the traces of Pliocene man discovered by Professor Capellini in
Italy, are witnesses to the fact. These colonists were portions of
the once glorious Race, whose cycle from the Eocene onwards had been
running down the scale.
1726 The artistic skill displayed by the old cave-men renders the
hypothesis which regards them as approximations to the
pithecanthropus alalus--that very mythical Hćeckelian monster--an
absurdity requiring no Huxley or Schmidt to expose it. We see in
their skill in engraving a gleam of Atlantean culture atavistically
reäppearing. It will be remembered that Donnelly regards modern
European civilization as a _renaissance_ of the Atlantean.
(_Atlantis_, pp. 237-264.)
1727 _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, Pt. II. p. 504, chap., "On
Organic Evolution."
1728 _Lettres sur l'Atlantide_, p. 12.
1729 _Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne_, pp. 25, _et seqq._
1730 _Lettres sur l'Atlantide_, p. 15. This conjecture is but a half-
guess. There were such "deluges of barbarians" in the Fifth Race.
With regard to the Fourth, it was a _bonâ fide_ deluge of water
which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly, however, knew
anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East.
1731 For a full discussion of the relations between the _old_ Greeks and
Romans, and the Atlantean colonists, see _Five Years of Theosophy_,
pp. 308-346.
1732 _Timćus_, translated by H. Davis, pp. 326-328.
1733 The story about Atlantis and all the traditions thereon were told,
as all know, by Plato in his _Timćus and Critias_. Plato, when a
child, had it from his grand-sire Critias, aged ninety, who in his
youth had been told of it by Solon, his father Dropides'
friend--Solon, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. No more reliable
source could be found, we should think.
1734 See Dr. Carter Blake's paper "On the Naulette Jaw," _Anthropological
Review_, Sept., 1867.
1735 See de Quatrefages and Hamy, _Crânes des Races Humaines_.
1736 Hćckel's "man-ape" of the Miocene period is the dream of a
monomaniac, which de Quatrefages (_Human Species_, pp. 105-113) has
cleverly disposed of. It is not clear why the world should accept
the lucubrations of a psychophobic Materialist--to accept whose
theory necessitates the acceptance _on faith_ of various animals
unknown to Science or Nature, like the Sozura, for instance, that
amphibian which has never existed anywhere outside Hćckel's
imagination--rather than the traditions of antiquity.
1737 But see the mass of evidence collected by Donnelly to prove the
Peruvian colony an offshoot of the Atlanteans.
1738 _Cavernes de Périgord_, p. 35.
1739 The ingenious author of _Atlantis, the Ante-diluvian World_, in
discussing the origin of various Grecian and Roman institutions,
expresses his conviction that "the roots of the institutions of to-
day reach back to the Miocene age." Ay, and further yet, as already
stated.
1740 _The Human Species_, p. 152.
1741 As we know them, however. For not only does Geology prove that the
British Islands have been _four times submerged and reëlevated_, but
that the straits between them and Europe were dry land at a former
remote epoch.
1742 See, in _Isis Unveiled_ (i. 627), what Kullűka Bhatta says.
1743 _Les Origines de la Terre et de l'Homme_, p. 454. To this, Professor
N. Joly, of Toulouse, who thus quotes the Abbé in his _Man before
Metals_, expresses the hope that M. Fabre will permit him "to differ
from him on this last point" (p. 186). So do the Occultists; for
though they claim a vast difference in the physiology and outward
appearance of the five Races so far evolved, still they maintain
that the present human species has descended from one and the same
primitive stock, evolved from the Divine Men--our common ancestors
and progenitors.
1744 _Loc. cit._, 15, 18.
1745 _Ibid._, 16.
1746 _Op. cit._, 8-10.
1747 "The flints of Thenay bear unmistakable trace of the work of human
hands." (G. de Mortillet, _Promenades au Musče de St. Germain_, p.
76.)
1748 Albert Gaudry, _Les Enchainements du Monde Animal dans les Temps
Géologiques_, p. 240.
1749 Speaking of the reindeer hunters of Périgord, Joly says that they
"were of great height, athletic, with a strongly built skeleton."
(_Man before Metals_, p. 353.)
1750 "On the shores of the lake of Beauce," says the Abbé Bourgeois, "man
lived in the midst of a fauna which completely disappeared
(aceratherium, tapir, mastodon). With the fluviatile sands of
Orléannais came the anthropomorphous monkey (pliopitliecus
antiquus); therefore, later than man." See _Comptes Rendus_ of the
"Prehistoric Congress" of 1867 at Paris.
1751 De Quatrefages, _The Human Species_, p. 312.
1752 "In making soundings in the slimy soil of the Nile Valley, two baked
bricks were discovered, one at the depth of 20, the other at 24
yards. If we estimate the thickness of the annual deposit formed by
the river at 8 inches a century [more careful calculations have
shown no more than from three to five per century], we must assign
to the first of these bricks an age of 12,000 years, and to the
second that of 14,000 years. By means of analogous calculations,
Burmeister supposes 72,000 years to have elapsed since the first
appearance of man upon the soil of Egypt, and Draper attributes to
the European man who witnessed the last glacial epoch, an antiquity
of more than 250,000 years." (_Man before Metals_, p. 183.) Egyptian
Zodiacs show more than 75,000 years of observation! Note well also
that Burmeister speaks only of the Delta population.
1753 See _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 66, Fifth Edition.
1754 Or on what are now the British Isles, which were not yet detached
from the main continent in those days. "The ancient inhabitant of
Picardy could pass into Great Britain without crossing the Channel.
The British Isles were united to Gaul by an isthmus which has since
been submerged." (_Man before Metals_, p. 184.)
1755 He witnessed and remembered it too, as "the final disappearance of
the largest continent [of Atlantis] was an event coďncident with the
elevation of the Alps," a Master writes (see _Esoteric Buddhism_ p.
70). _Pari passu_, as one portion of the dry land of our hemisphere
disappeared, some land of the new continent emerged from the seas.
It is on this colossal cataclysm, which lasted during a period of
150,000 years, that traditions of all the "deluges" are built, the
Jews constructing their version on an event which took place later,
on Poseidonis.
1756 "The Antiquity of the Human Race," in _Man before Metals_, by M.
Joly, p. 184.
1757 The scientific "jury" disagreed, as usual; while de Quatrefages, de
Mortillet, Worsać, Engelhardt, Waldemar, Schmidt, Capellini, Hamy,
and Cartailhac, saw upon the flints the traces of human handiwork,
Steenstrup, Virchow and Desor refused to do so. Still the majority,
if we except some English Scientists, are for Bourgeois.
1758 We take the following description from a scientific work. "The first
of these animals [the alligator] designed with considerable skill,
is no less than 250 ft. long.... The interior is formed of a heap of
stones, over which the form has been moulded in fine stiff clay. The
great serpent is represented with open mouth, in the act of
swallowing an egg of which the diameter is 100 ft. in the thickest
part; the body of the animal is wound in graceful curves and the
tail is rolled into a spiral. The entire length of the animal is
1,100 ft. This work is unique ... and there is nothing on the old
continent which offers any analogy to it." Except, however, its
symbolism of the Serpent (the Cycle of Time) swallowing the Egg
(Kosmos).
1759 It might be better, perhaps, for _fact_ had we more "specialists" in
Science and fewer "authorities" on universal questions. We have
never heard that Humboldt gave authoritative and final decisions in
the matter of polypi, or on the nature of an excrescence.
1760 57,000 years is the date assigned by Dr. Dowler to the remains of
the human skeleton, found buried beneath four ancient forests at New
Orleans on the banks of the Mississippi river.
1761 Murray says of the Mediterranean barbarians that they marvelled at
the prowess of the Atlanteans. "Their physical strength was
extraordinary [witness indeed their cyclopean buildings], the earth
shaking sometimes under their tread. Whatever they did, was done
speedily.... They were wise and communicated their wisdom to men"
(_Mythology_, p. 4).
1762 Art. by Dr. C. Carter Blake, 1871.
1763 But the Magi of Persia were never Persians--not even Chaldćans. They
came from a far-off land, the Orientalists being of opinion that the
said land was Media. This may be so, but from what part of Media? To
this we receive no answer.
1764 _Op. cit._, p. 160.
1765 _Op. cit._, pp. 3-13.
1766 _Civilization of the Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times_, pp. 130,
131.
1767 Bűmî haptâita, _Yasna_, xxxii. 3.
1768 _Cf._, for instance, vol. i. p. 4, of the Pahlavi Translation;
_Bdh._ xxi. 2, 3.
1769 Footnote by Dârâb Dastur Peshotan Sanjânâ, B.A., the translator of
Dr. Wilhelm Geiger's work on the _Civilization of the Eastern
Iranians_.
1770 _Op. cit._, pp. 130, 131.
1771 Dr. Kenealy, in his _Book of God_, quotes Vallancey, who says: "I
had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, ... where I
had studied Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries ...
when I heard a peasant girl say to a boor standing by her, 'Feach an
Maddin Nag' (Behold the morning star), pointing to the planet Venus,
the Maddina Nag of the Chaldćan" (pp. 162, 163).
1772 _Lib._ iv.
1773 There was a time when the whole world, the totality of mankind, had
one religion, and when they were of "one lip." "All the religions of
the earth were at first one and emanated from one centre," says
Faber very truly.
1774 _Critias_, translated by Davis, p. 415.
1775 Plato's veracity has been so unwarrantably impeached by even such
friendly critics as Professor Jowett, when the story of Atlantis has
been discussed, that it seems well to cite the testimony of a
specialist on the subject. It is sufficient to place mere literary
cavillers in a very ridiculous position:
"If our knowledge of Atlantis was more thorough, it would no doubt
appear that in every instance wherein the people of Europe accord
with the people of America, they were both in accord with the people
of Atlantis.... It will be seen that in every case where Plato gives
us any information in this respect as to Atlantis, we find this
agreement to exist. It existed in architecture, sculpture,
navigation, engraving, writing, an established priesthood, the mode
of worship, agriculture, and the construction of roads and canals;
and it is reasonable to suppose that the same correspondence
extended down to all the minor details." (Donnelly, _Atlantis_, p.
164. Twenty-fourth Ed.)
1776 Christians ought not to object to this doctrine of the periodical
destruction of continents by fire and water; for St. Peter speaks of
the Earth "standing out of the water, and in the water, whereby the
world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished, but [is
now] reserved unto fire" (II. iii. 5-7. See also the _Lives of
Alchemystical Philosophers_, p. 4, London, 1815).
1777 See Hesiod's _Theogony_, 507-509, and _Odyssey_, i. 51-53.
1778 _Mčmoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, p. 176.
1779 Ćschylus, _Prometheus Vinctus_, 351, 429, etc.
1780 iv. 184.
1781 _Pyth._, i. 20; Decharme, _op. cit._, p. 315.
1782 This does not mean that Atlas is the locality where it fell, for
this took place in Northern and Central Asia; but that Atlas formed
part of the Continent.
1783 Had not Diocletian burned the Esoteric works of the Egyptians in
A.D. 296, together with their books on Alchemy, "{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}"; Cćsar 700,000 rolls at Alexandria; Leo Isaurus
300,000 at Constantinople (eighth cent.); and the Mahommedans all
they could lay their sacrilegious hands on--the world might know to-
day more of Atlantis than it does. For Alchemy had its birthplace in
Atlantis during the Fourth Race, and had only its _renaissance_ in
Egypt.
1784 Professor Max Müller's Lectures--_On the Philosophy of Mythology_--are
before us. We read his citations of Heracleitus (460 B.C.),
declaring that Homer deserved "to be ejected from public assemblies
and flogged"; and of Xenophanes "holding Homer and Hesiod
responsible for the popular superstitions of Greece," and for
ascribing "to the gods whatever is disgraceful and scandalous among
men ... unlawful acts, such as theft, adultery, and fraud." Finally
the Oxford Professor quotes from Professor Jowett's translation of
Plato, where the latter tells Adaimantus (_Republic_) that "the
young man [in the state] should not be told that in committing the
worst of crimes, he is far from doing anything outrageous, and that
he may chastise his father [as Zeus did with Cronus] ... in any
manner that he likes, and in this will only be following the example
of the first and greatest of the gods.... In my opinion, these
stories are _not fit to be repeated_." To this Prof. Max Müller
observes that: "the Greek religion was clearly a national and
_traditional_ religion, and, as such, it shared both the advantages
and disadvantages _of this form of religious belief_"; while the
Christian religion is "an _historical_ and, to a great extent, an
individual religion, and it possesses the advantage of an authorized
codex and of a settled system of faith" (p. 349). So much the worse
if it is "historical," for surely Lot's incident with his daughters
would only gain, were it "allegorical."
1785 {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI AND PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}, _Hercules Furens_, 1346, Dindorf's
Edition.
1786 _Critias_, 421.
1787 Neptune or Poseidon is the Hindű Idas-pati, identical with Nârâyana
(the Mover on the Waters) or Vishnu, and like this Hindű God he is
shown crossing the whole horizon in _three steps_. Idas-pati means
also the "Master of the Waters."
1788 Bailly's assertion that the 9,000 years mentioned by the Egyptian
priests do not represent "solar years" is groundless. Bailly knew
nothing of Geology and its calculations; otherwise he would have
spoken differently.
1789 See _Matsya Purâna_, which places him among the seven Prajâpatis of
the period.
1790 _Iliad_, xxiv. 79.
1791 _Op. cit._, p. 126.
1792 The equivalent of this name is given in the original.
1793 Deucalion is said to have brought the worship of Adonis and Osiris
into Phoenicia. Now this worship is that of the Sun, lost and found
again in its astronomical significance. It is only at the Pole that
the Sun dies out for such a length of time as six months, for in
latitude 68° it remains _dead_ only for forty days, as in the
festival of Osiris. The two worships were born in the north of
Lemuria, or on that Continent of which Asia was a kind of broken
prolongation, and which stretched up to the polar regions. This is
well shown by de Gebelin's _Allegories d'Orient_, p. 246, and by
Bailly; though neither Hercules nor Osiris are _solar myths_, save
in one of their seven aspects.
1794 The Hyperboreans, now regarded as mythical, are described (Herod.,
iv. 33-35; Pausanius, i. 31, 32; v. 7, 8; x. 5, 7, 8) as the beloved
priests and servants of the Gods, and of Apollo chiefly.
1795 The Cyclopes are not the only "one-eyed" representatives in
tradition. The Arimaspes were a Scythian people, and were also
credited with but one eye. (_Géographie Ancienne_, ii. 321.) It is
they whom Apollo destroyed with his shafts.
1796 Ulysses was wrecked on the isle of Ćća, where Circe changed all his
companions into pigs _for their voluptuousness_; and after that he
was thrown into Ogygia, the island of Calypso, where for some seven
years he lived with the nymph in illicit connection. Now Calypso was
a daughter of Atlas (_Odys._, xii.), and all the traditional ancient
versions, when speaking of the Isle of Ogygia, say that it was very
distant from Greece, and right in the middle of the Ocean; thus
identifying it with Atlantis.
1797 Hygin., _Astron. Poétique_, ii. 15.
1798 _Nineteenth Century_, July, 1887.
1799 Diod. Sic., ii. 307.
1800 To make a difference between Lemuria and Atlantis, the ancient
writers referred to the latter as the Northern or Hyperborean
Atlantis, and to the former as the Southern. Thus Apollodorus says
(_Mythology_, Book ii): "The golden apples carried away by Hercules
are not, as some think, in Lybia; they are in the Hyperborean
Atlantis." The Greeks naturalized all the Gods they borrowed and
made Hellenes of them, and the moderns helped them. Thus also the
Mythologists have tried to make of Eridanus the river Po, in Italy.
In the myth of Phaeton it is said that at his death his sisters
dropped hot tears which fell into Eridanus and were changed into
amber! Now amber is found only in the northern seas, in the Baltic.
Phaeton, meeting with his death while carrying heat to the frozen
stars of the boreal regions, awakening at the Pole the Dragon made
rigid by cold, and being hurled down into the Eridanus, is an
allegory referring directly to the changes of climate in those
distant times when, from a frigid zone, the polar lands had become a
country with a moderate and warm climate. The usurper of the
functions of the Sun, Phaeton, being hurled into the Eridanus by
Jupiter's thunderbolt, is an allusion to the second change that took
place in those regions when, once more, the land where "the magnolia
blossomed" became the desolate forbidding land of the farthest north
and eternal ice. This allegory covers then the events of two
Pralayas; and if well understood, ought to be a demonstration of the
enormous antiquity of the human races.
1801 _Iliad_, xvii. 431-453.
1802 _Ibid._, 322-336.
1803 See Apollodorus for this number.
1804 See "The Sons of God and the Sacred Island."
1805 So occult and mystic is one of the aspects of Latona that she is
made to reappear even in _Revelation_ (xii), as the woman clothed
with the Sun (Apollo) and the Moon (Diana) under her feet, who being
with child "cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered."
A great red Dragon stands before the woman ready to devour the
child. She brings forth the man-child who was to rule all nations
with a rod of iron, and who was caught unto the throne of God--the
Sun. The woman fled to the wilderness still pursued by the Dragon,
who flees again, and casts out of his mouth water as a flood, when
the Earth helped the woman and swallowed the flood; and the Dragon
went to make war with the remnant of her seed who kept the
commandments of God. (See xii. 1, 17.) Anyone who reads the allegory
of Latona pursued by the revenge of jealous Juno, will recognize the
identity of the two versions. Juno sends Python, the Dragon, to
persecute and destroy Latona and devour her babe. The latter is
Apollo, the Sun, for the man-child of _Revelation_, "who was to rule
all nations with a rod of iron" is surely not the meek "Son of God,"
Jesus, but the physical Sun, "who rules all nations"; the Dragon
being the North Pole, gradually chasing the early Lemurians from the
lands which became more and more Hyperborean and unfit to be
inhabited by those who were fast developing into physical men, for
they now had to deal with the climatic variations. The Dragon will
not allow Latona "to bring forth"--the Sun to appear. "She is driven
from heaven, and finds no place where she can bring forth," until
Neptune, the Ocean, in pity, makes immovable the floating isle of
Delos--the nymph Asteria, hitherto hiding from Jupiter under the
waves of the Ocean--on which Latona finds refuge, and where the
bright God Delius is born, the God, who no sooner appears than he
kills Python, the cold and frost of the Arctic region, in whose
deadly coils all life becomes extinct. In other words, Latona-
Lemuria is transformed into Niobe-Atlantis, over which her son
Apollo, or the Sun, reigns--with an iron rod, truly, since Herodotus
makes the Atlantes _curse_ his too great heat. This allegory is
reproduced in its other mystic meaning (another of the seven keys)
in the just cited chapter of _Revelation_. Latona became a powerful
Goddess indeed, and saw her son receive worship (solar worship) in
almost every fane of antiquity. In his Occult aspect Apollo is
patron of number Seven. He is born on the seventh of the month, and
the swans of Myorica swim seven times round Delos singing that
event; he is given seven chords to his Lyre--the seven rays of the
Sun and the seven forces of Nature. But this is only in the
astronomical meaning, whereas the above is purely geological.
1806 See Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, vi.
1807 _Lettres sur l'Atlantide_, p. 137.
1808 Hesiod, _Opera et Dies_, 143.
1809 _Hist. Nat._, iv. 12.
1810 _Marius._
1811 _Op. cit._, c. 16.
1812 Isaac Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 139.
1813 Diod., ii. 225.
1814 _Op. cit._, xxxvii. 2.
1815 Vol. i. pp. 462-464.
1816 These islands were "found strewn with fossils of horses, sheep,
oxen, etc., among gigantic bones of elephants, mammoths,
rhinoceroses," etc. If there was no man on Earth at that period "how
came horses and sheep to be found in company with the huge
antediluvians?"--asks a Master in a letter. (_Esoteric Buddhism_, p.
67.) The reply is given above in the text.
1817 _Op. cit._, iv. 239-262.
1818 A good proof that all the Gods, and religious beliefs, and myths
have come from the North, which was also the cradle of _physical_
man, lies in several suggestive words which have originated and
remain to this day among the northern tribes in their primeval
significance; but, although there was a time when all the nations
were of "one lip," these words have received a different meaning
with the Greeks and Latins. One such word is _mann_, _man_, a living
being, and _manes_, dead men. The Laplanders call their corpses to
this day _manee_ (_Voyage de Rénard en Laponie_, i. 184). _Mannus_
is the ancestor of the German race; the Hindű _Manu_, the thinking
being, from _man_; the Egyptian _Menes_; and _Minos_, the King of
Crete, judge of the infernal regions after his death--all proceed
from the same word or root.
1819 Thus, for instance, Gyges is a hundred-armed and fifty-headed
monster, a Demi-god in one case, and a Lydian, the successor of
Candaules, king of the country, in another version. The same is
found in the Indian Pantheon, where Rishis and the Sons of Brahmâ
are reborn as mortals.
1820 _Op. cit._, viii. 13.
1821 The continents perish in turn by fire and water; either through
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by sinking and the great
displacement of waters. Our continents have to perish by the former
cataclysmal process. The incessant earthquakes of the past years may
be a warning.
1822 See Decharme's _Mythologie de la Grčce Antique_.
1823 Denis, the Geographer, tells us that the great sea north of Asia was
called glacial, or Saturnine (v. 35). Orpheus (v. 1077) and Pliny
(iv. 16) corroborate the statement by showing that it was its giant
inhabitants who gave it the name. And the Secret Doctrine explains
both assertions by telling us that all the continents were formed
from North to South; and that as the sudden change of climate
dwarfed the race that had been born on it, arresting its growth, so,
several degrees southward, various conditions had always produced
the tallest men in every new humanity, or race. We see it to this
day. The tallest men now found are those in Northern countries,
while the smallest are Southern Asiatics, Hindűs, Chinamen,
Japanese, etc. Compare the tall Sikhs and Punjabees, the Afghans,
Norwegians, Russians, Northern Germans, Scotchmen, and English, with
the inhabitants of Central India and the average European on the
continent. Thus also the Giants of Atlantis, and hence the Titans of
Hesiod, are all Northerners.
1824 Having already given several instances of the vagaries of Science,
it is delightful to find such agreement in this particular case.
Read in connection with the scientific admission (cited elsewhere)
of the Geologists' ignorance of even the approximate duration of
periods, the following passage is highly instructive: "We are not
yet able to assign an approximate date for the most recent epoch at
which our northern hemisphere was covered with glaciers. According
to Mr. Wallace, this epoch may have occurred no more than seventy
thousand years ago, while others would assign to it an antiquity of
at least two hundred thousand years, and there are yet others who
urge strong arguments on behalf of the opinion that a million of
years is barely enough to have produced the changes which have taken
place since that event." (Fiske, _Cosmic Philosophy_, i. 304, Ed.
1874.) Prof. Lefčvre, again, gives us as _his_ estimate one hundred
thousand years. Clearly, then, if Modern Science is unable to
estimate the date of so comparatively recent an era as the Glacial
Epoch, it can hardly impeach the Esoteric Chronology of Race-Periods
and Geological Ages.
1825 Cited in Schmidt's _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp. 300,
301.
1826 _Philosophy Historical and Critical_, p. 508.
1827 _Human Species_, pp. 428, _et seqq._
1828 Art., "The First Volume of the Publications of the 'Challenger,'" p.
2, Nov. 4th, 1880.
1829 _Op. cit._, Art., "Australia and Europe formerly one Continent" (v.
19, 25). Undoubtedly a fact, and a confirmation of the Esoteric
conception of Lemuria, which originally not only embraced great
areas in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but projected round South
Africa into the North Atlantic. Its Atlantic portion subsequently
became the geological basis of the future home of the Fourth Race
Atlanteans.
1830 _Ibid._, i. 143.
1831 _Cf._, the published reports of the "Challenger" expedition; also
Donnelly's _Atlantis_, p. 468 and pp. 46-56, Chap., "The Testimony
of the Sea."
1832 Even the cautious Lefčvre speaks of the existence of Tertiary men on
"upheaved lands, islands and continents then flourishing, but since
submerged beneath the waters," and elsewhere introduces a "possible
Atlantis" to explain ethnological facts. _Cf._, his _Philosophy
Historical and Critical_, pp. 478 and 504. Mr. Donnelly remarks with
rare intuition that "modern civilization is Atlantean ... the
inventive faculty of the present age is taking up the great
delegated work of creation where Atlantis left it thousands of years
ago" (_Atlantis_, p. 177. Twenty-fourth Ed.). He also refers the
origin of culture to the Miocene times. It is, however, to be sought
for in the teachings given to the Third Race men by their Divine
Rulers--at a vastly earlier period.
1833 An equally "curious" similarity may be traced between some of the
West Indian and West African fauna.
1834 The Pacific portion of the giant Lemurian Continent christened by
Dr. Carter Blake, the Anthropologist, "Pacificus."
1835 "Subsidence and Elevation," _Geological Magazine_, pp. 241, 245,
June, 1881.
1836 _Antiquity of Man_, p. 492.
1837 When Howard read, before the Royal Society of London, a paper on the
first serious researches that were made on the aerolites, the Geneva
Naturalist Pictet, who was present, communicated, on his return to
Paris, the facts reported to the French Academy of Sciences. But he
was forthwith interrupted by Laplace, the great Astronomer, who
cried: "Stop! we have had enough of such _fables_, and know all
about them," thus making Pictet feel very small. Globular-shaped
lightnings or thunder-bolts have been admitted by Science only since
Arago demonstrated their existence. Says de Rochat (_Forces Non-
definies_, p. 4): "Every one remembers Dr. Bouilland's misadventure
at the Academy of Medicine when he had declared Edison's phonograph
'_a trick of ventriloquism_'!"
1838 _Principles of Geology_, i. 9, 10.
1839 _Ibid._
1840 The Cyclic Law of Race-Evolution is most unwelcome to Scientists. It
is sufficient to mention the fact of "primeval civilization" to
excite the frenzy of Darwinians; it being obvious that the further
culture and science is pushed back, the more precarious becomes the
basis of the ape-ancestor theory. But as Jacolliot says: "Whatever
there may be in these traditions [submerged continents, etc.], and
whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient
than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India, was developed,
it is certain that this civilization did exist, and it is highly
important for science to recover its traces, however feeble and
fugitive they be." (_Histoire des Vičrges; les Peuples et les
Continents Disparus_, p. 15.) Donnelly has proved the fact from the
clearest premises, but the Evolutionists will not listen. A Miocene
civilization upsets the "universal Stone age" theory, and that of a
_continuous_ ascent of man from animalism. And yet Egypt, at least,
runs counter to current hypotheses. There is no Stone age visible
there, but a more glorious culture is apparent the further back we
are enabled to carry our retrospect.
1841 _Myths and Myth-Makers_, p. 21.
1842 Violent minor cataclysms and colossal earthquakes are recorded in
the annals of most nations--if not of all. Elevation and subsidence
of continents is always in progress. The whole coast of South
America has been raised up 10 to 15 feet and settled down again in
an hour. Huxley has shown that the British Islands have been four
times depressed beneath the ocean and subsequently raised again and
peopled. The Alps, Himâlayas and Cordilleras were all the result of
depositions drifted on to sea-bottoms and upheaved by Titanic forces
to their present elevation. The Sahara was the basin of a Miocene
sea. Within the last five or six thousand years the shores of
Sweden, Denmark and Norway, have risen from 200 to 600 feet; in
Scotland there are raised beaches with outlying stacks and skerries
surmounting the shore now eroded by the hungry wave. The North of
Europe is still rising from the sea, and South America presents the
phenomenon of raised beaches of over 1,000 miles in length, now at a
height varying from 100 to 1,300 feet above the sea-level. On the
other hand, the coast of Greenland is sinking fast, so much so that
the Greenlander will not build by the shore. All these phenomena are
certain. Why then may not a gradual change have given place to a
violent cataclysm in remote epochs--such cataclysms occurring on a
minor scale even now, _e.g._, the case of Sunda Island with the
destruction of 80,000 Malays?
1843 For the opinions of Jacolliot, after long travels through the
Polynesian Islands, and his proofs of a former great geological
cataclysm in the Pacific Ocean, see his _Histoire des Vičrges; les
Peuples et les Continents Disparus_, p. 308.
1844 August, 1880.
1845 _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, pp. 236, 237. _Cf._ also his
lengthy arguments on the subject, pp. 231-235.
1846 _Op. cit._, i. 22, 23, Ed. 1869.
1847 _Pedigree of Man_, p. 73.
1848 Cited in Schmidt's _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 238.
1849 For further facts as to the isolation of the Basques in Europe and
their ethnological relations, see Joly, _Man before Metals_, p. 316.
B. Davis is disposed to concede, from an examination of the skulls
of the Guanches of the Canary Islands and modern Basques, that both
belong to a race proper to those _ancient_ islands, of which the
Canaries are the _remains_! This is a step in advance indeed. De
Quatrefages and Hamy also both assign the Cro-Magnon men of South
France and the Guanches to _one_ type--a proposition which involves a
certain corollary which both these writers may not care to father.
1850 _Families of Speech._
1851 _Cf._, Benjamin, _The Atlantic Islands_, p. 130.
1852 _Westminster Review_, Jan., 1872.
1853 Schmidt, _Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism_, p. 223.
1854 Professor Retzius, _Smithsonian Report_, 1859, p. 266.
1855 See the investigations of United States ship "Dolphin" and others.
1856 _Scientific American_, July 28th, 1877.
1857 See his chart, _Atlantis_, p. 46, though he deals with only a
fragment of the _real_ Continent.
1858 Donnelly, _Atlantis_, p. 480.
1859 _Maçonnerie Occulte_, p. 44.
1860 _Vide_ Sir William Thompson and Mr. Huxley.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET DOCTRINE, VOL. 2 OF 4 ***
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and ost other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions hatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms f the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online t www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, ou will have to check the laws of the country where you are located efore using this eBook.
Title: The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4
Author: H. P. Blavatsky
Release date: March 30, 2018 [eBook #56880]
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET DOCTRINE, VOL. 3 OF 4 ***
The Secret Doctrine
The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
By
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Author of "Isis Unveiled."
Third and Revised Edition.
SATYĀT NĀSTI PARO DHARMAH.
"There is no Religion higher than Truth."
Volume III.
The Theosophical Publishing House
London
1897
CONTENTS
Preface.
Introductory.
Section I. Preliminary Survey.
Section II. Modern Criticism and the Ancients.
Section III. The Origin of Magic.
Section IV. The Secresy of Initiates.
Section V. Some Reasons for Secresy.
Section VI. The Dangers of Practical Magic.
Section VII. Old Wine in New Bottles.
Section VIII. The Book of Enoch the Origin and the Foundation of
Christianity.
Section IX. Hermetic and Kabalistic Doctrines.
Section X. Various Occult Systems of Interpretations of Alphabets and
Numerals.
Section XI. The Hexagon with the Central Point, or the Seventh Key.
Section XII. The Duty of the True Occultist toward Religions.
Section XIII. Post-Christian Adepts and their Doctrines.
Section XIV. Simon and his Biographer Hippolytus.
Section XV. St. Paul the real Founder of present Christianity.
Section XVI. Peter a Jewish Kabalist, not an Initiate.
Section XVII. Apollonius of Tyana.
Section XVIII. Facts underlying Adept Biographies.
Section XIX. St. Cyprian of Antioch.
Section XX. The Eastern Gupta Vidya & the Kabalah.
Section XXI. Hebrew Allegories.
Section XXII. The "Zohar" on Creation and the Elohim.
Section XXIII. What the Occultists and Kabalists have to say.
Section XXIV. Modern Kabalists in Science and Occult Astronomy.
Section XXV. Eastern and Western Occultism.
Section XXVI. The Idols and the Teraphim.
Section XXVII. Egyptian Magic.
Section XXVIII. The Origin of the Mysteries.
Section XXIX. The Trial of the Sun Initiate.
Section XXX. The Mystery "Sun of Initiation."
Section XXXI. The Objects of the Mysteries.
Section XXXII. Traces of the Mysteries.
Section XXXIII. The Last of the Mysteries in Europe.
Section XXXIV. The Post-Christian Successors to the Mysteries.
Section XXXV. Symbolism of Sun and Stars.
Section XXXVI. Pagan Sidereal Worship, or Astrology.
Section XXXVII. The Souls of the Stars--Universal Heliolatry.
Section XXXVIII. Astrology and Astrolatry.
Section XXXIX. Cycles and Avataras.
Section XL. Secret Cycles.
Section XLI. The Doctrine of Avataras.
Section XLII. The Seven Principles.
Section XLIII. The Mystery of Buddha.
Section XLIV. "Reincarnations" of Buddha.
Section XLV. An Unpublished Discourse of Buddha.
Section XLVI. Nirvana-Moksha.
Section XLVII. The Secret Books of "Lam-Rin" and Dzyan.
Section XLVIII. Amita Buddha Kwan-Shai-yin, and Kwan-yin.--What the "Book f Dzyan" and the Lamaseries of Tsong-Kha-pa say.
Section XLIX. Tsong-Kha-pa.--Lohans in China.
Section L. A few more Misconceptions Corrected.
Section LI. The "Doctrine of the Eye" & the "Doctrine of the Heart," or he "Heart's Seal."
Some Papers On The Bearing Of Occult Philosophy On Life.
Paper I. A Warning.
Paper II. An Explanation.
Paper III. A Word Concerning the Earlier Papers.
Appendix. Notes on Papers I., II. and III.
Notes On Some Oral Teachings.
Footnotes
[Cover Art]
[Transcriber's Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter t Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]
As for what thou hearest others say, who persuade the many that
the soul when once freed from the body neither suffers ... evil
nor is conscious, I know that thou art better grounded in the
doctrines received by us from our ancestors and in the sacred
orgies of Dionysus than to believe them; for the mystic symbols
are well known to us who belong to the Brotherhood.
PLUTARCH.
The problem of life is man. Magic, or rather Wisdom, is the
evolved knowledge of the potencies of man's interior being, which
forces are divine emanations, as intuition is the perception of
their origin, and initiation our induction into that knowledge....
We begin with instinct; the end is omniscience.
A. WILDER.
PREFACE.
The task of preparing this volume for the press has been a difficult and nxious one, and it is necessary to state clearly what has been done. The apers given to me by H. P. B. were quite unarranged, and had no obvious rder: I have, therefore, taken each paper as a separate Section, and have rranged them as sequentially as possible. With the exception of the orrection of grammatical errors and the elimination of obviously un-
English idioms, the papers are as H. P. B. left them, save as otherwise arked. In a few cases I have filled in a gap, but any such addition is nclosed within square brackets, so as to be distinguished from the text.
In "The Mystery of Buddha" a further difficulty arose; some of the
Sections had been written four or five times over, each version containing ome sentences that were not in the others; I have pieced these versions ogether, taking the fullest as basis, and inserting therein everything dded in any other versions. It is, however, with some hesitation that I ave included these Sections in the _Secret Doctrine_. Together with some ost suggestive thought, they contain very numerous errors of fact, and any statements based on exoteric writings, not on esoteric knowledge.
They were given into my hands to publish, as part of the Third Volume of he _Secret Doctrine_, and I therefore do not feel justified in coming etween the author and the public, either by altering the statements, to ake them consistent with fact, or by suppressing the Sections. She says he is acting entirely on her own authority, and it will be obvious to any nstructed reader that she makes--possibly deliberately--many statements so onfused that they are mere blinds, and other statements--probably nadvertently--that are nothing more than the exoteric misunderstandings of soteric truths. The reader must here, as everywhere, use his own udgment, but feeling bound to publish these Sections, I cannot let them o to the public without a warning that much in them is certainly rroneous. Doubtless, had the author herself issued this book, she would ave entirely re-written the whole of this division; as it was, it seemed est to give all she had said in the different copies, and to leave it in ts rather unfinished state, for students will best like to have what she aid as she said it, even though they may have to study it more closely han would have been the case had she remained to finish her work.
The quotations made have been as far as possible found, and correct eferences given; in this most laborious work a whole band of earnest and ainstaking students, under the guidance of Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, have been y willing assistants. Without their aid it would not have been possible o give the references, as often a whole book had to be searched through, n order to find a paragraph of a few lines.
This volume completes the papers left by H. P. B., with the exception of a ew scattered articles that yet remain and that will be published in her wn magazine _Lucifer_. Her pupils are well aware that few will be found n the present generation to do justice to the occult knowledge of H. P.
B. and to her magnificent sweep of thought, but as she can wait to future enerations for the justification of her greatness as a teacher, so can er pupils afford to wait for the justification of their trust.
ANNIE BESANT.
INTRODUCTORY.
"Power belongs to him who knows;" this is a very old axiom. Knowledge--the irst step to which is the power of comprehending the truth, of discerning he real from the false--is for those only who, having freed themselves rom every prejudice and conquered their human conceit and selfishness, re ready to accept every and any truth, once it is demonstrated to them.
Of such there are very few. The majority judge of a work according to the espective prejudices of its critics, who are guided in their turn by the opularity or unpopularity of the author, rather than by its own faults or erits. Outside the Theosophical circle, therefore, the present volume is ertain to receive at the hands of the general public a still colder elcome than its two predecessors have met with. In our day no statement an hope for a fair trial, or even hearing, unless its arguments run on he line of legitimate and accepted enquiry, remaining strictly within the oundaries of official Science or orthodox Theology.
Our age is a paradoxical anomaly. It is preėminently materialistic and as reėminently pietistic. Our literature, our modern thought and progress, o called, both run on these two parallel lines, so incongruously issimilar and yet both so popular and so very orthodox, each in its own ay. He who presumes to draw a third line, as a hyphen of reconciliation etween the two, has to be fully prepared for the worst. He will have his ork mangled by reviewers, mocked by the sycophants of Science and Church, isquoted by his opponents, and rejected even by the pious lending ibraries. The absurd misconceptions, in so-called cultured circles of ociety, of the ancient Wisdom-Religion (Bodhism) after the admirably lear and scientifically-presented explanations in _Esoteric Buddhism_, re a good proof in point. They might have served as a caution even to hose Theosophists who, hardened in an almost life-long struggle in the ervice of their Cause, are neither timid with their pen, nor in the least ppalled by dogmatic assumption and scientific authority. Yet, do what
Theosophical writers may, neither Materialism nor doctrinal pietism will ver give their Philosophy a fair hearing. Their doctrines will be ystematically rejected, and their theories denied a place even in the anks of those scientific ephemera, the ever-shifting "working hypotheses" f our day. To the advocate of the "animalistic" theory, our osmogenetical and anthropogenetical teachings are "fairy-tales" at best.
For to those who would shirk any moral responsibility, it seems certainly ore convenient to accept descent from a common simian ancestor and see a rother in a dumb, tailless baboon, than to acknowledge the fatherhood of
Pitris, the "Sons of God," and to have to recognise as a brother a tarveling from the slums.
"Hold back!" shout in their turn the pietists. "You will never make of espectable church-going Christians Esoteric Buddhists!"
Nor are we, in truth, in any way anxious to attempt the metamorphosis. But his cannot, nor shall it, prevent Theosophists from saying what they have o say, especially to those who, in opposing to our doctrine Modern
Science, do so not for her own fair sake, but only to ensure the success f their private hobbies and personal glorification. If we cannot prove any of our points, no more can they; yet we may show how, instead of iving historical and scientific facts--for the edification of those who, nowing less than they, look to Scientists to do their thinking and form heir opinions--the efforts of most of our scholars seem solely directed to illing ancient facts, or distorting them into props to support their own pecial views. This will be done in no spirit of malice or even criticism, s the writer readily admits that most of those she finds fault with stand mmeasurably higher in learning than herself. But great scholarship does ot preclude bias and prejudice, nor is it a safeguard against self- onceit, but rather the reverse. Moreover, it is but in the legitimate efence of our own statements, _i.e._, the vindication of Ancient Wisdom nd its great truths, that we mean to take our "great authorities" to ask.
Indeed, unless the precaution of answering beforehand certain objections o the fundamental propositions in the present work be adopted--objections hich are certain to be made on the authority of this, that, or another cholar concerning the Esoteric character of all the archaic and ancient orks on Philosophy--our statements will be once more contradicted and even iscredited. One of the main points in this Volume is to indicate in the orks of the old Āryan, Greek, and other Philosophers of note, as well as n all the world-scriptures, the presence of a strong Esoteric allegory nd symbolism. Another of the objects is to prove that the key of nterpretation, as furnished by the Eastern Hindu-Buddhistic canon of
Occultism--fitting as well the Christian Gospels as it does archaic
Egyptian, Greek, Chaldęan, Persian, and even Hebrew-Mosaic Books--must have een one common to all the nations, however divergent may have been their espective methods and exoteric "blinds." These claims are vehemently enied by some of the foremost scholars of our day. In his Edinburgh
Lectures, Prof. Max Müller discarded this fundamental statement of the
Theosophists by pointing to the Hindu Shāstras and Pandits, who know othing of such Esotericism.(1) The learned Sanskrit scholar stated in so any words that there was no hidden meaning, no Esoteric element or
"blinds," either in the _Purānas_ or the _Upanishads_. Considering that he word "Upanishad" means, when translated, the "Secret Doctrine," the ssertion is, to say the least, extraordinary. Sir M. Monier Williams gain holds the same view with regard to Buddhism. To hear him is to egard Gautama, the Buddha, as an enemy of every pretence to Esoteric eachings. He himself never taught them! All such "pretences" to Occult earning and "magic powers" are due to the later Arhats, the subsequent ollowers of the "Light of Asia"! Prof. B. Jowett, again, as ontemptuously passes the sponge over the "absurd" interpretations of
Plato's _Timęus_ and the Mosaic Books by the Neoplatonists. There is not a reath of the Oriental (Gnostic) spirit of Mysticism in Plato's
_Dialogues_, the Regius Professor of Greek tells us, nor any approach to
Science, either. Finally, to cap the climax, Prof. Sayce, the
Assyriologist, although he does not deny the actual presence, in the
Assyrian tablets and cuneiform literature, of a hidden meaning--
Many of the sacred texts ... so written as to be intelligible only
to the initiated--
et insists that the "keys and glosses" thereof are now in the hands of he Assyriologists. The modern scholars, he affirms, have in their ossession clues to the interpretation of the Esoteric Records,
Which even the initiated priests [of Chaldęa] did not possess.
Thus, in the scholarly appreciation of our modern Orientalists and
Professors, Science was in its infancy in the days of the Egyptian and
Chaldęan Astronomers. Pānini, the greatest Grammarian in the world, was nacquainted with the art of writing. So was the Lord Buddha, and everyone lse in India until 300 B.C. The grossest ignorance reigned in the days of he Indian Rishis, and even in those of Thales, Pythagoras, and Plato.
Theosophists must indeed be superstitious ignoramuses to speak as they do, n the face of such learned evidence to the contrary!
Truly it looks as if, since the world's creation, there has been but one ge of real knowledge on earth--the present age. In the misty twilight, in he grey dawn of history, stand the pale shadows of the old Sages of world enown. They were hopelessly groping for the correct meaning of their own
Mysteries, the spirit whereof has departed without revealing itself to the
Hierophants, and has remained latent in space until the advent of the nitiates of Modern Science and Research. The noontide brightness of nowledge has only now arrived at the "Know-All," who, basking in the azzling sun of induction, busies himself with his Penelopeian task of
"working hypotheses," and loudly asserts his rights to universal nowledge. Can anyone wonder, then, that according to present views the earning of the ancient Philosopher, and even sometimes that of his direct uccessors in the past centuries, has ever been useless to the world and alueless to himself? For, as explained repeatedly in so many words, while he Rishis and the Sages of old have walked far over the arid fields of yth and superstition, the medięval Scholar, and even the average ighteenth century Scientist, have always been more or less cramped by heir "supernatural" religion and beliefs. True, it is generally conceded hat some ancient and also medięval Scholars, such as Pythagoras, Plato,
Paracelsus, and Roger Bacon, followed by a host of glorious names, had ndeed left not a few landmarks over precious mines of Philosophy and nexplored lodes of Physical Science. But then the actual excavation of hese, the smelting of the gold and silver, and the cutting of the recious jewels they contain, are all due to the patient labours of the odern man of Science. And is it not to the unparalleled genius of the atter that the ignorant and hitherto-deluded world owes a correct nowledge of the real nature of the Kosmos, of the true origin of the niverse and man, as revealed in the automatic and mechanical theories of he Physicists, in accordance with strictly scientific Philosophy? Before ur cultured era, Science was but a name, Philosophy a delusion and a nare. According to the modest claims of contemporary authority on genuine
Science and Philosophy, the Tree of Knowledge has only now sprung from the ead weeds of superstition, as a beautiful butterfly emerges from an ugly rub. We have, therefore, nothing for which to thank our forefathers. The
Ancients have at best prepared and fertilised the soil; it is the Moderns ho have planted the seeds of knowledge and reared the lovely plants alled blank negation and sterile agnosticism.
Such, however, is not the view taken by Theosophists. They repeat what was tated twenty years ago. It is not sufficient to speak of the "untenable onceptions of an uncultured past" (Tyndall); of the "_parler enfantin_" f the Vaidic poets (Max Müller); of the "absurdities" of the
Neoplatonists (Jowett); and of the ignorance of the Chaldęo-Assyrian nitiated Priests with regard to their own symbols, when compared with the nowledge thereon of the British Orientalist (Sayce). Such assumptions ave to be proven by something more solid than the mere word of these cholars. For no amount of boastful arrogance can hide the intellectual uarries out of which the representations of so many modern Philosophers nd Scholars have been carved. How many of the most distinguished European
Scientists have derived honour and credit for the mere dressing-up of the deas of these old Philosophers, whom they are ever ready to disparage, is eft to an impartial posterity to say. Thus it does seem not altogether ntrue as stated in _Isis Unveiled_, to say of certain Orientalists and
Scholars of dead languages, that they will allow their boundless conceit nd self-opinionatedness to run away with their logic and reasoning owers, rather than concede to the ancient Philosophers the knowledge of nything the modern do not know.
As part of this work treats of the Initiates and the secret knowledge mparted during the Mysteries, the statements of those who, in spite of he fact that Plato was an Initiate, maintain that no hidden Mysticism is o be discovered in his works, have to be first examined. Too many of the resent scholars, Greek and Sanskrit, are but too apt to forego facts in avour of their own preconceived theories based on personal prejudice.
They conveniently forget, at every opportunity, not only the numerous hanges in language, but also that the allegorical style in the writings f old Philosophers and the secretiveness of the Mystics had their _raison 'źtre_; that both the pre-Christian and the post-Christian classical riters--the great majority at all events--were under the sacred obligation ever to divulge the solemn secrets communicated to them in the anctuaries; and that this alone is sufficient to sadly mislead their ranslators and profane critics. But these critics will admit nothing of he kind, as will presently be seen.
For over twenty-two centuries everyone who has read Plato has been aware hat, like most of the other Greek Philosophers of note, he had been nitiated; that therefore, being tied down by the Sodalian Oath, he could peak of certain things only in veiled allegories. His reverence for the
Mysteries is unbounded; he openly confesses that he writes
"enigmatically," and we see him take the greatest precautions to conceal he true meaning of his words. Every time the subject touches the greater ecrets of Oriental Wisdom--the cosmogony of the universe, or the ideal reėxisting world--Plato shrouds his Philosophy in the profoundest arkness. His _Timęus_ is so confused that no one but an Initiate can nderstand the hidden meaning. As already said in _Isis Unveiled_:
The speculations of Plato in the _Banquet_ on the creation, or
rather the evolution, of primordial men, and the essay on
cosmogony in the _Timęus_, must be taken allegorically if we
accept them at all. It is this hidden Pythagorean meaning in
_Timęus_, _Cratylus_, and _Parmenides_, and a few other trilogies
and dialogues, that the Neoplatonists ventured to expound, as far
as the theurgical vow of secresy would allow them. The Pythagorean
doctrine that God is the Universal Mind diffused through all
things, and the dogma of the soul's immortality, are the leading
features in these apparently incongruous teachings. His piety and
the great veneration he felt for the Mysteries are sufficient
warrant that Plato would not allow his indiscretion to get the
better of that deep sense of responsibility which is felt by every
Adept. "Constantly perfecting himself in perfect Mysteries a man
in them alone becomes truly perfect," says he in the _Phędrus_.
He took no pains to conceal his displeasure that the Mysteries had
become less secret than formerly. Instead of profaning them by
putting them within the reach of the multitude, he would have
guarded them with jealous care against all but the most earnest
and worthy of his disciples.(2) While mentioning the Gods on every
page, his monotheism is unquestionable, for the whole thread of
his discourse indicates that by the term "Gods" he means a class
of beings lower in the scale than Deities, and but one grade
higher than men. Even Josephus perceived and acknowledged this
fact, despite the natural prejudice of his race. In his famous
onslaught upon Apion, this historian says: "Those, however, among
the Greeks who philosophized in accordance with truth were not
ignorant of anything, ... nor did they fail to perceive the
chilling superficialities of the mythical allegories, on which
account they justly despised them.... By which thing Plato, being
moved, says it is not necessary to admit any one of the other
poets into 'the Commonwealth,' and he dismisses Homer blandly,
after having crowned him and pouring unguent upon him, in order
that indeed he should not destroy by _his myths_, the orthodox
belief respecting one God."(3)
And this is the "God" of every Philosopher, God infinite and impersonal.
All this and much more, which there is no room here to quote, leads one to he undeniable certitude that (_a_), as all the Sciences and Philosophies ere in the hands of the temple Hierophants, Plato, as initiated by them, ust have known them; and (_b_), that logical inference alone is amply ufficient to justify anyone in regarding Plato's writings as allegories nd "dark sayings," veiling truths which he had no right to divulge.
This established, how comes it that one of the best Greek scholars in
England, Prof. Jowett, the modern translator of Plato's works, seeks to emonstrate that none of the Dialogues--including even the _Timęus_--have ny element of Oriental Mysticism about them? Those who can discern the rue spirit of Plato's Philosophy will hardly be convinced by the rguments which the Master of Balliol College lays before his readers.
"Obscure and repulsive" to him, the _Timęus_ may certainly be; but it is s certain that this obscurity does not arise, as the Professor tells his ublic, "in the infancy of physical science," but rather in its days of ecresy; not "out of the confusion of theological, mathematical, and hysiological notions," or "out of the desire to conceive the whole of
Nature without any adequate knowledge of the parts."(4) For Mathematics nd Geometry were the backbone of Occult cosmogony, hence of "Theology," nd the physiological notions of the ancient Sages are being daily erified by Science in our age; at least, to those who know how to read nd understand ancient Esoteric works. The "knowledge of the parts" avails s little, if this knowledge only leads us the more to ignorance of the
Whole, or the "nature and reason of the Universal," as Plato called Deity, nd causes us to blunder most egregiously because of our boasted inductive ethods. Plato may have been "incapable of induction, or generalization in he modern sense";(5) he may have been ignorant also, of the circulation f the blood, which, we are told, "was absolutely unknown to him,"(6) but hen, there is naught to disprove that he knew what blood _is_--and this is ore than any modern Physiologist or Biologist can claim nowadays.
Though a wider and far more generous margin for knowledge is allowed the
"physical philosopher" by Prof. Jowett than by nearly any other modern ommentator and critic, nevertheless, his criticism so considerably utweighs his laudation, that it may be as well to quote his own words, to how clearly his bias. Thus he says:
To bring sense under the control of reason; to find some way
through the labyrinth or chaos of appearances, either the highway
of mathematics, or more devious paths suggested by the analogy of
man with the world and of the world with man; to see that all
things have a cause and are tending towards an end--this is the
spirit of the ancient physical philosopher.(7) But we neither
appreciate the conditions of knowledge to which he was subjected,
nor have the ideas which fastened upon his imagination the same
hold upon us. For he is hovering between matter and mind; he is
under the dominion of abstractions; his impressions are taken
almost at random from the outside of nature; he sees the light,
but not the objects which are revealed by the light; and he brings
into juxtaposition things which to us appear wide as the poles
asunder, because he finds nothing between them.
The last proposition but one must evidently be distasteful to the modern
"physical philosopher," who sees the "objects" before him, but fails to ee the light of the Universal Mind, which reveals them, _i.e._, who roceeds in a diametrically opposite way. Therefore the learned Professor omes to the conclusion that the ancient Philosopher, whom he now judges rom Plato's _Timęus_, must have acted in a decidedly unphilosophical and ven irrational way. For:
He passes abruptly from persons to ideas and numbers, and _from
ideas and numbers to persons_,(8) he confuses subject and object,
_first_ and _final_ causes, and in dreaming of geometrical
figures(9) is lost in a flux of sense. And now an effort of mind
is required on our parts _in order to understand his double
language_, or to apprehend _the twilight character of the
knowledge_ and the genius of ancient philosophers which, under
such conditions [?], seems by a divine power in many instances to
have anticipated the truth.(10)
Whether "such conditions" imply those of ignorance and mental stolidity in
"the genius of ancient philosophers" or something else, we do not know.
But what we do know is that the meaning of the sentences we have talicized is perfectly clear. Whether the Regius Professor of Greek elieves or disbelieves in a hidden sense of geometrical figures and of he Esoteric "jargon," he nevertheless admits the presence of a "double anguage" in the writings of these Philosophers. Thence he admits a hidden eaning, which must have had an interpretation. Why, then, does he flatly ontradict his own statement on the very next page? And why should he deny o the _Timęus_--that preėminently Pythagorean (mystic) Dialogue--any Occult eaning and take such pains to convince his readers that
The influence which the _Timęus_ has exercised upon posterity is
partly due to a misunderstanding.
The following quotation from his Introduction is in direct contradiction ith the paragraph which precedes it, as above quoted:
In the supposed depths of this dialogue the Neo-Platonists found
hidden meanings and connections with the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures, and out of them they dictated doctrines quite at
variance with the spirit of Plato. Believing that he was inspired
by the Holy Ghost, or had received his wisdom from Moses,(11) they
seemed to find in his writings the Christian Trinity, the Word,
the Church ... and the Neo-Platonists had a method of
interpretation which could elicit any meaning out of any words.
They were really incapable of distinguishing between the opinions
of one philosopher and another, or between the serious thoughts of
Plato and his passing fancies.(12)... [But] there is no danger of
the modern commentators on the _Timęus_ falling into the absurdity
of the Neo-Platonists.
No danger whatever, of course, for the simple reason that the modern ommentators have never had the key to Occult interpretations. And before nother word is said in defence of Plato and the Neoplatonists, the earned master of Balliol College ought to be respectfully asked: What oes, or can he know of the Esoteric canon of interpretation? By the term
"canon" is here meant that key which was communicated orally from "mouth o ear" by the Master to the disciple, or by the Hierophant to the andidate for initiation; this from time immemorial throughout a long eries of ages, during which the inner--not public--Mysteries were the most acred institution of every land. Without such a key no correct nterpretation of either the _Dialogues_ of Plato or any Scripture, from he _Vedas_ to Homer, from the _Zend Avesta_ to the Mosaic Books, is ossible. How then can the Rev. Dr. Jowett know that the interpretations ade by the Neoplatonists of the various sacred books of the nations were
"absurdities?" Where, again, has he found an opportunity of studying these
"interpretations"? History shows that all such works were destroyed by the
Christian Church Fathers and their fanatical catechumens, wherever they ere found. To say that such men as Ammonius, a genius and a saint, whose earning and holy life earned for him the title of Theodidaktos ("God- aught"), such men as Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus, were "incapable of istinguishing between the opinions of one philosopher and another, or etween the serious thoughts of Plato and his fancies," is to assume an ntenable position for a Scholar. It amounts to saying that, (_a_) scores f the most famous Philosophers, the greatest Scholars and Sages of Greece nd of the Roman Empire were dull fools, and (_b_) that all the other ommentators, lovers of Greek Philosophy, some of them the acutest ntellects of the age--who do not agree with Dr. Jowett--are also fools and o better than those whom they admire. The patronising tone of the last bove-quoted passage is modulated with the most _naļve_ conceit, emarkable even in our age of self-glorification and mutual-admiration liques. We have to compare the Professor's views with those of some other cholars.
Says Prof. Alexander Wilder of New York, one of the best Platonists of the ay, speaking of Ammonius, the founder of the Neoplatonic School:
His deep spiritual intuition, his extensive learning, his
familiarity with the Christian Fathers, Pantęnus, Clement, and
Athenagoras, and with the most erudite philosophers of the time,
all fitted him for the labour which he performed so
thoroughly.(13) He was successful in drawing to his views the
greatest scholars and public men of the Roman Empire, who had
little taste for wasting time in dialectic pursuits or
superstitious observances. The results of his ministration are
perceptible at the present day in every country of the Christian
world; every prominent system of doctrine now bearing the marks of
his plastic hand. Every ancient philosophy has had its votaries
among the moderns; and even Judaism ... has taken upon itself
changes which were suggested by the "God-taught" Alexandrian....
He was a man of rare learning and endowments, of blameless life
and amiable disposition. His almost superhuman ken and many
excellencies won for him the title of Theodidaktos; but he
followed the modest example of Pythagoras, and only assumed the
title of Philalethian, or lover of truth.(14)
It would be happy for truth and fact were our modern scholars to follow as odestly in the steps of their great predecessors. But not hey--Philalethians!
Moreover, we know that:
Like Orpheus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus
himself,(15) Ammonius committed nothing to writing.(16) Instead he
... communicated his most important doctrines to persons duly
instructed and disciplined, imposing on them the obligations of
secresy, as was done before him by Zoroaster and Pythagoras, and
in the Mysteries. Except a few treatises of his disciples we have
only the declarations of his adversaries from which to ascertain
what he actually taught.(17)
It is from the biassed statements of such "adversaries," probably, that he learned Oxford translator of Plato's Dialogues came to the conclusion hat:
That which was truly great and truly characteristic of him
[Plato], his effort to realise and connect abstractions, _was not
understood_ by them [the Neoplatonists] at all [?].
He states, contemptuously enough for the ancient methods of intellectual nalysis, that:
In the present day ... an ancient philosopher is to be interpreted
from himself and by the contemporary history of thought.(18)
This is like saying that the ancient Greek canon of proportion (if ever ound), and the Athena Promachus of Phidias, have to be interpreted in the resent day from the contemporary history of architecture and sculpture, rom the Albert Hall and Memorial Monument, and the hideous Madonnas in rinolines sprinkled over the fair face of Italy. Prof. Jowett remarks hat "mysticism is not criticism." No; but neither is criticism always air and sound judgment.
La critique est aisée, mais l'art est difficile.
And such "art" our critic of the Neoplatonists--his Greek scholarship otwithstanding--lacks from _a_ to _z_. Nor has he, very evidently, the key o the true spirit of the Mysticism of Pythagoras and Plato, since he enies even in the _Timęus_ an element of Oriental Mysticism, and seeks to how Greek Philosophy reäcting upon the East, forgetting that the truth is he exact reverse; that it is "the deeper and more pervading spirit of
Orientalism" that had--through Pythagoras and his own initiation into the
Mysteries--penetrated into the very depths of Plato's soul.
But Dr. Jowett does not see this. Nor is he prepared to admit that nything good or rational--in accordance with the "contemporary history of hought"--could ever come out of that Nazareth of the Pagan Mysteries; nor ven that there is anything to interpret of a hidden nature in the
_Timęus_ or any other Dialogue. For him,
The so-called mysticism of Plato is purely Greek, arising out of
his imperfect knowledge(19) and high aspirations, and is the
growth of an age in which philosophy is not wholly separated from
poetry and mythology.(20)
Among several other equally erroneous propositions, it is especially the ssumptions (_a_) that Plato was entirely free from any element of Eastern
Philosophy in his writings, and (_b_) that every modern scholar, without eing a Mystic and a Kabalist himself, can pretend to judge of ancient
Esotericism--which we mean to combat. To do this we have to produce more uthoritative statements than our own would be, and bring the evidence of ther scholars as great as Dr. Jowett, if not greater, specialists in heir subjects, moreover, to bear on and destroy the arguments of the
Oxford Regius Professor of Greek.
That Plato was undeniably an ardent admirer and follower of Pythagoras no ne will deny. And it is equally undeniable, as Matter has it, that Plato ad inherited on the one hand his doctrines, and on the other had drawn is wisdom, from the same sources as the Samian Philosopher.(21) And the octrines of Pythagoras are Oriental to the backbone, and even
Brāhmanical; for this great Philosopher ever pointed to the far East as he source whence he derived his information and his Philosophy, and
Colebrooke shows that Plato makes the same profession in his Epistles, and ays that he has taken his teachings "from ancient and sacred octrines."(22) Furthermore, the ideas of both Pythagoras and Plato oincide too well with the systems of India and with Zoroastrianism to dmit any doubt of their origin by anyone who has some acquaintance with hese systems. Again:
Pantęnus, Athenagoras, and Clement were thoroughly instructed in
the Platonic philosophy, and _comprehended_ its essential unity
with the Oriental systems.(23)
The history of Pantęnus and his contemporaries may give the key to the
Platonic, and at the same time Oriental, elements that predominate so trikingly in the Gospels over the Jewish Scriptures.
SECTION I. PRELIMINARY SURVEY.
Initiates who have acquired powers and transcendental knowledge can be raced back to the Fourth Root Race from our own age. As the multiplicity f the subjects to be dealt with prohibits the introduction of such a istorical chapter, which, however historical in fact and truth, would be ejected _ą priori_ as blasphemy and fable by both Church and Science--we hall only touch on the subject. Science strikes out, at its own sweet ill and fancy, dozens of names of ancient heroes, simply because there is oo great an element of myth in their histories; the Church insists that iblical patriarchs shall be regarded as historical personages, and terms er seven "Star-angels" the "historical channels and agents of the
Creator." Both are right, since each finds a strong party to side with it.
Mankind is at best a sorry herd of Panurgian sheep, following blindly the eader that happens to suit it at the moment. Mankind--the majority at any ate--hates to think for itself. It resents as an insult the humblest nvitation to step for a moment outside the old well-beaten tracks, and, udging for itself, to enter into a new path in some fresh direction. Give t an unfamiliar problem to solve, and if its mathematicians, not liking ts looks, refuse to deal with it, the crowd, unfamiliar with mathematics, ill stare at the unknown quantity, and getting hopelessly entangled in undry _x_'s and _y_'s, will turn round, trying to rend to pieces the ninvited disturber of its intellectual Nirvāna. This may, perhaps, ccount for the ease and extraordinary success enjoyed by the Roman Church n her conversions of nominal Protestants and Free-thinkers, whose name is egion, but who have never gone to the trouble of thinking for themselves n these most important and tremendous problems of man's inner nature.
And yet, if the evidence of facts, the records preserved in History, and he uninterrupted anathemas of the Church against "Black Magic" and
Magicians of the accursed race of Cain, are not to be heeded, our efforts ill prove very puny indeed. When, for nearly two millenniums, a body of en has never ceased to lift its voice against _Black_ Magic, the nference ought to be irrefutable that if Black Magic exists as a real act, there must be somewhere its counterpart--_White_ Magic. False silver oins could have no existence if there were no genuine silver money.
Nature is dual in whatever she attempts, and this ecclesiastical ersecution ought alone to have opened the eyes of the public long ago.
However much travellers may be ready to pervert every fact with regard to bnormal powers with which certain men are gifted in "heathen" countries; owever eager they may be to put false constructions on such facts, and--to se an old proverb--"to call white swan black goose," and to kill it, yet he evidence of even Roman Catholic missionaries ought to be taken into onsideration, once they swear in a body to certain facts. Nor is it ecause they choose to see Satanic agency in manifestations of a certain ind, that their evidence as to the existence of such powers can be isregarded. For what do they say of China? Those missionaries who have ived in the country for long years, and have seriously studied every fact nd belief that may prove an obstacle to their success in making onversions, and who have become familiar with every exoteric rite of both he official religion and sectarian creeds--all swear to the existence of a ertain body of men, whom no one can reach but the Emperor and a select ody of high officials. A few years ago, before the war in Tonkin, the rchbishop in Pekin, on the report of some hundreds of missionaries and
Christians, wrote to Rome the identical story that had been reported wenty-five years before, and had been widely circulated in clerical apers. They had fathomed, it was said, the mystery of certain official eputations, sent at times of danger by the Emperor and ruling powers to heir Sheu and Kiuay, as they are called among the people. These Sheu and
Kiuay, they explained, were the Genii of the mountains, endowed with the ost miraculous powers. They are regarded as the protectors of China, by he "ignorant" masses; as the incarnation of Satanic power by the good and
"learned" missionaries.
The Sheu and Kiuay are men belonging to another state of being to
that of the ordinary man, or to the state they enjoyed while they
were clad in their bodies. They are disembodied spirits, ghosts
and larvę, living, nevertheless, in objective form on earth, and
dwelling in the fastnesses of mountains, inaccessible to all but
those whom they permit to visit them.(24)
In Tibet certain ascetics are also called Lha, Spirits, by those with whom hey do not choose to communicate. The Sheu and Kiuay, who enjoy the ighest consideration of the Emperor and Philosophers, and of
Confucianists who believe in no "Spirits," are simply Lohans--Adepts who ive in the greatest solitude in their unknown retreats.
But both Chinese exclusiveness and Nature seem to have allied themselves gainst European curiosity and--as it is sincerely regarded in
Tibet--desecration. Marco Polo, the famous traveller, was perhaps the
European who ventured farthest into the interior of these countries. What as said of him in 1876 may now be repeated.
The district of the Gobi wilderness, and, in fact, the whole area
of Independent Tartary and Tibet is carefully guarded against
foreign intrusion. Those who are permitted to traverse it are
under the particular care and pilotage of certain agents of the
chief authority, and are in duty bound to convey no intelligence
respecting places and persons to the outside world. But for this
restriction, many might contribute to these pages accounts of
exploration, adventure, and discovery that would be read with
interest. The time will come, sooner or later, when the dreadful
sand of the desert will yield up its long-buried secrets, and then
there will indeed be unlooked-for mortifications for our modern
vanity.
"The people of Pashai,"(25) says Marco Polo, the daring traveller
of the thirteenth century, "are great adepts in sorceries and the
diabolic arts." And his learned editor adds: "This Paschai, or
Udyana, was the native country of Padma Sambhava, one of the chief
apostles of Lamaism, _i.e._, of Tibetan Buddhism, and a great
master of enchantments. The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed
in Udyana _in old times_, were probably strongly tinged with
Sivaļtic magic, and the Tibetans still regard the locality as the
classic ground of sorcery and witchcraft."
The "old times" are just like the "modern times"; nothing is
changed as to magical practices except that they have become still
more esoteric and arcane, and that the caution of the adepts
increases in proportion to the traveller's curiosity. Hiouen-
Thsang says of the inhabitants: "The men ... are fond of study,
but pursue it with no ardour. _The science of magical formulę has
become a regular professional business with them._"(26) We will
not contradict the venerable Chinese pilgrim on this point, and
are willing to admit that in the seventh century _some_ people
made "a professional business" of magic; so, also, do _some_
people now, but certainly not the true adepts. Moreover, in that
century, Buddhism had hardly penetrated into Tibet, and its races
were steeped in the sorceries of the Bhon,--the pre-lamaļc
religion. It is not Hiouen-Thsang, the pious, courageous man who
risked his life a hundred times to have the bliss of perceiving
Buddha's shadow in the cave of Peshawur, who would have accused
the good lamas and monkish thaumaturgists of "making a
professional business" of showing it to travellers.
The injunction of Gautama, contained in his answer to King
Prasenajit, his protector, who called on him to perform miracles,
must have been ever-present to the mind of Hiouen-Thsang. "Great
king," said Gautama, "I do not teach the law to my pupils, telling
them, 'Go, ye saints, and before the eyes of the Brāhmans and
householders perform, by means of your supernatural powers,
miracles greater than any man can perform.' I tell them when I
teach them the law, 'Live ye saints, _hiding your good works, and
showing your sins_.' "
Struck with the accounts of magical exhibitions witnessed and
recorded by travellers of every age who had visited Tartary and
Tibet, Colonel Yule comes to the conclusion that the natives must
have had "at their command the whole encyclopędia of modern
Spiritualists." Duhalde mentions among their sorceries the art of
producing by their invocations the figures of Laotseu(27) and
their divinities _in the air_, and "_of making a pencil write
answers to questions without anybody touching it_."(28)
The former invocations pertain to the religious mysteries of their
sanctuaries; if done otherwise, or for the sake of _gain_, they
are considered _sorcery_, necromancy, and strictly forbidden. The
latter art, that of making a pencil write without contact, was
known and practised in China and other countries before the
Christian era. It is the A B C of magic in those countries.
When Hiouen-Thsang desired to adore the shadow of Buddha, it was
not to "professional magicians" that he resorted, but to the power
of his own soul-invocation; the power of prayer, faith, and
contemplation. All was dark and dreary near the cavern in which
the miracle was alleged to sometimes take place. Hiouen-Thsang
entered and began his devotions. He made one hundred salutations,
but neither saw nor heard anything. Then, thinking himself too
sinful, he cried bitterly and despaired. But as he was about to
give up all hope, he perceived on the eastern wall a feeble light,
but it disappeared. He renewed his prayers, full of hope this
time, and again he saw the light, which flashed and disappeared
again. After this he made a solemn vow: he would not leave the
cave till he had the rapture to at last see the shadow of the
"Venerable of the Age." He had to wait longer after this, for only
after two hundred prayers was the dark cave suddenly "bathed in
light, and the shadow of Buddha, of a brilliant white colour, rose
majestically on the wall, as when the clouds suddenly open, and
all at once display the marvellous image of the 'Mountain of
Light.' A dazzling splendour lighted up the features of the divine
countenance. Hiouen-Thsang was lost in contemplation and wonder,
and would not turn his eyes away from the sublime and incomparable
object." Hiouen-Thsang adds in his own diary, _See-yu-kee_, that
it is only when man prays with sincere faith, and if he has
received from above a hidden impression, that he sees the shadow
clearly, but he cannot enjoy the sight for any length of time.
(Max Müller, _Buddhist Pilgrims_.)
From one end to the other the country is full of mystics,
religious philosophers, Buddhist saints and magicians. Belief in a
spiritual world, full of invisible beings who, on certain
occasions, appear to mortals objectively, is universal. "According
to the belief of the nations of Central Asia," remarks I. J.
Schmidt, "the earth and its interior, as well as the encompassing
atmosphere, are filled with spiritual beings, which exercise an
influence, partly beneficent, partly malignant, on the whole of
organic and inorganic nature.... Especially are deserts, and other
wild and uninhabited tracts, or regions in which the influences of
nature are displayed on a gigantic and terrible scale, regarded as
the chief abode or rendez-vous of evil spirits. And hence the
steppes of Turan, and in particular the great sandy desert of
Gobi, have been looked on as the dwelling place of malignant
beings, from days of hoary antiquity."
The treasures exhumed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenę, have awakened
popular cupidity, and the eyes of adventurous speculators are
being turned toward the localities where the wealth of ancient
peoples is supposed to be buried, in crypt or cave, or beneath
sand or alluvial deposit. Around no other locality, not even Peru,
hang so many traditions as around the Gobi Desert. In independent
Tartary this howling waste of shifting sand was once, if report
speaks correctly, the seat of one of the richest empires the world
ever saw. Beneath the surface is said to lie such wealth in gold,
jewels, statuary, arms, utensils, and all that indicates
civilization, luxury, and fine arts, as no existing capital of
Christendom can show to-day. The Gobi sand moves regularly from
east to west before terrific gales that blow continually.
Occasionally some of the hidden treasures are uncovered, but not a
native dare touch them, for the whole district is under the ban of
a mighty spell. Death would be the penalty. Bahti--hideous, but
faithful gnomes--guard the hidden treasures of this prehistoric
people, awaiting the day when the revolution of cyclic periods
shall again cause their story to be known for the instruction of
mankind.(29)
The above is purposely quoted from _Isis Unveiled_ to refresh the reader's emory. One of the cyclic periods has just been passed, and we may not ave to wait to the end of Mahā Kalpa to have revealed something of the istory of the mysterious desert, in spite of the Bahti, and even the
Rākshasas of India, not less "hideous." No tales or fictions were given in ur earlier volumes, their chaotic state notwithstanding, to which chaos he writer, entirely free from vanity, confesses publicly and with many pologies.
It is now generally admitted that, from time immemorial, the distant East,
India especially, was the land of knowledge and of every kind of learning.
Yet there is none to whom the origin of all her Arts and Sciences has been o much denied as to the land of the primitive Āryas. From Architecture own to the Zodiac, every Science worthy of the name was imported by the
Greeks, the mysterious Yavanas--agreeably with the decision of the
Orientalists! Therefore, it is but logical that even the knowledge of
Occult Science should be refused to India, since of its general practice n that country less is known than in the case of any other ancient eople. It is so, simply because:
With the Hindus it was, and is, more esoteric, if possible, than
it was even among the Egyptian priests. So sacred was it deemed
that its existence was only half admitted, and it was only
practised in public emergencies. _It was more than a religious
matter, for it was [and is still] considered divine._ The Egyptian
hierophants, notwithstanding the practice of a stern and pure
morality, could not be compared for one moment with the ascetical
Gymnosophists, either in holiness of life or miraculous powers
developed in them by the supernatural abjuration of everything
earthly. By those who knew them well they were held in still
greater reverence than the magians of Chaldęa. "Denying themselves
the simplest comforts of life, they dwelt in woods, and led the
life of the most secluded hermits,"(30) while their Egyptian
brothers at least congregated together. Notwithstanding the slur
thrown on all who practised magic and divination, history has
proclaimed them as possessing the greatest secrets in medical
knowledge and unsurpassed skill in its practice. Numerous are the
volumes preserved in Hindu Mathams, in which are recorded the
proofs of their learning. To attempt to say whether these
Gymnosophists were the real founders of magic in India, or whether
they only practised what had passed to them as an inheritance from
the earliest Rishis(31)--the seven primeval sages--would be regarded
as mere speculation by exact scholars.(32)
Nevertheless, this must be attempted. In _Isis Unveiled_, all that could e stated about Magic was set down in the guise of hints; and thus, owing o the great amount of material scattered over two large volumes, much of ts importance was lost upon the reader, while it still more failed to raw his attention on account of the faulty arrangement. But hints may now row into explanations. One can never repeat it too often--_Magic is as old s man_. It cannot any longer be called charlatanry or hallucination, when ts lesser branches--such as mesmerism, now miscalled "hypnotism," "thought eading," "action by suggestion," and what not else, only to avoid calling t by its right and legitimate name--are being so seriously investigated by he most famous Biologists and Physiologists of both Europe and America.
Magic is indissolubly blended with the Religion of every country and is nseparable from its origin. It is as impossible for History to name the ime when it was not, as that of the epoch when it sprang into existence, nless the doctrines preserved by the Initiates are taken into onsideration. Nor can Science ever solve the problem of the origin of man f it rejects the evidence of the oldest records in the world, and refuses rom the hand of the legitimate Guardians of the mysteries of Nature the ey to Universal Symbology. Whenever a writer has tried to connect the irst foundation of Magic with a particular country or some historical vent or character, further research has shown his hypothesis to be roundless. There is a most lamentable contradiction among the
Symbologists on this point. Some would have it that Odin, the Scandinavian riest and monarch, originated the practice of Magic some 70 years B.C., lthough it is spoken of repeatedly in the _Bible_. But as it was proven hat the mysterious rites of the priestesses Valas (Voilers) were greatly nterior to Odin's age(33), then Zoroaster came in for an attempt, on the round that he was the founder of Magian rites; but Ammianus Marcellinus,
Pliny and Arnobius, with other ancient Historians, have shown that
Zoroaster was but a reformer of Magic as practised by the Chaldęans and
Egyptians, and not at all its founder.(34)
Who, then, of those who have consistently turned their faces away from
Occultism and even Spiritualism, as being "unphilosophical" and therefore nworthy of scientific thought, has a right to say that he has studied the
Ancients; or that, if he has studied them, he has understood all they have aid? Only those who claim to be wiser than their generation, who think hat they know all that the Ancients knew, and thus, knowing far more to- ay, fancy that they are entitled to laugh at their ancient simple- indedness and superstition; those, who imagine they have discovered a reat secret by declaring the ancient royal sarcophagus, now empty of its
King Initiate, to be a "corn-bin," and the Pyramid that contained it, a ranary, perhaps a wine-cellar!(35) Modern society, on the authority of ome men of Science, calls Magic charlatantry. But there are eight hundred illions on the face of the globe who believe in it to this day; there are aid to be twenty millions of perfectly sane and often very intellectual en and women, members of that same society, who believe in its phenomena nder the name of Spiritualism. The whole ancient world, with its Scholars nd Philosophers, its Sages and Prophets, believed in it. Where is the ountry in which it was not practised? At what age was it banished, even rom our own country? In the New World as in the Old Country (the latter ar younger than the former), the Science of Sciences was known and ractised from the remotest antiquity. The Mexicans had their Initiates, heir Priest-Hierophants and Magicians, and their crypts of Initiation. Of he two statues exhumed in the Pacific States, one represents a Mexican
Adept, in the posture prescribed for the Hindu ascetic, and the other an
Aztec Priestess, in a head-gear which might be taken from the head of an
Indian Goddess; while the "Guatemalan Medal" exhibits the "Tree of
Knowledge"--with its hundreds of eyes and ears, symbolical of seeing and earing--encircled by the "Serpent of Wisdom" whispering into the ear of he sacred bird. Bernard Diaz de Castilla, a follower of Cortez, gives ome idea of the extraordinary refinement, intelligence and civilization, nd also of the magic arts of the people whom the Spaniards conquered by rute force. Their pyramids are those of Egypt, built according to the ame secret canon of proportion as those of the Pharaohs, and the Aztecs ppear to have derived their civilization and religion in more than one ay from the same source as the Egyptians and, before these, the Indians.
Among all these three peoples arcane Natural Philosophy, or Magic, was ultivated to the highest degree.
That it was natural, not supernatural, and that the Ancients so regarded t, is shown by what Lucian says of the "laughing Philosopher,"
Democritus, who, he tells his readers,
Believed in no [miracles] ... but applied himself to discover the
method by which the theurgists could produce them; in a word, his
philosophy brought him to the conclusion that magic was entirely
confined to the application and the imitation of the laws and the
works of nature.
Who then can still call the Magic of the Ancients "superstition"?
In this respect the opinion of Democritus is of the greatest
importance to us, since the Magi left by Xerxes, at Abdera, were
his instructors, and he had studied magic, moreover, for a
considerable time with the Egyptian priests.(36) For nearly ninety
years of the one hundred and nine of his life, this great
philosopher had made experiments, and noted them down in a book,
which, according to Petronius,(37) _treated of nature_--facts that
he had verified himself. And we find him not only disbelieving in
and utterly rejecting miracles, but asserting that every one of
those that were authenticated by eye-witnesses, had, and could
have taken place, for all, even the most _incredible_, were
produced according to _the _"hidden laws of nature".(38) ... Add
to this that Greece, the "later cradle of the arts and sciences,"
and India, cradle of religions, were, and one of them still is,
devoted to its study and practice--and who shall venture to
discredit its dignity as a study, and its profundity as a
science?(39)
No true Theosophist will ever do so. For, as a member of our great
Oriental body, he knows indubitably that the Secret Doctrine of the East ontains the Alpha and the Omega of Universal Science; that in its obscure exts, under the luxuriant, though perhaps too exuberant, growth of llegorical Symbolism, lie concealed the corner- and the key-stones of all ncient and modern knowledge. That Stone, brought down by the Divine
Builder, is now rejected by the too-human workman, and this because, in is lethal materiality, man has lost every recollection, not only of his oly childhood, but of his very adolescence, when he was one of the
Builders himself; when "the morning stars sang together, and the Sons of
God shouted for joy," after they had laid the measures for the foundations f the earth--to use the deeply significant and poetical language of Job, he Arabian Initiate. But those who are still able to make room in their nnermost selves for the Divine Ray, and who accept, therefore, the data f the Secret Sciences in good faith and humility, they know well that it s in this Stone that remains buried the absolute in Philosophy, which is he key to all those dark problems of Life and Death, some of which, at ny rate, may find an explanation in these volumes.
The writer is vividly alive to the tremendous difficulties that present hemselves in the handling of such abstruse questions, and to all the angers of the task. Insulting as it is to human nature to brand truth ith the name of imposture, nevertheless we see this done daily and accept t. For every occult truth has to pass through such denial and its upporters through martyrdom, before it is finally accepted; though even hen it remains but too often--
A crown
Golden in show, yet but a wreath of thorns.
Truths that rest on Occult mysteries will have, for one reader who may ppreciate them, a thousand who will brand them as impostures. This is nly natural, and the only means to avoid it would be for an Occultist to ledge himself to the Pythagorean "vow of silence," and renew it every ive years. Otherwise, cultured society--two-thirds of which think hemselves in duty bound to believe that, since the first appearance of he first Adept, one half of mankind practised deception and fraud on the ther half--cultured society will undeniably assert its hereditary and raditional right to stone the intruder. Those benevolent critics, who ost readily promulgate the now famous axiom of Carlyle with regard to his ountrymen, of being "mostly fools," having taken preliminary care to nclude themselves safely in the only fortunate exceptions to this rule, ill in this work gain strength and derive additional conviction of the ad fact, that the human race is simply composed of knaves and congenital diots. But this matters very little. The vindication of the Occultists nd their Archaic Science is working itself slowly but steadily into the ery heart of society, hourly, daily, and yearly, in the shape of two onster branches, two stray off-shoots of the trunk of Magic--Spiritualism nd the Roman Church. Fact works its way very often through fiction. Like n immense boa-constrictor, Error, in every shape, encircles mankind, rying to smother in her deadly coils every aspiration towards truth and ight. But Error is powerful only on the surface, prevented as she is by
Occult Nature from going any deeper; for the same Occult Nature encircles he whole globe, in every direction, leaving not even the darkest corner nvisited. And, whether by phenomenon or miracle, by spirit-hook or ishop's crook, Occultism must win the day, before the present era reaches
"Shani's (Saturn's) triple septenary" of the Western Cycle in Europe, in ther words--before the end of the twenty-first century "A.D."
Truly the soil of the long by-gone past is not dead, for it has only ested. The skeletons of the sacred oaks of the ancient Druids may still end shoots from their dried-up boughs and be reborn to a new life, like hat handful of corn, in the sarcophagus of a mummy 4,000 years old, hich, when planted, sprouted, grew, and "gave a fine harvest." Why not?
Truth is stranger than fiction. It may any day, and most unexpectedly, indicate its wisdom and demonstrate the conceit of our age, by proving hat the Secret Brotherhood did not, indeed, die out with the
Philalethians of the last Eclectic School, that the Gnosis flourishes till on earth, and its votaries are many, albeit unknown. All this may be one by one, or more, of the great Masters visiting Europe, and exposing n their turn the alleged exposers and traducers of Magic. Such secret
Brotherhoods have been mentioned by several well-known authors, and are poken of in Mackenzie's _Royal Masonic Cyclopędia_. The writer now, in he face of the millions who deny, repeats boldly, that which was said in
_Isis Unveiled_.
If they [the Initiates] have been regarded as mere fictions of the
novelist, that fact has only helped the "brother-adepts" to keep
their incognito the more easily....
The St. Germains and Cagliostros of this century, having learned
bitter lessons from the vilifications and persecutions of the
past, pursue different tactics now-a-days.(40)
These prophetic words were written in 1876, and verified in 1886.
Nevertheless, we say again,
There are numbers of these mystic Brotherhoods which have naught
to do with "civilized" countries; and it is in their unknown
communities that are concealed the skeletons of the past. These
"adepts" could, if they chose, lay claim to strange ancestry, and
exhibit verifiable documents that would explain many a mysterious
page in both sacred and profane history.(41) Had the keys to the
hieratic writings and the secret of Egyptian and Hindu symbolism
been known to the Christian Fathers, they would not have allowed a
single monument of old to stand unmutilated.(42)
But there exists in the world another class of adepts, belonging to a rotherhood also, and mightier than any other of those known to the rofane. Many among these are personally good and benevolent, even pure nd holy occasionally, as individuals. Pursuing collectively, however, and s a body, a selfish, one-sided object, with relentless vigour and etermination, they have to be ranked with the adepts of the Black Art.
These are our modern Roman Catholic "fathers" and clergy. Most of the ieratic writings and symbols have been deciphered by them since the
Middle Ages. A hundred times more learned in secret Symbology and the old
Religions than our Orientalists will ever be, the personification of stuteness and cleverness, every such adept in the art holds the keys ightly in his firmly clenched hand, and will take care the secret shall ot be easily divulged, if he can help it. There are more profoundly earned Kabalists in Rome and throughout Europe and America, than is enerally suspected. Thus are the professedly public "brotherhoods" of
"black" adepts more powerful and dangerous for Protestant countries than ny host of Eastern Occultists. People laugh at Magic! Men of Science,
Physiologists and Biologists, deride the potency and even the belief in he existence of what is called in vulgar parlance "Sorcery" and "Black
Magic"! The Archęologists have their Stonehenge in England with its housands of secrets, and its twin-brother Karnac of Brittany, and yet here is not one of them who even suspects what has been going on in its rypts, and its mysterious nooks and corners, for the last century. More han that, they do not even know of the existence of such "magic halls" in heir Stonehenge, where curious scenes are taking place, whenever there is new convert in view. Hundreds of experiments have been, and are being ade daily at the Salpźtričre, and also by learned hypnotisers at their rivate houses. It is now proved that certain sensitives--both men and omen--when commanded in trance, by the practitioner, who operates on them, o do a certain thing--from drinking a glass of water up to simulated urder--on recovering their normal state lose all remembrance of the order nspired--"suggested" it is now called by Science. Nevertheless, at the ppointed hour and moment, the subject, though conscious and perfectly wake, is compelled by an irresistible power within himself to do that ction which has been suggested to him by his mesmeriser; and that too, hatever it may be, and whatever the period fixed by him who controls the ubject, that is to say, holds the latter under the power of his will, as snake holds a bird under its fascination, and finally forces it to jump nto its open jaws. Worse than this: for the bird is conscious of the eril; it resists, however helpless in its final efforts, while the ypnotized subject does not rebel, but seems to follow the suggestions and oice of his own free-will and soul. Who of our European men of Science, ho believe in such _scientific_ experiments--and very few are they who till doubt them now-a-days, and who do not feel convinced of their actual eality--who of them, it is asked, is ready to admit this as being Black
Magic? Yet it is the _genuine_, undeniable and actual _fascination_ and
_sorcery_ of old. The Mulu Kurumbas of Nīlgiri do not proceed otherwise in heir _envoūtements_ when they seek to destroy an enemy, nor do the Dugpas f Sikkim and Bhūtān know of any more potential agent than their _will_.
Only in them that will does not proceed by jumps and starts, but acts with ertainty; it does not depend on the amount of receptivity or nervous mpressibility of the "subject." Having chosen his victim and placed imself _en rapport_ with him, the Dugpa's "fluid" is sure to find its ay, for his will is immeasurably more strongly developed than the will of he European experimenter--the self-made, untutored, and _unconscious_
Sorcerer for the sake of Science--who has no idea (or belief either) of the ariety and potency of the world-old methods used to develop this power, y the _conscious_ sorcerer, the "Black Magician" of the East and West.
And now the question is openly and squarely asked: Why should not the anatical and zealous priest, thirsting to convert some selected rich and nfluential member of society, use the same means to accomplish his end as he French Physician and experimenter uses in his case with his subject?
The conscience of the Roman Catholic priest is most likely at peace. He orks _personally_ for no selfish purpose, but with the object of "saving soul" from "eternal damnation." In his view, if Magic there be in it, it s holy, meritorious and divine Magic. Such is the power of blind faith.
Hence, when we are assured by trustworthy and respectable persons of high ocial standing, and unimpeachable character, that there are many well- rganised societies among the Roman Catholic priests which, under the retext and cover of Modern Spiritualism and mediumship, hold _séances_ or the purposes of conversion by suggestion, directly and at a istance--we answer: We know it. And when, moreover, we are told that henever those priest-hypnotists are desirous of acquiring an influence ver some individual or individuals, selected by them for conversion, they etire to an underground place, allotted and consecrated by them for such urposes (_viz._, ceremonial Magic); and there, forming a circle, throw heir combined will-power in the direction of that individual, and thus by epeating the process, gain a complete control over their victim--we again nswer: Very likely. In fact we know the practice to be so, whether this ind of ceremonial Magic and _envoūtement_ is practised at Stonehenge or lsewhere. We know it, we say, through personal experience; and also ecause several of the writer's best and most loved friends have been nconsciously drawn into the Romish Church and under her "benign" rotection by such means. And, therefore, we can only laugh in pity at the gnorance and stubbornness of those deluded men of Science and cultured xperimentalists who, while believing in the power of Dr. Charcot and his isciples to "envoūte" their subjects, find nothing better than a scornful mile whenever Black Magic and its potency are mentioned before them.
Éliphas Lévi, the Abbé-Kabalist, died before Science and the Faculté de
Médecine of France had accepted hypnotism and influence _par suggestion_ mong its scientific experiments, but this is what he said twenty-five ears ago, in his _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_, on "Les
Envoūtements et les Sorts":
That which sorcerers and necromancers sought above all things in
their evocations of the Spirit of Evil, was that magnetic potency
which is the lawful property of the true Adept, and which they
desired to obtain possession of for evil purposes.... One of their
chief aims was the power of spells or of deleterious
influences.... That power may be compared to real poisonings by a
current of astral light. They exalt their will by means of
ceremonies to the degree of rendering it venomous at a
distance.... We have said in our "Dogma" what we thought of magic
spells, and how this power was exceedingly real and dangerous. The
true Magus throws a spell without ceremony and by his sole
disapproval, upon those with whose conduct he is dissatisfied, and
whom he thinks it necessary to punish;(43) he casts a spell, even
by his pardon, over those who do him injury, and the enemies of
Initiates never long enjoy impunity for their wrong-doing. We have
ourselves seen proofs of this fatal law in numerous instances. The
executioners of martyrs always perish miserably; and the Adepts
are the martyrs of intelligence. Providence [Karma] seems to
despise those who despise them, and puts to death those who would
seek to prevent them from living. The legend of the Wandering Jew
is the popular poetry of this arcanum. A people had sent a sage to
crucifixion; that people had bidden him "Move on!" when he tried
to rest for one moment. Well! that people will become subject,
henceforth, to a similar condemnation; it will become entirely
proscribed, and for long centuries it will be bidden "Move on!
move on!" finding neither rest nor pity.(44)
"Fables," and "superstition," will be the answer. Be it so. Before the ethal breath of selfishness and indifference every uncomfortable fact is ransformed into meaningless fiction, and every branch of the once verdant
Tree of Truth has become dried up and stripped of its primeval spiritual ignificance. Our modern Symbologist is superlatively clever only at etecting phallic worship and sexual emblems even where none were ever eant. But for the true student of Occult Lore, White or Divine Magic ould no more exist in Nature without its counterpart Black Magic, than ay without night, whether these be of twelve hours or of six months' uration. For him everything in that Nature has an occult--a bright and a ight side to it. Pyramids and Druid's oaks, dolmens and Bo-trees, plant nd mineral--everything was full of deep significance and of sacred truths f wisdom, when the Arch-Druid performed his magic cures and incantations, nd the Egyptian Hierophant evoked and guided Chemnu, the "lovely pectre," the female Frankenstein-creation of old, raised for the torture nd test of the soul-power of the candidate for initiation, simultaneously ith the last agonising cry of his terrestrial human nature. True, Magic as lost its name, and along with it its rights to recognition. But its ractice is in daily use; and its progeny, "magnetic influence," "power of ratory," "irresistible fascination," "whole audiences subdued and held as hough under a spell," are terms recognised and used by all, generally eaningless though they now are. Its effects, however, are more determined nd definite among religious congregations such as the Shakers, the Negro
Methodists, and Salvationists, who call it "the action of the Holy Spirit" nd "grace." The real truth is that Magic is still in full sway amidst ankind, however blind the latter to its silent presence and influence on ts members, however ignorant society may be, and remain, to its daily and ourly beneficent and maleficent effects. The world is full of such nconscious magicians--in politics as well as in daily life, in the Church s in the strongholds of Free-Thought. Most of those magicians are
"sorcerers" unhappily, not metaphorically but in sober reality, by reason f their inherent selfishness, their revengeful natures, their envy and alice. The true student of Magic, well aware of the truth, looks on in ity, and, if he be wise, keeps silent. For every effort made by him to emove the universal cecity is only repaid with ingratitude, slander, and ften curses, which, unable to reach him, will react on those who wish him vil. Lies and calumny--the latter a teething lie, adding actual bites to mpty harmless falsehoods--become his lot, and thus the well-wisher is soon orn to pieces, as a reward for his benevolent desire to enlighten.
Enough has been given, it is believed, to shew that the existence of a
Secret Universal Doctrine, besides its practical methods of Magic, is no ild romance or fiction. The fact was known to the whole ancient world, nd the knowledge of it has survived in the East, in India especially. And f there be such a Science, there must be naturally, somewhere, professors f it, or Adepts. In any case it matters little whether the Guardians of he Sacred Lore are regarded as living, actually existing men, or are iewed as myths. It is their Philosophy that will have to stand or fall pon its own merits, apart from, and independent of any Adepts. For in the ords of the wise Gamaliel, addressed by him to the Synedrion: "If this octrine is false it will perish, and fall of itself; but if true, hen--_it cannot be destroyed_."
SECTION II. MODERN CRITICISM AND THE ANCIENTS.
The Secret Doctrine of the Āryan East is found repeated under Egyptian ymbolism and phraseology in the Books of Hermes. At, or near, the eginning of the present century, all the books called Hermetic were, in he opinion of the average man of Science, unworthy of serious attention.
They were set down and loudly proclaimed as simply a collection of tales, f fraudulent pretences and most absurd claims. They "never existed before he Christian era," it was said: "they were all written with the triple bject of speculation, deceiving and pious fraud;" they were all, even the est of them, silly apocrypha.(45) In this respect the nineteenth century roved a most worthy scion of the eighteenth, for, in the age of Voltaire s well as in this century, everything, save what emanated direct from the
Royal Academy, was false, superstitious, foolish. Belief in the wisdom of he Ancients was laughed to scorn, perhaps more so even than it is now.
The very thought of accepting as authentic the works and vagaries of "a alse Hermes, a false Orpheus, a false Zoroaster," of false Oracles, false
Sibyls, and a thrice false Mesmer and his absurd fluid, was tabooed all long the line. Thus all that had its genesis outside the learned and ogmatic precincts of Oxford and Cambridge,(46) or the Academy of France, as denounced in those days as "unscientific," and "ridiculously absurd."
This tendency has survived to the present day.
Nothing can be further from the intention of any true Occultist--who stands ossessed, by virtue of his higher psychic development, of instruments of esearch far more penetrating in their power than any as yet in the hands f physical experimentalists--than to look unsympathetically on the efforts hat are being made in the area of physical enquiry. The exertions and abours undertaken to solve as many as possible of the problems of Nature ave always been holy in his sight. The spirit in which Sir Isaac Newton emarked that at the end of all his astronomical work he felt a mere child icking up shells beside the Ocean of Knowledge, is one of reverence for he boundlessness of Nature which Occult Philosophy itself cannot eclipse.
And it may freely be recognised that the attitude of mind which this amous simile describes is one which fairly represents that of the great ajority of _genuine_ Scientists in regard to all the phenomena of the hysical plane of Nature. In dealing with this they are often caution and oderation itself. They observe facts with a patience that cannot be urpassed. They are slow to cast these into theories, with a prudence that annot be too highly commended. And, subject to the limitations under hich they observe Nature, they are beautifully accurate in the record of heir observations. Moreover, it may be conceded further that modern
Scientists are exceedingly careful not to affirm negations. They may say t is immensely improbable that any discovery will ever conflict with such r such a theory, now supported by such and such an aggregation of ecorded facts. But even in reference to the broadest eneralizations--which pass into a dogmatic form only in brief popular text ooks of scientific knowledge--the tone of "Science" itself, if that bstraction may be held to be embodied in the persons of its most istinguished representatives, is one of reserve and often of modesty.
Far, therefore, from being disposed to scoff at the errors into which the imitations of their methods may betray men of Science, the true Occultist ill rather appreciate the pathos of a situation in which great industry nd thirst for truth are condemned to disappointment, and often to onfusion.
That which is to be deplored, however, in respect to Modern Science, is in tself an evil manifestation of the excessive caution which in its most avourable aspect protects Science from over-hasty conclusions: namely, he tardiness of Scientists to recognise that other instruments of esearch may be applicable to the mysteries of Nature besides those of the hysical plane, and that it may consequently be impossible to appreciate he phenomena of any one plane correctly without observing them as well rom the points of view afforded by others. In so far then as they ilfully shut their eyes to evidence which ought to have shown them learly that Nature is more complex than physical phenomena alone would uggest, that there are means by which the faculties of human perception an pass sometimes from one plane to the other, and that their energy is eing misdirected while they turn it exclusively on the minutię of hysical structure or force, they are less entitled to sympathy than to lame.
One feels dwarfed and humbled in reading what M. Renan, that learned odern "destroyer" of every religious belief, past, present and future, as to say of poor humanity and its powers of discernment. He believes
Mankind has but a very narrow mind; and the number of men capable
of seizing acutely (_finement_) the true analogy of things, is
quite imperceptible.(47)
Upon comparing, however, this statement with another opinion expressed by he same author, namely, that:
The mind of the critic should yield to facts, hands and feet
bound, to be dragged by them wherever they may lead him,(48)
ne feels relieved. When, moreover, these two philosophical statements are trengthened by a third enunciation of the famous Academician, which eclares that:
_Tout parti pris ą priori, doit źtre banni de la science_,(49)
here remains little to fear. Unfortunately M. Renan is the first to break his golden rule.
The evidence of Herodotus--called, sarcastically no doubt, the "Father of
History," since in every question upon which Modern Thought disagrees with im, his testimony goes for nought--the sober and earnest assurances in the hilosophical narratives of Plato and Thucydides, Polybius, and Plutarch, nd even certain statements of Aristotle himself, are invariably laid side whenever they are involved in what modern criticism is pleased to egard as a myth. It is some time since Strauss proclaimed that:
The presence of a supernatural element or miracle in a narrative
is an infallible sign of the presence in it of a myth;
nd such is the canon of criticism tacitly adopted by every modern critic.
But what is a myth--{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}--to begin with? Are we not told distinctly by ncient writers that the word means tradition? Was not the Latin term
_fabula_, a fable, synonymous with something told, as having happened in re-historic times, and not necessarily an invention. With such autocrats f criticism and despotic rulers as are most of the French, English, and
German Orientalists, there may, then, be no end of historical, eographical, ethnological and philological surprises in store for the entury to come. Travesties in Philosophy have become so common of late, hat the public can be startled by nothing in this direction. It has lready been stated by one learned speculator that Homer was simply "a ythical personification of the épopée"(50); by another, that Hippocrates, on of Esculapius "could only be a chimera"; that the Asclepiades, their even hundred years of duration notwithstanding, might after all prove imply a "fiction"; that "the city of Troy (Dr. Schliemann to the ontrary) existed only on the maps," etc. Why should not the world be nvited after this to regard every hitherto historical character of days f old as a myth? Were not Alexander the Great needed by Philology as a ledge-hammer wherewith to break the heads of Brāhmanical chronological retensions, he would have become long ago simply "a symbol for nnexation," or "a genius of conquest," as has been already suggested by ome French writer.
Blank denial is the only refuge left to the critics. It is the most secure sylum for some time to come in which to shelter the last of the sceptics.
For one who denies unconditionally, the trouble of arguing is unnecessary, nd he also thus avoids what is worse, having to yield occasionally a oint or two before the irrefutable arguments and facts of his opponent.
Creuzer, the greatest of all the modern Symbologists, the most learned mong the masses of erudite German Mythologists, must have envied the lacid self-confidence of certain sceptics, when he found himself forced n a moment of desperate perplexity to admit that:
We are compelled to return to the theories of trolls and genii, as
they were understood by the ancients; [it is a doctrine] without
which it becomes absolutely impossible to explain to oneself
anything with regard to the Mysteries(51)
f the Ancients, which Mysteries are undeniable.
Roman Catholics, who are guilty of precisely the same worship, and to the ery letter--having borrowed it from the later Chaldęans, the Lebanon
Nabathęans, and the baptized Sabęans,(52) and not from the learned
Astronomers and Initiates of the days of old--would now, by anathematizing t, hide the source from which it came. Theology and Churchianism would ain trouble the clear fountain that fed them from the first, to prevent osterity from looking into it, and thus seeing their original prototype.
The Occultists, however, believe the time has come to give everyone his ue. As to our other opponents--the modern sceptic and the Epicurean, the ynic and the Sadducee--they may find an answer to their denials in our arlier volumes. As to many unjust aspersions on the ancient doctrines, he reason for them is given in these words in _Isis Unveiled_:
The thought of the present-day commentator and critic as to the
ancient learning, is limited to and runs round the exoterism of
the temples; his insight is either unwilling or unable to
penetrate into the solemn adyta of old, where the hierophant
instructed the neophyte to regard the public worship in its true
light. No ancient sage would have taught that man is the king of
creation, and that the starry heaven and our mother earth were
created for his sake.(53)
When we find such works as _Phallicism_(54) appearing in our day in print, t is easy to see that the day for concealment and travesty has passed way. Science, in Philology, Symbolism and Comparative Religion, has rogressed too far to make wholesale denials any longer, and the Church is oo wise and cautious not to be now making the best of the situation.
Meanwhile, the "rhombs of Hecate" and the "wheels of Lucifer,"(55) daily xhumed on the sites of Babylonia, can no longer be used as clear evidence f a Satan-worship, since the same symbols are shown in the ritual of the
Latin Church. The latter is too learned to be ignorant of the fact that ven the later Chaldęans, who had gradually fallen into dualism, reducing ll things to two primal Principles, never worshipped Satan or idols, any ore than did the Zoroastrians, who now lie under the same accusation, but hat their Religion was as highly philosophical as any; their dual and xoteric Theosophy became the heirloom of the Jews, who, in their turn, ere forced to share it with the Christians. Pārsīs are to this day harged with Heliolatry, and yet in the Chaldęan Oracles, under the
"Magical and Philosophical Precepts of Zoroaster" one finds the following:
Direct not thy mind to the vast measures of the earth;
For the plant of truth is not upon ground.
Nor measure the measures of the sun, collecting rules,
For he is carried by the eternal will of the Father, not for your
sake.
Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon; for she runs always by
work of necessity.
The progression of the stars was not generated for your sake.
There was a vast difference between the true worship taught to those who howed themselves worthy, and the state religions. The Magians are accused f all kinds of superstition, but this is what the same Chaldęan Oracle ays:
The wide aerial flight of birds is not true,
Nor the dissections of the entrails of victims; they are all mere
toys,
The basis of mercenary fraud; flee from these
If you would open the sacred paradise of piety,
Where virtue, wisdom, and equity are assembled.(56)
As we say in our former work:
Surely it is not those who warn people against "mercenary fraud"
who can be accused of it; and if they accomplished acts which seem
miraculous, who can with fairness presume to deny that it was done
merely because they possessed a knowledge of natural philosophy
and psychological science to a degree unknown to our schools?(57)
The above quoted stanzas are a rather strange teaching to come from those ho are universally believed to have worshipped the sun, and moon, and the tarry hosts, as Gods. The sublime profundity of the Magian precepts being eyond the reach of modern materialistic thought, the Chaldęan
Philosophers are accused of Sabęanism and Sun-worship, which was the eligion only of the uneducated masses.
SECTION III. THE ORIGIN OF MAGIC.
Things of late have changed, true enough. The field of investigation has idened; old religions are a little better understood; and since that iserable day when the Committee of the French Academy, headed by Benjamin
Franklin, investigated Mesmer's phenomena only to proclaim them harlatanry and clever knavery, both heathen Philosophy and Mesmerism have cquired certain rights and privileges, and are now viewed from quite a ifferent standpoint. Is full justice rendered them, however, and are they ny better appreciated? We are afraid not. Human nature is the same now, s when Pope said of the force of prejudice that:
The difference is as great between
The optics seeing, as the objects seen.
All manners take a tincture from our own,
Or some discolour'd through our passions shown,
Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies,
Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.
Thus in the first decades of our century Hermetic Philosophy was regarded y both Churchmen and men of Science from two quite opposite points of iew. The former called it sinful and devilish; the latter denied point- lank its authenticity, notwithstanding the evidence brought forward by he most erudite men of every age, including our own. The learned Father
Kircher, for instance, was not even noticed; and his assertion that all he fragments known under titles of works by Mercury Trismegistus,
Berosus, Pherecydes of Syros, etc., were rolls that had escaped the fire hich devoured 100,000 volumes of the great Alexandrian Library--was simply aughed at. Nevertheless the educated classes of Europe knew then, as they o now, that the famous Alexandrian Library, the "marvel of the ages," was ounded by Ptolemy Philadelphus; that numbers of its MSS. had been arefully copied from hieratic texts and the oldest parchments, Chaldęan,
Phoenician, Persian, etc.; and that these transliterations and copies mounted, in their turn, to another 100,000 rolls, as Josephus and Strabo ssert.
There is also the additional evidence of Clemens Alexandrinus, that ought o be credited to some extent.(58) Clemens testified to the existence of n additional 30,000 volumes of the Books of Thoth, placed in the library f the Tomb of Osymandias, over the entrance of which were inscribed the ords, "A Cure for the Soul."
Since then, as all know, entire texts of the "apocryphal" works of the
"false" Pymander, and the no less "false" Asclepias, have been found by
Champollion in the most ancient monuments of Egypt.(59) As said in _Isis
Unveiled_:
After having devoted their whole lives to the study of the records
of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champollion-Figéac and
Champollion Junior publicly declared, notwithstanding many biassed
judgments hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the
_Books of Hermes_ "truly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions
which are constantly corroborated by the most authentic records
and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest antiquity."(60)
The merit of Champollion as an Egyptologist none will question, and if he eclare that everything demonstrates the accuracy of the writings of the ysterious Hermes Trismegistus, and if the assertion that their antiquity uns back into the night of time be corroborated by him in minutest etails, then indeed criticism ought to be fully satisfied. Says
Champollion:
These inscriptions are only the faithful echo and expression of
the most ancient verities.
Since these words were written, some of the "apocryphal" verses by the
"mythical" Orpheus have also been found copied word for word, in ieroglyphics, in certain inscriptions of the Fourth Dynasty, addressed to arious Deities. Finally, Creuzer discovered and immediately pointed out he very significant fact that numerous passages found in Homer and Hesiod ere undeniably borrowed by the two great poets from the Orphic Hymns, hus proving the latter to be far older than the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_.
And so gradually the ancient claims come to be vindicated, and modern riticism has to submit to evidence. Many are now the writers who confess hat such a type of literature as the Hermetic works of Egypt can never be ated too far back into the prehistoric ages. The texts of many of these ncient works, that of Enoch included, so loudly proclaimed "apocryphal" t the beginning of this century, are now discovered and recognised in the ost secret and sacred sanctuaries of Chaldęa, India, Phoenicia, Egypt and
Central Asia. But even such proofs have failed to convince the bulk of our
Materialists. The reason for this is very simple and evident. All these exts--held in universal veneration in Antiquity, found in the secret ibraries of all the great temples, studied (if not always mastered) by he greatest statesmen, classical writers, philosophers, kings and laymen, s much as by renowned Sages--what were they? Treatises on Magic and
Occultism, pure and simple; the now derided and tabooed Theosophy--hence he ostracism.
Were people, then, so simple and credulous in the days of Pythagoras and
Plato? Were the millions of Babylonia and Egypt, of India and Greece, with heir great Sages to lead them, all fools, that during those periods of reat learning and civilization which preceded the year _one_ of our ra--the latter giving birth but to the intellectual darkness of medięval anaticism--so many otherwise great men should have devoted their lives to mere illusion, a superstition called Magic? It would seem so, had one to emain content with the word and conclusions of modern Philosophy.
Every Art and Science, however, whatever its intrinsic merit, has had its iscoverer and practitioner, and subsequently its proficients to teach it.
What is the origin of the Occult Sciences, or Magic? Who were its rofessors, and what is known of them, whether in history or legend?
Clemens Alexandrinus, one of the most intelligent and learned of the early
Christian Fathers, answers this question in his _Stromateis_. That ex- upil of the Neoplatonic School argues:
If there is instruction, you must seek for the master.(61)
And so he shows Cleanthes taught by Zeno, Theophrastus by Aristotle,
Metrodorus by Epicurus, Plato by Socrates, etc. And he adds that when he ad looked further back to Pythagoras, Pherecydes, and Thales, he had till to search for their masters. The same for the Egyptians, the
Indians, the Babylonians, and the Magi themselves. He would not cease uestioning, he says, to learn who it was they all had for their masters.
And when he (Clemens) had traced down the enquiry to the very cradle of ankind, to the first generation of men, he would reiterate once more his uestioning, and ask, "Who is their teacher?" Surely, he argues, their aster could be "no one of men." And even when we should have reached as igh as the Angels, the same query would have to be offered to them: "Who ere their (meaning the 'divine' and the 'fallen' Angels) masters?"
The aim of the good father's long argument is of course to discover two istinct masters, one the preceptor of biblical patriarchs, the other the eacher of the Gentiles. But the students of the Secret Doctrine need go o no such trouble. Their professors are well aware who were the Masters f their predecessors in Occult Sciences and Wisdom.
The two professors are finally traced out by Clemens, and are, as was to e expected, God, and his eternal and everlasting enemy and opponent, the
Devil; the subject of Clemens' enquiry relating to the _dual_ aspect of
Hermetic Philosophy, as cause and effect. Admitting the moral beauty of he virtues preached in every Occult work with which he was acquainted,
Clemens desires to know the cause of the apparent contradiction between he doctrine and the practice, good and evil Magic, and he comes to the onclusion that Magic has two origins--divine and diabolical. He perceives ts bifurcation into two channels, hence his deduction and inference.
We perceive it too, without, however, necessarily designating such ifurcation diabolical, for we judge the "left-hand path" as it issued rom the hands of its founder. Otherwise, judging also by the effects of
Clemens' own religion and the walk in life of certain of its professors, ince the death of their Master, the Occultists would have a right to come o somewhat the same conclusion as Clemens. They would have a right to say hat while Christ, the Master of all _true_ Christians, was in every way odly, those who resorted to the horrors of the Inquisition, to the xtermination and torture of heretics, Jews and Alchemists, the Protestant
Calvin who burnt Servetus, and his persecuting Protestant successors, down o the whippers and burners of witches in America, must have had for
_their_ Master, the Devil. But Occultists, not believing in the Devil, are recluded from retaliating in this way.
Clemens' testimony, however, is valuable in so far as it shows (1) the normous number of works on Occult Sciences in his day; and (2) the xtraordinary powers acquired through those Sciences by certain men.
He devotes, for instance, the whole of the sixth book of his _Stromateis_ o this research for the first two "Masters" of the true and the false
Philosophy respectively, both preserved, as he says, in the Egyptian anctuaries. Very pertinently too, he apostrophises the Greeks, asking hem why they should not accept the "miracles" of Moses as such, since hey claim the very same privileges for their own Philosophers, and he ives a number of instances. It is, as he says, Ęachus obtaining through is Occult powers a marvellous rain; it is Aristęus causing the winds to low; Empedocles quieting the gale, and forcing it to cease, etc.(62)
The books of Mercurius Trismegistus most attracted his attention.(63) He s also warm in his praise of Hystaspes (or Gushtasp), of the Sibylline ooks, and even of the right Astrology.
There have been in all ages use and abuse of Magic, as there are use and buse of Mesmerism or Hypnotism in our own. The ancient world had its
Apollonii and its Pherecydę, and intellectual people could discriminate hen, as they can now. While no classical or pagan writer has ever found ne word of blame for Apollonius of Tyana, for instance, it is not so with egard to Pherecydes. Hesychius of Miletia, Philo of Byblos and
Eusthathius charge the latter unstintingly with having built his
Philosophy and Science on demoniacal traditions--_i.e._, on Sorcery. Cicero eclares that Pherecydes is, _potius divinus quam medicus_, "rather a oothsayer than a physician," and Diogenes Laėrtius gives a vast number of tories relating to his predictions. One day Pherecydes prophesies the hipwreck of a vessel hundreds of miles away from him; another time he redicts the capture of the Lacedęmonians by the Arcadians; finally, he oresees his own wretched end.(64)
Bearing in mind the objections that will be made to the teachings of the
Esoteric Doctrine as herein propounded, the writer is forced to meet some f them beforehand.
Such imputations as those brought by Clemens against the "heathen" Adepts, nly prove the presence of clairvoyant powers and prevision in every age, ut are no evidence in favour of a Devil. They are, therefore, of no value xcept to the Christians, for whom Satan is one of the chief pillars of he faith. Baronius and De Mirville, for instance, find an unanswerable roof of Demonology in the belief in the co-eternity of Matter with
Spirit!
De Mirville writes that Pherecydes
Postulates in principle the primordiality of Zeus or Ether, and
then, on the same plane, a principle, coėternal and coäctive,
which he calls the fifth element, or Ogenos.(65)
He then points out that the meaning of Ogenos is given as that which shuts p, which holds captive, and that is Hades, "or in a word, hell."
The synonyms are known to every schoolboy without the Marquis going to the rouble of explaining them to the Academy; as to the deduction, every
Occultist will of course deny it and only smile at its folly. And now we ome to the theological conclusion.
The _résumé_ of the views of the Latin Church--as given by authors of the ame character as the Marquis de Mirville--amounts to this: that the
Hermetic Books, their wisdom--fully admitted in Rome--notwithstanding, are
"the heirloom left by Cain, the accursed, to mankind." It is "generally dmitted," says that modern memorialist of Satan in History:
That immediately after the Flood Cham and his descendants had
propagated anew the ancient teachings of the Cainites and of the
submerged Race.(66)
This proves, at any rate, that Magic, or Sorcery as he calls it, is an ntediluvian Art, and thus one point is gained. For, as he says:--
The evidence of Berosius makes Ham identical with the first
Zoroaster, founder of Bactria, the first author of all the magic
arts of Babylonia, the _Chemesenua_ or Cham,(67) the
_infamous_(68) of the faithful Noachians, finally the object of
adoration for Egypt, which having received its name {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, whence
chemistry, built in his honour a town called _Choemnis_, or the
"city of fire."(69) Ham adored it, it is said, whence the name
_Chammaim_ given to the pyramids; which in their turn have been
vulgarised into our modern noun "chimney."(70)
This statement is entirely wrong. Egypt was the cradle of Chemistry and ts birth-place--this is pretty well known by this time. Only Kenrick and thers show the root of the word to be _chemi_ or _chem_, which is not
_Cham_ or Ham, but _Khem_, the Egyptian phallic God of the Mysteries.
But this is not all. De Mirville is bent upon finding a satanic origin ven for the now innocent Tarot.
He goes on to say:
As to the means for the propagation of this evil Magic, tradition
points it out, in certain runic characters traced on metallic
plates [or leaves, _des lames_] which have escaped destruction by
the Deluge.(71) This might have been regarded as legendary, had
not subsequent discoveries shown it far from being so. Plates were
found covered with curious and utterly undecipherable characters,
characters of undeniable antiquity, to which the Chamites
[Sorcerers, with the author] attribute the origin of their
marvellous and terrible powers.(72)
The pious author may, meanwhile, be left to his own orthodox beliefs. He, t any rate, seems quite sincere in his views. Nevertheless, his able rguments will have to be sapped at their very foundation, for it must be hown on mathematical grounds who, or rather what, Cain and Ham really ere. De Mirville is only the faithful son of his Church, interested in eeping Cain in his anthropomorphic character and in his present place in
"Holy Writ." The student of Occultism, on the other hand, is solely nterested in the truth. But the age has to follow the natural course of ts evolution.
SECTION IV. THE SECRESY OF INITIATES.
The false rendering of a number of parables and sayings of Jesus is not to e wondered at in the least. From Orpheus, the first initiated Adept of hom history catches a glimpse in the mists of the pre-Christian era, down hrough Pythagoras, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Apollonius of Tyana, to
Ammonius Saccas, no Teacher or Initiate has ever committed anything to riting for public use. Each and all of them have invariably recommended ilence and secresy on certain facts and deeds; from Confucius, who efused to explain publicly and satisfactorily what he meant by his "Great
Extreme," or to give the key to the divination by "straws," down to Jesus, ho charged his disciples to tell no man that he was Christ(73)
(Chrestos), the "man of sorrows" and trials, before his supreme and last
Initiation, or that he had produced a "miracle" of resurrection.(74) The
Apostles had to preserve silence, so that the left hand should not know hat the right hand did; in plainer words, that the dangerous proficients n the Left Hand Science--the terrible enemies of the Right Hand Adepts, specially before their supreme Initiation--should not profit by the ublicity so as to harm both the healer and the patient. And if the above s maintained to be simply an assumption, then what may be the meaning of hese awful words:
Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God;
but unto them that are without all these things are done in
parables; that seeing they may see and not perceive; and hearing,
they may hear and not understand; lest at any time they should be
converted and their sins should be forgiven them.(75)
Unless interpreted in the sense of the law of silence and Karma, the utter elfishness and uncharitable spirit of this remark are but too evident.
These words are directly connected with the terrible dogma of redestination. Will the good and intelligent Christian cast such a slur f cruel selfishness on his Saviour?(76)
The work of propagating such truths in parables was left to the disciples f the high Initiates. It was their duty to follow the key-note of the
Secret Teaching without revealing its mysteries. This is shown in the istories of all the great Adepts. Pythagoras divided his classes into earers of exoteric and esoteric lectures. The Magians received their nstructions and were initiated in the far hidden caves of Bactria. When
Josephus declares that Abraham taught Mathematics he meant by it "Magic," or in the Pythagorean code Mathematics mean Esoteric Science, or Gnosis.
Professor Wilder remarks:
The Essenes of Judęa and Carmel made similar distinctions,
dividing their adherents into neophytes, brethren and the
perfect.... Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to
divulge his higher doctrines, except to those who had been
thoroughly instructed and exercised [prepared for initiation].(77)
One of the most powerful reasons for the necessity of strict secresy is iven by Jesus Himself, if one may credit Matthew. For there the Master is ade to say plainly:
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your
pearls before swine; lest they trample them under their feet, and
turn again and rend you.(78)
Profoundly true and wise words. Many are those in our own age, and even mong us, who have been forcibly reminded of them--often when too late.(79)
Even Maimonides recommends silence with regard to the true meaning of the
_Bible_ texts. This injunction destroys the usual affirmation that "Holy
Writ" is the only book in the world whose divine oracles contain plain nvarnished truth. It may be so for the learned Kabalists; it is certainly uite the reverse with regard to Christians. For this is what the learned
Hebrew Philosopher says:
Whoever shall find out the true sense of the Book of _Genesis_
ought to take care not to divulge it. This is a maxim that all our
sages repeat to us, and above all respecting the work of the six
days. If a person should discover the _true_ meaning of it by
himself, or by the aid of another, then he ought to be silent, or
if he speaks he ought to speak of it obscurely, in an enigmatical
manner, as I do myself, leaving the rest to be guessed by those
who can understand me.
The Symbology and Esoterism of the _Old Testament_ being thus confessed by ne of the greatest Jewish Philosophers, it is only natural to find
Christian Fathers making the same confession with regard to the _New
Testament_, and the _Bible_ in general. Thus we find Clemens Alexandrinus nd Origen admitting it as plainly as words can do it. Clemens, who had een initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries says, that:
The doctrines there taught contained in them _the end of all
instructions as they were taken from Moses and the prophets_,
slight perversion of facts pardonable in the good Father. The words dmit, after all, that the Mysteries of the Jews were identical with those f the Pagan Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them, n their turn, from the Chaldęans, who got them from the Āryans, the
Atlanteans and so on--far beyond the days of that Race. The secret meaning f the Gospel is again openly confessed by Clemens when he says that the
Mysteries of the Faith are not to be divulged to all.
But since this tradition is not published alone for him who
perceives the magnificence of the word; it is requisite,
therefore, to hide in a Mystery the wisdom spoken, which the Son
of God taught.(80)
Not less explicit is Origen with regard to the _Bible_ and its symbolical ables. He exclaims:
If we hold to the letter, and must understand what stands written
in the law after the manner of the Jews and common people, then I
should blush to confess aloud that it is God who has given these
laws: then the laws of men appear more excellent and
reasonable.(81)
And well he might have "blushed," the sincere and honest Father of early
Christianity in its days of relative purity. But the Christians of this ighly literary and civilised age of ours do not blush at all; they wallow, on the contrary, the "light" before the formation of the sun, the
Garden of Eden, Jonah's whale and all, notwithstanding that the same
Origen asks in a very natural fit of indignation:
What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first,
second and third days in which the _evening_ is named and the
_morning_, were without sun, moon, and stars, and the first day
without a heaven? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose
that God planted trees in Paradise, in Eden, like a husbandman,
etc.? I believe that every man must hold these things for images,
under which a hidden sense lies concealed?(82)
Yet millions of "such idiots" are found in our age of enlightenment and ot only in the third century. When Paul's unequivocal statement in
_Galatians_, iv. 22-25, that the story of Abraham and his two sons is all
"an allegory," and that "Agar is Mount Sinai" is added to this, then ittle blame, indeed, can be attached to either Christian or Heathen who eclines to accept the _Bible_ in any other light than that of a very ngenious allegory.
Rabbi Simeon Ben-"Jochai," the compiler of the _Zohar_, never imparted the ost important points of his doctrine otherwise than orally, and to a very imited number of disciples. Therefore, without the final initiation into he _Mercavah_, the study of the _Kabalah_ will be ever incomplete, and he _Mercavah_ can be taught only "in darkness, in a deserted place, and fter many and terrific trials." Since the death of that great Jewish
Initiate this hidden doctrine has remained, for the outside world, an nviolate secret.
Among the venerable sect of the Tanaim, or rather the Tananim, the
wise men, there were those who taught the secrets practically and
initiated some disciples into the grand and final Mystery. But the
_Mishna Hagiga_, 2nd Section, say that the table of contents of
the _Mercaba_ "must only be delivered to wise old ones." The
_Gemara_ is still more dogmatic. "The more important secrets of
the Mysteries were not even revealed to all priests. Alone the
initiates had them divulged." And so we find the same great
secresy prevalent in every ancient religion.(83)
What says the _Kabalah_ itself? Its great Rabbis actually threaten him who ccepts their sayings _verbatim_. We read in the _Zohar_:
Woe to the man who sees in the Thorah, _i.e._, Law, only simple
recitals and ordinary words! Because if in truth it only contained
these, we would even to-day be able to compose a Thorah much more
worthy of admiration. For if we find only the simple words, we
would only have to address ourselves to the legislators of the
earth,(84) to those in whom we most frequently meet with the most
grandeur. It would be sufficient to imitate them, and make a
Thorah after their words and example. But it is not so; each word
of the Thorah contains an elevated meaning and a sublime
mystery.... The recitals of the Thorah are the vestments of the
Thorah. Woe to him who takes this garment for the Thorah
itself.... The simple take notice only of the garments or recitals
of the Thorah, they know no other thing, they see not that which
is concealed under the vestment. The more instructed men do not
pay attention to the vestment, but to the body which it
envelops.(85)
Ammonius Saccas taught that the Secret Doctrine of the Wisdom-Religion was ound complete in the _Books of Thoth_ (Hermes), from which both
Pythagoras and Plato derived their knowledge and much of their Philosophy; nd these Books were declared by him to be "identical with the teachings f the Sages of the remote East." Professor A. Wilder remarks:
As the name Thoth means a college or assembly, it is not
altogether improbable that the books were so named as being the
collected oracles and doctrines of the sacerdotal fraternity of
Memphis. Rabbi Wise has suggested the same hypothesis in relation
to the divine utterances recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures.(86)
This is very probable. Only the "divine utterances" have never been, so ar, understood by the profane. Philo Judęus, a non-initiate, attempted to ive their secret meaning and--failed.
But _Books of Thoth_ or _Bible_, _Vedas_ or _Kabalah_, all enjoin the same ecresy as to certain mysteries of nature symbolised in them. "Woe be to im who divulges _unlawfully_ the words whispered into the ear of Manushi y the _First Initiator_." Who that "Initiator" was is made plain in the
_Book of Enoch_:
From them [the Angels] I heard all things, and understood what I
saw; that which will not take place in this generation [Race], but
in a generation which is to succeed at a distant period [the 6th
and 7th Races] on account of the elect [the Initiates].(87)
Again, it is said with regard to the judgment of those who, when they have earned "every secret of the angels," reveal them, that:
They have discovered secrets, and _they are_ those who have been
judged; but not thou, my son [Noah] ... thou art pure and good and
_free_ from the reproach of _discovering_ [revealing] secrets.(88)
But there are those in our century, who, having "discovered secrets" naided and owing to their own learning and acuteness only, and who being, evertheless, honest and straightforward men, undismayed by threats or arning since they have never pledged themselves to secresy, feel quite tartled at such revelations. One of these is the learned author and iscoverer of one "Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery." As he says, there re "some strange features connected with the promulgation and condition" f the _Bible_.
Those who compiled this Book were men as we are. They knew, saw,
handled and realized, through the key measure,(89) the _law_ of
the living, ever-active God.(90) They needed no faith that He was,
that He worked, planned, and accomplished, as a mighty mechanic
and architect.(91) What was it, then, that reserved to them alone
this knowledge, while first as men of God, and second as Apostles
of Jesus the Christ, they doled out a blinding ritual service, and
an empty teaching of _faith_ and no substance as proof, properly
coming through the exercise of just those senses which the Deity
has given all men as the essential means of obtaining any right
understanding? _Mystery_ and _parable_, and _dark saying_, and
_cloaking_ of the true meanings are the burden of the Testaments,
Old and New. Take it that the narratives of the _Bible_ were
purposed inventions to deceive the ignorant masses, even while
enforcing a most perfect code of moral obligations: How is it
possible to justify so great frauds, as part of a Divine economy,
when to that economy, the attribute of simple and perfect
_truthfulness_ must, in the nature of things, be ascribed? What
has, or what by possibility ought mystery to have, with the
promulgation of the truths of God?(92)
Nothing whatever most certainly, if those mysteries had been given from he first. And so it was with regard to the first, semi-divine, pure and piritual Races of Humanity. They had the "truths of God," and lived up to hem, and their ideals. They preserved them, so long as there was hardly ny evil, and hence scarcely a possible abuse of that knowledge and those ruths. But evolution and the gradual fall into materiality is also one of he "truths" and also one of the laws of "God." And as mankind progressed, nd became with every generation more of the earth, earthly, the ndividuality of each temporary Ego began to assert itself. It is personal elfishness that develops and urges man on to abuse of his knowledge and ower. And selfishness is a human building, whose windows and doors are ver wide open for every kind of iniquity to enter into man's soul. Few ere the men during the early adolescence of mankind, and fewer still are hey now, who feel disposed to put into practice Pope's forcible eclaration that he would tear out his own heart, if it had no better isposition than to love only himself, and laugh at all his neighbours.
Hence the necessity of gradually taking away from man the divine knowledge nd power, which became with every new human cycle more dangerous as a ouble-edged weapon, whose evil side was ever threatening one's neighbour, nd whose power for good was lavished freely only upon self. Those few
"elect" whose inner natures had remained unaffected by their outward hysical growth, thus became in time the sole guardians of the mysteries evealed, passing the knowledge to those most fit to receive it, and eeping it inaccessible to others. Reject this explanation from the Secret
Teachings, and the very name of Religion will become synonymous with eception and fraud.
Yet the masses could not be allowed to remain without some sort of moral estraint. Man is ever craving for a "beyond" and cannot live without an deal of some kind, as a beacon and a consolation. At the same time, no verage man, even in our age of universal education, could be entrusted ith truths too metaphysical, too subtle for his mind to comprehend, ithout the danger of an imminent reaction setting in, and faith in Gods nd Saints making room for an unscientific blank Atheism. No real hilanthropist, hence no Occultist, would dream for a moment of a mankind ithout one tittle of Religion. Even the modern day Religion in Europe, onfined to Sundays, is better than none. But if, as Bunyan put it,
"Religion is the best armour that a man can have," it certainly is the
"worst cloak"; and it is that "cloak" and false pretence which the
Occultists and the Theosophists fight against. The true ideal Deity, the ne living God in Nature, can never suffer in man's worship if that utward cloak, woven by man's fancy, and thrown upon the Deity by the rafty hand of the priest greedy of power and domination, is drawn aside.
The hour has struck with the commencement of this century to dethrone the
"highest God" of every nation in favour of One Universal Deity--the God of
Immutable Law, not charity; the God of Just Retribution, not mercy, which s merely an incentive to evil-doing and to a repetition of it. The reatest crime that was ever perpetrated upon mankind was committed on hat day when the first priest invented the first prayer with a selfish bject in view. A God who may be propitiated by iniquitous prayers to
"bless the arms" of the worshipper, and send defeat and death to thousands f his enemies--his brethren; a Deity that can be supposed not to turn a eaf ear to chants of laudation mixed with entreaties for a "fair ropitious wind" for self, and as naturally disastrous to the selves of ther navigators who come from an opposite direction--it is this idea of
God that has fostered selfishness in man, and deprived him of his self- eliance. Prayer is an ennobling action when it is an intense feeling, an rdent desire rushing forth from our very heart, for the good of other eople, and when entirely detached from any selfish personal object; the raving for a beyond is natural and holy in man, but on the condition of haring that bliss with others. One can understand and well appreciate the ords of the "heathen" Socrates, who declared in his profound though ntaught wisdom, that:
Our prayers should be for blessings on all, in general, for the
Gods know best what is good for us.
But official prayer--in favour of a public calamity, or for the benefit of ne individual irrespective of losses to thousands--is the most ignoble of rimes, besides being an impertinent conceit and a superstition. This is he direct inheritance by spoliation from the Jehovites--the Jews of the
Wilderness and of the Golden Calf.
It is "Jehovah," as will be presently shown, that suggested the necessity f veiling and screening this substitute for the unpronounceable name, and hat led to all this "mystery, parables, dark sayings and cloaking." Moses ad, at any rate, initiated his seventy Elders into the hidden truths, and hus the writers of the _Old Testament_ stand to a degree justified. Those f the _New Testament_ have failed to do even so much, or so little. They ave disfigured the grand central figure of Christ by their dogmas, and ave led people ever since into millions of errors and the darkest crimes, n His holy name.
It is evident that with the exception of Paul and Clement of Alexandria, ho had been both initiated into the Mysteries, none of the Fathers knew uch of the truth themselves. They were mostly uneducated, ignorant eople; and if such as Augustine and Lactantius, or again the Venerable
Bede and others, were so painfully ignorant until the time of Galileo(93) f the most vital truths taught in the Pagan temples--of the rotundity of he earth, for example, leaving the heliocentric system out of uestion--how great must have been the ignorance of the rest! Learning and in were synonymous with the early Christians. Hence the accusations of ealing with the Devil lavished on the Pagan Philosophers.
But truth must out. The Occultists, referred to as "the followers of the ccursed Cain," by such writers as De Mirville, are now in a position to everse the tables. That which was hitherto known only to the ancient and odern Kabalists in Europe and Asia, is now published and shown as being athematically true. The author of the _Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery r the Source of Measures_ has now proved to general satisfaction, it is o be hoped, that the two great God-names, Jehovah and Elohim, stood, in ne meaning of their numerical values, for a diameter and a circumference alue, respectively; in other words, that they are numerical indices of eometrical relations; and finally that _Jehovah is Cain_ and _vice ersā_.
This view, says the author,
Helps also to take the horrid blemish off from the name of Cain,
as a put-up job to destroy his character; for even without these
showings, by the very text, _he_ [Cain] _was Jehovah_. So the
theological schools had better be alive to making the amend
honorable, if such a thing is possible, to the good name and fame
of the God they worship.(94)
This is not the first warning received by the "theological schools," hich, however, no doubt knew it from the beginning, as did Clemens of
Alexandria and others. But if it be so they will profit still less by it, s the admission would involve more for them than the mere sacredness and ignity of the established faith.
But, it may also be asked, why is it that the Asiatic religions, which ave nothing of this sort to conceal and which proclaim quite openly the
Esoterism of their doctrines, follow the same course? It is simply this:
While the present, and no doubt enforced silence of the Church on this ubject relates merely to the external or theoretical form of the
_Bible_--the unveiling of the secrets of which would have involved no ractical harm, had they been explained from the first--it is an entirely ifferent question with Eastern Esoterism and Symbology. The grand central igure of the Gospels would have remained as unaffected by the symbolism f the _Old Testament_ being revealed, as would that of the Founder of
Buddhism had the Brāhmanical writings of the _Purānas_, that preceded his irth, all been shown to be allegorical. Jesus of Nazareth, moreover, ould have gained more than he would have lost had he been presented as a imple mortal left to be judged on his own precepts and merits, instead of eing fathered on Christendom as a God whose many utterances and acts are ow so open to criticism. On the other hand the symbols and allegorical ayings that veil the grand truths of Nature in the _Vedas_, the
_Brāhmanas_, the _Upanishads_ and especially in the Lamaist _Chagpa
Thogmed_ and other works, are quite of a different nature, and far more omplicated in their secret meaning. While the Biblical glyphs have nearly ll a triune foundation, those of the Eastern books are worked on the eptenary principle. They are as closely related to the mysteries of
Physics and Physiology, as to Psychism and the transcendental nature of osmic elements and Theogony; unriddled they would prove more than njurious to the uninitiated; delivered into the hands of the present enerations in their actual state of physical and intellectual evelopment, in the absence of spirituality and even of practical orality, they would become absolutely disastrous.
Nevertheless the secret teachings of the sanctuaries have not remained ithout witness; they have been made immortal in various ways. They have urst upon the world in hundreds of volumes full of the quaint, head- reaking phraseology of the Alchemist; they have flashed like rrepressible cataracts of Occult mystic lore from the pens of poets and ards. Genius alone had certain privileges in those dark ages when no reamer could offer the world even a fiction without suiting his heaven nd his earth to biblical text. To genius alone it was permitted, in those enturies of mental blindness, when the fear of the "Holy Office" threw a hick veil over every cosmic and psychic truth, to reveal unimpeded some f the grandest truths of Initiation. Whence did Ariosto, in his _Orlando
Furioso_, obtain his conception of that valley in the Moon, where after ur death we can find the ideas and images of all that exists on earth?
How came Dante to imagine the many descriptions given in his _Inferno_--a ew Johannine Apocalypse, a true Occult Revelation in verse--his visit and ommunion with the Souls of the Seven Spheres? In poetry and satire every
Occult truth has been welcomed--none has been recognised as serious. The
Comte de Gabalis is better known and appreciated than Porphyry and
Iamblichus. Plato's mysterious Atlantis is proclaimed a fiction, while
Noah's Deluge is to this day on the brain of certain Archęologists, who coff at the archetypal world of Marcel Palingenius' _Zodiac_, and would esent as a personal injury being asked to discuss the four worlds of
Mercury Trismegistus--the Archetypal, the Spiritual, the Astral and the
Elementary, with three others behind the opened scene. Evidently civilised ociety is still but half prepared for the revelation. Hence, the
Initiates will never give out the whole secret, until the bulk of mankind as changed its actual nature and is better prepared for truth. Clemens
Alexandrinus was positively right in saying, "It is requisite to hide in a ystery the wisdom spoken"--which the "Sons of God" teach.
That Wisdom, as will be seen, relates to all the primeval truths delivered o the first Races, the "Mind-born," by the "Builders" of the Universe
Themselves.
There was in every ancient country having claims to civilisation,
an Esoteric Doctrine, a system which was designated WISDOM,(95)
and those who were devoted to its prosecution were first
denominated sages, or wise men.... Pythagoras termed this system {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH DASIA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, the Gnosis or Knowledge of things that are.
Under the noble designation of WISDOM, the ancient teachers, the
sages of India, the magians of Persia and Babylon, the seers and
prophets of Israel, the hierophants of Egypt and Arabia, and the
philosophers of Greece and the West, included all knowledge which
they considered as essentially divine; classifying a part as
esoteric and the remainder as exterior. The Rabbis called the
exterior and secular series the _Mercavah_, as being the body or
vehicle which contained the higher knowledge.(96)
Later on, we shall speak of the law of the silence imposed on Eastern helās.
SECTION V. SOME REASONS FOR SECRESY.
The fact that the Occult Sciences have been withheld from the world at arge, and denied by the Initiates to Humanity, has often been made matter f complaint. It has been alleged that the Guardians of the Secret Lore ere selfish in withholding the "treasures" of Archaic Wisdom; that it was ositively criminal to keep back such knowledge--"if any"--from the men of
Science, etc.
Yet there must have been some very good reasons for it, since from the ery dawn of History such has been the policy of every Hierophant and
"Master." Pythagoras, the first Adept and real Scientist in pre-Christian
Europe, is accused of having taught in public the immobility of the earth, nd the rotatory motion of the stars around it, while he was declaring to is privileged Adepts his belief in the motion of the Earth as a planet, nd in the heliocentric system. The reasons for such secresy, however, are any and were never made a mystery of. The chief cause was given in _Isis
Unveiled_. It may now be repeated.
From the very day when the first mystic, taught by the first
Instructor of the "divine Dynasties" of the early races, was
taught the means of communication between this world and the
worlds of the invisible host, between the sphere of matter and
that of pure spirit, he concluded that to abandon this mysterious
science to the desecration, willing or unwilling, of the profane
rabble--was to lose it. An abuse of it might lead mankind to speedy
destruction; it was like surrounding a group of children with
explosive substances, and furnishing them with matches. The first
divine Instructor initiated but a select few, and these kept
silence with the multitudes. They recognised _their_ "God" and
each Adept felt the great "SELF" within himself. The Ātman, the
Self, the mighty Lord and Protector, once that man knew him as the
"I am," the "Ego Sum," the "Asmi," showed his full power to him
who could recognise the "still small voice." From the days of the
primitive man described by the first Vedic poet, down to our
modern age, there has not been a philosopher worthy of that name,
who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart the grand
and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt it as a sacred
science; if otherwise, then, like Socrates, repeating to himself
as well as his fellow-men, the noble injunction, "O man, know
thyself," he succeeded in recognising his God within himself. "Ye
are Gods," the king-psalmist tells us, and we find Jesus reminding
the scribes that this expression was addressed to other mortal
men, claiming for themselves the same privilege without any
blasphemy. And as a faithful echo, Paul, while asserting that we
are all "the temple of the living God," cautiously remarked
elsewhere that after all these things are only for the "wise," and
it is "unlawful" to speak of them.(97)
Some of the reasons for this secresy may here be given.
The fundamental law and master-key of practical Theurgy, in its chief pplications to the serious study of cosmic and sidereal, of psychic and piritual, mysteries was, and still is, that which was called by the Greek
Neoplatonists "Theophania." In its generally-accepted meaning this is
"communication between the Gods (or God) and those initiated mortals who re spiritually fit to enjoy such an intercourse." Esoterically, however, t signifies more than this. For it is not only the presence of a God, but n actual--howbeit temporary--incarnation, the blending, so to say, of the ersonal Deity, the Higher Self, with man--its representative or agent on arth. As a general law, the Highest God, the Over-soul of the human being
(Ātma-Buddhi), only overshadows the individual during his life, for urposes of instruction and revelation; or as Roman Catholics--who rroneously call that Over-soul the "Guardian Angel"--would say, "It stands utside and watches." But in the case of the theophanic mystery, it ncarnates itself in the Theurgist for purposes of revelation. When the ncarnation is temporary, during those mysterious trances or "ecstasy," hich Plotinus defined as
The liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, becoming
one and identified with the Infinite,
his sublime condition is very short. The human soul, being the offspring r emanation of its God, the "Father and the Son" become one, "the divine ountain flowing like a stream into its human bed."(98) In exceptional ases, however, the mystery becomes complete; the Word is made Flesh in eal fact, the individual becoming divine in the full sense of the term, ince his personal God has made of him his permanent life-long abernacle--"the temple of God," as Paul says.
Now that which is meant here by the _personal_ God of Man is, of course, ot his seventh Principle alone, as _per se_ and in essence that is merely beam of the infinite Ocean of Light. In conjunction with our Divine
Soul, the Buddhi, it cannot be called a Duad, as it otherwise might, ince, though formed from Ātmā and Buddhi (the two higher Principles), the ormer is no entity but an emanation from the Absolute, and indivisible in eality from it. The personal God is not the Monad, but indeed the rototype of the latter, what for want of a better term we call the
_manifested_ Kāranātmā(99) (Causal Soul), one of the "seven" and chief eservoirs of the human Monads or Egos. The latter are gradually formed nd strengthened during their incarnation-cycle by constant additions of ndividuality from the personalities in which incarnates that androgynous, alf-spiritual, half-terrestrial principle, partaking of both heaven and arth, called by the Vedāntins Jīva and Vijńānamaya Kosha, and by the
Occultists the Manas (mind); that, in short, which uniting itself artially with the Monad, incarnates in each new birth. In perfect unity ith its (seventh) Principle, the Spirit unalloyed, it is the divine
Higher Self, as every student of Theosophy knows. After every new ncarnation Buddhi-Manas culls, so to say, the aroma of the flower called ersonality, the purely earthly residue of which--its dregs--is left to fade ut as a shadow. This is the most difficult--because so transcendentally etaphysical--portion of the doctrine.
As is repeated many a time in this and other works, it is not the
Philosophers, Sages, and Adepts of antiquity who can ever be charged with dolatry. It is they in fact, who, recognising divine unity, were the only nes, owing to their initiation into the mysteries of Esotericism, to nderstand correctly the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} (hyponéa), or under-meaning of the nthropomorphism of the so-called Angels, Gods, and spiritual Beings of very kind. Each, worshipping the one Divine Essence that pervades the hole world of Nature, reverenced, but never worshipped or idolised, any f these "Gods," whether high or low--not even his own personal Deity, of hich he was a Ray, and to whom he appealed.(100)
The holy Triad emanates from the One, and is the Tetraktys; the
gods, daimons, and souls are an emanation of the Triad. Heroes and
men repeat the hierarchy in themselves.
Thus said Metrodorus of Chios, the Pythagorean, the latter part of the entence meaning that man has within himself the seven pale reflections of he seven divine Hierarchies; his Higher Self is, therefore, in itself but he refracted beam of the direct Ray. He who regards the latter as an
Entity, in the usual sense of the term, is one of the "infidels and theists," spoken of by Epicurus, for he fastens on that God "the opinions f the multitude"--an anthropomorphism of the grossest kind.(101) The Adept nd the Occultist know that "what are styled the Gods are only the first rinciples" (Aristotle). None the less they are intelligent, conscious, nd _living_ "Principles," the Primary Seven Lights _manifested_ from
Light _unmanifested_--which to us is Darkness. They are the
Seven--exoterically four--Kumāras or "Mind-Born Sons" of Brahmā. And it is hey again, the Dhyān Chohans, who are the prototypes in the ęonic ternity of lower Gods and hierarchies of divine Beings, at the lowest end f which ladder of being are we--men.
Thus perchance Polytheism, when philosophically understood, may be a egree higher than even the Monotheism of the Protestant, say, who limits nd conditions the Deity in whom he persists in seeing the Infinite, but hose supposed actions make of that "Absolute and Infinite" the most bsurd paradox in Philosophy. From this standpoint Roman Catholicism tself is immeasurably higher and more logical than Protestantism, though he Roman Church has been pleased to adopt the exotericism of the heathen
"multitude" and to reject the Philosophy of pure Esotericism.
Thus every mortal has his immortal counterpart, or rather his Archetype, n heaven. This means that the former is indissolubly united to the atter, in each of his incarnations, and for the duration of the cycle of irths; only it is by the spiritual and intellectual Principle in him, ntirely distinct from the lower _self_, never through the earthly ersonality. Some of these are even liable to break the union altogether, n case of absence in the moral individual of binding, _viz._, of piritual ties. Truly, as Paracelsus puts it in his quaint, tortured hraseology, man with his three (compound) Spirits is suspended like a oetus by all three to the matrix of the Macrocosm; the thread which holds im united being the "Thread-Soul," Sūtrātmā, and Taijasa (the "Shining") f the Vedāntins. And it is through this spiritual and intellectual
Principle in man, through Taijasa--the Shining, "because it has the uminous internal organ as its associate"--that man is thus united to his eavenly prototype, never through his lower inner self or Astral Body, for hich there remains in most cases nothing but to fade out.
Occultism, or Theurgy, teaches the means of producing such union. But it s the actions of man--his personal merit alone--that can produce it on arth, or determine its duration. This lasts from a few seconds--a flash--to everal hours, during which time the Theurgist or Theophanist is that vershadowing "God" himself; hence he becomes endowed for the time being ith relative omniscience and omnipotence. With such perfect (divine)
Adepts as Buddha(102) and others such a hypostatical state of avatāric ondition may last during the whole life; whereas in the case of full
Initiates, who have not yet reached the perfect state of Jīvanmukta,(103)
Theopneusty, when in full sway, results for the high Adept in a full ecollection of everything seen, heard, or sensed.
Taijasa has fruition of the supersensible.(104)
For one less perfect it will end only in a partial, indistinct emembrance; while the beginner has to face in the first period of his sychic experiences a mere confusion, followed by a rapid and finally omplete oblivion of the mysteries seen during this super-hypnotic ondition. The degree of recollection, when one returns to his waking tate and physical senses, depends on his spiritual and psychic urification, the greatest enemy of spiritual memory being man's physical rain, the organ of his sensuous nature.
The above states are described for a clearer comprehension of terms used n this work. There are so many and such various conditions and states hat even a Seer is liable to confound one with the other. To repeat: the
Greek, rarely-used word, "Theophania," meant more with the Neoplatonists han it does with the modern maker of dictionaries. The compound word,
"Theophania" (from "theos," "God," and "phainomai," "to appear"), does not imply mean "a manifestation of God to man by _actual_ appearance"--an bsurdity, by the way--but the actual presence of a God in man, a _divine_ ncarnation. When Simon the Magician claimed to be "God the Father," what e wanted to convey was just that which has been explained, namely, that e was a _divine_ incarnation of his own Father, whether we see in the atter an Angel, a God, or a Spirit; therefore he was called "that power f God which is called great,"(105) or that power which causes the Divine
Self to enshrine itself in its lower self--man.
This is one of the several mysteries of being and incarnation. Another is hat when an Adept reaches during his lifetime that state of holiness and urity that makes him "equal to the Angels," then at death his pparitional or astral body becomes as solid and tangible as was the late ody, and is transformed into the real man.(106) The old physical body, alling off like the cast-off serpent's skin, the body of the "new" man emains either visible or, at the option of the Adept, disappears from iew, surrounded as it is by the Ākāshic shell that screens it. In the atter case there are three ways open to the Adept:
(1.) He may remain in the earth's sphere (Vāyu or Kāma-loka), in that thereal locality concealed from human sight save during flashes of lairvoyance. In this case his astral body, owing to its great purity and pirituality, having lost the conditions required for Ākāshic light (the ether or terrestrial ether) to absorb its semi-material particles, the
Adept will have to remain in the company of disintegrating shells--doing no ood or useful work. This, of course, cannot be.
(2.) He can by a supreme effort of will merge entirely into, and get nited with, his Monad. By doing so, however, he would (_a_) deprive his
Higher Self of posthumous Samādhi--a bliss which is not real Nirvāna--the stral, however pure, being too earthly for such state; and (_b_) he would hereby open himself to Karmic law; the action being, in fact, the outcome f personal selfishness--of reaping the fruits produced by and for neself--alone.
(3.) The Adept has the option of renouncing conscious Nirvāna and rest, to ork on earth for the good of mankind. This he can do in a two-fold way: ither, as above said, by consolidating his astral body into physical ppearance, he can reassume the self-same personality; or he can avail imself of an entirely new physical body, whether that of a newly-born nfant or--as Shankarāchārya is reported to have done with the body of a ead Rājah--by "entering a deserted sheath," and living in it as long as he hooses. This is what is called "continuous existence." The Section ntitled "The Mystery about Buddha" will throw additional light on this heory, to the profane incomprehensible, or to the generality simply
_absurd_. Such is the doctrine taught, everyone having the choice of ither fathoming it still deeper, or of leaving it unnoticed.
The above is simply a small portion of what might have been given in _Isis
Unveiled_, had the time come then, as it has now. One cannot study and rofit by Occult Science, unless one gives himself up to it--heart, soul, nd body. Some of its truths are too awful, too dangerous, for the average ind. None can toy and play with such terrible weapons with impunity.
Therefore it is, as St. Paul has it, "unlawful" to speak of them. Let us ccept the reminder and talk only of that which is "lawful."
The quotation on p. 56 relates, moreover, only to psychic or spiritual
Magic. The practical teachings of Occult Science are entirely different, nd few are the strong minds fitted for them. As to ecstasy, and such like inds of self-illumination, this may be obtained by oneself and without ny teacher or initiation, for ecstacy is reached by an inward command and ontrol of Self over the physical Ego; as to obtaining mastery over the orces of Nature, this requires a long training, or the capacity of one orn a "natural Magician." Meanwhile, those who possess neither of the equisite qualifications are strongly advised to limit themselves to urely spiritual development. But even this is difficult, as the first ecessary qualification is an unshakable belief in one's own powers and he Deity within oneself; otherwise a man would simply develop into an rresponsible medium. Throughout the whole mystic literature of the ncient world we detect the same idea of spiritual Esoterism, that the ersonal God exists within, nowhere outside, the worshipper. That personal
Deity is no vain breath, or a fiction, but an immortal Entity, the
Initiator of the Initiates, now that the heavenly or Celestial Initiators f primitive humanity--the Shishta of the preceding cycles--are no more mong us. Like an under-current, rapid and clear, it runs without mixing ts crystalline purity with the muddy and troubled waters of dogmatism, an nforced anthropomorphic Deity and religious intolerance. We find this dea in the tortured and barbarous phraseology of the _Codex Nazaręus_, nd in the superb Neoplatonic language of the Fourth Gospel of the later
Religion, in the oldest _Veda_ and in the _Avesta_, in the _Abhidharma_, n Kapila's _Sānkhya_, and the _Bhagavad Gītā_. We cannot attain Adeptship nd Nirvāna, Bliss and the "Kingdom of Heaven," unless we link ourselves ndissolubly with our Rex Lux, the Lord of Splendour and of Light, our mmortal God within us. "Aham eva param Brahman"--"I am verily the Supreme
Brahman"--has ever been the one living truth in the heart and mind of the
Adepts, and it is this which helps the Mystic to become one. One must irst of all recognise one's own immortal Principle, and then only can one onquer, or take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. Only this has to be chieved by the higher--not the middle, nor the third--man, the last one eing of dust. Nor can the second man, the "Son"--on this plane, as his
"Father" is the Son on a still higher plane--do anything without the ssistance of the first, the "Father." But to succeed one has to identify neself with one's divine Parent.
The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second [inner, our
higher] man is the Lord from heaven.... Behold, I show you a
mystery.(107)
Thus says Paul, mentioning but the dual and trinitarian man for the better omprehension of the non-initiated. But this is not all, for the Delphic njunction has to be fulfilled: man must know himself in order to become a erfect Adept. How few can acquire the knowledge, however, not merely in ts inner mystical, but even in its literal sense, for there are two eanings in this command of the Oracle. This is the doctrine of Buddha and he Bodhisattvas pure and simple.
Such is also the mystical sense of what was said by Paul to the
Corinthians about their being the "temple of God," for this meant
Esoterically:
Ye are the temple of [the, or your] God, and the Spirit of [a, or
your] God dwelleth in you.(108)
This carries precisely the same meaning as the "I am verily Brahman" of he Vedāntin. Nor is the latter assertion more blasphemous than the
Pauline--if there were any blasphemy in either, which is denied. Only the
Vedāntin, who never refers to his body as being himself, or even a part of imself, or aught else but an illusory form for others to see him in, onstructs his assertion more openly and sincerely than was done by Paul.
The Delphic command "Know thyself" was perfectly comprehensible to every ation of old. So it is now, save to the Christians, since, with the xception of the Mussulmans, it is part and parcel of every Eastern eligion, including the Kabalistically instructed Jews. To understand its ull meaning, however, necessitates, first of all, belief in Reincarnation nd all its mysteries; not as laid down in the doctrine of the French
Reincarnationists of the Allan Kardec school, but as they are expounded nd taught by Esoteric Philosophy. Man must, in short, know who he was, efore he arrives at knowing what he is. And how many are there among
Europeans who are capable of developing within themselves an absolute elief in their past and future reincarnations, in general, even as a law, et alone mystic knowledge of one's immediately precedent life? Early ducation, tradition and training of thought, everything is opposing tself during their whole lives to such a belief. Cultured people have een brought up in that most pernicious idea that the wide difference ound between the units of one and the same mankind, or even race, is the esult of chance; that the gulf between man and man in their respective ocial positions, birth, intellect, physical and mental capacities--every ne of which qualifications has a direct influence on every human ife--that all this is simply due to blind hazard, only the most pious mong them finding equivocal consolation in the idea that it is "the will f God." They have never analysed, never stopped to think of the depth of he opprobrium that is thrown upon their God, once the grand and most quitable law of the manifold re-births of man upon this earth is oolishly rejected. Men and women anxious to be regarded as Christians, ften truly and sincerely trying to lead a Christ-like life, have never aused to reflect over the words of their own _Bible_. "Art thou Elias?" he Jewish priests and Levites asked the Baptist.(109) Their Saviour aught His disciples this grand truth of the Esoteric Philosophy, but erily, if His Apostles comprehended it, no one else seems to have ealised its true meaning. No; not even Nicodemus, who, to the assertion:
"Except a man be born again(110) he cannot see the Kingdom of God," nswers: "How can a man be born when he is old?" and is forthwith reproved y the remark: "Art thou a master in Israel and knowest not these hings?"--as no one had a right to call himself a "Master" and Teacher, ithout having been initiated into the mysteries (_a_) of a spiritual re- irth through water, fire and spirit, and (_b_) of the re-birth from lesh.(111) Then again what can be a clearer expression as to the doctrine f manifold re-births than the answer given by Jesus to the Sadducees,
"who deny that there is any resurrection," _i.e._, any re-birth, since the ogma of the resurrection in the flesh is now regarded as an absurdity ven by the intelligent clergy:
They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world
[Nirvāna](112) ... neither marry ... neither can they die any
more,
hich shows that they had already died, and more than once. And again:
Now that the dead are raised even Moses shewed ... he calleth the
Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob, for he is not a God of the dead but of the living.(113)
The sentence "now that the dead _are raised_" evidently applied to the hen actual re-births of the Jacobs and the Isaacs, and not to their uture resurrection; for in such case they would have been still dead in he interim, and could not be referred to as "the living."
But the most suggestive of Christ's parables and "dark sayings" is found n the explanation given by him to his Apostles about the blind man:
Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this [blind, physical] man
sinned nor his parents; but that the works of [his] God should be
made manifest in him.(114)
Man is the "tabernacle," the "building" only, of his God; and of course it s not the temple but its inmate--the vehicle of "God"(115)--that had sinned n a previous incarnation, and had thus brought the Karma of cecity upon he new building. Thus Jesus spoke truly; but to this day his followers ave refused to understand the words of wisdom spoken. The Saviour is hown by his followers as though he were paving, by his words and xplanation, the way to a preconceived programme that had to lead to an ntended miracle. Verily the Grand Martyr has remained thenceforward, and or eighteen centuries, the Victim crucified daily far more cruelly by his lerical disciples and lay followers than he ever could have been by his llegorical enemies. For such is the true sense of the words "that the orks of God should be made manifest in him," in the light of theological nterpretation, and a very undignified one it is, if the Esoteric xplanation is rejected.
Doubtless the above will be regarded as fresh blasphemy. Nevertheless here are a number of Christians whom we know--whose hearts go out as trongly to their ideal of Jesus, as their souls are repelled from the heological picture of the official Saviour--who will reflect over our xplanation and find in it no offence, but perchance a relief.
SECTION VI. THE DANGERS OF PRACTICAL MAGIC.
Magic is a dual power: nothing is easier than to turn it into Sorcery; _an vil thought suffices for it_. Therefore while theoretical Occultism is armless, and may do good, practical Magic, or the fruits of the Tree of
Life and Knowledge,(116) or otherwise the "Science of Good and Evil," is raught with dangers and perils. For the study of theoretical Occultism here are, no doubt, a number of works that may be read with profit, esides such books as the _Finer Forces of Nature_, etc., the _Zohar_,
_Sepher Jetzirah_, _The Book of Enoch_, Franck's _Kabalah_, and many
Hermetic treatises. These are scarce in European languages, but works in
Latin by the medięval Philosophers, generally known as Alchemists and
Rosicrucians, are plentiful. But even the perusal of these may prove angerous for the unguided student. If approached without the right key to hem, and if the student is unfit, owing to mental incapacity, for Magic, nd is thus unable to discern the Right from the Left Path, let him take ur advice and leave this study alone; he will only bring on himself and n his family unexpected woes and sorrows, never suspecting whence they ome, nor what are the powers awakened by his mind being bent on them.
Works for advanced students are many, but these can be placed at the isposal of only sworn or "pledged" chelās (disciples), those who have ronounced the ever-binding oath, and who are, therefore, helped and rotected. For all other purposes, well-intentioned as such works may be, hey can only mislead the unwary and guide him imperceptibly to Black
Magic or Sorcery--if to nothing worse.
The mystic characters, alphabets and numerals found in the divisions and ub-divisions of the _Great Kabalah_, are, perhaps, the most dangerous ortions in it, and especially the numerals. We say dangerous, because hey are the most prompt to produce effects and results, and this with or ithout the experimenter's will, even without his knowledge. Some students re apt to doubt this statement, simply because after manipulating these umerals they have failed to notice any dire physical manifestation or esult. Such results would be found the least dangerous: it is the moral auses produced and the various events developed and brought to an nforeseen crisis, that would testify to the truth of what is now stated ad the lay students only the power of discernment.
The point of departure of that special branch of the Occult teaching known s the "Science of Correspondences," numerical or literal or alphabetical, as for its epigraph with the Jewish and Christian Kabalists, the two mis- nterpreted verses which say that God
ordered all things in number, measure and weight;(117)
nd:
He created her in the Holy Ghost, and saw her, and numbered her,
and measured her.(118)
But the Eastern Occultists have another epigraph: "_Absolute Unity, x_, ithin number and plurality." Both the Western and the Eastern students of he Hidden Wisdom hold to this axiomatic truth. Only the latter are erhaps more sincere in their confessions. Instead of putting a mask on heir Science, they show her face openly, even if they do veil carefully er heart and soul before the inappreciative public and the profane, who re ever ready to abuse the most sacred truths for their own selfish ends.
But Unity is the real basis of the Occult Sciences--physical and etaphysical. This is shown even by Éliphas Lévi, the learned Western
Kabalist, inclined as he is to be rather jesuitical. He says:
Absolute Unity is the supreme and final reason of things.
Therefore, that reason can be neither one person, nor three
persons; it is Reason, and pre-eminently Reason (_raison par
excellence_).(119)
The meaning of this Unity in Plurality in "God" or Nature, can be solved nly by the means of transcendental methods, by numerals, as by the orrespondences between soul and the Soul. Names, in the _Kabalah_ as in he _Bible_, such as Jehovah, Adam Kadmon, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, are all f them more intimately connected, by geometrical and astronomical elations, with Physiology (or Phallicism) than with Theology or Religion.
Little as people are as yet prepared to admit it, this will be shown to be fact. If all those names are symbols for things hidden, as well as for hose manifested, in the _Bible_ as in the _Vedas_, their respective ysteries differ greatly. Plato's motto "God geometrises" was accepted by oth Āryans and Jews; but while the former applied their Science of
Correspondences to veil the most spiritual and sublime truths of Nature, he latter used their acumen to conceal only one--to them the most ivine--of the mysteries of Evolution, namely, that of birth and eneration, and then they deified the organs of the latter.
Apart from this, every cosmogony, from the earliest to the latest, is ased upon, interlinked with, and most closely related to, numerals and eometric figures. Questioned by an Initiate, these figures and numbers ill yield numerical values based on the integral values of the
Circle--"the secret habitat of the ever-invisible Deity" as the Alchemists ave it--as they will yield every other Occult particular connected with uch mysteries, whether anthropographical, anthropological, cosmic, or sychical. "In reuniting Ideas to Numbers, we can operate upon Ideas in he same way as upon Numbers, and arrive at the Mathematics of Truth," rites an Occultist, who shows his great wisdom in desiring to remain nknown.
Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of
numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views
of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical principles.
"True mathematics," says the _Magicon_, "is something with which
all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a
deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much praised infallibility only
arises from this--that materials, conditions and references are
made to foundation." ...
The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned in
India, and from the Egyptian Hierophants, is alone able to
reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to
demonstrate the other mathematically. The sacred numbers of the
universe in their esoteric combination can alone solve the great
problem, and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the
emanations. The lower orders, before they develop into higher
ones, must emanate from the higher spiritual ones, and when
arrived at the turning-point, be reäbsorbed into the
infinite.(120)
It is upon these true Mathematics that the knowledge of the Kosmos and of ll mysteries rests, and to one acquainted with them, it is the easiest hing possible to prove that both Vaidic and Biblical structures are based pon "God-in-Nature" and "Nature-in-God," as the radical law. Therefore, his law--as everything else immutable and fixed in eternity--could find a orrect expression only in those purest transcendental Mathematics eferred to by Plato, especially in Geometry as transcendentally applied.
_Revealed_ to men--we fear not and will not retract the expression--in this eometrical and symbolical garb, Truth has grown and developed into dditional symbology, invented by man for the wants and better omprehension of the masses of mankind that came too late in their cyclic evelopment and evolution to have shared in the primitive knowledge, and ould never have grasped it otherwise. If later on, the clergy--crafty and mbitious of power in every age--anthropomorphised and degraded abstract deals, as well as the real and divine Beings who do exist in Nature, and re the Guardians and Protectors of our manvantaric world and period, the ault and guilt rests with those would-be leaders, not with the masses.
But the day has come when the gross conceptions of our forefathers during he Middle Ages can no longer satisfy the thoughtful religionist. The edięval Alchemist and Mystic are now transformed into the sceptical
Chemist and Physicist; and most of them are found to have turned away from ruth, on account of the purely anthropomorphic ideas, the gross
Materialism, of the forms in which it is presented to them. Therefore, uture generations have either to be gradually initiated into the truths nderlying Exoteric Religions, including their own, or be left to break he feet of clay of the last of the gilded idols. No educated man or woman ould turn away from any of the now called "superstitions" which they elieve to be based on nursery tales and ignorance, if they could only see he basis of fact that underlies every "superstition." But let them once earn for a certainty that there is hardly a claim in the Occult Sciences hat is not founded on philosophical and scientific facts in Nature, and hey will pursue the study of those Sciences with the same, if not with reater, ardour than that they have expended in shunning them. This cannot e achieved at once, for to benefit mankind such truths have to be evealed gradually and with great caution, the public mind not being repared for them. However much the Agnostics of our age may find hemselves in the mental attitude demanded by Modern Science, people are lways apt to cling to their old hobbies so long as the remembrance of hem lasts. They are like the Emperor Julian--called the Apostate, because e loved truth too well to accept aught else--who, though in his last
Theophany he beheld his beloved Gods as pale, worn-out, and hardly iscernible shadows, nevertheless clung to them. Let, then, the world ling to its Gods, to whatever plane or realm they may belong. The true
Occultist would be guilty of high treason to mankind, were he to break for ver the old deities before he could replace them with the whole and nadulterated truth--and this he cannot do as yet. Nevertheless, the reader ay be allowed to learn at least the alphabet of that truth. He may be hown, at any rate, what the Gods and Goddesses of the Pagans, denounced s demons by the Church, are not, if he cannot learn the whole and final ruth as to what they are. Let him assure himself that the Hermetic "Tres
Matres," and the "Three Mothers" of the _Sepher Jetzirah_ are one and the ame thing; that they are no Demon-Goddesses, but Light, Heat, and
Electricity, and then, perchance, the learned classes will spurn them no onger. After this, the Rosicrucian Illuminati may find followers even in he Royal Academies, which will be more prepared, perhaps, than they are ow, to admit the grand truths of archaic Natural Philosophy, especially hen their learned members shall have assured themselves that, in the ialect of Hermes, the "Three Mothers" stand as symbols for the whole of he forces or agencies which have a place assigned to them in the modern ystem of the "correlation of forces."(121) Even the polytheism of the
"superstitious" Brāhman and idolater shows its _raison d'źtre_, since the hree Shaktis of the three great Gods, Brahmā, Vishnu, and Shiva, are dentical with the "Three Mothers" of the monotheistic Jew.
The whole of the ancient religious and mystical literature is symbolical.
The _Books of Hermes_, the _Zohar_, the _Ya-Yakav_, the Egyptian _Book __ f the Dead_, the _Vedas_, the _Upanishads_, and the _Bible_, are as full f symbolism as are the Nabathean revelations of the Chaldaic Qū-tāmy; it s a loss of time to ask which is the earliest; all are simply different ersions of the one primeval Record of prehistoric knowledge and evelation.
The first four chapters of _Genesis_ contain the synopsis of all the rest f the _Pentateuch_, being only the various versions of the same thing in ifferent allegorical and symbolical applications. Having discovered that he Pyramid of Cheops with all its measurements is to be found contained n its minutest details in the structure of Solomon's Temple; and having scertained that the biblical names Shem, Ham and Japhet are determinative
of pyramid measures, in connection with the 600-year period of
Noah and the 500-year period of Shem, Ham and Japhet; ... the term
"Sons of Elohim" and "Daughters" of H-Adam, [are] for one thing
astronomical terms,(122)
he author of the very curious work already mentioned--a book very little nown in Europe, we regret to say--seems to see nothing in his discovery eyond the presence of Mathematics and Metrology in the _Bible_. He also rrives at most unexpected and extraordinary conclusions, such as are very ittle warranted by the facts discovered. His impression seems to be that ecause the Jewish biblical names are all astronomical, therefore the
Scriptures of all the other nations can be "only this and nothing more."
But this is a great mistake of the erudite and wonderfully acute author of
_The Source of Measures_, if he really thinks so. The "Key to the Hebrew-
Egyptian Mystery" unlocks but a certain portion of the hieratic writings f these two nations, and leaves those of other peoples untouched. His dea is that the _Kabalah_ "is only that sublime Science upon which
Masonry is based"; in fact he regards Masonry as the substance of the
_Kabalah_, and the latter as the "rational basis of the Hebrew text of
Holy Writ." About this we will not argue with the author. But why should ll those who may have found in the _Kabalah_ something beyond "the ublime Science" upon which Masonry is alleged to have been built, be held p to public contempt?
In its exclusiveness and one-sidedness such a conclusion is pregnant with uture misconceptions and is absolutely wrong. In its uncharitable riticism it throws a slur upon the "Divine Science" itself.
The _Kabalah_ is indeed "of the essence of Masonry," but it is dependent n Metrology only in one of its aspects, the less Esoteric, as even Plato ade no secret that the Deity was ever geometrising. For the uninitiated, owever learned and endowed with genius they may be, the _Kabalah_, which reats only of "the garment of God," or the _veil_ and _cloak_ of truth,
is built from the ground upward with a practical application to
present uses.(123)
Or in other words represents an exact Science only on the terrestrial lane. To the initiated, the Kabalistic Lord descends from the primeval
Race, generated spiritually from the "Mind-born Seven." Having reached the
Earth the Divine Mathematics--a synonym for Magic in his day, as we are old by Josephus--veiled her face. Hence the most important secret yet ielded by her in our modern day is the identity of the old Roman measures nd the present British measures, of the Hebrew-Egyptian cubit and the
Masonic inch.(124)
The discovery is most wonderful, and has led to further and minor nveilings of various riddles in reference to Symbology and biblical ames. It is thoroughly understood and proven, as shown by Nachanides, hat in the days of Moses the initial sentence in _Genesis_ was made to ead _B'rash ithbara Elohim_, or "In the head-source [or Mūlaprakiti--the
Rootless Root] developed [or evolved] the Gods [Elohim], the heavens and he earth;" whereas it is now, owing to the Massora and theological unning, transformed into _B'rashith bara Elohim_, or, "In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth"--which word juggling alone has led o materialistic anthropomorphism and dualism. How many more similar nstances may not be found in the _Bible_, the last and latest of the
Occult works of antiquity? There is no longer any doubt in the mind of the
Occultist, that, notwithstanding its form and outward meaning, the
_Bible_--as explained by the _Zohar_ or _Midrash_, the _Yetzirah_ (Book of
Creation) and the _Commentary on the Ten Sephiroth_ (by Azariel Ben
Manachem of the XIIth century)--is part and parcel of the Secret Doctrine f the Āryans, which explains in the same manner the _Vedas_ and all other llegorical books. The _Zohar_, in teaching that the Impersonal One Cause anifests in the Universe through Its Emanations, the Sephiroth--that
Universe being in its totality simply the veil woven from the Deity's own ubstance--is undeniably the copy and faithful echo of the earliest
_Vedas_. Taken by itself, without the additional help of the Vaidic and of
Brāhmanical literature in general, the _Bible_ will never yield the niversal secrets of Occult Nature. The cubits, inches, and measures of his physical plane will never solve the problems of the world on the piritual plane--for Spirit can neither be weighed nor measured. The orking out of these problems is reserved for the "mystics and the reamers" who alone are capable of accomplishing it.
Moses was an initiated priest, versed in all the mysteries and the Occult nowledge of the Egyptian temples--hence thoroughly acquainted with rimitive Wisdom. It is in the latter that the symbolical and astronomical eaning of that "Mystery of Mysteries," the Great Pyramid, has to be ought. And having been so familiar with the geometrical secrets that lay oncealed for long ęons in her strong bosom--the measurements and roportions of the Kosmos, our little Earth included--what wonder that he hould have made use of his knowledge? The Esoterism of Egypt was that of he whole world at one time. During the long ages of the Third Race it had een the heirloom, in common, of the whole of mankind, received from their
Instructors, the "Sons of Light," the primeval Seven. There was a time lso when the Wisdom-Religion was not symbolical, for it became Esoteric nly gradually, the change being necessitated by misuse and by the Sorcery f the Atlanteans. For it was the "misuse" only, and not the use, of the ivine gift that led the men of the Fourth Race to Black Magic and
Sorcery, and finally to become "forgetful of Wisdom"; while those of the
Fifth Race, the inheritors of the Rishis of the Tretā Yuga, used their owers to atrophise such gifts in mankind in general, and then, as the
"Elect Root," dispersed. Those who escaped the "Great Flood" preserved nly its memory, and a belief founded on the knowledge of their direct athers of one remove, that such a Science existed, and was now jealously uarded by the "Elect Root" exalted by Enoch. But there must again come a ime when man shall once more become what he was during the second Yuga
(age), when his probationary cycle shall be over and he shall gradually ecome what he was--semi-corporeal and pure. Does not Plato, the Initiate, ell us in the _Phędrus_ all that man once was, and that which he may yet gain become:
Before man's spirit sank into sensuality and became embodied
through the loss of his wings, he lived among the Gods in the airy
spiritual world where everything is true and pure.(125)
Elsewhere he speaks of the time when men did not perpetuate themselves, ut lived as pure spirits.
Let those men of Science who feel inclined to laugh at this, themselves nravel the mystery of the origin of the first man.
Unwilling that his chosen people--chosen by him--should remain as grossly dolatrous as the profane masses that surrounded them, Moses utilised his nowledge of the cosmogonical mysteries of the Pyramid, to build upon it he Genesiacal Cosmogony in symbols and glyphs. This was more accessible o the minds of the _hoi polloi_ than the abstruse truths taught to the ducated in the sanctuaries. He invented nothing but the outward garb, dded not one iota; but in this he merely followed the example of older ations and Initiates. If he clothed the grand truths revealed to him by is Hierophant under the most ingenious imagery, he did it to meet the equirements of the Israelites; that stiff-necked race would accept of no
God unless He were as anthropomorphic as those of the Olympus; and he imself failed to foresee the times when highly educated statesmen would e defending the husks of the fruit of wisdom that grew and developed in im on Mount Sinai, when communing with his own personal God--his divine
Self. Moses understood the great danger of delivering such truths to the elfish, for he understood the fable of Prometheus and remembered the ast. Hence, he veiled them from the profanation of public gaze and gave hem out allegorically. And this is why his biographer says of him, that hen he descended from Sinai,
Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone ... and he put a
veil upon his face.(126)
And so he "put a veil" upon the face of his _Pentateuch_; and to such an xtent that, using orthodox chronology, only 3376 years after the event eople begin to acquire a conviction that it is "a veil indeed." It is not he face of God or even of a Jehovah shining through; not even the face of
Moses, but verily the faces of the later Rabbis.
No wonder if Clemens wrote in the _Stromateis_ that:
Similar, then, to the Hebrew enigmas in respect to concealment are
those of the Egyptians also.(127)
SECTION VII. OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES.
It is more than likely, that the Protestants in the days of the
Reformation knew nothing of the true origin of Christianity, or, to be ore explicit and correct, of Latin Ecclesiasticism. Nor is it probable hat the Greek Church knew much of it, the separation between the two aving occurred at a time when, in the struggle for political power the
Latin Church was securing, at any cost, the alliance of the highly ducated, the ambitious and influential Pagans, while these were willing o assume the outward appearance of the new worship, provided they were hemselves kept in power. There is no need to remind the reader here of he details of that struggle, well-known to every educated man. It is ertain that the highly cultured Gnostics and their leaders--such men as
Saturnilus, an uncompromising ascetic, as Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides,
Menander and Cerinthus--were not stigmatised by the (now) Latin Church ecause they were heretics, nor because their tenets and practices were ndeed "_ob turpitudinem portentosam nimium et horribilem_," "monstrous, evolting abominations," as Baronius says of those of Carpocrates; but imply because they knew too much of fact and truth. Kenneth R. H.
Mackenzie correctly remarks:
They were stigmatised by the later Roman Church because they came
into conflict with the purer Church of Christianity--the possession
of which was usurped by the Bishops of Rome, but which original
continues in its docility towards the founder, in the Primitive
Orthodox Greek Church.(128)
Unwilling to accept the responsibility of gratuitous assumptions, the riter deems it best to prove this inference by more than one personal and efiant admission of an ardent Roman Catholic writer, evidently entrusted ith the delicate task by the Vatican. The Marquis de Mirville makes esperate efforts to explain in the Catholic interest certain remarkable iscoveries in Archęology and Palęography, though the Church is cleverly ade to remain outside of the quarrel and defence. This is undeniably hown by his ponderous volumes addressed to the Academy of France between
1803 and 1865. Seizing the pretext of drawing the attention of the aterialistic "Immortals" to the "epidemic of Spiritualism," the invasion f Europe and America by a numberless host of Satanic forces, he directs is efforts towards proving the same, by giving the full Genealogies and he Theogony of the Christian and Pagan Deities, and by drawing parallels etween the two. All such wonderful likenesses and identities are only
"seeming and superficial," he assures the reader. Christian symbols, and ven characters, Christ, the Virgin, Angels and Saints, he tells them, ere all personated centuries beforehand by the fiends of hell, in order o discredit eternal truth by their ungodly copies. By their knowledge of uturity the devils anticipated events, having "discovered the secrets of he Angels." Heathen Deities, all the Sun-Gods named Soters--Saviours--born f immaculate mothers and dying a violent death, were only
Ferouers(129)--as they were called by the Zoroastrians--the demon-ante-dated opies (_copies anticipées_) of the Messiah to come.
The danger of recognition of such _facsimiles_ had indeed lately become angerously great. It had lingered threateningly in the air, hanging like sword of Damocles over the Church, since the days of Voltaire, Dupuis nd other writers on similar lines. The discoveries of the Egyptologists, he finding of Assyrian and Babylonian pre-Mosaic relics bearing the egend of Moses(130) and especially the many rationalistic works published n England, such as _Supernatural Religion_ made recognition unavoidable.
Hence the appearance of Protestant and Roman Catholic writers deputed to xplain the inexplicable; to reconcile the fact of Divine Revelation with he mystery that the divine personages, rites, dogmas and symbols of
Christianity were so often identical with those of the several great eathen religions. The former--the Protestant defenders--tried to explain t, on the ground of "prophetic, precursory ideas"; the Latinists, such as
De Mirville, by inventing a double set of Angels and Gods, the one divine nd true, the other--the earlier--"copies ante-dating the originals" and due o a clever plagiarism by the Evil One. The Protestant stratagem is an old ne, that of the Roman Catholics is so old that it has been forgotten, and s as good as new. Dr. Lundy's _Monumental Christianity_ and _A Miracle in
Stone_ belong to the first attempts. De Mirville's _Pneumatologie_ to the econd. In India and China, every such effort on the part of the Scotch nd other missionaries ends in laughter, and does no harm; the plan evised by the Jesuits is more serious. De Mirville's volumes are thus ery important, as they proceed from a source which has undeniably the reatest learning of the age at its service, and this coupled with all the raft and casuistry that the sons of Loyola can furnish. The Marquis de
Mirville was evidently helped by the acutest minds in the service of Rome.
He begins by not only admitting the justice of every imputation and charge ade against the Latin Church as to the originality of her dogmas, but by aking a seeming delight in anticipating such charges; for he points to very dogma of Christianity as having existed in Pagan rituals in
Antiquity. The whole Pantheon of Heathen Deities is passed in review by im, and each is shown to have had some point of resemblance with the
Trinitarian personages and Mary. There is hardly a mystery, a dogma, or a ite in the Latin Church that is not shown by the author as having been
"parodied by the Curvati"--the "Curved," the Devils. All this being dmitted and explained, the Symbologists ought to be silenced. And so they ould be, if there were no materialistic critics to reject such mnipotency of the Devil in this world. For, if Rome admits the ikenesses, she also claims the right of judgment between the true and the alse Avatāra, the real and the unreal God, between the original and the opy--though the copy precedes the original by millenniums.
Our author proceeds to argue that whenever the missionaries try to convert n idolater, they are invariably answered:
We had our Crucified before yours. What do you come to show
us?(131) Again, what should we gain by denying the mysterious side
of this copy, under the plea that according to Weber all the
present _Purānas_ are remade from older ones, since here we have
in the same order of personages a positive precedence which no one
would ever think of contesting.(132)
And the author instances Buddha, Krishna, Apollo, etc. Having admitted all his he escapes the difficulty in this wise:
The Church Fathers, however, who recognized their own property
under all such sheep's clothing ... knowing by means of the Gospel
... all the ruses of the pretended spirits of light; the Fathers,
we say, meditating upon the decisive words, "all that ever came
before me are robbers" (_John_, x. 8), did not hesitate in
recognizing the Occult agency at work, the general and superhuman
direction given beforehand to falsehood, the universal attribute
and environment of all these false Gods of the nations; "_omnes
dii gentium dęmonia (elilim)_." (_Psalm_ xcv.)(133)
With such a policy everything is made easy. There is not one glaring esemblance, not one fully proven identity, that could not thus be made way with. The above-quoted cruel, selfish, self-glorifying words, placed y John in the mouth of Him who was meekness and charity personified, ould never have been pronounced by Jesus. The Occultists reject the mputation indignantly, and are prepared to defend the man as against the
God, by showing whence come the words plagiarised by the author of the
Fourth Gospel. They are taken bodily from the "Prophecies" in the _Book of
Enoch_. The evidence on this head of the learned biblical scholar,
Archbishop Laurence, and of the author of the _Evolution of Christianity_, ho edited the translation, may be brought forward to prove the fact. On he last page of the Introduction to the _Book of Enoch_ is found the ollowing passage:
The parable of the sheep rescued by the good Shepherd from
hireling guardians and ferocious wolves, is obviously borrowed by
the fourth Evangelist from _Enoch_, lxxxix, in which the author
depicts the shepherds as killing and destroying the sheep before
the advent of their Lord, and thus discloses the true meaning of
that hitherto mysterious passage in the Johannine parable--"All
that ever came before me are thieves and robbers"--language in
which we now detect an obvious reference to the allegorical
shepherds of Enoch.
"Obvious" truly, and something else besides. For, if Jesus pronounced the ords in the sense attributed to him, then he must have read the _Book of
Enoch_--a purely Kabalistic, Occult work, and he therefore recognised the orth and value of a treatise now declared apocryphal by his Churches.
Moreover, he could not have been ignorant that these words belonged to the ldest ritual of Initiation.(134) And if he had not read it, and the entence belongs to John, or whoever wrote the Fourth Gospel, then what eliance can be placed on the authenticity of other sayings and parables ttributed to the Christian Saviour?
Thus, De Mirville's illustration is an unfortunate one. Every other proof rought by the Church to show the infernal character of the ante-and-anti-
Christian copyists may be as easily disposed of. This is perhaps nfortunate, but it is a fact, nevertheless--_Magna est veritas et revalebit_.
The above is the answer of the Occultists to the two parties who charge hem incessantly, the one with "Superstition," and the other with
"Sorcery." To those of our Brothers who are Christians, and twit us with he secresy imposed upon the Eastern Chelās, adding invariably that their wn "Book of God" is "an open volume" for all "to read, understand, and
_be saved_," we would reply by asking them to study what we have just said n this Section, and then to refute it--if they can. There are very few in ur days who are still prepared to assure their readers that the _Bible_ ad God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any ixture of error for its matter.
Could Locke be asked the question now, he would perhaps be unwilling to epeat again that the _Bible_ is
all pure, all sincere, nothing too much, nothing wanting.
The _Bible_, if it is not to be shown to be the very reverse of all this, adly needs an interpreter acquainted with the doctrines of the East, as hey are to be found in its secret volumes; nor is it safe now, after
Archbishop Laurence's translation of the _Book of Enoch_, to cite Cowper nd assure us that the _Bible_
... gives a light to every age,
It gives, but borrows none.
or it does borrow, and that very considerably; especially in the opinion f those who, ignorant of its symbolical meaning and of the universality f the truths underlying and concealed in it, are able to judge only from ts dead-letter appearance. It is a grand volume, a master-piece composed f clever, ingenious fables containing great verities; but it reveals the atter only to those who, like the Initiates, have a key to its inner eaning; a tale sublime in its morality and didactics truly--still a tale nd an allegory; a repertory of invented personages in its older Jewish ortions, and of dark sayings and parables in its later additions, and hus quite misleading to anyone ignorant of its Esotericism. Moreover it s Astrolatry and Sabęan worship, pure and simple, that is to be found in he _Pentateuch_ when it is read exoterically, and Archaic Science and
Astronomy to a most wonderful degree, when interpreted--Esoterically.
SECTION VIII. THE BOOK OF ENOCH THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF
CHRISTIANITY.
While making a good deal of the _Mercavah_, the Jews, or rather their ynagogues, rejected the _Book of Enoch_, either because it was not ncluded from the first in the Hebrew Canon, or else, as Tertullian hought, it was
Disavowed by the Jews like all other Scripture which speaks of
Christ.(135)
But neither of these reasons was the real one. The Synedrion would have othing to do with it, simply because it was more of a magic than a purely abalistic work. The present day Theologians of both Latin and Protestant
Churches class it among apocryphal productions. Nevertheless the _New
Testament_, especially in the _Acts_ and _Epistles_, teems with ideas and octrines, now accepted and established as dogmas by the infallible Roman nd other Churches, and even with whole sentences taken bodily from Enoch, r the "pseudo-Enoch," who wrote under that name in Aramaic or Syro-
Chaldaic, as asserted by Bishop Laurence, the translator of the Ethiopian ext.
The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author of _The Evolution of
Christianity_, who edited Bishop Laurence's translation, was compelled to ake some suggestive remarks in his Introduction. On internal vidence(136) this book is found to have been written before the Christian eriod (whether two or twenty centuries does not matter). As correctly rgued by the Editor, it is
Either the inspired forecast of a great Hebrew prophet, predicting
with miraculous accuracy the future teaching of Jesus of Nazareth,
or the Semitic romance from which the latter borrowed His
conceptions of the triumphant return of the Son of man, to occupy
a judicial throne in the midst of rejoicing saints and trembling
sinners, expectant of everlasting happiness or eternal fire; and
whether these celestial visions be accepted as human or Divine,
they have exercised so vast an influence on the destinies of
mankind for nearly two thousand years that candid and impartial
seekers after religious truth can no longer delay enquiry into the
relationship of the _Book of Enoch_ with the revelation, or the
evolution, of Christianity.(137)
The _Book of Enoch_
Also records the supernatural control of the elements, through the
action of individual angels presiding over the winds, the sea,
hail, frost, dew, the lightning's flash, and reverberating
thunder. The names of the principal fallen angels are also given,
among whom we recognize some of the invisible powers named in the
incantations [magical] inscribed on the terra-cotta cups of
Hebrew-Chaldee conjurations.(138)
We also find on these cups the word "Halleluiah," showing that
A word with which ancient Syro-Chaldęans conjured has become,
through the vicissitudes of language, the Shibboleth of modern
Revivalists.(139)
The Editor proceeds after this to give fifty-seven verses from various arts of the _Gospels_ and _Acts_, with parallel passages from the _Book f Enoch_, and says:
The attention of theologians has been concentrated on the passage
in the _Epistle of Jude_, because the author specifically names
the prophet; but the cumulative coincidence of language and ideas
in Enoch and the authors of the _New Testament_ Scripture, as
disclosed in the parallel passages which we have collated, clearly
indicates that the work of the Semitic Milton was the
inexhaustible source from which Evangelists and Apostles, or the
men who wrote in their names, borrowed their conceptions of the
resurrection, judgment, immortality, perdition, and of the
universal reign of righteousness, under the eternal dominion of
the Son of man. This evangelical plagiarism culminates in the
Revelation of John, which adapts the visions of Enoch to
Christianity, with modifications in which we miss the sublime
simplicity of the great master of apocalyptic prediction, who
prophesied in the name of the antediluvian patriarch.(140)
In fairness to truth, the hypothesis ought at least to have been uggested, that the _Book of Enoch_ in its present form is simply a ranscript--with numerous pre-Christian and post-Christian additions and nterpolations--from far older texts. Modern research went so far as to oint out that Enoch is made, in Chapter lxxi, to divide the day and night nto eighteen parts, and to represent the longest day in the year as onsisting of twelve out of these eighteen parts, while a day of sixteen ours in length could not have occurred in Palestine. The translator,
Archbishop Laurence, remarks thus:
The region in which the author lived must have been situated not
lower than forty-five degrees north latitude, where the longest
day is fifteen hours and a-half, nor higher perhaps than forty-
nine degrees, where the longest day is precisely sixteen hours.
This will bring the country where he wrote as high up at least as
the northern districts of the Caspian and Euxine Seas ... the
author of the _Book of Enoch_ was perhaps a member of one of the
tribes which Shalmaneser carried away, and placed "in Halah and in
Habor by the river Goshen, and in the cities of the Medes."(141)
Further on, it is confessed that:
It cannot be said that internal evidence attests the superiority
of the _Old Testament_ to the _Book of Enoch_.... The _Book of
Enoch_ teaches the preėxistence of the Son of man, the Elect One,
the Messiah, who "from the beginning existed in secret,(142) and
whose name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of Spirits,
before the sun and the signs were created." The author also refers
to the "other Power who was upon Earth over the water on that
day"--an apparent reference to the language of _Genesis_, i.
2.(143) [We maintain that it applies as well to the Hindu
Nārāyana--the "mover on the waters."] We have thus the Lord of
Spirits, the Elect One, and a third Power, seemingly foreshadowing
this Trinity [as much as the Trimūrti] of futurity; but although
Enoch's ideal Messiah doubtless exercised an important influence
on primitive conceptions of the Divinity of the Son of man, we
fail to identify his obscure reference to another "Power" with the
Trinitarianism of the Alexandrine school; more especially as
"angels of power" abound in the visions of Enoch.(144)
An Occultist would hardly fail to identify the said "Power." The Editor oncludes his remarkable reflections by adding:
Thus far we learn that the _Book of Enoch_ was published before
the Christian Era by some great Unknown of Semitic [?] race, who,
believing himself to be inspired in a post-prophetic age, borrowed
the name of an antediluvian patriarch(145) to authenticate his own
enthusiastic forecast of the Messianic kingdom. And as the
contents of his marvellous book enter freely into the composition
of the _New Testament_, it follows that if the author was not an
inspired prophet, who predicted the teachings of Christianity, he
was a visionary enthusiast whose illusions were accepted by
Evangelists and Apostles as revelation--alternative conclusions
which involve the Divine or human origin of Christianity.(146)
The outcome of all of which is, in the words of the same Editor:
The discovery that the language and ideas of alleged revelation
are found in a preėxistent work, accepted by Evangelists and
Apostles as inspired, but classed by modern theologians among
apocryphal productions.(147)
This accounts also for the unwillingness of the reverend librarians of the
Bodleian Library to publish the Ethiopian text of the _Book of Enoch_.
The prophecies of the _Book of Enoch_ are indeed prophetic, but they were ntended for, and cover the records of, the five Races out of the even--everything relating to the last two being kept secret. Thus the emark made by the Editor of the English translation, that:
Chapter xcii. records a series of prophecies extending from
Enoch's own time to about one thousand years beyond the present
generation,(148)
s faulty. The prophecies extend to the end of our present Race, not erely to a "thousand years" hence. Very true that:
In the system of [Christian] chronology adopted, a day stands
[occasionally] for a hundred, and a week for seven hundred
years.(149)
But this is an arbitrary and fanciful system adopted by Christians to make
Biblical chronology fit with facts or theories, and does not represent the riginal thought. The "days" stand for the undetermined periods of the
Side-Races, and the "weeks" for the Sub-Races, the Root-Races being eferred to by an expression that is not even found in the English ranslation. Moreover the sentence at the bottom of page 150:
Subsequently, in the fourth week ... the visions of the holy and
the righteous shall be seen, the order of generation after
generation shall take place,(150)
s quite wrong. It stands in the original: "the order of generation after eneration had taken place on the earth," etc.; that is, after the first uman race procreated in the truly human way had sprung up in the Third
Root-Race; a change which entirely alters the meaning. Then all that is iven in the translation--as very likely also in the Ethiopic text, since he copies have been sorely tampered with--as about things which were to appen in the future, is, we are informed, in the past tense in the riginal Chaldęan MSS., and is not prophecy, but a narrative of what had lready come to pass. When Enoch begins "to speak from a book"(151) he is eading the account given by a great Seer, and the prophecies are not his wn, but are from the Seer. Enoch or Enoichion means "internal eye" or
Seer. Thus every Prophet and Adept may be called "Enoichion," without ecoming a pseudo-Enoch. But here, the Seer who compiled the present _Book f Enoch_ is distinctly shown as reading out from a book:
I have been born the seventh in the first week [the seventh
branch, or Side-Race, of the first Sub-Race, after physical
generation had begun, namely, in the third Root-Race].... But
after me, in the second week [second Sub-Race] great wickedness
shall arise [arose, rather] and in that week the end of the first
shall take place, in which mankind shall be safe. But when the
first is completed iniquity shall grow up.(152)
As translated it has no sense. As it stands in the Esoteric text, it imply means, that the First Root-Race shall come to an end during the econd Sub-Race of the Third Root-Race, in the period of which time ankind will be safe; all this having no reference whatever to the iblical Deluge. Verse 10th speaks of the sixth week [sixth Sub-Race of he Third Root-Race] when
All those who are in it shall be darkened, the hearts of all of
them shall be forgetful of wisdom [the divine knowledge will be
dying out] and in it shall a man ascend.
This "man" is taken by the interpreters, for some mysterious reasons of heir own, to mean Nebuchadnezzar; he is in reality the first Hierophant f the purely human Race (after the allegorical Fall into generation) elected to perpetuate the dying Wisdom of the Devas (Angels or Elohim).
He is the first "Son of Man"--the mysterious appellation given to the ivine Initiates of the first human school of the Mānushi (men), at the ery close of the Third Root-Race. He is also called the "Saviour," as it as He, with the other Hierophants, who saved the Elect and the Perfect rom the geological conflagration, leaving to perish in the cataclysm of he Close(153) those who forgot the primeval wisdom in sexual sensuality.
And during its completion [of the "sixth week," or the sixth Sub-
Race] he shall burn the house of dominion [the half of the globe
or the then inhabited continent] with fire, and all the race of
the elect root shall be dispersed.(154)
The above applies to the Elect Initiates, and not at all to the Jews, the upposed chosen people, or to the Babylonian captivity, as interpreted by he Christian theologians. Considering that we find Enoch, or his erpetuator, mentioning the execution of the "decree upon sinners" in everal different weeks,(155) saying that "every work of the ungodly shall isappear from the whole earth" during this fourth time (the Fourth Race), t surely can hardly apply to the one solitary Deluge of the _Bible_, till less to the Captivity.
It follows, therefore, that as the _Book of Enoch_ covers the five Races f the Manvantara, with a few allusions to the last two, it does not ontain "Biblical prophecies," but simply facts taken out of the Secret
Books of the East. The editor, moreover, confesses that:
The preceding six verses, _viz._, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th,
and 18th, are taken from between the 14th and 15th verses of the
nineteenth chapter, where they are to be found in the MSS.(156)
By this arbitrary transposition, he has made confusion still more onfused. Yet he is quite right in saying that the doctrines of the
_Gospels_, and even of the _Old Testament_, have been taken bodily from he _Book of Enoch_, for this is as evident as the sun in heaven. The hole of the _Pentateuch_ was adapted to fit in with the facts given, and his accounts for the Hebrews refusing to give the book a place in their
Canon, just as the Christians have subsequently refused to admit it among heir canonical works. The fact that the Apostle Jude and many of the
Christian Fathers referred to it as a revelation and a sacred volume, is, owever, an excellent proof that the early Christians accepted it; among hese the most learned--as, for instance, Clement of Alexandria--understood
Christianity and its doctrines in quite a different light from their odern successors, and viewed Christ under an aspect that Occultists only an appreciate. The early Nazarenes and Chrestians, as Justin Martyr calls hem, were the followers of Jesus, of the true Chrestos and Christos of
Initiation; whereas, the modern Christians, especially those of the West, ay be Papists, Greeks, Calvinists, or Lutherans, but can hardly be called
Christians, _i.e._, the followers of Jesus, the Christ.
Thus the _Book of Enoch_ is entirely symbolical. It relates to the history f the human Races and of their early relation to Theogony, the symbols eing interblended with astronomical and cosmic mysteries. One chapter is issing, however, in the Noachian records (from both the Paris and the
Bodleian MSS.), namely, Chapter lviii. in Sect. X; this could not be emodelled, and therefore it had to disappear, disfigured fragments alone aving been left of it. The dream about the cows, the black, red and white eifers, relates to the first Races, their division and disappearance.
Chapter lxxxviii, in which one of the four Angels "went to the white cows nd taught them a mystery," after which, the mystery being born "became a an," refers to (_a_) the first group evolved of primitive Āryans, and
(_b_) to the "mystery of the Hermaphrodite" so called, having reference to he birth of the first human Races as they are now. The well-known rite in
India, one that has survived in that patriarchal country to this day, nown as the passage, or rebirth through the cow--a ceremony to which those f lower castes who are desirous of becoming Brāhmans have to submit--has riginated in this mystery. Let any Eastern Occultist read with careful ttention the above-named chapter in the _Book of Enoch_, and he will find hat the "Lord of the Sheep," in whom Christians and European Mystics see
Christ, is the Hierophant Victim whose name in Sanskrit we dare not give.
Again, that while the Western Churchmen see Egyptians and Israelites in he "sheep and wolves," all these animals relate in truth to the trials of he Neophyte and the mysteries of initiation, whether in India or Egypt, nd to that most terrible penalty incurred by the "wolves"--those who eveal indiscriminately that which is only for the knowledge of the Elect nd the "Perfect."
The Christians who, thanks to later interpolations,(157) have made out in hat chapter a triple prophecy relating to the Deluge, Moses and Jesus, re mistaken, as in reality it bears directly on the punishment and loss f Atlantis and the penalty of indiscretion. The "Lord of the sheep" is
Karma and the "Head of the Hierophants" also, the Supreme Initiator on arth. He says to Enoch, who implores him to save the leaders of the sheep rom being devoured by the beasts of prey:
I will cause a recital to be made before me ... how many they have
delivered up to destruction, and ... what they will do; whether
they will act as I have commanded them or not.
Of this, however, they shall be ignorant; neither shalt thou make
any explanation to them, neither shalt thou reprove them; but
there shall be an account of all the destruction done by them in
their respective seasons.(158)
... He looked in silence, rejoicing they were devoured, swallowed
up, and carried off, and leaving them in the power of every beast
for food....(159)
Those who labour under the impression that the Occultists of any nation eject the _Bible_, in its original text and meaning, are wrong. As well eject the _Books of Thoth_, the Chaldęan _Kabalah_ or the _Book of Dzyan_ tself. Occultists only reject the one-sided interpretations and the human lement in the _Bible_, which is an Occult, and therefore a sacred, volume s much as the others. And terrible indeed is the punishment of all those ho transgress the permitted limits of secret revelations. From Prometheus o Jesus, and from Him to the highest Adept as to the lowest disciple, very revealer of mysteries has had to become a Chrestos, a "man of orrow" and a martyr. "Beware," said one of the greatest Masters, "of evealing the Mystery to those without"--to the profane, the Sadducee and he unbeliever. All the great Hierophants in history are shown ending heir lives by violent deaths--Buddha,(160) Pythagoras, Zoroaster, most of he great Gnostics, the founders of their respective schools; and in our wn more modern epoch a number of Fire-Philosophers, of Rosicrucians and
Adepts. All of these are shown--whether plainly or under the veil of llegory--as paying the penalty for the revelations they had made. This may eem to the profane reader only coincidence. To the Occultist, the death f every "Master" is significant, and appears pregnant with meaning. Where o we find in history that "Messenger" grand or humble, an Initiate or a
Neophyte, who, when he was made the bearer of some hitherto concealed ruth or truths, was not crucified and rent to shreds by the "dogs" of nvy, malice and ignorance? Such is the terrible Occult law; and he who oes not feel in himself the heart of a lion to scorn the savage barking, nd the soul of a dove to forgive the poor ignorant fools, let him give up he Sacred Science. To succeed, the Occultist must be fearless; he has to rave dangers, dishonour and death, to be forgiving, and to be silent on hat which cannot be given. Those who have vainly laboured in that irection must wait in these days--as the _Book of Enoch_ teaches--"until he evil-doers be consumed" and the power of the wicked annihilated. It is ot lawful for the Occultist to seek or even to thirst for revenge: let im
Wait until sin pass away; for their [the sinners'] names shall be
blotted out of the holy books [the astral records], their seed
shall be destroyed and their spirits slain.(161)
Esoterically, Enoch is the "Son of man," the first; and symbolically, the irst Sub-Race of the _Fifth_ Root Race.(162) And if his name yields for urposes of numerical and astronomical glyphs the meaning of the solar ear, or 365, in conformity to the age assigned to him in _Genesis_, it is ecause, being the seventh, he is, for Occult purposes, the personified eriod of the two preceding Races with their fourteen Sub-Races.
Therefore, he is shown in the Book as the great grandfather of Noah who, n his turn, is the personification of the mankind of the Fifth, truggling with that of the Fourth Root-Race--the great period of the evealed and profaned Mysteries, when the "sons of God" coming down on
Earth took for wives the daughters of men, and taught them the secrets of he Angels; in other words, when the "mind-born" men of the Third Race ixed themselves with those of the Fourth, and the divine Science was radually brought down by men to Sorcery.
SECTION IX. HERMETIC AND KABALISTIC DOCTRINES.
The cosmogony of Hermes is as veiled as the Mosaic system, only it is upon ts face far more in harmony with the doctrines of the Secret Sciences and ven of Modern Science. Says the thrice great Trismegistus, "the hand that haped the world out of formless pre-existent matter is no hand"; to which
_Genesis_ is made to reply, "The world was created out of nothing," lthough the _Kabalah_ denies such a meaning in its opening sentences. The
Kabalists have never, any more than have the Indian Āryans, admitted such n absurdity. With them, Fire, or Heat, and Motion(163) were chiefly nstrumental in the formation of the world out of preėxisting Matter. The
Parabrahman and Mūlaprakriti of the Vedāntins are the prototypes of the En
Suph and Shekinah of the Kabalists. Aditi is the original of Sephira, and he Prajāpatis are the elder brothers of the Sephiroth. The nebular theory f Modern Science, with all its mysteries, is solved in the cosmogony of he Archaic Doctrine; and the paradoxical though very scientific nunciation, that "cooling causes contraction and contraction causes heat; herefore cooling causes heat," is shown as the chief agency in the ormation of the worlds, and especially of our sun and solar system.
All this is contained within the small compass of _Sepher Jetzirah_ in its hirty-two wonderful Ways of Wisdom, signed "Jah Jehovah Sabaoth," for homsoever has the key to its hidden meaning. As to the dogmatic or heological interpretation of the first verses in _Genesis_ it is ertinently answered in the same book, where speaking of the Three
Mothers, Air, Water and Fire, the writer describes them as a balance with
The good in one scale, the evil in the other, and the oscillating
tongue of the Balance between them.(164)
One of the secret names of the One Eternal and Ever-Present Deity, was in very country the same, and it has preserved to this day a phonetic ikeness in the various languages. The Aum of the Hindus, the sacred yllable, had become the {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} with the Greeks, and the Ęvum with the
Romans--the Pan or All. The "thirtieth way" is called in the _Sepher
Jetzirah_ the "gathering understanding," because
Thereby gather the celestial adepts judgments of the stars and
celestial signs, and their observations of the orbits are the
perfection of science.(165)
The thirty-second and last is called therein the "serving understanding," nd it is so-called because it is
A disposer of all those that are serving in the work of the Seven
Planets, according to their Hosts.(166)
The "work" was Initiation, during which all the mysteries connected with he "Seven Planets" were divulged, and also the mystery of the "Sun-
Initiate" with his seven radiances or beams cut off--the glory and triumph f the anointed, the Christos; a mystery that makes plain the rather uzzling expression of Clemens:
For we shall find that very many of the dogmas that are held by
such sects [of Barbarian and Hellenic Philosophy] as have not
become utterly senseless, and are not cut out from the order of
nature ["by cutting off Christ,"(167) or rather Chrestos] ...
correspond in their origin and with the truth as a whole.(168)
In _Isis Unveiled_,(169) the reader will find fuller information than can e given here on the _Zohar_ and its author, the great Kabalist, Simeon
Ben Jochai. It is said there that on account of his being known to be in ossession of the secret knowledge and of the Mercaba, which insured the eception of the "Word," his very life was endangered, and he had to fly o the wilderness, where he lived in a cave for twelve years surrounded by aithful disciples, and finally died there amid signs and wonders.(170)
His teachings on the origin of the Secret Doctrine, or, as he also calls t, the Secret Wisdom, are the same as those found in the East, with the xception that in place of the Chief of a Host of Planetary Spirits he uts "God," saying that this Wisdom was first taught by God himself to a ertain number of Elect Angels; whereas in the Eastern Doctrine the saying s different, as will be seen.
Some synthetic and kabalistic studies on the sacred _Book of Enoch_ and he Taro (Rota) are before us. We quote from the MS. copy of a Western
Occultist, which is prefaced by these words:
There is but one Law, one Principle, one Agent, one Truth and one
Word. That which is above is analogically as that which is below.
All that which is, is the result of quantities and of
equilibriums.
The axiom of Éliphas Lévi and this triple epigraph show the identity of hought between the East and the West with regard to the Secret Science hich, as the same MS. tells us, is:
The key of things concealed, the key of the sanctuary. This is the
Sacred Word which gives to the Adept the supreme reason of
Occultism and its Mysteries. It is the Quintessence of
Philosophies and of Dogmas; it is the Alpha and Omega; it is the
Light, Life and Wisdom Universal.
The Taro of the sacred _Book of Enoch_, or Rota, is prefaced, moreover, ith this explanation:
The antiquity of this Book is lost in the night of time. It is of
_Indian origin_, and goes back to an epoch long before Moses....
It is written upon detached leaves, which at the first were of
fine gold and precious metals.... It is symbolical, and its
combinations adapt themselves to all the wonders of the Spirit.
Altered by its passage across the Ages, it is nevertheless
preserved--thanks to the ignorance of the curious--in its types and
its most important primitive figures.
This is the Rota of Enoch, now called Taro of Enoch, to which De Mirville lludes, as we saw, as the means used for "evil Magic," the "metallic lates [or leaves] escaped from destruction during the Deluge" and which re attributed by him to Cain. They have escaped the Deluge for the simple eason that this Flood was not "Universal." And it is said to be "of
Indian origin," because its origin is with the Indian Āryans of the first
Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, before the final destruction of the last tronghold of Atlantis. But, if it originated with the forefathers of the rimitive Hindus, it was not in India that it was first used. Its origin s still more ancient and must be traced beyond and into the Himaleh,(171) he Snowy Range. It was born in that mysterious locality which no one is ble to locate, and which is the despair of both Geographers and Christian
Theologians--the region in which the Brāhman places his Kailāsa, the Mount
Sumeru, and the Pārvatī Pamīr, transformed by the Greeks into Paropamisus.
Round this locality, which still exists, the traditions of the Garden of
Eden were built. From these regions the Greeks obtained their
Parnassus(172); and thence proceeded most of the biblical personages, some f them in their day men, some demi-gods and heroes, some--though very ew--myths, the astronomical doubles of the former. Abram was one of them--a
Chaldęan Brāhman,(173) says the legend, transformed later, after he had epudiated his Gods and left his Ur (_pur_, "town"?) in Chaldęa, into A- rahm(174) (or A-braham) "no-brāhman" who emigrated. Abram becoming the
"father of many nations" is thus explained. The student of Occultism has o bear in mind that every God and hero in ancient Pantheons (that of the
_Bible_ included), has three biographies in the narrative, so to say, unning parallel with each other and each connected with one of the spects of the hero--historical, astronomical and perfectly mythical, the ast serving to connect the other two together and smooth away the sperities and discordancies in the narrative, and gathering into one or ore symbols the verities of the first two. Localities are made to orrespond with astronomical and even with psychic events. History was hus made captive by ancient Mystery, to become later on the great Sphynx f the nineteenth century. Only, instead of devouring her too dull uerists who will unriddle her whether she acknowledges it or not, she is esecrated and mangled by the modern OEdipus, before he forces her into the ea of speculations in which the Sphynx is drowned and perishes. This has ow become self-evident, not only through the Secret Teachings, arsimoniously as they may be given, but by earnest and learned
Symbologists and even Geometricians. The _Key to the Hebrew Egyptian
Mystery_, in which a learned Mason of Cincinnati, Mr. Ralston Skinner, nveils the riddle of a God, with such ungodly ways about him as the
Biblical Jah-ve, is followed by the establishment of a learned society nder the presidentship of a gentleman from Ohio and four vice-presidents, ne of whom is Piazzi Smyth, the well-known Astronomer and Egyptologist.
The Director of the Royal Observatory in Scotland and author of _The Great
Pyramid, Pharaonic by name, Humanitarian by fact, its Marvels, Mysteries, nd its Teachings_, is seeking to prove the same problem as the American uthor and Mason: namely, that the English system of measurement is the ame as that used by the ancient Egyptians in the construction of their
Pyramid, or in Mr. Skinner's own words that the Pharaonic "source of easures" originated the "British inch and the ancient cubit." It
"originated" much more than this, as will be fully demonstrated before the nd of the next century. Not only is everything in Western religion elated to measures, geometrical figures, and time-calculations, the rincipal period-durations being founded on most of the historical ersonages,(175) but the latter are also connected with heaven and earth ruly, only with the Indo-Āryan heaven and earth, not with those of
Palestine.
The prototypes of nearly all the biblical personages are to be sought for n the early Pantheon of India. It is the "Mind-born" Sons of Brahmā, or ather of the Dhyāni-Pitara (the "Father-Gods"), the "Sons of Light," who ave given birth to the "Sons of Earth"--the Patriarchs. For if the _Rig
Veda_ and its three sister _Vedas_ have been "milked out from fire, air nd sun," or Agni, Indra, and Sūrya, as _Manu-Smriti_ tells us, the _Old
Testament_ was most undeniably "milked out" of the most ingenious brains f Hebrew Kabalists, partly in Egypt and partly in Babylonia--"the seat of
Sanskrit literature and Brāhman learning from her origin," as Colonel Vans
Kennedy truly declared. One of such copies was Abram or Abraham, into hose bosom every orthodox Jew hopes to be gathered after death, that osom being localised as "heaven in the clouds" or Abhra.(176)
From Abraham to Enoch's Taro there seems to be a considerable distance, et the two are closely related by more than one link. Gaffarel has shown hat the four symbolical animals on the twenty-first key of the Taro, at he third septenary, are the Teraphim of the Jews invented and worshipped y Abram's father Terah, and used in the oracles of the Urim and Thummim.
Moreover, astronomically Abraham is the sun-measure and a portion of the un, while Enoch is the solar year, as much as are Hermes or Thot; and
Thot, numerically, "was the equivalent of Moses, or Hermes," "the lord of he lower realms, also esteemed as a teacher of wisdom," the same Mason- athematician tells us; and the Taro being, according to one of the latest ulls of the Pope, "an invention of Hell," the same "as Masonry and
Occultism," the relation is evident. The Taro contains indeed the mystery f all such transmutations of personages into sidereal bodies and _vice ersā_. The "wheel of Enoch" is an archaic invention, the most ancient of ll, for it is found in China. Éliphas Lévi says there was not a nation ut had it, its real meaning being preserved in the greatest secresy. It as a universal heirloom.
As we see, neither the _Book of Enoch_ (his "Wheel"), nor the _Zohar_, nor ny other kabalistic volume, contains merely Jewish wisdom.
The doctrine itself being the result of whole millenniums of
thought, is therefore the joint property of Adepts of every nation
under the sun. Nevertheless, the _Zohar_ teaches practical
Occultism more than any other work on that subject; not as it is
translated and commented upon by its various critics though, but
with the secret signs on its margins. These signs contain the
hidden instructions, apart from the metaphysical interpretations
and apparent absurdities so fully credited by Josephus, who was
never initiated and gave out the _dead letter_ as he had received
it.(177)
SECTION X. VARIOUS OCCULT SYSTEMS OF INTERPRETATIONS OF ALPHABETS AND
NUMERALS.
The transcendental methods of the _Kabalah_ must not be mentioned in a ublic work; but its various systems of arithmetical and geometrical ways f unriddling certain symbols may be described. The _Zohar_ methods of alculation, with their three sections, the Gematria, Notaricon and
Temura, also the Albath and Algath, are extremely difficult to practise.
We refer those who would learn more to Cornelius Agrippa's works.(178) But one of those systems can ever be understood unless a Kabalist becomes a eal Master in his Science. The Symbolism of Pythagoras requires still ore arduous labour. His symbols are very numerous, and to comprehend even he general gist of his abstruse doctrines from his Symbology would ecessitate years of study. His chief figures are the square (the
Tetraktys), the equilateral triangle, the point within a circle, the cube, he triple triangle, and finally the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid's
Elements, of which proposition Pythagoras was the inventor. But with this xception, none of the foregoing symbols originated with him, as some elieve. Millenniums before his day, they were well known in India, whence he Samian Sage brought them, not as a speculation, but as a demonstrated
Science, says Porphyry, quoting from the Pythagorean Moderatus.
The numerals of Pythagoras were hieroglyphical symbols by means
whereof he explained _all_ ideas concerning the nature of
things.(179)
The fundamental geometrical figure of the _Kabalah_, as given in the _Book f Numbers_,(180) that figure which tradition and the Esoteric Doctrines ell us was given by the Deity Itself to Moses on Mount Sinai,(181) ontains the key to the universal problem in its grandiose, because imple, combinations. This figure contains in itself all the others.
The Symbolism of numbers and their mathematical inter-relations is also ne of the branches of Magic, especially of mental Magic, divination and orrect perception in clairvoyance. Systems differ, but the root idea is verywhere the same. As shown in the _Royal Masonic Cyclopędia_, by
Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie:
One system adopts unity, another trinity, a third quinquinity;
again we have sexagons, heptagons, novems, and so on, until the
mind is lost in the survey of the materials alone of a science of
numbers.(182)
The Devanāgarī characters in which Sanskrit is generally written, have all hat the Hermetic, Chaldęan and Hebrew alphabets have, and in addition the
Occult significance of the "eternal sound," and the meaning given to every etter in its relation to spiritual as well as terrestrial things. As here are only twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet and ten undamental numbers, while in the Devanāgarī there are thirty-five onsonants and sixteen vowels, making altogether fifty-one simple letters, ith numberless combinations in addition, the margin for speculation and nowledge is in proportion considerably wider. Every letter has its quivalent in other languages, and its equivalent in a figure or figures f the calculation table. It has also numerous other significations, which epend upon the special idiosyncrasies and characteristics of the person, bject, or subject to be studied. As the Hindus claim to have received the
Devanāgarī characters from Sarasvatī, the inventress of Sanskrit, the
"language of the Devas" or Gods (in their exoteric pantheon), so most of he ancient nations claimed the same privilege for the origin of their etters and tongue. The _Kabalah_ calls the Hebrew alphabet the "letters f the Angels," which were communicated to the Patriarchs, just as the
Devanāgarī was to the Rishis by the Devas. The Chaldęans found their etters traced in the sky by the "yet unsettled stars and comets," says he _Book of Numbers_; while the Phoenicians had a sacred alphabet formed y the twistings of the sacred serpents. The Natar Khari (hieratic lphabet) and secret (sacerdotal) speech of the Egyptians is closely elated to the oldest "Secret Doctrine Speech." It is a Devanāgarī with ystical combinations and additions, into which the Senzar largely enters.
The power and potency of numbers and characters are well known to many
Western Occultists as being compounded from all these systems, but are till unknown to Hindu students, if not to their Occultists. In their turn
European Kabalists are generally ignorant of the alphabetical secrets of
Indian Esoterism. At the same time the general reader in the West knows othing of either; least of all how deep are the traces left by the
Esoteric numeral systems of the world in the Christian Churches.
Nevertheless this system of numerals solves the problem of cosmogony for homsoever studies it, while the system of geometrical figures represents he numbers objectively.
To realise the full comprehension of the Deific and the Abstruse enjoyed y the Ancients, one has to study the origin of the figurative epresentations of their primitive Philosophers. The _Books of Hermes_ are he oldest repositories of numerical Symbology in Western Occultism. In hem we find that the number _ten_(183) is the Mother of the Soul, Life nd Light being therein united. For as the sacred anagram Teruph shows in he _Book of the Keys_ (Numbers), the number 1 (one) is born from Spirit, nd the number 10 (ten) from Matter; "the unity has made the ten, the ten, he unity"; and this is only the Pantheistic axiom, in other words "God in
Nature and Nature in God."
The kabalistic Gematria is arithmetical, not geometrical. It is one of the ethods for extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words, and entences. It consists in applying to the letters of a word the sense they ear as numbers, in outward shape as well as in their individual sense. As llustrated by Ragon:
The figure I signified the living man (a body erect), man being
the only living being enjoying this faculty. A head being added to
it, the glyph (or letter) P was obtained, meaning paternity,
creative potency; the R signifying the walking man (with his foot
forward) going, _iens_, _iturus_.(184)
The characters were also made supplementary to speech, every
letter being at once a figure representing a sound for the ear, an
idea to the mind; as, for instance, the letter F, which is a
cutting sound like that of air rushing quickly through space;
fury, fusee, fugue, all words expressive of, and depicting what
they signify.(185)
But the above pertains to another system, that of the primitive and hilosophical formation of the letters and their outward glyphic form--not o Gematria. The Temura is another kabalistic method, by which any word ould be made to yield its mystery out of its anagram. So in _Sepher
Jetzirah_ we read "One--the Spirit of the Alahim of Lives." In the oldest abalistic diagrams the Sephiroth (the seven and the three) are epresented as wheels or circles, and Adam Kadmon, the primitive Man, as n upright pillar. "Wheels and seraphim and the holy creatures" (Chioth) ays Rabbi Akiba. In still another system of the symbolical _Kabalah_ alled Albath--which arranges the letters of the alphabet by pairs in three ows--all the couples in the first row bear the numerical value ten; and in he system of Simeon Ben Shetah (an Alexandrian Neoplatonist under the irst Ptolemy) the uppermost couple--the most sacred of all--is preceded by he Pythagorean cypher: one, and a nought--10.
All beings, from the first divine emanation, or "God manifested," down to he lowest atomic existence, "have their particular number which istinguishes each of them and becomes the source of their attributes and ualities as of their destiny." Chance, as taught by Cornelius Agrippa, is n reality only an unknown progression; and time but a succession of umbers. Hence, futurity being a compound of chance and time, these are ade to serve Occult calculations in order to find the result of an event, r the future of one's destiny. Said Pythagoras:
There is a mysterious connection between the Gods and numbers, on
which the science of arithmancy is based. The soul is a world that
is self-moving; the soul contains in itself, and is, the
quaternary, the tetraktys [the perfect cube].
There are lucky and unlucky, or beneficent and maleficent numbers. Thus hile the ternary--the first of the odd numbers (the one being the perfect nd standing by itself in Occultism)--is the divine figure or the triangle; he duad was disgraced by the Pythagoreans from the first. It represented
Matter, the passive and evil principle--the number of Māyā, illusion.
While the number _one_ symbolized harmony, order or the good
principle (the one God expressed in Latin by Solus, from which the
word Sol, the Sun, the symbol of the Deity), number two expressed
a contrary idea. The science of good and evil began with it. All
that is double, false, opposed to the only reality, was depicted
by the binary. It also expressed the contrasts in Nature which are
always double: night and day, light and darkness, cold and heat,
dampness and dryness, health and sickness, error and truth, male
and female, etc.... The Romans dedicated to Pluto the second month
of the year, and the second day of that month to expiations in
honour of the Manes. Hence the same rite established by the Latin
Church, and faithfully copied. Pope John XIX. instituted in 1003
the Festival of the Dead, which had to be celebrated on the 2nd of
November, the second month of autumn.(186)
On the other hand the triangle, a purely geometrical figure, had great onour shewn it by every nation, and for this reason:
In geometry a straight line cannot represent an absolutely perfect
figure, any more than two straight lines. Three straight lines, on
the other hand, produce by their junction a triangle, or the first
absolutely perfect figure. Therefore, it symbolized from the first
and to this day the Eternal--the first perfection. The word for
deity in Latin, as in French, begins with D, in Greek the delta or
triangle, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA~}, whose three sides symbolize the trinity, or the three
kingdoms, or, again, divine nature. In the middle is the Hebrew
Yod, the initial of Jehovah [see Éliphas Lévi's _Dogme et Rituel_,
i. 154], the animating spirit or fire, the generating principle
represented by the letter G, the initial of "God" in the northern
languages, whose philosophical significance is generation.(187)
As stated correctly by the famous Mason Ragon, the Hindu Trimūrti is ersonified in the world of ideas by Creation, Preservation and
Destruction, or Brahmā, Vishnu and Shiva; in the world of matter by Earth,
Water and Fire, or the Sun, and symbolised by the Lotus, a flower that ives by earth, water, and the sun.(188) The Lotus, sacred to Isis, had he same significance in Egypt, whereas in the Christian symbol, the
Lotus, not being found in either Judęa or Europe, was replaced by the ater-lily. In every Greek and Latin Church, in all the pictures of the
Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel is depicted with this trinitarian ymbol in his hand standing before Mary, while above the chief altar or nder the dome, the Eye of the Eternal is painted within a triangle, made o replace the Hebrew Yod or God.
Truly, says Ragon, there was a time when numbers and alphabetical haracters meant something more than they do now--the images of a mere nsignificant sound.
Their mission was nobler then. Each of them represented by its
form a complete sense, which, besides the meaning of the word, had
a double(189) interpretation adapted to a dual doctrine. Thus when
the sages desired to write something to be understood only by the
savants, they confabulated a story, a dream, or some other
fictitious subject with personal names of men and localities, that
revealed by their lettered characters the true meaning of the
author by that narrative. Such were all their religious
creations.(190)
Every appellation and term had its _raison d'źtre_. The name of a plant or ineral denoted its nature to the Initiate at the first glance. The ssence of everything was easily perceived by him once that it was figured y such characters. The Chinese characters have preserved much of this raphic and pictorial character to this day, though the secret of the full ystem is lost. Nevertheless, even now, there are those among that nation ho can write a long narrative, a volume, on one page; and the symbols hat are explained historically, allegorically and astronomically, have urvived until now.
Moreover, there exists a universal language among the Initiates, which an
Adept, and even a disciple, of any nation may understand by reading it in is own language. We Europeans, on the contrary, possess only one graphic ign common to all, & (and); there is a language richer in metaphysical erms than any on earth, whose every word is expressed by like common igns. The Litera Pythagorę, so called, the Greek {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~} (the English capital
Y) if traced alone in a message, was as explicit as a whole page filled ith sentences, for it stood as a symbol for a number of things--for white nd black Magic, for instance.(191) Suppose one man enquired of another:
To what School of Magic does so and so belong? and the answer came back ith the letter traced with the right branch thicker than the left, then t meant "to right hand or divine Magic;" but if the letter were traced in he usual way, with the left branch thicker than the right, then it meant he reverse, the right or left branch being the whole biography of a man.
In Asia, especially in the Devanāgarī characters, every letter had several ecret meanings.
Interpretations of the hidden sense of such apocalyptic writings are found n the keys given in the _Kabalah_, and they are among its most sacred ore. St. Hieronymus assures us that they were known to the School of the
Prophets and taught therein, which is very likely. Molitor, the learned
Hebraist, in his work on tradition says that:
The two and twenty letters of the Hebrew alphabet were regarded as
an emanation, or the visible expression of the divine forces
inherent in the ineffable name.
These letters find their equivalent in, and are replaced by numbers, in he same way as in the other systems. For instance, the twelfth and the ixth letter of the alphabet yield eighteen in a name; the other letters f that name added being always exchanged for that figure which orresponds to the alphabetical letter; then all those figures are ubjected to an algebraical process which transforms them again into etters; after which the latter yield to the enquirer "the most hidden ecrets of divine Permanency (eternity in its immutability) in the
Futurity."
SECTION XI. THE HEXAGON WITH THE CENTRAL POINT, OR THE SEVENTH KEY.
Arguing upon the virtue in names (Baalshem), Molitor thinks it impossible o deny that the _Kabalah_--its present abuses notwithstanding--has some ery profound and scientific basis to stand upon. And if it is claimed, he rgues,
That before the Name of Jesus every other Name must bend, why
should not the Tetragrammaton have the same power?(192)
This is good sense and logic. For if Pythagoras viewed the hexagon formed f two crossed triangles as the symbol of creation, and the Egyptians, as hat of the union of fire and water (or of generation), the Essenes saw in t the Seal of Solomon, the Jews the Shield of David, the Hindus the Sign f Vishnu (to this day); and if even in Russia and Poland the double riangle is regarded as a powerful talisman--then so widespread a use rgues that there is something in it. It stands to reason, indeed, that uch an ancient and universally revered symbol should not be merely laid side to be laughed at by those who know nothing of its virtues or real
Occult significance. To begin with, even the known sign is merely a ubstitute for the one used by the Initiates. In a Tāntrika work in the
British Museum, a terrible curse is called down upon the head of him who hall ever divulge to the profane the real Occult hexagon known as the
"Sign of Vishnu," "Solomon's Seal," etc.
The great power of the hexagon--with its central mystic sign the T, or the
Svastika, a septenary--is well explained in the seventh key of _Things
Concealed_, for it says:
The seventh key is the hieroglyph of the sacred septenary, of
royalty, of the priesthood [the Initiate], of triumph and true
result by struggle. It is magic power in all its force, the true
"Holy Kingdom." In the Hermetic Philosophy it is the quintessence
resulting from the union of the two forces of the great Magic
Agent [Ākāsha, Astral Light.].... It is equally Jakin and Boaz
bound by the will of the Adept and overcome by his omnipotence.
The force of this key is absolute in Magic. All religions have consecrated his sign in their rites.
We can only glance hurriedly at present at the long series of antediluvian orks in their postdiluvian and fragmentary, often disfigured, form.
Although all of these are the inheritance from the Fourth Race--now lying uried in the unfathomed depths of the ocean--still they are not to be ejected. As we have shown, there was but one Science at the dawn of ankind, and it was entirely divine. If humanity on reaching its adult eriod has abused it--especially the last Sub-Races of the Fourth Root-
Race--it has been the fault and sin of the practitioners who desecrated the ivine knowledge, not of those who remained true to its pristine dogmas.
It is not because the modern Roman Catholic Church, faithful to her raditional intolerance, is now pleased to see in the Occultist, and even n the innocent Spiritualist and Mason, the descendants of "the Kischuph, he Hamite, the Kasdim, the Cephene, the Ophite and the Khartumim"--all hese being "the followers of Satan," that they are such indeed. The State r National Religion of every country has ever and at all times very asily disposed of rival schools by professing to believe they were angerous heresies--the old Roman Catholic State Religion as much as the odern one.
The anathema, however, has not made the public any the wiser in the
Mysteries of the Occult Sciences. In some respects the world is all the etter for such ignorance. The secrets of Nature generally cut both ways, nd in the hands of the undeserving they are more than likely to become urderous. Who in our modern day knows anything of the real significance f, and the powers contained in, certain characters and igns--talismans--whether for beneficent or evil purposes? Fragments of the
Runes and the writing of the Kischuph, found scattered in old medięval ibraries; copies from the Ephesian and Milesian letters or characters; he thrice famous _Book of Thoth_, and the terrible treatises (still reserved) of Targes, the Chaldęan, and his disciple Tarchon, the
Etruscan--who flourished long before the Trojan War--are so many names and ppellations void of sense (though met with in classical literature) for he educated modern scholar. Who, in the nineteenth century, believes in he art, described in such treatises as those of Targes, of evoking and irecting thunder-bolts? Yet the same is described in the Brāhmanical iterature, and Targes copied his "thunder-bolts" from the Astra,(193) hose terrible engines of destruction known to the Mahābhāratan Āryans. A hole arsenal of dynamite bombs would pale before this art--if it ever ecomes understood by the Westerns. It is from an old fragment that was ranslated to him, that the late Lord Bulwer Lytton got his idea of Vril.
It is a lucky thing, indeed, that, in the face of the virtues and hilanthropy that grace our age of iniquitous wars, of anarchists and ynamiters, the secrets contained in the books discovered in Numa's tomb hould have been burnt. But the science of Circe and Medea is not lost.
One can discover it in the apparent gibberish of the Tāntrika Sūtras, the
_Kuku-ma_ of the Bhūtānī and the Sikhim Dugpas and "Red-caps" of Tibet, nd even in the sorcery of the Nīlgiri Mula Kurumbas. Very luckily few utside the high practitioners of the Left Path and of the Adepts of the
Right--in whose hands the weird secrets of the real meaning are afe--understand the "black" evocations. Otherwise the Western as much as he Eastern Dugpas might make short work of their enemies. The name of the atter is legion, for the direct descendants of the antediluvian sorcerers ate all those who are not with them, arguing that, therefore, they are gainst them.
As for the "Little Albert"--though even this small half-esoteric volume has ecome a literary relic--and the "Great Albert" or the "Red Dragon," ogether with the numberless old copies still in existence, the sorry emains of the mythical Mother Shiptons and the Merlins--we mean the false nes--all these are vulgarised imitations of the original works of the same ames. Thus the "Petit Albert" is the disfigured imitation of the great ork written in Latin by Bishop Adalbert, an Occultist of the eighth entury, sentenced by the second Roman Concilium. His work was reprinted everal centuries later and named _Alberti Parvi Lucii Libellus de
Mirabilibus Naturę Arcanis_. The severities of the Roman Church have ever een spasmodic. While one learns of this condemnation, which placed the
Church, as will be shown, in relation to the Seven Archangels, the Virtues r Thrones of God, in the most embarrassing position for long centuries, t remains a wonder indeed, to find that the Jesuits have not destroyed he archives, with all their countless chronicles and annals, of the
History of France and those of the Spanish Escurial, along with them. Both istory and the chronicles of the former speak at length of the priceless alisman received by Charles the Great from a Pope. It was a little volume n Magic--or Sorcery, rather--all full of kabalistic figures, signs, ysterious sentences and invocations to the stars and planets. These were alismans against the enemies of the King (_les ennemis de Charlemagne_), hich talismans, the chronicler tells us, proved of great help, as "every ne of them [the enemies] died a violent death." The small volume,
_Enchiridium Leonis Papę_, has disappeared and is very luckily out of rint. Again the Alphabet of Thoth can be dimly traced in the modern Tarot hich can be had at almost every bookseller's in Paris. As for its being nderstood or utilised, the many fortune-tellers in Paris, who make a rofessional living by it, are sad specimens of failures of attempts at eading, let alone correctly interpreting, the symbolism of the Tarot ithout a preliminary philosophical study of the Science. The real Tarot, n its complete symbology, can be found only in the Babylonian cylinders, hat any one can inspect and study in the British Museum and elsewhere.
Any one can see these Chaldęan, antediluvian rhombs, or revolving ylinders, covered with sacred signs; but the secrets of these divining
"wheels," or, as de Mirville calls them, "the rotating globes of Hecate," ave to be left untold for some time to come. Meanwhile there are the
"turning-tables" of the modern medium for the babes, and the _Kabalah_ for he strong. This may afford some consolation.
People are very apt to use terms which they do not understand, and to pass udgments on _primā facie_ evidence. The difference between White and
Black Magic is very difficult to realise fully, as both have to be judged y their motive, upon which their ultimate though not their immediate ffects depend, even though these may not come for years. Between the
"right and the left hand [Magic] there is but a cobweb thread," says an
Eastern proverb. Let us abide by its wisdom and wait till we have learned ore.
We shall have to return at greater length to the relation of the _Kabalah_ o Gupta Vidyā, and to deal further with esoteric and numerical systems, ut we must first follow the line of Adepts in post-Christian times.
SECTION XII. THE DUTY OF THE TRUE OCCULTIST TOWARD RELIGIONS.
Having disposed of pre-Christian Initiates and their Mysteries--though more as to be said about the latter--a few words must be given to the earliest ost-Christian Adepts, irrespective of their personal beliefs and octrines, or their subsequent places in History, whether sacred or rofane. Our task is to analyse this adeptship with its abnormal haumaturgical, or, as now called, psychological powers; to give each of uch Adepts his due, by considering, firstly, what are the historical ecords about them that have reached us at this late day, and secondly, to xamine the laws of probability with regard to the said powers.
And at the outset the writer must be allowed a few words in justification f what has to be said. It would be most unfair to see in these pages any efiance to, or disrespect for, the Christian religion--least of all, a esire to wound anyone's feelings. The Theosophist believes in neither
Divine nor Satanic miracles. At such a distance of time he can only obtain
_primā facie_ evidence and judge of it by the results claimed. There is either Saint nor Sorcerer, Prophet nor Soothsayer for him; only Adepts, r proficients in the production of feats of a phenomenal character, to be udged by their words and deeds. The only distinction he is now able to race depends on the results achieved--on the evidence whether they were eneficent or maleficent in their character as affecting those for or gainst whom the powers of the Adept were used. With the division so rbitrarily made between proficients in "miraculous" doings of this or hat Religion by their respective followers and advocates, the Occultist annot and _must not_ be concerned. The Christian whose Religion commands im to regard Peter and Paul as Saints, and divinely inspired and lorified Apostles, and to view Simon and Apollonius as Wizards and
Necromancers, helped by, and serving the ends of, supposed Evil Powers--is uite justified in thus doing if he be a sincere orthodox Christian. But o also is the Occultist justified, if he would serve truth and only ruth, in rejecting such a one-sided view. The student of Occultism must elong to no special creed or sect, yet he is bound to show outward espect to every creed and faith, if he would become an Adept of the Good
Law. He must not be bound by the pre-judged and sectarian opinions of nyone, and he has to form his own opinions and to come to his own onclusions in accordance with the rules of evidence furnished to him by he Science to which he is devoted. Thus, if the Occultist is, by way of llustration, a Buddhist, then, while regarding Gautama Buddha as the randest of all the Adepts that lived, and the incarnation of unselfish ove, boundless charity, and moral goodness, he will regard in the same ight Jesus--proclaiming Him another such incarnation of every divine irtue. He will reverence the memory of the great Martyr, even while efusing to recognise in Him the incarnation on earth of the One Supreme
Deity, and the "Very God of Gods" in Heaven. He will cherish the ideal man or his personal virtues, not for the claims made on his behalf by anatical dreamers of the early ages, or by a shrewd calculating Church nd Theology. He will even believe in most of the "asserted miracles," nly explaining them in accordance with the rules of his own Science and y his psychic discernment. Refusing them the term "miracle"--in the heological sense of an event "contrary to the established laws of ature"--he will nevertheless view them as a deviation from the laws known
(so far) to Science, quite another thing. Moreover the Occultist will, on he _primā facie_ evidence of the _Gospels_--whether proven or not--class ost of such works as beneficent, divine Magic, though he will be ustified in regarding such events as casting out devils into a herd of wine(194) as allegorical, and as pernicious to true faith in their dead- etter sense. This is the view a genuine, impartial Occultist would take.
And in this respect even the fanatical Mussulmans who regard Jesus of
Nazareth as a great Prophet, and show respect to Him, are giving a holesome lesson in charity to Christians, who teach and accept that
"religious tolerance is impious and absurd,"(195) and who will never refer o the prophet of Islam by any other term but that of a "false prophet."
It is on the principles of Occultism, then, that Peter and Simon, Paul and
Apollonius, will now be examined.
These four Adepts are chosen to appear in these pages with good reason.
They are the first in post-Christian Adeptship--as recorded in profane and acred writings--to strike the key-note of "miracles," that is of psychic nd physical phenomena. It is only theological bigotry and intolerance hat could so maliciously and arbitrarily separate the two harmonious arts into two distinct manifestations of Divine and Satanic Magic, into
"godly" and "ungodly" works.
SECTION XIII. POST-CHRISTIAN ADEPTS AND THEIR DOCTRINES.
What does the world at large know of Peter and Simon, for example? Profane istory has no record of these two, while that which the so-called sacred iterature tells us of them is scattered about, contained in a few entences in the _Acts_. As to the _Apocrypha_, their very name forbids ritics to trust to them for information. The Occultists, however, claim hat, one-sided and prejudiced as they may be, the apocryphal _Gospels_ ontain far more historically true events and facts than does the _New
Testament_, the _Acts_ included. The former are crude tradition, the atter (the official _Gospels_) are an elaborately made up legend. The acredness of the _New Testament_ is a question of private belief and of lind faith, and while one is bound to respect the private opinion of ne's neighbour, no one is forced to share it.
Who was Simon Magus, and what is known of him? One learns in the _Acts_ imply that on account of his remarkable magical Arts he was called "the
Great Power of God." Philip is said to have baptised this Samaritan; and ubsequently he is accused of having offered money to Peter and John to each him the power of working true "miracles," false ones, it is sserted, being of the Devil.(196) This is all, if we omit the words of buse freely used against him for working "miracles" of the latter kind.
Origen mentions him as having visited Rome during the reign of Nero,(197) nd Mosheim places him among the open enemies of Christianity;(198) but
Occult tradition accuses him of nothing worse than refusing to recognise
"Simeon" as a Vicegerent of God, whether that "Simeon" was Peter or anyone lse being still left an open question with the critic.
That which Irenęus(199) and Epiphanius(200) say of Simon Magus--namely, hat he represented himself as the incarnated trinity; that in Samaria he as the Father, in Judęa the Son, and had given himself out to the
Gentiles as the Holy Spirit--is simply backbiting. Times and events change; uman nature remains the same and unaltered under every sky and in every ge. The charge is the result and product of the traditional and now lassical _odium theologicum_. No Occultists--all of whom have experienced ersonally, more or less, the effects of theological rancour--will ever elieve such things merely on the word of an Irenęus, if, indeed, he ever rote the words himself. Further on it is narrated of Simon that he took bout with him a woman whom he introduced as Helen of Troy, who had passed hrough a hundred reincarnations, and who, still earlier, in the beginning f ęons, was Sophia, Divine Wisdom, an emanation of his own (Simon's)
Eternal Mind, when he (Simon) was the "Father"; and finally, that by her e had "begotten the Archangels and Angels, by whom this world was reated," etc.
Now we all know to what a degree of transformation and luxuriant growth ny bare statement can be subjected and forced, after passing through only alf a dozen hands. Moreover, all these claims may be explained and even hown to be true at bottom. Simon Magus was a Kabalist and a Mystic, who, ike so many other reformers, endeavoured to found a new Religion based on he fundamental teachings of the Secret Doctrine, yet without divulging ore than necessary of its mysteries. Why then should not Simon, a Mystic, eeply imbued with the fact of serial incarnations (we may leave out the umber "one hundred," as a very probable exaggeration of his disciples), peak of any one whom he knew psychically as an incarnation of some eroine of that name, and in the way he did--if he ever did so? Do we not ind in our own century some ladies and gentlemen, not charlatans but ntellectual persons highly honoured in society, whose inner conviction ssures them that they were--one Queen Cleopatra, another one Alexander the
Great, a third Joan of Arc, and who or what not? This is a matter of inner onviction, and is based on more or less familiarity with Occultism and elief in the modern theory of reincarnation. The latter differs from the ne genuine doctrine of old, as will be shown, but there is no rule ithout its exception.
As to the Magus being "one with God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Ghost," this again is quite reasonable, if we admit that a Mystic and
Seer has a right to use allegorical language; and in this case, moreover, t is quite justified by the doctrine of Universal Unity taught in
Esoteric Philosophy. Every Occultist will say the same, on (to him) cientific and logical grounds, in full accordance with the doctrine he rofesses. Not a Vedāntin but says the same thing daily: he is, of course,
Brahman, and he is Parabrahman, once that he rejects the individuality of is personal spirit, and recognises the Divine Ray which dwells in his
Higher Self as only a reflection of the Universal Spirit. This is the echo n all times and ages of the primitive doctrine of Emanations. The first
Emanation from the Unknown is the "Father," the second the "Son," and all nd everything proceeds from the One, or that Divine Spirit which is
"unknowable." Hence, the assertion that by her (Sophia, or Minerva, the
Divine Wisdom) he (Simon), when yet in the bosom of the Father, himself he Father (or the first collective Emanation), begot the Archangels--the
"Son"--who were the creators of this world.
The Roman Catholics themselves, driven to the wall by the irrefutable rguments of their opponents--the learned Philologists and Symbologists who ick to shreds Church dogmas and their authorities, and point out the lurality of the Elohim in the _Bible_--admit to-day that the first
"creation" of God, the Tsaba, or Archangels, must have participated in the reation of the Universe. Might not we suppose:
Although "God alone created the heaven and the earth" ... that
however unconnected they [the Angels] may have been with the
primordial _ex nihilo_ creation, they may have received a mission
to achieve, to continue, and to sustain it?(201)
xclaims De Mirville, in answer to Renan, Lacour, Maury and the _tutti uanti_ of the French Institute. With certain alterations it is precisely his which is claimed by the Secret Doctrine. In truth there is not a ingle doctrine preached by the many Reformers of the first and the ubsequent centuries of our era, that did not base its initial teachings n this universal cosmogony. Consult Mosheim and see what he has to say of he many "heresies" he describes. Cerinthus, the Jew,
Taught that the Creator of this world ... the Sovereign God of the
Jewish people, was a Being ... who derived his birth from the
Supreme God;
hat this Being, moreover,
Fell by degrees from his native virtue and primitive dignity.
Basilides, Carpocrates and Valentinus, the Egyptian Gnostics of the second entury, held the same ideas with a few variations. Basilides preached even Ęons (Hosts or Archangels), who issued from the substance of the
Supreme. Two of them, Power and Wisdom, begot the heavenly hierarchy of he first class and dignity; this emanated a second; the latter a third, nd so on; each subsequent evolution being of a nature less exalted than he precedent, and each creating for itself a Heaven as a dwelling, the ature of each of these respective Heavens decreasing in splendour and urity as it approached nearer to the earth. Thus the number of these
Dwellings amounted to 365; and over all presided the Supreme Unknown alled Abraxas, a name which in the Greek method of numeration yields the umber 365, which in its mystic and numerical meaning contains the number
355, or the man value.(202) This was a Gnostic Mystery based upon that of rimitive Evolution, which ended with "man."
Saturnilus of Antioch promulgated the same doctrine slightly modified. He aught two eternal principles, Good and Evil, which are simply Spirit and
Matter. The seven Angels who preside over the seven Planets are the
Builders of our Universe--a purely Eastern doctrine, as Saturnilus was an
Asiatic Gnostic. These Angels are the natural Guardians of the seven
Regions of our Planetary System, one of the most powerful among these even creating Angels of the _third_ order being "Saturn," the presiding enius of the Planet, and the God of the Hebrew people: namely, Jehovah, ho was venerated among the Jews, and to whom they dedicated the seventh ay or Sabbath, Saturday--"Saturn's day" among the Scandinavians and also mong the Hindus.
Marcion, who also held the doctrine of the two opposed principles of Good nd Evil, asserted that there was a third Deity between the two--one of a
"mixed nature"--the God of the Jews, the Creator (with his Host) of the ower, or our, World. Though ever at war with the Evil Principle, this ntermediate Being was nevertheless also opposed to the Good Principle, hose place and title he coveted.
Thus Simon was only the son of his time, a religious Reformer like so many thers, and an Adept among the Kabalists. The Church, to which a belief in is actual existence and great powers is a necessity--in order the better o set off the "miracle" performed by Peter and his triumph over
Simon--extols unstintingly his wonderful magic feats. On the other hand,
Scepticism, represented by scholars and learned critics, tries to make way with him altogether. Thus, after denying the very existence of Simon, hey have finally thought fit to merge his individuality entirely in that f Paul. The anonymous author of _Supernatural Religion_ assiduously ndeavoured to prove that by Simon Magus we must understand the Apostle
Paul, whose _Epistles_ were secretly as well as openly calumniated and pposed by Peter, and charged with containing "dysnoėtic learning." Indeed his seems more than probable when we think of the two Apostles and ontrast their characters.
The Apostle of the Gentiles was brave, outspoken, sincere, and
very learned; the Apostle of Circumcision, cowardly, cautious,
insincere, and very ignorant. That Paul had been, partially at
least, if not completely, initiated into the theurgic mysteries,
admits of little doubt. His language, the phraseology so peculiar
to the Greek philosophers, certain expressions used only by the
Initiates, are so many sure ear-marks to that supposition. Our
suspicion has been strengthened by an able article entitled "Paul
and Plato," by Dr. A. Wilder, in which the author puts forward one
remarkable and, for us, very precious observation. In the
_Epistles to the Corinthians_, he shows Paul abounding with
"expressions suggested by the initiations of Sabazius and Eleusis,
and the lectures of the (Greek) philosophers. He (Paul) designates
himself an _idiotes_--a person unskilful in the Word, but not in
the _gnosis_ or philosophical learning. 'We speak wisdom among the
perfect or initiated,' he writes, _even_ the _hidden wisdom_, 'not
the wisdom of this world, nor of the Archons of this world, but
divine wisdom in a mystery, secret--which _none of the Archons of
this world knew_.' "(203)
What else can the Apostle mean by those unequivocal words, but
that he himself, as belonging to the Mystę (Initiated), spoke of
things shown and explained only in the Mysteries? The "divine
wisdom in a mystery which none of the _Archons of this world
knew_," has evidently some direct reference to the Basileus of the
Eleusinian Initiation who did know. The Basileus belonged to the
staff of the great Hierophant, and was an Archon of Athens; and as
such was one of the chief Mystę, belonging to the _interior_
Mysteries, to which a very select and small number obtained an
entrance.(204) The magistrates supervising the Eleusinia were
called Archons.(205)
We will deal, however, first with Simon the Magician.
SECTION XIV. SIMON AND HIS BIOGRAPHER HIPPOLYTUS.
As shown in our earlier volumes, Simon was a pupil of the Tanaim of
Samaria, and the reputation he left behind him, together with the title of
"the Great Power of God," testify in favour of the ability and learning of is Masters. But the Tanaim were Kabalists of the same secret school as
John of the _Apocalypse_, whose careful aim it was to conceal as much as ossible the real meaning of the names in the Mosaic Books. Still the alumnies so jealously disseminated against Simon Magus by the unknown uthors and compilers of the _Acts_ and other writings, could not cripple he truth to such an extent as to conceal the fact that no Christian could ival him in thaumaturgic deeds. The story told about his falling during n aerial flight, breaking both his legs and then committing suicide, is idiculous. Posterity has heard but one side of the story. Were the isciples of Simon to have a chance, we might perhaps find that it was
Peter who broke both his legs. But as against this hypothesis we know that his Apostle was too prudent ever to venture himself in Rome. On the onfession of several ecclesiastical writers, no Apostle ever performed uch "supernatural wonders," but of course pious people will say this only he more proves that it was the Devil who worked through Simon. He was ccused of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, only because he introduced as he "Holy Spiritus" the Mens (Intelligence) or "the Mother of all." But we ind the same expression used in the _Book of Enoch_, in which, in ontradistinction to the "Son of Man," he speaks of the "Son of the
Woman." In the _Codex_ of the Nazarenes, and in the _Zohar_, as well as in he _Books of Hermes_, the same expression is used; and even in the pocryphal _Evangelium of the Hebrews_ we read that Jesus admitted the emale sex of the Holy Ghost by using the expression "My Mother, the Holy
Pneuma."
After long ages of denial, however, the actual existence of Simon Magus as been finally demonstrated, whether he was Saul, Paul or Simon. A anuscript speaking of him under the last name has been discovered in
Greece and has put a stop to any further speculation.
In his _Histoire des Trois Premiers Sičcles de l'Église_(206) M. de
Pressensé gives his opinion on this additional relic of early
Christianity. Owing to the numerous myths with which the history of Simon bounds--he says--many Theologians (among Protestants, he ought to have dded) have concluded that it was no better than a clever tissue of egends. But he adds:
It contains positive facts, it seems, now warranted by the
unanimous testimony of the Fathers of the Church and the narrative
of Hippolytus recently discovered.(207)
This MS. is very far from being complimentary to the alleged founder of
Western Gnosticism. While recognising great powers in Simon, it brands him s a priest of Satan--which is quite enough to show that it was written by Christian. It also shows that, like another "servant of the Evil One"--as
Manes is called by the Church--Simon was a _baptised_ Christian; but that oth, being too well versed in the mysteries of true _primitive_
Christianity, were persecuted for it. The secret of such persecution was hen, as it is now, quite transparent to those who study the question mpartially. Seeking to preserve his independence, Simon could not submit o the leadership or authority of any of the Apostles, least of all to hat of either Peter or John, the fanatical author of the _Apocalypse_.
Hence charges of heresy followed by "anathema maranatha." The persecutions y the Church were never directed against Magic, when it was orthodox; for he new Theurgy, established and regulated by the Fathers, now known to
Christendom as "grace" and "miracles," was, and is still, when it does appen, only Magic--whether conscious or unconscious. Such phenomena as ave passed to posterity under the name of "divine miracles" were produced hrough powers acquired by great purity of life and ecstasy. Prayer and ontemplation added to asceticism are the best means of discipline in rder to become a Theurgist, where there is no regular initiation. For ntense prayer for the accomplishment of some object is only intense
_will_ and desire, resulting in unconscious Magic. In our own day George
Müller of Bristol has proved it. But "divine miracles" are produced by the ame causes that generate effects of Sorcery. The whole difference rests n the good or evil effects aimed at, and on the actor who produces them.
The thunders of the Church were directed only against those who dissented rom the formulę and attributed to themselves the production of certain arvellous effects, instead of fathering them on a personal God; and thus, hile those Adepts in Magic Arts who acted under her direct instructions nd auspices were proclaimed to posterity and history as saints and riends of God, all others were hooted out of the Church and sentenced to ternal calumny and curses from their day to this. Dogma and authority ave ever been the curse of humanity, the great extinguishers of light and ruth.(208)
It was perhaps the recognition of a germ of that which, later on, in the hen nascent Church, grew into the virus of insatiate power and ambition, ulminating finally in the dogma of infallibility, that forced Simon, and o many others, to break away from her at her very birth. Sects and issensions began with the first century. While Paul rebukes Peter to his ace, John slanders under the veil of vision the Nicolaitans, and makes
Jesus declare that he hates them.(209) Therefore we pay little attention o the accusations against Simon in the MS. found in Greece.
It is entitled _Philosophumena_. Its author, regarded as Saint Hippolytus y the Greek Church, is referred to as an "unknown heretic" by the
Papists, only because he speaks in it "very slanderously" of Pope
Callistus, also a Saint. Nevertheless, Greeks and Latins agree in eclaring the _Philosophumena_ to be an extraordinary and very erudite ork. Its antiquity and genuineness have been vouched for by the best uthorities of Tübingen.
Whoever the author may have been, he expresses himself about Simon in this ise:
Simon, a man well versed in magic arts, deceived many persons
partly by the art of Thrasymedes,(210) and partly _with the help
of demons_.(211)... He determined to pass himself off as a god....
Aided by his wicked arts, he turned to profit not only the
teachings of Moses, but those of the poets.... His disciples use
to this day his charms. Thanks to incantations, to philtres, to
their attractive caresses(212) and what they call "sleeps," they
send demons to influence all those whom they would fascinate. With
this object they employ what they call "familiar demons."(213)
Further on the MS. reads:
The Magus (Simon) made those who wished to enquire of the demon,
write what their question was on a leaf of parchment; this, folded
in four, was thrown into a burning brazier, in order that the
smoke should reveal the contents of the writing to the Spirit
(demon) (_Philos._, IV. iv.). Incense was thrown by handfuls on
the blazing coals, the Magus adding, on pieces of papyrus, the
Hebrew names of the Spirits he was addressing, and the flame
devoured all. Very soon the _divine_ Spirit seemed to overwhelm
the Magician, who uttered unintelligible invocations, and plunged
in such a state he answered every question--phantasmal apparitions
being often raised over the flaming brazier (_ibid._, iii.); at
other times fire descended from heaven upon objects previously
pointed out by the Magician (_ibid._); or again the deity evoked,
crossing the room, would trace fiery orbs in its flight (_ibid._,
ix.).(214)
So far the above statements agree with those of Anastasius the Sinaļte:
People saw Simon causing statues to walk; precipitating himself
into the flames without being burnt; metamorphosing his body into
that of various animals [lycanthropy]; raising at banquets
phantoms and spectres; _causing the furniture in the rooms to move
about_, by invisible _spirits_. He gave out that he was escorted
by a number of shades to whom he gave the name of "souls of the
dead." Finally, he used to fly in the air ... (Anast., _Patrol.
Grecque_, vol. lxxxix., col. 523, quęst. xx.).(215)
Suetonius says in his _Nero_,
In those days an Icarus fell at his first ascent near Nero's box
and covered it with his blood.(216)
This sentence, referring evidently to some unfortunate acrobat who missed is footing and tumbled, is brought forward as a proof that it was Simon ho fell.(217) But the latter's name is surely too famous, if one must redit the Church Fathers, for the historian to have mentioned him simply s "an Icarus." The writer is quite aware that there exists in Rome a ocality named Simonium, near the Church of SS. Cosmas and Daimanus (Via
Sacra), and the ruins of the ancient temple of Romulus, where the broken ieces of a stone, on which it is alleged the two knees of the Apostle
Peter were impressed in thanksgiving after his supposed victory over
Simon, are shown to this day. But what does this exhibition amount to? For he broken fragments of one stone, the Buddhists of Ceylon show a whole ock on Adam's Peak with another imprint upon it. A crag stands upon its latform, a terrace of which supports a huge boulder, and on the boulder ests for nearly three thousand years the sacred foot-print, of a foot ive feet long. Why not credit the legend of the latter, if we have to ccept that of St. Peter? "Prince of Apostles," or "Prince of Reformers," r even the "First-born of Satan," as Simon is called, all are entitled to egends and fictions. One may be allowed to discriminate, however.
That Simon could fly, _i.e._, raise himself in the air for a few minutes, s no impossibility. Modern mediums have performed the same feat supported y a force that Spiritualists persist in calling "spirits." But if Simon id so, it was with the help of a self-acquired blind power that heeds ittle the prayers and commands of rival Adepts, let alone Saints. The act is that logic is against the supposed fall of Simon at the prayer of
Peter. For had he been defeated publicly by the Apostle, his disciples ould have abandoned him after such an evident sign of inferiority, and ould have become orthodox Christians. But we find even the author of
_Philosophumena_, just such a Christian, showing otherwise. Simon had lost o little credit with his pupils and the masses, that he went on daily reaching in the Roman Campania after his supposed fall from the clouds
"far above the Capitolium," in which fall he broke his legs only! Such a ucky fall is in itself sufficiently miraculous, one would say.
SECTION XV. ST. PAUL THE REAL FOUNDER OF PRESENT CHRISTIANITY.
We may repeat with the author of _Phallicism_:
We are all for _construction_--even for _Christian_, although of
course philosophical _construction_. We have nothing to do with
reality, in man's limited, mechanical, scientific sense, or with
_realism_. We have undertaken to show that mysticism is the very
life and soul of religion;(218) ... that _the Bible is only
misread and misrepresented when rejected as advancing supposed
fabulous and contradictory things_; that Moses did not make
mistakes, but spoke to the "children of men" in the only way in
which _children_ in their nonage can be addressed; that the world
is, indeed, a very different place from that which it is assumed
to be; that what is derided as superstition is the only true and
the only scientific _knowledge_, and moreover that modern
knowledge and modern science are to a great extent not only
_superstition_, but superstition of a very destructive and deadly
kind.(219)
All this is perfectly true and correct. But it is also true that the _New
Testament_, the _Acts_ and the _Epistles_--however much the historical igure of Jesus may be true--are all symbolical and allegorical sayings, nd that "it was not Jesus but Paul who was the real founder of
Christianity;"(220) but it was not the official Church Christianity, at ny rate. "The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch," the
_Acts of the Apostles_ tell us,(221) and they were not so called before, or for a long time after, but simply Nazarenes.
This view is found in more than one writer of the present and the past enturies. But, hitherto, it has always been laid aside as an unproven ypothesis, a blasphemous assumption; though, as the author of _Paul, the
Founder of Christianity_(222) truly says:
Such men as Irenęus, Epiphanius and Eusebius have transmitted to
posterity a reputation for such untruth and dishonest practices
that the heart sickens at the story of the crimes of that period.
The more so, since the whole Christian scheme rests upon _their_ sayings.
But we find now another corroboration, and this time on the perfect eading of biblical glyphs. In _The Source of Measures_ we find the ollowing:
It must be borne in mind that our present Christianity is
_Pauline_, not _Jesus_. Jesus, in his life, was a Jew, conforming
to the law; even more, He says: "The scribes and pharisees sit in
Moses' seat; whatsoever therefore they command you to do, that
observe and do." And again: "I did not come to destroy but to
fulfil the law." Therefore, He was under the law to the day of his
death, and could not, while in life, abrogate one jot or tittle of
it. He was circumcised and commanded circumcision. But Paul said
of circumcision that it availed nothing, and _he_ (Paul) abrogated
the law. _Saul_ and _Paul_--that is, Saul, under the law, and Paul,
freed from the obligations of the law--were in one man, but
parallelisms _in the flesh_, of Jesus the man under the law as
observing it, who thus died in _Chréstos_ and arose, freed from
its obligations, in the spirit world as _Christos_, or the
triumphant Christ. It was the Christ who was freed, but Christ was
in the Spirit. Saul in the flesh was the function of, and parallel
of Chréstos. Paul in the flesh was the function and parallel of
Jesus become Christ in the spirit, as an early reality to answer
to and act for the _apotheosis_; and so armed with all authority
in the flesh to abrogate human law.(223)
The real reason why Paul is shown as "abrogating the law" can be found nly in India, where to this day the most ancient customs and privileges re preserved in all their purity, notwithstanding the abuse levelled at he same. There is only one class of persons who can disregard the law of
Brāhmanical institutions, caste included, with impunity, and that is the
_perfect_ "Svāmīs," the Yogīs--who have reached, or are supposed to have eached, the first step towards the Jīvanmukta state--or the full
Initiates. And Paul was undeniably an Initiate. We will quote a passage or wo from _Isis Unveiled_, for we can say now nothing better than what was aid then:
Take Paul, read the little of original that is left of him in the
writings attributed to this brave, honest, sincere man, and see
whether anyone can find a word therein to show that Paul meant by
the word Christ anything more than the abstract ideal of the
personal divinity indwelling in man. For Paul, Christ is not a
person, but an embodied idea. "If any man is in Christ he is a new
creation," _he is reborn_, as after initiation, for the Lord is
spirit--the spirit of man. Paul was the only one of the apostles
who had understood the secret ideas underlying the teachings of
Jesus, although he had never met him.
But Paul himself was not infallible or perfect.
Bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform, one embracing the
whole of humanity, he sincerely set his own doctrines far above
the wisdom of the ages, above the ancient Mysteries and final
revelation to the Epoptę.
Another proof that Paul belonged to the circle of the "Initiates"
lies in the following fact. The apostle had his head shorn at
Ceuchreę, where Lucius (_Apuleius_) was initiated, because "he had
a vow." The Nazars--or set apart--as we see in the Jewish
Scriptures, had to cut their hair, which they wore long, and which
"no razor touched" at any other time, and sacrifice it on the
altar of initiation. And the Nazars were a class of Chaldęan
Theurgists or Initiates.
It is shown in _Isis Unveiled_ that Jesus belonged to this class.
Paul declares that: "According to the grace of God which is given
unto me, as a wise _master-builder_, I have laid the foundation."
(_I. Corinth._, iii. 10.)
This expression, master-builder, used only _once_ in the whole
_Bible_, and by Paul, may be considered as a whole revelation. In
the Mysteries, the third part of the sacred rites was called
Epopteia, or revelation, reception into the secrets. In substance
it means the highest stage of clairvoyance--the divine; ... but the
real significance of the word is "overseeing," from {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}--"I see
myself." In Sanskrit the root _āp_ had the same meaning
originally, though now it is understood as meaning "to
obtain."(224)
The word _epopteia_ is compound, from {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} "upon," and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} "to
look," or an overseer, an inspector--also used for a master-
builder. The title of master-mason, in Freemasonry, is derived
from this, in the sense used in the Mysteries. Therefore, when
Paul entitles himself a "master-builder," he is using a word pre-
eminently kabalistic, theurgic, and masonic, and one which no
other apostle uses. He thus declares himself an _adept_, having
the right to initiate others.
If we search in this direction, with those sure guides, the
Grecian Mysteries and the _Kabalah_, before us, it will be easy to
find the secret reason why Paul was so persecuted and hated by
Peter, John, and James. The author of the _Revelation_ was a
Jewish Kabalist, _pur sang_, with all the hatred inherited by him
from his forefathers toward the pagan Mysteries.(225) His jealousy
during the life of Jesus extended even to Peter; and it is but
after the death of their common master that we see the two
apostles--the former of whom wore the Mitre and the Petaloon of the
Jewish Rabbis--preach so zealously the rite of circumcision. In the
eyes of Peter, Paul, who had humiliated him, and whom he felt so
much his superior in "Greek learning" and philosophy, must have
naturally appeared as a magician, a man polluted with the
"Gnosis," with the "wisdom" of the Greek Mysteries--hence, perhaps,
"Simon the Magician" as a comparison, not a nickname.(226)
SECTION XVI. PETER A JEWISH KABALIST, NOT AN INITIATE.
As to Peter, biblical criticism has shown that in all probability he had o more to do with the foundation of the Latin Church at Rome than to urnish the pretext, so readily seized upon by the cunning Irenęus, of ndowing the Church with a new name for the Apostle--Petra or Kiffa--a name hich, by an easy play upon words, could be readily connected with
Petroma. The Petroma was a pair of stone tablets used by the Hierophants t the Initiations, during the final Mystery. In this lies concealed the ecret of the Vatican claim to the seat of Peter. As already quoted in
_Isis Unveiled_, ii. 92:
In the Oriental countries the designation Peter (in Phoenician and
Chaldaic an interpreter), appears to have been the title of this
personage.(227)
So far, and as the "interpreters" of _Neo_-Christianism, the Popes have ost undeniably the right to call themselves successors to the title of
Peter, but hardly the successors to, least of all the interpreters of, the octrines of Jesus, the Christ; for there is the Oriental Church, older nd far purer than the Roman hierarchy, which, having ever faithfully held o the primitive teachings of the Apostles, is known historically to have efused to follow the Latin seceders from the original Apostolic Church, hough, curiously enough, she is still referred to by her Roman sister as he "Schismatic" Church. It is useless to repeat the reasons for the tatements above made, as they may all be found in _Isis Unveiled_,(228) here the words, Peter, Patar, and Pitar, are explained, and the origin of he "Seat of Pitah" is shown. The reader will find upon referring to the bove pages that an inscription was found on the coffin of Queen Mentuhept f the Eleventh Dynasty (2250 B.C. according to Bunsen), which in its turn as shown to have been transcribed from the Seventeenth Chapter of the
_Book of the Dead_, dating certainly not later than 4500 B.C. or 496 years efore the World's Creation, in the Genesiacal chronology. Nevertheless,
Baron Bunsen shows the group of the hieroglyphics given (_Peter-ref-su_, he "Mystery Word") and the sacred formulary mixed up with a whole series f glosses and various interpretations on a monument 4,000 years old.
This is identical with saying that the record (the true
interpretation) was at that time no longer intelligible.... We beg
our readers to understand that a sacred text, a hymn, containing
the words of a departed spirit, existed in such a state, about
4,000 years ago, as to be all but unintelligible to royal
scribes.(229)
"Unintelligible" to the non-initiated--this is certain; and it is so proved y the confused and contradictory glosses. Yet there can be no doubt that t was--for it _still is_--a mystery word. The Baron further explains:
It appears to me that our PTR is literally the old Aramaic and
Hebrew "Patar," which occurs in the history of Joseph as the
specific word for _interpreting_, whence also Pitrum is the term
for interpretation of a text, a dream.(230)
This word, PTR, was partially interpreted owing to another word similarly ritten in another group of hieroglyphics, on a stele, the glyph used for t being an opened eye, interpreted by De Rougé(231) as "to appear," and y Bunsen as "illuminator," which is more correct. However it may be, the ord Patar, or Peter, would locate both master and disciple in the circle f initiation, and connect them with the Secret Doctrine; while in the
"Seat of Peter" we can hardly help seeing a connection with Petroma, the ouble set of stone tablets used by the Hierophant at the Supreme
Initiation during the final Mystery, as already stated, also with the
Pītha-sthāna (seat, or the place of a seat), a term used in the Mysteries f the Tāntriks in India, in which the limbs of Satī are scattered and hen united again, as those of Osiris by Isis.(232) Pītha is a Sanskrit ord, and is also used to designate the seat of the initiating Lama.
Whether all the above terms are due simply to "coincidences" or otherwise s left to the decision of our learned Symbologists and Philologists. We tate facts--and nothing more. Many other writers, far more learned and ntitled to be heard than the author has ever claimed to be, have ufficiently demonstrated that Peter never had anything to do with the oundation of the Latin Church; that his supposed name Petra or Kiffa, lso the whole story of his Apostleship at Rome, are simply a play on the erm, which meant in every country, in one or another form, the Hierophant r Interpreter of the Mysteries; and that finally, far from dying a martyr t Rome, where he had probably never been, he died at a good old age at
Babylon. In _Sepher Toldoth Jeshu_, a Hebrew manuscript of great ntiquity--evidently an original and very precious document, if one may udge from the care the Jews took to hide it from the Christians--Simon
(Peter) is referred to as "a faithful servant of God," who passed his life n austerities and meditation, a Kabalist and a Nazarene who lived at
Babylon "at the top of a tower, composed hymns, preached charity," and ied there.
SECTION XVII. APOLLONIUS OF TYANA.
It is said in _Isis Unveiled_ that the greatest teachers of divinity agree hat nearly all ancient books were written symbolically and in a language ntelligible only to the Initiated. The biographical sketch of Apollonius f Tyana affords an example. As every Kabalist knows, it embraces the hole of the Hermetic Philosophy, being a counterpart in many respects of he traditions left us of King Solomon. It reads like a fairy story, but, s in the case of the latter, sometimes facts and historical events are resented to the world under the colours of fiction. The journey to India epresents in its every stage, though of course allegorically, the trials f a Neophyte, giving at the same time a geographical and topographical dea of a certain country as it is even now, if one knows where to look or it. The long discourses of Apollonius with the Brāhmans, their sage dvice, and the dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus would, if nterpreted, give the Esoteric Catechism. His visit to the empire of the ise men, his interview with their king Hiarchas, the oracle of
Amphiaraus, explain symbolically many of the secret dogmas of Hermes--in he generic sense of the name--and of Occultism. Wonderful is this to elate, and were not the statement supported by numerous calculations lready made, and the secret already half revealed, the writer would never ave dared to say it. The travels of the great Magus are correctly, though llegorically described--that is to say, all that is related by Damis had ctually taken place--but the narrative is based upon the Zodiacal signs.
As _transliterated_ by Damis under the guidance of Apollonius and
_translated_ by Philostratus, it is a marvel indeed. At the conclusion of hat may now be related of the wonderful Adept of Tyana our meaning will ecome clearer. Suffice it to say for the present that the dialogues poken of would disclose, if correctly understood, some of the most mportant secrets of Nature. Éliphas Lévi points out the great resemblance hich exists between King Hiarchus and the fabulous Hiram, from whom
Solomon procured the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir. But he keeps ilent as to another resemblance of which, as a learned Kabalist, he could ot be ignorant. Moreover, according to his invariable custom, he ystifies the reader more than he teaches him, divulging nothing and eading him off the right track.
Like most of the historical heroes of hoary antiquity, whose lives and orks strongly differ from those of commonplace humanity, Apollonius is to his day a riddle, which has, so far, found no OEdipus. His existence is urrounded with such a veil of mystery that he is often mistaken for a yth. But according to every law of logic and reason, it is quite clear hat Apollonius should never be regarded in such a light. If the Tyanean
Theurgist may be put down as a fabulous character, then history has no ight to her Cęsars and Alexanders. It is quite true that this Sage, who tands unrivalled in his thaumaturgical powers to this day--on evidence istorically attested--came into the arena of public life no one seems to now whence, and disappeared from it, no one seems to know whither. But he reasons for this are evident. Every means was used--especially during he fourth and fifth centuries of our era--to sweep from people's minds the emembrance of this great and holy man. The circulation of his iographies, which were many and enthusiastic, was prevented by the
Christians, and for a very good reason, as we shall see. The diary of
Damis survived most miraculously, and remained alone to tell the tale. But t must not be forgotten that Justin Martyr often speaks of Apollonius, nd the character and truthfulness of this good man are unimpeachable, the ore in that he had good reasons to feel bewildered. Nor can it be denied hat there is hardly a Church Father of the first six centuries that left
Apollonius unnoticed. Only, according to invariable Christian customs of harity, their pens were dipped as usual in the blackest ink of _odium heologicum_, intolerance and one-sidedness. St. Jerome (Hieronymus) gives t length the story of St. John's alleged contest with the Sage of Tyana--a ompetition of "miracles"--in which, of course, the truthful saint(233) escribes in glowing colours the defeat of Apollonius, and seeks orroboration in St. John's _Apocrypha_ proclaimed doubtful _even_ by the
Church.(234)
Therefore it is that nobody can say where or when Apollonius was born, and veryone is equally ignorant of the date at which, and of the place where e died. Some think he was eighty or ninety years old at the time of his eath, others that he was one hundred or even one hundred and seventeen.
But, whether he ended his days at Ephesus in the year 96 A.D., as some ay, or whether the event took place at Lindus in the temple of Pallas-
Athene, or whether again he disappeared from the temple of Dictynna, or hether, as others maintain, he did not die at all, but when a hundred ears old renewed his life by Magic, and went on working for the benefit f humanity, no one can tell. The Secret Records alone have noted his irth and subsequent career. But then--"who hath believed in _that_ eport?"
All that history knows is that Apollonius was the enthusiastic founder of new school of contemplation. Perhaps less metaphorical and more ractical than Jesus, he nevertheless inculcated the same quintessence of pirituality, the same high moral truths. He is accused of having confined hem to the higher classes of society instead of doing what Buddha and
Jesus did, instead of preaching them to the poor and the afflicted. Of his easons for acting in such an exclusive way it is impossible to judge at o late a date. But Karmic law seems to be mixed up with it. Born, as we re told, among the aristocracy, it is very likely that he desired to inish the work undone in this particular direction by his predecessor, nd sought to offer "peace on earth and good will" to _all_ men, and not lone to the outcast and the criminal. Therefore he associated with the ings and the mighty ones of the age. Nevertheless, the three "miracle- orkers" exhibited striking similarity of purpose. Like Jesus and like
Buddha, Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy of all outward show of iety, all display of useless religious ceremonies, bigotry and hypocrisy.
That his "miracles" were more wonderful, more varied, and far better ttested in History than any others, is also true. Materialism denies; but vidence, and the affirmations of even the Church herself, however much he s branded by her, show this to be the fact.(235)
The calumnies set afloat against Apollonius were as numerous as
they were false. So late as eighteen centuries after his death he
was defamed by Bishop Douglas in his work against miracles. In
this the Right Reverend bishop crushed himself against historical
facts. For it is not in the _miracles_, but in the identity of
ideas and doctrines preached that we have to look for a similarity
between Buddha, Jesus and Apollonius. If we study the question
with a dispassionate mind, we shall soon perceive that the ethics
of Gautama, Plato, Apollonius, Jesus, Ammonius Sakkas, and his
disciples, were all based on the same mystic philosophy--that all
worshipped one divine Ideal, whether they considered it as the
"Father" of humanity, who lives in man, as man lives in Him, or as
the Incomprehensible Creative Principle. All led God-like lives.
Ammonius, speaking of his philosophy, taught that their school
dated from the days of Hermes, who brought his wisdom from India.
It was the same mystical contemplation throughout as that of the
Yogin: the communion of the Brāhman with his own luminous Self--the
"Ātman."(236)
The groundwork of the Eclectic School is thus shown to be identical with he doctrines of the Yogīs--the Hindu Mystics; it is proved that it had a ommon origin, from the same source as the earlier Buddhism of Gautama and f his Arhats.
The _Ineffable Name_ in the search for which so many
Kabalists--unacquainted with any Oriental or even European
Adepts--vainly consume their knowledge and lives, dwells latent in
the heart of every man. This mirific name which, according to the
most ancient oracles, "rushes into the infinite worlds,
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH YPOGEGRAMMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}," can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular
initiation, and through the "small voice" which Elijah heard in
the cave of Horeb, the mount of God. And "when Elijah heard it he
wrapped his _face in his mantle_ and stood in the entering of the
cave. And behold there came _the_ voice."
When Apollonius of Tyana desired to hear the "small voice," he
used to wrap himself up entirely in a mantle of fine wool, on
which he placed both his feet, after having performed certain
magnetic passes, and pronounced not the "name" but an invocation
well known to every adept. Then he drew the mantle over his head
and face, and his translucid or astral spirit was free. On
ordinary occasions he no more wore wool than the priests of the
temples. The possession of the secret combination of the "name"
gave the Hierophant supreme power over every being, human or
otherwise, inferior to himself in soul-strength.(237)
To whatever school he belonged, this fact is certain, that Apollonius of
Tyana left an imperishable name behind him. Hundreds of works were written pon this wonderful man; historians have seriously discussed him; retentious fools, unable to come to any conclusion about the Sage, have ried to deny his very existence. As to the Church, although she execrates is memory, she has ever tried to present him in the light of a historical haracter. Her policy now seems to be to direct the impression left by him nto another channel--a well known and a very old stratagem. The Jesuits, or instance, while admitting his "miracles," have set going a double urrent of thought, and they have succeeded, as they succeed in all they ndertake. Apollonius is represented by one party as an obedient "medium f Satan," surrounding his theurgical powers by a most wonderful and azzling light; while the other party professes to regard the whole matter s a clever romance, written with a predetermined object in view.
In his voluminous Memoirs of Satan, the Marquis de Mirville, in the course f his pleading for the recognition of the enemy of God as the producer of piritual phenomena, devotes a whole chapter to this great Adept. The ollowing translation of passages in his book unveils the whole plot. The eader is asked to bear in mind that the Marquis wrote every one of his orks under the auspices and authorisation of the Holy See of Rome.
It would be to leave the first century incomplete and to offer an
insult to the memory of St. John, to pass over in silence the name
of one who had the honour of being his special antagonist, as
Simon was that of St. Peter, Elymas that of Paul, etc. In the
first years of the Christian era, ... there appeared at Tyana in
Cappadocia one of those extraordinary men of whom the Pythagorean
School was so very lavish. As great a traveller as was his master,
initiated in all the secret doctrines of India, Egypt and Chaldęa,
endowed, therefore, with all the theurgic powers of the ancient
Magi, he bewildered, each in its turn, all the countries which he
visited, and which all--we are obliged to admit--seem to have
blessed his memory. We could not doubt this fact without
repudiating real historical records. The details of his life are
transmitted to us by a historian of the fourth century
(Philostratus), himself the translator of a diary that recorded
day by day the life of the philosopher, written by Damis, his
disciple and intimate friend.(238)
De Mirville admits the possibility of _some_ exaggerations in both ecorder and translator; but he "does not believe they hold a very wide pace in the narrative." Therefore, he regrets to find the Abbé Freppel
"in his eloquent _Essays_,(239) calling the diary of Damis a romance."
Why?
[Because] the orator bases his opinion on the perfect similitude,
calculated as he imagines, of that legend with the life of the
Saviour. But in studying the subject more profoundly, he [Abbé
Freppel] can convince himself that neither Apollonius, nor Damis,
nor again Philostratus ever claimed a greater honour than a
likeness to St. John. This programme was in itself sufficiently
fascinating, and the travesty as sufficiently scandalous; for
owing to magic arts Apollonius had succeeded in counterbalancing,
in appearance, several of the miracles at Ephesus [produced by St.
John], etc.(240)
The _anguis in herba_ has shown its head. It is the perfect, the wonderful imilitude of the life of Apollonius with that of the Saviour that places he Church between Scylla and Charybdis. To deny the life and the
"miracles" of the former, would amount to denying the trustworthiness of he same Apostles and patristic writers on whose evidence is built the ife of Jesus himself. To father the Adept's beneficent deeds, his aisings of the dead, acts of charity, healing powers, etc., on the "old nemy" would be rather dangerous at this time. Hence the stratagem to onfuse the ideas of those who rely upon authorities and criticisms. The
Church is far more clear-sighted than any of our great historians. The
Church _knows_ that to deny the existence of that Adept would lead her to enying the Emperor Vespasian and _his_ Historians, the Emperors Alexander
Severus and Aurelianus and _their_ Historians, and finally to deny Jesus nd every evidence about Him, thus preparing the way to her flock for inally denying _herself_. It becomes interesting to learn what she says n this emergency, through her chosen speaker, De Mirville. It is as ollows:
What is there so new and so impossible in the narrative of Damis oncerning their voyages to the countries of the Chaldees and the
Gymnosophists?--he asks. Try to recall, before denying, what were in those ays those countries of marvels _par excellence_, as also the testimony of uch men as Pythagoras, Empedocles and Democritus, who ought to be allowed o have known what they were writing about. With what have we finally to eproach Apollonius? Is it for having made, as the Oracles did, a series f prophecies and predictions wonderfully verified? No: because, better tudied now, we _know_ what they are.(241) The Oracles have now become to s, what they were to every one during the past century, from Van Dale to
Fontenelle. Is it for having been endowed with second sight, and having ad visions at a distance?(242) No; for such phenomena are at the present ay endemical in half Europe. Is it for having boasted of his knowledge of very existing language under the sun, without having ever learned one of hem? But who can be ignorant of the fact that this is the best riterion(243) of the presence and assistance of a spirit of whatever ature it may be? Or is it for having believed in transmigration
(reincarnation)? It is still believed in (by millions) in our day. No one as any idea of the number of the men of Science who long for the re- stablishment of the Druidical Religion and of the Mysteries of
Pythagoras. Or is it for having exorcised the demons and the plague? The
Egyptians, the Etruscans and all the Roman Pontiffs had done so long efore.(244) For having conversed with the dead? We do the same to-day, or elieve we do so--which is all the same. For having believed in the
Empuses? Where is the Demonologist that does not know that the Empuse is he "south demon" referred to in David's _Psalms_, and dreaded then as it s feared even now in all Northern Europe?(245) For having made himself nvisible at will? It is one of the achievements of mesmerism. For having ppeared after his (supposed) death to the Emperor Aurelian above the city alls of Tyana, and for having compelled him thereby to raise the siege of hat town? Such was the mission of every hero beyond the tomb, and the eason of the worship vowed to the Manes.(246) For having descended into he famous den of Trophonius, and taken from it an old book preserved for ears after by the Emperor Adrian in his Antium library? The trustworthy nd sober Pausanias had descended into the same den before Apollonius, and ame back no less a believer. For having disappeared at his death? Yes, ike Romulus, like Votan, like Lycurgus, like Pythagoras,(247) always nder the most mysterious circumstances, ever attended by apparitions, evelations, etc. Let us stop here and repeat once more: had the life of
Apollonius been simple _romance_, he would never have attained such a elebrity during his lifetime or created such a numerous sect, one so nthusiastic after his death.
And, to add to this, had all this been a romance, never would a Caracalla ave raised a heroön to his memory(248) or Alexander, Severus have placed is bust between those of two Demi-Gods and of the true God,(249) or an
Empress have corresponded with him. Hardly rested from the hardships of he siege at Jerusalem, Titus would not have hastened to write to
Apollonius a letter, asking to meet him at Argos and adding that his ather and himself (Titus) owed all to him, the great Apollonius, and hat, therefore, his first thought was for their benefactor. Nor would the
Emperor Aurelian have built a temple and a shrine to that great Sage, to hank him for his apparition and communication at Tyana. That _posthumous_ onversation, as all knew, saved the city, inasmuch as Aurelian had in onsequence raised the siege. Furthermore, had it been a romance, History ould not have had Vopiscus,(250) one of the most trustworthy Pagan
Historians, to certify to it. Finally, Apollonius would not have been the bject of the admiration of such a noble character as Epictetus, and even f several of the Fathers of the Church; Jerome for instance, in his etter moments, writing thus of Apollonius:
This travelling philosopher found something to learn wherever he
went; and profiting everywhere thus improved with every day.(251)
As to his prodigies, without wishing to fathom them, Jerome most ndeniably admits them as such; which he would assuredly never have done, ad he not been compelled to do so by facts. To end the subject, had
Apollonius been a simple hero of a romance, dramatised in the fourth entury, the Ephesians would not, in their enthusiastic gratitude, have aised to him a golden statue for all the benefits he had conferred upon hem.(252)
SECTION XVIII. FACTS UNDERLYING ADEPT BIOGRAPHIES.
The tree is known by its fruits; the nature of the Adept by his words and eeds. These words of charity and mercy, the noble advice put into the outh of Apollonius (or of his sidereal phantom), as given by Vopiscus, how the Occultists who Apollonius was. Why then call him the "Medium of
Satan" seventeen centuries later? There must be a reason, and a very otent reason, to justify and explain the secret of such a strong animus f the Church against one of the noblest men of his age. There is a reason or it, and we give it in the words of the author of the _Key to the
Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery in the Source of Measures_, and of Professor
Seyffarth. The latter analyses and explains the salient dates in the life f Jesus, and thus throws light on the conclusions of the former. We quote oth, blending the two.
According to solar months (of thirty days, one of the calendars in
use among the Hebrews) all remarkable events of the _Old
Testament_ happened on the days of the equinoxes and the
solstices; for instance, the foundations and dedications of the
temples and altars [and consecration of the tabernacle]. On the
same cardinal days, the most remarkable events of the _New
Testament_ happened; for instance, the annunciation, the birth,
the resurrection of Christ, and the birth of John the Baptist. And
thus we learn that all remarkable epochs of the _New Testament_
were typically sanctified a long time before by the _Old
Testament_, beginning at the day succeeding the end of the
Creation, which was the day of the vernal equinox. During the
crucifixion, on the 14th day of Nisan, Dionysius Areopagita saw,
in Ethiopia, an eclipse of the sun, and he said, "Now the Lord
(Jehovah) is suffering something." Then Christ arose from the dead
on the 22d March, 17 _Nisan_, Sunday, the day of the vernal
equinox (Seyf., quoting Philo de Septen)--that is, on Easter, or on
the day when the sun gives new life to the earth. The words of
John the Baptist "He must increase, but I must decrease," serve to
prove, as is affirmed by the fathers of the church, that John was
born on the longest day of the year, and Christ, who was six
months younger, on the shortest, 22d June and 22d December, the
solstices.
This only goes to show that, as to another phase, John and Jesus
were but epitomisers of the history of the same sun, under
differences of aspect or condition; and one condition following
another, of necessity, the statement, _Luke_, ix. 7, was not only
not an empty one, but it was true, that which "was said of some,
that (in Jesus) John was risen from the dead." (And this
consideration serves to explain why it has been that the _Life of
Apollonius of Tyana_, by Philostratus, has been so persistently
kept back from translation and from popular reading. Those who
have studied it in the original have been forced to the comment
that either the _Life of Apollonius_ has been taken from the _New
Testament_, or that the _New Testament_ narratives have been taken
from the _Life of Apollonius_, because of the manifest sameness of
the _means of construction_ of the narratives. The explanation is
simple enough, when it is considered that the names of _Jesus_,
Hebrew {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}, and Apollonius, or Apollo, are alike names of _the sun
in the heavens_; and necessarily the history of the one, as to his
travels through _the signs_, with the personifications of his
sufferings, triumphs and miracles, could be but the _history of
the other_, where there was a widespread, common method of
describing those travels by personification.) It seems also that,
for long afterward, all this was known to rest upon an
astronomical basis; for the secular church, so to speak, was
founded by Constantine, and the objective condition of the worship
established was that part of his decree, in which it was affirmed
that the venerable day of the _sun_ should be the day set apart
for the worship of Jesus Christ, as _Sun_-day. There is something
weird and startling in some other facts about this matter. The
prophet Daniel (_true prophet_, as says Graetz),(253) by use of
the pyramid numbers, or astrological numbers, foretold the cutting
off of the _Méshiac_, as it happened (which would go to show the
accuracy of his astronomical knowledge, if there was an eclipse of
the sun at that time).... Now, however, the temple was destroyed
in the year 71, in the month Virgo, and 71 is the Dove number, as
shown, or 71 × 5 = 355, and with _the fish_, a Jehovah number.
"Is it possible," queries further on the author, thus answering the ntimate thought of every Christian and Occultist who reads and studies is work:
Is it possible that the events of humanity do run co-ordinately
with these number forms? If so, while Jesus Christ, as an
astronomical figure, was true to all that has been advanced, and
more, possibly, He may, as a man, have filled up, under the
numbers, answers in the sea of life to predestined type. The
personality of Jesus does not appear to have been destroyed,
because, _as a condition_, he was answering to astronomical forms
and relations. The Arabian says, "Your destiny is written in the
stars."(254)
Nor is the "personality" of Apollonius "destroyed" for the same reason.
The case of Jesus covers the ground for the same possibility in the cases f all Adepts and Avatāras--such as Buddha, Shankarāchārya, Krishna, tc.--all of these as great and as historical for their respective ollowers and in their countries, as Jesus of Nazareth is now for
Christians and in this land.
But there is something more in the old literature of the early centuries.
Iamblichus wrote a biography of the great Pythagoras.
The latter so closely resembles the life of Jesus that it may be
taken for a travesty. Diogenes Laėrtius and Plutarch relate the
history of Plato according to a similar style.(255)
Why then wonder at the doubts that assail every scholar who studies all hese lives? The Church herself knew all these doubts in her early stages; nd though only one of her Popes has been known publicly and openly as a
Pagan, how many more were there who were too ambitious to reveal the ruth?
This "mystery," for mystery indeed it is to those who, not being
Initiates, fail to find the key of the perfect similitude between the ives of Pythagoras, Buddha, Apollonius, etc.--is only a natural result for hose who know that all these great characters were Initiates of the same
School. For them there is neither "travesty" nor "copy" of one from the ther; for them they are all "originals," only painted to represent one nd the same subject: the mystic, and at the same time the public, life of he Initiates sent into the world to save portions of humanity, if they ould not save the whole bulk. Hence, the same programme for all. The ssumed "immaculate origin" for each, referring to their "mystic birth" uring the Mystery of Initiation, and accepted literally by the ultitudes, encouraged in this by the better informed but ambitious lergy. Thus, the mother of each one of them was declared a virgin, onceiving her son directly by the Holy Spirit of God; and the Sons, in onsequence, were the "Sons of God," though in truth, none of them was any ore entitled to such recognition than were the rest of his brother
Initiates, for they were all--so far as their mystic lives were oncerned--only "the epitomisers of the history of the same Sun," which pitome is another mystery within the Mystery. The biographies of the xternal personalities bearing the names of such heroes have nothing to do ith, and are quite independent of the private lives of the heroes, being nly the mystic records of their public and, parallel therewith, of their
_inner_ lives, in their characters as Neophytes and Initiates. Hence, the anifest sameness of the means of construction of their respective iographies. From the beginning of Humanity the Cross, or Man, with his rms stretched out horizontally, typifying his kosmic origin, was onnected with his psychic nature and with the struggles which lead to
Initiation. But, if it is once shown that (_a_) every true Adept had, and till has, to pass through the seven and the twelve trials of Initiation, ymbolised by the twelve labours of Hercules; (_b_) that the day of his eal birth is regarded as that day when he is born into the world piritually, his very age being counted from the hour of his second birth, hich makes of him a "twice-born," a Dvija or Initiate, on which day he is ndeed born of a God and from an immaculate Mother; and (_c_) that the rials of all these personages are made to correspond with the Esoteric ignificance of initiatory rites--all of which corresponded to the twelve odiacal signs--then every one will see the meaning of the travels of all hose heroes through the signs of the Sun in Heaven; and that they are in ach individual case a personification of the "sufferings, triumphs and iracles" of an Adept, before and after his Initiation. When to the world t large all this is explained, then also the mystery of all those lives, o closely resembling each other that the history of one seems to be the istory of the other, and _vice versā_, will, like everything else, become lain.
Take an instance: The legends--for they are _all_ legends for exoteric urposes, whatever may be the denials in one case--of the lives of Krishna,
Hercules, Pythagoras, Buddha, Jesus, Apollonius, Chaitanya. On the worldly lane, their biographies, if written by one outside the circle, would iffer greatly from what we read of them in the narratives that are reserved of their mystic lives. Nevertheless, however much masked and idden from profane gaze, the chief features of such lives will all be ound there in common. Each of those characters is represented as a ivinely begotten Soter (Saviour), a title bestowed on deities, great ings and heroes; everyone of them, whether at their birth or afterwards, s searched for, and threatened with death (yet never killed) by an pposing power (the world of Matter and Illusion), whether it be called a ing Kansa, king Herod, or king Māra (the Evil Power). They are all empted, persecuted and finally said to have been murdered at the end of he rite of Initiation, _i.e._, in their _physical_ personalities, of hich they are supposed to have been rid for ever after _spiritual_
"resurrection" or "birth." And having thus come to an end by this supposed iolent death, they all descend to the Nether World, the Pit or Hell--the
Kingdom of Temptation, Lust and Matter, therefore of Darkness, whence eturning, having overcome the "Chrest-condition," they are glorified and ecome "Gods."
It is not in the course of their everyday life, then, that the great imilarity is to be sought, but in their inner state and in the most mportant events of their career as religious teachers. All this is onnected with, and built upon, an astronomical basis, which serves, at he same time, as a foundation for the representation of the degrees and rials of Initiation: descent into the Kingdom of Darkness and Matter,
_for the last time_, to emerge therefrom as "Suns of Righteousness," is he most important of these and, therefore, is found in the history of all he Soters--from Orpheus and Hercules, down to Krishna and Christ. Says
Euripides:
Heracles, who has gone from the chambers of earth,
Leaving the nether home of Pluto.(256)
And Virgil writes:
At Thee the Stygian lakes trembled; Thee the janitor of Orcus
Feared.... Thee not even Typhon frightened....
Hail, _true son of Jove_, glory added to the Gods.(257)
Orpheus seeks, in the kingdom of Pluto, Eurydice, his lost Soul; Krishna oes down into the infernal regions and rescues therefrom his six rothers, he being the seventh Principle; a transparent allegory of his ecoming a "perfect Initiate," the whole of the six Principles merging nto the seventh. Jesus is made to descend into the kingdom of Satan to ave the soul of Adam, or the symbol of material physical humanity.
Have any of our learned Orientalists ever thought of searching for the rigin of this allegory, for the parent "Seed" of that "Tree of Life" hich bears such verdant boughs since it was first planted on earth by the and of its "Builders"? We fear not. Yet it is found, as is now shown, ven in the exoteric, distorted interpretations of the _Vedas_--of the _Rig
Veda_, the oldest, the most trustworthy of all the four--this root and seed f all future Initiate-Saviours being called in it the Visvakarmā, the
"Father" Principle, "beyond the comprehension of mortals;" in the _second_ tage Sūrya, the "Son," who offers Himself as a sacrifice to Himself; in he third, the Initiate, who sacrifices His _physical_ to His _spiritual_
Self. It is in Visvakarmā, the "omnificent," who becomes (mystically)
Vikkartana, the "sun shorn of his beams," who suffers for his too ardent ature, and then becomes glorified (by purification), that the keynote of he Initiation into the greatest Mystery of Nature was struck. Hence the ecret of the wonderful "similarity."
All this is allegorical and mystical, and yet perfectly comprehensible and lain to any student of Eastern Occultism, even superficially acquainted ith the Mysteries of Initiation. In our objective Universe of Matter and alse appearances the Sun is the most fitting emblem of the life-giving, eneficent Deity. In the subjective, boundless World of Spirit and Reality he bright luminary has another and a mystical significance, which cannot e fully given to the public. The so-called "idolatrous" Pārsīs and Hindus re certainly nearer the truth in their religious reverence for the Sun, han the cold, ever-analysing, and as ever-mistaken, public is prepared to elieve, at present. The Theosophists, who will be alone able to take in he meaning, may be told that the Sun is the external manifestation of the
Seventh Principle of our Planetary System, while the Moon is its Fourth
Principle, shining in the borrowed robes of her master, saturated with and eflecting every passionate impulse and evil desire of her grossly aterial body, Earth. The whole cycle of Adeptship and Initiation and all ts mysteries are connected with, and subservient to, these two and the
Seven Planets. Spiritual clairvoyance is derived from the Sun; all psychic tates, diseases, and even lunacy, proceed from the Moon.
According even to the data of History--her conclusions being remarkably rroneous while her premises are mostly correct--there is an extraordinary greement between the "legends" of every Founder of a Religion (and also etween the rites and dogmas of all) and the names and course of onstellations headed by the Sun. It does not follow, however, because of his, that both Founders and their Religions should be, the one myths, and he other superstitions. They are, one and all, the different versions of he same natural primeval Mystery, on which the Wisdom-Religion was based, nd the development of its Adepts subsequently framed.
And now once more we have to beg the reader not to lend an ear to the harge--against Theosophy in general and the writer in particular--of isrespect toward one of the greatest and noblest characters in the
History of Adeptship--Jesus of Nazareth--nor even of hatred to the Church.
The expression of truth and fact can hardly be regarded, with any pproximation to justice, as blasphemy or hatred. The whole question hangs pon the solution of that one point: Was Jesus as "Son of God" and
"Saviour" of Mankind, unique in the World's annals? Was His case--among so any similar claims--the only exceptional and unprecedented one; His birth he sole supernaturally immaculate; and were all others, as maintained by he Church, but blasphemous Satanic copies and plagiarisms by nticipation? Or was He only the "son of his deeds," a pre-eminently holy an, and a reformer, one of many, who paid with His life for the resumption of endeavouring, in the face of ignorance and despotic power, o enlighten mankind and make its burden lighter by His Ethics and
Philosophy? The first necessitates a blind, all-resisting faith; the atter is suggested to every one by reason and logic. Moreover, has the
Church always believed as she does now--or rather, as she pretends she oes, in order to be thus justified in directing her anathema against hose who disagree with her--or has she passed through the same throes of oubt, nay, of secret denial and unbelief, suppressed only by the force of mbition and love of power?
The question must be answered in the affirmative as to the second lternative. It is an irrefutable conclusion, and a natural inference ased on facts known from historical records. Leaving for the present ntouched the lives of many Popes and Saints that loudly belied their laims to infallibility and holiness, let the reader turn to
Ecclesiastical History, the records of the growth and progress of the
Christian Church (not of Christianity), and he will find the answer on hose pages. Says a writer:
The Church has known too well the suggestions of freethought
created by enquiry, as also all those doubts that provoke her
anger to-day; and the "sacred truths" she would promulgate have
been in turn admitted and repudiated, transformed and altered,
amplified and curtailed, by the dignitaries of the Church
hierarchy, even as regards the most fundamental dogmas.
Where is that God or Hero whose origin, biography, and genealogy were more azy, or more difficult to define and finally agree upon than those of
Jesus? How was the now irrevocable dogma with regard to His true nature ettled at last? By His mother, according to the Evangelists, He was a an--a simple mortal man; by His Father He is God! But how? Is He then man r God, or is He both at the same time? asks the perplexed writer. Truly he propositions offered on this point of the doctrine have caused floods f ink and blood to be shed, in turn, on poor Humanity, and still the oubts are not at rest. In this, as in everything else, the wise Church
Councils have contradicted themselves and changed their minds a number of imes. Let us recapitulate and throw a glance at the texts offered for our nspection. This is History.
The Bishop Paul of Samosata denied the divinity of Christ at the first
Council of Antioch; at the very origin and birth of theological
Christianity, He was called "Son of God" merely on account of His holiness nd good deeds. His blood was corruptible in the Sacrament of the
Eucharist.
At the Council of Nicęa, held A.D. 325, Arius came out with his premisses, hich nearly broke asunder the Catholic Union.
Seventeen bishops defended the doctrines of Arius, who was exiled for hem. Nevertheless, thirty years after, A.D. 355, at the Council of Milan, hree hundred bishops signed a letter of adherence to the Arian views, otwithstanding that ten years earlier, A.D. 345, at a new Council of
Antioch, the Eusebians had proclaimed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God nd One with His Father.
At the Council of Sirmium, A.D. 357, the "Son" had become no longer onsubstantial. The Anomęans, who denied that consubstantiality, and the
Arians were triumphant. A year later, at the second Council of Ancyra, it as decreed that the "Son was not consubstantial but only similar to the
Father in his substance." Pope Liberius ratified the decision.
During several centuries the Councils fought and quarrelled, supporting he most contradictory and opposite views, the fruit of their laborious ravail being the Holy Trinity, which, Minerva-like, issued forth from the heological brain, armed with all the thunders of the Church. The new ystery was ushered into the world amid some terrible strifes, in which urder and other crimes had a high hand. At the Council of Saragossa, A.D.
380, it was proclaimed that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and he same Person, Christ's human nature being merely an "illusion"--an echo f the Avatāric Hindu doctrine. "Once upon this slippery path the Fathers ad to slide down _ad absurdum_--which they did not fail of doing." How eny human nature in him who was born of a woman? The only wise remark ade during one of the Councils of Constantinople came from Eutyches, who as bold enough to say: "May God preserve me from reasoning on the nature f my God"--for which he was excommunicated by Pope Flavius.
At the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 449, Eutyches had his revenge. As
Eusebius, the veracious Bishop of Cęsarea, was forcing him into the dmission of _two_ distinct natures in Jesus Christ, the Council rebelled gainst him and it was proposed that Eusebius should be burned alive. The ishops arose like one man, and with fists clenched, foaming with rage, emanded that Eusebius should be torn into two halves, and be dealt by as e would deal with Jesus, whose nature he divided. Eutyches was re- stablished in his power and office, Eusebius and Flavius deposed. Then he two parties attacked each other most violently and fought. St. Flavius as so ill-treated by Bishop Diodorus, who assaulted and kicked him, that e died a few days later from the injuries inflicted.
Every incongruity was courted in these Councils, and the result is the resent living paradoxes called Church dogmas. For instance, at the first
Council of Ancyra, A.D. 314, it was asked, "In baptizing a woman with hild, is the unborn baby also baptized by the fact?" The Council answered n the negative; because, as was alleged, "the person thus receiving aptism must be a consenting party, which is impossible to the child in ts mother's womb." Thus then unconsciousness is a canonical obstacle to aptism, and thus no child baptised nowadays is baptised at all in fact.
And then what becomes of the tens of thousands of starving heathen babies aptised by the missionaries during famines, and otherwise surreptitiously
"saved" by the too zealous Padres? Follow one after another the debates nd decisions of the numberless Councils, and behold on what a jumble of ontradictions the present infallible and Apostolic Church is built!
And now we can see how greatly paradoxical, when taken literally, is the ssertion in _Genesis_: "God created man in his own image." Besides the laring fact that it is not the Adam of dust (of Chapter ii.), who is thus ade in the divine image, but the Divine Androgyne (of Chapter i.), or
Adam Kadmon, one can see for oneself that God--the God of the Christians at ny rate--was created by man in his own image, amid the kicks, blows and urders of the early Councils.
A curious fact, one that throws a flood of light on the claim that Jesus as an Initiate and a martyred Adept, is given in the work, (already so ften referred to) which may be called "a mathematical revelation".--_The
Source of Measures._
Attention is called to the part of the 46th verse of the 27th
Chapter of Matthew, as follows: "Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?--that
is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Of course,
our versions are taken from the original _Greek_ manuscripts (the
reason why we have no original Hebrew manuscripts concerning these
occurrences being because the enigmas in Hebrew would betray
themselves on comparison with the sources of their derivation, the
_Old Testament_). The Greek manuscripts, without exception, give
these words as--
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}
They are _Hebrew words_, rendered into the _Greek_, and in Hebrew
are as follows:
{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} {~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER HET~} {~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER HET~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}
The Scripture of these words says, "that is to say, My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" as their proper translation. Here
then are the words, beyond all dispute; and beyond all question,
such is the interpretation given of them by Scripture. Now the
words will not bear this interpretation, and it is a false
rendering. The true meaning is _just the opposite of the one
given_, and is--
_My God, my God, how thou dost glorify me!_
But even more, for while _lama_ is _why_, or _how_, as a verbal it
connects the idea of _to dazzle_, or adverbially, it could run
"_how dazzlingly_," and so on. To the unwary reader this
interpretation is enforced, and made to answer, as it were, to the
fulfilment of a prophetic utterance, by a marginal reference to
the _first_ verse of the _twenty-second_ Psalm, which reads:
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
The Hebrew of this verse for these words is--
{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} {~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} {~HEBREW LETTER AYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER ZAYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}
as to which the reference is correct, and the interpretation sound
and good, but with an utterly different word. The words are--
_Eli, Eli, lamah azabvtha-ni?_
No wit of man, however scholarly, can save this passage from
_falseness of rendering_ on its face; and as so, it becomes a most
terrible blow upon the proper first-face sacredness of the
recital.(258)
For ten years or more, sat the revisers (?) of the _Bible_, a most mposing and solemn array of the learned of the land, the greatest Hebrew nd Greek scholars of England, purporting to correct the mistakes and lunders, the sins of omission and of commission of their less learned redecessors, the translators of the Bible. Are we going to be told that one of them saw the glaring difference between the Hebrew words in
_Psalm_ xxii., _azabvtha-ni_, and _sabachthani_ in _Matthew_; that they ere not aware of the deliberate falsification?
For "falsification" it was. And if we are asked the reason why the early
Church Fathers resorted to it, the answer is plain: Because the
_Sacramental_ words belonged in their true rendering to Pagan temple ites. They were pronounced after the terrible trials of Initiation, and ere still fresh in the memory of some of the "Fathers" when the _Gospel f Matthew_ was edited into the Greek language. Because, finally, many of he Hierophants of the Mysteries, and many more of the Initiates were till living in those days, and the sentence rendered in its true words ould class Jesus directly with the simple Initiates. The words "My God, y Sun, thou hast poured thy radiance upon me!" were the final words that oncluded the thanksgiving prayer of the Initiate, "the Son and the lorified Elect of the Sun." In Egypt we find to this day carvings and aintings that represent the rite. The candidate is between two divine ponsors; one "Osiris-Sun" with the head of a hawk, representing life, the ther Mercury--the ibis-headed, psychopompic genius, who guides the Souls fter death to their new abode, Hades--standing for the death of the hysical body, figuratively. Both are shown pouring the "stream of life," he water of purification, on the head of the Initiate, the two streams of hich, interlacing, form a cross. The better to conceal the truth, this
_basso-relievo_ has also been explained as a "Pagan presentment of a
Christian truth." The Chevalier des Mousseaux calls this Mercury:
The assessor of Osiris-Sol, as St. Michael is the assessor,
Ferouer, of the Word.
The monogram of Chrestos and the Labarum, the standard of Constantine--who, y the by, died a Pagan and was never baptised--is a symbol derived from he above rite and also denotes "life and death." Long before the sign of he Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret ign of recognition among Neophytes and Adepts. Say Éliphas Lévi:
The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong
exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the
oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by
the occult verse of the _Pater_, to which we have called attention
in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it,
or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning:
one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to
neophytes and the profane.(259)
One can understand now why the _Gospel of Matthew_, the Evangel of the
Ebionites, has been for ever excluded in its Hebrew form from the world's urious gaze.
Jerome found the authentic and original Evangel written in Hebrew,
by Matthew the Publican, at the library collected at Cęsarea by
the martyr Pamphilius. "_I received permission from the
Nazaręans_, who at Beroea of Syria used this (gospel) to translate
it," he writes toward the end of the fourth century.(260) "In the
Evangel which the _Nazarenes_ and _Ebionites_ use," said Jerome,
"which recently I translated from Hebrew into Greek, and which is
called by most persons the _genuine_ gospel of Matthew," etc.(261)
That the apostles had received a "secret doctrine" from Jesus, and
that he himself taught one, is evident from the following words of
Jerome, who confessed it in an unguarded moment. Writing to the
Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, he complains that "a difficult
work is enjoined, since this (translation) has been commanded me
by your Felicities, which _St. Matthew himself_, the Apostle and
Evangelist, _did not wish to be openly written_. For if this had
not been _secret_, he (Matthew) would have added to the Evangel
that what he gave forth _was his_; but he made up this book
_sealed up in the Hebrew characters_, which he put forth _even in
such a way_ that the book, written in Hebrew letters and by the
hand of himself, might be possessed _by the men most religious_;
who also, in the course of time, received it from those who
preceded them. But this very book they never gave to any one to be
transcribed, and _its text_ they related some one way and some
another."(262) And he adds further on the same page: "And it
happened that this book, having been published by a disciple of
Manichęus, named Seleucus, who also wrote falsely _The Acts of the
Apostles_, exhibited matter not for edification, but for
destruction; and that this (book) was _approved in a synod_ which
the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to."(263)
Jerome admits, himself, that the book which he authenticates as
being written "by the hand of Matthew," was nevertheless a book
which, notwithstanding that he translated it twice, was nearly
unintelligible to him, for it was arcane. Nevertheless, Jerome
coolly sets down every commentary upon it but his own as
_heretical_. More than that, Jerome knew that this Gospel was the
only _original_ one, yet he becomes more zealous than ever in his
persecution of the "Heretics." Why? Because to accept it was
equivalent to reading the death sentence of the established
Church. _The Gospel according to the Hebrews_ was well known to
have been the only one accepted for four centuries by the Jewish
Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. And neither of the
latter accepted the _divinity of_ Christ.(264)
The Ebionites were the first, the earliest Christians, whose epresentative was the Gnostic author of the _Clementine Homilies_, and as he author of _Supernatural Religion_ shows,(265) Ebionitic Gnosticism had nce been the purest form of Christianity. They were the pupils and ollowers of the early Nazarenes--the kabalistic Gnostics. They believed in he Ęons, as the Cerinthians did, and that "the world was put together by
Angels" (Dhyān Chohans), as Epiphanius complains (_Contra Ebionitas_):
"Ebion had the opinion of the Nazarenes, the form of Cerinthians." "They ecided that Christ was of the seed of a man," he laments.(266) Thus gain:
The badge of Dan-Scorpio is _death-life_, in the symbol {~CHI RHO~} as
_cross-bones and skull_, ... or _life-death_ ... the standard of
Constantine, the Roman Emperor. Abel has been shown to be Jesus,
and Cain-Vulcain, or Mars, pierced him. Constantine was the Roman
Emperor, whose warlike god was Mars, and a Roman soldier pierced
Jesus on the cross....
But the piercing of Abel was the consummation of his marriage with
Cain, and this was proper under the form of Mars Generator; hence
the double glyph, one of Mars-Generator [Osiris-Sun] and Mars-
Destroyer [Mercury the God of Death in the Egyptian _basso-
relievo_] in one; significant, again, of the primal idea of the
living cosmos, or of birth and death, as necessary to the
continuation of the stream of life.(267)
To quote once more from _Isis Unveiled_:
A Latin cross of a perfect Christian shape was found hewn upon the
granite slabs of the Adytum of the Serapeum; and the monks did not
fail to claim that the cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a
"spirit of prophecy." At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph,
records the fact.(268) But archęology and symbolism, those
tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have
found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running round the design
at least a partial interpretation of its meaning.
According to King and other numismatists and archęologists, the
cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life. Such a Tau,
or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian
Mysteries. Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon
the breast of the Initiate, after his "new birth" was
accomplished, and the Mystę had returned from their baptism in the
sea. It was a mystic sign that his spiritual birth had regenerated
and united his astral soul with his divine spirit, and that he was
ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and
glory--the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time
as a religious emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through
the Gnostics and Kabalists, who used it largely, as their numerous
gems testify. These in turn had the Tau (or handled cross) from
the Egyptians, and the Latin Cross from the Buddhist missionaries,
who brought it from India (where it can be found even now) two or
three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans,
Hindus and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications
of shape. Till very late in the middle ages, it was considered a
potent spell again at epilepsy and demoniacal possession, and the
"signet of the living God" brought down in St. John's vision by
the angel ascending from the east to "seal the servants of our God
in the foreheads," was but the same mystic Tau--the Egyptian Cross.
In the painted glass of St. Denis (France) this angel is
represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of the elect;
the legend reads, SIGNUM TAY. In King's _Gnostics_, the author
reminds us that "this mark is commonly borne by St. Anthony, an
_Egyptian_ recluse."(269) What the real meaning of the Tau was, is
explained to us by the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes,
and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but too evident that, with the
Apostle at least, it meant the "Ineffable Name," as he calls this
"signet of the living God" a few chapters further on(270) the
"_Father's name written in their foreheads_."
The Brahmātmā, the chief of the Hindu Initiates, had on his head-
gear two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death,
placed cross-like; and in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and
Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally
containing the staircase which leads to the inner dagoba,(271) and
the porticos of some _Prachidas_(272) are ornamented with a cross
formed of two fishes, as found on some of the zodiacs of the
Buddhists. We should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred
device in the tombs in the catacombs at Rome, the "Vesica Piscis,"
was derived from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must
have been that geometrical figure in the world-symbols, may be
inferred from the fact that there is a Masonic tradition that
Solomon's temple was built on three foundations, forming the
"triple Tau" or three crosses.
In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an
emblem, to the realisation by the earliest philosophy of an
_androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature_, which
proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity,
while the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic
law prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated.(273) The crucifix
was an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans as
it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the "Tree of
Infamy." It is but later that it was adopted as a Christian
symbol; but during the first two decades the apostles looked upon
it with horror.(274) It is certainly not the Christian Cross that
John had in mind when speaking of the "signet of the living God,"
but the _mystic_ Tau--the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on
the most ancient Kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four
Hebrew letters composing the Holy Word.
The famous Lady Ellenborough, known among the Arabs of Damascus,
and in the desert, after her last marriage, as _Hanoum Medjouye_,
had a talisman in her possession, presented to her by a Druse from
Mount Lebanon. It was recognised by a certain sign on its left
corner as belonging to that class of gems which is known in
Palestine as a "_Messianic_" amulet, of the second or third
century B.C. It is a green stone of a pentagonal form; at the
bottom is engraved a fish; higher, Solomon's Seal;(275) and still
higher, the four Chaldaic letters--Jod, He, Vau, He, IAHO, which
form the name of the Deity. These are arranged in quite an unusual
way, running from below upward, in reversed order, and forming the
Egyptian Tau. Around these there is a legend which, as the gem is
not our property, we are not at liberty to give. The Tau, in its
mystical sense, as well as the _Crux ansata_, is the _Tree of
Life_.
It is well known that the earliest Christian emblems--before it was
ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus--were
the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and _The Fish_. The origin of the
latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archęologists, thus
becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily
ascertained fact that, while in the _Kabalah_ the King Messiah is
called "Interpreter," or Revealer of the Mystery, and shown to be
the _fifth_ emanation, in the _Talmud_--for reasons we will now
explain--the Messiah is very often designated as "DAG," or the
Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates--as the
very name indicates--to the Babylonian Dagon, the man-fish, who was
the instructor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared.
Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his
(Messiah's) coming is the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the
sign _Pisces_.(276) Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon
identifying their Christos with the Messiah of the _Old
Testament_, they adopted it so readily as to forget that its true
origin might be traced still further back than the Babylonian
Dagon. How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by
the early Christians, with every imaginable kabalistic and pagan
tenet, may be inferred from the language of Clemens, of
Alexandria, addressed to his co-religionists.
When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate
symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the
following words: "Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be
either _a dove_, or _a ship running before the wind_ (the Argha),
or a _fish_." Was the good father, when writing this sentence,
labouring under the recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called
_Jesus_ in the Greek and Slavonian versions); or had he forgotten
the real interpretation of these pagan symbols?(277)
And now, with the help of all these passages scattered hither and thither n _Isis_ and other works of this kind, the reader will see and judge for imself which of the two explanations--the Christian or that of the
Occultist--is the nearer to truth. If Jesus were not an Initiate, why hould all these _allegorical_ incidents of his life be given? Why should uch extreme trouble be taken, so much time wasted trying to make the bove: (_a_) answer and dovetail with purposely picked out sentences in he _Old Testament_, to show them as _prophecies_; and (_b_) to preserve n them the initiatory symbols, the emblems so pregnant with Occult eaning and all of these belonging to Pagan _mystic_ Philosophy? The uthor of the _Source of Measures_ gives out that _mystical_ intent; but nly once now and again, in its one-sided, numerical and kabalistic eaning, without paying any attention to, or having concern with, the rimeval and more spiritual origin, and he deals with it only so far as it elates to the _Old Testament_. He attributes the _purposed_ change in the entence "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani" to the principle already mentioned f the crossed bones and skull in the Labarum,
As an emblem of death, being placed over the door of life and
signifying _birth_, or of the intercontainment of two opposite
principles in one, just as, mystically, the Saviour was held to be
man-woman.(278)
The author's idea is to show the mystic blending by the Gospel writers of
Jehovah, Cain, Abel, etc., with Jesus (in accordance with Jewish abalistic numeration); the better he succeeds, the more clearly he shows hat it was a _forced_ blending, and that we have not a record of the real vents of the life of Jesus, narrated by eye-witnesses or the Apostles.
The narrative is all based on the signs of the Zodiac:
Each a double sign or male-female [in ancient astrological
Magic]--viz: it was Taurus-Eve, and Scorpio was Mars-Lupa, or Mars
with the female wolf [in relation to Romulus]. So, as these signs
were opposites of each other, yet _met in the centre_, they were
connected; and so in fact it was, and in a double sense, the
conception of the year was in Taurus, as the conception of Eve by
Mars, her opposite, in Scorpio. The birth would be at the winter
solstice, or Christmas. On the contrary, by conception in
Scorpio--_viz._, of Lupa by Taurus--birth would be in Leo. Scorpio
was Chrestos in _humiliation_, while Leo was Christos in
_triumph_. While Taurus-Eve fulfilled astronomical functions,
Mars-Lupa fulfilled spiritual ones by type.(279)
The author bases all this on Egyptian correlations and meanings of Gods nd Goddesses, but ignores the Āryan, which are far earlier.
_Mooth_ or _Mouth_, was the Egyptian cognomen of Venus, (Eve,
mother of all living) [as _Vach_, mother of all living, a
permutation of _Aditi_, as Eve was one of Sephira] _or the moon_.
Plutarch (_Isis_, 374) hands it down that Isis was sometimes
called _Muth_, which word means _mother_ ... (Issa, {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, woman).
(_Isis_, p. 372). Isis, he says is that part of Nature, which, as
feminine, contains in herself, as (nutrix) nurse, all things to be
born.... "Certainly the moon," speaking astronomically, "chiefly
exercises this function in Taurus, Venus being the house (in
opposition to Mars, _generator_, in Scorpio), because the sign is
luna, hypsoma. Since ... Isis Metheur differs from Isis _Muth_ and
that in the vocable _Muth_ the _notion of bringing forth_ may be
concealed, and since fructification must take place, _Sol_ being
joined with _Luna_ in _Libra_, it is not improbable that Muth
first indeed signifies Venus in Libra; hence Luna in Libra."
(Beiträge zur Kenntniss, pars. 11, S. 9, under _Muth_.)(280)
Then Fuerst, under _Bohu_, is quoted to show
The double play upon the word _Muth_ by help of which the real
intent is produced in the occult way ... _sin_, _death_, and
_woman_ are one in the glyph, and correlatively connected with
_intercourse_ and _death_.(281)
All this is applied by the author _only_ to the exoteric and Jewish uhemerised symbols, whereas they were meant, first of all, to conceal osmogonical mysteries, and then, those of anthropological evolution with eference to the Seven Races, already evoluted and to come, and especially s regards the last branch races of the third Root-Race. However, the word
_void_ (primeval Chaos) is shown to be taken for Eve-Venus-Naamah, greeably with Fuerst's definition; for as he says:
In this primitive signification [of void] was {~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~} [bohu] taken in
the Biblical cosmogony, and used in establishing the dogma {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~} {~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL NUN~}
_Jes_ (us) _m'aven_, (_Jes-us from nothing_), respecting creation.
[Which shows the writers of the _New Testament_ considerably
skilled in the _Kabalah_ and Occult Sciences, and corroborates
still more our assertion.] Hence Aquila translates {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} vulg.
vacua (hence _vacca_, _cow_) [hence also the horns of Isis--Nature,
Earth, and the Moon--taken from Vāch, the Hindu "Mother of all that
lives," identified with Virāj and called in Atharvaveda the
daughter of Kāma, the _first_ desires: "That daughter of thine, O
Kāma, is _called __ the cow_, she whom Sages name _Vāch-Virāj_,"
who was _milked_ by Brihaspati, the Rishi, which is another
mystery] Onkelos and Samarit. {~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER QOF~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}.
The Phoenician cosmogony has connected _Bohu_ {~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~} into a
personified expression denoting the _primitive substance_, and as
a deity, the _mother of races of the gods_ [which is Aditi and
Vāch]. The Aramean name {~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}-{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}, {~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}-{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}, {~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}-{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}, {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}-{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, Buto,
for the _mother of the gods_, which passed over to the Gnostics,
Babylonians and Egyptians, _is identical then with Mōt_ ({~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~}, our
_Muth_) properly, ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}) _originated in Phoenician_ from an
interchange of _b_ with _m_.(282)
Rather, one would say, go to the origin. The mystic euhemerisation of
Wisdom and Intelligence, operating in the work of cosmic evolution, or
_Buddhi_ under the names of Brahmā, Purusha, etc., as male power, and
Aditi-Vāch, etc., as female, whence Sarasvatī, Goddess of Wisdom, who ecame under the veils of Esoteric concealment, Butos, _Bythos_--Depth, the rossly material, personal female, called Eve, the "primitive woman" of
Irenęus, and the world springing out of _Nothing_.
The workings out of this glyph of 4th _Genesis_ help to the
comprehension of the division of one character into the forms of
two persons; as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abram and Isaac,
Jacob and Esau, and so on [all male and female].... Now, as
linking together several great salient points in the Biblical
structure: (_1_) as to the _Old_ and _New Testaments_; with also
(_2_) as to the Roman Empire; (_3_) as to confirming the meanings
and uses of symbols; and (_4_) as to confirming the entire
explanation and reading of the glyphs; as (_5_) recognising and
laying down the base of the great pyramid as the _foundation
square_ of the Bible construction; (_6_) as well as the new Roman
adoption under Constantine--the following given:(283)
Cain has been shown to be ... the 360 circle of the Zodiac, the
perfect and exact standard, by a squared division; hence his name
of Melchizadik.... [The geometrical and numerical demonstrations
here follow.] It has been repeatedly stated that the object of the
Great Pyramid construction was to measure the _heavens and the
earth_ ... [the objective spheres as evoluting from the
subjective, purely spiritual Kosmos, we beg leave to add];
therefore, its measuring containment would indicate all the
substance of measure of _the heavens and the earth_, or agreeably
to ancient recognition, _Earth_, _Air_, _Water_ and _Fire_.(284)
(The base side of this pyramid was diameter to a circumference _in
feet_ of 2400. The characteristic of this is 24 feet, or 6 × 4 =
24, or this very Cain-Adam square.) Now, by the restoration of the
encampment of the Israelites, as initiated by Moses, by the great
scholar, Father Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit priest, the above
is precisely, by Biblical record and traditionary sources, the
method of laying off this encampment. The _four interior squares_
were devoted to (1) Moses and Aaron; (2) Kohath; (3) Gershom; and
(4) Merari--the last three being the heads of the Levites. The
attributes of these squares were the _primal_ attributes of Adam-
Mars and were concreted of the elements, _Earth_, _Air_, _Fire_,
_Water_, or {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL MEM~} = Iam = _Water_, {~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} = Nour = _Fire_, {~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HET~} = Rouach
= _Air_, and {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW POINT SIN DOT~}{~HEBREW POINT SIN DOT~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW POINT SIN DOT~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} = Iabeshah = _Earth_. The initial letters of
these words are INRI--the symbol usually translated as _I_esus
_N_azarenus _R_ex _I_udęorum--"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the
Jews." This square of INRI is the _Adam square_, which was
extended from, as a foundation, into four others of 144 × 2 = 288,
to the side of the large square of 288 × 4 = 1152, = the whole
circumference. But this square is the display of also circular
elements and 115·2 can denote this. Put _INRI_ into a circle, or
read it as the letters stand in the square, as to its values of
1521, and we have [Symbol: circle with numbers inside: 1, 1, 2, 5]
which reads 115·2.
But as seen Cain denotes this as, or in, the 115 of his name:
which 115 was the very complement to make up the 360 day year, to
agree with the balances of the standard circle, which were Cain.
The corner squares of the larger square are, A = Leo, and B = Dan
Scorpio; and it is seen that Cain pierces Abel at the intersection
of the equinoctial with the solstice cross lines, referred to from
Dan-Scorpio on the celestial circle. But Dan-Scorpio borders on
Libra, the scales, whose sign is {~LIBRA~} (which sign is that of the
ancient _pillow_ on which _the back of the head to the ears_(285)
rested, the pillow of Jacob), and is represented for one symbol as
[Symbol: Letters X, P, and S, with Libra symbol atop them]....
Also the badge of Dan-Scorpio is death-life, in the symbol {~CHI RHO~}. Now
the cross is the emblem of the _origin of measures_, in the
_Jehovah_ form of a _straight line one of a denomination of 20612,
the perfect circumference_; hence Cain was this as Jehovah, for
the text says that _he was_ Jehovah. But the attachment of a man
to this cross was that of 113: 355 to 6561: 5153 × 4 = 20612, as
shown. Now, over the _head_ of Jesus crucified was placed the
inscription, of which the initial letters of the words have always
been retained as symbolic, and handed down and used as a monogram
of Jesus Chrestos--_viz._, INRI or _Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judęorum_;
but they are located on the _Cross_, or the cubed _form_ of the
circular origin of measures which measure the substance of
_Earth_, _Air_, _Fire_ and _Water_, or INRI = 1152, as shown. Here
is the _man_ on the _cross_, or 113: 355 combined with 6561: 5153
× 4 = 20612. These are the _pyramid-base_ numbers as coming from
113: 355 as the Hebrew source; whence the Adam-square, which is
the pyramid base, and the centre one to the larger square of the
_encampment_. Bend INRI into a circle, and we have 1152, or the
circumference of the latter. But Jesus dying (or Abel married)
made use of the very words needed to set forth all. He says, _Eli,
Eli, Lama Sabachthani_.... Read them by their power values, in
_circular form_, as produced from the Adam form as shown, and we
have {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} = 113, {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} = 113, or 113--311: {~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER PE~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} = 345, or Moses in the
Cain-Adam pyramid circle: {~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER KAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HET~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~} = 710, equals Dove, or Jonah and
710 ÷ 2 = 355, or 355--553; and finally, as determinative of all {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}
or _ni_, where {~HEBREW LETTER BET~} = _nun_, fish = 565, and {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} = 1 or 10; together
565 {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} = {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} or the Christ value....
[All of the above] throws light on the transfiguration scene on
the mount. There were present there Peter and James and John with
Jesus; or {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL MEM~} Iami, James, _Water_; {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, Peter, _Earth_; {~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~},
John, _Spirit_, _Air_, and {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} Jesus, _Fire_, _Life_--together
INRI. But behold Eli and Moses met them there, or {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~} and {~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} or
_Eli_ and _Lamah_, or 113 and 345. And this shows that the scene
of transfiguration was connected with the one above set
forth.(286)
This kabalistical reading of the Gospel narratives--hitherto supposed to ecord the most important, the most mystically awful, yet most real events f the life of Jesus--must fall with terrible weight upon some Christians.
Every honest trusting believer who has shed tears of reverential emotion ver the events of the short period of the public life of Jesus of
Nazareth, has to choose one of the two ways opening before him after eading the aforesaid: either his faith has to render him quite impervious o any light coming from human reasoning and evident fact; or he must onfess that he has lost his Saviour. The One whom he had hitherto onsidered as the unique incarnation on this earth of the One Living God n heaven, fades into thin air, on the authority of the properly read and orrectly interpreted _Bible_ itself. Moreover, since on the authority of
Jerome himself and his accepted and authentic confession, the book written y the hand of Matthew "exhibits matter not for _edification_ but for
_destruction_" (of Church and _human_ Christianity, and only that) what ruth can be expected from his famous _Vulgate_? _Human_ mysteries, oncocted by generations of Church Fathers bent upon evolving a religion f their own invention, are seen instead of a _divine_ Revelation; and hat this was so is corroborated by a prelate of the Latin Church. Saint
Gregory Nazianzen wrote to his friend and confidant, Saint Jerome:
Nothing can impose better on a people than verbiage; the less they
understand the more they admire.... Our fathers and doctors have
often said, not what they thought, but that to which circumstances
and necessity forced them.
Which then of the two--the clergy, or the Occultists and Theosophists--are he more blasphemous and dangerous? Is it those who would impose upon the orld's acceptance a Saviour of their own fashioning, a God with human hortcomings, and who therefore is certainly not a perfect divine Being; r those others who say: Jesus of Nazareth was an Initiate, a holy, grand nd noble character, but withal human, though truly "a Son of God"?
If Humanity is to accept a so-called supernatural Religion, how far more ogical to the Occultist and the Psychologist seems the transparent llegory given of Jesus by the Gnostics. They, as Occultists, and with
Initiates for their Chiefs, differed only in their renderings of the story nd in their symbols, and not at all in substance. What say the Ophites, he Nazarenes, and other "heretics"? Sophia, "the Celestial Virgin," is revailed upon to send Christos, her emanation, to the help of perishing umanity, from whom Ilda-Baoth (the Jehovah of the Jews) and his six Sons f Matter (the lower terrestrial Angels) are shutting out the divine ight. Therefore, Christos, the perfect,(287)
Uniting himself with Sophia [divine wisdom] descended through the
seven planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form ...
[and] entered into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism in
the Jordan. From this time forth Jesus began to work miracles;
before that he had been entirely ignorant of his own mission.
Ilda-Baoth, discovering that Christos was bringing to an end his kingdom f Matter, stirred up the Jews, his own people, against Him, and Jesus was ut to death. When Jesus was on the Cross Christos and Sophia left His ody, and returned to Their own sphere. The material body of Jesus was bandoned to the earth, but He Himself, the Inner Man, was clothed with a ody made up of _ęther_.(288)
Thenceforth he consisted merely of soul and spirit.... During his
sojourn upon earth of _eighteen_ months after he had risen, he
received from Sophia that perfect knowledge, that true Gnosis,
which he communicated to the small portion of the Apostles who
were capable of receiving the same.(289)
The above is transparently Eastern and Hindu; it is the Esoteric Doctrine ure and simple, save for the names and the allegory. It is, more or less, he history of every Adept who obtains Initiation. The Baptism in the
Jordan is the Rite of Initiation, the final purification; whether in acred pagoda, tank, river, or temple lake in Egypt or Mexico. The perfect
Christos and Sophia--divine Wisdom and Intelligence--enter the Initiate at he moment of the mystic rite, by transference from Guru to Chelā, and eave the physical body, at the moment of the death of the latter, to re- nter the Nirmānakāya, or the astral Ego of the Adept.
The spirit of Buddha [collectively] overshadows the Bodhisattvas
of his Church
ays the Buddhist Ritual of Āryāsangha.
Says the Gnostic teaching:
When he [the spirit of Christos] shall have collected all the
Spiritual, all the Light [that exists in matter], out of
Ilbadaoth's empire, Redemption is accomplished and the end of the
world arrived.(290)
Say the Buddhists:
When Buddha [the Spirit of the Church] hears the hour strike, he
will send Maitreya Buddha--after whom the old world wall be
destroyed.
That which is said of Basilides by King may be applied as truthfully to very innovator, so called, whether of a Buddhist or of a Christian
Church. In the eyes of Clemens Alexandrinus, he says, the Gnostics taught ery little that was blameable in their mystical transcendental views.
In his eyes the latter [Basilides], was not a _heretic_, that is
an innovator upon the accepted doctrines of the Catholic Church,
but only a theosophic speculator who sought to express old truths
by new formulę.(291)
There was a Secret Doctrine preached by Jesus; and "secresy" in those days eant Secrets, or Mysteries of Initiation, all of which have been either ejected or disfigured by the Church. In the Clementine _Homilies_ we ead:
And Peter said: "We remember that our Lord and Teacher, commanding
us, said 'Guard the mysteries for me and the sons of my house.' "
Wherefore also he explained to His disciples privately the
Mysteries of the Kingdom of the Heavens.(292)
SECTION XIX. ST. CYPRIAN OF ANTIOCH.
The Ęons (Stellar Spirits)--emanated from the Unknown of the Gnostics, and dentical with the Dhyān Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine--and their
Pleroma, having been transformed into Archangels and the "Spirits of the
Presence" by the Greek and Latin Churches, the prototypes have lost caste.
The Pleroma(293) was now called the "Heavenly Host," and therefore the old ame had to become identified with Satan and his "Host." Might is right in very age, and History is full of contrasts. Manes had been called the
"Paraclete"(294) by his followers. He was an Occultist, but passed to osterity, owing to the kind exertions of the Church, as a Sorcerer, so a atch had to be found for him by way of contrast. We recognise this match n St. Cyprianus of Antioch, a self-confessed if not a real "Black
Magician," it seems, whom the Church--as a reward for his contrition and umility--subsequently raised to the high rank of Saint and Bishop.
What history knows of him is not much, and it is mostly based on his own onfession, the truthfulness of which is warranted, we are told, by St.
Gregory, the Empress Eudoxia, Photius and the Holy Church. This curious ocument was ferreted out by the Marquis de Mirville,(295) in the Vatican, nd by him translated into French for the first time, as he assures the eader. We beg his permission to re-translate a few pages, not for the ake of the penitent Sorcerer, but for that of some students of Occultism, ho will thus have an opportunity of comparing the methods of ancient
Magic (or as the Church calls it, Demonism) with those of modern Theurgy nd Occultism.
The scenes described took place at Antioch about the middle of the third entury, 252 A.D., says the translator. This Confession was written by the enitent Sorcerer after his conversion; therefore, we are not surprised to ind how much room he gives in his lamentations to reviling his Initiator
"Satan," or the "Serpent Dragon," as he calls him. There are other and ore modern instances of the same trait in human nature. Converted Hindus,
Pārsīs and other "heathen" of India are apt to denounce their forefathers' eligions at every opportunity. Thus runs the Confession:
O all of you who reject the real mysteries of Christ, see my
tears!... You who wallow in your demoniacal practices, learn by my
sad example all the vanity of their [the demons'] baits ... I am
that Cyprianus, who, vowed to Apollo from his infancy, was early
initiated into all the arts of the dragon.(296) Even before the
age of seven I had already been introduced into the temple of
Mithra: three years later, my parents taking me to Athens to be
received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate the
mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter,(297) and I also became
the guardian of the Dragon in the Temple of Pallas.
Ascending after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of
the Gods, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the
sense, and the _real_ meaning of their [the Gods'] speeches and
their clamorous manifestations (_strepituum_). It is there that I
was made to see in imagination (_phantasia_) [or _māyā_] those
trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the
help of demons; ... and I saw their dances, their warfares, their
snares, illusions and promiscuities. I heard their singing.(298) I
saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the Gods
and Goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they were Kings,
spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all
the nations.(299)
At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset,
the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of
the sacrifices.(300)
When I was fifteen my parents desired that I should be made
acquainted, not only with all the natural laws in connection with
the generation and corruption of bodies on earth, in the air and
in the seas, but also with all the other forces _grafted_(301)
(_insitas_) on these by the Prince of the World in order to
counteract their primal and divine constitution.(302) At twenty I
went to Memphis, where, penetrating into the Sanctuaries, I was
taught to discern all that pertains to the communications of
demons [Daimones or Spirits] with terrestrial matters, their
aversion for certain places, their sympathy and attraction for
others, their expulsion from certain planets, certain objects and
laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their
resistance to light.(303) There I learned the number of the fallen
Princes,(304) that which takes place in human souls and the bodies
they enter into communication with.
I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and the
rains, between the motion of the earth(305) and the motion of the
seas; I saw the spirits of the Giants plunged in subterranean
darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a man carrying a
burden on his shoulders.(306)
When thirty I travelled to Chaldęa to study there the true power
of the air, placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in
light [Ākāsha]. I was taught to see that the planets were in their
variety as dissimilar as the plants on earth, and the stars were
like armies ranged in battle order. I knew the Chaldęan division
of Ether into 365 parts,(307) and I perceived that every one of
the demons who divide it among themselves(308) was endowed with
that material force that permitted him to execute the orders of
the Prince and guide all the movements therein [in the
Ether].(309) They [the Chaldees] explained to me how those Princes
had become participants in the Council of Darkness, ever in
opposition to the Council of Light.
I got acquainted with the Mediatores [surely not mediums as De
Mirville explains!],(310) and upon seeing the covenants they were
mutually bound by, I was struck with wonder upon learning the
nature of their oaths and observances.(311)
Believe me, I saw the Devil; believe me I have embraced him(312)
[like the witches at the Sabbath (?)] when I was yet quite young,
and he saluted me by the title of the new Jambres, declaring me
worthy of my ministry (initiation). He promised me continual help
during life and a principality after death.(313) Having become in
great honour [an Adept] under his tuition, he placed under my
orders a phalanx of demons, and when I bid him good-bye, "Courage,
good success, excellent Cyprian," he exclaimed, rising up from his
seat to see me to the door, plunging thereby those present into a
profound admiration.(314)
Having bidden farewell to his Chaldęan Initiator, the future Sorcerer and
Saint went to Antioch. His tale of "iniquity" and subsequent repentance is ong but we will make it short. He became "an accomplished Magician," urrounded by a host of disciples and "candidates to the perilous and acrilegious art." He shows himself distributing love-philtres and dealing n deathly charms "to rid young wives of old husbands, and to ruin
Christian virgins." Unfortunately Cyprianus was not above love himself. He ell in love with the beautiful Justine, a converted maiden, after having ainly tried to make her share the passion one named Aglaides, a rofligate, had for her. His "demons failed" he tells us, and he got isgusted with them. This disgust brings on a quarrel between him and his
Hierophant, whom he insists on identifying with the Demon; and the dispute s followed by a tournament between the latter and some Christian onverts, in which the "Evil One" is, of course, worsted. The Sorcerer is inally baptised and gets rid of his enemy. Having laid at the feet of
Anthimes, Bishop of Antioch, all his books on Magic, he became a Saint in ompany with the beautiful Justine, who had converted him; both suffered artyrdom under the Emperor Diocletian; and both are buried side by side n Rome, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, near the Baptistery.
SECTION XX. THE EASTERN GUPTA VIDYA & THE KABALAH.
We now return to the consideration of the essential identity between the
Eastern Gupta Vidyā and the Kabalah as a system, while we must also show he dissimilarity in their philosophical interpretations since the Middle
Ages.
It must be confessed that the views of the Kabalists--meaning by the word hose students of Occultism who study the Jewish _Kabalah_ and who know ittle, if anything, of any other Esoteric literature or of its eachings--are as varied in their synthetic conclusions upon the nature of he mysteries taught even in the _Zohar_ alone, and are as wide of the rue mark, as are the _dicta_ upon it of exact Science itself. Like the edięval Rosicrucian and the Alchemist--like the Abbot Trithemius, John
Reuchlin, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, Philalethes, etc.--by whom hey swear, the continental Occultists see in the Jewish _Kabalah_ alone he universal well of wisdom; they find in it the secret lore of nearly ll the mysteries of Nature--metaphysical and divine--some of them including erein, as did Reuchlin, those of the Christian _Bible_. For them the
_Zohar_ is an Esoteric Thesaurus of all the mysteries of the Christian
Gospel; and the _Sepher Yetzirah_ is the light that shines in every arkness, and the container of the keys to open every secret in Nature.
Whether many of our modern followers of the medięval Kabalists have an dea of the real meaning of the symbology of their chosen Masters is nother question. Most of them have probably never given even a passing hought to the fact that the Esoteric language used by the Alchemists was heir own, and that it was given out as a blind, necessitated by the angers of the epoch they lived in, and not as the Mystery-language, used y the Pagan Initiates, which the Alchemists had re-translated and re- eiled once more.
And now the situation stands thus: as the old Alchemists have not left a ey to their writings, the latter have become a mystery within an older ystery. The _Kabalah_ is interpreted and checked only by the light which edięval Mystics have thrown upon it, and they, in their forced
Christology, had to put a theological dogmatic mask on every ancient eaching, the result being that each Mystic among our modern European and
American Kabalists interprets the old symbols in his own way, and each efers his opponents to the Rosicrucian and the Alchemist of three and our hundred years ago. Mystic Christian dogma is the central maėlstrom hat engulfs every old Pagan symbol, and Christianity--Anti-Gnostic
Christianity, the modern retort that has replaced the alembic of the
Alchemists--has distilled out of all recognition the _Kabalah_, _i.e._, the
Hebrew _Zohar_ and other rabbinical mystic works. And now it has come to his: The student interested in the Secret Sciences has to believe that he whole cycle of the symbolical "Ancient of Days," every hair of the ighty beard of Macroprosopos, refers only to the history of the earthly areer of Jesus of Nazareth! And we are told that the _Kabalah_ "was first aught to a select company of angels" by Jehovah himself--who, out of odesty, one must think, made himself only the third Sephiroth in it, and female one into the bargain. So many Kabalists, so many explanations.
Some believe--perchance with more reason than the rest--that the substance f the _Kabalah_ is the basis upon which Masonry is built, since modern
Masonry is undeniably the dim and hazy reflection of primeval Occult
Masonry, of the teaching of those divine Masons who established the
Mysteries of the prehistoric and prediluvian Temples of Initiation, raised y truly superhuman Builders. Others declare that the tenets expounded in he _Zohar_ relate merely to mysteries terrestrial and profane, having no ore concern with metaphysical speculations--such as the soul, or the
_post-mortem_ life of man--than have the Mosaic books. Others, again--and hese are the real, genuine Kabalists, who had their instructions from nitiated Jewish Rabbis--affirm that if the two most learned Kabalists of he medięval period, John Reuchlin and Paracelsus, differed in their eligious professions--the former being the Father of the Reformation and he latter a Roman Catholic, at least in appearance--the _Zohar_ cannot ontain much of Christian dogma or tenet, one way or the other. In other ords, they maintain that the numerical language of the Kabalistic works eaches universal truths--and not any one Religion in particular. Those who ake this statement are perfectly right in saying that the Mystery- anguage used in the _Zohar_ and in other Kabalistic literature was once, n a time of unfathomable antiquity, the universal language of Humanity.
But they become entirely wrong if to this fact they add the untenable heory that _this language was invented by, or was the original property f, the Hebrews, from whom all the other nations borrowed it_.
They are wrong, because, although the _Zohar_ ({~HEBREW LETTER ZAYIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~} ZHR), _The Book of
Splendour_ of Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, did indeed originate with him--his on, Rabbi Eleazar, helped by his secretary, Rabbi Abba, compiling the
Kabalistic teachings of his deceased father into a work called the
_Zohar_--those teachings were not Rabbi Simeon's, as the Gupta Vidyā shows.
They are as old as the Jewish nation itself, and far older. In short, the ritings which pass at present under the title of the _Zohar_ of Rabbi
Simeon are about as original as were the Egyptian synchronistic Tables fter being handled by Eusebius, or as St. Paul's _Epistles_ after their evision and correction by the "Holy Church."(315)
Let us throw a rapid retrospective glance at the history and the ribulations of that very same _Zohar_, as we know of them from rustworthy tradition and documents. We need not stop to discuss whether t was written in the first century B.C. or in the first century A.D.
Suffice it for us to know that there was at all times a Kabalistic iterature among the Jews; that though historically it can be traced only rom the time of the Captivity, yet from the _Pentateuch_ down to the
_Talmud_ the documents of that literature were ever written in a kind of
Mystery-language, were, in fact, a series of symbolical records which the
Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldęan Sanctuaries, only dapting them to their own national history--if history it can be called.
Now that which we claim--and it is not denied even by the most prejudiced
Kabalist, is that although Kabalistic lore had passed orally through long ges down to the latest Pre-Christian Tanaim, and although David and
Solomon may have been great Adepts in it, as is claimed, yet no one dared o write it down till the days of Simeon Ben Iochai. In short, the lore ound in Kabalistic literature was never recorded in writing before the irst century of the modern era.
This brings the critic to the following reflection: While in India we find he _Vedas_ and the Brāhmanical literature written down and edited ages efore the Christian era--the Orientalists themselves being obliged to oncede a couple of millenniums of antiquity to the older manuscripts; hile the most important allegories in _Genesis_ are found recorded on
Babylonian tiles centuries B.C.; while the Egyptian sarcophagi yearly ield proofs of the origin of the doctrines borrowed and copied by the
Jews; yet the Monotheism of the Jews is exalted and thrown into the teeth f all the Pagan nations, and the so-called Christian Revelation is placed bove all others, like the sun above a row of street gas-lamps. Yet it is erfectly well known, having been ascertained beyond doubt or cavil, that o manuscript, whether Kabalistic, Talmudistic, or Christian, which has eached our present generation, is of earlier date than the first enturies of our era, whereas this can certainly never be said of the
Egyptian papyri or the Chaldęan tiles, or even of some Eastern writings.
But let us limit our present research to the _Kabalah_, and chiefly to the
_Zohar_--called also the _Midrash_. This book, whose teachings were edited or the first time between 70 and 110 A.D., is known to have been lost, nd its contents to have been scattered throughout a number of minor anuscripts, until the thirteenth century. The idea that it was the omposition of Moses de Leon of Valladolid, in Spain who passed it off as pseudograph of Simeon Ben Iochai, is ridiculous and was well disposed of y Munk--though he does point to more than one modern interpolation in the
_Zohar_. At the same time it is more than certain that the present _Book f Zohar_ was written by Moses de Leon, and, owing to joint editorship, is ore Christian in its colouring than is many a genuine Christian volume.
Munk gives the reason why, saying that it appears evident that the author ade use of ancient documents, and among these of certain _Midraschim_, or ollections of traditions and Biblical expositions, which we do not now ossess.
As a proof, also, that the knowledge of the Esoteric system taught in the
_Zohar_ came to the Jews very late indeed--at any rate, that they had so ar forgotten it that the innovations and additions made by de Leon rovoked no criticism, but were thankfully received--Munk quotes from
Tholuck, a Jewish authority, the following information: Haya Gaon, who ied in 1038, is to our knowledge the first author who developed (and erfected) the theory of the Sephiroth, and he gave them names which we ind again among the Kabalistic names used by Dr. Jellinek. Moses Ben
Schem-Tob de Leon, who held intimate intercourse with the Syrian and
Chaldęan Christian learned scribes, was enabled through the latter to cquire a knowledge of some of the Gnostic writings.(316)
Again, the _Sepher Jetzirah_ (_Book of Creation_)--though attributed to
Abraham and though very archaic as to its contents--is first mentioned in he eleventh century by Jehuda Ho Levi (Chazari). And these two, the
_Zohar_ and _Jetzirah_, are the storehouse of all the subsequent
Kabalistic works. Now let us see how far the Hebrew sacred canon itself is o be trusted.
The word "Kabalah" comes from the root "to receive," and has a meaning dentical with the Sanskrit "Smriti" ("received by tradition")--a system of ral teaching, passing from one generation of priests to another, as was he case with the Brāhmanical books before they were embodied in anuscript. The Kabalistic tenets came to the Jews from the Chaldęans; and f Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates, as id every Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical ystem on which it was based, he may have--and we say he has--written
_Genesis_ and other "scrolls." The five books that now pass current under is name, the _Pentateuch_, are _not_ withal the original Mosaic
Records.(317) Nor were they written in the old Hebrew square letters, nor ven in the Samaritan characters, for both alphabets belong to a date ater than that of Moses, and Hebrew--as it is now known--did not exist in he days of the great lawgiver, either as a language or as an alphabet.
As no statements contained in the records of the Secret Doctrine of the
East are regarded as of any value by the world in general, and since to be nderstood by and convince the reader one has to quote names familiar to im, and use arguments and proofs out of documents which are accessible to ll, the following facts may perhaps demonstrate that our assertions are ot merely based on the teachings of Occult Records:
(1) The great Orientalist and scholar, Klaproth, denied positively the ntiquity of the so-called Hebrew alphabet, on the ground that the square
Hebrew characters in which the Biblical manuscripts are written, and which e use in printing, were probably derived from the Palmyrene writing, or ome other Semitic alphabet, so that the Hebrew _Bible_ is written merely n the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words.
The late Dr. Kenealy pertinently remarked that the Jews and Christians ely on
A phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language, as abstruse as
the cuneiform letters on the mountains of Assyria.(318)
(2) The attempts made to carry back the square Hebrew character to the ime of Esdras (B.C. 458) have all failed.
(3) It is asserted that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians uring their captivity. But there are scholars who do not carry the now- nown Hebrew square letters beyond the late period of the fourth century,
A.D.(319)
The Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were printed, not in
Greek, but in English letters; or as if Shakespeare's works were
phonographed in Burmese.(320)
(4) Those who maintain that the ancient Hebrew is the same as the Syraic r Chaldaic have to see what is said in _Jeremiah_, wherein the Lord is ade to threaten the house of Israel with bringing against it the mighty nd ancient nation of the Chaldęans:
A nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest
what they say.(321)
This is quoted by Bishop Walton(322) against the assumption of the dentity of Chaldaic and Hebrew, and ought to settle the question.
(5) The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the seventy years' captivity, hen the Israelites brought back Chaldaic with them and grafted it on heir own language, the fusion resulting in a dialectical variety of
Chaldaic, the Hebrew tincturing it very slightly and ceasing from that ime to be a spoken language.(323)
As to our statement that the present _Old Testament_ does not contain the riginal Books of Moses, this is proven by the facts that:
(1) The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish canonical books and _their_ "Law f Moses." They will have neither the _Psalms_ of David, nor the Prophets, or the _Talmud_ and _Mishna_: nothing but the real Books of Moses, and in uite a different edition.(324) The Books of Moses and of Joshua are isfigured out of recognition by the Talmudists, they say.
(2) The "black Jews" of Cochin, Southern India--who know nothing of the
Babylonian Captivity or of the _ten_ "lost tribes" (the latter a pure nvention of the Rabbis), proving that these Jews must have come to India efore the year 600 B.C.--have their Books of Moses which they will show to o one. And these Books and Laws differ greatly from the present scrolls.
Nor are they written in the square Hebrew characters (semi-Chaldaic and emi-Palmyrean) but in the archaic letters, as we were assured by one of hem--letters entirely unknown to all but themselves and a few Samaritans.
(3) The Karaim Jews of the Crimea--who call themselves the descendants of he true children of Israel, _i.e._, of the Sadducees--reject the _Torah_ nd the _Pentateuch_ of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews
(keeping Friday), will have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the
_Psalms_--nothing but their own Books of Moses and what they call his one nd real Law.
This makes it plain that the _Kabalah_ of the Jews is but the distorted cho of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldęans, and that the real _Kabalah_ s found only in the Chaldęan _Book of Numbers_ now in the possession of ome Persian Sufis. Every nation in antiquity had its traditions based on hose of the Āryan Secret Doctrine; and each nation points to this day to Sage of its own race who had received the primordial revelation from, nd had recorded it under the orders of, a more or less divine Being. Thus t was with the Jews, as with all others. They had received their Occult
Cosmogony and Laws from their Initiate, Moses, and they have now entirely utilated them.
Ādi is the generic name in our Doctrine of all the first men, _i.e._, the irst speaking races, in each of the seven zones--hence probably "Ad-am."
And such first men, in every nation, are credited with having been taught he divine mysteries of creation. Thus, the Sabęans (according to a radition preserved in the Sufi works) say that when the "Third First Man" eft the country adjacent to India for Babel, a tree(325) was given to im, then another and a third tree, whose leaves recorded the history of ll the races; the "Third First Man" meant one who belonged to the Third
Root-Race, and yet the Sabęans call him Adam. The Arabs of Upper Egypt, nd the Mohammedans generally, have recorded a tradition that the Angel
Azaz-el brings a message from the Wisdom-Word of God to Adam whenever he s reborn; this the Sufis explain by adding that this book is given to very Seli-Allah ("the chosen one of God") for his wise men. The story arrated by the Kabalists--namely, that the book given to Adam before his
Fall (a book full of mysteries and signs and events which either had been, ere, or were to be) was taken away by the Angel Raziel after Adam's Fall, ut again restored to him lest men might lose its wisdom and instruction; hat this book was delivered by Adam to Seth, who passed it to Enoch, and he latter to Abraham, and so on in succession to the most wise of every eneration--relates to all nations, and not to the Jews alone. For Berosus arrates in his turn that Xisuthrus compiled a book, writing it at the ommand of his deity, which book was buried in Zipara(326) or Sippara, the
City of the Sun, in Ba-bel-on-ya, and was dug up long afterwards and eposited in the temple of Belos; it is from this book that Berosus took is history of the antediluvian dynasties of Gods and Heroes. Ęlian (in
_Nimrod_) speaks of a Hawk (emblem of the Sun), who in the days of the eginnings brought to the Egyptians a book containing the wisdom of their eligion. The _Sam-Sam_ of the Sabęans is also a _Kabalah_, as is the
Arabic _Zem-Zem_ (_Well of Wisdom_).(327)
We are told by a very learned Kabalist that Seyffarth asserts that the old
Egyptian tongue was only old Hebrew, or a Semitic dialect; and he proves his, our correspondent thinks, by sending him "some 500 words in common" n the two languages. This proves very little to our mind. It only shows hat the two nations lived together for centuries, and that before dopting the Chaldęan for their phonetic tongue the Jews had adopted the ld Coptic or Egyptian. The Israelitish Scriptures drew their hidden isdom from the primeval Wisdom-Religion that was the source of other
Scriptures, only it was sadly degraded by being applied to things and ysteries of this Earth, instead of to those in the higher and ever- resent, though invisible, spheres. Their national history, if they can laim any autonomy before their return from the Babylonian captivity, annot be carried back one day earlier than the time of Moses. The anguage of Abraham--if Zeruan (Saturn, the emblem of time--the "Sar,"
"Saros," a "cycle") can be said to have any language--was not Hebrew, but
Chaldaic, perhaps Arabic, and still more likely some old Indian dialect.
This is shown by numerous proofs, some of which we give here; and unless, ndeed, to please the tenacious and stubborn believers in _Bible_ hronology, we cripple the years of our globe to the Procrustean bed of
7,000 years, it becomes self-evident that the Hebrew cannot be called an ld language, merely because Adam is supposed to have used it in the
Garden of Eden. Bunsen says in _Egypt's Place in Universal History_ that n the
Chaldęan tribe immediately connected with Abraham, we find
reminiscences of dates disfigured and misunderstood as genealogies
of single men, or figures of epochs. The Abrahamic recollections
go back at least three millennia beyond the grandfather of
Jacob.(328)
The _Bible_ of the Jews has ever been an Esoteric Book in its hidden eaning, but this meaning has not remained one and the same throughout ince the days of Moses. It is useless, considering the limited space we an give to this subject, to attempt anything like the detailed history of he vicissitudes of the so-called _Pentateuch_, and besides, the history s too well known to need lengthy disquisitions. Whatever was, or was not, he Mosaic _Book of Creation_--from _Genesis_ down to the Prophets--the
_Pentateuch_ of to-day is not the same. It is sufficient to read the riticisms of Erasmus, and even of Sir Isaac Newton, to see clearly that he Hebrew Scriptures had been tampered with and remodelled, had been lost nd rewritten, a dozen times before the days of Ezra. This Ezra himself ay yet one day turn out to have been Azara, the Chaldęan priest of the
Fire and Sun-God, a renegade who, through his desire of becoming a ruler, nd in order to create an Ethnarchy, restored the old lost Jewish Books in is own way. It was an easy thing for one versed in the secret system of
Esoteric numerals, or Symbology, to put together events from the stray ooks that had been preserved by various tribes, and make of them an pparently harmonious narrative of creation and of the evolution of the
Judęan race. But in its hidden meaning, from _Genesis_ to the last word of
_Deuteronomy_, the Pentateuch is the symbolical narrative of the sexes, nd is an apotheosis of Phallicism, under astronomical and physiological ersonations.(329) Its coördination, however, is only apparent; and the uman hand appears at every moment, is found everywhere in the "Book of
God." Hence the Kings of Edom discuss in _Genesis_ before any king had eigned in Israel; Moses records his own death, and Aaron dies twice and s buried in two different places, to say nothing of other trifles. For he Kabalist they are trifles, for he knows that all these events are not istory, but are simply the cloak designed to envelope and hide various hysiological peculiarities; but for the sincere Christian, who accepts ll these "dark sayings" in good faith, it matters a good deal. Solomon ay very well be regarded as a myth(330) by the Masons, as they lose othing by it, for all their secrets are Kabalistic and allegorical--for hose few, at any rate, who understand them. For the Christian, however, o give up Solomon, the son of David--from whom Jesus is made to escend--involves a real loss. But how even the Kabalists can claim great ntiquity for the Hebrew texts of the old Biblical scrolls now possessed y the scholars is not made at all apparent. For it is certainly a fact of istory, based on the confessions of the Jews themselves, and of
Christians likewise, that:
The Scriptures having perished in the captivity of Nabuchodonozar,
Esdras, the Levite, the priest, in the times of Artaxerxes, king
of the Persians, having become inspired, in the exercise of
prophecy restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures.(331)
One must have a strong belief in "Esdras," and especially in his good aith, to accept the now-existing copies as genuine Mosaic Books; for:
Assuming that the copies, or rather phonographs which had been
made by Hilkiah and Esdras, and the various anonymous editors,
were really true and genuine, they must have been wholly
exterminated by Antiochus; and the versions of the Old Testament
which now subsist must have been made by Judas, or by some unknown
compilers, probably from the Greek of the Seventy, long after the
appearance and death of Jesus.(332)
The _Bible_, therefore, as it is now (the Hebrew texts, that is), depends or its accuracy on the genuineness of the _Septuagint_; this, we are gain told, was written miraculously by the Seventy, in Greek, and the riginal copy having been lost since that time, our texts are re- ranslated back into Hebrew from that language. But in this vicious circle f proofs we once more have to rely upon the good faith of two
Jews--Josephus and Philo Judęus of Alexandria--these two Historians being he only witnesses that the Septuagint was written under the circumstances arrated. And yet it is just these circumstances that are very little alculated to inspire one with confidence. For what does Josephus tell us?
He says that Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to read the Hebrew Law in
Greek, wrote to Eleazar, the high-priest of the Jews, begging him _to send im six men from each of the twelve tribes_, who should make a translation or him. Then follows a truly miraculous story, vouchsafed by Aristeas, of hese seventy-two men from the twelve tribes of Israel, who, shut up in an sland, compiled their translation in exactly seventy-two days, etc.
All this is very edifying, and one might have had very little reason to oubt the story, had not the "ten lost tribes" been made to play their art in it. How could these tribes, lost between 700 and 900 B.C., each end six men some centuries later, to satisfy the whim of Ptolemy, and to isappear once more immediately afterwards from the horizon? A miracle, erily.
We are expected, nevertheless, to regard such documents as the
_Septuagint_ as containing direct divine revelation: Documents originally ritten in a tongue about which nobody now knows anything; written by uthors that are practically mythical, and at dates as to which no one is ble even to make a defensible surmise; documents of the original copies f which there does not now remain a shred. Yet people will persist in alking of the ancient Hebrew, as if there were any man left in the world ho now knows one word of it. So little, indeed, was Hebrew known that oth the Septuagint and the _New Testament_ had to be written in a
_heathen_ language (the Greek), and no better reasons for it given than hat Hutchinson says, namely, that the Holy Ghost chose to write the New
Testament in Greek.
The Hebrew language is considered to be very old, and yet there exists no race of it anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldęa. Among the reat number of inscriptions of various kinds found in the ruins of that ountry:
One in the Hebrew Chaldee letter and language _has never been
found_; nor has a single authentic medal or gem in this new-
fangled character been ever discovered, which could carry it even
to the days of Jesus.(333)
The original _Book of Daniel_ is written in a dialect which is a mixture f Hebrew and Aramaic; it is not even in Chaldaic, with the exception of a ew verses interpolated later on. According to Sir W. Jones and other
Orientalists, the oldest discoverable languages of Persia are the Chaldaic nd Sanskrit, and there is no trace of the "Hebrew" in these. It would be ery surprising if there were, since the Hebrew known to the Philologists oes not date earlier than 500 B.C., and its characters belong to a far ater period still. Thus, while the real Hebrew characters, if not ltogether lost are nevertheless so hopelessly transformed--
A mere inspection of the alphabet showing that it has been shaped
and made regular, in doing which the characteristic marks of some
of the letters _have been retrenched_ in order to make them more
square and uniform--(334)
hat no one but an initiated Rabbi of Samaria or a "Jain" could read them, he new system of the masoretic points has made them a sphinx-riddle for ll. Punctuation is now to be found everywhere in all the later anuscripts, and by means of it anything can be made of a text; a Hebrew cholar can put on the texts any interpretation he likes. Two instances iven by Kenealy will suffice:
In _Genesis_, xlix. 21, we read:
Naphtali is a _hind let loose_; he _giveth goodly words_.
By only a slight alteration of the points Bochart changes this
into:
Naphtali is a _spreading tree, shooting forth beautiful branches_.
So again, in _Psalms_ (xxix. 9), instead of:
The voice of the Lord _maketh the hind to calve_, and discovereth
the forests;
Bishop Lowth gives:
The voice of the Lord _striketh the oak_, and discovereth the
forests.
The same word in Hebrew signifies "God" and "nothing," etc.(335)
With regard to the claim made by some Kabalists that there was in ntiquity one knowledge and one language, this claim is also our own, and t is very just. Only it must be added, to make the thing clear, that this nowledge and language have both been esoteric ever since the submersion f the Atlanteans. The Tower of Babel myth relates to that enforced ecrecy. Men falling into sin were regarded as no longer trustworthy for he reception of such knowledge, and, from being universal, it became imited to the few. Thus, the "one-lip"--or the Mystery-language--being radually denied to subsequent generations, all the nations became everally restricted to their own national tongue; and forgetting the rimeval Wisdom-language, they stated that the Lord--one of the chief Lords r Hierophants of the Mysteries of the Java Aleim--had confounded the anguages of all the earth, so that the sinners could understand one nother's speech no longer. But Initiates remained in every land and ation, and the Israelites, like all others, had their learned Adepts. One f the keys to this Universal Knowledge is a pure geometrical and umerical system, the alphabet of every great nation having a numerical alue for every letter,(336) and, moreover, a system of permutation of yllables and synonyms which is carried to perfection in the Indian Occult ethods, and which the Hebrew certainly has not. This one system, ontaining the elements of Geometry and Numeration, was used by the Jews or the purpose of concealing their Esoteric creed under the mask of a opular and national monotheistic Religion. The last who knew the system o perfection were the learned and "atheistical" Sadducees, the greatest nemies of the pretensions of the Pharisees and of their confused notions rought from Babylon. Yes, the Sadducees, the Illusionists, who maintained hat the Soul, the Angels, and all similar Beings, were illusions because hey were temporary--thus showing themselves at one with Eastern
Esotericism. And since they rejected every book and Scripture, with the xception of the Law of Moses, it seems that the latter must have been ery different from what it is now.(337)
The whole of the foregoing is written with an eye to our Kabalists. Great cholars as some of them undoubtedly are, they are nevertheless wrong to ang the harps of their faith on the willows of Talmudic growth--on the
Hebrew scrolls, whether in square or pointed characters, now in our public ibraries, museums, or even in the collections of Paleographers. There do ot remain half-a-dozen copies from the true Mosaic Hebrew scrolls in the hole world. And those who are in possession of these--as we indicated a ew pages back--would not part with them, or even allow them to be xamined, on any consideration whatever. How then can any Kabalist claim riority for Hebrew Esotericism, and say, as does one of our orrespondents, that "the Hebrew has come down from a far remoter ntiquity than any of them [whether Egyptian or even Sanskrit!], and that t was the source, or nearer to the old original source, than any of hem"?(338)
As our correspondent says: "It becomes more convincing to me every day hat in a far past time there was _a mighty civilization with __ enormous earning, which had a common language over the earth, as to which its ssence can be recovered from the fragments which now exist_."
Aye, there existed indeed a mighty civilization, and a still mightier ecret learning and knowledge, the entire scope of which can never be iscovered by Geometry and the _Kabalah_ alone: for there are seven keys o the large entrance-door, and not one, nor even two, keys can ever open t sufficiently to allow more than glimpses of what lies within.
Every scholar must be aware that there are two distinct styles--_two chools_, so to speak--plainly traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures: the
Elohistic and the Jehovistic. The portions belonging to these respectively re so blended together, so completely mixed up by later hands, that often ll external characteristics are lost. Yet it is also known that the two chools were antagonistic; that the one taught esoteric, the other xoteric, or theological doctrines; that the one, the Elohists, were Seers
(Roch), whereas the other, the Jehovists, were prophets (Nabhi),(339) and hat the latter--who later became Rabbis--were generally only nominally rophets by virtue of their official position, as the Pope is called the nfallible and inspired vicegerent of God. That, again, the Elohists meant y "Elohim" "forces," identifying their Deity, as in the Secret Doctrine, ith Nature; while the Jehovists made of Jehovah a personal God xternally, and used the term simply as a phallic symbol--a number of them ecretly disbelieving even in metaphysical, abstract Nature, and ynthesizing all on the terrestrial scale. Finally, the Elohists made of an the divine incarnate image of the Elohim, emanated first in all
Creation; and the Jehovists show him as the last, the crowning glory of he animal creation, instead of his being the head of all the sensible eings on earth. (This is reversed by some Kabalists, but the reversion is ue to the designedly-produced confusion in the texts, especially in the irst four chapters of _Genesis_.)
Take the _Zohar_ and find in it the description relating to Ain-Suph, the
Western or Semitic Parabrahman. What passages have come so nearly up to he Vedāntic ideal as the following:
The creation [the evolved Universe] is the garment of that which
has no name, the garment _woven from the Deity's own
substance_.(340)
Between that which is Ain or "nothing," and the Heavenly Man, there is an
Impersonal First Cause, however, of which it is said:
Before It gave any shape to this world, before It produced any
form, It was alone, without form or similitude to anything else.
Who, then, can comprehend It, how It was before the creation,
since It was formless? Hence it is forbidden to represent It by
any form, similitude, or even by Its sacred name, by a single
letter or a single point.(341)
The sentence that follows, however, is an evident later interpolation; for t draws attention to a complete contradiction:
And to this the words (_Deut._ iv. 15), refer--"Ye saw no manner of
similitude on the day the Lord spake unto you."
But this reference to Chapter iv. of _Deuteronomy_, when in Chapter v. God s mentioned as speaking "face to face" with the people, is very clumsy.
Not one of the names given to Jehovah in the _Bible_ has any reference hatever to either Ain-Suph or the Impersonal First-Cause (which is the
Logos) of the _Kabalah_; but they all refer to the _Emanations_.
It says
For although to reveal itself to us, the concealed of all the
concealed sent forth the Ten Emanations [Sephiroth] called the
Form of God, Form of the Heavenly Man, yet since even this
luminous form was too dazzling for our vision, it had to assume
another form, or had to put on another garment, _which is the
Universe_. The Universe, therefore, or the visible world, is a
farther expansion of the Divine Substance, and is called in the
Kabalah "The Garment of God."(342)
This is the doctrine of all the Hindu Purānas, especially that of the
_Vishnu Purāna_. Vishnu pervades the Universe and is that Universe; Brahmā nters the Mundane Egg, and issues from it as the Universe; Brahmā even ies with it and there remains only Brahman, the impersonal, the eternal, he unborn, and the unqualifiable. The Ain-Suph of the Chaldęans and later f the Jews is assuredly a copy of the Vaidic Deity; while the "Heavenly
Adam," the Macrocosm which unites in itself the totality of beings and is he _Esse_ of the visible Universe, finds his original in the Purānic
Brahmā. In _Sōd_, "the Secret of the Law," one recognizes the expressions sed in the oldest fragments of the Gupta Vidyā, the Secret Knowledge. And t is not venturing too much to say that even a Rabbi quite familiar with is own special Rabbinical _Hebrew_ would only comprehend its secrets horoughly if he added to his learning a serious knowledge of the Hindu hilosophies. Let us turn to Stanza I. of the _Book of Dzyan_ for an xample.
The _Zohar_ premises, as does the Secret Doctrine, a universal, eternal
Essence, passive--because absolute--in all that men call attributes. The regenetic or pre-cosmical Triad is a pure metaphysical abstraction. The otion of a triple hypostasis in one Unknown Divine Essence is as old as peech and thought. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara--the Creator, the
Preserver, and the Destroyer--are the three manifested attributes of it, ppearing and disappearing with Kosmos; the visible Triangle, so to speak, n the plane of the ever-invisible Circle. This is the primeval root- hought of thinking Humanity; the Pythagorean Triangle emanating from the ver-concealed Monad, or the Central Point.
Plato speaks of it and Plotinus calls it an ancient doctrine, on which
Cudworth remarks that:
Since Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato, who all of them asserted a
Trinity of divine hypostases, unquestionably derived their
doctrine from the Egyptians, it may be reasonably suspected that
the Egyptians did the like before them.(343)
The Egyptians certainly derived their Trinity from the Indians. Wilson ustly observes:
As, however, the Grecian accounts and those of the Egyptians are
much more perplexed and unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus,
it is most probable that we find amongst them the doctrine in its
most original, as well as most methodical and significant
form.(344)
This, then, is the meaning:
"_Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were nce more One._"(345)
Space was, and is ever, as it is between the Manvantaras. The Universe in ts pre-kosmic state was once more homogeneous and one--outside its spects. This was a Kabalistic, and is now a Christian teaching.
As is constantly shown in the _Zohar_, the Infinite Unity, or Ain-Suph, is ver placed outside human thought and appreciation; and in _Sepher
Jetzirah_ we see the Spirit of God--the Logos, not the Deity itself--called
One.
One is the Spirit of the living God, ... who liveth for ever.
Voice, Spirit, [of the Spirit], and Word: this is the Holy
Spirit,(346)
--and the Quaternary. From this Cube emanates the whole Kosmos.
Says the Secret Doctrine:
"_It is called to life. The mystic Cube in which rests the Creative Idea, he manifesting Mantra_ [or articulate speech--Vāch] _and the holy Purusha_
[both radiations of prima materia] _exist in the Eternity in the Divine
Substance in their latent state_"
--during Pralaya.
And in the _Sepher Jetzirah_, when the Three-in-One are to be called into eing--by the manifestation of Shekinah, the first effulgency or radiation n the manifesting Kosmos--the "Spirit of God," or Number One,(347) ructifies and awakens the dual Potency, Number Two, Air, and Number
Three, Water; in these "are darkness and emptiness, slime and dung"--which s Chaos, the Tohu-Vah-Bohu. The Air and Water emanate Number Four, Ether r Fire, the Son. This is the Kabalistic Quaternary. This Fourth Number, hich in the manifested Kosmos is the One, or the Creative God, is with he Hindus the "Ancient," Sanat, the Prajāpati of the _Vedas_ and the
Brahmā of the Brāhmans--the heavenly Androgyne, as he becomes the male only fter separating himself into two bodies, Vāch and Virāj. With the
Kabalists, he is at first the Jah-Havah, only later becoming Jehovah, like
Virāj, his prototype; after separating himself as Adam-Kadmon into Adam nd Eve in the formless, and into Cain-Abel in the semi-objective, world, e became finally the Jah-Havah, or man and woman, in Enoch, the son of
Seth.
For, the true meaning of the compound name of Jehovah--of which, unvoweled, ou can make almost anything--is: men and women, or humanity composed of ts two sexes. From the first chapter to the end of the fourth chapter of
_Genesis_ every name is a permutation of another name, and every personage s at the same time somebody else. A Kabalist traces Jehovah from the Adam f earth to Seth, the third son--or rather race--of Adam.(348) Thus Seth is
Jehovah male; and Enos, being a permutation of Cain and Abel, is Jehovah ale and female, or our mankind. The Hindu Brahmā-Virāj, Virāj-Manu, and
Manu-Vaivasvata, with his daughter and wife, Vāch, present the greatest nalogy with these personages--for anyone who will take the trouble of tudying the subject in both the _Bible_ and the _Purānas_. It is said of
Brahmā that he created himself as Manu, and that he was born of, and was dentical with, his original self, while he constituted the female portion
"Shata-rūpā" (hundred-formed). In this Hindu Eve, "the mother of all iving beings," Brahmā created Virāj, who is himself, but on a lower cale, as Cain is Jehovah on an inferior scale: both are the first males f the Third Race. The same idea is illustrated in the Hebrew name of God
({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}) Read from right to left "Jod" ({~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}) is the father, "He" ({~HEBREW LETTER HE~}) the other, "Vau" ({~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}) the son, and "He" ({~HEBREW LETTER HE~}), repeated at the end of the word, s generation, the act of birth, materiality. This is surely a sufficient eason why the God of the Jews and Christians should be personal, as much s the male Brahmā, Vishnu, or Shiva of the orthodox, exoteric Hindu.
Thus the term of Jhvh alone--now accepted as the name of "One living [male]
God"--will yield, if seriously studied, not only the whole mystery of
_Being_ (in the Biblical sense,) but also that of the Occult Theogony, rom the highest divine Being, the third in order, down to man. As shown y the best Hebraists:
The verbal {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}, or Hāyāh, or E-y-e, means _to be_, _to exist_,
while {~HEBREW LETTER HET~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} or Chāyāh, or H-y-e, means _to live_, as _motion of
existence_.(349)
Hence Eve stands as the evolution and the never-ceasing "becoming" of
Nature. Now if we take the almost untranslatable Sanskrit word Sat, which eans the quintessence of absolute immutable Being, or Be-ness--as it has een rendered by an able Hindu Occultist--we shall find no equivalent for t in any language; but it may be regarded as most closely resembling
"Ain," or "En-Suph," Boundless Being. Then the term Hāyāh, "to be," as assive, changeless, yet manifested existence may perhaps be rendered by he Sanskrit Jīvātmā, universal life or soul, in its secondary and cosmic eaning; while "Chāyāh," "to live," as "motion of existence," is simply
Prāna, the ever-changing life in its objective sense. It is at the head of his third category that the Occultist finds Jehovah--the Mother, Binah, nd the Father, Arelim. This is made plain in the _Zohar_, when the manation and evolution of the Sephiroth are explained: First, Ain-Suph, hen Shekinah, the Garment or Veil of Infinite Light, then Sephira or the
Kadmon, and, thus making the fourth, the spiritual Substance sent forth rom the Infinite Light. This Sephira is called the Crown, Kether, and has esides, six other names--in all seven. These names are: 1. Kether; 2. the
Aged; 3. the Primordial Point; 4. the White Head; 5. the Long Face; 6. the
Inscrutable Height; and 7. Ehejeh ("I am".)(350) This septenary Sephira is aid to contain in itself the nine Sephiroth. But before showing how she rought them forth, let us read an explanation about the Sephiroth in the
_Talmud_, which gives it as an archaic tradition, or Kabalah.
There are three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth: 1. The Sephiroth called
"divine attributes" (the Triad in the Holy Quaternary); 2. the sidereal
(personal) Sephiroth; 3. the metaphysical Sephiroth, or a periphrasis of
Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chokmah and Binah), he rest of the seven being the personal "Seven Spirits of the Presence"
(also of the planets, therefore). Speaking of these, the angels are meant, hough not because they are seven, but because they represent the seven
Sephiroth which contain in them the universality of the Angels.
This shows (_a_) that, when the first four Sephiroth are separated, as a
Triad-Quaternary--Sephira being its synthesis--there remain only seven
Sephiroth, as there are seven Rishis; these become ten when the
Quaternary, or the first divine Cube, is scattered into units; and (_b_) hat while Jehovah might have been viewed as the Deity, if he be included n the three divine groups or orders of the Sephiroth, the collective
Elohim, or the quaternary indivisible Kether, once that he becomes a male
God, he is no more than one of the Builders of the lower group--a Jewish
Brahmā.(351) A demonstration is now attempted.
The first Sephira, containing the other nine, brought them forth in this rder: (2) Hokmah (Chokmah, or Wisdom), a masculine active potency epresented among the divine names as Jah; and, as a permutation or an volution into lower forms in this instance--becoming the Auphanim (or the
Wheels--cosmic rotation of matter) among the army, or the angelic hosts.
From this Chokmah emanated a feminine passive potency called (3)
Intelligence, Binah, whose divine name is Jehovah, and whose angelic name, mong the Builders and Hosts, is _Arelim_.(352) It is from the union of hese two potencies, male and female (or Chokmah and Binah) that emanated ll the other Sephiroth, the seven orders of the Builders. Now if we call
Jehovah by his divine name, then he becomes at best and forthwith "a emale passive" potency in Chaos. And if we view him as a male God, he is o more than one of many, an Angel, Arelim. But straining the analysis to ts highest point, and if his male name Jah, that of Wisdom, be allowed to im, still he is not the "Highest and the one Living God;" for he is ontained with many others within Sephira, and Sephira herself is a third
Potency in Occultism, though regarded as the first in the exoteric
_Kabalah_--and is one, moreover, of lesser importance than the Vaidic
Aditi, or the Primordial Water of Space, which becomes after many a ermutation the Astral Light of the Kabalist.
Thus the _Kabalah_, as we have it now, is shown to be of the greatest mportance in explaining the allegories and "dark sayings" of the _Bible_.
As an Esoteric work upon the mysteries of creation, however, it is almost orthless as it is now disfigured, unless checked by the Chaldęan _Book of
Numbers_ or by the tenets of the Eastern Secret Science, or Esoteric
Wisdom. The Western nations have neither the original _Kabalah_, nor yet he Mosaic _Bible_.
Finally, it is demonstrated by internal as well as by external evidence, n the testimony of the best European Hebraists, and the confessions of he learned Jewish Rabbis themselves, that "an ancient document forms the ssential basis of the _Bible_, which received very considerable nsertions and supplements;" and that "the Pentateuch arose out of the rimitive or older document by means of a supplementary one." Therefore in he absence of the _Book of Numbers_,(353) the Kabalists of the West are nly entitled to come to definite conclusions, when they have at hand some ata at least from that "ancient document"--data now found scattered hroughout Egyptian papyri, Assyrian tiles, and the traditions preserved y the descendants of the disciples of the last Nazars. Instead of that, ost of them accept as their authorities and infallible guides Sabre 'Olivet--who was a man of immense erudition and of speculative mind, but either a Kabalist nor an Occultist, either Western or Eastern--and the
Mason Ragon, the greatest of the "Widow's sons," who was even less of an
Orientalist than d'Olivet, for Sanskrit learning was almost unknown in the ays of both these eminent scholars.
SECTION XXI. HEBREW ALLEGORIES.
How can any Kabalist, acquainted with the foregoing, deduce his onclusions with regard to the true Esoteric beliefs of the primitive
Jews, from that only which he now finds in the Jewish scrolls? How can any cholar--even though one of the keys to the universal language be now ositively discovered, the true key to the numerical reading of a pure eometrical system--give out anything as his _final_ conclusion? Modern
Kabalistic speculation is on a par now with modern "speculative Masonry;" or as the latter tries vainly to link itself with the ancient--or rather he archaic--Masonry of the Temples, failing to make the link because all ts claims have been shown to be inaccurate from an archęological tandpoint, so fares it also with Kabalistic speculation. As no mystery of
Nature worth running after can be revealed to humanity by settling whether
Hiram Abif was a living Sidonian builder, or a solar myth, so no fresh nformation will be added to Occult Lore by the details of the exoteric rivileges conferred on the Collegia Fabrorum by Numa Pompilius. Rather ust the symbols used in it be studied in the Āryan light, since all the
Symbolism of the ancient Initiations came to the West with the light of he Eastern Sun. Nevertheless, we find the most learned Masons and
Symbologists declaring that all these weird symbols and glyphs, that run ack to a common origin of immense antiquity, were nothing more than a isplay of cunning natural phallicism, or emblems of primitive typology.
How much nearer the truth is the author of _The Source of Measures_, who eclares that the elements of human and numerical construction in the
_Bible_ do not shut out the spiritual elements in it, albeit so few now nderstand them. The words we quote are as suggestive as they are true:
How desperately blinding becomes a superstitious use, through
ignorance, of such emblems, when they are made to possess the
power of bloodshed and torture, through orders of propaganda of
any species of religious cultus. When one thinks of the horrors of
a _Moloch_, or _Baal_, or _Dagon_ worship; of the correlated
blood-deluges under the Cross baptized in gore by Constantine, at
the initiative of the secular Church; ... when one thinks of all
this and then that the cause of all has been simply ignorance of
the real radical reading of the _Moloch_, and _Baal_, and _Dagon_,
and the _Cross_ and the _T'phillin_, all running back to a common
origin, and after all being nothing more than a display of pure
and natural mathematics, ... one is apt to feel like cursing
ignorance, and to lose confidence in what are called _intuitions_
of religion; one is apt to wish for a return of the day when all
the world was of one _lip_ and of one _knowledge_.... But while
these elements [of the construction of the pyramid] are rational
and scientific, ... let no man consider that with this discovery
comes a cutting-off of the _spirituality_(354) of the _Bible_
intention, or of man's relation to this spiritual foundation. Does
one wish to build a house? No house was ever actually built with
tangible material _until first the architectural design of
building had been accomplished_, no matter whether the structure
was palace or hovel. So with these elements and numbers. They are
not of man, nor are they of his invention. They have been revealed
to him to the extent of his ability to realize a system, which is
_the creative system_ of the eternal God.... But _spiritually_, to
man the value of this matter is that he can actually in
contemplation, bridge over all material construction of the
cosmos, and pass into the very _thought_ and _mind_ of God, to the
extent of recognizing this _system of design_ for cosmic
creation--yea, even before the words went forth: "_Let there
be_."(355)
But true as the above words may be, when coming from one who has re- iscovered, more completely than anyone else has done during the past enturies, one of the keys to the universal Mystery Language, it is mpossible for an Eastern Occultist to agree with the conclusion of the ble author of _The Source of Measures_. He "has set out to find the ruth," and yet he still believes that:
The best and most authentic vehicle of communication from [the
creative] God to man ... is to be found in the Hebrew Bible.
To this we must and shall demur, giving our reasons for it in a few words.
The "Hebrew _Bible_" exists no more, as has been shown in the foregoing ages, and the garbled accounts, the falsified and pale copies we have of he real Mosaic _Bible_ of the Initiates, warrant the making of no such weeping assertion and claim. All that the scholar can fairly claim is hat the Jewish _Bible_, as now extant--in its latest and final nterpretation, and according to the newly-discovered key--may give a artial presentment of the truths it contained before it was mangled. But ow can he tell what the _Pentateuch_ contained before it had been re- omposed by Esdras; then corrupted still more by the ambitious Rabbis in ater times, and otherwise remodelled and interfered with? Leaving aside he opinion of the declared enemies of the Jewish Scriptures, one may uote simply what their most devoted followers say.
Two of these are Horne and Prideaux. The avowals of the former will be ufficient to show how much now remains of the original Mosaic books, nless indeed we accept his sublimely blind faith in the inspiration and ditorship of the Holy Ghost. He writes that when a Hebrew scribe found a riting of any author he was entitled, if he thought fit, being "conscious f the aid of the Holy Spirit," to do exactly as he pleased with it--to cut t up, or copy it, or use as much of it as he deemed right, and so to ncorporate it with his own manuscript. Dr. Kenealy aptly remarks of
Horne, that it is almost impossible to get any admission from him
That makes against his church, so remarkably guarded is he [Horne]
in his phraseology and so wonderfully discreet in the use of words
that his language, like a diplomatic letter, perpetually suggests
to the mind ideas other than those which he really means; I defy
any unlearned person to read his chapter on "Hebrew characters"
and to derive _any knowledge_ from it whatever on the subject on
which he professes to treat.(356)
And yet this same Horne writes:
We are persuaded that the things to which reference is made
proceeded from the original writers or _compilers_ of the books
[_Old Testament_]. Sometimes they took other writings, annals,
genealogies, and such like, with which they _incorporated
additional matter_, or which they put together with greater or
less condensation. The _Old Testament_ authors used the sources
they employed (that is, the writing of other people) with freedom
and independence. Conscious of the aid of the Divine Spirit, _they
adapted_ their own productions, or the productions of others, to
the wants of the times. But in these respects they cannot be said
to have corrupted the text of Scripture. _They made the
text._(357)
But of what did they make it? Why, of the writings of other persons, ustly observes Kenealy:
And this is Horne's notion of what the _Old Testament_ is--a cento
from the writings of unknown persons collected and put together by
those who, he says, were divinely inspired. No infidel that I know
of has ever made so damaging a charge as this against the
authenticity of the _Old Testament_.(358)
This is quite sufficient, we think, to show that no key to the universal anguage-system can ever open the mysteries of Creation in a work in hich, whether through design or carelessness, nearly every sentence has een made to apply to the latest outcome of religious views--to Phallicism, nd to nothing else. There are a sufficient number of stray bits in the
Elohistic portions of the _Bible_ to warrant the inference that the
Hebrews who wrote it were Initiates; hence the mathematical coördinations nd the perfect harmony between the measures of the Great Pyramid and the umerals of the Biblical glyphs. But surely if one borrowed from the ther, it cannot be the architects of the Pyramid who borrowed from
Solomon's Temple, if only because the former exists to this day as a tupendous living monument of Esoteric records, while the famous temple as never existed outside of the far later Hebrew scrolls.(359) Hence here is a great distance between the admission that some Hebrews were
Initiates, and the conclusion that because of this the Hebrew _Bible_ must e the best standard, as being the highest representative of the archaic
Esoteric System.
Nowhere does the _Bible_ say, moreover, that the Hebrew is the language of
God; of this boast, at any rate, the authors are not guilty. Perhaps ecause in the days when the _Bible_ was last edited the claim would have een too preposterous--hence dangerous. The _compilers_ of the _Old
Testament_, as it exists in the Hebrew canon, knew well that the language f the Initiates in the days of Moses was identical with that of the
Egyptian Hierophants; and that none of the dialects that had sprung from he old Syriac and the pure old Arabic of Yarab--the father and progenitor f the primitive Arabians, long before the time of Abraham, in whose days he ancient Arabic had already become vitiated--that none of those anguages was the one sacerdotal universal tongue. Nevertheless all of hem included a number of words which could be traced to common roots. And o do this is the business of modern Philology, though to this day, with ll the respect due to the labours of the eminent Philologists of Oxford nd Berlin, that Science seems to be hopelessly floundering in the
Cimmerian darkness of mere hypothesis.
Ahrens, when speaking of the letters as arranged in the Hebrew sacred crolls, and remarking that they were musical notes, had probably never tudied Āryan Hindu music. In the Sanskrit language letters are ontinually arranged in the sacred Ollas so that they may become musical otes. For the whole Sanskrit alphabet and the _Vedas_, from the first ord to the last, are musical notations reduced to writing; the two are nseparable.(360) As Homer distinguished between the "language of Gods" nd the "language of men,"(361) so did the Hindus. The Devanāgarī, the
Sanskrit characters, are the "speech of the Gods," and Sanskrit is the ivine language.
It is argued in defence of the present version of the Mosaic Books that he mode of language adopted was an "accommodation" to the ignorance of he Jewish people. But the said "mode of language" drags down the "sacred ext" of Esdras and his colleagues to the level of the most unspiritual nd gross phallic religions. This plea confirms the suspicions entertained y some Christian Mystics and many philosophical critics, that:
(_a_) Divine Power as an Absolute Unity had never anything more to do with he Biblical Jehovah and the "Lord God" than with any other Sephiroth or
Number. The Ain-Suph of the _Kabalah_ of Moses is as independent of any elation with the created Gods as is Parabrahman Itself.
(_b_) The teachings veiled in the _Old Testament_ under allegorical xpressions are all copied from the Magical Texts of Babylonia, by Esdras nd others, while the earlier Mosaic Text had its source in Egypt.
A few instances known to almost all Symbologists of note, and especially o the French Egyptologists, may help to prove the statement. Furthermore, o ancient Hebrew Philosopher, Philo no more than the Sadducees, claimed, s do now the ignorant Christians, that the events in the _Bible_ should e taken literally. Philo says most explicitly:
The verbal statements are fabulous [in the Book of the Law]: it is
in the allegory that we shall find the truth.
Let us give a few instances, beginning with the latest narrative, the
Hebrew, and thus if possible trace the allegories to their origin.
1. Whence the Creation in six days, the seventh day as day of rest, the even Elohim,(362) and the division of space into heaven and earth, in the irst chapter of _Genesis_?
The division of the vault above from the Abyss, or Chaos, below is one of he first acts of creation or rather of evolution, in every cosmogony.
Hermes in _Pymander_ speaks of a heaven seen in seven circles with seven
Gods in them. We examine the Assyrian tiles and find the same on them--the even creative Gods busy each in his own sphere. The cuneiform legends arrate how Bel prepared the seven mansions of the Gods; how heaven was eparated from the earth. In the Brāhmanical allegory everything is eptenary, from the seven zones, or envelopes, of the Mundane Egg down to he seven continents, islands, seas, etc. The six days of the week and the eventh, the Sabbath, are based primarily on the seven creations of the
Hindu Brahmā, the seventh being that of man; and secondarily on the number f generation. It is preėminently and most conspicuously phallic. In the
Babylonian system the seventh day, or period, was that in which man and he animals were created.
2. The Elohim make a woman out of Adam's rib.(363) This process is found n the Magical Texts translated by G. Smith.
The seven Spirits bring forth the woman from the loins of the man,
xplains Mr. Sayce in his _Hibbert Lectures_.(364)
The mystery of the woman who was made from the man is repeated in every ational religion, and in Scriptures far antedating the Jewish. You find t in the Avestan fragments, in the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, and inally in Brahmā, the male, separating from himself, as a female self,
Vāch, in whom he creates Virāj.
3. The two Adams of the first and second chapters in _Genesis_ originated rom garbled exoteric accounts coming from the Chaldęans and the Egyptian
Gnostics, revised later from the Persian traditions, most of which are old
Āryan allegories. As Adam Kadmon is the seventh creation,(365) so the Adam f dust is the eighth; and in the Purānas one finds an eighth, the
Anugraha creation, and the Egyptian Gnostics had it. Irenęus, complaining f the heretics, says of the Gnostics:
Sometimes they will have him [man] to have been made on the sixth
day, and sometimes on the eighth.(366)
The author of _The Hebrew and Other Creations_ writes:
These two creations of man on the sixth day and on the eighth were
those of the Adamic, or fleshly man, and of the spiritual man, who
were known to Paul and the Gnostics as the first and second Adam,
the man of earth and the man of Heaven. Irenęus also says they
insisted that Moses began with the Ogdoad of the Seven Powers and
their mother, Sophia (the old Kefa of Egypt, who is the _Living
Word_ at Ombos).(367)
Sophia is also Aditi with her seven sons.
One might go on enumerating and tracing the Jewish "revelations" _ad nfinitum_ to their original sources, were it not that the task is uperfluous, since so much is already done in that direction by others--and one thoroughly well, as in the case of Gerald Massey, who has sifted the ubject to the very bottom. Hundreds of volumes, treatises, and pamphlets re being written yearly in defence of the "divine-inspiration" claim for he _Bible_; but symbolical and archęological research is coming to the escue of truth and fact--therefore of the Esoteric Doctrine--upsetting very argument based on faith and breaking it as an idol with feet of lay. A curious and learned book, _The Approaching End of the Age_, by H.
Grattan Guinness, professes to solve the mysteries of the _Bible_ hronology and to prove thereby God's direct revelation to man. Among ther things its author thinks that:
It is impossible to deny that _a septiform chronology was divinely
appointed_ in the elaborate ritual of Judaism.
This statement is innocently accepted and fervently believed in by housands and tens of thousands, only because they are ignorant of the
Bibles of other nations. Two pages from a small pamphlet, a lecture by Mr.
Gerald Massey,(368) so upset the arguments and proofs of the enthusiastic
Mr. Grattan Guinness, spread over 760 pages of small print, as to prevent hem from ever raising their heads any more. Mr. Massey treats of the
Fall, and says:
Here, as before, the genesis does not begin at the beginning.
There was an earlier Fall than that of the Primal Pair. In this
the number of those who failed and fell was seven. We meet with
those seven in Egypt--eight with the Mother--where they are called
the "Children of Inertness," who were cast out from Am-Smen, the
Paradise of the Eight; also in a Babylonian legend of Creation, as
the Seven Brethren, who were Seven Kings, like the Seven Kings in
the _Book of Revelation_; and the Seven Non-Sentient Powers, who
became the Seven Rebel Angels that made war in heaven. The Seven
Kronidę, described as the Seven Watchers, who in the beginning
were formed in the interior of heaven. The heaven, like a vault,
they extended or hollowed out; that which was not visible they
raised, and that which had no _exit_ they opened; their work of
creation being exactly identical with that of the Elohim in the
_Book of Genesis_. These are the Seven elemental Powers of space,
who were continued as Seven Timekeepers. It is said of them: "In
watching was their office, but among the stars of heaven their
watch they kept not," and their failure was the Fall. In the _Book
of Enoch_ the same Seven Watchers in heaven are stars which
transgressed the commandment of God before their time arrived, for
they came not in their proper season, therefore was he offended
with them, and bound them until the period of the consummation of
their crimes, at the end of the _secret_, or great year of the
World, _i.e._, the Period of Precession, when there was to be
restoration and rebeginning. The Seven deposed constellations are
seen by Enoch, looking like seven great blazing mountains
overthrown--the seven mountains in _Revelation_, on which the
Scarlet Lady sits.(369)
There are seven keys to this, as to every other allegory, whether in the
_Bible_ or in pagan religions. While Mr. Massey has hit upon the key in he mysteries of cosmogony, John Bentley in his _Hindu Astronomy_ claims hat the Fall of the Angels, or _War in Heaven_, as given by the Hindus, s but a figure of the calculations of time-periods, and goes on to show hat among the Western nations the same war, with like results, took the orm of the war of the Titans.
In short, he makes it _astronomical_. So does the author of _The Source of
Measures_:
The celestial sphere with the earth, was divided into twelve
compartments [astronomically], and these compartments were
esteemed as _sexed_, the _lords_ or _husbands_ being respectively
the planets presiding over them. This being the settled scheme,
want of proper correction would bring it to pass, after a time,
that error and confusion would ensue by the compartments coming
under the lordship of the wrong planets. Instead of lawful
wedlock, there would be illegal intercourse, as between the
planets, "_sons of Elohim_" and these compartments, "daughters of
H-Adam," or the _earth_-man; and in fact the fourth verse of sixth
_Genesis_ will bear _this_ interpretation for the usual one,
_viz._, "In the same days, or periods, there were untimely births
in the earth; and also behind that, when the sons of Elohim came
to the daughters of H-Adam, they begat to them the offspring of
harlotry," etc., astronomically indicating this confusion.(370)
Do any of these learned explanations explain anything except a possible ngenious allegory, and a personification of the celestial bodies, by the ncient Mythologists and Priests? Carried to their last word they would ndeniably explain much, and would thus furnish one of the right seven eys, fitting a great many of the Biblical puzzles yet opening none aturally and entirely, instead of being scientific and cunning master- eys. But they yet prove one thing--that neither the septiform chronology or the septiform theogony and evolution of all things is of divine origin n the _Bible_. For let us see the sources at which the _Bible_ sipped its ivine inspiration with regard to the sacred number seven. Says Mr. Massey n the same lecture:
The _Book of Genesis_ tells us nothing about the nature of these
Elohim, erroneously rendered "God," who are creators of the Hebrew
beginning, and who are themselves preėxtant and seated when the
theatre opens and the curtain ascends. It says that in the
beginning the Elohim created the heaven and the earth. In
thousands of books the Elohim have been discussed, but ... with no
conclusive result.... The Elohim are Seven in number, whether as
nature-powers, gods of constellations, or planetary gods, ... as
the Pitris and Patriarchs, Manus and Fathers of earlier times. The
Gnostics, however, and the Jewish _Kabalah_ preserve an account of
the Elohim of _Genesis_ by which we are able to identify them with
other forms of the seven primordial powers.... Their names are
Ildabaoth, Jehovah (or Jao), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloeus, Oreus, and
Astanphęus. Ildabaoth signifies the Lord God of the fathers, that
is the fathers who preceded the Father; and thus the seven are
identical with the seven Pitris or Fathers of India (Irenęus, B.
I., xxx., 5). Moreover, the Hebrew Elohim were preėxtant by name
and nature as Phoenician divinities or powers. Sanchoniathon
mentions them by name, and describes them as Auxiliaries of Kronos
or Time. In this phase, then, the Elohim are time-keepers in
heaven! In the Phoenician mythology the Elohim are the Seven sons
of Sydik [Melchizedek], identical with the Seven Kabiri, who in
Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah, and the Seven Spirits of Ra in
_The Book of the Dead_; ... in America with the seven Hohgates,
... in Assyria with the seven Lumazi.... They are always seven in
number ... who _Kab_--that is, turn round, together, whence the
"Kab-iri."... They are also the Ili or Gods, in Assyrian, who were
seven in number!... They were first born of the Mother in
Space,(371) and then the Seven Companions passed into the sphere
of time as auxiliaries of Kronus, or Sons of the Male Parent. As
Damascius says in his _Primitive Principles_, the Magi consider
that space and time were the source of all; and from being powers
of the air the gods were promoted to become time-keepers for men.
Seven constellations were assigned to them.... As the seven turned
round in the ark of the sphere they were designated the Seven
Sailors' Companions, Rishis, or Elohim. The first "Seven Stars"
are not planetary. They are the leading stars of seven
constellations which turned round with the Great Bear in
describing the circle of the year.(372) These the Assyrians called
the seven Lumazi, or leaders of the flocks of stars, designated
sheep. On the Hebrew line of descent or development, these Elohim
are identified for us by the Kabalists and Gnostics, who retained
the hidden wisdom or gnosis, the clue of which is absolutely
essential to any proper understanding of mythology or theology....
There were two constellations with seven stars each. _We_ call
them the Two Bears. But the seven stars of the Lesser Bear were
once considered to be the seven heads of the Polar Dragon, which
we meet with--as the beast with seven heads--in the Akkadian Hymns
and in _Revelation_. The mythical dragon originated in the
crocodile, which is the dragon of Egypt.... Now in one particular
cult, the Sut-Typhonian, the first god was Sevekh [the seven-
fold], who wears the crocodile's head, as well as the Serpent, and
who is the Dragon, or whose constellation was the Dragon.... In
Egypt the Great Bear was the constellation of Typhon, or _Kepha_,
the old genetrix, called the Mother of the Revolutions; and the
Dragon with seven heads was assigned to her son, Sevekh-Kronus, or
Saturn, called the Dragon of Life. That is, the typical dragon or
serpent with seven heads was female at first, and then the type
was continued, as male in her son Sevekh, the Sevenfold Serpent,
in Ea the Sevenfold, ... Iao Chnubis, and others. We find these
two in _The Book of Revelation_. One is the Scarlet Lady, the
mother of mystery, the great harlot, who sat on a scarlet-coloured
beast with seven heads, which is the Red Dragon of the Pole. She
held in her hand the unclean things of her fornication. That means
the emblems of the male and female, imaged by the Egyptians at the
Polar Centre, the very uterus of creation, as was indicated by the
Thigh constellation, called the Khepsh of Typhon, the old Dragon,
in the northern birthplace of Time in heaven. The two revolved
about the _pole of heaven_, or the Tree, as it was called, which
was figured at the centre of the starry motion. In _The Book of
Enoch_ these two constellations are identified as Leviathan and
Behemoth-Bekhmut, or the Dragon and Hippopotamus = Great Bear, and
they are the primal pair that were first created in the Garden of
Eden. So that the Egyptian first mother, Kefa [or Kepha] whose
name signifies "mystery," was the original of the Hebrew Chavah,
our Eve; and therefore Adam is one with Sevekh the sevenfold one,
the solar dragon in whom the powers of light and darkness were
combined, and the sevenfold nature was shown in the seven rays
worn by the Gnostic Iao-Chnubis, god of the number seven, who is
Sevekh by name and a form of the first father as head of the
Seven.(373)
All this gives the key to the astronomical prototype of the allegory in
_Genesis_, but it furnishes no other key to the mystery involved in the evenfold glyph. The able Egyptologist shows also that Adam himself ccording to Rabbinical and Gnostic tradition, was the chief of the Seven ho fell from Heaven, and he connects these with the Patriarchs, thus greeing with the Esoteric Teaching. For by mystic permutation and the ystery of primeval rebirths and adjustment, the Seven Rishis are in eality identical with the seven Prajāpatis, the fathers and creators of ankind, and also with the Kumāras, the first sons of Brahmā, who refused o procreate and multiply. This apparent contradiction is explained by the even-fold nature--make it four-fold on metaphysical principles and it will ome to the same thing--of the celestial men, the Dhyān Chohans. This ature is made to divide and separate; and while the higher principles
(Ātmā-Buddhi) of the "Creators of Men" are said to be the Spirits of the even constellations, their middle and lower principles are connected with he earth and are shown
Without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged
from the Universe and undesirous of progeny,(374)
emaining Kaumāric (virgin and undefiled); therefore it is said they efused to create. For this they are cursed and sentenced to be born and eborn "Adams," as the Semites would say.
Meanwhile let me quote a few lines more from Mr. G. Massey's lecture, the ruit of his long researches in Egyptology and other ancient lore, as it hows that the septenary division was at one time a universal doctrine:
Adam as the father among the Seven is identical with the Egyptian
Atum, ... whose other name of Adon is identical with the Hebrew
Adonai. In this way the second Creation in _Genesis_ reflects and
continues the later creation in the mythos which explains it. The
Fall of Adam to the lower world led to his being humanised on
earth, by which process the celestial was turned into the mortal,
and this, which belongs to the astronomical allegory, got
literalised as the Fall of Man, or descent of the soul into
matter, and the conversion of the angelic into an earthly
being.... It is found in the [Babylonian] texts, when Ea, the
first father, is said to "grant forgiveness to the conspiring
gods," for whose "redemption did he create mankind." (Sayce; _Hib.
Lec._, p. 140) ... The Elohim, then, are the Egyptian, Akkadian,
Hebrew, and Phoenician form of the Universal Seven Powers, who are
Seven in Egypt, Seven in Akkad, Babylon, Persia, India, Britain,
and Seven among the Gnostics and Kabalists. They were the Seven
fathers who preceded the Father in Heaven, because they were
earlier than the individualised fatherhood on earth.... When the
Elohim said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,"
there were seven of them who represented the seven elements,
powers, or souls that went to the making of the human being who
came into existence before the Creator was represented
anthropomorphically, or could have conferred the human likeness on
the Adamic man. It was in the sevenfold image of the Elohim that
man was first created, with his seven elements, principles or
souls,(375) and therefore he could not have been formed in the
image of the one God. The seven Gnostic Elohim tried to make a man
in their own image, but could not for lack of virile power.(376)
Thus their creation in earth and heaven was a failure ... because
they themselves were lacking in the soul of the fatherhood! When
the Gnostic Ildabaoth,(377) chief of the Seven, cried: "I am the
father and God," his mother Sophia [Achamoth] replied: "Do not
tell lies, Ildabaoth, for the first man (Anthropos, son of
Anthropos)(378) is above thee." That is, man who had now been
created in the image of the fatherhood was superior to the gods
who were derived from the Mother-Parent alone!(379) For, as it had
been first on earth, so was it afterwards in heaven [the Secret
Doctrine teaches the reverse]; and thus the primary gods were held
to be soulless like the earliest races of men.... The Gnostics
taught that the Spirits of Wickedness, the inferior Seven, derived
their origin from the great Mother alone, who produced without the
fatherhood! It was in the image, then, of the sevenfold Elohim
that the seven races were formed which we sometimes hear of as the
Pre-Adamite races of men, because they were earlier than the
fatherhood, which was individualised only in the second Hebrew
Creation.(380)
This shows sufficiently how the echo of the Secret Doctrine--of the Third nd Fourth Races of men, made complete by the incarnation in humanity of he Mānasa Putra, Sons of Intelligence or Wisdom--reached every corner of he globe. The Jews, however, although they borrowed of the older nations he groundwork on which to build their revelation, never had more than hree keys out of the seven in their mind, while composing their national llegories--the astronomical, the numerical (metrology), and above all the urely anthropological, or rather physiological key. This resulted in the ost phallic religion of all, and has now passed, part and parcel, into
Christian theology, as is proved by the lengthy quotations made from a ecture of an able Egyptologist, who can make naught of it save stronomical myths and phallicism, as is implied by his explanations of
"fatherhood" in the allegories.
SECTION XXII. THE "ZOHAR" ON CREATION AND THE ELOHIM.
The opening sentence in _Genesis_, as every Hebrew scholar knows, is:
{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~} {~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL MEM~} {~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~} {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL MEM~} {~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~} {~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL TSADI~}
Now there are two well-known ways of rendering this line, as any other
Hebrew writing: one exoteric, as read by the orthodox _Bible_ interpreters
(Christian), and the other Kabalistic, the latter, moreover, being divided nto the Rabbinical and the purely Kabalistic or Occult method. As in
Sanskrit writing, the words are not separated in the Hebrew, but are made o run together--especially in the old systems. For instance, the above, ivided, would read: "_B'rashith bara Elohim eth hashamayim v'eth 'areths_;" and it can be made to read thus: "_B'rash ithbara Elohim thhashamayim v'eth'arets_," thus changing the meaning entirely. The atter means, "In the beginning _God made the heavens_ and the earth," hereas the former, precluding the idea of any beginning, would simply ead that "out of the ever-existing Essence [divine] [or out of the
_womb_--also head--thereof] the dual [or androgyne] Force [Gods] shaped the ouble heaven;" the upper and the lower heaven being generally explained s heaven and earth. The latter word means Esoterically the "Vehicle," as t gives the idea of an empty globe, within which the manifestation of the orld takes place. Now, according to the rules of Occult symbolical eading as established in the old _Sepher Jetzirah_ (in the Chaldęan _Book f Numbers_(381)) the initial fourteen letters (or "B'rasitb' raalaim") re in themselves quite sufficient to explain the theory of "creation" ithout any further explanation or qualification. Every letter of them is sentence; and, placed side by side with the hieroglyphic or pictorial nitial version of "creation" in the _Book of Dzyan_, the origin of the
Phoenician and Jewish letters would soon be found out. A whole volume of xplanations would give no more to the student of primitive Occult
Symbology than this: the head of a bull within a circle, a straight orizontal line, a circle or sphere, then another one with three dots in t, a triangle, then the Svastika (or Jaina cross); after these come an quilateral triangle within a circle, seven small bulls' heads standing in hree rows, one over the other; a black round dot (an opening), and then even lines, meaning Chaos or Water (feminine).
Anyone acquainted with the symbolical and numerical value of the Hebrew etters will see at a glance that this glyph and the letters of "B'rasith' aalaim" are identical in meaning. "Beth" is "abode" or "region;" "Resh," "circle" or "head;" "Aleph," "bull" (the symbol of generative or reative power(382)); "Shin," a "tooth" (300 exoterically--a trident or
_three in one_ in its Occult meaning); "Jodh," the perfect unity or
"one"(383); "Tau," the "root" or "foundation" (the same as the cross with he Egyptians and Āryans): again, "Beth," "Resh," and "Aleph." Then
"Aleph," or seven bulls for the seven Alaim; an ox-goad, "Lamedh," active rocreation; "He," the "opening" or "matrix;" "Yodh," the organ of rocreation; and "Mem," "water" or "chaos," the female Power near the male hat precedes it.
The most satisfactory and scientific exoteric rendering of the opening entence of _Genesis_--on which was hung in blind faith the whole Christian eligion, synthesized by its fundamental dogmas--is undeniably the one iven in the Appendix to _The Source of Measures_ by Mr. Ralston Skinner.
He gives, and we must admit in the ablest, clearest, and most scientific ay, the numerical reading of this first sentence and chapter in
_Genesis_. By the means of number 31, or the word "El" (1 for "Aleph" and
30 for "Lamedh"), and other numerical _Bible_ symbols, compared with the easures used in the great pyramid of Egypt, he shows the perfect identity etween its measurements--inches, cubits, and plan--and the numerical values f the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and the Patriarchs. In short, the uthor shows that the pyramid contains in itself architecturally the whole f _Genesis_, and discloses the astronomical, and even the physiological, ecrets in its symbols and glyphs; yet he will not admit, it would seem, he psycho-cosmical and spiritual mysteries involved in these. Nor does he author apparently see that the root of all this has to be sought in he archaic legends and the Pantheon of India.(384) Failing this, whither oes his great and admirable labour lead him? Not further than to find out hat Adam, the earth, and Moses or Jehovah "are the same"--or to the a-b-c f comparative Occult Symbology--and that the days in _Genesis_ being
"circles" "displayed by the Hebrews as squares," the result of the sixth- ay's labour culminates in the fructifying principle. Thus the _Bible_ is ade to yield Phallicism, and that alone.
Nor--read in this light, and as its Hebrew texts are interpreted by Western cholars--can it ever yield anything higher or more sublime than such hallic elements, the root and the corner-stone of its dead-letter eaning. Anthropomorphism and Revelation dig the impassable chasm between he material world and the ultimate spiritual truths. That creation is not hus described in the Esoteric Doctrine is easily shown. The Roman
Catholics give a reading far more approaching the true Esoteric meaning han that of the Protestant. For several of their saints and doctors admit hat the formation of heaven and earth, of the celestial bodies, etc., elongs to the work of the "Seven Angels of the Presence." St. Denys calls he "Builders" "the coöperators of God," and St. Augustine goes even arther, and credits the Angels with the possession of the divine thought, he prototype, as he says, of everything created.(385) And, finally, St.
Thomas Aquinas has a long dissertation upon this topic, calling God the rimary, and the Angels the secondary, cause of all visible effects. In his, with some dogmatic differences of form, the "Angelic Doctor" pproaches very nearly the Gnostic ideas. Basilides speaks of the lowest rder of Angels as the Builders of our material world, and Saturnilus eld, as did the Sabęans, that the Seven Angels who preside over the lanets are the real creators of the world; the Kabalist-monk, Trithemius, n his _De Secundis Deis_, taught the same.
The eternal _Kosmos_, the Macrocosm, is divided in the Secret Doctrine, ike man, the Microcosm, into three Principles and four Vehicles,(386) hich in their collectivity are the seven Principles. In the Chaldęan or
Jewish _Kabalah_, the Kosmos is divided into seven worlds: the Original, he Intelligible, the Celestial, the Elementary, the Lesser (Astral), the
Infernal (Kāma-loka or Hades), and the Temporal (of man). In the Chaldęan ystem it is in the Intelligible World, the second, that appear the "Seven
Angels of the Presence," or the Sephiroth (the three higher ones being, in act, one, and also the sum total of all). They are also the "Builders" of he Eastern Doctrine: and it is only in the third, the celestial world, hat the seven planets and our solar system are built by the seven
Planetary Angels, the planets becoming their visible bodies. Hence--as orrectly stated--if the universe as a whole is formed out of the Eternal
_One_ Substance or Essence, it is not that everlasting Essence, the
Absolute Deity, that builds it into shape; this is done by the first Rays, he Angels or Dhyān Chohans, that emanate from the One Element, which ecoming periodically Light and Darkness, remains eternally, in its Root-
Principle, the one unknown yet existing Reality.
A learned Western Kabalist, Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, whose reasoning nd conclusions will be the more above suspicion since he is untrained in
Eastern Philosophy and unacquainted with its Secret Teachings, writes on he first verse of _Genesis_ in an unpublished essay:
_Berashith Bara_ Elohim--"In the beginning the Elohim created!" Who
are these Elohim of _Genesis_?
_Va-Yivra Elohim Ath Ha-Adam Be-Tzalmo, Be-Tzelem Elohim Bara
Otho, Zakhar Vingebah Bara Otham_--"And the Elohim created the Adam
in Their own Image, in the Image of the Elohim created They them,
Male and Female created They them!" Who are they, the Elohim? The
ordinary English translation of the _Bible_ renders the word
Elohim by "God:" it translates a _plural_ noun by a _singular_
one. The only excuse brought forward for this is the somewhat lame
one that the word is certainly plural, but is not to be used in a
plural sense: that it is "a plural denoting excellence." But this
is only an assumption whose value may be justly gauged by
_Genesis_ i. 26, translated in the orthodox Biblical version thus:
"And God [Elohim] said, 'Let us make man in our own image, after
our likeness.' " Here is a distinct admission of the fact that
"Elohim" is _not_ a "plural of excellence," but a plural noun
denoting more than one being.(387)
What, then, is the proper translation of "Elohim," and to whom is
it referable? "Elohim" is not only a plural, but a _feminine
plural_! And yet the translators of the _Bible_ have rendered it
by a _masculine singular_! Elohim is the plural of the feminine
noun El-h, for the final letter, -h, marks the gender. It,
however, instead of forming the plural in -oth, takes the usual
termination of the masculine plural, which is -im.
Although in the great majority of cases the nouns of both genders
take the terminations appropriated to them respectively, there are
yet many masculines which form the plural in -oth, as well as
feminine which form it in -im while some nouns of each gender take
alternately both. It must be observed, however, that the
termination of the plural does not affect its gender, which
remains the same as in the singular....
To find the real meaning of the symbolism involved in this word
Elohim we must go to that key of Jewish Esoteric Doctrine, the
little-known and less-understood _Kabalah_. There we shall find
that this word represents two united masculine and feminine
Potencies, co-equal and co-eternal, conjoined in everlasting union
for the maintenance of the Universe--the great Father and Mother of
Nature, into whom the Eternal One conforms himself before the
Universe can subsist. For the teaching of the _Kabalah_ is that
before the Deity conformed himself thus--_i.e._ as male and
female--the Worlds of the Universe could not subsist; or in the
words of _Genesis_, that "the earth was formless and void." Thus,
then, is the conformation of the Elohim, the end of the Formless
and the Void and the Darkness, for only after that conformation
can the _Ruach Elohim_--the "Spirit of the Elohim"--vibrate upon the
countenance of the Waters. But this is a very small part of the
information which the Initiate can derive from the _Kabalah_
concerning this word _Elohim_.
Attention must here be called to the confusion--if not worse--which reigns n the Western interpretations of the _Kabalah_. The Eternal _One_ is said o conform himself into two: the Great Father and Mother of Nature. To egin with, it is a horribly anthropomorphic conception to apply terms mplying sexual distinction to the earliest and first differentiations of he One. And it is even more erroneous to identify these first ifferentiations--the Purusha and Prakriti of Indian Philosophy--with the
Elohim, the creative powers here spoken of; and to ascribe to these (to ur intellects) unimaginable abstractions, the formation and construction f this visible world, full of pain, sin, and sorrow. In truth, the
"creation by the Elohim" spoken of here is but a much later "creation," nd the Elohim far from being supreme, or even exalted powers in Nature, re only lower Angels. This was the teaching of the Gnostics, the most hilosophical of all the early Christian Churches. They taught that the mperfections of the world were due to the imperfection of its Architects r Builders--the imperfect, and therefore inferior, Angels. The Hebrew
Elohim correspond to the Prajāpati of the Hindus, and it is shown lsewhere from the Esoteric interpretation of the Purānas that the
Prajāpati were the fashioners of man's material and astral form _only_: hat they could not give him intelligence or reason, and therefore in ymbolical language they "failed to create man." But, not to repeat what he reader can find elsewhere in this work, his attention needs only to be alled to the fact that "creation" in this passage is not the Primary
Creation, and that the Elohim are not "_God_," nor even the higher
Planetary Spirits, but the Architects of this visible physical planet and f man's material body, or encasement.
A fundamental doctrine of the _Kabalah_ is that the gradual
development of the Deity from negative to positive Existence is
symbolized by the gradual development of the Ten Numbers of the
denary scale of numeration, from the Zero, through the Unity, into
the Plurality. This is the doctrine of the Sephiroth, or
Emanations.
For the inward and concealed Negative Form concentrates a centre
which is the primal Unity. But the Unity is one and indivisible:
it can neither be increased by multiplication nor decreased by
division, for 1 × 1 = 1, and no more; and 1 ÷ 1 = 1, and no less.
And it is this changelessness of the Unity, or Monad, which makes
it a fitting type of the One and Changeless Deity. It answers thus
to the Christian idea of God the Father, for as the Unity is the
parent of the other numbers, so is the Deity the Father of All.
The philosophical Eastern mind would never fall into the error which the
_connotation_ of these words implies. With them the "One and
Changeless"--Parabrahman--the Absolute All and One, cannot be conceived as tanding in any _relation_ to things finite and conditioned, and hence hey would never use such terms as these, which in their very essence mply such a relation. Do they, then, absolutely sever man from God? On he contrary. They feel a closer union than the Western mind has done in alling God the "Father of All," for they know that in his immortal ssence man _is_ himself the Changeless, Secondless One.
But we have just said that the Unity is one and changeless by
either multiplication or division; how then is two, the Duad,
formed? By reflection. For, unlike Zero, the Unity is partly
definable--that is, in its positive aspect; and the definition
creates an Eikon or Eidolon of itself which, together with itself,
forms a Duad; and thus the number two is to a certain extent
analogous to the Christian idea of the Son as the Second Person.
And as the Monad vibrates, and recoils into the Darkness of the
Primary Thought, so is the Duad left as its vice-gerent and
representative, and thus co-equal with the Positive Duad is the
Triune Idea, the number three, co-equal and co-eternal with the
Duad in the bosom of the Unity, yet, as it were, proceeding
therefrom in the numerical conception of its sequence.
This explanation would seem to imply that Mr. Mathers is aware that this
"creation" is not the truly divine or primary one, since the Monad--the irst manifestation on _our_ plane of objectivity--"recoils into the
Darkness of the Primal Thought," _i.e._, into the subjectivity of the irst divine Creation.
And this, again, also partly answers to the Christian idea of the
Holy Ghost, and of the whole three forming a Trinity in unity.
This also explains the fact in geometry of the three right lines
being the smallest number which will make a plane rectilineal
figure, while two can never enclose a space, being powerless and
without effect till completed by the number Three. These three
first numbers of the decimal scale the Qabalists call by the names
of Kether, the Crown, Chokmah, Wisdom, and Binah, Understanding;
and they furthermore associate with them these divine names: with
the Unity, Eheich, "I exist;" with the Duad, Yah; and with the
Triad, Elohim; they especially also call the Duad, Abba--the
Father, and the Triad, Aima--the Mother, whose eternal conjunction
is symbolized in the word Elohim.
But what especially strikes the student of the _Kabalah_ is the
malicious persistency with which the translators of the _Bible_
have jealously crowded out of sight and suppressed every reference
to the feminine form of the Deity. They have, as we have just
seen, translated the feminine plural "Elohim," by the masculine
singular, "God." But they have done more than this: they have
carefully hidden the fact that the word Ruach--the "Spirit"--is
feminine, and that consequently the Holy Ghost of the _New
Testament_ is a feminine Potency. How many Christians are
cognizant of the fact that in the account of the Incarnation in
_Luke_ (i. 35) _two_ divine Potencies are mentioned?
"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Power of the Highest
shall overshadow thee." The Holy Ghost (the feminine Potency)
descends, and the Power of the Highest (the masculine Potency) is
united therewith. "Therefore also that holy thing which shall be
born of thee shall be called the Son of God"--of the Elohim namely,
seeing that these two Potencies descend.
In the _Sepher Yetzirah_, or _Book of Formation_, we read:
"One is She the Ruach Elohim Chüm--(Spirit of the Living
Elohim).... Voice, Spirit, and Word; and this is She, the Spirit
of the Holy One." Here again we see the intimate connection which
exists between the Holy Spirit and the Elohim. Furthermore,
farther on in this same _Book of Formation_--which, is, be it
remembered, one of the oldest of the Kabalistical Books, and whose
authorship is ascribed to Abraham the Patriarch--we shall find the
idea of a Feminine Trinity in the first place, from whom a
masculine Trinity proceeds; or, as it is said in the text: "Three
Mothers whence proceed three Fathers." And yet this double Triad
forms, as it were, but one complete Trinity. Again it is worthy of
note that the Second and Third Sephiroth (Wisdom and
Understanding) are both distinguished by feminine names, Chokmah
and Binah, notwithstanding that to the former more particularly
the masculine idea, and to the latter the feminine, are
attributed, under the titles of Abba and Aima (or Father and
Mother). This Aima (the Great Mother) is magnificently symbolized
in the twelfth chapter of the _Apocalypse_, which is undoubtedly
one of the most Kabalistical books in the _Bible_. In fact,
without the Kabalistical keys its meaning is utterly
unintelligible.
Now, in the Hebrew, as in the Greek, alphabet, there are no
distinct numeral characters, and consequently each letter has a
certain numerical value attached to it. From this circumstance
results the important fact that every Hebrew word constitutes a
number, and every number a word. This is referred to in the
_Revelations_ (xiii. 18) in mentioning the "number of the beast"!
In the _Kabalah_ words of equal numerical values are supposed to
have a certain explanatory connection with each other. This forms
the science of Gematria, which is the first division of the
Literal _Kabalah_. Furthermore, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet
had for the Initiates of the _Kabalah_ a certain hieroglyphical
value and meaning which, rightly applied, gave to each word the
value of a mystical sentence; and this again was variable
according to the relative positions of the letters with regard to
each other. From these various Kabalistical points of view let us
now examine this word Elohim.
First then we can divide the word into the two words, which
signify "The Feminine Divinity of the Waters;" compare with the
Greek Aphrodite. "sprung from the foam of the sea." Again it is
divisible into the "Mighty One, Star of the Sea," or "the Mighty
One breathing forth the Spirit upon the Waters." Also by
combination of the letters we get "the Silent Power of Iah." And
again, "My God, the Former of the Universe," for _Mah_ is a secret
Kabalistical name applied to the idea of Formation. Also we obtain
"Who is my God." Furthermore "the Mother in Iah."
The total number is 1 + 30 + 5 + 10 + 40 = 86 = "Violent heat," or
"the Power of Fire." If we add together the three middle letters
we obtain 45, and the first and last letters yield 41, making thus
"the Mother of Formation." Lastly, we shall find the two divine
names "El" and "Yah," together with the letter _m_, which
signifies "Water," for Mem, the name of this letter, means
"water."
If we divide it into its component letters and take them as
hieroglyphical signs we shall have:
"Will perfected through Sacrifice progressing through successive
Transformation by Inspiration."
The last few paragraphs of the above, in which the word "Elohim" is
Kabalistically analyzed, show conclusively enough that the Elohim are not ne, nor two, nor even a trinity, but a Host--the army of the creative owers.
The Christian Church, in making of Jehovah--one of these very Elohim--the ne Supreme God, has introduced hopeless confusion into the celestial ierarchy, in spite of the volumes written by Thomas Aquinas and his chool on the subject. The only explanation to be found in all their reatises on the nature and essence of the numberless classes of celestial eings mentioned in the _Bible_--Archangels, Thrones, Seraphim, Cherubim,
Messengers, etc.--is that "The angelic host is God's militia." They are
"Gods _the creatures_," while he is "God _the Creator_;" but of their true unctions--of their actual place in the economy of Nature--not one word is aid. They are
More brilliant than the flames, more rapid than the wind, and they
live in love and harmony, mutually enlightening each other,
feeding on bread and a mystic beverage--the communion wine and
water?--surrounding as with a _river of fire_ the throne of the
Lamb, and veiling their faces with their wings. This throne of
love and glory they leave only to carry to the stars, the earth,
the kingdoms and all the sons of God, their brothers and pupils,
in short, to all creatures _like themselves_ the divine
influence.... As to their number, it is that of the great army of
Heaven (Sabaoth), more numerous than the stars.... Theology shows
us these rational luminaries, each constituting a species, and
containing in their natures such or another position of Nature:
covering immense space, though of a determined area;
residing--incorporeal though they are--within circumscribed limits;
... more rapid than light or thunderbolt, disposing of all the
elements of Nature, providing at will inexplicable mirages
[illusions?], objective and subjective in turn, speaking to men a
language at one time articulate, at another purely spiritual.(388)
We learn farther on in the same work that it is these Angels and their osts who are referred to in the sentence of verse I, chapter ii, of
_Genesis_: "Igitur perfecti sunt coeli et terra et omnis ornatus eorum:" nd that the Vulgate has peremptorily substituted for the Hebrew word
"tsaba" ("host") that of "ornament;" Munck shows the mistake of ubstitution and the derivation of the compound title, "Tsabaoth-Elohim," rom "tsaba." Moreover, Cornelius ą Lapide, "the master of all Biblical ommentators," says de Mirville, shows us that such was the real meaning.
Those Angels are stars.
All this, however, teaches us very little as to the true functions of this elestial army, and nothing at all as to its place in evolution and its elation to the earth we live on. For an answer to the question, "Who are he true Creators?" we must go to the Esoteric Doctrine, since there only an the key be found which will render intelligible the Theogonies of the arious world-religions.
There we find that the real creator of the Kosmos, as of all visible
Nature--if not of all the invisible hosts of Spirits not yet drawn into the
"Cycle of Necessity," or evolution--is "the Lord--the Gods," or the "Working
Host," the "Army" collectively taken, the "One in many."
The One is infinite and unconditioned. It cannot create, for It can have o relation to the finite and conditioned. If everything we see, from the lorious suns and planets down to the blades of grass and the specks of ust, had been created by the Absolute Perfection and were the direct work f even the _First_ Energy that proceeded from It,(389) then every such hing would have been perfect, eternal, and unconditioned, like its uthor. The millions upon millions of imperfect works found in Nature estify loudly that they are the products of finite, conditioned eings--though the latter were and are Dhyān Chohans, Archangels, or what ver else they may be named. In short, these imperfect works are the nfinished production of evolution, under the guidance of the imperfect
Gods. The _Zohar_ gives us this assurance as well as the Secret Doctrine.
It speaks of the auxiliaries of the "Ancient of Days," the "Sacred Aged," nd calls them Auphanim, or the living Wheels of the celestial orbs, who articipate in the work of the creation of the Universe.
Thus it is not the "Principle," One and Unconditioned, nor even Its eflection, that creates, but only the "Seven Gods" who fashion the
Universe out of the eternal Matter, vivified into objective life by the eflection into it of the One Reality.
The Creator is they--"God the Host"--called in the Secret Doctrine the Dhyān
Chohans; with the Hindus the Prajāpatis; with the Western Kabalists the
Sephiroth; and with the Buddhist the Devas--impersonal because blind orces. They are the Amshaspends with the Zoroastrians, and while with the
Christian Mystic the "Creator" is the "Gods of the God," with the dogmatic
Churchman he is the "God of the Gods," the "Lord of lords," etc.
"Jehovah" is only the God who is greater than all Gods in the eyes of
Israel.
I know, that the Lord [of Israel] is great and that our Lord is
above all gods.(390)
And again:
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the
heavens.(391)
The Egyptian Neteroo, translated by Champollion "_the other Gods_" are the
Elohim of the Biblical writers, behind which stands concealed the One God, onsidered in the diversity of his powers.(392) This One is not
Parabrahman, but the Unmanifested Logos, the Demiurgos, the real Creator r Fashioner, that follows him, standing for the Demiurgi collectively aken. Further on the great Egyptologist adds:
We see Egypt concealing and hiding, so to say, _the_ God of Gods
behind the _agents_ she surrounds him with; she gives the
precedence to her great gods before the one and sole Deity, so
that the attributes of that God become their property. Those great
Gods proclaim themselves uncreate.... Neith is "_that which is_,"
as Jehovah;(393) Thoth is self-created(394) without having been
begotten, etc. Judaism annihilating these potencies before the
grandeur of its God, they cease to be simply Powers, like Philo's
Archangels, like the Sephiroth of the _Kabalah_, like the Ogdoades
of the Gnostics--they merge together and become transformed into
God himself.(395)
Jehovah is thus, as the _Kabalah_ teaches, at best but the "Heavenly Man,"
Adam Kadmon, used by the self-created Spirit, the Logos, as a chariot, a ehicle in His descent towards manifestation in the phenomenal world.
Such are the teachings of the Archaic Wisdom, nor can they be repudiated ven by the orthodox Christian, if he be sincere and open-minded in the tudy of his own Scripture. For if he reads St. Paul's _Epistles_ arefully he will find that the Secret Doctrine and the _Kabalah_ are ully admitted by the "Apostle of the Gentiles." The Gnosis which he ppears to condemn is no less for him than for Plato "the supreme nowledge of the truth and of the One Being;"(396) for what St. Paul ondemns is not the true, but only the false, Gnosis and its abuses: therwise how could he use the language of a Platonist _pur sang_? The
Ideas, types (Archai), of the Greek Philosopher; the Intelligences of
Pythagoras; the Ęons or Emanations of the Pantheist; the Logos or Word,
Chief of these Intelligences; the Sophia or Wisdom; the Demiurgos, the
Builder of the world under the direction of the Father, the Unmanifested
Logos, from which He emanates; Ain-Suph, the Unknown of the Infinite; the ngelic Periods; the _Seven_ Spirits who are the representatives of the
_Seven_ of all the older cosmogonies--are all to be found in his writings, ecognized by the Church as canonical and divinely inspired. Therein, too, ay be recognized the Depths of Ahriman, Rector of this our World, the
"God of this World;" the Pleroma of the Intelligences; the Archontes of he air; the Principalities, the Kabalistic Metatron; and they can easily e identified again in the Roman Catholic writers when read in the riginal Greek and Latin texts, English translations giving but a very oor idea of the real contents of these.
SECTION XXIII. WHAT THE OCCULTISTS AND KABALISTS HAVE TO SAY.
The _Zohar_, an unfathomable store of hidden wisdom and mystery, is very ften appealed to by Roman Catholic writers. A very learned Rabbi, now the
Chevalier Drach, having been converted to Roman Catholicism, and being a reat Hebraist, thought fit to step into the shoes of Picus de Mirandola nd John Reuchlin, and to assure his new co-religionists that the _Zohar_ ontained in it pretty nearly all the dogmas of Catholicism. It is not our rovince to show here how far he has succeeded or failed; only to bring ne instance of his explanations and preface it with the following:
The _Zohar_, as already shown, is not a genuine production of the Hebrew ind. It is the repository and compendium of the oldest doctrines of the
East, transmitted orally at first, and then written down in independent reatises during the Captivity at Babylon, and finally brought together by
Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, toward the beginning of the Christian era. As
Mosaic cosmogony was born under a new form in Mesopotamian countries, so he _Zohar_ was a vehicle in which were focussed rays from the light of
Universal Wisdom. Whatever likenesses are found between it and the
Christian teachings, the compilers of the _Zohar_ never had Christ in heir minds. Were it otherwise there would not be one single Jew of the
Mosaic law left in the world by this time. Again, if one is to accept iterally what the _Zohar_ says, then any religion under the sun may find orroboration in its symbols and allegorical sayings; and this, simply ecause this work is the echo of the primitive truths, and every creed is ounded on some of these; the _Zohar_ being but a veil of the Secret
Doctrine. This is so evident that we have only to point to the said ex-
Rabbi, the Chevalier Drach, to prove the fact.
In Part III, fol. 87 (col. 346th) the _Zohar_ treats of the Spirit guiding he Sun, its Rector, explaining that it is not the Sun itself that is eant thereby, but the Spirit "on, or _under_" the Sun. Drach is anxious o show that it was Christ who was meant by that "Sun," or the Solar
Spirit therein. In his comment upon that passage which refers to the Solar
Spirit as "that stone which the builders rejected," he asserts most ositively that this
Sun-stone (_pierre soleil_) is identical with Christ, who was that
stone,
nd that therefore
The sun is undeniably (_sans contredit_) the second hypostasis of
the Deity,(397) or Christ.
If this be true, then the Vaidic or pre-Vaidic Āryans, Chaldęans and
Egyptians, like all Occultists past, present, and future, Jews included, ave been Christians from all eternity. If this be not so, then modern
Church Christianity is Paganism pure and simple exoterically, and ranscendental and practical Magic, or Occultism, Esoterically.
For this "stone" has a manifold significance, a dual existence, with radations, a regular progression and retrogression. It is a "mystery" ndeed.
The Occultists are quite ready to agree with St. Chrysostom, that the nfidels--the _profane_, rather--
Being blinded by sun-light, thus lose sight of the true Sun in the
contemplation of the false one.
But if that Saint, and along with him now the Hebraist Drach, chose to see n the _Zohar_ and the Kabalistic Sun "the _second_ hypostasis," this is o reason why all others should be blinded by them. The mystery of the Sun s the grandest perhaps, of all the innumerable mysteries of Occultism. A
Gordian knot, truly, but one that cannot be severed with the double-edged word of scholastic casuistry. It is a true _deo dignus vindice nodus_, nd can be untied only by the _Gods_. The meaning of this is plain, and very Kabalist will understand it.
_Contra solem ne loquaris_ was not said by Pythagoras with regard to the isible Sun. It was the "Sun of Initiation" that was meant, in its triple orm--two of which are the "Day-Sun" and the "Night-Sun."
If behind the physical luminary there were no mystery that people sensed nstinctively, why should every nation, from the primitive peoples down to he Parsīs of to-day, have turned towards the Sun during prayers? The
Solar Trinity is not Mazdean, but is universal, and is as old as man. All he temples in Antiquity were invariably made to face the Sun, their ortals to open to the East. See the old temples of Memphis and Baalbec, he Pyramids of the Old and of the New (?) Worlds, the Round Towers of
Ireland, and the Serapeum of Egypt. The Initiates alone could give a hilosophical explanation of this, and a reason for it--its mysticism otwithstanding--were only the world ready to receive it, which alas! it is ot. The last of the Solar Priests in Europe was the Imperial Initiate,
Julian, now called the Apostate.(398) He tried to benefit the world by evealing at least a portion of the great mystery of the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} nd--_he died_. "There are three in one," he said of the Sun--the central
Sun(399) being a precaution of Nature: the first is the universal cause of ll, Sovereign Good and perfection; the Second Power is paramount
Intelligence, having dominion over all reasonable beings, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}; the hird is the visible Sun. The pure energy of solar intelligence proceeds rom the luminous seat occupied by our Sun in the centre of heaven, that ure energy being the Logos of our system; the "Mysterious Word Spirit roduces all through the Sun, and never operates through any other edium," says Hermes Trismegistus. For it is _in_ the Sun, more than in ny other heavenly body that the [unknown] Power placed the seat of its abitation. Only neither Hermes Trismegistus nor Julian (an initiated
Occultist), nor any other, meant by this Unknown Cause Jehovah, or
Jupiter. They referred to the cause that produced all the manifested
"great Gods" or Demiurgi (the Hebrew God included) of our system. Nor was ur visible, _material_ Sun meant, for the latter was only the manifested ymbol. Philolaus the Pythagorean, explains and completes Trismegistus by aying:
The Sun is a mirror of fire, the splendour of whose flames by
their reflection in that mirror [the Sun] is poured upon us, and
that splendour we call image.
It is evident that Philolaus referred to the central spiritual Sun, whose eams and effulgence are only mirrored by our central Star, the Sun. This s as clear to the Occultists as it was to the Pythagoreans. As for the rofane of pagan antiquity, it was, of course, the physical Sun that was he "highest God" for them, as it seems--if Chevalier Drach's view be ccepted--to have now virtually become for the modern Roman Catholics. If ords mean anything, the statement made by the Chevalier Drach that "this un is, undeniably, the second hypostasis of the Deity," imply what we ay; as "this Sun" refers to the Kabalistic Sun, and "hypostasis" means ubstance or subsistence of the Godhead or Trinity--distinctly personal. As he author, being an ex-Rabbi, thoroughly versed in Hebrew, and in the ysteries of the _Zohar_, ought to know the value of words; and as, oreover, in writing this, he was bent upon reconciling "the seeming ontradictions," as he puts it, between Judaism and Christianity--the fact ecomes quite evident.
But all this pertains to questions and problems which will be solved aturally and in the course of the development of the doctrine. The Roman
Catholic Church stands accused, not of worshipping under other names the
Divine Beings worshipped by all nations in antiquity, but of declaring dolatrous, not only the Pagans ancient and modern, but every Christian ation that has freed itself from the Roman yoke. The accusation brought gainst herself by more than one man of Science, of worshipping the stars ike true Sabęans of old, stands to this day uncontradicted, yet no star- orshipper has ever addressed his adoration to the material stars and lanets, as will be shown before the last page of this work is written; one the less is it true that those Philosophers alone who studied
Astrology and Magic knew that the last word of those sciences was to be ought in, and expected from, the Occult forces emanating from those onstellations.
SECTION XXIV. MODERN KABALISTS IN SCIENCE AND OCCULT ASTRONOMY.
There is a physical, an astral, and a super-astral Universe in the three hief divisions of the _Kabalah_; as there are terrestrial, super- errestrial, and spiritual Beings. The "Seven Planetary Spirits" may be idiculed by Scientists to their hearts' content, yet the need of ntelligent ruling and guiding Forces is so much felt to this day that cientific men and specialists, who will not hear of Occultism or of ncient systems, find themselves obliged to generate in their inner onsciousness some kind of semi-mystical system. Metcalf's "sun-force" heory, and that of Zaliwsky, a learned Pole, which made Electricity the
Universal Force and placed its storehouse in the Sun,(400) were revivals f the Kabalistic teachings. Zaliwsky tried to prove that Electricity, roducing "the most powerful, attractive, calorific, and luminous ffects," was present in the physical constitution of the Sun and xplained its peculiarities. This is very near the Occult teaching. It is nly by admitting the gaseous nature of the Sun-reflector, and the owerful Magnetism and Electricity of the solar attraction and repulsion, hat one can explain (_a_) the evident absence of any waste of power and uminosity in the Sun--inexplicable by the ordinary laws of combustion; and
(_b_) the behaviour of the planets, so often contradicting every accepted ule of weight and gravity. And Zaliwsky makes this "solar electricity"
"_differ from anything known on earth_."
Father Secchi may be suspected of having sought to introduce
_Forces of quite a new order_ and quite foreign to gravitation,
which he had discovered in Space,(401)
n order to reconcile Astronomy with theological Astronomy. But Nagy, a ember of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was no clerical, and yet he evelops a theory on the necessity of intelligent Forces whose complacency
"would lend itself to all the whims of the comets." He suspects that:
Notwithstanding all the actual researches on the rapidity of
light--that _dazzling product of an unknown force_ ... which we see
too frequently to understand--_that light is motionless_ in
reality.(402)
C. E. Love, the well-known railway builder and engineer in France, tired f blind forces, made all the (then) "imponderable agents"--now called
"forces"--subordinates of Electricity, and declares the latter to be an
Intelligence--albeit molecular in nature and material.(403)
In the author's opinion these Forces are atomistic agents, endowed with ntelligence, spontaneous will, and motion,(404) and he thus, like the
Kabalists, makes the causal Forces substantial, while the Forces that act n this plane are only the effects of the former, as with him matter is ternal, and the Gods also;(405) so is the Soul likewise, though it has nherent in itself a still higher Soul [Spirit], preėxistent, endowed with emory, and superior to Electric Force; the latter is subservient to the igher Souls, those superior Souls forcing it to act according to the ternal laws. The concept is rather hazy, but is evidently on the Occult ines. Moreover, the system proposed is entirely pantheistic, and is orked out in a purely scientific volume. Monotheists and Roman Catholics all foul of it, of course; but one who believes in the Planetary Spirits nd who endows Nature with living Intelligences, must always expect this.
In this connection, however, it is curious that after the moderns have so aughed at the ignorance of the ancients,
Who, knowing only of seven planets [yet having an ogdoad which
_did not_ include the earth!], invented therefore seven Spirits to
fit in with the number,
Babinet should have vindicated the "superstition" unconsciously to imself. In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ this eminent French Astronomer rites:
The ogdoad of the Ancients included the earth [which is an error],
_i.e._, eight or seven according to whether or not the earth was
comprised in the number.(406)
De Mirville assures his readers that:
M. Babinet was telling me but a few days ago that we had in
reality only eight big planets, including the earth, and so many
small ones between Mars and Jupiter.... Herschel offering to call
all those beyond the seven primary planets asteroids!(407)
There is a problem to be solved in this connection. How do Astronomers now that Neptune is a planet, or even that it is a body belonging to our ystem? Being found on the very confines of our Planetary World, so alled, the latter was arbitrarily expanded to receive it; but what really athematical and infallible proof have Astronomers that it is (_a_) a lanet, and (_b_) one of _our_ planets? None at all! It is at such an mmeasurable distance from us, the
Apparent diameter of the sun being to Neptune but one-fortieth of
the sun's apparent diameter to us,
nd it is so dim and hazy when seen through the best telescope that it ooks like an astronomical romance to call it one of our planets.
Neptune's heat and light are reduced to 1/900 part of the heat and light eceived by the earth. His motion and that of his satellites have always ooked suspicious. They do not agree--in appearance, at least--with those of he other planets. His system is retrograde, etc. But even the latter bnormal fact resulted only in the creation of new hypotheses by our
Astronomers, who forthwith suggested a probable overturn of Neptune, his ollision with another body, etc. Was Adams' and Leverrier's discovery so elcomed because Neptune was as necessary as was Ether to throw a new lory upon astronomical prevision, upon the certitude of modern scientific ata, and principally upon the power of mathematical analysis? It would so ppear. A new planet that widens our planetary domain by more than four undred million leagues is worthy of annexation. Yet, as in the case of errestrial annexation, scientific authority may be proved "right" only ecause it has "might." Neptune's motion happens to be dimly perceived:
Eureka! it is a planet! A mere motion, however, proves very little. It is ow an ascertained fact in Astronomy that there are no absolutely fixed tars in Nature,(408) even though such stars should continue to exist in stronomical parlance, while they have passed from the scientific magination. Occultism, however, has a strange theory of its own with egard to Neptune.
Occultism says that if several hypotheses resting on mere assumption--which ave been accepted only because they have been taught by eminent men of earning--are taken away from the Science of Modern Astronomy, to which hey serve as props, then even the presumably universal law of gravitation ill be found to be contrary to the most ordinary truths of mechanics. And eally one can hardly blame Christians--foremost of all the Roman
Catholics--however scientific some of these may themselves be, for refusing o quarrel with their Church for the sake of scientific beliefs. Nor can e even blame them for accepting in the secresy of their hearts--as some of hem do--the theological "Virtues" and "Archons" of Darkness, instead of ll the blind forces offered them by Science.
Never can there be intervention of any sort in the marshalling and
the regular precession of the celestial bodies! The law of
gravitation is the law of laws; who ever witnessed a stone rising
in the air against gravitation? The permanence of the universal
law is shown in the behaviour of the sidereal worlds and globes
eternally faithful to their primitive orbits; never wandering
beyond their respective paths. Nor is there any intervention
needed, as it could only be disastrous. Whether the first sidereal
incipient rotation took place owing to an intercosmic chance, or
to the spontaneous development of latent primordial forces; or
again, whether that impulse was given once for all by God or
Gods--it does not make the slightest difference. At this stage of
cosmic evolution no intervention, superior or inferior, is
admissible. Were any to take place, the universal clock-work would
stop, and Kosmos would fall into pieces.
Such are stray sentences, pearls of wisdom, fallen from time to time from cientific lips, and now chosen at random to illustrate a query. We lift ur diminished heads and look heavenward. Such seems to be the fact: orlds, suns, and stars, the shining myriads of the heavenly hosts, remind he Poet of an infinite, shoreless ocean, whereon move swiftly numberless quadrons of ships, millions upon millions of cruisers, large and small, rossing each other, whirling and gyrating in every direction; and Science eaches us, that though they be without rudder or compass or any beacon to uide them, they are nevertheless secure from collision--almost secure, at ny rate, save in chance accidents--as the whole celestial machine is built pon and guided by an immutable, albeit blind, law, and by constant and ccelerating force or forces. "Built upon" by whom? "By self-evolution," s the answer. Moreover, as dynamics teach that
A body in motion tends to continue in the same state of relative
rest or motion unless acted upon by some external force,
his force has to be regarded as self-generated--even if not eternal, since his would amount to the recognition of perpetual motion--and so well self- alculated and self-adjusted as to last from the beginning to the end of
Kosmos. But "self-generation" has still to generate from something, eneration _ex-nihilo_ being as contrary to reason as it is to Science.
Thus we are placed once more between the horns of a dilemma: are we to elieve in perpetual motion or in self-generation _ex-nihilo_? And if in either, who or what is that something, which first produced that force or hose forces?
There are such things in mechanics as superior levers, which give the mpulse and act upon secondary or inferior levers. The former, however, eed an impulse and occasional renovation, otherwise they would themselves ery soon stop and fall back into their original status. What is the xternal force which puts and retains them in motion? Another dilemma!
As to the law of cosmical _non-intervention_, it could be justified only n one case, namely, if the celestial mechanism were perfect; but it is ot. The so-called unalterable motions of celestial bodies alter and hange incessantly; they are very often disturbed, and the wheels of even he sidereal locomotive itself occasionally jump off their invisible ails, as may be easily proved. Otherwise why should Laplace speak of the robable occurrence at some future time of an out-and-out reform in the rrangement of the planets;(409) or Lagrange maintain the gradual arrowing of the orbits; or our modern Astronomers, again, declare that he fuel in the sun is slowly disappearing? If the laws and forces which overn the behaviour of the celestial bodies are immutable, such odifications and wearing-out of substance or fuel, of force and fluids, ould be impossible; yet they are not denied. Therefore one has to suppose hat such modifications will have to rely upon the laws of forces, which ill have to self-regenerate themselves once more on such occasions, thus roducing an astral antinomy, and a kind of physical palinomy, since, as
Laplace says, one would then see fluids disobeying themselves and reäcting n a way contrary to all their attributes and properties.
Newton felt very uncomfortable about the moon. Her behaviour in rogressively narrowing the circumference of her orbit around the earth ade him nervous, lest it should end one day in our satellite falling upon he earth. The world, he confessed, needed repairing, and that very ften.(410) In this he was corroborated by Herschel.(411) He speaks of eal and quite considerable deviations, besides those which are only pparent, but gets some consolation from his conviction that somebody or omething will probably see to things.
We may be answered that the personal beliefs of some pious Astronomers, owever great they may be as scientific characters, are no proofs of the ctual existence and presence in space of intelligent supramundane Beings, f either Gods or Angels. It is the behaviour of the stars and planets hemselves that has to be analysed and inferences must be drawn therefrom.
Renan asserts that nothing that we know of the sidereal bodies warrants he idea of the presence of any Intelligence, whether internal or external o them.
Let us see, says Reynaud, if this is a fact, or only one more empty cientific assumption.
The orbits traversed by the planets are far from being immutable.
They are, on the contrary, subject to perpetual mutation in
position, as in form. Elongations, contractions, and orbital
widenings, oscillations from right to left, slackening and
quickening of speed ... and all this on a plane which seems to
vacillate.(412)
As is very pertinently observed by des Mousseux:
Here is a path having little of the mathematical and mechanical
precision claimed for it; for we know of no clock which, having
gone slow for several minutes should catch up the right time _of
itself_ and _without a turn of the key_.
So much for blind law and force. As for the physical impossibility--a iracle indeed in the sight of Science--of a stone raised in the air gainst the law of gravitation, this is what Babinet--the deadliest enemy nd opponent of the phenomena of levitation--(cited by Arago) says:
Everyone knows the theory of _bolides_ [meteors] and
aerolithes.... In Connecticut an immense aerolith was seen [a mass
of eighteen hundred feet in diameter], bombarding a whole American
zone and returning to the spot [in mid-air] from which it had
started.(413)
Thus we find in both of the cases above cited--that of self-correcting lanets and of meteors of gigantic size flying back into the air--a "blind orce" regulating and resisting the natural tendencies of "blind matter," nd even occasionally repairing its mistakes and correcting its failures.
This is far more miraculous and even "extravagant," one would say, than ny "Angel-guided" Element.
Bold is he who laughs at the idea of Von Haller, who declares that:
The stars are perhaps an abode of glorious Spirits; as here Vice
reigns, there is Virtue master.(414)
SECTION XXV. EASTERN AND WESTERN OCCULTISM.
In _The Theosophist_ for March, 1886,(415) in an answer to the "Solar
Sphinx," a member of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society wrote as ollows:
We hold and believe that the revival of Occult Knowledge now in
progress will some day demonstrate that the Western system
represents ranges of perceptions which the Eastern--at least as
expounded in the pages of _The Theosophist_--has yet to
attain.(416)
The writer is not the only person labouring under this erroneous mpression. Greater Kabalists than he had said the same in the United
States. This only proves that the knowledge possessed by Western
Occultists of the true Philosophy, and the "ranges of perceptions" and hought of the Eastern doctrines, is very superficial. This assertion will e easily demonstrated by giving a few instances, instituting comparisons etween the two interpretations of one and the same doctrine--the Hermetic
Universal Doctrine. It is the more needed since, were we to neglect ringing forward such comparisons, our work would be left incomplete.
We may take the late Éliphas Lévi, rightly referred to by another Western
Mystic, Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, as "one of the greatest representatives of odern Occult Philosophy,"(417) as presumably the best and most learned xpounder of the Chaldęan _Kabalah_, and compare his teaching with that of
Eastern Occultists. In his unpublished manuscripts and letters, lent to us y a Theosophist, who was for fifteen years his pupil, we had hoped to ind that which he was unwilling to publish. What we do find, however, isappoints us greatly. We will take these teachings, then, as containing he essence of Western or Kabalistic Occultism, analyzing and comparing hem with the Eastern interpretation as we go on.
Éliphas Lévi teaches correctly, though in language rather too hapsodically rhetorical to be sufficiently clear to the beginner, that
Eternal life is Motion equilibrated by the alternate
manifestations of force.
But why does he not add that this perpetual motion is independent of the anifested Forces at work? He says:
Chaos is the Tohu-vah-bohu of perpetual motion and the sum total
of primordial matter;
nd he fails to add that Matter is "primordial" only at the beginning of very new reconstruction of the Universe, matter _in abscondito_, as it is alled by the Alchemists, is eternal, indestructible, without beginning or nd. It is regarded by Eastern Occultists as the eternal Root of all, the
Mūlaprakriti of the Vedāntin, and the Svabhāvat of the Buddhist, the
Divine Essence, in short, or Substance; the radiations from This are eriodically aggregated into graduated forms, from pure Spirit to gross
Matter; the Root, or Space, is in its abstract presence the Deity Itself, he Ineffable and Unknown One Cause.
Ain-Suph with him also is the Boundless, the infinite and One Unity, econdless and causeless as Parabrahman. Ain-Suph is the indivisible oint, and therefore, as "being everywhere and nowhere," is the absolute
All. It is also "Darkness" because it is absolute Light, and the Root of he seven fundamental Cosmic Principles. Yet Éliphas Lévi, by simply tating that "Darkness was upon the face of the Earth," fails to show
(_a_) that "Darkness" in this sense is Deity Itself, and he is therefore ithholding the only philosophical solution of this problem for the human ind; and (_b_) he allows the unwary student to believe that by "Earth" ur own little globe--an atom in the Universe--is meant. In short, this eaching does not embrace the Occult Cosmogony, but deals simply with
Occult Geology and the formation of our cosmic speck. This is further hown by his making a _résumé_ of the Sephirothal Tree in this wise:
God is harmony, the astronomy of Powers and Unity outside of the
World.
This seems to suggest (_a_) that he teaches the existence of an extra- osmic God, thus limiting and conditioning both the Kosmos and the divine
Infinity and Omnipresence, which cannot be extraneous to or outside of one ingle atom; and (_b_) that by skipping the whole of the pre-cosmic eriod--the manifested Kosmos here being meant--the very root of Occult eaching, he explains only the Kabalistic meaning of the dead-letter of he _Bible_ and _Genesis_, leaving its spirit and essence untouched.
Surely the "ranges of perception" of the Western mind will not be greatly nlarged by such a limited teaching.
Having said a few words on Tohu-vah-bohu--the meaning of which Wordsworth endered graphically as "higgledy-piggledy"--and having explained that this erm denoted Cosmos, he teaches that:
Above the dark abyss [Chaos] were the Waters; ... the earth [_la
terre!_] was Tohu-vah-bohu, _i.e._, in confusion, and darkness
covered the face of the Deep, and vehement Breath moved on the
Waters when the Spirit exclaimed [?], "Let there be light," and
there was light. Thus the earth [our globe, of course] was in a
state of cataclysm; _thick_ vapours veiled the immensity of the
sky, the earth was covered with waters and a violent wind was
agitating this dark ocean, when at a given moment the equilibrium
revealed itself and light reäppeared; the letters that compose the
Hebrew word "Bereshith" (the first word of _Genesis_) are "Beth,"
the binary, the verb manifested by the act, a _feminine_ letter;
then "Resch," the Verbum and Life, number 20, the disc multiplied
by 2; and "Aleph," the spiritual principle, the Unit, a masculine
letter.
Place these letters in a triangle and you have the absolute Unity,
that without being included into numbers creates the number, the
first manifestation, which is 2, and these two united by harmony
resulting from the analogy of contraries [opposites], make 1,
only. This is why God is called Elohim (plural).
All this is very ingenious, but is very puzzling, besides being incorrect.
For owing to the first sentence, "Above the dark abyss were the Waters," he French Kabalist leads the student away from the right track. This an
Eastern Chela will see at a glance, and even one of the profane may see t. For if the Tohu-vah-bohu is "under" and the Waters are "above," then hese two are quite distinct from each other, and this is not the case.
This statement is a very important one, inasmuch as it entirely changes he spirit and nature of Cosmogony, and brings it down to a level with xoteric _Genesis_--perhaps it was so stated with an eye to this result.
The Tohu-vah-bohu is the "Great Deep" and is identical with "the Waters of
Chaos," or the primordial Darkness. By stating the fact otherwise it makes oth "the Great Deep" and the "Waters"--which cannot be separated except in he phenomenal world--limited as to space and conditioned as to their ature. Thus Éliphas in his desire to conceal the last word of Esoteric
Philosophy, fails--whether intentionally or otherwise does not matter--to oint out the fundamental principle of the one true Occult Philosophy, amely, the unity and absolute homogeneity of the One Eternal Divine
Element, and he makes of the Deity a male God. Then he says:
Above the Waters was the powerful Breath of the Elohim [the
creative Dhyān Chohans]. Above the Breath appeared the Light, and
above the Light the Word ... that created it.
Now the fact is quite the reverse of this: it is the Primeval Light that reates the Word or Logos, Who in His turn creates physical light. For the
Secret Doctrine teaches us that the reconstruction of the Universe takes lace in this wise: At the periods of new generation, perpetual Motion ecomes Breath; from the Breath comes forth primordial Light, through hose radiance manifests the Eternal Thought concealed in darkness, and his becomes the Word (Mantra).(418) It is _That_ (the Mantra or Word) rom which all This (the Universe) sprang into being.
Further on Éliphas Lévi says:
This [the concealed Deity] radiated a ray into the Eternal Essence
[Waters of Space] and, fructifying thereby the primordial germ,
the Essence expanded,(419) giving birth to the Heavenly Man from
whose mind were born all forms.
The _Kabalah_ states very nearly the same. To learn what it really teaches ne has to reverse the order in which Éliphas Lévi gives it, replacing the ord "above" by that of "in," as there cannot surely be any "above" or
"under" in the Absolute. This is what he says:
Above the waters the powerful breath of the Elohim; above the
Breath the Light; above Light the Word, or the Speech that created
it. We see here the spheres of evolution: the souls [?] driven
from the dark centre (Darkness) toward the luminous circumference.
At the bottom of the lowest circle is the Tohu-vah-bohu, or the
chaos which precedes all manifestation [_Naissances_--generation];
then the region of Water; then Breath; then Light; and, lastly,
the Word.
The construction of the above sentences shows that the learned Abbé had a ecided tendency to anthropomorphize creation, even though the latter has o be shaped out of preėxisting material, as the _Zohar_ shows plainly nough.
This is how the "great" Western Kabalist gets out of the difficulty: he eeps silent on the first stage of evolution and imagines a second Chaos.
Thus he says:
The Tohu-vah-bohu is the Latin Limbus, or twilight of the morning
and evening of life.(420) It is in perpetual motion,(421) it
decomposes continually,(422) and the work of putrefaction
accelerates, because the world is advancing towards
regeneration.(423) The Tohu-vah-bohu of the Hebrews is not exactly
the confusion of things called Chaos by the Greeks, and which is
found described in the commencement of the Metamorphosis of Ovid;
it is something greater and more profound; it is the foundation of
religion, it is the philosophical affirmation of the immateriality
of God.
Rather an affirmation of the materiality of a personal God. If a man has o seek his Deity in the Hades of the ancients--for the Tohu-vah-bohu, or he Limbus of the Greeks, is the Hall of Hades--then one can wonder no onger at the accusations brought forward by the Church against the
"witches" and sorcerers versed in Western Kabalism, that they adored the oat Mendes, or the devil personified by certain spooks and Elementals.
But in face of the task Éliphas Lévi had set before himself--that of econciling Jewish Magic with Roman ecclesiasticism--he could say nothing lse.
Then he explains the first sentence in _Genesis_:
Let us put on one side the vulgar translation of the sacred texts
and see what is hidden in the first chapter of _Genesis_.
He then gives the Hebrew text quite correctly, but transliterates it:
Bereschith Bara Eloim uth aschamam ouatti aares ouares ayete Tohu-
vah-bohu.... Ouimas Eloim rai avur ouiai aour.
And he then explains:
The first word, "Bereschith," signifies "genesis," a word
equivalent to "nature."
"The act of generation or production," we maintain; not "nature." He then ontinues:
The phrase, then, is incorrectly translated in the _Bible_. It is
not "in the beginning," for it should be at the stage of the
_generating force_,(424) which would thus exclude every idea of
the _ex-nihilo_ ... as _nothing_ cannot produce something. The
word "Eloim" or "Elohim" signifies the generating Powers, and such
is the Occult sense of the first verse.... "Bereschith" ("nature"
or "genesis"), "Bara" ("created") "Eloim" ("the forces") "Athat-
ashamaim" ("heavens") "ouath" and "oaris" ("the earth"); that is
to say, "The generative potencies created indefinitely
(eternally(425)) those forces that are the equilibrated opposites
that we call heaven and earth, meaning the space and the bodies,
the volatile and the fixed, the movement and the weight."
Now this, if it be correct, is too vague to be understood by any one gnorant of the Kabalistic teaching. Not only are his explanations nsatisfactory and misleading--in his published works they are still orse--but his Hebrew transliteration is entirely wrong: it precludes the tudent, who would compare it for himself with the equivalent symbols and umerals of the words and letters of the Hebrew alphabet, from finding nything of that he might have found were the words correctly spelt in the
French transliteration.
Compared even with exoteric Hindu Cosmogony, the philosophy which Éliphas
Lévi gives out as Kabalistic is simply mystical Roman Catholicism adapted o the Christian _Kabalah_. His _Histoire de la Magie_ shows it plainly, nd reveals also his object, which he does not even care to conceal. For, hile stating with his Church, that
The Christian religion has imposed silence on the lying oracles of
the Gentiles and put an end to the prestige of the false
gods,(426)
e promises to prove in his work that the real Sanctum Regnum, the great
Magic Art, is in that Star of Bethlehem which led the three Magi to adore he Saviour of the World. He says:
We will prove that the study of the sacred Pentagram had to lead
all the Magi to know the new name which should be raised above all
names, and before which every being capable of worship has to bend
his knee.(427)
This shows that Lévi's _Kabalah_ is mystic Christianity, and not
Occultism; for Occultism is universal and knows no difference between the
"Saviours" (or great Avatāras) of the several old nations. Éliphas Lévi as not an exception in preaching Christianity under a disguise of
Kabalism. He was undeniably "the greatest representative of modern Occult
Philosophy," as it is studied in Roman Catholic countries generally, where t is fitted to the preconceptions of Christian students. But he never aught the real universal _Kabalah_, and least of all did he teach Eastern
Occultism. Let the student compare the Eastern and Western teaching, and ee whether the philosophy of the _Upanishads_ "has yet to attain the anges of perception" of this Western system. Everyone has the right to efend the system he prefers, but in doing this, there is no need to throw lurs upon the system of one's brother.
In view of the great resemblance between many of the fundamental "truths" f Christianity and the "myths" of Brāhmanism, there have been serious ttempts made lately to prove that the _Bhagavad Gītā_ and most of the
_Brāhmanas_ and the _Purānas_ are of a far later date than the Mosaic
Books and even than the _Gospels_. But were it possible that an enforced uccess should be obtained in this direction, such argument cannot achieve ts object, since the _Rig Veda_ remains. Brought down to the most modern imits of the age assigned to it, its date cannot be made to overlap that f the _Pentateuch_, which is admittedly later.
The Orientalists know well that they cannot make away with the landmarks, ollowed by all subsequent religions, set up in that "Bible of Humanity" alled the _Rig Veda_. It is there that at the very dawn of intellectual umanity were laid the foundation-stones of all the faiths and creeds, of very fane and church built from first to last; and they are still there.
Universal "myths," personifications of Powers divine and cosmic, primary nd secondary, and historical personages of all the now-existing as well s of extinct religions are to be found in the seven chief Deities and heir 330,000,000 correlations of the _Rig Veda_, and those Seven, with he odd millions, are the Rays of the one boundless Unity.
But to THIS can never be offered profane worship. It can only be the
"object of the most abstract meditation, which Hindus practise in order to btain absorption in it." At the beginning of every "dawn" of "Creation," ternal Light--which is darkness--assumes the aspect of so-called Chaos: haos to the human intellect; the eternal Root to the superhuman or piritual sense.
"Osiris is a black God." These were the words pronounced at "low breath" t Initiation in Egypt, because Osiris Noumenon is darkness to the mortal.
In this Chaos are formed the "Waters," Mother Isis, Aditi, etc. They are he "Waters of Life," in which primordial germs are created--or rather eäwakened--by the primordial Light. It is Purushottama, or the Divine
Spirit, which in its capacity of Nārāyana, the Mover on the Waters of
Space, fructifies and infuses the Breath of life into that germ which ecomes the "Golden Mundane Egg," in which the male Brahmā is reated;(428) and from this the first Prajāpati, the Lord of Beings, merges, and becomes the progenitor of mankind. And though it is not he, ut the Absolute, that is said to contain the Universe in Itself, yet it s the duty of the male Brahmā to manifest it in a visible form. Hence he as to be connected with the procreation of species, and assumes, like
Jehovah and other male Gods in subsequent anthropomorphism, a phallic ymbol. At best every such male God, the "Father" of all, becomes the
"Archetypal Man." Between him and the Infinite Deity stretches an abyss.
In the theistic religions of personal Gods the latter are degraded from bstract Forces into physical potencies. The Water of Life--the "Deep" of
Mother Nature--is viewed in its terrestrial aspect in anthropomorphic eligions. Behold, how holy it has become by theological magic! It is held acred and is deified now as of old in almost every religion. But if
Christians use it as a means of spiritual purification in baptism and rayer; if Hindus pay reverence to their sacred streams, tanks, and ivers; if Pārsī, Mahommedan and Christian alike believe in its efficacy, urely that element must have some great and Occult significance. In
Occultism it stands for the Fifth Principle of Kosmos, in the lower eptenary: for the whole visible Universe was built by Water, say the
Kabalists who know the difference between the two waters--the "Waters of
Life" and those of Salvation--so confused together in dogmatic religions.
The "King-Preacher" says of himself:
I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I gave my
heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all _things_
that are done under heaven.(429)
Speaking of the great work and glory of the Elohim(430)--unified into the
"Lord God" in the English _Bible_, whose garment, he tells us, is light nd heaven the curtain--he refers to the builder
Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters,(431)
hat is, the divine Host of the Sephiroth, who have constructed the
Universe out of the Deep, the Waters of Chaos. Moses and Thales were right n saying that only earth and water can bring forth a living Soul, water eing on this plane the principle of all things. Moses was an Initiate,
Thales a Philosopher--_i.e._, a Scientist, for the words were synonymous in is day.
The secret meaning of this is that water and earth stand in the Mosaic
Books for the prima materia and the creative (feminine) Principle on our lane. In Egypt Osiris was Fire, and Isis was the Earth or its synonym
Water; the two opposing elements--just because of their opposite roperties--being necessary to each other for a common object: that of rocreation. The earth needs solar heat and rain to make her throw out her erms. But these procreative properties of Fire and Water, or Spirit and
Matter, are symbols but of physical generation. While the Jewish Kabalists ymbolized these elements only in their application to manifested things, nd reverenced them as the emblems for the production of terrestrial life, he Eastern Philosophy noticed them only as an illusive emanation from heir spiritual prototypes, and no unclean or unholy thought marred its
Esoteric religious symbology.
Chaos, as shown elsewhere, is Theos, which becomes Kosmos: it is Space, he container of everything in the Universe. As Occult Teachings assert, t is called by the Chaldęans, Egyptians, and every other nation Tohu-vah- ohu, or Chaos, Confusion, because Space is the great storehouse of
Creation, whence proceed not forms alone, but also ideas, which could eceive their expression only through the Logos, the Word, Verbum, or
Sound.
_The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 are the successive emanations from Mother [Space] s she forms running downward her garment, spreading it upon the seven teps of Creation._(_432_)_ The roller returns upon itself, as one end oins the other __ in infinitude, and the numbers 4, 3, and 2 are isplayed, as it is the only side of the veil that we can perceive, the irst number being lost in its inaccessible solitude._
... _Father, which is Boundless Time, generates Mother, which is infinite
Space, in Eternity; and Mother generates Father in Manvantaras, which are ivisions of durations, that Day when that world becomes one ocean. Then he Mother becomes Nārā [Waters--the Great Deep] for Nara [the Supreme
Spirit] to rest--or move--upon, when, it is said, that 1, 2, 3, 4 descend nd abide in the world of the unseen, while the 4, 3, 2, become the limits n the visible world to deal with the manifestations of Father
[Time]._(433)
This relates to the Mahāyugas which in figures become 432, and with the ddition of noughts, 4,320,000.
Now it is surpassingly strange, if it be a mere coincidence, that the umerical value of Tohu-vah-bohu, or "Chaos," in the _Bible_--which Chaos, f course, is the "Mother" Deep, or the Waters of Space--should yield the ame figures. For this is what is found in a Kabalist manuscript:
It is said of the Heavens and the Earth in the second verse of
_Genesis_ that they were "Chaos and Confusion"--that is, they were
"Tohu-vah-bohu;" "and _darkness_ was upon the face of the deep,"
_i.e._, "the perfect material out of which construction was to be
made lacked organization." The order of the digits of these words
as they stand--_i.e._,(434) the letters rendered by their numerical
value--is 6,526,654 and 2,386. By art speech these are key-working
numbers loosely shuffled together, the germs and keys of
construction, but to be recognized, one by one, as used and
required. They follow symmetrically in the work as immediately
following the first sentence of grand enunciation: "In Rash
developed itself Gods, the heavens and the earth."
Multiply the numbers of the letters of "Tohu-vah-bohu" together
continuously from right to left, placing the consecutive single
products as we go, and we will have the following series of
values, _viz._, (_a_) 30, 60, 360, 2,160, 10,800, 43,200, or as by
the characterizing digits; 3, 6, 36, 216, 108, and 432; (_b_) 20,
120, 720, 1,440, 7,200, or 2, 12, 72, 144, 72, 432, the series
closing in 432, one of the most famous numbers of antiquity, and
which, though obscured, crops out in the chronology up to the
Flood.(435)...
This shows that the Hebrew usage of play upon the numbers must have come o the Jews from India. As we have seen, the final series yields, besides any another combination, the figures 108 and 1008--the number of the names f Vishnu, whence the 108 grains of the Yogī's rosary--and close with 432, he truly "famous" number in Indian and Chaldęan antiquity, appearing in he cycle of 4,320,000 years in the former, and in the 432,000 years, the uration of the Chaldęan divine dynasties.
SECTION XXVI. THE IDOLS AND THE TERAPHIM.
The meaning of the "fairy-tale" told by the Chaldęan Qū-tāmy is easily nderstood. His _modus operandi_ with the "idol of the moon" was that of ll the Semites, before Terah, Abraham's father, made images--the Teraphim, alled after him--or the "chosen people" of Israel ceased divining by them.
These teraphim were just as much "idols" as is any pagan image or tatue.(436) The injunction "Thou shalt not bow to a graven image," or eraphim, must have either come at a later date, or have been disregarded, ince the bowing-down to and the divining by the teraphim seem to have een so orthodox and general that the "Lord" actually threatens the
Israelites, through Hosea, to deprive them of their teraphim.
For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king,
... without a sacrifice, and without an image.
Matzebah, or statue, or pillar, is explained in the _Bible_ to mean
"without an ephod and without teraphim."(437)
Father Kircher supports very strongly the idea that the statue of the
Egyptian Serapis was identical in every way with those of the seraphim, or eraphim, in the temple of Solomon. Says Louis de Dieu:
They were, perhaps, images of angels, or statues dedicated to the
angels, the presence of one of these spirits being thus attracted
into a teraphim and answering the inquirers [consultans]; and even
in this hypothesis the word "teraphim" would become the equivalent
of "seraphim" by changing the "t" into "s" in the manner of
Syrians.(438)
What says the _Septuagint_? The teraphim are translated successively by
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}--forms in someone's likeness; eidolon, an "astral body;" {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~}--the culptured; {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}--sculptures in the sense of containing something idden, or receptacles; {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}--manifestations; {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}--truths or ealities; {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} or {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}--luminous, shining likenesses. The latter xpression shows plainly what the teraphim were. The _Vulgate_ translates he term by "annuntientes," the "messengers who announce," and it thus ecomes certain that the teraphim were the oracles. They were the animated tatues, the Gods who revealed themselves to the masses through the
Initiated Priests and Adepts in the Egyptian, Chaldęan, Greek, and other emples.
As to the way of divining, or learning one's fate, and of being instructed y the teraphim,(439) it is explained quite plainly by Maimonides and
Seldenus. The former says:
The worshippers of the teraphim claimed that the light of the
principal stars [planets], penetrating into and filling the carved
statue through and through, the angelic virtue [of the regents, or
animating principle in the planets] conversed with them, teaching
them many most useful arts and sciences.(440)
In his turn Seldenus explains the same, adding that the teraphim(441) were uilt and fashioned in accordance with the position of their respective lanets, each of the teraphim being consecrated to a special "star-angel," hose that the Greeks called stoichę, as also according to figures located n the sky and called the "tutelary Gods":
Those who traced out the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} were called {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} [or
the diviners by the planets] and the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}.(442)
Ammianus Marcellinus states that the ancient divinations were always ccomplished with the help of the "spirits" of the elements (spiritus lementorum), or as they are called in Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}. Now he latter are not the "spirits" of the stars (planets), nor are they ivine Beings; they are simply the creatures inhabiting their respective lements, called by the Kabalists, elementary spirits, and by the
Theosophists elementals.(443) Father Kircher, the Jesuit, tells the eader:
Every god had such instruments of divination to speak through.
Each had his speciality.
Serapis gave instruction on agriculture; Anubis taught sciences; Horus dvised upon psychic and spiritual matters; Isis was consulted on the ising of the Nile, and so on.(444)
This historical fact, furnished by one of the ablest and most erudite mong the Jesuits, is unfortunate for the prestige of the "Lord God of
Israel" with regard to his claims to priority and to his being the _one_ iving God. Jehovah, on the admission of the _Old Testament_ itself, onversed with his elect in no other way, and this places him on a par ith every other Pagan God, even of the inferior classes. In _Judges_, vii., we read of Micah having an ephod and a teraphim fabricated, and onsecrating them to Jehovah (see the _Septuagint_ and the _Vulgate_); hese objects were made by a founder from the two hundred shekels of ilver given to him by his mother. True, King James' "Holy Bible" explains his little bit of idolatry by saying:
In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that
which was right in his own eyes.
Yet the act must have been orthodox, since Micah, after hiring a priest, a iviner, for his ephod and teraphim, declares: "Now know I that the Lord ill do me good." And if Micah's act--who
Had an house of Gods, and made an ephod and teraphim and
consecrated one of his sons
o their service, as also to that of the "graven image" dedicated "unto he Lord" by his mother--now seems prejudicial, it was not so in those days f one religion and one lip. How can the Latin Church blame the act, since
Kircher, one of her best writers, calls the teraphim "the holy instruments f primitive revelations;" since _Genesis_ shows us Rebecca going "to nquire of the Lord,"(445) and the Lord answering her (certainly through is teraphim), and delivering to her several prophecies? And if this be ot sufficient, there is Saul, who deplores the silence of the ephod,(446) nd David who consults the thummim, and receives oral advice from the Lord s to the best way of killing his enemies.
The thummim and urim, however--the object in our days of so much conjecture nd speculation--was not an invention of the Jews, nor had it originated ith them, despite the minute instruction given about it by Jehovah to
Moses. For the priest-hierophant of the Egyptian temples wore a reastplate of precious stones, in every way similar to that of the high riest of the Israelites.
The high-priests of Egypt wore suspended on their necks an image
of sapphire, called _Truth_, the manifestation of truth becoming
evident in it.
Seldenus is not the only Christian writer who assimilates the Jewish to he Pagan teraphim, and expressed a conviction that the former had orrowed them from the Egyptians. Moreover, we are told by Döllinger, a reėminently Roman Catholic writer:
The teraphim were used and remained in many Jewish families to the
days of Josiah.(447)
As to the personal opinion of Döllinger, a Papist, and of Seldenus, a
Protestant--both of whom trace Jehovah in the teraphim of the Jews and
"evil spirits" in those of the Pagans--it is the usual one-sided judgment f _odium theologicum_ and sectarianism. Seldenus is right, however, in rguing that in the days of old, all such modes of communication had been rimarily established for purposes of divine and angelic communications nly. But
The holy Spirit (spirits, rather) spake [not] to the children of
Israel [alone] by urim and thummim, while the tabernacle remained,
s Dr. A. Cruden would have people believe. Nor had the Jews alone need of "tabernacle" for such a kind of theophanic, or divine communication; for o Bath-Kol (or "Daughter of the divine Voice"), called thummim, could be eard whether by Jew, Pagan, or Christian, were there not a fit tabernacle or it. The "tabernacle" was simply the archaic telephone of those days of
Magic when Occult powers were acquired by Initiation, just as they are ow. The nineteenth century has replaced with an electric telephone the
"tabernacle" of specified metals, wood, and special arrangements, and has atural mediums instead of high priests and hierophants. Why should people onder, then, that instead of reaching Planetary Spirits and Gods, elievers should now communicate with no greater beings than elementals nd animated shells--the demons of Porphyry? Who these were, he tells us andidly in his work _On the Good and Bad Demons_:
They whose ambition is to be taken for Gods, and whose leader
demands to be recognized as the Supreme God.
Most decidedly--and it is not the Theosophists who will ever deny the act--there are good as well as bad spirits, beneficent and malevolent
"Gods" in all ages. The whole trouble was, and still is, to know which is hich. And this, we maintain, the Christian Church knows no more than her rofane flock. If anything proves this, it is, most decidedly, the umberless theological blunders made in this direction. It is idle to call he Gods of the heathen "devils," and then to copy their symbols in such a ervile manner, enforcing the distinction between the good and the bad ith no weightier proof than that they are respectively Christian and
Pagan. The planets--the elements of the Zodiac--have not figured only at
Heliopolis as the twelve stones called the "mysteries of the elements"
(elementorum arcana). On the authority of many an orthodox Christian riter they were found also in Solomon's temple, and may be seen to this ay in several old Italian churches, and even in Notre Dame of Paris.
One would really say that the warning in Clement's _Stromateis_ has been iven in vain, though he is supposed to quote words pronounced by St.
Peter. He says:
Do not adore God as the Jews do, who think they are the only ones
to know Deity and fail to perceive that, instead of God, they are
worshipping angels, the lunar months, and the moon.(448)
Who after reading the above can fail to feel surprise that, otwithstanding such understanding of the Jewish mistake, the Christians re still worshipping the Jewish Jehovah, the Spirit who spoke through his eraphim! That this is so, and that Jehovah was simply the "tutelary enius," or spirit, of the people of Israel--only one of the pneumata ton toicheion (or "great spirits of the elements"), not even a high
"Planetary"--is demonstrated on the authority of St. Paul and of Clemens
Alexandrinus, if the words they use have any meaning. With the latter, the ord {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} signifies not only elements, but also
Generative cosmological principles, and notably the signs [or
constellations] of the Zodiac, of the months, days, the sun and
the moon.(449)
The expression is used by Aristotle in the same sense. He says, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~},(450) while Diogenes Laertius calls {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, the twelve igns of the Zodiac.(451) Now having the positive evidence of Ammianus
Marcellinus to the effect that
Ancient divination was always accomplished with the help of the
spirits of the elements,
r the same {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, and seeing in the _Bible_ numerous assages that (_a_) the Israelites, including Saul and David, resorted to he same divination, and used the same means; and (_b_) that it was their
"Lord"--namely, Jehovah--who answered them, what else can we believe Jehovah o be than a "spiritus elementorum"?
Hence one sees no great difference between the "idol of the moon"--the
Chaldęan teraphim through which spoke Saturn--and the idol of urim and hummim, the organ of Jehovah. Occult rites, scientific at the eginning--and forming the most solemn and sacred of sciences--have fallen hrough the degeneration of mankind into Sorcery, now called
"superstition." As Diogenes explains in his _History_:
The Kaldhi, having made long observations on the planets and
knowing better than anyone else the meaning of their motions and
their influences, predict to people their futurity. They regard
their doctrine of the _five_ great orbs--which they call
interpreters, and we, planets--as the most important. And though
they allege that it is the _sun_ that furnishes them with most of
the predictions for great forthcoming events, yet they worship
more particularly Saturn. Such predictions made to a number of
kings, especially to Alexander, Antigonus, Seleucus, Nicanor,
etc., ... have been so marvellously realised that people were
struck with admiration.(452)
It follows from the above that the declaration made by Qū-tāmy, the
Chaldęan Adept--to the effect that all that he means to impart in his work o the profane had been told by Saturn to the moon, by the latter to her dol, and by that idol, or teraphim, to himself, the scribe--no more mplied idolatry than did the practice of the same method by King David.
One fails to perceive in it, therefore, either an apocrypha or a "fairy- ale." The above-named Chaldęan Initiate lived at a period far anterior to hat ascribed to Moses, in whose day the Sacred Science of the sanctuary as still in a flourishing condition. It began to decline only when such coffers as Lucian had been admitted, and the pearls of the Occult Science ad been too often thrown to the hungry dogs of criticism and ignorance.
SECTION XXVII. EGYPTIAN MAGIC.
Few of our students of Occultism have had the opportunity of examining
Egyptian papyri--those living, or rather re-arisen witnesses that Magic, ood and bad, was practised many thousands of years back into the night of ime. The use of the papyrus prevailed up to the eighth century of our ra, when it was given up, and its fabrication fell into disuse. The most urious of the exhumed documents were immediately purchased and taken away rom the country. Yet there are a number of beautifully-preserved papyri t Bulak, Cairo, though the greater number have never been yet properly ead.(453)
Others--those that have been carried away and may be found in the museums nd public libraries of Europe--have fared no better. In the days of the
Vicomte de Rougé, some twenty-five years ago, only a few of them "were wo-thirds deciphered;" and among those some most interesting legends, nserted parenthetically and for purposes of explaining royal expenses, re in the Register of the Sacred Accounts.
This may be verified in the so-called "Harris" and Anastasi collections, nd in some papyri recently exhumed; one of these gives an account of a hole series of magic feats performed before the Pharaohs Ramses II. and
III. A curious document, the first-mentioned, truly. It is a papyrus of he fifteenth century B.C., written during the reign of Ramses V., the ast king of the eighteenth dynasty, and is the work of the scribe
Thoutmes, who notes down some of the events with regard to defaulters ccurring on the twelfth and thirteenth days of the month of Paophs. The ocument shows that in those days of "miracles" in Egypt the taxpayers ere not found among the living alone, but every mummy was included. All nd everything was taxed; and the Khou of the mummy, in default, was unished "by the priest-exorciser, who deprived it of the liberty of ction." Now what was the Khou? Simply the astral body, or the aerial imulacrum of the corpse or the mummy--that which in China is called the
Hauen, and in India the Bhūt.
Upon reading this papyrus to-day, an Orientalist is pretty sure to fling t aside in disgust, attributing the whole affair to the crass uperstition of the ancients. Truly phenomenal and inexplicable must have een the dullness and credulity of that otherwise highly philosophical and ivilized nation if it could carry on for so many consecutive ages, for housands of years, such a system of mutual deception! A system whereby he people were deceived by the priests, the priests by their King-
Hierophants, and the latter themselves were cheated by the ghosts, which ere, in their turn, but "the fruits of hallucination." The whole of ntiquity, from Menes to Cleopatra, from Manu to Vikramaditya, from
Orpheus down to the last Roman augur, were hysterical, we are told. This ust have been so, if the whole were not a system of fraud. Life and death ere guided by, and were under the sway of, sacred "conjuring." For there s hardly a papyrus, though it be a simple document of purchase and sale, deed belonging to daily transactions of the most ordinary kind, that has ot Magic, white or black, mixed up in it. It looks as though the sacred cribes of the Nile had purposely, and in a prophetic spirit of race- atred, carried out the (to them) most unprofitable task of deceiving and uzzling the generations of a future white race of unbelievers yet unborn!
Anyhow, the papyri are full of Magic, as are likewise the stelę. We learn, oreover, that the papyrus was not merely a smooth-surfaced parchment, a abric made of
Ligneous matter from a shrub, the pellicles of which superposed
one over the other formed a kind of writing-paper;
ut that the shrub itself, the implements and tools for fabricating the archment, etc., were all previously subjected to a process of magical reparation--according to the ordinance of the Gods, who had taught that rt, as they had all others, to their Priest-Hierophants.
There are, however, some modern Orientalists who seem to have an inkling f the true nature of such things, and especially of the analogy and the elations that exist between the Magic of old and our modern-day henomena. Chabas is one of these, for he indulges, in his translation of he "Harris" papyrus, in the following reflections:
Without having recourse to the imposing ceremonies of the wand of
Hermes, or to the obscure formulę of an unfathomable mysticism, a
mesmerizer in our own day will, by means of a few passes, disturb
the organic faculties of a subject, inculcate the knowledge of
foreign languages, transport him to a far-distant country, or into
secret places, make him guess the thoughts of those absent, read
in closed letters, etc.... The antre of the modern sybil is a
modest-looking room, the tripod has made room for a small round
table, a hat, a plate, a piece of furniture of the most vulgar
kind; only the latter is even superior to the oracle of antiquity
[how does M. Chabas know?], inasmuch as the latter only
spoke,(454) while the oracle of our day writes its answers. At the
command of the medium the spirits of the dead descend to make the
furniture creak, and the authors of bygone centuries deliver to us
works written by them beyond the grave. Human credulity has no
narrower limits to-day than it had at the dawn of historical
times.... As teratology is an essential part of general physiology
now, so the _pretended_ Occult Sciences occupy in the annals of
humanity a place which is not without its importance, and deserve
for more than one reason the attention of the philosopher and the
historian.(455)
Selecting the two Champollions, Lenormand, Bunsen, Vicomte de Rougé, and everal other Egyptologists to serve as our witnesses, let us see what hey say of Egyptian Magic and Sorcery. They may get out of the difficulty y accounting for each "superstitious belief" and practice by attributing hem to a chronic psychological and physiological derangement, and to ollective hysteria, if they like; still facts are there, staring us in he face, from the hundreds of these mysterious papyri, exhumed after a est of four, five, and more thousands of years, with their magical ontainments and evidence of antediluvian Magic.
A small library, found at Thebes, has furnished fragments of every kind of ncient literature, many of which are dated, and several of which have hus been assigned to the accepted age of Moses. Books or manuscripts on thics, history, religion and medicine, calendars and registers, poems and ovels--everything--may be had in that precious collection; and old egends--traditions of long forgotten ages (please to remark this: legends ecorded during the Mosaic period)--are already referred to therein as elonging to an immense antiquity, to the period of the dynasties of Gods nd Giants. Their chief contents, however, are formulę of exorcisms gainst black Magic, and funeral rituals: true breviaries, or the _vade ecum_ of every pilgrim-traveller in eternity. These funeral texts are enerally written in hieratic characters. At the head of the papyrus is nvariably placed a series of scenes, showing the defunct appearing before host of Deities successively, who have to examine him. Then comes the udgment of the Soul, while the third act begins with the launching of hat Soul into the divine light. Such papyri are often forty feet ong.(456)
The following is extracted from general descriptions. It will show how the oderns understand and interpret Egyptian (and other) Symbology.
The papyrus of the priest Nevo-loo (or Nevolen), at the Louvre, may be elected for one case. First of all there is the bark carrying the coffin, black chest containing the defunct's mummy. His mother, Ammenbem-Heb, nd his sister, Hooissanoob, are near; at the head and feet of the corpse tand Nephtys and Isis clothed in red, and near them a priest of Osiris lad in his panther's skin, his censer in his right hand, and four ssistants carrying the mummy's intestines. The coffin is received by the
God Anubis (of the jackal's head), from the hands of female weepers. Then he Soul rises from its mummy and the Khou (astral body) of the defunct.
The former begins its worship of the four genii of the East, of the sacred irds, and of Ammon as a ram. Brought into the "Palace of Truth," the efunct is before his judges. While the Soul, a scarabęus, stands in the resence of Osiris, his astral Khou is at the door. Much laughter is rovoked in the West by the invocations to various Deities, presiding over ach of the limbs of the mummy, and of the living human body. Only judge: n the papyrus of the mummy Petamenoph "the anatomy becomes heographical," "astrology is applied to physiology," or rather "to the natomy of the human body, the heart and the soul." The defunct's "hair elongs to the Nile, his eyes to Venus (Isis), his ears to Macedo, the uardian of the tropics; his nose to Anubis, his left temple to the Spirit welling in the sun.... What a series of intolerable absurdities and gnoble prayers ... to Osiris, imploring him to give the defunct in the ther world, geese, eggs, pork, etc."(457)
It might have been prudent, perhaps, to have waited to ascertain whether ll these terms of "geese, eggs, and pork" had not some other Occult eaning. The Indian Yogī who, in an _exoteric_ work, is invited to drink a ertain intoxicating liquor till he loses his senses, was also regarded as drunkard representing his sect and class, until it was found that the
Esoteric sense of that "spirit" was quite different: that it meant divine ight, and stood for the ambrosia of Secret Wisdom. The symbols of the ove and the lamb which abound now in Eastern and Western Christian
Churches may also be exhumed long ages hence, and speculated upon as bjects of present-day worship. And then some "Occidentalist" in the orthcoming ages of high Asiatic civilization and learning, may write armically upon the same as follows: "The ignorant and superstitious
Gnostics and Agnostics of the sects of 'Pope' and 'Calvin' (the two onster Gods of the Dynamite-Christian period) adored a pigeon and a heep!" There will be portable hand-fetishes in all and every age for the atisfaction and reverence of the rabble, and the Gods of one race will lways be degraded into devils by the next one. The cycles revolve within he depths of Lethe, and Karma shall reach Europe as it has Asia and her eligions.
Nevertheless,
This grand and dignified language [in the _Book of the Dead_],
these pictures full of majesty, this orthodoxy of the whole
evidently proving a very precise doctrine concerning the
immortality of the soul and its personal survival,
s shown by De Rougé and the Abbé Van Drival, have charmed some
Orientalists. The psychostasy (or judgment of the Soul) is certainly a hole poem to him who can read it correctly and interpret the images herein. In that picture we see Osiris, the horned, with his sceptre ooked at the end--the original of the pastoral bishop's crook or rosier--the Soul hovering above, encouraged by Tmei, daughter of the Sun f Righteousness and Goddess of Mercy and Justice; Horus and Anubis, eighing the deeds of the soul. One of these papyri shows the Soul found uilty of gluttony sentenced to be re-born on earth as a hog; forthwith omes the learned conclusion of an Orientalist, "This is an indisputable roof of belief in _metempsychosis_, of transmigration _into animals_," tc.
Perchance the Occult law of Karma might explain the sentence otherwise. It ay, for all our Orientalists know, refer to the physiological vice in tore for the Soul when re-incarnated--a vice that will lead that ersonality into a thousand and one scrapes and misadventures.
Tortures to begin with, then metempsychosis _during_ 3,000 _years_
as a hawk, an angel, a lotus-flower, a heron, a stork, a swallow,
a serpent, and a crocodile: one sees that the consolation of such
a progress was far from being satisfactory,
rgues De Mirville, in his work on the Satanic character of the Gods of
Egypt.(458) Again, a simple suggestion may throw on this a great light.
Are the Orientalists quite sure they have read correctly the
"metempsychosis during 3,000 years"? The Occult Doctrine teaches that
Karma waits at the threshold of Devachan (the Amenti of the Egyptians) for
3,000 years; that then the eternal _Ego_ is reincarnated _de novo_, to be unished in its new temporary personality for sins committed in the receding birth, and the suffering for which, in one shape or another, ill atone for past misdeeds. And the hawk, the lotus-flower, the heron, erpent, or bird--every object in Nature, in short--had its symbolical and anifold meaning in ancient religious emblems. The man who all his life cted hypocritically and passed for a good man, but had been in sober eality watching like a bird of prey his chance to pounce upon his fellow- reatures, and had deprived them of their property, will be sentenced by
Karma to bear the punishment for hypocrisy and covetousness in a future ife. What will it be? Since every human unit has ultimately to progress n its evolution, and since that "man" will be reborn at some future time s a good, sincere, well-meaning man, his sentence to be re-incarnated as hawk may simply mean that he will then be regarded metaphorically as uch. That, notwithstanding his real, good, intrinsic qualities, he will, erhaps during a long life, be unjustly and falsely charged with and uspected of greed and hypocrisy and of secret exactions, all of which ill make him suffer more than he can bear. The law of retribution can ever err, and yet how many such innocent victims of false appearance and uman malice do we not meet in this world of incessant illusion, of istake and deliberate wickedness. We see them every day, and they may be ound within the personal experience of each of us. What Orientalist can ay with any degree of assurance that he has understood the religions of ld? The metaphorical language of the priests has never been more than uperficially revealed, and the hieroglyphics have been very poorly astered to this day.(459)
What says _Isis Unveiled_ on this question of Egyptian rebirth and ransmigration, and does it clash with anything that we say now?
It will be observed that this philosophy of cycles, which was
allegorized by the Egyptian Hierophants in the "cycle of
necessity," explains at the same time the allegory of the "Fall of
Man." According to the Arabian descriptions, each of the seven
chambers of the pyramids--those grandest of all cosmic symbols--was
known by the name of a planet. The peculiar architecture of the
pyramids shows in itself the drift of the metaphysical thought of
their builders. The apex is lost in the clear blue sky of the land
of the Pharaohs, and typifies the primordial point lost in the
unseen Universe from whence started the first race of the
spiritual prototypes of man. Each mummy from the moment that it
was embalmed lost its physical individuality in one sense: it
symbolised the human race. Placed in such a way as was best
calculated to aid the exit of the "Soul," the latter had to pass
through the seven planetary chambers before it made its exit
through the symbolical apex. Each chamber typified, at the same
time, one of the seven spheres [of our Chain] and one of the seven
higher types of physico-spiritual humanity alleged to be above our
own. Every 3000 years the soul, representative of its race, had to
return to its primal point of departure before it underwent
another evolution into a more perfected spiritual and physical
transformation. We must go deep indeed into the abstruse
metaphysics of Oriental mysticism before we can realise fully the
infinitude of the subjects that were embraced at one sweep by the
majestic thought of its exponents.(460)
This is all Magic when once the details are given; and it relates at the ame time to the evolution of our seven Root-Races, each with the haracteristics of its special guardian or "God," and his Planet. The stral body of each Initiate, after death, had to reėnact in its funeral ystery the drama of the birth and death of each Race--the past and the uture--and pass through the seven "planetary chambers," which, as said bove, typified also the seven spheres of our Chain.
The mystic doctrine of Eastern Occultism teaches that
_"__The Spiritual Ego [not the astral Khou] has to revisit, before it ncarnates into a new body, the scenes it left at its last disincarnation.
It __ has to see for itself and take cognizance of all the effects roduced by the causes [the Nidānas] generated by its actions in a revious life; that, seeing, it should recognize the justice of the ecree, and help the law of Retribution [Karma] instead of impeding t.__"_(461)
The translations by Vicomte de Rougé of several Egyptian papyri, imperfect s they may be, give us one advantage: they show undeniably the presence n them of white, divine Magic, as well as of Sorcery, and the practice of oth throughout all the dynasties. The _Book of the Dead_, far older than
_Genesis_(462) or any other book of the _Old Testament_, shows it in every ine. It is full of incessant prayers and exorcisms against the Black Art.
Therein Osiris is the conqueror of the "aerial demons." The worshipper mplores his help against Matat, "from whose eye proceeds the invisible rrow." This "invisible arrow" that proceeds from the eye of the Sorcerer
(whether living or dead) and that "circulates throughout the world," is he evil eye--cosmic in its origin, terrestrial in its effects on the icrocosmical plane. It is not the Latin Christians whom it behoves to iew this as a superstition. Their Church indulges in the same belief, and as even a prayer against the "arrow circulating in darkness."
The most interesting of all those documents, however, is the "Harris" apyrus, called in France "_le papyrus magique_ de Chabas," as it was irst translated by the latter. It is a manuscript written in hieratic haracters, translated, commented upon, and published in 1860 by M.
Chabas, but purchased at Thebes in 1855 by Mr. Harris. Its age is given at etween twenty-eight and thirty centuries. We quote a few extracts from hese translations:
Calendar of lucky and unlucky days: ... He who makes a bull work
on the 20th of the month of Pharmuths will surely die; he who on
the 24th day of the same month pronounces the name of Seth aloud
will see trouble reigning in his house from that day; ... he who
on the 5th day of Patchous leaves his house falls sick and dies.
Exclaims the translator, whose cultured instincts are revolted:
If one had not these words under our eyes, one could never believe
in such servitude at the epoch of the Ramessides.(463)
We belong to the nineteenth century of the Christian era, and are herefore at the height of civilization, and under the benign sway and nlightening influence of the Christian Church, instead of being subject o the Pagan Gods of old. Nevertheless we personally know dozens, and have eard of hundreds, of educated, highly-intellectual persons who would as oon think of committing suicide as of starting on any business on a
Friday, of dining at a table where thirteen sit down, or of beginning a ong journey on a Monday. Napoleon the Great became pale when he saw three andles lit on a table. Moreover, we may gladly concur with De Mirville in his, at any rate, that such "superstitions" are "the outcome of bservation and experience." If the former had never agreed with facts, he authority of the _Calendar_, he thinks, would not have lasted for a eek. But to resume:
_Genethliacal influences_: The child born on the 5th day of Paophi
will be killed by a bull; on the 27th by a serpent. Born on the
4th of the month of Athyr, he will succumb to blows.
This is a question of horoscopic predictions; judiciary astrology is irmly believed in in our own age, and has been proven to be cientifically possible by Kepler.
Of the Khous two kinds were distinguished: first, the justified Khous,
_i.e._, those who had been absolved from sin by Osiris when they were rought before his tribunal; these lived a second life. Secondly, there ere the guilty Khous, "the Khous dead a second time;" these were the amned. Second death did not annihilate them, but they were doomed to ander about and to torture people. Their existence had phases analogous o those of the living man, a bond so intimate between the dead and the iving that one sees how the observation of religious funeral rites and xorcisms and prayers (or rather magic incantations) should have become ecessary.(464) Says one prayer:
Do not permit that the venom should master his limbs [of the
defunct], ... that he should be penetrated by any male dead, or
any female dead; or that the shadow of any spirit should haunt him
(or her).(465)
M. Chabas adds:
These Khous were beings of that kind to which human beings belong
after their death; they were exorcised in the name of the god
Chons.... The Manes then could enter the bodies of the living,
haunt and obsess them. Formulę and talismans, and especially
statues or _divine figures_, were used against such _formidable_
invasions.(466)... They were combated by the help of the divine
power, the god Chons being famed for such deliverances. The Khou,
in obeying the orders of the god, none the less preserved the
precious faculty inherent in him of accommodating himself in any
other body at will.
The most frequent formula of exorcism is as follows. It is very uggestive:
Men, gods, elect, dead spirits, amous, negroes, menti-u, do not
look at this soul to show cruelty toward it.
This is addressed to all who were acquainted _with Magic_.
"Amulets and mystic names." This chapter is called "very mysterious," and ontains invocations to Penhakahakaherher and Uranaokarsankrobite, and ther such easy names. Says Chabas:
We have proofs that mystic names similar to these were in common
use during the stay of the Israelites in Egypt.
And we may add that, whether got from the Egyptians or the Hebrews, these re sorcery names. The student can consult the works of Éliphas Lévi, such s his _Grimoire des Sorciers_. In these exorcisms Osiris is called
Mamuram-Kahab, and is implored to prevent the twice-dead Khou from ttacking the justified Khou and his next of kin, since the accursed
(astral spook)
Can take any form he likes and penetrate at will into any locality
or body.
In studying Egyptian papyri, one begins to find that the subjects of the
Pharaohs were not very much inclined to the Spiritism or Spiritualism of heir day. They dreaded the "blessed spirit" of the dead more than a Roman
Catholic dreads the devil!
But how uncalled-for and unjust is the charge against the Gods of Egypt hat they are these "devils," and against the priests of exercising their agic powers with the help of "the fallen angels," may be seen in more han one papyrus. For one often finds in them records of Sorcerers entenced to the death penalty, as though they had been living under the rotection of the holy Christian Inquisition. Here is one case during the eign of Ramses III., quoted by De Mirville from Chabas.
The first page begins with these words: "From the place where I am
to the people of my country." There is reason to suppose, as one
will see, that the person who wrote this, in the first personal
pronoun, is a magistrate making a report, and attesting it before
men, after an accustomed formula, for here is the main part of
this accusation: "This Hai, a bad man, was an overseer [or perhaps
keeper] of sheep: he said: 'Can I have a book that will give me
great power?'... And a book was given him with the formulę of
Ramses-Meri-Amen, the great God, his royal master; and he
succeeded in getting a divine power enabling him to fascinate men.
He also succeeded in building a place and in finding a very _deep
place_, and produced men of Menh [magical homunculi?] and ...
love-writings ... stealing them from the Khen [the occult library
of the palace] by the hand of the stonemason Atirma, ... by
forcing one of the supervisors to go aside, and acting magically
on the others. Then he sought to read futurity by them and
succeeded. All the horrors and abominations he had conceived in
his heart, he did them really, he practised them all, and other
great crimes as well, such as _the horror_ [?] of all the Gods and
Goddesses. Likewise let the prescriptions _great_ [_severe?_]
_unto death_ be done unto him, such as the divine words order to
be done to him." The accusation does not stop there, it specifies
the crimes. The first line speaks of a hand paralysed by means of
the _men of Menh_, to whom it is simply said, "_Let such an effect
be produced_," and it is produced. Then come the _great
abominations_, such as deserve death.... The judges who had
examined him (the culprit) reported saying, "Let him die according
to the order of Pharaoh, and according to what is written in the
lines of the divine language."
M. Chabas remarks:
Documents of this kind abound, but the task of analysing them all
cannot be attempted with the limited means we possess.(467)
Then there is an inscription taken in the temple of Khous, the God who had ower over the elementaries, at Thebes. It was presented by M. Prisse 'Avenne to the Imperial--now National--Library of Paris, and was translated irst by Mr. S. Birch. There is in it a whole romance of Magic. It dates rom the day of Ramses XII.(468) of the twentieth dynasty; it is from the endering of M. de Rougé as quoted by De Mirville, that we now translate t.
This monument tells us that one of the Ramses of the twentieth
dynasty, while collecting at Naharain the tributes paid to Egypt
by the Asiatic nations, fell in love with a daughter of the chief
of Bakhten, one of his tributaries, married her and, bringing her
to Egypt with him, raised her to the dignity of Queen, under the
royal name of Ranefrou. Soon afterwards the chief of Bakhten
dispatched a messenger to Ramses, praying the assistance of
Egyptian science for Bent-Rosh, a young sister of the queen,
attacked with illness in all her limbs.
The messenger asked expressly that a "wise-man" [an Initiate--Reh-
Het] should be sent. The king gave orders that all the
hierogrammatists of the palace and the guardians of the secret
books of the Khen should be sent for, and choosing from among them
the royal scribe Thoth-em-Hebi, an intelligent man, well versed in
writing, charged him to examine the sickness.
Arrived at Bakhten, Thoth-em-Hebi found that Bent-Rosh was
possessed by a Khou (Em-seh-'eru ker h'ou), but declared himself
too weak to engage in a struggle with him.(469)
Eleven years elapsed, and the young girl's state did not improve.
The chief of Bakhten again sent his messenger, and on his formal
demand Khons-peiri-Seklerem-Zam, one of the divine forms of
Chons--God the Son in the Theban Trinity--was dispatched to
Bakhten....
The God [incarnate] having saluted (_besa_) the patient, she felt
immediately relieved, and the Khou who was in her manifested
forthwith his intention of obeying the orders of the God. "O great
God, who forcest the phantom to vanish," said the Khou, "I am thy
slave and I will return whence I came!"(470)
Evidently Khons-peiri-Seklerem-Zam was a real Hierophant of the class amed the "Sons of God," since he is said to be one of the forms of the
God Khons; which means either that he was considered as an incarnation of hat God--an Avatāra--or that he was a full Initiate. The same text shows hat the temple to which he belonged was one of those to which a School of
Magic was attached. There was a Khen in it, or that portion of the temple hich was inaccessible to all but the highest priest, the library or epository of secret works, to the study and care of which special priests ere appointed (those whom all the Pharaohs consulted in cases of great mportance), and wherein they communicated with the Gods and obtained dvice from them. Does not Lucian tell his readers in his description of he temple of Hierapolis, of "Gods who manifest their presence ndependently?"(471) And further on that he once travelled with a priest rom Memphis, who told him he had passed twenty-three years in the ubterranean crypts of his temple, receiving instructions on Magic from he Goddess Isis herself. Again we read that it was by Mercury himself hat the great Sesostris (Ramses II.) was instructed in the Sacred
Sciences. On which Jablonsky remarks that we have here the reason why Amun
(Ammon)--whence he thinks our "Amen" is derived--was a real evocation to the ight.(472)
In the Papyrus Anastasi, which teems with various formulę for the vocation of Gods, and with exorcisms against Khous and the elementary emons, the seventh paragraph shows plainly the difference made between he real Gods, the Planetary Angels, and those shells of mortals which are eft behind in Kāma-loka, as though to tempt mankind and to puzzle it the ore hopelessly in its vain search after the truth, outside the Occult
Sciences and the veil of Initiation. This seventh verse says with regard o such divine evocations or theomantic consultations:
One must invoke that divine and great name(473) only in cases of
absolute necessity, and when one feels absolutely pure and
irreproachable.
Not so in the formula of black Magic. Reuvens, speaking of the two rituals f Magic of the Anastasi collection, remarks that they
Undeniably form the most instructive commentary upon the _Egyptian
mysteries_ attributed to Jamblichus, and the best pendant to that
classical work, for understanding the thaumaturgy of the
philosophical sects, thaumaturgy based on ancient Egyptian
religion. According to Jamblichus, thaumaturgy was exercised by
the ministry of secondary genii.(474)
Reuvens closes with a remark which is very suggestive and is very mportant to the Occultists who defend the antiquity and genuineness of heir documents, for he says:
All that he [Jamblichus] gives out as theology we find as history
in our papyri.
But then how deny the authenticity, the credibility, and, beyond all, the rustworthiness of those classical writers, who all wrote about Magic and ts Mysteries in a most worshipful spirit of admiration and reverence?
Listen to Pindarus, who exclaims:
Happy he who descends into the grave thus initiated, for he knows
the end of his life and the kingdom(475) given by Jupiter.(476)
Or to Cicero:
Initiation not only teaches us to feel happy in this life, but
also to die with better hope.(477)
Plato, Pausanias, Strabo, Diodorus and dozens of others bring their vidence as to the great boon of Initiation; all the great as well as the artially-initiated Adepts, share the enthusiasm of Cicero.
Does not Plutarch, thinking of what he had learned in his
initiation, console himself for the loss of his wife? Had he not
obtained the certitude at the Mysteries of Bacchus that "the soul
[spirit] remains incorruptible, and that there is a hereafter"?...
Aristophanes went even farther: "All those who participated in the
Mysteries," he says, "led an innocent, calm, and holy life; they
died looking for the light of the Eleusinian Fields [Devachan],
while the rest could never expect anything but eternal darkness
[ignorance?].
"... And when one thinks about the importance attached by the
States to the principle and the correct celebration of the
Mysteries, to the stipulations made in their treaties for the
security of their celebration, one sees to what degree those
Mysteries had so long occupied their first and their last thought.
"It was the greatest among public as well as private
preoccupations, and this is only natural, since according to
Döllinger, 'the Eleusinian Mysteries were viewed as the
efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the purest essence of
all its conceptions.' "(478)
Not only conspirators were refused admittance therein, but those
who had not denounced them; traitors, perjurers, debauchees,(479)
... so that Porphyry could say that: "Our soul has to be at the
moment of death as it was during the Mysteries, _i.e._, exempt
from any blemishes, passion, envy, hatred, or anger."(480)
Truly,
Magic was considered a Divine Science which led to a participation
in the attributes of the Divinity itself.(481)
Herodotus, Thales, Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, Pythagoras, all went, ach in his day, in search of the wisdom of Egypt's great Hierophants, in he hope of solving the problems of the universe.
Says Philo:
The Mysteries were known to unveil the secret operations of
Nature.(482)
The prodigies accomplished by the priests of theurgic magic are so
well authenticated and the evidence--if human testimony is worth
anything at all--is so overwhelming that, rather than confess that
the pagan theurgists far outrivalled the Christians in miracles,
Sir David Brewster conceded to the former the greatest proficiency
in physics and everything that pertains to natural philosophy.
Science finds herself in a very disagreeable dilemma....
"Magic," says Psellus, "formed the last part of the sacerdotal
science. It investigated the nature, power, and quality of
everything sublunary; of the elements and their parts, of animals,
of various plants and their fruits, of stones and herbs. In short,
it explored the essence and power of everything. From hence,
therefore, it produced its effects. And it formed _statues_
[magnetized] which procure health, and made all various figures
and things [talismans], which could equally become the instruments
of disease as well as of health. Often, too, celestial fire is
made to appear through magic, and then statues laugh and lamps are
spontaneously enkindled."(483)
This assertion of Psellus that Magic "made statues which procure health," s now proven to the world to be no dream, no vain boast of a hallucinated
Theurgist. As Reuvens says, it becomes "history." For it is found in the
_Papyrus Magique_ of Harris and on the votive stele just mentioned. Both
Chabas and De Rougé state that:
On the eighteenth line of this very mutilated monument is found
the formula with regard to the acquiescence of the God (Chons) who
made his consent known by a motion he imparted to his statue.(484)
There was even a dispute over it between the two Orientalists. While M. de
Rougé wanted to translate the word "Han" by "favour" or "grace," M. Chabas nsisted that "Han" meant a "movement" or "_a sign_" made by the statue.
Excesses of power, abuse of knowledge and personal ambition very often led elfish and unscrupulous Initiates to black Magic, just as the same causes ed to precisely the same thing among Christian popes and cardinals; and t was black Magic that led finally to the abolition of the Mysteries, and ot Christianity, as is often erroneously thought. Read Mommsen's _Roman
History_, vol. i., and you will find that it was the Pagans themselves who ut an end to the desecration of the Divine Science. As early as 560 B.C. he Romans had discovered an Occult association, a school of black Magic f the most revolting kind; it celebrated mysteries brought from Etruria, nd very soon the moral pestilence had spread all over Italy
More than seven thousand Initiates were prosecuted, and most of
them were sentenced to death....
Later on, Titus-Livius shows us another three thousand Initiates
sentenced during a single year for the crime of poisoning.(485)
And yet black Magic is derided and denied!
Paulthier may or may not be too enthusiastic in saying that India appears o him as
The grand and primitive hearth of human thought, that has ended by
embracing the whole ancient world,
ut he was right in his idea. That primitive thought led to Occult nowledge, which in our Fifth Race is reflected from the earliest days of he Egyptian Pharaohs down to our modern times. Hardly a hieratic papyrus s exhumed with the tightly swathed-up mummies of kings and high priests hat does not contain some interesting information for the modern students f Occultism.
All that is, of course, derided Magic, the outcome of primitive knowledge nd of revelation, though it was practised in such ungodly ways by the
Atlantean Sorcerers that it has since become necessary for the subsequent
Race to draw a thick veil over the practices which were used to obtain so- alled magical effects on the psychic and on the physical planes. In the etter no one in our century will believe the statements, with the xception of the Roman Catholics, and these will give the acts a satanic rigin. Nevertheless, Magic is so mixed up with the history of the world, hat if the latter is ever to be written it has to rely upon the iscoveries of Archęology, Egyptology, and hieratic writings and nscriptions; if it insists that they must be free from that "superstition f the ages" it will never see the light. One can well imagine the mbarrassing position in which serious Egyptologists, Assyriologists, avants and academicians find themselves. Forced to translate and nterpret the old papyri and the archaic inscriptions on stelę and
Babylonian cylinders, they find themselves compelled from first to last to ace the distasteful, and to them repulsive, subject of Magic, with its ncantations and paraphernalia. Here they find sober and grave narratives rom the pens of learned scribes, made up under the direct supervision of
Chaldęan or Egyptian Hierophants, the most learned among the Philosophers f antiquity. These statements were written at the solemn hour of the eath and burial of Pharaohs, High Priests, and other mighty ones of the and of Chemi; their purpose was the introduction of the newly-born,
Osirified Soul before the awful-tribunal of the "Great Judge" in the egion of Amenti--there where a _lie_ was said to outweigh the greatest rimes. Were the Scribes and Hierophants, Pharaohs, and King-Priests all ools or frauds to have either believed in, or tried to make others elieve in, such "cock-and bull stories" as are found in the most espectable papyri? Yet there is no help for it. Corroborated by Plato and
Herodotus, by Manetho and Syncellus, as by all the greatest and most rustworthy authors and philosophers who wrote upon the subject, those apyri note down--as seriously as they note any history, or any fact so ell known and accepted as to need no commentary--whole royal dynasties of
Manes, to wit, of shadows and phantoms (astral bodies), and such feats of agic skill and such Occult phenomena, that the most credulous Occultist f our own times would hesitate to believe them to be true.
The Orientalists have found a plank of salvation, while yet publishing and elivering the papyri to the criticism of literary Sadducees: they enerally call them "romances of the days of Pharaoh So-and-So." The idea s ingenious, if not absolutely fair.
SECTION XXVIII. THE ORIGIN OF THE MYSTERIES.
All that is explained in the preceding Sections and a hundredfold more was aught in the Mysteries from time immemorial. If the first appearance of hose institutions is a matter of historical tradition with regard to some f the later nations, their origin must certainly be assigned to the time f the Fourth Root Race. The Mysteries were imparted to the elect of that
Race when the average Atlantean had begun to fall too deeply into sin to e trusted with the secrets of Nature. Their establishment is attributed n the Secret Works to the King-Initiates of the divine dynasties, when he "Sons of God" had gradually allowed their country to become Kookarma- es (the land of vice).
The antiquity of the Mysteries may be inferred from the history of the orship of Hercules in Egypt. This Hercules, according to what the priests old Herodotus, was not Grecian, for he says:
Of the Grecian Hercules I could in no part of Egypt procure any
knowledge: ... the name was never borrowed by Egypt from
Greece.... Hercules, ... as they [the priests] affirm, is one of
the twelve (great Gods), who were reproduced from the earlier
eight Gods 17,000 years before the year of Amasis.
Hercules is of Indian origin, and--his Biblical chronology put side--Colonel Tod was quite right in his suggestion that he was Balarāma r Baladeva. Now one must read the _Purānas_ with the Esoteric key in ne's hand in order to find out how on almost every page they corroborate he Secret Doctrine. The ancient classical writers so well understood this ruth that they unanimously attributed to Asia the origin of Hercules.
A section of the Mahābhārata is devoted to the history of the
Hercūla, of which race was Vyasa.... Diodorus has the same legend
with some variety. He says: "Hercules was born amongst the Indians
and, like the Greeks, they furnish him with a club and lion's
hide." Both [Krishna and Baladeva] are (lords) of the race (cūla)
of Heri (Heri-cul-es) of which the Greeks might have made the
compound Hercules.(486)
The Occult Doctrine explains that Hercules was the last incarnation of one f the seven "Lords of the Flame," as Krishna's brother, Baladeva. That is incarnations occurred during the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Root-Races, nd that his worship was brought into Egypt from Lanka and India by the ater immigrants. That he was borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians is ertain, the more so as the Greeks place his birth at Thebes, and only his welve labours at Argos. Now we find in the _Vishnu Purāna_ a complete orroboration of the statement made in the Secret Teachings, of which
Purānic allegory the following is a short summary:
Raivata, a grandson of Sharyāti, Manu's fourth son, finding no man worthy f his lovely daughter, repaired with her to Brahmā's region to consult he God in this emergency. Upon his arrival, Hāhā Hūhū, and other
Gandharvas were singing before the throne, and Raivata, waiting till they ad done, imagined that but one Muhūrta (instant) had passed, whereas long ges had elapsed. When they had finished Raivata prostrated himself and xplained his perplexity. Then Brahmā asked him whom he wished for a son- n-law, and upon hearing a few personages named, the Father of the World miled and said: "Of those whom you have named the third and fourth eneration [Root-Races] no longer survive, for many successions of ages
[Chatur-Yuga, or the four Yuga cycles] have passed away while you were istening to our songsters. Now on earth the twenty-eighth great age of he present Manu is nearly finished and the Kali period is at hand. You ust therefore bestow this virgin-gem upon some other husband. For you are ow alone."
Then the Rāja Raivata is told to proceed to Kushasthalī, his ancient apital, which was now called Dvārakā, and where reigned in his stead a ortion of the divine being (Vishnu) in the person of Baladeva, the rother of Krishna, regarded as the seventh incarnation of Vishnu whenever
Krishna is taken as a full divinity.
"Being thus instructed by the Lotus-born [Brahmā], Raivata returned with is daughter to earth, where he found the race of men dwindled in stature
[see what is said in the Stanzas and Commentaries of the races of mankind radually decreasing in stature]; ... reduced in vigour, and enfeebled in ntellect. Repairing to the city of Kushasthalī, he found it much ltered," because, according to the allegorical explanation of the ommentator, "Krishna had reclaimed from the sea a portion of the ountry," which means in plain language that the continents had all been hanged meanwhile--and "had renovated the city"--or rather built a new one,
Dvārakā; for one reads in the _Bhagavad Purāna_(487) that Kushasthalī was ounded and built by Raivata within the sea; and subsequent discoveries howed that it was the same, or on the same spot, as Dvārakā. Therefore it as on an island before. The allegory in _Vishnu Purāna_ shows King
Raivata giving his daughter to "the wielder of the ploughshare"--or rather
"the plough-bannered"--Baladeva, who "beholding the damsel of excessively ofty height ... shortened her with the end of his ploughshare, and she ecame his wife."(488)
This is a plain allusion to the Third and Fourth Races--to the Atlantean iants and the successive incarnations of the "Sons of the Flame" and ther orders of Dhyān Chohans in the heroes and kings of mankind, down to he Kali Yuga, or Black Age, the beginning of which is within historical imes. Another _coincidence_: Thebes is the city of a hundred gates, and
Dvārakā is so called from its many gateways or doors, from the word
"Dvāra," "gateway." Both Hercules and Baladeva are of a passionate, hot emper, and both are renowned for the fairness of their white skins. There s not the slightest doubt that Hercules is Baladeva in Greek dress.
Arrian notices the great similarity between the Theban and the Hindu
Hercules, the latter being worshipped by the Suraseni who built Methorea, r Mathūrā, Krishna's birthplace. The same writer places Sandracottus
(Chandragupta, the grandfather of King Asoka, of the clan of Morya) in the irect line of the descendants of Baladeva.
There were no Mysteries in the beginning, we are taught. Knowledge (Vidyā) as common property, and it reigned universally throughout the Golden Age
(Satya Yuga). As says the Commentary:
_Men had not created evil yet in those days of bliss and purity, for they ere of God-like more than of human nature._
But when mankind, rapidly increasing in numbers, increased also in variety f idiosyncrasies of body and mind, then incarnated Spirit showed its eakness. Natural exaggerations, and along with these superstitions, arose n the less cultured and healthy minds. Selfishness was born out of esires and passions hitherto unknown, and but too often knowledge and ower were abused, until finally it became necessary to limit the number f those _who knew_. Thus arose Initiation.
Every separate nation now arranged for itself a religious system, ccording to its enlightenment and spiritual wants. Worship of mere form eing discarded by the wise men, these confined true knowledge to the very ew. The need of veiling truth to protect it from desecration becoming ore apparent with every generation, a thin veil was used at first, which ad to be gradually thickened according to the spread of personality and elfishness, and this led to the Mysteries. They came to be established in very country and among every people, while to avoid strife and isunderstanding exoteric beliefs were allowed to grow up in the minds of he profane masses. Inoffensive and innocent in their incipient stage--like historical event arranged in the form of a fairy tale, adapted for and omprehensible to the child's mind--in those distant ages such beliefs ould be allowed to grow and make the popular faith without any danger to he more philosophical and abstruse truths taught in the sanctuaries.
Logical and scientific observation of the phenomena in Nature, which alone eads man to the knowledge of eternal truths--provided he approaches the hreshold of observation unbiassed by preconception and sees with his piritual eye before he looks at things from their physical aspect--does ot lie within the province of the masses. The marvels of the One Spirit f Truth, the ever-concealed and inaccessible Deity, can be unravelled and ssimilated only through Its manifestations by the secondary "Gods," Its cting powers. While the One and Universal Cause has to remain for ever
_in abscondito_, Its manifold action may be traced through the effects in
Nature. The latter alone being comprehensible and manifest to average ankind, the Powers causing those effects were allowed to grow in the magination of the populace. Ages later in the Fifth, the Āryan, Race some nscrupulous priests began to take advantage of the too-easy beliefs of he people in every country, and finally raised those secondary Powers to he rank of God and Gods, thus succeeding in isolating them altogether rom the One Universal Cause of all causes.(489)
Henceforward the knowledge of the primeval truths remained entirely in the ands of the Initiates.
The Mysteries had their weak points and their defects, as every nstitution welded with the human element must necessarily have. Yet
Voltaire has characterised their benefits in a few words:
In the chaos of popular superstitions there existed an institution
which has ever prevented man from falling into absolute brutality:
it was that of the Mysteries.
Verily, as Ragon puts it of Masonry;
Its temple has Time for duration, the Universe for space.... "Let
us divide that we may rule," have said the crafty; "Let us unite
to resist," have said the first Masons.(490)
Or rather, the Initiates whom the Masons have never ceased to claim as heir primitive and direct Masters. The first and fundamental principle of oral strength and power is association and solidarity of thought and urpose. "The Sons of Will and Yoga" united in the beginning to resist the errible and ever-growing iniquities of the left-hand Adepts, the
Atlanteans. This led to the foundation of still more Secret Schools, emples of learning, and of Mysteries inaccessible to all except after the ost terrible trials and probations.
Anything that might be said of the earliest Adepts and their divine
Masters would be regarded as fiction. It is necessary, therefore, if we ould know something of the primitive Initiates to judge of the tree by ts fruits; to examine the bearing and the work of their successors in the
Fifth Race as reflected in the works of the classic writers and the great
Philosophers. How were Initiation and the Initiates regarded during some
2,000 years by the Greek and Roman writers? Cicero informs his readers in ery clear terms. He says:
An Initiate must practise all the virtues in his power: justice,
fidelity, liberality, modesty, temperance; these virtues cause men
to forget the talents that he may lack.(491)
Ragon says:
When the Egyptian priests said: "All for the people, nothing
through the people," they were right: in an ignorant nation truth
must be revealed only to trustworthy persons.... We have seen in
our days, "all through the people, nothing for the people," a
false and dangerous system. The real axiom ought to be: "All for
the people and _with_ the people."(492)
But in order to achieve this reform the masses have to pass through a dual ransformation: (_a_) to become divorced from every element of exoteric uperstition and priestcraft, and (_b_) to become educated men, free from very danger of being enslaved whether by a man or an idea.
This, in view of the preceding, may seem paradoxical. The Initiates were
"priests," we may be told--at any rate, all the Hindu, Egyptian, Chaldęan,
Greek, Phoenician, and other Hierophants and Adepts were priests in the emples, and it was they who invented their respective exoteric creeds. To his the answer is possible: "The cowl does not make the friar." If one ay believe tradition and the unanimous opinion of ancient writers, added o the examples we have in the "priests" of India, the most conservative ation in the world, it becomes quite certain that the Egyptian priests ere no more priests in the sense we give to the word than are the temple
Brāhmans. They could never be regarded as such if we take as our standard he European clergy. Laurens observes very correctly that:
The priests of Egypt were not, strictly speaking, ministers of
religion. The word "priest," which translation has been badly
interpreted, had an acceptation very different from the one that
is applied to it among us. In the language of antiquity, and
especially in the sense of the initiation of the priests of
ancient Egypt, the word "priest" is synonymous with that of
"philosopher."... The institution of the Egyptian priests seems to
have been really a confederation of sages gathered to study the
art of ruling men, to centre the domain of truth, modulate its
propagation, and arrest its too dangerous dispersion.(493)
The Egyptian Priests, like the Brāhmans of old, held the reins of the overning powers, a system that descended to them by direct inheritance rom the Initiates of the great Atlantis. The pure cult of Nature in the arliest patriarchal days--the word "patriarch" applying in its first riginal sense to the Progenitors of the human race,(494) the Fathers,
Chiefs, and Instructors of primitive men--became the heirloom of those lone who could discern the noumenon beneath the phenomenon. Later, the
Initiates transmitted their knowledge to the human kings, as their divine
Masters had passed it to their forefathers. It was their prerogative and uty to reveal the secrets of Nature that were useful to mankind--the idden virtues of plants, the art of healing the sick, and of bringing bout brotherly love and mutual help among mankind. No Initiate was one if e could not heal--aye, recall to life from apparent death (coma) those ho, too long neglected, would have indeed died during their ethargy.(495) Those who showed such powers were forthwith set above the rowds, and were regarded as Kings and Initiates. Gautama Buddha was a
King-Initiate, a healer, and recalled to life those who were in the hands f death. Jesus and Apollonius were healers, and were both addressed as
Kings by their followers. Had they failed to raise those who were to all ntents and purposes the dead, none of their names would have passed down o posterity; for this was the first and crucial test, the certain sign hat the Adept had upon Him the invisible hand of a primordial divine
Master, or was an incarnation of one of the "Gods."
The later royal privilege descended to our Fifth Race kings through the ings of Egypt. The latter were all initiated into the mysteries of edicine, and they healed the sick, even when, owing to the terrible rials and labours of final Initiation, they were unable to become full
Hierophants. They were healers by privilege and by tradition, and were ssisted in the healing art by the Hierophants of the temples, when they hemselves were ignorant of Occult curative Science. So also in far later istorical times we find Pyrrhus curing the sick by simply touching them ith his foot; Vespasian and Hadrian needed only to pronounce a few words aught to them by their Hierophants, in order to restore sight to the lind and health to the cripple. From that time onward history has ecorded cases of the same privilege conferred on the emperors and kings f almost every nation.(496)
That which is known of the Priests of Egypt and of the ancient Brāhmans, orroborated as it is by all the ancient classics and historical writers, ives us the right to believe in that which is only traditional in the pinion of sceptics. Whence the wonderful knowledge of the Egyptian
Priests in every department of Science, unless they had it from a still ore ancient source? The famous "Four," the seats of learning in old
Egypt, are more historically certain than the beginnings of modern
England. It was in the great Theban sanctuary that Pythagoras upon his rrival from India studied the Science of Occult numbers. It was in
Memphis that Orpheus popularized his too-abstruse Indian metaphysics for he use of Magna Grecia; and thence Thales, and ages later Democritus, btained all they knew. It is to Saļs that all the honour must be given of he wonderful legislation and the art of ruling people, imparted by its
Priests to Lycurgus and Solon, who will both remain objects of admiration or generations to come. And had Plato and Eudoxus never gone to worship t the shrine of Heliopolis, most probably the one would have never stonished future generations with his ethics, nor the other with his onderful knowledge of mathematics.(497)
The great modern writer on the Mysteries of Egyptian Initiation--one, owever, who knew nothing of those in India--the late Ragon, has not xaggerated in maintaining that:
All the notions possessed by Hindustan, Persia, Syria, Arabia,
Chaldęa, Sydonia, and the priests of Babylonia, [on the secrets of
Nature], was known to the Egyptian priests. It is thus Indian
philosophy, without mysteries, which, having penetrated into
Chaldęa and ancient Persia, gave rise to the doctrine of Egyptian
Mysteries.(498)
The Mysteries preceded the hieroglyphics.(499) They gave birth to the atter, as permanent records were needed to preserve and commemorate their ecrets. It is primitive Philosophy(500) that has served as the oundation-stone for modern Philosophy; only the progeny, while erpetuating the features of the external body, has lost on its way the
Soul and Spirit of its parent.
Initiation, though it contained neither rules and principles, nor any pecial teaching of Science--as now understood--was nevertheless Science, nd the Science of sciences. And though devoid of dogma, of physical iscipline, and of exclusive ritual, it was yet the one true Religion--that f eternal truth. Outwardly it was a school, a college, wherein were aught sciences, arts, ethics, legislation, philanthropy, the cult of the rue and real nature of cosmic phenomena; secretly, during the Mysteries, ractical proofs of the latter were given. Those who could learn truth on ll things--_i.e._, those who could look the great Isis in her unveiled ace and bear the awful majesty of the Goddess--became Initiates. But the hildren of the Fifth Race had fallen too deeply into matter always to do o with impunity. Those who failed disappeared from the world, without eaving a trace behind. Which of the highest kings would have dared to laim any individual, however high his social standing, from the stern riests, once that the victim had crossed the threshold of their sacred
Adytum?
The noble precepts taught by the Initiates of the early races passed to
India, Egypt, and Greece, to China and Chaldęa, and thus spread all over he world. All that is good, noble, and grand in human nature, every ivine faculty and aspiration, were cultured by the Priest-Philosophers ho sought to develop them in their Initiates. Their code of ethics, based n altruism, has become universal. It is found in Confucius, the
"atheist," who taught that "he who loves not his brother has no virtue in im," and in the _Old Testament_ precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour s thyself."(501) The greater Initiates became like unto Gods, and
Socrates, in Plato's _Phędo_, is represented as saying:
The Initiates are sure to come into the company of the Gods.
In the same work the great Athenian Sage is made to say:
It is quite apparent that those who have established the
Mysteries, or the secret assemblies of the Initiates, were no mean
persons, but powerful genii, who from the first ages had
endeavoured to make us understand under those enigmas that he who
will reach the invisible regions unpurified will be hurled into
the abyss [the Eighth Sphere of the Occult Doctrine; that is, he
will lose his personality for ever], while he who will attain them
purged of the maculations of this world, and accomplished in
virtues, will be received in the abode of the Gods.
Said Clemens Alexandrinus, referring to the Mysteries:
Here ends all teaching. One sees Nature and all things.
A Christian Father of the Church speaks then as did the Pagan Pretextatus, he pro-consul of Achaia (fourth century A.D.), "a man of eminent irtues," who remarked that to deprive the Greeks of "the sacred Mysteries hich bind in one the whole of mankind," was to render their very lives orthless to them. Would the Mysteries have ever obtained the highest raise from the noblest men of antiquity had they not been of more than uman origin? Read all that is said of this unparalleled institution, as uch by those who had never been initiated, as by the Initiates hemselves. Consult Plato, Euripides, Socrates, Aristophanes, Pindar,
Plutarch, Isocrates, Diodorus, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, not to ame dozens of other famous Sages and writers. That which the Gods and
Angels had _revealed_, exoteric religions, beginning with that of Moses,
_reveiled_ and hid for ages from the sight of the world. Joseph, the son f Jacob, was an Initiate, otherwise he would not have married Aseneth, he daughter of Petephre ("Potiphar"--"he who belongs to Phre," the Sun-
God), priest of Heliopolis and governor of On.(502) Every truth _revealed_ y Jesus, and which even the Jews and early Christians understood, was
_reveiled_ by the Church that pretends to serve Him. Read what Seneca ays, as quoted by Dr. Kenealy:
"The world being melted and having reėntered the bosom of Jupiter
[or Parabrahman], this God continues for some time totally
concentred in himself and remains concealed, as it were, wholly
immersed in the contemplation of his own ideas. Afterwards we see
a new world spring from him.... An innocent race of men is
formed." And again, speaking of a mundane dissolution as involving
the destruction or death of all, he [Seneca] teaches us that when
the laws of Nature shall be buried in ruin and the last day of the
world shall come, the Southern Pole shall crush, as it falls, all
the regions of Africa; and the North Pole shall overwhelm all the
countries beneath its axis. _The affrighted sun shall be deprived
of its light_; the palace of heaven, falling to decay, shall
produce at once both life and death, and some kind of dissolution
shall equally seize upon all the deities, who thus shall return to
their original chaos.(503)
One might fancy oneself reading the Purānic account by Parāshara of the reat Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has
Christianity nothing of the kind? Let the reader open any English _Bible_ nd read chapter iii. of the _Second Epistle of Peter_, and he will find here the same ideas.
There shall come in the last days scoffers, ... saying, Where is
the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all
things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
For this they willingly are ignorant of that by the word of God
the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water
and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being
overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth,
which are now, by the same word are ... reserved unto fire, ... in
the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat.... Nevertheless we ... look
for new heavens and a new earth.
If the interpreters chose to see in this a reference to a creation, a eluge, and a promised coming of Christ, when they will live in a New
Jerusalem in heaven, that is no fault of Peter. What he meant was the estruction of the Fifth Race and the appearance of a new continent for he Sixth Race.
The Druids understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, therefore when all he fires were extinguished on the 1st of November their sacred and nextinguishable fire remained alone to illumine the horizon like those of he Magi and the modern Zoroastrian. And like the early Fifth Race and the ater Chaldęans and Greeks, and again like the Christians (who do it to his day without suspecting the real meaning), they greeted the "Morning-
Star," the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.(504) Strabo speaks of an island near
Britannia where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites s in Samothrace, and this was the sacred Ierna, where a perpetual fire as lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man, not, as Lucian xplains,
That the same _Spirit_ shall animate a new body, not here, but in
a different world,
ut in a series of reļncarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus ays, they declared that the souls of men after a determinate period would ass into other bodies.(505)
These tenets came to the Fifth Race Āryans from their ancestors of the
Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They piously preserved the teachings, while heir parent Root-Race, becoming with every generation more arrogant, wing to the acquisition of superhuman powers, were gradually approaching heir end.
SECTION XXIX. THE TRIAL OF THE SUN INITIATE.
We will begin with the ancient Mysteries--those received from the
Atlanteans by the primitive Āryans--whose mental and intellectual state
Professor Max Müller has described with such a masterly hand, yet left so ncomplete withal.
He says: We have in it [in the _Rig Veda_] a period of the
intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any
other part of the world. In the hymns of the _Veda_ we see man
left to himself to solve the riddle of this world.... He invokes
the gods around him, he praises, he worships them. But still with
all these gods ... beneath him, and above him, the early poet
seems ill at rest within himself. There, too, in his own breast,
he has discovered a power that is never mute when he prays, never
absent when he fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers
and yet to listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to
support him and all around him. The only name he can find for this
mysterious power is "Brahman;" for brahman meant originally force,
will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation. But this
impersonal brahman too, as soon as it is named, grows into
something strange and divine. It ends by being one of many gods,
one of the great triad, worshipped to the present day. And still
the thought within him has no real name; that power which is
nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens, and
every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not
expressed. At last he calls it "Ātman," for ātman, originally
breath or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone, Self, whether
divine or human; Self, whether creating or suffering; Self,
whether One or All; but always Self, independent and free. "Who
has seen the first-born?" says the poet, "when he who had no bones
(_i.e._, form) bore him that had bones? Where was the life, the
blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any one
who knew it? (_Rig Veda_, I, 164, 4.) This idea of a divine Self
once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its supremacy;
_Self_ is the Lord of all things; it is the King of all things; as
all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and
circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all selves
are contained in this _Self_." (Brihadāranyaka, IV. v. 15).(506)
This Self, the highest, the one, and the universal, was symbolised on the lane of mortals by the Sun, its life-giving effulgence being in its turn he emblem of the Soul--killing the terrestrial passions which have ever een an impediment to the re-union of the Unit Self (the Spirit) with the
All-Self. Hence the allegorical mystery, only the broad features of which ay be given here. It was enacted by the "Sons of the Fire-Mist" and of
"Light." The second Sun (the "second hypostasis" of Rabbi Drach) appeared s put on his trial, Vishvakarma, the Hierophant, cutting off seven of his eams, and replacing them with a crown of brambles, when the "Sun" became
Vikarttana, shorn of his beams or rays. After that, the Sun--enacted by a eophyte ready to be initiated--was made to descend into Pātāla, the nether egions, on a trial of Tantalus. Coming out of it triumphant, he emerged rom this region of lust and iniquity, to re-become Karmasākshin, witness f the Karma of men,(507) and arose once more triumphant in all the glory f his regeneration, as the Graha-Rājah, King of the Constellations, and as addressed as Gabhastiman, "re-possessed of his rays."
The "fable" in the popular Pantheon of India, founded upon, and born out f the poetical mysticism of the _Rig-Veda_--the sayings of which were ostly all dramatised during the religious Mysteries--grew in the course of ts exoteric evolution into the following allegory. It may be found now in everal of the _Purānas_ and in other Scriptures. In the _Rig-Veda_ and ts Hymns, Vishvakarma, a Mystery-God, is the Logos, the Demiurgos, one of he greatest Gods, and spoken of in two of the hymns as the highest. He is he Omnificent (Vishvakarma), called the "Great Architect of the
Universe," the
All seeing God, ... the father, the generator, the disposer, who
gives the gods their names, and is beyond the comprehension of
mortals,
s is every Mystery-God. Esoterically, He is the personification of the reative manifested Power: and mystically He is the seventh principle in an, in its collectivity. For He is the son of Bhuvana, the self-created, uminous Essence, and of the virtuous, chaste and lovely Yoga-Siddhā, the irgin Goddess, whose name speaks for itself, since it personified Yoga- ower, the "chaste mother" that creates the Adepts. In the Rig-Vaidic
Hymns, Vishvakarma performs the "great sacrifice," _i.e._, sacrifices imself for the world; or, as the _Nirukta_ is made to say, translated by he Orientalists:
Vishvakarma first of all offers up all the world in a sacrifice,
and then ends by sacrificing himself.
In the mystical representations of his character, Vishvakarma is often alled Vittoba, and is pictured as the "Victim," the "Man-God," or the
Avatāra crucified in space.
[Of the true Mysteries, the real Initiations, nothing of course can be aid in public; they can be known only to those who are able to experience hem. But a few hints can be given of the great ceremonial Mysteries of
Antiquity, which stood to the public as the real Mysteries, and into which andidates were initiated with much ceremony and display of Occult Arts.
Behind these, in silence and darkness, were the true Mysteries, as they ave always existed and continue to exist. In Egypt, as in Chaldęa and ater in Greece, the Mysteries were celebrated at stated times, and the irst day was a public holiday, on which, with much pomp, the candidates ere escorted to the Great Pyramid and passed thereinto out of sight. The econd day was devoted to ceremonies of purification, at the close of hich the candidate was presented with a white robe; on the third ay](508) he was tried and examined as to his proficiency in Occult earning. On the fourth day, after another ceremony symbolical of urification, he was sent alone to pass through various trials, finally ecoming entranced in a subterranean crypt, in utter darkness, for two ays and two nights. In Egypt, the entranced neophyte was placed in an mpty sarcophagus in the Pyramid, where the initiatory rites took place.
In India and Central Asia, he was bound on a lathe, and when his body had ecome like that of one dead (entranced), he was carried into the crypt.
Then the Hierophant kept watch over him "guiding the apparitional soul
(astral body) from this world of Samsāra (or delusion) to the _nether_ ingdoms, from which, if successful, he had the right of releasing _seven uffering souls_" (Elementaries). Clothed with his Anandamayakosha, the ody of bliss--the Srotāpanna remained there where we have no right to ollow him, and upon returning--received the _Word_, with or without the
"heart's blood" of the Hierophant.(509)
Only in truth the Hierophant was never killed--neither in India nor lsewhere, the murder being simply feigned--unless the Initiator had chosen he Initiate for his successor and had decided to pass to him the last and upreme Word, after which he had to die--only one man in a nation having he right to know that word. Many are those grand Initiates who have thus assed out of the world's sight, disappearing
As mysteriously from the sight of men as Moses from the top of
Mount Pisgah (_Nebo_, oracular Wisdom), after he had laid his
hands upon Joshua, who thus became "full of the spirit of wisdom,"
_i.e._, initiated.
But he died, he was not killed. For killing, if really done, would belong o black, not to divine Magic. It is the transmission of light, rather han a transfer of life, of life spiritual and divine, and it is the hedding of Wisdom, not of blood. But the uninitiated inventors of heological Christianity took the allegorical language _ą la lettre_; and nstituted a dogma, the crude, misunderstood expression of which horrifies nd repels the spiritual "heathen."
All these Hierophants and Initiates were types of the Sun and of the
Creative Principle (spiritual potency) as were Vishvakarma and Vikarttana, rom the origin of the Mysteries. Ragon, the famous Mason, gives curious etails and explanations with regard to the Sun rites. He shows that the iblical Hiram, the great hero of Masonry (the "widow's son") a type taken rom Osiris, is the Sun-God, the inventor of arts, and the "architect," he name Hiram meaning the _elevated_, a title belonging to the Sun. Every
Occultist knows how closely related to Osiris and the Pyramids are the arratives in _Kings_ concerning Solomon, his Temple and its construction; e knows also that the whole of the Masonic rite of Initiation is based pon the Biblical allegory of the construction of that Temple, Masons onveniently forgetting, or perhaps ignoring, the fact that the latter arrative is modelled upon Egyptian and still earlier symbolisms. Ragon xplains it by showing that the three companions of Hiram, the "three urderers," typify the three last months of the year; and that Hiram tands for the Sun--from its summer solstice downwards, when it begins ecreasing--the whole rite being an astronomical allegory.
During the summer solstice, the Sun provokes songs of gratitude
from all that breathes; hence Hiram, who represents it, can give
to whomsoever has the right to it, the sacred Word, that is to say
life. When the Sun descends to the inferior signs all Nature
becomes mute, and Hiram can no longer give the sacred Word to the
companions, who represent the three inert months of the year. The
first companion strikes Hiram feebly with a rule twenty-four
inches long, symbol of the twenty-four hours which make up each
diurnal revolution; it is the first distribution of time, which
after the exaltation of the mighty star, feebly assails his
existence, giving him the first blow. The second companion strikes
him with an _iron square_, symbol of the last season, figured by
the intersections of two right lines, which would divide into four
equal parts the Zodiacal circle, whose centre symbolises Hiram's
heart, where it touches the point of the four squares representing
the four seasons: second distribution of time, which at that
period strikes a heavier blow at the solar existence. The third
companion strikes him mortally on his forehead with a heavy blow
of his mallet, whose cylindrical form symbolises the year, the
ring or circle: third distribution of time, the accomplishment of
which deals the last blow to the existence of the _expiring_ Sun.
From this interpretation it has been inferred that _Hiram_, a
_founder_ of metals, the hero of the new legend with the title of
_architect_, is Osiris (the Sun) of modern initiation; that
_Isis_, his widow, is the _Lodge_, the emblem of the Earth (_loka_
in Sanskrit, the world) and that _Horus_, son of Osiris (or of
light) and the widow's son, is the _free Mason_, that is to say,
the _Initiate_ who inhabits the terrestrial lodge (_the child of
the Widow, and of Light_.)(510)
And here again, our friends the Jesuits have to be mentioned, for the bove rite is of their making. To give one instance of their success in hrowing dust into the eyes of ordinary individuals to prevent their eeing the truths of Occultism, we will point out what they did in what is ow called Freemasonry.
This Brotherhood does possess a considerable portion of the symbolism, ormulę, and ritual of Occultism, handed down from time immemorial from he primeval Initiations. To render this Brotherhood a mere harmless egation, the Jesuits sent some of their most able emissaries into the
Order, who first made the simple brethren believe that the true secret was ost with Hiram Abiff; and then induced them to put this belief into their ormularies. They then invented specious but spurious higher degrees, retending to give further light upon this lost secret, to lead the andidate on and amuse him with forms borrowed from the real thing but ontaining no substance, and all artfully contrived to lead the aspiring
Neophyte to nowhere. And yet men of good sense and abilities, in other espects, will meet at intervals, and with solemn face, zeal and arnestness, go through the mockery of revealing "substituted secrets" nstead of the real thing.
If the reader turns to a very remarkable and very useful work called _The
Royal Masonic Cyclopędia_, Art. "Rosicrucianism," he will find its author, high and learned Mason, showing what the Jesuits have done to destroy
Masonry. Speaking of the period when the existence of this mysterious
Brotherhood (of which many pretend to know "something" if not a good deal, nd know in fact nothing) was first made known, he says:
There was a dread among the great masses of society in byegone
days of the unseen--a dread, as recent events and phenomena show
very clearly, not yet overcome in its entirety. Hence students of
Nature and mind were forced into an obscurity not altogether
unwelcome.... The Kabalistic reveries of a Johann Reuchlin led to
the fiery action of a Luther, and the patient labours of
Trittenheim produced the modern system of diplomatic cipher
writing.... It is very worthy of remark, that one particular
century, and that in which the Rosicrucians first showed
themselves, is distinguished in history as the era in which most
of these efforts at throwing off the trammels of the past [Popery
and Ecclesiasticism] occurred. Hence the opposition of the losing
party, and their virulence against anything mysterious or unknown.
They freely organised pseudo-Rosicrucian and Masonic societies in
return; and these societies were instructed to irregularly entrap
the weaker brethren of the True and Invisible Order, and then
triumphantly betray anything they might be so inconsiderate as to
communicate to the superiors of these transitory and unmeaning
associations. Every wile was adopted by the authorities, fighting
in self-defence against the progress of truth, to engage, by
persuasion, interest or terror, such as might be cajoled into
receiving the Pope as Master--when gained, as many converts to that
faith know, but dare not own, they are treated with neglect, and
left to fight the battle of life as best they may, not even being
admitted to the knowledge of such miserable aporrheta as the
Romish faith considers itself entitled to withhold.
But if Masonry has been spoiled, none is able to crush the real, invisible
Rosicrucian and the Eastern Initiate. The symbolism of Vishvakarma and
Sūrya Vikarttana has survived, where Hiram Abiff was indeed murdered, and e will now return to it. It is not simply an astronomical, but is the ost solemn rite, an inheritance from the Archaic Mysteries that has rossed the ages and is used to this day. It typifies a whole drama of the
Cycle of Life, of progressive incarnations, and of psychic as well as of hysiological secrets, of which neither the Church nor Science knows nything, though it is this rite that has led the former to the greatest f its Christian Mysteries.
SECTION XXX. THE MYSTERY "SUN OF INITIATION."
The antiquity of the Secret Doctrine may be better realised when it is hown at what point of history its Mysteries had already been desecrated, y being made subservient to the personal ambition of despot-ruler and rafty priest. These profoundly philosophical and scientifically composed eligious dramas, in which were enacted the grandest truths of the Occult r Spiritual Universe and the hidden lore of learning, had become subject o persecution long before the days when Plato and even Pythagoras lourished. Withal, primal revelations given to Mankind have not died with he Mysteries; they are still preserved as heirlooms for future and more piritual generations.
It has been already stated in _Isis Unveiled_,(511) that so far back as in he days of Aristotle, the great Mysteries had already lost their rimitive grandeur and solemnity. Their rites had fallen into desuetude, nd they had to a great degree degenerated into mere priestly speculations nd had become religious shams. It is useless to state when they first ppeared in Europe and Greece, since recognised history may almost be said o begin with Aristotle, everything before him appearing to be in an nextricable chronological confusion. Suffice it to say, that in Egypt the
Mysteries had been known since the days of Menes, and that the Greeks eceived them only when Orpheus introduced them from India. In an article
"Was writing known before Pānini?"(512) it is stated that the Pāndus had cquired universal dominion and had taught the "sacrificial" Mysteries to ther races as far back as 3,300 B.C. Indeed, when Orpheus, the son of
Apollo or Helios, received from his father the phorminx--the seven-stringed yre, symbolical of the sevenfold mystery of Initiation--these Mysteries ere already hoary with age in Central Asia and India. According to
Herodotus it was Orpheus who brought them from India, and Orpheus is far nterior to Homer and Hesiod. Thus even in the days of Aristotle few were he true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. The heirs of those who ad been dispersed by the conquering swords of various invaders of old
Egypt had been dispersed in their turn. As 8,000 or 9,000 years earlier he stream of knowledge had been slowly running down from the tablelands f Central Asia into India and towards Europe and Northern Africa, so bout 500 years B.C. it had begun to flow backward to its old home and irthplace. During the two thousand subsequent years the knowledge of the xistence of great Adepts nearly died out in Europe. Nevertheless, in some ecret places the Mysteries were still enacted in all their primitive urity. The "Sun of Righteousness" still blazed high on _the midnight ky_; and, while darkness was upon the face of the profane world, there as the eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. The _true_
Mysteries were never made public. Eleusinia and Agrę for the multitudes; he God {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~} "of the good counsel," the great Orphic Deity, for the eophyte.
This mystery God--mistaken by our Symbologists for the Sun--who was He?
Everyone who has any idea of the ancient Egyptian exoteric faith is quite ware that for the multitudes Osiris was the Sun in Heaven, "the Heavenly
King," Ro-Imphab; that by the Greeks the Sun was called the "Eye of
Jupiter," as for the modern orthodox Pārsī he is "the Eye of Ormuzd:" that he Sun, moreover, was addressed as the "All-seeing God" ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}) as he "God Saviour," and the "saving God" ({~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}). Read the apyrus of Papheronmes at Berlin, and the stela as rendered by Mariette
Bey,(513) and see what they say:
Glory to thee, O Sun, divine child! ... thy rays carry life to the
pure and to those ready.... The Gods [the "Sons of God"] who
approach thee tremble with delight and awe.... Thou art the first
born, the Son of God, the Word.(514)
The Church has now seized upon these terms and sees presentments of the oming Christ in these expressions in the initiatory rites and prophetic tterances of the Pagan Oracles. They are nothing of the kind, for they ere applied to every worthy Initiate. If the expressions that were used n hieratic writings and glyphs thousands of years before our era are now ound in the laudatory hymns and prayers of Christian Churches, it is imply because they have been unblushingly appropriated by the Latin
Christians, in the full hope of never being detected by posterity.
Everything that could be done had been done to destroy the original Pagan anuscripts and the Church felt secure. Christianity has undeniably had er great Seers and Prophets, like every other religion; but their claims re not strengthened by denying their predecessors.
Listen to Plato:
Know then, Glaucus, that when I speak of the production of good,
it is the Sun I mean. The Son has a perfect analogy with his
Father.
Iamblichus calls the Sun "the image of divine intelligence or Wisdom."
Eusebius, repeating the words of Philo, calls the rising Sun ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH VARIA~}) the hief Angel, the most ancient, adding that the Archangel who is
_polyonymous_ (of many names) is the Verbum or Christ. The word Sol (Sun) eing derived from _solus_, the One, or the "He alone," and its Greek name
Helios meaning the "Most High," the emblem becomes comprehensible.
Nevertheless, the Ancients made a difference between the Sun and its rototype.
Socrates saluted the rising Sun as does a true Pārsī or Zoroastrian in our wn day; and Homer and Euripides, as Plato did after them several times, ention the Jupiter-Logos, the "Word" or the Sun. Nevertheless, the
Christians maintain that since the oracle consulted on the God Iao nswered: "It is the Sun," therefore
The Jehovah of the Jews was well known to the Pagans and
Greeks;(515)
nd "Iao is our Jehovah." The first part of the proposition has nothing, t seems, to do with the second part, and least of all can the conclusion e regarded as correct. But if the Christians are so anxious to prove the dentity, Occultists have nothing against it. Only, in such case, Jehovah s also Bacchus. It is very strange that the people of civilised
Christendom should until now hold on so desperately to the skirts of the dolatrous Jews--Sabęans and Sun worshippers as they were,(516) like the abble of Chaldęa--and that they should fail to see that the later Jehovah s but a Jewish development of the Ja-va, or the Iao, of the Phoenicians; hat this name, in short, was the secret name of a Mystery-God, one of the any Kabiri. "Highest God" as He was for one little nation, he never was o regarded by the Initiates who conducted the Mysteries; for them he was ut a Planetary Spirit attached to the visible Sun; and the visible Sun is nly the central Star, not the central spiritual Sun.
And the Angel of the Lord said unto him [Manoah] "Why askest thou
thus after my name, seeing it is secret."(517)
However this may be, the identity of the Jehovah of Mount Sinai with the
God Bacchus is hardly disputable, and he is surely--as already shown in
_Isis Unveiled_--Dionysos.(518) Wherever Bacchus was worshipped there was a radition of Nyssa,(519) and a cave where he was reared. Outside Greece,
Bacchus was the all-powerful "Zagreus, the highest of Gods," in whose ervice was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Now, unless it be onceded that Moses was an initiated Priest, an Adept, whose actions are ll narrated allegorically, then it must be admitted that he personally, ogether with his hosts of Israelites, worshipped Bacchus.
And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it _Jehovah
Nissi_ [or, Iao-nisi, or again Dionisi].(520)
To strengthen the statement we have further to remember that the place here Osiris, the Egyptian Zagreus or Bacchus, was born, was Mount Sinai, hich is called by the Egyptians Mount Nissa. The brazen serpent was a is, {~HEBREW LETTER KAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}, and the month of the Jewish Passover is Nisan.
SECTION XXXI. THE OBJECTS OF THE MYSTERIES.
The earliest Mysteries recorded in history are those of Samothrace. After he distribution of pure Fire, a new life began. This was the new birth of he Initiate, after which, like the Brāhmans of old in India, he became a wija--a "twice born,"
Initiated into that which may be rightly called the most blessed
of all Mysteries ... being ourselves pure,(521)
ays Plato. Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, and Sanchoniathon the
Phoenician--the oldest of Historians--say that these Mysteries originated in he night of time, thousands of years probably before the historical eriod. Iamblichus informs us that Pythagoras
Was initiated in all the Mysteries of Byblus and Tyre, in the
sacred operations of the Syrians, and in the Mysteries of the
Phoenicians.(522)
As was said in _Isis Unveiled_:
When men like Pythagoras, Plato and Iamblichus, renowned for their
severe morality, took part in the Mysteries and spoke of them with
veneration, it ill behoves our modern critics to judge them [and
their Initiates] upon their merely external aspect.
Yet this is what has been done until now, especially by the Christian
Fathers. Clement Alexandrinus stigmatises the Mysteries as "indecent and iabolical" though his words, showing that the Eleusinian Mysteries were dentical with, and even, as he would allege, borrowed from, those of the
Jews, are quoted elsewhere in this work. The Mysteries were composed of wo parts, of which the Lesser were performed at Agrę, and the Greater at
Eleusis, and Clement had been himself initiated. But the Katharsis, or rials of purification, have ever been misunderstood. Iamblichus explains he worst; and his explanation ought to be perfectly satisfactory, at any ate for every unprejudiced mind.
He says:--
Exhibitions of this kind in the Mysteries were designed to free us
from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at the same
time vanquishing all evil thought, through the awful sanctity with
which these rites were accompanied.
Dr. Warburton remarks:
The wisest and best men in the Pagan world are unanimous in this,
that the Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest
ends by the worthiest means.
Although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take part n the Mysteries, and a participation in them was even obligatory, very ew indeed attained the higher and final Initiation in these celebrated ites. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth ook of his _Theology of Plato_.
The perfective rite, precedes in order the initiation Telete,
_Muesis_, and the initiation, _Epopteia_, or the final apocalypse
[revelation].
Theon of Smyrna, in _Mathematica_, also divides the mystic rites into five arts:
The first of which is the previous purification; for neither are
the Mysteries communicated to all who are willing to receive them;
but there are certain persons who are prevented by the voice of
the crier ... since it is necessary that such as are not expelled
from the Mysteries should first be refined by certain
purifications: but after purification the reception of the sacred
rites succeeds. The third part is denominated _epopteia_ or
reception. And the fourth, which is the end and design of the
revelation, is (the investiture) the binding of the head and
fixing of the crowns(523) ... whether after this he [the initiated
person] becomes a torchbearer, or an hierophant of the Mysteries,
or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal office. But the
fifth, which is produced from all these, _is friendship and
interior communion with God_. And this was the last and most awful
of all the Mysteries.(524)
The chief objects of the Mysteries, represented as diabolical by the
Christian Fathers and ridiculed by modern writers, were instituted with he highest and the most moral purpose in view. There is no need to repeat ere that which has been already described in _Isis Unveiled_(525) that hether through temple Initiation or the private study of Theurgy, every tudent obtained the proof of the immortality of his Spirit, and the urvival of his Soul. What the last _epopteia_ was is alluded to by Plato n _Phędrus_:
Being _initiated_ in those _Mysteries_, which it is lawful to call
the most blessed of all mysteries ... we were freed from the
molestations of evils, which otherwise await us in a future period
of time. Likewise in consequence of this divine _initiation_, we
became spectators of entire, simple, immoveable, and blessed
visions, resident in a pure light.(526)
This veiled confession shows that the Initiates enjoyed Theophany--saw isions of Gods and of real immortal Spirits. As Taylor correctly infers:
The most sublime part of the _epopteia_ or final revealing,
consisted in beholding the Gods [the high Planetary Spirits]
themselves, invested with a resplendent light.(527)
The statement of Proclus upon the subject is unequivocal:
In all the Initiations and Mysteries, the Gods exhibit many forms
of themselves, and appear in a variety of shapes; and sometimes
indeed a formless light of themselves is held forth to the view;
sometimes this light is according _to a human form_ and sometimes
it proceeds into a different shape.(528)
Again we have
Whatever is on earth is the resemblance and shadow of something
that is in the sphere, while that resplendent thing [the prototype
of the Soul-Spirit] remaineth in _unchangeable_ condition, it is
well also with its shadow. When that resplendent one removeth far
from its shadow life removeth [from the latter] to a distance.
Again that light is the shadow of something more resplendent than
itself.(529)
Thus speaks the _Desatir_, in the _Book of Shet_ (the prophet Zirtusht), hereby showing the identity of its Esoteric doctrines with those of the
Greek Philosophers.
The second statement of Plato confirms the view that the Mysteries of the
Ancients were identical with the Initiations practised even now among the
Buddhist and the Hindu Adepts. The higher visions, the most truthful, were roduced through a regular discipline of gradual Initiations, and the evelopment of psychical powers. In Europe and Egypt the Mystę were rought into close union with those whom Proclus calls "mystical natures,"
"resplendent Gods," because, as Plato says:
[We] were ourselves pure and immaculate, being liberated from this
surrounding vestment, which we denominate body, and to which we
are now bound like an oyster to its shell.(530)
As to the East,
The doctrine of planetary and terrestrial Pitris was revealed
_entirely_ in ancient India, as well as now, only at the last
moment of initiation, and to the adepts of superior degrees.(531)
The word _Pitris_ may now be explained and something else added. In India he chela of the third degree of Initiation has two Gurus: One, the living
Adept; the other the disembodied and glorified Mahātmā, Who remains the dviser or instructor of even the high Adepts. Few are the accepted chelas ho even see their living Master, their Guru, till the day and hour of heir final and for ever binding vow. It is this that was meant in _Isis
Unveiled_, when it was stated that few of the _fakirs_ (the word _chela_ eing unknown to Europe and America in those days) however
Pure, and honest, and self-devoted, have yet ever seen the astral
form of a purely _human pitar_ (an ancestor or father), otherwise
than at the solemn moment of their first and last initiation. It
is in the presence of his instructor, the Guru, and just before
the _vatou_-fakir [the just initiated chela] is despatched into
the world of the living, with his seven-knotted bamboo wand for
all protection, that he is suddenly placed face to face with the
unknown PRESENCE [of his Pitar or Father, the glorified invisible
Master, or disembodied Mahātmā]. He sees it, and falls prostrate
at the feet of the evanescent form, but is not entrusted with the
great secret of its evocation, for it is the supreme mystery of
the holy syllable.
The Initiate, says Éliphas Lévi, _knows_; therefore, "he dares all and eeps silent." Says the great French Kabalist:
You may see him often sad, never discouraged or desperate; often
poor, never humbled or wretched; often persecuted, never cowed
down or vanquished. For he remembers the widowhood and the murder
of Orpheus, the exile and solitary death of Moses, the martyrdom
of the prophets, the tortures of Apollonius, the Cross of the
Saviour. He knows in what forlorn state died Agrippa, whose memory
is slandered to this day; he knows the trials that broke down the
great Paracelsus, and all that Raymond Lully had to suffer before
he arrived at a bloody death. He remembers Swedenborg having to
feign insanity, and losing even his reason before his knowledge
was forgiven to him; St. Martin, who had to hide himself all his
life; Cagliostro, who died forsaken in the cells of the
Inquisition(532); Cazotte, who perished on the guillotine.
Successor of so many victims, he dares, nevertheless, but
understands the more the necessity to keep silent.(533)
Masonry--not the political institution known as the Scotch Lodge, but real
Masonry, some rites of which are still preserved in the Grand Orient of
France, and that Elias Ashmole, a celebrated English Occult Philosopher of he XVIIth century, tried in vain to remodel, after the manner of the
Indian and Egyptian Mysteries--Masonry rests, according to Ragon, the great uthority upon the subject, upon three fundamental degrees: the triple uty of a Mason is to study _whence he comes_, _what he is_, and _whither e goes_; the study that is, of God, of himself, and of the future ransformation.(534) Masonic Initiation was modelled on that in the lesser
Mysteries. The third degree was one used in both Egypt and India from time mmemorial, and the remembrance of it lingers to this day in every Lodge, nder the name of the death and resurrection of Hiram Abiff, the "Widow's
Son." In Egypt the latter was called "Osiris;" in India "Loka-chakshu"
(Eye of the World), ind "Dinakara" (day-maker) or the Sun--and the rite tself was everywhere named the "gate of death." The coffin, or arcophagus, of Osiris, killed by Typhon, was brought in and placed in the iddle of the Hall of the Dead, with the Initiates all around it and the andidate near by. The latter was asked whether he had participated in the urder, and notwithstanding his denial, and after sundry and very hard rials, the Initiator feigned to strike him on the head with a hatchet; he as thrown down, swathed in bandages like a mummy, and wept over. Then ame lightning and thunder, the supposed corpse was surrounded with fire, nd was finally raised.
Ragon speaks of a rumour that charged the Emperor Commodus--when he was at ne time enacting the part of the Initiator--with having played this part n the initiatory drama so seriously that he actually killed the postulant hen dealing him the blow with the hatchet. This shows that the _lesser_
Mysteries had not quite died out in the second century A.D.
The Mysteries were carried into South and Central America, Northern Mexico nd Peru by the Atlanteans in those days when
A pedestrian from the North [of what was once upon a time also
India] might have reached--hardly wetting his feet--the Alaskan
Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the _future_ Gulf of
Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller,
furnished with a canoe and starting from the South, could have
walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged
into any part of the continent of South America.(535)
They continued to exist down to the day of the Spanish invaders. These estroyed the Mexican and Peruvian records, but were prevented from laying heir desecrating hands upon the many Pyramids--the lodges of an ancient
Initiation--whose ruins are scattered over Puente Nacional, Cholula, and
Teotihuacan. The ruins of Palenque, of Ococimgo in Chiapas, and others in
Central America are known to all. If the pyramids and temples of Guiengola nd Mitla ever betray their secrets, the present Doctrine will then be hown to have been a forerunner of the grandest truths in Nature.
Meanwhile they have all a claim to be called Mitla, "the place of sadness" nd "the abode of the (desecrated) dead."
SECTION XXXII. TRACES OF THE MYSTERIES.
Says the _Royal Masonic Cyclopędia_, art. "Sun:"
In all times, the Sun has necessarily played an important part as
a symbol, and especially in Freemasonry. The W.M. represents the
rising sun, the J.W. the sun at the meridian, and the S.W. the
setting sun. In the Druidical rites, the Arch-Druid represented
the sun, and was aided by two other officers, one representing the
Moon in the West, and the other the Sun at the South in its
meridian. It is quite unnecessary to enter into any lengthened
discussion on this symbol.
It is the more "unnecessary" since J. M. Ragon has discussed it very ully, as one may find at the end of Section XXIX., where part of his xplanations have been quoted. Freemasonry derived her rites from the
East, as we have said. And if it be true to say of the modern Rosicrucians hat "they are invested with a knowledge of chaos, not perhaps a very esirable acquisition," the remark is still more true when applied to all he other branches of Masonry, since the knowledge of their members about he full signification of their symbols is _nil_. Dozens of hypotheses are esorted to, one more unlikely than the other, as to the "Round Towers" of
Ireland; one fact is enough to show the ignorance of the Masons, namely, hat, according to the _Royal Masonic Cyclopędia_, the idea that they are onnected with Masonic Initiation may be at once dismissed as unworthy of otice. The "Towers," which are found throughout the East in Asia, were onnected with the Mystery-Initiations, namely, with the Vishvakarma and he Vikarttana rites. The candidates for Initiation were placed in them or three days and three nights, wherever there was no temple with a ubterranean crypt close at hand. These round towers were built for no ther purposes. Discredited as are all such monuments of Pagan origin by he Christian clergy, who thus "soil their own nest," they are still the iving and indestructible relics of the Wisdom of old. Nothing exists in his objective and illusive world of ours that cannot be made to serve two urposes--a good and a bad one. Thus in later ages, the Initiates of the
_Left_ Path and the anthropomorphists took in hand most of those venerable uins, then silent and deserted by their first wise inmates, and turned hem indeed into phallic monuments. But this was a deliberate, wilful, and icious misinterpretation of their real meaning, a deflection from their irst use. The Sun--though ever, even for the multitudes, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, "the only and one King and God in Heaven," and the {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH PERISPOMENI~}, "the God f Good Counsel" of Orpheus--had in every exoteric popular religion a dual spect which was anthropomorphised by the profane. Thus the Sun was
Osiris-_Typhon_, Ormuzd-_Ahriman_, Bel-Jupiter and _Baal_, the life-giving nd the _death_-giving luminary. And thus one and the same monolith, illar, pyramid, tower or temple, originally built to glorify the first rinciple or aspect, might become in time an idol-fane, or worse, a hallic emblem in its crude and brutal form. The Lingam of the Hindus has spiritual and highly philosophical meaning, while the missionaries see n it but an "indecent emblem;" it has just the meaning which is to be ound in all those baalim, chammanim, and the bamoth with the pillars of nhewn stone of the Bible, set up for the glorification of the male
Jehovah. But this does not alter the fact that the pureia of the Greeks, he nur-hags of Sardinia, the teocalli of Mexico, etc., were all in the eginning of the same character as the "Round Towers" of Ireland. They ere sacred places of Initiation.
In 1877, the writer, quoting the authority and opinions of some most minent scholars, ventured to assert that there was a great difference etween the terms _Chrestos_ and _Christos_, a difference having a rofound and Esoteric meaning. Also that while _Christos_ means "to live" nd "to be born into a new life," _Chrestos_, in "Initiation" phraseology, ignified the death of the inner, lower, or personal nature in man; thus s given the key to the Brāhmanical title, the twice-born; and finally,
There were _Chrestians_ long before the era of Christianity, and
the Essenes belonged to them.(536)...
For this epithets sufficiently opprobrious to characterise the writer ould hardly be found. And yet then as well as now, the author never ttempted a statement of such a serious nature without showing as many earned authorities for it as could be mustered. Thus on the next page it as said:
Lepsius shows that the word _Nofre_ means Chrestos, "good," and
that one of the titles of Osiris, "Onnofre," must be translated
"the goodness of God made manifest." "The worship of Christ was
not universal at this early date," explains Mackenzie, "by which I
mean that Christolatry had not been introduced; but the worship of
_Chrestos_--the Good Principle--had preceded it by many centuries,
and even survived the general adoption of Christianity, as shown
on monuments still in existence...." Again, we have an inscription
which is pre-Christian on an epitaphial tablet (Spon. _Misc.
Erud._, Ant., x. xviii. 2). {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}
{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}, and de Rossi (_Roma Sotteranea_, tome i., tav. xxi.) gives
us another example from the catacombs--"Ęlia Chreste, in
Pace."(537)
To-day the writer is able to add to all those testimonies the orroboration of an erudite author, who proves whatever he undertakes to how on the authority of geometrical demonstration. There is a most urious passage with remarks and explanations in the _Source of Measures_, hose author has probably never heard of the "Mystery-God" Visvakarma of he early Āryans. Treating on the difference between the terms Chrest and
Christ, he ends by saying that:
There were two Messiahs: one who went down into the pit for the
salvation of this world; this was the Sun shorn of his golden
rays, and crowned with blackened ones (symbolising this loss), as
the thorns: the other was the triumphant Messiah mounting up to
the summit of the arch of heaven, and _personified as the Lion of
the Tribe of Judah_. In both instances he had the cross; once in
humiliation and once holding it in his control as the law of
creation, He being Jehovah.
And then the author proceeds to give "the fact" that "there were two
Messiahs," etc., as quoted above. And this--leaving the divine and mystic haracter and claim for Jesus entirely independent of this event of His ortal life--shows Him, beyond any doubt, as an Initiate of the Egyptian
Mysteries, where the same rite of Death and of spiritual Resurrection for he neophyte, or the suffering Chrestos on his trial and new birth by
Regeneration, was enacted--for this was a universally adopted rite.
The "pit" into which the Eastern Initiate was made to descend was, as hown before, Pātāla, one of the seven regions of the nether world, over hich ruled Vāsuki, the great "snake God." This pit, Pātāla, has in the
Eastern Symbolism precisely the same manifold meaning as is found by Mr.
Ralston Skinner in the Hebrew word _shiac_ in its application to the case n hand. For it was the synonym of Scorpio--Pātāla's depths being
"impregnated with the brightness of the new Sun"--represented by the "newly orn" into the glory; and Pātāla was and is in a sense, "a pit, a grave, he place of death, and the door of Hades or Sheol"--as, in the partially xoteric Initiations in India, the candidate had to pass through the atrix of the heifer before proceeding to Pātāla. In its non-mystic sense t is the Antipodes--America being referred to in India as Pātāla. But in ts symbolism it meant all that, and much more. The fact alone that
Vāsuki, the ruling Deity of Pātāla, is represented in the Hindu Pantheon s the great Nāga (Serpent)--who was used by the Gods and Asuras as a rope ound the mountain Mandara, at the churning of the ocean for Amrita, the ater of immortality--connects him directly with Initiation.
For he is Shesha Nāga also, serving as a couch for Vishnu, and upholding he seven worlds; and he is also Ananta, "the endless," and the symbol of ternity--hence the "God of Secret Wisdom," degraded by the Church to the
_rōle_ of the tempting Serpent, of Satan. That what is now said is correct ay be verified by the evidence of even the exoteric rendering of the ttributes of various Gods and Sages both in the Hindu and the Buddhist
Pantheons. Two instances will suffice to show how little our best and most rudite Orientalists are capable of dealing correctly and fairly with the ymbolism of Eastern nations, while remaining ignorant of the orresponding points to be found only in Occultism and the Secret
Doctrine.
(1) The learned Orientalist and Tibetan traveller, Professor Emil
Schlagintweit, mentions in one of his works on Tibet, a national legend to he effect that
Nāgārjuna [a "mythological" personage "without any real
existence," the learned German scholar thinks] received the book
Paramārtha, or according to others, the book _Avatamsaka_, from
the Nāgas, fabulous creatures of the nature of serpents, who
occupy a place among the beings superior to man, and are regarded
as protectors of the law of Buddha. To these spiritual beings
Shākyamuni is said to have taught a more philosophical religious
system than to men, who were not sufficiently advanced to
understand it at the time of his appearance.(538)
Nor are men sufficiently advanced for it now; for "the more philosophical eligious system" is the Secret Doctrine, the Occult Eastern Philosophy, hich is the corner-stone of all sciences rejected by the unwise builders ven at this day, and more to-day perhaps than ever before, in the great onceit of our age. The allegory means simply that Nāgārjuna having been nitiated by the "Serpents"--the Adepts, "the wise ones"--and driven out rom India by the Brāhmans, who dreaded to have their Mysteries and acerdotal Science divulged (the real cause of their hatred of Buddhism), ent away to China and Tibet, where he initiated many into the truths of he hidden Mysteries taught by Gautama Buddha.
(2) The hidden symbolism of Nārada--the great Rishi and the author of some f the Rig-Vaidic hymns, who incarnated again later on during Krishna's ime--has never been understood. Yet, in connection with the Occult
Sciences, Nārada, the son of Brahmā, is one of the most prominent haracters; he is directly connected in his first incarnation with the
"Builders"--hence with the seven "Rectors" of the Christian Church, who
"helped God in the work of creation." This grand personification is hardly oticed by our Orientalists, who refer only to that which he is alleged to ave said of Pātāla, namely, "that it is a place of sexual and sensual ratifications." This is thought to be amusing, and the reflection is uggested that Nārada, no doubt, "found the place delightful." Yet this entence simply shows him to have been an Initiate, connected directly ith the Mysteries, and walking, as all the other neophytes, before and fter him, had to walk, in "the pit among the thorns" in the "sacrificial
_Chrest_ condition," as the suffering victim made to descend thereinto--a ystery, truly!
Nārada is one of the seven Rishis, the "mind-born sons" of Brahmā. The act of his having been during his incarnation a high Initiate--he, like
Orpheus, being the founder of the Mysteries--is corroborated, and made vident by his history. The _Mahābhārata_ states that Nārada, having rustrated the scheme formed for peopling the universe, in order to remain rue to his vow of chastity, was cursed by Daksha, and sentenced to be orn once more. Again, when born during Krishna's time, he is accused of alling his father Brahmā "a false teacher," because the latter advised im to get married, and he refused to do so. This shows him to have been n Initiate, going against the orthodox worship and religion. It is urious to find this Rishi and leader among the "Builders" and the
"Heavenly Host" as the prototype of the Christian "leader" of the same
"Host"--the Archangel Mikael. Both are the male "Virgins," and both are the nly ones among their respective "Hosts" who refuse to create. Nārada is aid to have dissuaded the Hari-ashvas, the five thousand sons of Daksha, egotten by him for the purpose of peopling the Earth, from producing ffspring. Since then the Hari-ashvas have "dispersed themselves through he regions, and have never returned." The Initiates are, perhaps, the ncarnations of these Hari-ashvas?
It was on the seventh day, the third of his ultimate trial, that the eophyte arose, a regenerated man, who, having passed through his second piritual birth, returned to earth a glorified and triumphant conqueror of
Death, a Hierophant.
An Eastern neophyte in his Chrest condition may be seen in a certain ngraving in Moor's _Hindu Pantheon_, whose author mistook another form of he crucified Sun or Vishnu, Vittoba, for Krishna, and calls it "Krishna rucified in Space." The engraving is also given in Dr. Lundy's
_Monumental Christianity_, in which work the reverend author has collected s many proofs as his ponderous volume could hold of "Christian symbols
_before_ Christianity," as he expresses it. Thus he shows us Krishna and
Apollo as good shepherds, Krishna holding the cruciform Conch and the
Chakra, and Krishna "crucified in Space," as he calls it. Of this figure t may be truly said, as the author says of it himself:
This representation I believe to be anterior to Christianity....
It looks like a Christian crucifix in many respects.... The
drawing, the attitude, the nail-marks in hands and feet, indicate
a Christian origin, while the Parthian coronet of seven points,
the absence of the wood, and of the usual inscription, and the
rays of glory above, would seem to point to some other than a
Christian origin. Can it be the victim-man, or the priest and
victim both in one, of the Hindu Mythology, who offered himself a
sacrifice before the worlds were?
It is surely so.
Can it be Plato's Second God who impressed himself on the universe
in the form of the cross? Or is it his divine man, who would be
scourged, tormented, fettered, have his eyes burnt out; and lastly
... _would be crucified_?
It is all that and much more; archaic religious Philosophy was universal, nd its Mysteries are as old as man. It is the eternal symbol of the ersonified Sun--astronomically purified--in its mystic meaning regenerated, nd symbolised by all the Initiates in memory of a sinless Humanity when ll were "Sons of God." Now, mankind has become the "Son of Evil" truly.
Does all this take anything away from the dignity of Christ as an ideal, r of Jesus as a divine man? Not at all. On the contrary, made to stand lone, glorified above all other "Sons of God," He can only foment evil eelings in all those many millioned nations who do not believe in the
Christian system, provoking their hatred and leading to iniquitous wars nd strifes. If, on the other hand, we place Him among a long series of
"Sons of God" and Sons of divine Light, every man may then be left to hoose for himself, among those many ideals, which he will choose as a God o call to his help, and worship on earth as in Heaven.
Many among those called "Saviours" were "good shepherds," as was Krishna or one, and all of them are said to have "crushed the serpent's head"--in ther words to have conquered their sensual nature and to have mastered ivine and Occult Wisdom. Apollo killed Python, a fact which exonerates im from the charge of being himself the great Dragon, Satan: Krishna slew he snake Kalināga, the Black Serpent; and the Scandinavian Thor bruised he head of the symbolical reptile with his crucifixion mace.
In Egypt every city of importance was separated from its burial-place by a acred lake. The same ceremony of judgment, as is described in _The Book f the Dead_--"that precious and mysterious book" (Bunsen)--as taking place n the world of Spirit, took place on earth during the burial of the ummy. Forty-two judges or assessors assembled on the shore and judged the eparted "Soul" according to its actions when in the body. After that the riests returned within the sacred precincts and instructed the neophytes pon the probable fate of the Soul, and the solemn drama that was then aking place in the invisible realm whither the Soul had fled. The mmortality of the Spirit was strongly inculcated on the neophytes by the
_Al-om-jah_--the name of the highest Egyptian Hierophant. In the Crata
Nepoa--the priestly Mysteries in Egypt--the following are described as four ut of the seven degrees of Initiation.
After a preliminary trial at Thebes, where the neophyte had to pass hrough many probations, called the "Twelve Tortures," he was commanded, n order that he might come out triumphant, to govern his passions and ever lose for a moment the idea of his inner God or seventh Principle.
Then, as a symbol of the wanderings of the unpurified Soul, he had to scend several ladders and wander in darkness in a cave with many doors, ll of which were locked. Having overcome all, he received the degree of
Pastophoris, after which he became, in the second and third degrees, the
Neocoris and Melancphoris. Brought into a vast subterranean chamber, hickly furnished with mummies lying in state, he was placed in presence f the coffin which contained the mutilated body of Osiris. This was the all called the "Gates of Death," whence the verse in Job:
Have the gates of Death been opened to thee,
Hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Thus asks the "Lord," the Hierophant, the Al-om-jah, the Initiator of Job, lluding to this third degree of Initiation. For the _Book of Job_ is the oem of Initiation _par excellence_.
When the neophyte had conquered the terrors of this trial, he was onducted to the "Hall of Spirits," to be judged by them. Among the rules n which he was instructed, he was commanded:
Never to either desire or seek revenge; to be always ready to help
a brother in danger, even unto the risk of his own life; to bury
every dead body; to honour his parents above all; to respect old
age, and protect those weaker than himself; and, finally, to ever
bear in mind the hour of death, and that of resurrection in a new
and imperishable body.
Purity and chastity were highly recommended, and adultery was threatened ith death. Thus the Egyptian neophyte was made a Kristophoros. In this egree the mystery-name of IAO was communicated to him.
Let the reader compare the above sublime precepts with the precepts of
Buddha, and the noble commandments in the "Rule of Life" for the ascetics f India, and he will understand the unity of the Secret Doctrine verywhere.
It is impossible to deny the presence of a sexual element in many eligious symbols, but this fact is not in the least open to censure, once t becomes generally known that--in the religious traditions of every ountry--man was not born in the first "human" race from father and mother.
From the bright "mind-born Sons of Brahmā," the Rishis, and from Adam
Kadmon with his Emanations, the Sephiroth, down to the "parentless," the
Anupādaka, or the Dhyāni-Buddhas, from whom sprang the Bodhisattvas and
Manushi-Buddhas, the earthly Initiates--men--the first race of men was with very nation held as being born without father or mother. Man, the
"Manushi-Buddha," the Manu, the "Enosh," son of Seth, or the "Son of Man" s he is called--is born in the present way only as the consequence, the navoidable fatality, of the law of natural evolution. Mankind--having eached the last limit, and that turning point where its spiritual nature ad to make room for mere physical organisation--had to "fall into matter" nd generation. But man's evolution and involution are cyclic. He will end s he began. Of course to our grossly material minds even the sublime ymbolism of Kosmos conceived in the matrix of Space after the divine Unit ad entered into and fructified it with Its holy fiat, will no doubt uggest materiality. Not so with primitive mankind. The initiatory rite in he Mysteries of the self-sacrificing Victim that dies a spiritual death o save the world from destruction--really from depopulation--was stablished during the Fourth Race, to commemorate an event, which, hysiologically, has now become the Mystery of Mysteries among the world- roblems. In the Jewish script it is Cain and the female Abel who are the acrificed and sacrificing couple--both immolating themselves (as ermutations of Adam and Eve, or the dual Jehovah) and shedding their lood "of separation and union," for the sake of and to save mankind by naugurating a new physiological race. Later still, when the neophyte, as lready mentioned, in order to be re-born once more into his lost piritual state, had to pass through the entrails (the womb) of a _virgin_ eifer(539) killed at the moment of the rite, it involved again a mystery nd one as great, for it referred to the process of birth, or rather the irst entrance of man on to this earth, through Vāch--"the melodious cow ho milks forth sustenance and water"--and who is the female Logos. It had lso reference to the same self-sacrifice of the "divine Hermaphrodite"--of he third Root-Race--the transformation of Humanity into truly physical en, after the loss of spiritual potency. When, the fruit of evil having een tasted along with the fruit of good, there was as a result the radual atrophy of spirituality and a strengthening of the materiality in an, then he was doomed to be born thenceforth through the present rocess. This is the Mystery of the Hermaphrodite, which the Ancients kept o secret and veiled. It was neither the absence of moral feeling, nor the resence of gross sensuality in them that made them imagine their Deities nder a dual aspect; but rather their knowledge of the mysteries and rocesses of primitive Nature. The Science of Physiology was better known o them than it is to us now. It is in this that lies buried the key to he Symbolism of old, the true focus of national thought, and the strange ual-sexed images of nearly every God and Goddess in both pagan and onotheistic Pantheons.
Says Sir William Drummond in _OEdipus Judaļcus_:
The truths of science were the arcana of the priests because these
truths were the foundations of religion.
But why should the missionaries so cruelly twit the Vaishnavas and Krishna orshippers for the supposed grossly indecent meaning of their symbols, ince it is made clear beyond the slightest doubt, and by the most nprejudiced writers, that Chrestos in the pit--whether the pit be taken as eaning the grave or hell--had likewise a sexual element in it, from the ery origin of the symbol.
This fact is no longer denied to-day. The "Brothers of the Rosy Cross" of he Middle Ages were as good Christians as any to be found in Europe, evertheless, all their rites were based on symbols whose meaning was pre- minently phallic and sexual. Their biographer, Hargrave Jennings, the est modern authority on Rosicrucianism, speaking of this mystic
Brotherhood, describes how
The tortures and the sacrifice of Calvary, the Passion of the
Cross, were, in their [the Rose-Croix's] glorious blessed magic
and triumph, the protest and appeal.
Protest--by whom? The answer is, the protest of the crucified Rose, the reatest and the most unveiled of all sexual symbols--the Yoni and Lingam, he "victim" and the "murderer," the female and male principles in Nature.
Open the last work of that author, _Phallicism_, and see in what glowing erms he describes the sexual symbolism in that which is most sacred to he Christian:
The flowing blood streamed from the crown, or the piercing circlet
of the thorns of Hell. The Rose is feminine. Its lustrous carmine
petals are guarded with thorns. The Rose is the most beautiful of
flowers. The Rose is the Queen of God's Garden (Mary, the Virgin).
It is not the Rose alone which is the magical idea, or truth. But
it is the "crucified rose," or the "martyred rose" (by the grand
mystic apocalyptic figure) which is the talisman, the standard,
the object of adoration of all the "Sons of Wisdom" or the true
Rosicrucians.(540)
Not of _all_ the "Sons of Wisdom," by any means, not even of the _true_
Rosicrucian. For the latter would never put in such sickening relievo, in uch a purely sensual and terrestrial, not to say animal light, the randest, the noblest of Nature's symbols. To the Rosicrucian, the "Rose" as the symbol of Nature, of the ever prolific and virgin Earth, or Isis, he mother and nourisher of man, considered as feminine and represented as virgin woman by the Egyptian Initiates. Like every other personification f Nature and the Earth she is the sister and wife of Osiris, as the two haracters answer to the personified symbol of the Earth, both she and the
Sun being the progeny of the same mysterious Father, because the Earth is ecundated by the Sun--according to the earliest Mysticism--by divine nsufflation. It was the pure ideal of mystic Nature that was personified n the "World Virgins," the "Celestial Maidens," and later on by the human
Virgin, Mary, the Mother of the Saviour, the _Salvator Mundi_ now chosen y the Christian World. And it was the character of the Jewish maiden that as adapted by Theology to archaic Symbolism,(541) and not the Pagan ymbol that was modelled for the new occasion.
We know through Herodotus that the Mysteries were brought from India by
Orpheus--a hero far anterior to both Homer and Hesiod. Very little is eally known of him, and till very lately Orphic literature, and even the
Argonauts, were attributed to Onamacritus, a contemporary of Pisistratus,
Solon and Pythagoras--who was credited with their compilation in the resent form toward the close of the sixth century B.C., or 800 years fter the time of Orpheus. But we are told that in the days of Pausanias here was a sacerdotal family, who, like the Brāhmans with the _Vedas_, ad committed to memory all the Orphic Hymns, and that they were usually hus transmitted from one generation to another. By placing Orpheus so far ack as 1200 B.C., official Science--so careful in her chronology to choose n each case as late a period as possible--admits that the Mysteries, or in ther words Occultism dramatised, belong to a still earlier epoch than the
Chaldęan and Egyptians.
The downfall of the Mysteries in Europe may now be mentioned.
SECTION XXXIII. THE LAST OF THE MYSTERIES IN EUROPE.
As was predicted by the great Hermes in his dialogue with Ęsculapius, the ime had indeed come when impious foreigners accused Egypt of adoring onsters, and naught but the letters engraved in stone upon her monuments urvived--enigmas unintelligible to posterity. Her sacred Scribes and
Hierophants became wanderers upon the face of the earth. Those who had emained in Egypt found themselves obliged for fear of a profanation of he sacred Mysteries to seek refuge in deserts and mountains, to form and stablish secret societies and brotherhoods--such as the Essenes; those who ad crossed the oceans to India and even to the (now-called) New World, ound themselves by solemn oaths to keep silent, and to preserve secret heir Sacred Knowledge and Science; thus these were buried deeper than ver out of human sight. In Central Asia and on the northern borderlands f India, the triumphant sword of Aristotle's pupil swept away from his ath of conquest every vestige of a once pure Religion: and its Adepts eceded further and further from that path into the most hidden spots of he globe. The cycle of ---- being at its close, the first hour for the isappearance of the Mysteries struck on the clock of the Races, with the
Macedonian conqueror. The first strokes of its last hour sounded in the ear 47 B.C. Alesia(542) the famous city in Gaul, the Thebes of the Kelts, o renowned for its ancient rites of Initiation and Mysteries, was, as J.
M. Ragon well describes it:
The ancient metropolis and the tomb of Initiation, of the religion
of the Druids and of the freedom of Gaul.(543)
It was during the first century before our era, that the last and supreme our of the great Mysteries had struck. History shows the populations of
Central Gaul revolting against the Roman yoke. The country was subject to
Cęsar, and the revolt was crushed; the result was the slaughter of the arrison at Alesia (or Alisa), and of all its inhabitants, including the
Druids, the college-priests and the neophytes; after this the whole city as plundered and razed to the ground.
Bibractis, a city as large and as famous, not far from Alesia, perished a ew years later. J. M. Ragon describes her end as follows:
Bibractis, the mother of sciences, the soul of the early nations
[in Europe], a town equally famous for its sacred college of
Druids, its civilisation, its schools, in which 40,000 students
were taught philosophy, literature, grammar, jurisprudence,
medicine, astrology, occult sciences, architecture, etc. Rival of
Thebes, of Memphis, of Athens and of Rome, it possessed an
amphitheatre, surrounded with colossal statues, and accommodating
100,000 spectators, gladiators, a capitol, temples of Janus,
Pluto, Proserpine, Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, Cybele, Venus and
Anubis; and in the midst of those sumptuous edifices the Naumachy,
with its vast basin, an incredible construction, a gigantic work
wherein floated boats and galleys devoted to naval games; then a
_Champ de Mars_, an aqueduct, fountains, public baths; finally
fortifications and walls, the construction of which dated from the
heroic ages.(544)
Such was the last city in Gaul wherein died for Europe the secrets of the
Initiations of the Great Mysteries, the Mysteries of Nature, and of her orgotten Occult truths. The rolls and manuscripts of the famous
Alexandrian Library were burned and destroyed by the same Cęsar,(545) but hile History deprecates the action of the Arab general, Amrus, who gave he final touch to this act of vandalism perpetrated by the great onqueror, it has not a word to say to the latter for his destruction of early the same amount of precious rolls in Alesia, nor to the destroyer f Bibractis. While Sacrovir--chief of the Gauls, who revolted against
Roman despotism under Tiberius, and was defeated by Silius in the year 21 f our era--was burning himself alive with his fellow conspirators on a uneral pyre before the gates of the city, as Ragon tells us, the latter as sacked and plundered, and all her treasures of literature on the
Occult Sciences perished by fire. The once majestic city, Bibractis, has ow become Autun, Ragon explains.
A few monuments of glorious antiquity are still there, such as the
temples of Janus and of Cybele.
Ragon goes on:
Arles, founded two thousand years before Christ, was sacked in
270. This metropolis of Gaul, restored 40 years later by
Constantine, has preserved to this day a few remains of its
ancient splendour; amphitheatre, capitol, an obelisk, a block of
granite 17 metres high, a triumphal arch, catacombs, etc. Thus
ended Kelto-Gaulic civilisation. Cęsar, as a barbarian worthy of
Rome, had already accomplished the destruction of the ancient
Mysteries by the sack of the temples and their initiatory
colleges, and by the massacre of the Initiates and the Druids.
Remained Rome; but she never had but the lesser Mysteries, shadows
of the Secret Sciences. The Great Initiation was extinct.(546)
A few further extracts may be given from his _Occult Masonry_, as they ear directly upon our subject. However learned and erudite, some of the hronological mistakes of that author are very great. He says:
After deified man (Hermes) came the King-Priest [the Hierophant]
Menes was the first legislator and the founder of Thebes of the
hundred palaces. He filled that city with magnificent splendour;
it is from his day that the sacerdotal epoch of Egypt dates. The
priests reigned, for it is they who made the laws. It is said that
there have been three hundred and twenty-nine [Hierophants] since
his time--all of whom have remained unknown.
After that, genuine Adepts having become scarce, the author shows the
Priests choosing false ones from the midst of slaves, whom they exhibited, aving crowned and deified them, for the adoration of the ignorant masses.
Tired of reigning in such a servile way, the kings rebelled and
freed themselves. Then came Sesostris, the founder of Memphis
(1613, they say, before our era). To the sacerdotal election to
the throne succeeded that of the warriors.... Cheops who reigned
from 1178 to 1122 built the great Pyramid which bears his name. He
is accused of having persecuted theocracy and closed the temples.
This is utterly incorrect, though Ragon repeats "History." The Pyramid alled by the name of Cheops is the Great Pyramid, the building of which ven Baron Bunsen assigned to 5,000 B.C. He says in _Egypt's Place in
Universal History_:
The Origines of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium before
Christ.(547)
And as the Mysteries were performed and the Initiations took place in that
Pyramid--for indeed it was built for that purpose--it looks strange and an tter contradiction with known facts in the history of the Mysteries, to uppose that Cheops, if the builder of that Pyramid, ever turned against he initiated Priests and their temples. Moreover, as far as the Secret
Doctrine teaches, it was not Cheops who built the Pyramid of that name, hatever else he might have done.
Yet, it is quite true that
Owing to an Ethiopian invasion and the federated government of
twelve chiefs, royalty fell into the hands of Amasis, a man of low
birth.
This was in 570 B.C., and it is Amasis who destroyed priestly power. And
Thus perished that ancient theocracy which showed its crowned
priests for so many centuries to Egypt and the whole world.
Egypt had gathered the students of all countries around her Priests and
Hierophants before Alexandria was founded. Ennemoser asks:
How comes it that so little has become known of the Mysteries and
of their particular contents, through so many ages, and amongst so
many different times and people? The answer is that it is again
owing to the universally strict silence of the initiated. Another
cause may be found in the destruction and total loss of all the
written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest
antiquity.
Numa's books, described by Livy, consisting of natural philosophy,
were found in his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made
known, lest they should reveal the most secret mysteries of the
state religion.... The senate and the tribunes of the people
determined ... that the books themselves should be burned, which
was done.(548)
Cassain mentions a treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth centuries, hich was accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his turn was reputed o have received it from Jared, the fourth generation from Seth, the son f Adam.
Alchemy also was first taught in Egypt by her learned Priests, though the irst appearance of this system is as old as man. Many writers have eclared that Adam was the first Adept; but that was a blind and a pun pon the name, which is "red earth" in one of its meanings. The correct nformation--under its allegorical veil--is found in the sixth chapter of
Genesis, which speaks of the "Sons of God" who took wives of the daughters f men, after which they communicated to these wives many a mystery and ecret of the phenomenal world. The cradle of Alchemy, says Olaus
Borrichius, is to be sought in the most distant times. Democritus of
Abdera was an Alchemist, and a Hermetic Philosopher. Clement of Alexandria rote considerably upon the Science, and Moses and Solomon are called roficients in it. We are told by W. Godwin:
The first authentic record on this subject is an edict of
Diocletian about 300 years A.D., ordering a diligent search to be
made in Egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art
of making gold and silver, that they might, without distinction,
be consigned to the flames.
The Alchemy of the Chaldęans and the old Chinamen is not even the parent f that Alchemy which revived among the Arabians many centuries later.
There is a spiritual Alchemy and a physical transmutation. The knowledge f both was imparted at the Initiations.
SECTION XXXIV. THE POST-CHRISTIAN SUCCESSORS TO THE MYSTERIES.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were no more. Yet it was these which gave their rincipal features to the Neo-platonic school of Ammonius Saccas, for the
Eclectic System was chiefly characterised by its Theurgy and ecstasis. It as Iamblichus who added to it the Egyptian doctrine of Theurgy with its ractices, and Porphyry, the Jew, who opposed this new element. The chool, however, with but few exceptions, practised asceticism and ontemplation, its mystics passing through a discipline as rigorous as hat of the Hindu devotee. Their efforts never tended so much to develop he successful practice of thaumaturgy, necromancy or sorcery--such as they re now accused of--as to evolve the higher faculties of the inner man, the
Spiritual Ego. The school held that a number of spiritual beings, denizens f spheres quite independent of the earth and of the human cycle, were ediators between the "Gods" and men, and even between man and the Supreme
Soul. To put it in plainer language, the soul of man became, owing to the elp of the Planetary Spirits, "recipient of the soul of the world" as
Emerson puts it. Apollonius of Tyana asserted his possession of such a ower in these words (quoted by Professor Wilder in his _Neo-Platonism_):
I can see the present and the future in a clear mirror. The sage
[Adept] need not wait for the vapours of the earth and the
corruption of the air to foresee plagues and fevers; he must know
them later than God, but earlier than the people. The _theoi_ or
gods see the future; common men, the present; sages, that which is
about to take place. My peculiar abstemious mode of living
produces such an acuteness of the senses, or creates some other
faculty, so that the greatest and most remarkable things may be
performed.(549)
Professor A. Wilder's comment thereupon is remarkable:
This is what may be termed _spiritual photography_. The soul is
the camera in which facts and events, future, past, and present,
are alike fixed; and the mind becomes conscious of them. Beyond
our everyday world of limits, all is as one day or state--the past
and future comprised in the present. Probably this is the "great
day," the "_last_ day," the "day of the Lord," of the Bible
writers--the day into which everyone passes by death or _ecstasis_.
Then the soul is freed from the constraint of the body, and its
nobler part is united to higher nature and becomes partaker in the
wisdom and foreknowledge of the higher beings.(550)
How far the system practised by the Neo-Platonists was identical with that f the old and the modern Vedāntins may be inferred from what Dr. A.
Wilder says of the Alexandrian Theosophists.
The anterior idea of the New Platonists was that of a single
Supreme Essence.... All the old philosophies contained the
doctrine that {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~}, _theoi_, gods or disposers, angels, demons,
and other spiritual agencies, emanated from the Supreme Being.
Ammonius accepted the doctrine of the Books of Hermes, that from
the divine All proceeded the Divine Wisdom or Amun; that from
Wisdom proceeded the Demiurge or Creator; and from, the Creator,
the subordinate spiritual beings; the world and its peoples being
the last. The first is contained in the second, the first and
second in the third, and so on through the entire series.(551)
This is a perfect echo of the belief of the Vedāntins, and it proceeds irectly from the secret teachings of the East. The same author says:
Akin to this is the doctrine of the Jewish Kabala which was taught
by the Pharsi or Pharisees, who probably borrowed it, as their
sectarian designation would seem to indicate, from the Magians of
Persia. It is substantially embodied in the following synopsis.
The Divine Being is the All, the source of all existence, the
Infinite; and He cannot be known. The Universe reveals Him, and
subsists by Him. At the beginning His effulgence went forth
everywhere.(552) Eventually He retired within Himself and so
formed around Him a vacant space. Into this He transmitted His
first Emanation, a Ray, containing in it the generative and
conceptive power, and hence the name IE, or Jah. This in its turn
produced the _tikkun_, the _pattern_ or idea of form; and in this
emanation, which also contained the male and female, or generative
and conceptive potencies, were the three primitive forces of
Light, Spirit and Life. This Tikkun is united to the Ray, or first
emanation, and pervaded by it: and by that union is also in
perpetual communication with the infinite source. It is the
pattern, the primitive man, the Adam Kadmon, the _macrocosm_ of
Pythagoras and other philosophers. From it proceeded the
_Sephiroth_.... From the Sephiroth in turn emanated the four
worlds, each proceeding out of the one immediately above it, and
the lower one enveloping its superior. These worlds became less
pure as they descended in the scale, the lowest of all being the
material world.(553)
This veiled enunciation of the Secret Teaching will be clear to our eaders by this time. These worlds are:
_Aziluth_ is peopled with the purest emanations [the First, almost
spiritual, Race of the human beings that were to inhabit] the
Fourth; the second, _Beriah_, by a lower order, the servants of
the former [the second Race]; the third, _Jesirah_, by the
cherubim and seraphim, the Elohim and B'ni Elohim ["Sons of Gods"
or _Elohim_, our Third Race]. The fourth world, _Asiah_, is
inhabited by the Klipputh, of whom Belial is chief [the Atlantean
Sorcerers].(554)
These worlds are all the earthly duplicates of their heavenly prototypes, he mortal and temporary reflections and shadows of the more durable, if ot eternal, races dwelling in other, to us, invisible worlds. The souls f the men of our Fifth Race derive their elements from these four orlds--Root Races--that preceded ours: namely, our intellect, Manas, the ifth principle, our passions and mental and corporeal appetites. A onflict having arisen, called "war in heaven," among our prototypical orlds, war came to pass, ęons later, between the Atlanteans(555) of
Asiah, and those of the third Root Race, the B'ni Elohim or the "Sons of
God,"(556) and then evil and wickedness were intensified. Mankind (in the ast sub-race of the third Root Race) having
Sinned in their first parent [a physiological allegory, truly!]
from whose soul every human soul is an emanation,
ays the _Zohar_, men were "exiled" into more material bodies to
Expiate that sin and become proficient in goodness.
To accomplish the cycle of necessity, rather, explains the doctrine; to rogress on their task of evolution, from which task none of us can be reed, neither by death nor suicide, for each of us have to pass through he "Valley of Thorns" before he emerges into the plains of divine light nd rest. And thus men will continue to be born in new bodies
Till they have become sufficiently pure to enter a higher form of
existence.
This means only that Mankind, from the First down to the last, or Seventh
Race, is composed of one and the same company of actors, who have escended from higher spheres to perform their artistic tour on this our lanet, Earth. Starting as pure spirits on our downward journey around the orld (verily!) with the knowledge of truth--now feebly echoed in the
Occult Doctrines--inherent in us, cyclic law brings us down to the reversed pex of matter, which is lost down here on earth and the bottom of which e have already struck; and then, the same law of spiritual gravity will ake us slowly ascend to still higher, still purer spheres than those we tarted from.
Foresight, prophecy, oracular powers! Illusive fancies of man's dwarfed erceptions, which see actual images in reflections and shadows, and istake past actualities for prophetic images of a future that has no room n Eternity. Our macrocosm and its smallest microcosm, man, are both epeating the same play of universal and individual events at each tation, as on every stage on which Karma leads them to enact their espective dramas of life. False prophets could have no existence had here been no true prophets. And so there were, and many of both classes, nd in all ages. Only, none of these ever saw anything but that which had lready come to pass, and had been before prototypically enacted in higher pheres--if the event foretold related to national or public weal or woe--or n some preceding life, if it concerned only an individual, for every such vent is stamped as an indelible record of the Past and Future, which are nly, after all, the ever Present in Eternity. The "worlds" and the urifications spoken of in the _Zohar_ and other Kabalistic books, relate o our globe and races no more and no less than they relate to other lobes and other races that have preceded our own in the great cycle. It as such fundamental truths as these that were performed in allegorical lays and images during the Mysteries, the last Act of which, the Epilogue or the Mystę, was the _anastasis_ or "continued existence," as also the
"Soul transformation."
Hence, the author of _Neo-platonism and Alchemy_ shows us that all such
Eclectic doctrines were strongly reflected in the _Epistles_ of Paul, and ere
Inculcated more or less among the Churches. Hence, such passages
as these "Ye were dead in errors and sins; ye walked according to
the _ęon_ of this world, according to the _archon_ that has the
domination of the air." "We wrestle not against flesh and blood,
but against the dominations, against potencies, against the lords
of darkness, and against the mischievousness of spirits in the
empyrean regions." But Paul was evidently hostile to the effort to
blend his gospel with the gnostic ideas of the Hebrew-Egyptian
school, as seems to have been attempted at Ephesus; and
accordingly, wrote to Timothy, his favourite disciple, "Keep safe
the precious charge entrusted to thee; and reject the new
doctrines and the antagonistic principles of the gnosis, falsely
so-called, of which some have made profession and gone astray from
the faith."(557)
But as the Gnosis is the Science pertaining to our Higher Self, as blind aith is a matter of temperament and emotionalism, and as Paul's doctrine as still newer and his interpretations far more thickly veiled, to keep he inner truths hidden far away from the Gnostic, preference has been iven to the former by every earnest seeker after truth.
Besides this, the great Teachers who professed the so-called "false
Gnosis" were very numerous in the days of the Apostles, and were as great s any converted Rabbi could be. If Porphyry, the Jew Malek, went against
Theurgy on account of old traditional recollections, there were other eachers who practised it. Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus were all haumaturgists, and the latter
Elaborated the entire theosophy and theurgy of his predecessors
into a complete system. (558)
As to Ammonius,
Countenanced by Clemens and Athenagoras, in the Church, and by
learned men of the Synagogue, the Academy, and the Grove, he
fulfilled his labour by teaching a common doctrine for all.(559)
Thus it is not Judaism and Christianity that re-modelled the ancient Pagan
Wisdom, but rather the latter that put its heathen curb, quietly and nsensibly, on the new faith; and this, moreover, was still further nfluenced by the Eclectic Theosophical system, the direct emanation of he Wisdom Religion. All that is grand and noble in Christian theology omes from Neo-Platonism. It is too well-known to now need much repetition hat Ammonius Saccas, the God-taught (_theodidaktos_) and the lover of the ruth (_philalethes_), in establishing his school, made a direct attempt o benefit the world by teaching those portions of the Secret Science that ere permitted by its direct guardians to be revealed in those days.(560)
The modern movement of our own Theosophical Society was begun on the same rinciples; for the Neo-Platonic school of Ammonius aimed, as we do, at he reconcilement of all sects and peoples, under the once common faith of he Golden Age, trying to induce the nations to lay aside their ontentions--in religious matters at any rate--by proving to them that their arious beliefs are all the more or less legitimate children of one common arent, the Wisdom Religion.
Nor was the Eclectic Theosophical system--as some writers inspired by Rome ould make the world believe--developed only during the third century of ur era; but it belongs to a much earlier age, as has been shown by
Diogenes Laertius. He traces it to the beginning of the dynasty of the
Ptolemies; to the great seer and prophet, the Egyptian Priest Pot-Amun, of he temple of the God of that name--for Amun is the God of Wisdom. Unto hat day the communication between the Adepts of Upper India and Bactria nd the Philosophers of the West had never ceased.
Under Philadelphus ... the Hellenic teachers became rivals of the
College of Rabbis of Babylon. The Buddhistic, Vedāntic and Magian
systems were expounded along with the philosophies of Greece....
Aristobulus, the Jew, declared that the ethics of Aristotle were
derived from the law of Moses (!); and Philo, after him, attempted
to interpret the Pentateuch in accordance with the doctrines of
Pythagoras and the Academy. In Josephus it is said that, in the
Book of the Genesis, Moses wrote philosophically--that is, in the
figurative style; and the Essenes of Carmel were reproduced in the
Therapeutę of Egypt, who, in turn, were declared by Eusebius to be
identical with the Christians, though they actually existed long
before the Christian era. Indeed, in its turn, Christianity also
was taught at Alexandria, and underwent an analogous
metamorphosis. Pantęnus, Athenagoras and Clement were thoroughly
instructed in the Platonic philosophy, and comprehended its
essential unity with the oriental systems.(561)
Ammonius, though the son of Christian parents, was a _lover_ of the truth, true Philaletheian foremost of all. He set his heart upon the work of econciling the different systems into a harmonious whole, for he had lready perceived the tendency of Christianity to raise itself on the ecatomb which it had constructed out of all other creeds and faiths. What ays history?
The ecclesiastical historian, Mosheim, declares that
Ammonius, conceiving that not only the philosophers of Greece, but
also all those of the different barbarous nations, were perfectly
in unison with each other with regard to every essential point,
made it his business so to temper and expound the tenets of all
these various sects, as to make it appear they had all of them
originated from one and the same source, and all tended to one and
the same end. Again, Mosheim says that Ammonius taught that the
religion of the multitude went hand in hand with philosophy, and
with her had shared the fate of being by degrees corrupted and
obscured with mere human conceits, superstition, and lies; that it
ought, therefore, to be brought back to its original purity by
purging it of this dross and expounding it upon philosophical
principles; and that the whole which Christ had in view was to
reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the Wisdom of the
Ancients.(562)
Now what was that "Wisdom of the Ancients" that the Founder of
Christianity "had in view"? The system taught by Ammonius in his Eclectic
Theosophical School was made of the crumbs permitted to be gathered from he antediluvian lore; those Neo-Platonic teachings are described in the
_Edinburgh Encyclopędia_ as follows:
He [Ammonius] adopted the doctrines which were received in Egypt
concerning the Universe and the Deity, considered as constituting
one great whole; concerning the eternity of the world, the nature
of souls, the empire of Providence [Karma] and the government of
the world by demons [_daimons_ or spirits, archangels]. He also
established a system of moral discipline which allowed the people
in general to live according to the laws of their country and the
dictates of nature; but required the wise to exalt their minds by
contemplation, and to mortify the body,(563) so that they might be
capable of enjoying the presence and assistance of the demons
[including their own _daimon_ or Seventh Principle] ... and
ascending after death to the presence of the Supreme [Soul]
Parent. In order to reconcile the popular religions, and
particularly the Christian, with this new system, he made the
whole history of the heathen gods an allegory, maintaining that
they were only celestial ministers(564) entitled to an inferior
kind of worship; and he acknowledged that Jesus Christ was an
excellent man and the friend of God, but alleged that it was not
his design entirely to abolish the worship of demons,(565) and
that his only intention was to purify the ancient religion.
No more could be declared except for those Philaletheians who were nitiated, "persons duly instructed and disciplined" to whom Ammonius ommunicated his more important doctrines,
Imposing on them the obligations of secrecy, as was done before
him by Zoroaster and Pythagoras, and in the Mysteries [where an
oath was required from the neophytes or catechumens not to divulge
what they had learned]. The great Pythagoras divided his teachings
into exoteric and esoteric.(566)
Has not Jesus done the same, since He declared to His disciples that to hem it was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, whereas o the multitudes it was not given, and therefore He spoke in parables hich had a two-fold meaning?
Dr. A. Wilder proceeds:
Thus Ammonius found his work ready to his hand. His deep spiritual
intuition, his extensive learning, and his familiarity with the
Christian fathers, Pantęnus, Clement and Athenagoras, and with the
most erudite philosophers of the time, all fitted him for the
labour he performed so thoroughly.... The results of his
ministration are perceptible at the present day in every country
of the Christian world; every prominent system of doctrine now
bearing the marks of his plastic hand. Every ancient philosophy
has had its votaries among the moderns; and even Judaism, oldest
of them all, has taken upon itself changes which were suggested by
the "God-taught" Alexandrian.(567)
The Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria founded by Ammonius--the prototype roposed for the Theosophical Society--taught Theurgy and Magic, as much as hey were taught in the days of Pythagoras, and by others far earlier than is period. For Proclus says that the doctrines of Orpheus, who was an
Indian and came from India, were the origin of the systems afterwards romulgated.
What Orpheus delivered in hidden allegories, Pythagoras learned
when he was initiated into the Orphic Mysteries; and Plato next
received a perfect knowledge of them from Orphic and Pythagorean
writings.(568)
The Philaletheians had their division into neophytes (_chelas_) and
Initiates, or Masters; and the eclectic system was characterised by three istinct features, which are purely Vedāntic; a Supreme Essence, One and
Universal; the eternity and indivisibility of the human spirit; and
Theurgy, which is Mantricism. So also, as we have seen, they had their ecret or Esoteric teachings like any other mystic school. Nor were they llowed to reveal anything of their secret tenets, any more than were the
Initiates of the Mysteries. Only the penalties incurred by the revealers f the secrets of the latter were far more terrible, and this prohibition as survived to this day, not only in India, but even among the Jewish
Kabalists in Asia.(569)
One of the reasons for such secrecy may be the undoubtedly serious ifficulties and hardships of chelaship, and the dangers attending
Initiation. The modern candidate has, like his predecessor of old, to ither conquer or die; when, which is still worse, he does not lose his eason. There is no danger to him who is true and sincere, and, specially, unselfish. For he is thus prepared beforehand to meet any emptation.
He, who fully recognised the power of his immortal spirit, and
never doubted for one moment its omnipotent protection, had naught
to fear. But woe to the candidate in whom the slightest physical
fear--sickly child of matter--made him lose sight and faith in his
own invulnerability. He who was not wholly confident of his moral
fitness to accept the burden of these tremendous secrets was
doomed.(570)
There were no such dangers in Neo-Platonic Initiations. The selfish and he unworthy failed in their object, and in the failure was the unishment. The chief aim was "reunion of the part with the _all_." This
All was One, with numberless names. Whether called _Dui_, the "bright Lord f Heaven" by the Āryan; _Iao_, by the Chaldęan and Kabalist; _Iabe_ by he Samaritan; the _Tiu_ or _Tuisco_ by the Northman; _Duw_ by the Briton;
_Zeus_, by the Thracian or _Jupiter_ by the Roman--it was _the_ Being, the
_Facit_, One and Supreme,(571) the unborn and the inexhaustible source of very emanation, the fountain of life and light eternal, a Ray of which very one of us carries in him on this earth. The knowledge of this
Mystery had reached the Neo-Platonists from India through Pythagoras, and till later through Apollonius of Tyana and the rules and methods for roducing ecstasy had come from the same lore of the divine Vidyā, the
Gnosis. For Āryavarta, the bright focus into which had been poured in the eginning of time the flames of Divine Wisdom, had become the centre from hich radiated the "tongues of fire" into every portion of the globe. What as Samādhi but that
Sublime ecstasy, in which state things divine and the mysteries of
Nature are revealed to us,
f which Porphyry speaks?
The efflux from the divine soul is imparted to the human spirit in
unreserved abundance, accomplishing for the soul a union with the
divine, and enabling it while in the body to be partaker of the
life which is not in the body,
e explains elsewhere.
Thus under the title of Magic was taught every Science, physical and etaphysical, natural or deemed supernatural by those who are ignorant of he omnipresence and universality of Nature.
Divine Magic makes of man a God; human magic creates a new fiend.
We wrote in _Isis Unveiled_:
In the oldest documents now in the possession of the World--the
_Vedas_ and the older laws of Manu--we find many magical rites
practised and permitted by the Brāhmans.(572) Tibet, Japan, and
China, teach in the present age that which was taught by the
oldest Chaldęans. The clergy of these respective countries prove
moreover what they teach--namely, that the practice of moral and
physical purity, and of certain austerities, developes the vital
soul-power of self-illumination. Affording to man the control over
his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly magical powers over
the elementary spirits inferior to himself. In the West we find
magic of as high an antiquity as in the East. The Druids of Great
Britain practised it in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and
Pliny devotes many a chapter to the "wisdom"(573) of the leaders
of the Celts. The Semothees--the Druids of the Gauls--expounded the
physical as well as the spiritual sciences. They taught the
secrets of the universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly
bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all--the immortality
of the Soul.(574) In their sacred groves--natural academies built
by the hand of the Invisible Architect--the initiates assembled at
the still hour of midnight, to learn about what man once was, and
what he will be.(575) They needed no artificial illumination, nor
life-drawing gas, to light up their temples, for the chaste
goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays on their oak-crowned
heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how to converse
with the solitary queen of the starry vault.(576)
During the palmy days of Neo-Platonism these Bards were no more, for their ycle had run its course, and the last of the Druids had perished at
Bibractis and Alesia. But the Neo-Platonic school was for a long time uccessful, powerful and prosperous. Still, while adopting Āryan Wisdom in ts doctrines, the school failed to follow the wisdom of the Brāhmans in ractice. It showed its moral and intellectual superiority too openly, aring too much for the great and powerful of this earth. While the
Brāhmans and their great Yogīs--experts in matters of philosophy, etaphysics, astronomy, morals and religion--preserved their dignity under he sway of the most powerful princes, remained aloof from the world and ould not condescend to visit them or ask for the slightest favour,(577) he Emperors Alexander, Severus, and Julian, and the greatest among the ristocracy of the land, embraced the tenets of the Neo-Platonists, who ixed freely with the world. The system flourished for several centuries nd comprised within the ranks of its followers the ablest and most earned among the men of the time; Hypatia, the teacher of the Bishop
Synesius, was one of the ornaments of the School until the fatal and hameful day when she was murdered by the Christian mob at the instigation f Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. The school was finally removed to Athens, nd closed by order of the Emperor Justinian.
How accurate is Dr. Wilder's remark that
Modern writers have commented upon the peculiar views of the Neo-
Platonists upon these [metaphysical] subjects, seldom representing
them correctly, even if this was desired or intended.(578)
The few speculations on the sublunary, material, and spiritual universes hat they did put into writing--Ammonius never having himself written a ine, after the wont of reformers--could not enable posterity to judge them ightly, even had not the early Christian Vandals, the later crusaders, nd the fanatics of the Middle Ages, destroyed three parts of that which emained of the Alexandrian Library and its later schools.
Professor Draper shows that Cardinal Ximenes alone
Delivered to the flames in the squares of Granada eighty thousand
Arabic manuscripts, many of them translations of classical
authors.
In the Vatican Library, whole passages in the most rare and precious reatises of the Ancients were found erased and blotted out, "for the sake f interlining them with absurd psalmodies!" Moreover it is well known hat over thirty-six volumes written by Porphyry were burnt and otherwise estroyed by the "Fathers." Most of the little that is known of the octrines of the Eclectics is found in the writings of Plotinus and of hose same Church Fathers.
Says the author of _Neo-Platonism_:
What Plato was to Socrates, and the Apostle John to the head of
the Christian faith, Plotinus became to the God-taught Ammonius.
To Plotinus, Origenes, and Longinus we are indebted for what is
known of the Philaletheian system. They were duly instructed,
initiated and entrusted with the interior doctrines.(579)
This accounts marvellously for Origen's calling people "idiots" who elieve in the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve fables; as also for the act that so few of the writings of that Church Father have passed to osterity. Between the secrecy imposed, the vows of silence and that which as maliciously destroyed by every foul means, it is indeed miraculous hat even so much of the Philaletheian tenets has reached the world.
SECTION XXXV. SYMBOLISM OF SUN AND STARS.
And the Heaven was visible in Seven Circles and the planets
appeared with all their signs, in star-form, and the stars were
divided and numbered with the rulers that were in them, and their
revolving course, through the agency of the divine Spirit.(580)
Here Spirit denotes Pneuma, collective Deity, manifested in its
"Builders," or, as the Church has it, "the seven Spirits of the Presence," he _mediantibus angelis_ of whom Thomas Aquinas says that "God never orks but through them."
These seven "rulers" or mediating Angels were the Kabiri Gods of the
Ancients. This was so evident, that it forced from the Church, together ith the admission of the fact, an explanation and a theory, whose lumsiness and evident sophistry are such that it must fail to impress.
The world is asked to believe, that while the Planetary Angels of the
Church are divine Beings, the genuine "Seraphim,"(581) these very same ngels, under identical names and planets, were and are "false"--as Gods of he ancients. They are no better than pretenders; the cunning copies of he real Angels, produced beforehand through the craft and power of
Lucifer and of the fallen Angels. Now, what are the Kabiri?
Kabiri, as a name, is derived from Habir {~HEBREW LETTER HET~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}, great, and also from Venus, his Goddess being called to the present day Kabar, as is also her star.
The Kabiri were worshipped at Hebron, the city of the Anakim, or anakas
(kings, princes). They are the highest Planetary Spirits, the "greatest
Gods" and "the powerful." Varro, following Orpheus, calls these Gods
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}, "divine Powers." The word Kabirim when applied to men, and the ords Heber, Gheber (with reference to Nimrod, or the "giants" of
_Genesis_, vi.) and Kabir, are all derived from the "mysterious Word"--the
Ineffable and the "Unpronounceable." Thus it is they who represent
_tsaba_, the "host of heaven." The Church, however, bowing before the ngel Anael (the regent of Venus),(582) connects the planet Venus with
Lucifer, the chief of the rebels under Satan--so poetically apostrophized y the prophet Isaiah as "O Lucifer, son of the morning."(583) All the
Mystery Gods were Kabiri. As these "seven lictors" relate directly to the
Secret Doctrine their real status is of the greatest importance.
Suidas defines the Kabiri as the Gods who command all the other dęmons
(Spirits), {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. Macrobius introduces them as
Those Penates and tutelary deities, through whom we live and learn
and know (_Saturn_, I. iii. ch. iv.).
The teraphim through which the Hebrews consulted the oracles of the Urim nd the Thummim, were the symbolical hieroglyphics of the Kabiri.
Nevertheless, the good Fathers have made of Kibir the synonym, of devil nd of daimon (spirit) a demon.
The Mysteries of the Kabiri at Hebron (Pagan and Jewish) were presided ver by the seven Planetary Gods, among the rest by Jupiter and Saturn nder their mystery names, and they are referred to as {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} and
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, and by Euripides as {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}. Creuzer, moreover, shows hat whether in Phoenicia or in Egypt, the Kabiri were always the seven lanets as known in antiquity, who, together with their Father the
Sun--referred to elsewhere as their "elder brother"--composed a powerful gdoad;(584) the eight superior powers, as {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~}, or solar assessors, anced around him the sacred circular dance, the symbol of the rotation of he planets around the Sun. Jehovah and Saturn, moreover, are one.
It is quite natural, therefore, to find a French writer, D'Anselme, pplying the same terms of {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} to Jehovah and his ord, and they are correctly so applied. For if the "circle dance" rescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries--being the "circle dance" of he planets, and characterised as "the motion of the divine Spirit carried n the waves of the great Deep"--can now be called "infernal" and
"lascivious" when performed by the Pagans, then the same epithets ought to e applied to David's dance;(585) and to the dance of the daughters of
Shiloh,(586) and to the leaping of the prophets of Baal;(587) they were ll identical and all belonged to Sabęan worship. King David's dance, uring which he uncovered himself before his maid-servants in a public horoughfare, saying:
I will _play_ (act wantonly) before {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} (Jehovah), and I will yet
be more vile than this,
as certainly more reprehensible than any "circle dance" during the
Mysteries, or even than the modern Rāsa Mandala in India,(588) which is he same thing. It was David who introduced Jehovistic worship into Judea, fter sojourning so long among the Tyrians and Philistines, where these ites were common.
David knew nothing of Moses; and if he introduced the Jehovah-
worship, it was not in its monotheistic character, but simply as
that of one of the many (_Kabirean_) gods of the neighbouring
nations, a tutelary deity of his own, {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~}{~HEBREW LETTER HE~} to whom he had given
the preference--whom he had chosen among "all other (Kabeiri)
gods,"(589)
nd who was one of the "associates," Chabir, of the Sun. The Shakers dance he "circle dance" to this day when turning round for the Holy Ghost to ove them. In India it is Nārā-yana who is "the mover on the waters;" and
Nārāyana is Vishnu in his secondary form, and Vishnu has Krishna for an
Avatāra, in whose honour the "circle dance" is still enacted by the
Nautch-girls of the temples, he being the Sun-God and they the planets as ymbolised by the gopis.
Let the reader turn to the works of De Mirville, a Roman Catholic writer, r to _Monumental Christianity_, by Dr. Lundy, a Protestant divine, if he ants to appreciate to any degree the subtlety and casuistry of their easonings. No one ignorant of the occult versions can fail to be mpressed with the proofs brought forward to show how cleverly and erseveringly "Satan has worked for long millenniums to tempt a humanity" nblessed with an infallible Church, in order to have himself recognised s the "One living God," and his fiends as holy Angels. The reader must be atient, and study with attention what the author says on behalf of his
Church. To compare it the better with the version of the Occultists, a few oints may be quoted here verbatim.
St. Peter tells us: "May the divine Lucifer arise in your
hearts"(590) [Now the Sun is Christ].... "I will send my Son from
the Sun," said the Eternal through the voice of prophetic
traditions; and prophecy having become history the Evangelists
repeated in their turn: The _Sun rising_ from on high visited
us.(591)
Now God says, through Malachi, that the Sun shall arise for those who fear is name. What Malachi meant by "the Sun of Righteousness" the Kabalists lone can tell; but what the Greek, and even the Protestant, theologians nderstood by the term is of course Christ, referred to metaphorically.
Only, as the sentence, "I will send my Son from the Sun," is borrowed erbatim from a Sibylline Book, it becomes very hard to understand how it an be attributed to, or classed with any prophecy relating to the
Christian Saviour, unless, indeed, the latter is to be identified with
Apollo. Virgil, again, says, "Here comes the Virgin's and Apollo's reign," nd Apollo, or Apollyon, is to this day viewed as a form of Satan, and is aken to mean the Antichrist. If the Sibylline promise, "He will send his
Son from the Sun" applies to Christ, then either Christ and Apollo are ne--and then why call the latter a demon?--or the prophecy had nothing to o with the Christian Saviour, and, in such a case, why appropriate it at ll?
But De Mirville goes further. He shows us St. Denys, the Areopagite, ffirming that
The Sun is the special signification, and the statue of
God(592).... It is by the Eastern door that the glory of the Lord
penetrated into the temples [of the Jews and Christians, that
divine glory being Sun-light.]... "We build our churches towards
the east," says in his turn St. Ambrose, "for during the Mysteries
we begin by renouncing him who is in the west."
"He who is in the west" is Typhon, the Egyptian god of darkness--the west aving been held by them as the "Typhonic Gate of Death." Thus, having orrowed Osiris from the Egyptians, the Church Fathers thought little of elping themselves to his brother Typhon. Then again:
The prophet Baruch(593) speaks of the stars that rejoice in their
_vessels_ and _citadels_ (Chap. iii.); and _Ecclesiastes_ applies
the same terms to the sun, which is said to be "the admirable
vessel of the most High," and the "citadel of the Lord"
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}.(594)
In every case there is no doubt about the thing, for the sacred
writer says, It is a _Spirit_ who rules the sun's course. Hear
what he says (in _Eccles._, i. 6), "The sun also ariseth--and its
spirit lighting all in its circular path (gyrat gyrans) returneth
according to his circuits."(595)
De Mirville seems to quote from texts either rejected by or unknown to
Protestants, in whose bible there is no forty-third chapter of
_Ecclesiastes_; nor is the sun made to go "in circuits" in the latter, but he wind. This is a question to be settled between the Roman and the
Protestant Churches. Our point is the strong element of Sabęanism or
Heliolatry present in Christianity.
An OEcumenical Council having authoritatively put a stop to Christian
Astrolatry by declaring that there were no sidereal Souls in sun, moon, or lanets, St. Thomas took upon himself to settle the point in dispute. The
"angelic doctor" announced that such expressions did not mean a "soul," ut only an Intelligence, not resident in the sun or stars, but one that ssisted them, "a guiding and directing intelligence."(596)
Thereupon the author, comforted by the explanation, quotes Clement the
Alexandrian, and reminds the reader of the opinion of that philosopher, he inter-relation that exists "between the seven branches of the andlestick--the seven stars of the Revelation," and the sun:
The six branches (says Clement) fixed to the central candlestick
have lamps, but the sun placed in the midst of the wandering ones
({~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}) pours his beams on them all; this golden candlestick
hides one more mystery: it is the sign of Christ, not only in
shape, but because he sheds his light through the ministry of the
seven spirits primarily created, and who are the Seven Eyes of the
Lord. Therefore the principal planets are to the seven primeval
spirits, according to St. Clement, that which the candlestick-sun
is to Christ Himself, namely--their vessels, their {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~}.
Plain enough, to be sure; though one fails to see that this explanation ven helps the situation. The seven-branched chandelier of the Israelites, s well as the "wanderers" of the Greeks, had a far more natural meaning, purely astrological one to begin with. In fact from Magi and Chaldęans own to the much-laughed-at Zadkiel, every astrological work will tell its eader that the Sun placed in the midst of the planets, with Saturn,
Jupiter and Mars on one side, and Venus, Mercury and the Moon on the ther, the planets' line crossing through the whole Earth, has always eant what Hermes tells us, namely, the thread of destiny, or that whose ction (influence) is called destiny.(597) But symbol for symbol we prefer he sun to a candlestick. One can understand how the latter came to epresent the sun and planets, but no one can admire the chosen symbol.
There is poetry and grandeur in the sun when it is made to symbolize the
"Eye of Ormuzd," or of Osiris, and is regarded as the Vāhan (vehicle) of he highest Deity. But one must for ever fail to perceive that any articular glory is rendered to Christ by assigning to him the trunk of a andlestick,(598) in a Jewish synagogue, as a mystical seat of honour.
There are then positively two suns, a sun adored and a sun adoring. The
_Apocalypse_ proves it.
The Word is found in Chap. vii., in the angel who ascends with the
rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God.... While
commentators differ on the personality of this angel, St. Ambrose
and many other theologians see in him Christ himself.... He is the
_Sun adored_. But in Chap. xix. we find an angel standing _in_ the
sun, inviting all the nations to gather to the great supper of the
Lamb. This time it is literally and simply the angel of the
sun--who cannot be mistaken for the "Word," since the prophet
distinguishes him from the Word, the King of Kings and the Lord of
Lords.... The angel _in_ the sun seems to be an adoring sun. Who
may be the latter? And who else can he be but the Morning Star,
the guardian angel of the Word, his _ferouer_, or _angel of the
face_, as the Word is the angel of the Face (presence) of his
Father, his principal attribute and strength, as his name itself
implies (Mikael), the powerful rector glorified by the Church, the
_Rector potens_ who will fell the Antichrist, the Vice-Word, in
short, who represents his master, and seems to be _one with
him_.(599)
Yes, Mikael is the alleged conqueror of Ormuzd, Osiris, Apollo, Krishna,
Mithra, etc., of all the Solar Gods, in short, known and unknown, now reated as demons and as "Satan." Nevertheless, the "Conqueror" has not isdained to don the war-spoils of the vanquished foes--their ersonalities, attributes, even their names--to become the _alter ego_ of hese demons.
Thus the Sun-God here is _Honover_ or the Eternal. The prince is
Ormuzd, since he is the first of the seven Amshaspends [the demon
copies of the seven original angels] (_capul angelorum_); the lamb
(_hamal_), the Shepherd of the Zodiac and the antagonist of the
snake. But the Sun (the Eye of Ormuzd) has also his rector,
Korshid or the _Mitraton_, who is the _Ferouer_ of the face of
Ormuzd, his Ized, or the morning star. The Mazdeans had a triple
Sun.... For us this _Korshid-Mitraton_ is the first of the
_psychopompian_ genii, and the guide of the sun, the immolator of
the terrestrial Bull [or lamb] whose wounds are licked by the
serpent [on the famous Mithraic monument].(600)
St. Paul, in speaking of the rulers of this world, the Cosmocratores, only aid what was said by all the primitive Philosophers of the ten centuries efore the Christian era, only he was scarcely understood, and was often ilfully misinterpreted. Damascius repeats the teachings of the Pagan riters when he explains that
There are seven series of cosmocratores or cosmic forces, which
are double: the higher ones commissioned to support and guide the
superior world; the lower ones, the inferior world [our own].
And he is but saying what the ancients taught. Iamblichus gives this dogma f the duality of all the planets and celestial bodies, of gods and aimons (spirits). He also divides the Archontes into two classes--the more nd the less spiritual; the latter more connected with and clothed with atter, as having a _form_, while the former are bodiless (_arūpa_). But hat have Satan and his angels to do with all this? Perhaps only that the dentity of the Zoroastrian dogma with the Christian, and of Mithra,
Ormuzd, and Ahriman with the Christian Father, Son, and Devil, might be ccounted for. And when we say "Zoroastrian dogmas" we mean the exoteric eaching. How explain the same relations between Mithra and Ormuzd as hose between the Archangel Mikael and Christ?
Ahura Mazda says to holy Zaratushta: "When I _created_ [emanated]
Mithra ... I created him that he should be invoked and adored
equally with myself."
For the sake of necessary reforms, the Zoroastrian Āryans transformed the
Devas, the bright Gods of India, into devs or devils. It was their Karma hat in their turn the Christians should vindicate on this point the
Hindus. Now Ormuzd and Mithra have become the devs of Christ and Mikael, he dark lining and aspect of the Saviour and Angel. The day of the Karma f Christian theology will come in its turn. Already the Protestants have egun the first chapter of the religion that will seek to transform the
"Seven Spirits" and the host of the Roman Catholics into demons and idols.
Every religion has its Karma, as has every individual. That which is due o human conception and is built on the abasement of our brothers who isagree with us, must have its day. "There is no religion higher than ruth."
The Zoroastrians, Mazdeans, and Persians borrowed their conceptions from
India; the Jews borrowed their theory of angels from Persia; the
Christians borrowed from the Jews.
Hence the latest interpretation by Christian theology--to the great disgust f the synagogue, forced to share the symbolical candlestick with the ereditary enemy--that the seven-branched candlestick represents the seven
Churches of Asia and the seven planets which are the angels of those
Churches. Hence also, the conviction that the Mosaic Jews, the inventors f that symbol for their tabernacle, were a kind of Sabęans, who blended heir planets and the spirits thereof into one, and called them--only far ater--Jehovah. For this we have the testimony of Clemens Alexandrinus, St.
Hieronymus and others.
And Clement, as an Initiate of the Mysteries--at which the secret of the eliocentric system was taught several thousands of years before Galileo nd Copernicus--proves it by explaining that
By these various symbols connected with (sidereal) phenomena the
totality of all the creatures which bind heaven with earth, are
figured.... The chandelier represented the motion of the seven
luminaries, describing their astral revolution. To the right and
the left of that candelabrum projected the six branches, each of
which had its lamp, because the Sun placed as a candelabrum in the
middle of other planets distributes light to them.(601) ... As to
the cherubs having twelve wings between the two, they represent to
us the sensuous world in the twelve zodiacal signs.(602)
And yet, in the face of all this evidence, sun, moon, planets, all are hown as being demoniacal before, and divine only after, the appearance of
Christ. All know the Orphic verse: "It is Zeus, it is Adas, it is the Sun, t is Bacchus," these names having been all synonymous for classic poets nd writers. Thus for Democritus "Deity is but a soul in an orbicular ire," and that fire is the Sun. For Iamblichus the sun was "the image of ivine intelligence"; for Plato "an immortal living Being." Hence the racle of Claros when asked to say who was the Jehovah of the Jews, nswered, "It is the Sun." We may add the words in _Psalm_ xix. 4
In the sun hath he placed a tabernacle for himself(603) ... his
going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto
the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
Jehovah then is the sun, and thence also the Christ of the Roman Church.
And now the criticism of Dupuis on that verse becomes comprehensible, as lso the despair of the Abbé Foucher. "Nothing is more favourable to
Sabęism than this text of the Vulgate!" he exclaims. And, however isfigured may be the words and sense in the English authorised bible, the
Vulgate and the Septuagint both give the correct text of the original, and ranslate the latter: "In the sun he established his abode"; while the
Vulgate regards the "heat" as coming direct from God and not from the sun lone, since it is God who issues forth from, and dwells in the sun and erforms the circuit: _in sole posuit ... et ipse exultavit_. From these acts it will be seen that the Protestants were right in charging St.
Justin with saying that
God has permitted us to worship the sun.
And this, notwithstanding the lame excuses that what was really meant was hat
God permitted himself to be worshipped in, or within, the sun,
hich is all the same.
It will be seen from the above, that while the Pagans located in the sun nd planets only the inferior powers of Nature, the representative
Spirits, so to say, of Apollo, Bacchus, Osiris, and other solar gods, the
Christians, in their hatred of Philosophy, appropriated the sidereal ocalities, and now limit them to the use of their anthropomorphic deity nd his angels--new transformations of the old, old gods. Something had to e done in order to dispose of the ancient tenants, so they were disgraced nto "demons," wicked devils.
SECTION XXXVI. PAGAN SIDEREAL WORSHIP, OR ASTROLOGY.
The Teraphim of Abram's father _Terah_, the "maker of images," and the
Kabiri Gods are directly connected with ancient Sabęan worship or
Astrolatry. Kiyun, or the God Kivan, worshipped by the Jews in the ilderness, is Saturn and Shiva, later on called Jehovah. Astrology xisted before astronomy, and _Astronomus_ was the title of the highest ierophant in Egypt.(604) One of the names of the Jewish Jehovah,
"Sabaoth," or the "Lord of Hosts" (_tsabaoth_), belongs to the Chaldęan
Sabęans (or _Tsabęans_), and has for its root the word _tsab_, meaning a
"car," a "ship," and "an army"; sabaoth thus meaning literally the _army f the ship_, the _crew_, or a _naval host_, the sky being metaphorically eferred to as the "upper ocean" in the doctrine.
In his interesting volumes, _The God of Moses_, Lacour explains that all uch words as
The celestial armies or the hosts of heaven, signify not only the
totality of the heavenly constellations, but also the Aleim on
whom they are dependent; the _aleitzbaout_ are the forces or
_souls_ of the constellations, the potencies that maintain and
guide the planets in this order and procession; ... the Jae-va-
Tzbaout signifies Him, the supreme chief of those celestial
bodies.
In his collectivity, as the chief "Order of Spirits," not a chief Spirit.
The Sabęans having worshipped in the _graven_ images only the celestial osts--angels and gods whose habitations were the planets, never in truth orshipped the stars. For on Plato's authority, we know that among the tars and constellations, the planets alone had a right to the title of
_theoi_ (Gods), as that name was derived from the verb {~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}, to run or to irculate. Seldenus also tells us that they were likewise called
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH VARIA~} (God-Councillors) and {~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} (_lictors_) as they
(the planets) were present at the sun's consistory, _solis
consistoris adstantes_.
Says the learned Kircher:
The sceptres the seven presiding angels were armed with, explain
these names of Rhabdophores and lictors given to them.
Reduced to its simplest expression and popular meaning, this is of course etish worship. Yet esoteric astrolatry was not at all the worship of dols, since under the names of "Councillors" and "Lictors," present at he "Sun's consistory," it was not the planets in their material bodies hat were meant, but their Regents or "Souls" (Spirits). If the prayer
"Our Father in heaven," or "Saint" so-and-so in "Heaven" is not an dolatrous invocation, then "Our Father in Mercury," or "Our Lady in
Venus," "Queen of Heaven," etc., is no more so; for it is precisely the ame thing, the name making no difference in the act. The word used in the
Christian prayers, "in heaven" cannot mean anything abstract. A welling--whether of Gods, angels or Saints (every one of these being nthropomorphic individualities and beings)--must necessarily mean a ocality, some defined spot in that "heaven"; hence it is quite immaterial or purposes of worship whether that spot be considered as "heaven" in eneral, meaning nowhere in particular, or in the Sun, Moon or Jupiter.
The argument is futile that there were
Two deities, and two distinct hierarchies or _tsabas_ in heaven,
in the ancient world as in our modern times ... the one, the
living God and his host, and the other, _Satan_, Lucifer with his
councillors and lictors, or the _fallen_ angels.
Our opponents say that it is the latter which Plato with the whole of ntiquity worshipped, and which two-thirds of humanity worship to this ay. "The whole question is to know how to discern between the two."
Protestant Christians fail to find any mention of angels in the
Pentateuch, we may therefore leave them aside. The Roman Catholics and the
Kabalists find such mention; the former, because they have accepted Jewish ngelology, without suspecting that the "tsabęan Hosts" were colonists and ettlers on Judęan territory from the lands of the Gentiles; the latter, ecause they accepted the bulk of the Secret Doctrine, keeping the kernel or themselves and leaving the husks to the unwary.
Cornelius a Lapide points out and proves the meaning of the word _tsaba_ n the first verse of Chapter ii. of _Genesis_; and he does so correctly, uided, as he probably was, by learned Kabalists. The Protestants are ertainly wrong in their contention, for angels _are_ mentioned in the
Pentateuch under the word _tsaba_, which means "hosts" of angels. In the
Vulgate the word is translated _ornatus_, meaning the "sidereal army," the
_ornament_ also of the sky--kabalistically. The biblical scholars of the
Protestant Church, and the _savants_ among the materialists, who failed to ind "angels" mentioned by Moses, have thus committed a serious error. For he verse reads:
Thus the heaven and the earth were finished and all the host of
them,
he "host" meaning "the army of stars and angels"; the last two words eing, it seems, convertible terms in Church phraseology. A Lapide is ited as an authority for this; he says that
_Tsaba_ does not mean _either one_ or the other but "_the one and
the other_," or both, _siderum ac angelorum_.
If the Roman Catholics are right on this point, so are the Occultists when hey claim that the angels worshipped in the Church of Rome are none else han their "Seven Planets," the Dhyān Chohans of Buddhistic Esoteric
Philosophy, or the Kumāras, "the mind-born sons of Brahmā," known under he patronymic of Vaidhātra. The identity between the Kumāras, the
Builders or cosmic Dhyān Chohans, and the Seven Angels of the Stars, will e found without one single flaw if their respective biographies are tudied, and especially the characteristics of their chiefs, Sanat-Kumāra
(Sanat Sujāta), and Michael the Archangel. Together with the Kabirim
(Planets), the name of the above in Chaldęa, they were all "_divine_
Powers" (Forces). Fuerot says that the name Kabiri was used to denote the
_seven_ sons of {~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER TSADI~}{~HEBREW LETTER DALET~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER QOF~} meaning Pater Sadic, Cain, or Jupiter, or again of
Jehovah. There are seven Kumāras--four exoteric and three secret--the names f the latter being found in the _Sānkhya Bhāshya_, by
Gaudapādāchārya.(605) They are all "Virgin Gods," who remain eternally ure and innocent and decline to create progeny. In their primitive spect, these Āryan seven "mind-born sons" of God are not the regents of he planets, but dwell far beyond the planetary region. But the same ysterious transference from one character or dignity to another is found n the Christian Angel-scheme. The "Seven Spirits of the Presence" attend erpetually on God, and yet we find them under the same names of Mikael,
Gabriel, Raphael, etc., as "Star-regents" or the informing deities of the even planets. Suffice it to say that the Archangel Michael is called "the nvincible virgin combatant" as he "refused to create,"(606) which would onnect him with both Sana Sujāta and the Kumāra who is the God of War.
The above has to be demonstrated by a few quotations. Commenting upon St.
John's "Seven Golden Candlesticks," Cornelius a Lapide says:
These seven lights relate to the seven branches of the candlestick
by which were represented the seven [principal] planets in the
temples of Moses and Solomon ... or, better still, to the seven
principal Spirits, commissioned to watch over the salvation of men
and churches.
St. Jerome says:
In truth the candlestick with the seven branches was the type of
the world and its planets.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Roman Catholic doctor writes:
I do not remember having ever met in the works of saints or
philosophers a denial that the planets are guided by spiritual
beings.... It seems to me that it may be proved to demonstration
that the celestial bodies are guided by some intelligence, either
directly by God, or by the mediation of angels. But the latter
opinion seems to be far more consonant with the order of things
asserted by St. Denys to be without exception, that everything on
earth is, as a rule, governed by God through intermediary
agencies.(607)
And now let the reader recall what the Pagans say of this. All the lassical authors and philosophers who have treated the subject, repeat ith Hermes Trismegistus, that the seven Rectors--the planets including the un--were the associates, or the co-workers, of the Unknown All represented y the Demiurgos--commissioned to contain the Cosmos--our planetary orld--within seven circles. Plutarch shows them representing "the circle f the celestial worlds." Again, Denys of Thracia and the learned Clemens f Alexandria both describe the Rectors as being shown in the Egyptian emples in the shape of mysterious wheels or spheres always in motion, hich made the Initiates affirm that the problem of perpetual motion had een solved by the celestial wheels in the Initiation Adyta.(608) This octrine of Hermes was that of Pythagoras and of Orpheus before him. It is alled by Proclus "the God-given" doctrine. Iamblichus speaks of it with he greatest reverence. Philostratus tells his readers that the whole idereal court of the Babylonian heaven was represented in the temples
In globes made of sapphires and supporting the golden images of
their respective gods.
The temples of Persia were especially famous for these representations. If
Cedrenus can be credited
The Emperor Heraclius on his entry into the city of Bazaeum was
struck with admiration and wonder before the immense machine
fabricated for King Chosroes, which represented the night-sky with
the planets and all their revolutions, with the angels presiding
over them.(609)
It was on such "spheres" that Pythagoras studied Astronomy in the _adyta rcana_ of the temples to which he had access. And it was there on his
Initiation, that the eternal rotation of those spheres--"the mysterious heels" as they are called by Clemens and Denys, and which Plutarch calls
"world-wheels"--demonstrated to him the verity of what had been divulged to im, namely, the heliocentric system, the great secret of the Adyta. All he discoveries of modern astronomy, like all the secrets that can be evealed to it in future ages, were contained in the secret observatories nd Initiation Halls of the temples of old India and Egypt. It is in them hat the Chaldęan made his calculations, revealing to the world of the rofane no more than it was fit to receive.
We may, and shall be told, no doubt, that Uranus was unknown to the ncients, and that they were forced to reckon the sun amongst the planets nd as their chief. How does anyone know? Uranus is a modern name; but one hing is certain: the ancients had a planet, "a mystery planet," that they ever named and that the highest Astronomus, the Hierophant, alone could
"confabulate with." But this seventh planet was not the sun, but the idden Divine Hierophant, who was said to have a crown, and to embrace ithin its wheel "seventy-seven smaller wheels." In the archaic secret ystem of the Hindus, the sun is the visible Logos "Sūrya"; over him there s another, the divine or heavenly Man--who, after having established the ystem of the world of matter on the archetype of the Unseen Universe, or
Macrocosm, conducted during the Mysteries the heavenly Rāsa Mandala; when e was said:
To give with his right foot the impulse to _Tyam_ or Bhūmi [Earth]
that makes her rotate in a double revolution.
What says Hermes again? When explaining Egyptian Cosmology he exclaims:
Listen, O my son ... the Power has also formed seven agents, who
contain within their circles the material world, and whose action
is called destiny.... When all became subject to man, the Seven,
willing to favour human intelligence, communicated to him their
powers. But as soon as man knew their true essence and his own
nature, he desired to penetrate within and beyond the circles and
thus break their circumference by usurping the power of him who
has dominion over the Fire [Sun] itself; after which, having
robbed one of the Wheels of the Sun of the sacred fire, he fell
into slavery.(610)
It is _not_ Prometheus who is meant here. Prometheus is a symbol and a ersonification of the whole of mankind in relation to an event which ccurred during its childhood, so to say--the "Baptism by Fire"--which is a ystery within the great Promethean Mystery, one that may be at present entioned only in its broad general features. By reason of the xtraordinary growth of human intellect and the development in our age of he fifth principle (Manas) in man, its rapid progress has paralysed piritual perceptions. It is at the expense of wisdom that intellect enerally lives, and mankind is quite unprepared in its present condition o comprehend the awful drama of human disobedience to the laws of Nature nd the subsequent Fall, as a result. It can only be hinted at in its lace.
SECTION XXXVII. THE SOULS OF THE STARS--UNIVERSAL HELIOLATRY.
In order to show that the Ancients have never "mistaken stars for Gods," r Angels and the sun for the highest Gods and God, but have worshipped nly the Spirit of all, and have reverenced the minor Gods supposed to eside in the sun and planets--the difference between these two worships as to be pointed out. Saturn, "the Father of Gods" must not be confused ith his namesake--the planet of the same name with its eight moons and hree rings. The two--though in one sense identical, as are, for instance, hysical man and his soul--must be separated in the question of worship.
This has to be done the more carefully in the case of the seven planets nd their Spirits, as the whole formation of the universe is attributed to hem in the Secret Teachings. The same difference has to be shown again etween the stars of the Great Bear, the Riksha and the Chitra
Shikhandina, "the bright-crested," and the Rishis--the mortal Sages who ppeared on earth during the Satya Yuga. If all of these have been so far losely united in the visions of the seers of every age--the bible seers ncluded--there must have been a reason for it. Nor need one go back so far s into the periods of "superstition" and "unscientific fancies" to find reat men in our epoch sharing in them. It is well known that Kepler, the minent astronomer, in common with many other great men who believed that he heavenly bodies ruled favourably or adversely the fates of men and ations--fully credited besides this the fact that all heavenly bodies, ven our own earth, are endowed with living and thinking souls.
Le Couturier's opinion is worthy of notice in this relation:
We are too inclined to criticize unsparingly everything concerning
astrology and its ideas; nevertheless our criticism, to be one,
ought at least to know, lest it should be proved aimless, what
those ideas in truth are. And when among the men we thus
criticize, we find such names as those of Regiomontanus, Tycho
Brahe, Kepler, etc., there is reason why we should be careful.
Kepler was an astrologer by profession, and became an astronomer
in consequence. He was earning his livelihood by genethliac
figures, which, indicating the state of the heavens at the moment
of the birth of individuals, were a means to which everyone
resorted for horoscopes. That great man was a believer in the
principles of astrology, without accepting all its foolish
results.(611)
But astrology is nevertheless proclaimed as a sinful science, and together ith Occultism is tabooed by the Churches. It is very doubtful, however, hether mystic "star worship" can be so easily laughed down as people magine--at any rate by Christians. The hosts of Angels, Cherubs and
Planetary Archangels are identical with the minor Gods of the Pagans. As o their "great Gods," if Mars has been shown--on the admission of even the nemies of the Pagan astrologers--to have been regarded by the latter imply as the personified strength of the one highest impersonal Deity,
Mercury being personified as its omniscience, Jupiter as its omnipotency, nd so on, then the "superstition" of the Pagan has indeed become the
"religion" of the masses of the civilized nations. For with the latter,
Jehovah is the synthesis of the seven Elohim, the eternal centre of all hose attributes and forces, the Alei of the Aleim, and the Adonai of the
Adonim. And if with them Mars is now called St. Michael, the "_strength_ f God," Mercury Gabriel, the "omniscience and fortitude of the Lord," and
Raphael "the blessing or healing power of God," this is simply a change of ames, the characters behind the masks remaining the same.
The Dalai-lama's mitre has seven ridges in honour of the seven chief
Dhyāni Buddhas. In the funeral ritual of the Egyptians the defunct is made o exclaim:
Salutation to you, O Princes, who stand in the presence of
Osiris.... Send me the grace to have my sins destroyed, as you
have done for the seven spirits who follow their Lord!(612)
Brahmā's head is ornamented with seven rays, and he is followed by the even Rishis, in the seven Svargas. China has her seven Pagodas; the
Greeks had their seven Cyclopes, seven Demiurgi, and the Mystery Gods, the even Kabiri, whose chief was Jupiter-Saturn, and with the Jews, Jehovah.
Now the latter Deity has become chief of all, the highest and the one God, nd his old place is taken by Mikael (Michael). He is the "Chief of the
Host" (_tsaba_); the "Archistrategus of the Lord's army"; the "Conqueror f the Devil"--Victor diaboli--and the "Archisatrap of the Sacred Militia," e who slew the "Great Dragon." Unfortunately astrology and symbology, aving no inducement to veil old things with new masks, have preserved the eal name of Mikael--"that was Jehovah"--Mikael being the Angel of the face f the Lord,(613) "the guardian of the planets," and the living image of
God. He represents the Deity in his visits to earth, for as it is well xpressed in Hebrew, he is one {~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER YOD~}{~HEBREW LETTER KAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}, who is as God, or who is like unto
God. It is he who cast out the serpent.(614)
Mikael, being the regent of the planet Saturn, is--_Saturn_.(615) His ystery-name is Sabbathiel, because he presides over the Jewish Sabbath, s also over the astrological Saturday. Once identified, the reputation of he Christian conqueror of the devil is in still greater danger from urther identifications. Biblical angels are called Malachim, the essengers between God (or rather _the gods_) and men. In Hebrew {~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER KAF~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}{~HEBREW LETTER LAMED~}
Malach, is also "a King," and Malech or Melech was likewise Moloch, or gain Saturn, the Seb of Egypt, to whom _Dies Saturni_, or the Sabbath, as dedicated. The Sabęans separated and distinguished the planet Saturn rom its God far more than the Roman Catholics do their angels from their tars; and the Kabalists make of the Archangel Mikael the patron of the eventh work of magic.
In theological symbolism ... Jupiter [the Sun] is the risen and
glorious Saviour, and Saturn, God the Father, or the Jehovah of
Moses,(616)
ays Éliphas Lévi, who _ought_ to know. Jehovah and the Saviour, Saturn nd Jupiter, being thus one, and Mikael being called the living image of
God, it does seem dangerous for the Church to call Saturn, Satan--_le dieu auvais_. However, Rome is strong in casuistry and will get out of this as he got out of every other identification, with glory to herself and to er own full satisfaction. Nevertheless all her dogmas and rituals seem ike so many pages torn out from the history of Occultism, and then istorted. The extremely thin partition that separates the Kabalistic and
Chaldęan Theogony from the Roman Catholic Angelology and Theodicy is now onfessed by at least one Roman Catholic writer. One can hardly believe ne's eyes in finding the following (the passages italicized by us should e carefully noticed):
One of the most characteristic features of our Holy Scriptures is
_the calculated discretion used in the enunciation of the
mysteries less directly useful to salvation_.... Thus, beyond
those "myriads of myriads" of angelic creatures just noticed(617)
and all these prudently elementary divisions, there are certainly
many others, whose very names have not yet reached us.(618) "For,"
excellently says St. John Chrysostom, "there are doubtless, (_sine
dubio_,) many other _Virtues_ [celestial beings] whose
denominations we are yet far from knowing.... The nine orders are
not by any means the only populations in heaven, where, on the
contrary, _are to be found numberless tribes_ of inhabitants
infinitely varied, and of which it would be impossible _to give
the slightest idea_ through human tongue.... Paul, who _had
learned their names_, reveals to us their existence." (_De
Incomprehensibili Natura Dei_, Bk. IV.)....
It would thus amount _to a gross mistake to see merely errors_ in
the Angelology of the Kabalists and Gnostics, so severely treated
by the Apostle of the Gentiles, for his imposing censure reached
_only their exaggerations and vicious interpretations_, and still
more, _the application of those noble_ titles _to the miserable
personalities of demoniacal usurpers_.(619) Often nothing so
resemble each other as _the language of the judges and that of the
convicts_ [of saints and Occultists]. One has to penetrate deeply
into this _dual_ study [of creed and profession] and what is still
better, _to trust blindly to the authority of the tribunal_ [the
Church of Rome, of course] to enable oneself to seize precisely
the point of the error. The _Gnosis_ condemned by St. Paul
remains, nevertheless, for him as for Plato the supreme knowledge
of all truths, and of the _Being par excellence_, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH DASIA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}
(_Republ._ Bk. VI). The Ideas, _types_, {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} of the Greek
philosopher, the _Intelligences_ of Pythagoras, the _aeons_ or
_emanations_, the occasion of so much reproach to the first
heretics, the Logos or Word, Chief of these Intelligences, the
_Demiurgos_, the architect of the world under his father's
direction [of the Pagans], the unknown God, the _En-soph_, or the
_It of the Infinite_ [of the Kabalists], the angelical
periods,(620) the _seven_ spirits, the Depths of _Ahriman_, the
World's _Rectors_, the _Archontes_ of the air, the _God of this
world_, the _pleroma_ of the intelligences, down to _Metatron_ the
angel of the Jews, _all this is found word for word, as so many
truths, in the works of our greatest doctors, and in St.
Paul_.(621)
If an Occultist, eager to charge the Church with a numberless series of lagiarisms were to write the above, could he have written more strongly?
And have we, or have we not, the right, after such a complete confession, o reverse the tables and to say of Roman Catholics and others what is aid of the Gnostics and Occultists. "They used our expressions and ejected our doctrines." For it is not the "promoters of the false
Gnosis"--who had all those expressions from their archaic ancestors--who elped themselves to Christian expressions, but verily the Christian
Fathers and Theologians, who helped themselves to our nest, and have tried ver since to soil it.
The words above quoted will explain much to those who are searching for ruth and for truth only. They will show the origin of certain rites in he Church inexplicable hitherto to the simple-minded, and will give the eason why such words as "Our Lord the Sun" were used in prayer by
Christians up to the fifth and even sixth century of our era, and embodied n the Liturgy, until altered into "Our Lord, the God." Let us remember hat the early Christians painted Christ on the walls of their ubterranean necropolis, as a shepherd in the guise of, and invested with ll the attributes of Apollo, driving away the wolf, Fenris, who seeks to evour the Sun and his Satellites.
SECTION XXXVIII. ASTROLOGY AND ASTROLATRY.
The books of Hermes Trismegistus contain the exoteric meaning, still eiled for all but the Occultist, of the Astrology and Astrolatry of the
Khaldi. The two subjects are closely connected. Astrolatry, or the doration of the heavenly host, is the natural result of only half- evealed Astrology, whose Adepts carefully concealed from the non- nitiated masses its Occult principles and the wisdom imparted to them by he Regents of the Planets--the "Angels." Hence, divine Astrology for the
Initiates; superstitious Astrolatry for the profane. St. Justin asserts t:
From the first invention of the hieroglyphics it was not the
vulgar, but the distinguished and select men who became initiated
in the secrecy of the temples into the science of every kind of
Astrology--even into its most abject kind: that Astrology which
later on found itself prostituted in the public thoroughfares.
There was a vast difference between the Sacred Science taught by Petosiris nd Necepso--the first Astrologers mentioned in the Egyptian manuscripts, elieved to have lived during the reign of Ramses II. (Sesostris)(622)--and he miserable charlatanry of the quacks called Chaldęans, who degraded the
Divine Knowledge under the last Emperors of Rome. Indeed, one may fairly escribe the two as the "high ceremonial Astrology" and "astrological
Astrolatry." The first depended on the knowledge by the Initiates of those
(to us) immaterial Forces or Spiritual Entities that affect matter and uide it. Called by the ancient Philosophers the Archontes and the
Cosmocratores, they were the types or paradigms on the higher planes of he lower and more material beings on the scale of evolution, whom we call
Elementals and Nature-Spirits, to whom the Sabęans bowed and whom they orshipped, without suspecting the essential difference. Hence the latter ind when not a mere pretence, degenerated but too often into Black Magic.
It was the favourite form of popular or exoteric Astrology, entirely gnorant of the apotelesmatic principles of the primitive Science, the octrines of which were imparted only at Initiation. Thus, while the real
Hierophants soared like Demi-Gods to the very summit of spiritual nowledge, the _hoi polloi_ among the Sabęans crouched, steeped in uperstition--ten millenniums back, as they do now--in the cold and lethal hadow of the valleys of matter. Sidereal influence is dual. There is the hysical and physiological influence, that of exotericism; and the high piritual, intellectual, and moral influence, imparted by the knowledge of he planetary Gods. Bailly, speaking with only an imperfect knowledge of he former, called Astrology, so far back as the eighteenth century, "The ery foolish mother of a very wise daughter"--Astronomy. On the other hand,
Arago, a luminary of the nineteenth century, supports the reality of the idereal influence of the Sun, Moon and Planets. He asks:
Where do we find lunar influences refuted by arguments that
science would dare to avow?
But even Bailly, having, as he thought, put down Astrology as publicly ractised, dares not do the same with the real Astrology. He says:
Judiciary Astrology was at its origin the result of a profound
system, the work of an enlightened nation that would wander too
far into the mysteries of God and Nature.
A Scientist of a more recent date, a member of the Institute of France, nd a professor of History, Ph. Lebas, discovers (unconsciously to imself) the very root of Astrology in his able article on the subject in he _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de France_. He well understands, he tells is readers, that the adhesion to that Science of such a number of highly ntellectual men should be in itself a sufficient motive for believing hat all Astrology is not folly:
While proclaiming in politics the sovereignty of the people and of
public opinion can we admit, as heretofore, that mankind allowed
itself to be radically deceived in this only: that an absolute and
gross absurdity reigned in the minds of whole nations for so many
centuries without being based on anything save--on one hand human
imbecility, and on the other charlatanry? How for fifty centuries
and more can most men have been either dupes or knaves? ... Even
though we may find it impossible to decide between and separate
the realities of Astrology from the elements of invention and
empty dreaming in it, ... let us, nevertheless, repeat with
Bossuet and all modern philosophers, that "nothing that has been
dominant could be absolutely false." Is it not true, at all
events, that there is a physical reaction on one another among the
planets? Is it not again true, that the planets have an influence
on the atmosphere, and consequently at any rate a mediate action
on vegetation and animals? Has not modern science demonstrated now
these two points beyond any doubt?... Is it any less true that
human liberty of action is not absolute: that all is bound, that
all weighs, planets as the rest, on each individual will; that
Providence [_or Karma_] acts on us and directs men through those
relations that it has established between them and the visible
objects and the whole universe?... Astrolatry, in its essence, is
nothing but that; we are bound to recognise that an instinct
superior to the age they lived in guided the efforts of the
ancient Magi. As to the materialism and annihilation of human
moral freedom with which Bailly charges their theory (Astrology),
the reprobate has no sense whatever. All the great astrologers
admitted, without one single exception, that man could react
against the influence of the stars. This principle is established
in the Ptolemoeian _Tetrabiblos_, the true astrological Scriptures,
in chapters ii. and iii. of book i.(623)
Thomas Aquinas had corroborated Lebas in anticipation; he says:
The celestial bodies are _the cause of all that happens in this
sublunary world_, they act indirectly on human actions; but not
all the effects produced by them are unavoidable.(624)
The Occultists and Theosophists are the first to confess that there is hite and black Astrology. Nevertheless, Astrology has to be studied in oth aspects by those who wish to become proficient in it; and the good or ad results obtained do not depend upon the principles, which are the same n both kinds, but in the Astrologer himself. Thus Pythagoras, who stablished the whole Copernican system by the Books of Hermes 2,000 years efore Galileo's predecessor was born, found and studied in them the whole
Science of divine Theogony, of the communication with, and the evocation f, the world's Rectors--the Princes of the "Principalities" of St.
Paul--the nativity of each Planet and of the Universe itself, the formulę f incantations and the consecration of each portion of the human body to he respective Zodiacal sign corresponding to it. All this cannot be egarded as childish and absurd--still less "devilish"--save by those who re, and wish to remain, tyros in the Philosophy of the Occult Sciences.
No true thinker--no one who recognises the presence of a common bond etween man and visible, as well as invisible, Nature--would see in the old elics of Archaic Wisdom--such as the _Petemenoph Papyrus_, for nstance--"childish nonsense and absurdity," as many Academicians and
Scientists have done. But upon finding in such ancient documents the pplication of the Hermetic rules and laws, such as
The consecration of one's hair to the celestial Nile; of the left
temple to the living Spirit in the sun, and in the right one to
the spirit of Ammon,
e will endeavour to study and comprehend better the "laws of orrespondences." Nor will he disbelieve in the antiquity of Astrology on he plea that some Orientalists have thought fit to declare that the
Zodiac was not very ancient, being only the invention of the Greeks of the
Macedonian period. For this statement, besides having been shown to be ntirely erroneous by a number of other reasons, may be entirely disproved y facts relating to the latest discoveries in Egypt, and by the more ccurate readings of hieroglyphics and inscriptions of the earliest ynasties. The published polemics on the contents of the so-called "Magic"
Papyri of the Anastasi collection indicate the antiquity of the Zodiac. As he _Lettres ą Lettrone_ say: The papyri discourse at length upon the four ases or
Foundations of the world, the identity of which it is impossible,
according to Champollion, to mistake, as one is forced to
recognise in them the Pillars of the World of St. Paul. It is they
who are invoked with the gods of all the celestial zones, quite
analogous, once more, to the _Spiritualia nequitię in cęlestibus_
of the same Apostle.(625)
That invocation was made in the proper terms ... of the formula,
reproduced far too faithfully by Jamblichus for it to be possible
to refuse him any longer the merit of having transmitted to
posterity the ancient and primitive spirit of the Egyptian
Astrologers.(626)
As Letronne had tried to prove that all the genuine Egyptian Zodiacs had een manufactured during the Roman period, the Sensaos mummy is brought orward to show that:
All the Zodiacal monuments in Egypt were chiefly astronomical.
Royal tombs and funereal rituals are so many tables of
constellations and of their influences for all the hours of every
month.
Thus the genethliac tables themselves prove that they are far
older than the period assigned to their origin; all the Zodiacs of
the sarcophagi of later epochs being simple reminiscences of the
Zodiacs belonging to the mythological [archaic] period.
Primitive Astrology was as far above modern judiciary Astrology, so- alled, as the guides (the Planets and Zodiacal signs) are above the lamp- osts. Berosus shows the sidereal sovereignty of Bel and Mylitta (Sun and
Moon), and only "the twelve lords of the Zodiacal Gods," the "thirty-six
Gods Counsellors" and the "twenty-four Stars, judges of this world," which upport and guide the Universe (our solar system), watch over mortals and eveal to mankind its fate and their own decrees. Judiciary Astrology as t is now known, is correctly denominated by the Latin Church the
Materialistic and pantheistic prophesying by the objective planet
itself, independently of its Rector [the Mlac of the Jews, the
ministers of the Eternal commissioned by him to announce his will
to mortals]; the ascension or conjunction of the planet at the
moment of the birth of an individual deciding his fortune and the
moment and mode of his death.(627)
Every student of Occultism knows that the heavenly bodies are closely elated during each Manvantara with the mankind of that special cycle; and here are some who believe that each great character born during that eriod has--as every other mortal has, only in a far stronger degree--his estiny outlined within his proper constellation or star, traced as a elf-prophecy, an anticipated autobiography, by the indwelling Spirit of hat particular star. The human Monad in its first beginning is that
Spirit, or the Soul of that star (Planet) itself. As our Sun radiates its ight and beams on every body in space within the boundaries of its ystem, so the Regent of every Planet-star, the Parent-monad, shoots out rom itself the Monad of every "pilgrim" Soul born under its house within ts own group. The Regents are esoterically seven, whether in the
Sephiroth, the "Angels of the Presence," the Rishis, or the Amshaspends.
"The One is no number" is said in all the esoteric works.
From the Kasdim and Gazzim (Astrologers) the noble primitive science assed to the Khartumim Asaphim (or Theologians) and the Hakamim (or cientists, the Magicians of the lower class), and from these to the Jews uring their captivity. The Books of Moses had been buried in oblivion for enturies, and when re-discovered by Hilkiah had lost their true sense for he people of Israel. Primitive Occult Astrology was on the decline when
Daniel, the last of the Jewish Initiates of the old school, became the hief of the Magi and Astrologers of Chaldęa. In those days even Egypt, ho had her wisdom from the same source as Babylon, had degenerated from er former grandeur, and her glory had begun to fade out. Still, the cience of old had left her eternal imprint on the world, and the seven reat Primitive Gods reigned for ever in the Astrology and in the division f time of every nation upon the face of the earth. The names of the days f our (Christian) week are those of the Gods of the Chaldęans, who ranslated them from those of the Āryans; the uniformity of these ntediluvian names in every nation, from the Goths back to the Indians, ould remain inexplicable, as Sir W. Jones thought, had not the riddle een explained to us by the invitation made by the Chaldęan oracles, ecorded by Porphyry and quoted by Eusebius:
To carry those names first to the Egyptian and Phoenician colonies,
then to the Greeks, with the express recommendation that each God
should be invoked only on that day that had been called by his
name....
Thus Apollo says in those oracles: "I must be invoked on the day
of the _sun_; Mercury after his directions, then Chronos [Saturn],
then Venus, and do not fail to call seven times each of those
gods."(628)
This is slightly erroneous. Greece did not get her astrological nstruction from Egypt or from Chaldęa, but direct from Orpheus, as Lucian ells us.(629) It was Orpheus, as he says, who imparted the Indian
Sciences to nearly all the great monarchs of antiquity; and it was they, he ancient kings favoured by the Planetary Gods, who recorded the rinciples of Astrology--as did Ptolemus, for instance. Thus Lucian writes:
The Boeotian Tiresias acquired the greatest reputation in the art
of predicting futurity.... In those days divination was not as
slightly treated as it is now; and nothing was ever undertaken
without previous consultation with diviners, whose oracles were
all directed by astrology.... At Delphos the virgin commissioned
to announce futurity was the symbol of the Heavenly Virgin, ...
and Our Lady.
On the sarcophagus of an Egyptian Pharaoh, Neith, mother of Ra, the heifer hat brings forth the Sun, her body spangled with stars, and wearing the olar and lunar discs, is equally referred to as the "Heavenly Virgin" and
"Our Lady of the Starry Vault."
Modern judiciary Astrology in its present form began only during the time f Diodorus, as he apprises the world.(630) But Chaldęan Astrology was elieved in by most of the great men in History, such as Cęsar, Pliny,
Cicero--whose best friends, Nigidius Figulus and Lucius Tarrutius, were hemselves Astrologers, the former being famous as a prophet. Marcus
Antonius never travelled without an Astrologer recommended to him by
Cleopatra. Augustus, when ascending the throne, had his horoscope drawn by
Theagenes. Tiberius discovered pretenders to his throne by means of
Astrology and divination. Vitellius dared not exile the Chaldęans, as they ad announced the day of their banishment as that of his death. Vespasian onsulted them daily; Domitian would not move without being advised by the rophets; Adrian was a learned Astrologer himself; and all of them, ending ith Julian (called the _Apostate_ because he would not become one), elieved in, and addressed their prayers to, the Planetary "Gods." The
Emperor Adrian, moreover, "predicted from the January calends up to
December 31st, every event that happened to him daily." Under the wisest mperors Rome had a School of Astrology, wherein were secretly taught the ccult influences of the Sun, Moon, and Saturn.(631) Judiciary Astrology s used to this day by the Kabalists; and Éliphas Lévi, the modern French
Magus, teaches its rudiments in his _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_.
But the key to ceremonial or ritualistic Astrology, with the teraphim and he urim and thummim of Magic, is lost to Europe. Hence our century of
Materialism shrugs its shoulders and sees in Astrology--a pretender.
Not all scientists scoff at it, however, and one may rejoice in reading in he _Musée des Sciences_(632) the suggestive and fair remarks made by Le
Couturier, a man of science of no mean reputation. He thinks it curious to otice that while the bold speculations of Democritus are found vindicated y Dalton,
The reveries of the alchemists are also on their way to a certain
rehabilitation. They receive renewed life from the minute
investigations of their successors, the chemists; a very
remarkable thing indeed is to see how much modern discoveries have
served to vindicate, of late, the theories of the Middle Ages from
the charge of absurdity laid at their door. Thus, if, as
demonstrated by Col. Sabine, the direction of a piece of steel,
hung a few feet above the soil, may be influenced by the position
of the moon, whose body is at a distance of 240,000 miles from our
planet, who then could accuse of extravagance the belief of the
ancient astrologers [or the modern, either] in the influence of
the stars on human destiny.(633)
SECTION XXXIX. CYCLES AND AVATARAS.
We have already drawn attention to the facts that the record of the life f a World-Saviour is emblematical, and must be read by its mystic eaning, and that the figures 432 have a cosmic evolutionary significance.
We find these two facts throwing light on the origin of the exoteric
Christian religion, and clearing away much of the obscurity surrounding ts beginnings. For is it not clear that the names and characters in the
Synoptical Gospels and in that of St. John are not historical? Is it not vident that the compilers of the life of Christ, desirous to show that he birth of their Master was a cosmic, astronomical, and divinely- reördained event, attempted to coördinate the same with the end of the ecret cycle, 4,320? When facts are collated this answers to them as ittle as does the other cycle of "thirty-three solar years, seven months, nd seven days," which has also been brought forward as supporting the ame claim, the soli-lunar cycle in which the Sun gains on the Moon one olar year. The combination of the three figures, 4, 3, 2, with cyphers ccording to the cycle and Manvantara concerned, was, and is, preėminently
Hindu. It will remain a secret even though several of its significant eatures are revealed. It relates, for instance, to the Pralaya of the aces in their periodical dissolution, before which events a special
Avatāra has always to descend and incarnate on earth. These figures were dopted by all the older nations, such as those of Egypt and Chaldęa, and efore them were current among the Atlanteans. Evidently some of the more earned among the early Church Fathers who had dabbled, whilst Pagans, in emple secrets, knew them to relate to the Avatāric or Messianic mystery, nd tried to apply this cycle to the birth of their Messiah; they failed ecause the figures relate to the respective ends of the Root-Races and ot to any individual. In their badly-directed efforts, moreover, an error f five years occurred. Is it possible, if their claims as to the mportance and universality of the event were correct, that such a vital istake should have been allowed to creep into a chronological computation reördained and traced in the heavens by the finger of God? Again, what ere the Pagan and even Jewish Initiates doing, if this claim as to Jesus e correct? Could they, the custodians of the key to the secret cycles and
Avatāras, the heirs of all the Āryan, Egyptian, and Chaldęan wisdom, have ailed to recognise their great "God-Incarnate," one with Jehovah,(634) heir Saviour of the latter days, him whom all the nations of Asia still xpect as their Kalki Avatāra, Maitreya Buddha, Sosiosh, Messiah, etc.?
The simple secret is this: There are cycles within greater cycles, which re all contained in the one Kalpa of 4,320,000 years. It is at the end of his cycle that the Kalki Avatāra is expected--the Avatāra Whose name and haracteristics are secret, Who will come forth from Shamballa, the "City f Gods," which is in the West for some nations, in the East for others, n the North or South for yet others. And this is the reason why, from the
Indian Rishi to Virgil, and from Zoroaster down to the latest Sibyl, all ave, since the beginning of the Fifth Race, prophesied, sung, and romised the cyclic return of the Virgin--Virgo, the constellation--and the irth of a divine child who should bring back to our earth the Golden Age.
No one, however fanatical, would have sufficient hardihood to maintain hat the Christian era has ever been a return to the Golden Age--Virgo aving actually entered into Libra since then. Let us trace as briefly as ossible the Christian traditions to their true origin.
First of all, they discover in a few lines from Virgil a direct prophecy f the birth of Christ. Yet it is impossible to detect in this prophecy ny feature of the present age. It is in the famous fourth Eclogue in hich, half a century before our era, Pollio is made to ask the Muses of
Sicily to sing to him about greater events.
The last era of Cumęan song is now arrived and the grand series of
ages [that series which recurs again and again in the course of
our mundane revolution] begins afresh. Now the Virgin Astręa
returns, and the reign of Saturn recommences. Now a new progeny
_descends from the celestial realms_. Do thou, chaste Lucina,
smile propitious to the infant Boy who will bring to a close the
present Age of Iron,(635) and introduce throughout the whole world
the Age of Gold.... He shall share the life of Gods and shall see
heroes mingled in society with Gods, himself be seen by them and
all the peaceful world.... Then shall the herds no longer dread
the huge lion, the serpent also shall die: and the poison's
deceptive plant shall perish. Come then, dear child of the Gods,
great descendant of Jupiter!... The time is near. See, the world
is shaken with its globe saluting thee: the earth, the regions of
the sea, and the heavens sublime.(636)
It is in these few lines, called the "Sibylline prophecy about the coming f Christ," that his followers now see a direct foretelling of the event.
Now who will presume to maintain that either at the birth of Jesus or ince the establishment of the so-called Christian religion, any portion f the above-quoted sentences can be shown as prophetic? Has the "last ge"--the Age of Iron, or Kali Yuga--closed since then? Quite the reverse, ince it is shown to be in full sway just now, not only because the Hindus se the name, but by universal personal experience. Where is that "new ace that has descended from the celestial realms"? Was it the race that merged from Paganism into Christianity? Or is it our present race, with ations ever red-hot for fight, jealous and envious, ready to pounce upon ach other, showing mutual hatred that would put to blush cats and dogs, ver lying and deceiving one another? Is it this age of ours that is the romised "Golden Age"--in which neither the venom of the serpent nor of any lant is any longer lethal, and in which we are all secure under the mild way of God-chosen sovereigns? The wildest fancy of an opium-eater could ardly suggest a more inappropriate description, if it is to be applied to ur age or to any age since the year one of our era. What of the mutual laughter of sects, of Christians by Pagans, and of Pagans and Heretics by
Christians; the horrors of the Middle Ages and of the Inquisition;
Napoleon, and since his day, an "armed peace" at best--at the worst, orrents of blood, shed for supremacy over acres of land, and a handful of eathen: millions of soldiers under arms, ready for battle; a diplomatic ody playing at Cains and Judases; and instead of the "mild sway of a ivine sovereign" the universal, though unrecognised, sway of Cęsarism, of
"might" in lieu of "right," and the breeding therefrom of anarchists, ocialists, pétroleuses, and destroyers of every description?
The Sibylline prophecy and Virgil's inspirational poetry remain nfulfilled in every point, as we see.
The fields are yellow with soft ears of corn;
ut so they were before our era:
The blushing grapes shall hang from the rude brambles, and dewy
honey shall [or may] distil from the rugged oak;
ut they have not thus done, so far. We must look for another nterpretation. What is it? The Sibylline Prophetess spoke, as thousands f other Prophets and Seers have spoken, though even the few such records hat have survived are rejected by Christian and infidel, and their nterpretations are only allowed and accepted among the Initiated. The
Sibyl alluded to cycles in general and to the great cycle especially. Let s remember how the Purānas corroborate the above, among others the
_Vishnu Purāna_:
When the practices taught by the Vedas, and the Institutes of Law
shall have nearly ceased, and the close of the Kali Yuga [the
"Iron Age" of Virgil] shall be nigh, an aspect of that divine
Being who exists of his own spiritual nature in the character of
Brahmā and even is the beginning and the end [_Alpha and Omega_],
... shall descend upon earth: he will be born in the family of
Vishnuyashas, an eminent Brāhman of Shamballah ... endowed with
the eight superhuman powers. By his irresistible might he will
destroy ... all whose minds are devoted to iniquity. He will then
reėstablish righteousness upon earth; and the minds of those who
live at the end of the [Kali] Age shall be awakened, and shall be
as pellucid as crystal.(637) The men who are thus changed by
virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds of human beings
[the Shistha, the survivors of the future cataclysm], and shall
give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita [or
Satya] Yuga [the age of purity, or the "Golden Age"]. For it is
said: "When the sun and moon and Tishya [asterisms] and the planet
Jupiter are in one mansion the Krita Age [the Golden] shall
return."(638)
The astronomical cycles of the Hindus--those taught publicly--have been ufficiently well understood, but the esoteric meaning thereof, in its pplication to transcendental subjects connected with them, has ever emained a dead-letter. The number of cycles was enormous; it ranged from he Mahā Yuga cycle of 4,320,000 years down to the small septenary and uinquennial cycles, the latter being composed of the five years called espectively the Samvatsara, Parivatsara, Idvatsara, Anuvatsara, and
Vatsara, each having secret attributes or qualities attached to them.
Vriddhagarga gives these in a treatise, now the property of a Trans-
Himālayan Matham (or temple); and describes the relation between this uinquennial and the Brihaspati cycle, based on the conjunction of the Sun nd Moon every sixtieth year: a cycle as mysterious--for national events in eneral and those of the Āryan Hindu nation especially--as it is important.
SECTION XL. SECRET CYCLES.
The former five-year cycle comprehends sixty solar-sidereal months of 1800 ays, sixty-one solar months (or 1830 days); sixty-two lunar months (or
1860 lunations), and sixty-seven lunar-asterismal months (or 1809 such ays).
In his _Kāla Sankalita_, Col. Warren very properly regards these years as ycles; this they are, for each year has its own special importance as aving some bearing upon, and connection with, specified events in ndividual horoscopes. He writes that in the cycle of sixty there
Are contained five cycles of twelve years, each supposed equal to
one year of the planet (Brihaspati, or Jupiter) ... I mention this
cycle because I found it mentioned in some books, but I know of no
nation or tribe that reckons time after that account.(639)
The ignorance is very natural, since Col. Warren could know nothing of the ecret cycles and their meanings. He adds:
The names of the five cycles or Yugas are: ... (1) Samvatsara, (2)
Parivatsara, (3) Idvatsara, (4) Anuvatsara, (5) Udravatsara.
The learned Colonel might, however, have assured himself that there were
"other nations" which had the same secret cycle, if he had but remembered hat the Romans also had their _lustrum_ of five years (from the Hindus ndeniably) which represented the same period if multiplied by 12.(640)
Near Benares there are still the relics of all these cycle-records, and of stronomical instruments cut out of solid rock, the everlasting records of
Archaic Initiation, called by Sir W. Jones (as suggested by the prudent
Brāhmans who surrounded him) old "back records" or reckonings. But in
Stonehenge they exist to this day. Higgins says that Waltire found the arrows of tumuli surrounding this giant-temple represented accurately the ituation and magnitude of the fixed stars, forming a complete orrery or lanisphere. As Colebrooke found out, it is the cycle of the _Vedas_, ecorded in the _Jyotisha_, one of the Vedāngas, a treatise on Astronomy, hich is the basis of calculation for all other cycles, larger or maller;(641) and the _Vedas_ were written in characters, archaic though hey be, long after those natural observations, made by the aid of their igantic mathematical and astronomical instruments, had been recorded by he men of the Third Race, who had received their instruction from the
Dhyān Chohans. Maurice speaks truly when he observes that all such
Circular stone monuments were intended as durable symbols of
astronomical cycles by a race who, not having, or for political
reasons, forbidding the use of letters, had no other permanent
method of instructing their disciples or handing down their
knowledge to posterity.
He errs only in the last idea. It was to conceal their knowledge from rofane posterity, leaving it as an heirloom only to the Initiates, that uch monuments, at once rock observatories and astronomical treatises, ere cut out.
It is no news that as the Hindus divided the earth into seven zones, so he more western peoples--Chaldęans, Phoenicians, and even the Jews, who got heir learning either directly or indirectly from the Brāhmans--made all heir secret and sacred numerations by 6 and 12, though using the number 7 henever this would not lend itself to handling. Thus the numerical base f 6, the exoteric figure given by Ārya Bhatta, was made good use of. From he first secret cycle of 600--the Naros, transformed successively into
60,000 and 60 and 6, and, with other noughts added into other secret ycles--down to the smallest, an Archęologist and Mathematician can easily ind it repeated in every country, known to every nation. Hence the globe as divided into 60 degrees, which, multiplied by 60, became 3,600 the
"great year." Hence also the hour with its 60 minutes of 60 seconds each.
The Asiatic people count a cycle of 60 years also, after which comes the ucky seventh decad, and the Chinese have their small cycle of 60 days, he Jews of 6 days, the Greeks of 6 centuries--the Naros again. The
Babylonians had a great year of 3,600, being the Naros multiplied by 6.
The Tartar cycle called Van was 180 years, or three sixties; this ultiplied by 12 times 12 = 144, makes 25,920 years, the exact period of evolution of the heavens.
India is the birthplace of arithmetic and mathematics; as "Our Figures," n _Chips from a German Workshop_, by Prof. Max Müller, shows beyond a oubt. As well explained by Krishna Shāstri Godbole in _The Theosophist_:
The Jews ... represented the units (1-9) by the first nine letters
of our alphabet; the tens (10-90) by the next nine letters; the
first four hundreds (100-400) by the last four letters, and the
remaining ones (500-900) by the second forms of the letters "kāf"
(11th), "mīm" (13th), "nūn" (14th), "pe" (17th), and "sād" (18th);
and they represented other numbers by combining these letters
according to their value.... The Jews of the present period still
adhere to this practice of notation in their Hebrew books. The
Greeks had a numerical system similar to that used by the Jews,
but they carried it a little farther by using letters of the
alphabet with a dash or slant-line behind, to represent thousands
(1000-9000), tens of thousands (10,000-90,000) and one hundred of
thousands (100,000) the last, for instance, being represented by
"rho" with a dash behind, while "rho" singly represented 100. The
Romans represented all numerical values by the combination
(additive when the second letter is of equal or less value) of six
letters of their alphabet: i (= 1), v (= 5), x (= 10), c (for
"centum" = 100), d (= 500), and m (= 1000): thus 20 = xx, 15 = xv,
and 9 = ix. These are called the Roman numerals, and are adopted
by all European nations when using the Roman alphabet. The Arabs
at first followed their neighbours, the Jews, in their method of
computation, so much so that they called it Abjad from the first
four Hebrew letters--"alif," "beth," "gimel"--or rather "jimel,"
that is, "jim" (Arabic being wanting in "g"), and "daleth,"
representing the first four units. But when in the early part of
the Christian era they came to India as traders, they found the
country already using for computation the decimal scale of
notation, which they forthwith borrowed literally; _viz._, without
altering its method of writing from left to right, at variance
with their own mode of writing, which is from right to left. They
introduced this system into Europe through Spain and other
European countries lying along the coast of the Mediterranean and
under their sway, during the dark ages of European history. It has
thus become evident that the Āryas knew well mathematics or the
science of computation at a time when all other nations knew but
little, if anything, of it. It has also been admitted that the
knowledge of arithmetic and algebra was first introduced from the
Hindus by the Arabs, and then taught by them to the Western
nations. This fact convincingly proves that the Āryan civilisation
is older than that of any other nation in the world; and as the
_Vedas_ are avowedly proved the oldest work of that civilisation,
a presumption is raised in favour of their great antiquity.(642)
But while the Jewish nation, for instance--regarded so long as the first nd oldest in the order of creation--knew nothing of arithmetic and emained utterly ignorant of the decimal scale of notation--the latter xisted for ages in India before the actual era.
To become certain of the immense antiquity of the Āryan Asiatic nations nd of their astronomical records one has to study more than the _Vedas_.
The secret meaning of the latter will never be understood by the present eneration of Orientalists; and the astronomical works which give openly he real dates and prove the antiquity of both the nation and its science, lude the grasp of the collectors of ollas and old manuscripts in India, he reason being too obvious to need explanation. Yet there are
Astronomers and Mathematicians to this day in India, humble Shāstris and
Pandits, unknown and lost in the midst of that population of phenomenal emories and metaphysical brains, who have undertaken the task and have roved to the satisfaction of many that the _Vedas_ are the oldest works n the world. One of such is the Shāstri just quoted, who published in
_The Theosophist_(643) an able treatise proving astronomically and athematically that:
If the Post-Vaidika works alone, the Upanishads, the Brāhmanas,
etc., down to the Purānas, when examined critically carry us back
to 20,000 B.C., then the time of the composition of the _Vedas_
themselves cannot be less than 30,000 B.C., in round numbers, a
date which we may take at present as the age of that Book of
books.(644)
And what are his proofs?
Cycles and the evidence yielded by the asterisms. Here are a few extracts rom his rather lengthy treatise, selected to give an idea of his emonstrations and bearing directly on the quinquennial cycle spoken of ust now. Those who feel interested in the demonstrations and are advanced athematicians can turn to the article itself, "The Antiquity of the
_Vedas_,"(645) and judge for themselves.
10. Somākara in his commentary on the _Shesha Jyotisha_ quotes a
passage from the _Satapatha Brāhmana_, which contains an
observation on the change of the tropics, and which is also found
in the _Sākhāyana Brāhmana_, as has been noticed by Prof. Max
Müller in his preface to _Rigveda Samhitā_ (p. xx. foot-note, vol.
iv.). The passage is this: ... "The full-moon night in Phālguna is
the first night of Samvatsara, the first year of the quinquennial
age." This passage clearly shows that the quinquennial age which,
according to the sixth verse of the _Jyotisha_, begins on the 1st
of Māgha (January-February), once began on the 15th of Phālguna
(February-March). Now when the 15th of Phālguna of the first year
called Samvatsara of the quinquennial age begins, the moon,
according to the _Jyotisha_, is in 3/4th of the Uttar Phālgunī,
and the sun in 1/4th of Pūrva Bhādrapadā. Hence the position of
the four principal points on the ecliptic was then as follows:
The winter solstice in 3°29' of Purva Bhādrapadā.
The vernal equinox in the beginning of Mrigashīrsha.
The summer solstice in 10 of Purva Phālgunī.
The autumnal equinox in the middle of Jyeshtha.
The vernal equinoctial point, we have seen, coincided with the
beginning of Krittikā in 1421 B.C.; and from the beginning of
Krittikā to that of Mrigashīrsha, was, in consequence, 1421 +
26-2/3 x 72 = 1421 + 1920 = 3341 B.C., supposing the rate of
_precession_ to be 50° a year. When we take the rate to be 3°20"
in 247 years, the time comes up to 1516 + 1960·7 = 3476·7 B.C.
When the winter solstice by its retrograde motion coincided after
that with the beginning of Pūrva Bhādrapadā, then the commencement
of the quinquennial age was changed from the 15th to the 1st of
Phālguna (February-March). This change took place 240 years after
the date of the above observation, that is, in 3101 B.C. This date
is most important, as from it an era was reckoned in after times.
The commencement of the Kali or Kali Yuga (derived from "kal," "to
reckon"), though said by European scholars to be an imaginary
date, becomes thus an astronomical fact.
INTERCHANGE OF KRITTIKĀ AND ASHVINĪ.(646)
We thus see that the asterisms, twenty-seven in number, were
counted from the Mrigashīrsha when the vernal equinox was in its
beginning, and that the practice of thus counting was adhered to
till the vernal equinox retrograded to the beginning of Krittikā,
when it became the first of the asterisms. For then the winter
solstice had changed, receding from Phālguna (February-March) to
Māgha (January-February), one complete lunar month. And, in like
manner, the place of Krittikā was occupied by Ashvinī, that is,
the latter became the first of the asterisms, heading all others,
when its beginning coincided with the vernal equinoctial point,
or, in other words, when the winter solstice was in Pansha
(December-February). Now from the beginning of Krittikā to that of
Ashvinī there are two asterisms, or 26-2/3°, and the time the
equinox takes to retrograde this distance at the rate of 1 in 72
years is 1920 years; and hence the date at which the vernal
equinox coincided with the commencement of Ashvinī or with the end
of Revatī is 1920 - 1421 = 499 A.D.
BENTLEY'S OPINION.
12. The next and equally-important observation we have to record
here is one discussed by Mr. Bentley in his researches into the
Indian antiquities. "The first lunar asterism," he says, "in the
division of twenty-eight was called Mūla, that is to say, the root
or origin. In the division of twenty-seven the first lunar
asterism was called Jyeshtha, that is to say, the eldest or first,
and consequently of the same import as the former" (_vide_ his
_Historical View of the Hindu Astronomy_, p. 4). From this it
becomes manifest that the vernal equinox was once in the beginning
of Mūla, and Mūla was reckoned the first of the asterisms when
they were twenty-eight in number, including Adhijit. Now there are
fourteen asterisms, or 180°, from the beginning of Mrigashīrsha to
that of Mūla, and hence the date at which the vernal equinox
coincided with the beginning of Mūla was at least 3341 + 180 × 72
= 16,301 B.C. The position of the four principal points on the
ecliptic was then as given below:
The winter solstice in the beginning of Uttara Phālgunī in the
month of Shrāvana.
The vernal equinox in the beginning of Mūla in Kārttika.
The summer solstice in the beginning of Pūrva Bhādrapadā in Māgha.
The autumnal equinox in the beginning of Mrigashīrsha in
Vaishākha.
A PROOF FROM THE BHAGAVAD GĪTĀ.
13. The _Bhagavad Gītā_, as well as the _Bhāgavata_, makes mention
of an observation which points to a still more remote antiquity
than the one discovered by Mr. Bentley. The passages are given in
order below:
"I am the Mārgashīrsha [_viz._ the first among the months] and the
spring [_viz._ the first among the seasons]."
This shows that at one time the first month of spring was
Mārgashīrsha. A season includes two months, and the mention of a
month suggests the season.
"I am the Samvatsara among the years [which are five in number]
and the spring among the seasons, and the Mārgashīrsha among the
months and the Abhijit among the asterisms [which are twenty-eight
in number]."
This clearly points out that at one time in the first year called
Samvatsara, of the quinquennial age, the Madhu, that is, the first
month of spring, was Mārgashīrsha, and Abhijit was the first of
the asterisms. It then coincided with the vernal equinoctial
point, and thence from it the asterisms were counted. To find the
date of this observation: There are three asterisms from the
beginning of Mūla to the beginning of Abhijit, and hence the date
in question is at least 16,301 + 3/7 × 90 × 72 = 19,078 or about
20,000 B.C. The Samvatsara at this time began in Bhādrapadā, the
winter solstitial month.
So far then 20,000 years are mathematically proven for the antiquity of he _Vedas_. And this is simply exoteric. Any mathematician, provided he e not blinded by preconception and prejudice, can see this, and an nknown but very clever amateur Astronomer, S. A. Mackey, has proved it ome sixty years back.
His theory about the Hindu Yugas and their length is curious--as being so ery near the correct doctrine.
It is said in volume ii. p. 131, of _Asiatic Researches_ that:
"The great ancestor of Yudhister reigned 27,000 years ... at the
end of the brazen age." In volume ix. p. 364, we read:
"In the _beginning of the Cali Yuga_, in the reign of Yudhister.
And Yudhister ... began his reign immediately after the flood
called Pralaya."
Here we find three different statements concerning Yudhister ...
to explain these seeming differences we must have recourse to
their books of science, where we find the heavens and the earth
divided into _five parts_ of unequal dimensions, by circles
parallel to the equator. Attention to these divisions will be
found to be of the utmost importance ... as it will be found that
from them arose the division of their Maha-Yuga into its four
component parts. Every astronomer knows that there is a point in
the heavens called the pole, round which the whole seems to turn
in twenty-four hours; and that at ninety degrees from it they
imagine a _circle_ called the _equator_, which divides the heavens
and the earth into two equal parts, the north and the south.
Between this circle and the pole there is another imaginary circle
called the circle of _perpetual apparition_: between which and the
equator there is a point in the heavens called the zenith, through
which let another imaginary circle pass, parallel to the other
two; and then there wants but the circle of perpetual occultation
to complete the round.... No astronomer of Europe besides myself
has ever applied them to the development of the Hindu mysterious
numbers. We are told in the _Asiatic Researches_ that Yudhister
brought Vicramāditya to reign in Cassimer, which is in the
latitude of 36 degrees. And in that latitude the circle of
perpetual apparition would extend up to 72 degrees altitude, and
from that to the zenith there are but 18 degrees, but from the
zenith to the equator in that latitude there are 36 degrees, and
from the equator to the circle of perpetual occultation there are
54 degrees. Here we find the semi-circle of 180 degrees divided
into four parts, in the proportion of 1, 2, 3, 4, _i.e._, 18, 36,
54, 72. Whether the Hindu astronomers were acquainted with the
motion of the earth or not is of no consequence, since the
appearances are the same; and if it will give those gentlemen of
_tender consciences_ any pleasure I am willing to admit that they
imagined the heavens rolled round the earth, but they had observed
the stars in the path of the sun to move _forward_ through the
equinoctial points, at the rate of fifty-four seconds of a degree
in a year, which carried the whole zodiac round in 24,000 years;
in which time they also observed that the angle of obliquity
varied, so as to _extend_ or _contract_ the width of the tropics 4
degrees on each side, which rate of motion would carry the tropics
from the equator to the poles in 540,000 years: in which time the
Zodiac would have made twenty-two and a half revolutions, which
are expressed by the parallel circles from the equator to the
poles ... or what amounts to the same thing, the north pole of the
ecliptic would have moved from the north pole of the earth to the
equator.... Thus the poles become inverted in 1,080,000 years,
which is their Maha Yuga, and which they had divided into four
unequal parts, in the proportions of 1, 2, 3, 4, for the reasons
mentioned above; which are 108,000, 216,000, 324,000, and 432,000.
Here we have the most positive proofs that the above numbers
originated in _ancient astronomical observations_, and
consequently are not deserving of those epithets which have been
bestowed upon them by the Essayist, echoing the voice of Bentley,
Wilford, Dupuis, etc.
I have now to show that the reign of Yudhister for 27,000 years is
neither _absurd nor disgusting_, but perhaps the Essayist is not
aware that there were several Yudhisters or Judhisters. In volume
ii. p. 131, _Asiatic Researches_: "The great ancestor of Yudhister
reigned 27,000 years at the end of the brazen or third age." Here
I must again beg your attention to this projection. This is a
plane of that machine which the second gentleman thought so very
clumsy; it is that of a _prolong spheroid_, called by the ancients
an atroscope. Let the longest axis represent the poles of the
earth, making an angle of 28 degrees with the horizon; then will
the seven divisions above the horizon to the North Pole, the
temple of Buddha, and the seven from the North Pole to the circle
of perpetual apparition represent the fourteen Manvantaras, or
very long periods of time, each of which, according to the third
volume of _Asiatic Researches_, p. 258 or 259, was the reign of a
Menu. But Capt. Wilford, in volume v. p. 243, gives us the
following information: "The Egyptians had fourteen dynasties, and
the Hindus had fourteen dynasties, the _rulers_ of which are
called Menus." ...
Who can here mistake the fourteen very long periods of time for
those which constituted the Cali Yuga of Delhi, or any other place
in the latitude of 28 degrees, where the blank space from the foot
of Meru to the seventh circle from the equator, constitutes the
part passed over by the tropic in the next age; which proportions
differ considerably from those in the latitude of 36; and because
the numbers in the Hindu books differ, Mr. Bentley asserts that:
"This shows what little dependence is to be put in them." But, on
the contrary, it shows with what accuracy the Hindus had
_observed_ the motions of the heavens in different latitudes.
Some of the Hindus inform us that "the earth has _two spindles_
which are surrounded by _seven tiers of heavens and hells_ at the
distance of _one Raju_ each." This needs but little explanation
when it is understood that the seven divisions from the equator to
their zenith are called _Rishis_ or _Rashas_. But what is most to
our present purpose to know is that they had given names to each
of those divisions which the tropics passed over during each
revolution of the Zodiac. In the latitude of 36 degrees where the
Pole or Meru was nine steps high at Cassimere, they were called
_Shastras_; in latitude 28 degrees at Delhi, where the Pole or
Meru was seven steps high, they were called Menus; but in 24
degrees, at Cacha, where the Pole or Meru was but six steps high,
they were called Sacas. But in the ninth volume (_Asiatic
Researches_) Yudhister, the son of Dherma, or _Justice_, was the
first of the six Sacas; the name implies the _end_, and as
everything has two ends, Yudhister is as applicable to the first
as to the last. And as the division on the north of the circle of
perpetual apparition is the first of the Cali Yuga, supposing the
tropics to be ascending, it was called the division or reign of
Yudhister. But the division which immediately precedes the circle
of perpetual apparition is the last of the third or _brazen age_,
and was therefore called Yudhister, and as his reign preceded the
reign of the other, as the tropic ascended to the Pole or Meru, he
was called _the father_ of the other--"the great ancestor of
Yudhister, who reigned _twenty-seven thousand years, at the end_
of the brazen age." (Vol. ii. _Asiatic Researches_.)
The ancient Hindus observed that the Zodiac went forward at about
the rate of fifty-four seconds a year, and to avoid greater
fractions, stated it at that, which would make a complete round in
24,000 years; and observing the angle of the poles to vary nearly
4 degrees each round, stated the three numbers as such, which
would have given _forty-five rounds of the Zodiac_ to half a
revolution of the poles; but finding that forty-five rounds would
not bring the northern tropic to coincide with the circle of
perpetual apparition by thirty minutes of a degree, which required
the Zodiac to move one sign and a half more, which we all know it
could not do in less than 3,000 years, they were, in the case
before us, added to the end of the _brazen age_; which lengthen
the reign of _that_ Yudhister to 27,000 years instead of 24,000,
but, at another time they did not alter the regular order of
24,000 years to the reign of each of these long-winded monarchs,
but rounded up the time by allowing a _regency_ to continue three
or four thousand years. In volume ii. p. 134, _Asiatic
Researches_, we are told that: "Paricshit, the great nephew and
successor of Yudhister, is allowed without controversy to have
reigned in the interval between the _brazen and earthen_, or Cali
Ages, and to have died at the setting-in of the Cali Yug." Here we
find an _interregnum_ at the _end_ of the _brazen_ age, and
_before_ the setting-in of the Cali Yug: and as there can be but
one brazen or Treta Yug, _i.e._, the third age, in a Maha Yuga of
1,080,000 years: the reign of this Paricshit must have been in the
second Maha Yuga, when the pole had returned to its original
position, which must have taken 2,160,000 years: and this is what
the Hindus call the Prajanatha Yuga. Analogous to this custom is
that of some nations more modern, who, fond of even numbers, have
made the common year to consist of twelve months of thirty days
each, and the five days and odd measure have been represented as
the reign of a little serpent biting his tail, and divided into
five parts, etc.
But "Yudhister began his reign immediately _after the flood called
Pralaya_," _i.e._, at the end of the Cali Yug (or age of heat),
when the tropic had passed from the pole to the other side of the
circle of perpetual apparition, which coincides with the northern
horizon; here the tropics or summer solstice would be again in the
same parallel of north declination, at the _commencement_ of their
first age, as he was at the _end_ of their _third age_, or Treta
Yug, called the brazen age....
Enough has been said to prove that the Hindu books of science are
not disgusting absurdities, originated in ignorance, vanity, and
credulity; but books containing the most profound knowledge of
astronomy and geography.
What, therefore, can induce those gentlemen of tender consciences
to insist that Yudhister was a real mortal man I have no guess;
unless it be that they fear for the fate of Jared and his
grandfather, Methuselah?
SECTION XLI. THE DOCTRINE OF AVATARAS.
A strange story--a legend rather--is persistently current among the isciples of some great Himālayan Gurus, and even among laymen, to the ffect that Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu, has never left the errestrial regions, though his body died and was burnt, and its relics re preserved to this day. There is an oral tradition among the Chinese
Buddhists, and a written statement among the secret books of the Lamaists f Tibet, as well as a tradition among the Āryans, that Gautama BUDDHA had wo doctrines: one for the masses and His lay disciples, the other for His
"elect," the Arhats. His policy and after Him that of His Arhats was, it ppears, to refuse no one admission into the ranks of candidates for
Arhatship, but never to divulge the final mysteries except to those who ad proved themselves, during long years of probation, to be worthy of
Initiation. These once accepted were consecrated and initiated without istinction of race, caste or wealth, as in the case of His western uccessor. It is the Arhats who have set forth and allowed this tradition o take root in the people's mind, and it is the basis, also, of the later ogma of Lamaic reincarnation or the succession of human Buddhas.
The little that can be said here upon the subject may or may not help to uide the psychic student in the right direction. It being left to the ption and responsibility of the writer to tell the facts as she
_personally_ understood them, the blame for possible misconceptions reated must fall only upon her. She has been taught the doctrine, but it as left to her sole intuition--as it is now left to the sagacity of the eader--to group the mysterious and perplexing facts together. The ncomplete statements herein given are fragments of what is contained in ertain secret volumes, but it is not lawful to divulge the details.
The esoteric version of the mystery given in the secret volumes may be old very briefly. The Buddhists have always stoutly denied that their
Buddha was, as alleged by the Brāhmans, an Avatāra of Vishnu in the same ense as a man is an incarnation of his Karmic ancestor. They deny it artly, perhaps, because the esoteric meaning of the term "Mahā Vishnu" is ot known to them in its full, impersonal, and general meaning. There is a ysterious Principle in Nature called "Mahā Vishnu," which is not the God f that name, but a principle which contains Bīja, the seed of Avatārism r, in other words, is the potency and cause of such divine incarnations.
All the World-Saviours, the Bodhisattvas and the Avatāras, are the trees f salvation grown out from the one seed, the Bīja or "Mahā Vishnu."
Whether it be called Ādi-Buddha (Primeval Wisdom) or Mahā Vishnu, it is ll the same. Understood esoterically, Vishnu is both Saguna and Nirguna
(with and without attributes). In the first aspect, Vishnu is the object f exoteric worship and devotion; in the second, as Nirguna, he is the ulmination of the totality of spiritual wisdom in the
Universe--Nirvāna,(647) in short--and has as worshippers all philosophical inds. In this esoteric sense the Lord BUDDHA _was_ an incarnation of Mahā
Vishnu.
This is from the philosophical and purely spiritual standpoint. From the lane of illusion, however, as one would say, or from the terrestrial tandpoint, those initiated _know_ that He was a direct incarnation of one f the primeval "Seven Sons of Light" who are to be found in every
Theogony--the Dhyān Chohans whose mission it is, from one eternity (ęon) to he other, to watch over the spiritual welfare of the regions under their are. This has been already enunciated in _Esoteric Buddhism_.
One of the greatest mysteries of speculative and philosophical
Mysticism--and it is one of the mysteries now to be disclosed--is the _modus perandi_ in the degrees of such hypostatic transferences. As a matter of ourse, divine as well as human incarnations must remain a closed book to he theologian as much as to the physiologist, unless the esoteric eachings be accepted and become the religion of the world. This teaching ay never be fully explained to an unprepared public; but one thing is ertain and may be said now: that between the dogma of a newly-created oul for each new birth, and the physiological assumption of a temporary nimal soul, there lies the vast region of Occult teaching(648) with its ogical and reasonable demonstrations, the links of which may all be raced in logical and philosophical sequence in nature.
This "Mystery" is found, for him who understands its right meaning, in the ialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, in the _Bhagavad Gita_, chapter iv.
Says the Avatāra:
Many births of mine have passed, as also of yours, O Arjuna! All
those I know, but you do not know yours, O harasser of your
enemies.
Although I am unborn, with exhaustless Ātmā, and am the Lord of
all that is; yet, taking up the domination of my nature I am born
by the power of illusion.(649)
Whenever, O son of Bhārata, there is decline of Dharma [the right
law] and the rise of Adharma [the opposite of Dharma] there I
manifest myself.
For the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness,
for the establishment of the law, _I am born_ in every yuga.
Whoever comprehends truly my divine birth and action, he, O
Arjuna, having abandoned the body does not receive re-birth; he
comes to me.
Thus, all the Avatāras are one and the same: the Sons of their "Father," n a direct descent and line, the "Father," or one of the seven Flames ecoming, for the time being, the Son, and these two being one--in
Eternity. What is the Father? Is it the absolute Cause of all?--the athomless Eternal? No; most decidedly. It is Kāranātmā, the "Causal Soul" hich, in its general sense, is called by the Hindus Īshvara, the Lord, nd by Christians, "God," the One and Only. From the standpoint of unity t is so; but then the lowest of the Elementals could equally be viewed in uch case as the "One and Only." Each human being has, moreover, his own ivine Spirit or personal God. That divine Entity or Flame from which
Buddhi emanates stands in the same relation to man, though on a lower lane, as the Dhyāni-Buddha to his human Buddha. Hence monotheism and olytheism are not irreconcilable; they exist in Nature.
Truly, "for the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness," he personalities known as Gautama, Shankara, Jesus and a few others were orn each in his age, as declared--"I am born in every Yuga"--and they were ll born through the same Power.
There is a great mystery in such incarnations and they are outside and eyond the cycle of general re-births. Rebirths may be divided into three lasses: the divine incarnations called Avatāras; those of Adepts who give p Nirvāna for the sake of helping on humanity--the Nirmānakāyas; and the atural succession of rebirths for all--the common law. The Avatāra is an ppearance, one which may be termed a special illusion within the natural llusion that reigns on the planes under the sway of that power, Māyā; the
Adept is re-born consciously, at his will and pleasure;(650) the units of he common herd unconsciously follow the great law of dual evolution.
What _is_ an Avatāra? for the term before being used ought to be well nderstood. It is a descent of the manifested Deity--whether under the pecific name of Shiva, Vishnu, or Ādi-Buddha--into an illusive form of ndividuality, an appearance which to men on this illusive plane is bjective, but is not so in sober fact. That illusive form, having neither ast nor future, because it had neither previous incarnation nor will have ubsequent rebirths, has naught to do with Karma, which has therefore no old on it.
Gautama BUDDHA was born an Avatāra in one sense. But this, in view of navoidable objections on dogmatic grounds, necessitates explanation.
There is a great difference between an Avatāra and a Jīvanmukta: one, as lready stated, is an illusive appearance, Karma-less, and having never efore incarnated; and the other, the Jīvanmukta, is one who obtains
Nirvāna by his individual merits. To this expression again an ncompromising, philosophical Vedāntin would object. He might say that as he condition of the Avatāra and the Jīvanmukta are one and the same tate, no amount of personal merit, in howsoever many incarnations, can ead its possessor to Nirvāna. Nirvāna, he would say, is actionless; how an, then, any action lead to it? It is neither a result nor a cause, but n ever-present, eternal _Is_, as Nāgasena defined it. Hence it can have o relation to, or concern with, action, merit, or demerit, since these re subject to Karma. All this is very true, but still to our mind there s an important difference between the two. An Avatāra _is_; a Jīvanmukta
_becomes_ one. If the state of the two is identical, not so are the causes hich lead to it. An Avatāra is a descent of a God into an illusive form; Jīvanmukta, who may have passed through numberless incarnations and may ave accumulated merit in them, certainly does not become a Nirvānī ecause of that merit, but only because of the Karma generated by it, hich leads and guides him in the direction of the Guru who will initiate im into the mystery of Nirvāna and who alone can help him to reach this bode.
The Shāstras say that from our works alone we obtain Moksha, and if we ake no pains there will be no gain and we shall be neither assisted nor enefited by Deity [the Mahā-Guru]. Therefore it is maintained that
Gautama, though an Avatāra in one sense, is a true human Jīvanmukta, owing is position to his personal merit, and thus more than an Avatāra. It was is personal merit that enabled him to achieve Nirvāna.
Of the voluntary and conscious incarnations of Adepts there are two ypes--those of Nirmānakāyas, and those undertaken by the probationary helās who are on their trial.
The greatest, as the most puzzling mystery of the first type lies in the act, that such re-birth in a human body of the personal Ego of some articular Adept--when it has been dwelling in the Māyāvi or the Kāma Rūpa, nd remaining in the Kāma Loka--may happen even when his "Higher
Principles" are in the state of Nirvāna.(651) Let it be understood that he above expressions are used for popular purposes, and therefore that hat is written does not deal with this deep and mysterious question from he _highest_ plane, that of absolute spirituality, nor again from the ighest philosophical point of view, comprehensible but to the very few.
It must not be supposed that anything can go into Nirvāna which is not ternally there; but human intellect in conceiving the Absolute must put
It as the highest term in an indefinite series. If this be borne in mind a reat deal of misconception will be avoided. The content of this spiritual volution is the material on various planes with which the Nirvānī was in ontact prior to his attainment of Nirvāna. The plane on which this is rue, being in the series of illusive planes, is undoubtedly not the ighest. Those who search for that must go to the right source of study, he teachings of the _Upanishads_, and must go in the right spirit. Here e attempt only to indicate the direction in which the search is to be ade, and in showing a few of the mysterious Occult possibilities we do ot bring our readers actually to the goal. The ultimate truth can be ommunicated only from Guru to initiated pupil.
Having said so much, the statement still will and must appear ncomprehensible, if not absurd, to many. Firstly, to all those who are nfamiliar with the doctrine of the manifold nature and various aspects of he human Monad; and secondly to those who view the septenary division of he human entity from a too materialistic standpoint. Yet the intuitional
Occultist, who has studied thoroughly the mysteries of Nirvāna--who knows t to be identical with Parabrahman, and hence unchangeable, eternal and o Thing but the Absolute All--will seize the possibility of the fact. They now that while a Dharmakāya--a Nirvānī "without remains," as our
Orientalists have translated it, being absorbed into that Nothingness, hich is the one real, because Absolute, Consciousness--cannot be said to eturn to incarnation on Earth, the Nirvānī being no longer a he, a she, r even an it, the Nirmānakāya--or he who has obtained Nirvāna "with emains," _i.e._, who is clothed in a subtle body, which makes him mpervious to all outward impressions and to every mental feeling, and in hom the notion of his Ego has not entirely ceased--can do so. Again, every
Eastern Occultist is aware of the fact that there are two kinds of
Nirmānakāyas--the natural, and the assumed; that the former is the name or pithet given to the condition of a high ascetic, or Initiate, who has eached a stage of bliss second only to Nirvāna; while the latter means he self-sacrifice of one who voluntarily gives up the absolute Nirvāna, n order to help humanity and be still doing it good, or, in other words, o save his fellow-creatures by guiding them. It may be objected that the
Dharmakāya, being a Nirvānī or Jīvanmukta, can have no "remains" left ehind him after death, for having attained that state from which no urther incarnations are possible, there is no need for him of a subtle ody, or of the individual Ego that reincarnates from one birth to nother, and that therefore the latter disappears of logical necessity; to his it is answered: it is so for all exoteric purposes and as a general aw. But the case with which we are dealing is an exceptional one, and its ealization lies within the Occult powers of the high Initiate, who, efore entering into the state of Nirvāna, can cause his "remains"
(sometimes, though not very well, called his Māyāvi Rūpa), to remain ehind,(652) whether he is to become a Nirvānī, or to find himself in a ower state of bliss.
Next, there are cases--rare, yet more frequent than one would be disposed o expect--which are the voluntary and conscious reincarnations of
Adepts(653) on their trial. Every man has an Inner, a "Higher Self," and lso an Astral Body. But few are those who, outside the higher degrees of
Adeptship, can guide the latter, or any of the principles that animate it, hen once death has closed their short terrestrial life. Yet such uidance, or their transference from the dead to a living body, is not nly possible, but is of frequent occurrence, according to Occult and
Kabalistic teachings. The degrees of such power of course vary greatly. To ention but three: the lowest of these degrees would allow an Adept, who as been greatly trammelled during life in his study and in the use of his owers, to choose after death another body in which he could go on with is interrupted studies, though ordinarily he would lose in it every emembrance of his previous incarnation. The next degree permits him, in ddition to this, to transfer the memory of his past life to his new body; hile the highest has hardly any limits in the exercise of that wonderful aculty.
As an instance of an Adept who enjoyed the first mentioned power some edięval Kabalists cite a well-known personage of the fifteenth entury--Cardinal de Cusa; Karma, due to his wonderful devotion to Esoteric tudy and the _Kabalah_, led the suffering Adept to seek intellectual ecuperation and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body of
Copernicus. _Se non e vero e ben trovato_; and the perusal of the lives of he two men might easily lead a believer in such powers to a ready cceptance of the alleged fact. The reader having at his command the means o do so is asked to turn to the formidable folio in Latin of the ifteenth century, called _De Docta Ignorantia_, written by the Cardinal e Cusa, in which all the theories and hypotheses--all the ideas--of
Copernicus are found as the key-notes to the discoveries of the great stronomer.(654) Who was this extraordinarily learned Cardinal? The son of poor boatman, owing all his career, his Cardinal's hat, and the everential awe rather than friendship of the Popes Eugenius IV., Nicholas
V., and Pius II., to the extraordinary learning which seemed innate in im, since he had studied nowhere till comparatively late in life. De Cusa ied in 1473; moreover, his best works were written before he was forced o enter orders--to escape persecution. Nor did the Adept escape it.
In the voluminous work of the Cardinal above-quoted is found a very uggestive sentence, the authorship of which has been variously attributed o Pascal, to Cusa himself, and to the _Zohar_, and which belongs by right o the Books of Hermes:
The world is an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and
whose circumference is nowhere.
This is changed by some into: "The centre being nowhere, and the ircumference everywhere," a rather heretical idea for a Cardinal, though erfectly orthodox from a Kabalistic standpoint.
The theory of rebirth must be set forth by Occultists, and then applied to pecial cases. The right comprehension of this psychic fact is based upon correct view of that group of celestial Beings who are universally alled the seven Primeval Gods or Angels--our Dhyān Chohans--the "Seven
Primeval Rays" or Powers, adopted later on by the Christian Religion as he "Seven Angels of the Presence." Arūpa, formless, at the upper rung of he ladder of Being, materializing more and more as they descend in the cale of objectivity and form, ending in the grossest and most imperfect f the Hierarchy, man--it is the former purely spiritual group that is ointed out to us, in our Occult teaching, as the nursery and fountain- ead of human beings. Therein germinates that consciousness which is the arliest manifestation from causal Consciousness--the Alpha and the Omega f divine being and life for ever. And as it proceeds downward through very phase of existence descending through man, through animal and plant, t ends its descent only in the mineral. It is represented by the double riangle--the most mysterious and the most suggestive of all mystic signs, or it is a double glyph, embracing spiritual and physical consciousness nd life, the former triangle running upwards, and the lower downwards, oth interlaced, and showing the various planes of the twice-seven modes f consciousness, the fourteen spheres of existence, the Lokas of the
Brāhmans.
The reader may now be able to obtain a clearer comprehension of the whole hing. He will also see what is meant by the "Watchers," there being one laced as the Guardian or Regent over each of the seven divisions or egions of the earth, according to old traditions, as there is one to atch over and guide every one of the fourteen worlds or Lokas.(655) But t is not with any of these that we are at present concerned, but with the
"Seven Breaths," so-called, that furnish man with his immortal Monad in is cyclic pilgrimage.
The Commentary on the _Book of Dzyan_ says:
_Descending on his region first as Lord of Glory, the Flame (or Breath), aving called into conscious being the highest of the Emanations of that pecial region, ascends from it again to Its primeval seat, whence It atches __ over and guides Its countless Beams (Monads). It chooses as Its
Avatāras only those who had the Seven Virtues in them_(_656_)_ in their revious incarnation. As for the rest, It overshadows each with one of Its ountless beams.... Yet even the __"__beam__"__ is a part of the Lord of
Lords._(657)
The septenary principle in man--who can be regarded as dual only as oncerns psychic manifestation on this gross earthly plane--was known to ll antiquity, and may be found in every ancient Scripture. The Egyptians new and taught it, and their division of principles is in every point a ounterpart of the Āryan Secret Teaching. It is thus given in _Isis
Unveiled_:
In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other faiths founded
on philosophy, man was not merely ... a union of soul and body: he
was a trinity when Spirit was added to it. Besides, that doctrine
made him consist of Kha (body), Khaba (astral form or shadow), Ka
(animal soul or life-principle), Ba (the higher soul), and Akh
(terrestrial intelligence). They had also a sixth principle, named
Sah (or mummy), but the functions of this one commenced after the
death of the body.(658)
The seventh principle being of course the highest, uncreated Spirit was enerically called Osiris, therefore every deceased person became
Osirified--or an Osiris--after death.
But in addition to reiterating the old ever-present fact of reincarnation nd Karma--not as taught by the Spiritists, but as by the most Ancient
Science in the world--Occultists must teach cyclic and evolutionary eincarnation: that kind of re-birth, mysterious and still ncomprehensible to many who are ignorant of the world's history, which as cautiously mentioned in _Isis Unveiled_. A general re-birth for every ndividual with interlude of Kāma Loka and Devachan, and a cyclic onscious reincarnation with a grand and divine object for the few. Those reat characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind like
Siddārtha BUDDHA and Jesus in the realm of the spiritual, and Alexander he Macedonian and Napoleon the Great in the realm of physical conquests re but the reflected images of human types which had existed--not ten housand years before, as cautiously put forward in _Isis Unveiled_, but or millions of consecutive years from the beginning of the Manvantara.
For--with the exception of real Avatāras, as above explained--they are the ame unbroken Rays (Monads), each respectively of its own special Parent-
Flame--called Devas, Dhyān Chohans, or Dhyāni-Buddhas, or again, Planetary
Angels, etc.--shining in ęonic eternity as their prototypes. It is in their mage that some men are born, and when some specific humanitarian object s in view, the latter are hypostatically animated by their divine rototypes reproduced again and again by the mysterious Powers that ontrol and guide the destinies of our world.
No more could be said at the time when _Isis Unveiled_ was written; hence he statement was limited to the single remark that
There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or
profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half
fictitious and half real traditions of bygone religions and
mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance
above our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects
itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men
of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can
embrace in a historical retrospect.
But now that so many publications have been brought out, stating much of he doctrine, and several of them giving many an erroneous view, this ague allusion may be amplified and explained. Not only does this tatement apply to prominent characters in history in general, but also to en of genius, to every remarkable man of the age, who soars beyond the ommon herd with some abnormally developed special capacity in him, eading to the progress and good of mankind. Each is a reincarnation of an ndividuality that has gone before him with capacities in the same line, ringing thus as a dowry to his new form that strong and easily re- wakened capacity or quality which had been fully developed in him in his receding birth. Very often they are ordinary mortals, the Egos of natural en in the course of their cyclic development.
But it is with "special cases" that we are now concerned. Let us suppose hat a person during his cycle of incarnations is thus selected for pecial purposes--the vessel being sufficiently clean--by his personal God, he Fountain-head (on the plane of the manifested) of his Monad, who thus ecomes his in-dweller. That God, his own prototype or "Father in Heaven," s, in one sense, not only the image in which he, the spiritual man, is ade, but in the case we are considering, it is that spiritual, individual
Ego himself. This is a case of permanent, life-long Theophania. Let us ear in mind that this is neither Avatārism, as it is understood in
Brāhmanical Philosophy, nor is the man thus selected a Jīvanmukta or
Nirvānī, but that it is a wholly exceptional case in the realm of
Mysticism. The man may or may not have been an Adept in his previous ives; he is so far, and simply, an extremely pure and spiritual ndividual--or one who was all that in his preceding birth, if the vessel hus selected is that of a newly-born infant. In this case, after the hysical translation of such a saint or Bodhisattva, his astral principles annot be subjected to a natural dissolution like those of any common ortal. They remain in our sphere and within human attraction and reach; nd thus it is that not only a Buddha, a Shankarāchārya, or a Jesus can be aid to animate several persons at one and the same time, but even the rinciples of a high Adept may be animating the outward tabernacles of ommon mortals.
A certain Ray (principle) from Sanat Kumāra spiritualized (animated)
Pradyumna, the son of Krishna during the great Mahābhārata period, while t the same time, he, Sanat Kumāra, gave spiritual instruction to King
Dhritarāshtra. Moreover, it is to be remembered that Sanat-Kumāra is "an ternal youth of sixteen," dwelling in Jana Loka, his own sphere or piritual state.
Even in ordinary _mediumistic_ life, so-called, it is pretty well scertained that while the body is acting--even though only mechanically--or esting in one place, its astral double may be appearing and acting ndependently in another, and very often distant place. This is quite a ommon occurrence in mystic life and history, and if this be so with cstatics, Seers and Mystics of every description, why cannot the same hing happen on a higher and more spiritually developed plane of xistence? Admit the possibility on the lower psychic plane, then why not n a higher plane? In the cases of higher Adeptship, when the body is ntirely at the command of the Inner Man, when the Spiritual Ego is ompletely reünited with its seventh principle even during the life-time f the personality, and the Astral Man or personal Ego has become so urified that he has gradually assimilated all the qualities and ttributes of the middle nature (Buddhi and Manas in their terrestrial spect) that personal Ego substitutes itself, so to say, for the spiritual
Higher Self, and is thenceforth capable of living an independent life on arth; when corporeal death takes place the following mysterious event ften happens. As a Dharmakāya, a Nirvānī "without remains" entirely free rom terrestrial admixture, the Spiritual Ego cannot return to reincarnate n earth. But in such cases, it is affirmed, the personal Ego of even a
Dharmakāya can remain in our sphere as a whole, and return to incarnation n earth if need be. For now it can no longer be subject, like the astral emains of any ordinary man, to gradual dissolution in the Kāma Loka (the
_limbus_ or purgatory of the Roman Catholic, and the "Summer-land" of the
Spiritualist); it cannot die a second death, as such disintegration is alled by Proclus.(659) It has become too holy and pure, no longer by eflected but its own natural light and spirituality, either to sleep in he unconscious slumber of a lower Nirvānic state, or to be dissolved like ny ordinary astral shell and disappear in its entirety.
But in that condition known as the Nirmānakāya [the Nirvānī "with emains,"] he can still help humanity.
"Let me suffer and bear the sins of all [be reincarnated unto new misery] ut let the world be saved!" was said by Gautama BUDDHA: an exclamation he real meaning of which is little understood now by his followers. "If I ill that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"(660) asks the stral Jesus of Peter. "Till I come" means "till I am reincarnated again" n a physical body. Yet the Christ of the old crucified body could truly ay: "I am with my Father and one with Him," which did not prevent the stral from taking a form again nor John from tarrying indeed till his
Master had come; nor hinder John from failing to recognize him when he did ome, or from then opposing him. But in the Church that remark generated he absurd idea of the millennium or chiliasm, in its physical sense.
Since then the "Man of Sorrows" has returned perchance, more than once, nknown to, and undiscovered by, his blind followers. Since then also, his grand "Son of God" has been incessantly and most cruelly crucified aily and hourly by the Churches founded in his name. But the Apostles, nly half-initiated, failed to tarry for their Master, and not recognizing im, spurned him every time he returned.(661)
SECTION XLII. THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES.
The "Mystery of Buddha" is that of several other Adepts--perhaps of many.
The whole trouble is to understand correctly that other mystery: that of he real fact, so abstruse and transcendental at first sight, about the
"Seven Principles" in man, the reflections in man of the seven powers in
Nature, physically, and of the seven Hierarchies of Being, intellectually nd spiritually. Whether a man--material, ethereal, and spiritual--is for he clearer comprehension of his (broadly-speaking) triple nature, divided nto groups according to one or another system, the foundation and the pex of that division will be always the same. There being only three
Upādhis (bases) in man, any number of Koshas (sheaths) and their aspects ay be built on these without destroying the harmony of the whole. Thus, hile the Esoteric System accepts the septenary division, the Vedāntic lassification gives five Koshas, and the Tāraka Rāja Yoga simplifies them nto four--the three Upādhis synthesized by the highest principle, Ātmā.
That which has just been stated will, of course, suggest the question:
"How can a spiritual (or semi-spiritual) personality lead a triple or even dual life, shifting respective 'Higher Selves' _ad libitum_, and be till the one eternal Monad in the infinity of a Manvantara?" The answer o this is easy for the true Occultist, while for the uninitiated profane t must appear absurd. The "Seven Principles" are, of course, the anifestation of one indivisible Spirit, but only at the end of the
Manvantara, and when they come to be re-united on the plane of the One
Reality does the unity appear; during the "Pilgrim's" journey the eflections of that indivisible One Flame, the aspects of the one eternal
Spirit, have each the power of action on one of the manifested planes of xistence--the gradual differentiations from the one unmanifested plane--on hat plane namely to which it properly belongs. Our earth affording every
Māyāvic condition, it follows that the purified Egotistical Principle, the stral and personal Self of an Adept, though forming in reality one ntegral whole with its Highest Self (Ātmā and Buddhi) may, nevertheless, or purposes of universal mercy and benevolence, so separate itself from ts divine Monad as to lead on this plane of illusion and temporary being distinct independent conscious life of its own under a borrowed illusive hape, thus serving at one and the same time a double purpose: the xhaustion of its own individual Karma, and the saving of millions of uman beings less favoured than itself from the effects of mental lindness. If asked: "When the change described as the passage of a Buddha r a Jīvanmukta into Nirvāna takes place, where does the original onsciousness which animated the body continue to reside--in the Nirvānī or n the subsequent reincarnations of the latter's 'remains' (the
Nirmānakāya)?" the answer is that _imprisoned_ consciousness may be a
"certain knowledge from observation and experience," as Gibbon puts it, ut _disembodied_ consciousness is not an effect, but a cause. It is a art of the whole, or rather a Ray on the graduated scale of its anifested activity, of the one all-pervading, limitless Flame, the eflections of which alone can differentiate; and, as such, consciousness s ubiquitous, and can be neither localized nor centred on or in any articular subject, nor can it be limited. Its effects alone pertain to he region of matter, for thought is an energy that affects matter in arious ways, but consciousness _per se_, as understood and explained by
Occult philosophy, is the highest quality of the sentient spiritual rinciple in us, the Divine Soul (or Buddhi) and our Higher Ego, and does ot belong to the plane of materiality. After the death of the physical an, if he be an Initiate, it becomes transformed from a human quality nto the independent principle itself; the conscious Ego becoming
Consciousness _per se_ without any Ego, in the sense that the latter can o longer be limited or conditioned by the senses, or even by space or ime. Therefore it is capable, without separating itself from or bandoning its possessor, Buddhi, of reflecting itself at the same time in ts astral man that was, without being under any necessity for localizing tself. This is shown at a far lower stage in our dreams. For if onsciousness can display activity during our visions, and while the body nd its material brain are fast asleep--and if even during those visions it s all but ubiquitous--how much greater must be its power when entirely ree from, and having no more connection with, our physical brain.
SECTION XLIII. THE MYSTERY OF BUDDHA.
Now the mystery of Buddha lies in this: Gautama, an incarnation of pure
Wisdom, had yet to learn in His human body and to be initiated into the orld's secrets like any other mortal, until the day when He emerged from
His secret recess in the Himālayas and preached for the first time in the rove of Benares. The same with Jesus: from the age of twelve to thirty ears, when He is found preaching the Sermon on the Mount, nothing is ositively said or known of Him. Gautama had sworn inviolable secrecy as o the Esoteric Doctrines imparted to Him. In His immense pity for the gnorance--and as its consequence the sufferings--of mankind, desirous hough He was to keep inviolate His sacred vows, He failed to keep within he prescribed limits. While constructing His Esoteric Philosophy (the
"Eye-Doctrine") on the foundations of eternal Truth, He failed to conceal ertain dogmas, and trespassing beyond the lawful lines, caused those ogmas to be misunderstood. In His anxiety to make away with the false
Gods, He revealed in the "Seven Paths to Nirvāna" some of the mysteries of he Seven Lights of the Arūpa (formless) World. A little of the truth is ften worse than no truth at all.
Truth and fiction are like oil and water: they will never mix.
His new doctrine, which represented the outward dead body of the Esoteric
Teaching without its vivifying Soul, had disastrous effects: it was never orrectly understood, and the doctrine itself was rejected by the Southern
Buddhists. Immense philanthropy, a boundless love and charity for all reatures, were at the bottom of His unintentional mistake; but Karma ittle heeds intentions, whether good or bad, if they remain fruitless. If he "Good Law" as preached resulted in the most sublime code of ethics and he unparalleled philosophy of things external in the visible Kosmos, it iassed and misguided immature minds into believing there was nothing more nder the outward mantle of the system, and its dead-letter only was ccepted. Moreover, the new teaching unsettled many great minds which had reviously followed the orthodox Brāhmanical lead.
Thus, fifty odd years after his death "the great Teacher"(662) having efused full Dharmakāya and Nirvāna, was pleased, for purposes of Karma nd philanthropy, to be reborn. For Him death had been no death, but as xpressed in the "Elixir of Life,"(663) He changed
A sudden plunge into darkness to a transition into a brighter
light.
The shock of death was broken, and like many other Adepts, He threw off he mortal coil and left it to be burnt, and its ashes to serve as relics, nd began interplanetary life, clothed in His subtle body. He was reborn s Shankara, the greatest Vedāntic teacher of India, whose hilosophy--based as it is entirely on the fundamental axioms of the ternal Revelation, the Shruti, or the primitive Wisdom-Religion, as
Buddha from a different point of view had before based His--finds itself in he middle-ground between the too exuberantly veiled metaphysics of the rthodox Brāhmans and those of Gautama, which, stripped in their exoteric arb of every soul-vivifying hope, transcendental aspiration and symbol, ppear in their cold wisdom like crystalline icicles, the skeletons of the rimeval truths of Esoteric Philosophy.
Was Shankarāchārya Gautama the Buddha, then, under a new personal form? It ay perhaps only puzzle the reader the more if he be told that there was he "astral" Gautama inside the outward Shankara, whose higher principle, r Ātman, was, nevertheless, his own divine prototype--the "Son of Light," ndeed--the heavenly, mind-born son of Aditi.
This fact is again based on that mysterious transference of the divine ex- ersonality merged in the impersonal Individuality--now in its full rinitarian form of the Monad as Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas--to a new body, whether isible or subjective. In the first case it is a Manushya-Buddha; in the econd it is a Nirmānakāya. The Buddha is in Nirvāna, it is said, though his once mortal vehicle--the subtle body--of Gautama is still present among he Initiates; nor will it leave the realm of conscious Being so long as uffering mankind needs its divine help--not to the end of this Root Race, t any rate. From time to time He, the "astral" Gautama, associates
Himself, in some most mysterious--to us quite incomprehensible--manner, with
Avatāras and great saints, and works through them. And several such are amed.
Thus it is averred that Gautama Buddha was reincarnated in
Shankarāchārya--that, as is said in _Esoteric Buddhism_:
Shankarāchārya simply _was_ Buddha in all respects in a new
body.(664)
While the expression in its mystic sense is true, the way of putting it ay be misleading until explained. Shankara was a Buddha, most assuredly, ut he never was a reincarnation of the Buddha, though Gautama's "Astral"
Ego--or rather his Bodhisattva--may have been associated in some mysterious ay with Shankarāchārya. Yes, it was perhaps the Ego, Gautama, under a new nd better adapted casket--that of a Brāhman of Southern India. But the
Ātman, the Higher Self that overshadowed both, was distinct from the
Higher Self of the translated Buddha, which was now in Its own sphere in
Kosmos.
Shankara was an Avatāra in the full sense of the term. According to
Sayanāchārya, the great commentator on the _Vedas_, he is to be held as an
Avatāra, or direct incarnation of Shiva--the Logos, the Seventh Principle n Nature--Himself. In the Secret Doctrine Shri Shankarāchārya is regarded s the abode--for the thirty-two years of his mortal life--of a Flame, the ighest of the manifested Spiritual Beings, one of the Primordial Seven
Rays.
And now what is meant by a "Bodhisattva"? Buddhists of the Mahāyāna mystic ystem teach that each BUDDHA manifests Himself (hypostatically or therwise) simultaneously in three worlds of Being, namely, in the world f Kāma (concupiscence or desire--the sensuous universe or our earth) in he shape of a man; in the world of Rūpa (form, yet supersensuous) as a
Bodhisattva; and in the highest Spiritual World (that of purely ncorporeal existences) as a Dhyāni-Buddha. The latter prevails eternally n space and time, _i.e._, from one Mahā-Kalpa to the other--the synthetic ulmination of the three being Ādi-Buddha,(665) the Wisdom-Principle, hich is Absolute, and therefore out of space and time. Their inter- elation is the following: The Dhyāni-Buddha, when the world needs a human
Buddha, "creates" through the power of Dhyāna (meditation, omnipotent evotion), a mind-born son--a Bodhisattva--whose mission it is after the hysical death of his human, or Manushya-Buddha, to continue his work on arth till the appearance of the subsequent Buddha. The Esoteric meaning f this teaching is clear. In the case of a simple mortal, the principles n him are only the more or less bright reflections of the seven cosmic, nd the seven celestial Principles, the Hierarchy of supersensual Beings.
In the case of a Buddha, they are almost the principles _in esse_ hemselves. The Bodhisattva replaces in him the Kārana Sharira, the Ego rinciple, and the rest correspondingly; and it is in this way that
Esoteric Philosophy explains the meaning of the sentence that "by virtue f Dhyāna [or abstract meditation] the Dhyāni-Buddha [the Buddha's Spirit r Monad] creates a Bodhisattva," or the astrally clothed Ego within the
Manushya-Buddha. Thus, while the Buddha merges back into Nirvāna whence it roceeded, the Bodhisattva remains behind to continue the Buddha's work pon earth. It is then this Bodhisattva that may have afforded the lower rinciples in the apparitional body of Shankarāchārya, the Avatāra.
Now to say that Buddha, after having reached Nirvāna, returned thence to eļncarnate in a new body, would be uttering a heresy from the
Brāhmanical, as well as from the Buddhistic standpoint. Even in the
Mahāyāna exoteric School in the teaching as to the three "Buddhic" odies,(666) it is said of the Dharmakāya--the ideal formless Being--that nce it is taken, the Buddha in it abandons the world of sensuous erceptions for ever, and has not, nor can he have, any more connection ith it. To say, as the Esoteric or Mystic School teaches, that though
Buddha is in Nirvāna he has left behind him the Nirmānakāya (the
Bodhisattva) to work after him, is quite orthodox and in accordance with oth the Esoteric Mahāyāna and the Prasanga Mādhyāmika Schools, the latter n anti-esoteric and most rationalistic system. For in the _Kāla Chakra_
Commentary it is shown that there is: (1) Ādi-Buddha, eternal and onditionless; then (2) come Sambhogakāya-Buddhas, or Dhyāni-Buddhas, xisting from (ęonic) eternity and never disappearing--the _Causal_ Buddhas o to say; and (3) the Manushya-Bodhisattvas. The relation between them is etermined by the definition given. Ādi-Buddha is Vajradhara, and the
Dhyāni-Buddhas are Vajrasattva; yet though these two are different Beings n their respective planes, They are identical in fact, one acting through he other, as a Dhyāni through a human Buddha. One is "Endless
Intelligence;" the other only "Supreme Intelligence." It is said of Phra
Bodhisattva--who was subsequently on earth Buddha Gautama:
Having fulfilled all the conditions for the immediate attainment
of perfect Buddhaship, the Holy One preferred, from unlimited
charity towards living beings, _once more_ to reincarnate for the
benefit of man.
The Nirvāna of the Buddhists is only the threshold of Paranirvāna, ccording to the Esoteric Teaching: while with the Brāhmans, it is the
_summum bonum_, that final state from which there is no more return--not ill the next Mahā-Kalpa, at all events. And even this last view will be pposed by some too orthodox and dogmatic Philosophers who will not accept he Esoteric Doctrine. With them Nirvāna is absolute nothingness, in which here is nothing and no one: only an unconditioned All. To understand the ull characteristics of that Abstract Principle one must sense it ntuitionally and comprehend fully the "one permanent condition in the
Universe," which the Hindūs define so truly as
The state of perfect unconsciousness--bare Chidākāsham (field of
consciousness) in fact,
owever paradoxical it may seem to the profane reader.(667)
Shankarāchārya was reputed to be an Avatāra, an assertion the writer mplicitly believes in, but which other people are, of course, at liberty o reject. And as such he took the body of a southern Indian, newly-born
Brāhman baby; that body, for reasons as important as they are mysterious o us, is said to have been animated by Gautama's astral personal remains.
This divine Non-Ego chose as its own Upādhi (physical basis), the thereal, human Ego of a great Sage in this world of forms, as the fittest ehicle for Spirit to descend into.
Said Shankarāchārya:
Parabrahman is Kartā [Purusha], as there is no other
Adhishtāthā,(668) and Parabrahman is Prakriti, there being no
other substance.(669)
Now what is true of the Macrocosmical is also true of the Microcosmical lane. It is therefore nearer the truth to say--when once we accept such a ossibility--that the "astral" Gautama, or the Nirmānakāya, was the Upādhi f Shankarāchārya's spirit, rather than that the latter was a eincarnation of the former.
When a Shankarāchārya has to be born, naturally every one of the rinciples in the manifested mortal man must be the purest and finest that xist on earth. Consequently those principles that were once attached to
Gautama, who was the direct great predecessor of Shankara, were naturally ttracted to him, the economy of Nature forbidding the re-evolution of imilar principles from the crude state. But it must be remembered that he higher ethereal principles are not, like the lower more material ones, isible sometimes to man (as astral bodies), and they have to be regarded n the light of separate or independent Powers or Gods, rather than as aterial objects. Hence the right way of representing the truth would be o say that the various principles, the Bodhisattva, of Gautama Buddha, hich did not go to Nirvāna, re-united to form the middle principles of
Shankarāchārya, the earthly Entity.(670)
It is absolutely necessary to study the doctrine of the Buddhas soterically and understand the subtle differences between the various lanes of existence to be able to comprehend correctly the above. Put more learly, Gautama, the human Buddha, who had, exoterically, Amitābha for is Bodhisattva and Avalokiteshvara for his Dhyāni-Buddha--the triad manating directly from Ādi-Buddha--assimilated these by his "Dhyāna"
(meditation) and thus become a Buddha ("enlightened"). In another manner his is the case with all men; everyone of us has his Bodhisattva--the iddle principle, if we hold for a moment to the trinitarian division of he septenary group--and his Dhyāni-Buddha, or Chohan, the "Father of the
Son." Our connecting link with the higher Hierarchy of Celestial Beings ies here in a nutshell, only we are too sinful to assimilate them.
Six centuries after the translation of the human Buddha (Gautama) another
Reformer, as noble and as loving, though less favoured by opportunity, rose in another part of the world, among another and a less spiritual ace. There is a great similarity between the subsequent opinions of the orld about the two Saviours, the Eastern and the Western. While millions ecame converted to the doctrines of the two Masters, the enemies of oth--sectarian opponents, the most dangerous of all--tore both to shreds by nsinuating maliciously-distorted statements based on Occult truths, and herefore doubly dangerous. While of Buddha it is said by the Brāhmans hat He was truly an Avatāra of Vishnu, but that He had come to tempt the
Brāhmans from their faith, and was therefore the evil aspect of the God; f Jesus the Bardesanian Gnostics and others asserted that He was Nebu, he false Messiah, the destroyer of the old orthodox religion. "He is the ounder of a new sect of Nazars," said other sectarians. In Hebrew the ord "Naba" means "to speak by inspiration," ({~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER ALEF~}, and {~HEBREW LETTER NUN~}{~HEBREW LETTER BET~}{~HEBREW LETTER VAV~} is Nebo, the
God of wisdom). But Nebo is also Mercury, who is Buddha in the Hindu onogram of planets. And this is shown by the fact that the Talmudists old that Jesus was inspired by the Genius (or Regent) of Mercury onfounded by Sir William Jones with Gautama Buddha. There are many other trange points of similarity between Gautama and Jesus, which cannot be oticed here.(671)
If both the Initiates, aware of the danger of furnishing the uncultured asses with the powers acquired by ultimate knowledge, left the innermost orner of the sanctuary in profound darkness, who, acquainted with human ature, can blame either of them for this? Yet although Gautama, actuated y prudence, left the Esoteric and most dangerous portions of the Secret
Knowledge untold, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty--the Esoteric
Doctrine says one hundred--years, dying with the certainty of having taught ts essential truths, and of having sown the seeds for the conversion of ne-third of the world, He yet perhaps revealed more than was strictly ood for posterity. But Jesus, who had promised His disciples the nowledge which confers upon man the power of producing "miracles" far reater than He had ever produced Himself, died, leaving but a few aithful disciples--men only half-way to knowledge. They had therefore to truggle with a world to which they could impart only what they but half- new themselves, and--no more. In later ages the exoteric followers of both angled the truths given out, often out of recognition. With regard to the dherents of the Western Master, the proof of this lies in the very fact hat none of them can now produce the promised "miracles." They have to hoose: either it is they who have blundered, or it is their Master who ust stand arraigned for an empty promise, an uncalled-for boast.(672) Why uch a difference in the destiny of the two? For the Occultist this enigma f the unequal favour of Karma or Providence is unriddled by the Secret
Doctrine.
It is "not lawful" to speak of such things publicly, as St. Paul tells us.
One more explanation only may be given in reference to this subject. It as said a few pages back that an Adept who thus sacrifices himself to ive, giving up full Nirvāna, though he can never lose the knowledge cquired by him in previous existences, yet can never rise higher in such orrowed bodies. Why? Because he becomes simply the vehicle of a "Son of
Light" from a still higher sphere, Who being Arūpa, has no personal astral ody of His own fit for this world. Such "Sons of Light," or Dhyāni-
Buddhas, are the Dharmakāyas of preceding Manvantaras, who have closed heir cycles of incarnations in the ordinary sense and who, being thus
Karmaless, have long ago dropped their individual Rūpas, and have become dentified with the first Principle. Hence the necessity of a sacrificial
Nirmānakāya, ready to suffer for the misdeeds or mistakes of the new body n its earth-pilgrimage, without any future reward on the plane of rogression and rebirth, since there are no rebirths for him in the rdinary sense. The Higher Self, or Divine Monad, is not in such a case ttached to the lower Ego; its connection is only temporary, and in most ases it acts through decrees of Karma. This is a real, genuine sacrifice, he explanation of which pertains to the highest Initiation of Gńāna
(Occult Knowledge). It is closely linked, by a direct evolution of Spirit nd involution of Matter, with the primeval and great Sacrifice at the oundation of the manifested Worlds, the gradual smothering and death of he spiritual in the material. The seed "is not quickened except it ie."(673) Hence in the Purusha Sūkta of the _Rig Veda_,(674) the mother- ount and source of all subsequent religions, it is stated allegorically hat "the thousand-headed Purusha" was slaughtered at the foundation of he World, that from his remains the Universe might arise. This is nothing ore nor less than the foundation--the seed, truly--of the later many-formed ymbol in various religions, including Christianity, of the sacrificial amb. For it is a play upon the words. "Aja" (Purusha), "the unborn," or ternal Spirit, means also "lamb," in Sanskrit. Spirit disappears--dies, etaphorically--the more it gets involved in matter, and hence the acrifice of the "unborn," or the "lamb."
Why the BUDDHA chose to make this sacrifice will be plain only to those ho, to the minute knowledge of His earthly life, add that of a thorough omprehension of the laws of Karma. Such occurrences, however, belong to he most exceptional cases.
As tradition goes, the Brāhmans had committed a heavy sin by persecuting
Gautama BUDDHA and His teachings instead of blending and reconciling them ith the tenets of pure Vaidic Brāhmanism, as was done later by
Shankarāchārya. Gautama had never gone against the _Vedas_, only against he exoteric growth of preconceived interpretations. The Shruti--divine ral revelation, the outcome of which was the _Veda_--is eternal. It eached the ear of Gautama Siddartha as it had those of the Rishis who had ritten it down. He accepted the revelation, while rejecting the later vergrowth of Brāhmanical thought and fancy, and built His doctrines on ne and the same basis of imperishable truth. As in the case of His
Western successor, Gautama, the "Merciful," the "Pure," and the "Just," as the first found in the Eastern Hierarchy of historical Adepts, if not n the world-annals of divine mortals, who was moved by that generous eeling which locks the whole of mankind within one embrace, with no petty ifferences of race, birth, or caste. It was He who first enunciated that rand and noble principle, and He again who first put it into practice.
For the sake of the poor and the reviled, the outcast and the hapless, nvited by Him to the king's festival table, He had excluded those who had itherto sat alone in haughty seclusion and selfishness, believing that hey would be defiled by the very shadow of the disinherited ones of the and--and these non-spiritual Brāhmans turned against Him for that reference. Since then such as these have never forgiven the prince- eggar, the son of a king, who, forgetting His rank and station, had flung idely open the doors of the forbidden sanctuary to the pariah and the man f low estate, thus giving precedence to personal merit over hereditary ank or fortune. The sin was theirs--the cause nevertheless Himself: hence he "Merciful and the Blessed One" could not go out entirely from this orld of illusion and created causes without atoning for the sin of ll--therefore of these Brāhmans also. If "man afflicted by man" found safe efuge with the Tathāgata, "man afflicting man" had also his share in His elf-sacrificing, all-embracing and forgiving love. It is stated that He esired to atone for the sin of His enemies. Then only was He willing to ecome a full Dharmakāya, a Jivanmukta "without remains."
The close of Shankarāchārya's life brings us face to face with a fresh ystery. Shankarāchārya retires to a cave in the Himālayas, permitting one of his disciples to follow him, and disappears therein for ever from he sight of the profane. Is he dead? Tradition and popular belief answer n the negative, and some of the local Gurus, if they do not emphatically orroborate, do not deny the rumour. The truth with its mysterious details s given in the Secret Doctrine is known but to them; it can be given out ully only to the direct followers of the great Dravidian Guru, and it is or them alone to reveal of it as much as they think fit. Still it is aintained that this Adept of Adepts lives to this day in his spiritual ntity as a mysterious, unseen, yet overpowering presence among the
Brotherhood of Shamballa, beyond, far beyond, the snowy-capped Himālayas.
SECTION XLIV. "REINCARNATIONS" OF BUDDHA.
Every section in the chapter on "Dezhin Shegpa"(675) (Tathāgata) in the
Commentaries represents one year of that great Philosopher's life, in its ual aspect of public and private teacher, the two being contrasted and ommented upon. It shows the Sage reaching Buddha-hood through a long ourse of study, meditation, and Initiations, as any other Adept would ave to do, not one rung of the ladder up to the arduous "Path of
Perfection" being missed. The Bodhisattva became a Buddha and a Nirvānī hrough personal effort and merit, after having had to undergo all the ardships of every other neophyte--not by virtue of a divine birth, as hought by some. It was only the reaching of Nirvāna while still living in he body and on this earth that was due to His having been in previous irths high on the "Path of Dzyan" (knowledge, wisdom). Mental or ntellectual gifts and abstract knowledge follow an Initiate in his new irth, but he has to acquire phenomenal powers anew, passing through all he successive stages. He has to acquire Rinchen-na-dun ("the seven recious gifts")(676) one after the other. During the period of meditation o worldly phenomena on the physical plane must be allowed to enter into is mind or cross his thoughts. Zhine-Ihagthong (Sanskrit: Vipashya, eligious abstract meditation) will develop in him most wonderful aculties independently of himself. The four degrees of contemplation, or
Sam-tan (Sanskrit: Dhyāna), once acquired, everything becomes easy. For, nce that man has entirely got rid of the idea of individuality, merging is Self in the Universal Self, becoming, so to say, the bar of steel to hich the properties inherent in the loadstone (Ādi Buddha, or Anima
Mundi) are imparted, powers hitherto dormant in him are awakened, ysteries in invisible Nature are unveiled, and becoming a Thonglam-pa (a
Seer) he becomes a Dhyāni-Buddha. Every Zung (Dhāranī, a mystic word or antra) of the Lokottaradharma (the highest world of causes) will be known o him.
Thus, after His outward death, twenty years later, Tathāgata in His mmense love and "pitiful mercy" for erring and ignorant humanity, refused
Paranirvāna(677) in order that He might continue to help men.
Says a Commentary:
_Having reached the Path of Deliverance [Thar-lam] from transmigration, ne cannot perform Tulpa_(_678_)_ any longer, for to become a Paranirvānī s to close the circle of the Septenary Ku-Sum._(_679_)_ He has merged his orrowed Dorjesempa [Vajrasattva] into the Universal and become one with t._
Vajradhara, also Vajrasattva (Tibetan: Dorjechang and Dorjedzin, or
Dorjosampa), is the regent or President of all the Dhyān Chohans or Dhyāni
Buddhas, the highest, the Supreme Buddha; personal, yet never manifested bjectively; the "Supreme Conqueror," the "Lord of all Mysteries," the
"One without Beginning or End"--in short, the Logos of Buddhism. For, as
Vajrasattva, He is simply the Tsovo (Chief) of the Dhyāni Buddhas or Dhyān
Chohans, and the Supreme Intelligence in the Second World; while as
Vajradhara (Dorjechang), He is all that which was enumerated above. "These wo are one, and yet two," and over them is "Chang, the Supreme
Unmanifested and Universal Wisdom that has no name." As two in one He
(They) is the Power that subdued and conquered Evil from the beginning, llowing it to reign only over willing subjects on earth, and having no ower over those who despise and hate it. Esoterically the allegory is asily understood; exoterically Vajradhara (Vajrasattva) is the God to hom all the evil spirits swore that they would not impede the propagation f the Good Law (Buddhism), and before whom all the demons tremble.
Therefore, we say this dual personage has the same _rōle_ assigned to it n canonical and dogmatic Tibetan Buddhism as have Jehovah and the
Archangel Mikael, the Metatron of the Jewish Kabalists. This is easily hown. Mikael is "the angel of the face of God," or he who represents his
Master. "My face shall go with thee" (in English, "presence"), before the
Israelites, says God to Moses (_Exodus_, xxxiii. 14). "The angel of my resence" (Hebrew: "of my face") (_Isaiah_, lxiii. 9), etc. The Roman
Catholics identify Christ with Mikael, who is also his ferouer, or "face," ystically. This is precisely the position of Vajradhara, or Vajrasattva, n Northern Buddhism. For the latter, in His Higher Self as Vajradhara
(Dorjechang), is _never_ manifested, except to the seven Dhyān Chohans, he primeval Builders. Esoterically, it is the Spirit of the "Seven" ollectively, their seventh principle, or Ātman. Exoterically, any amount f fables may be found in _Kāla Chakra_, the most important work in the
Gyut [or (D)gyu] division of the Kanjur, the division of mystic knowledge
[(D)gyu]. Dorjechang (wisdom) Vajradhara, is said to live in the second
Arūpa World, which connects him with Metatron, in the first world of pure
Spirits, the Briatic world of the Kabalists, who call this angel El-
Shaddai, the Omnipotent and Mighty One. Metatron is in Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
(Messenger), or the Great Teacher. Mikael fights Satan, the Dragon, and onquers him and his Angels. Vajrasattva, who is one with Vajrapāni, the
Subduer of the Evil Spirits, conquers Rāhu, the Great Dragon who is always rying to devour the sun and moon (eclipses). "War in Heaven" in the
Christian legend is based upon the bad angels having discovered the ecrets (magical wisdom) of the good ones (Enoch), and the mystery of the
"Tree of Life." Let anyone read simply the exoteric accounts in the Hindu nd Buddhist Pantheons--the latter version being taken from the former--and e will find both resting on the same primeval, archaic allegory from the
Secret Doctrine. In the exoteric texts (Hindu and Buddhist), the Gods hurn the ocean to extract from it the Water of Life--Amrita--or the Elixir f Knowledge. In both the Dragon steals some of this, and is exiled from eaven by Vishnu, or Vajradhara, or the chief God, whatever may be his ame. We find the same in the Book of _Enoch_, and it is poetized in St.
John's _Revelation_. And now the allegory, with all its fanciful rnamentations, has become a dogma!
As will be found mentioned later, the Tibetan Lamaseris contain many ecret and semi-secret volumes, detailing the lives of great Sages. Many f the statements in them are purposely confused, and in others the reader ecomes bewildered, unless a clue be given him, by the use of one name to over many individuals who follow the same line of teaching. Thus there is succession of "living Buddhas'" and the name "Buddha" is given to eacher after teacher. Schlagintweit writes:
To each human Buddha belongs a Dhyāni-Buddha, and a Dhyāni-
Bodhisattva, and the unlimited number of the former also involves
an equally unlimited number of the latter.(680)
[But if this be so--and the exoteric and semi-exoteric use of the name ustify the statement--the reader must depend on his own intuition to istinguish between the Dhyāni Buddhas and the human Buddhas, and must not pply to the great BUDDHA of the Fifth Race all that is ascribed to "the
Buddha" in books where, as said, blinds are constantly introduced.
In one of these books some strange and obscure statements are made which he writer gives, as before, entirely on her own responsibility, since a ew may sense a meaning hidden under words misleading in their surface eaning.](681) It is stated that at the age of thirty-three,
Shankarāchārya, tired of his mortal body, "put it off" in the cave he had ntered, and that the Bodhisattva, that served as his lower personality, as freed
With the burden of a sin upon him which he had not committed.
At the same time it is added:
At whatever age one puts off his outward body by free will, at
that age will he be made to die a violent death against his will
in his next rebirth.
Now, Karma could have no hold on "Mahā Shankara" (as Shankara is called in he secret work), as he had, as Avatāra, no Ego of his own, but a
Bodhisattva--a willing sacrificial victim. Neither had the latter any esponsibility for the deed, whether sinful or otherwise. Therefore we do ot see the point, since Karma cannot act unjustly. There is some terrible ystery involved in all this story, one that no uninitiated intellect can ver unravel. Still, there it is, suggesting the natural query, "Who, hen, was punished by Karma?" and leaving it to be answered.
A few centuries later Buddha tried one more incarnation, it is said, in *
* *, and again, fifty years subsequent to the death of this Adept, in one hose name is given as Tiani-Tsang.(682) No details, no further nformation or explanation is given. It is simply stated that the last
Buddha had to work out the remains of his Karma, which none of the Gods hemselves can escape, forced as he was to bury still deeper certain ysteries half revealed by him--hence misinterpreted. The words used would tand when translated:(683)
Born fifty-two years too early as Shramana Gautama, the son of
King Zastang; then retiring fifty-seven years too soon as Mahā
Shankara, who got tired of his outward form. This wilful act
aroused and attracted King Karma, who killed the new form of * * *
at thirty-three,(684) the age of the body that was put off. [At
whatever age one puts off his outward body by free will, at that
age will he be made to die in his next incarnation _against his
will_--Commentary.] He died in his next (body) at thirty-two and a
little over, and again in his next at eighty--a Māyā, and at one
hundred, in reality. The Bodhisattva chose Tiani-Tsang,(685) then
again the Sugata became Tsong-Kha-pa, who became thus Dezhin-
Shegpa [Tathāgata--"one who follows in the way and manner of his
predecessors"]. The Blessed One could do good to his generation as
* * * but none to posterity, and so as Tiani-Tsaug he became
incarnated only for the "_remains_" [of his precedent Karma, as we
understand it]. The Seven Ways and the Four Truths were once more
hidden out of sight. The Merciful One confined since then his
attention and fatherly care to the heart of Bodyul, the nursery-
grounds of the seeds of truth. The blessed "remains" since then
have overshadowed and rested in many a holy body of human
Bodhisattvas.
No further information is given, least of all are there any details or xplanations to be found in the secret volume. All is darkness and mystery n it, for it is evidently written but for those who are already nstructed. Several flaming red asterisks are placed instead of names, and he few facts given are abruptly broken off. The key of the riddle is left o the intuition of the disciple, unless the "direct followers" of Gautama he Buddha--"those who are to be denied by His Church for the next ycle"--and of Shankarāchārya, are pleased to add more.
The final section gives a kind of summary of the seventy sections--covering eventy-three years of Buddha's life(686)--from which the last paragraph is ummarized as follows:
Emerging from ----, the most excellent seat of the three secrets
[Sang-Sum], the Master of incomparable mercy, after having
performed on all the anchorites the rite of ----, and each of these
having been cut off,(687) perceived through [the power of] Hlun-
Chub(688) what was his next duty. The Most-Illustrious meditated
and asked himself whether this would help [the future]
generations. What they needed was the sight of Māyā in a body of
illusion. Which?... The great conqueror of pains and sorrows arose
and proceeded back to his birthplace. There Sugata was welcomed by
the few, for they did not know Shramana Gautama. "Shākya [the
Mighty] is in Nirvāna.... He has given the Science to the Shuddhas
[Shūdra]," said they of Damze Yul [the country of Brāhmans:
India].... It was for that, born of pity, that the All-Glorious
One had to retire to ----, and then appear [karmically] as Mahā
Shankara; and out of pity as ----, and again as ----, and again as
Tsong-Kha-pa.... For, he who chooses in humiliation must go down,
and he who _loves not_ allows Karma to raise him.(689)
This passage is confessedly obscure and written for the few. It is not awful to say any more, for the time has not yet come when nations are repared to hear the whole truth. The old religions are full of mysteries, nd to demonstrate some of them would surely lead to an explosion of atred, followed, perhaps, by bloodshed and worse. It will be sufficient o know that while Gautama Buddha is merged in Nirvāna ever since his eath, Gautama Shākyamuni may have had to reincarnate--this dual inner ersonality being one of the greatest mysteries of Esoteric psychism.
"The seat of the three secrets" refers to a place inhabited by high
Initiates and their disciples. The "secrets" are the three mystic powers nown as Gopa, Yasodhara, and Uptala Varna, that Csomo de Köros mistook or Buddha's three wives, as other Orientalists have mistaken Shakti (Yoga ower) personified by a female deity for His wife; or the Draupadī--also a piritual power--for the wife in common of the five brothers Pāndava.
SECTION XLV. AN UNPUBLISHED DISCOURSE OF BUDDHA.
(It is found in the second _Book of Commentaries_ and is addressed to the
Arhats.)
Said the All-Merciful: Blessed are ye, O Bhikshus, happy are ye who have nderstood the mystery of Being and _Non-Being_ explained in Bas-pa
[Dharma, Doctrine], and have given preference to the latter, for ye are erily my Arhats.... The elephant, who sees his form mirrored in the lake, ooks at it, and then goes away, taking it for the real body of another lephant, is wiser than the man who beholds his face in the stream, and, ooking at it, says, "Here am I.... I am I": for the "I," his Self, is not n the world of the twelve Nidānas and mutability, but in that of Non-
Being, the only world beyond the snares of Māyā.... That alone, which has either cause nor author, which is self-existing, eternal, far beyond the each of mutability, is the true "I" [Ego], the Self of the Universe. The
Universe of Nam-Kha says: "I am the world of Sien-Chan";(690) the four llusions laugh and reply, "Verily so." But the truly wise man knows that either man, nor the Universe that he passes through like a flitting hadow, is any more a real Universe than the dewdrop that reflects a spark f the morning sun is that sun.... There are three things, Bhikshus, that re everlastingly the same, upon which no vicissitude, no modification can ver act: these are the Law, Nirvāna, and Space,(691) and those three are
One, since the first two are within the last, and that last one a Māyā, so ong as man keeps within the whirlpool of sensuous existences. One need ot have his mortal body die to avoid the clutches of concupiscence and ther passions. The Arhat who observes the seven hidden precepts of Bas-pa ay become Dang-ma and Lha.(692) He may hear the "holy voice" of ...
[Kwan-yin],(693) and find himself within the quiet precincts of his
Sangharama(694) transferred into Amitābha Buddha.(695) Becoming one with
Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi,(696) he may pass through all the six worlds of
Being (Rūpaloka) and get into the first three worlds of Arūpa.(697)... He ho listens to my secret law, preached to my select Arhats, will arrive ith its help at the knowledge of Self, and thence at perfection.
It is due to entirely erroneous conceptions of Eastern thought and to gnorance of the existence of an Esoteric key to the outward Buddhist hrases that Burnouf and other great scholars have inferred from such ropositions--held also by the Vedāntins--as "my body is not body" and
"myself is no self of mine," that Eastern psychology was all based upon on-permanency. Cousin, for instance, lecturing upon the subject, brings he two following propositions to prove, on Burnouf's authority, that, nlike Brāhmanism, Buddhism rejects the perpetuity of the thinking rinciple. These are:
1. Thought or Spirit(698)--for the faculty is not distinguished
from the subject--appears only with sensation and does not survive
it.
2. The Spirit cannot itself lay hold of itself, and in directing
attention to itself it draws from it only the conviction of its
powerlessness to see itself otherwise than as successive and
transitory.
This all refers to Spirit embodied, not to the freed Spiritual Self on hom Māyā has no more hold. Spirit is no body; therefore have the
Orientalists made of it "nobody" and nothing. Hence they proclaim
Buddhists to be Nihilists, and Vedāntins to be the followers of a creed in hich the "Impersonal [God] turns out on examination to be a myth"; their oal is described as
The complete extinction of all spiritual, mental, and bodily
powers by absorption into the Impersonal.(699)
SECTION XLVI. NIRVANA-MOKSHA.
The few sentences given in the text from one of Gautama Buddha's secret eachings show how uncalled for is the epithet of "Materialist" when pplied to One Whom two-thirds of those who are looked upon as great
Adepts and Occultists in Asia recognize as their Master, whether under the ame of Buddha or that of Shankarāchārya. The reader will remember the ust-quoted words are what Buddha Sanggyas (or Pho) is alleged by the
Tibetan Occultists to have taught: there are three eternal things in the
Universe--the Law, Nirvāna, and Space. The Buddhists of the Southern Church laim, on the other hand, that Buddha held only two things as ternal--Ākāsha and Nirvāna. But Ākāsha being the same as Aditi,(700) and oth being translated "Space," there is no discrepancy so far, since
Nirvāna as well as Moksha, is a state. Then in both cases the great
Kapilavastu Sage unifies the two, as well as the three, into one eternal
Element, and ends by saying that even "that One is a Māyā" to one who is ot a Dang-ma, a perfectly purified Soul.
The whole question hangs upon materialistic misconceptions and ignorance f Occult Metaphysics. To the man of Science who regards Space as simply a ental representation, a conception of something existing _pro formā_, and aving no real being outside our mind, Space _per se_ is verily an llusion. He may fill the boundless interstellar space with an "imaginary" ther, nevertheless Space for him is an abstraction. Most of the
Metaphysicians of Europe are so wide of the mark, from the purely Occult tandpoint, of a correct comprehension of "Space," as are the
Materialists, though the erroneous conceptions of both of course differ idely.
If, bearing in mind the philosophical views of the Ancients upon this uestion, we compare them with what is now termed exact physical Science, t will be found that the two disagree only in inferences and names, and hat their postulates are the same when reduced to their most simple xpression. From the beginning of the human Ęons, from the very dawn of
Occult Wisdom, the regions that the men of Science fill with ether have een explored by the Seers of every age. That which the world regards imply as cosmic Space, an abstract representation, the Hindu Rishi, the
Chaldęan Magus, the Egyptian Hierophant held, each and all, as the one ternal Root of all, the playground of all the Forces in Nature. It is the ountain-head of all terrestrial life, and the abode of those (to us) nvisible swarms of existences--of real beings, as of the shadows only hereof, conscious and unconscious, intelligent and senseless--that urround us on all sides, that interpenetrate the atoms of our Kosmos, and ee us not, as we do not either see or sense them through our physical rganisms. For the Occultist "Space" and "Universe" are synonyms. In Space here is not Matter, Force, nor Spirit, but all that and much more. It is he One Element, and that one the Anima Mundi--Space, Ākāsha, Astral
Light--the Root of Life which, in its eternal, ceaseless motion, like the ut- and in-breathing of one boundless ocean, evolves but to reabsorb all hat lives and feels and thinks and has its being in it. As said of the
Universe in _Isis Unveiled_, it is:
The combination of a thousand elements and yet the expression of a
single Spirit--a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.
Such were the views upon the subject of all the great ancient
Philosophers, from Manu down to Pythagoras, from Plato to Paul.
When the dissolution [Pralaya] had arrived at its term the great
Being [Para-Ātmā, or Para-Purusha], the Lord existing through
himself, out of whom and through whom all things were, and are,
and will be, ... resolved to emanate from his own substance the
various creatures.(701)
The mystic Decad [of Pythagoras] (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10) is a way of
expressing this idea. The One is God;(702) the Two, matter; the
Three, combining Monad and Duad and partaking of the nature of
both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection,
expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all,
involves the entire Cosmos.(703)
Plato's "God" is the "Universal Ideation," and Paul saying "Out of him, nd through him, and in him, all things are," had surely a Principle--never Jehovah--in his profound mind. The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the ey to every great Philosophy. It is the general formula of unity in ultiplicity, the One evolving the many and pervading the All. It is the rchaic doctrine of Emanation in a few words.
Speusippus and Xenocrates held, like their great Master, Plato, that:
The Anima Mundi (or "world-soul") was not the Deity, but a
manifestation. Those philosophers never conceived of the One as an
_animate nature_. The original One did not _exist_, as we
understand the term. Not till he (it) had united with the many
emanated existences (the Monad and Duad), was a being produced.
The {~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} ("honoured"), the something manifested, dwells in the
centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of
the Deity--the World-Soul. In this doctrine we find the spirit of
Esoteric Buddhism.(704)
And it is that of Esoteric Brāhmanism and of the Vedāntin Adwaitīs. The wo modern philosophers, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, teach the same deas. The Occultists say that:
The psychic and ectenic forces, the "ideo-motor" and "electro-
biological powers," "latent thought," and even "unconscious
cerebration" theories can be condensed in two words: the
Kabalistic Astral Light.(705)
Schopenhauer only synthesized all this by calling it Will, and ontradicted the men of Science in their materialistic views, as von
Hartmann did later on. The author of the _Philosophy of the Unconscious_ alls their views "an instinctual prejudice."
Furthermore, he demonstrates that no experimenter can have
anything to do with matter properly so termed, but only with the
forces into which he divides it. The visible effects of matter are
but the effects of force. He concludes thereby that that which is
now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of atomic forces,
to express which the word "matter" is used; outside of that, for
science, matter is but a word void of sense.(706)
As much, it is to be feared, as those other terms with which we are now oncerned, "Space," "Nirvāna," and so on.
The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer's works
differ widely from those of the majority of our orthodox
scientists.(707) "In reality," remarks this daring speculator,
"there is neither _Matter_ nor _Spirit_. The tendency to
gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in the human
brain.... If matter can--no one knows why--fall to the ground, then
it can also--no one knows why--think.... As soon, even in mechanics,
as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach
the inscrutable adhesion, gravitation, and so on we are faced by
phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the _will_ and
_thought_ in man: we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible,
for such is every force in nature. Where is, then, that _matter_
which you all pretend to know so well, and from which--being so
familiar with it--you draw all your conclusions and explanations,
and attribute to it all things?... That which can be fully
realized by our reason and senses is but the superficial; they can
never reach the true inner substance of things. Such was the
opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head
some sort of a _spirit_, then you are obliged to concede the same
to a stone. If your dead and utterly-passive matter can manifest a
tendency toward gravitation or, like electricity, attract and
repel and send out sparks then as well as the brain it can also
think. In short, every particle of the so-called spirit we can
replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of matter
replace with spirit.... Thus, it is not the Christian division of
all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found
philosophically exact; but only if we divide them into _will_ and
_manifestation_, which form of division has naught to do with the
former, for it spiritualizes everything: all that which is in the
first instance real and objective--body and matter--it transforms
into a representation, and every manifestation into will."(708)
The _matter_ of science may be for all objective purposes a "dead and tterly-passive matter"; to the Occultist not an atom of it can be ead--"Life is ever present in it." We send the reader who would know more bout it to our article, "Transmigration of Life-Atoms."(709) What we are ow concerned with is the doctrine of Nirvāna.
A "system of atheism" it may be justly called, since it recognizes neither
God nor Gods--least of all a Creator, as it entirely rejects creation. The
_Fecit ex nihilo_ is as incomprehensible to the Occult metaphysical
Scientist as it is to the scientific Materialist. It is at this point that ll agreement stops between the two. But if such be the sin of the
Buddhist and Brāhman Occultist, then Pantheists and Atheists, and also heistical Jews--the Kabalists--must also plead "guilty" to it; yet no one ould ever think of calling the Hebrews of the Kabalah "Atheists." Except he Talmudistic and Christian exoteric systems there never was a religious
Philosophy, whether in the ancient or modern world, but rejected _ą riori_ the _ex nihilo_ hypothesis, simply because Matter was always co- ternalized with Spirit.
Nirvāna, as well as the Moksha of the Vedāntins, is regarded by most of he Orientalists as a synonym of annihilation; yet no more glaring njustice could be done, and this capital error must be pointed out and isproved. On this most important tenet of the Brāhmo-Buddhistic ystem--the Alpha and the Omega of "Being" or "Non-Being"--rests the whole difice of Occult Metaphysics. Now the rectification of the great error oncerning Nirvāna may be very easily accomplished with relation to the hilosophically inclined, to those who,
In the glass of things temporal see the image of things spiritual.
On the other hand, to that reader who could never soar beyond the details f tangible material form, our explanation will appear meaningless. He may omprehend and even accept the logical inferences from the reasons iven--the true spirit will ever escape his intuitions. The word "nihil" aving been misconceived from the first, it is continually used as a ledge-hammer in the matter of Esoteric Philosophy. Nevertheless it is the uty of the Occultist to try and explain it.
Nirvāna and Moksha, then, as said before, have their being in non-being, f such a paradox be permitted to illustrate the meaning the better.
Nirvāna, as some illustrious Orientalists have attempted to prove, does ean the "blowing-out"(710) of all sentient existence. It is like the lame of a candle burnt out to its last atom, and then suddenly xtinguished. Quite so. Nevertheless, as the old Arhat Nāgasena affirmed efore the king who taunted him: "Nirvāna _is_"--and Nirvāna is eternal.
But the Orientalists deny this, and say it is not so. In their opinion
Nirvāna is not a re-absorption in the Universal Force, not eternal bliss nd rest, but it means literally "the blowing-out, the extinction, omplete annihilation, and not absorption." The _Lankavatara_ quoted in upport of their arguments by some Sanskritists, and which gives the ifferent interpretations of Nirvāna by the Tīrthika Brāhmans, is no uthority to one who goes to primeval sources for information, namely, to he Buddha who taught the doctrine. As well quote the Chārvāka
Materialists in their support.
If we bring as an argument the sacred Jaina books, wherein the dying
Gautama Buddha is thus addressed: "Arise into Nirvi [Nirvāna] from this ecrepit body into which thou hast been sent.... Ascend into thy former bode, O blessed Avatāra"; and if we add that this seems to us the very pposite of nihilism, we may be told that so far it may only prove a ontradiction, one more discrepancy in the Buddhist faith. If again we emind the reader that since Gautama is believed to appear occasionally, e-descending from his "former abode" for the good of humanity and His aithful congregation, thus making it incontestable that Buddhism does not each final annihilation, we shall be referred to authorities to whom such eaching is ascribed. And let us say at once: Men are no authority for us n questions of conscience, nor ought they to be for anyone else. If nyone holds to Buddha's Philosophy, let him do and say as Buddha did and aid; if a man calls himself a Christian, let him follow the commandments f Christ--not the interpretations of His many dissenting priests and ects.
In _A Buddhist Catechism_ the question is asked:
Are there any dogmas in Buddhism which we are required to accept
on faith?
A. No. We are earnestly enjoined to accept nothing whatever on
faith, whether it be written in books, handed down from our
ancestors, or taught by sages. Our Lord Buddha has said that we
must not believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor
traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor
rumours, as such; nor writings by sages, because sages wrote them:
nor fancies that we may suspect to have been inspired in us by a
Deva (that is, in presumed spiritual inspiration); nor from
inferences drawn from some haphazard assumption we may have made;
nor because of what seems an analogical necessity; nor on the mere
authority of our teachers or masters. But we are to believe when
the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason
and consciousness. "For this," says he in concluding, "I taught
you not to believe merely because you have heard, but when you
believed of your consciousness, then to act accordingly and
abundantly."(711)
That Nirvāna, or rather, that state in which we are in Nirvāna, is quite he reverse of annihilation is suggested to us by our "reason and onsciousness," and that is sufficient for us personally. At the same ime, this fact being inadequate and very ill-adapted for the general eader, something more efficient may be added.
Without resorting to sources unsympathetic to Occultism, the _Kabalah_ urnishes us with the most luminous and clear proofs that the term "nihil" n the minds of the Ancient Philosophers had a meaning quite different rom that it has now received at the hands of Materialists. It means ertainly "nothing"--or "no-thing." F. Kircher, in his work on the
_Kabalah_ and the Egyptian Mysteries(712) explains the term admirably. He ells his readers that in the _Zohar_ the first of the Sephiroth(713) has name the significance of which is "the _Infinite_," but which was ranslated indifferently by the Kabalists as "Ens" and "Non-Ens" ("Being" nd "Non-Being"); a _Being_, inasmuch as it is the _root_ and source of ll other beings; _Non-Being_ because Ain Soph--the Boundless and the
Causeless, the Unconscious and the Passive Principle--resembles nought else n the Universe.
The author adds:
This is the reason why St. Denys did not hesitate to call it
Nihil.
"Nihil" therefore stands--even with some Christian theologians and hinkers, especially with the earlier ones who lived but a few removes rom the profound Philosophy of the initiated Pagans--as a synonym for the mpersonal, divine Principle, the Infinite All, which is no Being or hing--the En or Ain Soph, the Parabrahman of the Vedānta. Now St. Denys as a pupil of St. Paul--an Initiate--and this fact makes everything clear.
The "Nihil" is _in esse_ the Absolute Deity itself, the hidden Power or
Omnipresence degraded by Monotheism into an anthropomorphic Being, with ll the passions of a mortal on a grand scale. Union with That is not nnihilation in the sense understood in Europe.(714) In the East nnihilation in Nirvāna refers but to matter: that of the visible as well s the invisible body, for the astral body, the personal double, is still atter, however sublimated. Buddha taught that the primitive Substance is ternal and unchangeable. Its vehicle is the pure, luminous ether, the oundless, infinite Space,
Not a void resulting from the absence of forms, but on the
contrary, the foundation of all forms.... [This] denotes it to be
the creation of Māyā, all the works of which are as nothing before
the uncreated Form [Spirit], in whose profound and sacred depths
all motion must cease for ever.(715)
Motion here refers only to illusive objects, to their change as opposed to erpetuity, rest--perpetual motion being the Eternal Law, the ceaseless
Breath of the Absolute.
The mastery of Buddhistic dogmas can be attained only according to the
Platonic method: from universals to particulars. The key to it lies in the efined and mystical tenets of spiritual influx and divine life.
Saith Buddha:
_Whosoever is unacquainted with my Law,_(_716_)_ and dies in that state ust return to earth until he becomes a perfect Samano [ascetic]. To chieve this object he must destroy within himself the trinity of
Māyā._(_717_)_ He must extinguish his passions, unite and identify himself ith the Law [the teaching of the Secret Doctrine], and comprehend the hilosophy of annihilation._(718)
No, it is not in the dead-letter of Buddhistical literature that scholars ay ever hope to find the true solution of its metaphysical subtleties.
Alone in all antiquity the Pythagoreans understood them perfectly, and it s on the (to the average Orientalist and the Materialist) ncomprehensible abstractions of Buddhism that Pythagoras grounded the rincipal tenets of his Philosophy.
Annihilation means with the Buddhistical Philosophy only a dispersion of atter, in whatever form or _semblance_ of form it may be, for everything hat bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later perish,
_i.e._, change that shape; therefore, as something temporal, though eeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion, Māyā; for as eternity has either beginning nor end, the more or less prolonged duration of some articular form passes, as it were, like an instantaneous flash of ightning. Before we have the time to realize that we have seen it, it is one and passed for ever; hence even our astral bodies, pure ether, are ut illusions of matter so long as they retain their terrestrial outline.
The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits f the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. When the piritual Entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then nly it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvāna. He exists in
Spirit, in nothing; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely nnihilated, and thus will die no more, for Spirit alone is no Māyā, but he only Reality in an illusionary universe of ever-passing forms.
It is upon this Buddhist doctrine that the Pythagoreans grounded
the principal tenets of their philosophy. "Can that Spirit which
gives life and motion, and partakes of the nature of light, be
reduced to nonentity?" they ask. "Can that sensitive Spirit in
brutes which exercises memory, one of the rational faculties, die
and become nothing?" And Whitelock Bulstrode in his able defence
of Pythagoras expounds this doctrine by adding:
"If you say they [the brutes] breathe their Spirits into the air,
and there vanish, that is all that I contend for. The air indeed
is the proper place to receive them, being according to Laertius
full of souls; and according to Epicurus full of atoms, the
principles of all things; for even this place wherein we walk and
birds fly has so much of a spiritual nature that it is invisible,
and therefore may well be the receiver of forms, since the forms
of all bodies are so; we can only see and hear its effects; the
air itself is too fine and above the capacity of the age. What
then is the ether in the region above, and what are the influences
of forms that descend from thence?" The _Spirits_ of creatures,
the Pythagoreans hold, who are emanations of the most sublimated
portions of ether--emanations, _breaths, but not forms_. Ether is
corruptible--all philosophers agree in that;--and what is
incorruptible _is so far from being annihilated_ when it gets rid
of the _form_ that it lays a good claim to _immortality_.
"But what is that which has no body, no _form_; which is
imponderable, invisible, and indivisible--that which exists, and
yet _is not_?" ask the Buddhists. "It is Nirvāna," is the answer.
It is _nothing_--not a region, but rather a state.(719)
SECTION XLVII. THE SECRET BOOKS OF "LAM-RIN" AND DZYAN.
The _Book of Dzyan_--from the Sanskrit word "Dhyān" (mystic meditation)--is he first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiu- e, and a Glossary of the public works of the same name. Thirty-five olumes of Kiu-te for exoteric purposes and the use of the laymen may be ound in the possession of the Tibetan Gelugpa Lamas, in the library of ny monastery; and also fourteen books of Commentaries and Annotations on he same by the initiated Teachers.
Strictly speaking, those thirty-five books ought to be termed "The
Popularised Version" of the Secret Doctrine, full of myths, blinds, and rrors; the fourteen volumes of _Commentaries_, on the other hand--with heir translations, annotations, and an ample glossary of Occult terms, orked out from one small archaic folio, the _Book of the Secret Wisdom of he World_(720)--contain a digest of all the Occult Sciences. These, it ppears, are kept secret and apart, in the charge of the Teshu Lama of
Tji-gad-je. The Books of Kiu-te are comparatively modern, having been dited within the last millennium, whereas, the earliest volumes of the
_Commentaries_ are of untold antiquity, some fragments of the original ylinders having been preserved. With the exception that they explain and orrect some of the too fabulous, and to every appearance, grossly- xaggerated accounts in the Books of Kiu-te(721)--properly so-called--the
_Commentaries_ have little to do with these. They stand in relation to hem as the Chaldęo-Jewish _Kabalah_ stands to the Mosaic Books. In the ork known as the _Avatumsaka Sūtra_, in section: "The Supreme Ātman
[Soul] as manifested in the character of the Arhats and Pratyeka Buddhas," t is stated that:
Because from the beginning all sentient creatures have confused
the truth and embraced the false, therefore there came into
existence a hidden knowledge called Alaya Vijńāna.
"Who is in possession of the true knowledge?" is asked. "The great
Teachers of the Snowy Mountain," is the response.
These "great Teachers" have been known to live in the "Snowy Range" of the
Himālayas for countless ages. To deny in the face of millions of Hindus he existence of their great Gurus, living in the Āshrams scattered all ver the Trans- or the Cis-Himālayan slopes is to make oneself ridiculous n their eyes. When the Buddhist Saviour appeared in India, their
Āshrams--for it is rarely that these great Men are found in Lamaseries, nless on a short visit--were on the spots they now occupy, and that even efore the Brāhmans themselves came from Central Asia to settle on the
Indus. And before that more than one Āryan Dvija of fame and historical enown had sat at their feet, learning that which culminated later on in ne or another of the great philosophical schools. Most of these Himālayan
Bhante were Āryan Brāhmans and ascetics.
No student, unless very advanced, would be benefited by the perusal of hose exoteric volumes.(722) They must be read with a key to their eaning, and that key can only be found in the _Commentaries_. Moreover here are some comparatively modern works that are positively injurious so ar as a fair comprehension of even exoteric Buddhism is concerned. Such re the _Buddhist Cosmos_, by Bonze Jin-ch'on of Pekin; the _Shing-Tau-ki_
(or _The Records of the Enlightenment of Tathāgata_), by Wang Puk--seventh entury; _Hisai Sūtra_ (or _Book of Creation_), and some others.
SECTION XLVIII. AMITA BUDDHA KWAN-SHAI-YIN, AND KWAN-YIN.--WHAT THE "BOOK
OF DZYAN" AND THE LAMASERIES OF TSONG-KHA-PA SAY.
As a supplement to the _Commentaries_ there are many secret folios on the ives of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and among these there is one on
Prince Gautama and another on His reincarnation in Tsong-Kha-pa. This reat Tibetan Reformer of the fourteenth century, said to be a direct ncarnation of Amita Buddha, is the founder of the secret School near Tji- ad-je, attached to the private retreat of the Teshu Lama. It is with Him hat began the regular system of Lamaic incarnations of Buddhas (Sang- yas), or of Shākya-Thub-pa (Shakya-muni). Amida or Amita Buddha is called y the author of _Chinese Buddhism_, a mythical being. He speaks of
Amida Buddha (_Ami-to Fo_) a fabulous personage, worshipped
assiduously--like Kwan-yin--by the Northern Buddhists, but unknown
in Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon.(723)
Very likely. Yet Amida Buddha is not a "fabulous" personage, since (_a_)
"Amida" is the Senzar form of "Ādi"; "Ādi-Buddhi" and "Ādi-Buddha,"(724) s already shown, existed ages ago as a Sanskrit term for "Primeval Soul" nd "Wisdom"; and (_b_) the name was applied to Gautama Shākyamuni, the ast Buddha in India, from the seventh century, when Buddhism was ntroduced into Tibet. "Amitābha" (in Chinese, "Wu-liang-sheu") means iterally "Boundless Age," a synonym of "En," or "Ain-Suph," the "Ancient f Days," and is an epithet that connects Him directly with the Boundless
Ādi-Buddhi (primeval and Universal Soul) of the Hindus, as well as with he Anima Mundi of all the ancient nations of Europe and the Boundless and
Infinite of the Kabalists. If Amitābha be a fiction of the Tibetans, or a ew form of Wu-liang-sheu, "a fabulous personage," as the author-compiler f _Chinese Buddhism_ tells his readers, then the "fable" must be a very ncient one. For on another page he says himself that the addition to the anon, of the books containing the
Legends of Kwan-yin and of the Western heaven with its Buddha,
Amitābha, was also previous to the Council of Kashmere, a little
before the beginning of our era,(725)
nd he places
the origin of the primitive Buddhist books which are common to the
Northern and Southern Buddhists before 246 B.C.
Since Tibetans accepted Buddhism only in the seventh century A.D., how omes it that they are charged with inventing Amita-Buddha? Besides which, n Tibet, Amitābha is called Odpag-med, which shows that it is not the ame but the abstract idea that was first accepted of an unknown, nvisible, and Impersonal Power--taken, moreover, from the Hindu "Ādi-
Buddhi," and not from the Chinese "Amitābha."(726) There is a great ifference between the popular Odpag-med (Amitābha) who sits enthroned in
Devachan (Sukhāvatī), according to the _Mani Kambum_ Scriptures--the oldest
_historical_ work in Tibet, and the philosophical abstraction called Amida
Buddha, the name being passed now to the earthly Buddha, Gautama.
SECTION XLIX. TSONG-KHA-PA.--LOHANS IN CHINA.
In an article, "Reincarnation in Tibet," everything that could be said bout Tsong-Kha-pa was published.(727) It was stated that this reformer as not, as is alleged by Pārsī scholars, an incarnation of one of the elestial Dhyānis, or the five heavenly Buddhas, said to have been created y Shākyamuni after he had risen to Nirvāna, but that he was an ncarnation of Amita Buddha Himself. The records preserved in the Gon-pa, he chief Lamasery of Tda-shi-Hlumpo, show that Sang-gyas left the regions f the "Western Paradise" to incarnate Himself in Tsong-Kha-pa, in onsequence of the great degradation into which His secret doctrines had allen.
Whenever made too public, the Good Law of Cheu [magical powers]
fell invariably into sorcery or "black magic." The Dwijas, the
Hoshang [Chinese monks] and the Lamas could alone be entrusted
safely with the formulę.
Until the Tsong-Kha-pa period there had been no Sang-gyas (Buddha) ncarnations in Tibet.
Tsong-Kha-pa gave the signs whereby the presence of one of the twenty-five
Bodhisattvas(728) or of the Celestial Buddhas (Dhyān Chohans) in a human ody might be recognized, and He strictly forbade necromancy. This led to split amongst the Lamas, and the malcontents allied themselves with the boriginal Bhons against the reformed Lamaism. Even now they form a owerful sect, practising the most disgusting rites all over Sikkhim,
Bhutan, Nepaul, and even on the borderlands of Tibet. It was worse then.
With the permission of the Tda-shu or Teshu Lama,(729) some hundred Lohans
(Arhats), to avert strife, went to settle in China in the famous monastery ear Tien-t'-ai, where they soon became subjects for legendary lore, and ontinue to be so to this day. They had been already preceded by other
Lohans,
The world-famous disciples of Tathāgata, called the "sweet-voiced"
on account of their ability to chant the Mantras with magical
effect.(730)
The first ones came from Kashmir in the year 3,000 of Kali Yuga (about a entury before the Christian era),(731) while the last ones arrived at the nd of the fourteenth century, 1,500 years later; and, finding no room for hemselves at the lamasery of Yihigching, they built for their own use the argest monastery of all on the sacred island of Pu-to (Buddha, or Put, in
Chinese), in the province of Chusan. There the Good Law, the "Doctrine of he Heart," flourished for several centuries. But when the island was esecrated by a mass of Western foreigners, the chief Lohans left for the ountains of ----. In the Pagoda of Pi-yun-ti, near Pekin, one can still see he "Hall of the Five-hundred Lohans." There the statues of the first- omers are arranged below, while one solitary Lohan is placed quite under he roof of the building, which seems to have been built in commemoration f their visit.
The works of the Orientalists are full of the direct landmarks of Arhats
(Adepts), possessed of thaumaturgic powers, but these are spoken f--whenever the subject cannot be avoided--with unconcealed scorn. Whether nnocently ignorant of, or purposely ignoring, the importance of the
Occult element and symbology in the various Religions they undertake to xplain, short work is generally made of such passages, and they are left ntranslated. In simple justice, however, it should be allowed that much s all such miracles may have been exaggerated by popular reverence and ancy, they are neither less credible nor less attested in "heathen" nnals than are those of the numerous Christian Saints in the church hronicles. Both have an equal right to a place in their respective istories.
If, after the beginning of persecution against Buddhism, the Arhats were o more heard of in India, it was because, their vows prohibiting etaliation, they had to leave the country and seek solitude and security n China, Tibet, Japan, and elsewhere. The sacerdotal powers of the
Brāhmans being at that time unlimited, the Simons and Apolloniuses of
Buddhism had as much chance of recognition and appreciation by the
Brāhmanical Irenęuses and Tertullians as had their successors in the
Judęan and Roman worlds. It was a historical rehearsal of the dramas that ere enacted centuries later in Christendom. As in the case of the so- alled "Heresiarchs" of Christianity, it was not for rejecting the _Vedas_ r the sacred Syllable that the Buddhist Arhats were persecuted, but for nderstanding too well the secret meaning of both. It was simply because heir knowledge was regarded as dangerous and their presence in India nwelcome, that they had to emigrate.
Nor were there a smaller number of Initiates among the Brāhmans hemselves. Even to-day one meets most wonderfully-gifted Sāddhus and
Yogīs, obliged to keep themselves unnoticed and in the shadow, not only wing to the absolute secresy imposed upon them at their Initiation but lso for fear of the Anglo-Indian tribunals and courts of law, wherein udges are determined to regard as charlatanry, imposition, and fraud, the xhibition of, or claim to, any abnormal powers, and one may judge of the ast by the present. Centuries after our era the Initiates of the inner emples and the Mathams (monastic communities) chose a superior council, resided over by an all-powerful Brahm-Ātmā, the Supreme Chief of all hose Mahātmās. This pontificate could be exercised only by a Brāhman who ad reached a certain age, and he it was who was the sole guardian of the ystic formula, and he was the Hierophant who created great Adepts. He lone could explain the meaning of the sacred word, AUM, and of all the eligious symbols and rites. And whosoever among those Initiates of the
Supreme Degree revealed to a profane a single one of the truths, even the mallest of the secrets entrusted to him, had to die; and he who received he confidence was put to death.
But there existed, and still exists to this day, a Word far surpassing the ysterious monosyllable, and which renders him who comes into possession f its key nearly the equal of Brahman. The Brahmātmās alone possess this ey, and we know that to this day there are two great Initiates in
Southern India who possess it. It can be passed only at death, for it is he "Lost Word." No torture, no human power, could force its disclosure by Brāhman who knows it; and it is well guarded in Tibet.
Yet this secresy and this profound mystery are indeed disheartening, since hey alone--the Initiates of India and Tibet--could thoroughly dissipate the hick mists hanging over the history of Occultism, and force its claims to e recognized. The Delphic injunction, "_Know thyself_," seems for the few n this age. But the fault ought not to be laid at the door of the Adepts, ho have done all that could be done, and have gone as far as Their rules ermitted, to open the eyes of the world. Only while the European shrinks rom public obloquy and the ridicule unsparingly thrown on Occultists, the
Asiatic is being discouraged by his own Pandits. These profess to labour nder the gloomy impression that no Bīga Vidyā, no Arhatship (Adeptship), s possible during the Kali Yuga (the "Black Age") we are now passing hrough. Even the Buddhists are taught that the Lord Buddha is alleged to ave prophesied that the power would die out in "one millennium after His eath." But this is an entire mistake. In the _Dīgha Nikāya_ the Buddha ays:
Hear, Subhadra! The world will never be without Rahats, if the
ascetics in my congregations well and truly keep my precepts.
A similar contradiction of the view brought forward by the Brāhmans is ade by Krishna in the _Bhagavad Gītā_, and there is further the actual ppearance of many Sāddhus and miracle-workers in the past, and even in he present age. The same holds good for China and Tibet. Among the ommandments of Tsong-Kha-pa there is one that enjoins the Rahats (Arhats) o make an attempt to enlighten the world, including the "white arbarians," every century, at a certain specified period of the cycle. Up o the present day none of these attempts has been very successful.
Failure has followed failure. Have we to explain the fact by the light of certain prophecy? It is said that up to the time when Pban-chhen-rin-po- hhe (the Great Jewel of Wisdom)(732) condescends to be reborn in the land f the P'helings (Westerners), and appearing as the Spiritual Conqueror
(Chom-den-da), destroys the errors and ignorance of the ages, it will be f little use to try to uproot the misconceptions of P'heling-pa (Europe): er sons will listen to no one. Another prophecy declares that the Secret
Doctrine shall remain in all its purity in Bhod-yul (Tibet), only to the ay that it is kept free from foreign invasion. The very visits of Western atives, however friendly, would be baneful to the Tibetan populations.
This is the true key to Tibetan exclusiveness.
SECTION L. A FEW MORE MISCONCEPTIONS CORRECTED.
Notwithstanding widespread misconceptions and errors--often most amusing to ne who has a certain knowledge of the true doctrines--about Buddhism enerally, and especially about Buddhism in Tibet, all the Orientalists gree that the Buddha's foremost aim was to lead human beings to salvation y teaching them to practise the greatest purity and virtue, and by etaching them from the service of this illusionary world, and the love of ne's still more illusionary--because so evanescent and unreal--body and hysical self. And what is the good of a virtuous life, full of privations nd suffering, if the only result of it is to be annihilation at the end?
If even the attainment of that supreme perfection which leads the Initiate o remember the whole series of his past lives, and to foresee that of the uture ones, by the full development of that inner, divine eye in him, and o acquire the knowledge that unfolds the causes(733) of the ever- ecurring cycles of existence, brings him finally to non-being, and othing more--then the whole system is idiotic, and Epicureanism is far ore philosophical than _such_ Buddhism. He who is unable to comprehend he subtle, and yet so potent, difference between existence in a material r physical state and a purely spiritual existence--Spirit or "Soul- ife"--will never appreciate at their full value the grand teachings of the
Buddha, even in their exoteric form. Individual or personal existence is he cause of pains and sorrows; collective and impersonal life-eternal is ull of divine bliss and joy for ever, with neither causes nor effects to arken its light. And the hope for such a life-eternal is the keynote of he whole of Buddhism. If we are told that impersonal existence is no xistence at all, but amounts to annihilation, as was maintained by some
French reincarnationists, then we would ask: What difference can it make n the spiritual perceptions of an Ego whether he enter Nirvāna loaded ith the recollections only of his own personal lives--tens of thousands ccording to the modern reincarnationists--or whether, merged entirely in he Parabrāhmic state it becomes one with the All, with the absolute nowledge and the absolute feeling of representing collective humanities?
Once that an Ego lives only ten distinct individual lives he must ecessarily lose his one self, and become mixed up--merged, so to say--with hese ten selves. It really seems that so long as this great mystery emains a dead-letter to the world of Western thinkers, and especially to he Orientalists, the less the latter undertake to explain it the better or Truth.
Of all the existing religious Philosophies, Buddhism is the least nderstood. The Lassens, Webers, Wassiljows, the Burnoufs and Juliens, and ven such "eye-witnesses" of Tibetan Buddhism as Csoma de Köros and the
Schlagintweits, have hitherto only added perplexity to confusion. None of hese has ever received his information from a genuine Gelugpa source: all ave judged Buddhism from the bits of knowledge picked up at Tibetan rontier lamaseries, in countries thickly populated by Bhutanese and
Leptchas, Bhons, and red-capped Dugpas, along the line of the Himālayas.
Hundreds of volumes purchased from Burats, Shamans, and Chinese Buddhists, ave been read and translated, glossed and misinterpreted according to nvariable custom. Esoteric Schools would cease to be worthy of their name ere their literature and doctrines to become the property of even their rofane co-religionists--still less of the Western public. This is simple ommon-sense and logic. Nevertheless this is a fact which our Orientalists ave ever refused to recognize: hence they have gone on, gravely iscussing the relative merits and absurdities of idols, "sooth-saying ables," and "magical figures of Phurbu" on the "square tortoise." None of hese have anything to do with the real philosophical Buddhism of the
Gelugpa, or even of the most educated among the Sakyapa and Kadampa sects.
All such "plates" and sacrificial tables, Chinsreg magical circles, etc., ere avowedly got from Sikkhim, Bhutan, and Eastern Tibet, from Bhons and
Dugpas. Nevertheless, these are given as characteristics of Tibetan
Buddhism! It would be as fair to judge the unread Philosophy of Bishop
Berkeley after studying Christianity in the clown-worship of Neapolitan azzaroni, dancing a mystic jig before the idol of St. Pip, or carrying he _ex-voto_ in wax of the phallus of SS. Cosmo and Domiano, at Tsernie.
It is quite true that the primitive Shrāvakas (listeners or hearers) and he Shramanas (the "thought-restrainers" and the "pure") have degenerated, nd that many Buddhist sects have fallen into mere dogmatism and itualism. Like every other Esoteric, half-suppressed teaching, the words f the Buddha convey a double meaning, and every sect has gradually come o claim to be the only one knowing the correct meaning, and thus to ssume supremacy over the rest. Schism has crept in, and has fastened, ike a hideous cancer, on the fair body of early Buddhism. Nāgārjuna's
Mahāyāna ("Great Vehicle") School was opposed by the Hīnayāna (or "Little
Vehicle") System, and even the Yogāchārya of Āryāsanga became disfigured y the yearly pilgrimage from India to the shores of Mansarovara, of hosts f vagabonds with matted locks who play at being Yogīs and Fakirs, referring this to work. An affected detestation of the world, and the edious and useless practice of the counting of inhalations and xhalations as a means to produce absolute tranquillity of mind or editation, have brought this school within the region of Hatha Yoga, and ave made it heir to the Brāhmanical Tīrthikas. And though its Srotāpatti, ts Sakridāgāmin, Anāgāmin, and Arhats,(734) bear the same names in almost very school, yet the doctrines of each differ greatly, and none of these s likely to gain real Abhijńās (the supernatural abnormal five powers).
One of the chief mistakes of the Orientalists when judging on "internal
(?) evidence," as they express it, was that they assumed that the Pratyeka
Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, and the "Perfect" Buddhas were a later evelopment of Buddhism. For on these three chief degrees are based the even and twelve degrees of the Hierarchy of Adeptship. The first are hose who have attained the Bodhi (wisdom) of the Buddhas, but do not ecome Teachers.(735) The human Bodhisattvas are candidates, so to say, or perfect Buddhaship (in Kalpas to come), and with the option of using heir powers now if need be. "Perfect" Buddhas are simply "perfect"
Initiates. All these are men, and not disembodied Beings, as is given out n the Hīnayāna exoteric books. Their correct character may be found only n the secret volumes of Lugrub or Nāgārjuna, the founder of the Mahāyāna ystem, who is said to have been initiated by the Nāgas (fabulous
"Serpents," the veiled name for an Initiate or Mahātmā). The fabled report ound in Chinese records that Nāgārjuna considered his doctrine to be in pposition to that of Gautama Buddha, until he discovered from the Nāgas hat it was precisely the doctrine that had been secretly taught by
Shākyamuni Himself, is an allegory, and is based upon the reconciliation etween the old Brāhmanical secret Schools in the Himālayas and Gautama's
Esoteric teachings, both parties having at first objected to the rival chools of the other. The former, the parent of all others, had been stablished beyond the Himālayas for ages before the appearance of
Shākyamuni. Gautama was a pupil of this; and it was with them, those
Indian Sages, that He had learned the truths of the Sungata, the emptiness nd impermanence of every terrestrial, evanescent thing, and the mysteries f Prajńā Pāramitā, or "knowledge across the River," which finally lands he "Perfect One" in the regions of the One Reality. But His Arhats were ot Himself. Some of them were ambitious, and they modified certain eachings after the great councils, and it is on account of these
"heretics" that the Mother-School at first refused to allow them to blend heir schools, when persecution began driving away the Esoteric
Brotherhood from India. But when finally most of them submitted to the uidance and control of the chief Āshrams, then the Yogāchārya of
Āryāsanga was merged into the oldest Lodge. For it is _there_ from time mmemorial that has lain concealed the final hope and light of the world, he salvation of mankind. Many are the names of that School and land, the ame of the latter being now regarded by the Orientalists as the mythic ame of a fabulous country. It is from this mysterious land, nevertheless, hat the Hindu expects his Kalki Avatāra, the Buddhist his Maitreya, the
Pārsī his Sosiosh, and the Jew his Messiah, and so would the Christian xpect thence his Christ--if he only knew of it.
There, and there alone, reigns Paranishpanna (Gunggrub), the absolutely erfect comprehension of Being and Non-Being, the changeless true
Existence in Spirit, even while the latter is seemingly still in the body, very inhabitant thereof being a Non-Ego because he has become the Perfect
Ego. Their voidness is "self-existent and perfect"--if there were profane yes to sense and perceive it--because it has become absolute; the unreal eing transformed into conditionless Reality, and the realities of this, ur world, having vanished in their own nature into thin (non-existing) ir. The "Absolute Truth" (Dondam-pay-den-pa; Sanskrit: Paramārthasatya), aving conquered "relative truth" (Kunza-bchi-den-pa; Sanskrit:
Samvritisatya), the inhabitants of the mysterious region are thus supposed o have reached the state called in mystic phraseology Svasamvedanā
("self-analyzing reflection") and Paramārtha, or that absolute onsciousness of the personal merged into the impersonal Ego, which is bove all, hence above illusion in every sense. Its "Perfect" Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas may be on every nimble Buddhist tongue as celestial--therefore nreachable Beings, while these names may suggest and say nothing to the ull perceptions of the European profane. What matters it to Those who, eing in this world, yet live outside and far beyond our illusive earth!
Above Them there is but one class of Nirvānīs, namely, the Chos-ku
(Dharmakāya), or the Nirvānīs "without remains"--the pure Arūpa, the ormless Breaths.(736)
Thence emerge occasionally the Bodhisattvas in their Prul-pai-ku (or
Nirmānakāya) body and, assuming an ordinary appearance, they teach men.
There are conscious, as well as unconscious, incarnations.
Most of the doctrines contained in the Yogāchārya, or Mahāyāna systems are
Esoteric, like the rest. One day the profane Hindu and Buddhist may begin o pick the _Bible_ to pieces, taking it literally. Education is fast preading in Asia, and already there have been made some attempts in this irection, so that the tables may then be cruelly turned on the
Christians. Whatever conclusions the two may arrive at, they will never be alf as absurd and unjust as some of the theories launched by Christians gainst their respective Philosophies. Thus, according to Spence Hardy, at eath the Arhat enters Nirvāna:
That is, he ceases to exist.
And, agreeably to Major Jacob, the Jīvanmukta,
Absorbed into Brahma, enters upon an unconscious and stonelike
existence.(737)
Shankarāchārya is shown as saying in his prolegomena to the
_Shvetāshvatara:_
Gnosis, once arisen, requires nothing farther for the realization
of its result: it needs _subsidia_ only that it may arise.
The Theosophist, it has been argued, as long as he lives, may do good and vil as he chooses, and incur no stain, such is the efficacy of gnosis.
And it is further alleged that the doctrine of Nirvāna lends itself to mmoral inferences, and that the Quietists of all ages have been taxed ith immorality.(738)
According to Wassilyew(739) and Csoma de Köros,(740) the Prasanga School dopted a peculiar mode of
Deducing the absurdity and erroneousness of every esoteric
opinion.(741)
Correct interpretations of Buddhist Philosophy are crowned by that gloss n a thesis from the Prasanga School, that
Even an Arhat goes to hell in case he doubt anything,(742)
hus making of the most free-thinking religion in the world a blind-faith ystem. The "threat" refers simply to the well-known law that even an
Initiate may fail, and thus have his object utterly ruined, if he doubt or one moment the efficacy of his psychic powers--the alphabet of
Occultism, as every Kabalist well knows.
The Tibetan sect of the Ngo-vo-nyid-med par Mraba ("they who deny xistence," or "regard nature as Māyā")(743) can never be contrasted for ne moment with some of the nihilistic or materialistic schools of India, uch as the Chārvāka. They are pure Vedāntins--if anything--in their views.
And if the Yogāchāryas may be compared with, or called the Tibetan
Vishishtadwaitīs, the Prasanga School is surely the Adwaita Philosophy of he land. It was divided into two: one was originally founded by Bhavya, he Svantatra Madhyamika School, and the other by Buddhapālita; both have heir exoteric and esoteric divisions. It is necessary to belong to the atter to know anything of the esoteric doctrines of that sect, the most etaphysical and philosophical of all. Chandrakirti (Dava Dagpa) wrote his ommentaries on the Prasanga doctrines and taught publicly; and he xpressly states that there are two ways of entering the "Path" to
Nirvāna. Any virtuous man can reach by Naljorngonsum ("meditation by self- erception"), the intuitive comprehension of the four Truths, without ither belonging to a monastic order or having been initiated. In this ase it was considered as a heresy to maintain that the visions which may rise in consequence of such meditation, or Vishnā (internal knowledge), re not susceptible of errors (Namtog or false visions), for they are.
Alaya alone having an absolute and eternal existence, can alone have bsolute knowledge; and even the Initiate, in his Nirmānakāya(744) body ay commit an occasional mistake in accepting the false for the true in is explorations of the "Causeless" World. The Dharmakāya Bodhisattva is lone infallible, when in real Samādhi. Ālaya, or Nying-po, being the root nd basis of all, invisible and incomprehensible to human eye and ntellect, it can reflect only its reflection--not Itself. Thus that eflection will be mirrored like the moon in tranquil and clear water only n the passionless Dharmakāya intellect, and will be distorted by the litting image of everything perceived in a mind that is itself liable to e disturbed.
In short, this doctrine is that of the Rāj-Yoga in its practice of the two inds of the Samādhi state; one of the "Paths" leading to the sphere of liss (Sukhāvatī or Devachan), where man enjoys perfect, unalloyed appiness, but is yet still connected with personal existence; and the ther the Path that leads to entire emancipation from the worlds of llusion, self, and unreality. The first one is open to all and is reached y merit simply; the second--a hundredfold more rapid--is reached through nowledge (Initiation). Thus the followers of the Prasanga School are earer to Esoteric Buddhism than are the Yogāchāryas; for their views are hose of the most secret Schools, and only the echo of these doctrines is eard in the _Yamyangshapda_ and other works in public circulation and se. For instance, the unreality of two out of the three divisions of time s given in public works, namely (_a_) that there is neither past nor uture, both of these divisions being correlative to the present; and
(_b_) that the reality of things can never be sensed or perceived except y him who has obtained the Dharmakāya body; here again is a difficulty, ince this body "without remains" carries the Initiate to full
Paranirvāna, if we accept the exoteric explanation verbally, and can herefore neither sense nor perceive. But evidently our Orientalists do ot feel the _caveat_ in such incongruities, and they proceed to speculate ithout pausing to reflect over it. Literature on Mysticism being normous, and Russia, owing to the free intercourse with the Burats,
Shamans, and Mongolians, having alone purchased whole libraries on Tibet, cholars ought to know better by this time. It suffices to read, however, hat Csoma wrote on the origin of the Kāla Chakra System,(745) or
Wassilyew on Buddhism, to make one give up every hope of seeing them go elow the rind of the "forbidden fruit." When Schlagintweit is found aying that Tibetan Mysticism is not Yoga--
That abstract devotion by which supernatural powers are
acquired,(746)
s Yoga is defined by Wilson, but that it is closely related to Siberian
Shamanism, and is "almost identical with the Tāntrika ritual"; and that he Tibetan _Zung_ is the "_Dhāranīs_," and the _Gyut_ only the
_Tantras_--pre-Christian Tantra being judged by the ritual of the modern
Tāntrikas--one seems almost justified in suspecting our materialistic
Orientalists of acting as the best friends and allies of the missionaries.
Whatever is not known to our geographers seems to be a non-existent ocality. Thus:
Mysticism is reported to have originated in the fabulous country,
Sambhala.... Csoma, from _careful_ investigations, places this
[fabulous?] country beyond the Sir Daria [Yaxartes] between 45°
and 50° north latitude. It was first known in India in the year
965 A.D., and was introduced ... into Tibet from India, _viā_
Kashmir, in the year 1025 A.D.(747)
"It" meaning the "Dus-kyi Khorlo," or Tibetan Mysticism. A system as old s man, known in India and practised before Europe had become a continent,
"was first known," we are told, only nine or ten centuries ago! The text f its books in its present form may have "originated" even later, for here are numerous such texts that have been tampered with by sects to uit the fancies of each. But who has read the original book on Dus-Kyi
Khorlo, re-written by Tsong-Kha-pa, with his Commentaries? Considering hat this grand Reformer burnt every book on Sorcery on which he could lay is hands in 1387, and that he has left a whole library of his own orks--not a tenth part of which has ever been made known--such statements s those above-quoted are, to say the least, premature. The idea is also herished--from a happy hypothesis offered by Abbé Huc--that Tsong-Kha-pa erived his wisdom and acquired his extraordinary powers from his ntercourse with a stranger from the West, "remarkable for a long nose."
This stranger is believed by the good Abbé "to have been a European issionary"; hence the remarkable resemblance of the religious ritual in
Tibet to the Roman Catholic service. The sanguine "Lama of Jehovah" does ot say, however, who were the five foreigners who appeared in Tibet in he year 371 of our era, to disappear as suddenly and mysteriously as they ame, after leaving with King Thothori-Nyang-tsan instructions how to use ertain things in a casket that "had fallen from heaven" in his presence recisely fifty years before, or in the year A.D. 331.(748)
There is generally a hopeless confusion about Eastern dates among European cholars, but nowhere is this so great as in the case of Tibetan Buddhism.
Thus, while some, correctly enough, accept the seventh century as the date f the introduction of Buddhism, there are others--such as Lassen and
Koeppung, for instance--who show on good authority, the one, the onstruction of a Buddhist monastery on the slopes of the Kailas Range so ar back as the year 137 B.C.,(749) and the other, Buddhism established in nd north of the Punjab, as early as the year 292 B.C. The difference hough trifling--only just one thousand years--is nevertheless puzzling. But ven this is easily explained on Esoteric grounds. Buddhism--the veiled
Esotericism of Buddha--was established and took root in the seventh century f the Christian era; while true Esoteric Buddhism, or the kernel, the ery spirit of Tathāgata's doctrines, was brought to the place of its irth, the cradle of humanity, by the chosen Arhats of Buddha, who were ent to find for it a secure refuge, as
The Sage had perceived the dangers ever since he had entered upon
Thonglam ("the Path of seeing," or clairvoyance).
Amidst populations deeply steeped in Sorcery the attempt proved a failure; nd it was not until the School of the "Doctrine of the Heart" had merged ith its predecessor, established ages earlier on the slope facing Western
Tibet, that Buddhism was finally engrafted, with its two distinct
Schools--the Esoteric and the exoteric divisions--in the land of the Bhon- a.
SECTION LI. THE "DOCTRINE OF THE EYE" & THE "DOCTRINE OF THE HEART," OR
THE "HEART'S SEAL."
Prof. Albrecht Weber was right when he declared that the Northern
Buddhists
Alone possess these [Buddhist] Scriptures complete.
For, while the Southern Buddhists have no idea of the existence of an
Esoteric Doctrine--enshrined like a pearl within the shell of every eligion--the Chinese and the Tibetans have preserved numerous records of he fact. Degenerate, fallen as is now the Doctrine publicly preached by
Gautama, it is yet preserved in those monasteries in China that are placed eyond the reach of visitors. And though for over two millennia every new
"reformer," taking something out of the original has replaced it by some peculation of his own, still truth lingers even now among the masses. But t is only in the Trans-Himālayan fastnesses--loosely called Tibet--in the ost inaccessible spots of desert and mountain, that the Esoteric "Good
Law"--the "Heart's Seal"--lives to the present day in all its pristine urity.
Was Emanuel Swedenborg wrong when he remarked of the forgotten, long-lost
Word:
Seek for it in China; peradventure you may find it in Great
Tartary.
He had obtained this information, he tells his readers, from certain
"Spirits," who told him that they performed their worship according to his (lost) ancient Word. On this it was remarked in _Isis Unveiled_ that
Other students of Occult Sciences had more than the word of
"spirits" to rely upon in this special case: they have seen the
books
hat contain the "Word."(750) Perchance the names of those "Spirits" who isited the great Swedish Theosophist were Eastern. The word of a man of uch undeniable and recognised integrity, of one whose learning in
Mathematics, Astronomy, the natural Sciences and Philosophy was far in dvance of his age, cannot be trifled with or rejected as unceremoniously s if it were the statement of a modern Theosophist; further, he claimed o pass at will into that state when the Inner Self frees itself entirely rom every physical sense, and lives and breathes in a world where every ecret of Nature is an open book to the Soul-eye.(751) Unfortunately two- hirds of his public writings are also allegorical in one sense; and, as hey have been accepted literally, criticism has not spared the great
Swedish Seer any more than other Seers.
Having taken a panoramic view of the hidden Sciences and Magic with their
Adepts in Europe, Eastern Initiates must now be mentioned. If the presence f Esotericism in the Sacred Scriptures of the West only now begins to be uspected, after nearly two thousand years of blind faith in their
_verbatim_ wisdom, the same may well be granted as to the Sacred Books of he East. Therefore neither the Indian nor the Buddhist system can be nderstood without a key, nor can the study of comparative Religion become "Science" until the symbols of every Religion yield their final secrets.
At the best such a study will remain a loss of time, a playing at hide- nd-seek.
On the authority of a Japanese _Encyclopędia_, Remusat shows the Buddha, efore His death, committing the secrets of His system to His disciple,
Kāsyapa, to whom alone was entrusted the sacred keeping of the Esoteric nterpretation. It is called in China _Ching-fa-yin-Tsang_ ("the Mystery f the Eye of the Good Doctrine"). To any student of Buddhist Esotericism he term, "the Mystery of the Eye," would show the absence of any
Esotericism. Had the word "Heart" stood in its place, then it would have eant what it now only professes to convey. The "Eye Doctrine" means dogma nd dead-letter form, church ritualism intended for those who are content ith exoteric formulę. The "Heart Doctrine," or the "Heart's Seal" (the
Sin Yin), is the only real one. This may be found corroborated by Hiuen
Tsang. In his translation of _Mahā-Prajnā-Pāramitā_ (_Ta-poh-je-King_), in ne hundred and twenty volumes, it is stated that it was Buddha's
"favourite disciple Ānanda," who, after his great Master had gone into
Nirvāna, was commissioned by Kāsyapa to promulgate "the Eye of the
Doctrine," the "Heart" of the Law having been left with the Arhats alone.
The essential difference that exists between the two--the "Eye" and the
"Heart," or the outward form and the hidden meaning, the cold metaphysics nd the Divine Wisdom--is clearly demonstrated in several volumes on
"Chinese Buddhism," written by sundry missionaries. Having lived for years n China, they still know no more than they have learned from pretentious chools calling themselves esoteric, yet freely supplying the open enemies f their faith with professedly ancient manuscripts and esoteric works!
This ludicrous contradiction between profession and practice has never, as t seems, struck any of the western and reverend historians of other eoples' secret tenets. Thus many esoteric schools are mentioned in
_Chinese Buddhism_ by the Rev. Joseph Edkins, who believes quite sincerely hat he has made "a minute examination" of the secret tenets of Buddhists hose works "were until lately inaccessible in their original form." It eally will not be saying too much to state at once that the genuine
Esoteric literature is "inaccessible" to this day, and that the espectable gentleman who was inspired to state that
It does not appear that there was any secret doctrine which those
who knew it would not divulge,
ade a great mistake if he ever believed in what he says on page 161 of is work. Let him know at once that all those Yū-luh ("Records of the
Sayings") of celebrated teachers are simply blinds, as complete--if not ore so--than those in the Purānas of the Brāhmans. It is useless to numerate an endless string of the finest Oriental scholars or to bring orward the researches of Remusat, Burnouf, Koeppen, St. Hilaire, and St.
Julian, who are credited with having exposed to view the ancient Hindu orld, by revealing the sacred and secret books of Buddhism: the world hat they reveal has never been veiled. The mistakes of all the
Orientalists may be judged by the mistake of one of the most popular, if ot the greatest among them all--Prof. Max Müller. It is made with eference to what he laughingly translates as the "god Who" (Ka).
The authors of the Brāhmanas had so completely broken with the
past, that, forgetful of the poetical character of the hymns and
the yearning of the poets after the Unknown God, they exalted the
interrogative pronoun itself into a deity, and acknowledged a god
Ka (or Who?)... Wherever interrogative verses occur the author
states that Ka is Prajāpati, or the Lord of Creatures. Nor did
they stop here. Some of the hymns in which the interrogative
pronoun occurred were called Kadvat, _i.e._, having Kad or Quid.
But soon a new adjective was formed, and not only the hymns but
the sacrifice also offered to the god were called Kaya, or
"Who"-ish.... At the time of Pānini this word acquired such
legitimacy as to call for a separate rule explaining its
formation. The Commentator here explains Ka by Brahman.
Had the commentator explained It even by Parabrahman he would have been till more in the right than he was by rendering It as "Brahman." One ails to see why the secret and sacred Mystery-Name of the highest, exless, formless Spirit, the Absolute,--Whom no one would have dared to lassify with the rest of the manifested Deities, or even to name during he primitive nomenclature of the symbolical Panthenon, should not be xpressed by an interrogative pronoun. Is it those who belong to the most nthropomorphic Religion in the world who have a right to take ancient
Philosophers to task for even an exaggerated religious awe and veneration?
But we are now concerned with Buddhism. Its Esotericism and oral nstruction, which is written down and preserved in single copies by the ighest chiefs in genuine Esoteric Schools, is shown by the author San-
Kian-yi-su. Contrasting Bodhidharma with Buddha, he exclaims:
"Julai" (Tathāgata) taught great truths and the causes of things.
He became the instructor of men and Devas. He saved multitudes,
and spoke the contents of more than five hundred works. Hence
arose the Kiau-men, or exoteric branch of the system, and it was
believed to be the tradition of the _words_ of Buddha. Bodhidharma
brought from the Western Heaven [Shamballa] the "Seal of Truth"
(true seal) and opened the fountain of contemplation in the East.
He pointed directly to Buddha's heart and nature, swept away the
parasitic and alien growth of book-instruction, and thus
established the Tsung-men, or Esoteric branch of the system
containing the tradition of the heart of Buddha.(752)
A few remarks made by the author of _Chinese Buddhism_ throw a flood of ight on the universal misconceptions of Orientalists in general, and of he missionaries in the "lands of the Gentiles" in particular. They appeal ery forcibly to the intuition of Theosophists--more particularly of those n India. The sentences to be noticed are italicized.
The common [Chinese] word for the esoteric Schools is _dan_, the
Sanskrit _Dhyāna_.... Orthodox Buddhism has in China slowly but
steadily _become heterodox_. The Buddhism of books and ancient
traditions _has become the Buddhism of mystic contemplation_....
The history of ancient schools springing up long ago in the
Buddhist communities of India _can now be only very partially
recovered_. Possibly some light may be thrown back by China upon
the religious history of the country from which Buddhism
came.(753) In no part of the story is aid to the recovery of the
lost knowledge more likely to be found than in the accounts of the
patriarchs, the line of whom was completed by Bodhidharma. In
seeking the best explanation of the Chinese and Japanese narrative
of the patriarchs, and the _seven Buddhas_ terminating in Gautama,
or Shākyamuni, it is important to know the Jain traditions as they
were early in the sixth century of our era, when the Patriarch
Bodhidharma removed to China....
In tracing the rise of the various schools of esoteric Buddhism it
must be kept in mind that a principle somewhat similar to the
dogma of apostolical succession belongs to them all. They all
profess _to derive their doctrines through a succession of
teachers, each instructed personally by his predecessor, till the
time of Bodhidharma, and so further up in the series to Shākyamuni
himself and the earlier Buddhas_.(754)
It is complained further on, and is mentioned as a falling away from trict orthodox Buddhism, that _the Lamas of Tibet are received in Pekin ith the utmost respect_ by the Emperor.
The following passages, taken from different parts of the book, summarise
Mr. Edkins' views:
Hermits are not uncommonly met with in the vicinity of large
Buddhist temples ... their hair being allowed to grow unshorn....
The doctrine of metempsychosis is rejected. Buddhism is one form
of Pantheism on the ground that the doctrine of metempsychosis
makes all nature instinct with life, and that that life is the
Deity assuming different forms of personality, that Deity not
being a self-conscious, free-acting Self-Cause, but an all-
pervading Spirit. The esoteric Buddhists of China, keeping rigidly
to their one doctrine,(755) say nothing of the metempsychosis, ...
or any other of the more material parts of the Buddhist system....
The Western paradise promised to the worshippers of Amida Buddha
is ... inconsistent with the doctrine of Nirvana [?].(756)... _It
promises immortality_ instead of annihilation. The great antiquity
of this School is evident from the early date of the translation
of the _Amida Sūtra_, which came from the hands of Kumārajīva, and
the _Ku-liang-sheu-King_, dating from the Han dynasty. Its extent
of influence is seen in the attachment of the Tibetans and Moguls
to the worship of this Buddha, and in the fact that the name of
this fictitious personage [?] is more commonly heard in China than
that of the historical Shākyamuni.
We fear the learned writer is on a false track as to Nirvāna and Amita
Buddha. However, here we have the evidence of a missionary to show that here are several schools of Esoteric Buddhism in the Celestial Empire.
When the misuse of dogmatical orthodox Buddhist Scriptures had reached its limax, and the true spirit of the Buddha's Philosophy was nearly lost, everal reformers appeared from India, who established an oral teaching.
Such were Bodhidharma and Nāgārjuna, the authors of the most important orks of the contemplative School in China during the first centuries of ur era. It is known, moreover, as is said in _Chinese Buddhism_, that
Bodhidharma became the chief founder of the Esoteric Schools, which were ivided into five principal branches. The data given are correct enough, ut every conclusion, without one single exception, is wrong. It was said n _Isis Unveiled_ that--
Buddha teaches the doctrine of a new birth as plainly as Jesus
does. Desiring to break with the ancient Mysteries, to which it
was impossible to admit the ignorant masses, the Hindu reformer,
though generally silent upon more than one secret dogma, clearly
states his thought in several passages. Thus, he says: "_Some
people are born again_; evil-doers go to hell [Avitchi]; righteous
people go to heaven [Devachan]; those who are free from all
worldly desires enter Nirvāna" (_Precepts of the Dhammapada_, v.
126). Elsewhere Buddha states that "it is better to believe in a
future life, in which happiness or misery can be felt: for if the
heart believes therein it will abandon sin and act virtuously; and
even if there is no resurrection [rebirth], such a life will bring
a good name and the reward of men. But those who believe in
extinction at death will not fail to commit any sin that they may
choose, because of their disbelief in a future." (See _Wheel of
the Law_.)
How is immortality, then, "inconsistent with the doctrine of Nirvāna?" The bove are only a few of Buddha's openly-expressed thoughts to his chosen
Arhats; the great Saint said much more. As a comment upon the mistaken iews held in our century by the Orientalists, "who vainly try to fathom
Tathāgata's thoughts," and those of Brāhmans, "who repudiate the great
Teacher to this day," here are some original thoughts expressed in elation to the Buddha and the study of the Secret Sciences. They are from work written in Chinese by a Tibetan, and published in the monastery of
Tientaļ for circulation among the Buddhists
Who live in foreign lands, and are in danger of being spoiled by
missionaries,
s the author truly says, every convert being not only "spoiled" for his wn creed, but being also a sorry acquisition for Christianity. A ranslation of a few passages, kindly made from that work for the present olumes is now given.
No profane ears having heard the mighty Chau-yan [secret and
enlightening _precepts_] of Vu-vei-Tchen-jen [Buddha _within_
Buddha],(757) of our beloved Lord and Bodhisattva, how can one
tell what his thoughts really were? The holy Sang-gyas-
Panchhen(758) never offered an insight into the _One Reality_ to
the unreformed [uninitiated] Bhikkus. Few are those even among the
Tu-fon [Tibetans] who knew it; as for the Tsung-men(759) Schools,
they are going with every day more down hill.... Not even the Fa-
siong-Tsung(760) can give one the wisdom taught in real Naljor-
chod-pa [Sanskrit:(761) Yogāchārya]: ... it is all "Eye" Doctrine,
and no more. The loss of a restraining guidance is felt, since the
Tch'-an-si [teachers] of inward meditation [self-contemplation or
Tchung-kwan] have become rare, and the Good Law is replaced by
idol-worship [Siang-kyan]. It is of this [idol- or image-worship]
that the Barbarians [Western people] have heard, and know nothing
of Bas-pa-Dharma [the secret Dharma or doctrine]. Why has truth to
hide like a tortoise within its shell? Because it is now found to
have become like the Lama's tonsure knife,(762) a weapon too
dangerous to use even for the Lanoo. Therefore no one can be
entrusted with the knowledge [Secret Science] before his time. The
Chagpa-Thog-mad have become rare, and the best have retired to
Tushita the Blessed.(763)
Further on, a man seeking to master the mysteries of Esotericism before he ad been declared by the initiated Tch'-an-si (teachers) to be ready to eceive them, is likened to
One who would, without a lantern and on a dark night, proceed to a
place full of scorpions, determined to feel on the ground for a
needle his neighbour has dropped.
Again:
He who would acquire the Sacred Knowledge should, before he goes
any farther "_trim his lamp_ of inner understanding," and then
"with the help of such good light" use his meritorious actions as
a dust-cloth to remove every impurity from his mystic mirror,(764)
so that he should be enabled to see in its lustre the faithful
reflection of Self.... First, this; then Tong-pa-nya,(765) lastly;
Samma Sambuddha.(766)
In _Chinese Buddhism_ a corroboration of these statements is to be found n the aphorisms of Lin-tsi:
Within the body which admits sensations, acquires knowledge,
thinks, and acts, there is the "true man without a position" Wu-
wei-chen-jen. He makes himself clearly visible; not the thinnest
separating film hides him. Why do you not recognise him?... If the
mind does not come to conscious existence, there is deliverance
everywhere.... What is Buddha? _Ans._ A mind clear and at rest.
What is the Law? _Ans._ A mind clear and enlightened. What is
_Tau_? _Ans._ In every place absence of impediments and pure
enlightenment. These three are one.
The reverend author of _Chinese Buddhism_ makes merry over the symbolism f Buddhist discipline. Yet the self-inflicted "slaps on the cheek" and
"blows under the ribs" find their pendants in the mortifications of the ody and self-flagellation--"the discipline of the scourge"--of the
Christian monks, from the first centuries of Christianity down to our own ay. But then the said author is a Protestant, who substitutes for ortification and discipline--good living and comfort. The sentence in the
Lin-tsi,
The "true man, without a position," Wu-wei-chen-jen, is wrapped in
a prickly shell, like the chestnut. He cannot be approached. This
is Buddha--the Buddha within you,
s laughed at. Truly
An infant cannot understand the seven enigmas!
SOME PAPERS ON THE BEARING OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY ON LIFE.
NOTE.
Papers I. II. III. of the following were written by H. P. B. and were irculated privately during her lifetime, but they were written with the dea that they would be published after a time. They are papers intended or students rather than for the ordinary reader, and will repay careful tudy and thought. The "Notes of some Oral Teaching" were written down by ome of her pupils and were partially corrected by her, but no attempt has een made to relieve them of their fragmentary character. She had intended o make them the basis for written papers similar to the first three, but er failing health rendered this impossible, and they are published with er consent, the time for restricting them to a limited circle having xpired.
ANNIE BESANT.
Paper I. A Warning.
There is a strange law in Occultism which has been ascertained and proven y thousands of years of experience; nor has it failed to demonstrate tself, almost in every case, during the years that the Theosophical
Society has been in existence. As soon as anyone pledges himself as a
"Probationer," certain Occult effects ensue. Of these the first is the
_throwing outward_ of everything latent in the nature of the man; his aults, habits, qualities or subdued desires, whether good, bad or ndifferent.
For instance, if a man be vain or a sensualist, or ambitious, whether by tavism or by karmic heirloom, those vices are sure to break out, even if e has hitherto successfully concealed and repressed them. They will come o the front irrepressibly, and he will have to fight a hundred times arder than before, until he kills all such tendencies in himself.
On the other hand, if he be good, generous, chaste and abstemious, or has ny virtue hitherto latent and concealed in him, it will work its way out s irrepressibly as the rest. Thus a civilized man who hates to be onsidered a saint, and therefore assumes a mask, will not be able to onceal his true nature, whether base or noble.
THIS IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW IN THE DOMAIN OF THE OCCULT.
Its action is the more marked, the more earnest and sincere the desire of he candidate, and the more deeply he has felt the reality and importance f his pledge.
-------------------------------------
The ancient occult axiom, "Know Thyself," must be familiar to every tudent; but few if any have apprehended the real meaning of this wise xhortation of the Delphic Oracle. You all know your earthly pedigree, but ho of you has ever traced all the links of heredity, astral, psychic and piritual, which go to make you what you are? Many have written and xpressed their desire to unite themselves with their Higher Ego, yet none eem to know the indissoluble link connecting their "Higher Egos" with the
One Universal SELF.
For all purposes of Occultism, whether practical or purely metaphysical, uch knowledge is absolutely requisite. It is proposed, therefore, to egin these papers by showing this connection in all directions with the orlds: Absolute, Archetypal, Spiritual, Mānasic, Psychic, Astral, and
Elemental. Before, however, we can touch upon the higher orlds--Archetypal, Spiritual and Mānasic--we must master the relations of he seventh, the terrestrial world, the lower Prakriti, or Malkuth as in he Kabalah, to the worlds or planes which immediately follow it.
OM.
"OM," says the Āryan Adept, the son of the Fifth Race, who with this yllable begins and ends his salutation to the human being, his onjuration of, or appeal to, non-human PRESENCES.
"OM-MANI," murmurs the Turanian Adept, the descendant of the Fourth Race; nd after pausing he adds, "PADME-HUM."
This famous invocation is very erroneously translated by the Orientalists s meaning, "Oh the Jewel in the Lotus." For although, literally, OM is a yllable sacred to the Deity, PADME means "in the Lotus," and MANI is any recious stone, still neither the words themselves, nor their symbolical eaning, are thus really correctly rendered.
In this, the most sacred of all Eastern formulas, not only has every yllable a secret potency producing a definite result, but the whole nvocation has seven different meanings and can produce seven distinct esults, each of which may differ from the others.
The seven meanings and the seven results depend upon the intonation which s given to the whole formula and to each of its syllables; and even the umerical value of the letters is added to or diminished according as such r another rhythm is made use of. Let the student remember that number nderlies form, and number guides sound. Number lies at the root of the anifested Universe: numbers and harmonious proportions guide the first ifferentiations of homogeneous substance into heterogeneous elements; and umber and numbers set limits to the formative hand of Nature.
Know the corresponding numbers of the fundamental principle of every lement and its sub-elements, learn their interaction and behaviour on the ccult side of manifesting Nature, and the law of correspondences will ead you to the discovery of the greatest mysteries of macrocosmical life.
But to arrive at the macrocosmical, you must begin by the microcosmical,
_i.e._, you must study MAN, the microcosm--in this case as physical science oes--inductively, proceeding from particulars to universals. At the same ime, however, since a key-note is required to analyze and comprehend any ombination of differentiations of sound, we must never lose sight of the
Platonic method, which starts with one general view of all, and descends rom the universal to the individual. This is the method adopted in
Mathematics--the only _exact_ science that exists in our day.
Let us study Man, therefore; but if we separate him for one moment from he Universal Whole, or view him in isolation, from a single aspect, apart rom the "Heavenly Man"--the Universe symbolized by Adam Kadmon or his quivalents in every Philosophy--we shall either land in Black Magic or ail most ingloriously in our attempt.
Thus the mystic sentence, "_Om Mani Padme Hum_," when rightly understood, nstead of being composed of the almost meaningless words, "Oh the Jewel n the Lotus," contains a reference to this indissoluble union between Man nd the Universe, rendered in seven different ways, and having the apability of seven different applications to as many planes of thought nd action.
From whatever aspect we examine it, it means: "I am that I am": "I am in hee and thou art in me." In this conjunction and close union the good and ure man becomes a God. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he will ring about, or innocently cause to happen, unavoidable results. In the irst case, if an Initiate (of course an Adept of the Right-hand Path lone is meant), he can guide a beneficent or a protecting current, and hus benefit and protect individuals and even whole nations. In the second ase, although quite unaware of what he is doing, the good man becomes a hield to whomsoever he is with.
Such is the fact; but its how and why have to be explained, and this can e done only when the actual presence and potency of numbers in sounds, nd hence in words and letters, have been rendered clear. The formula,
"_Om Mani Padme Hum_," has been chosen as an illustration on account of ts almost infinite potency in the mouth of an Adept, and of its otentiality when pronounced by any man. Be careful, all you who read his: do not use these words in vain, or when in anger, lest you become ourself the first sacrificial victim, or, what is worse, endanger those hom you love.
The profane Orientalist, who all his life skims mere externals, will tell ou flippantly, and laughing at the superstition, that in Tibet this entence is the most powerful six-syllabled incantation and is said to ave been delivered to the nations of Central Asia by Padmapāni, the
Tibetan Chenresi.(767)
But who is Padmapāni, in reality? Each of us must recognize him for imself, whenever he is ready. Each of us has within himself the "Jewel in he Lotus," call it Padmapāni, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, or whatever name e may give to our Divine Self. The exoteric story runs thus:
The supreme Buddha, or Amitābha, they say, at the hour of the creation of an, caused a rosy ray of light to issue from his right eye. The ray mitted a sound and became Padmapāni Bodhisattva. Then the Deity allowed o stream forth from his left eye a blue ray of light, which, becoming ncarnate in the two virgins Dolma, acquired the power to enlighten the inds of living beings. Amitābha then called the combination, which orthwith took up its abode in man, "_Om Mani Padme Hum_," "I am the Jewel n the Lotus and in it I will remain." Then Padmapāni, "the One in the
Lotus" vowed never to cease working until he had made Humanity feel his resence in itself and had thus saved it from the misery of rebirth. He owed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa, adding that, in ase of failure, he wished that his head should split into numberless ragments. The Kalpa closed; but Humanity felt him not within its cold, vil heart. Then Padmapāni's head split and was shattered into a thousand ragments. Moved with compassion, the Deity re-formed the pieces into
_ten_ heads, three white, and seven of various colours. And since that day an has become a perfect number, or TEN.
In this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOUR, and NUMBER is so ngeniously introduced as to veil the real Esoteric meaning. To the utsider it reads like one of the many meaningless fairy-tales of reation; but it is pregnant with spiritual and divine, physical and agical meaning. From Amitābha--_no colour_, or the _white glory_--are born he seven differentiated colours of the prism. These each emit a orresponding sound, forming the seven of the _musical scale_. As
Geometry, among the Mathematical Sciences, is specially related to
Architecture, and also (proceeding to Universals) to Cosmogony, so the ten
Jods of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being made to symbolize the
Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its image, had also to be divided into en points. For this Nature herself has provided, as will be seen.
But before this statement can be proved and the perfect correspondences etween the Macrocosm and the Microcosm demonstrated, a few words of xplanation are necessary.
To the learner who would study the Esoteric Sciences with their double bject: (_a_) of proving Man to be identical in spiritual and physical ssence with both the Absolute Principle and with God in Nature; and (_b_) f demonstrating the presence in him of the same potential powers as exist n the creative forces in Nature--to such a one a perfect knowledge of the orrespondences between Colours, Sounds, and Numbers is the first equisite. As already said, the sacred formula of the far East, "_Om Mani
Padme Hum_," is the one best calculated to make these correspondential ualities and functions clear to the learner.
In the allegory of Padmapāni, the Jewel (or Spiritual Ego) in the Lotus, r the symbol of androgynous man, the numbers 3, 4, 7, 10, as synthesizing he _Unit_, Man, are prominent, as I have already said. It is on the horough knowledge and comprehension of the meaning and potency of these umbers, in their various and multiform combinations, and in their mutual orrespondence with sounds or words, and colours or rates of motion
(represented in physical science by vibrations), that the progress of a tudent in Occultism depends. Therefore we must begin with the first, nitial word, OM, or AUM. OM is a "blind." The sentence "_Om Mani Padme
Hum_" is not a six- but a seven-syllabled phrase, as the first syllable is ouble in its right pronunciation, and triple in its essence, A-UM. It epresents the for ever concealed primeval triune differentiation, not
_from_ but _in_ the ONE Absolute, and is therefore symbolized by the 4, or he Tetraktys, in the metaphysical world. It is the Unit-ray, or Ātman.
It is the Ātman, this highest Spirit in man, which, in conjunction with
Buddhi and Manas, is called the upper Triad, or Trinity. This Triad with ts four lower human principles, is, moreover, enveloped with an auric tmosphere, like the yolk of an egg (the future embryo) by the albumen and hell. This, to the perceptions of higher Beings from other planes, makes f each individuality an oval sphere of more or less radiancy.
To show the student the perfect correspondence between the birth of
Kosmos, a World, a Planetary Being, or a Child of Sin and Earth, a more efinite and clear description must be given. Those acquainted with
Physiology will understand it better than others.
Who, having read say the _Vishnu_ or other _Purāna_, is not familiar with he exoteric allegory of the birth of Brahmā (male-female) in the Egg of he World, Hiranyagarbha, surrounded by its seven zones, or rather planes, hich in the world of form and matter become seven and fourteen Lokas; the umbers seven and fourteen reäppearing as occasion requires.
Without giving out the secret analysis, the Hindus have from time mmemorial compared the matrix of the Universe, and also the solar matrix, o the female uterus. It is written of the former: "Its womb is vast as he Meru," and
The future mighty oceans lay asleep in the waters that filled its
cavities, the continents, seas and mountains, the stars, planets,
the gods, demons and mankind.
The whole resembled, in its inner and outer coverings, the cocoanut filled nteriorly with pulp, and covered externally with husk and rind. "Vast as
Meru," say the texts.
Meru was its Amnion, and the other mountains were its Chorion,
dds a verse in _Vishnu Purāna_.(768)
In the same way is man born in his mother's womb. As Brahmā is surrounded, n exoteric traditions, by seven layers within and seven without the
Mundane Egg, so is the embryo (the first or the seventh layer, according o the end from which we begin to count). Thus, just as Esotericism in its
Cosmogony enumerates seven inner and seven outer layers, so Physiology otes the contents of the uterus as seven also, although it is completely gnorant of this being a copy of what takes place in the Universal Matrix.
These contents are:
1. _Embryo._ 2. _Amniotic Fluid_, immediately surrounding the Embryo. 3.
_Amnion_, a membrane derived from the Foetus, which contains the fluid. 4.
_Umbilical Vesicle_, which serves to convey nourishment originally to the
Embryo and to nourish it. 5. _Allantois_, a protrusion from the Embryo in he form of a closed bag, which spreads itself between 3 and 7, in the idst of 6, and which, after being specialized into the Placenta, serves o conduct nourishment to the Embryo. 6. _Interspace_ between 3 and 7 (the
Amnion and Chorion), filled with an albuminous fluid. 7. _Chorion_, or uter layer.
Now, each of these seven contents severally corresponds with, and is ormed after, an antetype, one on each of the seven planes of being, with hich in their turn correspond the seven states of Matter and all other orces, sensational or functional, in Nature.
The following is a bird's-eye view of the seven correspondential contents f the wombs of Nature and of Woman. We may contrast them thus:
(1) Cosmic Process: The mathematical Point, called the "Cosmic
Seed," the Monad of Leibnitz; which contains the whole Universe,
as the acorn the oak. This is the first bubble on the surface of
boundless homogeneous Substance, or Space, the bubble of
differentiation in its incipient stage. It is the beginning of the
Orphic or Brahmā's Egg. It corresponds in Astrology and Astronomy
to the Sun.
Human Process: The terrestrial Embryo, which contains in it the
future man with all his potentialities. In the series of
principles of the human system it is the Ātman, or the super-
spiritual principle, just as in the physical Solar System it is
the Sun.
(2) Cosmic Process: The _vis vitę_ of our solar system exudes from
the Sun. Human Process: The Amniotic Fluid exudes from the Embryo.
(_a_) Cosmic Process: It is called, when referred to the higher
planes, Ākāsha. Human Process: It is called, on the plane of
matter, Prāna.(769)
(_b_) Cosmic Process: It proceeds from the ten "divinities," the
ten numbers of the Sun, which is itself the "Perfect Number."
These are called Dis--in reality Space--the forces spread in Space,
three of which are contained in the Sun's Ātman, or seventh
principle, and seven are the rays shot out by the Sun.
Human Process: It proceeds, taking its source in the universal One
Life, from the heart of man and Buddhi, over which the Seven Solar
Rays (Gods) preside.
(3) Cosmic Process: The Ether of Space, which, in its external
aspect, is the plastic crust which is supposed to envelope the
Sun. On the higher plane it is the whole Universe, as the third
differentiation of evolving Substance, Mūlaprakriti becoming
Prakriti.
Human Process: The Amnion, the membrane containing the Amniotic
Fluid and enveloping the Embryo. After the birth of man it becomes
the third layer, so to say, of his magneto-vital aura.
(_a_) Cosmic Process: It corresponds mystically to the manifested
Mahat, or the Intellect or Soul of the World. Human Process:
Manas, the third principle (counting from above), or the Human
Soul in Man.
(4) Cosmic Process: The sidereal contents of Ether, the
substantial parts of it, unknown to Modern Science, represented as
follows. Human Process: Umbilical Vesicle, serving, as Science
teaches, to nourish the Embryo originally, but, as Occult Science
avers, to carry to the Foetus by osmosis the cosmic influences
extraneous to the mother.
(_a_) Cosmic Process: In Occult and Kabalistic Mysteries, by
Elementals. Human Process: In the grown man these become the
feeders of Kāma, over which they preside.
(_b_) Cosmic Process: In physical Astronomy, by meteors, comets,
and all kinds of casual and phenomenal cosmic bodies. Human
Process: In the physical man, his passions and emotions, the moral
meteors and comets of human nature.
(5) Cosmic Process: Life currents in Ether, having their origin in
the Sun: the canals through which the vital principle of that
Ether (the blood of the Cosmic Body) passes to nourish everything
on the Earth and on the other Planets: from the minerals, which
are thus made to grow and become specialized, from the plants,
which are thus fed, to animal and man, to whom life is thus
imparted.
Human Process: The Allantois, a protrusion from the Embryo, which
spreads itself between the Amnion and Chorion; it is supposed to
conduct the nourishment from the mother to the Embryo. It
corresponds to the life-principle, Prāna or Jīva.
(6) Cosmic Process: The double radiation, psychic and physical,
which radiates from the Cosmic Seed and expands around the whole
Kosmos, as well as around the Solar System and every Planet. In
Occultism it is called the upper divine, and the lower material,
Astral Light.
Human Process: The Allantois is divided into two layers. The
interspace between the Amnion and the Chorion contains the
Allantois and also an albuminous fluid.(770)
(7) Cosmic Process: The outer crust of every sidereal body, the
Shell of the Mundane Egg, or the sphere of our Solar System, of
our Earth, and of every man and animal. In sidereal space, Ether
proper; on the terrestrial plane, Air, which again is built in
seven layers.
Human Process: The Chorion, or the _Zona Pellucida_, the globular
object called Blastodermic Vesicle, the outer and the inner layers
of the membrane of which go to form the physical man. The outer,
or ectoderm, forms his epidermis; the inner, or endoderm, his
muscles, bones, etc. Man's skin, again, is composed of seven
layers.
(_a_) Cosmic Process: The primordial potential world-stuff becomes
(for the Manvantaric period) the permanent globe or globes. Human
Process: The "primitive" becomes the "permanent" Chorion.
Even in the evolution of the Races we see the same order as in Nature and
Man.(771) Placental animal-man became such only after the separation of exes in the Third Root-Race. In the physiological evolution, the placenta s fully formed and functional only after the third month of uterine life.
Let us put aside such human conceptions as a personal God, and hold to the urely divine, to that which underlies all and everything in boundless
Nature. It is called by its Sanskrit Esoteric name in the _Vedas_, TAT (or
THAT), a term for the unknowable Rootless Root. If we do so, we may answer hese seven questions of the _Esoteric Catechism_ thus:
(1) Q.--What is the Eternal Absolute?
A.--THAT.
(2) Q.--How came Kosmos into being?
A.--Through THAT.
(3) Q.--How, or what will it be when it falls back into Pralaya?
A.--In THAT.
(4) Q.--Whence all the animate, and suppositionally, the
"inanimate" nature?
A.--From THAT.
(5) Q.--What is the Substance and Essence of which the Universe is
formed?
A.--THAT.
(6) Q.--Into what has it been and will be again and again resolved?
A.--Into THAT.
(7) Q.--Is THAT then both the instrumental and material cause of
the Universe?
A.--What else is it or can it be than THAT?
As the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm,(772) are _ten_, why hould we divide Man into _seven_ "principles"? This is the reason why the erfect number ten is divided into two: in their completeness, _i.e._, uper-spiritually and physically, the forces are TEN: to wit, three on the ubjective and inconceivable, and seven on the objective plane. Bear in ind that I am now giving you the description of the two opposite poles:
(_a_) the primordial Triangle, which, as soon as it has reflected itself n the "Heavenly Man," the highest of the lower seven--disappears, eturning into "Silence and Darkness"; and (_b_) the astral paradigmatic an, whose Monad (Ātmā) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to ecome a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes. The purely errestrial man being reflected in the universe of Matter, so to say, pside down, the upper Triangle, wherein the creative ideation and the ubjective potentiality of the formative faculty resides, is shifted in he man of clay below the seven. Thus three of the ten, containing in the rchetypal world only ideative and paradigmatical potentiality, _i.e._, xisting in possibility, not in action, are in fact one. The potency of ormative creation resides in the Logos, the synthesis of the seven Forces r Rays, which becomes forthwith the Quaternary, the sacred Tetraktys.
This process is repeated in man, in whom the lower physical triangle ecomes, in conjunction with the female One, the male-female creator, or enerator. The same on a still lower plane in the animal world. A mystery bove, a mystery below, truly.
This is how the upper and highest, and the lower and most animal, stand in utual relation.
Diagram I
1st--Macrocosm and Its 3, 7, or 10 Centres of Creative Forces
[Illustration: Triangle with A B C]
A. B. C. The Unknowable
A. Sexless, Unmanifested Logos
B. Potential Wisdom
C. Universal Ideation
[Illustration: Circle with a through g]
. Creative Logos . Eternal Substance . Spirit
. b. c. This is Pradhāna, undifferentiated matter in Sānkhya philosophy, r Good, Evil and Chaotic Darkness (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas), eutralizing each other. When differentiated, they become the Seven
Creative Potencies: Spirit, Substance and Fire stimulating Matter to form tself.
D. The Spiritual Forces acting in Matter
2nd.--Microcosm (the Inner Man) and his 3, 7, or 10 Centres of Potential
Forces
[Illustration: Circle with 1 through 6]
(ĀTMAN, although exoterically reckoned as the seventh principle, is no ndividual principle at all, and belongs to the Universal Soul; 7 is the
AURIC EGG, the Magnetic Sphere round every human and animal being.)
1. BUDDHI, the vehicle of ĀTMĀ.
2. MANAS, the vehicle of BUDDHI.
3. LOWER MANAS (the Upper and Lower MANAS are two aspects of one and the ame principle) and
4. KĀMA RŪPA, its vehicle.
5. PRĀNA, Life, and
6. LINGA SHARIRA, its vehicle
I. II. III. are the Three Hypostases of ĀTMAN, its contact with Nature and
Man being the Fourth, making it a Quaternary, or Tetraktys, the Higher elf.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. These six principles, acting on four different planes, nd having their AURIC ENVELOPE on the seventh (_vide infra_), are those sed by the Adepts of the Right-Hand, or White Magicians.
3rd.--Microcosm (the Physical Man) and his 10 Orifices, or centres of
Action
[Illustration: Circle with 1 through 10]
1. (BUDDHI) Right Eye
3. (LOWER MANAS) Right Ear
5. (LIFE PRINCIPLE) Right Nostril
7. The Organ of the CREATIVE LOGOS, the Mouth
8. 9. 10. As this Lower Ternary has a direct connection with the Higher
Ātmic Triad and its three aspects (creative, preservative and destructive, r rather regenerative), the abuse of the corresponding functions is the ost terrible of Karmic Sins--the Sin against the Holy Ghost with the
Christians.
2. (MANAS) Left Eye
4. (KĀMA RŪPA) Left Ear
6. (LIFE VEHICLE) Left Nostril
7. The Paradigm of the 10th (creative) orifice in the Lower Triad.
These Physical Organs are used only by Dugpas in Black Magic.
In this diagram, we see that physical man (or his body) does not share in he _direct_ pure waves of the divine Essence which flows from the _One in
Three_, the Unmanifested, through the Manifested Logos (the upper face in he diagram). Purusha, the primeval Spirit, touches the human head and tops there. But the Spiritual Man (the synthesis of the seven principles) s directly connected with it. And here a few words ought to be said about he usual exoteric enumeration of the principles. At first an approximate ivision only was made and given out. _Esoteric Buddhism_ begins with
Ātmā, the seventh, and ends with the Physical Body, the first. Now neither
Ātmā, which is no individual "principle," but a radiation _from_ and _one ith_ the Unmanifested Logos; nor the Body, which is the material rind, or hell, of the Spiritual Man, can be, in strict truth, referred to as
"principles." Moreover, the chief "principle" of all, one not even entioned heretofore, is the "Luminous Egg" (Hiranyagarbha), or the nvisible magnetic sphere in which every man is enveloped.(773) It is the irect emanation: (_a_) from the Ātmic Ray in its triple aspect of
Creator, Preserver and Destroyer (Regenerator); and (_b_) from Buddhi-
Manas. The _seventh_ aspect of this individual Aura is the faculty of ssuming the form of its body and becoming the "Radiant," the Luminous
Augoeides. It is this, strictly speaking, which at times becomes the form alled Māyāvi Rūpa. Therefore, as explained in the second face of the iagram (the astral man), the Spiritual Man consists of only five rinciples, as taught by the Vedāntins,(774) who substitute, tacitly, for he physical this sixth, or Auric, Body, and merge the dual Manas (the ual mind, or consciousness) into one. Thus they speak of five Koshas
(sheaths or principles), and call Ātmā the sixth yet no "principle." This s the secret of the late Subba Row's criticism of the division in
_Esoteric Buddhism_. But let the student now learn the true Esoteric numeration.
The reason why public mention of the Auric Body was not permitted was on ccount of its being so sacred. It is this Body which, at death, ssimilates the essence of Buddhi and Manas and becomes the vehicle of hese spiritual principles, _which are not objective_, and then, with the ull radiation of Ātmā upon it ascends as Manas-Taijasi into the
Devachanic state. Therefore is it called by many names. It is the
Sūtrātmā, the silver "thread" which "incarnates" from the beginning of
Manvantara to the end, stringing upon itself the pearls of human xistence, in other words, the spiritual aroma of every personality it
_follows_ through the pilgrimage of life.(775) It is also the material rom which the Adept forms his Astral Bodies, from the Augoeides and the
Māyāvi Rūpa downwards. After the death of man, when its most ethereal articles have drawn into themselves the spiritual principles of Buddhi nd the Upper Manas, and are illuminated with the radiance of Ātmā, the
Auric Body remains either in the Devachanic state of consciousness, or, in he case of a full Adept, prefers the state of a Nirmānakāya, that is, one ho has so purified his whole system that he is above even the divine llusion of a Devachanī. Such an Adept remains in the astral (invisible) lane connected with our earth, and henceforth moves and lives in the ossession of all his principles except the Kāma Rūpa and Physical Body.
In the case of the Devachanī, the Linga Sharīra--the _alter ego_ of the ody, which during life is within the physical envelope while the radiant ura is without--strengthened by the material particles which this aura eaves behind, remains close to the dead body and outside it, and soon ades away. In the case of the full Adept, the body alone becomes subject o dissolution, while the centre of that force which was the seat of esires and passions, disappears with its cause--the animal body. But uring the life of the latter all these centres are more or less active nd in constant correspondence with their prototypes, the cosmic centres, nd their microcosms, the principles. It is only through these cosmic and piritual centres that the physical centres (the upper seven orifices and he lower triad) can benefit by their Occult interaction, for these rifices, or openings, are channels conducting into the body the nfluences that _the will of man_ attracts and uses, _viz._, the cosmic orces.
This will has, of course, to act primarily through the spiritual rinciples. To make this clearer, let us take an example. In order to stop ain, let us say in the right eye, you have to attract to it the potent agnetism from that cosmic principle which corresponds to this eye and lso to Buddhi. Create, by a powerful will effort, an imaginary line of ommunication between the right eye and Buddhi, locating the latter as a
_centre_ in the same part of the head. This line, though you may call it
"imaginary," is, once you succeed in seeing it with your mental eye and ive it a shape and colour, in truth as good as real. A rope in a dream
_is not_ and yet _is_. Moreover, according to the prismatic colour with hich you endow your line, so will the influence act. Now Buddhi and
Mercury correspond with each other, and both are yellow, or radiant and olden coloured. In the human system, the right eye corresponds with
Buddhi and Mercury; and the left with Manas and Venus or Lucifer. Thus, if our line is golden or silvery, it will stop the pain; if red, it will ncrease it, for red is the colour of Kāma and corresponds with Mars.
Mental or Christian Scientists have stumbled upon the _effects_ without nderstanding the _causes_. Having found by chance the secret of producing uch results owing to mental abstraction, they attribute them to their nion with God (whether a personal or impersonal God they know best), hereas it is simply the effect of one or another principle. However it ay be, they are on the path of discovery, although they must remain andering for a long time to come.
Let not Esoteric students commit the same mistake. It has often been xplained that neither the cosmic planes of substance nor even the human rinciples--with the exception of the lowest material plane or world and he physical body, which, as has been said, are no "principles,"--can be ocated or thought of as being in Space and Time. As the former are seven n ONE, so are we seven in ONE--that same absolute Soul of the World, which s both Matter and non-Matter, Spirit and non-Spirit, Being and non-Being.
Impress yourselves well with this idea, all those of you who would study he mysteries of SELF.
Remember that with our physical senses alone at our command, none of us an hope to reach beyond gross Matter. We can do so only through one or nother of our seven _spiritual_ senses, either by training, or if one is born Seer. Yet even a clairvoyant possessed of such faculties, if not an
Adept, no matter how honest and sincere he may be, will, through his gnorance of the truths of Occult Science, be led by the visions he sees n the Astral Light only to mistake for God or Angels the denizens of hose spheres of which he may occasionally catch a glimpse, as witness
Swedenborg and others.
These seven senses of ours correspond with every other septenate in nature nd in ourselves. Physically, though invisibly, the human Auric Envelope
(the amnion of the physical man in every age of life) has seven layers, ust as Cosmic Space and our physical epidermis have. It is this Aura hich, according to our mental and physical state of purity or impurity, ither opens for us vistas into other worlds, or shuts us out altogether rom anything but this three-dimensional world of Matter.
Each of our seven physical senses (two of which are still unknown to rofane Science), and also of our seven states of consciousness--_viz._:
(1) waking; (2) waking-dreaming; (3) natural sleeping; (4) induced or rance-sleep; (5) psychic; (6) super-psychic; and (7) purely piritual--corresponds with one of the seven Cosmic Planes, develops and ses one of the seven super-senses, and is connected directly, in its use n the terrestro-spiritual plane, with the cosmic and divine centre of orce that gave it birth, and which is its direct creator. Each is also onnected with, and under the direct influence of, one of the seven sacred
Planets.(776) These belonged to the Lesser Mysteries, whose followers were alled Mystai (the veiled), seeing that they were allowed to perceive hings only through a mist, as it were "with the eyes closed"; while the
Initiates or "Seers" of the Greater Mysteries were called Epoptai (those ho see things unveiled). It was the latter only who were taught the true ysteries of the Zodiac and the relations and correspondences between its welve signs (two secret) and the ten human orifices. The latter are now f course ten in the female, and only nine in the male; but this is merely n external difference. In the second volume of this work it is stated hat till the end of the Third Root-Race (when androgynous man separated nto male and female) the ten orifices existed in the hermaphrodite, first otentially, then functionally. The evolution of the human embryo shows his. For instance, the only opening formed at first is the buccal cavity,
"a _cloaca_ communicating with the anterior extremity of the intestine."
These become later the mouth and the posterior orifice: the Logos ifferentiating and emanating gross matter on the lower plane, in Occult arlance. The difficulty which some students will experience in econciling the correspondences between the Zodiac and the orifices can be asily explained. Magic is coėval with the Third Root-Race, which began by reating through Kriyāshakti and ended by generating its species in the resent way.(777) Woman, being left with the full or perfect cosmic number
10 (the divine number of Jehovah), was deemed higher and more spiritual han man. In Egypt, in days of old, the marriage service contained an rticle that the woman should be the "lady of the lord," and real lord ver him, the husband pledging himself to be "obedient to his wife" for he production of alchemical results such as the Elixir of Life and the
Philosopher's Stone, for the _spiritual_ help of the woman was needed by he male Alchemist. But woe to the Alchemist who should take this in the ead-letter sense of _physical_ union. Such sacrilege would become Black
Magic and be followed by certain failure. The true Alchemist of old took
_aged_ women to help him, carefully avoiding the young ones; and if any of hem happened to be married they treated their wives for months both efore and during their operations as sisters.
The error of crediting the Ancients with knowing only ten of the zodiacal igns is explained in _Isis Unveiled_.(778) The Ancients did know of welve, but viewed these signs differently from ourselves. They took either Virgo nor Scorpio singly into consideration, but regarded them as wo in one, since they were made to refer directly and symbolically to the rimeval dual man and his separation into sexes. During the reformation of he Zodiac, Libra was added as the twelfth sign, though it is simply an quilibrating sign, at the turning point--the mystery of separated man.
Let the student learn all this well. Meanwhile we have to recapitulate hat has been said.
(1) Each human being is an incarnation of his God, in other words, one ith his "Father in Heaven," just as Jesus, an Initiate, is made to say.
As many men on earth, so many Gods in Heaven; and yet these Gods are in eality ONE, for at the end of every period of activity, they are ithdrawn, like the rays of the setting sun, into the Parent Luminary, the
Non-Manifested Logos, which in its turn is merged into the One Absolute.
Shall we call these "Fathers" of ours, whether individually or ollectively, and under any circumstances, our _personal God_? Occultism nswers, _Never_. All that an average man can know of his "Father" is what e knows of himself, through and within himself. The Soul of his "Heavenly
Father" is incarnated in him. This Soul is himself, if he be successful in ssimilating the Divine Individuality while in his physical, animal shell.
As to the Spirit thereof, as well expect to be heard by the Absolute. Our rayers and supplications are vain, unless to potential words we add otent acts, and make the Aura which surrounds each one of us so pure and ivine that the God within us may act outwardly, or in other words, become s it were an extraneous Potency. Thus have Initiates, Saints, and very oly and pure men been enabled to help others as well as themselves in the our of need, and produce what are foolishly called "miracles," each by he help and with the aid of the God within himself, which he alone has nabled to act on the outward plane.
(2) The word AUM or OM, which corresponds to the upper Triangle, if ronounced by a very holy and pure man, will draw out, or awaken, not only he less exalted Potencies residing in the planetary spaces and elements, ut even his Higher Self, or the "Father" within him. Pronounced by an veragely good man, in the correct way, it will help to strengthen him orally, especially if between two "AUMS" he meditates intently upon the
AUM within him, concentrating all his attention upon the ineffable glory.
But woe to the man who pronounces it after the commission of some far- eaching sin: he will only thereby attract to his own impure photosphere nvisible Presences and Forces which could not otherwise break through the
Divine Envelope.
AUM is the original of Amen. Now, Amen is not a Hebrew term, but, like the ord Halleluiah, was borrowed by the Jews and Greeks from the Chaldees.
The latter word is often found repeated in certain magical inscriptions pon cups and urns among the Babylonian and Ninevean relics. Amen does not ean "so be it," or "verily," but signified in hoary antiquity almost the ame as AUM. The Jewish Tanaļm (Initiates) used it for the same reason as he Āryan Adepts use AUM, and with a like success, the numerical value of
_AMeN_ in Hebrew letters being 91, the same as the full value of
_YHVH_,(779) 26, and _ADoNaY_, 65, or 91. Both words mean the affirmation f the being, or existence, of the sexless "Lord" within us.
(3) Esoteric Science teaches that every sound in the visible world awakens ts corresponding sound in the invisible realms, and arouses to action ome force or other on the Occult side of Nature. Moreover, every sound orresponds to a colour and a number (a potency spiritual, psychic or hysical) and to a sensation on some plane. All these find an echo in very one of the so-far developed elements, and even on the terrestrial lane, in the Lives that swarm in the terrene atmosphere, thus prompting hem to action.
Thus a prayer, unless pronounced _mentally_ and addressed to one's
"Father" in the silence and solitude of one's "closet," must have more requently disastrous than beneficial results, seeing that the masses are ntirely ignorant of the potent effects which they thus produce. To roduce good effects, the prayer must be uttered by "one who knows how to ake himself heard in silence," when it is no longer a prayer, but becomes command. Why is Jesus shown to have forbidden his hearers to go to the ublic synagogues? Surely every praying man was not a hypocrite and a iar, nor a Pharisee who loved to be seen praying by people! He had a otive, we must suppose: the same motive which prompts the experienced
Occultist to prevent his pupils from going into crowded places now as hen, from entering churches, séance rooms, etc., unless they are in ympathy with the crowd.
There is one piece of advice to be given to beginners, who cannot help oing into crowds--one which may appear superstitious, but which in the bsence of Occult knowledge will be found efficacious. As well known to ood Astrologers, the days of the week are not in the order of those lanets whose names they bear. The fact is that the ancient Hindus and
Egyptians divided the day into four parts, each day being under the rotection (as ascertained by practical magic) of a planet; and every day, s correctly asserted by Dion Cassius, received the name of the planet hich ruled and protected its first portion. Let the student protect imself from the "Powers of the Air" (Elementals) which throng public laces, by wearing either a ring containing some jewel of the colour of he presiding planet, or else of the metal sacred to it. But the best rotection is a clear conscience and a firm desire to benefit Humanity.
The Planets, The Days of the Week and Their Corresponding Colours and
Metals.
[Transcriber's Note: This table was a wide pull-out insert into the book, ith more columns than modern readers can display. It has been reformatted nto several tables of more manageable width.]
These Correspondences are from the Objective, Terrestrial Plane.
Ātman is no Number, and corresponds to no visible Planet, for it proceeds rom the Spiritual Sun; nor does it bear any relation either to Sound,
Colour, or the rest, for it includes them all.
As the Human Principles have no Numbers per se, but only correspond to
Numbers, Sounds, Colours, etc., they are not enumerated here in the order sed for exoteric purposes.
_NUMBERS_ _METALS._ _PLANETS._
1 and 10. Physical Iron. Mars. The Planet of
Man's Key-note. Generation.
2. Life Spiritual Gold. The Sun. The Giver nd Life Physical. of Life physically.
Spiritually and
esoterically the
substitute for the
inter-Mercurial
Planet, a sacred and
secret planet with
the ancients.
3. Because Buddhi is Mercury. Mixes with Mercury. The
(so to speak) Sulphur, as Buddhi Messenger and the etween Ātmā and is mixed with the Interpreter of the
Manas, and forms Flame of Spirit (See Gods. ith the seventh, or Alchemical
Auric Envelope, the Definitions.)
Devachanic Triad.
4. The middle Lead. Saturn. rinciple--between he purely material nd purely spiritual riads. The onscious part of
_animal_ man.
5. Tin. Jupiter.
6. Copper. When alloyed Venus. The Morning
becomes Bronze (the and the Evening
_dual_ principle). Star.
7. Contains in Silver. The Moon. The Patent tself the of the Earth. eflection of
Septenary Man.
_NUMBERS_ _THE HUMAN _DAYS OF THE WEEK._
PRINCIPLES._
1 and 10. Kāma Rūpa. The Tuesday. _Dies
vehicle or seat of Martis_, or Tiw.
the Animal Instincts
and Passions.
2. Prāna or Jīva. Life. Sunday. _Dies
Solss_, or Sun.
3. Buddhi. Spiritual Wednesday. _Dies
Soul, or Ātmic Ray; Mercurii_, or Woden.
vehicle of Ātmā. Day of Buddha in the
South, end of Woden
in the North--Gods of
Wisdom.
4. Kāma Manas. The Saturday. _Dies
Lower Mind, or Saturns_, or Saturn.
Animal Soul.
5. Auric Envelope. Thursday. _Dies
Jovis_, or Thor.
6. Manas. The Higher Friday. _Dies
Mind, or Human Soul. Veneris_, or Friga.
7. Linga Sharīra. The
Astral Double of
Man, the Parent of
the Physical Man.
_NUMBERS_ _COLOURS._ _SOUND._ MUSICAL
SCALE..
1 and 10. 1 Red. Sa or Do.
2. 2 Orange. Ri or Re.
3. 3. Yellow. Ga or Mi.
4. 4. Green. Ma or Fa.
5. 5. Blue. Pa or Sol.
6. 6. Indigo or Dark Da or La.
Blue.
7. 7. Violet. Ni or Si.
In the accompanying diagram the days of the week do not stand in their sual order, though they are placed in their correct sequence as etermined by the order of the colours in the solar spectrum and the orresponding colours of their ruling planets. The fault of the confusion n the order of the days revealed by this comparison lies at the door of he early Christians. Adopting from the Jews their lunar months, they ried to blend them with the solar planets, and so made a mess of it; for he order of the days of the week as it now stands does not follow the rder of the planets.
Now, the Ancients arranged the planets in the following order: Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, counting the Sun as a planet or exoteric purposes. Again, the Egyptians and Indians, the two oldest ations, divided their day into four parts, each of which was under the rotection and rule of a planet. In course of time each day came to be alled by the name of that planet which ruled its first portion--the orning. Now, when they arranged their week, the Christians proceeded as ollows: they wanted to make the day of the Sun, or Sunday, the seventh, o they named the days of the week by taking every fourth planet in turn;
_e.g._, beginning with the Moon (Monday), they counted thus: Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, _Mars_; thus Tuesday, the day whose first portion was uled by Mars, became the second day of the week; and so on. It should be emembered also that the Moon, like the Sun, is a substitute for a secret lanet.
The present division of the solar year was made several centuries later han the beginning of our era; and our week is not that of the Ancients nd the Occultists. The septenary division of the four parts of the lunar hases is as old as the world, and originated with the people who reckoned ime by the lunar months. The Hebrews never used it, for they counted only he seventh day, the Sabbath, though the second chapter of _Genesis_ seems o speak of it. Till the days of the Cęsars there is no trace of a week of even days among any nation save the Hindus. From India it passed to the
Arabs, and reached Europe with Christianity. The Roman week consisted of ight days, and the Athenian of ten.(780) Thus one of the numberless ontradictions and fallacies of Christendom is the adoption of the Indian eptenary week of the lunar reckoning, and the preservation at the same ime of the mythological names of the planets.
Nor do modern Astrologers give the correspondences of the days and planets nd their colours correctly; and while Occultists can give good reason for very detail of their own tables of colours, etc., it is doubtful whether he Astrologers can do the same.
-------------------------------------
To close this first Paper, let me say that the readers must in all ecessity be separated into two broad divisions: those who have not quite id themselves of the usual sceptical doubts, but who long to ascertain ow much truth there may be in the claims of the Occultists; and those thers who, having freed themselves from the trammels of Materialism and
Relativity, feel that true and real bliss must be sought only in the nowledge and personal experience of that which the Hindu Philosopher alls the Brahmavidyā, and the Buddhist Arhat the realization of
Ādibuddha, the primeval Wisdom. Let the former pick out and study from hese Papers only those explanations of the phenomena of life which rofane Science is unable to give them. Even with such limitations, they ill find by the end of a year or two that they will have learned more han all their Universities and Colleges can teach them. As to the sincere elievers, they will be rewarded by seeing their faith transformed into nowledge. True knowledge is of Spirit and in Spirit alone, and cannot be cquired in any other way except through the region of the higher mind, he only plane from which we can penetrate the depths of the all-pervading
Absoluteness. He who carries out only those laws established by human inds, who lives that life which is prescribed by the code of mortals and heir fallible legislation, chooses as his guiding star a beacon which hines on the ocean of Māyā, or of temporary delusions, and lasts for but ne incarnation. These laws are necessary for the life and welfare of hysical man alone. He has chosen a pilot who directs him through the hoals of one existence, a master who parts with him, however, on the hreshold of death. How much happier that man who, while strictly erforming on the temporary objective plane the duties of daily life, arrying out each and every law of his country, and rendering, in short, o Cęsar what is Cęsar's, leads in reality a spiritual and permanent xistence, a life with no breaks of continuity, no gaps, no interludes, ot even during those periods which are the halting-places of the long ilgrimage of purely spiritual life. All the phenomena of the lower human ind disappear like the curtain of a proscenium, allowing him to live in he region beyond it, the plane of the noumenal, the one reality. If man y suppressing, if not destroying, his selfishness and personality, only ucceeds in knowing himself as he is behind the veil of physical Māyā, he ill soon stand beyond all pain, all misery, and beyond all the wear and ear of change, which is the chief originator of pain. Such a man will be hysically of Matter, he will move surrounded by Matter, and yet he will ive beyond and outside it. His body will be subject to change, but he imself will be entirely without it, and will experience everlasting life ven while in temporary bodies of short duration. All this may be achieved y the development of unselfish universal love of Humanity, and the uppression of personality, or _selfishness_, which is the cause of all in, and consequently of all human sorrow.
Paper II. An Explanation.
In view of the abstruse nature of the subjects dealt with, the present
Paper will begin with an explanation of some points which remained obscure n the preceding one, as well as of some statements in which there was an ppearance of contradiction.
Astrologers, of whom there are many among the Esotericists, are likely to e puzzled by some statements distinctly contradicting their teachings; hilst those who know nothing of the subject may perhaps find themselves pposed at the outset by those who have studied the exoteric systems of he Kabalah and Astrology. For let it be distinctly known, nothing of that hich is printed broadcast, and available to every student in public ibraries or museums, is really Esoteric, but is either mixed with eliberate "blinds," or cannot be understood and studied with profit ithout a complete glossary of Occult terms.
The following teachings and explanations, therefore, may be useful to the tudent in assisting him to formulate the teaching given in the preceding
Paper.
In Diagram I. it will be observed that the 3, 7, and 10 centres are espectively as follows:
(_a_) The 3 pertain to the spiritual world of the Absolute, and therefore o the three higher principles in Man.
(_b_) The 7 belong to the spiritual, psychic, and physical worlds and to he body of man. Physics, metaphysics and hyper-physics are the triad that ymbolizes man on this plane.
(_c_) The 10, or the sum total of these, is the Universe as a whole, in ll its aspects, and also its Microcosm--Man, with his ten orifices.
Laying aside, for the moment, the Higher Decad (Kosmos) and the Lower
Decad (Man), the first three numbers of the separate sevens have a direct eference to the Spirit, Soul and Auric Envelope of the human being, as ell as to the higher supersensual world. The lower four, or the four spects, belong to Man also, as well as to the Universal Kosmos, the whole eing synthesized by the Absolute.
If these three discrete or distributive degrees of Being be conceived, ccording to the Symbology of all the Eastern Religions, as contained in ne Ovum, or EGG, the name of that EGG will be Svabhāvat, or the ALL-BEING n the manifested plane. This Universe has, in truth, neither centre nor eriphery; but in the individual and finite mind of man it has such a efinition, the natural consequence of the limitations of human thought.
In Diagram II., as already stated therein, no notice need be taken of the umbers used in the left-hand column, as these refer only to the
Hierarchies of the Colours and Sounds on the metaphysical plane, and are ot the characteristic numbers of the human principles or of the planets.
The human principles elude enumeration, because each man differs from very other, just as no two blades of grass on the whole earth are bsolutely alike. Numbering is here a question of spiritual progress and he natural predominance of one principle over another. With one man it ay be Buddhi that stands as number one; with another, if he be a bestial ensualist, the Lower Manas. With one the physical body, or perhaps Prāna, he life principle, will be on the first and highest plane, as would be he case in an extremely healthy man, full of vitality; with another it ay come as the sixth or even seventh downward. Again, the colours and etals corresponding to the planets and human principles, as will be bserved, are not those known exoterically to modern Astrologers and
Western Occultists.
Let us see whence the modern Astrologer got his notions about the orrespondence of planets, metals and colours. And here we are reminded of he modern Orientalist, who, judging by appearances credits the ancient
Akkadians (and also the Chaldęans, Hindus and Egyptians) with the crude otion that the Universe, and in like manner the earth, was like an nverted, bell-shaped bowl! This he demonstrates by pointing to the ymbolical representations of some Akkadian inscriptions and to the
Assyrian carvings. It is, however, no place here to explain how mistaken s the Assyriologist, for all such representations are simply symbolical f the _Khargakkurra_, the World-Mountain, or Meru, and relate only to the
North Pole, the Land of the Gods. Now, the Assyrians arranged their
_exoteric_ teaching about the planets and their correspondences as ollows:
Diagram II.
_Numbers._ _Planets._ _Metals._ _Colours._ _Solar
Days of
Week._
1. Saturn. Lead. Black. Saturday.
(Whence
Sabbath,(781)
in honour
of
Jehovah.)
2. Jupiter. Tin. White, but Thursday.
as often
Purple or
Orange.
3. Mars. Iron. Red. Tuesday.
4. Sun. Gold. Yellow- Sunday.
golden.
5. Venus. Copper. Green or Friday.
Yellow.
6. Mercury. Quicksilver. Blue. Wednesday.
7. Moon. Silver. Silver- Monday.
white.
This is the arrangement now adopted by Christian Astrologers, with the xception of the order of the days of the week, of which, by associating he solar planetary names with the lunar weeks, they have made a sore ess, as has been already shown in Paper I. This is the Ptolemaic eocentric system, which represents the Universe as in the following iagram, showing our Earth in the centre of the Universe, and the Sun a
Planet, the fourth in number.
And if the Christian chronology and order of the days of the week are eing daily denounced as being based on an entirely wrong astronomical oundation, it is high time to begin a reform also in Astrology built on uch lines, and coming to us entirely from the Chaldęan and Assyrian xoteric mob.
But the correspondences given in these Papers are purely Esoteric. For his reason it follows that when the Planets of the Solar System are named r symbolized (as in Diagram II.) it must not be supposed that the lanetary bodies themselves are referred to, except as types on a purely hysical plane of the septenary nature of the psychic and spiritual orlds. A material planet can correspond only to a material something.
Thus when Mercury is said to correspond to the right eye, it does not mean hat the objective planet has any influence on the right optic organ, but hat both stand rather as corresponding mystically through Buddhi. Man erives his Spiritual Soul (Buddhi) from the essence of the Mānasa Putra, he Sons of Wisdom, who are the Divine Beings (or Angels) ruling and residing over the planet Mercury.
In the same way Venus, Manas and the left eye are set down as orrespondences. Exoterically, there is, in reality, no such association f physical eyes and physical planets; but Esoterically there is; for the ight eye is the "Eye of Wisdom," _i.e._, it corresponds magnetically with hat Occult centre in the brain which we call the "Third Eye";(782) while he left corresponds with the intellectual brain, or those cells which are he organ on the physical plane of the thinking faculty. The kabalistic riangle of Kether, Chokmah and Binah shows this. Chokmah and Binah, or
Wisdom and Intelligence, the Father and Mother, or, again, the Father and
Son, are on the same plane and reäct mutually on one another.
When the individual consciousness is turned inward, a conjunction of Manas nd Buddhi takes place. In the spiritually regenerated man this onjunction is permanent, the Higher Manas clinging to Buddhi beyond the hreshold of Devachan, and the Soul, or rather the Spirit, which should ot be confounded with Ātmā, the Super-Spirit, is then said to have the
"Single Eye." Esoterically, in other words, the "Third Eye" is active. Now
Mercury is called Hermes, and Venus, Aphrodite, and thus their conjunction n man on the psycho-physical plane gives him the name of the
Hermaphrodite, or Androgyne. The absolutely Spiritual Man is, however, ntirely disconnected from sex. The Spiritual Man corresponds directly ith the higher "coloured circles," the Divine Prism which emanates from he One Infinite White Circle; while physical man emanates from the
Sephiroth, which are the Voices or Sounds of Eastern Philosophy. And these
"Voices" are lower than the "Colours," for they are the seven lower
Sephiroth, or the objective Sounds, seen, not heard, as the _Zohar_ hows,(783) and even the Old Testament also. For, when properly ranslated, verse 18 of chapter xx. _Exodus_ would read: "And the people aw the Voices" (or Sounds, not the "thunderings" as now translated); and hese Voices, or Sounds, are the Sephiroth.(784)
In the same way the right and left nostrils, into which is breathed the
"Breath of Lives"(785) are here said to correspond with Sun and Moon, as
Brahmā-Prajāpati and Vāch, or Osiris and Isis, are the parents of the atural life. This Quaternary, _viz._: the two eyes and two nostrils,
Mercury and Venus, Sun and Moon, constitutes the Kabalistic Guardian-
Angels of the Four Corners of the Earth. It is the same in the Eastern
Esoteric Philosophy, which, however, adds that the Sun is not a planet, ut the central star of our system, and the Moon a dead planet, from which ll the principles are gone, both being substitutes, the one for an nvisible inter-Mercurial planet, and the other for a planet which seems o have now altogether disappeared from view. These are the Four
Mahārājahs,(786) the "Four Holy Ones" connected with Karma and Humanity,
Kosmos and Man, in all their aspects. They are: the Sun, or its substitute
Michael; Moon, or substitute Gabriel; Mercury, Raphael; and Venus, Uriel.
It need hardly be said here again that the planetary bodies themselves, eing only physical symbols, are not often referred to in the Esoteric
System, but, as a rule, their cosmic, psychic, physical and spiritual orces are symbolized under these names. In short, it is the seven hysical planets which are the lower Sephiroth of the _Kabalah_, and our riple physical Sun whose reflection only we see, which is symbolized, or ather personified, by the Upper Triad, or Sephirothal Crown.(787)
Then, again, it will be well to point out that the numbers attached to the sychic principles in Diagram I. appear the reverse of those in exoteric ritings. This is because numbers in this connection are purely arbitrary, hanging with every school. Some schools count three, some four, some six, nd others seven, as do all the Buddhist Esotericists. As said efore,(788) the Esoteric School has been divided into two departments ince the fourteenth century, one for the inner Lanoos, or higher Chelās, he other for the outer circle, or lay Chelās. Mr. Sinnett was distinctly old in the letters he received from one of the Gurus that he could not be aught the real Esoteric Doctrine given out only to the pledged disciples f the Inner Circle. The numbers and principles do not go in regular equence, like the skins of an onion, but the student must work out for imself the number appropriate to each of his principles, when the time omes for him to enter upon practical study. The above will suggest to the tudent the necessity of knowing the principles by their names and their ppropriate faculties apart from any system of enumeration, or by ssociation with their corresponding centres of actions, colours, sounds, tc., until these become inseparable.
The old and familiar mode of reckoning the principles, given in the
_Theosophist_ and _Esoteric Buddhism_, leads to another apparently erplexing contradiction, though it is really none at all. The principles umbered 3 and 2, _viz._: Linga Sharīra and Prāna, or Jīva, stand in the everse order to that given in Diagram I. A moment's consideration will uffice to explain the apparent discrepancy between the exoteric numeration, and the Esoteric order given in Diagram I. For in Diagram I. he Linga Sharīra is defined as the vehicle of Prāna, or Jīva, the life rinciple, and as such must of necessity be inferior to Prāna, not uperior as the exoteric enumeration would suggest. The principles do not tand one above the other, and thus cannot be taken in numerical sequence; heir order depends upon the superiority and predominance of one or nother principle, and therefore differs in every man.
The Linga Sharīra is the double, or protoplasmic antetype of the body, hich is its image. It is in this sense that it is called in Diagram II. he parent of the physical body, _i.e._, the mother by conception of
Prāna, the father. This idea is conveyed in the Egyptian mythology by the irth of Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis, although, like all sacred
Mythoi, this has both a threefold spiritual, and a sevenfold psycho- hysical application. To close the subject, Prāna, the life principle, an, in sober truth, have no number, as it pervades every other principle, r the human total. Each number of the seven would thus be naturally pplicable to Prāna-Jīva exoterically as it is to the Auric Body
Esoterically. As Pythagoras showed, Kosmos was produced not _through_ or
_by_ number, but geometrically, _i.e._, following the proportions of umbers.
-------------------------------------
To those who are unacquainted with the exoteric astrological natures scribed in practice to the planetary bodies, it may be useful if we set hem down here after the manner of Diagram II., in relation to their ominion over the human body, colours, metals, etc., and explain at the ame time why genuine Esoteric Philosophy differs from the astrological laims.
_Planets._ _Days._ _Metals._ _Parts of _Colours._
the Body._
Saturn. Saturday. Lead. Right Ear, Black.(789)
Knees and
Bony
System.
Jupiter. Thursday. Tin. Left Ear, Purple.(790)
Thighs,
Feet and
Arterial
System.
Mars. Tuesday. Iron. Forehead Red.
and Nose,
the Skull,
Sex-
function
and
Muscular
System.
Sun. Sunday. Gold. Right Eye, Orange.(791)
Heart and
Vital
Centres.
Venus. Friday. Copper. Chin and Yellow.(792)
Cheeks,
Neck and
Reins and
the Venous
System.
Mercury. Wednesday. Quicksilver. Mouth, Dove or
Hands, Cream.(793)
Abdominal
Viscera
and
Nervous
System.
Moon. Monday. Silver. Breasts, White.(794)
Left Eye,
the
Fluidic
System,
Saliva,
Lymph,
etc.
Thus it will be seen that the influence of the solar system in the xoteric kabalistic Astrology is by this method distributed over the ntire human body, the primary metals, and the gradations of colour from lack to white; but that Esotericism recognizes neither black nor white as olours, because it holds religiously to the seven solar or natural olours of the prism. Black and white are artificial tints. They belong to he Earth, and are only perceived by virtue of the special construction of ur physical organs. White is the absence of all colours, and therefore no olour; black is simply the absence of light, and therefore the negative spect of white. The seven prismatic colours are direct emanations from he Seven Hierarchies of Being, each of which has a direct bearing upon nd relation to one of the human principles, since each of these
Hierarchies is, in fact, the creator and source of the corresponding human rinciple. Each prismatic colour is called in Occultism the "Father of the
Sound" which corresponds to it; Sound being the Word, or the Logos, of its
Father-Thought. This is the reason why sensitives connect every colour ith a definite sound, a fact well recognized in Modern Science (_e.g._,
Francis Galton's _Human Faculty_). But black and white are entirely egative colours, and have no representatives in the world of subjective eing.
Kabalistic Astrology says that the dominion of the planetary bodies in the uman brain also is defined thus: there are seven primary groups of aculties, six of which function through the cerebrum, and the seventh hrough the cerebellum. This is perfectly correct Esoterically. But when t is further said that: Saturn governs the devotional faculties; Mercury, he intellectual; Jupiter, the sympathetic; the Sun, the governing aculties; Mars, the selfish; Venus, the tenacious; and the Moon, the nstincts;--we say that the explanation is incomplete and even misleading.
For, in the first place, the physical planets can rule only the physical ody and the purely physical functions. All the mental, emotional, psychic nd spiritual faculties, are influenced by the Occult properties of the cale of causes which emanate from the Hierarchies of the Spiritual Rulers f the planets, and not by the planets themselves. This scale, as given in
Diagram II., leads the student to perceive in the following order: (1) olour; (2) sound; (3) the sound materializes into the spirit of the etals, _i.e._, the metallic Elementals; (4) these materialize again into he physical metals; (5) then the harmonial and vibratory radiant essence asses into the plants, giving them colour and smell, both of which
"properties" depend upon the rate of vibration of this energy per unit of ime; (6) from plants it passes into the animals; (7) and finally ulminates in the "principles" of man.
Thus we see the Divine Essence of our Progenitors in Heaven circling hrough seven stages; Spirit becoming Matter, and Matter returning to
Spirit. As there is sound in Nature which is inaudible, so there is colour hich is invisible, but which can be heard. The creative force, at work in ts incessant task of transformation, produces colour, sound and numbers, n the shape of rates of vibration which compound and dissociate the atoms nd molecules. Though invisible and inaudible to us in detail, yet the ynthesis of the whole becomes audible to us on the material plane. It is hat which the Chinese call the "Great Tone," or _Kung_. It is, even by cientific confession, the actual tonic of Nature, held by musicians to be he middle Fa on the keyboard of a piano. We hear it distinctly in the oice of Nature, in the roaring of the ocean, in the sound of the foliage f a great forest, in the distant roar of a great city, in the wind, the empest and the storm; in short, in everything in Nature which has a voice r produces sound. To the hearing of all who hearken, it culminates in a ingle definite tone, of an unappreciable pitch, which, as said, is the F, r Fa, of the diatonic scale. From these particulars, that wherein lies he difference between the exoteric and the Esoteric nomenclature and ymbolism will be evident to the student of Occultism. In short, abalistic Astrology, as practised in Europe, is the semi-esoteric Secret
Science, adapted for the outer and not for the inner circle. It is, urthermore, often left incomplete and not infrequently distorted to onceal the real truth. While it symbolizes and adapts its correspondences n the mere appearances of things, Esoteric Philosophy, which concerns tself pre-eminently with the essence of things, accepts only such symbols s cover the whole ground, _i.e._, such symbols as yield a spiritual as ell as a psychic and physical meaning. Yet even Western Astrology has one excellent work, for it has helped to carry the knowledge of the xistence of a Secret Wisdom throughout the dangers of the Medięval Ages nd their dark bigotry up to the present day, when all danger has isappeared.
The order of the planets in exoteric practice is that defined by their eocentric radii, or the distance of their several orbits from the Earth s a centre, _viz._, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon.
In the first three of these we find symbolized the celestial Triad of upreme power in the physical, manifested universe, or Brahmā, Vishnu and
Shiva; while in the last four we recognize the symbols of the terrestrial uaternary ruling over all natural and physical revolutions of the easons, quarters of the day, points of the compass, and elements. Thus:
Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter.
Morning. Noon. Evening. Night.
Youth. Adolescence. Manhood. Age.
Fire. Air. Water. Earth.
East. South. West. North.
But Esoteric Science is not content with analogies on the purely objective lane of the physical senses, and therefore it is absolutely necessary to reface further teachings in this direction with a clear explanation of he real meaning of the word Magic.
What Magic Is, In Reality.
Esoteric Science is, above all, the knowledge of our relations with and in
Divine Magic,(795) inseparableness from our divine _Selves_--the latter eaning something else besides our own higher Spirit. Thus, before roceeding to exemplify and explain these relations, it may perhaps be seful to give the student a correct idea of the full meaning of this most isunderstood word "Magic." Many are those willing and eager to study
Occultism, but very few have even an approximate idea of the Science tself. Now, very few of our American and European students can derive enefit from Sanskrit works or even their translations, as these ranslations are, for the most part, merely blinds to the uninitiated. I herefore propose to offer to their attention demonstrations of the foresaid drawn from Neo-Platonic works. These are accessible in ranslation; and in order to throw light on that which has hitherto been ull of darkness, it will suffice to point to a certain key in them. Thus he Gnosis, both pre-Christian and post-Christian, will serve our purpose dmirably.
There are millions of Christians who know the name of Simon Magus, and the ittle that is told about him in the _Acts_; but very few who have even eard of the many motley, fantastic and contradictory details which radition records about his life. The story of his claims and his death is o be found only in the prejudiced, half-fantastic records about him in he works of the Church Fathers, such as Irenęus, Epiphanius and St.
Justin, and especially in the anonymous _Philosophumena_. Yet he is a istorical character, and the appellation of "Magus" was given to him and as accepted by all his contemporaries, including the heads of the
Christian Church, as a qualification indicating the miraculous powers he ossessed, and irrespective of whether he was regarded as a white (divine) r a black (infernal) Magician. In this respect, opinion has always been ade subservient to the Gentile or Christian proclivities of his hronicler.
It is in his system and in that of Menander, his pupil and successor, that e find what the term "Magic" meant for Initiates in those days.
Simon, as all the other Gnostics, taught that our world was created by the
_lower_ angels, whom he called Ęons. He mentions only three degrees of uch, because it was and is useless, as we have before explained, to teach nything about the four higher ones, and he therefore begins at the plane f globes A and G. His system is as near to Occult Truth as any, so that e may examine it, as well as his own and Menander's claims about "Magic," o find out what they meant by the term. Now, for Simon, the summit of all anifested creation was Fire. It was, with him as with us, the Universal
Principle, the Infinite Potency, born from the concealed Potentiality.
This Fire was the primeval cause of the manifested world of being, and was ual, having a manifested and a concealed, or secret, side.
The secret side of the Fire is concealed in its evident [or
objective] side, and the objective is produced from the secret
side,(796)
e writes, which amounts to saying that the visible is ever present in the nvisible, and the invisible in the visible. This was but a new form of tating Plato's idea of the Intelligible (_Noźton_) and the Sensible
(_Aisthźton_), and Aristotle's teaching on the Potency (_Dunamis_) and the
Act (_Energeia_). For Simon, all that can be thought of, all that can be cted upon, was perfect intelligence. Fire contained _all_. And thus all he parts of that Fire, being endowed with intelligence and reason, were usceptible of development by extension and emanation. This is our eaching of the Manifested Logos, and these parts in their primordial manation are our Dhyān Chohans, the "Sons of Flame and Fire," or higher
Ęons. This "Fire" is the symbol of the active and living side of Divine
Nature. Behind it lay "infinite Potentiality in Potentiality," which Simon amed "that which has stood, stands and will stand," or permanent tability and personified immutability.
From the Potency of Thought, Divine Ideation thus passed to Action. Hence he series of primordial emanations through Thought begetting the Act, the bjective side of Fire being the Mother, the sacred side of it being the
Father. Simon called these emanations Syzygies (a united pair, or couple), or they emanated two-by-two, one as an active, and the other as a passive
Ęon. Three couples thus emanated (or six in all, the Fire being the eventh), to which Simon gave the following names: "Mind and Thought;
Voice and Name; Reason and Reflection,"(797) the first in each pair being ale, the last female. From these primordial six emanated the six Ęons of he Middle World. Let us see what Simon himself says:
Each of these six primitive beings contained the entire infinite
Potency [of its parent]; but it was there only in Potency, and not
in Act. That Potency had to be called forth [or conformed] through
an _image_ in order that it should manifest in all its essence,
virtue, grandeur and effects; for only then could the emanated
Potency become similar to its parent, the eternal and infinite
Potency. If, on the contrary, it remained simply potentially in
the six Potencies and failed to be conformed through an image,
then the Potency would not pass into action, but would get
lost,(798)
n clearer terms, it would become atrophied, as the modern expression oes.
Now, what do these words mean if not that to be equal in all things to the
Infinite Potency the Ęons had to imitate it in its action, and become hemselves, in their turn, emanative Principles, as was their Parent, iving life to new beings, and becoming Potencies _in actu_ themselves? To roduce emanations, or to have acquired the gift of Kriyā-shakti.(799) is he direct result of that power, an effect which depends on our own ction. That power, then, is inherent in man, as it is in the primordial
Ęons and even in the secondary Emanations, by the very fact of their and ur descent from the One Primordial Principle, the Infinite Power, or
Potency. Thus we find in the system of Simon Magus that the first six
Ęons, synthesized by the seventh, the Parent Potency, passed into Act, and manated, in their turn, six secondary Ęons, which were each synthesized y their respective Parents. In the _Philosophumena_ we read that Simon ompared the Ęons to the "Tree of Life." Said Simon in the
_Revelation_:(800)
It is written that there are two ramifications of the universal
Ęons, having neither beginning nor end, issued both from the same
Root, the invisible and incomprehensible Potentiality, Sigź
[Silence]. One of these [series of Ęons] appears from above. This
is the Great Potency, Universal Mind [or Divine Ideation, the
Mahat of the Hindus]; it orders all things and is male. The other
is from below, for it is the Great [manifested] Thought, the
female Ęon, generating all things. These [two kinds of Ęons]
corresponding(801) with each other, have conjunction and manifest
the middle distance [the intermediate sphere, or plane], the
incomprehensible Air which has neither beginning nor end.(802)
This female "Air" is our Ether, or the kabalistic Astral Light. It is, hen, the Second World of Simon, born of Fire, the principle of verything. We call it the ONE LIFE, the Intelligent, Divine Flame, mnipresent and infinite. In Simon's system this Second World was ruled by Being, or Potency, both male and female, or active and passive, good and ad. This Parent-Being, like the primordial infinite Potency, is also alled "that which has stood, stands and will stand," so long as the anifested Kosmos shall last. When it emanated _in actu_ and became like nto its own Parent, it was not dual or androgyne. It is the Thought
(Sigź) that emanated from it which became as itself (the Parent), having ecome like unto its image (or antetype); the second had now become in its urn the first (on its own plane or sphere). As Simon has it:
It [the Parent or Father] was one. For having it [the Thought] in
itself, it was alone. It was not, however, first, though it was
preėxisting; but manifesting itself to itself from itself, it
became the second (or dual). Nor was it called Father before it
[the Thought] gave it that name. As, therefore, itself developing
itself by itself, manifested to itself its own Thought, so also
the Thought being manifested did not act, but seeing the Father
hid it in itself, that is, (hid) that Potency (in itself). And the
Potency [_Dunamis_, _viz._: _Nous_] and Thought [_Epinoia_] are
male-female. Whence they correspond with one another--for Potency
in no way differs from Thought--being one. So from the things above
is found Potency, and from those below, Thought. It comes to pass,
therefore, that that which is manifested from them, although being
one, yet is found to be twofold, the androgyne having the female
in itself. So is Mind in Thought, things inseparable from each
other which though being one are yet found dual.(803)
He [Simon] calls the first Syzygy of the six Potencies and of the
seventh, which is with it, Nous and Epinoia, Heaven and Earth: the
male looks down from on high and takes thought for his Syzygy [or
spouse], for the Earth below receives those intellectual fruits
which are brought down from Heaven and are cognate to the
Earth.(804)
Simon's Third World with its third series of six Ęons and the seventh, the
Parent, is emanated in the same way. It is this same note which runs hrough every Gnostic system--gradual development downward into Matter by imilitude; and it is a law which is to be traced down to primordial
Occultism, or Magic. With the Gnostics, as with us, this seventh Potency, ynthesizing all, is the Spirit brooding over the dark waters of ndifferentiated Space, Nārāyana, or Vishnu, in India; the Holy Ghost in
Christianity. But while in the latter the conception is conditioned and warfed by limitations necessitating faith and grace, Eastern Philosophy hows it pervading every atom, conscious or unconscious. Irenęus upplements the information on the further development of these six Ęons.
We learn from him that Thought, having separated itself from its Parent, nd knowing through its identity of Essence with the latter what it had to now, proceeded on the second or intermediate plane, or rather World (each f such Worlds consisting of two planes, the superior and inferior, male nd female, the latter assuming finally both Potencies and becoming ndrogyne), to create inferior Hierarchies, Angels and Powers, Dominions nd Hosts, of every description, which in their turn created, or rather manated out of their own Essence, our world with its men and beings, over hich they watch.
It thus follows that every rational being--called Man on Earth--is of the ame essence and possesses potentially all the attributes of the higher
Ęons, the primordial Seven. It is for him to develope, "with the image efore him of the highest," by imitation _in actu_, the Potency with which he highest of his Parents, or Fathers, is endowed. Here we may again uote with advantage from the _Philosophumena_:
So then, according to Simon, this blissful and imperishable
[principle] is concealed in everything in potency, not in act.
This is "that which has stood, stands and will stand," _viz._,
that which has stood above in ingenerable Potency; that which
stands below in the stream of the waters generated in an image;
that which will stand above, beside the blissful infinite Potency,
if it makes itself like unto this image. For three, he says, are
they that stand, and without these three Ęons of stability, there
is no adornment of the generable which, according to them [the
Simonians], is borne on the water, and being moulded according to
the similitude is a perfect and celestial (Ęon), in no manner of
thinking inferior to the ingenerable Potency. Thus they say: "I
and thou [are] one; before me [wast] thou; that which is after
thee [is] I." This, he says, is the one Potency, divided into
above and below, generating itself, nourishing itself, seeking
itself, finding itself; its own mother, father, brother, spouse,
daughter and son, one, for it is the Root of all.(805)
Thus of this triple Ęon, we learn the first exists as "that which has tood, stands and will stand," or the uncreate Power, Ātman; the second is enerated in the dark waters of Space (Chaos, or undifferentiated
Substance, our Buddhi), from or through the image of the former reflected n those waters, the image of Him, or It, which moves on them; the third
World (or, in man, Manas) will be endowed with every power of that eternal nd omnipresent Image if it but assimilates it to itself. For,
All that is eternal, pure and incorruptible is concealed in
everything that is,
f only potentially, not actually. And
Everything is that image, provided the lower image (man) ascends
to that highest Source and Root in Spirit and Thought.
Matter as Substance is eternal and has never been created. Therefore Simon
Magus, with all the great Gnostic Teachers and Eastern Philosophers, never peaks of its beginning. "Eternal Matter" receives its various forms in he lower Ęon from the Creative Angels, or Builders, as we call them. Why, hen, should not Man, the direct heir of the highest Ęon, do the same, by he potency of his thought, which is born from Spirit? This is
Kriyāshakti, the power of producing forms on the objective plane through he potency of Ideation and Will, from invisible, indestructible Matter.
Truly says Jeremiah,(806) quoting the "Word of the Lord":
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou
camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee,
or Jeremiah stands here for Man when he was yet an Ęon, or Divine Man, oth with Simon Magus and Eastern Philosophy. The first three chapters of
_Genesis_ are as Occult as that which is given in Paper I. For the errestrial Paradise is the Womb, says Simon,(807) Eden the region urrounding it. The river which went out of Eden to water the garden is he Umbilical Cord; this cord is divided into four Heads, the streams that lowed out of it, the four canals which serve to carry nutrition to the
Foetus, _i.e._, the two arteries and the two veins which are the channels or the blood and convey the breathing air, the unborn child, according to
Simon, being entirely enveloped by the Amnion, fed through the Umbilical
Cord and given vital air through the Aorta.(808)
The above is given for the elucidation of that which is to follow. The isciples of Simon Magus were numerous, and were instructed by him in
Magic. They made use of so-called "exorcisms" (as in the _New Testament_), ncantations, philtres; believed in dreams and visions, and produced them t will; and finally forced the lower orders of spirits to obey them.
Simon Magus was called "the Great Power of God," literally "the Potency of he Deity which is called Great." That which was then termed Magic we now all Theosophia, or Divine Wisdom, Power and Knowledge.
His direct disciple, Menander, was also a great Magician. Says Irenęus, mong other writers:
The successor of Simon was Menander, a Samaritan by birth, who
reached the highest summits in the Science of Magic.
Thus both master and pupil are shown as having attained the highest powers n the art of enchantments, powers which can be obtained only through "the elp of the Devil," as Christians claim; and yet their "works" were dentical with those spoken of in the _New Testament_, wherein such henomenal results are called divine miracles, and are, therefore, elieved in and accepted as coming from and through God. But the question s, have these so-called "miracles" of the "Christ" and the Apostles ever een explained any more than the magical achievements of so-called
Sorcerers and Magicians? I say, never. We Occultists do not believe in upernatural phenomena, and the Masters laugh at the word "miracle." Let s see, then, what is really the sense of the word Magic.
The source and basis of it lie in Spirit and Thought, whether on the urely divine or the terrestrial plane. Those who know the history of
Simon have the two versions before them, that of White and of Black Magic, t their option, in the much talked of union of Simon with Helena, whom he alled his Epinoia (Thought). Those who, like the Christians, had to iscredit a dangerous rival, talk of Helena as being a beautiful and ctual woman, whom Simon had met in a house of ill-fame at Tyre, and who as, according to those who wrote his life, the reincarnation of Helen of
Troy. How, then, was she "Divine Thought"? The lower angels, Simon is made o say in _Philosophumena_, or the third Ęons, being so material, had more adness in them than all the others. Poor man, created or emanated from hem, had the vice of his origin. What was it? Only this: when the third
Ęons possessed themselves, in their turn, of the Divine Thought through he transmission into them of Fire, instead of making of man a complete eing, according to the universal plan, they at first detained from him hat Divine Spark (Thought, on Earth Manas); and that was the cause and rigin of senseless man's committing the original sin as the angels had ommitted it ęons before by refusing to create.(809) Finally, after etaining Epinoia prisoner amongst them and having subjected the Divine
Thought to every kind of insult and desecration, they ended by shutting it nto the already defiled body of man. After this, as interpreted by the nemies of Simon, she passed from one female body into another through ges and races, until Simon found and recognized her in the form of
Helena, the "prostitute," the "lost sheep" of the parable. Simon is made o represent himself as the Saviour descended on Earth to rescue this
"lamb" and those men in whom Epinoia is still under the dominion of the ower angels. The greatest magical feats are thus attributed to Simon hrough his sexual union with Helena, hence Black Magic. Indeed, the chief ites of this kind of Magic are based on such disgusting literal nterpretation of noble myths, one of the noblest of which was thus nvented by Simon as a symbolical mark of his own teaching. Those who nderstood it correctly knew what was meant by "Helena." It was the arriage of Nous (Ātmā-Buddhi) with Manas, the union through which Will nd Thought become one and are endowed with divine powers. For Ātman in an, being of an unalloyed essence, the primordial Divine Fire (or the ternal and universal "that which has stood, stands and will stand"), is f all the planes; and Buddhi is its vehicle or Thought, generated by and enerating the "Father" in her turn, and also Will. She is "that which has tood, stands and will stand," thus becoming, in conjunction with Manas, ale-female, in this sphere only. Hence, when Simon spoke of himself as he Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and of Helena as his Epinoia,
Divine Thought, he meant the marriage of his Buddhi with Manas. Helena was he Shakti of the inner man, the female potency.
Now, what says Menander? The lower angels, he taught, were the emanations f Ennoia (Designing Thought). It was Ennoia who taught the Science of
Magic and imparted it to him, together with the art of conquering the reative angels of the lower world. The latter stand for the passions of ur lower nature. His pupils, after receiving baptism from him (_i.e._, fter Initiation), were said to "resurrect from the dead" and, "growing no lder," became "immortal."(810) This "resurrection" promised by Menander eant, of course, simply the passage from the darkness of ignorance into he light of truth, the awakening of man's immortal Spirit to inner and ternal life. This is the Science of the Rāja Yogīs--Magic.
Every person who has read Neo-Platonic Philosophy knows how its chief
Adepts, such as Plotinus, and especially Porphyry, fought against henomenal Theurgy. But, beyond all of them, Jamblichus, the author of the
_De Mysteriis_, lifts high the veil from the real term Theurgy, and shows s therein the true Divine Science of Rāja Yoga.
Magic, he says, is a lofty and sublime Science, Divine, and exalted above ll others.
It is the great remedy for all.... It neither takes its source in,
nor is it limited to, the body or its passions, to the human
compound or its constitution; but all is derived by it from our
upper Gods,
ur divine Egos, which run like a silver thread from the Spark in us up to he primeval divine Fire.(811)
Jamblichus execrates physical phenomena, produced, as he says, by the bad emons who deceive men (the spooks of the séance room), as vehemently as e exalts Divine Theurgy. But to exercise the latter, he teaches, the
Theurgist must imperatively be "a man of high morality and a chaste Soul."
The other kind of Magic is used only by impure, selfish men, and has othing of the Divine in it. No real Vates would ever consent to find in ts communications anything coming from our higher Gods. Thus one
(Theurgy) is the knowledge of our Father (the Higher Self); the other, ubjection to our lower nature. One requires holiness of the Soul, a oliness which rejects and excludes everything corporeal; the other, the esecration of it (the Soul). One is the union with the Gods (with one's
God), the source of all Good; the other intercourse with demons
(Elementals), which, unless we subject them, will subject us, and lead us tep by step to moral ruin (mediumship). In short:
Theurgy unites us most strongly to divine nature. This nature
begets itself through itself, moves through its own powers,
supports all, and is intelligent. Being the ornament of the
Universe, it invites us to intelligible truth, to perfection and
imparting perfection to others. It unites us so intimately to all
the creative actions of the Gods, according to the capacity of
each of us, that the soul having accomplished the sacred rites is
consolidated in their [the Gods'] actions and intelligences, until
it launches itself into and is absorbed by the primordial divine
essence. This is the object of the sacred Initiations of the
Egyptians.(812)
Now, Jamblichus shows us how this union of our Higher Soul with the
Universal Soul, with the Gods, is to be effected. He speaks of Manteia, hich is Samādhi, the highest trance.(813) He speaks also of dream which s divine vision, when man re-becomes again a God. By Theurgy, or Rāja
Yoga, a man arrives at: (1) Prophetic Discernment through our God (the espective Higher Ego of each of us) revealing to us the truths of the lane on which we happen to be acting; (2) Ecstacy and Illumination; (3)
Action in Spirit (in Astral Body or through Will); (4) and Domination over he minor, senseless demons (Elementals) by the very nature of our urified Egos. But this demands the complete purification of the latter.
And this is called by him Magic, through initiation into Theurgy.
But Theurgy has to be preceded by a training of our senses and the nowledge of the human Self in relation to the Divine SELF. So long as man as not thoroughly mastered this preliminary study, it is idle to nthropomorphize the formless. By "formless" I mean the higher and the ower Gods, the supermundane as well as mundane Spirits, or Beings, which o beginners can be revealed only in Colours and Sounds. For none but a igh Adept can perceive a "God" in its true transcendental form, which to he untrained intellect, to the Chelā, will be visible only by its Aura.
The visions of full figures casually perceived by sensitives and mediums elong to one or another of the only three categories they can see: (_a_)
Astrals of living men; (_b_) Nirmānakāyas (Adepts, good or bad, whose odies are dead, but who have learned to live in the invisible space in heir ethereal personalities); and (_c_) Spooks, Elementaries and
Elementals masquerading in shapes borrowed from the Astral Light in eneral, or from figures in the "mind's eye" of the audience, or of the edium, which are immediately reflected in their respective Auras.
Having read the foregoing, students will now better comprehend the ecessity of first studying the correspondences between our
"principles"--which are but the various aspects of the triune (spiritual nd physical) man--and our Paradigm, the direct roots of these in the
Universe. In view of this, we must resume our teaching about the
Hierarchies directly connected and for ever linked with man.
-------------------------------------
Enough has been said to show that while for the Orientalists and profane asses the sentence, "_Om Mani Padme Hum_," means simply "Oh the Jewel in he Lotus," Esoterically it signifies "Oh my God within me." Yes; there is God in each human being, for man was, and will re-become, God. The entence points to the indissoluble union between Man and the Universe.
For the Lotus is the universal symbol of Kosmos as the absolute totality, nd the Jewel is Spiritual Man, or God.
In the preceding Paper, the correspondences between Colours, Sounds, and
"Principles" were given; and those who have read our second volume will emember that these seven principles are derived from the seven great
Hierarchies of Angels, or Dhyān Chohans, which are, in their turn, ssociated with Colours and Sounds, and form collectively the Manifested
Logos.
In the eternal music of the spheres we find the perfect scale orresponding to the colours, and in the number, determined by the ibrations of colour and sound, which "underlies every form and guides very sound," we find the summing-up of the Manifested Universe.
We may illustrate these correspondences by showing the relation of colour nd sound to the geometrical figures which(814) express the progressive tages in the manifestation of Kosmos.
But the student will certainly be liable to confusion if, in studying the
Diagrams, he does not remember two things: (1) That, our plane being a lane of reflection, and therefore illusionary, _the various notations are eversed and must be counted from below upwards_. The musical scale begins rom below upwards, commencing with the deep Do and ending with the far ore acute Si. (2) That Kāma Rūpa (corresponding to Do in the musical cale), containing as it does all potentialities of Matter, is necessarily he starting-point on our plane. Further, it commences the notation on very plane, as corresponding to the "matter" of that plane. Again, the tudent must also remember that these notes have to be arranged in a ircle, thus showing how Fa is the middle note of Nature. In short, usical notes, or Sounds, Colours and Numbers proceed from one to seven, nd not from seven to one as erroneously shown in the spectrum of the rismatic colours, in which Red is counted first: a fact which ecessitated my putting the principles and the days of the week at random n Diagram II. The musical scale and colours, according to the number of ibrations, proceed from the world of gross Matter to that of Spirit thus:
_Principles._ _Colours._ _Notes._ _Numbers._ _States of
Matter._
Chhāyā, Violet. Si. 7. Ether.
Shadow or
Double.
Higher Manas, Indigo. La. 6. Critical
Spiritual State,
Intelligence. called Air
in
Occultism.
Auric Blue. Sol. 5. Steam or
Envelope. Vapour.
Lower Manas, Green. Fa. 4. Critical r Animal State.
Soul.
Buddhi, or Yellow. Mi. 3. Water.
Spiritual
Soul.
Prāna, or Orange. Re. 2. Critical
Life State.
Principle.
Kāma Rūpa, Red. Do. 1. Ice. he Seat of
Animal Life.
Here again the student is asked to dismiss from his mind any orrespondence between "principles" and numbers, for reasons already iven. The Esoteric enumeration cannot be made to correspond with the onventional exoteric. The one is the reality, the other is classified ccording to illusive appearances. The human principles, as given in
_Esoteric Buddhism_, were tabulated for beginners, so as not to confuse heir minds. It was half a blind.
Colours, Sounds and Forms.
To proceed:
[Illustration: Square]
The Point in the Circle is the Unmanifested Logos, corresponding to
Absolute Life and Absolute Sound.
The first geometrical figure after the Circle or the Spheroid is the
Triangle. It corresponds to Motion, Colour and Sound. Thus the Point in he Triangle represents the Second Logos, "Father-Mother," or the White
Ray which is no colour, since it contains potentially all colours. It is hown radiating from the Unmanifested Logos, or the Unspoken Word. Around he first Triangle is formed on the plane of Primordial Substance in this rder (_reversed_ as to our plane):
[Illustration: Square]
[Illustration: Triangle and Square]
[Illustration: Triangle and Square]
A.
(_a_) The Astral Double of Nature, or the Paradigm of all Forms.
(_b_) Divine Ideation, or Universal Mind.
(_c_) The Synthesis of Occult Nature, the Egg of Brahmā, containing all nd radiating all.
(_d_) Animal or Material Soul of Nature, source of animal and vegetable ntelligence and instinct.
(_e_) The aggregate of Dhyān Chohanic Intelligences, Fohat.
(_f_) Life Principle in Nature.
(_g_) The Life Procreating Principle in Nature. That which, on the piritual plane, corresponds to sexual affinity on the lower.
Mirrored on the plane of Gross Nature, the World of Reality is reversed, nd becomes on Earth and our plane:
B.
(_a_) Red is the colour of manifested dual, or male and female. In man it s shown in its lowest animal form.
(_b_) Orange is the colour of the robes of the Yogīs and Buddhist Priests, he colour of the Sun and Spiritual Vitality, also of the Vital Principle.
(_c_) Yellow or radiant Golden is the colour of the Spiritual, Divine Ray n every atom; in man of Buddhi.
(_d_) Green and Red are, so to speak, interchangeable colours, for Green bsorbs the Red, as being threefold stronger in its vibrations than the atter; and Green is the complementary colour of extreme Red. This is why he Lower Manas and Kāma Rūpa are respectively shown as Green and Red.
(_e_) The Astral Plane, or Auric Envelope in Nature and Man.
(_f_) The Mind or rational element in Man and Nature.
(_g_) The most ethereal counterpart of the Body of man, the opposite pole, tanding in point of vibration and sensitiveness as the Violet stands to he Red.
The above is on the manifested plane; after which we get the seven and the
Manifested Prism, or Man on Earth. With the latter, the Black Magician lone is concerned.
In Kosmos, the gradations and correlations of Colours and Sounds, and herefore of Numbers are infinite. This is suspected even in Physics, for t is ascertained that there exist slower vibrations than those of the
Red, the slowest perceptible to us, and far more rapid vibrations than hose of the Violet, the most rapid that our senses can perceive. But on
Earth, in our physical world, the range of perceptible vibrations is imited. Our physical senses cannot take cognizance of vibrations above nd below the septenary and limited gradations of the prismatic colours, or such vibrations are incapable of causing in us the sensation of colour r sound. It will always be the graduated septenary and no more, unless we earn to paralyze our Quaternary and discern both the superior and nferior vibrations with our spiritual senses seated in the upper
Triangle.
Now, on this plane of illusion, there are three fundamental colours, as emonstrated by Physical Science, Red, Blue and Yellow (or rather Orange-
Yellow). Expressed in terms of the human principles they are: (1) Kāma
Rūpa, the seat of the animal sensations, welded to, and serving as a ehicle for the Animal Soul or Lower Manas (Red and Green, as said, being nterchangeable); (2) Auric Envelope, or the essence of man; and (3)
Prāna, or Life Principle. But if from the realm of illusion, or the living an as he is on our Earth, subject to his sensuous perceptions only, we ass to that of semi-illusion, and observe the natural colours themselves, r those of the principles, that is, if we try to find out which are those hat in the perfect man absorb all others, we shall find that the colours orrespond and become complementary in the following way:
Violet.
(1) Red Green.
(2) Orange Blue.
(3) Yellow Indigo.
Violet.
A faint violet, mist-like form represents the Astral Man within an oviform luish circle, over which radiate in ceaseless vibrations the prismatic olours. That colour is predominant, of which the corresponding principle s the most active generally, or at the particular moment when the lairvoyant perceives it. Such man appears during his waking states; and t is by the predominance of this or that colour, and by the intensity of ts vibrations, that a clairvoyant, _if_ he be acquainted with orrespondences, can judge of the inner state or character of a person, or the latter is an open book to every practical Occultist.
In the trance state the Aura changes entirely, the seven prismatic colours eing no longer discernible. In sleep also they are not all "at home." For hose which belong to the spiritual elements in the man, _viz._, Yellow,
Buddhi; Indigo, Higher Manas; and the Blue of the Auric Envelope will be ither hardly discernible, or altogether missing. The Spiritual Man is ree during sleep, and though his physical memory may not become aware of t, lives, robed in his highest essence, in realms on other planes, in ealms which are the land of reality, called dreams on our plane of llusion.
A good clairvoyant, moreover, if he had an opportunity of seeing a Yogī in he trance state and a mesmerized subject, side by side, would learn an mportant lesson in Occultism. He would learn to know the difference etween self-induced trance and a hypnotic state resulting from extraneous nfluence. In the Yogī, the "principles" of the lower Quaternary disappear ntirely. Neither Red, Green, Red-Violet nor the Auric Blue of the Body re to be seen; nothing but hardly perceptible vibrations of the golden- ued Prāna principle and a violet flame streaked with gold rushing upwards rom the head, in the region where the Third Eye rests, and culminating in point. If the student remembers that the true Violet, or the extreme end f the spectrum, is no compound colour of Red and Blue, but a homogeneous olour with vibrations seven times more rapid than those of the Red,(815) nd that the golden hue is the essence of the three yellow hues from
Orange Red to Yellow-Orange and Yellow, he will understand the reason why: e lives in his own Auric Body, now become the vehicle of Buddhi-Manas. On he other hand, in a subject in an artificially produced hypnotic or esmeric trance, an effect of unconscious when not of conscious Black
Magic, unless produced by a high Adept, the whole set of the principles ill be present, with the Higher Manas paralyzed, Buddhi severed from it hrough that paralysis, and the red-violet Astral Body entirely subjected o the Lower Manas and Kāma Rūpa (the green and red animal monsters in s).
One who comprehends well the above explanations will readily see how mportant it is for every student, whether he is striving for practical
Occult powers or only for the purely psychic and spiritual gifts of lairvoyance and metaphysical knowledge, to master thoroughly the right orrespondences between the human, or nature principles, and those of
Kosmos. It is ignorance which leads materialistic Science to deny the nner man and his Divine powers; knowledge and personal experience that llow the Occultist to affirm that such powers are as natural to man as wimming to fishes. It is like a Laplander, in all sincerity, denying the ossibility of the catgut, strung loosely on the sounding-board of a iolin producing comprehensive sounds or melody. Our principles are the
Seven-Stringed Lyre of Apollo, truly. In this our age, when oblivion has hrouded ancient knowledge, men's faculties are no better than the loose trings of the violin to the Laplander. But the Occultist who knows how to ighten them and tune his violin in harmony with the vibrations of colour nd sound, will extract divine harmony from them. The combination of these owers and the attuning of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm will give the eometrical equivalent of the invocation "_Om Mani Padme Hum_."
This was why the previous knowledge of music and geometry was obligatory n the School of Pythagoras.
The Roots Of Colour And Sound.
Further, each of the Primordial Seven, the first Seven Rays forming the
Manifested Logos, is again sevenfold. Thus, as the seven colours of the olar spectrum correspond to the seven Rays, or Hierarchies, so each of hese latter has again its seven divisions corresponding to the same eries of colours. But in this case one colour, _viz._, that which haracterizes the particular Hierarchy as a whole, is predominant and more ntense than the others.
These Hierarchies can only be symbolized as concentric circles of rismatic colours; each Hierarchy being represented by a series of seven oncentric circles, each circle representing one of the prismatic colours n their natural order. But in each of these "wheels" one circle will be righter and more vivid in colour than the rest, and the wheel will have a urrounding Aura (a fringe, as the physicists call it) of that colour.
This colour will be the characteristic colour of that Hierarchy as a hole. Each of these Hierarchies furnishes the essence (the Soul) and is he "Builder" of one of the seven kingdoms of Nature which are the three lemental kingdoms, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and the ingdom of spiritual man.(816) Moreover, each Hierarchy furnishes the Aura f one of the seven principles in man with its specific colour. Further, s each of these Hierarchies is the Ruler of one of the Sacred Planets, it ill easily be understood how Astrology came into existence, and that real
Astrology has a strictly scientific basis.
The symbol adopted in the Eastern School to represent the Seven
Hierarchies of creative Powers is a wheel of seven concentric circles, ach circle being coloured with one of the seven colours; call them
Angels, if you will, or Planetary Spirits, or, again, the Seven Rulers of he Seven Sacred Planets of our system, as in our present case. At all vents, the concentric circles stand as symbols for Ezekiel's Wheels with ome Western Occultists and Kabalists, and for the "Builders" or Prajāpati ith us.
DIAGRAM III.
The student should carefully examine the following Diagram.
[Diagram III]
Thus the Linga Sharīra is derived from the Violet sub-ray of the Violet
Hierarchy; the Higher Manas is similarly derived from the Indigo sub-ray f the Indigo Hierarchy, and so on. Every man being born under a certain lanet, there will always be a predominance of that planet's colour in im, because that "principle" wall rule in him which has its origin in the
Hierarchy in question. There will also be a certain amount of the colour erived from the other planets present in his Aura, but that of the ruling lanet will be strongest. Now a person in whom, say, the Mercury principle s predominant, will, by acting upon the Mercury principle in another erson born under a different planet, be able to get him entirely under is control. For the stronger Mercury principle in him will overpower the eaker Mercurial element in the other. But he will have little power over ersons born under the same planet as himself. This is the key to the
Occult Sciences of Magnetism and Hypnotism.
The student will understand that the Orders and Hierarchies are here named fter their corresponding colours, so as to avoid using numerals, which ould be confusing in connection with the human principles, as the latter ave no proper numbers of their own. The real Occult names of these
Hierarchies cannot now be given.
The student must, however remember that the colours which we see with our hysical eyes are not the true colours of Occult Nature, but are merely he effects produced on the mechanism of our physical organs by certain ates of vibration. For instance, Clerk Maxwell has demonstrated that the etinal effects of any colour may be imitated by properly combining three ther colours. It follows, therefore, that our retina has only three istinct colour sensations, and we therefore do not perceive the seven olours which really exist, but only their "imitations," so to speak, in ur physical organism.
Thus, for instance, the Orange-Red of the first "Triangle" is not a ombination of Orange and Red, but the true "spiritual" Red, if the term ay be allowed, while the Red (blood-red) of the spectrum is the colour of
Kāma, animal desire, and is inseparable from the material plane.
The Unity Of Deity.
Esotericism, pure and simple, speaks of no personal God; therefore are we onsidered as Atheists. But, in reality, Occult Philosophy, as a whole, is ased absolutely on the ubiquitous presence of God, the Absolute Deity; nd if IT Itself is not speculated upon, as being too sacred and yet ncomprehensible as a Unit to the finite intellect, yet the entire
Philosophy is based upon Its Divine Powers as being the Source of all that reathes and lives and has existence. In every ancient Religion the ONE as demonstrated by the many. In Egypt and India, in Chaldęa and Phoenicia, nd finally in Greece, the ideas about Deity were expressed by multiples f three, five and seven; and also by eight, nine and twelve great Gods, hich symbolized the powers and properties of the One and Only Deity. This as related to that infinite subdivision by irregular and odd numbers to hich the metaphysics of these nations subjected their ONE DIVINITY. Thus onstituted, the cycle of the Gods had all the qualities and attributes of he ONE SUPREME AND UNKNOWABLE; for in this collection of divine
Personalities, or rather of Symbols personified, dwells the ONE GOD, the
GOD ONE, that God which, in India, is said to have no Second.
O God Ani [the Spiritual Sun], thou residest in the agglomeration
of thy divine personages.(817)
These words show the belief of the ancients that all manifestation roceeds from one and the same Source, all emanating from the one dentical Principle which can never be completely developed except in and hrough the collective and entire aggregate of Its emanations.
The Pleroma of Valentinus is absolutely the Space of Occult Philosophy; or Pleroma means the "Fullness," the superior regions. It is the sum otal of all the Divine manifestations and emanations expressing the
_plenum_ or totality of the rays proceeding from the ONE, differentiating n all the planes, and transforming themselves into Divine Powers, called
Angels and Planetary Spirits in the Philosophy of every nation. The
Gnostic Ęons and Powers of the Pleroma are made to speak as the Devas and
Siddhas of the _Purānas_. The Epinoia, the first female manifestation of
God, the "Principle" of Simon Magus and Saturninus, holds the same anguage as the Logos of Basilides; and each of these is traced to the urely esoteric Alźtheia, the TRUTH of the Mysteries. All of them, we are aught, repeat at different times and in different languages the agnificent hymn of the Egyptian papyrus, thousands of years old:
The Gods adore thee, they greet thee, O the One Dark Truth.
And addressing Ra, they add:
The Gods bow before thy Majesty, by exalting the Souls of that
which produces them ... and say to thee, Peace to all emanations
from the Unconscious Father of the Conscious Fathers of the
Gods.... Thou producer of beings, we adore the souls which emanate
from thee. Thou begettest us, O thou Unknown, and we greet thee in
worshipping each God-Soul which descendeth from thee and liveth in
us.
This is the source of the assertion:
Know ye not that ye are Gods and the temple of God.
This is shown in the "Roots of Ritualism in Church and Masonry," in
_Lucifer_ for March, 1889. Truly then, as said seventeen centuries ago,
"Man cannot possess Truth (Alźtheia) except he participate in the Gnosis."
So we may say now: No man can know the Truth unless he studies the secrets f the Pleroma of Occultism; and these secrets are all in the Theogony of he ancient Wisdom-Religion, which is the Alźtheia of Occult Science.
Paper III. A Word Concerning the Earlier Papers.
As many have written and almost complained to me that they could find no ractical clear application of certain diagrams appended to the first two
Papers, and others have spoken of their abstruseness, a short explanation s necessary.
The reason of this difficulty in most cases has been that the point of iew taken was erroneous; the purely abstract and metaphysical was istaken for, and confused with, the concrete and the physical. Let us ake for example the diagrams on page 477 (Paper II.,) and say that these re entirely macrocosmic and ideal. It must be remembered that the study f Occultism proceeds from Universals to Particulars and not the reverse ay, as accepted by Science. As Plato was an Initiate, he very naturally sed the former method, while Aristotle, never having been initiated, coffed at his master, and, elaborating a system of his own, left it as an eirloom to be adopted and improved by Bacon. Of a truth the aphorism of
Hermetic Wisdom, "As above, so below," applies to all Esoteric nstruction; but we must begin with the above; we must learn the formula efore we can sum the series.
The two figures, therefore, are not meant to represent any two particular lanes, but are the abstraction of a pair of planes, explanatory of the aw of reflection, just as the Lower Manas is a reflection of the Higher.
They must therefore be taken in the highest metaphysical sense.
The diagrams are only intended to familiarize students with the leading deas of Occult correspondences, the very genius of metaphysical, or acrocosmic and spiritual Occultism forbidding the use of figures or even ymbols further than as temporary aids. Once define an idea in words, and t loses its reality; once figure a metaphysical idea, and you materialize ts spirit. Figures must be used only as ladders to scale the battlements, adders to be disregarded when once the foot is set upon the rampart.
Let students, therefore, be very careful to spiritualize the Papers and void materializing them; let them always try to find the highest meaning ossible, confident that in proportion as they approach the material and isible in their speculations on the Papers, so far are they from the ight understanding of them. This is especially the case with these first
Papers and Diagrams, for as in all true arts, so in Occultism, we must irst learn the theory before we are taught the practice.
Concerning Secrecy.
Students ask: Why such secrecy about the details of a doctrine the body of hich has been publicly revealed, as in _Esoteric Buddhism_ and the
_Secret Doctrine_?
To this Occultism would reply: for two reasons:--
(_a_) The whole truth is too sacred to be given out promiscuously.
(_b_) The knowledge of all the details and missing links in the exoteric eachings is too dangerous in profane hands.
The truths revealed to man by the "Planetary Spirits"--the highest Kumāras, hose who incarnate no longer in the Universe during this
Mahāmanvantara--who will appear on earth as Avatāras only at the beginning f every new human Race, and at the junctions or close of the two ends of he small and great cycles--in time, as man became more animalized, were ade to fade away from his memory. Yet, though these Teachers remain with an no longer than the time required to impress upon the plastic minds of hild-humanity the eternal verities they teach, Their Spirit remains vivid hough latent in mankind. And the full knowledge of the primitive evelation has remained always with a few elect, and has been transmitted rom that time up to the present, from one generation of Adepts to nother. As the Teachers say in the Occult Primer:
_This is done so as to ensure them_ [the eternal truths] _from being tterly lost or forgotten in ages hereafter by the forthcoming enerations._
The mission of the Planetary Spirit is but to strike the key-note of
Truth. When once He has directed the vibration of the latter to run its ourse uninterruptedly along the concatenation of the race to the end of he cycle, He disappears from our earth until the following Planetary
Manvantara. The mission of any teacher of Esoteric truths, whether he tands at the top or the foot of the ladder of knowledge, is precisely the ame; as above, so below. I have only orders to strike the key-note of the arious Esoteric truths among the learners as a body. Those units among ou who will have raised themselves on the "Path" over their fellow- tudents, in their Esoteric sphere, will, as the "Elect" spoken of did and o in the Parent Brotherhoods, receive the last explanatory details and he ultimate key to what they learn. No one, however, can hope to gain his privilege before the MASTERS--not my humble self--find him or her orthy.
If you wish to know the real _raison d'źtre_ for this policy, I now give t to you. No use my repeating and explaining what all of you know as well s myself; at the very beginning, events have shown that no caution can be ispensed with. Of our body of several hundred men and women, many did not eem to realize either the awful sacredness of the pledge (which some took t the end of their pen), or the fact that their _personality_ has to be ntirely disregarded, when brought face to face with their HIGHER SELF; or hat all their words and professions went for naught unless corroborated y actions. This was human nature, and no more; therefore it was passed eniently by, and a new lease accorded by the MASTER. But apart from this here is a danger lurking in the nature of the present cycle itself.
Civilized humanity, however carefully guarded by its invisible Watchers, he Nirmānakāyas, who watch over our respective races and nations, is yet, wing to its collective Karma, terribly under the sway of the traditional pposers of the Nirmānakāyas--the "Brothers of the Shadow," embodied and isembodied; and this, as has already been told you, will last to the end f the first Kali Yuga cycle (1897), and a few years beyond, as the maller dark cycle happens to overlap the great one. Thus, notwithstanding ll precautions, terrible secrets are often revealed to entirely unworthy ersons by the efforts of the "Dark Brothers" and their working on human rains. This is entirely owing to the simple fact that in certain rivileged organisms, vibrations of the primitive truth put in motion by he Planetary Beings are set up, in what Western philosophy would term nnate ideas, and Occultism "flashes of genius."(818) Some such idea based n eternal truth is awakened, and all that the watchful Powers can do is o prevent its entire revelation.
Everything in this Universe of differentiated matter has its two aspects, he light and the dark side, and these two attributes applied practically, ead the one to use, the other to abuse. Every man may become a Botanist ithout apparent danger to his fellow-creatures; and many a Chemist who as mastered the science of essences knows that every one of them can both eal and kill. Not an ingredient, not a poison, but can be used for both urposes--aye, from harmless wax to deadly prussic acid, from the saliva of n infant to that of the cobra di capella. This every tyro in medicine nows--theoretically, at any rate. But where is the learned Chemist in our ay who has been permitted to discover the "night side" of an attribute of ny substance in the three kingdoms of Science, let alone in the seven of he Occultists? Who of them has penetrated into its Arcana, into the nnermost Essence of things and its primary correlations? Yet it is this nowledge alone which makes of an Occultist a genuine practical Initiate, hether he turn out a Brother of Light or a Brother of Darkness. The ssence of that subtle, traceless poison, the most potent in nature, which ntered into the composition of the so-called Medici and Borgia poisons, f used with discrimination by one well versed in the septenary degrees of ts potentiality on each of the planes accessible to man on earth--could eal or kill every man in the world; the result depending, of course, on hether the operator was a Brother of the Light or a Brother of the
Shadow. The former is prevented from doing the good he might, by racial, ational, and individual Karma; the second is impeded in his fiendish work y the joint efforts of the human "Stones" of the "Guardian Wall."(819)
It is incorrect to think that there exists any special "powder of rojection" or "philosopher's stone," or "elixir of life." The latter urks in every flower, in every stone and mineral throughout the globe. It s the ultimate essence of _everything on its way to higher and higher volution_. As there is no good or evil _per se_, so there is neither
"elixir of life" nor "elixir of death," nor poison, _per se_, but all this s contained in one and the same universal Essence, this or the other ffect, or result, depending on the degree of its differentiation and its arious correlations. The _light side_ of it produces life, health, bliss, ivine peace, etc.; the _dark side_ brings death, disease, sorrow and trife. This is proven by the knowledge of the nature of the most violent oisons; of some of them even a large quantity will produce no evil effect n the organism, whereas a grain of the same poison kills with the apidity of lightning; while the same grain, again, altered by a certain ombination, though its quantity remains almost identical, will heal. The umber of the degrees of its differentiation is septenary, as are the lanes of its action, each degree being either beneficent or maleficent in ts effects, according to the system into which it is introduced. He who s skilled in these degrees is on the high road to practical Adeptship; he ho acts at hap-hazard--as do the enormous majority of the "Mind Curers," hether "Mental" or "Christian Scientists"--is likely to rue the effects on imself as well as on others. Put on the track by the example of the
Indian Yogīs, and of their broadly but incorrectly outlined practices, hich they have only read about, but have had no opportunity to tudy--these new sects have rushed headlong and guideless into the practice f _denying_ and _affirming_. Thus they have done more harm than good.
Those who are successful owe it to their innate magnetic and healing owers, which very often counteract that which would otherwise be onducive to much evil. Beware, I say; Satan and the Archangel are more han twins; they are one body and one mind--_Deus est Demon inversus_.
Is The Practice Of Concentration Beneficent?
Such is another question often asked. I answer: Genuine concentration and editation, _conscious and cautious_, upon one's lower self in the light f the inner divine man and the Pāramitās, is an excellent thing. But to
"sit for Yoga," with only a superficial and often distorted knowledge of he real practice, is almost invariably fatal; for ten to one the student ill either develop mediumistic powers in himself or lose time and get isgusted both with practice and theory. Before one rushes into such a angerous experiment and seeks to go beyond a minute examination of one's ower self and _its_ walk in life, or that which is called in our hraseology, "The Chelā's Daily Life Ledger," he would do well to learn at east the difference between the two aspects of "Magic," the White or
Divine, and the Black or Devilish, and assure himself that by "sitting for
Yoga," with no experience, as well as with no guide to show him the angers, he does not daily and hourly cross the boundaries of the Divine o fall into the Satanic. Nevertheless, the way to learn the difference is ery easy; one has only to remember that _no Esoteric truths entirely nveiled will ever be given in public print_, in book or magazine.
I ask students to turn to the _Theosophist_ of November, 1887. On page 98 hey will find the beginning of an excellent article by Mr. Rāma Prasād on
"Nature's Finer Forces."(820) The value of this work is not so much in its iterary merit, though it gained its author the gold medal of the
_Theosophist_, as in its exposition of tenets hitherto concealed in a rare nd ancient Sanskrit work on Occultism. But Mr. Rāma Prasād is not an
Occultist, only an excellent Sanskrit scholar, a university graduate and a an of remarkable intelligence. His essays are almost entirely based on
Tāntra works, which, if read indiscriminately by a tyro in Occultism, will ead to the practice of most unmitigated Black Magic. Now, since the ifference of primary importance between Black and White Magic is the bject with which it is practised, and that of secondary importance the ature of the agents used for the production of phenomenal results, the ine of demarcation between the two is very--_very_ thin. The danger is essened only by the fact that every _Occult_ book, so-called, is Occult nly in a certain sense: that is, the text is Occult merely by reason of ts blinds. The symbolism has to be thoroughly understood before the eader can get at the correct sense of the teaching. Moreover, it is never omplete, its several portions each being under a different title, and ach containing a portion of some other work; so that without a key to hese no such work divulges the whole truth. Even the famous _Shivāgama_, n which _Natures Finer Forces_ is based, "is nowhere to be found in omplete form," as the author tells us. Thus, like all others, it treats f only five Tattvas instead of the seven as in Esoteric teachings.
Now, the Tattvas being simply the substratum of the seven forces of
Nature, how can this be? There are seven forms of Prakriti, as Kapila's
Sānkhya, the _Vishnu Purāna_, and other works teach. Prakriti is Nature,
Matter (primordial and elemental); therefore logic demands that the
Tattvas also should be seven. For whether Tattvas mean, as Occultism eaches, "forces of Nature," or, as the learned Rāma Prāsad explains, "the ubstance out of which the universe is formed" and "the power by which it s sustained," it is all one; they are Force, Purusha, and _Matter_,
Prakriti. And if the _forms_, or rather planes, of the latter are seven, hen its forces must be seven also. In other words, the degrees of the olidity of matter and the degrees of the power that ensouls it must go and in hand.
The Universe is made out of the Tattva, it is sustained by the
Tattva, and it disappears into the Tattva,
ays Shiva, as quoted from the _Shivāgama_ in _Nature's Finer Forces_.
This settles the question; if Prakriti is septenary, then the Tattvas must e seven, for, as said, they are both Substance and Force, or atomic
Matter and the Spirit that ensoule it.
This is explained here to enable the student to read between the lines of he so-called Occult articles on Sanskrit Philosophy, by which they must ot be misled. The doctrine of the seven Tattvas (the principles of the
Universe and also of man) was held in great sacredness and therefore ecrecy, in days of old, by the Brāhmans, who have now almost forgotten he teaching. Yet it is taught to this day in the Schools beyond the
Himālayan Range, though now hardly remembered or heard of in India except hrough rare Initiates. The policy has, however, been changed gradually;
Chelās began to be taught the broad outlines of it, and at the advent of he T. S. in India in 1879, I was ordered to teach it in its exoteric form o one or two. I now give it out Esoterically.
Knowing that some students try to follow a system of Yoga in their own ashion, guided only by the rare hints they find in Theosophical books and agazines, which must naturally be incomplete, I chose one of the best xpositions upon ancient Occult works, _Nature's Finer Forces_, in order o point out how very easily one can be misled by their blinds.
The author seems to have been himself deceived. The Tantras read
Esoterically are as full of wisdom as the noblest Occult works. Studied ithout a guide and applied to practice, they may lead to the production f various phenomenal results, on the moral and physiological planes. But et anyone accept their dead-letter rules and practices, let him try with ome selfish motive in view to carry out the rites prescribed therein, nd--he is lost. Followed with pure heart and unselfish devotion merely for he sake of experiment, either no results will follow, or such as can only hrow back the performer. But woe to the selfish man who seeks to develop
Occult powers only to attain earthly benefits or revenge, or to satisfy is ambition; the separation of the Higher from the Lower Principles and he severing of Buddhi-Manas from the Tāntrist's personality will speedily ollow, the terrible Karmic results to the _dabbler_ in Magic.
In the East, in India and China, _soulless_ men and women are as requently met with as in the West, though vice is, in truth, far less eveloped there than it is here.
It is Black Magic and oblivion of their ancestral wisdom that lead them hereunto. But of this I will speak later, now merely adding: you have to e warned and know the danger.
Meanwhile, in view of what follows, the real Occult division of the
Principles in their correspondences with the Tattvas and other minor orces has to be well studied.
About "Principles" And "Aspects."
Speaking metaphysically and philosophically, on strict Esoteric lines, man s a complete unit is composed of Four basic Principles and their Three
Aspects on this earth. In the semi-esoteric teachings, these Four and
Three have been called Seven Principles, to facilitate the comprehension f the masses.
The Eternal Basic Principles.
1. _Ātmā_, or _Jīva_, "the One Life," which permeates the _Monadic Trio_.
(One in three and three in One.)
2. _Auric Envelope_; because the substratum of the Aura around man is the niversally diffused primordial and pure Akāsha, the first film on the oundless and shoreless expanse of Jīva, the immutable Root of all.
3. _Buddhi_; for Buddhi is a ray of the Universal Spiritual Soul (ALAYA).
4. _Manas_ (the Higher Ego); for it proceeds from Mahat, the first product r emanation of Pradhāna which contains _potentially_ all the Gunas
(attributes). Mahat is Cosmic Intelligence, called the "Great
Principle."(821)
Transitory Aspects Produced by the Principles.
1. _Prāna_, the Breath of Life, the same as _Nephesh_. At the death of a iving being, Prāna re-becomes Jīva.(822)
2. _Linga Sharīra_, the Astral Form, the transitory emanation of the Auric
Egg. This form precedes the formation of the living Body, and after death lings to it, dissipating only with the disappearance of its last atom
(the skeleton excepted).
3. Lower Manas, the Animal Soul, the reflection or shadow of the Buddhi-
Manas, having the potentialitie of both, but conquered generally by its ssociation with the Kāma elements.
As the lower man is the combined product of two aspects--physically, of his
Astral Form, and psycho-physiologically of Kāma-Manas--he is not looked pon even as an aspect, but as an illusion.
The Auric Egg, on account of its nature and manifold functions, has to be ell studied. As Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Womb or Egg, contains Brahmā, he collective symbol of the Seven Universal Forces, so the Auric Egg ontains, and is directly related to, both the divine and the physical an. In its essence, as said, it is eternal; in its constant correlations nd transformations, during the reincarnating progress of the Ego on this arth, it is a kind of perpetual motion machine.
As given out in our second volume, the Egos or Kumāras, incarnating in an, at the end of the Third Root-Race, are not human Egos of this earth r plane, but become such only from the moment they ensoul the Animal Man, hus endowing him with his Higher Mind. Each is a "Breath" or Principle, alled the Human Soul, or Manas, the Mind. As the teachings say:
_"__Each is a pillar of light. Having chosen its vehicle, it expanded, urrounding with an Ākāshic Aura the human animal, while the Divine
(Mānasic) Principle settled within that human form.__"_
Ancient Wisdom teaches us, moreover, that from this first incarnation, the
Lunar Pitris, who had made men out of their Chhāyās or Shadows, are bsorbed by this Auric Essence, and a distinct Astral Form is now produced or each forthcoming personality of the reincarnating series of each Ego.
Thus the Auric Egg, reflecting all the thoughts, words and deeds of man, s:
(_a_) The preserver of every Karmic record.
(_b_) The storehouse of all the good and evil powers of man, receiving and iving out at his will--nay, at his very thought--every potentiality, which ecomes, then and there, an acting potency: this Aura is the mirror in hich sensitives and clairvoyants sense and perceive the real man, and see im _as he is_, not as he appears.
(_c_) As it furnishes man with his Astral Form, around which the physical ntity models itself, first as a foetus, then as a child and man, the stral growing apace with the human being, so it furnishes him during ife, if an Adept, with his Māyāvi Rūpa, or Illusion Body, which is not is _Vital_-Astral Body; and after death, with his Devachanic Entity and
Kāma Rūpa, or Body of Desire (the Spook).(823)
In the case of the Devachanic Entity, the Ego, in order to be able to go nto a state of bliss, as the "I" of its immediately preceding ncarnation, has to be clothed (metaphorically speaking) with the piritual elements of the ideas, aspirations and thoughts of the now isembodied personality; otherwise what is it that enjoys bliss and eward? Surely not the impersonal Ego, the Divine Individuality. Therefore t must be the good Karmic records of the deceased, impressed upon the
Auric Substance, which furnish the Human Soul with just enough of the piritual elements of the ex-personality, to enable it to still believe tself that body from which it has just been severed, and to receive its ruition, during a more or less prolonged period of "spiritual gestation."
For Devachan is a "spiritual gestation" within an ideal matrix state, a irth of the Ego into the world of effects, which ideal, subjective birth recedes its next terrestrial birth, the latter being determined by its ad Karma, into the world of causes.(824)
In the case of the Spook, the Kāma Rūpa is furnished from the animal dregs f the Auric Envelope, with its daily Karmic record of animal life, so ull of animal desires and selfish aspirations.(825)
Now the Linga Sharīra remains with the Physical Body, and fades out along ith it. An astral entity then has to be created, a new Linga Sharīra rovided, to become the bearer of all the past Tanhas and future Karma.
How is this accomplished? The mediumistic Spook, the "departed angel," ades out and vanishes also in its turn(826) as an entity or full image of he personality that was, and leaves in the Kāmalokic world of effects nly the record of its misdeeds and sinful thoughts and acts, known in the hraseology of Occultists as Tānhic or human Elementals. Entering into the omposition of the Astral Form of the new body, into which the Ego, upon ts quitting the Devachanic state, is to enter according to Karmic decree, he Elementals form that new astral entity which is born within the Auric
Envelope, and of which it is often said:
Bad Karma waits at the threshold of Devachan, with its army of
Skandhas.(827)
For no sooner is the Devachanic state of reward ended, than the Ego is ndissolubly united with (or rather follows in the track of) the new
Astral Form. Both are Karmically propelled towards the family or woman rom whom is to be born the _animal child_ chosen by Karma to become the ehicle of the Ego which has just awakened from the Devachanic state. Then he _new_ Astral Form, composed partly of the pure Akāshic Essence of the
Auric Egg, and partly of the terrestrial elements of the punishable sins nd misdeeds of the last personality, is drawn into the woman. Once there,
Nature models the foetus of flesh around the Astral, out of the growing aterials of the male seed in the female soil. Thus grows out of the ssence of a decayed seed the fruit or eidolon of the dead seed, the hysical fruit producing in its turn within itself another, and other eeds for future plants.
And now we may return to the Tattvas, and see what they mean in nature and an, showing thereby the great danger of indulging in fancy, amateur Yoga, ithout knowing what we are about.
The Tāttvic Correlations and Meaning.
In Nature, then, we find seven Forces, or seven Centres of Force, and verything seems to respond to that number, as for instance, the septenary cale in music, or Sounds, and the septenary spectrum in Colours. I have ot exhausted its nomenclature and proofs in the earlier volumes, yet nough is given to show every thinker that the facts adduced are no oincidences, but very weighty testimony.
There are several reasons why only five Tattvas are given in the Hindu ystems. One of these I have already mentioned; another is that owing to ur having reached only the Fifth Race, and being (so far as Science is ble to ascertain) endowed with only five senses, the two remaining senses hat are still latent in man can have their existence proven only on henomenal evidence which to the Materialist is no evidence at all. The ive physical senses are made to correspond with the five lower Tattvas, he two yet undeveloped senses in man; and the two forces, or Tattvas, orgotten by Brāhmans and still unrecognized by Science, being so ubjective and the highest of them so sacred, that they can only be ecognized by, and known through, the highest Occult Sciences. It is easy o see that these two Tattvas and the two senses (the sixth and the eventh) correspond to the two highest human principles, Buddhi and the
Auric Envelope, impregnated with the light of Ātmā. Unless we open in urselves, by Occult training, the sixth and seventh senses, we can never omprehend correctly their corresponding types. Thus the statement in
_Nature's Finer Forces_ that, in the Tāttvic scale, the highest Tattva of ll is Ākāsha(828) (followed by [only] four, each of which becomes grosser han its predecessor), if made from the Esoteric standpoint, is erroneous.
For once Ākāsha, an almost homogeneous and certainly universal Principle, s translated Ether, then Ākāsha is dwarfed and limited to our visible
Universe, for assuredly it is not the Ether of Space. Ether, whatever
Modern Science makes of it, is differentiated Substance; Ākāsha, having no ttributes save one--SOUND, _of which it is the substratum_--is no substance ven exoterically and in the minds of some Orientalists,(829) but rather
Chaos, or the Great Spatial Void.(830)
Esoterically, Ākāsha alone is _Divine_ Space, and becomes Ether only on he lowest and last plane, or our visible Universe and Earth. In this case he blind is in the word "attribute," which is said to be Sound. But Sound s no attribute of Ākāsha, but its primary correlation, its primordial anifestation, the LOGOS, or Divine Ideation made Word, and that "WORD" ade "Flesh." Sound may be considered an "attribute" of Ākāsha only on the ondition of anthropomorphizing the latter. It is not a characteristic of t, though it is certainly as innate in it as the idea "I am _I_" is nnate in our thoughts.
Occultism teaches that Ākāsha contains and includes the seven Centres of
Force, therefore the six Tattvas, of which it is the seventh, or rather heir synthesis. But if Ākāsha be taken, as we believe it is in this case, o represent only the exoteric idea, then the author is right; because, eeing that Ākāsha is universally omnipresent, following the Paurānic imitation, _for the better comprehension of our finite intellects_, he laces its commencement only beyond the four planes of our Earth
Chain,(831) the two higher Tattvas being as concealed to the average ortal as the sixth and seventh senses are to the materialistic mind.
Therefore, while Sanskrit and Hindu Philosophy generally speak of five
Tattvas only, Occultists name seven, thus making them correspond with very septenary in Nature. The Tattvas stand in the same order as the even macro- and micro-cosmic Forces: and as taught in Esotericism, are as ollows:
(1) ĀDI TATTVA, the primordial universal Force, issuing at the beginning f manifestation, or of the "creative" period, from the eternal immutable
Sat, the substratum of ALL. It corresponds with the Auric Envelope or
Brahmā's Egg, which surrounds every globe, as well as every man, animal nd thing. It is the vehicle containing potentially everything--Spirit and
Substance, Force and Matter. Ādi Tattva, in Esoteric Cosmogony, is the
Force which we refer to as proceeding from the First or Unmanifested
LOGOS.
(2) ANUPĀDAKA TATTVA,(832) the first differentiation on the plane of eing--the first being an ideal one--or that which is born by transformation rom something higher than itself. With the Occultists, this Force roceeds from the Second LOGOS.
(3) ĀKĀSHA TATTVA, this is the point from which all _exoteric_
Philosophies and Religions start. Ākāsha Tattva is explained in them as
Etheric Force, Ether. Hence Jupiter, the "highest" God, was named after
Pater Ęther; Indra, once the highest God in India, is the etheric or eavenly expanse, and so with Uranus, etc. The Christian biblical God, lso, is spoken of as the Holy Ghost, Pneuma, rarefied wind or air. This he Occultists call the Force of the Third LOGOS, the Creative Force in he already Manifested Universe.
(4) VĀYU TATTVA, the aėrial plane where substance is gaseous.
(5) TAIJAS TATTVA, the plane of our atmosphere, from _tejas_, luminous.
(6) ĀPAS TATTVA, watery or liquid substance or force.
(7) PRITHIVĪ TATTVA, solid earthly substance, the terrestrial spirit or orce, the lowest of all.
All these correspond to our Principles, and to the seven senses and forces n man. According to the Tattva or Force generated or induced in us, so ill our bodies act.
Now, what I have to say here is addressed especially to those members who re anxious to develop powers by "sitting for Yoga." You have seen, from hat has been already said, that in the development of Rāja Yoga, no xtant works made public are of the least good; they can at best give nklings of Hatha Yoga, something that may develop mediumship at best, and n the worst case--consumption. If those who practice "meditation," and try o learn "the Science of Breath," will read attentively _Nature's Finer
Forces_, they will find that it is by utilizing the five Tattvas only that his dangerous science is acquired. For in the exoteric Yoga Philosophy, nd the Hatha Yoga practice, Ākāsha Tattva is placed in the head (or hysical brain) of man; Tejas Tattva in the shoulders; Vāyu Tattva in the avel (the seat of all the phallic Gods, "creators" of the universe and an); Āpas Tattva in the knees; and Prithivī Tattva in the feet. Hence the wo higher Tattvas and their correspondences are ignored and excluded; nd, as these are the chief factors in Rāja Yoga, no spiritual or ntellectual phenomena of a high nature can take place. The best results btainable will be physical phenomena and no more. As the "Five Breaths," r rather the five states of the human breath, in Hatha Yoga correspond to he above _terrestrial_ planes and colours, what spiritual results can be btained? On the contrary, they are the very reverse of the plane of
Spirit, or the higher macrocosmic plane, reflected as they are upside own, in the Astral Light. This is proven in the Tāntra work, _Shivāgama_, tself. Let us compare.
First of all, remember that the Septenary of visible and also invisible
Nature is said in Occultism to consist of the _three_ (and four) Fires, hich grow into the forty-nine Fires. This shows that as the Macrocosm is ivided into seven great planes of various differentiations of
Substance--from the spiritual or subjective, to the fully objective or aterial, from Akāsha down to the sin-laden atmosphere of our earth--so, in ts turn, each of these great planes has three aspects, based on four
Principles, as already shown above. This seems to be quite natural, as ven modern Science has her three states of matter and what are generally alled the "critical" or intermediate states between the solid, the luidic, and the gaseous.
Now, the Astral Light is not a universally diffused stuff, but pertains nly to our earth and all other bodies of the system on the same plane of atter with it. Our Astral Light is, so to speak, the Linga Sharīra of our arth; only instead of being its primordial prototype, as in the case of ur Chhāyā, or Double, it is the reverse. Human and animal bodies grow and evelop on the model of their antetypal Doubles; whereas the Astral Light s born from the terrene emanations, grows and develops after its rototypal parent, and in its treacherous waves everything from the upper lanes and from the lower solid plane, the earth, both ways, is reflected
_reversed_. Hence the confusion of its colours and sounds in the lairvoyance and clairaudience of the sensitive who trusts to its records, e that sensitive a Hatha Yogī or a medium.
Such, then, is the Occult Science on which the modern Ascetics and Yogīs f India base their Soul development and powers. They are known as the
Hatha Yogīs. Now, the science of Hatha Yoga rests upon the "suppression of reath," or Prānāyāma, to which exercise our Masters are unanimously pposed. For what is Prānāyāma? Literally translated, it means the "death f (vital) breath." Prāna, as said, is not Jīva, the eternal fount of life mmortal; nor is it connected in any way with Pranava, as some think, for
Pranava is a synonym of AUM in a mystic sense. As much as has ever been aught publicly and clearly about it is to be found in _Nature's Finer
Forces_. If such directions, however, are followed, they can only lead to
Black Magic and mediumship. Several impatient Chelās, whom we knew ersonally in India, went in for the practice of Hatha Yoga, otwithstanding our warnings. Of these, two developed consumption, of hich one died; others became almost idiotic; another committed suicide; nd one developed into a regular Tāntrika, a Black Magician, but his areer, fortunately for himself, was cut short by death.
The science of the Five Breaths, the moist, the fiery, the airy, etc., has twofold significance and two applications. The Tāntrikas take it iterally, as relating to the regulation of the vital, lung breath, hereas the ancient Rāja Yogīs understood it as referring to the mental or
"will" breath, which alone leads to the highest clairvoyant powers, to the unction of the Third Eye, and the acquisition of the true Rāja Yoga
Occult powers. The difference between the two is enormous. The former, as hown, use the five lower Tattvas; the latter begin by using the three igher alone, for mental and will development, and the rest only when they ave completely mastered the three; hence, they use only one (Ākāsha
Tattva) out of the Tāntric five. As well said in the above stated work,
"Tattvas are the modifications of Svara." Now, the Svara is the root of ll sound, the substratum of the Pythagorean music of the spheres, Svara eing that which is _beyond_ Spirit, in the modern acceptation of the ord, the Spirit within Spirit, or as very properly translated, the
"current of the life-wave," the emanation of the One Life. The Great
Breath spoken of in our first volume is ĀTMĀ, the etymology of which is
"_eternal motion_." Now while the ascetic Chelā of our school, for his ental development, follows carefully the process of the evolution of the
Universe, that is, proceeds from universals to particulars, the Hatha Yogī everses the conditions and begins by sitting for the suppression of his
(vital) breath. And if, as Hindu philosophy teaches, at the beginning of osmic evolution, "Svara threw itself into the form of Ākāsha," and thence uccessively into the forms of Vāyu (air), Agni (fire), Āpas (water), and
Prithivī (solid matter),(833) then it stands to reason that we have to egin by the higher _supersensuous_ Tattvas. The Rāja Yogī does not escend on the planes of substance beyond Sūkshma (subtle matter), while he Hatha Yogī develops and uses his powers only on the material plane.
Some Tāntrikas locate the three Nadīs, Sushumnā, Īdā and Pingalā, in the edulla oblongata, the central line of which they call Sushumnā, and the ight and left divisions, Pingalā and Īdā, and also in the heart, to the ivisions of which they apply the same names. The Trans-Himālayan school f the ancient Indian Rāja Yogīs, with which the modern Yogīs of India ave little to do, locates Sushumnā, the chief seat of these three Nadīs, n the central tube of the spinal cord, and Īdā and Pingalā on its left nd right sides. Sushumnā is the Brahmadanda. It is that canal (of the pinal cord), of the use of which Physiology knows no more than it does of he spleen and the pineal gland. Īā and Pingalā are simply the sharps and lats of that _Fa_ of human nature, the keynote and the middle key in the cale of the septenary harmony of the Principles, which, when struck in a roper way, awakens the sentries on either side, the spiritual Manas and he physical Kāma, and subdues the lower through the higher. But this ffect has to be produced by the exercise of will-power, not through the cientific or trained suppression of the breath. Take a transverse section f the spinal region, and you will find sections across three columns, one f which columns transmits the volitional orders, and a second a life urrent of Jīva--not of Prāna, which animates the body of man--during what s called Samādhi and like states.
He who has studied both systems, the Hatha and the Rāja Yoga, finds an normous difference between the two: one is purely psycho-physiological, he other purely psycho-spiritual. The Tāntrists do not seem to go higher han the six visible and known plexuses, with each of which they connect he Tattvas; and the great stress they lay on the chief of these, the
Mūladhāra Chakra (the sacral plexus), shows the material and selfish bent f their efforts towards the acquisition of powers. Their five Breaths and ive Tattvas are chiefly concerned with the prostatic, epigastric, ardiac, and laryngeal plexuses. Almost ignoring the Ājńā, they are ositively ignorant of the synthesizing laryngeal plexus. But with the ollowers of the old school it is different. We begin with the mastery of hat organ which is situated at the base of the brain, in the pharynx, and alled by Western Anatomists the Pituitary Body. In the series of the bjective cranial organs, corresponding to the subjective Tāttvic rinciples, it stands to the Third Eye (Pineal Gland) as Manas stands to
Buddhi; the arousing and awakening of the Third Eye must be performed by hat vascular organ, that insignificant little body, of which, once again,
Physiology knows nothing at all. The one is the Energizer of Will, the ther that of Clairvoyant Perception.
Those who are Physicians, Physiologists, Anatomists, etc., will understand e better than the rest in the following explanation.
Now, as to the functions of the Pineal Gland, or Conarium, and of the
Pituitary Body, we find no explanations vouchsafed by the standard uthorities. Indeed, on looking through the works of the greatest pecialists, it is curious to observe how much confused ignorance on the uman vital economy, physiological as well as psychological, is openly onfessed. The following is all that can be gleaned from the authorities pon these two important organs.
(1) The Pineal Gland, or Conarium, is a rounded, oblong body, from three o four lines long, of a deep reddish grey, connected with the posterior art of the third ventricle of the brain. It is attached at its base by wo thin medullary cords, which diverge forward to the Optic Thalami.
Remember that the latter are found by the best Physiologists to be the rgans of reception and condensation of the most sensitive and sensorial ncitations from the periphery of the body (according to Occultism, from he periphery of the Auric Egg, which is our point of communication with he higher, universal planes). We are further told that the two bands of he Optic Thalami, which are inflected to meet each other, unite on the edian line, where they become the two peduncles of the Pineal Gland.
(2) The Pituitary Body, or Hypophysis Cerebri, is a small and hard organ, bout six lines broad, three long and three high. It is formed of an nterior bean-shaped, and of a posterior and more rounded lobe, which are niformly united. Its component parts, we are told, are almost identical ith those of the Pineal Gland; yet not the slightest connection can be raced between the two centres. To this, however, Occultists take xception; they _know_ that there is a connection, and this even natomically and physically. Dissectors, on the other hand, have to deal ith corpses; and, as they themselves admit, brain-matter, of all tissues nd organs, collapses and changes form the soonest--in fact, a few minutes fter death. When, then, the pulsating life which expanded the mass of the rain, filled all its cavities and energized all its organs, vanishes, the erebral mass shrinks into a sort of pasty condition, and once open assages become closed. But the contraction and even interblending of arts in this process of shrinking, and the subsequent pasty state of the rain, do not imply that there is no connection between these two organs efore death. In point of fact, as Professor Owen has shown, a connection s objective as a groove and tube exists in the crania of the human foetus nd of certain fishes. When a man is in his normal condition, an Adept can ee the golden Aura pulsating in both the centres, like the pulsation of he heart, which never ceases throughout life. This motion, however, under he abnormal condition of effort to develop clairvoyant faculties, becomes ntensified, and the Aura takes on a stronger vibratory or swinging ction. The arc of the pulsation of the Pituitary Body mounts upward, more nd more, until, just as when the electric current strikes some solid bject, the current finally strikes the Pineal Gland, and the dormant rgan is awakened and set all glowing with the pure Ākāshic Fire. This is he psycho-physiological illustration of two organs on the physical plane, hich are, respectively, the concrete symbols of the metaphysical concepts alled Manas and Buddhi. The latter, in order to become conscious on this lane, needs the more differentiated fire of Manas; _but once the sixth ense has awakened the seventh_, the light which radiates from this eventh sense illumines the fields of infinitude. For a brief space of ime man becomes omniscient; the Past and the Future, Space and Time, isappear and become for him the Present. If an Adept, he will store the nowledge he thus gains in his physical memory, and nothing, save the rime of indulging in Black Magic, can obliterate the remembrance of it.
If only a Chelā, portions alone of the whole truth will impress themselves n his memory, and he will have to repeat the process for years, never llowing one speck of impurity to stain him mentally or physically, before e becomes a fully initiated Adept.
It may seem strange, almost incomprehensible, that the chief success of
Gupta Vidyā, or Occult Knowledge, should depend upon such flashes of lairvoyance, and that the latter should depend in man on two such nsignificant excrescences in his cranial cavity, "two horny _warts_ overed with grey sand (acervulus cerebri)," as expressed by Bichat in his
_Anatomie Descriptive_; yet so it is. But this sand is not to be despised; ay, in truth, it is only this landmark of the internal, independent ctivity of the Conarium that prevents Physiologists from classifying it ith the absolutely useless atrophied organs, the relics of a previous and ow utterly changed anatomy of man during some period of his unknown volution. This "sand" is very mysterious, and baffles the inquiry of very Materialist. In the cavity on the anterior surface of this gland, in oung persons, and in its substance, in people of advanced years, is found
A yellowish substance, semi-transparent, brilliant and hard, the
diameter of which does not exceed half a line.(834)
Such is the acervulus cerebri.
This brilliant "sand" is the concretion of the gland itself, so say the
Physiologists. Perhaps not, we answer. The Pineal Gland is that which the
Eastern Occultist calls Devāksha, the "Divine Eye." To this day, it is the hief organ of spirituality in the human brain, the seat of genius, the agical Sesame uttered by the purified will of the Mystic, which opens all he avenues of truth for him who knows how to use it. The Esoteric Science eaches that Manas, the Mind Ego, does not accomplish its full union with he child before he is six or seven years of age, before which period, ven according to the canon of the Church and Law, no child is deemed esponsible.(835) Manas becomes a prisoner, one with the body, only at hat age. Now a strange thing was observed in several thousand cases by he famous German anatomist, Wengel. With a few extremely rare exceptions, his "sand," or golden-coloured concretion, is found only in subjects fter the completion of their seventh year. In the case of fools these alculi are very few; in congenital idiots they are completely absent.
Morgagni,(836) Grading,(837) and Gum(838) were wise men in their eneration, and are wise men to-day, since they are the only
Physiologists, so far, who connect the calculi with mind. For, sum up the acts, that they are absent in young children, in very old people, and in diots, and the unavoidable conclusion will be that they must be connected ith mind.
Now since every mineral, vegetable and other atom is only a concretion of rystallized Spirit, or Ākāsha, the Universal Soul, why, asks Occultism, hould the fact that these concretions of the Pineal Gland, are, upon nalysis, found to be composed of animal matter, phosphate of lime and arbonate, serve as an objection to the statement that they are the result f the work of mental electricity upon surrounding matter?
Our seven Chakras are all situated in the head, and it is these Master
Chakras which govern and rule the seven (for there are seven) principal lexuses in the body, besides the forty-two minor ones to which Physiology efuses that name. The fact that no microscope can detect such centres on he objective plane goes for nothing; no microscope has ever yet detected, or ever will, the difference between the motor and sensory nerve-tubes, he conductors of all our bodily and psychic sensations; and yet logic lone would show that such difference exists. And if the term plexus, in his application, does not represent to the Western mind the idea conveyed y the term of the Anatomist, then call them Chakras or Padmas, or the
Wheels, the Lotus Heart and Petals. Remember that Physiology, imperfect as t is, shows septenary groups all over the exterior and interior of the ody; the seven head orifices, the seven "organs" at the base of the rain, the seven plexuses, the pharyngeal, laryngeal, cavernous, cardiac, pigastric, prostatic, and sacral, etc.
When the time comes, advanced students will be given the minute details bout the Master Chakras and taught the use of them; till then, less ifficult subjects have to be learned. If asked whether the seven lexuses, or Tāttvic centres of action, are the centres where the seven
Rays of the Logos vibrate, I answer in the affirmative, simply remarking hat the rays of the Logos vibrate in every atom, for the matter of that.
In these volumes it is almost revealed that the "Sons of Fohat" are the ersonified Forces known in a general way as Motion, Sound, Heat, Light,
Cohesion, Electricity or Electric Fluid, and Nerve-Force or Magnetism.
This truth, however, cannot teach the student to attune and moderate the
Kundalinī of the cosmic plane with the _vital_ Kundalinī, the Electric
Fluid with the Nerve-Force, and unless he does so, he is sure to kill imself; for the one travels at the rate of about 90 feet, and the other t the rate of 115,000 leagues a second. The seven Shaktis respectively alled Para Shakti, Jńāna Shakti, etc., are synonymous with the "Sons of
Fohat," for they are their female aspects. At the present stage, however, s their names would only be confusing to the Western student, it is etter to remember the English equivalents as translated above. As each
Force is septenary, their sum is, of course, forty-nine.
The question now mooted in Science, whether a sound is capable of calling orth impressions of light and colour in addition to its natural sound mpressions, has been answered by Occult Science ages ago. Every impulse r vibration of a physical object producing a certain vibration of the ir, that is, causing the collision of physical particles, the sound of hich is capable of affecting the ear, produces at the same time a orresponding flash of light, which will assume some particular colour.
For, in the realm of hidden Forces, an _audible_ sound is but a subjective olour; and a perceptible colour, but an _inaudible_ sound; both proceed rom the same potential substance, which Physicists used to call ether, nd now refer to under various other names; but which we call plastic, hrough invisible SPACE. This may appear a paradoxical hypothesis, but acts are there to prove it. Complete deafness, for instance, does not reclude the possibility of discerning sounds; medical science has several ases on record which prove that these sounds are received by, and onveyed to, the patient's organ of sight, through the mind, under the orm of chromatic impressions. The very fact that the intermediate tones f the chromatic musical scale were formerly written in colours shows an nconscious reminiscence of the ancient Occult teaching that colour and ound are two out of the seven correlative aspects, _on our plane_, of one nd the same thing, _viz._, Nature's first differentiated Substance.
Here is an example of the relation of colour to vibration well worthy of he attention of Occultists. Not only Adepts and advanced Chelās, but also he lower order of Psychics, such as clairvoyants and psychometrists, can erceive a psychic Aura of various colours around every individual, orresponding to the temperament of the person within it. In other words, he mysterious records within the Auric Egg are not the heirloom of rained Adepts alone, but sometimes also of natural Psychics. Every human assion, every thought and quality, is indicated in this Aura by orresponding colours and shades of colour, and certain of these are ensed and felt rather than perceived. The best of such Psychics, as shown y Galton, can also perceive colours produced by the vibrations of musical nstruments, every note suggesting a different colour. As a string ibrates and gives forth an audible note, so the nerves of the human body ibrate and thrill in correspondence with various emotions under the eneral impulse of the circulating vitality of Prāna, thus producing ndulations in the psychic Aura of the person which result in chromatic ffects.
The human nervous system as a whole, then, may be regarded as an Ęolian
Harp, responding to the impact of the vital force, which is no bstraction, but a dynamic reality, and manifests the subtlest shades of he individual character in colour phenomena. If these nerve vibrations re made intense enough and brought into vibratory relation with an astral lement, the result is--sound. How, then, can anyone doubt the relation etween the microcosmic and macrocosmic forces?
And now that I have shown that the Tāntric works as explained by Rāma
Prāsad, and other Yoga treatises of the same character which have appeared rom time to time in Theosophical journals--for note well that those of rue Rāja Yoga are never published--tend to Black Magic and are most angerous to take for guides in self-training, I hope that students will e on their guard.
For, considering that no two authorities up to the present day agree as to he real location of the Chakras and Padmas in the body, and, seeing that he colours of the Tattvas as given are reversed, _e.g._:
(_a_) Ākāsha is made black or colourless, whereas corresponding to Manas, t is indigo;
(_b_) Vāyu is made blue, whereas, corresponding to the Lower Manas, it is reen;
(_c_) Āpas is made white, whereas, corresponding to the Astral Body, it is iolet, with a silver, moonlike white substratum;
Tejas, red, is the only colour given correctly--from such considerations, I ay, it is easy to see that these disagreements are dangerous blinds.
Further, the practice of the Five Breaths results in deadly injury, both hysiologically and psychically, as already shown. It is indeed that which t is called, Prānāyāma, or the death of the breath, for it results, for he practiser, in death--in moral death always, and in physical death very requently.
On Exoteric "Blinds" and "the Death of the Soul."
As a corollary to this, and before going into still more abstruse eachings, I must redeem the promise already given. I have to illustrate y tenets you already know, the awful doctrine of personal annihilation.
Banish from your minds all that you have hitherto read in such works as
_Esoteric Buddhism_, and thought you understood, of such hypotheses as the ighth sphere and the moon, and that man shares a common ancestor with the pe. Even the details occasionally given out by myself in the
_Theosophist_ and _Lucifer_ were nothing like the whole truth, but only road general ideas, hardly touched upon in their details. Certain assages, however, give out hints, especially my foot-notes on articles ranslated from Éliphas Lévi's _Letters on Magic_.(839)
Nevertheless, personal immortality is conditional, for there are such hings as "soulless men," a teaching barely mentioned, although it is poken of even in _Isis Unveiled_;(840) and there is an Avītchi, rightly alled Hell, though it has no connection with, or similitude to, the good
Christian's Hell, either geographically or psychically. The truth known to
Occultists and Adepts in every age could not be given out to a promiscuous ublic; hence, though almost every mystery of Occult Philosophy lies half oncealed in _Isis_ and the two earlier volumes of the present work, I had o right to amplify or correct the details of others. Readers may now ompare those four volumes and such books as _Esoteric Buddhism_ with the iagrams and explanations in these Papers, and see for themselves.
Paramātmā, the Spiritual Sun, may be thought of as outside the human Auric
Egg, as it is also outside the Macrocosmic or Brahmā's Egg. Why? Because, hough every particle and atom are, so to speak, cemented with and soaked hrough by this Paramātmic essence, yet it is wrong to call it a "human" r even a "universal" Principle, for the term is very likely to give rise o naught but an erroneous idea of the philosophical and purely etaphysical concept; it is not a Principle, but the cause of every
Principle, the latter term being applied by Occultists only to its hadow--the Universal Spirit that ensouls the boundless Kosmos whether ithin or beyond Space and Time.
Buddhi serves as a vehicle for that Paramātmic shadow. This Buddhi is niversal, and so also is the human Ātmā. Within the Auric Egg is the acracosmic pentacle of LIFE, Prāna, containing within itself the entagram which represents man. The universal pentacle must be pictured ith its point soaring upwards, the sign of White Magic--in the human entacle it is the lower limbs which are upward, forming the "Horns of
Satan," as the Christian Kabbalists call them. This is the symbol of
Matter, that of the personal man, and the recognized pentacle of the Black
Magician. For this reversed pentacle does not stand only for Kāma, the ourth Principle exoterically, but it also represents physical man, the nimal of flesh with its desires and passions.
Now, mark well, in order to understand that which follows, that Manas may e pictured as an upper triangle connected with the lower Manas by a thin ine which binds the two together. This is the Antah-karana, that path or ridge of communication which serves as a link between the personal being hose physical brain is under the sway of the lower animal mind, and the eincarnating Individuality, the spiritual Ego, Manas, Manu, the "Divine
Man." This thinking Manu alone is that which reincarnates. In truth and in ature, the two Minds, the spiritual and the physical or animal, are one, ut separate into two at reincarnation. For while that portion of the
Divine which goes to animate the personality, consciously separating tself, like a dense but pure shadow, from the Divine Ego,(841) wedges tself into the brain and senses(842) of the foetus, at the completion of ts seventh month, the Higher Manas does not unite itself with the child efore the completion of the first seven years of its life. This detached ssence, or rather the reflection or shadow of the Higher Manas, becomes, s the child grows, a distinct thinking Principle in man, its chief agent eing the physical brain. No wonder the Materialists, who perceive only
_this_ "rational soul," or mind, will not disconnect it with the brain and atter. But Occult Philosophy has ages ago solved the problem of mind, and iscovered the duality of Manas. The Divine Ego tends with its point pwards towards Buddhi, and the human Ego gravitates downwards, immersed n Matter, connected with its higher, subjective half only by the
Antahkarana. As its derivation suggests, this is the only connecting link uring life between the two minds--the higher consciousness of the Ego and he human intelligence of the lower mind.
To understand this abstruse metaphysical doctrine fully and correctly, one as to be thoroughly impressed with an idea, which I have in vain ndeavoured to impart to Theosophists at large, namely, the great xiomatic truth that the only eternal and living Reality is that which the
Hindus call Paramātmā and Parabrahman. This is the one ever-existing Root
Essence, immutable and unknowable to our physical senses, but manifest and learly perceptible to our spiritual natures. Once imbued with that basic dea and the further conception that if It is omnipresent, universal and ternal, like abstract Space itself, we must have emanated from It and we ust, some day, return into It, and all the rest becomes easy.
If so, then it stands to reason that life and death, good and evil, past nd future, are all empty words, or at best, figures of speech. If the bjective Universe itself is but a passing illusion on account of its eginning and finitude, then both life and death must also be aspects and llusions. They are changes of state, in fact, and no more. Real life is n the spiritual consciousness of that life, _in a conscious existence in
Spirit, not Matter_; and real death is the limited perception of life, the mpossibility of sensing conscious or even individual existence outside of orm, or at least, of some form of Matter. Those who sincerely reject the ossibility of conscious life divorced from Matter and brain-substance, re _dead units_. The words of Paul, an Initiate, become comprehensible.
"Ye are dead, and your _life_ is hid with Christ in God;" which is to say:
Ye are personally dead matter, unconscious of its own spiritual essence, nd your real life is hid with your Divine Ego (Christos) in, or merged ith, God (Ātmā); now has it departed from you, ye soulless people.
Speaking on Esoteric lines, every irrevocably materialistic person is a
_dead Man_, a living automaton, in spite of his being endowed with great rain power. Listen to what Aryasangha says, stating the same fact:
That which is neither Spirit nor Matter, neither Light nor
Darkness, but is verily the container and root of these, that thou
art. The Root projects at every Dawn its shadow on ITSELF, and
that shadow thou callest Light and Life, O poor dead Form. (This)
Life-Light streameth downward through the stairway of the seven
worlds, the stairs of which each step become denser and darker. It
is of this seven-times-seven scale that thou art the faithful
climber and mirror, O little man! Thou art this, but thou knowest
it not.
This is the first lesson to learn. The second is to study well the
Principles of both the Kosmos and ourselves, dividing the group into the ermanent and the impermanent, the higher and immortal and the lower and ortal, for thus only can we master and guide, first the lower cosmic and ersonal, then the higher cosmic and impersonal.
Once we can do that we have secured our immortality. But some may say:
"How few are those who can do so. All such are great Adepts, and none can each such Adeptship in one short life." Agreed; but there is an lternative. "If the Sun thou canst not be, then be the humble Planet," ays the _Book of the Golden Precepts_. And if even that is beyond our each, then let us at least endeavour to keep within the ray of some esser star, so that its silvery light may penetrate the murky darkness, hrough which the stony path of life trends onward; for without this ivine radiance we risk losing more than we imagine.
With regard, then, to "soulless" men, and the "second death" of the
"Soul," mentioned in the second volume of _Isis Unveiled_, you will there ind that I have spoken of such soulless people, and even of Avītchi, hough I leave the latter unnamed. Read from the last paragraph on page
367 to the end of the first paragraph on page 370, and then collate what s there said with what I have now to say.
The higher triad, Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas, may be recognized from the first ines of the quotation from the Egyptian papyrus. In the _Ritual_, now the
_Book of the Dead_, the purified Soul, the dual Manas, appears as "the ictim of the dark influence of the Dragon Apophis," the physical ersonality of Kāmarūpic man, with his passions. "If it has attained the inal knowledge of the heavenly and infernal Mysteries, the Gnosis"--the ivine and the terrestrial Mysteries, of White and Black Magic--then the efunct personality "will triumph over its enemy"--death. This alludes to he case of a complete re-union, at the end of earth life, of the lower
Manas, full of "the harvest of life," with its Ego. But if Apophis onquers the Soul, then it "cannot escape a _second_ death."
These few lines from a papyrus, many thousands of years old, contain a hole revelation, known, in those days, only to the Hierophants and the
Initiates. The "harvest of life" consists of the finest spiritual houghts, of the memory of the noblest and most unselfish deeds of the ersonality, and the constant presence during its bliss after death of all hose it loved with divine, spiritual devotion.(843) Remember the eaching: The Human Soul, lower Manas, is the _only_ and direct mediator etween the personality and the Divine Ego. That which goes to make up on his earth the _personality_ miscalled _individuality_ by the majority, is he sum of all its mental, physical, and spiritual characteristics, which, eing impressed on the Human Soul, produces the _man_. Now, of all these haracteristics it is the purified thoughts alone which can be impressed n the higher, immortal Ego. This is done by the Human Soul merging again, n its essence, into its parent source, commingling with its Divine Ego uring life, and re-uniting itself entirely with it after the death of the hysical man. Therefore, unless Kāma-Manas transmits to Buddhi-Manas such ersonal ideations, and such consciousness of its "I" as can be ssimilated by the Divine Ego, nothing of that "I" or personality can urvive in the Eternal. Only that which is worthy of the immortal God ithin us, and identical in its nature with the divine quintessence, can urvive; for in this case it is its own, the Divine Ego's, "shadows" or manations which ascend to it and are indrawn by it into itself again, to ecome once more part of its own Essence. No noble thought, no grand spiration, desire, or divine immortal love, can come into the brain of he man of clay and settle there, except as a direct emanation from the
Higher to, and through, the lower Ego; all the rest, intellectual as it ay seem, proceeds from the "shadow," the _lower mind_, in its association nd commingling with Kāma, and passes away and disappears for ever. But he mental and spiritual ideations of the personal "I" return to it, as arts of the Ego's Essence, and can never fade out. Thus of the ersonality that was, only its spiritual experiences, the memory of all hat is good and noble, with the consciousness of its "I" blended with hat of all the other personal "I's" that preceded it, survive and become mmortal. There is no distinct or separate immortality for the men of arth outside of the Ego which informed them. That Higher Ego is the sole earer of all its _alter egos_ on earth and their sole representative in he mental state called Devachan. As the last embodied personality, owever, has a right to its own special state of bliss, unalloyed and free rom the memories of all others, it is the _last life only which is fully nd realistically vivid_. Devachan is often compared to the happiest day n a series of many thousands of other "days" in the life of a person. The ntensity of its happiness makes the man entirely forget all others, his ast becoming obliterated.
This is what we call the Devachanic state, the reward of the personality, nd it is on this old teaching that the hazy Christian notion of Paradise as built, borrowed with many other things from the Egyptian Mysteries, herein the doctrine was enacted. And this is the meaning of the passage uoted in _Isis_. The Soul has triumphed over Apophis, the Dragon of
Flesh. Henceforth, the personality will live in eternity, in its highest nd noblest elements, the memory of its past deeds, while the
"characteristics" of the "Dragon" will be fading out in Kāma Loka. If the uestion be asked, "How live in eternity, when Devachan lasts but from
1,000 to 2,000 years," the answer is: "In the same way as the recollection f each day which is worth remembering lives in the memory of each one of s." For the sake of an example, the days passed in one personal life may e taken as an illustration of each personal life, and this or that person ay stand for the Divine Ego.
To obtain the key which will open the door of many a psychological mystery t is sufficient to understand and remember that which precedes and that hich follows. Many a Spiritualist has felt terribly indignant on being old that personal immortality was _conditional_; and yet such is the hilosophical and logical fact. Much has been said already on the subject, ut no one to this day seems to have fully understood the doctrine.
Moreover, it is not enough to know that such a fact is said to exist. All
Occultist, or he who would become one, must know _why_ it is so; for aving learned and comprehended the _raison d'étre_, it becomes easier to et others right in their erroneous speculations, and, most important of ll, it affords one an opportunity, without saying too much, to teach ther people to avoid a calamity which, sad to say, occurs in our age lmost daily. This calamity will now be explained at length.
One must know little indeed of the Eastern modes of expression to fail to ee in the passage quoted from the _Book of the Dead_, and the pages of
_Isis_, (_a_) an allegory for the uninitiated, containing our Esoteric eaching; and (_b_) that the two terms "second death" and "Soul" are, in ne sense, blinds. "Soul" refers indifferently to Buddhi-Manas and Kāma-
Manas. As to the term "second death," the qualification "second" applies o several deaths which have to be undergone by the "Principles" during heir incarnation, Occultists alone understanding fully the sense in which uch a statement is made. For we have (1) the death of the Body; (2) the eath of the Animal Soul in Kāma Loka; (3) the death of the Astral Linga
Sharīra, following that of the Body; (4) the metaphysical death of the
Higher Ego, the _immortal_, every time it "falls into matter," or ncarnates in a new personality. The Animal Soul, or lower Manas, that hadow of the Divine Ego which separates from it to inform the ersonality, cannot by any possible means _escape death_ in Kāma Loka, at ny rate that portion of this reflection which remains as a terrestrial esidue and cannot be impressed on the Ego. Thus the chief and most mportant secret with regard to that "second death," in the Esoteric eaching, was and is to this day the terrible possibility of the _death_ f the Soul, that is, its severance from the Ego on earth during a erson's lifetime. This is a _real_ death (though with chances of esurrection), which shows no traces in a person and yet leaves him orally a living corpse. It is difficult to see why this teaching should ave been preserved until now with such secrecy, when, by spreading it mong people, at any rate among those who believe in reincarnation, so uch good might be done. But so it was, and I had no right to question the isdom of the prohibition, but have given it hitherto, as it was given to yself, _under pledge_ not to reveal it to the world at large. But now I ave permission to give it to all, revealing its tenets first to the
Esotericists, and then when they have assimilated them thoroughly it will e their duty to teach others this special tenet of the "second death," nd warn all the Theosophists of its dangers.
To make the teaching clearer, I shall seemingly have to go over old round; in reality, however, it is given out with new light and new etails. I have tried to hint at it in the _Theosophist_ as I have done in
_Isis_, but have failed to make myself understood. I will now explain it, oint by point.
The Philosophical Rationale of the Tenet.
(1) Imagine, for illustration's sake, the one homogeneous, absolute and mnipresent Essence, above the upper step of the "stair of the seven lanes of worlds," ready to start on its evolutionary journey. As its orrelating reflection gradually descends, it differentiates and ransforms into subjective, and finally into objective matter. Let us call t at its north pole Absolute Light; at its south pole, which to us would e the fourth or middle step, or plane, counting either way, we know it
Esoterically as the One and Universal Life. Now mark the difference.
Above, LIGHT; below, _Life_. The former is ever immutable, the latter anifests under the aspects of countless differentiations. According to he Occult law, all potentialities included in the higher become ifferentiated reflections in the lower; and according to the same law, othing which is differentiated can be blended with the homogeneous.
Again, nothing can endure of that which lives and breathes and has its eing in the seething waves of the world, or plane of differentiation.
Thus Buddhi and Manas being both primordial rays of the One Flame, the ormer the vehicle, the upādhi or vāhana, of the one eternal Essence, the atter the vehicle of Mahat or Divine Ideation (Mahā-Buddhi in the
_Purānas_), the Universal Intelligent Soul--neither of them, as such, can ecome extinct or be annihilated, either in essence or consciousness. But he physical personality with its Linga Sharīra, and the animal soul, with ts Kāma,(844) can and do become so. They are born in the realm of llusion, and must vanish like a fleecy cloud from the blue and eternal ky.
He who has read these volumes with any degree of attention, must know the rigin of the human Egos, called Monads, generically, and what they were efore they were forced to incarnate in the human animal. The divine eings whom Karma led to act in the drama of Manvantaric life, are ntities from higher and earlier worlds and planets, whose Karma had not een exhausted when their world went into Pralaya. Such is the teaching; ut whether it is so or not, the Higher Egos are--as compared to such forms f transitory, terrestrial mud as ourselves--Divine Beings, Gods, immortal hroughout the Mahāmanvantara, or the 311,040,000,000,000 years during hich the Age of Brahmā lasts. And as the Divine Egos, in order to re- ecome the One Essence, or be indrawn again into the AUM, have to purify hemselves in the fire of suffering and individual experience, so also ave the terrestrial Egos, the personalities, to do likewise, if they ould partake of the immortality of the Higher Egos. This they can achieve y crushing in themselves all that benefits only the lower personal nature f their "selves" and by aspiring to transfuse their thinking Kāmic
Principle into that of the Higher Ego. We (_i.e._, our personalities) ecome immortal by the mere fact of our thinking moral nature being rafted on our Divine Triune Monad, Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas, the three in one nd one in three (aspects). For the Monad manifested on earth by the ncarnating Ego is that which is called the Tree of Life Eternal, that can nly be approached by eating the fruit of knowledge, the Knowledge of Good nd Evil, or of GNOSIS, Divine Wisdom.
In the Esoteric teachings, this Ego is the fifth Principle in man. But the tudent who has read and understood the first two Papers, knows something ore. He is aware that the seventh is not a human, but a universal
Principle in which man participates; but so does equally every physical nd subjective atom, and also every blade of grass and everything that ives or is in Space, whether it be sensible of it or not. He knows, oreover, that if man is more closely connected with it, and assimilates t with a hundredfold more power, it is simply because he is endowed with he highest consciousness on this earth; that man, in short, may become a
Spirit, a Deva, or a God, in his next transformation, whereas neither a tone nor a vegetable, nor an animal, can do so before they become men in heir proper turn.
(2) Now what are the functions of Buddhi? On this plane it has none, nless it is united with Manas, the conscious Ego. Buddhi stands to the ivine Root Essence in the same relation as Mūlaprakriti to Parabrahman, n the Vedānta School; or as Alaya the Universal Soul to the One Eternal
Spirit, or that which is beyond Spirit. It is its human vehicle, one emove from that Absolute, which can have no relation whatever to the inite and the conditioned.
(3) What, again, is Manas and its functions? In its purely metaphysical spect, Manas, though one remove on the downward plane from Buddhi, is till so immeasurably higher than the physical man, that it cannot enter nto direct relation with the personality, except through its reflection, he lower mind. Manas is _Spiritual Self-Consciousness_ in itself, and
Divine Consciousness when united with Buddhi, which is the true "producer" f that "production" (vikāra), or Self-Consciousness, through Mahat.
Buddhi-Manas, therefore, is entirety unfit to manifest during its eriodical incarnations, except through the human mind or lower Manas.
Both are linked together and are inseparable, and can have as little to do ith the lower Tanmātras,(845) or rudimentary atoms, as the homogeneous ith the heterogeneous. It is, therefore, the task of the lower Manas, or hinking personality, if it would blend itself with its God, the Divine
Ego, to dissipate and paralyze the Tanmātras, or properties of the aterial form. Therefore, Manas is shown double, as the Ego and Mind of
Man. It is Kāma-Manas, or the lower Ego, which, deluded into a notion of ndependent existence, as the "producer" in its turn and the sovereign of he five Tanmātras, becomes _Ego-ism_, the selfish Self, in which case it as to be considered as Mahābhūtic and finite, in the sense of its being onnected with Ahankāra, the personal "I-creating" faculty. Hence
Manas has to be regarded as eternal and non-eternal; eternal in
its atomic nature (paramanu rūpa), as eternal substance (dravya),
finite (kārya rūpa) when linked as a duad with Kāma (animal desire
or human _egoistic_ volition), a lower production, in short.(846)
While, therefore, the INDIVIDUAL EGO, owing to its essence and nature, is mmortal throughout eternity, with a form (rūpa), which prevails during he whole life cycles of the Fourth Round, its _Sosie_, or resemblance, he personal Ego, has to win its immortality.
(4) Antahkarana is the name of that imaginary bridge, the _path_ which ies between the Divine and the human Egos, for they are _Egos_, during uman life, to re-become _one_ Ego in Devachan or Nirvāna. This may seem ifficult to understand, but in reality, with the help of a familiar, hough fanciful illustration, it becomes quite simple. Let us figure to urselves a bright lamp in the middle of a room, casting its light upon he wall. Let the lamp represent the Divine Ego, and the light thrown on he wall the lower Manas, and let the wall stand for the body. That ortion of the atmosphere which transmits the ray from the lamp to the all, will then represent the Antahkarana. We must further suppose that he light thus cast is endowed with reason and intelligence, and ossesses, moreover, the faculty of dissipating all the evil shadows which ass across the wall, and of attracting all brightnesses to itself, eceiving their indelible impressions. Now, it is in the power of the uman Ego to chase away the shadows, or sins, and multiply the rightnesses, or good deeds, which make these impressions, and thus hrough Antahkarana, ensure its own permanent connection, and its final e-union, with the Divine Ego. Remember that the latter cannot take place hile there remains a single taint of the terrestrial, or of matter, in he purity of that light. On the other hand, the connection cannot be ntirely ruptured, and final re-union prevented, so long as there remains ne spiritual deed, or potentiality to serve as a thread of union; but the oment this last spark is extinguished, and the last potentiality xhausted, then comes the severance. In an Eastern parable, the Divine Ego s likened to the Master who sends out his labourers to till the ground nd to gather in the harvest, and who is content to keep the field so long s it can yield even the smallest return. But when the ground becomes bsolutely sterile, not only is it abandoned, but the labourer also (the ower Manas) perishes.
On the other hand, however, still using our simile, when the light thrown n the wall, or the rational human Ego, reaches the point of actual piritual exhaustion, the Antahkarana disappears, no more light is ransmitted, and the lamp becomes non-existent to the ray. The light which as been absorbed gradually disappears and "Soul eclipse" occurs; the eing lives on earth and then passes into Kāma Loka as a mere surviving ongeries of material qualities; it can never pass onwards towards
Devachan, but is reborn immediately, a human animal and scourge.
This simile, however fantastic, will help us to seize the correct idea.
Save through the blending of the moral nature with the Divine Ego, there s no immortality for the personal Ego. It is only the most spiritual manations of the personal Human Soul which survive. Having, during a ifetime, been imbued with the notion and feeling of the "I am I" of its ersonality, the Human Soul, the bearer of the very essence of the Karmic eeds of the physical man, becomes, after the death of the latter, part nd parcel of the Divine Flame, the Ego. It becomes immortal through the ere fact that it is now strongly grafted on the Monad, which is the "Tree f Life Eternal."
And now we must speak of the tenet of the "second death." What happens to he Kāmic Human Soul, which is always that of a debased and wicked man or f a soulless person? This mystery will now be explained.
The personal Soul in this case, _viz._, in that of one who has never had a hought not concerned with the animal self, having nothing to transmit to he Higher, or to add to the sum of the experiences gleaned from past ncarnations which its memory is to preserve throughout eternity--this ersonal Soul becomes separated from the Ego. It can graft nothing of self n that eternal trunk whose sap throws out millions of personalities, like eaves from its branches, leaves which wither, die and fall at the end of heir season. These personalities bud, blossom forth and expire, some ithout leaving a trace behind, others after commingling their own life ith that of the parent stem. It is the Souls of the former class that are oomed to annihilation, or Avītchi, a state so badly understood, and still orse described by some Theosophical writers, but which is not only ocated on our earth, but is in fact this very earth itself.
Thus we see that Antahkarana has been destroyed before the lower man has ad an opportunity of assimilating the Higher and becoming at one with it; nd therefore the Kāmic "Soul" becomes a separate entity, to live enceforth, for a short or long period according to its Karma, as a
"soulless" creature.
But before I elaborate this question, I must explain more clearly the eaning and functions of the Antahkarana. As already said, it may be epresented as a narrow bridge connecting the Higher and the lower Manas.
If you look at the Glossary of the _Voice of the Silence_, pp. 88 and 89, ou will find that it is a projection of the lower Manas, or, rather, the ink between the latter and the Higher Ego, or, between the Human and the
Divine or Spiritual Soul.(847)
At death it is destroyed as a path, or medium of communication,
and its remains survive as Kāma Rūpa,
he "shell." It is this which the Spiritualists see sometimes appearing in he séance rooms as materialized "forms," which they foolishly mistake for he "Spirits of the Departed."(848) So far is this from being the case, hat in dreams, though Antahkarana is there, the personality is only half wake; therefore, Antahkarana is said to be _drunk_ or _insane_ during our ormal sleeping state. If such is the case during the periodical death, or leep, of the living body, one may judge what the consciousness of
Antahkarana is like when it has been transformed after the "eternal sleep" nto Kāma Rūpa.
But to return. In order not to confuse the mind of the Western student ith the abstruse difficulties of Indian metaphysics, let him view the ower Manas, or Mind, as the personal Ego during the waking state, and as
Antahkarana only during those moments when it aspires towards its Higher
Ego, and thus becomes the medium of communication between the two. It is or this reason that it is called the "Path." Now, when a limb or organ elonging to the physical organism is left in disuse, it becomes weak and inally atrophies. So also is it with mental faculties; and hence the trophy of the lower mind-function, called Antahkarana, becomes omprehensible in both completely materialistic and depraved natures.
According to Esoteric Philosophy, however, the teaching is as follows:
Seeing that the faculty and function of Antahkarana is as necessary as the edium of the ear for hearing, or that of the eye for seeing; then so long s the feeling of Ahankāra, that is, of the personal "I" or selfishness, s not entirely crushed out in a man, and the lower mind not entirely erged into and become one with the Higher Buddhi-Manas, it stands to eason that to destroy Antahkarana is like destroying a bridge over an mpassable chasm; _the traveller can never reach the goal on the other hore_. And here lies the difference between the exoteric and Esoteric eaching. The former makes the Vedānta state that so long as Mind (the ower) clings through Antahkarana to Spirit (Buddhi-Manas) it is mpossible for it to acquire true Spiritual Wisdom, Gnyāna, and that this an only be attained by seeking to come _en rapport_ with the Universal
Soul (Ātmā); that, in fact, it is by ignoring the Higher Mind altogether hat one reaches Rāja Yoga. We say it is not so. No single rung of the adder leading to knowledge can be skipped. No personality can ever reach r bring itself into communication with Ātmā, except through Buddhi-Manas; o try and become a Jīvanmukta or a Mahātmā, before one has become an
Adept or even a Narjol (a sinless man) is like trying to reach Ceylon from
India without crossing the sea. Therefore we are told that if we destroy
Antahkarana before the personal is absolutely under the control of the mpersonal Ego, we risk to lose the latter and be severed for ever from t, unless indeed we hasten to re-establish the communication by a supreme nd final effort.
It is only when we are indissolubly linked with the essence of the Divine
Mind, that we have to destroy Antahkarana.
Like as a solitary warrior pursued by an army, seeks refuge in a
stronghold; to cut himself off from the enemy, he first destroys
the drawbridge, and then only commences to destroy the pursuer; so
must the Srotāpatti act before he slays Antahkarana.
Or as an Occult axiom has it:
_The Unit becomes Three, and Three generate Four. It is for the
latter [the Quaternary] to rebecome Three, and for the Divine
Three to expand into the Absolute One._
Monads, which become Duads on the differentiated plane, to develop into
Triads during the cycle of incarnations, even when incarnated know neither pace nor time, but are diffused through the lower Principles of the
Quaternary, being omnipresent and omniscient in their nature. But this mniscience is innate, and can manifest its reflected light only through hat which is at least semi-terrestrial or material; even as the physical rain which, in its turn, is the vehicle of the lower Manas enthroned in
Kāma Rūpa. And it is this which is gradually annihilated in cases of
"second death."
But such annihilation--which is in reality the absence of the slightest race of the doomed Soul from the eternal MEMORY, and therefore signifies nnihilation in eternity--does not mean simply discontinuation of human ife on earth, for earth is Avītchi, and the worst Avītchi possible.
Expelled for ever from the consciousness of the Individuality, the eincarnating Ego, the physical atoms and psychic vibrations of the now eparate personality are immediately reincarnated on the same earth, only n a lower and still more abject creature, a human being only in form, oomed to Karmic torments during the whole of its new life. Moreover, if t persists in its criminal or debauched course, it will suffer a long eries of immediate reincarnations.
Here two questions present themselves: (1) What becomes of the Higher Ego n such cases? (2) What kind of an animal is a human creature born oulless?
Before answering these two very natural queries, I have to draw the ttention of all of you who are born in Christian countries to the fact hat the romance of the vicarious atonement and the mission of Jesus, as t now stands, was drawn or borrowed by some too liberal Initiates from he mysterious and weird tenet of the earthly experience of the eincarnating Ego. The latter is indeed the sacrificial victim of, and hrough, its own Karma in previous Manvantaras, which takes upon itself oluntarily the duty of saving what would be otherwise soulless men or ersonalities. Eastern truth is thus more philosophical and logical than
Western fiction. The Christos, or Buddhi-Manas of each man is not quite an nnocent and sinless God, though in one sense it is the "Father," being of he same essence with the Universal Spirit, and at the same time the
"Son," for Manas is the second remove from the "Father." By incarnation he Divine Son makes itself responsible for the sins of all the ersonalities which it will inform. This it can do only through its proxy r reflection, the lower Manas. The only case in which the Divine Ego can scape individual penalty and responsibility as a guiding Principle, is hen it has to break off from the personality, because matter, with its sychic and astral vibrations, is then, by the very intensity of its ombinations, placed beyond the control of the Ego. Apophis, the Dragon, aving become the conqueror, the reincarnating Manas, separating itself radually from its tabernacle, breaks finally asunder from the psycho- nimal Soul.
Thus, in answer to the first question, I say:
(1) The Divine Ego does one of two things: either (_a_) it recommences mmediately under its own Karmic impulses a fresh series of incarnations; r (_b_) it seeks and finds refuge in the bosom of the Mother, Alaya, the
Universal Soul, of which the Manvantaric aspect is Mahat. Freed from the ife-impressions of the personality, it merges into a kind of Nirvānic nterlude, wherein there can be nothing but the eternal Present, which bsorbs the Past and Future. Bereft of the "labourer," both field and arvest now being lost, the Master, in the infinitude of his thought, aturally preserves no recollection of the finite and evanescent illusion hich had been his last personality. And then, indeed, is the latter nnihilated.
(2) The future of the lower Manas is more terrible, and still more errible to humanity than to the now animal man. It sometimes happens that fter the separation the exhausted Soul, now become supremely animal, ades out in Kāma Loka, as do all other animal souls. But seeing that the ore material is the human mind, the longer it lasts, even in the ntermediate stage, it frequently happens that after the present life of he soulless man is ended, he is again and again reincarnated into new ersonalities, each one more abject than the other. The impulse of _animal ife_ is too strong; it cannot wear itself out in one or two lives only.
In rarer cases, however, when the lower Manas is doomed to exhaust itself y _starvation_; when there is no longer hope that even a remnant of a ower light will, owing to favourable conditions--say, even a short period f spiritual aspiration and repentance--attract back to itself its Parent
Ego, and Karma leads the Higher Ego back to new incarnations, then omething far more dreadful may happen. The Kāma-Mānasic spook may become hat which is called in Occultism the "Dweller on the Threshold." This
Dweller is not like that which is described so graphically in _Zanoni_, ut an actual fact in Nature and not a fiction in romance, however eautiful the latter may be. Bulwer, however, must have got the idea from ome Eastern Initiate. This Dweller, led by affinity and attraction, orces itself into the astral current, and through the Auric Envelope, of he new tabernacle inhabited by the Parent Ego, and declares war to the ower light which has replaced it. This, of course, can only happen in the ase of the moral weakness of the personality so obsessed. No one strong n virtue, and righteous in his walk of life, can risk or dread any such hing; but only those depraved in heart. Robert Louis Stevenson had a limpse of a true vision indeed when he wrote his _Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_. His story is a true allegory. Every Chelā will ecognise in it a substratum of truth, and in Mr. Hyde a Dweller, an bsessor of the personality, the tabernacle of the Parent Spirit.
"This is a nightmare tale!" I was often told by one, now no more in our anks, who had a most pronounced "Dweller," a "Mr. Hyde," as an almost onstant companion. "How can such a process take place without one's nowledge?" It can and does so happen, and I have almost described it once efore in the _Theosophist_.
The Soul, the lower Mind, becomes as a half animal principle
almost paralyzed with daily vice, and grows gradually unconscious
of its subjective half, the Lord, one of the mighty Host; [and] in
proportion to the rapid sensuous development of the brain and
nerves, sooner or later, it (the personal Soul) finally loses
sight of its divine mission on earth.
Truly,
Like the vampire, the brain feeds and lives and grows in strength
at the expense of its spiritual parent ... and the personal half-
unconscious Soul becomes senseless, beyond hope of redemption. It
is powerless to discern the voice of its God. It aims but at the
development and fuller comprehension of natural, earthly life; and
thus can discover but the mysteries of physical nature.... It
begins by becoming virtually dead, during the life of the body;
and ends by dying completely--that is, by being _annihilated as a
complete immortal Soul_. Such a catastrophe may often happen long
years before one's physical death: "We elbow soulless men and
women at every step in life." And when death arrives ... there is
no more a Soul (the reincarnating Spiritual Ego) to liberate ...
for _it has fled years before_.
_Result_: Bereft of its guiding Principles, but strengthened by the aterial elements, Kāma-Manas, from being a "derived light" now becomes an ndependent Entity. After thus suffering itself to sink lower and lower on he animal plane, when the hour strikes for its earthly body to die, one f two things happens: either Kāma-Manas is immediately reborn in Myalba, he state of Avītchi on earth,(849) or, if it become too strong in vil--"immortal in Satan" is the Occult expression--it is sometimes allowed, or Karmic purposes, to remain in an active state of Avītchi in the errestrial Aura. Then through despair and loss of all hope it becomes ike the mythical "devil" in its endless wickedness; it continues in its lements, which are imbued through and through with the essence of Matter; or evil is coeval with Matter rent asunder from Spirit. And when its
Higher Ego has once more reincarnated, evolving a new reflection, or Kāma-
Manas, the doomed lower Ego, like a Frankenstein's monster, will ever feel ttracted to its Father, who repudiates his son, and will become a regular
"Dweller on the Threshold" of terrestrial life. I gave the outlines of the
Occult doctrine in the _Theosophist_ of October, 1881, and November, 1882, ut could not go into details, and therefore got very much embarrassed hen called upon to explain. Yet I have written there plainly enough about
"useless drones," those who refuse to become co-workers with Nature and ho perish by millions during the Manvantaric life-cycle; those, as in the ase in hand, who prefer to be ever suffering in Avītchi under Karmic law ather than give up their lives "in evil," and finally, those who are co- orkers with Nature for destruction. These are thoroughly wicked and epraved men, but yet as highly intellectual and acutely _spiritual_ for vil, as those who are spiritual for good.
The (lower) Egos of these may escape the law of final destruction
or annihilation for ages to come.
Thus we find two kinds of soulless beings on earth: those who have lost heir Higher Ego in the present incarnation, and those who are born oulless, having been severed from their Spiritual Soul in the preceding irth. The former are candidates for Avītchi; the latter are "Mr. Hydes," hether _in_ or _out_ of human bodies, whether incarnated or hanging about s invisible though potent ghouls. In such men, cunning develops to an normous degree, and no one except those who are familiar with the octrine would suspect them of being soulless, for neither Religion nor
Science has the least suspicion that such facts actually exist in Nature.
There is, however, still hope for a person who has lost his Higher Soul hrough his vices, while he is yet in the body. He may be still redeemed nd made to turn on his material nature. For either an intense feeling of epentance, or one single earnest appeal to the Ego that has fled, or best f all, an active effort to amend one's ways, may bring the Higher Ego ack again. The thread of connection is not altogether broken, though the
Ego is now beyond forcible reach, for "Antahkarana is destroyed," and the ersonal Entity has one foot already in Myalba;(850) yet it is not ntirely beyond hearing a strong spiritual appeal. There is another tatement made in _Isis Unveiled_(851) on this subject. It is said that his terrible death may be sometimes avoided by the knowledge of the ysterious NAME, the "WORD."(852) What this "WORD," which is not a "Word" ut a _Sound_, is, you all know. Its potency lies in the rhythm or the ccent. This means simply that even a bad person may, by the study of the
Sacred Science, be redeemed and stopped on the path of destruction. But nless he is in thorough union with his Higher Ego, he may repeat it, arrot-like, ten thousand times a day, and the "Word" will not help him.
On the contrary, if not entirely at one with his Higher Triad, it may roduce quite the reverse of a beneficent effect, the Brothers of the
Shadow using it very often for malicious objects; in which case it awakens nd stirs up naught but the evil, material elements of Nature. But if ne's nature is good, and sincerely strives towards the HIGHER SELF, which s that Aum, through one's Higher Ego, which is its third letter, and
Buddhi the second, there is no attack of the Dragon Apophis which it will ot repel. From those to whom much is given much is expected. He who nocks at the door of the Sanctuary in full knowledge of its sacredness, nd after obtaining admission, departs from the threshold, or turns round nd says, "Oh, there's nothing in it!" and thus loses his chance of earning the whole truth--can but await his Karma.
Such are then the Esoteric explanations of that which has perplexed so any who have found what they thought contradictions in various
Theosophical writings, including "Fragments of Occult Truth," in vols. ii. and iv. of _The Theosophist_, etc. Before finally dismissing the ubject, I must add a caution, which pray keep well in mind. It will be ery natural for those of you who are Esotericists to hope that none of ou belong so far to the soulless portion of mankind, and that you can eel quite easy about Avītchi, even as the good citizen is about the penal aws. Though not, perhaps, exactly on the Path as yet, you are skirting ts border, and many of you in the right direction. Between such venal aults as are inevitable under our social environment, and the blasting ickedness described in the Editor's note on Éliphas Lévi's "Satan,"(853) here is an abyss. If not become "immortal in good by identification with
(our) God," or AUM, Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas, we have surely not made ourselves
"immortal in evil" by coalescing with Satan, the lower Self. You forget, owever, that everything must have a beginning; that the first step on a lippery mountain slope is the necessary antecedent to one's falling recipitately to the bottom and into the arms of death. Be it far from me he suspicion that any of the Esoteric students have reached to any onsiderable point down the plane of spiritual descent. All the same I arn you to avoid taking the first step. You may not reach the bottom in his life or the next, but you may now generate causes which will insure our spiritual destruction in your third, fourth, fifth, or even some ubsequent birth. In the great Indian epic you may read how a mother whose hole family of warrior sons were slaughtered in battle, complained to
Krishna that though she had the spiritual vision to enable her to look ack fifty incarnations, yet she could see no sin of hers that could have egotten so dreadful a Karma; and Krishna answered her: "If thou could'st ook back to thy fifty-first anterior birth, as I can, thou would'st see hyself killing in wanton cruelty the same number of ants as that of the ons thou hast now lost." This, of course, is only a poetical xaggeration; yet it is a striking image to show how great results come rom apparently trifling causes.
Good and evil are relative, and are intensified or lessened according to he conditions by which man is surrounded. One who belongs to that which e call the "useless portion of mankind," that is to say, the lay ajority, is in many cases irresponsible. Crimes committed in Avidyā, or gnorance, involve physical but not moral responsibilities or Karma. Take, or example, the case of idiots, children, savages, and people who know no etter. But the case of each who is pledged to the HIGHER SELF is quite nother matter. _You cannot invoke this Divine Witness with impunity_, and nce that you have put yourselves under its tutelage, you have asked the
Radiant Light to shine and search through all the dark corners of your eing; consciously you have invoked the Divine Justice of Karma to take ote of your motive, to scrutinize your actions, and to enter up all in our account. The step is irrevocable as that of the infant taking birth.
Never again can you force yourselves back into the matrix of Avidyā and rresponsibility. Though you flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, and ide yourselves from the sight of men, or seek oblivion in the tumult of he social whirl, that Light will find you out and lighten your every hought, word and deed. All H. P. B. can do is to send to each earnest one mong you a most sincerely fraternal sympathy and hope for a good outcome o your endeavours. Nevertheless, be not discouraged, but try, ever keep rying;(854) twenty failures are not irremediable if followed by as many ndaunted struggles upward. Is it not so that mountains are climbed? And now further, that if Karma relentlessly records in the Esotericist's ccount, bad deeds that in the ignorant would be overlooked, yet, equally rue is it that each of his good deeds is, by reason of his association ith the Higher Self, a hundredfold intensified as a potentiality for ood.
Finally, keep ever in mind the consciousness that though you see no Master y your bedside, nor hear one audible whisper in the silence of the still ight, yet the Holy Power is about you, the Holy Light is shining into our hour of spiritual need and aspirations, and it will be no fault of he MASTERS, or of their humble mouthpiece and servant, if through erversity or moral feebleness some of you cut yourselves off from these igher potencies, and step upon the declivity that leads to Avītchi.
Appendix. Notes on Papers I., II. and III.
Page 436.
Students in the west have little or no idea of the forces that lie latent n Sound, the Ākāshic vibrations that may be set up by those who nderstand how to pronounce certain words. The Om, or the "_Om mani padme um_" are in spiritual affinity with cosmic forces, but without a nowledge of the natural arrangement, or of the order in which the yllables stand, very little can be achieved. "Om" is, of course, Aum, hat may be pronounced as two, three or seven syllables, setting up ifferent vibrations.
Now, letters, as vocal sounds, cannot fail to correspond with musical otes, and therefore with numbers and colours; hence also with Forces and
Tattvas. He who remembers that the Universe is built up from the Tattvas ill readily understand something of the power that may be exercised by ocal sounds. Every letter in the alphabet, whether divided into three, our, or seven septenaries, or forty-nine letters, has its own colour, or hade of colour. He who has learnt the colours of the alphabetical etters, and the corresponding numbers of the seven, and the forty-nine olours and shades on the scale of planes and forces, and knows their espective order in the seven planes, will easily master the art of ringing them into affinity or interplay. But here a difficulty arises.
The Senzar and Sanskrit alphabets, and other Occult tongues, besides other otencies, have a number, colour, and distinct syllable for every letter, nd so had also the old Mosaic Hebrew. But how many students know any of hese tongues? When the time comes, therefore, it must suffice to teach he students the numbers and colours attached to the Latin letters only
(N.B. as pronounced in Latin, not in Anglo-Saxon, Scotch, or Irish). This, owever, would be at present premature.
The colour and number of not only the planets but also the zodiacal onstellations corresponding to every letter of the alphabet, are ecessary to make any special syllable, and even letter, _operative_.(855)
Therefore if a student would make Buddhi operative, for instance, he would ave to intone the first words of the Mantra on the note _mi_. But he ould have still further to accentuate the _mi_, and produce mentally the ellow colour corresponding to this sound and note, on every letter M in
"_Om mani padme hum_"; this, not because the note bears the same name in he vernacular, Sanskrit, or even the Senzar, for it does not--but because he letter M follows the first letter, and is in this sacred formula also he seventh and the fourth. As Buddhi it is second; as Buddhi-Manas it is he second and third combined.
H. P. B.
Page 439.(856)
The Pythagorean Four, or Tetraktys, was the symbol of the Kosmos, as ontaining within itself, the point, the line, the superficies, the solid; n other words, the essentials of all forms. Its mystical representation s the point within the triangle. The Decad or perfect number is contained n the Four; thus, 1+2+3+4=10.
Page 477.
The difficult passage: "Bear in mind ... a mystery below truly,"(857) may ecome a little more clear to the student if slightly amplified. The
"primordial Triangle" is the Second Logos, which reflects itself as a
Triangle in the Third Logos, or Heavenly Man, and then disappears. The
Third Logos, containing the "potency of formative creation," develops the
Tetraktys from the Triangle, and so becomes the Seven, the Creative Force, aking a Decad with the primordial Triangle which originated it. When this eavenly Triangle and Tetraktys are reflected in the Universe of Matter, s the astral paradigmatic man, they are reversed, and the Triangle, or ormative potency, is thrown below the Quaternary, with its apex pointing ownwards: the Monad of this astral paradigmatic man is itself a Triangle, earing to the Quaternary and Triangle the relation borne by the rimordial Triangle to the Heavenly Man. Hence the phrase, "the upper
Triangle ... is shifted in the man of clay below _the seven_." Here again he Point tracing the Triangle, the Monad becoming the Ternary, with the
Quaternary and the lower creative triangle, make up the Decad, the perfect umber. "As above, so below."
The student will do well to relate the knowledge here acquired to that iven on p. 477. Here the upper Triangle is given as Violet, Indigo, Blue, ssociating Violet as the paradigm of all forms with Indigo as Mahat, and lue as the Ātmic Aura. In the Quaternary, Yellow, as substance, is ssociated with Yellow-Orange, Life, and Red-Orange, the creative potency.
Green is the plane between.
The next stage is not explained. Green passes upwards to Violet, Indigo,
Blue, the Triangle opening out to receive it, and so forming the square,
Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green. This leaves the Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, nd Yellow, and these, having thus lost their fourth member, can only form triangle. This triangle revolves, to point downwards for the descent nto matter, and "mirrored on the plane of gross nature, it is reversed."
In the perfect man the Red will be absorbed by the Green; Yellow will ecome one with Indigo; Yellow-Orange will be absorbed in Blue; Violet ill remain outside the True Man, though connected with him. Or, to ranslate the colours: Kāma will be absorbed in the Lower Manas; Buddhi ill become one with Manas; Prāna will be absorbed in the Auric Egg; the hysical body remains, connected but outside the real life.
A. B.
Page 481.
To the five senses at present the property of mankind two more on this lobe are to be added. The sixth sense is the psychic sense of colour. The eventh is that of spiritual sound. In the second instruction, the orrected rates of vibration for the seven primary colours and their odulations are given. Inspecting these, it appears that each colour iffers from the proceeding one by a step of 42, or 6 × 7.
462 Red + 42 = 504
504 Orange + 42 = 546
546 Yellow + 42 = 588
588 Green + 42 = 630
630 Blue + 42 = 672
672 Indigo + 42 = 714
714 Violet + 42 = 756
756 Red
Carrying the process backward, and subtracting 42, we find that the first r ground colour is green, for this globe.
---- Green
42 Blue
84 Indigo
126 Violet (end of First semi-octave)
168 Red (start of Second octave)
210 Orange
252 Yellow
294 Green
336 Blue
378 Indigo
420 Violet
462 Red
The second and fourth octaves would be heat and actinic rays, and are nvisible to our present perception.
The seventh sense is that of spiritual sound; and, since the vibrations of he sixth progress by steps of 6 × 7, those of the seventh progress by teps of 7 × 7. This is their table:
---- Fa ... Green Sound (start of First semi-octave)
49 Sol ... Blue
98 La ... Indigo
147 Si ... Violet
196 Do ... Red
245 Re ... Orange (start of Second Octave)
294 Mi ... Yellow
343 Fa ... Green
392 Sol ... Blue
441 La ... Indigo
490 Si ... Violet
539 Do ... Red
Etc., etc.
The fifth sense is in our possession: it is possibly that of geometrical orm, and its steps of progression would be 5 × 7, or 35.
The fourth sense is that of physical hearing, music, and its progressions re 28, or 4 × 7. The truth of this is demonstrated by the fact that it is n accord with the theories of Science as to the vibrations of musical otes. Our scale is as follows:
--, 28, 56, 84, 112, 140, 168, 196, 224, 252, 280, 308, 336, 364, 392, 420,
448, 476, 504, 532, 560, 588, 616, 644, 672, 700.
According to musical science, the notes C, E, G, are as 4, 5, 6, in their atios of vibrations. The same ratio obtains between the notes of the riplet G, B, D, and F, A, C.
H. C.
Notes On Some Oral Teachings.
The Three Vital Airs.
It is the pure Ākāsha that passes up Sushumnā: its two aspects flow in Idā nd Pingalā. These are the three vital airs, and are symbolized by the
Brāhmanical thread. They are ruled by the Will. Will and Desire are the igher and lower aspects of one and the same thing. Hence the importance f the purity of the canals; for if they soil the vital airs energized by he Will, Black Magic results. This is why all sexual intercourse is orbidden in practical Occultism.
From Sushumnā, Idā and Pingalā a circulation is set up, and from the entral canal passes into the whole body. (Man is a tree; he has in him he macrocosm and the microcosm. Hence the trees used as symbols; the
Dhyān-Chohanic body is thus figured.)
The Auric Egg.
The Auric Egg is formed in curves, which may be conceived from the curves ormed by sand on a vibrating metal disk. Each atom, as each body, has its
Auric Egg, each centre forming its own. This Auric Egg, with the ppropriate materials thrown into it, is a defence; no wild animal, owever ferocious, will approach the Yogī thus guarded: it flings back rom its surface all malign influences. No Will power is manifested hrough the Auric Egg.
_Q. What is the connection between the circulation of the vital airs and he power of the Yogī to make his Auric Egg a defence against aggression?_
_A._ It is impossible to answer this question. The knowledge is the last ord of Magic. It is connected with Kundalinī, that can as easily destroy s preserve. The ignorant tyro might kill himself.
_Q. Is the Auric Egg of a child a differentiation of Akāsha, into which ay be thrown by the Adept the materials he needs for special urposes_--_e.g._, _the Māyāvi Rūpa?_
[The question was somewhat obscurely worded. Evidently what the questioner anted to know was if the Auric Egg was a differentiation of Akāsha, into hich, as the child became a man, he might, if an Adept, weave the aterials needed for special purposes, etc.]
_A._ Taking the question in the sense of an Adept putting something into r acting on the Auric Egg of a child, then this could not be done, as the
Auric Egg is Karmic, and not even an Adept must interfere with such Karmic ecord. If the Adept were to put anything into the Auric Egg of another, or which the person is not responsible, or which does not come from the
Higher Self of that personality, how could Karmic justice be maintained?
The Adept can draw into his own Auric Egg from his planet, or even from hat of the globe or of the universe, according to his degree. This nvelope is the receptacle of all Karmic causes, and photographs all hings like a sensitive plate.
The child has a very small Auric Egg which is in colour almost pure white.
At birth the Auric Egg consists of almost pure Akāsha plus the Tanhās, hich, until the seventh year, remain potential or in latency.
The Auric Egg of an idiot cannot be said to be human, that is, it is not inged with Manas. It is Akāshic vibrations rather than an Auric Egg--the aterial envelope, such as that of the plant, the mineral or other object.
The Auric Egg is the transmitter from the periodical lives to the Life ternal, _i.e._, from Prāna to Jīva. It disappears, but remains.
The reason why the confession of the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches is o great a sin is because the confessor interferes with the Auric Egg of he penitent by means of his will power, engrafting artificially manations from his own Auric Egg and casting seeds for germination into he Auric Egg of his subject. It is on the same lines as hypnotic uggestion.
The above remarks apply equally to Hypnotism, although the latter is a sycho-physical force, and it is this which constitutes one of its many erious dangers. At the same time "a good thing may pass through dirty hannels," as in the case of the breaking by suggestion of the alcohol or pium habit. Mesmerism may be used by the Occultist to remove evil habits, f the intention be perfectly pure; as on the higher plane intention is verything, and good intention must work for good.
_Q. Is the Auric Egg the expansion of the __"__Pillar of Light,__"__ the
Mānasic Principle, and so not surrounding the child till its seventh ear?_
_A._ It is the Auric Egg. The Auric Egg is quite pure at birth, but it is question whether the higher or lower Manas will colour it at the seventh ear. The Mānasic expansion is pure Ākāsha. The ray of Manas is let down nto the vortex of the lower Principles, and being discoloured, and so imited by the Kāmic Tanhās and by the defects of the bodily organism, orms the personality. Hereditary Karma can reach the child before the eventh year, but no individual Karma can come into play till the descent f the Manas.
The Auric Egg is to the Man
As the Astral Light is to the Earth
As the Ether is to the Astral Light
As the Akāsha is to the Ether
The critical states are left out in the enumeration. They are the Lava
Centres, or missing links in our consciousness, and separate these four lanes from one another.
The Dweller.
The "Dweller on the Threshold" is found in two cases: (_a_) In the case of he separation of the Triangle from the Quaternary; (_b_) When Kāmic esires and passions are so intense that the Kāma Rūpa persists in Kāma
Loka beyond the Devachanic period of the Ego, and thus survives the eincarnation of the Devachanic Entity (_e.g._, when reincarnation occurs ithin two hundred or three hundred years). The "Dweller" being drawn by ffinity towards the Reincarnating Ego to whom it had belonged, and being nable to reach it, fastens on the Kāma of the new personality, and ecomes the Dweller on the Threshold, strengthening the Kāmic element and hus lending it a dangerous potency. Some become mad from this cause.
Intellect.
The white Adept is not always at first of powerful intellect. In fact, H.
P. B. had known Adepts whose intellectual powers were originally below the verage. It is the Adept's purity, his equal love to all, his working with
Nature, with Karma, with his "Inner God," that give him his power.
Intellect by itself alone will make the Black Magician. For intellect lone is accompanied with pride and selfishness: it is the intellectual
_plus_ the spiritual that raises man. For spirituality prevents pride and anity.
Metaphysics are the domain of the Higher Manas; whereas Physics are that f Kāma-Manas, which does the thinking in Physical Science and on material hings. Kāma-Manas, like every other Principle, is of seven degrees. The
Mathematician without spirituality, however great he may be, will not each Metaphysics; but the Metaphysician will master the highest onceptions of Mathematics, and will apply them, without learning the atter. To a born Metaphysician the Psychic Plane will not be of much ccount: he will see its errors immediately he enters it, inasmuch as it s not the thing he seeks. With respect to Music and other Arts, they are he children of either the Mānasic or Kāma-Mānasic Principle, roportionately as Soul or technicality predominates.
Karma.
After each incarnation, when the Mānasic Ray returns to its Father, the
Ego, some of its atoms remain behind and scatter. These Mānasic atoms,
Tānhic and other "causes," being of the same nature as the Manas, are ttracted to it by strong bonds of affinity, and on the reincarnation of he Ego are unerringly attracted to it and constitute its Karma. Until hese are all gathered up, the individuality is not free from rebirth. The
Higher Manas is responsible for the Ray it sends forth. If the Ray be not oiled, no bad Karma is generated.
The Turīya State.
You should bear in mind that, in becoming Karma-less, good Karma, as well s bad, has to be gotten rid of, and that Nidānas, started towards the cquisition of good Karma, are as binding as those induced in the other irection. For both are Karma.
Yogīs cannot attain the Turīya state unless the Triangle is separated from he Quaternary.
Mahat.
Mahat is the manifested universal Parabrāhmic Mind (for one Manvantara) on he Third Plane [of Kosmos]. It is the Law whereby the Light falls from lane to plane and differentiates. The Mānasaputras are its emanations.
Man alone is capable of conceiving the Universe on this plane of xistence.
Existence _is_; but when the entity does not feel it, for that entity it s not. The pain of an operation exists, though the patient does not feel t, and for the patient it is not.
How To Advance.
_Q. What is the correct pronunciation of AUM?_
_A._ It should first be practised physically, always at the same pitch, hich must be discovered in the same way as the particular colour of the tudent is found, for each has his own tone.
AUM consists of two vowels and one semi-vowel, which latter must be rolonged. Just as Nature has its Fa, so each man has his: man being ifferentiated from Nature. The body may be compared to an instrument and he Ego to the player. You begin by producing effects on yourself; then ittle by little you learn to play on the Tattvas and Principles; learn irst the notes, then the chords, then the melodies. Once the student is aster of every chord, he may begin to be a co-worker with Nature and for thers. He may then, by the experience he has gained of his own nature, nd by the knowledge of the chords, strike such as will be beneficial in nother, and so will serve as a keynote for beneficial results.
Try to have a clear representation of the geometrical triangle on every lane, the conception gradually growing more metaphysical, and ending with he subjective Triangle, Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas. It is only by the knowledge of his Triangle under all forms that you can succeed, _e.g._ in enclosing he past and the future in the present. Remember that you have to merge he Quaternary in the Triangle. The Lower Manas is drawn upwards, with the
Kāma, Prāna and Linga, leaving only the physical body behind, the lower einforcing the higher.
Advance may be made in Occultism even in Devachan, if the Mind and Soul be et thereon during life; but it is only as in a dream, and the knowledge ill fade away as memory of a dream fades, unless it be kept alive by onscious study.
Fear And Hatred.
Fear and hatred are essentially one and the same. He who fears nothing ill never hate, and he who hates nothing will never fear.
The Triangle.
_Q. What is the meaning of the phrase: __"__Form a clear image of the
Triangle on every plane;__"_ _e.g._, _on the Astral Plane, what should one hink of as the Triangle?_
_A._ [H. P. B. asked whether the question signified the meaning of the
Triangle or the way to represent the Triangle on the "screen of light."
The questioner explaining that the latter was the meaning, H. P. B. said hat] it was only in the Turīya state, the fourth of the seven steps of
Rāja Yoga that the Yogī can represent to himself that which is abstract.
Below this state, the perceptive power, being conditioned, must have some orm to contemplate; it cannot represent to itself the Arūpa. In the
Turīya state the Triangle is in yourself and is felt. Below the Turīya tate there must be a symbol to represent Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas. It is not a ere geometrical Triangle, but the Triad imaged, to make thought possible.
Of this Triad, we can make some kind of representation of Manas, however ndistinct; while of Ātmā no image can be formed. We must try to represent he Triangle to ourselves on higher and higher planes. We must figure
Manas as overshadowed by Buddhi, and immersed in Ātmā. Only Manas, the
Higher Ego, can be represented; we may think it as the Augoeides, the adiant figure in _Zanoni_. A very good Psychic might see this.
Psychic Vision.
Psychic vision, however, is not to be desired, since Psyche is earthly and vil. More and more as Science advances, the psychic will be reached and nderstood; Psychism has in it nothing that is spiritual. Science is right n its own plane, from its own standpoint. The law of the Conservation of
Energy implies that psychic motion is generated by motion. Psychic motion eing only motion on the Psychic Plane, a material plane, the Psychologist s right who sees in it nothing beyond matter. Animals have no Spirit, but hey have psychic vision, and are sensitive to psychic conditions; observe ow these react on their health, their bodily state.
Motion is the abstract Deity; on the highest plane it is Arūpa, absolute; ut on the lowest it is merely mechanical. Psychic action is within the phere of physical motion. Ere psychic action can be developed in the rain and nerves, there must be adequate action which generates it on the
Physical Plane. The paralyzed animal that cannot generate action in the hysical body, cannot think. Psychics merely see on a plane of different aterial density; the spiritual glimpses sometimes obtained by them come rom a plane beyond. A Psychic's vision is that of one coming, as it were, nto a lighted room, and seeing everything there by an artificial light: hen the light is extinguished, vision is lost. Spiritual vision sees by he light within, the light hidden beneath the bushel of the body, by hich we can see clearly and independently of all outside. The Psychic eeing by an external light, the vision is coloured by the nature of that ight.
X. saying that she felt as though she saw on three planes, H. P. B. nswered that each plane was sevenfold, the Astral as every other. She ave as an example on the Physical Plane the vision of a table with the ense of sight; seeing it still, with the eyes closed, by retinal mpression; the image of it conserved in the brain; it can be recalled by emory; it can be seen in dream; or as an aggregate of atoms; or as isintegrated. All these are on the Physical Plane. Then we can begin gain on the Astral Plane, and obtain another septenary. This hint should e followed and worked out.
Triangle And Quaternary.
_Q. Why is the violet, the color of the Linga Sharīra, placed at the apex f the triangle, when the Macrocosm is figured as a triangle over a quare, thus throwing the yellow, Buddhi, into the lower Quaternary?_
_A._ It is wrong to speak of the "lower Quaternary" in the Macrocosm. It s the Tetraktys, the highest, the most sacred of all symbols. There comes moment when, in the highest meditation, the Lower Manas is withdrawn nto the Triad, which thus becomes the Quaternary, the Tetraktys of
Pythagoras, leaving what was the Quaternary as the lower Triad, which is hen reversed. The Triad is reflected in the Lower Manas. The Higher Manas annot reflect itself, but when the Green passes upward it becomes a irror for the Higher; it is then no more Green, having passed from its ssociations. The Psyche then becomes spiritual, the Ternary is reflected n the Fourth, and the Tetraktys is formed. So long as you are not dead, here must be something to reflect the Higher Triad; for there must be omething to bring back to the waking consciousness the experiences passed hrough on the higher plane. The Lower Manas is as a tablet which retains he impressions made on it during trance.
The Turīya state is entered on the Fourth Path; it is figured in the iagram on p. 478, in the Second Paper.
_Q. What is the meaning of a triangle formed of lines of light appearing n the midst of intense vibrating blue?_
_A._ Seeing the Triangle outside is nothing; it is merely a reflection of he Triad on the Auric Envelope, and proves that the seer is outside the
Triangle. It should be seen in quite another way. You must endeavour to erge yourself in it, to assimilate yourself with it. You are merely eeing things in the Astral. "When the Third Eye is opened in any one of ou, you will have something very different to tell me."
_Q. With reference to the __"__Pillar of Light__"__ in a previous uestion, is the Auric Envelope the Higher Ego, and does it correspond to he Ring Pass-Not?_
[This question was not answered, as going too far. The Ring Pass-Not is at he circumference of the manifested Universe.]
Nidānas.
_Q. The root of the Nidānas is Avidyā. How does this differ from Māyā? How any Nidānas are there Esoterically?_
_A._ Again too much is asked. The Nidānas, the concatenations of causes nd effects (not in the sense of the Orientalists), are not caused by gnorance. They are produced by Dhyān Chohans and Devas, who certainly annot be said to act in ignorance. We produce Nidānas in ignorance. Each ause started on the Physical Plane sets up action on every plane to all ternity. They are eternal effects reflected from plane to plane on to the
"screen of eternity."
Manas.
_Q. What is the septenary classification of Manas? There are seven degrees f the Lower Manas, and presumably there are seven degrees of the Higher.
Are there then fourteen degrees of Manas, or is Manas, taken as a whole, ivided into forty-nine Mānasic fires?_
_A._ Certainly there are fourteen, but you want to run before you can alk. First learn the three, and then go on to the forty-nine. There are hree Sons of Agni; they become seven, and then evolve to the forty-nine.
But you are still ignorant how to produce the three. Learn first how to roduce the "Sacred Fire," spoken of in the _Purānas_. The forty-nine ires are all states of Kundalinī, to be produced in ourselves by the riction of the Triad. First learn the septenary of the body, and then hat of each Principle. But first of all learn the first Triad (the three ital airs).
The Spinal Cord.
_Q. What is the sympathetic nerve and its function in Occultism? It is ound only after a certain stage of animal evolution, and would seem to be volving in complexity towards a second spinal cord._
_A._ At the end of the next Round, Humanity will again become male-female, nd then there will be two spinal cords. In the Seventh Race the two will erge into the one. The evolution corresponds to the Races, and with the volution of the Races the sympathetic developes into a true spinal cord.
We are returning up the arc only with self-consciousness added. The Sixth
Race will correspond to the "pudding bags," but will have the perfection f form with the highest intelligence and spirituality.
Anatomists are beginning to find new ramifications and new modifications n the human body. They are in error on many points, _e.g._, as to the pleen, which they call the manufactory of white blood corpuscles, but hich is really the vehicle of the Linga Sharīra. Occultists know each inute portion of the heart, and have a name for each. They call them by he names of the Gods, as Brahmā's Hall, Vishnu's Hall, etc. They orrespond with parts of the brain. The very atoms of the body are the hirty-three crores of Gods.
The sympathetic nerve is played on by the Tāntrikas, who call it Shiva's
Vīnā.
Prāna.
_Q. What is the relation of man to Prāna--the periodical life?_
_A._ Jīva becomes Prāna only when the child is born and begins to breathe.
It is the breath of life, Nephesh. There is no Prāna on the Astral Plane.
Antahkarana.
_Q. The Antahkarana is the link between the Higher and the Lower Egos; oes it correspond to the umbilical cord in projection?_
_A._ No; the umbilical cord joining the astral to the physical body is a eal thing. Antahkarana is imaginary, a figure of speech, and is only the ridging over from the Higher to the Lower Manas. Antahkarana only exists hen you commence to "throw your thought upwards and downwards." The
Māyāvi Rūpa, or Mānasic body, has no material connection with the physical ody, no umbilical cord. It is spiritual and ethereal, and passes verywhere without let or hindrance. It entirely differs from the astral ody, which, if injured, acts by repercussion on the physical body. The
Devachanic entity, even previous to birth, can be affected by the
Skandhas, but these have nothing to do with the Antahkarana. It is ffected, _e.g._, by the desire for reincarnation.
_Q. We are told in_ The Voice of the Silence _that we have to become __
__"__the path itself,__"__ and in another passage that Antahkarana is that ath. Does this mean anything more than that we have to bridge over the ap between the consciousness of the Lower and the Higher Egos?_
_A._ That is all.
_Q. We are told that there are seven portals on the Path: is there then a evenfold division of Antahkarana? Also, is Antahkarana the battlefield?_
_A._ It is the battlefield. There are seven divisions in the Antahkarana.
As you pass from each to the next you approach the Higher Manas. When you ave bridged the fourth you may consider yourself fortunate.
Miscellaneous.
_Q. We are told that_ AUM _"__should be practised physically.__"__ Does his mean that, colour being more differentiated than sound, it is only hrough the colours that we shall get at the real sound of each of us? and hat_ AUM _can only have its Spiritual and Occult signification when urned to the Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas of each person?_
_A._ AUM means good action, not merely lip-sound. You must say it in eeds.
_Q. With reference to the triangle, is not the Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas different or each entity, according to the plane on which he is?_
_A._ Each Principle is on a different plane. The Chelā must rise to one fter the other, assimilating each, until the three are one. This is the eal root of the Trinity.
_Q. In_ The Secret Doctrine _we are told that Ākāsha is the same as
Pradhāna. Ākāsha is the Auric Egg of the earth, and yet Ākāsha is Mahat.
What that is the relation of Manas to the Auric Egg?_
_A._ Mūlaprakriti is the same as Ākāsha (seven degrees). Mahat is the ositive aspect of Ākāsha, and is the Manas of the Kosmic Body. Mahat is o Ākāsha as Manas is to Buddhi, and Pradhāna is but another name for
Mūlaprakriti.
The Auric Egg is Ākāsha and has seven degrees. Being pure abstract ubstance, it reflects abstract ideas, but also reflects lower concrete hings.
The Third Logos and Mahat are one, and are the same as the Universal Mind,
Alaya.
The Tetraktys is the Chatur Vidyā, or the fourfold knowledge in one, the our-faced Brahmā.
Nādis.
_Q. Have the Nādīs any fixed relationship to the vertebrę; can they be ocated opposite to or between any vertebrę? can they be regarded as ccupying each a given and fixed extent in the cord? Do they correspond to he divisions of the cord known to Anatomists?_
_A._ H. P. B. believed that the Nādīs corresponded to regions of the pinal cord known to Anatomists. There are thus six or seven Nādīs or lexuses along the spinal cord. The term, however, is not technical but eneral, and applies to any knot, centre, ganglion, etc. The sacred Nādīs re those which run along or above Sushumnā. Six are known to Science, and ne (near the atlas) unknown. Even the Tāraka Rāja Yogīs speak only of ix, and will not mention the sacred seventh.
Idā and Pingalā play along the curved wall of the cord in which is
Sushumnā. They are semi-material, positive and negative, sun and moon, and tart into action the free and spiritual current of Sushumnā. They have istinct paths of their own, otherwise they would radiate all over the ody. By concentration on Idā and Pingalā is generated the "sacred fire."
Another name for Shiva's Vīnā (sympathetic system) is Kālī's Vīnā.
The sympathetic cords and Idā and Pingalā start from a sacred spot above he medulla oblongata, called Triveni. This is one of the sacred centres, nother of which is Brahmarandra, which is, if you like, the grey matter f the brain. It is also the anterior fontanelle in the new-born child.
The spinal column is called Brahmadanda, the stick of Brahmā. This is gain symbolized by the bamboo rod carried by Ascetics. The Yogīs on the ther sides of the Himālayas, who assemble regularly at Lake Mānsarovara, arry a triple knotted bamboo stick, and are called Tridandins. This has he same signification as the Brāhmanical cord, which has many other eanings besides the three vital airs: _e.g._, it symbolizes the three nitiations of a Brāhman, taking place: (_a_) at birth, when he receives is mystery name from the family Astrologer, who is supposed to have eceived it from the Devas (he is also thus said to be initiated by the
Devas); a Hindu will sooner die than reveal this name; (_b_) at seven, hen he receives the cord; and (_c_) at eleven or twelve, when he is nitiated into his caste.
_Q. If it is right to study the body and its organs, with their orrespondences, will you give the main outline of these in connection ith the Nādīs and with the diagram of the orifices._
_A._ The Spleen corresponds to the Linga Sharīra
The Liver to Kāma
The Heart to Prāna
The Corpora-quadrigemina to Kāma-Manas
The Pituitary body to Manas-Antahkarana
The Pineal gland to Manas
ntil it is touched by the vibrating light of Kundalinī, which proceeds rom Buddhi, when it becomes Buddhi-Manas.
The pineal gland corresponds with Divine Thought. The pituitary body is he organ of the Psychic Plane. Psychic vision is caused by the molecular otion of this body, which is directly connected with the optic nerve, and hus affects the sight and gives rise to hallucinations. Its motion may eadily cause flashes of light, such as may be obtained by pressing the yeballs. Drunkenness and fever produce illusions of sight and hearing by he action of the pituitary body. This body is sometimes so affected by runkenness that it is paralyzed. If an influence on the optic nerve is hus produced and the current thus reversed, the colour will probably be omplementary.
Sevens.
_Q. If the physical body is no part of the real human septenary, is the hysical material world one of the seven planes of the Kosmic septenary?_
_A._ It is. The body is not a Principle in Esoteric parlance, because the ody and the Linga are both on the same plane; then the Auric Egg makes he seventh. The body is an Upādhi rather than a Principle. The earth and ts astral light are as closely related to each other as the body and its
Linga, the earth being the Upādhi. Our plane in its lowest division is the arth, in its highest the astral. The terrestrial astral light should of ourse not be confounded with the universal Astral Light.
_Q. A physical object was spoken of as a septenary on the physical plane, nasmuch as we could (1) directly contact it; (2) retinally reproduce it;
(3) remember it; (4) dream of it; (5) view it atomically; (6) view it isintegrated; (7)--What is the seventh?_
_These are seven ways in which we view it: the septenary is our way of eeing one thing. Is it objectively septenary?_
_A._ The seventh bridges across from one plane to another. The last is the dea, the privation of matter, and carries you to the next plane. The ighest of one plane touches the lowest of the next. Seven is a factor in ature, as in colours and sounds. There are seven degrees in the same iece of wood, each perceived by one of the seven senses. In wood the mell is the most material degree, while in other substances it may be the ixth. Substances are septenary apart from the consciousness of the iewer.
The psychometer, seeing a morsel, say of a table a thousand years hence, ould see the whole; for every atom reflects the whole body to which it elongs, just as with the Monads of Leibnitz.
After the seven material subdivisions are the seven divisions of the
Astral, which is its second Principle. The disintegrated matter--the ighest of the material subdivisions--is the privation of the idea of t--the fourth.
The number fourteen is the first step between seven and forty-nine. Each eptenary is really a fourteen, because each of the seven has its two spects. Thus fourteen signifies the inter-relation of two planes in its urn. The septenary is to be clearly traced in the lunar months, fevers, estations, etc. On it is based the week of the Jews and the septenary
Hierarchies of the Lord of Hosts.
Sounds.
_Q. Sound is an attribute of Ākāsha; but we cannot cognize anything on the
Ākāshic plane; on what plane then do we recognize sound? On what plane is ound produced by the physical contact of bodies? Is there sound on seven lanes, and is the physical plane one of them?_
_A._ The physical plane is one of them. You cannot see Ākāsha, but you can ense it from the Fourth Path. You may not be fully conscious of it, and et you may sense it. Ākāsha is at the root of the manifestation of all ounds. Sound is the expression and manifestation of that which is behind t, and which is the parent of many correlations. All Nature is a ounding-board; or rather Ākāsha is the sounding-board of Nature. It is he Deity, the one Life, the one Existence. (Hearing is the vibration of olecular particles; the order is seen in the sentence, "The disciple eels, hears, sees.")
Sound can have no end. H. P. B. remarked with regard to a tap made by a encil on the table: "By this time it has affected the whole universe. The article which has had its wear and tear destroys something which passes nto something else. It is eternal in the Nidānas it produces." A sound, f not previously produced on the Astral Plane, and before that on the
Ākāshic, could not be produced at all. Ākāsha is the bridge between nerve ells and mental powers.
_Q. __"__Colours are psychic, and sounds are spiritual.__"__ What, ssuming that these are vibrations, is the successive order (these orresponding to sight and hearing) of the other senses?_
_A._ This phrase was not to be taken out of its context, otherwise onfusion would arise. All are on all planes. The First Race had touch all ver like a sounding board; this touch differentiated into the other enses, which developed with the Races. The "sense" of the First Race was hat of touch, meaning the power of their atoms to vibrate in unison with xternal atoms. The "touch" would be almost the same as sympathy.
The senses were on a different plane with each Race; _e.g._, the Fourth
Race had very much more developed senses than ourselves, but on another lane. It was also a very material Race. The sixth and seventh senses will erge into the Ākāshic Sound. "It depends to what degree of matter the ense of touch relates itself as to what we call it."
Prāna.
_Q. Is Prāna the production of the countless __"__lives__"__ of the human ody, and therefore, to some extent, of the congeries of the cells or toms of the body?_
_A._ No; Prāna is the parent of the "lives." As an example, a sponge may e immersed in an ocean. The water in the sponge's interior may be ompared to Prāna; outside is Jīva. Prāna is the motor-principle in life.
The "lives" leave Prāna; Prāna does not leave them. Take out the sponge rom the water, and it becomes dry, thus symbolizing death. Every rinciple is a differentiation of Jīva, but the life-motion in each is
Prāna, the "breath of life." Kāma depends on Prāna, without which there ould be no Kāma. Prāna wakes the Kāmic germs to life; it makes all esires vital and living.
The Second Spinal Cord.
_Q. With reference to the answer to the question on the second cord, what s it that will become a second spinal cord in the Sixth Race? Will Idā nd Pingalā have separate physical ducts?_
_A._ It is the sympathetic cords which will grow together and form another pinal cord. Idā and Pingalā will be joined with Sushumnā, and they will ecome one. Idā is on the left side of the cord, and Pingalā on the right.
Initiates.
Pythagoras was an Initiate, one of the grandest of Scientists. His isciple, Archytas, was marvellously apt in applied Science. Plato and
Euclid were Initiates, but not Socrates. No real Initiates were married.
Euclid learned his Geometry in the Mysteries. Modern men of Science only ediscover the old truths.
Kosmic Consciousness.
H. P. B. proceeded to explain Kosmic Consciousness, which is, like all lse, on seven planes, of which three are inconceivable, and four are ognizable by the highest Adept.
Taking the lowest only, the Terrestrial (it was afterwards decided to call his plane Prākritic), it is divisible, into seven planes, and these again nto seven, making the forty-nine.
She then took the lowest plane of Prākriti, or the true Terrestrial.
Its objective or sensuous plane is that which is sensed by the five hysical senses.
On its second plane things are reversed.
Its third plane is psychic: here is the instinct which prevents a kitten oing into the water and getting drowned.
Then objective consciousness was given.
The three lower Prākritic are related to the three lower of the Astral
Plane immediately succeeding.
With regard to the first division of the second plane, H. P. B. reminded er pupils that all seen on it must be reversed in translating it, _e.g._, ith numbers which appeared backwards. The Astral Objective corresponds in verything to the Terrestrial Objective.
The second division corresponds to the second of the lower plane, but the bjects are of extreme tenuity, an astralized Astral. This plane is the imit of the ordinary medium, beyond which he cannot go. A non-mediumistic erson to reach it must be asleep or in a trance, or under the influence f laughing-gas; or in ordinary delirium people pass on to this plane.
The third, the Prānic, is of an intensely vivid nature. Extreme delirium arries the patient to this plane. In delirium tremens the sufferer passes o this and to the one above it. Lunatics are often conscious on this lane, where they see terrible visions. It runs into the--
Fourth division, the worst of the astral planes, Kāmic and terrible. Hence ome the images that tempt; images of drunkards in Kāma Loka impelling thers to drink; images of all vices inoculating men with the desire to ommit crimes. The weak imitate these images in a kind of monkeyish ashion, so falling beneath their influence. This is also the cause of pidemics of vices, and cycles of disaster, of accidents of all kinds oming in groups. Extreme delirium tremens is on this plane.
The fifth division is that of premonitions in dreams, of reflections from he lower mentality, glimpses into the past and future, the plane of hings mental and not spiritual. The mesmerized clairvoyant can reach this lane, and even, if good, may go higher.
The sixth is the plane from which come all beautiful inspirations of art, oetry, and music; high types of dreams, flashes of genius. Here we have limpses of past incarnations, without being able to locate or analyze hem.
We are on the seventh plane at the moment of death or in exceptional isions. The drowning man is here when he remembers his past life. The emory of events of this plane must be centred in the heart, "the seat of
Buddha." There it will remain, but impressions from this plane are not ade on the physical brain.
General Notes.
The two planes above dealt with are the only two used in the Hatha Yoga.
Prāna and the Auric Envelope are essentially the same, and again, as Jīva, t is the same as the Universal Deity. This, in its Fifth Principle, is
Mahat, in its Sixth, Alaya. (The Universal Life is also seven-principled.)
Mahat is the highest _Entity_ in Kosmos; beyond this is no diviner Entity; t is of subtlest matter, Sūkshma. In us this is Manas, and the very Logoi re less high, not having gained experience. The Mānasic Entity will not e destroyed, even at the end of the Mahāmanvantara, when all the Gods are bsorbed, but will re-emerge from Parabrāhmic latency.
Consciousness is the Kosmic seed of superkosmic omniscience. It has the otentiality of budding into the Divine Consciousness.
Rude physical health is a drawback to seership. This was the case with
Swedenborg.
Fohat is everywhere: it runs like a thread through all, and has its own even divisions.
Auric Envelope or Ātmic Elements of Manifested Kosmos.
Alaya. Buddhi.
Mahat. Manas.
Fohat. Kāma-Manas.
Jīva. Kāma-Prana.
Astral. Linga.
Prākriti. Body.
In the Kosmic Auric Envelope is all the Karma of the manifesting Universe.
This is the Hiranyagarbha. Jīva is everywhere, and so with the other
Principles.
[Illustration]
The above diagram represents the type of all the Solar Systems.
Mahat, single before informing the Universe, differentiates when informing t, as does Manas in man.
[Illustration]
Taking this figure to represent the human Principles and planes of onsciousness, then 7, 6, 5 represent respectively, Shiva, Vishnu, Brahmā,
Brahmā being the lowest.
Shiva is the four-faced Brahmā; the Creator, Preserver, Destroyer, and
Regenerator.
Between 5 and 4 comes the Antahkarana. The triangle represents the
Christos, the Sacrificial Victim crucified between the thieves: this is he double-faced entity. The Vedāntins make this a quaternary for a blind:
Antahkarana, Chit, Buddhi, and Manas.
MANVANTARIC ASPECT OF PARABRAHMAN AND MŪLAPRAKRITI.
[Illustration]
[N.B.--The number of Rays is arbitrary and without significance.]
Perceptive life begins with the Astral: it is not our physical atoms which ee, etc.
Consciousness proper begins between Kāma and Manas. Ātmā-Buddhi acts more n the atoms of the body, in the bacilli, microbes, etc., than in Man imself.
Objective Consciousness.
Sensuous objective consciousness includes all that pertains to the five hysical senses in man, and rules in animals, birds, fishes and some nsects. Here are the "Lives"; their consciousness is in Ātmā-Buddhi; hese are entirely without Manas.
Astral Consciousness.
That of some plants (_e.g._, sensitive), of ants, spiders, and some night- lies (Indian), but not of bees.
The vertebrate animals in general are without this consciousness, but the lacental Mammals have all the potentialities of human consciousness, hough at present, of course, dormant.
Idiots are on this plane. The common expression "he has lost his mind" is n Occult truth. For when through fright or other cause the lower mind ecomes paralyzed, then the consciousness is on the Astral Plane. The tudy of lunacy will throw much light on these points. This may be called he "nerve plane." It is cognized by our "nervous centres" of which
Physiology knows nothing, _e.g._, the clairvoyant reading with the eyes andaged, reading with the tips of the fingers, the pit of the stomach, tc. This sense is greatly developed in the deaf and dumb.
Kāma-Prānic Consciousness.
The general life-consciousness which belongs to all the objective world, ven to the stones; for if stones were not living they could not decay, mit a spark, etc. Affinity between chemical elements is a manifestation f this Kāmic consciousness.
Kāma-Mānasic Consciousness.
The instinctual consciousness of animals and idiots in its lowest degrees, he planes of sensation: in man these are rationalized, _e.g._, a dog shut n a room has the instinct to get out, but cannot because its instinct is ot sufficiently rationalized to take the necessary means; whereas a man t once takes in the situation and extricates himself. The highest degree f this Kāma-Mānasic consciousness is the psychic. Thus there are seven egrees from the instinctual animal to the rationalized instinctual and sychic.
Mānasic Consciousness.
From this plane Manas stretches upwards to Mahat.
Buddhic Consciousness.
The plane of Buddhi and the Auric Envelope. From here it goes to the
Father in heaven, Ātmā, and reflects all that is in the Auric Envelope.
Five and six therefore cover the planes from the psychic to the divine.
Miscellaneous.
Reason is a thing that oscillates between right and wrong. But
Intelligence--Intuition--is higher, it is the clear vision.
To get rid of Kāma we must crush out all our material instincts--"crush out atter." The flesh is a thing of habit; it will repeat mechanically a good mpulse as well as a bad one. It is not the flesh which is always the empter; in nine cases out of ten it is the Lower Manas, which, by its mages, leads the flesh into temptation.
The highest Adept begins his Samādhi on the Fourth Solar Plane, but cannot o outside the Solar System. When he begins Samādhi he is on a par with ome of the Dhyān Chohans, but he transcends them as he rises to the eventh plane (Nirvāna).
The Silent Watcher is on the Fourth Kosmic Plane.
The higher Mind directs the Will: the lower turns it into selfish Desire.
The head should not be covered in meditation. It is covered in Samādhi.
The Dhyān Chohans are passionless, pure and mindless. They have no truggle, no passions to crush.
The Dhyān Chohans are made to pass through the School of Life. "God goes o School."
The best of us in the future will be Mānasaputras; the lowest will be
Pitris. We are seven intellectual Hierarchies here. This earth becomes the oon of the next earth.
The "Pitris" are the Astral overshadowed by Ātmā-Buddhi, falling into atter. The "Pudding-bags" had Life and Ātmā-Buddhi, but no Manas. They ere therefore senseless. The reason for all evolution is the gaining of xperience.
In the Fifth Round all of us will play the part of Pitris. We shall have o go and shoot out our Chhāyās into another humanity, and remain until hat humanity is perfected. The Pitris have finished their office in this
Round and have gone into Nirvāna; but they will return to do the same ffice up to the middle point of the Fifth Round. The Fourth or Kāmic
Hierarchy of the Pitris becomes the "man of flesh."
The astral body is first in the womb; then comes the germ that fructifies t. It is then clothed with matter, as were the Pitris.
The Chhāyā is really the lower Manas, the shadow of the higher Mind. This
Chhāyā makes the Māyāvi Rūpa. The Ray clothes itself in the highest degree f the Astral Plane. The Māyāvi Rūpa is composed of the astral body as
Upādhi, the guiding intelligence from the heart, the attributes and ualities from the Auric Envelope.
The Auric Envelope takes up the light of Ātmā, and overshadows the oronal, circling round the head.
The Auric Fluid is a combination of the Life and Will principles, the life nd the will being one and the same in Kosmos. It emanates from the eyes nd hands, when directed by the will of the operator.
The Auric Light surrounds all bodies: it is the "aura" emanating from hem, whether they be animal, vegetable, or mineral. It is the light,
_e.g._, seen round magnets.
Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas in man corresponds to the three Logoi in Kosmos. They ot only correspond, but each is the radiation from Kosmos to Microcosmos.
The third Logos, Mahat, becomes Manas in man, Manas being only Mahat ndividualized, as the sun-rays are individualized in bodies that absorb hem. The sun-rays give life, they fertilize what is already there, and he individual is formed. Mahat, so to say, fertilizes, and Manas is the esult.
Buddhi-Manas is the Kshetrajńa.
There are seven planes of Mahat, as of all else.
The Human Principles.
Here H. P. B. drew two diagrams, illustrating different ways of epresenting the human principles. In the first
[Illustration]
he two lower are disregarded; they go out, disintegrate, are of no ccount. Remain five, under the radiation of Ātmā.
In the second:
[Illustration]
he lower Quaternary is regarded as mere matter, objective illusion, and here remain Manas and the Auric Egg, the higher Principles being eflected in the Auric Egg. In all these systems remember the main rinciple, the descent and re-ascent of the Spirit, in man as in Kosmos.
The Spirit is drawn downwards as by spiritual gravitation.
Seeking further for the cause of this, the students were checked, H. P. B. iving only a suggestion on the three Logoi:
1. Potentiality of Mind (Absolute Thought).
2. Thought in Germ.
3. Ideation in Activity.
Notes.
Protective variation, _e.g._, identity of colouring of insects and of that n which they feed, was explained to be the work of Nature Elementals.
Form is on different planes, and the forms of one plane may be formless to wellers on another. The Kosmocratores build on planes in the Divine Mind, isible to them though not to us. The principle of limitation--_principium ndividuationis_--is Form: this principle is Divine Law manifested in
Kosmic Matter, which, in its essence, is limitless. The Auric Egg is the imit of man as Hiranyagarbha of the Kosmos.
The first step towards the accomplishment of Kriyāshakti is the use of the
Imagination. To imagine a thing is to firmly create a model of what you esire, perfect in all its details. The Will is then brought into action, nd the form is thereby transferred to the objective world. This is reation by Kriyāshakti.
Suns And Planets.
A comet partially cools and settles down as a sun. It then gradually ttracts round it planets that are as yet unattached to any centre, and hus, in millions of years, a Solar System is formed. The worn-out planet ecomes a moon to the planet of another system.
The sun we see is a reflection of the true Sun: this reflection, as an utward concrete thing, is a Kāma-Rūpa, all the suns forming the Kāma-Rūpa f Kosmos. To its own system the sun is Buddhi, as being the reflection nd vehicle of the true Sun, which is Ātmā, invisible on this plane. All he Fohatic forces--electricity, etc.--are in this reflection.
The Moon.
At the beginning of the evolution of our globe, the moon was much nearer o the earth, and larger than it is now. It has retreated from us, and hrunk much in size. (The moon gave all her Principles to the earth, while he Pitris gave only their Chhāyās to man.)
The influences of the moon are wholly psycho-physiological. It is dead, ending out injurious emanations like a corpse. It vampirizes the earth nd its inhabitants, so that anyone sleeping in its rays suffers, losing ome of his life-force. A white cloth is a protection, the rays not assing through it, and the head especially should be thus guarded. It has ost power when it is full. It throws off particles which we absorb, and s gradually disintegrating. Where there is snow the moon looks like a orpse, being unable, through the white snow, to vampirize effectually.
Hence snow-covered mountains are free from its bad influences. The moon is hosphorescent.
The Rākshakas of Lanka and the Atlanteans are said to have subjected the oon. The Thessalians learned from them their Magic.
Esoterically, the moon is the symbol of the Lower Manas; it is also the ymbol of the Astral.
Plants which under the sun's rays are beneficent are maleficent under hose of the moon. Herbs containing poisons are most active when gathered nder the moon's rays.
A new moon will appear during the Seventh Round, and our moon will finally isintegrate and disappear. There is now a planet, the "Mystery Planet," ehind the moon, and it is gradually dying. Finally the time will come for t to send its Principles to a new Laya Centre, and there a new planet ill form, to belong to another Solar System, the present Mystery Planet hen functioning as moon to that new globe. This moon will have nothing to o with our earth, though it will come within our range of vision.
The Solar System.
All the visible planets placed in our Solar System by Astronomers belong o it, except Neptune. There are also some others not known to Science, elonging to it, and "all moons which are not yet visible for next hings."
The planets only move in our consciousness. The Rulers of the seven Secret
Planets have no influence on this earth, as this earth has on other lanets. It is the sun and moon which really have not only a mental, but lso a physical effect. The effect of the sun on humanity is connected ith Kāma-Prāna, with the most physical Kāmic elements in us; it is the ital principle which helps growth. The effect of the moon is chiefly
Kāma-Mānasic or psycho-physiological; it acts on the psychological brain, n the brain-mind.
Precious Stones.
In answer to a question, H. P. B. said that the diamond and the ruby were nder the sun, the sapphire under the moon--"but what does it matter to ou?"
Time.
When once out of the body, and not subject to the habit of consciousness ormed by others, time does not exist.
Cycles and epochs depend on consciousness: we are not here for the first ime; the cycles return because we come back into conscious existence.
Cycles are measured by the consciousness of humanity and not by Nature. It s because we are the same people as in past epochs that these events ccur to us.
Death.
The Hindus look upon death as impure, owing to the disintegration of the ody and the passing from one plane to another. "I believe in ransformation, not in death."
Atoms.
The Atom is the Soul of the molecule. It is the six Principles, and the olecule is the body thereof. The Atom is the Ātman of the objective
Kosmos, _i.e._, it is on the seventh plane of the lowest Prakriti.
Terms.
H. P. B. began by saying that students ought to know the correct meaning f the Sanskrit terms used in Occultism, and should learn the Occult
Symbology. To begin with one had better learn the correct Esoteric lassification and names of the fourteen (7 × 2) and seven (Sapta) Lokas ound in the exoteric texts. These are given there in a very confused anner, and are full of "blinds." To illustrate this three classifications re given below.
Lokas.
1. The general exoteric, orthodox and tāntric category:
Bhūr-loka.
Bhuvar-loka.
Swar-loka.
Mahar-loka. The second seven are reflected.
Janar-loka.
Tapar-loka.
Satya-loka.
2. The Sānkhya category, and that of some Vedāntins
Brahmā-loka.
Pitri-loka.
Soma-loka.
Indra-loka.
Gandharva-loka.
Rākshasa-loka
Yaksha-loka.
And an eighth.
3. The Vedāntic, the nearest approach to the Esoteric:
Atala.
Vitala.
Sutala.
Talātala (or Karatala).
Rasātala.
Mahātala.
Pātāla.
Each and all correspond Esoterically to the Kosmic or Dhyān Chohanic
Hierarchies, and to the human States of Consciousness and their ubdivisions (forty-nine). To appreciate this the meanings of the terms sed in the Vedāntic classification must be first understood.
_Tala_ means _place_.
Atala means no place.
Vitala means some change for the better: _i.e._, better for matter in hat more matter enters into it, or, in other words, it becomes more ifferentiated. This is an ancient Occult term.
Sutala means good, excellent, place.
Karatala means something that can be grasped or touched (from kara, a and): _i.e._, the state in which matter becomes tangible.
Rasātala means place of taste; a place you can sense with one of the rgans of sense.
Mahātala means exoterically "great place"; but, Esoterically, a place ncluding all others subjectively, and potentially including all that recedes it.
Pātāla means something under the feet (from pada, foot), the upādhi, r basis, of anything, the antipodes, America, etc.
Each of the Lokas, places, worlds, states, etc., corresponds with and is ransformed into five (exoterically) and seven (Esoterically) states or
Tattvas, for which there are no definite names. These in the main ivisions cited below make up the forty-nine Fires:
5 and 7 Tanmātras, outer and inner senses.
5 and 7 Bhūtas, or elements.
5 and 7 Gnyānendryas, or organs of sensation.
5 and 7 Karmendryas, or organs of action.
These correspond in general to States of Consciousness, to the Hierarchies f Dhyān Chohans, to the Tattvas, etc. These Tattvas transform themselves nto the whole Universe. The fourteen Lokas are made of seven with seven eflections: above, below; within, without; subjective, objective; pure, mpure; positive, negative; etc.
Explanation of the States of Consciousness Corresponding to the Vedāntic
Classification of Lokas.
7. _Atala._ The Ātmic or Auric state or locality: it emanates directly rom ABSOLUTENESS, and is the first something in the Universe. Its orrespondence is the Hierarchy of non-substantial primordial Beings, in a lace which is no place (for us), a state which is no state. This
Hierarchy contains the primordial plane, all that was, is, and will be, rom the beginning to the end of the Mahāmanvantara; all is there. This tatement should not, however, be taken to imply Kismet: the latter is ontrary to all the teachings of Occultism.
Here are the Hierarchies of the Dhyāni Buddhas. Their state is that of
Parasamādhi, of the Dharmakāya; a state where no progress is possible. The ntities there may be said to be crystallized in purity, in homogeneity.
6. _Vitala._ Here are the Hierarchies of the celestial Buddhas, or
Bodhisattvas, who are said to emanate from the seven Dhyāni Buddhas. It is elated on earth to Samādhi, to the Buddhic consciousness in man. No
Adept, save one, can be higher than this and live; if he passes into the
Ātmic or Dharmakāya state (Alaya) he can return to earth no more. These wo states are purely hyper-metaphysical.
5. _Sutala._ A differential state corresponding on earth with the Higher
Manas, and therefore with Shabda (Sound), the Logos, our Higher Ego; and lso to the Manushi Buddha state, like that of Gautama, on earth. This is he third stage of Samādhi (which is septenary). Here belong the
Hierarchies of the Kumāras--the Agnishvattas, etc.
4. _Karatala_ corresponds with Sparsha (touch) and to the Hierarchies of thereal, semi-objective Dhyān Chohans of the astral matter of the Mānasa-
Manas, or the pure ray of Manas, that is the Lower Manas before it is ixed with Kāma (as in the young child). They are called Sparsha Devas, he Devas endowed with touch. These Hierarchies of Devas are progressive: he first have one sense; the second two; and so on to seven: each ontaining all the senses potentially, but not yet developed. Sparsha ould be rendered better by affinity, contact.
3. _Rasātala_, or Rūpatala: corresponds to the Hierarchies of Rūpa or
Sight Devas, possessed of three senses, sight, hearing, and touch. These re the Kāma-Mānasic entities, and the higher Elementals. With the
Rosicrucians they were the Sylphs and Undines. It corresponds on earth ith an artificial state of consciousness, such as that produced by ypnotism and drugs (morphia, etc.).
2. _Mahātala._ Corresponds to the Hierarchies of Rasa or Taste Devas, and ncludes a state of consciousness embracing the lower five senses and manations of life and being. It corresponds to Kāma and Prāna in man, and o Salamanders and Gnomes in nature.
1. _Pātāla._ Corresponds to the Hierarchies of Gandha or Smell Devas, the nderworld or antipodes: Myalba. The sphere of irrational animals, having o feeling save that of self-preservation and gratification of the senses: lso of intensely selfish human beings, waking or sleeping. This is why
Nārada is said to have visited Pātāla when he was cursed to be reborn. He eported that life there was very pleasant for those "who had never left heir birth-place"; they were very happy. It is the earthly state, and orresponds with the sense of smell. Here are also animal Dugpas,
Elementals of animals, and Nature Spirits.
Further Explanations of the Same Classifications.
7. Auric, Ātmic, Alayic, sense or state. One of full potentiality, but not f activity.
6. Buddhic; the sense of being one with the universe; the impossibility of magining oneself apart from it.
(It was asked why the term Alayic was here given to the Ātmic and not to he Buddhic state. _Ans._ These classifications are not hard and fast ivisions. A term may change places according as the classification is xoteric, Esoteric or practical. For students the effort should be to ring all things down to states of consciousness. Buddhi is really one and ndivisible. It is a feeling within, absolutely inexpressible in words.
All cataloguing is useless to explain it.)
5. Shābdic, sense of hearing.
4. Spārshic, sense of touch.
3. Rūpic, the state of feeling oneself a body and perceiving it (rūpa = orm).
2. Rāsic, sense of taste.
1. Gāndhic, sense of smell.
All the Kosmic and anthropic states and senses correspond with our organs f sensation, Gnyānendryas, rudimentary organs for receiving knowledge hrough direct contact, sight, etc. These are the faculties of Sharīra, hrough Netra (eyes), nose, speech, etc., and also with the organs of ction, Karmendryas, hands, feet, etc.
Exoterically, there are five sets of five, giving twenty-five. Of these wenty are facultative and five Buddhic. Exoterically Buddhi is said to erceive; Esoterically it reaches perception only through the Higher
Manas. Each of these twenty is both positive and negative, thus making orty in all. There are two subjective states answering to each of the our sets of five, hence eight in all. These being subjective cannot be oubled. Thus we have 40 + 8 = 48 "cognitions of Buddhi." These with Māyā, hich includes them all, make 49. (Once that you have reached the ognition of Māyā, you are an Adept.)
The Lokas.
In their exoteric blinds the Brāhmans count fourteen Lokas (earth ncluded), of which seven are objective, though not apparent, and seven ubjective, yet fully demonstrable to the Inner Man. There are seven
Divine Lokas and seven infernal (terrestrial) Lokas.
SEVEN DIVINE LOKAS. SEVEN INFERNAL (TERRESTRIAL)
LOKAS.
1. Bhūrloka (the earth). 1. Pātāla (our earth).
2. Bhuvarloka (between the 2. Mahātala. arth and the sun [Munis]).
3. Svarloka (between the sun 3. Rasātala. nd and Pole Star [Yogīs]).
4. Maharloka (between the 4. Talātala (or Karatala). arth and the utmost limit of he Solar System).(858)
5. Janarloka (beyond the Solar 5. Sutala.
System, the abode of the
Kumāras, who do not belong to his plane).
6. Taparloka (still beyond the 6. Vitala.
Mahātmic region, the dwelling f the Vairāja deities).
7. Satyaloka (the abode of the 7. Atala.
Nirvanīs).
These the Brāhmans read from the bottom.
Now all these fourteen are planes from without within, and (the seven
Divine) States of Consciousness through which man can pass--and must pass, nce he is determined to go through the seven paths and portals of Dhyāni; ne need not be disembodied for this, and all this is reached on earth, nd in one or many of the incarnations.
See the order: the four lower ones (1, 2, 3, 4), are _rūpa_; _i.e._, they re performed by the Inner Man with the full concurrence of the diviner ortions, or, elements, of the Lower Manas, and consciously by the ersonal man. The three higher states cannot be reached and remembered by he latter, unless he is a fully initiated Adept. A Hatha Yogī will never ass beyond the Maharloka, psychically, and the Talātala (double or dual lace), physico-mentally. To become a Rāja Yogī, one has to ascend up to he seventh portal, the Satyaloka. For such, the Master Yogīs tell us, is he fruition of Yajna, or sacrifice. When the Bhūr, Bhuvar and Svarga
(states) are once passed, and the Yogī's consciousness centred in
Maharloka, it is in the last plane and state between entire identification f the Personal and the Higher Manas.
One thing to remember: while the infernal (or terrestrial) states are also he seven divisions of the earth, for planes and states, as much as they re Kosmic divisions, the divine Saptaloka are purely subjective, and egin with the psychic Astral Light plane, ending with the Satya or
Jīvanmukta state. These fourteen Lokas, or spheres, form the extent of the hole Brahmānda (world). The four lower are transitory, with all their wellers, and the three higher eternal; _i.e._, the former states, planes nd subjects, to these, last only a Day of Brahmā, changing with every
Kalpa: the latter endure for an Age of Brahmā.
Students must learn the correspondences: then concentrate on the organs nd so reach their corresponding states of consciousness. Take them in rder beginning with the lowest, and working steadily upwards. A medium ight irregularly catch glimpses of higher, but would not thus gain rderly development.
The greatest phenomena are produced by touching and centering the ttention upon the little finger.
The Lokas and Talas are reflections the one of the other. So also are the
Hierarchies in each, in pairs of opposites, at the two poles of the phere. Everywhere are such opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, ale and female.
H. P. B. could not say why blue was the colour of the earth. Blue is a olour by itself, a primary. Indigo is a colour, not a shade of blue, so s violet.
The Vairājas belong to, are the fiery Egos of, other Manvantaras. They ave already been purified in the fire of passions. It is they who refused o create. They have reached the Seventh Portal, and have refused Nirvāna, emaining for succeeding Manvantaras.
The seven steps of Antahkarana correspond with the Lokas.
Samādhi is the highest state on earth that can be reached in the body.
Beyond that the Initiate must have become a Nirmānakāya.
Purity of mind is of greater importance than purity of body. If the Upādhi e not perfectly pure, it cannot preserve recollections coming from a igher state. An act may be performed to which little or no attention is aid, and it is of comparatively small importance. But if thought of, welt on in the mind, the effect is a thousand times greater. The thoughts ust be kept pure.
Remember that Kāma, while having bad passions and emotions, helps you to volve by giving also the desire and impulse necessary for rising.
The flesh, the body, the human being in his material part, is, on this lane, the most difficult thing to subject. The highest Adept, put into a ew body, has to struggle against it and subdue it, and finds its ubjugation difficult.
The Liver is the General, the Spleen is the Aide-de-Camp. All that the
Liver does not accomplish is taken up and completed by the Spleen.
H. P. B. was asked whether each person must pass through the fourteen tates, and answered that the Lokas and Talas represented planes on this arth, through some of which all must pass, and through all of which the isciple must pass, on his way to Adeptship. Everyone passes through the ower Lokas, but not necessarily through the corresponding Talas. There re two poles in everything: seven states in every state.
Vitala represents a sublime as well as an infernal state. That state which or the mortal is a complete separation of the Ego from the personality is or a Buddha a mere temporary separation. For the Buddha it is a Kosmic tate.
The Brāhmans and Buddhists regard the Talas as hells, but in reality the erm is figurative. We are in hell whenever we are in misery, suffer isfortune and so on.
Forms In The Astral Light.
The Elementals in the Astral light are reflections. Everything on earth is eflected there. It is from these that photographs are sometimes obtained hrough mediums. The mediums unconsciously produce them as forms. The
Adepts produce them consciously through Kriyāshakti, bringing them down by process that may be compared to the focussing of rays of light by a urning glass.
States Of Consciousness.
Bhūrloka is the waking state in which we normally live; it is the state in hich animals also are, when they sense food, a danger, etc. To be in
Svarloka is to be completely abstracted on this plane, leaving only nstinct to work, so that on the material plane you would behave as an nimal. Yogīs are known who have become crystallized in this state, and hen they must be nourished by others. A Yogī near Allahabad had been for ifty-three years sitting on a stone; his Chelās plunge him into the river very night and then replace him. During the day his consciousness returns o Bhūrloka, and he talks and teaches. A Yogī was found on an island near
Calcutta round whose limbs the roots of trees had grown. He was cut out, nd in the endeavour to awaken him so many outrages were inflicted on him hat he died.
_Q. Is it possible to be in more than one state of consciousness at once?_
_A._ The consciousness cannot be entirely on two planes at once. The igher and lower states are not wholly incompatible, but if you are on the igher you will wool-gather on the lower. In order to remember the higher tate on returning to the lower, the memory must be carried upwards to the igher. An Adept may apparently enjoy a dual consciousness; when he esires not to see he can abstract himself: he may be in a higher state nd yet return answers to questions addressed to him. But in this case he ill momentarily return to the material plane, shooting up again to the igher plane. This is his only salvation in adverse conditions.
The lower you go in the Talas the more intellectual you become and the ess spiritual. You may be a morally good man but not spiritual. Intellect ay remain very closely related to Kāma. A man may be in a Loka and visit ne and all the Talas, his condition depending on the Loka to which he elongs. Thus a man in Bhūrloka only may pass into the Talas and go to the evil. If he dwells in Bhuvarloka he cannot become as bad. If he has eached the Satya state he can go into any Tala without danger; buoyed up y his own purity he can never be engulfed. The Talas are brain intellect tates, while the Lokas--or more accurately the three higher--are spiritual.
Manas absorbs the light of Buddhi. Buddhi is Arūpa, and can absorb othing. When the Ego takes all the light of Buddhi, it takes that of
Ātmā, Buddhi being the vehicle, and thus the three become one. This done, he _full_ Adept is one spiritually, but has a body. The fourfold Path is inished and he is one. The Masters' bodies are, as far as they are oncerned, illusionary, and hence do not grow old, become wrinkled, etc.
The student, who is not naturally psychic, should fix the fourfold onsciousness in a higher plane and nail it there. Let him make a bundle f the four lower and pin them to a higher state. He should centre on this igher, trying not to permit the body and intellect to draw him down and arry him away. Play ducks and drakes with the body, eating, drinking and leeping, but living always on the ideal.
Mother-Love.
Mother-love is an instinct, the same in the human being and in the animal, nd often stronger in the latter. The continuance of this love in human eings is due to association, to blood magnetism and to psychic affinity.
Families are sometimes formed of those who have lived together before, but ften not. The causes at work are very complex and have to be balanced.
Sometimes when a child with very bad Karma is to be born, parents of a allous type are chosen, or they may die before the Karmic results appear.
Or the suffering through the child may be their own Karma. Mother-love as n instinct is between Rasātala and Talātala.
The Lipikas keep man's Karmic record, and impress it on the Astral Light.
Vacillating people pass from one state of consciousness to another.
Thought arises before desire. The thought acts on the brain, the brain on he organ, and then desire awakes. It is not the outer stimulus that rouses the organ. Thought therefore must be slain ere desire can be xtinguished. The student must guard his thoughts. Five minutes' thought ay undo the work of five years; and though the five years' work will be un through more rapidly the second time, yet time is lost.
Consciousness.
H. P. B. began by challenging the views of consciousness in the West, ommenting on the lack of definition in the leading Philosophies. No istinction was made between consciousness and self-consciousness, and yet n this lay the difference between man and the animal. The animal was onscious only, not self-conscious; the animal does not know the Ego as
Subject, as does man. There is therefore an enormous difference between he consciousness of the bird, the insect, the beast, and that of man.
But the full consciousness of man is self-consciousness--that which makes s say, "_I_ do that." If there is pleasure it must be traced to some one xperiencing it. Now the difference between the consciousness of man and f animals is that while there is a Self in the animal, the animal is not onscious of the Self. Spencer reasons on consciousness, but when he comes o a gap he merely jumps over it. So again Hume, when he says that on ntrospection he sees merely feelings and can never find any "I," forgets hat without an "I" no seeing of feelings would be possible. What is it hat studies the feelings? The animal is not conscious of the feeling "I m I." It has instinct, but instinct is not self-consciousness. Self- onsciousness is an attribute of the mind, not of the soul, the _anima_, hence the very name _animal_ is taken. Humanity had no self-consciousness ntil the coming of the Mānasaputras in the Third Race. Consciousness, rain-consciousness, is the field of the light of the Ego, of the Auric
Egg, of the Higher Manas. The cells of the leg are conscious, but they are he slaves of the idea; they are not self-conscious, they cannot originate n idea, although when they are tired they can convey to the brain an neasy sensation, and so give rise to the idea of fatigue. Instinct is the ower state of consciousness. Man has consciousness running through the our lower keys of his septenary consciousness; there are seven scales of onsciousness in his consciousness, which is none the less essentially and re-eminently one, a unit. There are millions and millions of states of onsciousness, as there are millions and millions of leaves; but as you annot find two leaves alike, so you cannot find two states of onsciousness alike; a state is never exactly repeated.
Is memory a thing born in us that it can give birth to the Ego? Knowledge, eeling, volition, are colleagues of the mind, not faculties of it. Memory s an artificial thing, an adjunct of relativeness; it can be sharpened or eft dull, and it depends on the condition of the brain-cells which store ll impressions; knowledge, feeling, volition, cannot be correlated, do hat you will. They are not produced from each other, nor produced from ind, but are principles, colleagues. You cannot have knowledge without emory, for memory stores all things, garnishing and furnishing. If you each a child nothing, it will know nothing. Brain-consciousness depends n the intensity of the light shed by the Higher Manas on the Lower, and he extent of affinity between the brain and this light. Brain-mind is onditioned by the responsiveness of the brain to this light; it is the ield of consciousness of the Manas. The animal has the Monad and the
Manas latent, but its brain cannot respond. All potentialities are there, ut are dormant. There are certain accepted errors in the West which itiate all their theories.
How many impressions can a man receive simultaneously into his onsciousness and record? The Westerns say one: Occultists say normally even, and abnormally fourteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one, up to orty-nine, impressions can be simultaneously received. Occultism teaches hat the consciousness always receives a sevenfold impression and stores t in the memory. You can prove it by striking at once the seven notes of he musical scale: the seven sounds reach the consciousness imultaneously, but the untrained ear can only recognize them one after nother, and if you choose you can measure the intervals. The trained ear ill hear the seven notes at once, simultaneously. And experiment has hown that in two or three weeks a man may be trained to receive seventeen r eighteen impressions of colour, the intervals decreasing with practice.
Memory is acquired for this life, and can be expanded. Genius is the reatest responsiveness of the brain and brain-memory to the Higher Manas.
Impressions on any sense are stored in the memory.
Before a physical sense is developed there is a mental feeling which roceeds to become a physical sense. Fishes who are blind, living in the eep sea, or subterranean waters, if they are put into a pond will in a ew generations develop eyes. But in their previous state there is a sense f seeing, though no physical sight; how else should they in the darkness ind their way, avoid dangers, etc.? The mind will take in and store all inds of things mechanically and unconsciously, and will throw them into he memory as unconscious perceptions. If the attention is greatly ngrossed in any way, the sense perception of any injury is not felt at he time, but later the suffering enters into consciousness. So, returning o our example of the seven notes struck simultaneously, we have one mpression, but the ear is affected in succession by the notes one after nother, so that they are stored in the brain-mind in order, for the ntrained consciousness cannot register them simultaneously. All depends n training and on attention. Thus the transference of a sensation passing rom any organ to the consciousness is almost simultaneous if your ttention is fixed on it, but if any noise distracts your attention, then t will take a fraction more of a second before it reaches your onsciousness. The Occultist should train himself to receive and transmit long the line of the seven scales of his consciousness every impression, r impressions, simultaneously. He who reduces the intervals of physical ime the most has made the most progress.
Consciousness, Its Seven Scales.
There are seven scales or shades of consciousness, of the Unit; _e.g._, in moment of pleasure or pain; four lower and three higher.
1. Physical sense-perception: Perception of the cell (if paralyzed, the ense is there, though _you_ do not feel it).
2. Self-perception or apperception: _I.e._, self-perception of cell.
3. Psychic apperception: Of astral double, döppelganger, carrying it igher to the:
4. Vital perception: Physical feeling, sensations of pleasure and pain, of uality.
These are the four lower scales, and belong to the psycho-physiological an.
5. Mānasic discernment of the Mānasic self-perception. Lower Manas:
6. Will perception: Volitional perception, the voluntary taking in of an dea; you can regard or disregard physical pain.
7. Spiritual, entirely conscious apperception: Because it reaches the
Higher, self-conscious Manas.
[Apperception means self-perception, conscious action, not as with
Leibnitz, but when attention is fixed on the perception.]
You can take these on any planes: _e.g._, bad news passes through the four ower stages before coming to the heart.
Or take Sound:
1. It strikes the ear.
2. Self-perception of the ear.
3. On the psychic or mental, which carries it to
4. Vital (harsh, soft; strong, weak; etc.).
The Ego.
One of the best proofs that there is an Ego, a true Field of
Consciousness, is the fact already mentioned, that a state of onsciousness is never exactly reproduced, though you should live a undred years, and pass through milliards and milliards. In an active day, ow many states and substates there are; it would be impossible to have ells enough for all. This will help you to understand why some mental tates and abstract things follow the Ego into Devachan, and why others erely scatter in space. That which touches the Entity has an affinity for t, as a noble action, is immortal and goes with it into Devachan, forming art and parcel of the biography of the personality which is isintegrating. A lofty emotion runs through the seven stages, and touches he Ego, the mind that plays its tunes in the mind-cells. We can analyze he work of consciousness and describe it; but we cannot define onsciousness unless we postulate a Subject.
Bhūrloka.
The Bhūrloka begins with the Lower Manas. Animals do not feel as do men.
The dog thinks more of his master being angry than of the actual pain of he lash. The animal does not suffer in memory and in imagination, feeling ast and future as well as actual present pain.
Pineal Gland.
The special physical organ of perception is the brain, and perception is ocated in the aura of the pineal gland. This aura answers in vibrations o any impressions, but it can only be sensed, not perceived, in the iving man. During the process of thought manifesting in consciousness, a onstant vibration occurs in the light of this aura, and a clairvoyant ooking at the brain of a living man may almost count, see with the piritual eye, the seven scales, the seven shades of light, passing from he dullest to the brightest. You touch your hand; before you touch it the ibration is already in the aura of the pineal gland, and has its own hade of colour. It is this aura which causes the wear and tear of the rgan, by the vibrations it sets up. The brain, set vibrating, conveys the ibrations to the spinal cord, and so to the rest of the body. Happiness s well as sorrow sets up these strong vibrations, and so wears out the ody. Powerful vibrations of joy or sorrow may thus kill.
The Heart.
The septenary disturbance and play of light around the pineal gland are eflected in the heart, or rather the aura of the heart, which vibrates nd illumines the seven brains of the heart, just as does the aura round he pineal gland. This is the exoterically four- but Esoterically seven- eaved lotus, the Saptaparna, the cave of Buddha, with its seven ompartments.
Astral And Ego.
There is a difference between the nature and the essence of the Astral
Body and the Ego. The Astral Body is molecular, however etherealized it ay be: the Ego is atomic, spiritual. The Atoms are spiritual, and are for ver invisible on this plane; molecules form around them, they remaining s the higher invisible principles of the molecules. The eyes are the most
Occult of our senses: close them and you pass to the mental plane. Stop ll the senses and you are entirely on another plane.
Individuality.
If twelve people are smoking together, the smoke of their cigarettes may ingle, but the molecules of the smoke from each have an affinity with ach other, and they remain distinct for ever and ever, no matter how the hole mass may interblend. So a drop of water, though it fall into the cean retains its individuality. It has become a drop with a life of its wn, like a man, and cannot be annihilated. Any group of people would ppear as a group in the Astral Light, but would not be permanent; but a roup meeting to study Occultism would cohere, and the impression would be ore permanent. The higher and the more spiritual the affinity, the more ermanent the cohesion.
Lower Manas.
The Lower Manas is an emanation from the Higher Manas, and is of the same ature as the Higher. This nature can make no impression on this plane, or receive any: an Archangel, having no experience, would be senseless on his plane, and could neither give nor receive impressions. So the Lower
Manas clothes itself with the essence of the Astral Light; this astral nvelope shuts it out from its Parent, except through the Antahkarana hich is its only salvation. Break this and you become an animal.
Kāma.
Kāma is life, it is the essence of the blood. When this leaves the blood he latter congeals. Prāna is universal on this plane; it is in us the ital principle, Prānic, rather than Prāna.
Self-Hood.
Qualities determine the properties of "Self-hood." As, for instance, two olves placed in the same environment would probably not act differently.
The field of the consciousness of the Higher Ego is never reflected in the
Astral Light. The Auric Envelope receives the impressions of both the
Higher and the Lower Manas, and it is the latter impressions that are also eflected in the Astral Light. Whereas the essence of all things piritual, all that which reaches, or is not rejected by, the Higher Ego s not reflected in the Astral Light, because it is on too low a plane.
But during the life of a man, this essence, with a view to Karmic ends, is mpressed on the Auric Envelope, and after death and the separation of the
Principles is united with the Universal Mind (that is to say, those
"impressions" which are superior to even the Devachanic Plane), to await here Karmically until the day when the Ego is to be reincarnated. [There re thus three sets of impressions, which we may call the Kāmic,
Devachanic and Mānasic.] For the entities, no matter how high, must have heir Karmic rewards and punishments on earth. These spiritual impressions re made more or less on the brain, otherwise the Lower Ego would not be esponsible. There are some impressions, however, received through the rain, which are not of our previous experience. In the case of the Adept he brain is trained to retain these impressions.
The Reincarnating Ray may, for convenience, be separated into two aspects: he lower Kāmic Ego is scattered in Kāma Loka; the Mānasic part ccomplishes its cycle and returns to the Higher Ego. It is, in reality, his Higher Ego which is, so to speak, punished, which suffers. This is he true crucifixion of the Christos--the most abstruse but yet the most mportant mystery of Occultism; all the cycle of our lives hangs on it. It s indeed the Higher Ego that is the sufferer; for remember that the bstract consciousness of the higher personal consciousness will remain mpressed on the Ego, since it must be part and parcel of its eternity.
All our grandest impressions are impressed on the Higher Ego, because they re of the same nature as itself.
Patriotism and great actions in national service are not altogether good, rom the point of view of the highest. To benefit a portion of humanity is ood; but to do so at the expense of the rest is bad. Therefore, in atriotism, etc., the venom is present with the good. For though the inner ssence of the Higher Ego is unsoilable, the outer garment may be soiled.
Thus both the bad and the good of such thoughts and actions are impressed n the Auric Envelope and the Karma of the bad is taken up by the Higher
Ego, though it is perfectly guiltless of it. Thus both sets of mpressions, after death, scatter in the Universal Mind, and at eincarnation the Ego sends out a Ray which is itself, into a new ersonality, and there suffers. It suffers in the Self-consciousness that t has created by its own accumulated experiences.
Every one of our Egos has the Karma of past Manvantaras behind. There are even Hierarchies of Egos, some of which, _e.g._, in inferior tribes, may e said to be only just beginning the present cycle. The Ego starts with
Divine Consciousness; no past, no future, no separation. It is long before ealizing that it is itself. Only after many births does it begin to iscern, by this collectivity of experience, that it is individual. At the nd of its cycle of reincarnation it is still the same Divine
Consciousness, but it has now become individualized Self-consciousness.
The feeling of responsibility is inspired by the presence of the Light of he Higher Ego. As the Ego in its cycle of re-birth becomes more and more ndividualized, it learns more and more by suffering to recognize its own esponsibility, by which it finally gains Self-consciousness, the onsciousness of all the Egos of the whole Universe. Absolute Being, to ave the idea or sensation of all this, must pass through all experience ndividually, not universally, so that when it returns it should be of the ame omniscience as the Universal Mind _plus_ the memory of all that it as passed through.
At the Day "Be with us" every Ego has to remember all the cycles of its ast reincarnations for Manvantaras. The Ego comes in contact with this arth, all seven Principles become one, it sees all that it has done herein. It sees the stream of its past reincarnations by a certain divine ight. It sees all humanity at once, but still there is ever, as it were, stream which is always the "I."
We should therefore always endeavour to accentuate our responsibility.
The Higher Ego is, as it were, a globe of pure divine light, a Unit from a igher plane, on which is no differentiation. Descending to a plane of ifferentiation it emanates a Ray, which it can only manifest through the ersonality which is already differentiated. A portion of this Ray, the
Lower Manas, during life, may so crystallize itself and become one with
Kāma that it will remain assimilated with Matter. That portion which etains its purity forms Antahkarana. The whole fate of an incarnation epends on whether Antahkarana will be able to restrain the Kāma-Manas or ot. After death the higher light (Antahkarana) which bears the mpressions and memory of all good and noble aspirations, assimilates tself with the Higher Ego, the bad is dissociated in space, and comes ack as bad Karma awaiting the personality.
The feeling of responsibility is the beginning of Wisdom, a proof that
Ahankāra is beginning to fade out, the beginning of losing the sense of eparateness.
Kāma Rūpa.
The Kāma Rūpa eventually breaks up and goes into animals. All red-blooded nimals come from man. The cold-blooded are from the matter of the past.
The blood is the Kāma Rūpa.
The white corpuscles are the scavengers, "devourers"; they are oozed out f the Astral through the spleen, and are of the same essence as the
Astral. They are the sweat-born of the Chhāyā. Kāma is everywhere in the ody. The red cells are drops of electrical fluid, the perspiration of all he organs oozed out from every cell. They are the progeny of the Fohatic
Principle.
Heart.
There are seven brains in the heart, the Upādhis and symbols of the seven
Hierarchies.
The Fires.
The fires are always playing round the pineal gland, but when Kundalinī lluminates them for a brief instant the whole universe is seen. Even in eep sleep the Third Eye opens. This is good for Manas, who profits by it, hough we ourselves do not remember.
Perception.
In answer to a question on the seven stages of perception, H. P. B. said hat thought should be centred on the highest, the seventh, and then an ttempt to transcend this will prove that it is impossible to go beyond it n this plane. There is nothing in the brain to carry the thinker on, and f thought is to rise yet further it must be thought without a brain. Let he eyes be closed, the will set not to let the brain work, and then the oint may be transcended and the student will pass to the next plane. All he seven stages of perception come before Antahkarana; if you can pass eyond them you are on the Mānasic Plane.
Try to imagine something which transcends your power of thought, say, the ature of the Dhyān Chohans. Then make the brain passive, and pass beyond; ou will see a white radiant light, like silver, but opalescent as mother f pearl; then waves of colour will pass over it, beginning in the enderest violet, and through bronze shades of green to indigo with etallic lustre, and that colour will remain. If you see this you are on nother plane. You should pass through seven stages.
When a colour comes, glance at it, and if it is not good reject it. Let our attention be arrested only on the green, indigo and yellow. These are ood colours. The eyes being connected with the brain, the colour you see ost easily will be the colour of the personality. If you see red, it is erely physiological, and is to be disregarded. Green-bronze is the Lower
Manas, yellow-bronze the Antahkarana, indigo-bronze is Manas. These are to e observed, and when the yellow-bronze merges into the indigo you are on he Mānasic Plane.
On the Mānasic Plane you see the Noumena, the essence of phenomena. You do ot see people or other consciousnesses, but have enough to do to keep our own. The trained Seer can see Noumena always. The Adept sees the
Noumena on this plane, the reality of things, so cannot be deceived.
In meditation the beginner may waver backwards and forwards between two lanes. You hear the ticking of a clock on this plane, then on the stral--the soul of the ticking. When clocks are stopped here the ticking oes on on higher planes, in the astral, and then in the ether, until the ast bit of the clock is gone. It is the same as with a dead body, which ends out emanations until the last molecule is disintegrated.
There is no time in meditation, because there is no succession of states f consciousness on this plane.
Violet is the colour of the Astral. You begin with it, but should not stay n it; try to pass on. When you see a sheet of violet, you are beginning nconsciously to form a Māyāvi Rūpa. Fix your attention, and if you go way keep your consciousness firmly to the Māyāvic Body; do not lose sight f it, hold on like grim death.
Consciousness.
The consciousness which is merely the animal consciousness is made up of he consciousness of all the cells in the body except those of the heart.
The heart is the king, the most important organ in the body of man. Even f the head be severed from the body, the heart will continue to beat for hirty minutes. It will beat for some hours if wrapped in cotton wool and ut in a warm place. The spot in the heart which is the last of all to die s the seat of life, the centre of all, Brahmā, the first spot that lives n the foetus and the last that dies. When a Yogī is buried in a trance it s this spot that lives, though the rest of the body be dead, and as long s this is alive the Yogī can be resurrected. This spot contains otentially mind, life, energy, and will. During life it radiates rismatic colours, fiery and opalescent. The heart is the centre of piritual consciousness, as the brain is the centre of intellectual. But his consciousness cannot be guided by a person, nor its energy directed y him until he is at one with Buddhi-Manas; until then it guides him--if t can. Hence the pangs of remorse, the prickings of conscience; they come rom the heart, not the head. In the heart is the only manifested God, the ther two are invisible, and it is this which represents the Triad,
Ātmā-Buddhi-Manas.
In reply to a question whether the consciousness might not be concentrated n the heart, and so the promptings of the Spirit caught, H. P. B. said hat any one who could thus concentrate would be at one with Manas, would ave united Kāma-Manas to the Higher Manas. The Higher Manas could not irectly guide man, it could only act through the Lower Manas.
There are three principal centres in man, Heart, Head, and Navel: any two f which may be + or - to each other, according to the relative redominance of the centres.
The heart represents the Higher Triad; the liver and spleen represent the
Quaternary. The solar plexus is the brain of the stomach.
H. P. B. was asked if the three centres above-named would represent the
Christos, crucified between two thieves; she said it might serve as an nalogy, but these figures must not be over-driven. It must never be orgotten that the Lower Manas is the same in its essence as the Higher, nd may become one with it by rejecting Kāmic impulses. The crucifixion of he Christos represents the self-sacrifice of the Higher Manas, the Father hat sends his only begotten Son into the world to take upon him our sins: he Christ-myth came from the Mysteries. So also did the life of
Apollonius of Tyana; this was suppressed by the Fathers of the Church ecause of its striking similarity to the life of Christ.
The psycho-intellectual man is all in the head with its seven gateways; he spiritual man is in the heart. The convolutions are formed by thought.
The third ventricle in life is filled with light, and not with a liquid as fter death.
There are seven cavities in the brain which are quite empty during life, nd it is in these that visions must be reflected if they are to remain in he memory. These centres are, in Occultism, called the seven harmonies, he scale of the divine harmonies. They are filled with Ākāsha, each with ts own colour, according to the state of consciousness in which you are.
The sixth is the pineal gland, which is hollow and empty during life; the eventh is the whole; the fifth is the third ventricle; the fourth the ituitary body. When Manas is united to Ātmā-Buddhi, or when Ātmā-Buddhi s centred in Manas, it acts in the three higher cavities, radiating, ending forth a halo of light, and this is visible in the case of a very oly person.
The cerebellum is the centre, the storehouse, of all the forces; it is the
Kāma of the head. The pineal gland corresponds to the uterus; its eduncles to the Fallopian tubes. The pituitary body is only its servant, ts torch-bearer, like the servants bearing lights that used to run before he carriage of a princess. Man is thus androgyne so far as his head is oncerned.
Man contains in himself every element that is found in the Universe. There s nothing in the Macrocosm that is not in the Microcosm. The pineal land, as was said, is quite empty during life; the pituitary contains arious essences. The granules in the pineal gland are precipitated after eath within the cavity.
The cerebellum furnishes the materials for ideation; the frontal lobes of he cerebrum are the finishers and polishers of the materials, but they annot create of themselves.
Clairvoyant perception is the consciousness of touch: thus reading etters, psychometrizing substances, etc., may be done at the pit of the tomach. Every sense has its consciousness, and you can have consciousness hrough every sense. There may be consciousness on the plane of sight, hough the brain be paralyzed; the eyes of a paralyzed person will show error. So with the sense of hearing. Those who are physically blind, deaf r dumb, are still possessed of the psychic counterparts of these senses.
Will And Desire.
Eros in man is the will of the genius to create great pictures, great usic, things that will live and serve the race. It has nothing in common ith the animal desire to create. Will is of the Higher Manas. It is the niversal harmonious tendency acting by the Higher Manas. Desire is the utcome of separateness, aiming at the satisfaction of Self in Matter. The ath opened between the Higher Ego and the Lower enables the Ego to act on he personal self.
Conversion.
It is not true that a man powerful in evil can suddenly be converted and ecome as powerful for good. His vehicle is too defiled, and he can at est but neutralize the evil, balancing up the bad Karmic causes he has et in motion, at any rate for this incarnation. You cannot take a herring arrel and use it for attar of roses: the wood is too soaked through with he drippings. When evil impulses and tendencies have become impressed on he physical nature, they cannot at once be reversed. The molecules of the ody have been set in a Kāmic direction, and though they have sufficient ntelligence to discern between things on their own plane, _i.e._, to void things harmful to themselves, they cannot understand a change of irection, the impulse to which is from another plane. If they are forced oo violently, disease, madness or death will result.
Origines.
Absolute eternal motion, Parabrahman, which is nothing and everything, otion inconceivably rapid, in this motion throws off a film, which is
Energy, Eros. It thus transforms itself to Mūlaprakriti, primordial
Substance which is still Energy. This Energy, still transforming itself in ts ceaseless and inconceivable motion, becomes the Atom, or rather the erm of the Atom, and then it is on the Third Plane.
Our Manas is a Ray from the World-Soul and is withdrawn at Pralaya; "it is erhaps the Lower Manas of Parabrahman," that is, of the Parabrahman of he manifested Universe. The first film is Energy, or motion on the anifested plane; Alaya is the Third Logos, Mahā-Buddhi, Mahat. We always egin on the Third Plane; beyond that all is inconceivable. Ātmā is ocussed in Buddhi, but is embodied only in Manas, these being the Spirit,
Soul and Body of the Universe.
Dreams.
We may have evil experiences in dreams as well as good. We should, herefore, train ourselves so as to awaken directly we tend to do wrong.
The Lower Manas is asleep in sense-dreams, the animal consciousness being hen guided towards the Astral Light by Kāma; the tendency of such sense- reams is always towards the animal.
If we could remember our dreams in deep sleep, then we should be able to emember all our past incarnations.
Nidānas.
There are twelve Nidānas, exoteric and Esoteric, the fundamental doctrine f Buddhism.
So also there are twelve exoteric Buddhist Sūttas called Nidānas, each iving one Nidāna.
The Nidānas have a dual meaning. They are:
(1) The twelve causes of sentient existence, through the twelve links of ubjective with objective Nature, or between the subjective and objective
Natures.
(2) A concatenation of causes and effects.
Every cause produces an effect, and this effect becomes in its turn a ause. Each of these has as Upādhi (basis), one of the sub-divisions of ne of the Nidānas, and also an effect or consequence.
Both bases and effects belong to one or another Nidāna, each having from hree to seventeen, eighteen and twenty-one sub-divisions.
The names of the twelve Nidānas are:
(1) Jarāmarana.
(2) Jāti.
(3) Bhava.
(4) Upādāna.
(5) Trishnā.
(6) Vedanā.
(7) Sparsha.
(8) Chadayātana.
(9) Nāmarūpa.
(10) Vignāna.
(11) Samskāra.
(12) Avidyā.(859)
(1) JARĀMARANA, lit. death in consequence of decrepitude. Notice that eath and not life comes as the first of the Nidānas. This is the first undamental in Buddhist Philosophy; every Atom, at every moment, as soon s it is born begins dying.
The five Skandhas are founded on it; they are its effects or product.
Moreover, in its turn, it is based on the five Skandhas. They are mutual hings, one gives to the other.
(2) JĀTI, lit. Birth.
That is to say, Birth according to one of the four modes of Chaturyoni
(the four wombs), _viz._:
(i) Through the womb, like Mammalia.
(ii) Through Eggs.
(iii) Ethereal or liquid Germs--fish spawn, pollen, insects, etc.
(iv) Anupādaka--Nirmānakāyas, Gods, etc.
That is to say that birth takes place by one of these modes. You must be orn in one of the six objective modes of existence, or in the seventh hich is subjective. These four are within six modes of existence, _viz._:
_Exoterically_:--
(i) Devas; (ii) Men; (iii) Asuras; (iv) Men in Hell; (v) Pretas, devouring emons on earth; (vi) animals.
_Esoterically_:--
(i) Higher Gods; (ii) Devas or Pitris (all classes); (iii) Nirmānakāyas;
(iv) Bodhisattvas; (v) Men in Myalba; (vi) Kāma Rūpic existences, whether f men or animals, in Kāma Loka or the Astral Light; (vii) Elementals
(Subjective Existences).
(3) BHAVA = Karmic existence, not life existence, but as a moral agent hich determines _where_ you will be born, _i.e._, in which of the
Triloka, Bhūr, Bhuvar or Svar (seven Lokas in reality).
The cause or Nidāna of Bhava is Upādāna, that is, the clinging to xistence, that which makes us desire life in whatever form.
Its effect is Jāti in one or another of the Triloka and under whatever onditions.
Nidānas are the detailed expression of the law of Karma under twelve spects; or we might say the law of Karma under twelve Nidānic aspects.
Skandhas.
Skandhas are the germs of life on all the seven planes of Being, and make p the totality of the subjective and objective man. Every vibration we ave made is a Skandha. The Skandhas are closely united to the pictures in he Astral Light, which is the medium of impressions, and the Skandhas, or ibrations, connected with subjective or objective man, are the links hich attract the Reincarnating Ego, the germs left behind when it went nto Devachan which have to be picked up again and exhausted by a new ersonality. The exoteric Skandhas have to do with the physical atoms and ibrations, or objective man; the Esoteric with the internal and ubjective man.
A mental change, or a glimpse of spiritual truth, may make a man suddenly hange to the truth even at his death, thus creating good Skandhas for the ext life. The last acts or thoughts of a man have an enormous effect upon is future life, but he would still have to suffer for his misdeeds, and his is the basis of the idea of a death-bed repentance. But the Karmic ffects of the past life must follow, for the man in his next birth must ick up the Skandhas or vibratory impressions that he left in the Astral
Light, since nothing comes from nothing in Occultism, and there must be a ink between the lives. New Skandhas are born from their old parents.
It is wrong to speak of Tanhās in the plural; there is only one Tanhā,
_the desire to live_. This develops into a multitude or one might say a ongeries of ideas. The Skandhas are Karmic and non-Karmic. Skandhas may roduce Elementals by unconscious Kriyāshakti. Every Elemental that is hrown out by man must return to him sooner or later, since it is his own ibration. They thus become his Frankenstein. Elementals are simply ffects producing effects. They are disembodied thoughts, good and bad.
They remain crystallized in the Astral Light and are attracted by affinity nd galvanized back into life again, when their originator returns to arth-life. You can paralyze them by reverse effects. Elementals are aught like a disease and hence are dangerous to ourselves and to others.
This is why it is dangerous to influence others. The Elementals which live fter your death are those which you implant in others: the rest remain atent till you are reincarnated, when they come to life in you. "Thus,"
H. P. B. said, "if you are badly taught by me or incited thereby to do omething wrong, you would go on after my death and sin through me, but I hould have to bear the Karma. Calvin, for instance, will have to suffer or all the wrong teaching he has given, though he gave it with good ntentions. The worst * * * * does is to arrest the progress of truth.
Even Buddha made mistakes. He applied his teaching to people who were not eady; and this has produced Nidānas."
Subtle Bodies.
When a man visits another in his Astral Body, it is the Linga Sharīra hich goes, but this cannot happen at any great distance. When a man
_thinks_ of another at a distance very intently, he sometimes appears to hat person.
In this case it is the Māyāvi Rūpa, which is created by unconscious
Kriyāshakti, and the man himself is not conscious of appearing. If he ere, and projected his Māyāvi Rūpa consciously, he would be an
Adept.(860) No two persons can be simultaneously conscious of one nother's presence, unless one be an Adept. Dugpas use the Māyāvi Rūpa and orcerers also. Dugpas work on the Linga Sharīra of other people.
The Linga Sharīra in the spleen is the perfect picture of the man, and is ood or bad, according to his own nature. The Astral Body is the ubjective image of the man which is to be, the first germ in the matrix, he model of the physical body in which the child is formed and developed.
The Linga Sharīra may be hurt by a sharp instrument, and would not face a word or bayonet, although it would easily pass through a table or other iece of furniture.
Nothing however can hurt the Māyāvi Rūpa or thought-body, since it is urely subjective. When swords are struck at shades, it is the sword tself, not its Linga Sharīra or Astral that cuts. Sharp instruments alone an penetrate Astrals, _e.g._, under water, a blow will not affect you, ut a cut will.
The projection of the Astral Body should not be attempted, but the power f Kriyāshakti should be exercised in the projection of the Māyāvi Rūpa.
Fire.
Fire is not an Element but a divine thing. The physical flame is the bjective vehicle of the highest Spirit. The Fire Elementals are the ighest. Everything in this world has its Aura and its Spirit. The flame ou apply to the candle has nothing to do with the candle itself. The Aura f the object comes into conjunction with the lowest part of the other.
Granite cannot burn because its Aura is Fire. Fire Elementals have no onsciousness on this plane, they are too high, reflecting the divinity of heir own source. Other Elementals have consciousness on this plane as hey reflect man and his nature. There is a very great difference between he mineral and vegetable kingdoms. The wick of the lamp, for instance, is egative. It is made positive by fire, the oil being the medium. Ęther is
Fire. The lowest part of Ęther is the flame which you see. Fire is
Divinity in its subjective presence throughout the universe. Under other onditions, this Universal Fire manifests as water, air and earth. It is he one Element in our visible Universe which is the Kriyāshakti of all orms of life. It is that which gives light, heat, death, life, etc. It is ven the blood. In all its various manifestations it is essentially _one_.
It is the "seven Cosmocratores."
Evidence of the esteem in which Fire was held are to be found in the _Old
Testament_. The Pillar of Fire, the Burning Bush, the Shining Face of
Moses--all Fire. Fire is like a looking-glass in its nature, and reflects he beams of the first order of subjective manifestations which are upposed to be thrown on to the screen of the first outlines of the reated universe; in their lower aspect these are the creations of Fire.
Fire in the grossest aspect of its essence is the first form and reflects he lower forms of the first subjective beings which are in the universe.
The first divine chaotic thoughts are the Fire Elementals. When on earth hey take form and come flitting in the flame in the form of the
Salamanders or lower Fire Elementals. In the air you have millions of iving and conscious beings, besides our thoughts which they catch up. The
Fire Elementals are related to the sense of sight and absorb the
Elementals of all the other senses. Thus through sight you can have the onsciousness of feeling, hearing, tasting, etc., since all are included n the sense of sight.
Hints On The Future.
As time passes on there will be more and more ether in the air. When ether ills the air, then will be born children without fathers. In Virginia here is an apple tree of a special kind. It does not blossom but bears ruit from a kind of berry without any seeds. This will gradually extend o animals and then to men. Women will bear children without impregnation, nd in the Seventh Round there will appear men who can reproduce hemselves. In the Seventh Race of the Fourth Round, men will change their kins every year and will have new toe and finger nails. People will ecome more psychic, then spiritual. Last of all in the Seventh Round,
Buddhas will be born without sin. The Fourth Round is the longest in the
Kali Yuga, then the Fifth, then the Sixth, and the Seventh Round will be ery short.
The Egos.
On the separation of the Principles at death the Higher Ego may be said to o to Devachan by reason of the experiences of the Lower. The Higher Ego n its own plane is the Kumāra.
The Lower Quaternary dissolves; the body rots, the Linga Sharīra fades ut.
At reincarnation the Higher Ego shoots out a Ray, the Lower Ego. Its nergies are upward and downward. The upward tendencies become its
Devachanic experiences; the lower are Kāmic. The Higher Manas stands to
Buddhi as the Lower Manas to the Higher.
As to the question of responsibility, it may be understood by an example.
If you take the form of Jack the Ripper, you must suffer for its misdeeds, or the law will punish the murderer and hold him responsible. You are the acrificial victim. In the same way the Higher Ego is the Christos, the acrificial victim for the Lower Manas. The Ego takes the responsibility f every body it informs.
You borrow some money to lend it to another; the other runs away, but it s you who are responsible. The mission of the Higher Ego is to shoot out Ray to be a Soul in a child.
Thus the Ego incarnates in a thousand bodies, taking upon itself the sins nd responsibilities of each body. At every incarnation a new Ray is mitted, and yet it is the same Ray in essence, the same in you and me and very one. The dross of the incarnation disintegrates, the good goes to
Devachan.
The Flame is eternal. From the Flame of the Higher Ego, the Lower is ighted, and from this a lower vehicle, and so on.
And yet the Lower Manas is such as it makes itself. It is possible for it o act differently in like conditions, for it has reason and self- onscious knowledge of right and wrong, and good and evil, given to it. It s in fact endowed with all the attributes of the Divine Soul. In this the
Ray is the Higher Manas, the speck of responsibility on earth.
The part of the essence is the essence, but while it is out of itself, so o say, it can get soiled and polluted. The Ray can be manifested on this arth because it can send forth its Māyāvi Rūpa. But the Higher cannot, so t has to send forth a Ray. We may look upon the Higher Ego as the Sun, nd the personal Manases as its Rays. If we take away the surrounding air nd light the Ray may be said to return to the Sun, so with the Lower
Manas and Lower Quaternary.
The Higher Ego can only manifest through its attributes.
In cases of sudden death, the Lower Manas no more disappears than does the
Kāma Rūpa after death. After the severance the Ray may be said to snap or e dropped. After death such a man cannot go to Devachan, nor yet remain n Kāma Loka; his fate is to reincarnate immediately. Such an entity is hen an animal Soul _plus_ the intelligence of the severed Ray. The anifestation of this intelligence in the next birth will depend entirely n the physical formation of the brain and on education.
Such a Soul may be re-united with its Higher Ego in the next birth, if the nvironment is such as to give it a chance of aspiration (this is the
"grace" of the Christians); or it may go on for two or three incarnations, he Ray becoming weaker and weaker, and gradually dissipating, until it is orn a congenital idiot and then finally dissipated in lower forms.
There are enormous mysteries connected with the Lower Manas.
With regard to some intellectual giants, they are in somewhat the same ondition as smaller men, for their Higher Ego is paralyzed, that is to ay, their spiritual nature is atrophied.
The Manas can pass its essence to several vehicles, _e.g._, the Māyāvi
Rūpa, etc., and even to Elementals which it can ensoul, as the
Rosicrucians taught.
The Māyāvi Rūpa may be sometimes so vitalized that it goes on to another lane and unites with the beings of that plane and so ensouls them.
People who bestow great affection upon animal pets are ensouling them to a ertain extent, and such animal Souls progress very rapidly; in return uch persons get back the animal vitality and magnetism. It is, however, gainst Nature to thus accentuate animal evolution, and on the whole is ad.
Monadic Evolution.
The Kumāras do not direct the evolution of the Lunar Pitris. To understand he latter, we might take the analogy of the blood.
The blood may be compared to the universal Life Principle, the corpuscles o the Monads. The different kinds of corpuscles are the same as the arious classes of Monads and various kingdoms, not, however, because of heir essence being different, but because of the environment in which hey are. The Chhāyā is the permanent seed, and Weissmann in his ereditary germ theory is very near truth.
H. P. B. was asked whether there was one Ego to one permanent Chhāyā seed, versouling it in a series of incarnations; her answer was: "No, it is
Heaven and Earth kissing each other."
The animal Souls are in temporary forms and shells in which they gain xperience, and in which they prepare materials for higher evolution.
Until the age of seven the astral atavic germ forms and moulds the body; fter that the body forms the Astral.
The Astral and the Mind mutually react on each other.
The meaning of the passage in the _Upanishads_, where it says that the
Gods feed on men, is that the Higher Ego obtains its earth experience hrough the Lower.
Astral Body.
The Astral can get out unconsciously to the person and wander about.
The Chhāyā is the same as the Astral Body.
The germ or life essence of it is in the spleen.
"The Chhāyā is coiled up in the spleen." It is from this that the Astral s formed; it evolves in a shadowy curling or gyrating essence like smoke, radually taking form as it grows. But it is not projected from the hysical, atom for atom. This latter intermolecular form is the Kāma Rūpa.
At death every cell and molecule gives out its essence, and from it is ormed the Astral of the Kāma Rūpa; but this can never come out during ife.
The Chhāyā in order to become visible draws upon the surrounding tmosphere, attracting the atoms to itself; the Linga Sharīra could not orm _in vacuo_. The fact of the Astral Body accounts for the Arabian and
Eastern tales of Djins and bottle imps, etc.
In spiritualistic phenomena, the resemblance to deceased persons is mostly aused by the imagination. The clothing of such phantoms is formed from he living atoms of the medium, and is no real clothing, and has nothing o do with the clothing of the medium. "All the clothing of a aterialization has been paid for."
The Astral supports life; it is the reservoir or sponge of life, gathering t up from all the natural kingdoms around, and is the intermediary etween the kingdoms of Prānic and physical life.
Life cannot come immediately from the subjective to the objective, for
Nature goes gradually through each sphere. Therefore the Linga Sharīra is he intermediary between Prāna and our physical body, and pumps in the ife.
The spleen is consequently a very delicate organ, but the physical spleen s only a cover for the real spleen.
Now Life is in reality Divinity, Parabrahman. But in order to manifest on he Physical Plane it must be assimilated; and as the purely physical is oo gross, it must have a medium, _viz._, the Astral. Astral matter is not omogeneous, and the Astral Light is nothing but the shadow of the real
Divine Light; it is however not molecular.
Those (Kāmarūpic) entities which are below the Devachanic Plane are in
Kāma Loka and only possess intelligence like monkeys. There are no ntities in the four lower kingdoms possessing intelligence which can ommunicate with men, but the Elementals have instincts like animals. It s, however, possible for the Sylphs (the Air Elementals, the wickedest hings in the world) to communicate, but they require to be propitiated.
Spooks (Kāmarūpic entities) can only give the information they see mmediately before them. They see things in the Aura of people, although he people may not be aware of them themselves.
Earth-bound spirits are Kāmalokic entities that have been so materialistic hat they cannot be dissolved for a long time. They have only a glimmering f consciousness and do not know why they are held, some sleep, some reserve a glimmering of consciousness and suffer torture.
In the case of people who have very little Devachan, the greater part of he consciousness remains in Kāma Loka, and may last far beyond the normal eriod of one hundred and fifty years and remain over until the next eincarnation of the Spirit. This then becomes the Dweller on the
Threshold and fights with the new Astral.
The acme of Kāma is the sexual instinct, _e.g._, idiots have such desires nd also food appetites, etc., and nothing else.
Devachan is a state on a plane of spiritual consciousness; Kāma Loka is a lace of physical consciousness. It is the shadow of the animal world and hat of instinctual feelings. When the consciousness thinks of spiritual hings, it is on a spiritual plane.
If one's thoughts are of nature, flowers, etc., then the consciousness is n the material plane.
But if thoughts are about eating, drinking, etc., and the passions, then he consciousness is in the Kāmalokic plane, which is the plane of animal nstincts pure and simple.
[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.]
FOOTNOTES
1 The majority of the Pandits know nothing of the Esoteric Philosophy
now, because they have lost the key to it; yet not one of these, if
honest, would deny that the _Upanishads_, and especially the
_Purānas_, are allegorical and symbolical; nor that there still
remain in India a few great scholars who could, if they would, give
them the key to such interpretations. Nor do they reject the actual
existence of Mahātmās--initiated Yogis and Adepts--even in this age of
Kali Yuga.
2 This assertion is clearly corroborated by Plato himself, who writes:
"You say that in my former discourse I have not sufficiently
explained to you the nature of the First. I purposely spoke
enigmatically, that in case the tablet should have happened with any
accident, either by sea or land, a person without some previous
knowledge of the subject might not be able to understand its
contents." (Plato, _Ep._, ii. 312; Cory, _Ancient Fragments_, p.
304.)
3 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 287, 288.
4 _The Dialogues of Plato_, translated by B. Jowett, Regius Professor
of Greek at the University of Oxford, iii. 523.
5 _Op. cit._, p. 561.
6 _Op. cit._, p. 591.
7 This definition places (unwittingly, of course), the ancient
"physical philosopher" many cubits higher than his modern "physical"
_confrčre_, since the _ultima thule_ of the latter is to lead
mankind to believe that neither universe nor man have any cause at
all--not an intelligent one at all events--and that they have sprung
into existence owing to blind chance and a senseless whirling of
atoms. Which of the two hypotheses is the more rational and logical
is left to the impartial reader to decide.
8 Italics are mine. Every tyro in Eastern Philosophy, every Kabalist,
will see the reason for such an association of persons with ideas,
numbers, and geometrical figures. For number, says Philolaus, "is
the dominant and self-produced bond of the eternal continuance of
things." Alone the modern Scholar remains blind to the grand truth.
9 Here again the ancient Philosopher seems to be ahead of the modern.
For he only "confuses ... first and final causes" (which confusion
is denied by those who know the spirit of ancient scholarship),
whereas his modern successor is confessedly and absolutely ignorant
of both. Mr. Tyndall shows Science "powerless" to solve a single one
of the final problems of Nature and "disciplined [read, modern
materialistic], imagination retiring in bewilderment from the
contemplation of the problems" of the world of matter. He even
doubts whether the men of present Science possess "the intellectual
elements which would enable them to grapple with the ultimate
structural energies of Nature." But for Plato and his disciples, the
lower types were but the concrete images of the higher abstract
ones; the immortal Soul has an arithmetical, as the body has a
geometrical, beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the
great universal Archęus (_Anima Mundi_), is self-moving, and from
the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the Macrocosm.
10 _Op. cit._, p. 523.
11 Nowhere are the Neoplatonists guilty of such an absurdity. The
learned Professor of Greek must have been thinking of two spurious
works attributed by Eusebius and St. Jerome to Ammonius Saccas, who
wrote nothing; or must have confused the Neoplatonists with Philo
Judęus. But then Philo lived over 130 years before the birth of the
founder of Neoplatonism. He belonged to the School of Aristobulus
the Jew, who lived under Ptolemy Philometer (150 years B.C.), and is
credited with having inaugurated the movement which tended to prove
that Plato and even the Peripatetic Philosophy were derived from the
"revealed" Mosaic Books. Valckenaer tries to show that the author of
the _Commentaries on the Books of Moses_, was not Aristobulus, the
sycophant of Ptolemy. But whatever he was, he was not a
Neoplatonist, but lived before, or during the days of Philo Judęus,
since the latter seems to know his works and follow his methods.
12 Only Clemens Alexandrinus, a Christian Neoplatonist and a very
fantastic writer.
13 The labour of reconciling the different systems of religion.
14 _New Platonism and Alchemy_, by Alex. Wilder, M.D. pp. 7, 4.
15 It is well-known that, though born of Christian parents, Ammonius
had renounced the tenets of the Church--Eusebius and Jerome
notwithstanding. Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, who had lived
with Ammonius for eleven years together, and who had no interest for
stating an untruth, positively declares that he had renounced
Christianity entirely. On the other hand, we know that Ammonius
believed in the bright Gods, Protectors, and that the Neoplatonic
Philosophy was as "pagan" as it was mystical. But Eusebius, the most
unscrupulous forger and falsifier of old texts, and St. Jerome, an
out-and-out fanatic, who had both an interest in denying the fact,
contradict Porphyry. We prefer to believe the latter, who has left
to posterity an unblemished name and a great reputation for honesty.
16 Two works are falsely attributed to Ammonius. One, now lost, called
_De Consensu Moysis et Jesu_, is mentioned by the same "trustworthy"
Eusebius, the Bishop of Cęsaręa, and the friend of the Christian
Emperor Constantine, who died, however, a heathen. All that is known
of this pseudo-work is that Jerome bestows great praise upon it
(_Vir. Illust._, § 55; and Euseb., _H. E._, vi. 19). The other
spurious production is called the _Diatesseron_ (or the "Harmony of
the Gospels"). This is partially extant. But then, again, it exists
only in the Latin version of Victor, Bishop of Capua (sixth
century), who attributed it himself to Tatian, and as wrongly,
probably, as later scholars attributed the _Diatesseron_ to
Ammonius. Therefore no great reliance can be placed upon it, nor on
its "esoteric" interpretation of the Gospels. Is it this work, we
wonder, which led Prof. Jowett to regard the Neo-platonic
interpretations as "absurdities"?
17 _Op. cit._, p. 7.
18 _Op. cit._, iii, 524.
19 "Imperfect knowledge" of what? That Plato was ignorant of many of
the modern "working hypotheses"--as ignorant as our immediate
posterity is sure to be of the said hypotheses when they in their
turn after exploding join the "great majority"--is perhaps a blessing
in disguise.
20 _Op. cit._, p. 524.
21 _Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme_, by M. J. Matter, Professor of
the Royal Academy of Strasburg, "It is in Pythagoras and Plato that
we find, in Greece, the first elements of [Oriental] Gnosticism," he
says. (Vol. i, pp. 48 and 50.)
22 _Asiat. Trans._, i, 579.
23 _New Platonism and Alchemy_, p. 4.
24 This fact and others may be found in Chinese Missionary Reports, and
in a work by Monseigneur Delaplace, a Bishop in China. _Annales de
la Propagation de la Foi._
25 The regions somewhere about Udyana and Kashmir, as the translator
and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule) believes (i. 175).
26 _Voyage des Pélerins Bouddhistes_, Vol. I.; _Histoire de la Vie de
Hiouen-Thsang_, etc., traduit du chinois en franēais, par Stanislas
Julien.
27 Lao-tse, the Chinese philosopher.
28 _The Book of Ser Marco Polo_, i. 318.
29 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 599-601, 603, 598.
30 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6.
31 The Rishis--the first group of seven in number--lived in days
preceding the Vedic period. They are now known as Sages and held in
reverence like demigods. But they may now be shown as something more
than merely mortal Philosophers. There are other groups of ten,
twelve and even twenty-one in number. Haug shows that they occupy in
the Brāhmanical religion a position answering to that of the twelve
sons of Jacob in the Jewish _Bible_. The Brāhmans claim to descend
directly from the Rishis.
32 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 90.
33 See Münter "On the most Ancient Religions of the North before Odin."
_Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France_, ii. 230.
34 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi. 6.
35 "The date of the hundreds of pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is
impossible to fix by any of the rules of modern science; Herodotus
informs us that each successive king erected one to commemorate his
reign, and serve as his sepulchre. But, Herodotus did not tell all,
although he knew that the real purpose of the pyramid was very
different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his
religious scruples, he 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." (_Isis Unveiled_, i. 518, 519.)
36 Diog. Laėrt., in "Democrit. Vit."
37 _Satyric_, ix. 3.
38 Pliny, _Hist. Nat._
39 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 512.
40 _Op. cit._, ii. 403.
41 This is precisely what some of them are preparing to do, and many a
"mysterious page" in sacred and profane history are touched on in
these pages. Whether or not their explanations will be accepted--is
another question.
42 _Ibid._
43 This is incorrectly expressed. The true Adept of the "Right Hand"
never punishes anyone, not even his bitterest and most dangerous
enemy; he simply leaves the latter to his Karma, and Karma never
fails to do so, sooner or later.
44 _Op. cit._, ii. 239, 241, 240.
45 See, in this connection, _Pneumatologie des Esprits_, by the Marquis
de Mirville, who devotes six enormous volumes to show the absurdity
of those who deny the reality of Satan and Magic, or the Occult
Sciences--the two being with him synonymous.
46 We think we see the sidereal phantom of the old Philosopher and
Mystic--once of Cambridge University--Henry More, moving about in the
astral mist over the old moss-covered roofs of the ancient town in
which he wrote his famous letter to Glanvil about "witches." The
"soul" seems restless and indignant, as on that day of May, 1678,
when the doctor complained so bitterly to the author of _Sadducismus
Triumphatus_ of Scot, Adie and Webster. "Our new inspired saints,"
the soul is heard to mutter, "sworn advocates of the witches ... who
against all sense and reason ... will have no Samuel but a
confederate knave ... these in-blown buffoons, puffed up with ...
ignorance, vanity and stupid infidelity!" (See "Letter to Glanvil,"
and _Isis Unveiled_, i. 205, 206.)
47 _Études Religieuses._
48 _Études Historiques._
49 _Mémoire_ read at the Académie des Inscriptions des Belles Lettres,
in 1859.
50 See Alfred Maury's _Histoire des Religions de la Grčce_, i. 248; and
the speculations of Holzmann in _Zeitschrift für Vergleichende
Sprach forschung_, ann. 1852, p. 487, _sq._
51 Creuzer's _Introduction des Mystčres_, iii. 456.
52 The later Nabathęans adhered to the same belief as the Nazarenes and
the Sabęans, honoured John the Baptist, and used Baptism. (See _Isis
Unveiled_, ii. 127; Munck, _Palestine_, p. 525; Dunlap, _Sod, the
Son of Man_, etc.)
53 i. 535.
54 By Hargrave Jennings.
55 See De Mirville's _Pneumatologie_, iii. 267 _et seq._
56 Psellus, 4: in Cory's _Ancient Fragments_, 269.
57 _Isis Unveiled_, i, 535, 536.
58 The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians, mentioned by Clement of
Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the
Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest
Abammon, attributes 1,200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho
36,000. But the testimony of Iamblichus as a Neoplatonist and
Theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is
held by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a "purely historical
personage," with whom "none of the later native historians can be
compared" (see _Égypte_, i. 97), suddenly becomes a Pseudo-Manetho,
as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific
prejudices against Magic and the Occult knowledge claimed by the
ancient priests. However, none of the Archęologists doubt for a
moment the almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books.
Champollion shows the greatest regard for their authenticity and
truthfulness, corroborated as it is by many of the oldest monuments.
And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of their age. From his
researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of sixty-
one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period
by a clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus
we are warranted in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus
were extant many ages before the birth of the Jewish law-giver.
"Styli and inkstands were found on monuments of the fourth Dynasty,
the oldest in the world," says Bunsen. If the eminent Egyptologist
rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to which
Diogenes Laėrtius carries back the records of the priests, he is
evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical
observations, and remarks that "if they were actual observations,
they _must have_ extended over 10,000 years" (p. 14). "We learn,
however," he adds, "from one of their own old chronological works
... that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological
period treated of _myriads_ of years." (_Égypte_, i. 15; _Isis
Unveiled_, i. 33.)
59 These details are taken from _Pneumatologie_, iii. pp. 204, 205.
60 _Égypte_, p. 143; _Isis Unveiled_, i. 625.
61 _Strom._, VI. vii. The following paragraph is paraphrased from the
same chapter.
62 See _Pneumatologie_, iii. 207. Therefore Empedocles is called
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, the "dominator of the wind." _Strom._, VI. iii.
63 _Ibid._, iv.
64 Summarised from _Pneumatologie_, iii. 209.
65 _Loc. cit._
66 _Op. cit._, iii. 208.
67 The English speaking people who spell the name of Noah's
disrespectful son "Ham" have to be reminded that the right spelling
is "Kham" or "Cham."
68 Black Magic, or Sorcery, is the _evil_ result obtained in any shape
or way through the practice of Occult Arts; hence it has to be
judged only by its effects. The name of neither Ham nor Cain, when
pronounced, has ever killed any one; whereas, if we have to believe
that same Clemens Alexandrinus who traces the teacher of every
Occultist, outside of Christianity, to the Devil, the name of
Jehovah (pronounced Jevo and in a peculiar way) had the effect of
killing a man at a distance. The mysterious Schemham-phorasch was
not always used for holy purposes by the Kabalists, especially since
the Sabbath or Saturday, sacred to Saturn or the evil Shani,
became--with the Jews--sacred to "Jehovah."
69 Khoemnis, the pre-historic city, may or may not have been built by
Noah's son, but it was not his name that was given to the town, but
that of the Mystery Goddess Khoemnu or Khoemnis (Greek form); the
deity that was created by the ardent fancy of the neophyte, who was
thus tantalised during his "twelve labours" of probation before his
final initiation. Her male counterpart is Khem. The city of Choemnis
or Khemmis (to-day Akhmem) was the chief seat of the God Khem. The
Greeks identifying Khem with Pan, called this city "Panopolis."
70 _Pneumatologie_, iii. 210. This looks more like pious vengeance than
philology. The picture, however, seems incomplete, as the author
ought to have added to the "chimney" a witch flying out of it on a
broomstick.
71 How could they escape from the Deluge unless God so willed it? This
is scarcely logical.
72 _Loc. cit._, p. 210.
73 _Matthew_, xvi. 20.
74 _Mark_, v. 43.
75 _Mark_, iv. 11, 12.
76 Is it not evident that the words: "lest at any time they should be
converted (or: 'lest haply they should turn again'--as in the revised
version) and their sins be forgiven them"--do not at all mean to
imply that Jesus feared that through repentance any outsider, or
"them that are without," should escape damnation, as the literal
dead-letter sense plainly shows--but quite a different thing? Namely,
"lest any of the profane should by understanding his preaching,
undisguised by parable, get hold of some of the secret teachings and
mysteries of Initiation--and even of Occult powers? 'Be converted'
is, in other words, to obtain a knowledge belonging exclusively to
the Initiated: 'and their sins be forgiven them,' that is, their
sins would fall upon the illegal revealer, on those who had helped
the unworthy to reap there where they have never laboured to sow,
and had given them, thereby, the means of escaping on this earth
their deserved Karma, which must thus re-act on the revealer, who,
instead of good, did harm and failed."
77 _New Platonism and Alchemy_, 1869, pp. 7, 9.
78 vii. 6.
79 History is full of proofs of the same. Had not Anaxagoras enunciated
the great truth taught in the Mysteries, _viz._, that the sun was
surely larger than the Peloponnesus, he would not have been
persecuted and nearly put to death by the fanatical mob. Had that
other rabble which was raised against Pythagoras understood what the
mysterious Sage of Crotona meant by giving out his remembrance of
having been the "Son of Mercury"--God of the Secret Wisdom--he would
not have been forced to fly for his life; nor would Socrates have
been put to death, had he kept secret the revelations of his divine
Daimon. He knew how little his century--save those initiated--would
understand his meaning, had he given out all he knew of the moon.
Thus he limited his statement to an allegory, which is now proven to
have been more scientific than was hitherto believed. He maintained
that the moon was inhabited and that the lunar beings lived in
profound, vast and dark valleys, our satellite being airless and
without any atmosphere outside such profound valleys; this,
disregarding the revelation full of meaning for the few only, must
be so of necessity, if there is any atmosphere on our bright Selene
at all. The facts recorded in the secret annals of the Mysteries had
to remain veiled under penalty of death.
80 _Stromateis_, xii.
81 See _Homilies_ 7, in _Levit._, quoted in the _Source of Measures_,
p. 307.
82 Origen: Huet., _Origeniana_, 167; Franck, 121; quoted from Dunlap's
_Sōd_, p. 176.
83 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 350.
84 The materialistic "law-givers," the critics and Sadducees who have
tried to tear to shreds the doctrines and teachings of the great
Asiatic Masters past and present--no scholars in the modern sense of
the word--would do well to ponder over these words. No doubt that
doctrines and secret teachings had they been invented and written in
Oxford and Cambridge would be more brilliant outwardly. Would they
equally answer to universal truths and facts, is the next question
however.
85 iii. fol. 1526, quoted in Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 102.
86 _New-Platonism and Alchemy_, p. 6.
87 i. 2.
88 lxiv. 10.
89 The _key_ is shown to be "in the source of measures originating the
British inch and the ancient cubit" as the author tries to prove.
90 The word as a plural might have better solved the mystery. God is
_ever-present_; if he were _ever-active_ he could no longer be an
infinite God--nor ever-present in his limitation.
91 The author is evidently a Mason of the way of thinking of General
Pike. So long as the American and English Masons will reject the
"Creative Principle" of the "Grand Orient" of France they will
remain in the dark.
92 _Source of Measures_, pp. 308, 309.
93 In his _Pneumatologie_, in Vol. iv., pp. 105-112, the Marquis de
Mirville claims the knowledge of the heliocentric system--earlier
than Galileo--for Pope Urban VIII. The author goes further. He tries
to show that famous Pope, not as the persecutor but as one
persecuted by Galileo, and calumniated by the Florentine Astronomer
into the bargain. If so, so much the worse for the Latin Church,
since her Popes, knowing of it, still preserved silence upon this
most important fact, either to screen Joshua or their own
infallibility. One can understand well that the _Bible_ having been
so exalted over all the other systems, and its alleged monotheism
depending upon the silence preserved, nothing remained of course but
to keep quiet over its symbolism, thus allowing all its blunders to
be fathered on its God.
94 _Op. cit._, App. vii. p. 296. The writer feels happy to find this
fact now mathematically demonstrated. When it was stated in _Isis
Unveiled_ that Jehovah and Saturn were one and the same with Adam
Kadmon, Cain, Adam and Eve, Abel, Seth, etc., and that all were
convertible symbols in the Secret Doctrine (see Vol. ii. pp. 446,
448, 464 _et seq._); that they answered, in short, to secret
numerals and stood for more than one meaning in the _Bible_ as in
other doctrines--the author's statements remained unnoticed. _Isis_
had failed to appear under a scientific form, and by giving too
much, in fact, gave very little to satisfy the enquirer. But now, if
mathematics and geometry, besides the evidence of the _Bible_ and
_Kabalah_ are good for anything, the public must find itself
satisfied. No fuller, more scientifically given proof can be found
to show that Cain is the transformation of an Elohim (the Sephira
Binah) into Jah-Veh (or God-Eve) androgyne, and that Seth is the
Jehovah male, than in the combined discoveries of Seyffarth, Knight,
etc., and finally in Mr. Ralston Skinner's most erudite work. The
further relations of these personifications of the first human
races, in their gradual development, will be given later on in the
text.
95 The writings extant in olden times often personified Wisdom as an
emanation and associate of the Creator. Thus we have the Hindu
Buddha, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the Hermes of
Greece; also the female divinities, Neļtha, Metis, Athena, and the
Gnostic potency Achamoth or Sophia. The Samaritan _Pentateuch_
denominated the _Book of Genesis_, Akamouth, or Wisdom, and two
remnants of old treatises, the _Wisdom of Solomon_ and the _Wisdom
of Jesus_, relate to the same matters. The _Book of Mashalim_--the
_Discourses_ or _Proverbs_ of Solomon--thus personifies Wisdom as the
auxiliary of the Creator. In the Secret Wisdom of the East that
auxiliary is found collectively in the first emanations of Primeval
Light, the Seven Dhyįni-Chohans, who have been shown to be identical
with the "Seven Spirits of the Presence" of the Roman Catholics.
96 _New Platonism and Alchemy_, p. 6.
97 ii. 317. 318. Many verbal alterations from the original text of
_Isis Unveiled_ were made by H. P. B. in her quotations therefrom,
and these are followed throughout.
98 Proclus claims to have experienced this sublime ecstasy six times
during his mystic life; Porphyry asserts that Apollonius of Tyana
was thus united four times to his deity--a statement which we believe
to be a mistake, since Apollonius was a Nirmānakāya (divine
incarnation--not Avatāra)--and he (Porphyry) only once, when over
sixty years of age. Theophany (or the actual appearance of a God to
man), Theopathy (or "assimilation of divine nature"), and
Theopneusty (inspiration, or rather the mysterious power to hear
orally the teachings of a God) have never been rightly understood.
99 Kārana Sharīra is the "causal" body and is sometimes said to be the
"personal God." And so it is, in one sense.
100 This would be in one sense Self-worship.
101 "The Gods exist," said Epicurus, "but they are not what the _hoi
polloi_ [the multitude] suppose them to be. He is not an infidel or
atheist who denies the existence of Gods whom the multitude worship,
but he is such who fastens on the Gods the opinions of the
multitude."
102 Esoteric, as exoteric, Buddhism rejects the theory that Gautama was
an incarnation or Avatāra of Vishnu, but teaches the doctrine as
herein explained. Every man has in him the materials, if not the
conditions, for theophanic intercourse and Theopneusty, the
inspiring "God" being, however, in every case, his own Higher Self,
or divine prototype.
103 One entirely and absolutely purified, and having nothing in common
with earth except his body.
104 _Māndūkyopanishad_, 4.
105 Acts, viii. 10 (Revised Version).
106 See the explanations given on the subject in "The Elixir of Life,"
by G. M. (From a Chelā's Diary), _Five Years of Theosophy_.
107 _I. Cor._, xv. 47, 50.
108 _I. Cor._, iii. 16. Has the reader ever meditated upon the
suggestive words, often pronounced by Jesus and his Apostles? "Be ye
therefore perfect as your Father ... is perfect" (_Matt._, v. 48),
says the Great Master. The words are, "as perfect as your Father
which is in heaven," being interpreted as meaning God. Now the utter
absurdity of any man becoming as perfect as the infinite, all-
perfect omniscient and omnipresent Deity, is too apparent. If you
accept it in such a sense, Jesus is made to utter the greatest
fallacy. What was Esoterically meant is, "Your Father who is above
the material and astral man, the highest Principle (save the Monad)
within man, his own personal God, or the God of his own personality,
of whom he is the 'prison' and the 'temple.' " "If thou wilt be
perfect (_i.e._, an Adept and Initiate) go and sell that thou hast"
(_Matt._, xix. 21). Every man who desired to become a neophyte, a
chelā, then, as now, had to take the vow of poverty. The "Perfect,"
was the name given to the Initiates of every denomination. Plato
calls them by that term. The Essenes had their "Perfect," and Paul
plainly states that they, the Initiates, can only speak before other
Adepts. "We speak wisdom among them [only] that are perfect" (_I.
Cor._ ii. 6.)
109 _John_, i. 21.
110 _John_, iii. "Born" from above, _viz._, from his Monad or divine
EGO, the seventh Principle, which remains till the end of the Kalpa,
the nucleus of, and at the same time the overshadowing Principle, as
the Kāranātmā (Causal Soul) of the personality in every rebirth. In
this sense, the sentence "born anew" means "descends from above,"
the last two words having no reference to heaven or space, neither
of which can be limited or located, since one is a state and the
other infinite, hence having no cardinal points. (See _New
Testament, Revised Version_, _loc. cit._)
111 This can have no reference to Christian Baptism, since there was
none in the days of Nicodemus and he could not therefore know
anything of it, even though a "Master."
112 This word, translated in the _New Testament_ "world" to suit the
official interpretation, means rather an "age" (as shown in the
_Revised Version_) or one of the periods during the Manvantara, a
Kalpa, or Ęon. Esoterically the sentence would read: "He who shall
reach, through a series of births and Karmic law, that state in
which Humanity shall find itself after the Seventh Round and the
Seventh Race, when comes Nirvāna, Moksha, and when man becomes
'equal unto the Angels' or Dhyān Chohans, is a 'son of the
resurrection' and 'can die no more'; then there will be no marriage,
as there will be no difference of sexes"--a result of our present
materiality and animalism.
113 _Luke_, xx. 27-38.
114 _John_, ix. 2, 3.
115 The conscious Ego, or Fifth Principle Manas, the vehicle of the
divine Monad or "God."
116 Some Symbologists, relying on the correspondence of numbers and the
symbols of certain things and personages, refer these "secrets" to
the mystery of generation. But it is more than this. The glyph of
the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" has no doubt a phallic and
sexual element in it, as has the "Woman and the Serpent"; but it has
also a psychical and spiritual significance. Symbols are meant to
yield more than one meaning.
117 _Wisdom_, xi. 21. Douay version.
118 _Ecclesiasticus_, i. 9. Douay version.
119 _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_, i. 361.
120 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 6, 7.
121 "Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in the temple of
Memphis, on one of which was engraved the following sentence: 'One
_nature_ delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one
nature overrules another, and the whole of them are _one_'."
"The inherent restlessness of matter is embodied in the saying of
Hermes: 'Action is the life of Phta'; and Orpheus calls nature
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}, 'the mother that makes many things,' or the
ingenious, the contriving, the inventive mother."--_Isis Unveiled_,
i. 257.
122 _Source of Measures_, p. x.
123 _Masonic Review_, July, 1886.
124 See _Source of Measures_, pp. 47-50, _et pass._
125 See Cary's translation, pp. 322, 323.
126 _Exodus_, xxxiv. 29, 33.
127 _Op. cit._, V. vii.
128 _The Royal Masonic Cyclopędia_, under "Gnosticism."
129 In the Ferouers and Devs of Jacobi (Letters F. and D.) the word
"ferouer" is explained in the following manner: The Ferouer is a
part of the creature (whether man or animal) of which it is the type
and which it survives. It is the Nous of the Greeks, therefore
divine and immortal, and thus can hardly be the Devil or the satanic
copy De Mirville would represent it (see _Mémoires de l'Académie des
Inscriptions_, Vol. XXXVII. p. 623, and chap. xxxix. p. 749).
Foucher contradicts him entirely. The Ferouer was never the
"principle of sensations," but always referred to the most divine
and pure portion of Man's Ego--the spiritual principle. Anquetil says
that the Ferouer is the purest portion of man's soul. The Persian
Dev is the antithesis of the Ferouer, for the Dev has been
transformed by Zoroaster into the Genius of Evil (whence the
Christian Devil), but even the Dev is only finite; for having become
possessed of the soul of man by _usurpation_, it will have to leave
it at the great day of Retribution. The Dev obsesses the soul of the
defunct for three days, during which the soul wanders about the spot
at which it was forcibly separated from its body; the Ferouer
ascends to the region of eternal Light. It was an unfortunate idea
that made the noble Marquis de Mirville imagine the Ferouer to be a
"satanic copy" of a _divine_ original. By calling all the Gods of
the Pagans--Apollo, Osiris, Brahmā, Ormazd, Bel, etc., the "Ferouers
of Christ and of the chief Angels," he merely exhibits the God and
the Angels he would honour as inferior to the Pagan Gods, as man is
inferior to his Soul and Spirit; since the Ferouer is the immortal
part of the mortal being of which it is the type and which it
survives. Perchance the poor author is unconsciously prophetic; and
Apollo, Brahmā, Ormazd, Osiris, etc., are destined to survive and
replace--as eternal cosmic verities--the evanescent fictions about the
God, Christ and Angels of the Latin Church!
130 See George Smith's _Babylon_ and other works.
131 This is as fanciful as it is arbitrary. Where is the Hindu or
Buddhist who would speak of his "Crucified"?
132 _Op. cit._, iv. 237.
133 _Loc. cit._, 250.
134 "_Q._: Who knocks at the door?
_A._: The good cowherd.
_Q._: Who preceded thee?
_A._: The three robbers.
_Q._: Who follows thee?
_A._: The three murderers," etc., etc.
Now this is the conversation that took place between the priest-
initiators and the candidates for initiation during the mysteries
enacted in the oldest sanctuaries of the Himālayan fastnesses. The
ceremony is still performed to this day in one of the most ancient
temples in a secluded spot of Nepaul. It originated with the
Mysteries of the first Krishna, passed to the First Tirthankara and
ended with Buddha, and is called the Kurukshetra rite, being enacted
as a memorial of the great battle and death of the divine Adept. It
is not Masonry, but an initiation into the Occult teachings of that
Hero--Occultism, pure and simple.
135 _Book of Enoch_, Archbishop Laurence's translation. Introduction, p.
v.
136 _The Book of Enoch_ was unknown to Europe for a thousand years, when
Bruce found in Abyssinia some copies of it in Ethiopic; it was
translated by Archbishop Laurence in 1821, from the text in the
Bodleian Library, Oxford.
137 _Op. cit._, p. xx.
138 _Loc. cit._
139 _Op. cit._, p. xiv., note.
140 _Op. cit._, p. xxxv.
141 _Op. cit._, p. xiii.
142 The Seventh Principle, the First Emanation.
143 _Op. cit._, pp. xxxvii. and xl.
144 _Op. cit._, pp. xl. and li.
145 Who stands for the "Solar" or Manvantaric Year.
146 _Op. cit._, pp. xli., xlii.
147 _Op. cit._, p. xlviii.
148 _Op. cit._, p. xxiii.
149 _Loc. cit._
150 xcii. 9.
151 _Op. cit._, xcii. 4.
152 _Op. cit._, xcii. 4-7.
153 At the close of every Root-Race there comes a cataclysm, in turn by
fire or water. Immediately after the "Fall into generation" the
dross of the third Root-Race--those who fell into sensuality by
falling off from the teaching of the Divine Instructors--were
destroyed, after which the Fourth Root-Race originated, at the end
of which took place the last Deluge. (See the "Sons of God"
mentioned in _Isis Unveiled_, 593 _et seq._)
154 _Op. cit._, xcii. 11.
155 _Op. cit._, xcii. 7, 11, 13, 15.
156 _Op. cit._, note, p. 152.
157 Those interpolations and alterations are found almost in every case
where figures are given--especially whenever the numbers eleven and
twelve come in--as these are all made (by the Christians) to relate
to the numbers of Apostles, and Tribes, and Patriarchs. The
translator of the Ethiopic text--Archbishop Laurence--attributes them
generally to "mistakes of the transcriber" whenever the two texts,
the Paris and the Bodleian MSS., differ. We fear it is no mistake,
in most cases.
158 _Op. cit._, lxxxviii. 99, 100.
159 _Loc. cit._, 94. This passage, as will be presently shown, has led
to a very curious discovery.
160 In the profane history of Gautama Buddha he dies at the good old age
of eighty, and passes off from life to death peacefully with all the
serenity of a great saint, as Barthélemy St. Hilaire has it. Not so
in the Esoteric and true interpretation which reveals the real sense
of the profane and allegorical statement that makes Gautama, the
Buddha, die very unpoetically from the effects of too much pork,
prepared for him by Tsonda. How one who preached that the killing of
animals was the greatest sin, and who was a perfect vegetarian,
could die from eating pork, is a question that is never asked by our
Orientalists, some of whom made (as now do many charitable
missionaries in Ceylon) great fun at the alleged occurrence. The
simple truth is that the said rice and pork are purely allegorical.
Rice stands for "forbidden fruit," like Eve's "apple," and means
Occult knowledge with the Chinese and Tibetans; and "pork" for
Brāhmanical teachings--Vishnu having assumed in his first Avatāra the
form of a boar, in order to raise the earth on the surface of the
waters of space. It is not, therefore, from "pork" that Buddha died,
but for having divulged some of the Brāhmanical mysteries, after
which, seeing the bad effects brought on some unworthy people by the
revelation, he preferred, instead of availing himself of Nirvāna, to
leave his earthly form, remaining still in the sphere of the living,
in order to help humanity to progress. Hence his constant
reincarnations in the hierarchy of the Dalai and Teshu Lamas, among
other bounties. Such is the Esoteric explanation. The life of
Gautama will be more fully discussed later on.
161 _Op. cit._, cv. 21.
162 In the _Bible_ (_Genesis_, iv and v) there are three distinct Enochs
(Kanoch or Chanoch)--the son of Cain, the son of Seth, and the son of
Jared; but they are all identical, and two of them are mentioned for
purposes of misleading. The years of only the last two are given,
the first one being left without further notice.
163 The eternal and incessant "in-breathing and out-breathing of
Parabrahman" or Nature, the Universe in Space, whether during
Manvantara or Pralaya.
164 _Op. cit._, iii. 1.
165 _Op. cit._, 30.
166 _Op. cit._, 32.
167 Those who are aware that the term Christos was applied by the
Gnostics to the Higher Ego (the ancient Pagan Greek Initiates doing
the same), will readily understand the allusion. Christos was said
to be cut off from the lower Ego, Chrestos, after the final and
supreme Initiation, when the two became blended in one; Chrestos
being conquered and resurrected in the glorified Christos.--Franck,
_Die Kabbala_, 75; Dunlap, _Sōd_, Vol. II.
168 _Stromateis_, I. xiii.
169 _Op. cit._, II. viii.
170 Many are the marvels recorded as having taken place at his death, or
we should rather say his translation; for he did not die as others
do, but having suddenly disappeared, while a dazzling light filled
the cavern with glory, his body was again seen upon its subsidence.
When this heavenly light gave place to the habitual semi-darkness of
the gloomy cave--then only, says Ginsburg, "the disciples of Israel
perceived that the lamp of Israel was extinguished." His biographers
tell us that there were voices heard from Heaven during the
preparation for his funeral, and at his interment, when the coffin
was lowered into the deep cave prepared for it, a flame broke forth
and a voice mighty and majestic pronounced these words: "This is he
who caused the earth to quake, and the kingdoms to shake!"
171 Pockocke, maybe, was not altogether wrong in deriving the German
Heaven, Himmel, from Himālaya; nor can it be denied that it is the
Hindu Kailāsa (Heaven) that is the father of the Greek Heaven
(Koilon), and of the Latin Coelum.
172 See Pockocke's _India in Greece_, and his derivation of Mount
Parnassus from Parnasa, the leaf and branch huts of the Hindu
ascetics, half shrine and half habitation. "Part of the Par-o-
Pamisus (the hill of Bamian), is called Parnassus. 'These mountains
are called Devanica, because they are so full of Devas or Gods,
called "Gods of the Earth," Bhu Devas. They lived, according to the
Purānas, in bowers or huts, called Parnasas, because they were made
of leaves' (Parnas)," p. 302.
173 Rawlinson is justly very confident of an Āryan and Vedic influence
on the early mythology and history of Babylon and Chaldęa.
174 This is a Secret Doctrine affirmation, and may or may not be
accepted. Only Abrahm, Isaac and Judah resemble terribly the Hindu
Brahmā Ikshvāku and Yadu.
175 It is said in _The Gnostics and their Remains_, by C. W. King (p.
13), with regard to the names of Brahmā and Abram; "This figure of
the _man_, Seir Aupin, consists of 243 numbers, being the numerical
value of the letters in the name 'Abram' signifying the different
orders in the celestial Hierarchies. In fact the names Abram and
Brahmā are equivalent in numerical value." Thus to one acquainted
with Esoteric Symbolism, it does not seem at all strange to find in
the Loka-pālas (the four cardinal and intermediate points of the
compass personified by eight Hindu Gods) Indra's elephant, named
Abhra--(mātanga) and his wife Abhramu. Abhra is in a way a Wisdom
Deity, since it is this elephant's head that replaced that of
Ganesha (Ganapati) the God of Wisdom, cut off by Shiva. Now Abhra
means "cloud," and it is also the name of the city where Abram is
supposed to have resided--when read backwards--"Arba (Kirjath) the
city of four ... Abram is Abra with an appended _m_ final, and Abra
read backward is Arba" (_Key to the Hebrew Egyptian Mystery_). The
author might have added that Abra meaning in Sanskrit "in, or of,
the clouds," the cosmo-astronomical symbol of Abram becomes still
plainer. All of these ought to be read in their originals, in
Sanskrit.
176 Before these theories and speculations--we are willing to admit they
are such--are rejected, the following few points ought to be
explained, (1) Why, after leaving Egypt, was the patriarch's name
changed by Jehovah from Abram to Abraham. (2) Why Sarai becomes on
the same principle Sarah (_Gen._, xvii.). (3) Whence the strange
coincidence of names? (4) Why should Alexander Polyhistor say that
Abraham was born at Kamarina or Uria, a city of soothsayers, and
invented Astronomy? (5) "The Abrahamic recollections go back at
least three millenniums beyond the grandfather of Jacob," says
Bunsen (_Egypt's Place in History_, v. 35.)
177 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 35.
178 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 218-300. Gematria is formed by a metathesis
from the Greek word {~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}; Notaricon may be compared to
stenography; Temura is permutation--a way of dividing the alphabet
and shifting letters.
179 _De Vita Pythag._
180 We are not aware that a copy of this ancient work is embraced in the
catalogue of any European library; but it is one of the "Books of
Hermes," and it is referred to and quotations are made from it in
the works of a number of ancient and medięval philosophical authors.
Among these authorities are Arnoldo di Villanova's _Rosarium
Philosoph._, Francesco Arnuphi's _Opus de Lapide_, Hermes
Trismegistus' _Tractatus de Transmutatione Metallorum_ and _Tabula
Smaragdina_, and above all the treatise of Raymond Lully, _Ab
Angelis Opus Divinum de Quinta Essentia_.
181 _Exodus_, xxv. 40.
182 _Sub voce_ "Numbers."
183 See Johannes Meursius, _Denarius Pythagoricus_.
184 Ragon, _Maēonnerie Occulte_, p. 426, note.
185 _Ibid._, p. 432, note.
186 Extracted from Ragon, _Maēonnerie Occulte_, p. 427, note.
187 Summarised from Ragon, _ibid._, p. 428, note.
188 Ragon mentions the curious fact that the first four numbers in
German are named after the elements.
"Ein, or one, means the air, the element which, ever in motion,
penetrates matter throughout, and whose continual ebb and tide is
the universal vehicle of life.
"Zwei, two, is derived from the old German Zweig, signifying germ,
fecundity; it stands for earth the fecund mother of all.
"Drei, three, is the _trienos_ of the Greeks, standing for water,
whence the Sea-gods, Tritons; and trident, the emblem of Neptune--the
water, or sea, in general being called Amphitrite (surrounding
water).
"Vier, four, a number meaning in Belgian fire.... It is in the
quaternary that the first solid figure is found, the universal
symbol of immortality, the Pyramid, 'whose first syllable means
fire.' Lysis and Timęus of Locris claimed that there was not a thing
one could name that had not the quaternary for its root.... The
ingenious and mystical idea which led to the veneration of the
ternary and the triangle was applied to number four and its figure:
it was said to express a living being, 1, the vehicle of the
triangle 4, vehicle of God, or man carrying in him the divine
principle."
Finally, "the Ancients represented the world by the number five.
Diodorus explains it by saying that this number represents earth,
fire, water, air and ether or spiritus. Hence, the origin of Pente
(five) and of Pan (the God) meaning in Greek all." (Compare Ragon,
_op. cit._, pp. 428-430.) It is left with the Hindu Occultists to
explain the relation this Sanskrit word Pancha (five) has to the
elements, the Greek Pente having for its root the Sanskrit term.
189 The system of the so-called Senzar characters is still more
wonderful and difficult, since each letter is made to yield several
meanings, a sign placed at the commencement showing the true
meaning.
190 Ragon, _op. cit._, p. 431, note.
191 The Y exoterically signifies only the two paths of virtue or vice,
and stands also for the numeral 150 and with a dash over the letter
Y for 150,000.
192 _Tradition_, chap. on "Numbers."
193 This is a kind of magical bow and arrow calculated to destroy in one
moment whole armies; it is mentioned in the _Rāmāyana_, the
_Purānas_ and elsewhere.
194 _Matthew_, viii. 30-34.
195 _Dogmatic Theology_, iii. 345.
196 viii. 9, 10.
197 _Adv. Celsum._
198 _Eccles. Hist._, i. 140.
199 _Contra Hęreses_, I. xxiii. 1-4.
200 _Contra Hęreses_, ii. 1-6.
201 _Op. cit._, ii. 337.
202 Ten is the perfect number of the Supreme God among the "manifested"
deities, for number 1 is the symbol of the Universal Unit, or male
principle in Nature, and number O the feminine symbol Chaos, the
Deep, the two forming thus the symbol of Androgyne nature as well as
the full value of the solar year, which was also the value of
Jehovah and Enoch. Ten, with Pythagoras, was the symbol of the
Universe; also of Enos, the Son of Seth, or the "Son of Man" who
stands as the symbol of the solar year of 365 days, and whose years
are therefore given as 365 also. In the Egyptian Symbology Abraxas
was the Sun, the "Lord of the Heavens."
The circle is the symbol of the one Unmanifesting Principle, the
plane of whose figure is infinitude eternally, and this is crossed
by a diameter only during Manvantaras.
203 _I. Cor._, ii. 6-8.
204 Compare Taylor's _Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries_.
205 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 89.
206 _Op. cit._, ii. 395.
207 Quoted by De Mirville, _Op. cit._, vi. 41 and 42.
208 Mr. St. George Lane-Fox has admirably expressed the idea in his
eloquent appeal to the many rival schools and societies in India. "I
feel sure," he said, "that the prime motive, however dimly
perceived, by which you, as the promoters of these movements, were
actuated, was a revolt against the tyrannical and almost universal
establishment throughout all existing social and so-called religious
institutions of a usurped authority in some external form
supplanting and obscuring the only real and ultimate authority, the
indwelling spirit of truth revealed to each individual soul, true
conscience in fact, that supreme source of all human wisdom and
power which elevates man above the level of the brute." (_To the
Members of the Ārya Samāj, the Theosophical Society, Brahmo and
Hindu Samāj and other Religious and Progressive Societies in
India._)
209 _Revelation_, ii. 6.
210 This "art" is not common jugglery, as some define it now: it is a
kind of psychological jugglery, if jugglery at all, where
fascination and glamour are used as means of producing illusions. It
is hypnotism on a large scale.
211 The author asserts in this his Christian persuasion.
212 Magnetic passes, evidently, followed by a trance and sleep.
213 "Elementals" used by the highest Adept to do mechanical, not
intellectual work, as a physicist uses gases and other compounds.
214 Quoted from De Mirville, _op. cit._, vi. 43.
215 _Ibid._, vi. 45.
216 _Ibid._, p. 46.
217 Amédée Fleury, _Rapports de St. Paul avec Sénčque_, ii. 100. The
whole of this is summarised from De Mirville.
218 But we can never agree with the author "that rites and ritual and
formal worship and prayers are of the absolute necessity of things,"
for the external can develop and grow and receive worship only at
the expense of, and to the detriment of, the internal, the only real
and true.
219 H. Jennings, _op. cit._, pp. 37, 38.
220 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 574.
221 xi. 26.
222 Art., by Dr. A. Wilder, in _Evolution_.
223 _Op. cit._, p. 262.
224 In its most extensive meaning, the Sanskrit word has the same
literal sense as the Greek term; both imply "revelation," by no
human agent, but through the "receiving of the sacred drink." In
India the initiated received the "Soma," sacred drink, which helped
to liberate his soul from the body; and in the Eleusinian Mysteries
it was the sacred drink offered at the Epopteia. The Grecian
Mysteries are wholly derived from the Brāhmanical Vaidic rites, and
the latter from the Ante-Vaidic religious Mysteries--primitive Wisdom
Philosophy.
225 It is needless to state that the _Gospel according to John_ was not
written by John, but by a Platonist or a Gnostic belonging to the
Neoplatonic school.
226 _Ibid._, _loc. cit._ The fact that Peter persecuted the "Apostle to
the Gentiles" under that name, does not necessarily imply that there
was no Simon Magus individually distinct from Paul. It may have
become a generic name of abuse. Theodoret and Chrysostom, the
earliest and most prolific commentators on the Gnosticism of those
days, seem actually to make of Simon a rival of Paul and to state
that between them passed frequent messages. The former, as a
diligent propagandist of what Paul terms the "antithesis of the
Gnosis" (_1. Epistle to Timothy_), must have been a sore thorn in
the side of the apostle. There are sufficient proofs of the actual
existence of Simon Magus.
227 Taylor's _Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries_, Wilder's ed., p. x.
228 ii. 91-94.
229 Bunsen, _Egypt's Place in History_, v. 90.
230 _Ibid._
231 _Stele_, p. 44.
232 See Dowson's _Hindu Classical Dict._, _sub voc._, "Pītha-sthānaru."
233 See _Preface to St. Matthew's Gospel_, Baronius, i. 752, quoted in
De Mirville, vi. 63. Jerome is the Father who having found the
authentic and original _Evangel_ (the Hebrew text), by Matthew the
Apostle-publican, in the library of Cęsarea, "_written by the hand_
of Matthew" (Hieronymus: _De Viris_, Illust. Chap. iii.)--as he
himself admits--set it down as heretical, and substituted for it his
own Greek text. And it is also he who perverted the text in the
_Book of Job_ to enforce belief in the resurrection in flesh (see
_Isis Unveiled_, Vol. ii. pp. 181 and 182, _et seq._), quoting in
support the most learned authorities.
234 De Mirville gives the following thrilling account of the "contest."
"John, pressed, as St. Jerome tells us, by all the churches of Asia
to proclaim more solemnly [in the face of the miracles of
Apollonius] the divinity of Jesus Christ, after a long prayer with
his disciples on the Mount of Patmos and being in ecstasy by the
divine Spirit, made heard amid thunder and lightning his famous _In
Principio erat Verbum_. When that sublime extasis, that caused him
to be named the 'Son of Thunder,' had passed, Apollonius was
compelled to retire and to disappear. Such was his defeat, less
bloody but as hard as that of Simon, the Magician." ("The Magician
Theurgist," vi. 63) For our part we have never heard of extasis
producing thunder and lightning and we are at a loss to understand
the meaning.
235 This is the old, old story. Who of us, Theosophists, but knows by
bitter personal experience what clerical hatred, malice and
persecution can do in this direction; to what an extent of
falsehood, calumny and cruelty these feelings can go, even in our
modern day, and what exemplars of _Christ-like_ charity His alleged
and self-constituted servants have shown themselves to be!
236 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 342.
237 _Loc. cit._, ii. 343, 344.
238 _Pneumatologie_, vi. 62.
239 _Les Apologistes Chrétiens au Second Sičcle_, p. 106.
240 _Pneumatologie_, vi, 62.
241 Many are they who _do not know_: hence, they do not believe in them.
242 Just so. Apollonius, during a lecture he was delivering at Ephesus
before an audience of many thousands, perceived the murder of the
Emperor Domitian in Rome and notified it at the very moment it was
taking place, to the whole town; and Swedenborg, in the same manner,
saw from Gothenburg the great fire at Stockholm and told it to his
friends, no telegraph being in use in those days.
243 No criterion at all. The Hindu Sāddhus and Adepts acquire the gift
by the holiness of their lives. The Yoga-Vidyā teaches it, and no
"spirits" are required.
244 As to the Pontiffs, the matter is rather doubtful.
245 But this alone is no reason why people should believe in this class
of spirits. There are better authorities for such belief.
246 De Mirville's aim is to show that all such apparitions of the Manes
or disembodied Spirits are the work of the Devil, "Satan's
simulacra."
247 He might have added: like the great Shankarāchārya, Tsong-Kha-Pa,
and so many other real Adepts--even his own Master, Jesus; for this
is indeed a criterion of true Adeptship, though "to disappear" one
need not fly up in the clouds.
248 See _Dion Cassius_, XXVII. xviii. 2.
249 Lampridius, _Adrian_, xxix. 2.
250 The passage runs as follows: "Aurelian had determined to destroy
Tyana, and the town owed its salvation only to a miracle of
Apollonius; this man so famous and so wise, this great friend of the
Gods, appeared suddenly before the Emperor, as he was returning to
his tent, in his own figure and form, and said to him in the
Pannonian language: 'Aurelian, if thou wouldst conquer, abandon
these evil designs against my fellow-citizens: if thou wouldst
command, abstain from shedding innocent blood; and if thou wouldst
live, abstain from injustice.' Aurelian, familiar with the face of
Apollonius, whose portraits he had seen in many temples, struck with
wonder, immediately vowed to him (Apollonius) statue, portrait and
temple, and returned completely to ideas of mercy." And then
Vopiscus adds: "If I have believed more and more in the virtues of
the _majestic_ Apollonius, it is because, after gathering my
information from the most serious men, I have found all these facts
corroborated in the Books of the Ulpian Library." (See Flavius
Vopiscus, _Aurelianus_). Vopiscus wrote in 250 and consequently
preceded Philostratus by a century.
251 _Ep. ad Paulinum._
252 The above is mostly summarised from De Mirville, _loc. cit._, pp.
66-69.
253 A "true prophet" because an Initiate, one perfectly versed in Occult
astronomy.
254 _Key to Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery_, p. 259 _et seq._ Astronomy and
physiology are the bodies, astrology and psychology their informing
souls; the former being studied by the eye of sensual perception,
the latter by the inner or "soul-eye"; and both are _exact_
sciences.
255 _New Platonism and Alchemy_, p. 12
256 _Heracles_, 807.
257 _Ęneid_, viii., 274 ff.
258 App., vii., p. 301.
259 _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_, ii. 88.
260 (Hieronymus, _De Viris Illust._, iii.) "It is remarkable that, while
all Church Fathers say that _Matthew_ wrote in _Hebrew_, the whole
of them use the _Greek_ text as the genuine apostolic writing,
without mentioning what relation the _Hebrew_ Matthew has to our
_Greek_ one! It had many _peculiar additions_ which are wanting in
our (Greek) Evangel" (Olshausen, _Nachweis der Echtheit der
Sämmtlichen Schriften des Neuen Test._, p. 32; Dunlap, _Sōd, the Son
of the Man_, p. 44.)
261 _Commen. to Matthew_ (xii. 13) Book II. Jerome adds that it was
written in the Chaldaic language, but with Hebrew letters.
262 "St. Jerome," v. 445; Dunlap, _Sōd, the Son of Man_, p. 46.
263 This accounts also for the rejection of the works of Justin Martyr,
who used only this "Gospel according to the Hebrews," as also did
most probably Tatian, his disciple. At what a late period the
divinity of Christ was fully established we can judge by the mere
fact that even in the fourth century Eusebius did not denounce this
book as spurious, but only classed it with such as the _Apocalypse_
of John; and Credner (_Zur Gesch. des Kan_, p. 120) shows Nicephorus
inserting it, together with the _Revelation_, in his _Stichometry_,
among the Antilegomena. The Ebionites, the _genuine_ primitive
Christians, rejecting the rest of the Apostolic writings, make use
only of this Gospel (_Adv. Hęr._, i. 26) and the Ebionites, as
Epiphanius declares, firmly believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus
was but a man, "of the seed of a man."
264 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 182-3.
265 _Op. cit._, ii. 5.
266 See also _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 180, to end of chapter.
267 _Source of Measures_, p. 299. This "stream of life" being
emblematised in the Philloc _basso-relievo_ just mentioned, by the
water poured in the shape of a Cross on the initiated candidate by
Osiris--_Life_ and the Sun--and Mercury--_Death_. It was the _finale_
of the rite of Initiation after the _seven_ and the _twelve_
tortures in the Crypts of Egypt were passed through successfully.
268 Another untrustworthy, untruthful and ignorant writer, an
ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century. His alleged history
of the strife between the Pagans, Neoplatonists, and the Christians
of Alexandria and Constantinople, which extends from the year 324 to
439, dedicated by him to Theodosius, the younger, is full of
deliberate falsifications.
269 _Gems of the Orthodox Christians_, vol. I., p. 135.
270 _Revelation_, xiv. 1.
271 A Dagoba is a small temple of globular form, in which are preserved
the relics of Gautama.
272 Prachidas are buildings of all sizes and forms, like our mausoleums,
and are sacred to votive offerings to the dead.
273 The Talmudistic records claim that, after having been hanged, he was
lapidated and buried under the water at the junction of two streams.
_Mishna Sanhedrin_, Vol. VI., p. 4; _Talmud_, of Babylon, same
article, 43 a, 67 a.
274 _Coptic Legends of the Crucifixion_, MSS. XI.
275 We are at a loss to understand why King, in his _Gnostic Gems_,
represents Solomon's Seal as a five-pointed star, whereas it is six-
pointed, and is the signet of Vishnu in India.
276 King (_Gnostics_) gives the figure of a Christian symbol, very
common during the middle ages, of three fishes interlaced into a
triangle, and having the FIVE letters (a most sacred Pythagorean
number) {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA~} engraved on it. The number five relates to the same
kabalistic computation.
277 _Op. cit._, ii., 253-256.
278 _Op. cit._, 301. All this connects Jesus with great Initiates and
solar heroes; all this is purely Pagan, under a newly-evolved
variation, the Christian scheme.
279 _Op. cit._, 296.
280 Pp. 294, 295.
281 P. 295
282 Pp. 295, 296.
283 Had we known the learned author before his book was printed, he
might have been perchance prevailed upon to add a seventh link from
which all others, far preceding those enumerated in point of time,
and surpassing them in universally philosophical meaning, have been
derived, aye, even to the great pyramid, whose foundation square
was, in its turn, the great Āryan Mysteries.
284 We would say cosmic Matter, Spirit, Chaos, and Divine Light, for the
Egyptian idea was identical in this with the Āryan. However, the
author is right with regard to the Occult Symbology of the Jews.
They were a remarkably matter of fact, unspiritual people at all
times; yet even with them "Ruach" was Divine Spirit, not "air."
285 Mr. Ralston Skinner shows that the symbol {~CHI RHO~}, the crossed bones and
skull, has the letter {~HEBREW LETTER QOF~} _Koph_, the half of the head behind the
ears.
286 Pp. 296-302. By these numbers, explains the author, "Eli is 113 (by
placing the word in a circle); _amah_ being 345, is by change of
letters to suit the same value {~HEBREW LETTER MEM~}{~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER TAV~} (in a circle) or Moses, while
Sabachth is John or the dove, or Holy Spirit, because (in a circle)
it is 710 (or 355 × 2). The termination _ni_, as _meni_ or 5651,
becomes Jehovah."
287 The Western personification of that power, which the Hindus call the
_Vija_, the "one seed," or _Mahā Vishnu_--a power, not the God--or
that mysterious Principle that contains in Itself the Seed of
Avatārism.
288 "Arise into Nervi from this decrepit body into which thou hast been
sent. Ascend into thy former abode, O blessed Avatār!"
289 _The Gnostics and their Remains_, King, pp. 100, 101.
290 _Loc cit._
291 _Op. cit._ 258.
292 _Homilies_ XIX., xx. 1.
293 The Pleroma constituted the synthesis or entirety of all the
spiritual entities. St. Paul still used the name in his Epistles.
294 The "Comforter," second Messiah, intercessor. "A term applied to the
Holy Ghost." Manes was the disciple of Terebinthus, an Egyptian
Philosopher, who, according to the Christian Socrates (I. i., cited
by Tillemont, iv. 584), "while invoking one day the demons of the
air, fell from the roof of his house and was killed."
295 _Cf._ _op. cit._, vi. 169-183.
296 "The _great serpent_ placed to _watch the temple_," comments De
Mirville. "How often have we repeated that it was no _symbol_, no
personification but really a serpent occupied by a god!"--he
exclaims; and we answer that at Cairo in a Mussulman, not a
_heathen_ temple, we have seen, as thousands of other visitors have
also seen, a huge serpent that lived there for centuries, we were
told, and was held in great respect. Was it also "occupied by a
God," or possessed, in other words?
297 The Mysteries of Demeter, or the "afflicted mother."
298 By the satyrs.
299 This looks rather suspicious and seems interpolated. De Mirville
tries to have what he says of Satan and his Court sending their imps
on earth to tempt humanity and masquerade at _séances_, corroborated
by the ex-sorcerer.
300 This does not look like sinful food. It is the diet of Chelās to
this day.
301 "Grafted" is the correct expression. "The seven Builders graft the
divine and the beneficent forces on to the gross material nature of
the vegetable and mineral kingdoms every Second Round"--says the
_Catechism of Lanoos_.
302 Only the Prince of the World is not Satan, as the translator would
make us believe, but the collective Host of the Planetary. This is a
little theological back-biting.
303 Here the Elemental and Elementary Spirits are evidently meant.
304 The reader has already learned the truth about them in the course of
the present work.
305 Pity the penitent _Saint_ had not imparted his knowledge of the
rotation of the earth and helio-centric system earlier to his
Church. That might have saved more than one human life--that of Bruno
for one.
306 Chelās in their trials of initiation, also see _in trances
artificially generated for them_, the vision of the Earth supported
by an elephant on the top of a tortoise standing on nothing--and
this, to teach them to discern the true from the false.
307 Relating to the days of the year, also to 7 × 7 divisions of the
earth's sublunary sphere, divided into seven upper and seven lower
spheres with their respective Planetary Hosts or "armies."
308 Daimon is not "demon," as translated by De Mirville, but Spirit.
309 All this is to corroborate his dogmatic assertions that Pater Ęther
or Jupiter is Satan! and that pestilential diseases, cataclysms, and
even thunderstorms that prove disastrous, come from the Satanic Host
dwelling in Ether--a good warning to the men of Science!
310 The translator replaces the word Mediators by mediums, excusing
himself in a foot-note by saying that Cyprian _must_ have meant
modern mediums!
311 Cyprianus simply meant to hint at the rites and mysteries of
Initiation, and the pledge of secresy and oaths that bound the
Initiates together. His translator, however, has made a Witches'
Sabbath of it instead.
312 "Twelve centuries later, in full renaissance and reform, the world
saw Luther do the same [embrace the Devil he means?]--according to
his own confession and in the same conditions," explains De Mirville
in a foot-note, showing thereby the brotherly love that binds
Christians. Now Cyprianus meant by the Devil (if the word is really
in the original text) his Initiator and Hierophant. No Saint--even a
penitent Sorcerer--would be so silly as to speak of his (the Devil's)
rising from his seat to see him to the door, were it otherwise.
313 Every Adept has "a principality after his death."
314 Which shows that it was the Hierophant and his disciples. Cyprianus
shows himself as grateful as most of the other converts (the modern
included) to his Teachers and Instructors.
315 This is proved if we take but a single recorded instance. J. Picus
de Mirandola, finding that there was more Christianity than Judaism
in the _Kabalah_, and discovering in it the doctrines of the
Trinity, the Incarnation, the Divinity of Jesus, etc., wound up his
proofs of this with a challenge to the world at large from Rome. As
Ginsburg shows: "In 1486, when only twenty-four years old, he
[Picus] published nine hundred [Kabalistic] _theses_, which were
placarded in Rome, and undertook to defend them in the presence of
all European scholars whom he invited to the Eternal City, promising
to defray their travelling expenses."
316 This account is summarised from Isaac Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 10, _et
seq._
317 There is not in the decalogue one idea that is not the counterpart,
or the paraphrase, of the dogmas and ethics current among the
Egyptians long before the time of Moses and Aaron. (The Mosaic Law a
transcript from Egyptian Sources; vide _Geometry in Religion_,
1890.)
318 _Book of God._ Kenealy, p. 383. The reference to Klaproth is also
from this page.
319 See _Asiat. Jour._, N.S. vii., p. 275, quoted by Kenealy.
320 _Book of God_, _loc. cit._
321 _Op. cit._, v. 15.
322 _Prolegomena_, iii. 13, quoted by Kenealy, p. 385.
323 See _Book of God_, p. 385. "Care should be taken," says Butler
(quoted by Kenealy, p. 489), "to distinguish between the Pentateuch
in the Hebrew language but in the letters of the Samaritan alphabet,
and the version of the Pentateuch in the Samaritan language. One of
the most important differences between the Samaritan and the Hebrew
text respects the duration of the period between the deluge and the
birth of Abraham. The Samaritan text makes it longer by some
centuries than the Hebrew text; and the Septuagint makes it longer
by some centuries than the Samaritan." It is observable that in the
authentic translation of the Latin Vulgate, the Roman Church follows
the computation expressed in the Hebrew text; and in her Martyrology
follows that of the Seventy, both texts being inspired, as she
claims.
324 See Rev. Joseph Wolff's _Journal_, p. 200.
325 A tree is symbolically a book--as "pillar" is another synonym of the
same.
326 The wife of Moses, one of the seven daughters of a Midian priest, is
called Zipora. It was Jethro, the priest of Midian, who initiated
Moses, Zipora, one of the seven daughters, being simply one of the
seven Occult powers that the Hierophant was and is supposed to pass
to the initiated novice.
327 See for these details the _Book of God_, pp. 244, 250.
328 _Op. cit._ v. 85.
329 As is fully shown in the _Source of Measures_ and other works.
330 Surely even Masons would never claim the _actual_ existence of
Solomon? As Kenealy shows, he is not noticed by Herodotus, nor by
Plato, nor by any writer of standing. It is most extraordinary, he
says, "that the Jewish nation, over whom but a few years before the
mighty Solomon had reigned in all his glory, with a magnificence
scarcely equalled by the greatest monarchs, spending nearly _eight
thousand millions_ of gold on a temple, was overlooked by the
historian Herodotus, writing of Egypt on the one hand, and of
Babylon on the other--visiting both places, and of course passing
almost necessarily within a few miles of the splendid capital of the
national Jerusalem? How can this be accounted for?" he asks (p.
457). Nay, not only are there no proofs of the twelve tribes of
Israel having ever existed, but Herodotus, the most accurate of
historians, who was in Assyria when Ezra flourished, never mentions
the Israelites at all; and Herodotus was born in 484 B.C. How is
this?
331 Clement, _Stromateis_, xxii.
332 _Book of God_, p. 408.
333 _Book of God_, p. 453.
334 _Asiatic Journal_, vii., p. 275, quoted by Kenealy.
335 _Book of God_, p. 385.
336 Speaking of the hidden meaning of the Sanskrit words, Mr. T. Subba
Row, in his able article on "The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac," gives
some advice as to the way in which one should proceed to find out
"the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature in the old
Āryan myths. 1. Find out the synonyms of the word used which have
other meanings. 2. Find out the numerical value of the letters
composing the word according to the methods of the ancient Tāntrik
works [_Tāntrika Shāstra_--works on Incantation and Magic]. 3.
Examine the ancient myths or allegories, if there are any, which
have any special connection with the word in question. 4. Permute
the different syllables composing the word and examine the new
combinations that will thus be formed and their meanings," etc. But
he does not give the principal rule. And no doubt he is quite right.
The Tāntrika _Shāstras_ are as old as Magic itself. Have they also
borrowed their Esotericism from the Hebrews?
337 Their founder, Sadoc, was the pupil, through Antigonus Saccho, of
Simon the Just. They had their own secret _Book of the Law_ ever
since the foundation of their sect (about 400 B.C.) and this volume
was unknown to the masses. At the time of the Separation the
Samaritans recognised only the _Book of the Law of Moses_ and the
_Book of Joshua_, and their _Pentateuch_ is far older, and is
different from the Septuagint. In 168 B.C. Jerusalem had its temple
plundered, and its Sacred Books--namely, the _Bible_ made up by Ezra
and finished by Judas Maccabeus--were lost (see Burder's _Josephus_,
vol. ii. pp. 331-335); after which the _Massorah_ completed the work
of destruction (even of Ezra's once-more adjusted _Bible_) begun by
the change into square from horned letters. Therefore the later
_Pentateuch_ accepted by the Pharisees was rejected and laughed at
by the Sadducees. They are generally called atheists; yet, since
those learned men, who made no secret of their freethought,
furnished from among their number the most eminent of the Jewish
high-priests, this seems impossible. How could the Pharisees and the
other two believing and pious sects allow notorious atheists to be
selected for such posts? The answer is difficult to find for bigotry
and for believers in a personal, anthropomorphic God, but very easy
for those who accept facts. The Sadducees were called atheists
because they believed as the initiated Moses believed, thus
differing very widely from the latter made-up Jewish legislator and
hero of Mount Sinai.
338 The measurements of the Great Pyramid being those of the temple of
Solomon, of the Ark of the Covenant, etc., according to Piazzi
Smythe and the author of the _Source of Measures_, and the Pyramid
of Gizeh being shown on astronomical calculations to have been built
4950 B.C., and Moses having _written_ his books--for the sake of
argument--not even half that time before our era, how can this be?
Surely if any one borrowed from the other, it is not the Pharaohs
from Moses. Even philology shows not only the Egyptian, but even the
Mongolian, older than the Hebrew.
339 This alone shows how the Books of Moses were tampered with. In
_Samuel_ (ix. 9), it is said: "He that is now a prophet [Nabhi] was
beforetime called a Seer [Roch]." Now since before _Samuel_, the
word "Roch" is met nowhere in the _Pentateuch_, but its place is
always taken by that of "Nabhi," this proves clearly that the Mosaic
text has been replaced by that of the later Levites. (See for fuller
details _Jewish Antiquities_, by the Rev. D. Jennings, D.D.)
340 _Zohar_, i, 2a.
341 _Zohar_, 42b.
342 _Zohar_, i, 2a. See Dr. Ch. Ginsburg's essay on _The Cabbalah, its
Doctrines, Developments and Literature_.
343 Cudworth, I. iii, quoted by Wilson, _Vishnu Purāna_, i. 14, note.
344 _Vishnu Purāna_, i. 14.
345 Stanza i, 4.
346 _Mishna_, i. 9.
347 In its manifested state it becomes Ten, the Universe. In the
Chaldęan _Kabalah_ it is sexless. In the Jewish, Shekinah is female,
and the early Christians and Gnostics regarded the Holy Ghost as a
female potency. In the _Book of Numbers_ "Shekina" is made to drop
the final "h" that makes it a feminine name. Nārāyana, the Mover on
the Waters, is also sexless; but it is our firm belief that Shekinah
and Daiviprakriti, the "Light of the Logos," are one and the same
thing philosophically.
348 The Elohim create the Adam of dust, and in him Jehovah-Binah
separates himself into Eve, after which the male portion of God
becomes the Serpent, tempts himself in Eve, then creates himself in
her as Cain, passes into Seth, and scatters from Enoch, the Son of
Man, or Humanity, as Jodheva.
349 _The Source of Measures_, p. 8.
350 This identifies Sephira, the third potency, with Jehovah the Lord,
who says to Moses out of the burning bush: "(Here) I am." (_Exodus_,
iii, 4.) At this time the "Lord" had not yet become Jehovah. It was
not the one Male God who spoke, but the Elohim manifested, or the
Sephiroth in their manifested collectivity of seven, contained in
the triple Sephira.
351 The Brāhmans were wise in their generation when they gradually, for
no other reason than this, abandoned Brahmā, and paid less attention
to him individually than to any other deity. As an abstract
synthesis they worshipped him collectively and in every God, each of
which represents him. As Brahmā, the male, he is far lower than
Shiva, the Lingam, who personates universal generation, or Vishnu,
the preserver--both Shiva and Vishnu being the regenerators of life
after destruction. The Christians might do worse than follow their
example, and worship God in Spirit, and not in the male Creator.
352 A plural word, signifying a collective host generically; literally,
the "strong lion."
353 The writer possesses only a few extracts, some dozen pages in all,
verbatim quotations from that priceless work, of which but two or
three copies, perhaps, are still extant.
354 Aye; but that _spirituality_ can never be discovered, far less
proved, unless we turn to the Āryan Scriptures and Symbology. For
the Jews it was lost, save for the Sadducees, from the day that the
"chosen people" reached the Promised Land, the national Karma
preventing Moses from reaching it.
355 _Op. cit._, pp. 317-319.
356 _The Book of God_, pp. 388, 389.
357 See Horne's _Introduction_ (10th edition), vol. ii, p. 33, as quoted
by Dr. Kenealy, p. 389.
358 See Horne's _Introduction_ (10th edition), vol. ii, p. 33, as quoted
by Dr. Kenealy, p. 389.
359 The author says that Parker's _quadrature_ is "that identical
measure which was used anciently as the perfect measure, by the
Egyptians, in the construction of the Great Pyramid, which was built
to _monument it and its uses_," and that "from it the _sacred cubit-
value was derived_, which was the cubit-value used in the
construction of the Temple of Solomon, the Ark of Noah, and the Ark
of the Covenant" (p. 22). This is a grand discovery, no doubt, but
it only shows that the Jews profited well by their captivity in
Egypt, and that Moses was a great Initiate.
360 See _Theosophist_, November, 1879, art. "Hindu Music," p. 47.
361 The Sanskrit letters are far more numerous than the poor twenty-two
letters of the Hebrew alphabet. They are all musical, and they are
read--or rather chanted--according to a system given in very old
Tāntrika works, and are called Devanāgarī, the speech, or language,
of the Gods. And since each letter answers to a numeral, the
Sanskrit affords a far larger scope for expression, and it must
necessarily be far more perfect than the Hebrew, which followed the
same system but could apply it only in a very limited way. If either
of these two languages, were taught to humanity by the Gods, surely
it would more likely be the Sanskrit, the perfect form of the most
perfect language on earth, than the Hebrew, the roughest and the
poorest. For once anyone believes in a language of divine origin, he
can hardly believe at the same time that Angels or Gods or any
divine Messengers have had to develop it from a rough monosyllabic
form into a perfect one, as we see in terrestrial linguistic
evolution.
362 In the first chapter of _Genesis_ the word "God" represents the
Elohim--Gods in the plural, not one God. This is a cunning and
dishonest translation. For the whole _Kabalah_ explains sufficiently
that the Alhim (Elohim) are seven; each creates one of the seven
things enumerated in the first chapter, and these answer
allegorically to the seven creations. To make this clear, count the
verses in which it is said "And God saw that it was good," and you
will find that this is said seven times--in verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21,
25, and 31. And though the compilers cunningly represent the
creation of man as occurring on the sixth day, yet, having made man
"male and female in the image of God," the Seven Elohim repeat the
sacramental sentence, "It was good," for the seventh time, thus
making of man the seventh creation, and showing the origin of this
bit of cosmogony to be in the Hindu creations. The Elohim are, of
course, the seven Egyptian Khnūmū, the "assistant-architects"; the
seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians; the Seven Spirits subordinate
to Ildabaoth of the Nazareans; the seven Prajāpati of the Hindus,
etc.
363 _Gen._, ii. 21, 22.
364 _Op. cit._, p. 395, note.
365 The seventh esoterically, exoterically the sixth.
366 _Contra Hereses_, I, xviii, 2.
367 _Op. cit._ by Gerald Massey, p. 19.
368 _Op cit._, p. 278.
369 _The Hebrew and other Creations: with a reply to Professor A. H.
Sayce_, p. 19.
370 _Op. cit._, p. 243.
371 When they are the Anupādakas (Parentless) of the Secret Doctrine.
See Stanzas, i, 9, Vol. i, 56.
372 These originated with the Āryans, who placed therein their "bright-
crested" (Chitra-Shikhandan) Seven Rishis. But all this is far more
Occult than appears on the surface.
373 _Op. cit._, pp. 19-22.
374 _Vishnu Purāna_, Wilson's Trans., i, 101. The period of these
Kumāras is Pre-Adamic, _i.e._, before the separation of sexes, and
before humanity had received the creative, or sacred, fire of
Prometheus.
375 The Secret Doctrine says that this was the second creation, not the
first, and that it took place during the Third Race, when men
separated, _i.e._, began to be born as distinct men and women. See Vol. ii. of this work, Stanzas and Commentaries.
376 This is a Western mangling of the Indian doctrine of the Kumāras.
377 He was regarded by several Gnostic sects as one with Jehovah. See _Isis Unveiled_, vol. ii. p. 184.
378 Or "man, son of man." The Church found in this a _prophecy_ and a
confession of Christ, the "Son of Man!"
379 See Stanza ii. 5, Secret Doctrine, ii. 16.
380 _Op. cit._, pp. 23, 24.
381 The _Sepher Jetzirah_ now known is but a portion of the original one
incorporated in the Chaldęan _Book of Numbers_. The fragment now in
possession of the Western Kabalists is one greatly tampered with by
the Rabbis of the Middle Ages, as its masoretic points show. The
"Masorah" scheme is a modern blind, dating after our era and
perfected in Tiberias. (See _Isis Unveiled_, vol. ii, pp. 430-431.)
382 In the oldest symbolism--that used in the Egyptian hieroglyphics--when
the bull's head only is found it means the Deity, the Perfect
Circle, with the procreative power latent in it. When the whole bull
is represented, a solar God, a _personal_ deity is meant, for it is
then the symbol of the acting generative power.
383 It took three Root-Races to degrade the symbol of the One Abstract
Unity manifested in Nature as a Ray emanating from infinity (the
Circle) into a phallic symbol of generation, as it was even in the
_Kabalah_. This degradation began with the Fourth Race, and had its
_raison d'etre_, in Polytheism, as the latter was invented to screen
the One Universal Deity from profanation. The Christians may plead
ignorance of its meaning as an excuse for its acceptance. But why
sing never-ceasing laudations to the Mosaic Jews who repudiated all
the other Gods, preserved the most phallic, and then most impudently
proclaimed themselves Monotheists? Jesus ever steadily ignored
Jehovah. He went against the Mosaic commandments. He recognized his
Heavenly Father alone, and prohibited public worship.
384 Is it everything to have found out that the celestial circle of 360°
is determined by "the full word-form of Elohim," and that this
yields, when the word is placed in a circle, "3.1415, or the
relation of circumference to a diameter of _one_." This is only its
astronomical or mathematical aspect. To know the full _septenary_
significance of the "Primordial Circle," the pyramid and the
Kabalistic _Bible_ must be read in the light of the figure on which
the temples of India are built. The mathematical squaring of the
circle is only the terrestrial _résumé_ of the problem. The Jews
were content with the six days of activity and the seventh of rest.
The progenitors of mankind solved the greatest problems of the
Universe with their seven Rays or Rishis.
385 _Genesis_ begins with the _third_ stage of "creation," skipping the
preliminary two.
386 The three _root_-principles are, exoterically: Man, Soul, and Spirit
(meaning by "man" the intelligent personality), and esoterically:
Life, Soul, and Spirit; the four vehicles are Body, Astral double,
Animal (or human) Soul, and Divine Soul (Sthūla-Sharīra, Linga-
Sharīra, Kāma-rūpa, and Buddhi, the vehicle of Ātma or Spirit). Or,
to make it still clearer: (1) the _Seventh_ Principle has for its
vehicle the Sixth (Buddhi); (2) the vehicle of Manas is Kāma-rūpa;
(3) that of Jīva or Prāna (life) is the Linga-Sharīra (the "double"
of man; the Linga-Sharīra proper can never leave the body till
death; that which appears is an astral body, reflecting the physical
body and serving as a vehicle for the human soul, or intelligence);
and (4) the Body, the physical vehicle of all the above
collectively. The Occultist recognizes the same order as existing
for the cosmical totality, the _psycho_-cosmical Universe.
387 St. Denys, the Areopagite, the supposed contemporary of St. Paul,
his co-disciple, and first Bishop of St. Denis, near Paris, teaches
that the bulk of the "work of creation" was performed by the
"_Seven_ Spirits of the Presence"--God's _co-operators_, owing to a
participation of the divinity in them. (_Hierarch._, p. 196.) And
Saint Augustine also thinks that "things were rather created in the
angelic minds than in Nature, that is to say, that the angels
perceived and knew them (all things) in their thoughts before they
could spring forth into actual existence." (_Vid. De Genesis ad
Litteram_ p. II.) (Summarized from De Mirville, Vol. II., pp.
337-338.) Thus the early Christian Fathers, even a non-initiate like
St. Augustine, ascribed the creation of the visible world to Angels,
or Secondary Powers, while St. Denys not only specifies these as the
"_Seven_ Spirits of the Presence," but shows them owing their power
to the informing divine energy--Fohat in the Secret Doctrine. But the
egotistical darkness which caused the Western races to cling so
desperately to the _Geo_-centric System, made them also neglect and
despise all those fragments of the true Religion which would have
deprived them and the little globe they took for the centre of the
Universe of the signal honour of having been expressly "created" by
the One, Secondless, Infinite God!
388 De Mirville, ii. 295.
389 To the Occultist and Chelā the difference made between _Energy_ and
Emanation need not be explained. The Sanskrit word "Sakti" is
untranslatable. It may be Energy, but it is one that proceeds
through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will of the
one that produces it. The "First-Born," or Logos, is not an
Emanation, but an Energy inherent in and co-eternal with
Parabrahman, the One. The _Zohar_ speaks of emanations, but reserves
the word for the seven Sephiroth emanated from the first three--which
form one triad--Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. As for these three, it
explains the difference by calling them "immanations," something
inherent to and coėval with the subject postulated, or in other
words, "Energies."
It is these "Auxiliaries," the Auphanim, the half-human Prajāpatis,
the Angels, the Architects under the leadership of the "Angel of the
Great Council," with the rest of the Kosmos-Builders of other
nations, that can alone explain the imperfection of the Universe.
This imperfection is one of the arguments of the Secret Science in
favour of the existence and activity of these "Powers." And who know
better than the few philosophers of our civilised lands how near the
truth Philo was in ascribing the origin of evil to the admixture of
inferior potencies in the arrangement of matter, and even in the
formation of man--a task entrusted to the divine Logos.
390 _Psalms_ cxxxv. 5.
391 _Psalms_ xcvi. 5.
392 Rather as Ormazd or Ahura-Mazda, Vit-nam-Ahmi, and all the
unmanifested Logoi. Jehovah is the manifested Virāj, corresponding
to Binah, the third Sephira in the _Kabalah_, a female Power which
would find its prototype rather in the Prajāpati, than in Brahmā,
the Creator.
393 Neith is Aditi, evidently.
394 The Self-created Logos, Nārāyana, Purushottama, and others.
395 _Mčre d'Apis_, pp. 32-35. Quoted by De Mirville.
396 See _Republic_, I. vi.
397 _Harmonie entre l'Église et la Synagogue_, t. II., p. 427, by the
Chevalier Drach. See De Mirville iv. 38, 39.
398 Julian died for the same crime as Socrates. Both divulged a portion
of the solar mystery, the heliocentric system being only a part of
what was given during Initiation--one consciously, the other
unconsciously, the Greek Sage never having been initiated. It was
not the real solar system that was preserved in such secrecy, but
the mysteries connected with the Sun's constitution. Socrates was
sentenced to death by earthly and worldly judges; Julian died a
violent death because the hitherto protecting hand was withdrawn
from him, and, no longer shielded by it, he was simply left to his
destiny or Karma. For the student of Occultism there is a suggestive
difference between the two kinds of death. Another memorable
instance of the unconscious divulging of secrets pertaining to
mysteries is that of the poet, P. Ovidius Naso, who, like Socrates,
had not been initiated. In his case, the Emperor Augustus, who was
an Initiate, mercifully changed the penalty of death into banishment
to Tomos on the Euxine. This sudden change from unbounded royal
favour to banishment has been a fruitful scheme of speculation to
classical scholars not initiated into the Mysteries. They have
quoted Ovid's own lines to show that it was some great and heinous
immorality of the Emperor of which Ovid had become unwillingly
cognizant. The inexorable law of the death penalty, always following
upon the revelation of any portion of the Mysteries to the profane,
was unknown to them. Instead of seeing the amiable and merciful act
of the Emperor in its true light, they have made it an occasion for
traducing his moral character. The poet's own words can be no
evidence, because as he was not an Initiate, it could not be
explained to him in what his offence consisted. There have been
comparatively modern instances of poets unconsciously revealing in
their verses so much of the hidden knowledge as to make even
Initiates suppose them to be fellow-Initiates, and come to talk to
them on the subject. This only shows that the sensitive poetic
temperament is sometimes so far transported beyond the bounds of
ordinary sense as to get glimpses into what has been impressed on
the Astral Light. In the _Light of Asia_ there are two passages that
might make an Initiate of the first degree think that Mr. Edwin
Arnold had been initiated himself in the Himālyan _āshrams_, but
this is not so.
399 A proof that Julian was acquainted with the heliocentric system.
400 _La Gravitation par l'Electricité_, p. 7, quoted by De Mirville; iv.
156.
401 De Mirville, iv. 157.
402 _Memoir on the Solar System_, p. 7, De Mirville, iv. 157.
403 _Essai sur l' Identité des Agents Producteurs du Son, de la
Lumičre_, etc., p. 15, _Ibid._
404 _Ibid._, p. 218.
405 Summarised from _Ibid._, p. 213. De Mirville, iv. 158.
406 May, 1855. _Ibid._, p. 139.
407 _La Terre et notre Systčme solaire._ De Mirville, iv. 139.
408 If, as Sir W. Herschel thought, the so-called fixed stars have
resulted from, and owe their origin to nebular combustion, they
cannot be fixed any more than is our sun, which was believed to be
motionless and is now found to rotate around its axis every twenty-
five days. As the fixed star nearest to the sun, however, is eight-
thousand times farther away from him than is Neptune, the illusions
furnished by the telescopes must be also eight-thousand times as
great. We will therefore leave the question at rest, repeating only
what A. Maury said in his work (_La Terre et l'Homme_, published in
1858): "It is utterly impossible, so far, to decide anything
concerning Neptune's constitution, analogy alone authorising us to
ascribe to him a rotary motion like that of other planets" (De
Mirville, iv. 140).
409 _Exposition du vrai Systčme du Monde_, p. 282.
410 See the passage quoted by Herschel in _Natural Philosophy_, p. 165.
De Mirville, iv. 105.
411 _Loc. cit._
412 _Terre et Ciel_, p. 28. _Ibid._
413 _OEuvres d'Arago_, vol. i., p. 219; quoted by De Mirville, iii. 462.
414 "_Die Sterne sind vielleicht ein Sitz verklarter Geister;_
_Wie hier das Laster herrscht, ist dort die Tugend Meister._"
415 _Op. cit._, p. 411.
416 Whenever Occult doctrines were expounded in the pages of _The
Theosophist_, care was taken each time to declare a subject
incomplete when the whole could not be given in its fulness, and no
writer has ever tried to mislead the reader. As to the Western
"ranges of perception" concerning doctrines really Occult, the
Eastern Occultists have been made acquainted with them for some time
past. Thus they are enabled to assert with confidence that the West
may be in possession of Hermetic philosophy as a speculative system
of dialectics, the latter being used in the West admirably well, but
it lacks entirely the knowledge of Occultism. The genuine Eastern
Occultist keeps silent and unknown, never publishes what he knows,
and rarely even speaks of it, as he knows too well the penalty of
indiscretion.
417 See _The Royal Masonic Cyclopędia_, art. "Sepher Jetzirah."
418 In the exoteric sense, the Mantra (or that psychic faculty or power
that conveys perception or thought) is the older portion of the
_Vedas_, the second part of which is composed of the _Brāhmanas_. In
Esoteric phraseology Mantra is the Word made flesh, or rendered
objective, through divine magic.
419 The secret meaning of the word "Brahmā" is "expansion," "increase,"
or "growth."
420 Why not give at once its theological meaning, as we find it in
Webster? With the Roman Catholics it means simply "purgatory," the
borderland between heaven and hell (_Limbus patrum_ and _Limbus
infantum_), the one for all men, whether good, bad or indifferent;
the other for the souls of unbaptized children! With the ancients it
meant simply that which in _Esoteric Buddhism_ is called the Kāma
Loka, between Devachan and Avitchi.
421 As Chaos, the eternal Element, not as the Kāma Loka surely.
422 A proof that by this word Éliphas Lévi means the lowest region of
the terrestrial Ākāsha.
423 Evidently he is concerned only with our periodical world, or the
terrestrial globe.
424 In the "reäwakening" of the Forces would be more correct.
425 An action which is incessant in eternity cannot be called
"creation;" it is evolution, and the eternally or ever-becoming of
the Greek Philosopher and the Hindu Vedāntin; it is the Sat and the
one Beingness of Parmenides, or the Being identical with Thought.
Now how can the Potencies be said to "create movement," once it is
seen movement never had any beginning, but existed in the Eternity?
Why not say that the reawakened Potencies transferred motion from
the eternal to the temporal plane of being? Surely this is not
Creation.
426 _Histoire de la Magie._ Int., p. 1.
427 _Histoire de la Magie._ Int., p. 2.
428 The Vaishnavas, who regard Vishnu as the Supreme God and the
fashioner of the Universe, claim that Brahmā sprang from the navel
of Vishnu, the "imperishable," or rather from the lotus that grew
from it. But the "navel" here means the Central Point, the
mathematical symbol of infinitude, or Parabrahman, the One and the
Secondless.
429 _Ecclesiastes_, i. 12, 13.
430 It is probably needless to say here what everyone knows. The
translation of the Protestant _Bible_ is not a word for word
rendering of the earlier Greek and Latin _Bibles_: the sense is very
often disfigured, and "God" is put where "Jahve" and "Elohim" stand.
431 _Psalms_, civ. 2, 3.
432 To avoid misunderstanding of the word "creation" so often used by
us, the remarks of the author of _Through the Gates of Gold_ may be
quoted owing to their clearness and simplicity. "The words 'to
create' are often understood by the ordinary mind to convey the idea
of evolving something out of nothing. This is clearly not its
meaning. We are mentally obliged to provide our Creator with chaos
from which to produce the worlds. The tiller of the soil, who is the
typical producer of social life, must have his material: his earth,
his sky, rain and sun, and the seeds to place within the earth. Out
of nothing he can produce nothing. Out of a void nature cannot
arise; there is that material beyond, behind, or within, from which
she is shaped by our desire for a Universe." (P. 72.)
433 Commentary on Stanza ix. on Cycles.
434 Or, read from right to left, the letters and their corresponding
numerals stand thus: "t," 4; "h," 5; "bh," 2; "v," 6; "v," 6; "h,"
5; "v" or "w," 6; which yields "thuvbhu," 4566256, or "Tohu-vah-
bohu."
435 Mr. Ralston Skinner's MSS.
436 That the teraphim was a statue, and no small article either, is
shown in _Samuel_ xix., where Michal takes a teraphim ("image," as
it is translated) and puts it in bed to represent David, her
husband, who ran away from Saul (see verse 13, _et seq._). It was
thus of the size and shape of a human figure--a statue or real
_idol_.
437 _Op. cit._, iii. 4
438 Louis de Dieu, _Genesis_, xxxi. 19. See De Mirville, iii. 257.
439 "The teraphim of Abram's father, Terah, the 'maker of images,' were
the Kabeiri Gods, and we see them worshipped by Micah, by the
Danites, and others. (_Judges_, xvii.-xviii., etc.) Teraphim were
identical with seraphim, and these were serpent images, the origin
of which is in the Sanskrit 'Sarpa' (the 'serpent') a symbol sacred
to all the deities as a symbol of immortality. Kiyun, or the God
Kivan, worshipped by the Hebrews in the wilderness, is Shiva, the
Hindu Saturn. (The Zendic 'h' is 's' in India; thus, 'Hapta' is
'Sapta;' 'Hindu' is 'Sindbaya.' (A. Wilder)) 'The "s" continually
softens to "h" from Greece to Calcutta, from the Caucasus to Egypt,'
says Dunlap. Therefore the letters 'k,' 'h,' and 's' are
interchangeable. The Greek story shows that Dardanus, the Arcadian,
having received them as a dowry, carried them to Samothrace, and
thence to Troy; and they were worshipped long before the days of
glory of Tyre or Sidon, though the former had been built 2760 B.C.
From where did Dardanus derive them?" _Isis Unveiled_, i. 570.
440 Maimon, _More Nevochim_, III. xxx.
441 Those dedicated to the sun were made in gold, and those to the moon
in silver.
442 _De Diis Syriis, Teraph._ II. Syat, p. 31.
443 Those that the Kabalists call _elementary_ spirits are sylphs,
gnomes, undines and salamanders, nature-spirits, in short. The
spirits of the angels formed a distinct class.
444 _OEdipus_, ii. 444.
445 _Op. cit._, xxv. 22 _et seq._
446 The ephod was a linen garment worn by the high priest, but as the
thummim was attached to it, the entire paraphernalia of divination
was often comprised in that single word, ephod. See I. _Sam._,
xxviii. 6, and xxx. 7, 8.
447 _Paganism and Judaism_, iv. 197.
448 _Op. cit._, I. vi. 5.
449 _Discourse to the Gentiles_, p. 146.
450 _De Gener._, I, II. iv.
451 See _Cosmos_, by Ménage, I., vi., § 101.
452 _Op. cit._, I. ii.
453 "The characters employed on those parchments," writes De Mirville,
"are sometimes hieroglyphics, placed perpendicularly, a kind of
lineary tachygraphy (abridged characters), where the image is often
reduced to a simple stroke; at other times placed in horizontal
lines; then the hieratic or sacred writing, going from right to left
as in all Semitic languages; lastly, the characters of the country,
used for official documents, mostly contracts, etc., but which since
the Ptolemies has been also adopted for the monuments," v. 81, 82. A
copy of the Harris papyrus, translated by Chabas--_Papyrus
magique_--may be studied at the British Museum.
454 And what of the "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," the words that "the
fingers of a man's hand," whose body and arm remained invisible,
wrote on the walls of Belshazzar's palace? (_Daniel_, v.) What of
the writings of Simon the Magician, and the magic characters on the
walls and in the air of the crypts of Initiation, without mentioning
the tables of stone on which the finger of God wrote the
commandments? Between the writing of one God and other Gods the
difference, if any, lies only in their respective natures; and if
the tree is to be known by its fruits, then preference would have to
be given always to the Pagan Gods. It is the immortal "To be or not
to be." Either all of them are--or at any rate, may be--true, or all
are surely pious frauds and the result of credulity.
455 _Papyrus Magique_, p. 186.
456 See Maspero's _Guide to the Bulak Museum_, among others.
457 De Mirville (from whom much of the preceding is taken), v. 81, 85.
458 See De Mirville, v. 84, 85.
459 One sees this difficulty arise even with a perfectly known language
like Sanskrit, the meaning of which is far easier to comprehend than
the hieratic writings of Egypt. Everyone knows how hopelessly the
Sanskritists are often puzzled over the real meaning and how they
fail in rendering the meaning correctly in their respective
translations, in which one Orientalist contradicts the other.
460 _Op. cit._, i. 297.
461 Book II., Commentary.
462 Bunsen and Champollion so declare, and Dr. Carpenter says that the
_Book of the Dead_, sculptured on the oldest monuments, with "the
very phrases we find in the _New Testament_ in connection with the
Day of Judgment ... was engraved probably 2,000 years before the
time of Christ." (See _Isis Unveiled_, i., 518.)
463 De Mirville, v. 88. Just such a calendar and horoscope interdictions
exist in India in our day, as well as in China and all the Buddhist
countries.
464 See De Mirville, iii. 65.
465 _Pap. Mag._, p. 163.
466 _Ibid._, p. 168.
467 Maimonides in his _Treatise on Idolatry_ says, speaking of the
Jewish teraphim: "They talked with men." To this day Christian
Sorcerers in Italy, and negro Voodoos at New Orleans fabricate small
wax figures in the likeness of their victims, and transpierce them
with needles, the _wound_, as on the teraphim or Menh, being
repercussed on the living, often killing them. Mysterious deaths are
still many, and not all are traced to the guilty hand.
468 The Ramses of Lepsius, who reigned some 1300 years before our era.
469 One may judge how trustworthy are the translations of such Egyptian
documents when the sentence is rendered in three different ways by
three Egyptologists. Rougé says: "He found her in a state _to fall
under the power of spirits_," or "with her limbs quite stiff," (?)
another version; and Chabas translates: "And the Scribe found the
Khou too wicked." Between her being in possession of an evil Khou
and "with her limbs quite stiff," there is a difference.
470 De Mirville, v. 247, 248.
471 Some translators would have Lucian speak of the inhabitants of the
city, but they fail to show that this view is maintainable.
472 De Mirville, v. 256, 257.
473 How can de Mirville see Satan in the Egyptian God of the great
divine Name, when he himself admits that nothing was greater than
the name of the oracle of Dodona, as it was that of the God of the
Jews, IAO, or Jehovah? That oracle had been brought by the
Pelasgians to Dodona more than fourteen centuries B.C. and left with
the forefathers of the Hellenes, and its history is well-known and
may be read in Herodotus. Jupiter, who loved the fair nymph of the
ocean, Dodona, had ordered Pelasgus to carry his cult to Thessaly.
The name of the God of that oracle at the temple of Dodona was Zeus
Pelasgicos, the Zeuspater (God the Father), or as De Mirville
explains: "It was the name _par excellence_, the name that the Jews
held as the ineffable, the unpronounceable Name--in short, _Jaoh-
pater_, _i.e._, 'he who was, who is, and who will be,' otherwise the
Eternal." And the author admits that Maury is right "in discovering
in the name of the Vaidic Indra the Biblical Jehovah," and does not
even attempt to deny the etymological connection between the two
names--"the _great_ and the _lost_ name with the sun and the thunder-
bolts." Strange confessions, and still stranger contradictions.
474 Reuvens' _Letter to Letronne on the 75th number of the Papyri
Anastasi_. See De Mirville. v. 258.
475 The Eleusinian Fields.
476 _Fragments_, ix.
477 _De Legibus_, II. iv.
478 _Judaism and Paganism_, i. 184.
479 _Frag. of Styg., ap. Stob._
480 _De Special. Legi._
481 De Mirville, v. 278, 279.
482 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 25.
483 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 282, 283.
484 De Mirville, v. 248.
485 De Mirville, v. 281.
486 Tod's Rajasthan, i. 28.
487 _Op. cit._, ix. iii. 28.
488 _Vishnu Purāna_, iv. i. Wilson's translation, iii. 248-254.
489 There were no Brāhmans as a hereditary caste in days of old. In
those long-departed ages a man became a Brāhman through personal
merit and Initiation. Gradually, however, despotism crept in, and
the son of a Brāhman was created a Brāhman by right of protection
first, then by that of heredity. The rights of blood replaced those
of real merit, and thus arose the body of Brāhmans, which was soon
changed into a powerful caste.
490 _Des Initiations Anciennes and Modernes._ "The mysteries," says
Ragon, "were the gift of India." In this he is mistaken, for the
Āryan race had brought the mysteries of Initiation from Atlantis.
Nevertheless he is right in saying that the mysteries preceded all
civilisations, and that by polishing the mind and morals of the
peoples they served as a base for all the laws--civil, political, and
religious.
491 _De Off._, i. 33.
492 _Des Initiations_, p. 22.
493 _Essais Historiques sur la Franc-Maēonnerie_, pp. 142, 143.
494 The word "patriarch" is composed of the Greek word "Patria"
("family," "tribe," or "nation") and "Archos" (a "chief"), the
paternal principle. The Jewish Patriarchs who were pastors, passed
their name to the Christian Patriarchs; yet they were no priests,
but were simply the heads of their tribes, like the Indian Rishis.
495 There is no need to observe here that the resurrection of a really
dead body is an impossibility in Nature.
496 The kings of Hungary claimed that they could cure the jaundice; the
Dukes of Burgundy were credited with preserving people from the
plague; the kings of Spain delivered those possessed by the devil.
The prerogative of curing the king's evil was given to the kings of
France, in reward for the virtues of good King Robert. Francis the
First, during a short stay at Marseilles for his son's wedding,
touched and cured of that disease upwards of 500 persons. The kings
of England had the same privilege.
497 See Laurens' _Essais Historiques_ for further information as to the
world-wide, universal knowledge of the Egyptian Priests.
498 _Des Initiations_, p. 24.
499 The word comes from the Greek "hieros" ("sacred") and "glupho" ("I
grave"). The Egyptian characters were sacred to the Gods, as the
Indian Devanāgarī is the language of the Gods.
500 The same author had (as Occultists have) a very reasonable objection
to the modern etymology of the word "philosophy," which is
interpreted "love of wisdom," and is nothing of the kind. The
philosophers were scientists, and philosophy was a real science--not
simply verbiage, as it is in our day. The term is composed of two
Greek words whose meaning is intended to convey its secret sense,
and ought to be interpreted as "wisdom of love." Now it is in the
last word, "love," that lies hidden the esoteric significance: for
"love" does not stand here as a noun, nor does it mean "affection"
or "fondness," but is the term used for Eros, that primordial
principle in divine creation, synonymous with {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, the abstract
desire in Nature for procreation, resulting in an everlasting series
of phenomena. It means "divine love," that universal element of
divine omnipresence spread throughout Nature and which is at once
the chief cause and effect. The "wisdom of love" (or "philosophia,")
meant attraction to and love of everything hidden beneath objective
phenomena and the knowledge thereof. Philosophy meant the highest
Adeptship--love of and assimilation with Deity. In his modesty
Pythagoras even refused to be called a Philosopher (or one who knows
every hidden thing in things visible; cause and effect, or absolute
truth), and called himself simply a Sage an aspirant to philosophy,
or to Wisdom of Love--love in its exoteric meaning being as degraded
by men then as it is now by its purely terrestrial application.
501 _Lev._, xix. 18.
502 "On," the "Sun," the Egyptian name of Heliopolis (the "City of the
Sun").
503 _Book of God_, p. 160.
504 Mr. Kenealy quotes, in his _Book of God_, Vallancey, who says: "I
had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had
studied Hebrew and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries, when I
heard a peasant girl say to a boor standing by her '_Feach an Maddin
Nag_' ('Behold the morning star'), pointing to the planet Venus, the
Maddena Nag of the Chaldeans."
505 There was a time when the whole world, the totality of mankind, had
one religion, as they were of "one lip." "All the religions of the
earth were at first one, and emanated from one centre," says Faber.
506 _Chips from a German Workshop_, i. 69, 70.
507 Sūrya, the Sun, is one of the nine divinities that witness all human
actions.
508 [There is a gap in H. P. B.'s MS., and the paragraph in brackets
supplies what was missing.--A. B.]
509 In _Isis Unveiled_, Vol. II., pp. 41, 42, a portion of this rite is
referred to. Speaking of the dogma of Atonement, it is traced to
ancient "heathendom" again. We say: "This cornerstone of a church
which had believed herself built on a firm rock for long centuries,
is now excavated by science and proved to come from the Gnostics.
Professor Draper shows it as hardly known in the days of Tertullian,
and as having 'originated among the Gnostic heretics' (see _Conflict
Between Religion and Science_, p. 224).... But there are sufficient
proofs to show that it _originated_ among them no more than did
their anointed Christos and Sophia. The former they modelled on the
original of the King Messiah, the male principle of wisdom, and the
latter on the third Sephiroth, from the Chaldęan _Kabalah_, and even
from the Hindu Brahmā and Sarasvatī, and the Pagan Dionysius and
Demeter. And here we are on firm ground, if it were only because it
is now proved that the _New Testament_ never appeared in its
complete form, such as we find it now, till 300 years after the
period of the apostles, and the _Zohar_ and other Kabalistic books
are found to belong to the first century before our era, if not to
be far older still.
"The Gnostics entertained many of the Essenean ideas; and the
Essenes had their greater and minor Mysteries at least two centuries
before our era. They were the _Isarim_ or _Initiates_, the
descendants of the Egyptian hierophants, in whose country they had
been settled for several centuries before they were converted to
Buddhistic monasticism by the missionaries of King Asoka, and
amalgamated later with the earliest Christians: and they existed,
probably, before the old Egyptian temples were desecrated and ruined
in the incessant invasions of Persians, Greeks, and other conquering
hordes. The hierophants had their atonement enacted in the Mystery
of Initiation ages before the Gnostics, or even the Essenes, had
appeared. It was known among hierophants as the Baptism of Blood,
and was considered not as an atonement for the 'fall of man' in
Eden, but simply as an expiation for the past, present, and future
sins of ignorant, but nevertheless polluted mankind. The hierophant
had the option of either offering his pure and sinless life as a
sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped to rejoin, or an
animal victim. The former depended entirely on their own will. At
the last moment of the solemn 'new birth,' the Initiator passed 'the
word' to the initiated, and immediately after the latter had a
weapon placed in his right hand, and was ordered _to strike_. This
is the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement."
As Ballanche says, quoted by Ragon: "Destruction is the great God of
the World," justifying therefore the philosophical conception of the
Hindu Shīva. According to this immutable and sacred law, "the
Initiate was compelled to kill the Initiator; otherwise initiation
remained incomplete.... It is death that generates life."
_Orthodoxie maēonnique_, p. 104. All that, however, was emblematic
and exoteric. Weapon and killing must be understood in their
allegorical sense.
510 _Orthodoxie maēonnique_, pp. 102-104.
511 _Op. cit._, i. 15.
512 _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 258. A curious question to start and
to deny, when it is well-known even to the Orientalists that, to
take but one case, there is Yaska, who was a predecessor of Pānini,
and his work still exists; there are seventeen writers of Nirukta
(glossary) known to have preceded Yaska.
513 _La Mčre d'Apis_, p. 47.
514 One just initiated is called the "first-born," and in India he
becomes dwija, "twice born," only after his final and supreme
Initiation. Every Adept is a "Son of God" and a "Son of Light" after
receiving the "Word," when he becomes the "Word" himself, after
receiving the seven divine attributes or the "lyre of Apollo."
515 See De Mirville, iv. 15.
516 II. _Kings_, xxiii. 4-13.
517 _Judges_, xiii. 18. Samson, Manoah's son, was an Initiate of that
"Mystery" Lord, Ja-va; he was consecrated before his birth to become
a "Nazarite" (a chela) an Adept. His sin with Dalilah, and the
cropping of his long hair that "no razor was to touch" shows how
well he kept his sacred vow. The allegory of Samson proves the
Esotericism of the _Bible_, as also the character of the "Mystery
Gods" of the Jews. True, Mōvers gives a definition of the Phoenician
idea of the ideal sunlight as a spiritual influence issuing from the
highest God, Iao, "the light conceivable only by intellect--the
physical and spiritual Principle of all things; out of which the
soul emanates." It was the male Essence, or Wisdom, while the
primitive matter or _Chaos_ was the female. Thus the first two
principles, co-eternal and infinite, were already with the primitive
Phoenicians, spirit and matter. But this is the echo of Jewish
thought, not the opinion of Pagan Philosophers.
518 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 526.
519 Beth-San or Scythopolis in Palestine had that designation; so had a
spot on Mount Parnassus. But Diodorus declares that Nyssa was
between Phoenicia and Egypt; Euripides states that Dionysos came to
Greece from India; and Diodorus adds his testimony: "Osiris was
brought up in Nyssa, in Arabia the Happy; he was the son of Zeus,
and was named from his father (nominative Zeus, genitive _Dios_) and
the place Dio-Nysos"--the Zeus or Jove of Nyssa. This identity of
name or title is very significant. In Greece Dionysos was second
only to Zeus, and Pindar says: "So Father Zeus governs all things,
and Bacchus he governs also."
520 _Ex._, xvii. 15.
521 _Phędrus_, Cary's translation, p. 326.
522 _Life of Pythagoras_, p. 297. "Since Pythagoras," he adds, "also
spent two and twenty years in the adyta of the temples in Egypt,
associated with the Magians in Babylon, and was instructed by them
in their venerable knowledge, it is not at all wonderful that he was
skilled in Magic or Theurgy, and was therefore able to perform
things which surpass merely human power, and which appear to be
perfectly incredible to the vulgar" (p. 298).
523 This expression must not be understood simply literally; for, as in
the initiation of certain Brotherhoods, it has a secret meaning that
we have just explained; it was hinted at by Pythagoras, when he
describes his feelings after the Initiation, and says that he was
crowned by the Gods in whose presence he had drunk "the waters of
life"--in the Hindu Mysteries there was the fount of life, and
_soma_, the sacred drink.
524 _Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries_, T. Taylor, p. 46, 47.
525 ii. 111, 113.
526 _Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries_, p. 63.
527 _Op. cit._, p. 65.
528 Quoted by Taylor, p. 66.
529 Verses 35-38.
530 _Phędrus_, 64, quoted by Taylor, p. 64.
531 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 114.
532 This is false, and the Abbé Constant (Éliphas Lévi) _knew_ it was
so. Why did he promulgate the untruth?
533 _Dogme de la Haute Magie_, i. 219, 220.
534 _Orthodoxie Maēonnique_, p. 99.
535 _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 214.
536 In I. _Peter_, ii. 3, Jesus is called "the Lord Chrestos."
537 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 323.
538 _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 31.
539 The Āryans replaced the living cow by one made of gold, silver or
any other metal, and the rite is preserved to this day, when one
desires to become a Brāhman, a twice-born, in India.
540 _Op. cit._, p. 141.
541 In Ragon's _Orthodoxie Maēonnique_, p. 105, _note_, we find the
following statement--borrowed from Albumazar the Arabian, probably:
"_The Virgin of the Magi and Chaldęans._ The Chaldęan sphere [globe]
showed in its heavens a newly-born babe, called _Christ and Jesus_;
it was placed in the arms of the Celestial Virgin. It was to this
Virgin that Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian Librarian, born 276 years
before our era, gave the name of Isis, mother of Horus." This is
only what Kircher gives (in _Ędipus Ęgypticus_, iii. 5), quoting
Albumazar: "In the first decan of the Virgin rises a maid, called
Aderenosa, that is pure, immaculate virgin ... sitting upon an
embroidered throne nursing a boy...; a boy, named Jessus ... which
signifies Issa, whom they also call Christ in Greek." (See _Isis
Unveiled_, ii. 491.)
542 Now called _St. Reine_ (Cōte d'Or) on the two streams, the Ose and
the Oserain. Its fall is a historical fact in Keltic Gaulish
History.
543 _Orthodoxie Maēonnique_, p. 22.
544 _Op. cit._, p. 22.
545 The Christian mob in 389 of our era completed the work of
destruction upon what remained; most of the priceless works were
saved for students of Occultism, but lost to the world.
546 _Op. cit._ p. 23. J. M. Ragon, a Belgian by birth, and a Mason, knew
more about Occultism than any other non-initiated writer. For fifty
years he studied the ancient Mysteries wherever he could find
accounts of them. In 1805, he founded at Paris the Brotherhood of
_Les Trinosophes_, in which Lodge he delivered for years lectures on
Ancient and Modern Initiation (in 1818 and again in 1841), which
were published, and now are lost. Then he became the writer in chief
of _Hermes_, a masonic paper. His best works were _La Maēonnerie
Occulte_ and the _Fastes Initiatiques_. After his death, in 1866, a
number of his MSS. remained in the possession of the Grand Orient of
France. A high Mason told the writer that Ragon had corresponded for
years with two Orientalists in Syria and Egypt, one of whom is a
Kopt gentleman.
547 _Op. cit._, iv. 462.
548 _History of Magic_, ii. 11.
549 _Neo-Platonism and Alchemy_, p. 15.
550 _Loc. cit._
551 _Op. cit._, pp. 9, 10.
552 This Divine Effulgence and Essence is the light of the Logos; only
the Vedāntin would not use the pronoun "He," but would say "It."
553 _Loc. cit._, _note_, p. 10.
554 _Loc. cit._, _note_.
555 See _Esoteric Buddhism_, by A. P. Sinnett, Fifth Edition.
556 See _Isis Unveiled_, Vol. I., pp. 589-595. The "Sons of God" and
their war with the giants and magicians.
557 _Loc. cit._, _note_.
558 _Op. cit._, p. 18.
559 _Op. cit._, p. 8.
560 No orthodox Christian has ever equalled, far less surpassed, in the
practice of true Christ-like virtues and ethics, or in the beauty of
his moral nature, Ammonius, the Alexandrian pervert from
Christianity (he was born from Christian parents).
561 _Op. cit._, pp. 3, 4.
562 Quoted by Dr. Wilder, p. 5.
563 "Mortification" is here meant in the moral, not the physical sense;
to restrain every lust and passion, and live on the simplest diet
possible.
564 This is the Neo-Platonic teaching adopted as a doctrine in the Roman
Catholic Church, with its worship of the Seven Spirits.
565 The Church has made of it the worship of devils. "Daimon" is Spirit,
and relates to our divine Spirit, the seventh Principle and to the
Dhyān Chohans. Jesus prohibited going to the temple or church "as
Pharisees do" but commanded that man should retire for prayer
(communion with his God) into a private closet. Is it Jesus who
would have countenanced in the face of the starving millions, the
building of the most gorgeous churches?
566 _Op. cit._, p. 7.
567 _Op. cit._, p. 7.
568 _Op. cit._, p. 18.
569 The _Talmud_ gives the story of the four Tanaim, who are made, in
allegorical terms, to enter into _the garden of delights_, _i.e._,
to be initiated into the occult and final science.
"According to the teaching of our holy masters the names of the four
who entered the garden of delight, are: Ben Asai, Ben Zoma, Acher,
and Rabbi Akiba....
"Ben Asai looked and--lost his sight.
"Ben Zoma looked and--lost his reason.
"Acher made depredations in the plantation" (mixed up the whole and
failed). "But Akiba, who had entered in peace came out of it in
peace; for the saint, whose name he blessed, had said, 'This old man
is worthy of serving us with glory.' "
"The learned commentators of the _Talmud_, the Rabbis of the
synagogue, explain that the _garden of delight_, in which those four
personages are made to enter, is but that mysterious science, the
most terrible of sciences for weak intellects, which it leads
directly to insanity," says A. Franck, in his _Kabbalah_. It is not
the pure at heart and he who studies but with a view to perfecting
himself and so more easily acquiring the promised immortality, who
need have any fear; but rather he who makes of the science of
sciences a sinful pretext for worldly motives, who should tremble.
The latter will never understand the kabalistic evocations of the
supreme initiation.--_Isis Unveiled_, ii. 119.
570 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 119.
571 See _Neo-Platonism_, p. 9.
572 See the Code published by Sir William Jones, Chapter ix. p. 11.
573 Pliny: _Hist. Nat._, xxx. 1; _Ib._, xvi. 14; xxv. 9, etc.
574 Pomponius ascribes to them the knowledge of the highest sciences.
575 Cęsar, iii. 14.
576 Pliny, xxx. _Isis Unveiled_, i. 18.
577 "The care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing it
with generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honour, and
their maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, prove that
they were expert in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy,
morality and religion," says a modern writer. "If kings or princes
desired the advice or the blessings of the holy men, they were
either obliged to go themselves, or to send messengers. To these men
no secret power of either plant or mineral was unknown. They had
fathomed nature to its depths, while psychology and physiology were
to them open books, and the result was that science that is now
termed, so superciliously, _magic_."
578 _Op. cit._, p. 9.
579 _Op. cit._, p. 11.
580 _Hermes_, iv. 6.
581 From _Saraph_ {~HEBREW LETTER SHIN~}{~HEBREW LETTER RESH~}{~HEBREW LETTER FINAL PE~} "fiery, burning," plural (see _Isaiah_, vi. 2-6).
They are regarded as the personal attendants of the Almighty, "his
messengers," angels or metatrons. In _Revelation_ they are the
"seven burning lamps" in attendance before the throne.
582 Venus with the Chaldęans and Egyptians was the wife of _Proteus_,
and is regarded as the mother of the Kabiri, the sons of Phta or
Emepth--the divine light or the Sun. The angels answer to the stars
in the following order: The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury,
Jupiter, and Saturn; Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Anael, Raphael,
Zachariel, and Orifiel; this is in religion and Christian Kabalism;
astrologically and esoterically the places of the "regents" stand
otherwise, as also in the Jewish, or rather the real Chaldęan
_Kabalah_.
583 _Loc. cit._, xiv. 12.
584 This is one more proof that the Ancients knew of seven planets
besides the Sun; for otherwise which is the eighth in such a case?
The seventh, with two others, as stated, were "mystery" planets,
whether Uranus or any other.
585 II. _Sam._, vi. 20-22.
586 _Judges_, xxi. 21, _et seq._
587 I. _Kings_, xviii. 26.
588 This dance--the Rāsa Mandala, enacted by the Gopīs or shepherdesses
of Krishna, the Sun-God, is enacted to this day in Rājputāna in
India, and is undeniably the same theo-astronomical and symbolical
dance of the planets and the Zodiacal signs, that was danced
thousands of years before our era.
589 _Isis Unveiled_, ii. 45.
590 II. _Epistle_, i. 19. The English text says: "Until the day-star
arise in your heart," a trifling alteration which does not really
matter--as _Lucifer_ is the day as well as the "morning" star--and it
is less shocking to pious ears. There are a number of such
alterations in the Protestant bibles.
591 Again the English translation changes the word "Sun" into "day-
spring." The Roman Catholics are decidedly braver and more sincere
than the Protestant theologians. De Mirville: iv. 34, 38.
592 Thus said the Egyptians and the Sabęans in days of old, the symbol
of whose manifested gods, Osiris and Bel, was the sun. But they had
a higher deity.
593 Exiled from the Protestant bible but left in the _Apocrypha_ which,
according to Article VI. of the Church of England, "she doth read
for example of life and instruction of manners" (?), but not to
establish any doctrine.
594 _Cornelius a Lapide_, v. 248.
595 _Ecclesiastes_, xliii. The above quotations are taken from De
Mirville's chapter "On Christian and Jewish Solar Theology," iv.
35-38.
596 Nevertheless the Church has preserved in her most sacred rites the
"star-rites" of the Pagan Initiates. In the pre-Christian Mithraic
Mysteries, the candidate who overcame successfully the "twelve
Tortures" which preceded the final Initiation, received a small
round cake or wafer of unleavened bread, symbolising in one of its
meanings, the solar disc, and known as the manna (heavenly
bread).... A lamb, or a bull even, was killed, and with the blood
the candidate had to be sprinkled, as in the case of the Emperor
Julian's initiation. The seven rules or mysteries that are
represented in the _Revelation_ as the seven seals which are opened
in order were then delivered to the newly born.
597 Truly says S. T. Coleridge: "Instinctively the reason has always
pointed out to men the ultimate end of various sciences.... There is
no doubt but that astrology of some sort or other will be the last
achievement of astronomy; there must be chemical relations between
the planets ... the difference of their magnitude compared with that
of their distances is not explicable otherwise." Between planets and
our earth with its mankind, we may add.
598 "Christ then," the author says (p. 40), "is represented by the trunk
of the candlestick."
599 De Mirville, iv. 41, 42.
600 De Mirville, iv. 42.
601 Notwithstanding the above, written in the earliest Christian period
by the renegade Neo-Platonist, the Church persists to this day in
her wilful error. Helpless against Galileo, she now tries to throw a
doubt even on the heliocentric system!
602 _Stromateis_, V., vi.
603 The English bible has: "In them (the Heavens) hath he set a
tabernacle for the sun," which is incorrect and has no sense in view
of the verse that follows, for there _are_ things "hid from the heat
thereof" if the latter word is to be applied to the sun.
604 When the hierophant took his last degree, he emerged from the sacred
recess called _Manneras_ and was given the golden _Tau_, the
Egyptian Cross, which was subsequently placed on his breast, and
buried with him.
605 The three secret names are "Sana, Sanat Sujāta, and Kapila;" while
the four exoteric Gods are called, Sanat Kumāra, Sananda, Sanaka and
Sanātana.
606 Another Kumāra, the "God of War" is called in the Hindu system the
"eternal celibate"--"the virgin warrior." He is the Āryan St.
Michael.
607 We give the original: "Coelestia corpora moveri a spirituali
creatura, a _nemine_ Sanctorum vel philosophorum, negatum, legisse
me memini. (_Opusc._ X. art. iii.).... Mihi autam videtur, quod
_Demonstrative_ probari posset, quod ab aliquo intellectu corpora
coelestia moveantur, vel a Deo immediate, vel a mediantibus angelis.
Sed quod mediantibus angelis ca moveat, congruit rerum ordine, quem
Dionysius infallibilem asserit, ut inferiora a Deo per _Media_
secundum cursum communem administrentur" (_Opusc._ II. art. ii.),
and if so, and God _never_ meddles with the once for ever
established laws of Nature, leaving it to his administrators, why
should their being called Gods by the "heathen" be deemed
idolatrous?
608 In one of Des Mousseaux's volumes on Demonology (_OEuvres des
Demons_) if we do not mistake the statement of the Abbé Huc is
found, and the author testifies to having heard the following story
repeatedly from the Abbé himself. In a lamasery of Tibet, the
missionary found the following:
It is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical apparatus
attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his leisure.
It represents a moonlit landscape, but the moon is not at all
motionless and dead; quite the reverse, for, according to the Abbé,
one would say that our moon herself, or at least her living double,
lighted the picture. Each phase, each aspect, each movement of our
satellite, is repeated in her facsimile, in the movement and
progress of the moon in the sacred picture. "You see this planet in
the painting ride as a crescent, or full, shine brightly, pass
behind the clouds, peep out or set, in a manner corresponding in the
most extraordinary way with the real luminary. It is, in a word, a
most perfect and resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the
night, which received the adoration of so many people in the days of
old." We know from the most reliable sources and numerous eye-
witnesses, that such "machines"--not canvas paintings--do exist in
certain temples of Tibet; as also the "sidereal wheels" representing
the planets, and kept for the same purposes--astrological and
magical. Huc's statement was translated in _Isis Unveiled_ from Des
Mousseaux's volume.
609 Cedrenus, p. 338. Whether produced by _clockwork_ or _magic_ power,
such machines--whole celestial spheres with planets rotating--were
found in the Sanctuaries, and some exist to this day in Japan, in a
secret subterranean temple of the old Mikados, as well as in two
other places.
610 Champollion's _Égypte Moderne_, p. 42.
611 _Musée des Sciences_, p. 230.
612 Translated by the Vicomte de Rougemont. See _Les Annales de
Philosophie Chrétienne_, 7th year, 1861.
613 _Isaiah_, lxiii. 9.
614 Chapter xii. of _Revelation_: "There was war in heaven, Mikael and
his angels fought against the Dragon," etc. (7) and the great dragon
was cast out (9).
615 He is also the informing Spirit of the Sun and Jupiter, and even of
Venus.
616 _Dogme et Rituel_, ii. 116.
617 If enumerated, they will be found to be the Hindu "divisions" and
choirs of Devas, and the Dhyān Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism.
618 But this fact has not prevented the Roman Church from adopting them
all the same, accepting them from ignorant, though perchance sincere
Church Fathers, who had borrowed them from Kaballists--Jews and
Pagans.
619 To call "usurpers" those who preceded the Christian Beings for whose
benefit these same titles were borrowed, is carrying paradoxical
anachronism a little too far!
620 Or the _divine ages_, the "days and years of Brahmā."
621 De Mirville, ii. 325, 326. So we say too. And this shows that it is
to the Kabalists and _Magicians_ that the Church is indebted for her
dogmas and names. Paul never condemned _real_ Gnosis, but the
_false_ one, now accepted by the Church.
622 Sesostris, or Pharaoh Ramses II., whose mummy was unswathed in 1886
by Maspero of the Bulak Museum, and recognised as that of the
greatest king of Egypt, whose grandson, Ramses III. was the last
king of an ancient kingdom.
623 _Op. cit._, p. 422.
624 _Summa_, Quest. xv. Art. v., upon Astrologers, and Vol. III. pp.
2-29.
625 "The principalities and powers [born] in heavenly places" (_Ephes._,
iii. 10). The verse, "For though there be that are called Gods,
whether in heaven or on earth, as there be Gods many and lords many"
(I. _Corinth._, viii. 5), shows, at any rate, the recognition by
Paul of a plurality of "Gods" whom he calls "dęmons"
("spirits"--never _devils_). Principalities, Thrones, Dominions,
Rectors, etc. are all Jewish and Christian names for the Gods of the
ancients--the Archangels and Angels of the former being in every case
the Devas and the Dhyān Chohans of the more ancient religions.
626 Answer by Reuvens to Letronne with regard to his mistaken notions
about the Zodiac of Dendera.
627 St. Augustine (_De Gen._, I. iii.) and Delrio (_Disquisit._, Vol.
IV., chap. iii.) are quoted by De Mirville, to show that "the more
astrologers speak the truth and the better they prophesy it, the
more one has to feel diffident, seeing that their agreement with the
devil becomes thereby the more apparent." The famous statement made
by Juvenal (_Satires_, vi.) to the effect that "not one single
astrologer could be found who did not pay dearly for the help he
received from his genius"--no more proves the latter to be a devil
than the death of Socrates proves his daimon to have been a native
from the nether world--if such there be. Such argument only
demonstrates human stupidity and wickedness, once reason is made
subservient to prejudice and fanaticism of every sort. "Most of the
great writers of antiquity, Cicero and Tacitus among them, believed
in Astrology and the realization of its prophecies;" and "the
penalty of death decreed nearly everywhere against those
mathematicians [astrologers] who happened to predict falsely
diminished neither their number nor their tranquillity of mind."
628 _Preparatio Evangelica_, I. xiv.
629 _Ast._, iv. 60.
630 _Hist._, I. ii.
631 All these particulars may be found more fully and far more
completely in Champollion Figeac's _Égypte_.
632 _Op. cit._, p. 230.
633 _Op. cit._, p. 230.
634 In the 1,326 places in the _New Testament_ where the word "God" is
mentioned nothing signifies that in God are included more beings
than God. On the contrary in 17 places God is called the only God.
The places where the Father is so-called amount to 320. In 105
places God is addressed with high-sounding titles. In 90 places all
prayers and thanks are addressed to the Father; 300 times in the
_New Testament_ is the Son declared to be inferior to the Father; 85
times is Jesus called the "Son of Man;" 70 times is he called a man.
In not one single place in the bible is it said that God holds
within him three different Beings or Persons, and yet is one Being
or Person.--Dr. Karl von Bergen's _Lectures in Sweden_.
635 Kali Yuga, the Black or Iron Age.
636 Virgil, _Eclogue_, iv.
637 At the close of our Race, people, it is said, through suffering and
discontent will become more spiritual. Clairvoyance will become a
general faculty. We shall be approaching the spiritual state of the
Third and Second Races.
638 _Vishnu Purāna_, IV., xxiv. 228, Wilson's translation.
639 _Op. cit._, p. 212.
640 At any rate, the temple secret meaning was the same.
641 _Asiat. Res._, vol. viii. p. 470, _et seq._
642 _Theosophist_, August, 1881.
643 Aug., 1881 to Feb., 1882.
644 _Loc. cit._, iv. 127.
645 _Theosophist_, vol. iii. p. 22.
646 The impartial study of Vaidic and Post-Vaidic works shows that the
ancient Āryans knew well the precession of the equinoxes, and "that
they changed their position from a certain asterism to two
(occasionally three) asterisms back whenever the precession amounted
to two, properly speaking, to 2 11/61 asterisms or about 29°, being
the motion of the sun in a lunar month, and so caused the seasons to
fall back a complete lunar month.... It appears certain that at the
date of _Sūrya Siddhānta_, _Brahmā Siddānta_, and other ancient
treatises on astronomy, the vernal equinoctial point had not
actually reached the beginning of Ashvinī, but was a few degrees
east of it.... The astronomers of Europe change westward the
beginning of Aries and of all other signs of the Zodiac every year
by about 50" 25, and thus make the names of the signs meaningless.
But these signs are as much fixed as the asterisms themselves, and
hence the Western astronomers of the present day appear to us in
this respect less wary and scientific in their observations than
their very ancient brethren--the Āryas."--_Theosophist_, iii. 23.
647 A great deal of misconception is raised by a confusion of planes of
being and misuse of expressions. For instance, certain spiritual
states have been confounded with the Nirvāna of BUDDHA. The Nirvāna
of BUDDHA is totally different from any other spiritual state of
Samādhi or even the highest Theophania enjoyed by lesser Adepts.
After physical death the kinds of spiritual states reached by Adepts
differ greatly.
648 This region is the one possible point of conciliation between the
two diametrically opposed poles of religion and science, the one
with its barren fields of dogmas on faith, the other over-running
with empty hypotheses, both overgrown with the weeds of error. They
will never meet. The two are at feud, at an everlasting warfare with
each other, but this does not prevent them from uniting against
Esoteric Philosophy, which for two millenniums has had to fight
against infallibility in both directions, or "mere vanity and
pretence" as Antoninus defined it, and now finds the materialism of
Modern Science arrayed against its truths.
649 Whence some of the Gnostic ideas? Cerinthus taught that the world
and Jehovah having fallen off from virtue and primitive dignity the
Supreme permitted one of his glorious Ęons, whose name was the
"Anointed" (Christ) to incarnate in the man Jesus. Basilides denied
the reality of the body of Jesus, and calling it an "illusion" held
that it was Simon of Cyrene who suffered on the Cross in his stead.
All such teachings are echoes of the Eastern Doctrines.
650 A genuine initiated Adept will retain his Adeptship, though there
may be for our world of illusion numberless incarnations of him. The
propelling power that lies at the root of a series of such
incarnations is not Karma, as ordinarily understood, but a still
more inscrutable power. During the period of his lives the Adept
does not lose his Adeptship, though he cannot rise in it to a higher
degree.
651 From the so-called Brahmā Loka--the seventh and higher world, beyond
which all is arūpa, formless, purely spiritual--to the lowest world
and insect, or even to an object such as a leaf, there is perpetual
revolution of the condition of existence, evolution and re-birth.
Some human beings attain states or spheres from which there is only
a return in a new Kalpa (a day of Brahmā); there are other states or
spheres from which there is only return after 100 years of Brahmā
(Mahā-Kalpa, a period covering 311,040,000,000,000 years). Nirvāna,
it is said, is a state from which there is no return. Yet it is
maintained that there may be, as exceptional cases, re-incarnation
from that state; only such incarnations are illusion, like
everything else on this plane, as will be shown.
652 This fact of the disappearance of the vehicle of Egotism in the
fully developed Yogī, who is supposed to have reached Nirvāna on
earth, years before his corporeal death, has led to the law in Manu,
sanctioned by millenniums of Brāhmanical authority, that such a
Paramātmā should be held as absolutely blameless and free from sin
or responsibility, do whatever he may (see last chapter of the _Laws
of Manu_). Indeed, caste itself--that most despotic, uncompromising
and autocratic tyrant in India--can be broken with impunity by the
Yogī, who is above caste. This will give the key to our statements.
653 [The word "Adept" is very loosely used by H. P. B., who often seems
to have implied by it no more than the possession of special
knowledge of some kind. Here it seems to mean first an uninitiated
disciple and then an initiated one.--EDS.]
654 About fifty years before the birth of Copernicus, de Cusa wrote as
follows: "Though the world may not be absolutely infinite, no one
can represent it to himself as finite, since human reason is
incapable of assigning to it any term.... For in the same way that
our earth cannot be in the centre of the Universe, as thought, no
more could the sphere of the fixed stars be in it.... Thus this
world is like a vast machine, having its centre [Deity] everywhere,
and its circumference nowhere [_machina mundi, quasi habens ubique
centrum, et nullibi circumferentiam_].... Hence, the earth not being
in the centre, cannot therefore be motionless ... and though it is
far smaller than the sun, one must not conclude for all that, that
she is worse [_vilior_--more vile].... One cannot see whether its
inhabitants are superior to those who dwell nearer to the sun, or in
other stars, as sidereal space cannot be deprived of inhabitants....
The earth, very likely [_fortasse_] one of the smallest globes, is
nevertheless the cradle of intelligent beings, most noble and
perfect." One cannot fail to agree with the biographer of Cardinal
de Cusa, who, having no suspicion of the Occult truth, and the
reason of such erudition in a writer of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, simply marvels at such a miraculous foreknowledge, and
attributes it to God, saying of him that he was a man incomparable
in every kind of philosophy, by whom many a theological mystery
inaccessible to the human mind (!), veiled and neglected for
centuries (_velata et neglecta_) were once more brought to light.
"Pascal might have read De Cusa's works; but whence could the
Cardinal have borrowed his ideas?" asks Moreri. Evidently from
Hermes and the works of Pythagoras, even if the mystery of his
incarnation and re-incarnation be dismissed.
655 This is the secret meaning of the statements about the Hierarchy of
Prajāpatis or Rishis. First seven are mentioned, then ten, then
twenty-one, and so on. They are "Gods" and creators of men--many of
them the "Lords of Beings"; they are the "Mind-born Sons" of Brahmā,
and then they became mortal heroes, and are often shown as of a very
sinful character. The Occult meaning of the Biblical Patriarchs,
their genealogy, and their descendants dividing among themselves the
earth, is the same. Again, Jacob's dream has the same significance.
656 He "of the Seven Virtues" is one who, without the benefit of
Initiation, becomes as pure as any Adept by the simple exertion of
his own merit. Being so holy, his body at his next incarnation
becomes the Avatāra of his "Watcher" or Guardian Angel, as the
Christian would put it.
657 The title of the highest Dhyān Chohans.
658 _Op. cit._, ii. 367.
659 "After death, the soul continueth in the aerial (astral) body, till
it is entirely purified from all angry, sensual passions; then doth
it put off by a _second death_ [when arising to Devachan] the aerial
body as it did the earthly one. Wherefore the ancients say that
there is a celestial body always joined with the soul, which is
immortal, luminous and star-like." It becomes natural then, that the
"aerial body" of an Adept should have no such second dying, since it
has been cleansed of all its natural impurity before its separation
from the physical body. The high Initiate is a "Son of the
Resurrection," "being equal unto the angels," and cannot die any
more (see _Luke_, xx. 36).
660 _St. John_, xxi. 21.
661 See the extract made in the _Theosophist_ from a glorious novel by
Dostoievsky--a fragment entitled "The Great Inquisitor." It is a
fiction, naturally, still a sublime fiction of Christ returning in
Spain during the palmy days of the Inquisition, and being imprisoned
and put to death by the Inquisitor, who fears lest Christ should
ruin the work of Jesuit hands.
662 When we say the "great Teacher," we do not mean His Buddhic Ego, but
that principle in Him which was the vehicle of His personal or
terrestrial Ego.
663 _Five Years of Theosophy_, New Edition, p. 3.
664 _Op. cit._, p. 175, Fifth Edition.
665 It would be useless to raise objections from exoteric works to
statements in this, which aims to expound, however superficially,
the Esoteric Teachings alone. It is because they are misled by the
exoteric doctrine that Bishop Bigandet and others aver that the
notion of a supreme eternal Ādi-Buddha is to be found only in
writings of comparatively recent date. What is given here is taken
from the secret portions of Dus Kyi Khorlo (Kāla Chakra, in
Sanskrit, or the "Wheel of Time," or duration).
666 The three bodies are (1) the Nirmānakāya (Pru-lpai-Ku in Tibetan),
in which the Bodhisattva after entering by the six Pāramitās the
Path to Nirvāna, appears to men in order to teach them; (2)
Sambhogakāya (Dzog-pai-Ku), the, body of bliss impervious to all
physical sensations, received by one who has fulfilled the three
conditions of moral perfection; and (3) Dharmakāya (in Tibetan,
Chos-Ku), the Nirvānic body.
667 _Five Years of Theosophy_, art. "Personal and Impersonal God," p.
129.
668 Adhishtāthā, the active or working agent in Prakriti (or matter).
669 _Vedānta-Sūtras_, Ad. I. Pāda iv. Shi. 23. Commentary. The passage
is given as follows in Thibaut's translation (Sacred Books of the
East, xxxiv.), p. 286: "The Self is thus the operative cause,
because there is no other ruling principle, and the material cause
because there is no other substance from which the world could
originate."
670 In _Five Years of Theosophy_ (art. "Shākya Muni's Place in History,"
p. 234, note) it is stated that one day when our Lord sat in the
Sattapanni Cave (Saptaparna) he compared man to a Saptaparna (seven
leaved) plant.
"Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and
there are _six_ Bhikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What
are the _seven_? The seven branches of complete knowledge. What are
the _six_? The six organs of sense. What are the five? The five
elements of illusive being. And the One which is also ten? He is a
true Buddha who develops in him the ten forms of holiness and
subjects them all to the One." Which means that every principle in
the Buddha was the highest that could be evolved on this earth;
whereas in the case of other men who attain to Nirvāna this is not
necessarily the case. Even as a mere human (Manushya) Buddha Gautama
was a pattern for all men. But his Arhats were not necessarily so.
671 See _Isis Unveiled_, ii., 132.
672 "Before one becomes a Buddha he must be a Bodhisattva; before
evolving into a Bodhisattva he must be a Dhyāni-Buddha.... A
Bodhisattva is the way and Path to his Father, and thence to the One
Supreme Essence" (_Descent of Buddhas_, p. 17, from Āryāsanga). "I
am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father
but by me" (_St. John_, xiv. 6). The "way" is not the goal. Nowhere
throughout the _New Testament_ is Jesus found calling himself God,
or anything higher than "a son of God," the son of a "Father" common
to all, synthetically. Paul never said (I. _Tim._, iii. 10), "God
was manifest in the flesh," but "He who was manifested in the flesh"
(Revised Edition). While the common herd among the Buddhists--the
Burmese especially--regard Jesus as an incarnation of Devadatta, a
relative who opposed the teachings of Buddha, the students of
Esoteric Philosophy see in the Nazarene Sage a Bodhisattva with the
spirit of Buddha Himself in Him.
673 I. _Corinth._, xv. 36.
674 _Op. cit._, Mandala x., hymn 90.
675 Literally, "he who walks [or follows] in the way [or path] of his
predecessors."
676 Schmidt, in _Slanong Seetsen_, p. 471, and Schlagintweit, in
_Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 53, accept these precious things
_literally_, enumerating them as "the wheel, the precious stone, the
royal consort, the best treasurer, the best horse, the elephant, the
best leader." After this one can little wonder if "besides a Dhyāni-
Buddhi and a Dhyāni-Bodhisattva" each human Buddha is furnished with
"a female companion, a Shakti"--when in truth "Shakti" is simply the
Soul-power, the psychic energy of the God as of the Adept. The
"royal consort," the third of the "seven precious gifts," very
likely led the learned Orientalist into this ludicrous error.
677 A Bodhisattva can reach Nirvāna and live, as Buddha did, and after
death he can either refuse objective reincarnation or accept and use
it at his convenience for the benefit of mankind whom he can
instruct in various ways while he remains in the Devachanic regions
within the attraction of our earth. But having once reached
Paranirvāna or "Nirvāna without remains"--the highest Dharmakāya
condition, in which state he remains entirely outside of every
earthly condition--he will return no more until the commencement of a
new Manvantara, since he has crossed beyond the cycle of births.
678 Tulpa is the voluntary incarnation of an Adept into a living body,
whether of an adult, child, or new-born babe.
679 Ku-sum is the triple form of the Nirvāna state and its respective
duration in the "cycle of Non-Being." The number seven here refers
to the seven Rounds of our septenary System.
680 _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 52. This same generic use of a name is found
among Hindus with that of Shankarāchārya, to take but one instance.
All His successors bear his name, but are not reincarnations of Him.
So with the "Buddhas."
681 [The words within brackets are supplied to introduce the following
statements that are confused and contradictory as they stand, and
which H. P. B. had probably intended to elucidate to some slight
extent, as they are written two or three times with different
sentences following them. The MS. is exceedingly confused, and
everything H. P. B. said is here pieced together, the addition above
made being marked in brackets to distinguish it from hers.--A. B.]
682 King Suddhodana.
683 There are several names marked simply by asterisks.
684 Shankarāchārya died also at thirty-two years of age, or rather
disappeared from the sight of his disciples, as the legend goes.
685 Does "Tiani-Tsang" stand for Apollonius of Tyana? This is a simple
surmise. Some things in the life of that Adept would seem to tally
with the hypothesis--others to go against it.
686 According to Esoteric teaching Buddha lived one hundred years in
reality, though having reached Nirvāna in his eightieth year he was
regarded as one dead to the world of the living. See article
"Shākyamuni's Place in History" in _Five Years of Theosophy_.
687 It is a _secret_ rite, pertaining to high Initiation, and has the
same significance as the one to which Clement of Alexandria alludes
when he speaks of "the token of recognition being in common with us,
as by cutting off Christ" (Strom., 13). Schlagintweit wonders what
it may be. "The typical representation of a hermit," he says, "is
always that of a man with long, uncut hair and beard.... A rite very
often selected, though I am unable to state for what reason, is that
of Chod ('to cut' or 'to destroy') the meaning of which is anxiously
kept a profound secret by the Lamas." (_Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 163.)
688 Hlun-Chub is the divining spirit in man, the highest degree of
seership.
689 The secret meaning of this sentence is that Karma exercises its sway
over the Adept as much as over any other man; "Gods" can escape it
as little as simple mortals. The Adept who, having reached the Path
and won His Dharmakāya--the Nirvāna from which there is no return
until the new grand Kalpa--prefers to use His right of choosing a
condition inferior to that which belongs to Him, but that will leave
him free to return whenever He thinks it advisable and under
whatever personality He may select, must be prepared to take all the
chances of failure--possibly--and a lower condition than was His
lot--for a certainty--as it is an occult law. Karma alone is absolute
justice and infallible in its selections. He who uses his rights
with it (Karma) must bear the consequences--if any. Thus Buddha's
first reincarnation was produced by Karma--and it led Him higher than
ever; the two following were "out of pity" and * * *.
690 The Universe of Brahmā (Sien-Chan; Nam-Kha) is Universal Illusion,
or our phenomenal world.
691 Ākāsha. It is next to impossible to render the mystic word "Tho-og"
by any other term than "Space," and yet, unless coined on purpose,
no new appellation can render it so well to the mind of the
Occultist. The term "Aditi" is also translated "Space," and there is
a world of meaning in it.
692 Dang-ma, a purified soul, and Lha, a freed spirit within a living
body; an Adept or Arhat. In the popular opinion in Tibet, a Lha is a
disembodied spirit, something similar to the Burmese Nat--only
higher.
693 Kwan-yin is a synonym, for in the original another term is used, but
the meaning is identical. It is the divine voice of Self, or the
"Spirit-voice" in man, and the same as Vāchīshvara (the "Voice-
deity") of the Brāhmans. In China, the Buddhist ritualists have
degraded its meaning by anthropomorphizing it into a Goddess of the
same name, with one thousand hands and eyes, and they call it Kwan-
shai-yin-Bodhisat. It is the Buddhist "daļmon"-voice of Socrates.
694 Sangharama is the _sanctum sanctorum_ of an ascetic, a cave or any
place he chooses for his meditation.
695 Amitābha Buddha is in this connection the "boundless light" by which
things of the subjective world are perceived.
696 Esoterically, "the unsurpassingly merciful and enlightened heart,"
said of the "Perfect Ones," the Jīvan-muktas, collectively.
697 These six worlds--seven with us--are the worlds of Nats or Spirits,
with the Burmese Buddhists, and the seven higher worlds of the
Vedāntins.
698 Two things entirely distinct from each other. The "faculty is not
distinguished from the subject" only on this material plane, while
thought generated by our physical brain, one that has never
impressed itself at the same time on the spiritual counterpart,
whether through the atrophy of the latter or the intrinsic weakness
of that thought, can never survive our body; this much is sure.
699 _Vedānta Sāra_, translated by Major Jacob, p. 123.
700 Aditi is, according to the _Rig Veda_, "the Father and Mother of all
the Gods"; and Ākāsha is held by Southern Buddhism as the Root of
all, whence everything in the Universe came out, in obedience to a
law of motion inherent in it; and this is the Tibetan "Space" (Tho-
og).
701 _Mānava-Dharma-Shāstra_, i. 6, 7.
702 The "God" of Pythagoras, the disciple of the Āryan Sages, is no
personal God. Let it be remembered that he taught as a cardinal
tenet that there exists a permanent Principle of Unity beneath all
forms, changes, and other phenomena of the Universe.
703 _Isis Unveiled_, i. xvi.
704 _Isis Unveiled_, i. xviii.
705 _Isis Unveiled_ i. 58.
706 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 59.
707 While they are to a great extent identical with those of Esoteric
Buddhism, the Secret Doctrine of the East.
708 _Parerga_, II. iii. 112; quoted in _Isis Unveiled_, i. 58.
709 _Five Years of Theosophy_, p. 338, _et seq._
710 Prof. Max Müller, in a letter to _The Times_ (April, 1857),
maintained most vehemently that Nirvāna meant _annihilation_ in the
fullest sense of the word. (_Chips from a German Workshop_, i. 287.)
But in 1869, in a lecture before the General Meeting of the
Association of German Philologists at Kiel, "he distinctly declares
his belief that the Nihilism attributed to Buddha's teaching forms
no part of his doctrine, and that it is wholly wrong to suppose that
Nirvāna means annihilation." (Trubner's _Amer. and Oriental Lit.
Rec._, Oct. 16th, 1869.)
711 See the _Kalama Sutta_ of the _Anguttaranikayo_, as quoted in _A
Buddhist Catechism_, by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical
Society, pp. 55, 56.
712 _OEdipus Ęgypt._, II. i. 291.
713 Sephir, or Aditi (mystic Space). The Sephiroth, be it understood,
are identical with the Hindu Prajāpatis, the Dhyān Chohans of
Esoteric Buddhism, the Zoroastrian Amshaspends, and finally with the
Elohim--the "Seven Angels of the Presence" of the Roman Catholic
Church.
714 According to the Eastern idea, the All comes out from the One, and
returns to it again. Absolute annihilation is simply unthinkable.
Nor can eternal Matter be annihilated. Form may be annihilated: co-
relations may change. That is all. There can be no such thing as
annihilation--in the European sense--in the Universe.
715 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 289.
716 The Secret Law, the "Doctrine of the Heart," so called in contrast
to the "Doctrine of the Eye," or exoteric Buddhism.
717 "Illusive matter in its triple manifestation in the earthly, and the
astral or fontal Soul (the body), and the Platonian dual Soul--the
rational and the irrational one."
718 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 289.
719 _Isis Unveiled_, i. 290.
720 It is from the texts of all these works that the Secret Doctrine has
been given. The original matter would not make a small pamphlet, but
the explanations and notes from the Commentaries and Glossaries
might be worked into ten volumes as large as _Isis Unveiled_.
721 The monk Della Penna makes considerable fun in his _Memoirs_ (see
Markham's _Tibet_) of certain statements in the Books of Kiu-te. He
brings to the notice of the Christian public "the great mountain
160,000 leagues high" (a Tibetan league consisting of five miles) in
the Himālayan Range. "According to their law," he says, "in the west
of this world is an eternal world ... a paradise, and in it a Saint
called Hopahma, which means 'Saint of Splendour and Infinite Light.'
This Saint has many disciples who are all Chang-chub," which means,
he adds in a footnote, "the Spirits of those who, on account of
their perfection, do not care to become saints, and train and
instruct the bodies of the reborn Lamas ... so that they may help
the living." Which means that the presumably "dead" Yang-Chhub (not
"Chang-chub") are simply living Bodhisattvas, some of those known as
Bhante ("the Brothers"). As to the "mountain 160,000 leagues high,"
the _Commentary_ which gives the key to such statements explains
that according to the code used by the writers, "to the west of the
'Snowy Mountain' 160 leagues [the cyphers being a blind] from a
certain spot and by a direct road, is the Bhante Yul [the country or
'Seat of the Brothers'], the residence of Mahā-Chohan ..." etc. This
is the real meaning. The "Hopahma" of Della Penna is--the
Mahā-Chohan, the Chief.
722 In some MSS. notes before us, written by Gelung (priest) Thango-pa
Chhe-go-mo, it is said: "The few Roman Catholic missionaries who
have visited our land (under protest) in the last century and have
repaid our hospitality by turning our sacred literature into
ridicule, have shown little discretion and still less knowledge. It
is true that the Sacred Canon of the Tibetans, the _Kahgyur_ and
_Bstanhgyur_, comprises 1707 distinct works--1083 public and 624
secret volumes, the former being composed of 350 and the latter of
77 volumes folio. May we humbly invite the good missionaries,
however, to tell us when they ever succeeded in getting a glimpse of
the last-named secret folios? Had they even by chance seen them I
can assure the Western Pandits that these manuscripts and folios
could never be understood even by a born Tibetan without a key (_a_)
to their peculiar characters, and (_b_) to their hidden meaning. In
our system every description of locality is figurative, every name
and word purposely veiled; and one has first to study the mode of
deciphering and then to learn the equivalent secret terms and
symbols for nearly every word of the religious language. The
Egyptian enchorial or hieratic system is child's play to our
sacerdotal puzzles."
723 _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 171.
724 "Buddhi" is a Sanskrit term for "discrimination" or intellect (the
sixth principle), and "Buddha" is "wise," "wisdom," and also the
planet Mercury.
725 This curious contradiction may be found in _Chinese Buddhism_, pp.
171, 273. The reverend author assures his readers that "to the
philosophic Buddhists ... Amitābha Yoshi Fo, and the others are
nothing but the signs of ideas" (p. 236). Very true. But so should
be all other deific names, such as Jehovah, Allah, etc., and if they
are not simply "signs of ideas" this would only show that minds that
receive them otherwise are not "philosophic"; it would not at all
afford serious proof that there are personal, living Gods of these
names in reality.
726 The Chinese Amitābha (Wu-liang-sheu) and the Tibetan Amitābha
(Odpag-med) have now become personal Gods, ruling over and living in
the celestial region of Sukhāvatī, or Tushita (Tibetan: Devachan);
while Ādi-Buddhi, of the philosophic Hindu, and Amita Buddha of the
philosophic Chinaman and Tibetan, are names for universal, primeval
ideas.
727 See _Theosophist_ for March, 1882.
728 The intimate relation of the twenty-five Buddhas (Bodhisattvas) with
the twenty-five Tattvas (the Conditioned or Limited) of the Hindus
is interesting.
729 It is curious to note the great importance given by European
Orientalists to the Dalaļ Lamas of Lhassa, and their utter ignorance
as to the Tda-shu (or Teshu) Lamas, while it is the latter who began
the hierarchical series of Buddha-incarnations, and are _de facto_
the "popes" in Tibet; the Dalaļ Lamas are the creations of Nabang-
lob-Sang, the Tda-shu Lama, who was Himself the sixth incarnation of
Amita, through Tsong Kha-pa, though very few seem to be aware of
that fact.
730 The chanting of a Mantra is not a prayer, but rather a magical
sentence in which the law of Occult causation connects itself with,
and depends on, the will and acts of its singer. It is a succession
of Sanskrit sounds, and when its string of words and sentences is
pronounced according to the magical formulę in the _Atharva Veda_,
but understood by the few, some Mantras produce an instantaneous and
very wonderful effect. In its esoteric sense it contains the Vāch
(the "mystic speech"), which resides in the Mantra, or rather in its
sounds, since it is according to the vibrations, one way or the
other, of ether that the effect is produced. The "sweet singers"
were called by that name because they were experts in Mantras. Hence
the legend in China that the singing and melody of the Lohans are
heard at dawn by the priests from their cells in the monastery of
Fang-Kwang. (See _Biography of Chi-Kai_ in Tien-tai-nan-tchi.)
731 The celebrated Lohan, Mādhyantika, who converted the king and whole
country of Kashmir to Buddhism, sent a body of Lohans to preach the
Good Law. He was the sculptor who raised to Buddha the famous statue
one hundred feet high, which Hiuen-Tsaung saw at Dardu, to the north
of the Punjab. As the same Chinese traveller mentions a temple ten
Li from Peshawur--350 feet round and 850 feet high--which was at his
time (A.D. 550) already 850 years old, Koeppen thinks that so far
back as 292 B.C. Buddhism was the prevalent religion in the Punjab.
732 A title of the Tda-shu-Hlum-po Lama.
733 The twelve Nidāwas, called in Tibetan Tin-brel Chug-nyi, which are
based upon the "Four Truths."
734 The Srotāpatti is one who has attained the _first_ Path of
comprehension in the real and the unreal; the Sakridāgāmin is the
candidate for one of the higher Initiations: "one who is to receive
birth once more;" the Anāgāmin is he who has attained the "third
Path," or literally, "he who will not be reborn again" _unless he so
wishes it_, having the option of being reborn in any of the "worlds
of the Gods," or of remaining in Devachan, or of choosing an earthly
body with a philanthropic object. An Arhat is one who has reached
the highest Path; he may merge into Nirvāna at will, while here on
earth.
735 [The Pratyeka Buddha stands on the level of the Buddha, but His work
for the world has nothing to do with its teaching, and His office
has always been surrounded with mystery. The preposterous view that
He, at such superhuman height of power, wisdom and love could be
selfish, is found in the exoteric books, though it is hard to see
how it can have arisen. H. P. B. charged me to correct the mistake,
as she had, in a careless moment, copied such a statement
elsewhere.--A. B.]
736 It is an erroneous idea which makes the Orientalists take literally
the teaching of the Mahāyāna School about the three different kinds
of bodies, namely, the Prulpa-ku, the Longehod-drocpaig-ku, and the
Chos-ku, as all pertaining to the Nirvānic condition. There are two
kinds of Nirvāna: the earthly, and that of the purely disembodied
Spirits. These three "bodies" are the three envelopes--all more or
less physical--which are at the disposal of the Adept who has entered
and crossed the six Pāramitās, or "Paths" of Buddha. Once He enters
upon the seventh, He can return no more to earth. See Cosma, _Jour.
As. Soc. Beng._, vii. 142; and Schott, _Buddhismus_, p. 9, who give
it otherwise.
737 _Vedānta Sāra_, translated by Major Jacob, p. 119.
738 _Ibid._, p. 122.
739 _Der Buddhismus_, pp. 327, 357, _et seq._, quoted by Schlagintweit.
740 _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 41.
741 _Jour. of As. Soc. Bengal_, vii. 144, quoted as above.
742 _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 44.
743 They maintain also the existence of One Absolute pure Nature,
Parabrahman; the illusion of everything outside of it; the leading
of the individual Soul--a Ray of the "Universal"--into the true nature
of existence and things by Yoga alone.
744 Nirmānakāya (also Nirvānakāya, vulg.) is the body or Self "with
remains," or the influence of terrestrial attributes, however
spiritualized, clinging yet to that Self. An Initiate in Dharmakāya,
or in Nirvāna "without remains," is the Jivanmukta, the Perfect
Initiate, who separates his Higher Self entirely from his body
during Samādhi. [It will be noticed that these two words are here
used in a sense other than that previously given.--A. B.]
745 The "Sacred" Books of Dus-Kyi Khorlo ("Time Circle"). See _Jour. As.
Soc._, ii. 57. These works were abandoned to the Sikkhim Dugpas,
from the time of Tsong-Kha-pa's reform.
746 _Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms_, art. "Yoga," quoted in
_Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 47.
747 _Buddhism in Tibet_, pp. 47, 48.
748 _Buddhism in Tibet_, pp. 63, 64. The objects found in the casket, as
enumerated in the exoteric legend, are of course symbolical. They
may be found mentioned in the _Kanjur_. They were said to be: (1)
two hands joined; (2) a miniature Choten (Stūpa, or reliquary); (3)
a talisman with "Om mani padme hum" inscribed on it; (4) a religious
book, _Zamatog_ ("a constructed vehicle").
749 _Alterthumskunde_, ii. 1072.
750 _Op. cit._, ii. 470.
751 Unless one obtains exact information and the right method, one's
visions, however correct and true in Soul-life, will ever fail to
get photographed in our human memory, and certain cells of the brain
are sure to play havoc with our remembrances.
752 _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 158. The Rev. Joseph Edkins either ignores,
or--which is more probable--is utterly ignorant of the real existence
of such Schools, and judges by the Chinese travesties of these,
calling such Esotericism "heterodox Buddhism." And so it is, in one
sense.
753 That country--India--has lost the records of such Schools and their
teachings only so far as the general public, and especially the
inappreciative Western Orientalists, are concerned. It has preserved
them in full in some Mathams (refuges for mystic contemplation). But
it may perhaps be better to seek them with, and from, their rightful
owners, the so-called "mythical" Adepts, or Mahātmās.
754 _Chinese Buddhism_, pp. 155-159.
755 They certainly reject most emphatically the popular theory of the
transmigration of human entities or Souls _into_ animals, but not
the evolution of men _from_ animals--so far, at least, as their lower
principles are concerned.
756 It is quite consistent, on the contrary, when explained in the light
of the Esoteric Doctrine. The "Western paradise," or Western heaven,
is no fiction located in transcendental space. It is a _bonā-fide_
locality in the mountains, or, to be more correct, one encircled in
a desert within mountains. Hence it is assigned for the residence of
those students of Esoteric Wisdom--disciples of Buddha--who have
attained the rank of Lohans and Anāgāmins (Adepts). It is called
"Western" simply from geographical considerations; and "the great
iron mountain girdle" that surrounds the Avitchi, and the seven
Lokas that encircle the "Western paradise" are a very exact
representation of well-known localities and things to the Eastern
student of Occultism.
757 The word is translated by the Orientalists as "true man without a
position," (?) which is very misleading. It simply means the true
inner man, or Ego, "Buddha _within_ Buddha" meaning that there was a
Gautama _inwardly_ as well as _outwardly_.
758 One of the titles of Gautama Buddha in Tibet.
759 The "Esoteric" Schools, or sects, of which there are many in China.
760 A school of contemplation founded by Hiuen-Tsang, the traveller,
nearly extinct. Fa-siong-Tsung means "the School that unveils the
inner nature of things."
761 Esoteric, or hidden, teaching of Yoga (Chinese: Yogi-mi-kean).
762 The "tonsure knife" is made of _meteoric_ iron, and is used for the
purpose of cutting off the "vow-lock," or hair from the novice's
head during his first ordination. It has a double-edged blade, is
sharp as a razor, and lies concealed within a hollow handle of horn.
By touching a spring the blade jerks out like a flash of lightning,
and recedes back with the same rapidity. A great dexterity is
required in using it without wounding the head of the young Gelung
and Gelung-ma (candidates to become priests and nuns) during the
preliminary rites, which are public.
763 Chagpa-Thog-mad is the Tibetan name of Āryāsanga, the founder of the
Yogāchārya or Naljorchodpa School. This Sage and Initiate is said to
have been taught "Wisdom" by Maitreya Buddha Himself, the Buddha of
the Sixth Race, at Tushita (a celestial region presided over by
Him), and as having received from Him the five books of
_Champaitehos-nga_. The Secret Doctrine teaches, however, that he
came from Dejung, or Shambhalla, called the "source of happiness"
("wisdom-acquired") and declared by some Orientalists to be a
"fabulous" place.
764 It may not be, perhaps, amiss to remind the reader of the fact that
the "mirror" was a part of the symbolism of the Thesmophoria, a
portion of the Eleusinian Mysteries; and that it was used in the
search for Atmu, the "Hidden One," or "Self." In his excellent paper
on the above-named mysteries, Dr. Alexander Wilder of New York says:
"Despite the assertion of Herodotus and others that the Bacchic
Mysteries were Egyptian, there exists strong probability that they
came originally from India, and were Shaivitic or Buddhistical.
Kore-Persep-honeia was but the goddess Parasu-pani, or Bhavani, and
Zagreus is from Chakra, a country extending from ocean to ocean. If
this is a Turanian story we can easily recognise the 'horns' as the
crescent worn by Lama-priests, and assume the whole legend [the
fable of Dionysus-Zagreus] to be based on Lama-succession and
transmigration.... The whole story of Orpheus ... has a Hindu ring
all through." The tale of "Lama-succession and transmigration" did
not originate with the Lamas, who date themselves only so far back
as the seventh century, but with the Chaldęans and the Brāhmans,
still earlier.
765 The state of absolute freedom from any sin or desire.
766 The state during which an Adept sees the long series of his past
births, and lives through all his previous incarnations in this and
the other worlds. (See the admirable description in the _Light of
Asia_, p. 166, 1884 ed.)
767 See _supra_, ii. 188, 189.
768 Wilson's translation, as amended by Fitzedward Hall, i. 40.
769 Prāna is in reality the universal Life Principle.
770 All the uterine contents, having a direct spiritual connection with
their cosmic antetypes, are, on the physical plane, potent objects
in Black Magic, and are therefore considered unclean.
771 See _supra_, ii. Part I.
772 The Solar System or the Earth, as the case may be.
773 So are the animals, the plants, and even the minerals. Reichenbach
never understood what he learned through his sensitives and
clairvoyants. It _is_ the odic, or rather the auric or magnetic
fluid which emanates from man, but it is also something more.
774 See _supra_, i. 181, for the Vedāntic exoteric enumeration.
775 See _Lucifer_, January, 1889, "Dialogue upon the Mysteries of After-
Life."
776 See _supra_, i, 626-629.
777 See _supra_, i, 228, _et seq._, and ii. _passim_.
778 _Op. cit._, ii, 456, 461, 465 _et seq._
779 _Jod-Hevah_, or male-female on the terrestrial plane, as invented by
the Jews, and now made out to mean Jehovah; but signifying in
reality and literally, "giving being" and "receiving life."
780 See _Notice sur le Calendrier_, J. H. Ragon.
781 See _supra_, ii. 373; and 152, _et seq._
782 See _supra_, ii. 302, _et seq._
783 _Op. cit._, ii. 81, 6.
784 See Frank's _Die Kabbala_, p. 314, _et seq._
785 _Genesis_, ii. 7.
786 _Supra_, i. 147.
787 We may refer for confirmation to Origen's works, who says that "the
seven ruling daimons" (genii or planetary rulers) are Michael, the
Sun (the lion-like); the second in order, the Bull, Jupiter or
Suriel, etc.; and all these, the "Seven of the Presence," are the
Sephiroth. The Sephirothal Tree is the Tree of the Divine Planets as
given by Porphyry, or Porphyry's Tree, as it is usually called.
788 _Supra_, i, 147.
789 Esoterically, green, there being no black in the prismatic ray.
790 Esoterically, light blue. As a pigment, purple is a compound of red
and blue, and in Eastern Occultism blue is the spiritual essence of
the colour purple, while red is its material basis. In reality,
Occultism makes Jupiter blue because he is the son of Saturn, which
is green, and light blue as a prismatic colour contains a great deal
of green. Again, the Auric Body will contain much of the colour of
the Lower Manas if the man is a material sensualist, just as it will
contain much of the darker hue if the Higher Manas has preponderance
over the Lower.
791 Esoterically, the Sun cannot correspond with the eye, nose, or any
other organ, since, as explained, it is no planet, but a central
star. It was adopted as a planet by the post-Christian Astrologers,
who had never been initiated. Moreover, the true colour of the Sun
is blue, and it appears yellow only owing to the effect of the
absorption of vapours (chiefly metallic) by its atmosphere. All is
Māyā on our Earth.
792 Esoterically, indigo, or dark blue, which is the complement of
yellow in the prism. Yellow is a simple or primitive colour. Manas
being dual in its nature--as is its sidereal symbol, the planet
Venus, which is both the morning and evening star--the difference
between the higher and the lower principles of Manas, whose essence
is derived from the Hierarchy ruling Venus, is denoted by the dark
blue and green. Green, the Lower Manas, resembles the colour of the
solar spectrum which appears between the yellow and the dark blue,
the Higher Spiritual Manas. Indigo is the intensified colour of the
heaven or sky, to denote the upward tendency of Manas toward Buddhi,
or the heavenly Spiritual Soul. This colour is obtained from the
_indigofera tinctoria_, a plant of the highest occult properties in
India, much used in White Magic, and occultly connected with copper.
This is shown by the indigo assuming a copper lustre, especially
when rubbed on any hard substance. Another property of the dye is
that it is insoluble in water and even in ether, being lighter in
weight than any known liquid. No symbol has ever been adopted in the
East without being based upon a logical and demonstrable reason.
Therefore Eastern Symbologists, from the earliest ages, have
connected the spiritual and the animal minds of man, the one with
dark blue (Newton's indigo), or true blue, free from green; and the
other with pure green.
793 Esoterically, yellow, because the colour of the Sun is orange, and
Mercury now stands next to the Sun in distance, as it does in
colour. The planet for which the Sun is a substitute was still
nearer the Sun than Mercury now is, and was one of the most secret
and highest planets. It is said to have become invisible at the
close of the Third Race.
794 Esoterically, violet, because, perhaps, violet is the colour assumed
by a ray of sunlight when transmitted through a very thin plate of
silver, and also because the Moon shines upon the Earth with light
borrowed from the Sun, as the human body shines with qualifications
borrowed from its double--the aėrial man. As the astral shadow starts
the series of principles in man, on the terrestrial plane, up to the
lower, animal Manas, so the violet ray starts the series of
prismatic colours from its end up to green, both being, the one as a
principle and the other as a colour, the most refrangible of all the
principles and colours. Besides which, there is the same great
Occult mystery attached to all these correspondences, both celestial
and terrestrial bodies, colours and sounds. In clearer words, there
exists the same law of relation between the Moon and the Earth, the
astral and the living body of man, as between the violet end of the
prismatic spectrum and the indigo and the blue. But of this more
anon.
795 Magic, _Magia_, means, in its spiritual, secret sense, the "Great
Life," or divine life _in spirit_. The root is _magh_, as seen in
the Sanskrit _mahat_, Zend _maz_, Greek _megas_, and Latin _magnus_,
all signifying "great."
796 _Philosophumena_, vi. 9.
797 _Nous_, _Epinoia_; _Phōne_, _Onoma_; _Logismos_, _Enthumźsis_.
798 _Philosophumena_, vi. 12.
799 See _supra_, _sub voce_.
800 _The Great Revelation_ (_Hź Megalź Apophasis_), of which Simon
himself is supposed to have been the author.
801 Literally, standing opposite each other in rows or pairs.
802 _Philosophumena_, vi. 18.
803 _Op. cit._, vi. 18.
804 _Op. cit._, i. 13.
805 _Op. cit._, vi. 17.
806 _Op. cit._, i. 5.
807 _Philosophumena_, vi. 14.
808 At first there are the omphalo-mesenteric vessels, two arteries and
two veins, but these afterwards totally disappear, as does the
"vascular area" on the Umbilical Vesicle, from which they proceed.
As regards the "Umbilical Vessels" proper, the Umbilical Cord
ultimately has entwined around it from right to left the one
Umbilical Vein which takes the oxygenated blood from the mother to
the Foetus, and two Hypogastric or Umbilical Arteries which take the
used-up blood from the Foetus to the Placenta, the contents of the
vessels being the reverse of that which prevails after birth. Thus
Science corroborates the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Occultism,
for in the days of Simon Magus no man, unless an Initiate, knew
anything about the circulation of the blood or about Physiology.
While this Paper was being printed, I received two small pamphlets
from Dr. Jerome A. Anderson, which were printed in 1884 and 1888,
and in which is to be found the scientific demonstration of the
foetal nutrition as advanced in Paper I. Briefly, the Foetus is
nourished by osmosis from the Amniotic Fluid and respires by means
of the Placenta. Science knows little or nothing about the Amniotic
Fluid and its uses. If any one cares to follow up this question, I
would recommend Dr. Anderson's _Remarks on the Nutrition of the
Foetus_. (Wood & Co., New York.)
809 _Supra_, vol. ii.
810 See Eusebius, _Hist. Eccles._, lib. iii. cap. 26.
811 _De Mysteriis_, p. 100, lines 10 to 19; p. 109, fol. 1.
812 _De Mysteriis_, p. 290, lines 15 to 18, _et seq._, caps. v. and vii.
813 _Ibid._, p. 100, sec. iii, cap. iii.
814 See _supra_, i. 34; i. 4, _et seq._; ii. 39, _et seq._, and 625, _et
seq._
815 The following table lists the wave-lengths in Millimetres, and the
number of vibrations in Trillions, of the various colours.
Violet extreme: 406, 759
Violet: 423, 709
Violet-Indigo: 439, 683
Indigo: 449, 668
Indigo-Blue: 459, 654
Blue: 479, 631
Blue-Green: 492, 610
Green: 512, 586
Green-Yellow: 532, 564
Yellow: 551, 544
Yellow-Orange: 571, 525
Orange: 583, 514
Orange-Red: 596, 503
Red: 620, 484
Red-extreme: 645, 465
816 See _Five Years of Theosophy_, pp. 273 to 278.
817 _Apud Grźbaut Papyrus Orbiney_, p. 101.
818 See "Genius," _Lucifer_, Nov., 1889, p. 227.
819 See _Voice of the Silence_, pp. 68 and 94, art. 28, Glossary.
820 The references to "Nature's Finer Forces" which follow, have respect
to the eight articles which appeared in the pages of the
_Theosophist_ and not to the fifteen essays and the translation of a
chapter of the Shivāgama which are contained in the book called
_Nature's Finer Forces_. The _Shivāgama_ in its details is purely
Tāntric, and nothing but harm can result from any practical
following of its precepts. I would most strongly dissuade any
student from attempting any of these Hatha Yoga practices, for he
will either ruin himself entirely, or throw himself so far back that
it will be almost impossible to regain the lost ground in this
incarnation. The translation referred to has been considerably
expurgated, and even now is hardly fit for publication. It
recommends Black Magic of the worst kind, and is the very antipodes
of spiritual Rāja Yoga. Beware, I say.
821 Prāna, on earth at any rate, is thus but a mode of life, a constant
cyclic motion from within outwardly and back again, an out-breathing
and in-breathing of the ONE LIFE, or Jīva, the synonym of the
Absolute and Unknowable Deity. Prāna is not absolute life, or Jīva,
but its aspect in a world of delusion. In the _Theosophist_, May,
1888, p. 478, Prāna is said to be "one stage finer than the gross
matter of the earth."
822 Remember that our re-incarnating Egos are called the Mānasaputras,
"Sons of Manas" (or Mahat), Intelligence, Wisdom.
823 It is erroneous to call the fourth human principle "Kāma Rūpa." It
is no Rūpa or form at all until after death, but stands for the
Kāmic elements in man, his animal desires and passions, such as
anger, lust, envy, revenge, etc., the progeny of selfishness and
matter.
824 Here the world of effects is the Devachanic state, and the world of
causes, earth life.
825 It is this Kāma Rūpa alone that can _materialize_ in mediumistic
séances, which occasionally happens when it is not the Astral Double
or Linga Sharīra, of the medium himself which appears. How, then,
can this vile bundle of passions and terrestrial lusts, resurrected
by, and gaining consciousness only through the organism of the
medium, be accepted as a "departed angel" or the Spirit of a once
human body? As well say of the microbic pest which fastens on a
person, that it is a sweet departed angel.
826 This is accomplished in more or less time, according to the degree
in which the personality (whose dregs it now is) was spiritual or
material. If spirituality prevailed, then the Larva, or Spook, will
fade out very soon; but if the personality was very materialistic,
the Kāma Rūpa may last for centuries and--in some, though very
exceptional cases--even survive with the help of some of its
scattered Skandhas, which are all transformed in time into
Elementals. See the _Key to Theosophy_, pp. 141 _et seq._, in which
work it was impossible to go into details, but where the Skandhas
are spoken of as the germs of Karmic effect.
827 _Key to Theosophy_, p. 141
828 Following _Shivāgama_, the said author enumerates the
correspondences in this wise; Ākāsha, Ether, is followed by Vāyu,
Gas; Tejas, Heat; Āpas, Liquid; and Prithivī, Solid.
829 See Fitz-Edward Hall's notes on the _Vishnu Purāna_.
830 The pair which we refer to as the One Life, the Root of All, and
Ākāsha in its pre-differentiating period answers to the Brahma
(neuter) and Aditi of some Hindus, and stands in the same relation
as the Parabrahman and Mūlaprakriti of the Vedāntins.
831 See above, i. diagram, p. 221.
832 Anupādaka, Opapatika in Pāli, means the "parentless," born without
father or mother, from _itself_, as a transformation, _e.g._, the
God Brahmā sprung from the Lotus (the symbol of the Universe) that
grows from Vishnu's navel, Vishnu typifiying eternal and limitless
Space, and Brahmā the Universe and LOGOS; the mythical Buddha is
also born from a Lotus.
833 See _Theosophist_, February, 1888, p. 276.
834 Soemmerring, _De Acervulo Cerebri_, vol. ii. p. 322.
835 In the Greek Eastern Church no child is allowed to go to confession
before the age of seven, after which he is considered to have
reached the age of reason.
836 _De Caus. Ep._, vol xii.
837 _Advers. Med._, ii. 322.
838 _De Lapillis Glandulę Pinealis in Quinque Ment Alien_, 1753.
839 See "Stray Thoughts on Death and Satan" in the _Theosophist_, vol.
iii. No. 1; also "Fragments of Occult Truth," vols. iii. and iv.
840 _Op. cit._, ii. 368, _et seq._
841 The essence of the Divine Ego is "pure flame," an entity to which
nothing can be added and from which nothing can be taken; it cannot,
therefore, be diminished even by countless numbers of lower minds,
detached from it like flames from a flame. This is in answer to an
objection by an Esotericist who asked whence was that inexhaustible
essence of one and the same Individuality which was called upon to
furnish a human intellect for every new personality in which it is
incarnated.
842 The brain, or thinking machinery, is not only in the head, but, as
every physiologist who is not quite a materialist will tell you,
every organ in man, heart, liver, lungs, etc., down to every nerve
and muscle, has, so to speak, its own distinct brain or thinking
apparatus. As our brain has naught to do in the guidance of the
collective and individual work of every organ in us, what is that
which guides each so unerringly in its incessant functions; that
make these struggle, and that too with disease, throws it off and
acts, each of them, even to the smallest, not in a clock-work
manner, as alleged by some materialists (for, at the slightest
disturbance or breakage the clock stops), but as an entity endowed
with instinct? To say it is Nature is to say nothing, if it is not
the enunciation of a fallacy; for Nature after all is but a name for
these very same functions, the sum of the qualities and attributes,
physical, mental, etc., in the universe and man, the total of
agencies and forces guided by intelligent laws.
843 See _Key to Theosophy_, pp. 147, 148, _et seq._
844 Kāma Rūpa, the vehicle of the Lower Manas, is said to dwell in the
physical brain, in the five physical senses and in all the sense-
organs of the physical body.
845 Tanmātra means subtle and rudimentary form, the gross type of the
finer elements. The five Tanmātras are really the characteristic
properties or qualities of matter and of all the elements; the real
spirit of the word is "something" or "merely transcendental," in the
sense of properties or qualities.
846 See _Theosophist_, August, 1883, "The Real and the Unreal."
847 As the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ and the _Occult World_ called
Manas the Human Soul, and Buddhi the Spiritual Soul, I have left
these terms unchanged in the _Voice_, seeing that it was a book
intended for the public.
848 In the exoteric teachings of Rāja Yoga, Antahkarana is called the
inner organ of perception and is divided into four parts: the
(lower) Manas, Buddhi (reason), Ahankāra (personality), and Chitta
(thinking faculty). It also, together with several other organs,
forms a part of Jīva, Soul called also Lingadeh. Esotericists,
however, must not be misled by this popular version.
849 The Earth, or earth-life rather, is the only Avītchi (Hell) that
exists for the men of our humanity on this globe. Avītchi is a
state, not a locality, a counterpart of Devachan. Such a state
follows the Soul wherever it goes, whether into Kāma Loka, as a
semi-conscious Spook, or into a human body, when reborn to suffer
Avītchi. Our Philosophy recognizes no other Hell.
850 See _Voice of the Silence_, p. 97.
851 _Loc. cit._
852 Read the last footnote on p. 368, vol. ii. of _Isis Unveiled_, and
you will see that even profane Egyptologists and men who, like
Bunsen, were ignorant of Initiation, were struck by their own
discoveries when they found the "Word" mentioned in old papyri.
853 See _Theosophist_, vol. iii., October, 1882, p. 13.
854 Read pp. 40 and 63 in the _Voice of the Silence_.
855 See _Voice of the Silence_, p. viii.
856 The following notes were contributed by students and approved by H.
P. B.
857 See page 444.
858 All these "spaces" denote the special magnetic currents, the planes
of substance, and the degrees of approach that the consciousness of
the Yogī, or Chelā, performs towards assimilation with the
inhabitants of the Lokas.
859 [If the Nidānas are read the reverse way, _i.e._, from 12 to 1, they
give the evolutionary order.--ED.]
860 [_I.e._, an Initiate, the word Adept being used by H. P. B. to cover
all grades of Initiation. As above seen, she used the words Māyāvi
Rūpa in more than one sense.--ED.]
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